Giovanni Stefano Danedi, Known As Montalto (treviglio, 1612 - Milan, 1690), San Giovannino

Giovanni Stefano Danedi, known as Montalto (Treviglio, 1612 - Milan, 1690)

San Giovannino with lamb

Oil on panel, cm 35 x 27,5

With frame, cm 51 x 47

The work presented here is, together with that kept at the Civic Museums of Monza, one of two versions of San Giovannino with the lamb made by the painter from Bergamo Giovanni Stefano Danedi called il Montalto (Treviglio, 1612 - Milan, 1690), among the most prolific and significant interpreters of Baroque painting in Lombardy. The typical formalisms of the artist, recurring extensively within his pictorial corpus, such as the emotional charge conferred by the warm luminosity and the strong chiaroscuro contrasts, also characterize the canvas under examination, in which the San Giovannino, Naked and sitting on the ground on what according to the iconography is a flap of camel skin, he is immortalized trying to caress the lamb crouched next to him, in a very dark and poorly visible wooded environment. The canvas is rich in iconographic references summarized by the embrace of the saint towards the lamb: as narrated in the Gospels, it was John the Baptist adult to indicate as "lamb of God" Jesus, who had gone along the banks of the Jordan to receive baptism.

The iconicity of San Giovannino, characterized by a chubby body and the typical hair with blond curls, is also found in the little angels musicians frescoed in the Chapel of San Vittore in Milan, and those present in the Pietà or even in the Prayer of Christ in the garden of olive trees, both kept at the Pinacoteca di Brera. Consider also the angels painted by the artist himself within the decorations of the Cathedral of Monza, the Certosa di Pavia and those of the altarpiece with S. Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi for the Church of S. Maria del Carmine milanese: equal attitude, Equal the playful exuberance.