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MATTIA PRETI called IL CAVALIERE CALABRESE (Taverna 1613-1699 Malta)
" A Study of a Young man wearing a brown cloak and a straw hat"
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Oil on canvas
25 ½ x 19 ¼ inches / 65 x 49 cm
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| Provenance:
Private collection, Great Britain
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The truly striking and enigmatic figure depicted in Mattia Preti’s unusual work is clearly revealed as a man of the country. He gazes heavenward with rapt attention and calls to mind shepherds of the Annunciation or paintings of saints in ecstasy. He wears a beautifully rendered broad brimmed straw hat to shield his face from the intense golden sunlight of summer. The painting is a tour de force for an artist to whom the play of light and shadow meant so much. The question is whether the man is enthralled by some unusual celestial event or caught up in a moment of reverential devotion of some kind. Using an artistic vocabulary common in religious paintings, Preti here depicts a seemingly quite ordinary individual in simple contemporary costume. A key to understanding the meaning of the present work is the identification of the unusual object of gleaming metal the man holds - perhaps an hourglass or some instrument used for scientific observation of some sort.
Originally from Calabria in southern Italy, Preti went to Rome around 1630, sharing a room with his brother Gregorio who had arrived about two years earlier. Gregorio may have been Mattia's principal teacher, although they both also studied at the Accademia di San Luca. The first artistic influences on the young artist came from the followers of Caravaggio, particularly Bartolommeo Manfredi. Shortly after arriving in Rome, Preti produced genre and concert scenes with three or more figures and came into direct contact with the last works to be influenced by Caravaggio himself. These early paintings, which are undeniably Caravaggesque in feeling, link Preti's work to that of other young artists, such as Valentin and Vouet, who also came under the sway of the revolutionary approaches to light and naturalism adopted by Caravaggio. The choice of subject and the fact that the figures are arranged with a certain refined yet expressive elegance are evidence of Caravaggio's influence.
In Rome, Preti painted fresco cycles in Sant'Andrea della Valle and San Carlo ai Catinari. Between 1640 and 1646 he spent time in Venice, but would return to Rome in 1641-42, 1650-51, and 1660-61. He painted frescoes for the church of San Biago at Modena (1653-6) and participated in the fresco decoration of the Palazzo Pamphilj in Valmontone (1658-59), where he worked along with Pier Francesco Mola, Gaspar Dughet, Francesco Cozza, Giovanni Battista Tassi (il Cortonese), and Guglielmo Cortese. In 1641 he was granted knighthood by Pope Urban VIII, which earned him the nickname "Il Cavaliere Calabrese."
Although Mattia Preti spent much of his life elsewhere, he is traditionally associated with the city of Naples. During most of 1656-1660, he worked in Naples, and along with Luca Giordano, the other great artist in the city, extended the reputation of Neapolitan painting throughout Italy and internationally. By the time he had traveled to Naples in 1656, the dynamic styles of the later Emilian painters Guercino and Giovanni Lanfranco had infused his color palette with a bold new brilliance, while Venetian influences inspired his use of monumental compositions. His mature style, which reached its epitome in Naples from 1653 to 1660, is intensely dramatic, uniting a Caravaggesque realism and expressive chiaroscuro with the grandeur and theatricality of Venetian artists like Paolo Veronese and Tintoretto. This attractive style coupled with the loss of the majority of great Neapolitan artists to the plague, brought Preti to the forefront in a city in need of a fresh local leader. He influenced other Neapolitan artists such as Luca Giordano and Francesco Solimena with his dynamic and theatrical compositions. After four years of great success in Naples and several brief journeys to other cities, he settled on the island of Malta in 1661 to finish his prolific career. He completed over 700 works, an enormously high number for a Neapolitan artist of the time since the plague of 1656 tragically had robbed many of long careers.
Preti was fortunate to enjoy a long career and have a considerable artistic output. His paintings, representative of the exuberant late Baroque style, are held by many great museums, including important collections in Naples, Valletta, and in his hometown of Taverna.
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