Il Pesarese Simone Cantarini, The Holy Family with Saint Elizabeth and Saint John the Baptist

Oil on canvas
cm. 145,5x109.
Published by Andrea Emiliani in 1992, and then exhibited at the major Bolognese exhibition dedicated to the painter in 1998, this superb canvas was immediately accepted as an autograph work by Cantarini, relevant evidence both of his controversial but very intense dialogue with Guido Reni, and of his late production, if this is how one can qualify the activity related to the last years of the life of an artist who died at the age of 36. Both the iconography and the composition are among the most typical and recurring in the Pesaro painter's corpus and in the records of ancient inventories: but, as Marina Cellini appropriately noted in the fine catalog entry dedicated to the painting, what is especially striking here is the so affectionate and "private" character of the representation, which introduces us to Cantarini's most intimate and melancholic vein. Contributing to this lyrically domestic intonation that permeates the painting is also the pictorial drafting, in which the "sparing" preparation, the choice of an essential chromatic palette reduced to a few brown ranges, enlivened by skilful touches of white and the dull red of the Virgin's dress, combine with a ductus so delicate, tenuous and vibrant that at times it borders on the unfinished. This can be detected especially in the two figures of St. Anne and even more St. Joseph, where a barely sketched pictorial conduct also corresponds to a conscious formal choice, dictated by the lesser importance of the two figures both iconographically and in terms of the layout of the scene, which concentrates the emotional and psychological focus in the group of the three main figures. It is precisely the exchange of gestures and glances between Jesus and San Giovannino that constitutes here the heart of the scene and the main object of the investigation of the passions, an essential and constant motive of Cantarini's painting as well as of the masterful expressive calibration of our painting: and it is no coincidence that behind each of Cantarini's paintings there is always an intense and accurate graphic elaboration, with an analytical study of gestures, postures, movements and expressions of the figures. The dematerialization of the outlines, the transparency of the flesh tones, the abbreviated rendering of the garments, and the simplicity of the structure indicate a still stringent comparison with Guido Reni's mature production, albeit now in a dialectic between masters of equal standing.

Published by Andrea Emiliani in 1992, and then exhibited at the major Bolognese exhibition dedicated to the painter in 1998, this superb canvas was immediately accepted as an autograph work by Cantarini, relevant evidence both of his controversial but very intense dialogue with Guido Reni, and of his late production, if this is how one can qualify the activity related to the last years of the life of an artist who died at the age of 36. Both the iconography and the composition are among the most typical and recurring in the Pesaro painter's corpus and in the records of ancient inventories: but, as Marina Cellini appropriately noted in the fine catalog entry dedicated to the painting, what is especially striking here is the so affectionate and "private" character of the representation, which introduces us to Cantarini's most intimate and melancholic vein. Contributing to this lyrically domestic intonation that permeates the painting is also the pictorial drafting, in which the "sparing" preparation, the choice of an essential chromatic palette reduced to a few brown ranges, enlivened by skilful touches of white and the dull red of the Virgin's dress, combine with a ductus so delicate, tenuous and vibrant that at times it borders on the unfinished. This can be detected especially in the two figures of St. Anne and even more St. Joseph, where a barely sketched pictorial conduct also corresponds to a conscious formal choice, dictated by the lesser importance of the two figures both iconographically and in terms of the layout of the scene, which concentrates the emotional and psychological focus in the group of the three main figures. It is precisely the exchange of gestures and glances between Jesus and San Giovannino that constitutes here the heart of the scene and the main object of the investigation of the passions, an essential and constant motive of Cantarini's painting as well as of the masterful expressive calibration of our painting: and it is no coincidence that behind each of Cantarini's paintings there is always an intense and accurate graphic elaboration, with an analytical study of gestures, postures, movements and expressions of the figures. The dematerialization of the outlines, the transparency of the flesh tones, the abbreviated rendering of the garments, and the simplicity of the structure indicate a still stringent comparison with Guido Reni's mature production, albeit now in a dialectic between masters of equal standing.