PRETI, Mattia

This canvas is a typical example of the Caravaggesque style of the Maltese painter Mattia Preti.

The Feast was one of a series of four paintings that belonged to the furnishings of the palazzo of the Duca di San Severino Gruther in Naples in 1745. It probably served as a counterpart to David Playing the Harp to Saul (private collection), and in the 18th century it had already been compared with Veronese by Preti’s biographer De Dominici, because of its magnificent painted architecture.

The nineteenth-century inventories list this painting with an attribution to Vouet, while later inventories reflect a modification of the attribution to Alessandro Turchi. Assigned in 1916 to Mattia Preti, the canvas is considered one of the best of the Calabrian painter’s youthful works. The painting, dated to the fourth decade of the century, represents Preti’s first ambitious attempt to distance himself from the Manfredian models of his youth. At the same time, the Roman neo-Venetian experience, which would prove fundamental to his development as a painter, is just beginning to manifest itself.

This painting is a key work for the study of Preti, as it shows him in a delicate moment of stylistic passage. Abandoning his earlier predilection for genre scenes set in a closed room with artificial light, Preti is for the first time attempting a forceful history picture in an open, outdoor setting. The brilliant chromatic range, all based on primary colours, was revealed by a recent restoration. The vibrant blue of Aeneas’ mantle, the yellow of his tunic and the resplendent white of the drapery that covers Ascanius remind us that Preti had already encountered the art of Poussin and the neo-Venetian ambient in Rome.

The epic subject, taken from the Aeneid, depicts the flight of Aeneas from Troy after the defeat and sack of the city by the Greeks. With his son Ascanius at his side, he carries his old and infirm father Anchises on his shoulders. Anchises clutches the penates, the household gods. In the narrative Aeneas’ wife Creusa here set in the margin of the composition, would be lost and killed in the confusion of the flight.

This subject found a new popularity at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries, notably through the enthusiasm of Cardinal Scipione Borghese. The connections, emphasized by Virgil and Ovid, between the flight of Aeneas and the founding of Rome had obvious appeal to the modern Romans. Ascanius, according to legend, would grow up to found the city of Albalonga, where Rome’s own founders Romulus and Remus were born.

Mattia Preti painted this subject on at least four other occasions. Each displays the immediacy and psychological depths characteristic of his Biblical narratives, but is presented in a unique composition.

Mattia Preti, a pupil of Guercino, became the leader of the Naples school of painting after Ribera. He was a prolific painter who worked in Rome, Naples and Malta, where he was knighted and where he probably painted this work.

This painting, and its companion-piece depicting players (now in the Rostov Museum), was executed during the artist’s stay in Rome.

This painting marks the transition to Preti’s late style, which can be characterized by a more muted palette.

This early painting by Preti is notable for its rare literary subject and clear stylistic allusion to Paolo Veronese. The subject of this picture is taken from Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (1580). The heroine Erminia inscribed his lover Tancred’s name on every tree and branch.

The choice of subject matter was doubtless inspired by Pietro da Cortona and Nicolas Poussin, both of whom had painted stories from Tasso in Venetian influenced styles.

The picture shows one of the scenes from the martyrdom of St Andrew, painted on the choir walls by Mattia Preti.

The picture shows one of the scenes from the martyrdom of St Andrew, painted on the choir walls by Mattia Preti.

The picture shows one of the scenes from the martyrdom of St Andrew, painted on the choir walls by Mattia Preti.

The picture shows the paintings in the choir of Sant’Andrea della Valle: Scenes from the Life of St Andrew by Domenichino in the apse calotte; Scenes from the Martyrdom of St Andrew by Mattia Preti on the choir walls.

Sant’Andrea della Valle is the general seat for the religious order of the Theatines. Its construction started 1593 under the designs of Giacomo della Porta and Pier Paolo Olivieri, and under the patronage of Cardinal Gesualdo. With the prior patron’s death, direction of the church passed to Cardinal Alessandro Peretti di Montalto, nephew of Sixtus V. By 1608, work restarted anew with a more grandiose plan, mainly by Carlo Maderno. The interior structure of the church was finally completed by 1666, with additional touches added by Francesco Grimaldi (1560-after 1626). The Baroque fa�ade was added between 1655 and 1663 by Carlo Rainaldi, at the expense of Cardinal Francesco Peretti di Montalto, nephew of Alessandro.

One of the greatest challenges to confront Roman religious painting in the first half of the seventeenth century was the decoration of the Sant’Andrea della Valle. The structure of the church competed architecturally and in its urban setting with the two most important sixteenth-century Roman religious structures, namely Saint Peter’s, with its similar tall drum cupola visible from afar, and Il Gesù, which provided the pattern for its longitudinal structure flanked by chapels. With the painting of choir and the cupola of Sant’Andrea these prototypes were outdone, for at that time neither Saint Peter’s nor Il Gesù had any high-quality painted decoration. Accordingly, Sant’Andrea della Valle set a new standard, and introduced an epoch of Roman monumental painting that would culminate a half-century later in two simultaneous Jesuit commissions (in Sant’Ignazio di Loyola).

Domenichino was commissioned in 1622 to paint the choir. Originally he was supposed to take over the entire painted decoration of the church, however, the commission for the cupola was given to Giovanni Lanfranco instead. This led to a breach between the two former workshop assistants of Annibale Carracci. Both Domenichino’s pictures in the choir calotte and Lanfranco’s cupola were completed in 1628.

Mattia Preti was commissioned in 1650 to paint the nave of the church. The commission included four pictures in the nave vault and the compartments above the windows. Additional contracts in the same year obliged the painter the paint three scenes from the life of St Andrew on the wall of the choir, and pictures on the wall of the antechoir. The paintings on the nave vault were not realised.

Preti transformed the apse into a monumental triptych. The centre of the composition, placed on the central axis of the church, shows the apostle stretched on the cross. This scene is flanked by The Erection of the Cross, and The Entombment. Originally Preti was also supposed to paint the smaller panels above the passages to the presbytery chapels. Because of a litigation, he never actually did so, and the two panels were ultimately executed by the Albani pupils Carlo Cignani and Emilio Taruffi. The scenes - St Andrew Condemned by Aegeus, and Arrival of the St Andrew Relic in Ancona - produced jointly by the two young Bolognese artists completed the cycle.

The painting illustrates the episode in the Gospel of Matthew, in which Pontius Pilate, after having tried to save Christ from death, washed his hands and declared “I am innocent of the blood of this righteous person.”

Tomyris was the queen of nomadic people Massagetae in central Asia in ancient times. According to Herodotus (1:214), Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian empire, met his death in battle against her. The painting depicts Tomyris submerging the severed head of Cyrus, King of Persia, in a basin of human blood, having repulsed his invasion of her lands in a violent battle in 530 B.C.

In this characteristic representation of St Jerome, alerted by a trumpet announcing the Last Judgment, he turns his gaze in its direction.

The biblical source for the painting is Matthew 14:6-11 or Mark 6:21-8, where the daughter of Herodias danced for her stepfather, Herod, on his birthday. As a reward he promised her anything she wanted and, prompted by her mother, she chose the head of Saint John the Baptist, which she then carried to Herodias on a silver charger. The daughter subsequently became known in literature as Salome, and the theme was memorably treated in the nineteenth century by Richard Strauss and Oscar Wilde amongst others.

You can view other depictions of Salome with the Head of John the Baptist.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 15 minutes):

Richard Strauss: Salome, closing scene

Sophonisba was the daughter of a Carthaginian general at the time of the second Punic war. She married a prince of neighbouring Numidia, allied to Rome, and succeeded in alienating him from his Roman masters. But he was captured by another Numidian leader Masinissa, who in turn fell in love with Sophonisba, and likewise married her. To prevent the loss of a second ally from the same cause the Roman general Scipio demanded that she be surrendered and sent captive to Rome. Her husband, not daring to defy Scipio, sent her a cup of poison which she drank.

Sophonisba’s death is a popular theme among Baroque painters of Italy and northern Europe.

This small painting is a bozzetto for Preti’s monumental altarpiece for the Parish Church of St. Catherine in Zurrieq, Malta. The final canvas was executed for the altar belonging to the local fishermen.

St. Andrew was a fisherman at Capernaum and the first of Christ’s disciples.

Mattia Preti was a pupil of Ludovico Carracci and was also linked to the Bologna Academy. But if his easel painting reveals the influence of Caravaggism, the frescoes of traditional subjects which he executed for churches and palaces maintain the classicist tradition.

This Caravaggesque composition was executed during the artist’s long service at the Cavalieri di Malta whose patron saint was St John the Baptist.

This scene is described by the Gospel (Mark 6:17-20). John rebuked Herod for having married Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip. The tetrarch is seen on a throne, Herodias’ daughter Salome sits beside her mother. John remonstrates with Herod: ‘You have no right to your brothers’s wife’. As a consequence Herod was persuaded by his wife to imprison John.

This canvas is the creative legacy of Mattia Preti’s stay in Naples. The picture clearly takes off Caravaggio’s light as its point of departure. The refined way in which it is painted, however, as well as the use of elegant details and the classically-inspired pose of the saint’s statuesque body bathed in a ray of light are all extremely revealing about the painter’s extensive and important travels. In fact, Preti amalgamated the most disparate influences with great originality.

Mattia Preti’s Concert is a work which has a bearing on the artistic links between Italy and the Netherlands. Its style is strongly influenced by Caravaggio, particularly in its formal aspects: the strong chiaroscuro reaches an extreme degree in the faces of the three figures. At the same time, the painting also demonstrates the interest in depicting everyday life so characteristic of the art of northern Europe, and takes pleasure in painting the details of the clothing and objects.

The composition of the scene and the descending ray of light that isolates the three youths in the darkness reflect the influence of the tavern and gambling scenes painted by Bartolomeo Manfredi and Valentin de Boulogne and other early followers of Caravaggio.

This painting is a ‘bozzetto’ for one of his frescoes, now lost, painted as an ex-voto on the city gates during the plague of 1656. In the mature works created during his Neapolitan period (1656-60) Preti weddded reminiscences of Battistello, Ribera and Guercino with those of Tintoretto and Veronese. The resulting style is well illustrated by the bozzetto.

This painting is assigned to Preti’s Neapolitan period, after the Calabrian painter’s Roman experience and his travels in northern Italy. During these years (1653-1659), the artist came into contact with the Neapolitan artistic ambient, a world suffused with naturalism. There he began a reflection on the Roman matrix in which he had been formed, and gave life to an important synthesis between the various experiences that led to his artistic maturity.

Considered one of the masterpieces of the sixth decade of the century, the canvas is characterized by a monumental composition, sustained by an able control of light. The strong play of light and dark that distinguishes the painting is in keeping with the rhythm of the narrative.

This large canvas is a late work by Mattia Preti, from the period when he was active in Malta in the order of the Knights of Malta. It was certainly intended for a church.

Preti’s biographer Dominici reports that this painting The Tribute Money was executed in Malta, where the painter had travelled in 1660 as a Knight of Malta in order to work on the decoration of the cathedral of San Giovanni. The painting is of particular interest in view of Preti’s encounter with the works of Caravaggio who had executed some important paintings in Malta after 1607. The theme treated here is the biblical tale culminating in Christ’s fateful words: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” (St Matthew, 22:21)

In the dark brown tones of the painting, we can barely make out the six figures half illuminated by a light from some indiscernible source. The tax collector pauses in his writing as Peter hands him the coin. Only this pause indicates the miracle that has just occurred: Peter found the coin in a fish he had caught at the command of Christ (St Matthew 17:24). The turban of a man, a hand holding a pen, another holding a coin, a face in profile with a deeply lined forehead, turned towards another face of which we can recognize only the temple and the nose, a bald head, a little red fabric and the heavy folds of a rough brown cloth are the scattered but not unconnected fragments from which our gaze wanders to and fro, reconstructing the narrative.

The painter Mattia Preti, who was based in Naples from 1653, became acquainted with Veronese’s works in Venice and Modena. His high regard for them can be clearly discerned, especially in his own feast and banqueting scenes. This painting in London was very probably commissioned by Caspar de Roomer, the hugely wealthy Flemish merchant who lived in Naples, and for whom Preti painted a lavish, crowded scene on a loggia in imitation of Veronese.