Divine Shepherdess

Author: Scipione Manni (Naples 1705 ca. – Milazzo 1770)

Date: 1755-1760

Material: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 210×150

Location: Milazzo, Municipal Palace – Fund of Buildings

The pleasant painting on canvas, inserted in a mistiline frame, is part of an accurate iconography dedicated to the representation of the Virgin represented as “Divine Shepherd”, the title under the theological profile from the theme, codified in Spain in 1703 by the Capuchin friar Isidore of Seville (1662-1750), it is attributable to the devotion of Mary as Mother of the Good Shepherd. The work, awarded to the painter Scipione Manni and appropriately evaluated and included in his artistic path, is part of a group of canvases intended to decorate the altars and walls of the Benedictine church of SS. Salvatore. The prestigious monumental complex, today heavily damaged by structural damage and offended by very painful thefts, includes a remarkable cycle of frescoes painted in the vault, partly collapsed, signed by the artist and dated 1755.

The pictorial plastic apparatus as rightly assumed by Bilardo is part of a once royal design and theoretical which, however, also concerns the group of paintings formed by four elliptical canvases depicting Jesus and the daughter of Jairus, Christ and the adulteress, Christ and the Samaritan, the Vocation of Saint Matthew, two shaped with the Divine Shepherd and the Flight into Egypt and finally the great altars: the Transfiguration (trafugato) and Holy Scholastic, all works attributable to Manni and his workshop. The proven formulas attributable to a controlled formal elegance linked to the orientations of the Roman matrix Arcadian classicism represent the constant character of artistic expressions of Scipione, particularly fruitful in Milazzo. This stylistic language used frequently in the paintings with a Marian subject, clearly taken from the compositions performed around the fifties by Sebastiano Conca but also by Marco Benefial, is found in various works, as for example in the Adoration of the Magi from the Church of Our Lady of Light, and again from the Nativity (Church of SS. Savior) that reproposes in a hand-held manner the face of Our Lady Pastorella, defined with graced connotations systematically repeated.

The artist with his remarkable production certainly characterizes the pictorial scene of Milazzo. Probably his fortune is due not only to the substantial lack in the territory of Messina craftsmen disappeared because of the plague of 1743, but also the presence around the thirties of other members of his family with whom he had probably started a solid business in the town. The author, however, despite being present in Milazzo already around 1734, probably continues to have contacts with the Neapolitan environment and especially to draw inspiration from the works produced by the Conca since 1752, during his long stay in Naples, As he observes, Nicola Spinosa was involved and chosen by Luigi Vanvitelli precisely because his language “faces the wise reworking in a classicist and temperately rococo key, of models and formulas inherited from the example of Carlo Maratta”, perfectly coincides with the inclinations of the prestigious court architect absolutely opposed to “traditional tendencies of late-Baroque Neapolitan”.

Our painting carefully reproduces the salient characters of the iconography fixed by Brother Isidore and translated for the first time by the painter Miguel Alonso de Trovar (1678-1758), author of many replicas taken from the first model of 1703, as the one kept in the Archbishop’s Palace of Seville or in the Carmen Thyssen Museum of Malaga. The Divine Shepherd of Milazzo is therefore depicted immersed in a rural landscape and the act of holding a frightened lamb, carries the handkerchief around his neck and holds the stick like farmers, an aura of light emphasizes and limits the face suffused by soft grace. The Mother of the Good Shepherd watches with affection the small flock that surrounds her and all the sheep, described with care, bring in their mouths a rose symbol of the institution of the Holy Rosary. As foreseen by the hagiographic text that, in the second half of the XVIII century through prints and engravings from Spain spread into the Kingdom of the two Sicilies, The painting of Manni also welcomes the quotation of the lost sheep, which is attacked by the dragon but promptly rescued by Saint Michael the Archangel who comes down from the sky with his shield and arrow. The colour range is soft and radiated by a wise light that defines the main subjects.

Manni’s painting production is documented from 1753 to 1765, a period in which the family-run workshop allowed him to meet the numerous and demanding commissions, Also in view of the pleasant codification of hagiographic themes expressed through pictorial expressions well experienced and absolutely pleasing to the ecclesial committenza of the territory. His works distinguished by the influence of Maratha painting, mediated through the experiences of the Conca and with appropriations pertaining to the Neapolitan culture of the second half of the century, in the best cases, such as the Adoration of the Magi, coming from the Church of Our Lady of Light or the Nativity and especially the Virgin Pastorella, relevant to the Benedictine plexus, end up expressing, despite the basic academic classicism, pleasant Arcadian-Rococo themes. Besides these aspects related to a production as pleasant as correct, it should be noted that the emphatic and somewhat theatrical character of his compositions, the forced postures of the characters, especially in the cycles to fresco, are often concerned with formal oversights and show the objective difficulty of this artist to experiment with autonomous design expressions, especially in complex subjects and broad-based themes, where the combination of patterns, The design of a model is already pre-established, but it often leads to unhappy and cumbersome results.

Buda V., Lanuzza S. (a cura di), Tesori di Milazzo. Arte sacra tra Seicento e Settecento., Milazzo 2015