Giuseppe CESARI dit Il CAVALIER d'ARPINO (Arpino, 1568 - Rome, 1640)

The Holy Family adored by Saint Francis with an angel Oil on copper in grisaille 42 x 34.5 cm Minor restorations 18th-century Carlo Maratta frame in carved and gilded wood (restorations and some missing parts) Provenance : Sestieri, Rome Italo Faldi, Rome Born into a family of artists, Ercole Procaccini hails from Milan, where his namesake grandfather (1515 - 1595) moved in 1586 to found a painting academy. Ercole worked there with his uncle, Giulio Cesare Procaccini (Bologna, 1574 - Milan, 1625), who gave him a taste for a style inspired by the emotions of Correggio and the grandiloquence of Rubens. We now know that Ercole the Younger held a position of great importance in the Lombard artistic world of the mid-seventeenth century: thanks to the support of the powerful Arese family and the Spanish governor in Milan, the Marquis of Caracena, he took part in the major artistic projects of the period. His compositions on religious subjects, with their sober style and direct message, had certainly attracted the favor of the protagonists of Milan's Counter-Reformation. He was also able to excel in paintings with mythological subjects, as is the case with this attractive canvas already attributed to his uncle, which represents a major rediscovery of Lombard pagan painting. The theme was very dear to the artists of Northern Europe, and it also enjoyed a certain success in Lombardy. Dating back to the Roman playwright Terence, the motto "Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus" means that, in order not to lose its strength, love needs food (Ceres) and wine (Bacchus). In this painting, Ercole opts for the tight composition found particularly in Nordic examples. However, his interpretation is all about bewitching light-and-shadow effects and an amber palette, revealing his affinity with the works of Giovanni Stefano Danedi, known as il Montalto (1612 - 1690). The dense brushwork, the brown and red tones, the figures in the foreground animated by a warm light while Bacchus, in the background, is in twilight: all typical characteristics of this admirable creator of bewitching and highly eloquent images. Small hanging Bibliography : H. Roettgen, Il Cavalier Giuseppe Cesari d'Arpino. Un grande pittore nello splendore della fama e nell'incostanza della fortuna, Rome, 2002, p. 379, n. 137 M.S. Bolzoni, Il Cavalier Giuseppe Cesari d'Arpino. Maestro del disegno. Catalogo ragionato dell'opera grafica, Rome, 2013, p. 343, n. 222 (cit.). H. Roettgen, Cavalier Giuseppe Cesari d'Arpino. Die Zeichnungen. I disegni. III Reife und Alter. Maturita' e anzianita' 1605-1640, Stoccarda 2013, pp. 16-17, n. 427 (published in black and white). Related works by Cavalier d'Arpino: The panel with identical subject (42 x 32 cm) in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow (see image no. 1). The altarpiece The Virgin and Child with St. Francis and St. Catherine in the church of Santa Maria della Tomba (Rotoli chapel) in Sulmona (Abruzzo, Italy). The Holy Family adored by St. Francis drawing at the Uffizi (Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe). H: 45 x W: 36.5 cm