Attributed to Stringa - Saint within a floral wreath

The iconography featuring the figure of a saint within a floral wreath is typical of the 17th-century Emilian school of painting. The saint is depicted in a generic manner, with no specific attributes to reveal her identity. The only certainty is that she is a martyred saint, given the palm branch she holds in her hand.

The artist of this painting displays remarkable pictorial technique, allowing him to achieve a perfectly naturalistic rendering of the subject. The saint appears in a free and relaxed pose, in a natural and complex three-quarter twist. There is great precision and richness of detail, both in the physiognomy and in the clothing and in the depiction of the flowers. In addition to this great attention to detail, the painter is also distinguished by a loose brushstroke that creates a delicate softness in the modeling. The subject's forms blend smoothly with the darkness of the background, leaving the part of the saint to our left in deep shadow. The subject's plastic qualities are highly emphasized, enhanced primarily by the complex and marked design of both the drapery and the flowers. The artist strives for perfect formal purity, as can be seen in the way the entire subject appears to have a smooth surface. Indeed, the artist has a painting style that allows very little for atmospherics or pictorial effects. It follows that the figure of the saint, while fitting naturally into the space of the painting, maintains a compact form in which its volumes are enhanced.

The work has been attributed to Francesco Stringa, a painter originally from Modena who lived between 1635 and 1709. His training was fundamentally classicist, close to the Carracci school, but he was also profoundly influenced by Mattia Preti, a Neapolitan painter active in Modena in 1650. A typical feature of Francesco Stringa's work, which links him to the present work, is the combination of a classical naturalist language with deep dark shadows that almost seem to dissolve the subject. Francesco Stringa served for a long time under the Dukes of Este, particularly Alfonso IV. Among his most important commissions in 1674 were frescoes for the Ducal Palace in Modena.

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