Cerchia di Scipione Pulzone

bearing the cardinal's coat of arms with the arms of the Colonna family in the lower center oil on canvas, minimal imperfections

86x62 cm

The realization of this altarpiece with the Madonna and Child enthroned between Saints Stephen and Lawrence, both represented with the symbols of martyrdom (stones and grill), must be placed on a stylistic basis at the end of the sixteenth century or possibly the very first years of following century. It is, in fact, a classic example of the religious painting of the Counter-Reformation and of the revision of the sacred images that followed. There are two important data that help us to better define the area of \u200b\u200battribution: the pose of the Madonna in relation to the Infant Jesus and the cardinal's coat of arms with the Colonna arms, depicted in the lower center at the foot of the stone staircase leading to the throne. rough and bare, as required by the Tridentine religiosity, the throne on which the Virgin is seated. The gesture of the Madonna, who gracefully flexes her head towards the infant Jesus, elegantly covered by a light transparent veil imbued with light, is practically identical in various autograph compositions by Scipione Pulzone, painter born in Gaeta in 1544 and died in 1598 in Rome, city \u200b\u200bwhere his artistic training took place. In particular, it will be remembered in this regard the Annunciation of the National Galleries of Capodimonte, the Holy Family of the Borghese Galleries and the Madonna and Child of San Carlo ai Catinari, all made between the end of the eighties of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the decade. following. This posture had an important response and was persistently replicated both in the Pulzone workshop and outside it, as we can even find it in some works by Spanish masters of the early seventeenth century. Scipione Pulzone also seems to trace the cardinal's coat of arms with the arms of the Colonna family, to whose commission the painter Gaetano was linked. Chronologically this coat of arms can only refer to the figure of Ascanio Colonna (1560-1608): of him as of his father, Marcantonio II, Scipio made important portraits