Saint Irene

58. Tela Sant’Irene da Lecce The painting depicts the martyr Irene da Lecce, minor patron of the city of Altamura from 1728, when the cult and invocations of protection against the damage of storms was borrowed from the city of Salento. A whirlwind of cherubs, which bear the iconographic attributes, and dark and threatening clouds from which bright red arrows burst out, supports the saint who, painted with ecstatic expression, raises her right arm in the act of stopping them, protecting from the danger the city ​​represented below in which Altamura is identified. The scene, articulated on several levels, responds to an exquisitely devotional taste that focuses more on an immediate reading of the work than on the most sought-after stylistic aspect. The presence, at the right bottom, of the emblem of the city of Altamura suggests that it is a painting with the value of an ex-voto commissioned by the Universitas. The work could be attributed to the Altamuran painter Nicolò Maramonte, active around the mid-eighteenth century, an artist capable of combining, as evidenced by the paintings he made and especially preserved in the Altamuran church of San Biagio, the autumn of the Baroque style with an immediate readability of the scene.