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©
Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, on loan with the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC)
Francesco Maffei

The Archangel Michael overthrowing Lucifer

ca. 1656
Oil on stone.
80 x 75 cm
Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, on deposit with the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC)
Inv. no.
274
(
1977.62
)
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
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
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
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others • HALL
Level -1
Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Temporary exhibition rooms Conference room EducaThyssen Workshop

Born in Vicenza in 1605, Francesco Maffei is considered one of the most appealing 17th century artists from the Veneto. Little, however, is known regarding his training, his early period or his first works as a mature painter. Nonetheless, this prolific painter of considerable merit has been unanimously considered by art historians to be an important Baroque artist.

The present oil is painted on an uncommon and fragile support in the form of a sheet of stone. This is the only known use of this material in the artist’s oeuvre, which was compiled by Paola Rossi in a catalogue raisonné published in 1991 In addition to the originality of the support this subject is not found again in Maffei’s output.

Little is known about the provenance of this painting. It was acquired for the Collection in 1977 from the Italian art market and is included in the catalogues of the Collection from 1986, at which date it was published by Gertrude Borghero.

The attribution to Maffei has never been doubted and it is unanimously considered an autograph painting. The date of the work, however, has been the subject of debate. In general, it is not easy to date Maffei’s paintings given the nature of his stylistic evolution and the problems of reconstructing his early output.

Paola Rossi dated the present painting to around the mid-1620s and thus within the artist’s early phase. She based her opinion on the technical similarities between this work and three others, The Annunciation and The Guardian Angel (both in Vicenza) and St. Carlo Borromeo (Sondalo). Rossi compared the type of brushstroke and the way of constructing the different areas of the composition using a highly charged brush and rapid, brilliant touches, characteristic of Maffei’s style in the 1620s. Roberto Contini, however, considered this suggestion to be based on little concrete evidence and opted for a date of around 1656, an opinion also given some years later by Caroline de Watteville. Contini compared the figure of the Archangel with the one to be seen in The Guardian Angel, a painting commissioned from Maffei in 1656 for the church of Verolanuova in Brescia. According to Contini, the background of clouds, smoke and fire against which the Archangel stands out is derived from a print after Raphael by Nicolas Beatrizet (Beatricetto, 1507 or 1515-ca. 1565), of which there is an impression in the Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica, Rome. Maffei reinterpreted that image in his own highly distinctive manner.

Mar Borobia

17th Century17th Century - Italian paintingPaintingOilstone
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The Archangel Michael overthrowing Lucifer. San Miguel arcángel venciendo a Lucifer, c. 1656
The Archangel Michael overthrowing Lucifer
Francesco Maffei

©

Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, on loan with the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC)

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The Archangel Michael overthrowing Lucifer. San Miguel arcángel venciendo a Lucifer, c. 1656
The Archangel Michael overthrowing Lucifer
Francesco Maffei

©

Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, on loan with the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC)

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