Neapolitan School, 17th Century, Saint Peter In Prayer Within Garland Of Flowers

Neapolitan school, 17th century

Saint Peter in prayer within garland of flowers

Oil on canvas, cm 111 x 95.5

With frame, cm 126 x 110,5

The practice of framing religious figures in richly flowered garlands is due to the intellectual collaboration between Frederick Borromeo and Jan Brueghel the Elder. In spite of the all-Nordic and Flemish fame that would then characterize this iconography, it would be possible to trace this figural declination back to the Lombard art of Milan borromaica with Carlo Antonio Procaccini at its head. If it is indeed possible to recognize the prototype of this iconography in the specimen preserved today at the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana and executed by Jan Brueghel the Elder in 1607-1608, it is possible that the real antecedent of the genre is what was organized by Brueghel himself today kept at the Mauritshuis in The Hague. Bruegel father and son tried to perform several replicas, directing the type of devotional garland in spite of the more austere cartouches festonati introduced by the Jesuit Daniel Seghers and followers. 

The typology of the girdles Virgin, Child and Saints abounded in the Flemish world in response to the Protestant Reformation that was spreading at the end of the 16th century and that was concomitantly denying the validity of representations of the Virgin or Saints. 

Brughel the Elder thus knew how to satisfy the needs of Catholic collectors in need of sacred images. 

The present painting, near the vegetation of Giovanni Stanchi known as dei Fiori (1608-1675) and the figurations of Massimo Stanzione (1585-1656) regarding the image of Saint Peter, is related to the syncretism between Neapolitan culture and the ways of the other side of the Alps, Long in vogue for the whole seventeenth century. 

The object is in good condition