GIROLAMO PESCI (Rome, 1679 - 1759) Adoration of the Shepherds Oil on canvas, 43.5X35 cm Provenance: Milan, Finarte, 10 June 1987, lot 13 (as attributed to Giovanni Camillo Sagrestani) Rome, Galleria Fabio Massimo Megna (1988, as Girolamo Pesci) Italy, private collection The work, already inexplicably attributed to the Florentine Camillo Sagrestani, turns out to be a precious testimony of the art of Girolamo Pesci, an artist who trained in Carlo Maratti's workshop 'where he learnt the first principles of drawing' and, later, 'was seduced by the style of Treviso that would mark his art, for expressive gentleness and marked pictorialism' (cf. Pio, Le vite di Pittori, Scultori e Architetti, edited by C., R. Enggass, Vatican City 1977). In fact, the painter's style bears a clear resemblance to the creations of Francesco Trevisani (Koper, 1656 - Rome, 1746), which is very evident in the canvas under examination, not only in the character of the figures, but especially in the chromatic interpretation. This intonation can be seen, for example, in the St. Francis Receives the Stigmata in the Rieti Museum (cf. L. Mortari, Museo Civico di Rieti, Rome 1960, no. 56, p. 38, table 44), but even more so in the Sacrifice of Noah formerly in the Lemme collection, now in the collections of Palazzo Chigi in Ariccia which, datable to the beginning of the third decade, offers a useful chronological match. Both canvases are characterised by a similar palette, and the illustrative tenor is also a common narrative approach in some passages. We thank Francesca Baldassari for the attribution. Reference bibliography: S. Rudolph, La pittura del Settecento a Roma, Milan 1983, tables 565-566 G. Sestieri, Repertorio della pittura romana della fine del '600 e del '700, II, Milan 1994, pp. 146 F. Lemme, in Il Museo del barocco romano: la collezione Lemme a Palazzo Chigi in Ariccia, edited by V. Casale and F. Petrucci, Rome 2007, pp. 112-113, no. 55