Attributed To Francesco Bassano The Younger (16th Century) - Orpheus Enchants The Animals.

Attributed to Francesco Bassano the Younger or his close workshop (Bassano del Grappa 1549 - Venice 1592) - Orpheus Charming the Animals.

93 x 121 cm.

Oil on canvas, in a gilded and painted wooden frame.

The composition derives from the prototype devised by Jacopo Bassano (Bassano del Grappa c.1515 - Bassano del Grappa 1592).

Francesco Bassano the Younger, Jacopo's eldest son, was a leading figure in the celebrated family workshop active between Bassano del Grappa and Venice in the second half of the sixteenth century. Together with his father and brothers, he developed a repertoire of pastoral and biblical subjects populated by numerous animals, rendered with careful naturalistic observation, which became one of the workshop's most requested and repeated formulas.

The painting depicts Orpheus playing a bowed instrument in a wood, surrounded, as if enchanted by his music, by numerous domestic and wild animals: a stag, a donkey, an ox, goats, sheep, rabbits, an owl, and a monkey with an open book, alongside various poultry and birds among the branches. The analytical rendering of fur and feathers, together with the crowded, descriptive arrangement of the scene, is consistent with the idiom of Francesco Bassano the Younger or his close workshop, which specialised in this type of biblical or mythological composition populated with animals.

Condition report: Lined canvas. Good state of conservation of the pictorial surface, with signs of aging and wear.

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Disclaimer: Renderings: The environmental images are AI-generated for illustrative purposes and may not reflect the actual proportions of the artwork.