Martyrdom of St. Sebastian

     The scene takes one of the most in sacred art represented: the body of dying holy martyr riddled by arrows shoot by torturers, probably because of the atrocity of torture. There is no author of the Renaissance who hasn’t attempted in reproduce it. But there is also a historical reason that justifies the wide spread of devotion to St. Sebastian and that the atrocities of that torture has led Christians affected by of plague of the scourge to call upon this holy invoke his intercession to God, when faced with this so painful disease and once incurable.
Here the saint has been taken at the time of transition between life and death and the mastery of the artist is particularly successful to seize in the plastic movement of the battered body the detachment from life and the complete abandonment in the hands of the Invisible.

  Baptism of the Lord

      In Baptism of the Lord is represent the mystery of the beginning of the public life of Jesus when he decides to undergo the Law which provides for washing and rebirth into a new life and spirit, despite the fact that He is free, as Son of God.
The Baptist is to oppose the divine paradox - "I need to be baptized by you and you come from me?". But Jesus said to him: “let it be so, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfil all righteousness "- so at the end he accepts and complacency of the Father is manifested in the theophany:" This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him! "(Matt. 3, 13-17).
Public life of Jesus starts this way, after thirty years of hidden life, and it lasts much less, yet is the one that we best know through the Gospels. Obedience of Jesus confirmed on this occasion, brought him to the death for those who crucify him.
By the intense vision of the Baptist it seems to grasp its tender emotion for the humility of the Saviour, which bends to the will of the Father through submission to a gesture of a man. On the other hand Jesus for thirty years "erat subditus illis" was subjected to his parents and then had voluntarily submitted to the will of the people and so, in obedience to the Father's will, he shall accept the ultimate sacrifice of death "mortem autem crucis" and death by crucifixion.
The plasticity of the movements, the careful study of the body anatomy, the recollection of the figure of the Lamb of God, whose protection the Baptist knows to be inadequate, make of this sacred representation a true work of art.
   

San Giuseppe Moscati

Saint Joseph Moscati

    And so we are at today with St. Joseph Moscati, the holy doctor from Benevento. The mastery of our craft was played in a very beloved saint in Naples. In him meet the quality of the man of science and those of the man good, strong, caring toward others, holy, in short. The glance alive, intense, penetrating, which trasfonde a great humanity, gladdens our heart as he had to be for many people, mostly poor, which he took care, often for free, from his home-study in via Cisterna dell’olio in Naples. Even today you can visit the premises of this house and his clothes, his library, in part at these premises and partly at an exhibition set up inside the Church of Gesù Nuovo a few metres from the first. It's nice to know that God calls each still in its ordinary condition - in this case the saint is included in its habit of work - from which each one can love others and God doing his job well and serving the others beginning by the nearest ones.