Battista GAULLI dit il Bacciccio (1639 - 1709) Saint... Lot 11

Battista GAULLI dit il Bacciccio (1639 - 1709) Saint Anthony abbot in prayer Canvas. Ancient restorations, small dents, uprisings. 98 x 73 cm Provenance: Acquired in 1860 in Paris by Mr Sylvestre Savy. Since then it has remained in the family. We can compare this unpublished painting with several other saints and apostles of the artist, where we find the same graphic writing in the cottony beard or hands: Crucifixion with Saint Anthony of Padua and Saint Anthony Abbot kept in the church of Santa Maria della Cima in Genzano di Roma (Francesco Petrucci, Baciccio, Ugo Bozzi Editore, 2009, p. 293, fig. 366 and p. 526, C8); Saint Thomas in private collection (Petrucci, op. cit, p. 312, fig. 383 and p. 571, D14); Apostle's Head formerly in the Zabert Gallery in Turin (Petrucci, op. cit., p. 312, fig. 385 and p. 572, D16), Saint Andrew in the Palazzo Chigi in Ariccia (Petrucci, op. cit., p. 313, fig. 386 and p. 590, D37). We thank Professor Francesco Petrucci for confirming the attribution of this painting to Gaulli by e-mail and digital photo on June 7, 2020. This author insists on Gaulli's reinterpretation of Guido Reni's prototype figures of saints through Bernini's baroque sculptural plasticity, and dates them around 1680 (catalogue of the exhibition "Il Museo del Barocco Romano La Collezioni Ferrari, Laschena ed altre donazioni a Palazzo Chigi in Araccia", Arricia, 2008, p. 68). That is to say, at the time when the artist frescoed the immense vault of the Gesù, the mother church of the Society of Jesus, a key work in the evolution of Roman Baroque.