(Naples 1590–1645 Conversano)
Saint Veronica,
oil on canvas, 98.5 x 84.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Rome

We are grateful to Riccardo Lattuada for suggesting the attribution after examining the present painting in the original and for his help in cataloguing this lot.

According to an ancient tradition, not reported in the Gospels, Veronica is the woman who dried the bloodied face of Christ with her veil, as he climbed to Golgotha for crucifixion. The image of Christ’s face remained impressed on the veil she had offered. This tradition took such firm hold in the Christian world that it has become one of the stations of the Via Crucis, the Way of the Cross.

This painting presents all the typical stylistic and compositional characteristics of the work of Paolo Finoglio from Atella, one of the prominent figures in the early decades of painting in 17th century Naples. Finoglio had his first training under the master of southern late mannerism, Ippolito Borghese, and he embarked on the modernisation of this late mannerist style probably in the studio of Battistello Caracciolo, he thereby becoming one of the leading exponents of Neapolitan post-Caravaggism. Subsequently, for over two decades, he worked for the principal religious institutions in the city: the Certosa di San Martino, San Lorenzo Maggiore and San Paolo Maggiore. He probably moved to Conversano in 1635, where he became court painter to the powerful Acquaviva d’Aragona family. In their Castello di Conversano, he painted the frescoes in the nuptial chambers of Count Gian Girolamo II Acquaviva, and also the series of ten vast canvases representing Episodes from Gerusalemme Liberata preserved today in the Pinacoteca Comunale del Castello at Conversano (for a modern appraisal of the artist see: C. D. Fonseca (ed.), Paolo Fingolo e il suo tempo. Un pittore napoletano alla Corte degli Acquaviva, exhibition catalogue, Naples 2000; for the Gerusalemme Liberata cycle see: A. Tapié (ed.), Paolo Domenico Finoglio. La Jérusalem délivrée, exhibition catalogue, Lille-Paris, 2010). Finoglio’s fame achieved an international level, as is demonstrated by his being commissioned to produced one of four paintings, each by a different Neapolitan master, for the decoration of the Palacio del Buen Retiro, Madrid (see S. Pierguidi, Il ciclo dei costumi de’ Romani antichi del Buen Retiro di Madrid, in: Storia dell’arte, 125/126, January-August 2010, pp. 79-93).

In the present painting, the vigorous handling of light and shade for Saint Veronica’s features is comparable to that of the adulteress in the Christ and the Adulteress by Finoglio in the Museo Provinciale, Lecce, of circa 1628-30, to the female figures in the Sposalizio della Vergine at Santa Maria di Piedigrotta, Naples, of around 1630, and to that of the Martyr Saint in the Hungarian Christian Museum, Esztergom (also towards 1630), as well as that of the Saint at Prayer in a private collection. All these works have been connected to the stylistic moment of the Immaculate Conception by Finoglio, which is known through versions at San Lorenzo Maggiore, Naples (1629 or 1630), at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lille and at San Francesco d’Assisi, Montesarchio (for each of these works see: A. Cassiano/R. Mavelli/C. de Toma, in: Paolo Finoglio e il suo tempo, pp. 151 n. 16; 152 n. 18; 153 n. 20; 154, n. 22; and p. 99, colour pl. 16; p. 101, colour pl. 18; p. 102, fig. 20; p. 103, colour pl. 22).

It has repeatedly been observed that, between the end of the 1620s and the first half of the 1630s, Finoglio renewed his figurative language in accordance with the formal innovations introduced to the Neapolitan scene following Artemisia Gentileschi’s arrival. In the present painting, the firm features of Saint Veronica’s face, the sculptural chiaroscuro shaping her drapery, and the colouring of the flesh tones reveal more than a single point of contact with Artemisia’s first Neapolitan period – as seen in comparison to her Annunciation in the Galleria di Capodimonte, Naples which is signed and dated 1630.