Giovanni Stefano Danedi called Montalto Treviglio 1608 - 1689 Milan

Like his elder brother Giuseppe, who was also a painter, the artistic personality of Giovanni Stefano Danedi was clearly formed upon the early Seicento Milanese heritage of Cerano, Camillo and Giulio Cesare Procaccini, Daniele Crespi and, in particular, that of Morazzone, in whose studio he is often thought to have trained. His later work shows some slight influence of Pietro da Cortona, whose paintings he may perhaps have seen in Rome, and more clearly that of the Genoese painters Domenico Piola and Giovanni Battista Carlone. Although a chronology for Montalto's work is very difficult to establish, this is likely to be a work of his early maturity, comparable to the Venus in the forge of Vulcan and Herodias with the head of the Baptist, both in private collections, and a Martyrdom of Saint Agatha, formerly in the Canova collection in Milan, in which the dominant influence is that of his Milanese contemporary Francesco del Cairo (the first two reproduced in  L. Bandera Gregori, I Montalto - Pittori Trevigliesi del '600, exhibition catalogue, Treviglio, Museo Civico, 1985, p. 21, fig. 7 and pp. 78-9, 88-89, nos. 8 and 13). Gregori suggests a dating for these works in the 1640s, and a similar or slightly later date may be advanced for the present work.