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Books, Autographs & Prints

Wednesday 18 November 2020, 10:30 AM • Rome

51

Fabrizio Clerici

(Milano 1913 - Roma 1993)

Sketches and drawings for the stained glass windows of the Basilica of San Domenico in Siena, 1959

Artist's Resale Right

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€ 10.000 - 12.000

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€ 12.660

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Information

Large corpus of preparatory drawings and sketches relating to the execution of a pictorial cycle to decorate the stained glass windows of the Basilica of San Domenico in Siena; Clerici was commissioned to depict the faith of St. Catherine within a single window, which he developed in six different moments. The cartons have different sizes, even very large ones, and in some cases they are colored.

Specialist Notes

In May 1955 the Dominican Fathers decided to provide the Basilica with stained glass windows. The task was entrusted to the painters: Cantatore, Clerici, Quaroni and Saetti. Modern artists and actively participate in the renewal of the 20th century arts. After a long work that lasted four years, the finished works and the preparatory cartoons & nbsp; they were exhibited in the halls of Palazzo Venezia in April 1959, before being definitively placed in the mullioned windows
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of the Basilica of San Domenico in Siena. The figurative subject was chosen by the commission chaired by Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, Fabrizio Clerici was given the "Faith of St. Catherine". The painter recounts the episode of Niccolò di Toldo, a young Perugian sentenced to death by the government of Siena, to whom the Saint brought the immense comfort of her word in prison until her execution in 1365. Fabrizio Clerici was attracted by many possibilities that such a technique offered him, even if it was a work that various constraints made more complex: first of all the Gothic form within which to narrate a precise religious story, then the location where it was to be inserted. For the execution Clerici relied on the technique of a specialized craftsman, the master Ernesto Tross, who defines the cartoon as "anomalous" for various reasons. "Clerici did something that is not done, the sketches for a stained glass window are always very synthetic and on a reduced scale while Fabrizio made a cartoon with original measurements and painted it, even taking care of the shades as if it were a real finished painting". The episode is described in Clerici's stained glass window in six moments, grouped two by two starting from the top left, according to the division of the fourteenth-century mullioned window. The strong passion and the great commitment with which the artist participated in this unusual work is testified in a note: "... I developed this very human story based on the same letter that the Saint sent to her confessor, Blessed Raimondo da Capua immediately after 'execution of the young Perugian; document of such lofty and touching poetry as to be the best inspiration for the development of the proposed work. " Thanks to the choice of colors, the story seems to be told through the kaleidoscope; the blood motif is a returning note in the six squares as are the browns and yellows of the two characters' robes, all against a bright and constant background of the blue of the sky.