Attributed to Giovanni Antonio de Pieri known as the Zoppo (1671-1751), Adoration of the Magi

Attributed to Giovanni Antonio de Pieri known as the Lame (1671-1751)

Adoration of the Magi

Oil on canvas, 93 x 60 cm

With frame, 106 x 74 cm

Dated 1703 lower center

The Adoration of the Magi that we present here belongs to the Veneto area and in particular to Vicenza, while as regards the dating, the number written at the bottom center clearly reports 1703 helps us. The name, instead, to which the canvas should be referred is that of Giovanni Antonio de' Pieri, an artist born in Vicenza and active above all in the city of origin. Critics have immediately revealed his ability to make his own the instances of contemporary painters such as Antonio Balestra, the tenebrosi of Venetian extraction, his fellow countryman Francesco Maffei of whom he was a pupil, a pioneer of the Venetian Baroque, and Giulio Carpioni. In this canvas one can notice the technical ideas of Maffei, with a fluid and fast brushstroke loaded with colors capable of enlivening the scene; at the same time, however, he does not indulge in the same narrative frenzy in the depiction of the subject, maintaining a more classical, flat and organised layout and therefore closer to the design idea of ​​Carpioni and the refined composure of Balestra, to be noted in the composure of the poses and the orderly layout. The artist's biography sees a stylistic stabilisation starting from the first decade of the eighteenth century, a period from which a consolidated activity will begin, focused above all on sacred subjects, such as ours, but also on decorative cycles, such as the lost one found in Palazzo Tecchio in Vicenza, portraits, among which Andrea Nicolio should be mentioned, and allegorical or mythological subjects, such as the Allegory of Winter in the Civic Museum of Vicenza. The course of his career was not linear, both due to the many suggestions that continued to evolve and modify his personal style and due to a certain tendency to sudden qualitative changes, perhaps to be included in a constant process of questioning his own art. The result regarding this work is certainly to be included in the category that qualitatively exalted the figure of de' Pieri in the eyes of the Veronese and Vicenza patrons, both for the lively explosion of colors and for the harmonious arrangement of the figures and the architecture. The comparison with two adorations, one of the Magi and the other of the shepherds, preserved in the diocese of Trento and belonging to his circle, allows us to identify some guidelines with respect to the rendering of the faces of the characters, observing in particular the Child and the Virgin.