Italian school; first half of the eighteenth century. "Portrait of lady are Santa Teodora". Oil...

Italian school; first half of the eighteenth century. "Portrait of lady are Santa Teodora". Oil on canvas. Relined.

Italian school; first half of the eighteenth century.
"Portrait of lady are Santa Teodora".
Oil on canvas. Relined.
It presents frame of epoch, faults in the margins and jumps in the gilding of the frame.
Size: 77x 63 cm; 84 x 69 cm (frame).
Saint Theodora of Sihla was born in Romania, during the reign of Vasile Lupu. During her youth, she was forced to marry against her will. Having no children, both she and her husband decided to embrace monasticism, he retired to the monastery of Poiana M?rului under the name of Elfterie, and she to V?rz?re?ti. Foreign invasions prompted her to retire to the mountains of Buz?u, where she lived for almost a decade. She climbed the mountains to become an anchorite in the Sihla moors. The word "sihl?" means "dense forest of young trees", "grove". Theodora initially lived in a small house in a rocky area of Sihla, left to her by an elderly monk. Tradition has it that nuns fleeing from foreign invasions came across the hut of the saint, who abandoned it to move to a cave, even more remote than her initial home.
In this particular case, it is a female portrait which is accompanied by several little loves, highlighting the one located in the upper right area, as it is crowning the lady. During the eighteenth century and well into the nineteenth century, it was very common for others to adopt both attitudes and iconographic elements of other personalities, as in this particular case. This type of portraitist rescued both gods of classical mythology and relevant personalities of Christian history, thus establishing an analogy between religious archetypes and the virtues of the portrayed.