MADONNA WITH CHILD (OIL ON CANVAS)
AUTHOR: PAINTER FROM THE CIRCLE OF STEFANO MARIA LEGNANI CALLED LEGNANINO
SCHOOL: LOMBARDY
PERIOD: LATE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
DIMENSIONS: 58 X 47
The painting in question constitutes a valuable testimony of painting from the extreme limit of the Baroque age in Lombardy. Due to some intrinsic iconographic characteristics of the sacred subject, it can be ascribed to a Lombard painter from the circle of Stefano Maria Legnani, known as Legnanino (1661-1713), an artist with a short and intense career, working between the capital and the province, who also left his mark in less nearby locations such as Turin and Genoa.
His contribution is, therefore, that of an undisputed protagonist of the Baroque in late seventeenth-century Lombardy, in which he intends to propose himself as an innovator, with an autonomous style and undisputed originality, in the years preceding and preparing for the arrival of Tiepolo.
In the painting under examination, fully adhering to the traditional representation of the Madonna and Child, “maternity”, one can trace, in the predominant classicism of the forms, the fundamental tribute to the legacy of Maratta (of whom, according to Orlandi, Legnanino was a pupil), above all in the distinctive features of the Virgin's face.
It should be noted that, although unlike other Lombard artists present in Rome, Legnani is not listed among the members of the Accademia di San Luca, this fact would however seem to be supported by the presence of one of his paintings in the Roman church of San Francesco a Ripa (“Holy Family”), his first known work to date, especially considering the close and intense relations with the Franciscan order, to which the aforementioned sacred building belongs.
The lesson of Bolognese painting assimilated through the study of Cignani leaves a greater and more marked imprint on his entire work: both Oretti and Zanelli speak of a stay in Bologna and of an apprenticeship with Cignani.
In particular, it is the ancient grace of Correggio, which Legnani recovers through Cignani, all interpreted according to an “already eighteenth-century sensitivity, mixing an affectionate idealism with a composite classicism: these are the aspects that pass from the master to the pupil, readable in the faces of his elegant female characters, in the innumerable smiling angels that populated his compositions, be they altarpieces or ceilings frescoed with mythological tales” (Marina dell'Olmo).
Certainly attributable to the chronological period that gravitates around the last decades of the seventeenth century, the painting in question, in the aforementioned homage to Maratta and to the never betrayed Bolognese classicism, bears only a residual trace of the tenebrism of Filippo Abbiati, with its dramatic setting, from which Legnanino, who did not join the Accademia Ambrosiana, remained substantially extraneous.
Most likely, almost certainly a private commission, our painter's painting can be traced back, as in the specific case of Legnanino, to the request of important families, often included in the highest administrative positions, such as the Clerici, the Trotti, the Durini, or of significant figures in the social context of the city such as Giuseppe Annoni or Cesare Pagani.
Its authenticity is certified
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