Stoning of Saint Stephen
Author: Unknown painter (Second half sec. XVI – first half sec. XVII)
Dating: First half sec. XVII
material: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: cm 200 x 160
Location: Milazzo, Cathedral of Santo Stefano Protomartire.
The painting, originally placed in the second altar of the left aisle of the old Cathedral of Milazzo, is now visible on the wall of the presbytery in the modern matrix. Severely incomplete along the margins, perhaps due to damage due to the transfer of seat, has been adapted, with the addition of two wood inserts, to a rich frame in carved wood with lush foliage motifs of late 17th century Baroque taste. The overcrowded scene refers to the moment when the protomartyr Stephen on his knees, with the dalmatica as a deacon and the gaze turned to the Trinity, suffers the violence of the crowd and the stoning. The young man in lorica, who points to the saint looking towards the outside observer, is Saul, the future Saint Paul, at whose feet, according to the Gospel account, the witnesses of martyrdom laid their mantles (Acts of the Apostles, 7, 58).
The institution of the diaconal ministry is linked to the figure of St Stephen, one of the seven disciples chosen for the service of the tables so that the apostles might devote more time to preaching and prayer. Accused of having uttered blasphemous words against God and Moses, he was brought before the Sanhedrin where he delivered a long speech which, blaming the Jews for allowing the killing of Christ by neglecting the prophecies of the prophets, aroused the ire of the elders. The cult of the protomartyr in Milazzo is ancient, local tradition tells of the discovery, in 1461, of some relics preserved in the ancient church of S. Maria del Boschetto and identified twenty years later as fragments of his arm, through the interpretation of certain documents. In 1521, with the confirmation of the authenticity of the relics, it was celebrated by electing him as patron of the city and in 1680 the matrix of Milazzo, originally named after S. Maria Assunta, was also consecrated to Santo Stefano by the Archbishop Cicala.
The work, without precise documentary references, was assigned by local sources to the painter from Messina Letterio Paladino and dated 1729. Far from the late 18th century Baroque transparencies as to the refined novellesco naturalism, the painting openly declares its own sources of Toscoromana’s sixteenth-century matrix. Of late Mannerist plant, marked by counterformed austerity, reworks the two versions of the subject made by Giorgio Vasari, in the seventies, for Pisa and for the Chapel of Santo Stefano in the Vatican, Bearing in mind also the table painted by Giulio Romano around 1521. The numerous figures crowd into the scene set on a single plane almost devoid of perspective depth and revolve around the fulcrum of the composition constituted by the saint who, with his eyes and the gesture of his hands, He leads his gaze towards the upper part occupied by the Trinity in a choir of angels, adhering to the rigid two-part counter-reformist brand.
The canvas, obviously subject to numerous damages and alterations that have altered the pictorial tissue not allowing a precise reading, shows the prevalence of brown tones, Just enlivened by the golden brightness of the divine appearance and the red of the drape that with a articulated flutter covers the Christ. The author draws on the vast repertoire of forms and poses offered by the altarpieces of painters of Florentine training working between the end of the Fifth and beginning of the Seventeenth century, which also played a decisive role in the Roman artistic production of these years and from which various works came to Sicily. In the Milazzese canvas are readable echoes of the painting by Filippo Paladini, Agostino Ciampelli, Domenico Cresti called the Passignano, from which derives composure and simplification of the forms intended to correct, through a greater naturalness, the formal refinement and refined chromatic Mannerist chvaryantismi, just evoked in the lorica of young Saul.
Drawing on these models the artist enriches previous Vasari with the addition of various figures, such as the soldier on horseback or the child on the left who, illuminated, emerges behind the figure of the tinkerer highlighting his silhouette in backlight. Some misspelling in the anatomical definition of some figures, probably attributable to subsequent interventions, does not diminish the quality of execution that, however, it is not possible to attribute to a precise artistic personality. The absence of stylistic evidence in the contemporary Sicilian production suggests that it is not a local artist. All the formal data, however, report the execution of the painting not later than the first half of the seventeenth century; it can reasonably be assumed that it was commissioned before the consecration of the altar to the saint, also in view of the spread of worship in Milazzo since the first decades of the sixteenth century.
Buda V., Lanuzza S. (a cura di), Tesori di Milazzo. Arte sacra tra Seicento e Settecento, Milazzo 2015.