MAESTRO ARGENTIERE GIUSEPPE D'ANGELO, Importante... Lot n° 670

MAESTRO ARGENTIERE GIUSEPPE D'ANGELO (Messina 17th/18th century) Important monstrance made in Messina by master Giuseppe D'Angelo, in chiseled and embossed silver, with foot and stem decorated with Rocailles, Cartouches, cherub heads, and cherub in the round at the top. Sunburst display with clouds and cherub heads. Provenance: noble Sicilian family. Bibliography: Maria Accascina, "Oreficeria di Sicilia dal XII al XIX secolo," S. F. Flaccovio editore, Palermo 1974. Giuseppe D'Angelo, son of Mario, one of the most qualified master silversmiths in Messina in the late 1600s-early 1700s at a time in history when the city was flourishing, which was reflected in the many building sites for the construction of palaces, churches and fountains that added to the many left by the great architects of the 1500s. In churches as in palaces or in festive decorations with triumphal arches or ephemeral machines, everything contributed to the explosion of pomp that involved every artistic form. Silversmith workshops were also at the center of this frenetic production, both for sacred apparatuses and for the secular aspect intended for an aristocracy and a cultured and refined society. Alongside Mario and his son Giuseppe D'Angelo we find the names of other extraordinary interpreters of the goldsmith artistic scene of the time such as the family of Pietro and Gregorio Juvara, Gaetano and Antonio Martinez, and many other happy interpreters of this extraordinary art. To Mario are to be ascribed works of great importance such as the Bust of Santa Venera of the Cathedral of Acireale (1651) and other works on which Mario worked alongside Pietro and Antonio Juvara and Giuseppe alongside Sebastiano and Filippo Juvara in an exceptional association between the exponents of the most qualified goldsmith families of the Sicilian Baroque. Giuseppe also followed the fashion of the time by executing the Reliquary Bust of St. George in the church of the same name in Ragusa. Inspired by the Orion fountain by Giovanni Antonio Montorsoli, executed between 1547 and 1553, is the sumptuous silver table riser executed by Giuseppe around the 1770s, a work in which the goldsmith artist succeeds perfectly in the adaptation of sculptural forms to the plasticity and sensitivity proper to the definition of this material. Although it is not known exactly, in all likelihood the patron of this extraordinary work can be identified in Antonio Ruffo in whose palace all kinds of works of art accumulated in this period and at the same time represented the hub around which the cultural and intellectual life of the time revolved. 27 x 16 x 60.5 cm.