Details
TERESA DEL PÒ (Rome 1649-1713 Naples)
Pan and Syrinx; Apollo and Daphne
signed ‘Teresa del Pò Accad.ca Romana F.’ (i, lower left); signed and dated ‘Teresa del Pò Accad.ca Romana F. 1698’ (ii, lower left)
bodycolor on vellum, mounted on cardboard
1458 x 1218 in. (37x 30.7cm), oval
Provenance
M. Grassi, New York.
Literature
N. G. Heller, Women Artists. An Illustrated History, New York, 1987, p. 8, ill.
N. Spinosa, Pittura napoletana del Settecento da Rococò al Classicismo, Naples, 1987, p. 57, and no. 329, ill.
A. Castello in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, XXXVIII, Rome, 1990, s.v.
O. Scognamiglio, ‘Donne artiste a Napoli e in Italia meridionale. Un difficile percorso critico’, in Una visione diversa. La creatività femminile in Italia tra lAnno Mille e il 1700, Milan, 2003, p. 82, ill.
B. de Dominici, Vite depittori, scultori ed architetti napoletani, F. Sricchia Santoro and A. Zezza, eds., Naples, 2008, II, p. 971, n. 47.
Dipinti del XVIII secolo, exhib. cat., Naples, Museo e Gallerie Nazionali di Capodimonte, 2010, p. 47, under no. 39 (catalogue by N. Spinosa).
Exhibited
Naples, Castel S. Elmo, and Vienna, Kunstforum der Bank Austria, Settecento napoletano. Sulle ali dell’aquila imperiale 1707-1734, 1994, nos. 95a-b, ill. (catalogue by N. Spinosa).
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Lot Essay

These two mythological scenes are important documents of the activity of Teresa del Pò, an artist born in Rome and trained in the workshop of her father, Pietro del Pò, together with two brothers. In 1675 Teresa became one of a handful of female members of the Academy of Saint Luke in Rome. She focused her artistic activity on the production of etchings and miniatures in pastel and tempera. By 1683 Teresa had moved to Naples, where presumably she painted these two works. For both compositions, the artist based herself on larger paintings of the same subjects by her brother Giacomo, one of which, Apollo and Daphne, is in the Museo Correale di Terranova in Sorrento (Spinosa, op. cit., 1987, no. 172, ill.). It has been suggested that the two gouaches can be identified with two ovals described in an archival document of 1696 which records that Neapolitan nobleman, the Prince of Sant’Agata, commissioned from Teresa two miniature paintings. For the two works, on 4 January 1696, she received a down payment together with her brother Giacomo, who was also given commissions by the same patron (De Dominici, op. cit.).

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