LUCA GIORDANO
(Naples, 1634 – 1705)

The Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs

Inscribed in paint, verso: no. 22 Giordanz / No. 480

Oil on copper
31 x 36 ¼ inches (79 x 92 cm)

Provenance:

Private Collection, (“A Deceased Estate”), UK; their sale:

Sotheby’s, London, 21 April 1993, lot 44; where acquired by:

Stanley Moss, Riverdale-on-Hudson, until 2024.

Literature:

Nicola Spinosa, “Altre aggiunte a Luca Giordano,” in Per l’Arte da Venezia all’Europa; Studi in onore di Giuseppe Maria Pilo, ed. Maria Piantoni and Laura De Rossi, II (Da Rubens al contemporaneo). Venice 2001, pp. 393-398, p. 654, fig. 7.

Giuseppe Scavizzi, Luca Giordano: Nuove Opere / Aggiunte al Catalogo, 2003–2023, Todi, 2024, p. 33, cat. no. 93.

In Greek mythology Lapiths and Centaurs were tribes in ancient Thessaly—Lapiths human in appearance, Centaurs a race of half-human, half-horse creatures. Their legendary battle was occasioned by an invitation to the Centaurs to attend the wedding of the Lapith King Pirithous. As described by Ovid (Metamorphoses XII, 210f), a great battle ensued at the wedding feast because the Centaurs, unused to wine, became wild and belligerent. Giordano has chosen to focus on the central element of the battle, the attempted abduction of Hippodamia, the beautiful bride of the Lapith king, by the Centaur Eurytion. At the end of the bloody encounter the Centaurs were defeated and driven from Thessaly.

The subject of the Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs is best known from the series of relief sculptures carved on the Parthenon by Phidias and his workshop—these metopes forming part of the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum. For the Greeks, and for those that followed, the conflict between the Lapiths and the Centaurs was emblematic of the struggle between man and his baser instincts, between civilization and chaos.

Giordano has chosen to focus on the central element of the battle, the abduction of Hippodamia by the Centaur Eurytion.  She appears sprawled and struggling across the centaur’s withers as he attempts to restrain her, his right arm holding her left leg as he tightly grasps her right arm with his left. A Lapith warrior challenges Eurytion. This may be Theseus, whom Ovid places at the battle, a guest at the wedding. Beyond another Centaur warrior wielding a club and shield fights off armored Lapiths across an overturned banquet table, while wounded figures from both sides of the conflict litter the ground.

This large copper painting dates from the period of Giordano’s ten years in Spain, where he worked at the court of Charles II beginning in 1692. A pendant to The Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs depicting The Rape of the Sabine Women appeared at auction in 1993 and is in an Italian private collection (Fig. 1).[i] Two larger compositionally diverse treatments of the subject on canvas are in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, and in a private collection in Rome.[ii] These have been dated ca. 1682 and 1686, respectively. A copy of our painting on canvas was recently on the art market in Rome (Fig. 2).[iii]

[i] Oil on copper, 30 ⅞ x 36 inches (78.5 x 91.5 cm). Sotheby’s, Sussex, 26 May 1993, lot 793, as by Luca Giordano.

[ii] Oreste Ferrari and Giuseppe Scavizzi, Luca Giordano: L’opera Completa, Naples, 1992, vol. 1, cat. nos. A290, A414, vol. 2, figs. 397, 545.

[iii] Oil on canvas, 74 x 90 cm. Sold as Neapolitan School, 18th Century, Finarte, Rome, 29 November 2023, lot 9.