Francesco Montelatici known as Cecco Bravo (Florence, November 15, 1601 – Innsbruck, December 1661), attributed, Vesting of a Knight before Battle

Francesco Montelatici known as Cecco Bravo (Florence, November 15, 1601 – Innsbruck, December 1661), attributed. Vesting of a Knight before Battle Oil on slate, 48 x 47 cm With frame, 60 x 58 cm Signed FM on the lower right The enigmatic episode depicted, which shows two knights preparing for the battle raging behind them, opens itself to multiple interpretations. In the foreground, a group of three knights is waiting to take action: the first puts his sword back into its scabbard, next to him, the other raises the spiked mace to the sky, both are dressed in the ancient style, with armor reminiscent of the Roman world. A third knight, this time dressed in contemporary fashion, is being helped by two attendants as he puts on his imposing armor with a plumed hat. Figures of knights are not unusual in the catalog of Cecco Bravo, a 17th-century Florentine painter known for his original style and a personality as fascinating as it is enigmatic. Compare works such as Angelica and Ruggero from the Smart Museum of Art, Chicago, Erminia and the Shepherds from the Pistoia Civic Museums, or Angelica and Ruggero from the Palazzo Pretorio in Prato. But it is above all the brushstroke, loose and with a characteristic effusive painting style, built on brushstrokes of flaky color, on the contrasts between transparencies and strokes of more substantial material, between glimmers and backlighting effects, that characterizes this work, thus linking it to the art of Montelatici. With a bizarre spirit, Cecco Bravo also approached the Venetian artistic environment, particularly painters such as Sebastiano Mazzoni and Domenico Fetti. The painter's autonomous activity is recorded from 1624, as can be seen from some citations of the court of the Accademia del Disegno, in which he begins to be mentioned as Cecco Bravo. He became an academic of this institution in 1637 and remained a member until 1659, shortly before his departure for Innsbruck at the court of Archduke Ferdinand Charles of Austria and Anna de' Medici, counts of Tyrol. Among his most famous works are the frescoes on the northern wall of the Salone degli Argenti, on the ground floor of Palazzo Pitti. The frescoes, created on the occasion of the wedding between Ferdinando II de' Medici and Vittoria della Rovere, were completed between 1638-1639 and depict Lorenzo the Magnificent brings peace and Lorenzo the Magnificent welcomes Apollo and the Muses. They demonstrate a painting with fluid and transparent chromaticism derived from Pietro da Cortona, who had recently completed the frescoes in the Stufa room, also in Pitti. After 1650, Montelatici's painting moved towards greater formal restlessness, dominated by dark tones, aimed at the dematerialization of space, defined rather by increasingly blurred brushstrokes in correspondence with the background. In this particular case, the materiality of the brushstrokes is further accentuated thanks to the particular support, the slate, which absorbs little or no oil paint and leaves the colors very bright and vivid. The choice of this stone as a support is explained by its conservation capabilities and the particular pictorial rendering; it is no coincidence that great artists such as Titian and Sebastiano del Piombo used it, but there are many past painters who used this stone, especially in the 16th and 17th centuries.