Time Orders Old Age to Destroy Beauty
Time Orders Old Age to Destroy Beauty | |
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Artist | Pompeo Batoni |
Year | 1746 |
Medium | oil on canvas |
Dimensions | 135,3 cm × 96,5 cm (533 in × 380 in) |
Location | National Gallery, London |
Website | Catalogue entry |
Time Orders Old Age to Destroy Beauty is a 1746 allegorical oil on canvas painting by the Italian artist Pompeo Batoni. It was commissioned from him by Bartolomeo Talenti, a collector from Lucca, as a pendant for La lascivia, now in the Hermitage Museum. It shows personifications of Time as an old man with a scythe, Old Age as an old woman and Beauty as a young woman. It came into the collection of the Russian count Nikolai Alexandrovich Kushelev-Bezborodko, before being acquired in 1961 by the National Gallery, London where it now hangs.[1]
History
The painting was commissioned from Batoni by Bartolomeo Talenti, a Lucchese collector, as a counterpart to La lascivia, now preserved in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. It entered the collection of the Russian Count Nikolai Alexandrovich Kushelev-Bezborodko and was finally acquired by the National Gallery in 1961.