Page 22 - Luca Giordano - Liberation of St Peter
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connected themes in different ways.20 These small paint- cult grew powerful in Naples at this time, to deliver these
ings are in a sense the end of the school of Neapolitan suffering souls from the pains of purgatory. The Viceroy
painting that had flourished in the first half of the century. of Naples, Gaspar de Bracamonte, Count of Pen?eranda,
These artists had been associated with the busy studio of was an important patron of every aspect of this church,
Aniello Falcone, where a varied group of painters had ex- but many others contributed, amongst them powerful
perimented with many of the minor genres, small bam- guilds, wealthy merchants, and the people, from whom
boccianti pictures, battle painting, landscape and still life. alms were collected. Bracamonte, an able diplomat, had
arrived in Naples in 1659; he was to become a powerful
lll force in the patronage of religious institutions. On his arrival
in Naples he had stayed with the wealthy merchant and
I n the years after the cessation of plague there came, collector, Gaspar Roomer, at his Villa at Barra. Here he
surprisingly quickly, a lifting of the general mood of would have seen Roomer’s splendid collection of pictures,
gloom and penitence, and a sense of celebration and by Andrea Vaccaro, Luca Giordano, Rubens and many
thanksgiving. Art, unlike the economy, flourished, and, others, and this may have encouraged his choice of
Preti, in 1657 painted an heroic St Sebastian (Naples, Vaccaro and Giordano to paint altarpieces for the church.
Capodimonte), where the plague saint, bound in the
darkness, is illumined by a heavenly light that promises AndreaVaccaro , an immensely popular artist and a sur-
redemption. For the cemetery church of S. Maria del vivor from the older school of Neapolitan painting had,
Pianto, one of the most interesting projects of these earlier in his career, moved from the darkness of Caravaggio
years, Andrea Vaccaro and Luca Giordano painted altar- to a more classical style influenced by Massimo Stanzione.
pieces which are passionate pleas for salvation.This small For S.Maria del Pianto he painted the high altar, Interces-
church had been built at the entrance to the Grotta degli sion for the Souls in Purgatory, (Naples, Capodimonte) which
Sportiglioni, (the Grotto of Bats) where, during the shows theVirgin Mary pleading with her son for the souls
plague, many thousands of corpses had been buried, often who languish in purgatory below. Both the Virgin and her
without receiving the last rites. A contemporary chron- Son are static, heavily modelled figures, who sit somewhat
icler, Florio, in 1661 described the ‘mounds of corpses... stolidly on banks of clouds, and the composition is strik-
brought by their dear relatives rushing to dump into that abyss, ingly old fashioned. The painting forms a sharp contrast
their own children and parents, relieved to be able to flee from with the brilliant colour and light of Giordano’s two lateral
the horrendous spectacle without the hint for any of them [the paintings, which, as his contemporaries appreciated,
dead] of a religious rite.’21 introduced a whole new era of painting.
The church commemorated this, and at the same time Giordano’s two paintings themselves are sharply con-
encouraged prayers to the Madonna of Purgatory, whose trasting, and move from the apocalyptic darkness, the
passionate hope and prayer of the Crucified Christ with
20. C. Marshall, ‘“Cause di Stravaganze”: Order and Anarchy in Saints, (Fig. 7 to the radiant colour and light of the St
Domenico Gargiulo’s Revolt of Masaniello’, in Art Bulletin, LXXX, Januarius interceding for the Plague Victims, Fig. 8 c.1660-
1998, p. 84. 1662; both Naples, Capodimonte). In the Crucified Christ,
against an apocalyptic sky, with blood red sun and cres-
21. Florio, as given in R. L. Ehlert, S. Maria del Pianto: Loss, cent moon, the peak ofVesuvius grey in the distance, five
Remembrance and Legacy in 17th Century Naples, MA thesis, Queen’s patron saints kneel in adoration before Christ on a cross
University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, 2007, pp. 50-51.
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