(Monreale 1603–1647 Palermo)
The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa,
oil on canvas, 194 x 138 cm, framed

Provenance:
Monastero dell’Assunta delle Carmelitane, Palermo, 1628 – ante 1827;
Anonymous noble collection, Santa Margherita Belice, Agrigento;
sale, Circolo Artistico di Palermo, 1960s (as Pietro Novelli);
where acquired by Giuseppe Canalotto;
and thence by descent to the present owner

Documented:
L. Di Giovanni, Le opere d’Arte nelle chiese di Palermo, 1827: “Io ho veduto dentro al monastero a piè della scala grande un quadro di circa 10 palmi in cui vi è dipinta S.Teresa in estasi, è opera bellissima di un colorito sorprendente, e sembra opera di egreggio Pittore di scuola fiamminga” (see S. La Barbera (eds.), Lazzaro Di Giovanni: Le opere d’arte nelle chiese di Palermo, Palermo 2000, p. 255)

We are grateful to Antonio Cuccia for confirming the attribution after examining the present painting in the original and for his help in cataloguing this lot.

We are also grateful to Riccardo Lattuada and Maria Giulia Aurigemma for independently confirming the attribution after examining the present painting in the original.

The subject of the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa of Avila as depicted in this painting follows a particular rendering of the iconography, whereby the saint’s pose describes her circumspection and unwillingness, thereby eschewing the theme of divine ‘pleasure’ so memorably rendered by Gian Lorenzo Bernini for the Cornaro Chapel in Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome (see fig. 1). The painter captures the moment just before the ecstasy, expressed by the nun’s apparent disorientation: supported by an angel as she falls, she holds up her hands as if to defend herself against the sudden appearance of the divine messenger with his arrow, guided from above by the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, that breaks the formation of putti overhead. Within the confined space of the canvas the painter manages to create an engaging hagiographic episode with bold contrasts of bright light and deep shadow that heighten the drama.

Cuccia has suggested that the present painting is referred to by Lazzaro di Giovanni (1827; see documents) as being in a convent: ‘I have seen in the monastery, at the foot of the great stairs, a painting of about 10 palmi in which Saint Teresa is depicted in ecstasy, it is a most beautiful work with startling colouring, and seems to be the fine work of a Painter of the Flemish school’ [‘Io ho veduto dentro al monastero a piè della scala grande un quadro di circa 10 palmi in cui vi è dipinta S.Teresa in estasi, è opera bellissima di un colorito sorprendente, e sembra opera di egreggio Pittore di scuola fiamminga’]. Di Giovanni here refers to the Monastero dell’Assunta in Palermo, which was endowed by the Duke of Montalto, Viceroy of Sicily, for the perpetual enclosure of his wife as a nun, who retired there with papal permission, on 20 June 1628 after having left the Neapolitan convent of San Giuseppe delle Carmelitane Scalze (see: V. Abbate, Pittura e Mito: due acquisizioni per Palazzo Abatellis, Bagheria 2006, p. 31), following her husband’s decision to join the Jesuits.

The attribution to Novelli is justified by the sophisticated composition of the work which enhances the emotional effect of the hagiographic episode at the centre of the diagonal around which the scene is constructed. These features are intrinsically bound to the painter’s style, as are his palette which was derived from Rubens, especially in the vivid reddening of the flesh tones and his dark ground serving to contrast the startlingly bright colours of the illuminated areas.

Also typical of the artist’s production are the identifiable facial types which reoccur in other well-known works by Novelli, such as is evident, for example, when comparing the figure of the angel from the now destroyed Annunciation of Villa Niscemi, datable to 1629, that could be overlaid on the angel with an arrow in the present work; likewise the angel in the Ecstasy of Saint Gaetano, in the Church of San Giuseppe dei Teatini, Palermo shares the same features as the angel that supports Saint Teresa; meanwhile Saint Teresa’s oval features find a match in those of the Saint George painted in fresco in 1628 for the church of San Francesco, Palermo, since transferred to Palazzo Abatellis. These are all works made during a single brief time frame before 1630, and they all share the same splendid colour harmonies of mustard yellow and rose that reverberate in the distempered whites of the flesh tones.

Chronologically the painting seems distant from the elaborate, late-mannerist calligraphic style with contrasted colouring typical of the artist’s early phase, identifiable in such works as the Immaculate conception of 1627 for Termini Imerse (see: A. Cuccia, La prima maturità di Pietro Novelli. Contributi all’attività giovanile, in: Bollettino d’Arte, no. 108, 1999, pp. 19-56). In turn the present work also differs from the artist’s classicist phase, emblematic of his maturity; instead it belongs to his intermediate phase, which through his choice of pallet reveals his experience of Flemish realism and is specifically suggestive of his contact with Anthony van Dyck in Palermo from 1624 to 1625, with Geronimo Gerardi, also a Fleming, who settled in Sicily and through whom Novelli was influenced by Rubens: stimuli that he may also have enhanced on a presumed journey to Genoa.

Finally, such stylistic considerations coincide with the arrival in Palermo of the Abbess Montalto in 1628 to inaugurate the Carmelite Convent dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin, pointing to a date that gives credence to the work’s execution at the beginning of 1629, before the artist’s documented journey to Naples and Rome between 12 March 1629 and 18 January 1630 (see G. Mendola, Di Novelli giovane, 1623-1631, in: Bollettino d’Arte, no.108, 1999, pp. 1-18).