The Circumcision

Stefano Pozzi · c. 1762/63

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

177.5 × 117.2 cm (69 7/8 × 46 1/8 in.); Framed: 189.3 × 129.6 × 7.7 cm (74 1/2 × 51 × 3 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Rococo

Stefano Pozzi's The Circumcision is a devotional work of quiet dignity, its figures bathed in the warm, controlled light characteristic of mid-18th century Roman painting. Pozzi was one of the more accomplished painters working in Rome during the transition from high Baroque to Rococo, a period when grand theatrical gestures gave way to something softer and more intimate. His draughtsmanship was precise, his palette refined — favouring creamy flesh tones and rich drapery that hold the eye without demanding it. In a religious composition like this one, Pozzi's gift was in making a sacred and formally demanding subject feel genuinely human: the figures around the infant are attentive, even tender, rather than merely ceremonial. Pozzi was a member of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome, the institution that defined standards of academic painting in Italy throughout the 18th century, and his work circulated widely among religious and aristocratic patrons across the peninsula. This hand-painted oil reproduction replicates Pozzi's original on canvas using traditional oil pigments, preserving the layered depth and tonal subtlety that make the painting worth studying — qualities that prints and digital reproductions simply cannot replicate.