Neapolitan school of the 17th-18th century, Bacchus and Ariadne abandoned by Theseus

Neapolitan school of the 17th-18th century Bacchus and Ariadne abandoned by Theseus Oil on canvas, 74 x 100 cm With frame, 89 x 111 cm The painting in question, attributable to the hand of the same artist, represents a well-known mythological episode recognizable at first glance, full of hope and love. The represented is a mythological episode, taken from the tales of Ovid and Catullus: the meeting between Bacchus and Ariadne, after the Cretan princess was abandoned on the beach of Naxos by Theseus. The Athenian hero, in fact, after killing the minotaur thanks to the help of Ariadne, daughter of Minos, king of Crete, waited for the girl to fall asleep on the island of Naxos to leave with his ship and his companions. Upon awakening, Ariadne, desperate and disappointed, began to cry, but suddenly the Triumphal Chariot of Bacchus (or Dionysus) arrived, just escaped from the sorceress Circe, accompanied by a procession of nymphs and fauns and by a chariot pulled by leopards. As soon as he saw the young Ariadne, he fell in love with her, got off his chariot, reached her and gave her a wonderful golden crown created by Ephesus which, thrown into the sky, went to form the constellation of the Corona Borealis. Ariadne reciprocated the love for the god, followed him into the sky, to reach the other deities of Olympus. In the painting, there are explicit references to an artist active in Naples, Francesco Solimena (1657-1747), among the major interpreters of late Baroque culture in Italy. The painter, in fact, seems to refer both for the style, focused on characters characterized by strong shadows and light fabrics, and for the compositions both to Solimena, and to the chromatic experiments of Luca Giordano, to the vigorous and expressive painting of Mattia Preti, but also to the painting of "chiaroscuro" by Caravaggio and Giovanni Battista Caracciolo, artists who have left an indelible mark in Naples of the 17th century, the European capital of Baroque painting. The painting with Bacchus and Ariadne, on the other hand, takes up some of the figures conceived by Solimena in his homonymous painting present in the antique market. In particular, the positions of Bacchus with his arm outstretched to indicate the clouds in the sky through which he will take Ariadne to Olympus, the figure of the princess to whom a winged putto with a torch is placed next to, the glimpse of the bow of Theseus' ship leaving and the satyr behind the God, while caressing a leopard, as well as the putto kneeling in front of the Cretan girl, are similar. A reinterpretation in which our artist has decided to focus on the main characters of the scene, to whom he has managed to give feelings and emotions very close to reality.