Saint Chiara

The unpublished sculpture of St. Clare, depicted with an ecstatic and visionary gaze, wears a wide and ponderous dress and protrudes forward the left hand that once held a monstrance now lost, pointing it with the right hand to the faithful to whom it seems to move and the whose trend is accentuated by the left foot raised. Originally, it had to be part of the liturgical decoration of the church of San Francesco da Paola, annexed to the cloistered convent of the Madonna Del Soccorso of Altamura. In the work, although there is a heavy repainting, we find the stylistic modules - especially in the physiognomic details, in the poses and gestures, in the wide grooves of the folds, in the naturalism expressed in the dentition - owned by Filippo Angelo Altieri. In Santa Chiara, in fact, there is an expressionistic and pathetic charge that recalls other sculptures related to him, such as the Christ who brings the cross of Ruvo, which joins to the laying, draping and airy veil, evidence that the sculptor has opened up to those theatrical baroque artistic tendencies made during his stay in Naples.