Attributed to CARLO SARACENI (Venice ca. 1570 - Venice, 1620)."The Coronation of the Virgin.Oil on

Attributed to CARLO SARACENI (Venice ca. 1570 - Venice, 1620).
"The Coronation of the Virgin.
Oil on copper.
It presents slight restorations.
Measurements: 75,5 x 53 cm; 121 x 88 cm (frame).
In this work the Virgin Mary is represented in the centre, thus establishing the axis of symmetry of the composition, which facilitates the compression of the scene, since it is composed of a number of characters, which create with their disposition, a border around the figure of Mary. In the upper area, the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ and God the Father contemplate the Virgin, who is being crowned by two small angels who in turn carry garlands of flowers. The Virgin raises her gaze and receives the cherubs with open arms, while she is accompanied by a large retinue of musical angels. This theme had already been treated by Saraceni in the church of Santa Maria in Aquiro in Rome, specifically in the ceiling of the chapel of the Annunciation. The musical angels are the latest expression of a complex set of musical ideas of a mystical-mathematical nature that have their roots in the most remote antiquity and whose common denominator is the ordering of the world and the relationship between the macrocosm and the microcosm. They are the last group of the epiphany and the army of God, and for this reason the closest to mankind.
Although he was born and died in Venice, his paintings are clearly Roman; he moved to Rome in 1598, joining the Accademia di San Luca in 1607. He never visited France, although he spoke French fluently and had a French following and a French wardrobe. His painting, however, was influenced at first by the densely wooded landscapes and lush human figure settings of Adam Elsheimer, a German painter living in Rome; "There are few Saraceni landscapes that have not been attributed to Elsheimer," observed Malcolm Waddingham, and Anna Ottani Cavina has suggested that the influences may have travelled both ways.Elsheimer's small cabinet paintings on copper provided a format that Saraceni employed in six landscape panels illustrating The Flight of Icarus; in Moses and the Daughters of Jethro and Mars and Venus. When Caravaggio's famous Death of the Virgin was rejected in 1606 as a suitable altarpiece for a chapel in Santa Maria della Scala, it was Saraceni who provided the acceptable substitute, which remains in situ, the only secure painting from his first decade in Rome. He was influenced by Caravaggio's dramatic lighting, monumental figures, naturalistic detail and momentary action (illustration, right), for which reason he is counted among the early "Tenebrists" or "Caravaggisti". Examples of this style can be seen in Judith Candlelight with the Head of Holofernes.Saraceni's style matured rapidly between 1606 and 1610, and the following decade gave way to his fully mature works, synthesising Caravaggio and the Venetians. In 1616-17 he collaborated on the frescoes in the Sala Regia of the Palazzo del Quirinale. In 1618 he was paid for two paintings in the church of Santa Maria dell'Anima. In 1620 he returned to Venice, where he died in the same year.