anticSwiss 23/09/2021 16:15:22 http://www.anticswiss.com

Portrait of an old woman with candle, 17th century

FOR SALE ANTIQUE DEALER Period: 17° secolo -1600 Ars Antiqua srl Milano Style: Altri stili +39 02 29529057 393664680856 Height:91cm Width:70cm Material:Olio su tela Price:9000€

DETAILED DESCRIPTION:

Attr. A , 17th century Old woman with candle Oil on canvas, 91 x 70 cm - with frame 125 x 104 cm

This is a genre scene set at night: an old lady has a wrinkled face illuminated by the dim light of a lamp oil, which radiates its rays on thin fingers, intent on counting coins, on the very precise details of the dress and on the face, leaving everything else in shadow. The intimacy of the scene reflects some paintings of Caravaggesque ancestry, such as Old with candle, 1650-1700 (Milan, Fondazione Cariplo Collection). Federico Zeri diverted the attribution from Rubens to the workshop of the great artist. It is actually a copy free from an invention by Rubens, known through a canvas, mentioned at the death of the painter in his inventory as “pourtrait d'une vieille avec un garcon, à la nuict”. There is also an engraving with the scene taken upside down, originally from the Museum of The Hague and which can be placed between 1616 and 1617 approximately. Usually considered as one of the few made directly by the artist, the latter bears an inscription at the bottom with a clear allusion to the theme of 'vanitas': "quis vetet apposito, lumen de lumine tolli / Mille licet capiant, deperit inde nihil" ( R. Mezzetti, in Rubens and the etching 1977, p. 14, n. 2; plate 2; see the various specimens preserved in the British Museum in London). Another excellent interpreter of the so-called “light painting” is Matthias Stom or Stomer (Amersfoort c. 1600-after 1650, Sicily). One of the most extraordinary admirers of late European Caravaggism, he was born around 1600 and was formed between Flanders and Holland under , in the context of a culture of transition between late Mannerism and the great naturalistic revolution determined by the impact of Nordic artists with 's avant-garde painting. The activity of the Stom took place through a long pilgrimage around the Italian peninsula. Documented for the first time in 1630, in a Rome now in full explosion, he was a participant in a group of "romantic" naturalists. One of its peculiarities is the depiction of figures in the foreground, very close to the relative, outlined by strong contrasts and

1 / 3 anticSwiss 23/09/2021 16:15:22 http://www.anticswiss.com accentuated realism. The exceptional ability to portray nocturnal scenes lit by torches and candles allowed him to emerge in the Neapolitan artistic circles, frequented between 1633 and 1637 approximately. It was precisely in the Neapolitan city that he managed to renew his own language, alongside the latest achievements of Jusepe Ribera and the airy painting promoted in the context of the neo-Venetian currents. On this front, without neglecting his interest in nocturnes, he moved once he landed in , where he remained until about 1645, joining the circuit of the numerous Flemish artists active in the city. Hired by the most powerful landed aristocracy, he gave birth to some of his greatest masterpieces in Sicily, the last and extraordinary expression of the naturalist poetics of the early seventeenth century. This painting follows a long tradition of depictions of men or women counting money. Such scenes often oscillate between genre and allegory, with the figures sometimes meant to represent Avarice - greed or greed - one of the seven deadly sins. In Cesare Ripa's Iconology, avarice is described as an elderly woman - "because greed dominates in the elderly". She is accompanied by a wolf and has a closed bag, which she "takes more pleasure in watching [...] than [...] using [...] to alleviate anguish and destitution". However, realizing this, the viewer comes to a better understanding of the underlying morality, which is that fighting for material wealth makes no sense, that life is about more important things. The details are reduced to a minimum in a synthesis that also involves the drafting of the painting, such as the play of light on the right hand or the vivid reflections that scrutinize the face of the elderly woman, veiled by melancholy, to the millimeter. The painter's predilection is for the almost dramatic contrasts of light and shadow, for the light of the candles, for the red and yellow colors and for the lively gestures and expressions. His heads are extraordinarily lively and often have a personal, even portraiture quality. This expressiveness is underlined by the combination of wrinkled, furrowed and suggestive chiaroscuro features. Despite these visual theatricalities, the artist also managed to suggest a great sense of intimacy: the woman is completely absorbed in her task. Her clothes and rough hands are extremely accentuated and characterize her as belonging to the people. The luministic and chiaroscuro effects are in fact affected by the influence of the art of Caravaggio and the Caravaggeschi, artists that the Flemings in Italy were able to appreciate and study, see the famous Supper at Emmaus in Brera (1606), in which the face wrinkled of the old woman in the background recalls the one in question, as well as the chiaroscuro reflections; faces also compared with the Madonna dei Pellegrini in Sant'Agostino in Rome, with the Madonna dei Palafrenieri (Galleria Borghese) and with Judith and Holofernes of Toulouse. https://www.anticswiss.com/en/fine-art-antiques/portrait-of-an-old-woman-with-candle-17th-century-24776

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