Jacques Callot

Les Gueux, 1622 (complete series), Jacques Callot Etchings On Paper

1622

Mixed media on canvas, with textural applications. Signed lower right. From 1958 to 1968 ORAZI, who had already moved from the figurative to the abstract phase, devoted himself to ...

The figure of the Magdalene emerges from the darkness, leaning to follow the curve of the stone support; it is depicted vaulted with an interrogative air towards the dark, as if in an attitude of listening, the left hand raised and the other leaning on the "memento mori" very shortened. In front of her a scourge and the jar of ointment. Painted en pendant, Saint John the Baptist is depicted as a young man, with a lamb at his feet, in his hand the processional cross with the banner "exception agnus dei", while with his right hand he draws from the source of water, recalling the episode that will see Jesus Christ baptized. In both paintings the figures stand out in a strong and incisive way thanks to the black that characterizes the slate plate on which they are depicted. Historical-critical analysis: We are faced with two examples of oil painting on stone. The beginnings of this particular technique are to be placed in the first half of the sixteenth century: after some fifteenth-century experiments it is with Sebastiano del Piombo that the genre takes hold in the sixteenth century. There were different types of support used, also linked to their availability: amethyst, marble in various colors, alabaster and blackboard. The reasons underlying this technical choice refer to Renaissance artistic theories: it is no coincidence that the painter who most often experimented with oil painting on marble...