Offered by Antichità Castelbarco
Carlo Maratta (Camerano 1625 – Rome 1713) School of
The Guardian Angel (Archangel Raphael Showing the Way to Tobias)
Oil on canvas 136 x 99 cm. - Framed: 150 x 112 cm.
The central figure of this painting is the Archangel Raphael, depicted protecting a young boy [1]: the meaning of this iconography, which spread primarily between the 16th and 17th centuries, has taken on a broader significance over time, eventually becoming the emblem of the guardian angel whose task is to protect every human being. [1]
In the *Book of Tobit*, the angel Raphael was invoked by Tobit, a righteous and poor man, to accompany his son Tobiah on a journey; Raphael showed Tobias the safest route and saved him more than once, without ever revealing himself as an angel, except at the end of the story.
The angel is depicted here with the customary features of a young man with delicate features and a robe marked by ample drapery. The young boy, innocently frightened, turns his eyes toward the sky, where, through a break in the clouds, the light of divine grace appears.
The painting stands out for the tenderness of the image and for the sense of ecstasy one feels when confronted with “that flight”—a supernatural moment that the painter has managed to immortalize with delicacy and charm.
From a stylistic point of view, although the scene’s composition is linked to a still-Baroque sensibility—particularly in terms of the structure of the composition— this tendency is nevertheless tempered by a more classical approach, typical of the Roman art scene between the 17th and 18th centuries and specifically of the works of Carlo Maratta (Camerano 1625 – Rome 1713).
The canvas fully displays the formal grace, compositional balance, and Raphael-inspired classicism typical of the painter from the Marche region.
Although it is difficult to identify a specific name for the artist of this work, he must nevertheless be sought among the numerous pupils of Maratta’s workshop, who reinterpreted this subject on various occasions and in various variations, gaining extraordinary fame above all thanks to its print adaptations, which made these precise iconographies of the guardian angel extremely popular models in the 17th and 18th centuries, often replicated with variations by numerous students and copyists in his circle.
Delevery information :
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Should you have the desire to see this or other works in person, we would be happy to welcome you to our gallery in Riva del Garda, Viale Giuseppe Canella 18, we are always open by appointment only.
