Ifigenia's Sacrifice, 1700s, Oil on Canvas, Framed

Oil on canvas. Neapolitan school of half '700.Il painting proposes the Greek myth of the sacrifice of Ifigenia, the daughter of King Agamemnon, head of the expedition of Achaeans who had to leave at a time of Troy. Since the Greek fleet could not take the sea because of the unfavorable winds, the soothsayer Chalcis predicted that, because of an offense that the king had caused to the goddess Artemis, now she was opposed to their departure until the king had not sacrificed on the altar the young daughter. Ifigenia courageously accepted the sacrifice and spontaneously climbed the altar, but Artemis, pitied, at the last moment exchanged her for a fawn and brought the girl alive in Tauride, where she became a priestess of the goddess who had saved her. The great scene, set outside the Greek camp on the seashore (in the background on the left the anchored ships, on the right the tents), sees in the center the goddess Artemis who exchanges the young and beautiful Ifigenia with the fawn, while the priest Chalcedes already holds the knife of the sacrifice; on the right the despair of King Agamemnon and his wife Clytemnestra. The painting is stylistically close to the production of Fedele Fischetti (1732-1792), the Neapolitan artist who devoted himself mainly to allegorical/mythological scenes, particularly in his early works of the 1860s.The work presented here was auctioned at Sotheby's in April 1998.Restored and re-presented, it is presented in a stylish frame.