(Orta di Atella circa 1585 – circa 1656 Naples)
Saint Agatha,
signed with monogram: EQ. MAX.,
oil on canvas, 51 x 37 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private European collection

We are grateful to Sebastian Schütze for confirming the attribution after examining the present painting in the original and for suggesting a date of the mid-1640s.

The present compostion of Saint Agatha belongs among a number of half-bust representations of female saints that were broadly diffused in seventeenth century Naples, such as Stanzione’s Saint Catherine of Alexandria in a Neapolitan private collection or the Saint Agnes and Saint Apollonia in the Pio Monte della Misericordia, Naples (see S. Schütze/T. Willette, Massimo Stanzione: L’opera completa, Napoli, 1992, p. 214, A59, figs. 198-199).

The female saint is here bathed in a glow that exalts her aura of spiritual purity. Her pale cheeks reveal a sudden pinkish-red blush, while her pose shows her raising her hand to her bleeding breast: between her parted fingers, Massimo Stanzione’s monogram can clearly be read: ‘EQ. MAX.’. The artist was knighted by papal brief on 14 May 1621: this provides the terminus post quem for dating the painting. The present work can be compared to the Martyrdom of Saint Agatha in the Dupont collection, Milan, it is notable that the latter reveals a dense pictorial impasto, strongly reminiscent of Caravaggio’s oeuvre, and clearly revealing the artist’s close ties to the works of Ribera (see op. cit. Schütze, Willette, 1992, p. 18), while in the present painting the light is considerably softer, the layers of pigment lend the flesh tones an ivory hue and the delicate play of light and shade pick out the subject’s neck’s cavity and shoulder. The orchestration of colour is here softened and derives from the influence of Simon Vouet, as well as Artemisia Gentileschi.

This change in Stanzione’s style derived from his two Roman sojourns, the first during the years 1617–1618 and the second most probably undertaken between 1625 and 1630 (De Dominici, Vite de’ pittori, scultori e architetti napoletani, 1742–1745, III, p. 49). At Rome Stanzione came under the influence of the Bolognese painters active in the city: Annibale Caracci, Lanfranco and above all Guido Reni. It is especially to the latter that he owed his progressive enrichment of light effects and an increasingly sentimental and less dramatic mode of interpretation. This stylistic transformation was to earn him the epithet of ‘Guido napoletano’ as he was renamed by the famous Flemish art dealer Gaspare Roomer (op. cit. De Dominici, 1742–1745, p. 58). The present painting can be compared in style to the Saint Agatha in the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, and to the Saint Dorothea in the Herlitzka collection, Buenos Aires.

Massimo Stanzione was primarily a painter of altarpieces and frescoes, his significant production and following of students and imitators made him arguably the leading Neapolitan painter in the first half of the 17th century. He was known as the great rival of Jusepe de Ribera, and for most of the 1630s and 1640s he and Ribera dominated painting in Naples. Stanzione’s rich colour and idealized naturalism, definitively influenced numerous local artists and remained discernible even in the 1670s, in the early works of Francesco Solimena.

A number of important artists trained in Stanzione’s studio, including Agostino Beltrano, Pacecco De Rosa, Francesco Guarino, Giovanni Battista Spinelli and Bernardo Cavallino; other artists in his studio included Giovanni Ricca and Giuseppe Marullo. Documents relating to Stanzione’s large-scale projects show that he employed assistants, artists from his studio, as was usually working practice for an artist of status.

The present work is a significant example of a small wholly autograph easel painting of quality from his artistic production; and it is signed in his usual way, EQ. MAX. (Eques Maximo). Eques referred to his title of Cavaliere given to him by Pope Gregory XV in recognition of artistic contribution.