Giovanni Stefano Danedi known as Montalto (Treviglio, 1612 – Milan, 1690) Saint John the Baptist with the Lamb

Giovanni Stefano Danedi known as Montalto (Treviglio, 1612 – Milan, 1690)

St. John with the lamb

Oil on panel, 35 x 27,5 cm

With frame, 51 x 47 cm

The work presented here constitutes, together with the one preserved in the Civic Museums of Monza, one of the two versions of the Infant Saint John with the Lamb created by the Bergamo painter Giovanni Stefano Danedi, known as Montalto (Treviglio, 1612 – Milan, 1690), one of the most prolific and significant interpreters of Baroque painting in Lombardy. The artist's typical formalisms, recurring extensively within his pictorial corpus, such as the emotional charge conferred by the warm luminosity and the strong chiaroscuro contrasts, also characterize the canvas in question, in which the Infant Saint John, naked and seated on the ground on what according to iconography is a piece of camel skin, is immortalized intent on caressing the lamb crouched next to him, in a very dark and barely visible woodland setting. The canvas is rich in iconographic references summed up by the saint's embrace of the lamb: as narrated in the Gospels, it was the adult John the Baptist who indicated Jesus as the "lamb of God", who had gone to the banks of the Jordan to receive baptism.

The iconicity of the San Giovannino, characterized by a chubby little body and typical blond curls of hair, can also be found in the little musician angels frescoed in the Chapel of San Vittore in Milan, and in those present in the Pietà or in the Prayer of Christ in the Garden of Olives, both preserved in the Pinacoteca di Brera. Consider also the little angels painted by the artist himself within the decorations of the Duomo of Monza, the Certosa di Pavia and in those of the altarpiece with S. Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi for the Church of S. Maria del Carmine in Milan: the same attitude, the same playful exuberance.

Montalto, Giuseppe's younger brother, a disciple of Guido Reni, collected the artistic legacy of Morazzone between the 1704s and 1648s, combining it with the innovations of Francesco Cairo. Orlandi was the first critic to report his biography, in the Abbecedario pittorico of 1656. The first work signed "Stefano Daneda", namely a Lamentation of Christ preserved in the Museum of Castelvecchio Veronese, allows us to identify an initial stylistic phase in the artist's corpus, which in the following years turned to Venetian and Genoese influences. Around 1654, after a brief stay in Rome, his artistic language was updated in a decidedly Baroque direction as documented by the frescoes executed in that same year in the presbytery of the Cathedral of Monza. Of essential importance in the material conception of his works were the suggestions mediated by Giovanni Battista Carlone and Domenico Piola, Procaccini and Discepoli (in Genoa he also seems to look at the robust naturalism and the warm, brown-reddish tonality), even if the artist was later able to welcome a more Cortona-esque imprint, as can be seen in the profane-themed frescoes of Villa Frisani (1671), designed by the Milanese Francesco Maria Richini in 1688 in Corbetta (also famous is the study on the ground floor, with the depiction of the allegories of the four seasons where one of the rare portraits of Richini is present). It is precisely in this pictorial cycle that Danedi expresses his adherence to the new Baroque language – which in Milan has its major points of reference in Pietro Nuvolone and Storer. He will adhere more and more to this in the following years, as shown above all by the frescoes of the sixth and seventh chapels on the right in the Certosa di Pavia (1688-XNUMX) and the decoration of the XVII chapel and the dome of the Sanctuary of the Sacro Monte di Varallo. Stefano Montalto's career, displayed with the same generosity both on the private and public fronts, was crowned by his appointment as "first Director" of the new Accademia di San Luca in Milan, which opened its doors in XNUMX.