Giovanni Stefano Danedi detto Montalto (Treviglio,

Giovanni Stefano Danedi known as Montalto (Treviglio, 1612 – Milan, 1690) Saint John the Baptist with the Lamb Oil on panel, 35 x 27.5 cm With frame, 51 x 47 cm The work presented here, together with the one preserved at the Civic Museums of Monza, is one of the two versions of Saint John the Baptist with the Lamb created by the Bergamasque painter Giovanni Stefano Danedi known as Montalto (Treviglio, 1612 – Milan, 1690), among the most prolific and significant interpreters of Baroque painting in Lombardy. The typical formalisms of the artist, recurring extensively within his pictorial corpus, such as the emotional charge conferred by the warm luminosity and the strong chiaroscuro contrasts, also characterize the canvas in question, in which Saint John the Baptist, nude and sitting on the ground on what according to iconography is a piece of camel skin, is immortalized intent on caressing the lamb curled up next to him, in a very dark and scarcely visible wooded environment. The canvas is rich in iconographic references summarized by the saint's embrace of the lamb: as narrated in the Gospels, it was the adult John the Baptist who indicated Jesus, who had gone along the banks of the Jordan to receive baptism, as the "Lamb of God." The iconicity of Saint John the Baptist, characterized by a chubby little body and the typical blond curly hair, can also be found in the musical cherubs frescoed in the Chapel of San Vittore in Milan, and in those present in the Pietà or in the Prayer of Christ in the Garden of Olives, both preserved at the Pinacoteca di Brera. Consider also the cherubs painted by the artist within the decorations of the Cathedral of Monza, the Certosa of Pavia and in those of the altarpiece with S. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi for the Church of S. Maria del Carmine in Milan: the attitude is equal, the playful exuberance is the same. Montalto, the younger brother of Giuseppe, a disciple of Guido Reni, collected the artistic legacy of Morazzone between the 1630s and 1640s, combining it with the innovations of Francesco Cairo. Orlandi was the first critic to point out his biography in the Abbecedario pittorico of 1704. The first work signed "Stefano Daneda," namely a Lamentation of Christ kept at the Museo di Castelvecchio in Verona, allows us to identify an early stylistic phase in the artist's corpus, which in subsequent years turned to Venetian and Genoese influences. Around 1648, after a brief stay in Rome, his artistic language was updated in a decidedly Baroque sense, as documented by the frescoes executed in that same year in the presbytery of the Cathedral of Monza. Of essential importance in the material conception of his works were the suggestions mediated by Giovanni Battista Carlone and Domenico Piola, Procaccini and Discepoli (in Genoa he also seems to look at the robust naturalism and the warm, brownish-red tone), even if the artist was subsequently able to welcome a more Cortonesque imprint, as seen in the frescoes of secular themes of Villa Frisani (1656), designed by the Milanese Francesco Maria Richini in 1654 in Corbetta (also famous is the study on the ground floor, with the depiction of the allegories of the four seasons where one of the rare portraits of Richini is present). Precisely in this pictorial cycle, Danedi expresses his adherence to the new Baroque language - which in Milan has its major points of reference in Pietro Nuvolone and Storer. In the following years he adhered to it more and more, as shown above all by the frescoes of the sixth and seventh chapels on the right in the Certosa di Pavia (1671-1688) and the decoration of the XVII chapel and the dome of the Sanctuary of the Sacro Monte di Varallo. Stefano Montalto's career, deployed with the same generosity both on the private and public fronts, was crowned by his appointment as "first Director" of the new Academy of San Luca in Milan, which opened its doors in 1688.