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A masterpiece of Luigi Garzi's maturity, the work is inspired by Annibale Carracci's fresco in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo: the artist opts for a vertical format in order to give more relief to St. Peter's expression of astonishment, the elegance of the body of Christ, the classical architecture of the background and the putti framed by the clouds. The rigorous composition is built in diagonals. The main figures, noble and graceful, almost complementary in gestures and expressions, conferring unity and harmony to the image, are defined by a harmonious design. The classical inspiration (Carracci, Poussin and contemporary French painting), the sobriety of the chromatic scale (with a refined harmony of blues and ochres), the contained dynamism, the great control
formal, invite us to date the work to the 18th century, bringing it closer to the altarpiece that once stood in the church of the SS. Venanzio and Ansuino, from the ceiling of Palazzo Carolis in Rome, from the canvas of Palazzo Bonaccorsi in Macerata, but in none of these works does Garzi achieve such an advanced result in the attenuation of the legacy of Roman Baroque, in the search for a pure style, already on the path of proto-NeoClassicism. In this sense this painting is already in perspective with the production of Benedetto Luti, Francesco Mancini, and the Imperiali, and demonstrates the importance of the role played by the artist in Roman painting between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Alessandro Agresti
Restoration at the level of the shoulder of Christ
