Francesco Solimena (copy by) - inv. 3207

With an absorbed air, Mary keeps her place in a small book, The intense chiaroscuro, emphasised by the light that emanates from the Virgin’s face and especially evident in the drapery, has led scholars to believe that the work is an eighteenth-century copy of a painting by the Neapolitan Francesco Solimena; a copy not of exceptional quality of a still unknown original. Francesco Solimena (Canale di Serino, 1657 – Barra (Naples), 1747) was one of the more important Neapolitan painters during the second half of the seventeenth century. He was internationally famous and in Naples founded the most renowned academy of painting in the south of Italy.

J.S.