Domenico Piola

The canvas has an old relining. There is a horizontal canvas join running the length of the canvas approx half way up. The paint surface is secure and in good condition under an old yellowed varnish. Scattered old retouchings are visible to the naked eye and these are confirmed under UV. Offered in a gold and black painted wooden frame in good condition.
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Dateable to the mid 1640s, this is a youthful work by Domenico Piola. The Madonna is painted in an entirely Genoese idiom which looks back at Valerio Castello and Piola's master Giovanni Domenico Cappellino, while the forms and physiognomies of the putti recall the work of Giulio Cesare Procaccini, who had passed through Genoa some twenty five years earlier. The work finds parallels in the figure of Spring and her attendant putti in the artist's monumental canvas (300 by 437 cm) in Palazzo Rosso, Genoa.¹ 

We are grateful to Dr. Mary Newcome for suggesting an attribution to the young Piola and to Dr Daniele Sanguineti for endorsing the attribution, both on the basis of photographs.


1. See D. Sanguineti, Domenico Piola e i pittori della sua 'casa', Soncino 2004, vol. II, pp. 374-75, cat. no. I.3, reproduced in colour plates III-V.