Saint Bartholomew, Sculptor from Northern Italy

Sculptor from Northern Italy of the 17th and 18th centuries

Saint Bartholomew.

Minimal defects and re-gilding.

This sculpture, in terms of execution technique and subject, presents analogies with the production of the Lombard Fantoni workshop and specifically with the work of Andrea Fantoni (1659-1734), with particular reference to the cycle of martyrs placed on the cymatiums of the wardrobes of the second Sacristy of the Basilica of San Martino in Alzano Lombardo. Perhaps the most technically interesting element of the environment, created by the Fantoni workshop between 1692 and 1701, the cycle presents 32 martyrs of saints created with great decorative skill and with the strong expressive charge typical of baroque taste: among them, there is a martyr Saint Bartholomew, flanked by two figures of executioners. A further comparative suggestion with a Fantonian work can derive from the analogy with another sculpture of the same subject and attributed to the workshop of Andrea Fantoni present in the church of S. Marco in Foresto Sparso, on the parapet of the main altar: this figure of San Bartolomeo, sculpted in marble and 50 cm high, although closer to the standing position of the famous model by Marco d'Agrate, it is comparable with our sculpture in the treatment of musculature and in the creation and positioning of the saint's skin.