Boston buys the Saint Cecilia by Diana Di Rosa

29/7/23 - Acquisition - Boston, Museum of Fine Arts - In our review of the last Maastricht Fair, we wrote that a painting presented by the Porcini gallery, Saint Cecilia with an Angel (ill. 1), had been acquired by an American museum. We can now give its name: it is the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

1. Diana Di Rosa (1602-1643)
Saint Cecilia with an Angel
Oil on canvas - 98 x 76 cm
Boston, Museum of Fine Arts
Photo: Porcini Gallery

See the image in its page

Diana di Rosa was sometimes called Anella Di Rosa, perhaps because it was a diminutive of a nickname like Dianella, as explained by Giuseppe Porzio [1]. It rectifies a large number of inaccuracies reported by ancient historiography, which takes its sources from Bernardo De Dominici’s Vita di Anna dette Annella di Massimo pittrice. The man nicknamed the Neapolitan Vasari, because like his illustrious Florentine predecessor he wrote the lives of artists, seems to have told almost anything about Diana Di Rosa. He calls her Anna, but her real name is Diana. He says she was the niece of the painter Pacceco De Rosa (his brother’s daughter), but she was in fact his older sister. He explained that she and her future husband, the painter Agostino Beltrano, were pupils of Massimo Stanzione, but in reality they were both pupils of the painter Gaspare Del Popolo. Finally, he invents a dramatic ending for Diana: she is said to have died in 1649, killed by her husband who thought she was Massimo Stanzione’s mistress! In fact, she died in December 1643, and there is absolutely nothing to support the legend invented by Di Dominici.

If the artist cannot claim an even more tragic fate than Artemisia Gentileschi in order to emerge from obscurity, her talent should suffice, for the works that can be seen in the biography published by the Porcini Gallery, which we quoted above and which reproduces all the paintings attributed to her, are of the highest quality. Moreover, she has never been completely…