Roman School, Late 16th - Early 17th century
Praying Madonna
Oil on canvas, 81 x 69 cm - with frame 83 x 95.5 cm
A divine candor reverberates with vibrant brilliance on the maphorion of this Virgin. The palpable iridescence that structures her subtle pinkish robe, woven with the same fresh light, produces a slight rustle as her hands rise. The Madonna is depicted praying, opening her palms to emphasize her fervent ecstatic intention; her pure neck is rendered with skillful fullness of pigment, as are her hands, perfectly alive, and her very bright eyes. With refined care, the artist arranges the Virgin's hair with thin white ribbons, exacerbating her purity. An evocative light falls gently on her bust, a materialized sign of divine glory.
This work can be traced back to the late Mannerist climate that dominated the capital following the promulgation of the Council of Trent (1545-1563). The late Mannerist licenses that are still visible, such as the intense lyricism in the artistic style adopted by the artist, are interwoven with the new underlying catechetical intent, which at the end of the century produced a certain figurative rigor. However, this work still reflects that extraordinary Roman dynamism that elevated the capital to a bulwark for the entire Mannerist lesson, matched only by a second artistic center, Florence. The engaging transport of the Virgin reflects contemporary examples by Giuseppe Valeriano (1542-1596), a Jesuit painter, who in the Marriage of the Virgin in the Church of the Gesù in Rome, as well as in the Madonna Addolorata of the Recanati Altarpiece, presents equal ardor. But it is in the Assumption of the Virgin painted in collaboration with Scipione Pulzone (1540/2-1584) that this work reveals greater assonance. Valeriano worked on the decoration of the Chapel of the Madonna della Strada within the Church of the Gesù, together with Pulzone, with seven paintings relating to the Stories of the Virgin; the Presentation at the Temple, in particular, offers the same brilliance of robes that also belongs to this work, of very bright liquefaction on the outstretched arms of the priest. The Virgin's gestures, of explicit immediacy, are also equal to those of the agitated Virgin Annunciate by Marcello Venusti (1512/5-1579) in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. It is still to a work by Scipione Pulzone, the Immacolata for the Church of S. Francesco in Ronciglione (now the Doebbing Palace Museum) that we find a connectable resemblance, with the painting in question, for the full face of the Madonna. The significant plurality of directions that occurred in the papal area at the end of the century, encouraged by the need to spread the cultural program of new confraternities and religious orders, also justifies the mention of Federico Barocci (1528-1612), significantly related to Raffaellino Motta, known as da Reggio (1550-1578) in colorism. The lively modulations of the chromatic range, here with dominant pink tones, were in fact sought after, first of all, by Barocci, champion of the Counter-Reformation era; we can cite, for Barocci, the very famous Madonna of the Cherries, while for Motta, Tobias and the Angel (Borghese Gallery, Rome), of noble and immediate brilliance like the present Madonna.
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