Our Lady Of Loreto Among The Saints

Venetian-Cretan school, 16th century

Madonna of Loreto between the Saints Giacomo maggiore and Girolamo

Tempera on table, cm 49,5 x 38,5

With frame, cm 72,5 x 63

The artistic language common to the area between Venice and the immediate Mediterranean East assumed from the thirteenth century a koiné spread up in Dalmatia. The traditional definition that stigmatizes its area of belonging, namely Scuola Veneto or Dalmato-Cretese, contains a recurring formalism, typically declined on private tables of easy dimensions, Intended to serve as ex-voto or commemorative images and professions of faith. The central Venetian culture, main effective matrix of this particular pictorial declination, was justified on the basis of the political and commercial primacy, in an era that had handed over to the Serenissima the figurative prontuario of the territory between Europe and Asia. The island of Crete, ancient Heraklion, was conquered by the Republic in 1211 following the Fourth Crusade.

In this work, the canonical treatment of the surface coloristica, sculptural cangiantismo in correspondence with the clothes of the depicted, figure a subject much appreciated in central Italy: the miracle of the Sanctuary of the Madonna di Loreto. Legend has it that on the night between the ninth and tenth of December 1294 a group of angels had raised in his interest the house of the Virgin and that he had transported her from Palestine to the city of Marche. In 1296 the hermit Fra' Paolo della Selva had confirmation of the event in a vision, which was translated into a tabula and then inserted in the 1465 chronicle written by Pier Giorgio di Tolomei called the Teramano. Pilgrimage destination since the fourteenth century, the house, immediately became sanctuary, attracted a flock of kings and queens, popes, leaders and founders of religious orders.
The work in question, attributable to an artist from Veneto but also strong of the reception of the lexicon of the Marche, remains faithful to the Dalmatian-Cretan compositions of ancient date: the organization of the Saints, liberations placed within the wide piece of Paesistico background, It is for that school slice faithful to the typical cuts of the masters of the first season of Veneto, such as Tiziano, widely preferred in the context of the artist’s reality above, compared to, for example, the Bellini cut that also had partial luck. The basic iconographic tradition, that of the Byzantines, is thus superseded here in the natural colorism which spreads along the table, this time defined as a true Renaissance icon.

The object is in good condition