Page 24 - Luca Giordano - Liberation of St Peter
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Above the Virgin pleads with her Son, and an evanescent
angel, strongly reminiscent of Pietro da Cortona, sheathes
his sword.This heavenly vision, and the painting’s brilliant
light and colour, seem to promise salvation; Giordano
unites something of the dark tragedy of Preti with colour
and light that are indebted to Cortona, Veronese and to
Rubens.
lll
F rom the late 1640s the theme of the liberation of
St Peter had disappeared from Neapolitan art, to be
replaced by highly emotional scenes of salvation and
redemption. Now, as the mood lightened, and the darkness
lifted, Giordano turned back to the subject with this
grandiose Liberation of St Peter. Here he moved away from
earlier Caravaggesque renderings of the subject which
had stressed the human and psychological narrative.The
emphasis falls no longer on Peter’s fear and amazement,
but on the angel, whose radiant light so brilliantly illu-
mines the darkness of prison.
Fig. 7. LUCA GIORDANO, The Crucified Christ with Saints. Oil on It is the theatrical juxtaposition of light and dark
canvas, 400 x 315 cm. Museo di Capodimonte, Naples. which, above all, reveal that Giordano has turned to the
most celebrated rendering of the scene, Raphael’s The
idealised, and the fallen timber jutting out of the painting, Liberation of St Peter (Vatican, Stanza d’Eliodoro. Fig. 2,
and a sharply foreshortened corpse on the right threaten to p.38). In the Roman church of S.Pietro inVincoli, which
erupt into the viewer’s space. And yet this darkened, trag- Giordano would have known, Jacopo Coppi, in the
ic world is brought close to the heavens. Above gleams the 1570s, had already painted an apsidal fresco directly
astonishing pale blue drapery of St Januarius, the most based on the central part of Raphael’s painting, whilst a
powerful protector of Naples, accompanied by putti print by Theodore Galle after Johannes Stradanus united
bearing his mitre and a reliquary with his congealed the three episodes of Raphael’s work into one, weaving a
blood. The clouds on which he sits cast shadows on the dense frieze of soldiers across the foreground and adding
livid corpses below, and heaven and earth seem united. some narrative details, the view of prison walls through an
arch on the left, and the hanging lantern framed by a sec-
ond arch. In contrast is the altarpiece which Domenichino
painted for the church in 1604 (now replaced by a copy).
Domenichino stripped Raphael’s composition down to its
essentials, with four impressively sculptural figures, poses
and colours carefully balanced. His is a powerfully direct
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