Recently identified as a composition by Corrado Giaquinto, this work is a modello or finished study for a larger altarpiece or decorative cycle for a chapel or church. Giaquinto’s work in Rome and at the royal courts of Naples, Turin, and Spain earned him contemporary renown as one of Europe’s foremost painters of large-scale decorative schemes. As demonstrated in this work, his color palette moved away from the standard red, blue, grey, and flesh-colors of the late baroque, toward a more personal direction, boldly exploiting violets, pinks, greens, azures, and oranges of the rococo. One of the saints wears armor, one holds a cluster of arrows and may be identified as Sebastian, another, like Saint John of Nepomuk, adores a crucifixion, while a fourth, possible Saint James, wears a shell on his shoulder, indicating he is a pilgrim.
