Offered by Antichità di Alina
Orazio De Ferrari (1606 – 1657)
The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist
Oil on canvas, 136 × 111 cm without frame
Antique giltwood frame, 18th century
The scene captures the dramatic moment of Saint John the Baptist’s decapitation, composed along a Baroque diagonal with figures caught in a rotational movement. At the center, the executioner is painted in a twisting posture, with thick, flesh-like brushwork that gives his figure a strong sense of volume and a nearly physical presence that seems to break through the pictorial space. His dark skin and brutal features stand in stark contrast to the saint’s calm and luminous face, marked by striking humanity.
The painting is accompanied by a signed expertise by Professor Camillo Manzitti, who confirms both the attribution and authenticity. According to Manzitti, this version predates the larger canvas now in the Palazzo Bianco, Museums of Strada Nuova, Genoa. Its compact structure and the existence of a related preparatory sketch point to an earlier, more concentrated stage in the creative process.
Stylistically, the work belongs fully to the Ligurian Baroque painting of the early 17th century, with figures that gradually emerge from darkness, shaped by a dramatic chiaroscuro that recalls Caravaggesque naturalism. It is a night scene, pierced by shafts of light that illuminate faces with sudden clarity — visages surfacing from shadow, suspended between corporeality and dissolution.
A student of Giovanni Andrea Ansaldo, De Ferrari soon broke away to pursue a personal idiom of monumental composition, sculptural bodies and dramatic lighting. During the same years, he was invited to Monaco by Prince Honoré II Grimaldi, who knighted him and commissioned major decorative cycles for the princely palace.
Condition: good, with antique patina.
