17th century Italian School, attributable to Orazio Borgianni (1575 - 1616) "Saint [...]

17th century Italian School, attributable to Orazio Borgianni (1575 - 1616)"Saint Gregory the Great as Pontiff and Doctor of the Church"Oil on canvas. Circa 1610 - 1616. Painting of great quality and accomplished Baroque naturalism. The light at the left side of the picture shines on the saint´s face and the magnificent cape which forms deep folds and falls to the bottom of the canvas. The mastery of the artist can best be appreciated in this treatment of the materials and brocades, which faithfully reproduces the textures, giving a great feeling of volume to the figure. The formal scene and composition have great similarities to the Saint Gregory which is kept at the chapterhouse in Huesca. The painter of this Saint Gregory is unknown. However, there are other paintings with the same name and of the same period which can throw some light on some aspects of the painter. In Spain there are at least three paintings in the same series, identical to this one, of the Fathers of the Church. There is the one kept at the Prado Museum, which was previously attributed by A. L. Mayer to Herrera el Viejo, but is now catalogued as anonymous, 17th century Italian. There is also one at the Episcopal Museum and chapterhouse in Huesca, which Ms. M. C. Lacarra Ducay y C. García listed in the museum catalogue in 1984 as being from the Caravaggio circle, and there is one at Santa María de Palacio, in Logroño. This concentration of three of the best of the series in Spain suggests, according to Ismael Gutiérrez Pastor "that the possibility could be considered that the artist is an Italian painter working in the Spanish sphere. In this case, the figure of Orazio Borgianni fits perfectly with the stylistic and historical circumstances which appear in these paintings. Borgianni spent time in Spain at least twice: from 1595 - 1603 and from 1604 - 1605, with a short stay in Rome in between, and a return to the papal city after 1605, after which his originally mannerist style transforms, under the influence of Caravaggio. In the case that this series of paintings can be attributed to Borgianni, they will be paintings from after his definitive return to Italy, however, the painter never lost contact with his Spanish clientele, and that is why he became one of the first propagators of Caravaggio´s style in Spain."182 x 100 cm.