Elephants in a Circus
As frequently occurred in the cycle on the History of Ancient Rome commissioned for the decoration of the Buen Retiro Palace, Andrea di Lione drew elements of his painting from the abundant Antiquarian literature that began to be published in the middle of the sixteenth century. Today we can trace this procedure with considerable confidence. The starting point for the present work was Tabula III, a plate included in Antoine Lafréry’s Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae (1575), which shows two camels, a giraffe and five elephants, three of which are reproduced with great precision in a red-chalk drawing by Lione that appeared on the art market in 2003 (Christie’s Paris, 27 March 2003, lot 29). Starting with this, Lione arranged the elephants in two rows and set the scene in a Roman circus, the seats of which are filled with magnificent little figures similar in style to those of Aniello Falcone. In the foreground Lione added four dancers and musicians who closely resemble those in Nicolas Poussin’s bacchic scenes.
Authors discussing these paintings often try to explain them as depictions of concrete historical events, in an effort to establish analogies with the king of Spain. It seems much more likely, however, that the artists sought simply to illustrate public entertainment in ancient Rome. Onofrio Panvinio was a prolific author of works depicting Roman customs that may have served as a model for the Buen Retiro cycle. The most important of his works for the present subject is De Ludis Circensibus (1600), from which Lione may have drawn the idea for this depiction of the sort of parades carried out in circuses as a prelude to the main event. These included the participation of elephants and cavalrymen outfitted for the Pugna equestris. Such riders appear in a painting for the Buen Retiro by Falcone, now at the Museo del Prado.
There are considerable doubts about the chronology of Lione’s works. His biography is far from complete, and overlapping influences persist throughout his extensive oeuvre. After studying with Mannerist painter Belisario Corenzio in Naples, Lione moved to Falcone’s workshop, and the latter may be responsible for his participation in the Buen Retiro series.
Lione’s vibrant colours also very clearly reflect the influence of Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, whom he may have met when the latter visited Naples in 1635, and again on a possible trip to Rome in the 1640s. From Castiglione’s prints Lione took certain compositions with people and animals set in wooded landscapes, two magnificent examples of which are now at the Museo del Prado. Castiglione’s persistent influence on Lione, even in his final works, considerably complicates the artist’s chronology. Finally, his relationship to Poussin is clear, especially in his treatment of figures.
All of these influences complicate efforts to date Elephants in a circus, c.1640. Martín Soria was the first to propose a date of 1655 for the work, based on the veristic treatment of the elephants, which he thought, mistakenly, were copied from nature. That date is too late for the present painting. Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez noted this detail and advanced its chronology to the early 1640s (Text drawn from Úbeda de los Cobos, A.: Italian Masterpieces. From Spain´s Royal Court, Museo del Prado, 2014, p. 198).
- See work in timeline
An Elephant Combat
This dramatic elephant fight epitomizes the Hada Master style, in which the action is so intense that it threatens to burst from the page. The two elephants are locked in frenzied battle; a mahout leaps for his life, and footmen with long shafted lances goad the combatants into action and scurry for safety. The French traveler and gem trader François Bernier witnessed such an event in 1663, describing the mud wall erected to separate the animals, seen here being scaled by the more aggressive elephant, who “attacks his opponent and putting him to flight, pursues and fastens on him with such obstinacy that the animals can be separated only by means of cherkys or fireworks, which are made to explode between them.” The footman at lower left appears to be doing precisely as Bernier described. The vitality and immediacy of this drawing strongly suggest that it was drawn from life, the artist perhaps sharing the high (and safe) vantage point enjoyed by the Rao for viewing this dangerous sport.
About the Artist
Hada Master and the Kota School
Presumably trained in Bundi, Rajasthan, and active in Kota soon after 1631 until the 1660s
In 1631, the Mughal government permitted the sub region of Kota to secede from Bundi and become an independent state. Some artists in the Bundi atelier appear to have taken the opportunity for advancement offered by a new ruler seeking to establish his cultural credentials and moved to Kota. Both Rao Madho Singh (r. 1631–48) and his successor Rao Jagat Singh were enthusiastic patrons and actively recruited painters from Bundi. As the Bundi atelier was strongly influenced by the Chunar Ragamala artists who appear to have had imperial or subimperial Mughal training, so elements of the courtly style were introduced to Bundi and thence disseminated to other court workshops in the Rajasthan region. Kota absorbed and developed the stylistic traits of the Bundi school most directly.
A leading hand at the new Kota school has been named, by Milo Beach, as the Hada Master, distinguished by figure types and characteristically robust elephants. Through his highly original work, in which complex landscape compositions were populated by hunters and hunted, the Hada Master appears to have created a lasting vogue for dramatic hunting scenes and exciting elephant fights. All are distinguished by their theatricality, drama, and emphasis on action. Tiger hunts and raging elephants, locked in combat or running amok, were favorite subjects. Such themes became the hallmark of the Kota school thereafter, persisting into the nineteenth century.
Ragamalas also became an established topic in Rajasthani painting in Kota, as is witnessed by several sets of paintings, which, in their formulaic diagonal architectural recessions into space, perpetuate the Mughal style that migrated to Rajasthan courtesy of the Chunar Ragamala artists. A singular masterwork of the Hada Master is the portrait of his patron Rao Jagat Singh relaxing with female attendants in a lush water garden. The combination of an aerial view of the garden’s grid plan and the setting of figures and flowers in profile within it sets up a pictorial ambiguity that enlivens the composition. This painting belongs to the last decade of the Hada Master’s known career.
