Caecilia Metella

Caecilia Metella, Rhea Silvia and Aemilia the Vestal Virgin form a single group in terms of format, subject matter and collecting history. The three women were all major figures in ancient Rome in the days of the Republic, the paintings depicting episodes that capture the tragedy of each woman’s fate.

Caecilia Metella is the most mysterious of the three figures that Giani portrayed. Our sources (Plutarch) mention only that she was the wife of the dictator Silla, who cast her out when she fell ill because he did not want the shadow of the decay associated with her illness to dim the glory of his house. The scene has a tragic connotation in that it effectively alludes to melancholy, to the sense of dejection that accompanies solitude, only partly mitigated here by the consoling presence of the handmaiden embracing Caecilia and urging her not to lose hope.

Both the figures’ emphatic gestures and the setting are extremely theatrical. The figures are set in a majestic yet bare interior suggestive of an atmospheric ancient hall adorned with only two “stage props”, a candelabrum and a seat which, however, are archaeologically correct to a fault.

The inscription on the wall in the background – Di Cecilia: Mo Glie Di Metello – is interesting because, on the one hand, it reveals Giani’s need to clarify the otherwise unrecognisable subject he is portraying, while on the other, the historical error (Caecilia was Lucius Caecilius Metellus Dalamaticus’ daughter, not his wife) points up the extent to which artists occasionally confused or mixed up their historical sources.

On stylistic grounds, this work, like the other two ovals, may be dated to some time between the final decade of the 18th century and the first decade of the 19th.