Expertise by Professor Claudio Strinati: «The painting derives from a well-known prototype of the Guercino environment, much
imitated throughout the seventeenth century and beyond in various Italian schools. Here the figure is complete and the work is enriched by a valuable Still Life at the feet of the Saint. The painting is executed with a very correct drawing and appears well highlighted in the “tenebrist” fashion that radiates from the Venetian environment also in southern Italy during the second half of the seventeenth century. Precisely for this reason I attribute the painting to the interesting and rare Neapolitan painter Oronzo Malinconico, member of the well-known family of artists almost all gravitating towards Luca Giordano's circle.
This stylistic reference would seem to be justified by interesting and vivid analogies that can be found for our painting in the few certain works of this artist, very well known in his time, and then entered into a sort of cone of shadow from which he has begun to re-emerge in recent times thanks to the studies of authoritative specialists of the period.
The Guercino component, evident in our painting, is also very clear in some of Oronzo's crucial works, as can be seen in the cycle of canvases he executed for the Cappella d'Avalos in Montesarchio, presumably between the eighth and ninth decade of the seventeenth century. This observation therefore leads us to date the painting under examination here to the same period.
We can see the same robust attitude and the same mastery of draftsmanship which also induce a visual effect of sad and introverted meditation as befits the character depicted.
Good state of preservation.
In faith,
Claudio Strinati»