Setting by Giuseppe Nuvolone, Madonna and Child

Setting by Giuseppe Nuvolone (1619-1703)
Madonna and Child with San Giovannino
Oil on canvas, 103 x 77.5 cm - with frame 119 x 91 cm

The painting clearly presents the characteristics of seventeenth-century Lombard painting, softened by an obvious interest in Emilian culture, especially from Bologna. This formula of fusion between the two traditions, Lombard and Emilian, belongs to the Nuvolone family of artists active in seventeenth-century Milan and, in particular, to the two sons of the progenitor Panfilo, namely Carlo Francesco (1609-1662) and Giuseppe (1619 - 1703). The canvas is attributable to the context of Giuseppe Nuvolone for the close correspondence with paintings of a similar subject, such as the nursing Madonna of the Albertina Academy of Turin and the Madonna with Child and San Giovannino in a private Brescia collection, finally the Virgin announced passed on the market antique dealer. Between the known works of Nuvolone and the painting examined, there is a correspondence in the rendering of the face of the Virgin, portrayed with full cheeks, lowered eyelids, the characteristic cut of the eyes, round and swollen, and the head draped with a soft veil. With his brother Carlo Francesco, Giuseppe collaborated on the decoration of the Chapel of the Sacro Monte d'Orta and on the frescoes in San Francesco in Trecate. Giuseppe always remained stylistically linked to Carlo Francesco, while differentiating himself for a greater liveliness of colors and for the great harmony and compositional complexity, as can be seen from the numerous works preserved in Milan, Novara, Cremona, Bergamo and Brescia. The softness of Nuvolonian painting, played on the tenderness of attitudes and on the luministic sweetness, makes the figure of the Virgin particularly full of delicacy and love, here associated with the typical vigorous and plastic solemnity of the master.