The Massacre of the Giustiniani at Chios

In Naples in the beginning of the 18th century there flourished a whole school of decorative painters. Solimena, with his crowds of figures swirling through eddies and shades, still belonged to the line of the ‘tenebrosi’.

This painting in the Capodimonte Museum is the sketch for one of the large-scale compositions for the Senate Chamber in Genoa. The space follows the same laws of perspective as those used by Padre Pozzo in Rome.