By PAT BASKETT
The history of a work by the 18th-century Neapolitan artist Jacopo Amigoni is particularly rich. Called Portrait group: The singer Farinelli and friends, it was painted either in Madrid or Bologna probably within two years of Amigoni's death in 1752.
Farinelli was one of the most famous castrati singers of the time and the subject of a late-20th century film. He is known to have gone to London in 1733, singing in the Lincoln's Inn Fields theatre - in opposition to Handel's company, which performed at the King's Theatre in the Haymarket.
Amigoni went to London in 1729 and earned his living painting histories on the walls of people's houses, for which he charged sterling 90. He also painted the ceiling and proscenium arch of the Theatre Royal at Covent Garden, but these frescoes were later destroyed. His wife was a mezzo-soprano who sang with Farinelli.
In 1739 Amigoni was in Venice, but it is likely he died in Madrid because his wife and daughters were there after his death, under the protection of the king.
Farinelli is the painting's central figure in the red coat, and the young woman is Teresa Castillini, a pupil of his. His initials can be seen on the sheet of music she holds and also on the collar of the greyhound, beside which, in smock and turban, stands Farinelli's page. All three - Farinelli, Castillini and Amigoni - were known to be in Madrid together.
The figure on the left is the contemporary Italian poet Metastasio and the painter identified himself as the man in brown by writing his name on the paintbrush he holds.
The painting is recorded as having hung in Farinelli's house in Bologna in 1761, some time later travelling to England. Farinelli's activities in England were very controversial because his voice was considered unnatural and he was seen as a sexual threat to women - as well as because of the competition between Handel's Haymarket theatre and that at Lincoln's Inn Fields.
This aspect of the painting's history is elucidated in one of the several accompanying small exhibitions. The English satirist William Hogarth was a virulent denouncer of what he considered to be foppery and conceit, and Farinelli was one of his targets.
Farinelli in merry tableau
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