Scuola fiamminga (XVIII) - Pietà con la Vergine e...

This fascinating oil painting on panel depicts a dramatic Pieta enriched by the unusual presence of devotional portraits of the patrons. The work, which in its composition and execution belongs to the eighteenth century, fits into the proven tradition of European workshops of the era that faithfully reproduce complex sacred models from the Renaissance and Late Flemish Mannerism, preserving entirely the iconography and the compositional setup of the sixteenth-century prototype. The scene is dominated in the foreground by the figure of the Virgin Mary, who sorrowfully receives the lifeless body of Christ on her lap. The Savior’s anatomical rendering is conveyed with vivid expressiveness in the details of the wound and the musculature, while on the ground, lower right, lies the crown of thorns. The background opens onto a suggestive hilly landscape that descends toward a body of water with fortified architectures and towers, rendered with the characteristic glaze of Nordic country painting. On the right stands the element of greatest historical and collecting interest: the portrait of a family of patrons from the period, reproduced in traditional late sixteenth-century attire cited from the original model. The lady, depicted while drawing water from a stone fountain according to the spiritual allegory of fons vitae, wears a rigid lettuce-trimmed bib and a coordinated cap, while the nobleman behind her wears a fitted jacket with puffed breeches and tenderly holds the infant in swaddling clothes in his arms. From a material and conservation standpoint, the painting is developed on a wooden support whose reverse structure shows a vertical crack from the period, stabilized and consolidated with a reinforcing batten to ensure the panel’s stability over time. The painted surface presents a natural patina and a dense craquelure, integrated by light conservative restoration interventions that guarantee full visual usability. The dimensions of the painting panel alone are 45 centimeters in width by 57.5 centimeters in height, increasing to 47 centimeters in width by 59.5 centimeters in height with the gilded containment profile."

Estimate:£675.85

View all items fromCatawikiorMiscellaneous