St Peter and Cornelius the Centurion

1640 · Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome

religious

Scholars agree on attributing this painting to Cavallino, and date it to between 1645 and 1650 on account of the studied poses, the academicizing tendencies and the visible influence of the German painter Schoenfeld, active in Naples from 1638 to 1648. On the basis of the identification of the standing young man to the right as the artist's self portrait, a dating to the end of the 1640's was also proposed. This dating is compatible with the apparent age of the "self-portrait", as Cavallino would have been just over thirty years old at that time.

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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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