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拍品專文
The present picture is a bozzetto for part of Solimena's fresco cycle in the chapel dedicated to San Filippo Neri in the church of the Gerolamini, Naples, commissioned in 1727 and completed by 1732. The decoration of this large chapel, consisting of two rooms with a dome over the second, in one of the main counter reformation churches of the city, was one of the most important religious commissions the artist received in his maturity and its success is reflected in De Dominici's enthusiastic description published twenty years after its completion: 'Francesco Solimena aveva dato principio alle bellissime pitture della Cappella di S. Filippo Neri nella Chiesa de' PP. dell'Oratorio detti Gerolamini, e già avea dipinto in essa la Tribuna, rendendola prima abbellita con la sua architettura, e aprendo le finestre nel lanternino l'avea con ciò renduta luminosissima; laddove che prima era quasi oscura, e proseguiva tuttavia a dipingere li bozzetti per render compiuta tutta la mentovata Cappella, ed altresi gli angoli della sua cupoletta... Ripigliato il lavoro della bellissima Cappella di S. Filippo Neri nella anzidetta Chiesa de' Girolamini, dipinse negli angoli della cupola i quattro amici del Santo, cioè S. Carlo Borromeo, S. Felice Cappuccino, S. Ignazio di Lojola, ed il S. Ponteficie Pio V, con bello accompagnamento di Angeli, e Puttini con teste di Cherubini... Queste pitture han meritato le lodi di tutto il pubblico, dapoichè sono esse dipinte con sommo amore, con figure bellissime nelle mosse, nell'espressione, disegno, e freschezza di bellissimo colorito' (B. de' Dominici, Vite de' pittori, scultori ed architetti napoletani, III, Naples, 1742, pp. 601-3).
While the walls show the main events in the life of San Filippo Neri, founder of the Order of the Filippini, the pendentives below the dome are frescoed with the four friends of the saint who were particularly important for his life and religious education. The present painting is a bozzetto for the fresco of San Felice da Cantalice (fig. a; F. Bologna, Francesco Solimena, Naples, 1958, fig. 187), in which the figures follow fairly closely those in the bozzetto but the angel at lower left and the putto at lower right are omitted. Another surviving bozzetto for the cycle, that of Sant'Ignazio di Loyola, of similar size, in the Galleria Pallavicini, Rome (Zeri, op. cit., no. 462, illustrated), similarly shows putti and clouds breaking the bounds of the architecture. Evidently at this preliminary stage in his development of the scheme Solimena envisaged a highly illusionistic effect similar to that of Gaulli's ceiling of the nave of the church of the Gesù, Rome. Solimena is thought to have visited Rome in 1700 and 1707 (see Bologna, op cit., p. 185) and he would have seen there the latest developments in baroque illusionism; in the fresco, however, it is Maratta's 'barocco temperato' that prevails, fused with abiding reminiscences of the work of Preti.
While the walls show the main events in the life of San Filippo Neri, founder of the Order of the Filippini, the pendentives below the dome are frescoed with the four friends of the saint who were particularly important for his life and religious education. The present painting is a bozzetto for the fresco of San Felice da Cantalice (fig. a; F. Bologna, Francesco Solimena, Naples, 1958, fig. 187), in which the figures follow fairly closely those in the bozzetto but the angel at lower left and the putto at lower right are omitted. Another surviving bozzetto for the cycle, that of Sant'Ignazio di Loyola, of similar size, in the Galleria Pallavicini, Rome (Zeri, op. cit., no. 462, illustrated), similarly shows putti and clouds breaking the bounds of the architecture. Evidently at this preliminary stage in his development of the scheme Solimena envisaged a highly illusionistic effect similar to that of Gaulli's ceiling of the nave of the church of the Gesù, Rome. Solimena is thought to have visited Rome in 1700 and 1707 (see Bologna, op cit., p. 185) and he would have seen there the latest developments in baroque illusionism; in the fresco, however, it is Maratta's 'barocco temperato' that prevails, fused with abiding reminiscences of the work of Preti.