Pier Francesco Gianoli, penitent Magdalene

Pier Francesco Gianoli (Campertogno 1624 - Varallo Sesia 1690)
Penitent Magdalene
Oil on canvas, 92.5 x 122 cm - with frame 105 x 136 cm
Expertise Prof. Alberto Crispo
ALC

The painting, depicting penitent Magdalene, identifies the hand, given the stringent stylistic comparisons, by Pier Francesco Gianoli (Campertogno 1624 - Varallo Sesia 1690). The painter belonged to a merchant family that had interests in Milan, Pavia, Novara and Valsesia. Very young he moved with his father to Milan and there he entered the workshop of the painter Carlo Antonio Rossi, who died in 1648. It is likely that later the painter went to Rome for a period of training, since a "Francesco Giannoli" appears among the artists registered in the books of the Accademia di San Luca, but in 1656 he was resident again in Milan and in 1663 he was a resident of Varallo. The first documented works by Gianoli are the Stories of San Gaudenzio in the parish church of San Gaudenzio in Varallo Sesia (1654). Later he executed the frescoes of the chapel 32 of the Sacred Mount of Varallo with Jesus climbing the staircase of the Pretorio (1665), followed by those for the chapel 29 with Jesus led back to Pilate (1679). The production of Pier Francesco Gianoli shows a clear debt towards Tanzio da Varallo, from which the dilated forms and deformations of the Mannerist mold that we can observe also in the Magdalene commented here derive. However, the painter is far from Tanzio's crude realism, preferring calmer tones and a classicist approach certainly favored by the direct knowledge of Roman figurative culture and Andrea Sacchi in particular. The success of this sweetened version of the Tanzanian models at the client, above all ecclesiastical, makes Gianoli one of the key figures of the second Piedmontese seventeenth century. , sees at the center of the composition the figure of the Magdalene, covered only by a drapery draped with long strides, changing in the points where it is struck by the light. Here the loose, long and flowing hair characterizes the youthful beauty of the saint, while, the sorrowful gaze turned downwards, is almost partaker of the same pain of the Savior. The long loose hair is an attribute of Mary Magdalene; they allude to the Gospel episode during which the known sinner presented herself to Jesus, a guest in Simon's house, to ask forgiveness of her sins, wetting her feet with tears and drying them with her hair and perfuming them with a precious ointment. the face of the Saint, with the particular oblique cut, the large lowered eyelids and the marked nose, recalls, very closely, the one outlined in the Tamar is revealed to Judas of Jacob passed thirty years ago on the Milanese antique market (Finarte Milan, December 17, 1987, lot 62), but the same elusive glimpse also appears in the Christ and the centurion of Capernaum in pendant with the previous one. The intertwined hands of our Magdalene are then entirely similar to those outlined in the Holy prayer that has recently passed on the Swiss market (Galartis Lausanne / Crissier, 12 November 2016, lot 60), as well as the clearly marked draperies and trends tortuous and curved are easily found in the paintings compared. According to legend, Mary Magdalene lived the last years of her existence as a hermit. The skull, which the plump angels in flight offer to the saint, is a typical attribute of the hermit, used as a source of meditation on death. Behind the saint, framed by the rocky elements of the cave, you can see a landscape surmounted by a blue sky crossed by clouds. The iconographic subject of the Magdalene spread rapidly in the Counter-Reformation era in controversy with the Protestant doctrine which denied the validity of the sacrament of penance.