Altro diletto che imparar non trovo

A young man in the service of Virtue and Science, also known as Altro diletto che imparar non trovo.

Etching, circa 1645-50, signed in the plate in the bottom left corner.

Example in the first state of three, before the address of Westerouth. Excellent work, printed on contemporary laid paper with unidentified watermark, trimmed to the borderline, traces of folds of paper on verso, small restorations perfectly executed, otherwise in excellent condition.

The subject of this work, a complex allegory reflects the conception of pleasure or intellectual pleasure of the head, in the likeness of the young hero naked and pure, who plays the painter-philosopher described by Vitruvius. As emphasized in the Cropper, the inspiration of this scene is classic.

“The motto of this etching – “I find delight only in learning” – pertectly expresses Testa’s own philosophy of pleasure. The heroic nude who supports shield on which it is written personifies the ideal Vitruvian philosopher-painter he sought to be. The from Petrarch's Triumph of Love, which Testa found in the pages of Daniele Barbaro's edition of Vitruvius, which was perhaps the book he most closely srudied. In book one, chapter two, of his Ten Books f Architecture Vitruvius enumerates the principles of architecture, considering in their turn order, arrangement, curhythmy, symmetry, propriety, and economy. The second principle, arrangement, con- cerns ground plan, elevation, and perspective, all of which are born, according to Vitruvius, of reflection and invention. Reflection (pensamento), in turn, involves study, industry, and vigilance, all combined delight (dilettatione). In Testa's image the bust of Minerva, accompanied by books, compasses, and a celestial globe, broadly indicates that the artist- hero is being drawn toward wisdom; but the draw- ings on the tablet below, including the profile of a cornice, a line marked off into sections, a geometri- cal diagram, and the elevation of a cone, make it clear that Testa's invocation to artistic virtue is founded on Vitruvius's discussion of architectural sayıng is not of his own invention but is a quotation principles. In commenting on this passage in his second edition and translation of I dieci libri, pub- lished in 1567, Barbaro expands upon Vitruvius's notion of the delight and pleasure that accompany beautiful things born of hard work and diligence. He writes that pleasure follows the fulfillment of desire and that because the intellect desires the truth the greatest delight is to be found in learning it, "whence one says, 'I find delight only in learning. Barbaro's quotation in this way of a verse from Petrarch's Triumph of Love led to its becoming a kind of artist's motto. It was employed not only by Testa but also by the English architect Inigo Jones on the hrst page of his Roman sketchbook in 1614 The Florentine painter Alessandro Allori also added it to his signature on The Sacrifice of Isaac, dated 1601, now in the Uffizi.'

[…] This etching is very similar in technique and in invention to "The Seasons" and probably dates to about 1644. No preparatory drawings are known, and despite the in- scription there is no evidence that Testa produced a painting of this subject.' Altro diletto continues the investigation, begun in The Triumph of Painting on Parnassus of the artist's own struggle for virtue, framed without the reference to the natural order that characterizes "The Seasons." What further distinguishes these two prints and The Triumph of the Virtuous Artist on Parnassus from "The Seasons" is the prominence given to models taken from ancient sculpture and not only to Testa's study of figures from Annibale Carracci The figure of the young man is derived from the famous statue of Mercury by François Duquesnov itself closely modeled on the Belvedere Antinous that Testa would have known well. The sculpture was reproduced in the two-volume Galleria Giustiniani (Rome, 1631-c. 1634), the lavish publication of Vincenzo Giustiniani's collection, for which Testa had made drawings shortly after his arrival in Rome. Duquesnoy's bronze Mercury was commissioned as a companion to the bronze Hercules then in Giustiniani's collection, and it is significant that Testa has endowed the Herculean character of his virtuous hero with the more elegant proportions of Duquesnoy's Mercury. The choice, as Dempsey shows, was dictated by Testa's interest in the Greek manner that Duquesnoy's work exemplified. Testa amplified the slender portions of Mercury somewhat to adapt them more perfectly for his older and more heroic figure of Hercules, and it may also be that he sought to combine the strength of Hercules with the persuasiveness of Mercury's discourse in a single figure of the virtuous and intellectual artist. The bust of Minerva with rams' heads on her helmet is also derived from a statue in the Giustiniani collection. The Minerva Giustiniani was reproduced not only in the Galleria Giustiniani but also by François Perrier in his Segmenta nobilium signorum et statuarum que temporis dentem invidium evase (Rome, 1638) and by Joachim von Sandrart in his Teutsche Academie (1675-79). Testa's adoption of the head of the figure and the interest that his contemporaries took in it indicate that Giustiniani was not alone in consider- ing this the prize of his collection” E. Cropper, Pietro Testa, pp. 220-222, n. 101.

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.