Saint Paul

Born in Taverna in the south of Italy, Preti moved to Rome around 1630 to train with his elder brother, Gregorio, where he stayed until about 1653, before later working in Modena, Naples and Malta. The present work was presumably painted in Rome and was dated by John T. Spike to circa 1638-1640. As evidenced by its intense tonality and contrasting effects of light, Preti's style was heavily influenced by the Caravaggesque manner and was marked by a powerful sense of drama and expressive chiaroscuro.

At the time of the 2010 sale, Spike confirmed the attribution to Preti on the basis of photographs, and suggested that the painting may have originally belonged to a lost series of paintings of the Apostles, noting that this would fit with the young artist's close attachment to the work of Jusepe de Ribera, himself the author of multiple series of Apostolados (the most complete, dating from around 1630, is in the Museo del Prado, Madrid). These closely cropped, dramatically lit half-length figures are imbued with an intense human realism that is clearly mirrored in Preti's Saint Paul.