The Blessings of Good Government

Sebastiano Conca 1680 - 1764

Summary

This allegorical scene, framed with Rococo scrolls and garlands, relates to the good government of Pope Benedict XIV (1740-1758). The central figures of Fortune, with a rudder, and Truth, with light radiating from her head, point to four empty cartouches. Truth holds a coat-of-arms under her left arm: three gold bars against a red background (as yet unidentified, probably gules, three billets per fes, or), which was probably intended to relate to the principal portrait. These two main figures are flanked by putti with fasces, symbols of justice. To the right, Abundance with a cornucopia is approached by Wisdom, symbolised as a Wise Virgin with oil to burn in her lamp. On the left is Mercury with a female warrior, perhaps Minerva, whose helmet may be crested with an owl. The absence of any detail in the frames makes it difficult to know whether this is an alternative decorative scheme to the pendant sketch by Conca in Manchester's collection (inv. 1966.296), or in praise of someone other than Pope Benedict XIV. The meaning is similar, however. Both oil sketches were evidently designs for painted panels, probably overdoors (sopraporti) or sections of a frieze. Conca was one of the most successful painters in Rome in the first half of the 18th century. He received numerous important royal and religious commissions and his smaller easel works were collected across Europe. Pompeo Batoni, Corrado Giaquinto and Anton Raphael Mengs were outstanding pupils of his famous Accademia del Nudo in the Palazzo Farnese in Rome. Conca himself was indebted to his own teacher in Rome, Carlo Maratti (1625-1713), who was the last major artist there to work in the classical tradition that began with Raphael. Stylistically, the present work combines elements of late Baroque grandeur and theatre that were standard in grand decorative schemes (here, the fluid complex of figures in an ornate faux frame) with a classicising symmetry and sense of proportion.