ALESSANDRO TURCHI (VERONA 1578-1649 ROME)

Alessandro Turchi was born in Verona, where he trained in the studio of Felice Brusasorci. Influenced in his early career by the compositions of Veronese, by 1615 Turchi was working in Rome, alongside Giovanni Lanfranco and Carlo Saraceni, on the Sala Regia in the Palazzo del Quirinale. Turchi's success in the Quirinale led to commissions from, among others, Caravaggio's ambitious patron, Cardinal Scipione Borghese. By 1619 he was well established in Rome's artistic community, joining the Accademia di San Luca and serving as its Principe after Pietro da Cortona in 1637. The nickname ‘Orbetto’ (the diminutive of orbo, ‘blind man’) was often used from the second half of the 1600s to refer to the artist, and probably assigned to him after his death. It was likely derived from his assistance to his father, who according to the Verona tax census of 1595 was referred to as ‘cecus mendicans olim spatarius’ (‘blind, dependent on alms, formerly sword-maker’).

In addition to religious works, Turchi painted numerous mythological subjects throughout his career for both Italian and foreign patrons. By 1640 the painter's success in this was such that he caught the eye of Phélypeaux de La Vrillière, an influential Frenchman in Rome who also commissioned pictures from Pietro da Cortona and Guercino, and for whom Turchi painted The Death of Antony and Cleopatra (Paris, Musée du Louvre). This staging of Lot and his Daughters was once given to Poussin, a reflection of its classicising tendencies and crisp execution, and is dated by Daniela Scaglietti Kelescian, to whom we are grateful for her assistance, to the later 1630s, to one of the finest moments of his illustrious career. The provenance of the picture saw it pass through the important Gherardini family in Verona, to the Italian general Teodoro Lechi and to the English collector Charles Henfrey, who amassed a fine collection at his home, Villa Clara-Henfrey, in Baveno.