GIUSEPPE VERMIGLIO (Alexandria, c. 1587 - c. 1635) The Denial of St. Peter Oil on canvas, 83X103.5 cm The style, faces and handwriting lead us to recognise the hand of the Lombard painter Giuseppe Vermiglio, whose training was purely Roman. Documents, in fact, attest him in the Eternal City from 1604 until 1619, telling us of a turbulent and bohemian life. The court documents concerning him describe a daily life of brawls and gambling debts, following an existential analogy with the life of Michelangelo Merisi, and which well evokes Giulio Mancini's words when he describes the exuberance of young artists active in Rome. Indeed, Vermiglio was only seventeen years old in Adriano Monteleone's workshop in Piazza Nicosia in Campo Marzio, where he learnt the rudiments of the trade, and although this master's production is unknown to us, we know that he was acquainted with Antiveduto Gramatica and Merisi himself (cf. A. Morandotti, p. 30). However, Giuseppe's artistic culture also denotes an interest in naturalism with central Italian classicist leanings. He was certainly attracted to the creations of Pomarancio, the illustrative models of Rubens and the Bolognese but, in particular, we can see that temperament of 'working of painting together' typical of Roman workshops and shared by Tommaso Salini, Leonello Spada, Rutilio Manetti and Giovanni Francesco Guerrieri (cf. A. Morandotti 1999, pp. 30-31, no. 111 - M. Pulini, p. 7). The canvas presented here can be dated to the third decade and clearly shows the Caravaggesque influence and its relationship with the 'Denial of Peter' in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, which, painted in Naples in 1607, shows the extreme phase of his revolutionary style and which he must have seen in Rome in 1613, when the canvas was in the hands of painters Luca Ciamberlano and Guido Reni (cf. M. Nicolaci, R. Gandolfi, Il Caravaggio di Guido Reni: la Negazione di Pietro tra relazioni artistiche e operazioni finanziarie, in Storia dell'arte, 2011, no. 130, pp. 41-64). In addition to the format, the painting under examination shares with the one in New York the arrangement of the characters, the gestures and the peremptory cut of the light that illuminates the face of Peter and the female figure, moulding a skilful backlighting on the face of the armiger, from which the red sleeve stands out in the foreground. The narrative, however, is more relaxed and less dramatic than in Caravaggio's drafting, revealing a clear Emilian influence that we perceive in the faces and their expressions. That said, the painting also has the merit of possessing a pictorial surface in good condition and, more importantly, does not show signs of decortication and unravelling, as can be seen when observing the private collection replica sold at Christie's in London on 30 October 2018, lot 31 (cf. Damiani Cabrini, in Giuseppe Vermiglio 2000, pp. 86-87, no. 3), defects that the private collection version published by Morandotti also manifests (cf. A. Morandotti, in Giuseppe Vermiglio 2000, p. 49, fig. 27). We thank Filippo Maria Ferro for the attribution. Reference bibliography: M. Pulini, Per Giuseppe Vermiglio pittore del ritorno, in Paradigma, 1996, no. 11, pp. 49-58 G. Romano, ed., Percorsi caravaggeschi tra Roma e Piemonte, Turin 1999, p. 11 A. Morandotti, Giuseppe Vermiglio, naturalista accademico e diligente, in Percorsi Caravaggeschi tra Roma e Piemonte, edited by G. Romano, Turin 1999, pp. 239-272, p. 265, n. 144, p. 86 Giuseppe Vermiglio: Un pittore caravaggesco tra Roma e la Lombardia, exhibition catalogue edited by D. Pescarmona, Milan 2000, pp. 49, 86-87, n. 3, fig. 7 J. Stoppa, Giuseppe Vermiglio, in The Burlington Magazine, CXLII, no. 1173, December 2000, p. 798 M. C. Terzaghi, Roma vista da Milano. Per una rilettura degli esordi dei pittori lombardi e piemontesi a Roma, in Roma al tempo di Caravaggio, II, Saggi, edited by R. Vodret, Milan 2012, pp. 189-207