Abstract

The stylistic analysis of a very damaged altarpiece made in 1507 for Raimondina Guarino – the abbess of the female Benedictine monastery of San Giovanni Evangelista in Lecce – together with the unsatisfactory and generic attribution proposals to an anonymous Venetian master, encourages a re-examination of the painting in Salento in those years, basically ignored by critics. The analysis of the style denies the possibility that the Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saint John the Evangelist was made in Venice (or by a Venetian painter). On the other hand, the painting doesn’t even come from Naples, the other starting point for many artworks that reached Terra d’Otranto. It is therefore possible to advance the hypothesis that a local painting school – which still needs to be properly investigated – operated in those territories, with specific and peculiar features