Il disinganno (c.1575)

Veronese, Paolo (1528-1588)

Allegorie dell’amore: Il disinganno (Four Allegories of Love: Scorn)
c.1575
Oil on canvas, 186.6 x 188.5 cm
National GalleryLondon

This is one of a series of four paintings by Veronese that concern the trials and rewards of love, although their precise meanings remain unclear. The titles are not original and were given to the paintings in 1727. The compositions are designed to be seen from below, so we know the pictures were intended for a ceiling or a series of ceilings.

The paintings were recorded in 1648 in the collection of the Holy Roman Emperor in Prague. We do not know who commissioned them, but it is most likely that the patron of the Four Allegories of Love was Italian and that the paintings were still in Italy in the 1620s, when Anthony van Dyck recorded two of the compositions in his Italian sketchbook (British MuseumLondon). It is possible that the paintings were made for the parallel suites of rooms of a husband and wife, two for the reception room and bedchamber of the man and two for the equivalent rooms of his spouse.This painting and Respect arguably seem particularly intended for a male viewer.

This painting is the most difficult to interpret of the series. A naked man is lying on an entablature beneath a ruined classical structure, which is decorated with two sculptures, one a limbless satyr or faun (half-man, half-goat), the other a standing figure holding panpipes in a niche. In classical mythology such creatures were associated with raw sexuality. Cupid is standing on the man’s chest, beating him with his bow. Its string has snapped, suggesting that love itself is broken. Cupid seems to be chastising the man for his devotion to hedonistic sexuality.

A bare-breasted woman looks down on the man as she is lead away by another woman holding an ermine (the white animal has a black-tipped tail). During the Italian Renaissance, the ermine was an emblem of purity and moderation, as well as of pregnancy and childbirth, as the animal was believed to protect pregnant women. Leonardo employed the ermine as a symbol to express these concepts in his portrait Lady with an Ermine (National Museum, Kraków).

The two women with joined hands may be understood as an illustration of how love encompasses, but is also split between, desire and devotion. The two women may represent earthly and celestial love, holding hands because they are both essential and in synthesis. The stone satyr appears to symbolise bestial love, which is inadmissible in a virtuous life. Although this painting was given the title Scorn in 1727, its subject seems to relate to contemporary Neoplatonic ideas about love, as also expressed in Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love of about 1514 (Galleria BorgheseRome).

A sheet of figure studies in pen and ink by Veronese for this series of paintings exists in the Metropolitan Museum of ArtNew York. The five different positions in which the naked man in Scorn is drawn shows the attention Veronese gave to problems of foreshortening, perhaps using a wax model of the figure to help resolve the pose. (NG)

The other three Allegories of Love:

Veronese, Paolo (1528-1588)
Il rispetto
c.1575
National GalleryLondon

 

 

Veronese, Paolo (1528-1588)
L’infedeltà
c.1575
National GalleryLondon

 

 

Veronese, Paolo (1528-1588)
L’unione felice
c.1575
National GalleryLondon

 

 

These four paintings by Veronese are allegories of love. They are titled Unfaithfulness, Scorn, Respect and Happy Union, although their precise meanings remain unclear and have been much debated. The titles were given to the paintings in 1727, and continue to be used in the absence of better suggestions.

They were intended for a ceiling or a series of ceilings. We can tell this because the architectural elements within them are tilted. The lower parts of the compositions are not included in the paintings, and in several cases the feet of the figures are not visible. These features would have worked when the paintings were displayed on a ceiling but are disconcerting when they are hung on a wall. The composition of each painting forms a strong diagonal, which on a ceiling would help relate the paintings to one another.

We do not know who commissioned them, but it is most likely that the patron was Italian and they were made for a Venetian location. They seem to have still been in Italy in the 1620s, when Van Dyck recorded two of the compositions (Unfaithfulness and Respect) in his Italian sketchbook (British MuseumLondon). In 1648 they were in Prague Castle, although it seems most likely that the patron was Venetian.

The paintings may have been made to decorate a husband and wife’s apartments as the subjects are connected with the trials and rewards of love. The scenes are not necessarily meant to go in any particular order and there is no obvious narrative development. The man in Happy Union does not appear in any of the other scenes.

It seems likely that the paintings were intended for the ceilings of a suite of four rooms rather than for a single ceiling. In each painting the light falls from the same direction, which supports this idea. Also, in Venice no private residence had a ceiling large enough for all four paintings and no ceiling with four square compartments is recorded. Since many European palaces had parallel suites of rooms for husband and wife, it is possible that two of the paintings were made for a reception room and bedchamber of a man and two for the equivalent rooms of his spouse. The series does seem to divide well into two pairs: Unfaithfulness with Happy Union; and Scorn with Respect.

It is likely that the rapidly brushed-in highlights on the figures were made in response to a final judgment of how the pictures looked when viewed from a distance and from below. That final judgment must have been Veronese’s own. The costumes and hairstyles relate to those in Veronese’s other paintings of the mid-1570s. (NG)