Guido Cagnacci (1601-1662), ambito di - Sant'Antonio da Padova

GUIDO CAGNACCI [Scope]
(Santarcangelo di Romagna, 1601 - Vienna, 1662)
Saint Anthony of Padua
Oil on canvas, cm. 79 x 65

NOTE: Publication of the catalog of works from the Intermidiart collection. Certificate of Guarantee and Lawful Origin. Work without frame:

The unpublished painting illustrates a figure of a saint, in the act of prayer, represented by the scene of Saint Anthony of Padua, which was widely disseminated already in the 16th-17th century, inspiring many Italian artists and painters. The iconography of Saint Anthony of Padua presents many variations with different attributes that have appeared over time: youth, the habit, the book, Baby Jesus, the lily, the flame, the heart and the bread. They express both a characteristic of his personality (memory function) and the gifts and qualities that popular devotion has attributed to him (symbolic function) .
The work, therefore, depicts a very successful Antonian icon, where it sees the Saint in the role of a young devotee, he seems to be kneeling inside a monastery or church, with his gaze turned upwards, in the act of prayer to the Lord.
The narrative, in fact, is organized around the figure of the Saint, occupying an almost central position, and his attributes, such as: youth, symbol of an ideal character, pure, good and welcoming to all; and the brown habit, the only constant in all Antonian representations; and the rope with three knots, symbol of poverty, chastity and obedience to the Franciscan order. On the right side, a kneeler with flowers represented by lilies: symbol of her purity and the fight against evil; behind, in the background there is a typical scenario of the southern school, composed of the architecture of an interior of a monastery or church. The figure presents a great gesture of action, leading the viewer's attention to the figure of Saint Anthony, standing on his knees and with his eyes turned to the sky, and with his hands with pearly complexions, almost joined in the attitude of an interaction ( prayer) with the Lord.
The painting - coming from a well-known Italian auction house - bore a collector's attribution to a painter of the 17th century Neapolitan school (Asta Farsetti) , and erroneously - here - in the circle of Giovan Battista Carracciolo, known as Battistello (Naples , 1578 – 1635) . Subsequently - at the suggestion of the historian Micheli Danieli - the canvas in question, due to the general characteristics of the image, the colors and the typology of the face would seem pertinent to the manner of Guido Cagnacci (Santarcangelo di Romagna, 1601 - Vienna, 1662) .
According to the historian's investigation, the canvas, although smaller in size, is a clear copy of the most famous painting by Guido Cagnacci preserved on the left altar of the chapel of the Madonna del Fuoco, owned by the Morattini Monsignani family, in the Cathedral of Forlì. executed in 1642-1642.
The storage conditions of the canvas in question, with dust deposits and possible oxidation of the colors, do not allow us to evaluate its pictorial qualities (certainly not high) nor to read the details of the composition. Compared to the original, the executor - given the smaller dimensions of the canvas, perhaps intended for a private devotion - reproduced the 'description' of the environment in which the scene of the Saint's preaching takes place: this is how the marble 'machine' is reproduced of the pulpit, rendered by Cagnacci with a bold perspective view; the extraordinary rendering of the Saint's foot which emerges from the floor plane and 'breaks through' the two-dimensionality of the canvas, giving depth to the composition, is missing; with a nod to the architectural background, with a succession of vaults and arches. In 1761 Algarotti described Cagnacci's "Saint Anthony" with these words: “I have seen few paintings that represent the truth so vividly as this one does, and hold the viewer so strongly attached. It's as colorful as it gets. . . . the face of the Saint is both beautiful and devout. " Certainly the modest copy in question remains as evidence of the very lively devotion to the Saint in the land of Romagna, as Anna Colombi Ferretti has well highlighted: "before moving to Padua, Saint Anthony had a very direct link with the hermitage of Montepaolo, not far from Forlì, and with the same city, in whose cathedral he had the opportunity to manifest his rare talent as a preacher for the first time" (Altar paintings in the age of the Counter-Reformation in Romagna, 1560-1650, works restored by the Diocese of Faenza, Forlì, Cesena and Rimini edited by A. Colombi Ferretti, Bologna 1982, pp. 60-62) . Hence the extraordinary success of Cagnacci's painting, not only in the local context, attested by the large number of copies that have reached us. As with our canvas, these are mainly small-sized paintings, sometimes partial deductions, none of which are of such a quality as to suggest the presence of a copy replicated by Cagnacci himself. Therefore, Malvasia's opinion is valid, taken up by Giordano Viroli in the catalog entry published on the occasion of the recent exhibition in Forlì (Guido Cagnacci. Protagonist of the seventeenth century between Caravaggio and Reni, edited by D. Benati and A. Paolucci, Cinisello Balsamo 2008, pp. 238-239) ; speaking of the Forlì painter Petrelli, involved in replicating the head of Cagnacci's Saint Anthony in numerous small canvases, Malvasia comments: "and to do so many he took on a frankness, which all seemed original".
We cannot therefore exclude - as suggested by the historian - the hypothesis that the author could be a follower or circle of the master Cagnacci.
The pictorial surface has a patina, and does not show difficulty in reading. We can see - in Wood's light - some small scattered restorations, but nothing really significant. To strengthen the qualitative confirmation of the work, we recently subjected the canvas to a cautious cleaning operation at the restoration office of Prof. Gaetano Eduardo Alagna, where, appropriately, it was limited to the removal of surface dirt and an application of a light opaque film that perfected the readability of the work, destabilized by previous restorations. The intervention, therefore, was limited to removing the balance of the chromatic and chiaroscuro values of the pictorial film. The painting is relined. Upon examination with UV light, some micro-restorations can be seen on the saint's face, one under the end of the mouth and one in the socket of the right eye. A revelation on the saint's neck, some punctiform restorations on the hands. In sunlight, a fine crackle related to the era is visible. The present painting is of considerable interest because it forces us to reconsider the autography in the direction of the painter mentioned above, postponing in-depth studies on the work in the near future. The measurements of the canvas are cm. 79 x 65. The painting is sold without a frame, although it is framed in a well-made gilded and worked frame (frame size approx. 99 x 85 x 8 cm, presence of small defects) .

Provenance: Coll. private Sicilian

Publication:
Unpublished;
The Myths and the Territory in Sicily with a thousand cultures. UNPUBLISHED PAINTINGS general catalog of paintings from the collection of the “Myths and the territory” cycle, Publisher Lab_04, Marsala, 2024.

Shipping in wooden crate (fragile board) . In the case of sales outside Italian territory, the buyer will have to wait for the export procedures to be processed.