Giovan Battista Beinaschi (Fossano 1636 - Naples 1688)
(Fossano, 1634 ca. – Napoli, 1688)
The Holy Family with Saints Anne and JoachimOil on canvas, 127,5 x 169 cm
- PROVENIENZA
- BIBLIOGRAFIA
- MOSTRE
- DESCRIZIONE
PROVENIENZA
Vente Christie’s, Londres, 30 novembre 1973, lot 2 (as « The Property of Sir Richard Blunt, Bt »); vente Sotheby’s, Londres, 11 décembre 1974, lot 59 ; Nice, private collection.
BIBLIOGRAFIA
- Fausta Navarro, « Giovan Battista Beinaschi (Fossano 1636 – Napoli 1688) », in Civiltà del Seicento a Napoli, 2 vol., Naples, I, 1998, cat. exh. Museo di Capodimonte, 24 October 1984 – 1 April 1985, p. 116 ; - Fausta Navarro, « Beinaschi, Giovan Battista », in La Pittura in Italia. Il Seicento, 2 vol., Mina Gregori-Eric Schleier (ed.), Milano, 1989, II, p. 630 ; - Riccardo Lattuada, « Beinaschi, Giovan Battista », in The Dictionary of Art, James Turner (ed.), 43 vol., London, 1996, 3, pp. 521-522 ; - Véronique Damian, Tableaux napolitains du naturalisme au baroque, Paris, Galerie Canesso, 2007, pp. 46-47; - Antonio Gesino, in Giovan Battista Beinaschi. Pittore barocco tra Roma e Napoli, Vincenzo Pacelli – Francesco Petrucci (ed.), Rome, 2011, p. 45, fig. 62, pp. 313-314, no. Cb7.
DESCRIZIONE
The art of this painter, a native of Piedmont, combines a number of different influences drawn from Rome, where he sojourned from 1660, and Naples, where he settled permanently in 1664 (except for a year spent in Rome in 1687). The Neapolitan artistic milieu offered him an opportunity to carry out grand fresco projects and paint in a composite style, midway between the rigorous classicism he had been able to observe in the works of Giovanni Lanfranco (1582-1647) and the accentuated but delicate chiaroscuro of Mattia Preti (1613-1699). The painting presented here is unpublished and belongs to his Neapolitan years. It can be dated to the 1670s, when Beinaschi was still mindful of Lanfranco's art and before his palette lightened under the influence of Luca Giordano (1634-1705). The composition is firmly defined and shows us the four Biblical characters in a close-up format. The choice of a nocturnal setting serves the painter's expressive purposes - the Christ Child sleeps in the arms of the Virgin, who is speaking with her parents Saints Anne and Joachim - and lends a special prominence to the dove, the symbol of the Holy Spirit, which also turns towards the sleeping Child. The artist displays an entirely personal manner of treating colour in the luminous areas, using broad, free strokes of the brush. The faces in the middle ground, summarily sketched in the penumbra, are typical of this language, and contrast with the energetic handling of the foreground figures. With this economy of means, Beinaschi's original style succeeded in bringing novel solutions to the art of Baroque Naples.
