Description
Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini (Venice 1675 – Venice 1741) – Roman Charity (Cimone 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 (review attached).
Prof. Ugo Ruggeri (review attached).
Prof. Dario Succi (review attached).
Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini trained in Venice in the workshop of Paolo Pagani, acquiring a mastery of color and a fluency with the brush that would lead him to become one of the protagonists of the European Rococo, active in England, Germany, France, and the Netherlands. His research focuses on a progressive softening of chiaroscuro contrasts, with forms immersed in luminous atmospheres and a chromatic softness that anticipates the achievements of 18th-century Venice. The canvas depicts the episode of Roman Charity from Valerio Massimo’s Memorable Facts and Sayings: the elderly Cimone, imprisoned and near death by starvation, is fed by his daughter Pero. The composition focuses on the two protagonists in the foreground, projecting them forward under a beam of light, while the sfumato softens the harsh contours of the male figure. The pictorial layering that plastically accompanies the forms, dissolving their contours in a luminous chromatic softness, places the painting in Pellegrini’s youthful phase, around the first decade of the 18th century, when the artist was emancipating himself from the teachings of Pagani. Critical opinions by Egidio Martini, Ugo Ruggeri, and Dario Succi firmly attribute the canvas to Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini.
Condition report: Lined canvas. Good state of conservation of the painted surface.
