ANCIENT PAINTING OF THE ITALIAN SCHOOL FROM THE 17TH CENTURY

“St. Martin’s Summer” Oil on canvas – Dimensions 196 X 125 cm Important painting from 1619, with original canvas and frame. A beautiful chromatic representation of St. Martin's summer. The work has a dedication and is distinguished by a noble coat of arms. During the restoration phase, we adopted an absolutely conservative approach that allowed us to maintain both the canvas and the frame in their original manufacture. St. Martin was born in Sabaria Sicca (present-day Szombathely, in Hungary) in an outpost of the Roman Empire on the border with Pannonia. His father, a military tribune of the legion, gave him the name Martin in honor of Mars, the god of war. As a child, he moved with his parents to Pavia, where his father had received an estate as a veteran, and he spent his childhood in that city. At the age of ten, he ran away from home for two days, which he spent in a church (probably in Pavia). In 331 an imperial edict forced all sons of veterans to enlist in the Roman army. He was recruited into the Scholae imperiales, a select corps of 5,000 fully equipped units: he therefore had a horse and a slave. He was sent to Gaul, to the city of Amiens, near the border, and there he spent most of his life as a soldier. He was part of the imperial guard, non-combat troops who guaranteed public order, the protection of the imperial mail, the transfer of prisoners or the security of important people. The tradition of cutting the cloak As a circitor, his task was to patrol at night and inspect the guard posts, as well as the night surveillance of the garrisons. During one of these patrols, the episode occurred that changed his life (and which is still the most remembered and used by iconography). In the harsh winter of 335, Martin met a half-naked beggar. Seeing him suffering, he cut his military cloak (the white chlamys of the imperial guard) in two and shared it with the beggar. The following night he saw Jesus in a dream dressed in half of his military cloak. He heard Jesus say to his angels: «Here is Martin, the Roman soldier who is not baptized, he has clothed me». When Martin awoke, his cloak was whole. The miraculous cloak was kept as a relic and became part of the collection of relics of the Merovingian kings of the Franks. The medieval Latin term for "short cloak", cappella, was extended to the people in charge of preserving Saint Martin's cloak, the chaplains, and from these it was applied to the royal oratory, which was not a church, called the chapel.