Pier Francesco Mola

This drawing depicts Hercules and his one-time mistress and lover Omphale, Queen of Lydia, to whom Hercules was sold after he murdered his friend Iphitus during a fit of madness, according to classical mythology. In reversal of their gender roles, Hercules is shown holding a distaff (a stick used for spinning thread), while Omphale wears the hero's lion skin and props herself up on his club. The figure of Cupid sits below in the lower left. The identities of the three figures are confirmed by a short inscription in French on the verso of the drawing. As evidenced by this inscription, the drawing has traditionally been attributed to Pier Francesco Mola. Nicholas Turner believes this sheet is unquestionably by Mola, and is dateable to the 1650s. Turner compares the sheet's composition as well as the psychological aspect of the figures to Mola's fresco Bacchus and Ariadne in the Palazzo Costaguti, Rome, generally dated ca. 1650, and related drawings (Turner, E-mail correspondence, September 2009; Cocke 1972, p. 57, cat. 46, pls. 39-441, repr.; Pier Francesco Mola 1989-90, pp. 205-7, cat. II.3, repr.). Though somewhat coarse and clumsy in execution, the drawing also bears a compositional resemblance to a study of Bacchus and Ariadne in the British Museum, as noted by Rhoda Eitel-Porter. Once thought to be by Nicolas Poussin, the British Museum drawing, too, was later given to Pier Francesco Mola and most recently has been attributed to Giovanni Francesco Romanelli (inv. 1913-1-11-2; Turner 1999, pp. 183-4, no. 275, fig. 275, as attributed to Romanelli). Most prominent among the similarities are Omphale's and Ariadne's stances, the poses of the two Cupids, the surrounding cast of peripheral characters and the lightly-indicated landscape. The exact purpose of the British Museum drawing remains unknown, though it has been associated with Romanelli's commission for an oval panel of Cupid and Danae in the Grande Galerie of the Palais Mazarin, Paris (Turner 1999, p. 184, under cat. 275). Sean Leatherbury, 2009.
Works cited: Cocke, Richard. Pier Francesco Mola (Oxford, 1972); Friedlaender, Walter, and Blunt, Anthony (eds). The Drawings of Nicolas Poussin. Catalogue raisonné. Part Three: Mythological Subjects (London, 1953); Pier Francesco Mola, 1612-1666 (exh. cat., Lugano, Museo Cantonale d'Arte; Rome, Museo Capitolino; 1989-90); Rosenberg, Pierre, and Prat, Louis-Antoine. Nicolas Poussin, 1594-1665. Catalogue raisonné des dessins, II (Milan, 1994); Turner, Nicholas. Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in The British Museum. Roman Baroque Drawings, c. 1620 to c. 1700 (London, 1999), Vol.s I-II.