Madonna of the Holy Rosary with Child - (Lombardy)

Brotherhood of the Holy Rosary

Foundation year: 1521

City: Corbetta (MI)

Archdiocese: Archdiocese of Milan

Artistic artifact (canvas, fresco, statue, etc.): D ipinto oil on canvas

Title: Madonna of the Holy Rosary with Child, St. Francis, St. Dominic and Angels

Dimensions: 268 x 184 cm (canvas)

Year of execution: 1612

Author (with year of birth and death): Giulio Cesare Procaccini (1574-1625)

Brief description of the work and of the author profile: The work belongs to the hand of one of the main artists of the early Lombard Baroque who painted it in 1612 commissioned by the then prior of the Confraternity of the Holy Rosary, Gaspare Spanzotta, on the occasion of the rededication of a chapel of the Sanctuary of Corbetta to the Madonna del Rosario. The painting is articulated on two fundamental levels, an upper one in which the Madonna and Child are found, the first with an aloof look, the second staring at the viewer in a loving gesture of presentation of the mother. On the lower floor, on the left, Saint Francis is found in the act of receiving a fruit (an apple in particular), a symbol of what divine providence can do, a symbolic object of the fall of man and his redemption promised by Jesus Christ. On the right is instead San Domenico in the act of receiving the rosary from the hands of the Madonna while a putto near him hands him a model of the ancient church of San Nicolao di Corbetta as it appeared in the thirteenth century (before the late sixteenth-century extensions that led to the construction of the current sanctuary). All around is a vertex of musician angels, celebrating and adoring, one of which carries a vase that is a symbol of virginal purity referring to the Madonna. In the painting the use of the Caravaggesque-inspired chiaroscuro theme emerges in an irrepressible way. Regarding the frame, the attribution to Procaccini himself is to be taken for granted due to many similarities with the frames present in Santa Maria dei Miracoli in Milan or with the painting “the Angel and Tobiolo” today in the Cremonese Civic Museum. There is a copy of the painting made by Procaccini's pupils which was originally made for the Church of San Francesco Grande in Milan and which is now kept at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.