The theme of the painting we are presenting is a well-known subject, with a consolidated sacred iconographic tradition: the Nativity.
What makes the painting original, however, is the bursting novelty of the language of the artist in question, through a series of data detectable at first glance and which suggest a comparison and an attribution to the school of the painter Girolamo Romani known as Romanino (Brescia 1484-1566).
In fact, in our Nativity , we find ourselves faced with a far from negligible novelty of language, which fully reflects the descriptive terms reserved for Romanino by Angelo Piazzoli: "the painter of the conscious anti-classical break, impetuous experimenter of a mixture in which the Milanese perspective culture, the colours and moods of the Venetian lagoon, Gothic and grotesque traits of Dürerian derivation, the typically Lombard concreteness of attention to truth boil . All of this is always animated by an inner drive of urgent religiosity" ( A. Piazzoli, F. Larovere , Girolamo Romanino, il testimone inquieto, Bergamo 9-30 October 2015 ).
In fact, there has long been talk, with regard to Romanino, of “anti-classicism” and “ungrammatical language”, two conditions equally recognisable in our painting, direct elements of specularity and comparison with the “stylistic plurilingualism” of Romanino, so celebrated by Testori, who particularly draws attention, in this regard, to the artist's “peripheral” experience in Valcamonica (frescoes of Pisogne and Bieno), where Romanino , with overflowing impetuosity, subverts the linguistic codes of classicism and mannerism.
These peripheral contexts, in which "the history of a popular humanity pulsates, in the rustic, and sometimes awkward, physicality of the bodies and in the modest simplicity of the clothes" (A. Piazzoli, Ibidem ) find an echo and correspondence in our painting, in which nothing is conceded to the hieratic composure of the Renaissance or to the visionary and spiritualizing transformation of Mannerist forms.
In this sense, the words of Dell'Acqua, superintendent of the Gallerie per la Lombardia, who wanted the Brescia conference in 1965 precisely to fully understand "to what extent Romanino's art speaks to the conscience, to the sensibility of today", resonate more relevant than ever, making him our contemporary, contemporary to a restlessness defined by Guttuso as "romantic" and in which "the much proclaimed stylistic inequalities belong to those who research".
Its authenticity is certified with photos and documents
Measurements: 47x 34 board
