Meditating with Giovanni Battista Gaulli, known as Il Baciccio (1639-1709)
“Where do wars come from, where do conflicts between you come from? » So asks Saint James in his letter preserved in the New Testament. He continues: “Is it not precisely all these desires that wage their battle within you? You are full of lust and you get nothing, so you kill; you are jealous and you do not achieve your goals, so you enter into conflict and you make war” (Jc 4, 1-2).
Contemplating the immense work of Baciccio, this Italian painter of swirling Baroque, the question resonates more than ever. Certainly the story told here is legendary. But as a result, it has a universal scope. These two groups who meet are Greek soldiers who went to war together against the city of Troy. Here, on the left, all dressed in gold and saber in hand, is the powerful prince Agamemnon at the head of the punitive expedition. He goes out, angry, to meet Achilles, leader of the Myrmidons, a Greek people who train terrible soldiers.
What opposes them? Lust, precisely. Lust for Briseis, a Trojan prisoner belonging to Achilles but desired by Agamemnon. Everything is set for drama. But Baciccio prefers to paint the unexpected. Restrained anger. Because the goddess Athena intervenes to stop the vengeful hand of Achilles, on the good advice of Hera, the wife of Zeus, seated far away on her cloud.
“O Holy Father,” writes the artist to Pope Innocent XII to whom he dedicates his work, “as you have manifested yourself to us, we show you Athena calling back to union the princes of the Greeks in Troy, far from the earth native. » Because, Saint James again reminds us, “it is in peace that justice is sown which gives its fruit to the peacemakers”.