Artists

Johann Baptist Lampi The Elder, Johann Baptist Lampi The Younger

Press release

What do a Neoclassical family portrait and a Biedermeier painting of Venus have in common? Both the portrait of Caroline and Viktor von Tomatis by Johann Baptist Lampi the Elder (1751 Romeno – 1830 Vienna) and the painting Sleeping Venus with Cupid in Front of a Mirror by his eponymous son Johann Baptist the Younger (1775 Trento – 1837 Vienna) were significantly overpainted. This IN-SIGHT exhibition traces how these major interventions altered the meaning of both works. Curated by Katharina Lovecky. During his time in Warsaw in 1788/89, Johann Baptist Lampi the Elder painted several portraits of the Tomatis family. Milanese dancer Catarina, née Filipazzi, had moved to Warsaw with entrepreneur Carlo Tomatis in 1765. One of the three portraits of the family by Lampi shows two of their children, Caroline and Viktor, standing either side of a bust. X-ray and infrared imaging from 2016 revealed this bust to be an overpainting: hidden beneath the layers of paint is a portrait of their mother, Catarina, embracing her children. This exhibition tells the story of the Tomatis family based on this work, further portraits, and archival material. In 2022 Johann Baptist Lampi the Younger's painting Venus Sleeping on a Day Bed was also analyzed using X-ray and infrared imaging. In this case, the figure of Cupid emerged, concealed beneath a black surface. By erasing the god of love, the mythological content of this work had faded into the background. This helps explain why the painting was later interpreted as a portrait of Emilie Victoria Kraus, one of Napoleon's lovers, in two twentieth-century novels set in Salzburg. It was precisely this false interpretation that paved the way to the painting's popularity—reaching even as far as Paraguay. Now, for the first time since the revealing of Cupid in 2024, the painting will be shown to the public under its original title. This exhibition uncovers the layers of meaning contained within two paintings, which had been hidden by overpainting. It shows that the meaning of artworks can be significantly altered once they leave the artist's studio: A family portrait expressing a mother's love for her children was transformed into a memorial, an idealized Venus became the portrait of a local Salzburg celebrity.