The Holy Night (The Nativity)

religious

Maratti was the pre-eminent exponent of late Baroque classicism in Rome. The major inspiration for the present painting was Correggio's large altarpiece of the Holy Night with its striking nocturnal lighting. The painter has not only directly borrowed the pose and position of Mary and the Christ Child from Correggio's altarpiece, but also the youthful grace of the Virgin's features.

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About the Artist

Carlo Maratti

1625 – 1713

Carlo Maratti (Maratta) Italian painter, the leading painter in Rome in the latter part of the 17th century. As the pupil of Andrea Sacchi he continued the tradition of the classical Grand Manner, based on Raphael, and he gained an international reputation particularly for his paintings of the Madonna and Child, which are reworkings of types established during the High Renaissance. The rhetorical splendour of his work is thoroughly in the Baroque idiom, however, and the numerous altarpieces he painted for Roman churches (many still in situ) give whole-hearted expression to the dogmas of the Counter-Reformation. Maratta was also an accomplished fresco painter, and the finest portraitist of the day in Rome. He had a large studio and his posthumous reputation suffered when the inferior works of his many pupils and imitators were confused with his own paintings.

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