Antonio Tempesta, Saint James Religious Tempest, 1620, Oil on Canvas, Framed

Antonio Tempesta (Florence 1555 - Rome 1630) Circle

Saint James Defeating the Moors in Battle

Oil on canvas (112 x 102 cm. - Framed 125 x 114 cm.)

Full details (LINK)

A valiant knight with his sword drawn, proud in his sumptuous armor trimmed with gold ornaments, intent on steering a majestic white horse is placed at the center of the painting: it is a striking image of Saint James in battle, defeating the fleeing Moors.

This subject celebrates the more tumultuous aspect of Saint James's character, which earned him and his brother John the nickname Boanerges, meaning "Sons of Thunder," in the Gospel of Mark (3:17).

According to tradition, around the mid-9th century, at the height of the battles for the Reconquest of Spanish lands occupied by the Moors, while enemy armies clashed in the town of Clavijo, Saint James appeared to defend the Christian troops, frightened by the animosity of their adversaries, thus turning the tide of the war.

This is a rare iconography of the Saint, which invests him with the status of an impetuous and unstoppable knight against the infidels, so much so that in the Spanish popular imagination he was nicknamed Matamoros, meaning "Moorslayer."

It was therefore a recurring theme in Hispanic iconography, but it also spread to Italian art, as an allegory of the Victory of Faith.

Although it is a religious subject, it cannot be ruled out that it was intended for private devotion rather than a place of worship: the painting indeed has a purely "profane" rather than devotional character.

This work—a pendant is available (link)—is believed to have been created by the workshop of Antonio Tempesta (Florence 1555 - Rome 1630), a leading artist of fundamental importance to the 17th-century development of the "battle" genre.

His style, which can be placed in the late Renaissance or early Baroque period, is characterized by elements such as the dynamism of the composition, the dramatic use of light and shadow (chiaroscuro), and the expressiveness of the figures.

He shaped his art within the culture of late-16th-century Mannerism, acquired from his early training in Florence in the workshop of the Flemish painter Giovanni Stradano, with whom he collaborated on the decoration of Palazzo Vecchio.

Active primarily in Rome from 1572, he worked for Pope Gregory XIII on the decorations of the Vatican Loggias, and for many of the most noble and influential families, such as the Farnese, Borghese, Giustiniani, and Rospigliosi-Pallavicini, especially in demand as an artist of historical and biblical battle scenes.

Beginning in 1613, he created a series of engravings of "biblical battles" for Grand Duke Cosimo II, inspired by Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered." These subjects earned him great success at the Medici family and at the Florentine court, and served as a source of inspiration for his later paintings.