Page 33 - GUIDO RENI 2017

Fig. 10. Annibale or Agostino Carracci, Fête Champêtre, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Marseille.

This Emilian interest in concerts finds a later interpretation in A Double Portrait (Rome, Capitoline) and The
Portrait of the Four Monaldini Brothers (Scotland, Hopetown House), both by Bartolomeo Passerotti c.1580. All
of these works may well, of course, have been known by Reni. Another echo of Passerotti is the headgear worn
by the seated peasants, reminiscent of Passerotti’s Fishmonger (Rome, Palazzo Barberini), but this of course
just represents the style of the period.

One has to ponder the degree to which Reni, in his Country Dance, is reflecting upon models by Annibale
Carracci. He would have known the landscape elements of the frescoes in Palazzo Magnani and might
also have seen the Fête Champêtre now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Marseille, which is generally
dated 1580-85 (Fig.10). This painting has been attributed to Annibale9 but, as Clovis Whitfield has pointed
out, could also be by Agostino: ‘It does not seem to have been noticed that Malvasia described such a picture

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