"Didone non abbandonata": New Research on Tiepolo’s Death of Dido (Pushkin Museum)
The article offers a new interpretation of Giambattista Tiepolo’s Death of Dido from the Pushkin Museum, tracing a literary source and the probable client, for whom the 18th century Venetian artist created the picture. A connection is suggested with the opera Didone abbandonata (libretto by Pietro Metastasio), which was premiered in 1724 and staged at the court of Catherine II in the 1760s. It is shown how the painting came to Russia and to the collection of Prince Nikolai Yusupov by the offices of Venetian architects (Gian Antonio Selva and Giacomo Quarenghi) and that the treatment of the theme probably originates in the literary treatise on famous women, De mulieribus chiaris, by Boccaccio. New arguments are presented for correctness of the attribution to Tiepolo, who may have created the work for the Venetian Doge, writer and bibliophile, Marco Foscarini.