Antonio Mercurio Amorosi (1660-1738), Attributed to - Contadina che fila la lana

Ancient painting, oil on canvas from the 17th century, measuring 43.5 by 31.5 cm, in perfect conservational condition, bears on the back the inscription AMOROSI, clearly referring to Antonio Mercurio Amorosi: he was born in Comunanza, in the Marche, in 1660. In 1668 he moved to Rome, originally with the intention of pursuing an ecclesiastical career.

However, the encounter in 1676 with the painter Giuseppe Ghezz lo brought him closer to art, and Amorosi entered his workshop as an apprentice for about eleven years.

Around 1690 he became independent; that year he produced his first work: the Portrait of the child Filippo Ricci, now kept in the private Weitzner collection in New York.

In 1699 he frescoed the Palazzo dei Comune of Civitavecchia; with Pope Innocent III he receives the city’s magistrates and, with the Madonna and Saint Fermo, destroyed in 1944; in 1702 he painted, in the church of Santa Maria della Morte in Civitavecchia, the altarpiece Saint Gregory and the souls of Purgatory, a composition indebted to the art of Carlo Maratta, and Saint Anne, Saint Dominic, and Saint John the Baptist.

By the mid-17th century the first bambocciate appeared, pictorial representations of scenes of popular life that trace their roots to the painting culture of Northern Europe and, although in Italy marked by grotesque and caricatural elements—the depiction of the life of the “common people” shown to aristocratic clientele—are testament to the dissolution of the classical ideal. It is said that the taste of the circle around the Spanish ambassador in Rome, the Duke de Uceda, himself an important patron of Amorosi, encouraged the painter to compose genre scenes; in this milieu, among other things, Amorosi met and befriended his future biographer and art historian Leone Pascoli. His popular scenes remained, until his death, a fundamental component of Amorosi’s production, ensuring commissions from wealthy clients, most of them members of the Roman aristocracy.

In addition to genre scenes, he painted sacred themes, which can be found in altarpieces in Rome: in the church of San Biagio, Saint Gregory Nazianzen; in the church of San Andrea della Valle a Glory of putti; for the church of San Rocco, but now preserved at Palazzo Venezia, a Saint Francis de Paola of 1722; and in San Bernardino ai Monti, The Glory of Saint Bernard, one of his last works.

According to Pascoli, Amorosi was also a skilled copyist of Renaissance artists and a restorer. His son Filippo also collaborated in his father’s workshop and was a painter of genre scenes.