Battistello Caracciolo
Encyclopedia
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
artist and important Neapolitan
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
follower of Caravaggio
Caravaggio
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1593 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, had a formative influence on the Baroque...
.
Caracciolo was born in Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
. His initial training was with Francesco Imparato
Francesco Imparato
Francesco Imparato was an Italian painter of the Renaissance period, active mainly in his city of birth, Naples.Father of Girolamo Imparato. He trained under Giovanni Filippo Criscuolo, where he became a close friend and fellow-pupil of Fabrizio Santafede. He became a follower of Andrea Sabbatini...
. Caravaggio arrived there in late 1606 after killing a man in a brawl in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
. His stay in the city lasted only about eight months, with another brief visit in 1609/1610, yet his impact on artistic life there was profound. Battistello, only a few years younger than Caravaggio, was among the first there to adopt the startling new style with its sombre palette, dramatic tenebrism
Tenebrism
Tenebrism, from the Italian tenebroso , is a style of painting using very pronounced chiaroscuro, where there are violent contrasts of light and dark, and darkness becomes a dominating feature of the image...
, and sculptural figures in a shallow picture plane defined by light rather than by perspective. Among the Neapolitan Caravaggisti
Caravaggisti
The Caravaggisti were stylistic followers of the 16th century Italian Baroque painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. His influence on the new Baroque style that eventually emerged from Mannerism was profound. Caravaggio never established a workshop as most other painters did, and thus had no...
were Giuseppe Ribera, Carlo Sellitto
Carlo Sellitto
Carlo Sellitto was an Italian painter of the Baroque period.One of the most gifted followers of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio , Sellitto played an important role in the spread of Caravaggism to Naples and in the development away from Late Mannerism to a greater naturalism.The son of a painter...
, Artemisia Gentileschi
Artemisia Gentileschi
Artemisia Gentileschi was an Italian Early Baroque painter, today considered one of the most accomplished painters in the generation influenced by Caravaggio...
, and Caracciolo's pupil, Mattia Preti
Mattia Preti
Mattia Preti was an Italian Baroque artist who worked in Italy and Malta.- Biography :Born in the small town of Taverna in Calabria, Preti was sometimes called Il Cavalier Calabrese...
, then early in his career.
Among the earliest works showing the influence of Caravaggio was the Liberation of St Peter (1608–09), painted for the same church (Chiesa del Monte della Misericordia) and a couple of years after the master's The Seven Acts of Mercy
The Seven Works of Mercy (Caravaggio)
The Seven Works of Mercy , also known as The Seven Acts of Mercy, is an oil painting by Italian painter Caravaggio, circa 1607. It is housed in the church of Pio Monte della Misericordia in Naples...
. His painting became more polished after a trip to Rome in 1614, by which time he had become the leader of the new Neapolitan school, dividing his time between religious subjects (altarpieces and, unusually for a Caravaggist, frescos) and paintings for private patrons.
After 1618 he visited Genoa
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
, Rome and Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
. In Rome he came under the influence of the revived Classicism
Classicism
Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for classical antiquity, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clark observed, "if we object to his restraint...
of the Carracci
Carracci
There are several notable people with the name Carracci:* Agostino Carracci , Italian painter and printmaker* Annibale Carracci , Italian Baroque painter and brother of Agostino Carracci...
cousins and the Emilian school
Bolognese School (painting)
The Bolognese School or the School of Bologna of painting flourished in Bologna, the capital of Emilia Romagna, between the 16th and 17th centuries in Italy, and rivalled Florence and Rome as the center of painting. Its most important representatives include the Carracci family, including Ludovico...
, and began working towards a synthesis of their style with his own tenebrism
Tenebrism
Tenebrism, from the Italian tenebroso , is a style of painting using very pronounced chiaroscuro, where there are violent contrasts of light and dark, and darkness becomes a dominating feature of the image...
- his Cupid, http://www.whitfieldfineart.com/?cat=24 with its bravura handling of the red cloth, shows the influence of the Carracci synthesis. Back in Naples, he translated this into grandiose, wide-ranging scenes frescos including his masterpiece The Washing of the Feet of 1622, painted for the Certosa di San Martino
Certosa di San Martino
The Certosa di San Martino is a former monastery complex, now a museum, in Naples, southern Italy. It is the most visible landmark of the city, perched atop the Vomero hill that commands the gulf. A Carthusian monastery, it was finished and inaugurated under the rule of Queen Joan I in 1368. It...
. He also painted further works in Santa Maria La Nova
Santa Maria La Nova
Santa Maria la Nova is a church in Naples, southern Italy. It is located on the site given to the Franciscan order in 1279 when Charles of Anjou decided to build his Castel Nuovo , or Maschio Angioino, on the grounds of the order's original monastery, whence the name Nova .The "new" church was...
and San Diego all Ospedaletto.