45 - By Pietro Novelli, known as Il Monrealese

By Pietro Novelli, known as Il Monrealese (Monreale, 1603 – Palermo, 1647) Portrait of an Elderly Woman Oil on canvas, 37.5 x 26.5 cm Unsigned In good condition with slight signs of aging.This fine painting is a reproduction of an original sketch by Pietro Novelli (Monreale, 1603 – Palermo, 1647), exhibited in Salemi in 2015 at the Norman-Swabian Castle (Myths and Territory in Sicily: A Land of a Thousand Cultures. The Influence of Caravaggio and the Flemish on Southern Italian Painting, curated by historian Franco Paliaga). In light of current technical and stylistic analyses, however, it is not possible to determine with absolute certainty either the attribution or the dating of the work presented here; these will require a comprehensive re-examination supported by appropriate diagnostic tests—such as pigment analysis, IR reflectography, and examination of the support. While acknowledging the high quality of the work’s execution, it cannot be ruled out that it was created in the 19th century by one of the talented copyists active in Sicily, including Giuseppe Velasco, Giuseppe Patania, or, above all, Salvatore Lo Forte. Our attention is drawn in particular to the latter, as he was entrusted with numerous copies of half-length portraits based on works by Novelli. Lo Forte, deeply fascinated by the painterly style of the artist from Monreale, assimilated its realistic and luministic elements, as evidenced by works such as *The Hermit Saints* and *Saint Philip of Agira Exorcising a Possessed Man*, derived from Novelli’s originals now preserved at the Church of the Gesù Casa Professa of the Jesuit Fathers in Palermo. It seems plausible to place the painting under consideration within this same cultural and chronological context. Novelli’s artistic qualities inspired such deep admiration in the young painter that, in 1823, Lo Forte was chosen, along with Vincenzo Riolo, to carry out some restoration work on Novelli’s frescoes in the Chapel of the Holy Cross in the Church of San Filippo Neri (see Rosella Sinagra, Salvatore Lo Forte in Nineteenth-Century Sicily: Catalog of Paintings and Drawings, Naples, 1998, pp. 37–38).