Archangel Gabriel

The small sculpture, depicting the archangel Gabriel, was allocated in the deposits of the church of Santa Teresa and found during the work of cataloguing of the diocesan heritage promoted by the Italian Episcopal Conference. This circumstance did not allow us to understand the reasons for its presence inside the sacred building, but it is likely that, given its small size, the work could find the favour of some believer inside a private chapel or, as was customary, could be part of the liturgical decoration of the sacristy. Placed on clouds from which two heads of cherubs peep out, the Archangel seems about to hover in the air while he unfolds his wings and protrudes his left leg backwards, with the ecstatic gaze facing upwards and the enlarged arms. The effect of swirl and airiness of the scene gives the work an intense theatrical charge in which the ruffled and fluttering drapery prevail. It is a work of great finesse and technical and compositional skill, so it has not been difficult to attribute it to the hand of Nicola Antonio Brudaglio, an artist considered among the greatest and prolific exponents of wood sculpture in Southern Italy. In fact, the statue denotes the stringent stylistic analogies with others assigned with certainty to the master from Andria, in particular with the Immaculate preserved in the church of San Francesco in Gravina and with that of the same subject performed for the cathedral of Vieste, ascribable chronologically to the years Fifty and Sixties of the seventeenth century, period of maximum artistic production of his workshop and executive maturity of the master.