Saint Simeon Holding the Christ Child

While Caravaggesque by first formation, Fetti was by nature and in later activity much more concerned with a complex palette and pure paint handling. His guides away from Roman tradition were the progressive Florentine painters active in Rome and especially the works of Rubens. After going to Mantua as court painter to the Gonzaga family in 1613, he was drawn further into the art of Rubens as well as into Venetian painting through the Dukes’great collection. His basic naturalism ever more dissolved into precious color and fluid brushwork, Fetti followed his style to its logical geographical conclusion,Venice itself, in 1622. There, he specialized in charming renderings from mythology and parables. In turn, Fetti helped revitalize that school’s own tradition. Here, in an original iconographic interpretation, Fetti has distilled the Gospel narrative of the Presentation in the Temple down to a tender portrayal of the Christ Child in the arms of the priest Simeon. This portrayal seems barely sketched with a freedom of drawing and general thinness of paint application but then loaded highlights that are reminiscent of Rubens’s oil sketches. It is exquisite example of Fetti’s gifts as an intimate storyteller and painter.