(Leonessa, Rieti circa 1600–1644 Rome)
Saint Martha taming the Tarasque,
oil on canvas, 101.5 x 74.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
possibly Ruffo della Scaletta collection, Messina;
Private European collection;
where acquired by the present owner

Literature:
M. Pulini (ed.), Bartolomeo Mendozzi da Leonessa. Un Maestro del Seicento tra l’Incredulità, il caso Ducamps e i nuovi documenti, Rimini 2022, cat. no. 26, pp. 86–87

Bartolomeo Mendozzi, also known as the Master of the Incredulity of Saint Thomas, was active in Rome during the second and third decades of the seventeenth century and was one of Caravaggio’s accomplished followers, alongside artists such as Bartolomeo Manfredi, Nicolas Tournier, Valentin de Boulogne and Cecco del Caravaggio.

The master’s sobriquet was formulated in 1997 on the basis of the Incredulity of Saint Thomas conserved in the Palazzo Valentini in Rome, around which an initial nucleus of stylistically similar works was formed (see G. Papi, Il Maestro dell’Incredulità di San Tommaso, in: Arte Cristiana, no. 779, 1997, pp. 121–30). Subsequently Papi made further additions to the master’s corpus of work such as the Card players in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden (inv. no. 408), and those of the Galleria Nazionale di Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini, Rome (see G. Papi, Il genio degli anonimi. Maestri caravaggeschi a Roma e a Napoli, exhibition catalogue, Milan 2005).

Francesca Curti identified the master with the painter Bartolomeo Mendozzi, a native of Leonessa in northern Lazio who was probably a pupil of Bartolomeo Manfredi (1582–1622), and who gained important patrons such as Vincenzo Giustiniani and the Dukes of Savoy (see F. Curti, in: La luce e i silenzi. Orazio Gentileschi e la pittura caravaggesca nelle Marche del Seicento, exhibition catalogue, ed. by A. M. Ambrosini, A. Delpriori, Ancona 2019, pp. 260–63).

Papi dates this work to the artist’s maturity, around the end of the third or the beginning of the fourth decade of the seventeenth century. Comparable paintings of the same period are the Shepherds making music in the Circolo degli Ufficiali di Presidio, Turin, the Salome receiving the head of the Baptist in the Museo di Varallo, and the Holy Family in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes.

The taming of the Tarasque by Saint Martha of Bethany depicted in the present painting is narrated by Jacopo da Varazze in the Golden Legend. The saint, together with Mary Magdalen and Lazarus, arrived in Provence in 48 A.D. to propagate Christianity. Martha headed on to the Camargue, where a monster that was half-beast and half-fish, the Tarasque, terrorised the population. The monster was about to eat a man alive when the saint, armed with holy water, managed to tame it. As a result, the Tarasque became a symbol of paganism subdued by the Christianity.