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RIGO Church of San Giovanni Battista
The church of San Giovanni Battista in Rigo conserves within the sumptuous frame of the high altar an interesting altarpiece that can be dated to the middle decades of the XVI century. It is a painting on panel that portrays the Madonna enthroned with the infant Jesus between S. Giovanni Battista and S. Sebastiano.The clothes show a laying on of anodyne colour in which the draping is suggested by dark tones laid on in stiff brush strokes, and they float rigidly in the air or fall to the ground without enhancing or hinting at the physicality of the figures or their spatial positions.The naïve perspective of the dais of the throne and the particularity of the infant Jesus supported by the Madonna in the air instead of laid on her knee highlight even further the limitation of artifice in terms of compositional capacity and rendering of the elements.If the general scheme of the work is found in an altarpiece of Cola dell’Amatrice carried out for the church of S. Giovanni Battista in Acquasanta Terme (now conserved in the civic picture gallery in Ascoli), and if the effective characterisation of the face of the Madonna with infant Jesus is painted by the same Cola in the large altarpiece of the parish church of Mozzano (started in 1536), the painter of Rigo demonstrates in the same Jesus and in S. Sebastiano a particular vocation given the bodily evidence and the almost wooden plasticity of the figures, following modules that are not o be found in the work of Cola. It is obvious that the Raffaellan turn given to the Madonna and altered by Cola flanks a different inspiration, linked to a strong traditional vein, according to a dynamic of mixing and contamination that was very evident in the upper Tronto valley in the bordering areas. There the echoes of Crivelli, altered by Alemanno and his followers, also underwent repercussions from the work of Cola and were influenced by paintings from Umbria and Abruzzo. These intriguing aspects, typical of a “hinge” culture as the culture of the trans-Appenine area was, still await systematic study. Photos:
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