“péro Et Cimon”, Oil On Wood, Entourage Of Antoine Caron Around 1560 (fontainebleau School)

This oil on wood measures 76cm by 57cm and its 16th century Italian frame with its original gilding measures 90cm by 70cm. Sold with a certificate of authenticity. Possibility of payment in several installments on request. This painting represents a Roman charity, a name traditionally given to an exemplary scene: a young girl, Pero (or Pera), secretly breastfeeds her father, Cimon or Mycon, in prison, condemned to die of starvation. Péro gets permission to visit her father, but the guards make sure she doesn't bring him food. The old man does not die. One of the guards notices that Péro is breastfeeding his father. The praetor and the judges, informed, decide to release the prisoner. This story is reported, with variations, by various ancient authors, who present it as an exemplary act of filial piety. We find it in the Memorable Facts and Sayings of the Roman historian Valère Maxime (book V, chap. 4), in Pliny the Elder (Hist. nat., VII, 36), in Solin (chap. I), in Festus (sv pietas), or even at Hygin (Fables, 254). This painting is the work of an artist close to Antoine Caron, artist of the second school of Fontainebleau. This artist, born in 1521 in Beauvais and died in 1599 in Paris, is a master glassmaker, illustrator and French Mannerist painter. He was one of the rare French painters of his time to possess a pronounced artistic personality. His work reflects the refined, although very unstable, atmosphere of the courtyard of the house of Valois, during the Wars of Religion from 1560 to 1598.