Domenico Piola

A significant number of compositional drawings for ceilings by Domenico Piola are known, most of which are related to his work as a fresco painter. This drawing may be a first idea for part of Piola’s cupola fresco of The Coronation of the Virgin and the Fall of the Rebel Angels in the dome of the small Genoese church of San Luca. Piola began working in the church in 1681 and was eventually tasked by the Spinola family, which owned the church, with frescoing almost the whole of the interior. As Raffaella Besta has noted of the San Luca commission, for which several preparatory drawings are known, ‘The abundant surviving drawings document a complex preparatory process and demonstrate that Domenico acted as designer and director, as he did in the other major projects of the Casa Piola. Such systematic and detailed studies helped guide his numerous collaborators.’ Aided by his son Paolo Gerolamo Piola and a large team of assistants, including the quadraturista Anton Maria Haffner, Piola completed the project in 1695. The San Luca frescoes may be regarded as the most complex and accomplished of Piola’s surviving fresco cycles.

According to the 19th century art historian Federigo Alizeri, Piola received the commission to decorate the cupola in 1690 and was paid the sum of 15,000 lire to do so. As the late Mary Newcome Schleier has described the composition of the cupola fresco, ‘The band of figures surrounding the Coronation [of the Virgin] bends around to join with an area in the cupola that is less densely populated, less noticed by scholars, but which involves the drama of [Saint] Michael vanquishing the demons…A foreshortened putto riding the lantern edge directs attention to Michael, just as the rays of light from Paradise beam down from the lantern onto the Coronation figures. Two angels on clouds on the right of Michael and an elegant group of angels and putti on the left add to the brilliance of the flying forms…The movement of Michael and the pairs of demons that fall against the cupola rim in two places reflect the turbulent figures [in frescoes by Giacinto Brandi and Giovanni Battista Gaulli in Rome].’

Among comparable drawings by Piola is a very similar oval design for a ceiling, depicting Athena, Justice and other allegorical figures, that was sold at auction in London in 1983. Also similar is a quatrefoil drawing of The Triumph of the Church, formerly in the Brooke collection, which appeared at auction in Paris in 2004 alongside a somewhat comparable Study for a Vault Decoration with the Immaculate Conception, God the Father and Prophets, now in the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas. Another analogous work is a drawing for a quatrefoil ceiling composition of The Angel Appearing to Saint Joseph sold at auction in 1971, as well as a preparatory drawing by Piola, in the Palazzo Rosso in Genoa, for his ceiling fresco of Apollo and the Muses in the Palazzo Fieschi-Negrone in Genoa.