An Allegory in Honor of Innocent X

Etching, 1644, inscribed in the image below the figure of the Tiber: Dno Stephano Garbesi Nobili Viro optime de se merito/ Petrus Testa beneficiorum non immemor DD; in lower left Si Stampano alla Pace per Gio Jacomo de Rossi/ in Roma all insegna di Parigi

Example in the third state of four, published by Giovanni Giacomo de Rossi.

Excellent work, printed on contemporary laid paper with “double circle and fleur-de-lis” watermark, small margins, small tears perfectly repaired on upper part, in very good condition.

"Innocent X Pamphili was elected pope on September 15, 1644. For those who had prospered under the patronage of the Barberini, his election brought hard times. Testa’s own patron Girolamo Buonvisi left Rome for Lucca, and his opportunities to win favor for the young artist, now thirty-four years old, were curtailed. No prints bearing his emblem can be dated after 1644. Cassiano dal Pozzo also lost his favored position at the papal couR With the production of this print Testa hoped to find fresh patronage had done on the occasion of Cardinal Franciotti's appointment as bishop of Lucca (cat. no. 36). The Pamphili coat of arms includes the fleur-de- lys and a dove bearing an olive branch (seen here in the oval niche at the right). Like many other artists and writers Testa seized upon the implication of the dove and the olive branch to develop the conceit that, after suffering the economic catastro- phe of Urban VIII's War of Castro,' Rome would enjoy a golden age of peace under the new pope. Building on the inventions of "The Seasons" (see cat. nos. 74-83), Testa shows at the left the orb of a new sun above the cloth of the starry skies in whose folds the ladder of the Zodiac appears. The most prominent sign, below the lion of Leo, is Virgo, whose return to the earth heralds the return of Justice and the beginning of the golden age. But it is now God the Father himself, flanked by angels, who leans upon the globe of the earth and points commandingly down to the scene below. Beside the orb in which he sits, and again appropriate tor an invention dedicated to the celebration of a pope, stands a woman with her hands folded in prayer, representing Religion. Next to her stands another woman who represents Piety, her hands covered in reverence as she holds a model of the Pantheon, the temple of all the gods. with the new pope, just as he As in The Triumph of Painting on Parnassus (cat. no. 73), Testa shows the triumphal arch of the rain- bow lending colors to painting, only here the rain- bow is the sign of God's promise of peace first granted to Noah, and the artist is symbolized as Peace herself. The figure of Iris, the messenger o the gods and the personification of the rainbow, holds out her pot of colors to Peace as a dove bearing an olive branch swoops down from above. The image painted by Peace is realized in the form of a monument to Innocent X, a bust of whom appears in an oval niche above the Pamphili lilies and dove. Resting on the top of the monument are the papal tiara, keys, and stole and two pots of smoking incense. The oval image is flanked by two allegorical figures, the one with the fasces in her hand standing for Justice, the other in the form of Minerva circled by a snake representing the prudent wisdom that accompanies justice. Each holds an olive branch of peace. To the familiar conjoining of Justice and Peace in Psalm 85, to which Testa had referred in his drawing for the fresco in Lucca (cat. no. 31), is thus here added the equally familiar Virgilian theme that Justice (the figure of Virgo in the zodiac) returns in the golden age.

Beneath the benign aspect of the heavens at the election of Innocent X Testa shows the city of Rome enjoying the perpetual springtime of the golden age. Nymphs collect flowers in baskets and weave them into garlands with which winged putti bedeck the monument to Innocent X. In the right foreground reclines the figure of the Tiber, so identified by Testa in his note on the proof beside a cornucopia of the fruits and flowers of the new age. One putto soberly crowns the river with a garland. In the back- ground sit artists and poets, their work inspired by the light from the celestial radiance. In the left foreground, in sharp contrast to this scene of celebration, sits a crouching, muscular ngure who cowers over a hare on the other bank of the Tiber. Like the figure with the hare in the Frankfurt drawing for The Triumph of Painting (fig. 73a), he represents Fear or Pusillanimity. As in that work and in accordance with Testa's reading of Ber- nardo Segni's translation of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, the pusillanimous man is the opposite of the magnanimous patronage. Avarice, in the figure of the hun-gry wolf, is also shown leaving the city.' In the barely legible note at the lower edge of the proof Testa identifies the figure with the protector of evil- doers, and there can be no doubt that he intends a criticism of the previous papal regime. In the back- ground, against the cityscape of ancient Rome, Her- cules drives personifications of the vices across a bridge and out of the city. This is the punitive justice to which Testa's note refers. Testa had not benefited directly from Barberini patronage, but his main supporters had enjoyed office at the Barberini court, and he had little justifi-cation for taking up the popular attacks on the dead pope: 2. and his family. That he did so suggests increas- ing desperation on his part. In a drawing in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle (fig. 85-86a), he again took up the theme of the return of justice. 

Mars stands in his chariot at the center of the com- position, and beneath him are all the evils of war. A man with a sword tramples a mother with her children as Envy with her snakes and dog looks on; the trophies of war are arrayed to the right. As Painting lies fainting on the rainbow, supported by the supplicating figure of winged Fame and by Wis- dom, hope comes in the form of Virgo holding up her scales and seated on yet another rainbow. As she the hand of Mars the dove flies in with an stays olive branch in his beak, putti scatter flowers, and Flora reins in the horses of the chariot of war. But the arrival of Innocent brought no such salvation to the arts. As Montagu states, the Romans greeted the new pope with "even more than their usual degree of optimism that a change of a happier and more propitious era, but even the most sanguine could not look forward to a new golden age for the arts.' prediction in this print, which he probably hoped to dedicate to the pope himself, and in the Windsor drawing, but the patronage he hoped for, and far less the new golden age, were not forthcoming." E. Cropper, Pietro Testa, pp. 182-183, n. 86.

Pietro Testa was called Lucchesino for he was born in Lucca. There are but a few news about his apprenticeship in his hometown; for sure, he went to Rome in 1629 to study in the school of Domenichino first and then, towards the end of the year, he moved to the studio of his real master, Pietro da Cortona. His introvert temper caused him a lot of troubles; Cortona, in fact, was obliged to send him away due to his hostile and disdainful behaviour.

Testa went then to the house of his first patron, the famous collector Cassiano del Pozzo, and for him he realized his drawings from antiques. Maybe it was in this house that he met Nicolas Poussin who deeply influenced his art both in the neo-Venetian phase and the intellectual classicist one, from 1635.

His engravings though, about 40 pieces, have been considered, starting from Sandrart and Bladinucci, the most important graphic works of the Italian XVII century.