MILANI, Aureliano

Italian painter, draughtsman and engraver. He was distantly related to the Carracci family and zealous to revive their style for his generation of Bolognese artists. As a young artist, trained briefly by his uncle Giulio Cesare Milani and then by Lorenzo Pasinelli and Cesare Gennari, he undertook a long and diligent study of the celebrated fresco cycles by the Carracci in the Palazzo Magnani and the Palazzo Fava in Bologna. He was given free access to the Fava palace, and financial assistance, by Count Alessandro Fava. Milani also made copies, in both drawing and painting, of major pictures by the Carracci in Bologna and emulated the vigorous rhythmic articulation of musculature and contour that they used to convey the powerful energy of the male figure in movement.

In 1719 he moved to Rome where he worked for the remainder of his career, decorating churches and undertaking several important decorative projects, such as a fresco cycle of the ‘Story of Hercules’ in the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj (1732).

Milani had perhaps a better contemporary reputation as a draughtsman than as a painter.

The Combat between Aeneas and Turnus

The subject is drawn from the Aeneid and represents the victory of Aeneas over Turnus in the concluding section of Virgil’s epic poem. Aeneas’s journey has ended at the mouth of the Tiber in Latium. Turnus, King of the Rutuli, is deeply hostile to the arrival and settlement of the Trojans in Central Italy, and becomes their sworn enemy, unleashing war against them but suffering defeat when he is killed by Aeneas in single combat. Aureliano Milani’s vision of Latium is entirely invented. In order to provide a setting for the scene, he includes the Pantheon, one of the symbols of Rome, on the right.

The painting is signed and dated at centre right, on the pediment of the temple: «AURELIANO MILANI. M.DCCVIII»

Expulsion of Adam and Eve

The Combat between Aeneas and Turnus