Luca Giordano

LUCA GIORDANO (Naples, 1634 - 1705).
"Holy Family with St. John".
Oil on canvas. Relined.
It preserves Italian frame of the seventeenth century in carved and gilded wood.
Signed in the lower left corner.
Provenance: Wells College Museum, Aurora (United States) and private collection, Madrid.
Measurements: 83 x 104 cm; 108 x 130.5 cm (frame).
Bibliography: Milkovich, M. (dir.). Luca Giordano in America. Memphis: 1964, p. 38.
- Ferrari, O. and Scavizzi, G. Luca Giordano. Naples: 1966, vol. II, p. 49 and vol. III, fig. 89.
-Fredericksen, B. B. and Zeri, F. Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972, pp. 85 and 554.
- Ferrari, O. and Scavizzi, G. Luca Giordano. L'opera completa. Naples: Electa, 1992, vol. I, p. 263, cat. no. A86.
-Sotheby's New York, Master Paintings & Sculpture: Part II, cat. exp. 29 January 2015.
Luca Giordano is one of the most relevant figures of the European Baroque. A prolific painter, his career developed between his native Naples and the court of Madrid, where he resided between 1692 and 1702. His early biographers indicate that he was trained in the style of Ribera, whose style he imitated during his early years. His ability to imitate and copy the old masters would lead him to imitate the style of Rafael Sanzio, as shown in some of the paintings preserved in the Prado Museum. His time in Venice and Rome is also evident in his work, especially with regard to Pietro da Cortona. A good example of this is this Holy Family with St. John, dated by Ferrari and Scavizzi around 1660. It shows the physical types of Cortona's paintings such as his Adoration of the Shepherds of San Salvatore in Lauro. On the other hand, the space with classical ruins in which the figures are inserted is related to contemporary paintings by Giordano as his St. Anne with the Child Virgin of the Church of the Assumption in Chiaia (1657) or Christ among the doctors of Bolognese private collection (ca. 1660). The painting was first documented in 1664 by Milkovich in the Wells College Museum in Aurora. It was also collected there by Ferrari and Scavizzi in 1992, who also studied it and dated it to around 1660."
Luca Giordano, the most outstanding Neapolitan painter of the late 17th century, and one of the main representatives of the late Italian Baroque.Painter and engraver, known in Spain as Lucas Jordan, Giordano enjoyed great popularity during his lifetime, both in his native Italy and in our country. However, after his death his work was often criticized for its speed of execution, opposed to the Greco-Latin aesthetics. It is believed that he was formed in the environment of Ribera, whose style he followed at first. However, he soon traveled to Rome and Venice, where he studied Veronese, whose influence has been felt ever since in his work. This trip was key to the maturation of his style, as well as the influences of other artists such as Mattia Preti, Rubens, Bernini and, above all, Pietro da Cortona. At the end of the 1670s Giordano began his great mural decorations (Montecassino and San Gregorio Armeno in Naples), which were followed from 1682 by other projects, including the mural paintings in the gallery and library of the Palazzo Medici Ricardi in Florence. In 1692 he was called to Madrid to carry out mural works in the monastery of El Escorial, where he worked from 1692 to 1694. Later he also painted the office and bedroom of Charles II in the Royal Palace of Aranjuez, and after these he undertook the paintings of the Casón del Buen Retiro (ca. 1697), the sacristy of the cathedral of Toledo (1698), the royal chapel of the Alcázar and San Antonio de los Portugueses (1699). However, royal commissions ceased with the arrival of Philip V in 1701 and the beginning of the War of Succession, so Giordano returned to Naples in 1702, although from there he continued to send paintings to Spain. Today Giordano's works are kept in the most important art galleries around the world, including the Prado Museum, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the Louvre in Paris, the Kunsthistorisches in Vienna, the Metropolitan in New York and the National Gallery in London.