Maestro Fiammingo di fine '500

"The Feast of the Gods" ------- Oil on canvas --------- Period: late 16th - early 17th century ------- Important gilded frame ---------- Canvas dimensions 116 x 86 ---------- Frame dimensions 153 x 123 --------- Excellent condition --------- Restored and re-lined in 1896 ---------- Extraordinary large-scale painting on canvas, excellently depicting a particularly lavish and character-rich convivial scene. It is the feast of the Gods to celebrate the wedding of Cupid and Psyche. All the most important Gods of Olympus participate, arranged in order on a horizontal line. The composition is truly spectacular, and the viewer's gaze does not focus on a main protagonist but is constantly moving, attracted by a succession of details. The figures are described in such a way as to be recognized by their attributes and classic pairings, in a riot of fruit and flowers scattered everywhere. The party appears very balanced, in the strictest sixteenth-century dictates, with an evident erotic charge. The naked and accentuatedly muscular bodies of the Gods contrast with the pale complexions of the Goddesses who ostentatiously display their bare breasts. The work is a remarkable work by a Flemish Artist inspired by Italian Mannerism, in particular by Raphael's frescoes at the Farnesina and Giulio Romano's at Palazzo Te. A very similar canvas, evidently by the same author, is exhibited in the Dijon museum in France with the attribution to an unknown Flemish painter executed between the late 16th and early 17th centuries. (Photo on the private website) The painting was restored in the late 19th century by the French painter Prevel d'Arlay who dated his intervention on the back of the canvas. The work is in truly excellent condition and is enhanced by an important gilded frame in neoclassical style perfectly in keeping with the subject of the painting. All the details of the work are published on the private website: https://www.antichitaischia.it/it/prodotto/-il-banchetto-degli-dei-