Ventura Salimbeni

From the late 18th century The Three Graces at the Galleria Borghese passed as the work of Francesco Vanni, a leading Sienese painter of around 1600. The name was a near miss. Vanni was Ventura Salimbeni's half-brother, and both learned from Arcangelo Salimbeni, Ventura's father and Vanni's stepfather. In 2013 the scholar Marco Gallo returned the picture to Ventura after a signed variant with his monogram appeared on the art market.

The little canvas, 35 by 41 centimetres, takes its three embracing goddesses from the ancient marble group in the Piccolomini Library of Siena Cathedral, the same statue Raphael used. Salimbeni adds Eros flying with his arrows and Anteros resting on a stone, his bow laid down. Earlier, from 1588, Salimbeni had worked in Rome on the frescoes of the Vatican Library for Pope Sixtus V. A cardinal patron later made him a knight of the Golden Spur, and his last commission, a Marriage of the Virgin for Foligno, dates from 1613, the year he died.