Donato Creti's individual and poetic art represents the last significant expression of the classical-idealist strain in Bolognese painting. His activity was almost wholly confined to Bologna, where he painted decorative frescoes, altarpieces and easel pictures for private collectors. Two characteristics dominated, perfect handling of paint and a poetic mood.

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Mercury and Paris

Donato Creti has languished virtually unknown for almost two hundred years. And, because his major works belong to the City of Bologna, matters have remained largely that way until a major exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum.

But, because Creti's artistic sensibility and his vision of idealized beauty was so refined, he was out of the mainstream of Italian painting even in his own time. The ungrateful Bolognese eventually shipped the cycle off to storage. From which it was rescued only in the 1930s.

Such classical subjects were bread-and-butter to many painters of his time. Patrons couldn't get enough of mythological heroes and lovely goddesses.

His virtuoso rendering not only of his figures, but also of their drapes and props, is amazing in its detail.

In Creti's Mercury and Paris, seldom have virtually nude male bodies been posed so voluptuously and yet been so free of sensuality. That must be what idealized beauty is all about. But even Paris' accompanying hunting dog gets Creti's detailed attention!