AURELIO LOMI

(Pisa, 1556 - 1623/1624) Flagellation Oil on canvas, 94X79 cm An artist from Pisa but trained in Florence, Aurelio Lomi attended Bronzino's workshop and then moved to Rome, where he had the opportunity to study the works of Girolamo Muziano, Federico Zuccari and Scipione Pulzone, Counter-Reformation painters who influenced his style. Likely, his first stay in the Eternal City falls around 1575, and in 1578 his enrollment in the Florentine Academy is documented, but in the same year he decorated the Chapel of the Assumption in Santa Maria in Vallicella in Rome, an undertaking commissioned by Giovanni Agostino Pinelli, a Genoese banker and treasurer of the Camera apostolica. Returning to Pisa in 1588 we see him engaged in the creation of the canvases of the northern transept, two monumental paintings representing the Adoration of the Shepherds and the Adoration of the Magi, and after such significant commissions we can say that Lomi will gain increasing prestige. In 1597 we date his move to Genoa, where he remained until 1604 and carried out a frenetic activity, indicative of an authoritative status, close to a kind of leadership in producing works for ecclesiastical purposes. But equally important would be private commissions and the states of Magdalen souls, in fact, say he was domiciled in the palace of Origo Salvago di strada Nuova in 1602, while the following year he moved to the palace of Gerolamo Spinola. To the Ligurian sojourn, or soon after, should be assigned the canvas under consideration because of its similarity to mature works, particularly the descriptive vein and a pictoricism close to that of Giovanni Battista Paggi. It should also be noted that, given its small size and 'unfinished' character, the work is a model, a preparatory study for an altarpiece. Thanks are due to Pierluigi Carofano for the attribution. Reference bibliography: P. Carofano, R. P. Ciardi, M. C. Galassi, Aurelio Lomi, manner and innovation, Pisa 1989, ad vocem