Agostino Scilla (Messina 1629-Rome 1700) - St.... Lot 17

Agostino Scilla (Messina 1629-Rome 1700) - St. John the Baptist preaching to the crowds, 17th century H cm 204x161- in frame H cm 268x203 Oil on canvas Expert opinion and video by Professor Claudio Strinati: "The painting is constructed with a criterion typical of this eminent painter, of which I confirm the autography, already extremely revalued by historiography but still awaiting a full redefinition by contemporary criticism.Of Sicilian origin, Scylla had an important Roman period where he approached the style and manner of Pier Francesco Mola and Andrea Sacchi. In our painting such influences, especially Mola's, appear evident. The slender and very tall figure of the Baptist dominates the scene set in a dark but sharply delineated landscape. The crowd throngs around himand there is a certain, I would say deliberate, accentuation of oriental typesaccording to a criterion that tends to visually reconstruct the stories toldin the figure, in a manner that is both fantastic and verisimilar. The work under consideration here, moreover, seems to bear in the upper right-hand corner an initials(difficult to decipher, however) that could perhaps be read as A S, an initials that Scylla sometimes affixes in his paintings. The state of preservation is good, but it should be noted that the painting must have undergone some drastic cleaning in the past, which would have necessitated the application of numerous and widespread retouches, in my opinion easily removable with a new and more up-to-date intervention. Our painting appears datable to the period from the formetà cycle of frescoes in the Cathedral of Syracuse (1657-60) to some celebrated monumental altarpieces such as that of the dying Saint Hilarion cheritengo undoubtedly usefully comparable with our painting. Our work is dated shortly after 1670, the year in which Scylla gave allestampe a remarkable volume entitled La vana speculazionedisingannata dal senso, which is the first maipublished treatise on paleontology in Italy, a discipline in which Scylla was a great specialist. A character, his, very complex and rich in evenextraesthetic references, to which our work seems significant testimony. In faith, Claudio Strinati." Non-coeval frame. 17th-century Sicilian painter.