Domenico Gargiulo

1609 – 1675

Italian painter and draughtsman. He received the nickname Micco Spadaro because his father was a maker of swords (spade). He was trained from about 1628 in the workshop of Aniello Falcone, where Andrea di Leone (d. 1677) and Salvator Rosa were also studying; de Dominici recounts that Gargiulo and Rosa painted landscapes in the open air in the Neapolitan countryside. His early works were influenced by Paul Bril, who in 1602 had painted landscape frescoes in the atrium of Santa Maria Regina Coeli, Naples, and by the vivid realism of Filippo Napoletano 's small landscapes. The latter arrived in Naples in 1627-28 and may have stimulated Gargiulo's interest in the etchings of Jacques Callot and Stefano della Bella. It is probable that Gargiuolo spent time in Rome where he became familiar with the landscape painting then in full flower. He worked for the Carthusians in Naples over a period of more than twenty years. He began in 1637 with two frescoes in the atrium of the church of San Martino. These were followed between 1638 and 1640 with a lunette in the so-called Tesoro Vecchio. In 1640-42 he decorated the lay brothers' choir in the Certosa di San Martino. Gargiulo was in contact with the German painter Johann Heinrich Schönfeld, who sojourned in Naples from 1638 to 1643, who was also indebted to Callot's engravings.

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