Description
Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini (Venice 1675 – Venice 1741) – Roman Charity (Cimon and Pero).
Oil on canvas, in a carved and gilded wooden frame.
Publications: D. Succi, Il Fiore di Venezia, Gorizia, Led edizioni, 2014, cat. 43, pp. 76-78.
Prof. Egidio Martini (critical essay attached).
Prof. Ugo Ruggeri (critical essay attached).
Prof. Dario Succi (critical essay attached).
Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini trained in Venice in the workshop of Paolo Pagani, developing a mastery of colour and a freedom of brushwork that would establish him as one of the leading figures of European Rococo, active in England, Germany, France, and the Netherlands. His work is characterized by a progressive lightening of chiaroscuro contrasts, with forms dissolved in luminous atmospheres and a chromatic softness that anticipates the achievements of mature eighteenth-century Venetian painting. The canvas depicts the episode of Roman Charity as recounted by Valerius Maximus: the aged Cimon, imprisoned and reduced to the point of starvation, is nursed by his daughter Pero. The composition draws the two figures close to the foreground, projecting them forward under a concentrated beam of light, while a delicate sfumato softens the contours of the male figure. The painterly handling, which models forms plastically while dissolving their outlines into a luminous chromatic warmth, places the work in Pellegrini’s early period, around the first decade of the eighteenth century, when the artist was moving beyond the influence of Pagani. The critical opinions of Egidio Martini, Ugo Ruggeri, and Dario Succi attribute the canvas with certainty to Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini.
Condition report: Relined canvas. Good overall condition of the pictorial surface.
