Neapolitan School, 17th Century

We are grateful to Professor Nicola Spinosa for proposing an attribution on the basis of a photograph to the Master of Fontanarosa (active in Naples in the first half of the 17th century). Comparable works by the master share the close interest in musculature and the strong use of diagonals in the disposition of the figures which lie close to the pictorial plane: see the Saint Jerome in Ecstasy in a private collects ion, Naples, and a Saint Sebastian cured by Saint Irene, in a private collects ion.¹

A photograph of this painting is filed in the Fototeca of the Fondazione Zeri under 'Neapolitan School, 17th century'.


1. See G. Porzio in N. Spinosa (ed.), Ritorno al Barocco, exh. cat., Naples 2009, pp. 112-13, cat. no. 1. 37 and p. 115, cat. no. 1.39 respectively.