Attributed to FRANCESCO SOLIMENA (Italy, 1657 - 1747). "Saint in Meditation". Oil on copper. Measurements: 19 x 14,5 cm. In this work we see a saint dressed in clerical clothes, represented as a young man with blond hair and a bushy beard, leaning on a pedestal on which rest a crucifix and a skull, objects related to Christian meditation. The saint is shown holding his left hand to his chest while extending his right hand, raising his gaze in a gesture of mystical ecstasy very much to the taste of Baroque religious iconography. From its formal characteristics we can relate this work to the hand of Francesco Solimena, an Italian painter of the late Baroque period, the main representative of the Neapolitan school of the first half of the 18th century. Francesco Solimena trained with his father, also a painter, and developed his career in Naples, where he settled in 1674. There he furthered his training with De Maria, in whose studio he became familiar with the more advanced Baroque style of Cortona, Lanfranco, Preti and Giordano. His early works reveal a clear affinity with the Roman Baroque as well as with the more recent Neapolitan pictorial tradition. Later, seeking to develop an alternative to Giordano`s fanciful language, Solimena approached the more tenebrous art of Mattia Preti, insisting on greater plasticity. Thus the shading that characterises his figures began to appear in his work. He soon became the visible head of the Neapolitan school and was later influenced by the classicism of Maratta, which led him to seek a greater intensity in his drawing with academic accents. Works by Solimena are now in the Museo del Prado, the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, the J. Paul Getty in Los Angeles, the Kunsthistorisches in Vienna, the Louvre in Paris, the Metropolitan in New York, the National Gallery in London and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, among other public and private collections throughout the world.