Page 41 - GUIDO RENI 2017

Both Elena Fumagalli and Catherine Johnston have tentatively suggested that the painting may have been
commissioned by the Aldobrandini early in the artist’s career. The 1603 inventory of part of Pietro’s collection
does not list the painting among the 339 works recorded and the 1611 inventory (Arch. Segreto Vaticano, Fondo
Borghese, vol. 7377) remains to be researched20. Keith Christiansen proposed that the picture dates early in
Reni’s career (in Bologna) c.1598-1600 and Erich Schleier concurs. That Camillo Borghese was familiar with
Reni is made clear by the fact that he commissioned his portrait while still a cardinal (London, Matthiesen Gallery
see p. 46 in this catalogue). Recently the dating of this portrait, previously c.1604, has been moved a few years
earlier so that it is entirely possible that he could have acquired the Country Dance directly from Reni close to
1600. Alternatively, Scipione engaged Reni’s services and acquired many pictures from the Aldobrandini.
If Scipione himself commissioned the Country Dance from Reni, he might have been inspired to do so by the Dosso
Dossi works that he owned as well as being influenced by Niccolò dell’ Abate’s work. There is further evidence
of the continuing success of the Village Dance theme in a recently discovered drawing by the eighteenth-century
Bolognese artist Giuseppe Gambarini, 1680-1725 (Fig. 15).The expression of this theme formed a fundamental
part of French eighteenth century art from Watteau to Fragonard21.

Patrick Matthiesen

20. I am once again grateful to Francesca Cappelletti for furnishing me with a transcript of the inventory which contains primarily
religious works, many by Ferrarese artists, and only a handful of landscapes by Viola, Albani and Domenichino.

21. cf. the exhibition catalogue De Watteau à Fragonard, les fêtes galantes, Paris, Musée Jacquemart-André (2014).

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