01 Work , RELIGIOUS ART, Pacecco de Rosa's Saint Barbara - with footnotes #192

Giovan Francesco de Rosa, called Pacecco de Rosa

Saint Barbara

Oil on canvas

39 1/2 by 28 7/8 in.; 100.3 by 73.3 cm.

Private collection

Sold for 37,500 USD in January 2011

Saint Barbara, known in the Eastern Orthodox Church as the Great Martyr Barbara, was an early Christian Lebanese and Greek saint and martyr. Accounts place her in the 3rd century in Heliopolis Phoenicia, present-day Baalbek, Lebanon, and recent discovered texts in the Saida early church archives suggest her maternal grandmother is a descendant from Miye ou Miye village. There is no reference to her in the authentic early Christian writings nor in the original recension of Saint Jerome's martyrology.

Despite the legends detailing her story, the earliest references to her supposed 3rd-century life do not appear until the 7th century, and veneration of her was common, especially in the East, from the 9th century.

Because of doubts about the historicity of her legend, she was removed from the General Roman Calendar in the 1969 revision, though not from the Catholic Church's list of saints.

Saint Barbara is often portrayed with miniature chains and a tower. As one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, Barbara continues to be a popular saint in modern times, perhaps best known as the patron saint of armourers, artillerymen, military engineers, miners and others who work with explosives because of her legend's association with lightning, and also of mathematicians. A 15th-century French version of her story credits her with thirteen miracles, many of which reflect the security she offered that her devotees would not die before getting to make confession and receiving extreme unction. More on Saint Barbara

Pacecco De Rosa (byname of Giovanni Francesco De Rosa; 17 December 1607 - 1656) was an Italian painter, active in Naples.

He was a contemporary of Massimo Stanzione or, according to others, a pupil of him. De Rosa was influenced by his father-in-law, Filippo Vitale, also a painter: this is shown in his earlier works, such as a Deposition now in the Museum of the Certosa di San Martino. Also in the Certosa is a St. Nicholas of Bari and Basilius (1636), showing influences of both Stanzione and Domenichino, who was in Naples from 1631.

Attributed to De Rosa is a series portraying the Madonna with Child (one in Museum of the Certosa di San Martino; one in the church of Santa Marta, Naples; and one in the National Gallery of Prague). Of the 1640s is a painting, in collaboration with Vitale, of the Madonna with St. Charles Borromeo in the church of San Domenico Maggiore. His other works include an Annunciation in San Gregorio Armeno, St. Thomas of Aquino in Santa Maria della Sanità and the later Massacre of the Innocents in the Museum of Philadelphia and Diana Bathing in the Capodimonte Museum.

Among the artists thought to be in his circle are Girolamo De Magistro.

He died in Naples in 1656. More on Pacecco De Rosa

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