Destruction of Niobe's Children Animals revealing an astonishingly bold mixture

revealing an astonishingly bold mixture of colours in the model's face that would not seem out of place in a twenty-first century portrait

or in Benjamin Wilson's so-called 'Peg Woffington' in the Garrick Club

Conca's career was based mostly in Rome

doubtless painted from memory as a result of a chance encounter

one after the other he swallowed all five of the children he had fathered with Rhea

Destruction of Niobe's Children Animals revealing an astonishingly bold mixtureOnofri was a pupil in Rome of Gaspard Dughet, whose style he imitated with great success. In 1689 he moved to Florence to work for prince Ferdinando de' Medici. The scene shows the moment in Ovid's Metamorphoses VI when Apollo and Diana slay all of Niobe's fourteen children to avenge their mother Leto, to whom Niobe has declared herself superior on account of her fecundity.