Adoration of the Magi - Presentation of Jesus in the Temple

The two paintings, clearly of a high quality despite their poor condition, remain to this date an unresolved mystery.

Foschi believed that they were originally from the Cervia Vecchia cathedral, a theory echoed by Viroli, although there is currently no documentary evidence to support this theory (Foschi, 1977; Viroli, 1991). The first scholar to catalogue them as paintings from the “Bologna school” was Antonio Corbara in an indexing carried out for the Cultural Heritage Department in 1974.

Among the names recently proposed, the one given the most credence is Antonio Fanzaresi (1700-1772) who trained in the Forlì school of Carlo and Felice Cignani and who was one of the most prolific exponents of late Baroque painting in Romagna (Viroli, 1991; Gori, 2001; Bondi - Garavini -Giunchi, 2007).

In the dark backgrounds, characterised by majestic architectural foreshortening, from which the bodies and the drapery emerge through gentle gradations of colour which culminate in flashes of bright light, we can see the classic traces of the Bologna school, in the tradition of Garbieri, Dal Sole, Pasinelli and Del Cignani (Viroli, 1991; Gori, 2001).”