(Florence 1578–1650)
Saint John the Baptist,
oil on canvas, octagonal, 97.5 x 77 cm, framed

Provenance:
Collection of Filippo Pasqui, Villa Pallò, Impruneta;
and thence by descend to the present owner

We are grateful to Sandro Bellesi for confirming the attribution of the present painting on the basis of a high resolution digital photograph.

The present unpublished painting by Matteo Rosselli shows Saint John the Baptist in the desert with his typical attributes in the foreground: a cartouche reciting the prophecy Ecce Agnus Dei and the long staff terminating in a cross; he is clothed in camel hair and is wrapped in a red mantle. The Baptist appears here as a vigorous youth and not as emaciated, his features dug out by the labours of his pilgrimage in the desert. His inspired gaze is turned to the heavens from whence a ray of divine light enters at an angle from the upper left corner.

This work can be compared to the Saint John the Baptist in in the collection of Claude Jeancolas, Paris, and with the Baptist in the canvas formerly with Santa Lucia Antichità, Florence, representing Christ with Saint John the Baptist (see S. Bellesi, Catalogo dei pittori fiorentini del ‘600 e del ‘700: biografie e opere, vol. 1, Florence 2009, p. 19, pl. VII and p. 272, fig. 1418). In these paintings, the features of the Baptist remain the same: round eyes turned to the heavens, a prominent chin, similarly curly hair and even the motions of their limbs coincide. The position in which the Baptist is posed belongs to a long-established Tuscan portrait tradition, which is still to be found replicated, all be it with some variants, in a Saint John the Baptist conserved in the Depositi delle Gallerie Fiorentine, attributed by Cantelli to Cesare Dandini (see G. Cantelli, Repertorio della pittura fiorentina del Seicento, Fiesole 1983, cat. no. 213) and by Bellesi to Felice Ficherelli (see op. cit. Bellesi, 2009, cat. no. 604).

Born in Florence in 1578 Matteo Rosselli trained in the studio of Gregorio Pagani as is reported by Filippo Baldinucci in the Vita dedicated to the artist published in 1688. In 1605 Rosselli moved to Rome with Domenico Cresti called il Passignano, his second master after Pagani. Matteo Rosselli was made director of the cycles of pictorial decoration of the Medici casino at San Marco and at their Villa di Poggio Imperiale, where he worked with an established team of painters, such as Francesco Furini and Jacopo Vignali (see M. Gregori, E. Ancafora, P. Bacherini, Fasto di corte. La decorazione murale nelle residenze dei Medici e dei Lorena, Florence 2005–2007).