STEFANO MARIA LEGNANI detto IL LEGNANINO (attr. A)

(Milan, 1661 - 1713) Sketch depicting the Flight into Egypt Oil on canvas, 61X44,5 cm The eighteenth-century biographers attest an early apprenticeship of Legnanino in Bologna with Carlo Cignani and that the teaching of the Emilian school allowed him to express a lively pictorial eclecticism, also imbued with reminiscences of Correggio. The artist then stayed in Rome from 1683 to 1686, frequenting the circle of Carlo Maratta, from whom he acquired the classicism that would cloak his production, where he also met Giovan Battista Gaulli, from whom he learned the chromatic preciousness and the softness of the mixtures, as can be seen by observing the first work known to us, preserved in the Church of San Francesco a Ripa, documented in 1685. The comparison with the early lingustic rococo was developed after 1694, during the period in Turin and Genoa between 1710 and 1712, when the lesson of Domenico Piola and Gregorio de Ferrari distinguished the more mature works characterized by bright and shaded tones. Reference bibliography: L. Ghio, Gli affreschi del Legnanino nella chiesa genovese di S. Filippo, in Artisti lombardi e centri di produzione italiani nel Settecento. Interscambi, modelli, tecniche, committenti, cantieri, edited by G. C. Sciolla ; V. Terraroli, Bergamo 1995, pp. 176 ; 179 E. Gavazza and L. Magnani, Pittura e decorazione a Genova e in Liguria nel Settecento, Genoa 2000, pp. 61, 265, 270, 408, 428 M. Dell'Omo, Il Legnanino, Bologna 1998, ad vocem