Hedonistic Hell

Signed, "Rodriguez"
Oil on canvas
Circa: 1940-1950
Size: 23 1/4" (h) x 31 3/8" (w) (sight)
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This remarkable, ambitious, and hedonistic painting is by an unidentified painter named "C. Rodriguez," as signed in the lower right and created circa 1950.

The painting represents the seven deadly sins and maybe a couple extra for good measure. It illustrates several nude women embracing a capital vice: lust, envy, greed, sloth, wrath, and pride, while a gluttonous man drinks wine and gorges on watermelon and bananas.

The whole has the feeling of Gustave Doré's illustrations for Dante's Inferno and The Divine Comedy and hell as depicted by Hieronymus Bosch, Jan Van Eyck, and Jan Brueghel the Younger.

The cavernous landscape hints at death with grottos that mimic the shape of human skulls with dark, vacant eye sockets.  While not all the vignettes are precise in which sin they portray, some, like the woman transforming into a Jaguar before a bifurcated snake, are pretty remarkable—as is the woman who straddles a huge flying dragon.

Though the artist is unidentified, that doesn't take away from the quality of the work; it only adds mystery and keeps us engaged with the work in a different way than if we did. We look at the work first and the artist second.

CLICK HERE for INSTAGRAM VIDEO REEL.

HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGES AVAILABLE.

Condition: Excellent with minor, scattered in-painting. Previously mounted to masonite, now relined onto canvas. Conservation by Simon Parkes.

Price: $18,000.00

ALL ITEMS GUARANTEED AS REPRESENTED