The Fable of the Piovano Arlotto (from D.M.Manni's Vita de Arlotto Mainardi, Capri, 1762)
Giovanni da San Giovanni (San Giovanni Valdarno 1592 - Florence 1636)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1629
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
1015 x 1455 mm (40 x 57 in)
Place of origin
Italy
Order this imageCollection
Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire
NT 108852
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, The Fable of the Piovano Arlotto by Giovanni da San Giovanni (San Giovanni Valdarno 1592 - Florence 1636), 1629. Horseman with other figures and dogs depicting the fable of Piovano Arlotto. The picture depicts the story of Arlotto Mainardi, parish priest of S.Cresci a Maciuoli and the huntsmen who attempted to make him look after their hounds without payment. The priest gave the hounds little food and beat them every time he brought it to them. When the huntsmen returned they complained that the hounds had been starved, but the priest called them and offered them food. When the hounds refused to eat it from fear of the beating, the priest pointed out to the huntsmen that they could not have been starved since they refused food when it was put before them. The story is told in D.M.Manni, Vita de Arlotto Mainardi, Capri, 1762, p.371. Giovanni da San Giovanni is best known as a fresco-painter, eg in the Pitti Palace, but he also painted a number of easel-paintings of burlesque subjects, taken from the recorded facezie of the jesting priest, Arlotto Mainardi. This tells one of the earliest stories to illustrate Pavlovian conditioning. A band of huntsmen, having eaten Arlotto out of house and home, left their hounds with him. To avoid having to feed them too, he beat them every time they approached the bread he put out for them, so that by the time the huntsmen came back they shied away at the sight of it, so that he could say they were not hungry.
Provenance
Reputedly originally painted for Cardinal Barberini (1597-1679) but rejected by him, it was given to Giovanni Francesco Grazini in 1629, whose whole villa the artist frescoed in 1630; Marchese Niccolò Maria Pallavicini (1650-1714); Tommaso Niccolò Maria Arnaldi; bought from the Arnaldi collection by William Kent for Nathaniel Curzon, 1st Lord Scarsdale (1726-1804) (letter dated 15.8.1758) and recorded in North Music Room/Music Room by Horace Walpole, 1768; and thence by descent until bought with part of the contents of Kedleston with the aid of the National Heritage Memorial Fund in 1987 when the house and park were given to the National Trust by Francis Curzon, 3rd Viscount Scarsdale (1924-2000)
Credit line
Kedleston Hall, The Scarsdale Collection (acquired with the help of the National Heritage Memorial Fund and transferred to The National Trust in 1987)
Makers and roles
Giovanni da San Giovanni (San Giovanni Valdarno 1592 - Florence 1636), artist