“GB”: Giovanni Bilivert ritrovato in Sicilia

The paper is a study on a Saint John the Baptist in the desert discovered in Sicily (Ni- cosia, Enna) and signed "GB," a monogram with which the painter Giovanni Bilivert was used to signing his works. However, the pres- ence of the monogram on the back of the canvas raises the question of the practices of painting production in seventeenth-century Florentine workshops – and specifically in that of Bilivert – as well as the issue of copies, following the testimony of Filippo Baldinucci, who noted in his biography of the painter, "veggonsi delle copie, o poco o molto ritocche da lui, colla medesima cifra". The monogram at the same time confirms the attribution to the same context of the nearly identical painting in the Corsini Gallery in Florence, which was already attributed to Bilivert by Mina Gregori (1961). However, the painting in the collection still retains the name of Carlo Dolci, leaving open the question of different versions of the same painting. The work ap- pears to be related to a subject described in Florentine sources: a "S. Giovanni Battista in atto di frappare frasca per dar mangiare all’agnello" (Bianchi, in Baldinucci), owned by Odoardo Portinari.