GIUSEPPE VERMIGLIO (Milan, 1585? - post 1635) Saint James Oil on canvas, 59.3X48 cm Provenance: Private collection The style and writing, and particularly the face, lead without hesitation to recognise the hand of the Lombard painter Giuseppe Vermiglio, whose Roman training was predominant. Documents, in fact, attest to him being in the Eternal City from 1604 until 1619, highlighting aspects of a turbulent and bohemian life, court cases for brawls and debts, life events that evoke similarities with Merisi and also the famous phrase by Giulio Mancini when describing the exuberance of young artists active in Rome. Thus, the young Vermiglio appears to have been just seventeen years old in Adriano Monteleone's workshop in Piazza Nicosia in Campo Marzio learning the first rudiments of the trade and, although Monteleone's production is unknown to us, we know that he was acquainted with Antiveduto Gramatica and Caravaggio himself (cf. A. Morandotti, p. 30). But the artistic culture evidenced by Vermiglio also denotes an interest in a naturalism dictated by classicist and central Italian declinations. He was certainly attracted to the creations of Pomarancio and the illustrative models of Rubens, but in a particular way participated in that temperament of working together and from life, typical of Roman workshops and shared by Tommaso Salini, Leonello Spada, Rutilio Manetti and Giovanni Francesco Guerrieri (cf. A. Morandotti, pp. 30-31, no. 111; M. Pulini, p. 7). In our case, in fact, the physiognomy of the saint clearly appears to be a real portrait and the expressive force of Caravaggio suggests an early dating due to the proximity of the faces in the Incredulity of St. Thomas signed and dated 1612 and conserved in the Cenci Church in Rome, with those in the Coronation of Thorns in Palazzo Altieri (cf. Morandotti in Giuseppe Vermiglio. Un pittore caravaggesco tra Roma e la Lombardia, 2000). Documents attest the artist's presence in the Eternal City until 1619, and it is therefore plausible to place the canvas in the last years of the Capitoline period, bearing in mind that the naturalistic and Caravaggesque tenor is as predominant as ever, unlike the softness found in, for example, the Saint James the Greater in the Repossi Art Gallery, dated by critics to the first half of the 1920s. We thank Filippo Maria Ferro for the attribution. Reference bibliography: 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 A. Crispo, Giuseppe Vermiglio da Roma a Milano: il problema dei modelli, in Artes, 1999, 7, p. 86 Giuseppe Vermiglio. Un pittore caravaggesco tra Roma e la Lombardia, exhibition catalogue edited by D. Pescarmona, Milan 2000, p. 73, fig. 49 G. Papi, Brevi note al Vermiglio caravaggesco, in Paragone, 29, 2000, pp. 26-37 M. C. Terzaghi, Giuseppe Vermiglio lombardo e piemontese, in Paragone, 29, 2000, pp. 38 60 M. Pulini, San Matteo e l'Angelo di Giuseppe Vermiglio, Siena 2001, ad vocem M. C. Terzaghi, in Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Tomo II, Milan 2006, pp. 257-260, no. 319 M. C. Terzaghi, Giuseppe Vermiglio, in I Caravaggeschi, edited by A. Zuccari, Milan 2006, pp. 751-763, with previous bibliography