Page 32 - Luca Giordano - Liberation of St Peter

A YOUTHFUL WORK BY LUCA GIORDANO
CALLED LUCA FA PRESTO1

Naples 1634-1705

THE LIBERATION OF ST. PETER

Oil on canvas, 200 x 307 cm (79 x 121 in)

PROVENANCE: classes and the massed populace.’2 When Luca Giordano
began his career as a painter, Naples was no longer the
Mackenzie family since circa 1850; thence by descent. dynamic cultural centre that had previously attracted
la crème de la crème of‘modern’ painters, including Cavalier
EXHIBITED: d’Arpino, Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi and
Domenichino.TheThirtyYearsWar had proved disastrous
Fawley Court and museum, Polish Congregation of the for the Southern Italian peninsula, and its effects on the
Marian Fathers 1953-2008. economy were to be felt everywhere. Intolerably high
levels of taxation were introduced, which in turn resulted
MID- SEVENTEENTH CENTURY NAPLES in social unrest and provoked the Masaniello revolt of
1647-1648.An even greater disaster was to shake Naples
‘N aples was the second most populous in 1656 when the plague halved the population of the city
city of Baroque Europe. It was a major and the surrounding countryside. Victims of the plague
Mediterranean trading center forming included Massimo Stanzione, Bernardo Cavallino, Aniello
a vital cultural bridge between the Falcone and many other prominent artists, basically
Spanish Habsburgs, the aristocracy, the emerging middle destroying a still flourishing and diverse school of painting.
In short the Neapolitan School had become a mere shad-
1. B. De Dominici, Vite dei Pittori, Scultori ed Architetti Napoletani tells ow of its former self and the only surviving artists of note
us that the nickname came to be used when Luca’s father, in Rome were Domenico Gargiulo (called Micco Spadaro),Andrea
in the year 1650, pressed his son to make his drawings quickly by Vaccaro and Luca Giordano.
telling him “Luca fapresto”, so that more drawings could be sold.
Naples had never evolved from being a feudal society
2. C. Marshall, Economic Lives, forthcoming publication. Preview blog and in the latter half of the seventeenth century it had re-
http://www.culture-communication.unimelb.edu.au/about/ verted to an almost mediaeval socio-economic system
people/academic/christopher-marshall. consisting of a wealthy aristocracy and a poor populace.

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