The Ecstasy of St Cecilia

1645 · Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples

religious

This is the beautiful cartoon that Cavallino painted when he was blocking out the most important commission of his career, The St Cecilia Altarpiece now in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. The final version, however, does not possess the same freshness and immediacy as the cartoon. As this is one of his few works that we can date accurately, it forms an important watershed in his oeuvre.

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About the Artist

Bernardo Cavallino

1616 – 1656

Neapolitan painter. He was the most individual and sensitive Neapolitan painter of his time, but his career is somewhat obscure. About eighty paintings by him are extant, but only one is dated, St Cecilia in Ecstasy (Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, 1645; a modello is in the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples). Most of his pictures are small-scale religious works, peopled by exquisitely elegant and refined figures who evoke a feeling of tender melancholy. Their fragile sensitivity is in complete contrast to the earthy vigour of much of Neapolitan painting of his period. Cavallino trained with Massimo Stanzione, but his style has more in common with that of Van Dyck, whose work was fairly well known in Naples. He is presumed to have died in the plague that devastated Naples in 1656.

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