1765 - PIETRO GRAMMORSEO

PIETRO GRAMMORSEO (attributed to) Saint Paul Oil on panel, 158.5 x 68.5 cm This work has been designated as being of particular historical and artistic interest and is subject to notification requirements. Roberto Longhi had already identified Grammorseo as an artist capable of combining the elements he learned during his early training with the pictorial language characteristic of artists active in southern Piedmont, interwoven with the sensibilities of Leonardo and Dürer, as documented in the Zeri Photo Library. The painting was offered for sale at the Porro Gallery as a work by Cesare Magni, a Milanese painter particularly inclined toward Lombard sensibilities in the tradition of Foppa and Zenale, who later began to explore solutions of a Leonardo-esque nature, following the figurative vocabulary of masters such as Bergognone, Cesare da Sesto, and Bernardino Luini. The work, of considerable interest and unquestionable quality, should be attributed to a hand akin to that of the two aforementioned artists—certainly an artist working in a manner similar to the Master of the Coronation of Biella or the Master of the Ciriè Polyptych, or perhaps to Sebastiano Novelli—all artists active in the Piedmont region during the early 16th century who were particularly inclined to experiment, with independence and inventiveness, with that formal and pictorial style whose influences can be seen in the distinctive features of the panel under consideration. Provenance: Formerly the Frascione Collection, Florence Faldella Collection, Rome Galleria Porro Auction, Milan, December 2015 (attributed to Cesare Magni) Private collection, Casale Monferrato Bibliography: Fototeca Zeri catalog, entry 23830 G. Romano, *Casalesi del Cinquecento. L'avvento del manierismo in una città padana*, Turin, 1970, pp. 25–43 S. Baiocco, Gandolfino da Roreto and the Risorgimento in Southern Piedmont, Turin, 1998, pp. 261 ff. A. Bagnoli, “Expansion of Pietro Grammorseo’s Catalog: Two Panels for a Polyptych to Be Reconstructed,” in “Prospettiva. Journal of Ancient and Modern History,” no. 172, October 2018, pp. 63–69.