Pan and Syrinx; Apollo and Daphne

These two mythological scenes are important documents of the activity of Teresa del Pò, an artist born in Rome and trained in the workshop of her father, Pietro del Pò, together with two brothers. In 1675 Teresa became one of a handful of female members of the Academy of Saint Luke in Rome. She focused her artistic activity on the production of etchings and miniatures in pastel and tempera. By 1683 Teresa had moved to Naples, where presumably she painted these two works. For both compositions, the artist based herself on larger paintings of the same subjects by her brother Giacomo, one of which, Apollo and Daphne, is in the Museo Correale di Terranova in Sorrento (Spinosa, op. cit., 1987, no. 172, ill.). It has been suggested that the two gouaches can be identified with two ovals described in an archival document of 1696 which records that Neapolitan nobleman, the Prince of Sant’Agata, commissioned from Teresa two miniature paintings. For the two works, on 4 January 1696, she received a down payment together with her brother Giacomo, who was also given commissions by the same patron (De Dominici, op. cit.).