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©
Carmen Thyssen Collection
Giacomo Cestaro (attributed to)

A Female Saint holding a Platter with Roses

s.f
Oil on canvas.
46.3 x 35 cm
Carmen Thyssen Collection
Inv. no. (
CTB.1999.1
)
Not on display
  • Level 2 Permanent Collection
  • Level 1 Permanent Collection
  • Level 0 Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
  • Level -1 Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Level 1
Permanent Collection
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30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms 54 Postpop rooms 55 Postpop rooms 56 Postpop rooms Rodin Exhibition room
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
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Level -1
Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Temporary exhibition rooms Conference room EducaThyssen Workshop
The young saint, represented in a full-fronted three quarter figure, on a background tinted with a Mediterranean flavour, with a sky with heavy yellowish clouds, and framed by a column and some cypresses, frees herself from a generic anonymity thanks to the attribute of the plate with roses she holds in her right hand, almost offering it to the observer. This object can be related to at least two characters: the saint and martyr Dorothy of Cappadocia (although in that case she should be carrying some apples as well as the roses) and, if we ignore the discrepancy of the richness of her dress, with jewels adorning the hair and shoulders of the model, the hermit Rosalia, usually represented with Jesus as a child offering her a crown of roses.

In any case, as the restorers Ubaldo Sedano and Juan Alberto Soler Miret have made evident, the present iconographic representation is the result of a modification during the execution, since the painting shows some corrections, which may mean that the original subject was rather different. Still visible to the naked eye under a side-light is the presence, in her left hand, of the palm of martyrdom, painted over by the red cloak and the shaded foot of the column. It therefore seems justifiable to suppose that originally the plate held the characteristic attribute of St. Lucy, that is her eyes, which she presents on a tray. The need to suppress such macabre symbols may have induced the artist to transform at a later stage the eyes into the small roses which we can see today.

Clearly impregnated with the style of the last years of Francesco Solimena, the main figure on the Neapolitan post-Giordano scene, that is between 1680 and approximately 1750 (how could we not recall the allegorical figure of Peace in the decoration of the Royal Palace of the Pardo in Madrid, with Hymen, Hercules and the Virtues of Marriage?), this work has been attributed to one of the many disciples of this artist, Jacopo Cestaro, active in the central decades of the 18th century.

However, the present author is not entirely convinced of the possibility of Cestaro being among the polyphonic list of followers of Solimena, due in particular to the iconographic lack of expression, typical of a production in series, on the face of the young woman, which means that she cannot bear the comparison with the passionate heroines of the greatest works by Cestaro (Cleopatra, Rome, formerly in the Sestieri Collection; Cleopatra, Naples, Capodimonte), although it could be more directly related to the supposed production of the artist's youth, around 1735-1740, corresponding to the series of oils sent to the church of the Immaculate Conception in Fuscaldo.

This atemporal childishness, which follows word for word the rules of a fully 18th-century Imperial Grammar, can be perceived also in other works by Cestaro (I am referring in particular to the masses represented on the foreground of the Presentation of the Virgin to the Temple and, in general, to the Circumcision, both of which belong to the Fuscaldo cycle, 1 but I am not sure to what extent these paintings may be equated to the Saint being analysed here.

However, even if we consider valid the hypothesis of the paternity originally attributed to the work (and I do not wish to pursue an alternative affirmation), we should bear in mind, among the army of followers of Solimena, at least the names of Lorenzo de Caro and of Giuseppe Bonito. In the Saint Peter of Alcantara Confessing Saint Teresa (Naples, church of Santi Filippo e Giacomo) by the former, the face of the saint, although his skin is more shivering and wasted away than others, offers at least a paradigm of inexpressive roundness not exempt of formal affinities-in any case, it is a "natural" complexion as opposed to a mere oleograph-with the refined face of the saint studied here.

Much more convincing is the stylistic coincidence shown by a number of elements in the work of Giuseppe Bonito; it is the case of the florid peasant posing for the Allegory of Autumn in the Santangelo Collection in Naples, whose stare has a stereotypical fixity, almost identical to that of our Martyr, whose tight lips make an allusion to the different ways of giving or of giving oneself.

Roberto Contini

18th Century - Italian paintingPaintingOilcanvas
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Saint Holding a Platter with Roses

Saint Holding a Platter with Roses

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Poster Vincent van Gogh: Les Vessenots in Auvers

Poster Vincent van Gogh: Les Vessenots in Auvers

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Poster Richard Estes. Nedick's, 1970

Poster Richard Estes. Nedick's, 1970

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Max Beckmann, figuras del exílio. Exhibition catalogue. Hardcover. Spanish.

Max Beckmann, figuras del exílio. Exhibition catalogue. Hardcover. Spanish.

38.00 € 9.50 €

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A Female Saint holding a Platter with Roses. Santa sosteniendo un plato con rosas
A Female Saint holding a Platter with Roses
Giacomo Cestaro (attributed to)

©

Carmen Thyssen Collection

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A Female Saint holding a Platter with Roses. Santa sosteniendo un plato con rosas
A Female Saint holding a Platter with Roses
Giacomo Cestaro (attributed to)

©

Carmen Thyssen Collection

Terms of Use

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