The Preaching of St John the Baptist in the Desert

religious

This painting is part of a series of canvases with scenes from the life of St John the Baptist which were executed for the Buen Retiro palace. Some paintings of the series were painted by Artemisia Gentileschi. Stanzione was one of the leading Neapolitan painters of the Caravaggio school.

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The Preaching of St John the Baptist in the Desert

About the Artist

Massimo Stanzione

1585 – 1656

One of the leading Neapolitan painters of the Caravaggio School. He was working in Rome by 1617 where he would have seen the Farnese Gallery by Annibale Carracci. His style is similar to that of Saraceni in that it is a more graceful and elegant form of Caravaggism than that practised by his fellow Neapolitan Ribera, although Ribera exerted some influence on him. Stanzione has been called the Neapolitan Guido Reni which aptly summarizes his semi-Bolognese classicism (e.g. his signed picture in San Francisco). He may have died in the great plague of 1656 in Naples. Most of his pictures are in Naples, but there are others in Dresden, Florence, Frankfurt, Kansas City, London, Manchester, New York and Sarasota Fla.

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