GIOVANNI STEFANO DANEDI Lot n° 12

(Treviglio, 1612 ; Milan, 1690)
Head of St. John
Oil on canvas, cm 53X70
The canvas bore a collector's attribution to Giovanni Stefano Maria Danedi known as Montalto (Treviglio, 1612 ; Milan, 1690), which was in turn confirmed by Filippo Maria Ferro. Orlandi, who first traced a biography of the artist in his Abbecedario Pittorico published in Bologna in 1704, points to Morazzone as his first master, but modern critics perceive in his work an open interest in Francesco del Cairo, Venetian influences and an interesting reflection on the Genoese art of Giovanni Battista Carlone and Domenico Piola, not to mention the classicist Bolognese intonations deduced from his older brother Giuseppe, a very young disciple of Guido Reni. In comparison with the canvas presented here we cite the Herodias pierces the tongue of St. John the Baptist with a hairpin preserved at the Museum of Palazzo Sforzesco in Milan in which we observe a similar chromatic tenor of the drafts and lumens, clear design similarities of the head and embossed decorations visible on the edge of the plate (fig. 1; C. Geddo, in Museo d'Arte Antica del Castello Sforzesco di Milano, edited by M. T. Fiorio, Milan 1999, III, pp. 168-170, no. 596). Another possible and decidedly more appropriate comparison is with The Head of the Baptist on a Tray belonging to the collections of the Accademia Ligustica, which has been traced back to Danedi by Giuseppe Pacciarotti, to whom he juxtaposes another version from a private collection already assigned to Daniele Crespi by Adolfo Venturi (Cf. G. Pacciarotti, 1995). These works reveal the influence of Borromean artistic culture, and the theme depicted, already widely addressed by Leonardo artists of the previous century, was in turn investigated by early naturalists. For this reason an early date persuades for the canvas under consideration, in which Danedi, while taking note of Morazzone's examples and implementing a contiguity with Cairo, is distinguished 'by a greater plastic firmness and exalting with virtuosic effects the chromatic sheens of the Bacile and the sword' (Pacciarotti, op. cit. p. 65).
We thank Filippo Maria Ferro for the attribution.
Reference bibliography:
P. Tirloni, I Danedi detti Montalto, in I Pittori Bergamaschi dal XVIII-XIX secolo. The Seventeenth Century, III, Bergamo 1985, pp. 375-515
L. Bandera, in Painting between Adda and Serio. Lodi Treviglio Caravaggio Crema, edited by M. Gregori, 1987, pp. 172-174
G. Pacciarotti, Inediti di Giovanni Stefano Montalto, in Paragone, XLVI, 49, 539, 1995, pp. 65-67, tables 64-65, notes 7-8
O. D'Albo, Giovanni Stefano and Giuseppe Montalto. Due Pittori trevigliesi nella Lombardia barocca, proceedings of the study day, Milan 2015, with previous bibliography