Marcello Venusti (Mazzo di Valtellina 1510 - Rome 1579), workshop/circle
Saint John the Baptist
Oil on canvas (65 x 50 cm / Framed 74 x 58 cm)
Full details of the painting (click HERE)
The work portrays Saint John the Baptist in full figure in a moment of meditation in the desert, depicted with sober elegance, seated in his typical contemplative pose with his index finger pointing to the sky, while his gaze turns to the observer, and with one hand he holds the traditional cross staff, alluding to Christ's sacrifice on the cross.
Characterized by a simplicity that exalts the spiritual purity of the subject, the Saint is enveloped in a simple bright red cloak, symbolizing the abandonment of material things and the connection with the divine dimension, while the environment surrounding him, bare and arid, represents solitude and sacrifice, central elements in the saint's life.
The depiction conveys a profound spirituality, typical of the iconographic canons required in the 16th century, and can be traced back to a painter active in this century, or at most at the beginning of the next, close to Marcello Venusti (1510 - 1579), a painter of Lombard origin but active for most of his prolific career in Rome, whose workshop was commissioned numerous works on the same subject.
Venusti arrived in the Eternal City around 1545, thanks to the support of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, and worked first in the shipyards of Perin del Vaga in Castel Sant'Angelo and later alongside Michelangelo in the Pauline Chapel in the Vatican.
The work is a version made for domestic devotion and therefore of reduced proportions, of the altarpiece commissioned to Marcello Venusti for the church of Santa Caterina dei Funari in Rome. LINK: https://catalogo.fondazionezeri.unibo.it/scheda/opera/16863/
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
Good condition, complete with gilded frame (not contemporary to the painting).
The work is sold complete with a certificate of authenticity and descriptive iconographic sheet.
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