Allegory of Painting

This canvas has a twin. Pellegrini painted it around 1725 to 1730 as one of a pair, Painting on one side and Sculpture on the other, and the pairing is the whole point. For a couple of centuries Italian artists had argued over which of the two arts was the nobler, a running debate they called the paragone. Sculptors said their work was harder and truer because it stood in real space, solid on every side. Painters answered that they could conjure space, light, distance and living flesh on a flat surface out of nothing but pigment. Hanging the two allegories together stages that argument in a single glance. Here is Painting herself, holding the brushes and palette of the trade, making her case simply by standing beside her rival. The two canvases reached the Accademia together, bought in 1959.