Sigismunda Mourning Over The Heart of Guiscardo - Commissioning

Commissioning

The painting was one of Hogarth's last works, commissioned in 1758 by Sir Richard Grosvenor. James Caulfeild, 1st Earl of Charlemont had previously commissioned a painting from Hogarth, allowing Hogarth to select the subject and price.

For Lord Charlemont, Hogarth chose to paint the satirical Piquet, or Virtue in Danger (also known as The Lady's Last Stake, after a 1708 play by Colley Cibber), which, with echoes of Marriage à-la-Mode, shows an army officer offering an aristocratic lady a chance to recover the fortune she has just lost by gambling (with the implication that if she loses again, she will have to take him as her lover). After Grosvenor saw this painting in Hogarth's studio in 1758, he asked Hogarth to paint a picture for him as well, under the same terms.

Hogarth chose a more serious topic for Grosvenor's painting. He is said to have painted Sigismunda mourning over the Heart of Guiscardo with the aim of proving that he could equal works of the "Old Italian Masters", and intending the painting to be one of his masterpieces. In the leg of the table in the painting, a turbaned, pug-nosed figure is carved, emerging from the ornate decoration, which is reminiscent of Hogarth's self-portrait The Artist Painting the Comic Muse from around 1757, and is perhaps Hogarth's attempt to insert himself bodily into the picture, thereby making an overt connection between himself and the Old Masters. In 1758, Sir Thomas Sebright, 5th Baronet had paid £405.5s in an Old Master auction for a painting of Sigismunda supposedly by Correggio. Hogarth doubted the attribution and was later proved correct: the painting is now considered to be by Francesco Furini. Nevertheless, Hogarth priced his Sigismunda in line with what was paid for the "Correggio" version and commensurate with the time he had spent creating it – at least two hundred days (although it appears he was also working on finishing Piquet during this period) – and this may have contributed to Grosvenor's eventual loss of interest. When Hogarth presented the piece to Grosvenor, he rejected it, ostensibly because it was "so striking and inimitable, that the constantly having it before one's eyes would be too often occasioning melancholy ideas to arise in one's mind"; in disgust, Hogarth released him from their bargain.