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Lot Essay
In 1656, Naples found itself in a particularly virulent outbreak of the plague. On 10 June of that year, with scores of people dying and the city shackled with a quarantine, the Eletti, or syndics, of Naples, resolved to invoke the merciful intercession of the Madonna and of the Neapolitan patron saints; the plague soon broke. According to the legend recounted by his biographers Pascoli and De Dominici, Mattia Preti, then resident in Naples, was compelled to paint seven works for the gates of the city, as penance for having violated the quarantine against the plague, risking his life and those of others.
In personal communication with the present owner dated 15 April 2010, Professor Nicola Spinosa suggested an attribution to Mattia Preti, and subsequently confirming this attribution on the basis of first-hand inspection as a bozzetto relating to the commission by the eletti of seven large devotional frescoes by Preti, to be installed above seven of the main city gates of Naples, as a votive offering to the Madonna of the Immaculate Conception in thanks for the salvation of the populace from the plague of 1656. The instructions to the artist seem to have been very clear: each of the seven frescoes was to have essentially the same composition, showing, in the upper register, the Madonna and Child with the attributes of the Immaculate Conception, with Saints Francis Xavier and Gaetano (ultimately Saints Gennaro and Rosalia were included), and angels; and, in the lower register, scenes of the people of Naples stricken by or saved from the plague (for the story of the commission, documentary evidence of the frescoes and a discussion of their iconography, see J. Clifton, 'Mattia Preti's Frescoes for the City Gates of Naples', The Art Bulletin, LXXVI, September 1994, pp. 482ff.). Although the frescoes themselves are lost, having survived only in fragmentary state into the later modern period, two large modelli by Mattia Preti are known, both in the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples (127 x 75 cm., inv. nos. 84410, Q262 and 84414, Q265), showing the complete composition with the Madonna and saints, angels and the people below. No other record exists of the exact composition of the other five frescoes, but the present work may be an early preparatory stage for the lower register, below the Madonna, saints and angels, for one of the frescoes. The composition is strongly indebted to Nicolas Poussin's The Plague at Ashdod (Paris, musée du Louvre) of circa 1630-1631, which could have been seen by Preti during his Roman stays (documented 1643, 1646-1653); according to Flibien (Entretiens sur les...plus excellens peintres anciens et modernes, ed. Trvoux, Paris, 1725, IV, p. 20), between 1647 and 1649 the Plague at Ashdod belonged to a Roman sculptor named Matteo, probably the Carlo Matteo who worked under Bernini (see A. Blunt, The Paintings of Nicolas Poussin: A critical catalogue London, 1966, pp. 24-25, no. 32). The stylistic, colouristic and compositional qualities of the bozzetto speak of the fecund atmosphere of cross-pollination and influence between the many innovative artists working in Naples in the middle decades of the seventeenth century. The lively, agitated handling recalls that of Micco Spadaro, while the composition, with its multiple levels and crowded figures, echoes on a smaller scale.
In personal communication with the present owner dated 15 April 2010, Professor Nicola Spinosa suggested an attribution to Mattia Preti, and subsequently confirming this attribution on the basis of first-hand inspection as a bozzetto relating to the commission by the eletti of seven large devotional frescoes by Preti, to be installed above seven of the main city gates of Naples, as a votive offering to the Madonna of the Immaculate Conception in thanks for the salvation of the populace from the plague of 1656. The instructions to the artist seem to have been very clear: each of the seven frescoes was to have essentially the same composition, showing, in the upper register, the Madonna and Child with the attributes of the Immaculate Conception, with Saints Francis Xavier and Gaetano (ultimately Saints Gennaro and Rosalia were included), and angels; and, in the lower register, scenes of the people of Naples stricken by or saved from the plague (for the story of the commission, documentary evidence of the frescoes and a discussion of their iconography, see J. Clifton, 'Mattia Preti's Frescoes for the City Gates of Naples', The Art Bulletin, LXXVI, September 1994, pp. 482ff.). Although the frescoes themselves are lost, having survived only in fragmentary state into the later modern period, two large modelli by Mattia Preti are known, both in the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples (127 x 75 cm., inv. nos. 84410, Q262 and 84414, Q265), showing the complete composition with the Madonna and saints, angels and the people below. No other record exists of the exact composition of the other five frescoes, but the present work may be an early preparatory stage for the lower register, below the Madonna, saints and angels, for one of the frescoes. The composition is strongly indebted to Nicolas Poussin's The Plague at Ashdod (Paris, musée du Louvre) of circa 1630-1631, which could have been seen by Preti during his Roman stays (documented 1643, 1646-1653); according to Flibien (Entretiens sur les...plus excellens peintres anciens et modernes, ed. Trvoux, Paris, 1725, IV, p. 20), between 1647 and 1649 the Plague at Ashdod belonged to a Roman sculptor named Matteo, probably the Carlo Matteo who worked under Bernini (see A. Blunt, The Paintings of Nicolas Poussin: A critical catalogue London, 1966, pp. 24-25, no. 32). The stylistic, colouristic and compositional qualities of the bozzetto speak of the fecund atmosphere of cross-pollination and influence between the many innovative artists working in Naples in the middle decades of the seventeenth century. The lively, agitated handling recalls that of Micco Spadaro, while the composition, with its multiple levels and crowded figures, echoes on a smaller scale.