Giuseppe Nuvolone (milan, 1619 – 1703), Santa In Ecstasy

Giuseppe Nuvolone (Milan, 1619 – 1703)

Santa in ecstasy

Oil on canvas, 97 x 73 cm

With frame, 113 x 90 cm

Origin: Rome, private collection

Second son of the famous painter Panfilo and his wife Isabella, Giuseppe Nuvolone was born in 1619 in Milan. Like his brother Carlo Francesco, he was often remembered, in contemporary and subsequent documents, with the nickname of his father Panfilo. There is no well-defined information regarding his beginnings as a painter and his training, which must have taken place with his older brother Carlo Francesco. This is demonstrated by the oldest works referable to him with certainty, namely the Domestic Works of the Holy Family in S. Giorgio a Bregnano (1646) and the altarpiece with S. Francis in ecstasy in S. Giorgio a Cornate d'Adda (1650), in which he demonstrates an unconditional adherence to the style choices of his fraternal workshop, so much so that, especially in these years, the distinction between the works of the two painters and the precise definition of their respective catalogs are often problematic. The contiguity with his brother is confirmed in the numerous undertakings carried out in collaboration, starting at least from the cycle of canvases and frescoes with biblical scenes from the chapel of the Savior in the sanctuary of the Blessed Virgin of Vimercate (1648-1652) and from the famous Self-portrait of the Nuvolone family of the Pinacoteca di Brera, created around the middle of the century, in which the three figures on either side of the scene, including the self-portrait, in the act of sounding a mandola, belong to Joseph. The focus of the role played by Joseph as part of this long custom of collaboration finds an indispensable term of reference in the paintings created in the same years by the painter independently, such as the decoration of the chapel of St. Antonio Abate in the collegiate church of S. Lorenzo a Chiavenna, whose altarpiece bears the date 1657, the altarpiece of the parish of Groppello d'Adda (1657)