Saint Stephen

Author: Filippo Quattrocchi (Gangi 1738 – Palermo post 1813)

Dating: 1784

Material: cypress wood carved and painted on silver leaf

Dimensions: cm 175 x 80 approx.

Provenance: Ancient Cathedral in the Fortified City

As we can see from the Book of Results of the Mother Church in Milazzo, the sculptor Filippo Quattrocchi received, between May and August 1786, a payment of thirty ounces for the statue of Santo Stefano protomartire and another thirty for the pedestal below, Both transported by sea from Palermo. Thanks to this precise archival reference we know the circumstances in which arrived in Milazzo the wooden statue dedicated to the patron saint to be placed in the main sacred building of the city. Precisely the crucial role it was intended to have pushed the clients to turn to one of the most skilled Sicilian wood sculptors of the second half of the eighteenth century, famous for his ability to interpret with refined delicacy the religious spirit of the time.

The artistic debut of Filippo Quattrocchi had taken place in his native city of Gangi (Palermo), where, little more than twenty years old, in 1761-64, he had obtained the prestigious commission of the wooden group depicting the Madonna del Rosario for the church of Santa Maria della Catena, whose design was entrusted to the famous painter Vito D’Anna. The collaboration with the latter strongly conditioned the career of Nostro, not only because he absorbed the elegant Rococo vein, but also because in such circumstances moved definitively to Palermo, entering into contact with the fervent environment of the capital, dominated by Ignazio Marabitti, Federico Siracusa and Filippo Pennino. In Palermo the artist had a great success, receiving commissions for numerous Sicilian centres, and a production, always of a sacred character, characterized by quality emphasized, as well as careful composition balance and extreme technical expertise.

The Milazzese statue also follows these stylings and is marked by a “sense of movement”, evident in the retraction of one foot from the other and the bending of the body, but also in the floating of clothes or in the arrangement of wavy folds”. A dynamism that appears specially designed to reach the acme during the procedural rites – to which the sculpture was intended from the beginning – when the saint seems to run through the crowd with solemn naturalness, almost as a tangible presence and at the same time incorporeal. All the more so because the elaborate virtuosity of execution, the finesse of the modelled and the soft idealization of the face infuse in the work a lightness that perfectly expresses the idea of spiritual ascent, transmelting into wood the impalpable air of the contemporary pictorial examples.

In the base, the rococo matrix structure is superimposed on decorations strongly oriented towards neoclassicism and characterized by a repertoire of stylized vases at the corners, laurel festoons and naturalistic motifs in the mirrors. The presence of the work in Cape Town had a considerable influence on local artistic production. It was used as a model for some paintings, many of which are attributed to the Barcelona painter Giuseppe Russo. The most literal derivation is found in the canvas, already in the church of S. Giacomo and now in the cathedral, representing the moment of stoning, some variant is found, instead, in that of the sacristy of the cathedral itself, with the saint placed in the foreground bearing symbols of martyrdom; Finally, in the altarpiece of the Madonna della Catena of the church of the Addolorata al Capo, the figure of the protomartyr is presented together with San Bartolomeo and San Lorenzo.

The artist himself made a copy of the statue in the church of S. Maria di Loreto in Petralia Soprana. Among the other sculptures certainly autograph include, finally, the Madonna of the Help for the church Mother of Campobello di Licata (Agrigento), the Assumption of the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Nicosia (Enna), the Martyrdom of S. Andrea for the church Madre a Ciminna, the groups of Our Lady of the Rosary made for both the church of S. Domenico in Polizzi (Palermo), that of Sant’Orsola in Gangi, the 1799 Annunciation for the Mother Church of the same town, which is considered his masterpiece.

Buda V., Lanuzza S. (a cura di), Tesori di Milazzo. Arte sacra tra Seicento e Settecento., Milazzo 2015