Search

The essay presents an unpublished pencil portrait of Jacopo Alessandro Calvi in a private collection, which captures the scientist Eustachio Zanotti in profile. It also proposes to refer to Calvi’s hand the portrait of the same astronomer preserved in the university collections of Palazzo Poggi, on the basis of a comparison with a further oil portrait by him, also in a private collection, which came to us through the painter’s heirs and was painted in pairs with that of Calvi’s father, the spice merchant Giuseppe Maria, a great friend of the scientist. The painting in Palazzo Poggi is in fact currently in search of an authorship, after a past attribution to the name of Giampietro Zanotti, secretary of the Accademia Clementina, father of Eustachio as well as master of Jacopo Alessandro himself. The attributive hypothesis therefore widens Calvi’s known activity as a portraitist, to which the painter very rarely devoted himself, but that was very significant in order to document the literary interests cultivated by the young artist, and his academic and Arcadian acquaintances.

A photograph kept at the Fondazione Federico Zeri records the existence of a painting by Stefano Torelli, representing Christ and the Samaritan woman, signed and dated 1774, of which so far just one fragment of the figure of Jesus was known (art market, 1992): the discovery offers the opportunity for an in-depth study of the late production of the Bolognese painter, which reveals his interests in the artistic culture of Louis XV's France, strengthened during the long period of career he spent at the court of Catherine II of Russia. The arrival of Étienne-Maurice Falconet in St. Petersburg in 1766 reawakened Torelli's attraction for the enchanting "art de plaire" developed in Paris by the great sculptor, already a collaborator in Sèvres of François Boucher, the "painter of graces".

The Oratory of Saint Onuphrius, presently the venue of municipally promoted festivals and art exhibitions, had once a liturgical function related to the charitable activity of the annexed hospital, where needy people of the town could be offered some relief. Despite the present employment, however, the state of preservation and integrity of the Oratory's decorations do allow one's imagination to see such past activity, and so gather a deeper insight as to the choices of the patrons, in relation to their own requirements and to the complex's purpose. In particular, the cycle of paintings dedicated to the stories of the anchorite saint, made between 1716 and 1719 by the Bavarian painter Ignazio Stern, is the expression of a culture that was influenced by Arcadian literature, and that saw the assertion of values based on the Gospel in the voluntary dismissal of the material comforts provided by the civilisation of progress.