Venus preventing her son Aeneas from killing Helen of Troy

The subject of a violent murder averted at the last minute by the miraculous intervention of a god or an angel occurs in several stories in Classical Greek and Roman mythology and also in the Old Testament. Such subjects were very popular in Italian Baroque painting, for they provided an ideal vehicle for high drama, angular lines of rapid movement, bursts of energy and suspense. This fine example, with its strong light and low arc of flailing, grasping hands, is based on an episode in Book II of the Aeneid, the ancient Roman epic poem by Virgil.

Luca Ferrari was a pupil of the Bolognese master Guido Reni, whose influence is clearly visible in the faces of Venus, centre, and Helen, on the right. Ferrari was also profoundly influenced by Caravaggio, whose unique approach to theatrical subjects of this kind is here visible in the handling of Aeneas’s face and in the robust veins and sinews of his left wrist and right forearm.

Tony Magnusson, Curator of European Art, 2016–18