Joseph Goupy
London 1689 – 1769
Glaucus and Scylla, after Salvator Rosa
Gouache.
227 x 180 mm – 11 1/2 x 7 1/16 in.
Born to an artistic family, Joseph Goupy specialized in small-sized copies of master paintings, such as Raphael’s cartoons that he reproduced for baron Johann Adolph von Kielmansegg (1668 – 1717). Many collectors and artists ordered from him these miniature and refined versions of famous master paintings they could not possess. It is him who was in charge of the restoration of Mantegna’s Triumphs of Caesar, in Hampton Court Palace. He executed many decor paintings for the theater, for Haendel’s Giulio Cesare that was played in Haymarket Opera House and Riccardo Primo played in the Royal Academy of Music. A fine engraver, he was close to William Hogarth, with whom he had the Engraver Copyright Act voted in order to protect engravers from forgery or counterfeit.
This beautiful gouache is a copy of Glaucus and Scylla, a composition painted twice by Salvator Rosa, one in a painting in the Musée des Beaux-arts of Caen and the other in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, in Bruxelles. They represent the Ovidian theme of Glaucus’s thwarted love for Scylla and her transformation into a sea monster by jealous Circe.
Condition report: irregular edges, a few cracks in the gouache.
