San Luigi Gonzaga

In religious-themed paintings, Giuseppe Bazzani very often manages to render, in an extraordinarily effective way, the yearning of the saints, which resembles ecstasy. This certainly happens in the beautiful work that we admire here, in which appears the favorite saint of Mantua: Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, progeny of the famous family, born in Castiglione delle Stiviere in 1568. The verticality of the painting defines the character, who appears slightly bent forward, completely immersed in his vibrant search for faith. The canvas was exhibited in Florence in the 1920s, then in Mantua, and it is dated to the 1740s. Here, once again, Bazzani shows the particular stylistic synthesis with which he operates, on the one hand starting from the distant example of Domenico Fetti and Rubens, and on the other, invigorating his paintings with the sensibility of Veneto, particularly of Venice.