Angelo Caroselli (Rome, 1585 - 1652)
Christ and the adulteress
oil on canvas, cm 124x145
Although it is well known to critics, the impressive canvas shown here marks the finding of a work had for decades been considered in an unknown and unreachable location. It is a masterpiece that adds an important part to our vision of the Roman art scene around 1630s, a period of different tendencies coexisting together, as the last glimpse of the caravaggesque stile, classicisms, neo-Venetian tendencies and early baroque. Our painting expresses at the highest level the composite, primitive and multiforme artistic personality of Angelo Caroselli. Among the multitude of talents that animated the capitol's artistic world, he occupies an abnormal and peculiar position, though not easy to outline (also due to the small data related to his biography and his work), where they coexist tradition sixteenth century and naturalistic innovation, aulicity and comic book, convention and eccentricity.
The canvas has a secular documentary history, which unfortunately does not go back to its genesis. His most ancient quotation is in the inventory of Flavio Chigi, written in 1692 by the painter Francesco Corallo, accurately described and attributed to Massimo Stanzione: “Un quadro p.mi 6 e 5 (...) con prospettiva, e varie figure in piedi, con Christo, et una donna piangente, che rappresenta la Dultera, mano del Cavaliere Massimi” (eng: "A painting p.mi 6 and 5 (...) with perspective, and various standing figures, with Christo, and a weeping woman, representing the Dultera, of the Cavaliere Massimi". In the last century the great canvas was appropriately taken from Stanzione's hand and referred to Aniello Falcone by Sergio Ortolani and again by Giuliano Briganti in the inventory of Eleonora Chigi della Rocchetta in 1962. Finally, starting from an essay by Maurizio Marini and the first edition of Benedict Nicholson's caravaggesque paintings repertoire, both published in 1979, the painting was unanimously recognized as a corpus by Angelo Caroselli. In his contribution, Marini proposed, among other things, to move the articulated classic architectural background to the hand of Filippo Gagliardi: a hypothesis that, while not having found particular follow in the critical literature, had the merit of emphasizing the participation in the execution of canvas an artist specialized in prospective and architectural invention.
In the painting it is easy to find strict stylistic tangencies with the principal works of the great painter between the second half of the third decade and the end of the fourth decade of the seventeenth century.
It is evident here a profound assimilation of the lesson of Caravaggio, which first emerges from the posture of the two beggars introducing the scene occupying the two sides of the first floor, inspired by the similar figures of the Martyrdom of St. Matthew in S. Luigi dei Francesi – Rome; but also from other figures derived more or less literally from the Seven Mercy of Pio Monte della Misericordia - Naples and the Madonna of the Rosary today at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Wien (as Marta Rossetti put it in his accurate monograph of the painter). But our canvas expresses in all its amplitude the figurative culture of Caroselli: in addition to the primary influence of Caravaggio, in fact, Christ and adulterous show painter's attention and tangents towards Caravaggio artists of the first and second generations (Orazio Gentileschi , Borgianni, Cavarozzi, Cecco del Caravaggio, Paolini), but also signs of a superficial update on Nicolas Poussin's classicism. Of the latter, Caroselli was a brilliant copywriter in real time, as attested to his version of Azoth's Plague, which is now preserved at the National Gallery in London. The work was in fact executed in Rome at the beginning of 1631, commissioned for 35 scudi by the noble Palermitan Fabrizio Valguarnera, who had assured for 110 scudi the original Poussinian (now preserved at the Musée du Louvre).
PROVENANCE: Cardinal Flavio Chigi (1631-1693); Chigi Collection; since 1917, Eleonora Chigi Incisa della Rocchetta for the legacy of Mario Chigi; Auction Finarte Milano 18 April 1972, l. 12; Italian private collection.
LITERATURE:
A.Ottani Cavina, voce Caroselli, Angelo, in DBI, Roma 1977, XX, p. 549;
M. Marini, San Pietro Nolasco trasportato dagli angeli: Bartolomeo Cavarozzi e Cecco del Caravaggio, in “Antologia di belle arti”, 9-12,1979, pp. 68-76;
B. Nicholson, The International Caravaggesque movement, Oxford, Phaidon Press, 1979, p. 41;
Id., Caravaggism in Europe, Ed. by L. Vertova, Torino, Allemandi, 1990, v. I, p. 95;
F. Petrucci, in La “schola” del Caravaggio. Dipinti dalla collezione Koelliker, cat. della mostra, a cura di G. Papi, Ariccia, Palazzo Chigi, 13 ottobre 2006-11 febbraio 2007, Milano, Skira, 2006, p. 26;
D. Semprebene, Angelo Caroselli 1585-1652. Un pittore irriverente, Roma, Gangemi, 2011, p. 112;
M. Rossetti, Angelo Caroselli 1585 – 1652 pittore romano. Copista, pasticheur, restauratore, conoscitore, Roma, Campisano, 2015, n. 56, pp. 336-340.
Because of its historical-artistic importance, the painting is subject to notification by the Italian State.
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