Per Fabrizio Santafede: un’opera perduta, un documento ritrovato

The paper presents the notarial contract for an important altarpiece dedicated to the Madonna of the Rosary by the young Fabrizio Santafede, stolen in 1992 from the Church of the Spirito Santo in Sant’Antimo, in the province of Naples. The document, stipulated in Naples on 12 May 1578 between the painter and the governors of the local confraternity of the Rosary, not only illustrates – as usual – the technical and design aspects of the commission and provides indications on the original layout of the altarpiece, already modified in the first quarter of the 18th century, but also definitively clarifies the chronology of the work, which began immediately after the agreement and was finally paid on 13 August 1579, fixing a rare point of reference in the sequence of Santafede’s early paintings.