Portrait Of Baby Jesus - Oil On Canvas - Giuseppe Angeli

GIUSEPPE ANGELI (Venice 1712 - 1798)
PORTRAIT OF THE BABY JESUS
Delightful oil painting on canvas depicting Baby Jesus delicately holding a small cross between the index finger and thumb of his right hand, while with his other hand he holds a small basket containing the symbols of the Passion.
The author of this painting can be identified as Giuseppe Angeli, the most gifted of Giovanni Battista Piazzetta's students, so much so that in 1645 he is documented as the director of his very active workshop. From his master, Angeli draws that chromatic luminosity, leaving aside the pathetic components, exhibiting a soft application and a mellowness of color in tune with delicate accords, silvery pinks, deep blues and soft grays, with a sensual and suggestive language. Visible are the updates derived from the art of Rosalba Carriera and Jacopo Amigoni that will characterize the mature production of the artist, who, with 1757, will take on the role of master of nude at the Academy. These are the years to which the execution of this beautiful canvas refers. The subject portrayed here represents a model used several times by our painter since the first tests; recognizable, for example, in the altarpiece with the blessed Gerolamo Miani and some orphans praying around the crucifix of the Venetian church of Santa Maria dei derelitti and dell'ospedaletto and in the painting with Girls tickling a sleeping boy, published by Egidio Martini in 1981.
reference bibliography:
E. Martini, La Pittura del Settecento veneto, Udine, 1981, fig. 308
T. Pignatti, Giuseppe Angeli, catalogue of the exhibition Giambattista Piazzetta and his time, his school, Venice, 1983, ad vocem
R. Pallucchini in Painting in the Veneto. The Eighteenth Century, Milan 1996, II, pp. 161 - 162, fig. 227

Size cm. 47x38 (cm.62x52.5 with frame)