Page 31 - Luca Giordano - Liberation of St Peter
P. 31
travelled to Rome and visited northern Italy. De Dominici De Dominici’s claim upon the Life of Giordano, only to
claims this is when Giordano came into contact with be proven wrong. There was a little-known deluxe folio
Pietro de Cortona, whose ‘bel colorito [beautiful use of version of the 1728 edition of Bellori’s Lives that con-
colour] he would not forget.13 This technique is evident tains a pair of sonnets exchanged by Antonio Roviglione
in Giordano’s altarpieces of the 1650’s in which, follow- and Bernardo De Dominici,‘Per laVita del Cavalier D. Luca
ing Mattia Preti, he ‘brought Neapolitan painting out of Giordano,’ and another sonnet by Nicoló Lombardo that
its fifty-year involvement with dark tonalities and with praises ‘Bernardo’ for writing the Life of Giordano.18
Caravaggism’ into the international mainstream of the This second edition of Bellori’s Lives represents De
late baroque.14 When Giordano was, he painted several Dominici’s first attempt to put Naples on the modern
altarpieces during his stay inVenice. During this visit, he cultural map of Europe.19 The objective was to demon-
was deeply drawn to painters such as PaoloVeronese and strate the relations between Giordano’s style and that of
their cinquecento styles. Giordano’s interest in the work sixteenth century painters like Veronese. Giordano was
of Veronese is emphasized in Bellori’s Lives. able to absorb the‘art of the present and the past as an open
field...’20 and transformed them into new experiences.
As an international celebrity, Luca Giordano’s unsigned
Life was added to Giovan Pietro Bellori’s Lives in 1728.15 13. Ibid, 117.
It was not Bellori who wrote this Life, instead the son of 14. Ibid, 117.
a painter that worked in Giordano’s shop - Bernardo De 15. Janis Bell,Thomas Willette, Art History in the Age of Bellori :
Dominici.16 Seventeen years later, De Dominici completed
a shorter, revised version of Giordano’s Life for the third Scholarship and Cultural Politics in Seventeenth-Century Rome
volume of his Vite de’ Pittori, scultori ed architetti napoletani. (NewYork: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 282.
The first published life of Giordano was considered by 16. Ibid, .282,286.
some to be Bellori’s work, but De Dominici claimed 17. Ibid, 282.
authorship‘composed by me in youth and brought forth 18. Ibid, 282.
in 1728.’17 Several historians have since discredited 19. Ibid, 289.
20. Colton, 118.
29
