Page 35 - Luca Giordano - Liberation of St Peter
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Relatione adds that by the age of ten the young artist had authors and times. Christ Curing the Lame15 (National
completed a painting of a Cobbler’s Shop which attracted Gallery and Museum Alexander Soutzos, Athens) has
the ‘gathering and applause of the whole city’ and been Gothic style drapery as well as a variety of characters rem-
asked to paint the portrait of the viceroy. He had also iniscent of Brueghel. Here Giordano proves that he feels
painted a fresco with two beautiful angels in the church free, as he will in his later works, to combine compatible
of S. Maria la Nova in Naples while his father, who was elements from a number of sources with one another in
supposed to carry out this commission, was absent. order to enrich the scene. In addition to the paintings and
Although this may have been just a matter of oral tradition, drawings in a Northern manner, there are small ban-
it seems likely there is some truth in it. If the number of queting scenes in the Venetian style. These little canvases
works produced by Giordano by the time of the Relatione painted alla prima, such as Herod’s Banquet or The Wedding
was indeed 5,000, as it is claimed in the biography the at Cana preserved at S. Martino, Naples demonstrate a free
artist must have started painting at a very young age manner of the brushwork that constitutes the foundation
indeed! of his own art anticipating his later style.These ‘Venetian
works’ are quite amazing for their scope and diversity;
Essentially a self-taught artist who was at home both in some imitate Veronese with their silvery fresh colours,
Naples and Rome, Luca had absorbed the major stylistic some are painted with bold brushstrokes like Tintoretto.
trends of the past and present during the 1650s. Growing Another major component of this‘neo-Renaissance’ group
up in the shop of a painter-art dealer and probably educat- is the series of small scale compositions in a Raphaelesque
ed, as Pellegrino Antonio Orlandi12 reported , on the manner on which more will be said later.These works are
paintings his father traded, Giordano started by copying small and often what might be described as experimental.
the old masters and imiting them in a variety of different Considered in the past to be frauds or imitations, this quite
styles.13 Bruno Arciprete and other commentators have substantial group of paintings and drawings represents a
remarked that Giordano’s great variety of experimenta- serious meditation on art. The northern inspired group,
tion extended not only to styles, but to the very techniques for example, is an exploration of a type of art that Giordano
of the paintings themselves. During these years Luca used found particularly congenial.An intensely religious artist,
wood, copper and different types of canvas for support, Giordano appears to have looked to the northern Europe
and just as many ways to prepare the canvases as to apply
colour.14 A large number of Giordano’s surviving works 12. Pellegrino Antonio Orlandi (1660-1727) was an Italian writer and
today bear witness to his catholic taste and his fantastic art historian, author of the Abecedario pittorico.This was a
swings from one style to another. There are many paint- biographical dictionary published in Bologna in 1704 covering,
ings made in a Northern stylistic vein, primarily represent- according to its author, some four thousand painters, sculptors
ing the Passion of Christ, for which the recognized and architects.
prototypes were Dürer and Lucas van Leyden. Other
paintings followed a more contemporary style influenced 13. See V. Pinto, ‘Luca Giordano nelle fonti letterarie’, in Luca
by artists such as Hendrick Goltzius. One of his drawings, Giordano 1634-1705, quoted above, p. 470.
derived from Barthel Beham, indicates that his knowledge
also extended to minor artists and that his interest in this 14. B. Arciprete, ‘Alcune note sulla tecnica pittorica di Luca
type of material was not merely superficial. Some of the Giordano’, catalogue of the exhibition, Naples 2001.Técnica.
works in this vein also show a marvelous sense of narrative Pintura mural, Acts of symposium of 2008, ed. A. Úbeda de los
and an ability to combine ideas and styles from different Cobos, Madrid 2010, pp. 35-40.
15. O. Ferrari, G. Scavizzi, Luca Giordano, L’opera completa, Naples
1992, A597.
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