GAVIN HAMILTON (1723-1798)

Gavin Hamilton spent the great majority of his life in Italy, primarily in Rome, where he became one of the leading forces in the emergence of neo-classicism in European painting at the time. Visits to Herculaneum and the recently discovered archaeological site of Pompeii are likely to have had a profound effect on his subsequent career painting large, impressive scenes from Classical antiquity on commission for a range of major patrons.
R. Rosenblum (1961, op. cit., p. 11) believed the present work to have been commissioned by James Hope-Johnstone (1741-1816), later 3rd Earl of Hopetoun, whilst Bowron and Rishel (op. cit., pp. 381-2) published the painting in the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, as commissioned by James's brother, Charles Hope, Lord Granton (1763-1851). Bowron and Rishel link the present work to one of two other versions painted by Hamilton, commented on in the artist's studio by Antonio Canova in 1780: 'Vidi un quadro rappresentante la morte di Lucrezia benissimo inventato e di bei caratteri secondo l'uso antico' (Rosenblum, 1961, op. cit., p.11).