Southern Italian school; follower of VAN DYCK (Antwerp, 1599-London, 1641). "Ecstasy of St. Rosalia of Palermo". Oil on canvas. Re-tinted.

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Jul 14, 2021

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  Southern Italian school; follower of VAN DYCK (Antwerp, 1599-London, 1641). "Ecstasy of St. Rosalia of Palermo". Oil on canvas. Re-tinted. It presents pictorial losses and damages. Size: 89 x 75 cm. This work in which Santa Rosalia is represented, being crowned with roses by an angel, follows the aesthetic precepts of the work of Van Dyck, which belongs to the collection of the MET in New York, and which was made by the author in 1624. Both works have the same theme and composition. Although it is worth mentioning that the theme of Saint Rosalia, was common in Van Dyck's painting, an example of this are his works in the Apsley House collection in London, and the Prado Museum in Madrid, although the latter differ slightly both in the set of characters that make up the scene, as well as in the representation of the saint. Rosalia of Palermo was an Italian saint of the 12th century, whose cult was promoted by the Benedictines. She is considered a protector against infectious diseases, such as the plague, and is also invoked to seek her protection in difficult times. Rosalia lived in solitude, poverty and penance, and according to her hagiography she performed miracles such as the extinction of the plague that ravaged her native Sicily. Patroness of Palermo, she enjoys great devotion in Sicily. Saint Rosalia was an important subject in Italian Renaissance and Baroque painting, particularly in the sacre conversazioni (group images of saints flanking the Virgin Mary) of artists such as Riccardo Quartararo, Mario di Laurito, Vincenzo La Barbara and possibly Antonello da Messina. But it was the Flemish master Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1637), who was caught in Palermo during the plague of 1624, who produced the largest number of paintings of her. Saint Rosalia is usually depicted as a young woman with flowing blonde hair, wearing a Franciscan hood or a crown of flowers and leaning toward the city of Palermo in her peril. The formal characteristics of the present canvas allow us to place it in the circle of Anton van Dyck, a key painter of the Flemish Baroque and one of the most important portraitists of the entire 17th century. Anton Van Dyck began his training with Van Balen, a Romanist painter, in 1609. In 1615-16 he worked with Jordaens, and between 1617 and 1620 with Rubens, who said that he was his best pupil. In 1620 he visited England for the first time, in the service of James I, when he was only twenty-one years old. In London he enjoyed greater freedom and left aside religious painting to devote himself fully to portraiture. Between 1621 and 1627 he completed his training with a trip to Italy, being particularly impressed by Bolognese painting and the works of Titian. It was in Italy where he achieved his mature, refined and elegant style, as well as configuring his type of portrait, which became a model for Western painting. In Italy his fame as a portraitist was also established, and he enjoyed immediate success wherever he worked, painting portraits of the most important noble families of Italy, as well as the Pope and various members of the Roman Curia. In 1629 he was again in London, this time working for King Charles I, who admired Titian's work and saw in Van Dyck his heir. Thus, he dismissed all his painters, having found in Van Dyck the court painter he had wanted for years. In 1640, on the death of Rubens, the painter returned to Antwerp to finish the works he had left unfinished. The following year he moved to Paris, where he painted the wedding portrait of King William II and Princess Mary. That same year he returned hastily to London for health reasons, dying shortly thereafter at his home in the English capital. Anton Van Dyck is represented in major museums around the world, such as the Louvre, the Prado, the Kunsthistorisches in Vienna, the National Gallery and the British Museum in London, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, etc.
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