Saint Antonio from Padova

The Lusitan saint appears at the centre of the scene - built inside a room illuminated by a window beyond which opens a landscape - and carries in his hands the iconographic attributes: the lily and the book on which there is the figure of the child Christ. The scene is completed by the presence of two cherubs at the top right, which place a laurel wreath on the head of the friar, while on the left a drape offers a scenic backdrop to the entire representation. The characters are defined with a sturdy brushstroke, which builds the anatomies and draperies with force, making it easy to read the painting, while the room is made with a strong perspective, suggested by the floor whose tiles converge all towards a single point of escape, as to remember the first-Renaissance perspective constructions. This taste oriented towards an expository clarity, the attention to details in the construction of the interiors, the typologies of the faces depicted and the constructive brushstroke of the drapery recall very closely the ways of Giovanni Donato Oppido, a painter native of the nearby Matera, who was very active in the first three decades of the seventeenth century, especially between its land of origin and Altamura. In particular, the face of Antonio here depicted is almost superimposable to that present in the great painting of the Madonna del Carmine between the saints Francesco, Elia, Eliseo realized for the church of the same name of Altamura by the Materan artist in 1632. This last data allows to hypothesize the construction in years close to this date.