Possibly Mattias de’ Medici (1613–1667), Siena,

Private collection, Berlin, 1933,

with Gilberto Zabert, Galleria Dipinti Antichi, Turin, 1974,

V. Di Capua, Turin,

Private collection, Milan.

Dipinti dal XV al XIX secolo per collezionisti ed intenditori, Turin, 1974, n.45, (as Rutilio Manetti).

A. Bagnoli, 'Aggiornamento di Rutilio Manetti', Prospettiva, 13, 1978, p. 32, fig. 30.

A. Bagnoli in Mostra di opere d’arte restaurate nelle provincie di Siena e Grosseto, Genoa, 1981, p. 212.

A. Bagnoli, 'La pittura del Seicento a Siena' in M. Gregori and E. Schleier, ed., La Pittura in Italia, Milan, 1989, p. 345, fig. 505.

B. Cesani, s.v. ‘Tornioli’ in La Pittura in Italia. Il Seicento, Milan, 1989, p. 902.

G. Pacciarotti, La pittura del Seicento, Turin, 1997, p. 285.

A. Matteoli, 'Due inedite pitture barocche su temi biblici', Bollettino della Accademia degli Euteleti della Città di San Miniato, 68, 2001, pp. 147–48.

Marco Ciampolini, 'Diffusione e fortuna del Caravaggismo in terra di Siena: reticenza e entusiasmo' in P. Carofano, ed., Luce e ombra: caravaggismo e naturalismo nella pittura toscana del Seicento, Pisa, 2005, pp. CLI, 186–189, no. 60.

M. Ciampolini, Pittori Senesi de Seicento, Siena, 2010, pp. 883, 885, fig. 454.

The present painting depicts the violent climax of the Old Testament story of Absalom and his older half-brother, Amnon, two sons of King David (2 Samuel 13: 28–29). Absalom developed a profound hatred of his brother, after the latter had feigned illness in order to lure Absalom’s sister Tamar into his bedroom and subsequently rape her. Two years after the incident, Absalom invited all of David’s sons for a feast. Before the dinner, he instructed his servants to murder Amnon upon his signal, once the intended target had imbibed a quantity of wine, and it is this fatal moment that is represented in the present painting.

The Sienese Baroque painter Niccolò Tornioli depicts the story in a monumental pictorial arrangement, strongly enhanced by the dramatic chiaroscuro and marvellous colouring. At the right, the standing figure of Absalom, wearing a red cloak, exhorts his servants to stab his brother, who screams in terror, his arms flailing in the air as he attempts in vain to escape the assassins closing in upon him. The table tilts, on the verge of flipping over, and a meticulously rendered still life of sugary sweets on a golden platter tumbles off its side as the servants act upon their master’s word with horrifying vigour. Another gold dish slides off the table, supporting a small sculpture. This shows a man assaulting a woman on the back of a fantastical and hideous creature baring its sharp teeth, alluding to the rape which precipitated this violent episode of revenge.

Born in Siena, Niccolò Tornioli’s training with Francesco Rustici is reflected in his Crucifixion of 1631 in San Niccolò in Sasso in Siena, his first surviving documented work. In Rome in 1634 he won a commission for the Calling of Saint Matthew for the customs-house in Siena (1635–37, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen). This work reveals Tornioli’s interest in the art of Caravaggio, which Rustici and Rutilio Manetti had already brought to Siena, as well as a new awareness of the classicism and fluid handling of Andrea Sacchi and Pier Francesco Mola. His highly individual blend of Caravaggesque motifs and the formal language of the Baroque enabled Tornioli to achieve a style analogous to that of Mattia Preti. Indeed, his most famous work, The Astronomers (c. 1643, Galleria Spada, Rome), was for many years attributed to Preti. Yet Tornioli’s compositions are always more balanced than those of Preti, and his art has a refinement that suggests a familiarity with Florentine painting, particularly that of Sigismondo Coccapani and Cesare Dandini. During the 1640s Tornioli continued to be influenced by the art of Cortona. In 1643 he painted the Roman Charity (Galleria Spada, Rome) and received the commission for the fresco Saint Philip Seeing a Vision during his Illness in the Stanze di San Filippo in Santa Maria in Vallicella, Rome, his most vigorously Baroque works. Jacob Wrestling with the Angel and Cain and Abel (both San Paolo, Bologna) were painted in 1648, followed shortly afterwards by the Sacrifice of Iphegenia (Galleria Spada, Rome), which is probably his last known work.

Alessandro Bagnoli has dated the work just before 1645, while Marco Ciampolini places it later in the 1640s, arguing that its animated staging marks a significant departure from the highly balanced compositions of the Astronomers, closer in style to the later Christ in the Temple (c. 1647, private collection, Siena) and the Sacrifice of Iphegenia.

Interestingly, the agitated composition of the present painting draws significant inspiration from the world of sculpture. The composition, in which the figures are arrayed across the surface of the work in dramatic close-up, leaving little of the background visible, is similar to that of a bas-relief. Meanwhile, the figure of Amnon, his arms stretched upwards, recalls postures found in the works of Bernini, particularly his Rape of Persephone (fig. 1, Galleria Borghese, Rome) while the small statue on the table almost seems to be a terracotta modello for a variant on this famous sculpture. Tornioli’s close relationship with the sculptor Alessandro Algardi is well documented, and this bond of friendship and esteem must have resulted in fruitful artistic exchanges. Indeed, Algardi’s bas-relief in Saint Peter’s Basilica depicting the meeting of Leo I and Attila, executed between 1646 and 1653 (fig. 2), seems to be a point of reference for Tornioli’s composition, in which the two central figures confront one another in an intense exchange of similar emphatic gestures, surrounded on all sides by subsidiary figures who emote and take part in the action but are layered onto the picture plane so that only flashes and slashes of their bodies and faces are visible. In the painting, the theatricality of this crush of figures is enhanced by the drama of the lighting. The result is a highly engaging image over which the eye continuously wanders in its discovery of technical and formal virtuosity, at once captivated and appalled by its subject.

Ciampolini has argued that the present work was commissioned by Matthias de’ Medici, the Governor of Siena, noting the affinity between Absalom and the figure at left in Cesare Dandini’s Due bravi (fig. 3, Luzzetti collection, Florence) which has been identified as Mattias de’ Medici, the son of Cosimo II, shown together with his brother Gian Carlo. A soldier who fought in the crucial battles of the Thirty Years War (1618–48) and won military victories in the War of Castro (1641–44), Matthias favoured martial themes in his art patronage, and would likely have enjoyed seeing himself mirrored in the figure of Absalom, the handsome younger son of a king who avenged his sister’s honour.

Fig. 1. Gianlorenzo Bernini, The Rape of Persephone, 1621–22, marble, Galleria Borghese, Rome.

Fig. 2. Alessandro Algardi, The Meeting of Leo I and Attila, 1646–53, marble, Saint Peter’s Basilica, Vatican.

Fig. 3. Cesare Dandini, Due Bravi, early 1640s, oil on canvas, Luzzetti collection, Florence.

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