St Paul healing the cripple at Lystra.

Drawing, pen and brown ink, grey wash, traces of black chalk, 21,5 x 31 cm, laid paper, unsigned (brown stain at lower left, not affecting the image).

Under gilt frame.

When Paul was preaching in Lystra, among those listening to him was a man who had been a cripple since birth. Paul saw that he had the faith to be cured, so he said to him in a loud voice, "stand up straight on your feet"; and he sprang up and started to walk. Francesco Solimena (4 October 1657-3 April 1747) was a prolific Italian painter of the Baroque era, known for his many wall and ceiling paintings in and around Naples. By the 1680s, he had independent fresco commissions, and his active studio came to dominate Neapolitan painting from the 1690s through the first four decades of the 18th century. He modelled his painting on the exuberant Baroque style of his predecessor, Luca Giordano, modified by the classical tendencies of Roman decorator Pietro da Cortona. Clarity of line and theatricality are characteristics of Solimena's art. The present sheet can possibly be related to one of his many fresco projects and compared to similar preparatory drawings executed in the same technique, such as an Allegorical figure study in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum New York (inv. 65.66.11).
Ref. F. Bologna, "Francesco Solimena", Naples, 1958.