CARACCIOLO, Giovanni Battista

The painting, showing the half-length figure of a young man, reflects the influence of Caravaggio’s St John the Baptist, painted in Naples. However, the youth’s air of coarseness and his enticing smile seem far removed from a religious representation, and these qualities would seem instead to suggest a figure of Bacchus. The painting attests to Caracciolo’s prominent role among the Caravaggesque painters at the heart of the Neapolitan School.

This picture was painted just after Caracciolo came back from Rome and is his definite masterpiece. It is also one of the most fascinating and original interpretations of Caravaggio’s style. Of particular note is the splendidly classical figure of the angel who is about to take the hand of the frightened St Peter. Caracciolo understood Caravaggio’s art probably better than any other Caravaggist painter.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 21 minutes):

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina: Missa Brevis (Tu es Petrus)

Caracciolo was one of the first and most important Neapolitan exponents of the Caravaggesque trends straddling luminism and naturalism between 1607 and 1615. Around 1618, however, the artist turned to monumental forms and carefully studied compositional solutions, taking up the example of Annibale Carracci in particular. The attribution of the present painting to Caracciolo was confirmed when his initials were noted on the vase of ointment.

Regarding the iconography of Christ wearing a gardener’s hat, the same solution had been adopted in the sixteenth century in some cases, e.g. by Lavinia Fontana.

The exquisite painted decoration of the chapels of the church in the Certosa di San Martino, done both in fresco and in oils, was executed by prominent representatives of the younger Neapolitan school of painting, who were greatly influenced by Caravaggio. Of the works in fresco painting, the most outstanding example is the vault of the San Gennaro chapel, painted by Caracciolo in 1632 with four scenes from the life of the patron saint of Naples. His highly compressed compositions with their wealth of figures and drapery almost threaten to burst through the frames of the relatively small picture panels

The canvas depicts an adolescent, seemingly a sleeping Cupid stretched out on a crimson damask bedspread and pillow trimmed with dark ochre braiding and tassels. A bow and arrow are set on them in the foreground, the tip of the arrow tucked into the folds of the spread.

The most plausible names scholars have advanced so far for the attribution of the work are Orazio Riminaldi and Giovanni Battista Caracciolo. Currently the latter is the most convincing.

The attribution of this painting to Caracciolo is supported by most scholars. It is variously dated between 1610 and 1625. More recently, a possible connection was proposed between this painting and Cosimo Fanzago’s statue of Isaiah in the church of the Gesù Vecchio in Naples which Battistello seems to have used as a compositional source.

The monumental figure of the saint, in spite of his apparently unstable pose, is perfectly balanced in the space of the picture. Standing in the centre of the painting, Onofrius’s pose is a study in contrapposto movements. Caracciolo’s use of light no longer annuls the details of anatomy, as it had in his work of the 1610’s; but instead ably underlines the pictorial three-dimensionality with which the artist has sculpted the body of the saint. A beautiful passage, this nude is described with a pleasing formal forcefulness, without the characteristic indulgence of Ribera. The face, intense and vibrant, is rendered with rapid brushstrokes and with no attempt to hide the signs of old age. Instead, the face is transformed with a noble expressivity that is only accentuated by the severe, almost monochromatic handling of colour.