Zoppo from Lugano, Adoration of the Magi

Giovanni Battista Discepoli, known as lo Zoppo from Lugano (Lugano, around 1590 - Milan, around 1654)
Adoration of the Magi
Oil on canvas, 82 x 121 cm, with frame 103 x 132 cm

The composition tells the famous episode of the visitation of the Magi to the Messiah . The scene, inspired by the Christian tradition to a tender humanism, seems to be destined to adorn a chapel used for the Epiphany cult. The work in question is linked to the attentive and agreeable modus operandi of Giovanni Battista Discepoli, called lo Zoppo da Lugano. The documentary sources do not allow to establish with greater precision the chronological data of the painter's life, which however is unanimously remembered as originating from Castagnola, near Lugano: in two documents of February 28 and March 3, 1640, for example, in which it is it is mentioned as a witness, it is also called "mayor" (lay administrator) of the parish church of S. Giorgio in Castagnola. His family situation is also unknown, except for the presence of children, who in 1677 must pay the balance of the debts contracted by his deceased father. The stylistic reading of the works considered juvenile allows him to be attributed, if not a real alumnus, at least the start to the profession in the circle of Camillo Procaccini, often present also in Ticino and in the same Lugano between the last decade of the sixteenth century and the first of the following century; but it is in particular to the Milanese painting of Francesco Cairo and, even more, of Carlo Francesco Nuvolone, that the Disciples looks. Still for stylistic reasons we could hypothesize his trip or stay in Genoa, where he would have had the opportunity to study the works of Van Dyck and Rubens, of Bernardo Strozzi and of Giovanni Battista Carlone. The same can be said for the influences of Venetian painting, found in some paintings of maturity, which make a trip to Venice plausible. Around the middle of the century the Disciples proposes a personal interpretation of Lombard painting, skillfully balancing the Venetian and Genoese influences: unwilling to contrast the dramatic scenes, he offers his best in works where his soft and nuanced but enriched painting from rich and sensual colors, it is well suited to the climate of tender concentration of the present subject. The Adoration of the Magi in question is to be related, given the similar compositional structure, to a larger canvas of the same subject preserved in a private collection. It is also to compare the same chromatic register of extreme refinement, which finds its most intense expression in the description of the characters' clothes, played on the shades of blue, red, ocher, earth and gold. In support of the attribution see the comparison with another version of the Adoration of the Magi, (circa 1651, Milan, Musei Civici del Castello Sforzesco), and with the altarpiece today in the church of S. Giorgio in Borgovico di Como, with the evocative flight of lively and plump little angels, which is a recurring theme in the painting of the Disciples. In the two aforementioned altarpieces, elements present in our painting return: the enhanced gestures of the characters, the chromatic modulations, the rich and full-bodied colors.