Art History Today

Neapolitan & Sicilian Baroque Art & Architecture. Slides.

1) G.B. Caracciolo, Madonna of the Purification of the Soul with SS Francis and Clare, before 1617, oil on canvas, 290 x 203 cm, S. Chiara, Nola.

2) Syracuse Cathedral, an example of the style known as “Sicilian Baroque.”

3) Domenico Gargiulo, Market in the Piazza del Mercato, Naples, mid 1650s, oil on canvas, 80 x 145 cm, Palazzo Lerma, Toledo.

4) Piazza del Mercato today.

5) Plan of Naples.

6) Simon Guillain (after Annibale Carracci), Picture Seller, etching, plate 19, Le arti di Bologna.

7) Unidentified topographical painter in the circle of Francois de Nome and Alessandro Baratta, View of the Palazzo Gravina, Naples, 1620s-30s, oil on canvas, 98 x 125 cm, Private Collection, Rome.

8) Palazzo Gravina today.

9) Michele Regolia, Palace Interior, c 1675, oil on canvas, 97.3 x 145.2 cm, Private Collection, Naples.

10) Jusepe Ribera, Drunken Silenus, oil on canvas, 181 x 229 cms, Capodimonte, Naples, prev Gaspar Roomer.

11) Mattia Preti, Crucifixion of St Peter, oil on canvas, 194.5 x 194.3 cm, Barber Institute, Birmingham University, prev Ferdinand van den Eiden.

12) Carlo Sellitto, St Cecilia, oil on canvas, 250 x 183 cm, Capodimonte, Naples, prev. S Maria della Solitaria, Naples.

13) Filippo Napoletano, Picnic on the Grass, c. 1619, dimensions/media unknown, Uffizi, Florence.

14) Duomo, Naples, consecrated.

15) Interior of Duomo, Naples, with ceiling by Domenichino.

16) Jusepe Ribera, St Januarius Emerging Unscathed from the Furnace, 1646, oil on copper, 320 x 200 cm, Cappella del Tesoro, di San Gennaro, Naples Cathedral.

17) View of Chiesa del Pio Monte della Misericordia, with paintings by Santafede, Caravaggio and Caracciolo.

18) Fabrizio Santafede, The Raising of Tabitha, 1611, oil on canvas, 306 x 205 cm, Chiesa del Pio Monte della Misericordia, Naples.

19) G.B. Caracciolo, Liberation of St Peter, 1615, oil on canvas, 310 x 207 cm, Chiesa del Pio Monte della Misericordia, Naples.

20) G.B. Caracciolo, Agony in the Garden, 1615-17, oil on canvas, 148 x 124 cm, Kuntshistorische Museum, Vienna.

21) Artemesia Gentileschi, Judith Slaying Holofernes, oil on canvas, 158.8 x 125.5 cm, Capodimonte, Naples.

22) Caravaggio, Judith Slaying Holofernes, 1598–1599, Oil on canvas, 145 cm × 195 cm, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica at Palazzo Barberini, Rome.

23) Artemesia Gentileschi, Birth of St John the Baptist, oil on canvas, 184 x 258 cm, Prado, Mardid.

24) Andrea Vacarro, The Martyrdom of St Sebastian, c.1640, Oil on canvas, 130 x 102 cm, Private collection.

25) Andrea Vaccaro, Martyrdom of St Bartholomew, Oil on canvas, 97 x 120 cm, Private collection.

26) Jusepe Ribera, The Tears of St Peter, 1612-13, oil on canvas, 161.9 x 114.3 cm, Metropolitan Museum, New York, prev. Cardinal Benedetto Monaldi Baldeschi in Rome, 1644.

27) Jusepe Ribera, Apollo and Marsyas, oil on canvas, 176 x 227 cm, Capodimonte, Naples, prev Gaspar Roomer.

28) Jusepe Ribera, Jacob’s Dream, oil on canvas, 179 x 233 cm, Prado, Madrid.

29) Jusepe Ribera, Adoration of the Shepherds, oil on canvas, 239 x 181 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

30) Master of the Annunciation to the Shepherds, oil on canvas, 180 x 261.5 cm, Capodimonte, Naples.

31) Massimo Stanzione, Portrait of a Woman, mid 1630s, oil on canvas, 118.7 x 97.2 cm, San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts.

32) Massimo Stanzione, Judith and Holofernes, circa 1640, oil on canvas, 199.4 x 146.3 cm, Met, New York, prev Lucrezia Bonamin, widow of Giovanni Andrea Lumaga, Venice in 1677.

33) Massimo Stanzione, Cleopatra, 1630s, Oil on canvas, 169 x 100 cm, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.

34) Massimo Stanzione, Massacre of the Innocents, c. 1640, oil on canvas, 127 x 153 cm, Scholoss Rohrau.

35) Guido Reni, Massacre of the Innocents, 1611, oil on canvas, 268 x 170 cms, Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna.

36) Guido Reni, The Meeting of Christ with St John the Baptist, 1628-33, oil on canvas, Sacristy, Church of Girolamini, Naples.

37) Massimo Stanzione, Adoration of the Shepherds, 1645-50, Oil on canvas, 117 x 155 cm, Private collection.

38) P. P. Finoglio, The Annunciation, 1630s, Oil on canvas, 216 x 154 cm, Szépmûvészeti Múzeum, Budapest.

39) Bernardo Cavallino, St Catherine of Alexandria, 1640s, oil on canvas, 75.2 x 59.2 cm, Barber Institute, Birmingham University, purchased 1965.

40) Bernardo Cavallino, Flight into Egypt, 1640, oil on canvas, 76.8 x 63.5 cm, Compton Verney.

41) Bernardo Cavillino, The Blessed Virgin, 1650, Oil on canvas, 167 x 118 cm, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan.

42) Bernardo Cavillino, The Finding of Moses, 1150s, oil on canvas, 102 x 128, Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Brunswick.

43) Aniello Falcone, Rest on the Flight into Egypt, 1650s, oil on canvas, 126 x 92 cm, Sacristy, Naples Cathedral.

44) Aniello Falcone, Cavalry Battle between Turks and Christians, c. 1650, Oil on canvas, 76 x 113, cm, Private collection.

45) Salvator Rosa, A Battle Scene, 1640s, Oil on canvas, 96 x 154 cm, Private collection.

46) Andrea de Lione, Venus and Adonis, 1630s, Oil on canvas, 116 x 153 cm, Private collection.

47) Andrea de Lione, Titus Burying the Dead, late 1640s, formerly Sothebys, New York.

48) After Nicholas Poussin, possibly Andra di Lione, The Adoration of the Golden Calf, The Adoration of the Golden Calf, Oil on Canvas, 99.4 x 128.6 cm, possibly 1626-27.[1]

49) Simon Vouet, The Circumcision, 1626, oil on canvas, 293 x 193.5 cm, Capodimonte, Naples,

50) Tancredi Scarpelli,Tommaso Aniello (Masaniello) leading the revolt of 1647, Illustration for Storia d'Italia by Paolo Giudici (Nerbini, 1929-32).

51) Mattia Preti, The Great Plague of 1656, oil on canvas, Naples, Capodimonte.

52) Mattia Preti, Absalom's Feast, 1653-59, Oil on canvas, 202 x 297 cm, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples, prev Duca San Severino.

53) Mattia Preti, St Sebastian, c. 1656-7, Oil on canvas, 240 x 169 cm, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples, prev S. Sebastiano, Naples.

54) Mattia Preti, Pilate Washing His Hands, 1663, 206.1 x 184.8 cm, Metropolitan Museum, New York, acq 1978, prev Antonio Ruffo.

55) Luca Giordano, The Holy Family & the Symbols of the Plague, mid 1660s, oil on canvas, 409 x 279 cm, SS Guiseppe e Teresa, Pontecorvo, Naples.

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[1] It is not certain if the San Francisco painting is a copy or a pastiche. It was in 1973 that Blunt and Rosenberg started to call the painting an old fake, or pastiche; and it was Rosenberg who first attributed the work to the Neapolitan painter, Andrea de Lione. Blunt had argued in a much earlier article that Andrea visited Rome and saw Poussin’s neo-Venetian works from the late 1620s. In 1982 Rosenberg listed the San Francisco picture as “a copy of a lost original”, a view that has been strengthened by the existence of a matching composition on a drawing at Windsor.

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Tumults & Trends in Neapolitan Painting.

Though one should be cautious in attributing changes in stylistic development to political events such as the impact of the Sack of Rome on mannerism in 1527, in the case of Naples it seems justifiable since two major upheavals affected art in the city. Firstly, the revolt of 1647 led by the Neapolitan fisherman Masaniello against the Hapsburgs which ended in the beheading of the insurgent. Many painters fled the city in fear of their lives, but some lost theirs in the much more serious plague of 1656 which killed artists of the calibre of Pacecco de Rosa, Falcone, Massimo Stanzione, and Cavallino which, according to Wittkower makes 1656 a “turning point “ in the history of painting in Naples.[1] Leading the artistic “counter-revolution” were two painters from outside Naples: Mattia Preti from Calabria (1613-99) and Luca Giordano (1635-1740).What marks them out from the early Caravaggism and its followers in Naples is their debt to Venetian painting marked by dazzling colour effects and slashing brushwork; also, they were exponents of the Roman grand manner. Thus Neapolitan painting becomes more international in aspect and character. Of the two, Preti is closer to Caravaggio whose style he emulated in Rome; later Preti turned to the Roman and Bolognese classicism of Domenichino, Sacchi and Reni. After successes in Venice and Naples, Preti went to Malta where he ended his days. By contrast Giordano is more a creature of the eighteenth century looking ahead to the restless style of Tiepolo; though his energetic Holy Family and the Symbols of the Plague – painted for the Discalced Carmelites in Naples (above), was said by De Dominici to be Luca’s attempt to paint like Veronese. It is true that in this impressive work Giordano’s baroque-neo Venetian style comes to the fore.

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[1] Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy, 360. But for an alternative view see Nicola Spinosa “baroque and Classical Tendencies in Neapolitan Painting 1650-1700” in Painting in Naples, 49-54.

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Cabinet Pictures in Naples.

There is one painter who is mainly associated with cabinet painting in 17^th century Naples- Aniello Falcone (1607-1656) who became famous for specialising in one genre - battle painting. Before that he worked in other genres such as religious art, e.g. Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Naples Cath). According to De Dominici Falcone trained with Ribera, but he probably left his studio at an early date.[1] He was highly regarded as a painter as he was included in the group of painters who decorated Philip IV’s Buen Retiro palace which show the influence of Castiglione. In conceiving the genre of Neapolitan battle painting, Falcone mixed the large-scale frescoed battles in the Sala di Constantino (Vatican) with the military scenes of the northern print-maker Jacques Callot. Falcone’s battle pictures (above) were often mistaken for his pupils Andrea di Leone (1610-85). Andrea was a complex painter who not only imitated the battle pictures of his master, but also specialised in mythological pictures, especially bacchanals. There was a vogue for neo-Venetian scenes inspired by Poussin, Castiglione and of course the Titian bacchanals that were in Naples. Poussin’s art was constantly referenced by Andrea, and some of the Neapolitan’s paintings have been attributed to the French master such as the Adoration of the Golden Calf (San Francisco). Another keen plunderer of Poussin was Salvator Rosa who also produced the odd battle picture, though he found more success with his landscapes which he peopled with philosophers and biblical figures.

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[1] Bio in Painting in Naples, 153.

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Stanzione’s Workshop.

Lack of documentation prevents accurate reconstruction of Stanzione’s workshop; there is also the additional problem of varying styles of painters working against a collective identity in the workshop. All manner of artists would be subsumed under what Marshall calls the “Stanzionesque so-called school of enobled Neapolitan Caravaggesque painting” including names central to it like Paolo Finoglio, Andrea Vaccaro, and artists who were more marginal of which Bernardo Cavallini (1616-1656) would be the best example.[1] Finoglio signed himself Neapolitanus and probably trained in Naples under the late Mannerist painter Ippolito Borghese (d 1627). Borghese's influence, though lasting, was not as strong as that of Caravaggio, whose art Finoglia came to admire. His work before 1626 is exemplified by the ten lunettes representing the Founders of Religious Orders in the Sala Capitolare (1620-c. 1626) of the Certosa di S Martino, Naples, which demonstrate his accomplished blending of late Mannerist and Caravaggesque styles. Vaccaro belonged to a large and important family of Neapolitan painters and was one of many artists influenced by the dramatic light effects of the Caravaggisti, followers of Caravaggio. He first studied literature but at an early age turned to painting. He was probably a pupil of the late-Mannerist painter Gerolamo Imparato, though there are no known works from this period. About 1620 he became a follower of Caravaggio; he copied Caravaggio's Flagellation (Naples, Capodimonte), and his copy and the original hung in S Domenico Maggiore, Naples (copy in situ). David with the Head of Goliath (Florence, Fondazione Longhi) and Sebastian (Naples, Capodimonte) are early works indebted to Caravaggio's naturalism and chiaroscuro. During the 1630s and early 1640s Cavallino enjoyed success as an independent painter producing cabinet pictures for eager patrons. Previous to that he seems to have spent time in Stanzione’s workshop during the early to mid-1630s. Work produced in his early career show the influence of both Stanzione and Ribera; he produced many fine pictures of musicians, allegories and saints, as in the wonderful St Catherine (Barber), above.

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[1] Marshall, Baroque Naples, 44.

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Massimo Stanzione.

Next in significance after Caravaggio and Ribera comes Massimo Stanzione (1585?- 1656) The information on Stanzione comes from the Neapolitan Vasari, De Dominici who tells us the artist was born in 1585 about 15 kms north of Naples in Orta di Atella.[1] De Dominichi tells us Stanzione entered Santafede’s studio and then Caracciolo’s before moving on to Rome which allowed him to observe the transition in styles in the first phase of Neapolitan painting. Stanzione is documented in Rome about 1617 with established painters like Cavalier d’Arpino, Roncalli, Saraceni and Honthorst. It is likely that he also studied neo-Venetianism in Rome and classicism enshrined in the work of the Carracci in Rome as shown in academic nudes like his Cleopatra (St Petersburg). Stanzione began his career as a portrait painter, a good example is the Portrait of a Woman from the mid 1630s (San Francisco). This seems to be the same model that appears in his Judith and Holofernes (New York) (above) which in its colouring may owe something to Artemesia. Stanzione was one of those painters who could assimilate any style into his own production, Caravaggio, the Gentileschi, Guido Reni, Poussin; this focused eclecticism served him well when he was seeking to establish himself in both Rome and Naples.

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[1] Bio in Painting in Naples, 156-7.

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Ribera and the Spanish Connection.

After Caravaggio, the next important painter in Naples is Jusepe de Ribera (1592-1652) called “Spagnoletto” whose success eclipsed all other artists working in the city. Ribera was born and trained in Spain, though nothing is really known of his early training; the hypothesis that Francesco Ribalta taught him has been discarded.[1] A visit to Parma is possible, but he is definitely documented in Rome in 1615 in the circle of the northern Caravaggisti.Here he painted series on the Five Senses which were much admired. In 1616 Ribera left for Naples, possibly in the suite of the Viceroy Conde de Osuna; there he married Caterina, daughter of another artist G.B. Azzolini. After this he seldom left Naples where he enjoyed the protection of the viceroys who commissioned many works from their countryman. Ribera advanced his career quickly and enjoyed a similar favoured relationship with the aristocracy as Bernini had with the Barberini court in Rome. Of the highlights in Ribera’s oeuvre there are the Drunken Silenus (Capodimonte) above painted for the Dutch merchant Gaspar Roomer; Jacob’s Dream (Prado); and Adoration of the Shepherds (Louvre). There are many more showing his brutish realism, perfectly suited to some of the violent martyrdoms and tortures that were the stock in trade of the Counter-Reformation. Undoubtedly Ribera scored an early success, but this had its disadvantages later in his career when he was expected to turn out umpteenth saints and philosophers, and myriad versions of the martyrdom of St Bartholomew.[2] Orbiting the stellar artistic bodies of Neapolitan painting’s first division were a number of minor artists, some of whom were exhibited in the London show of 1982. Many of these were in the purlieus of Ribera’s workshop. One good example is the so-called “Master of the Annunciation to the Shepherds” whose work has been compared to Ribera and Velasquez. He is named after the subject he painted of which eight versions are known including ones in Birmingham Art Gallery and the Capodimonte. He could be Spanish, or even one of Ribera’s students or one of his many followers like Bartolomeo Passante (1618-1656) who assiduously copied Ribera’s pictures.

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[1] Bio in Painting in Naples, 225-6.

[2] As pointed out by Marshall, Baroque Naples, 56.

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Early Caravaggism in Naples.

When Caravaggio came to work in Naples in 1606-7, the scene was dominated by mannerist painters who had been heavily influenced by the Cavaliere di Arpino- the polar opposite of Caravaggio. The mannerists stubbornly refused to accommodate the Lombardy painter and so artists like Fabrizio Santafede (c. 1560-1634) and Bernardino Azzolino (c. 1572-1645) found themselves relegated to the ranks of the mediocre in art history. However painters like Caracciolo (1570-1637) evaded oblivion because of his flexibility and responsiveness as in his altarpiece the Liberation of St Peter (above) for the Chiesa del Monte Misericordia (the home of Caravaggio’s Seven Acts of Mercy). Caracciolo as the “solitary founder of the ‘modern’ Neapolitan school” had set off on a long and lonely road and it is unsurprising that his style did not “set the pattern of painting in Naples.”[1] A second, but different interpreter of Caravaggio, Jusepe Ribera (1591-1662) had a more sizeable impact with vulgar realism, painterly chiaroscuro and dramatic lighting effects-see below. Caravaggio’s influence can also be seen in the extremely violent pictures of Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-c. 1652) painted before she came to settle in Naples in 1630 with a brief sojourn (1638-39) in London to help her father at the court of Charles I.[2] Eventually there would be a reaction against Caravaggism in Naples with the pendulum swinging towards Bolognese classicism represented by Domenichino and Reni; also the venetianism of Giordano in a later phase.[3] We should also not neglect to mention the influence of the Frenchman Simon Vouet’s work which in its early Roman phase had been a confection of Michelangelo and Caravaggio, which the Neapolitans found intriguing with its decorative tendencies.

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[1] Rudolf Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy 1600-1750 (Pelican History of Art, Yale University Press, 1958, rep. 1982), 356.

[2] On Artemesia and Naples, Riccardo Lattuda, “Artemesia and Naples, Naples and Artemesia” in Orazio and Artemesia Gentileschi, New York, 2001), 379f

[3] Wittkower (ibid) identified there main trends which were “acclimatised in Naples.” These were “Domenichino’s baroque classicism, Lanfranco’s intense high baroque, and the discursive Caravaggism of the second generation.”

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The Altarpiece in Naples

By far the altarpiece was the most important and frequently commissioned type of art in late 16^th and 17^th century Naples. These works were lavish aids to devotion which must have been both effective in dazzling the spectator into religious compliance as well as alerting them to the skill of the artists and craftsmen who designed them. These were elaborate, multi- form creations, sometimes an ornate frame structure housing two or more paintings in which painting was not exclusively important. Collaboration between commissioning bodies and artists could be frustrating complex as is shown in the case of Decio Tramontano who was caught in litigation because he didn’t fulfil a commission after eight months. Worse, Decio was caught painting other altarpieces in his workshop; as part of his defence Decio called a physician to testify to a period of five months illness![1] Even a painter of the calibre of Stanzione found himself subject to scrutiny. One of his most important commissions was for a set of paintings in the chapel of the Certosa di San Martino, though the fathers still sought “references” from artists and experts in Rome, such was the suspicion of religious orders, even to Neapolitan painters.Other like Ribera (above) because of their reputations escaped such investigation.

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[1] Marshall, Baroque Naples, 11.

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Locating Artists’ Communities in Naples.

Instead of Haskell “mechanics of patronage” setup in Rome, painters in Naples were mainly distributed about the city in a series of artists’ quarters. Naples in the 17^th century was made up of a group of artistic communities clustered in various regions of the city. One of the largest group of painters, sculptors, carvers and guilders congregated in the region of the Palazzo Gravina which can be seen in some veduti of the 1620s and 1630s (above). Other quarters included the district near the monastery of Monteoliveto- the Quartiere della Carita bustling with merchants, dealers and rivenditori, or sellers. This also connected with the Via Toledo, one of the main thoroughfares in the city- then and now - which led down to the quayside. Additionally, the quarter of Santa Spirito would be home to painters like Carlo Sellitto, Giovanni Batistta Caracciolo, Giovanni Bernardino Azzolini, and Filippo Vitale, as well as the sculptor Pietro Bernini. And the next generation of artists living here would include the young Salvator Rosa, Massimo Stanzione, Bernardo Cavallino, Giacomo Recco, and Viviano Codazzi who came from Rome to Naples. Such close-knit social groups not only cemented their links through professional associations but also through kinship networks and marriages. One example of this is Carlo Sellitto (1581-1614). Sellitto was the son of Sebastiano another painter and he entered the workshop of a Fleming (Croys) which also featured François de Nomé (from Lorraine) and the landscape painter Filippo Napoletano. Sellitto was betrothed to Croy’s daughter Claudia and in 1607 he set up independently with his own workshop in which he employed more artists. In 1612 Sellitto became godparent to the eldest son of Filippo Vitale, together with Andrea Vaccaro’s mother. Most of Sellitto’s work has perished, but his St Cecilia (Capodimonte) has survived.

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Patrons & Painters in Naples

In his important study of patronage in 17^th century Italy Francis Haskell described a pattern existing between the artist and the man who commissioned his or her work. The artist would firstly lodge in quarters within the patron’s house; he was given a monthly allowance; he became, in a sense, a member of the patron’s family.[1] This kind of model of patronage could only work in stable societies, but in turbulent centres like Naples it would have come unstuck. At that time Naples was ruled badly by the Viceroys for the Spanish, and this group of officials had their own favourites including Roman artists. For example the Marchese de Carpio who patronised such outstanding masters as Ribera had an enthusiasm for current Roman painting which occasionally tempted Neapolitan artists to adopt Roman styles in their art to appease their patron. As Marshall points out, Naples operated a completely different dynamic where patronage was concerned due to the nature of the aristocratic class of viceroys who were less interested in enriching painting in Naples than filling their own collections which would depart with them to Spain at the end of their term. Thus there was no wealthy ruling household like the Barberini in Rome to provide work for artists as well as making painting symbolically central to the city.[2] There were advantages for Naples though when for political and financial reasons, superior art would be transferred to Naples as happened in 1631 with Titian’s Bacchanal of the Andrians and the Venus Worship were moved to the city resulting in a Neapolitan genre of Titianesque painting as in the work of Andrea di Lione (above). This prompted Domenichino to exclaim on seeing them in Naples: “Can it really be that Rome has sent these treasures into exile?”

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[1] Francis Haskell, Patrons and Painters: Art and Society in Baroque Italy, (Yale University Press, 1980), 6.

[2] Marshall, Baroque Naples, 10. On the viceroys, see 217-231.