Elmo Marianna (Lecce 1730)

work of the Lecce artist and embroiderer who used the technique of "broderie à fils collès" which allowed him to create paintings by famous painters of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, landscapes and sacred subjects, gluing threads of polychrome, silver and gilded silks on top a cardboard support covered with a layer of virgin beeswax. Elmo is considered the leader of the Leccesi School of Embroiderers, also achieving fame in Naples and Sicily. The brightness of the silk thread gave particular charm to the embroidery. This precious technique declined in the nineteenth century and, consequently, was forgotten, examples of this art are found in the museums of Naples, Palermo, Lecce, Bari, Turin and Genoa. Ebonized wood frame, 29 x 41 cm.