Giovanni Battista Gaulli (1639-1709), ‘The blessed Ludovica Albertoni distributing alms’
Giovanni Battista Gaulli (1639-1709), ‘The blessed Ludovica Albertoni distributing alms’, 1670-71“The visual layout of the composition confirms that the work was meant to be hung as an altarpiece slightly above eye level, as we can just peer down into the bowl lower centre. Indeed, the bread and dark liquid would have carried clear Eucharistic symbolism when worshippers approached the altar for communion.”…..“The traditional subject of the altarpiece was long considered to be Saint Francesca Romana Distributing Alms but more recently Petrucci and Lloyd (see Literature) have proposed a different historical figure, the Blessed Ludovica Albertoni, who was also a pious Roman woman. Ludovica was widowed in 1506 and after spending her wealth feeding the poor died in 1533. Though iconographically similar to Ludovica in her standard black habit, white veil and holding a book, Petrucci and Lloyd are correct to dismiss the idea of Francesca Romana as she would be depicted here devoid of her ever-present guardian angel. The key to the correct iconographical reading lies in the seemingly unusual placing of a coin in the loaf of bread lower centre. Moreover, as if to underline the iconographical importance of the coins, the little girl who stares directly at the viewer - the only figure to do so - with her left hand points to some more coins in her right palm. The unusual iconography of coins placed on a loaf of bread echoes a fresco of Ludovica in the Altieri family chapel also in the church of San Francesco a Ripa, the very church where Ludovica had become a Franciscan tertiary and where Bernini’s celebrated marble sculpture of her which dates from 1674 can still be found. Given the subject, we can be quite certain that the present work was commissioned by Cardinal Angelo Altieri, who had recently become related through marriage to descendants of Ludovica, and was paid for on 22 February 1671. It would have been commissioned to celebrate the occasion of Ludovica’s beatification by Pope Clement X Altieri earlier that year, a process which had started in 1670, thereby allowing time for the painter to have it complete by the end of January 1671.”Source: http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2011/important-old-master-paintings-sculpture-n08712/lot.111.html -- source link
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