Pietà

1621 · Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome

religious

In the course of the restoration that followed the National Gallery's acquisition of this painting, the painter's signature came to light. As Stanzione styles himself as "Cavaliere" in the signature, we may date the work to after 1621, the year in which the painter was knighted. Scholars agree in assigning the painting to the earlier phase of Stanzione's career, to somewhere between 1621 and 1626.

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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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