FG FINE ART LTD
Alessandro Rosi
Florence, 1627 - 1697
Although inspired by his master, Alessandro Rosi turns Dandini’s lunar and hypnotic subject into a composition of beautiful mixture (as it is evident in the fur and the cheeky feather of the hat), exhibiting his skill both in the shadows of the curls of the Painting and in the backlight of the putto and the fake bronze with the beautiful young man’s nude.
Influenced by the French painting of Vouet’s followers, perhaps known in Rome and through the circulation of prints, Rosi’s production opened up, especially in its mature phase, to Giordano of which it welcomed the free and frantic effects of the brushstroke. The presence of Salvator Rosa in Florence from 1640 left significant traces on the artist, one of the forerunners of a necromantic trend that reached the grand ducal city, through his pupil Alessandro Gherardini, in the eighteenth century.
Allegory of Painting
Oil on canvas, 73 x 58 cm
Provenance
Private collection
Bibliography
E. Acanfora, Alessandro Rosi (under publication)
Recently rediscovered and without doubts referable to the Florentine Alessandro Rosi, this beautiful canvas depicts the Allegory of Painting, according to the figurative indications codified in the Iconologia of Cesare Ripa. The allegory is represented here, in fact, as a “Woman, beautiful, with black hair, thick and scattered, and twisted in different ways, with arched eyelashes, showing fantastic thoughts (...) [and who] will hold in one hand the brush, and in the other the palette; with the robe of iridescent cloth (...)”, elements that allude to the beauty and nobility of Painting, to contemplative thoughts, to the wonder and melancholy caused by art, while “the iridescent robe shows that variety is particularly fond of”.
Although inspired by his master, Alessandro Rosi turns Dandini’s lunar and hypnotic subject into a composition of beautiful mixture (as it is evident in the fur and the cheeky feather of the hat), exhibiting his skill both in the shadows of the curls of the Painting and in the backlight of the putto and the fake bronze with the beautiful young man’s nude.
A full fact sheet is available on request.