Angelo Monticelli (Milan, 1778-1837), attr., Dancing Putti

Angelo Monticelli (Milan, 1778-1837), attr.

Dancing Cherubs

Oil on canvas, 122,5 x 131 cm

The canvas presented here, which dates back to the 19th century, was an exquisite example of a painting created to decorate a boiserie, as attested by the particularity of the format and the ornamental subject.

The theme of dancing putti is based on a very widespread and experimented model from the 1517s, on which the greatest artists tried their hand: Pordenone, author of the Dance of Putti today in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, for example, was able to make use of multiple visual models to perfect this complex and original composition, such as having come across the famous engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi with a circle of cupids, deriving from an invention by Raphael himself and datable between 1520 and XNUMX. Over the following centuries, the fame of this affected subject never waned.

The work in question, in fact, can be attributed to the hand of the eighteenth-century artist Angelo Monticelli, specialized in tempera drawing and a pupil of the painter Andrea Appiani (1754-1817), active mainly in Lombardy, where, for the Teatro alla Scala he designed the figures of the parapets of the boxes (1807) and the curtain (1821). In 1826, on the occasion of the repainting of the Teatro Comunale in Ferrara, Monticelli decorated the ceiling with an Apotheosis of Lodovico Ariosto. The curtain of the Rossini Theatre in Pesaro is also by his hand. For the Duke of Lodi Francesco Melzi d'Eril and under the direction of the architect Giocondo Albertolli, based on a design by Giuseppe Bossi, he decorated in chiaroscuro the niche of the altar of the noble chapel of Villa Melzi in Bellagio with a figure of the Eternal Father and the Four Evangelists in the pendentives of the dome. For the pulvinar room of the Arena Civica in Milan he painted the frieze with figures in fake stucco, while in the Palazzo Reale he painted the fresco with the theme of Jupiter thundering that decorates the hall of columns. Monticelli was also the designer of a series of illustrations for the successful illustrated publication in 21 volumes Il Costume antico e moderno di tutti i popoli dell'Europa by the cultured librarian of the Biblioteca Braidense Giulio Ferrario. Also pleasing from the chiaroscuro point of view, the illustrations restore the colors of the clothes, the habits and customs of the various populations described, also presenting monuments and buildings that no longer exist today.

The little angels that adorn this panel, which probably served as a door decoration, recall, in their composition, those that appear in the monochrome painting created for Villa Carlotta, in Tremezzina, and currently still there. The bright and gaudy colours of the painting are perfectly suited to the characteristics of the artist's private and theatrical production. The bright and lively colours are the trademark of Monticelli's works, which aim to capture the eye of their spectator.