Oil on canvas painting depicting a soldier presenting a crown to Saint Joseph. The dimensions are 76 x 61 cm without frame and 95 x 80 cm with frame. The painter is Giovanni Domenico Molinari (Vercelli 1721 – Turin 1793).
Molinari was born in Caresana (Vercelli) on July 19, 1721, but after losing both parents, he moved to Turin. Here, from 1736, he became a student at the Accademia del Disegno founded by the painter Claudio Francesco Beaumont (Turin, July 4, 1694 – Turin, June 21, 1766), where he remained as a boarder until December 1755. Molinari was immediately involved in translating the master's sketches onto cartoons used for the Royal Tapestry Factory. His early success in the Turin art scene is confirmed by the fact that he joined the Compagnia di San Luca in 1756.
The colors used here, bright but cool with a predilection for blue and pink tones with vivid notes of yellow, can be found in many other works by the master, such as the Apparition of the Madonna of the Snow in Santa Maria della Neve in Mondelli or the Madonna del Carmine with the SS. Sebastian and Baptist Saint John the Baptist in Rivara. Pastoral episodes that have appeared on the antiques market are the most closely related to this one, as is the Sant'Agata in the Luigi Mallé Museum in Dronero. Also close to his style are some works by Beaumont such as the music-making putti in Private Collection or the Allegory of Painting, Musée des Beaux-Arts in Brest.
The paintings in question are an important document of Molinari's best vein because he exhibits a luministic impetus of brilliant ability; this happens because undoubtedly the best part of our painter's activity is that of portraiture of both people and objects, which he carried out with constant commitment, arriving at a peculiarity of ways that marks a significant phase in the development of the genre, with a lucid anticipation of the executive finesse of the Neoclassical artists, also due to a breadth of mixtures and a perspicuity of definition that are all typical prerogatives of the great Italian painting and Molinari himself.
We can find the same artistic sense present here in other works by the painter such as the two works on the story of David that are located in Palazzo Reale in Turin where a catalog "Mostra del barocco Piemontese. Pittura – Scultura – Arazzi" was published.
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Dr. Riccardo Moneghini
Art Historian
