Watercolour over traces in black chalk. Signed Morelli in black chalk lower right. 417 x 302 mm.
Our drawing replicates, in a slight different, less dramatic way, the subject of one of the most famous paintings by Morelli, Gli Iconoclasti, now in Naples at the Gallerie di Capodimonte. That painting (1855) closes Morelli's academic period, and inaugurates, with its great success, the romantic one. Furthermore, the subject expresses the artist's patriotic ideals: through this episode of sacred history Morelli refers to the libertarian and Risorgimento instances expressed and then suffocated in the 1848 movements. The friar is actually a symbol of liberal ideals, while his persecutors allude to the Bourbon guards.
PROVENANCE and LITERATURE: originally the drawing was a sheet of the liber amicorum property of Costanza Bougleux.