Details
FOLLOWER OF CLAUDE LORRAIN
The Father of Psyche Offering Sacrifice at the Temple of Apollo
oil on canvas
6312 x 8258 in. (161.2 x 209.9 cm.)
Provenance
Anonymous sale; Philips, London, 20 April 2000, lot 86, as 'After Claude Lorrain'.
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Lot Essay

The present work is a copy after a picture by Claude of c. 1662-5, painted for Angelo Paluzzi degli Albertoni, Marquess of Rosina (1623-1698), whose son, Gaspari Altieri, commissioned its pendant, The Arrival of Aeneas at Pallanteum. Both pictures were later in the collection of William Beckford, where JMW Turner is said to have admired their beauty, noting that 'he was both pleased and unhappy while He viewed it –it seemed to be beyond the power of imitation', and are now at Anglesey Abbey, National Trust.

The subject derives from The Metamorphoses of Apuleius, or The Golden Ass, by Apuleius. Psyche's beauty was so renowned that no suitor was prepared to court her. Concerned by her lack of husband and sensing the envy of the Gods, Psyche's father offered prayers and a sacrifice to Apollo, who declared that Psyche's future husband will be a 'serpent dire and fierce'.

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