It is certainly a small fresco, but embodied within its great dynamism, colour and compositional wisdom, it represents an excellent example of the art of Luca Cambiaso (as does, the fresco displayed next to it, also coming from the same Villa Grimaldi Sauli al Bisagno, depicting Scipione freeing Massinissa's nephew).
It was part of the decoration of one of the rooms of the building, in a corner of the vault. An example whose relatively recent restoration (2010) has enriched, it shows the refined fresco techniques used by Cambiaso in his works, referring in the plasticity of the forms to a complex maturity, still mixed with 'Roman' colour and spatial suggestions, but in a decisive evolution towards a style of his own: note how the vivid, white light cuts the scene defining the struggling bodies with a geometricizing substantiality dear to the still young artist.

Loans

Genoa, Galata Museo del Mare
from 27/06/2016 to 10/01/2016
for the exhibition "Mare Monstrum. The imagery of the sea between wonder and fear"