Martyrdom of Sts Seconda and Rufina

religious

Considered a rare oddity by contemporaries, this painting by "three hands" (Morazzone, Giovan Battista Crespi and Giulio Cesare Procaccini) recalls the competitions that were common in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in which painters vied to outdo one another in rendering the same subject. Here, however, the three artists collaborated on a single picture. Similar outlooks and experiences created a common bond, a sort of "family resemblance" among the three, so that stylistically the painting has unity, despite variations and differences.

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About the Artist

Morazzone

1573 – 1626

Italian painter, originally Pier Francesco Mazzuchelli. Together with Giovanni Battista Crespi and Giulio Cesare Procaccini, he was the leading Milanese painter of the early 17th century. Like Crespi, he was in Rome in the 1590s, where frescoes by him survive in S. Silvestro in Capite. Even more than Crespi and Procaccini, however, he based his art on Gaudenzio Ferrari, and his principal works are also for chapels on the Sacro Monti at Varallo, Varese and Novara. At the time of his death he was painting frescoes in Piacenza Cathedral, completed by Guercino. There are many works by him in museums and churches in Milan.

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