A Philosopher

This enigmatic Philosopher has recently been rehabilitated to the oeuvre of the young Luca Giordano, having been inaccessible to scholars for fifty years. Although rejected in a 1992 publication by Giuseppe Scavizzi and the late Oreste Ferrari, both Scavizzi and Riccardo Lattuada, to whom we are grateful, have recently had the opportunity to study the painting in high-resolution photographs; both independently and unequivocally attribute the painting to Giordano (written communication, 2025). It is datable to the early 1650s during the earliest phase of the artist’s career, when his work is characterised by a close adherence to the dark, dramatic style and iconographic traditions of the Spanish-born Jusepe de Ribera, a leading exponent of Neapolitan painting and very possibly Giordano’s teacher.

Giordano’s work of this decade is led by his series of philosophers, scholars and hermits, clearly painted in tribute to Ribera’s famed series of the same subjects, examples of which were held in prominent Neapolitan collections. Prized for their enigmatic tenebrism and stoic naturalism, the subjects in both artists’ series have unidealized physiognomies, drawn mostly from live models. The figures are often depicted as beggars, in simple, ragged attire, or as scientists and scholars with attributes such as globes, scrolls and books, as in Giordano’s Heraclitus (Brescia, Fondazione Brescia Musei). The series testify to the broader intellectual currents of seventeenth-century Naples and Spain, where the figure of the philosopher was as much moral and academic archetype as historical figure. This was driven in part by scholars like polymath Giambattista della Porta (1535-1615), whose Della fisionomia dell’huomo of the late 16^th Century had a marked effect on contemporary discourse around physiognomy and human nature.

Further to endorsing the present painting’s attribution, Scavizzi and Lattuada have independently proposed the idea that it is a self-portrait: Giordano representing himself in the guise of a philosopher, in his late teenage years, looking out at the viewer and placing himself directly within the tradition established by Ribera. Another purported self-portrait by the young Giordano is the so-called Cynic Philosopher, also dating to the early 1650s (Munich, Alte Pinakothek).

Adding a further dimension to the dialogue around this arresting painting is the existence of a drawing, which Scavizzi and Lattuada consider to be autograph (fig. 1; location unknown, formerly with Colnaghi, London, 1979), and done in preparation for the present painting. The oil goes further than the study in evolving the details of the tattered pages of the volume held under the figure’s right arm and the tears in his clothing, and the parchment held in the painting bears an illegible inscription which does not appear in the drawing. The artist's spirited brushwork remains unresolved in some areas, leading both scholars to propose that the painting may be unfinished.