Attributed to Filippo Vitale

Attributed to FILIPPO VITALE (Naples, c. 1585-Naples, 1650).
"St. John the Baptist in the Desert."
Oil on canvas.
It has a seventeenth-century frame from old fragments.
Measurements: 100 x 127 cm; 118,5 x 144 cm (frame).
This Italian painting of the XVII century represents Saint John the Baptist with a workmanship of extraordinary delicacy and a vaporous technique that wraps the figure in an atmosphere of subtle sensuality. The young saint appears reclining in a desolate landscape, his body barely covered by a camel skin and a wide red cloth that undulates elegantly over the surface. The light models his anatomy with soft transitions and an almost tactile carnality, highlighting the smoothness of his skin and the rosy hue of his face. His melancholic expression and serene gaze contribute to endow the image with a certain extenuation, distancing it from the penitent severity with which the Baptist is usually represented.
The pictorial treatment is characterized by a moderate chiaroscuro, where the shadows are subtly dissolved in the general luminosity of the scene. This approach suggests a distancing from the tenebrist dramatism of the cruder Neapolitan school, approaching instead a more refined and evocative aesthetic, combining naturalism and a certain idealism. The soft and enveloping brushstroke, together with the softness of the contours, recalls the work of Francesco Guarino and Antonio de Bellis, painters active in Naples who knew how to fuse the theatricality of caravaggism with a more graceful and sophisticated sense of form.
The technique and style bring it closer to the circle of the artist Filippo Vitale (Naples, 1585 - 1650), an Italian Baroque painter known for being one of the first Neapolitan painters to join the Caravaggismo movement. Vitale trained in the workshop of Carlo Sellitto, whose style greatly influenced his painting. Introduced later in the circle of Ribera, he remained faithful throughout his career to a realistic caravaggismo that, however, softened over time towards a certain classicism.
In comparison with Filippo Vitale's depiction of St. Jerome in the Desert, this work departs from the Neapolitan painter's characteristic crude and ascetic accent. While Vitale emphasizes the tortured physicality and extreme asceticism of St. Jerome, with rough modeling and harsh lighting, this depiction of St. John the Baptist prefers a gentler, more seductive vision. The composition invites more to aesthetic contemplation than to devotional commotion, integrating a serene spirituality with a pictorial sense of great sensuality and refinement.