Artista fiammingo, XVII secolo

Minerva protects the shepherd Syphilus

Oil on canvas

cm. 119x95,5. Framed

This painting, with its highly unusual iconography, is closely based on an idea by Otto van Veen, translated into print by Pieter Perret. The allegorical composition places the shepherd Syphilus at the center, surrendered to bodily pleasures and intoxication—an emblem of vulnerable mankind—besieged by the personifications of Venus (carnal love), Bacchus (intoxication), Ceres (gluttony), Poverty, Death, and Time. On the left, an armed Minerva attempts to pull Syphilus away, flanked by putti descending from the heavens bearing a laurel wreath and a palm—traditional rewards of virtue. The classical temple in the background, identified as Apollo’s, may also allude to the soul’s ascent toward knowledge and inner balance. The painting visualizes the moral and philosophical content of Syphilis sive de morbo gallico (1530), the Latin poem by Girolamo Fracastoro, a Veronese physician and poet. In the poem, Syphilus is a young shepherd who refuses to venerate Apollo, and is punished by the god with a new and terrible disease, marked by ulcerations and bodily deformities. The poem is not only a literary work but also a medical treatise on a newly emerging illness, described with great precision, to which the author gave the name “syphilis,” deriving it from the name of the protagonist.

Provenance:
Private collection, Rome.