28 TRAPANI

ANDREA VACCARO - FRANCESCO SOLIMENA

	Francesco Solimena (Canale di Serino, 1657-1747), Christ giving His blessing,Oil on canvas, cm 59x47 Prov. Trapani, General G.B. Fardella's Picture Gallery	Andrea Vaccaro (Naples, 1605-1670) Penitent Magdalene, Oil on canvas, cm. 120x73, Prov. Trapani, General G.B. Fardella's Picture Gallery

The Maddalena penitente (Penitent Magdalene), with the skull and the book, is one of a series of replicas from a subject painted by Andrea Vaccaro (Naples, 1605-1670) distinguishing themselves from one another in small details, sometimes iconographical and sometimes pictorial. Significant examples are those kept in the Salerno Cathedral, in the d'Alba collection in Madrid and in the gallery of Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo. The Saint in religious ecstasy is not an ethereal figure but she is almost provocative due to the turgor of her body, while her expression suggests she is not waiting only for a mystical wedding. This picture was very successful with the patrons who commissioned it, as it is confirmed by its many versions. The small painting with the Cristo benedicente (Christ giving His blessing), attributed to the Neapolitan painter Francesco Solimena (Canale di Serino, 1657- Barra, 1747) is characterised by the strongly communicative expression on Christ's face, noble and moving at the same time. Dating from the period between the 17th and the 18th century, it shows a certain anti-baroque style, also suggested by stylistic quotations from Preti's painting.

TRAPANI

	MUSEO REGIONALE "A. PEPOLI" Via Conte A. Pepoli 200 tel. 0923/553269 FRANCESCA MARIA SCALISI

critical text by Gaetano Bongiovanni Scalisi's paintings are connected, at least at their starting point, to Italian informal culture, between Burri and Vedova. This interest, though, does not lead the young artist to formalistic researches, but to a rethinking of the quality of the pictorial space as form and sign, where the stratified chromatic layers, only apparently flat, slowly reach a thickness of their own. Being shaped as a palimpsest, they further develop through the fragmentary insertions of newspapers' pages, as in a sort of collage. In her works, the form-sign is certainly enlivened by the colour-light. This is more evident in her recent production, as in Ascesa (Ascent), a diptych where the strong naturalism of the "golden century" Neapolitan painting is translated by the contemporary sign. In the right panel, the ascending twisted shape of the Magdalene surfaces through a space which is moulded by an intense lapis lazuli blue colour, while in the left panel the warm colours of the Redeemer - red, yellow and brown - relate to the luminescent blue colour of the cloak in a dense and structuring dialogue. Three vertical ribbons rigidly crossing the painting - whose shades of colour abstractly remind of the main chromatic choices of the small panting by Solimena - are evidence for the further need of the artist for rationalization and synthesis, both formal and symbolic.