Philips, Londra 2 dicembre 1997, lotto 238

Derek Johns Ltd., Londra

Solofra, collezione Felice Ferrara

Porro & C., Milano, 3 aprile 2003, lotto 8

Milano, collezione privata

R. Lattuada, Francesco Guarino da Solofra nella pittura napoletana del Seicento (1611 – 1651), Napoli 2000, p. 226 (2° edizione, Napoli 2012, p. 226)

Sold at a Phillips auction with an attribution to a late follower of Simon Vouet, the painting was recognised as a work by Francesco Guarino by Riccardo Lattuada, who published it in his monograph on the painter, placing it around 1645.

Recent cleaning has fully confirmed the scholar's hypothesis and has indeed highlighted the extreme refinement of the pictorial ductus that places the work among the highest achievements of the Irpinian artist's maturity.

The work should be placed at a later time than the execution of the Stories of St. Anthony in the Campobasso altarpiece, dated 1642 (see Lattuada, 2000, pp. 161-167), from which it differs in its greater refinement. On the other hand, the five octagonal sprigs from the Certosa di San Martino, now in the Capodimonte Museum, and above all the small St. Agnes, also on copper, from a private collection, are particularly close, in which we find the same executive finesse pushed down to the smallest details that constitutes one of the distinctive traits of this moment in Francesco Guarino's career and that unites him to what Bernardo Cavallino was doing in the same years.