Placido Costanzi Rome 1702-1759

Placido Costanzi championed the classicizing trend in early eighteenth- century Roman painting, and his style betrays his close study of Raphael, Annibale Carracci and Domenichino. The present pair likely date from around 1750, at the same time as his Clelia before Porsenna in the Palazzo Reale in Turin (see S. Rudolph, ed., La Pittura dell '700 a Roma, 1983, fig. 232). The Earl of Radnor may have acquired the paintings directly from the artist in Rome.