GIUSEPPE NICOLA NASINI

(Castel del Piano, 1657 - Siena, 1736) Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple Oil on oval canvas, 148X110 cm. Provenance: Private collection Trained in the family workshop, Nasini moved to Rome, becoming a pupil of Ciro Ferri, who, already a celebrated collaborator of Pietro da Cortona, was one of the most important artists of his time, and thanks to him, Giuseppe Nicola acquired his first commissions from the Chigi family, painting in 1679 and 1680 thirteen small copperplate portraits of Agostino's sons (Ariccia, Palazzo Chigi) and copies from Jacob Ferdinand Voet and Alessandro Mattia da Farnese. In 1681, the painter painted for the Medici the Death of St. Peter of Alcantara for the church of the Medici villa of Ambrogina near Montelupo Fiorentino (now preserved in the church of SS. Quirico and Lucia) and a Portrait of Cosimo III, now lost, for the Medici minister in Rome, Giovanni Battista Mancini, works that earned him admission to the Tuscan Academy of Drawing in Rome. Thereafter, Nasini moved to Venice for three years, during which he visited the main cities of the Veneto and Emilia, before reaching Florence to be appointed by the Grand Duke as chamberlain's aide and superintendent of the works in the Medici galleries. As we can see, the artist gained a prominent position in the sphere of late Baroque painting in just a few years, and even during the first decades of the eighteenth century biographies agree in praising the numerous commissions he completed that also earned him the title of knight (Cf. G. Nasini, Della vita e delle opere del Cav. Giuseppe Nasini, pp. 52-56). Returning to the canvas under consideration, Ciampolini places its execution in the early 1990s, in conjunction with the four large canvases depicting the 'Newest' (i.e. what awaits man at the end of earthly life: Death, Judgment, Hell, Paradise) for the room of the same name in Palazzo Pitti commissioned by Cosimo III, in which the figures find a perfect analogy, also comparable with those of the frescoes of Hercules at the Crossroads and the Fall of the Giants painted in 1691 on the ceilings of Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence. The work is accompanied by a critical file by Marco Ciampolini. Reference bibliography: M. Ciampolini, Pittori Senesi del Seicento, Siena 2010, pp. 479, 498; 499, fig. on p. 498