‘Bathsheba at Her Bath’ by Giuseppe Antonio Pianca, after Carle van Loo

This painting depicts a biblical scene that has inspired many painters, such as Rembrandt and Veronese. King David catches sight of Bathsheba from the terrace of his palace whilst she is bathing in the evening. David then forces Bathsheba into adultery and sends her husband, Uriah, off to battle, where he loses his life. Thus, far removed from any moral considerations, the story of David and Bathsheba provides a superb religious pretext, allowing for the depiction of lust, carnal desire and male voyeurism. What is unique about Carle van Loo’s choice here is that Bathsheba is clothed, suggesting nudity rather than exposing it as François Boucher would have done.

The composition of this painting has been compared to that of Carle van Loo’s work, held at the Musée Bossuet in Meaux. The arrangement is exactly the same, but reversed, which suggests that the copy was made using Nicolas Tardieu’s engraving (the printmaking process reverses the drawing, which was itself engraved in the same direction), unless other copies of the work in this inverted orientation (Hampel Kunstauktionen auction, Munich, 9 December 2005) may also have served as models.

The name of Giuseppe Antonio Pianca (1703–1760) has been put forward as the artist behind the copy of Carle van Loo’s painting, owing to its characteristic style and the known influence of van Loo’s works on Pianca during his stay at the court of Savoy. The colour palette has changed; it is much darker than in Carle van Loo’s original version, and the paint is much thicker, both in the rendering of flesh tones and in that of the fabrics.

Pianca was rediscovered by Roberto Longhi in a lecture in which he placed him on a par with Magnasco. Little known outside Italy, his style offers a synthesis of the most expressive colourist trends of his century and is characterised by a dense and dynamic rendering of form. The painter, originally from Piedmont, travelled to Milan, where he was first influenced by the late Mannerist painters, and subsequently by Alessandro Magnasco, whose works display a very free style in the service of whimsical expressiveness. Pianca’s subjects were initially mainly religious; then, from the 1740s onwards, the painter embarked on an itinerant career, during which he developed his fresco technique. The artist subsequently extended his explorations in the field of decorative painting to include easel paintings, in order to meet the demand generated by the French Rococo style, which he had absorbed through his exposure to the works produced by Carle van Loo during his stay at the court of Savoy, in the 1730s.

Michel François Dandré-Bardon, *Vie de Carle Vanloo*, Paris, Desaint, 1765, pp. 53–69.

Filippo Maria Ferro,Giuseppe Antonio Pianca: A Valsesian Painter of the 18th Century, Soncino, 2013.