Agostino Masucci

(Roma, 1690 - 1758)

The present painting exemplifies at the highest qualitative level Masucci’s late manner, marked by an elegance, rationality, and formal and compositional balance that may be described as proto-Neoclassical, albeit with clear references to the late seventeenth-century Roman tradition, above all Carlo Maratta. A fine bozzetto of the composition is also known in the Lemme collection, executed in a more rapid and synthetic manner, yet already presenting the image in its final conception, as found in both the present model and the altarpiece. Three preparatory studies for the altarpiece are also known, one of which shows the composition at a highly advanced stage of development, demonstrating the exceptional precision and stylistic, iconographic, and narrative calibration reserved by Masucci for the work.

COMPARATIVE LITTERATURE:

A. AGRESTI, in Il Museo del Barocco Romano. La collezione Lemme in Palazzo Chigi in Ariccia, exhibition catalogue, Ariccia 2007–2008, Rome 2007, no. 50, pp. 102–104.