This attractive painting depicts a celebrated episode recounted in Book V (lines 311-430) of Homer's Iliad. Diomedes, the King of Argos and one of the most important and valiant characters in the Iliad who enjoyed the protection of Pallas Athena, wounded Venus on the battlefield after she appeared in the thick of the fray to tend to her son Aeneas.

The goddess had spread her arms around her son to protect him from arrows and spears with her resplendent veil so that the Greeks could not kill him. She removed Aeneas from the battle but she was chased by Diomedes, who cast his spear at her and grazed her wrist. Mars, her lover, sent a chariot swathed in clouds and driven by Iris to bring her back to Mount Olympus.

In the painting under discussion here, Venus lies in Iris's chariot swathed in clouds. Seemingly lifeless, she is supported by the three winged putti around her. In the lower background we are offered a very summary bird's eye view of the battling raging between the Achaeans of Diomedes and Aeneas's Trojans. In the distance we can make out the city walls and monuments of a Troy so fanciful that it even encompasses the pyramids of Egypt.

This painting, whose compositional approach and beguiling view from below appear to echo the style of a fresco, is very closely modelled on the work of Andrea Appiani, Italy's most important Neoclassical painter.

We are reminded of Appiani's painting primarily by the construction of the picture's composition. The artist must have meticulously studied several of the frescoes that Appiani painted in Milan in the course of his prestigous career, including the Aurora Chasing the Night Away with which he adorned the grand staircase in Palazzo Litta (now Palazzo Litta Cusini Modignani) in 1792.

Iris's raised arm in our picture is strongly reminiscent of Aurora's arm in Appiani's fresco, and we can detect further similarities in the poses of the winged putti accompanying the chariot, in the horses and in the artist's singular handling of gilt bronze, which he renders in intense detail and highlights with dashes of lead white to capture its sheen. Winged victories are also frequently found in the celebratory work that Appiani dedicated to Napoleon after he was appointed to the post of the French Emperor's official painter in Italy in 1805.

A similar composition may also be seen in a small oil painting on copper depicting Aurora and Cephalus in Milan's Galleria d’Arte Moderna.

The bird's eye view of the battle between the Trojans and the Greeks is also very closely inspired by the new approach to historical painting that Appiani first adopted in Milan with his celebrated Fastes de Napoléon – destroyed in an air raid in 1943 – painted in monochrome in the gallery of the Sala delle Cariatidi in the Palazzo Reale between 1800 and 1807 (fig. 3).

 Fig. 3: Andrea Appiani, Napoleon in Egypt Meditating Before the Allegorical Embodiment of the Cisalpine Republic, 1800–3, tempera on canvas; formerly Palazzo Reale di Milano, Sala delle Cariatidi (destroyed in 1943).

For all the above reasons, our painting may be attributed to one of Appiani's closest assistants. One such was an as yet little-known artist named Antonio De Antoni (1780/5 – 1854) who worked with his master both on a number of his frescoes and on such canvases as the Portrait of Giovanni Battista Fratres dated 1805–10 (fig. 4);while another was Giuseppe Diotti (1779–1846), who went on to enjoy an important career as a fresco painter in his own right (fig. 5)

 Fig. 4: Andrea Appiani, Antonio De Antoni, Portrait of Giovanni Battista Fratres, 1805–10, oil on canvas; Milan, Ospedale Maggiore, Ca' Granda.

Despite the considerable research that has been devoted to these topics, some of it the fruit of my own labours, the complex dynamic of Appiani's workshop still awaits historical reconstruction. Thus future research may well help to shed light also on the artist who painted this rediscovered picture, which we may rightly consider to be a very valuable element in  documenting the history of Neoclassical art in Lombardy.

Lastly, we may date our painting to c. 1820 on account of the very sharp, almost chiselled handling of the figures' anatomy and of Venus's lithe and slender limbs which reveal a sensitivity to the natural that already foreshadows the taste of Romantic era; while the faces of the putti very clearly betray the influence of Pelagio Palagi, another important Italian painter who moved to Milan in 1815 and remained there until 1832.

 Fig. 5: Giuseppe Diotti, Iris Brings Venus Back to Mount Olympus, 1815–20, fresco; Cremona, Palazzo Mina Bolzesi.

Rome, February 2021

                                                                                    Francesco Leone