FRANCESCO NARICI (Sestri Ponente, 1719-1785) The Assumption of the Virgin Oil on canvas, 124 x 71 cm. Unpublished. Painting with certificate of free circulation. SOLD The larger part of Francesco Narici’s oeuvre was carried out in the years he spent between Naples and the Caserta area, documented from 1751 to 1779. After an early apprenticeship in Genoa, the painter is believed to have trained indeed in Naples around 1735, presumably together with Francesco Solimena’s pupils. Narici worked for the Bourbon Court and for important religious institutions in Campania, and he was one of the best interpreters of the academic developments of the figurative trend represented by Francesco Solimena and his great successor, Francesco de Mura. At the same time, the Ligurian painter kept on sending works back home, a proof of his solid bond with those patrons that were loyal to him even in the final leg of his career. This painting, that I was able to study on high-resolution digital photographs and that, as far as I know, has never been published before, is a finished sketch or perhaps a refined afterthought of the «Assumption of the Virgin» by Francesco Narici in Badalucco, in the church of Santa Maria Assunta e San Giorgio, signed and dated 1778. This pivotal work of Narici’s later course was first mentioned by Daniele Sanguineti in an important essay... (see GALLERIA GIAMBLANCO DIPINTI ANTICHI – Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Allemandi, 2014) [Riccardo Lattuada] Dimensions H x W x D Height cm.: 124 Width cm.: 71