GIUSEPPE ANTONIO PIANCA Lot n° 48

(Agnona, 1703 - Milan, 1760) Saint Joseph with Child Oil on canvas, 97X73 cm The canvas expresses an astonishing quality, and the characters of style openly reveal the attribution to Giuseppe Antonio Pianca, an undeservedly underrated artist, but one who can achieve, as in this case, high pictorial results. His art denotes clear affinities with Genoese painting, particularly the works of Alessandro Magnasco, consequently placing him among the most original painters of the first half of the 1700s. Interesting is the way in which the painter combines a seventeenth-century and neo-Baroque sensibility with the delicacies of Rococo touch, and the canvas under consideration best expresses this peculiar artistic temperament, offering us a most fascinating autonomous interpretation of Lombard naturalism. Filippo Maria Ferro is thanked for the attribution. Reference bibliography: G. Testori, The Reality of Painting, edited by P. Marani, Milan 1995, pp. 482-484 F. M. Ferro, Giuseppe Antonio Pianca, valsesian painter of the 1700s, Soncino 2013, ad vocem