Lot 75 | Giovanni Mannozzi - attributed | Saint Dominic Brings Napoleone Orsini to Life

MANNOZZI, GIOVANNI
('Giovanni da San Giovanni')
1592 San Giovanni Valdarno - 1636 Florence

attributed

Title: Saint Dominic Brings Napoleone Orsini to Life.
Technique: Oil on canvas.
Mounting: Relined.
Measurement: 199 x 144cm.
Frame: Framed.

Provenance:
Private ownership, Germany;
According to family tradition, the painting would have been purchased in Italy.

Dominic of Guzman was the founder of the Order of Preachers commonly known as the "Dominicans". This order had great enlightened spirits such as St Albert the Great and St Thomas Aquinas, as well as outstanding missionaries such as St Hyacinth and St Vincent Ferreri.
St Dominic worked many miracles: these included the resurrection of the dead and the healing of the wounded, crippled and poisoned. The miracle of the Resurrection of Napoleone Orsini, depicted in the present painting, is one of the best known facts about St Dominic of Guzmán. It seems that the saint knew a young Roman nobleman, the nephew of the Cardinal of Fossanova, and that during one of the saint's stays in Rome he was called to help the young man who lay lifeless on the ground after falling from his horse. Dominic, seeing the despair of his uncle and relatives, laid the young man on the ground and began to bless him; immediately the boy got up healed.
In the present painting, the young man is still lying unconscious on the floor while his relatives - including the Cardinal of Fossanova, who can be seen behind St Dominic - are in despair and implore with their eyes the help of the saint, who begins to pray with his eyes turned towards heaven.
The present work is attributed both by family tradition and stylistic analysis to the Florentine painter Giovanni da San Giovanni. It is still unknown for what place the painting was originally made; given its size, it was probably intended to decorate the altar of a chapel in a church dedicated to St Dominic or whose founder bore that name or belonged to the Dominican Order.
Giovanni da San Giovanni was mainly active in Tuscany and Rome in the first decades of the 17th century and died in Florence on 6th December 1636. He is undoubtedly considered one of the most interesting painters of his time, who was engaged in both the decoration of frescoes and the production of oil paintings on canvas.
His first works can be dated to around 1616. Around 1620 he created the Circumcision for the church of San Bartolomeo in Cutigliano in the diocese of Pistoia, with which the Miracle of the Resurrection by Napoleone Orsini has some similarities both in the drawing and in the colour palette used. The altarpiece in Cutigliano could therefore perhaps serve as both a stylistic and chronological reference point for the correct attribution and dating of the present painting.

We are grateful to Sandro Bellesi, Florence, who confirmed the attribution of the present painting on the basis of a high-resolution digital photograph.