The Blessed Virgin

religious

A highly refined work, this canvas by Cavallino clearly shows his intrinsic vibrancy and lightness of style. Figures and objects are subtly built up out of transparent layers steeped in light and almost palpitating with atmospheric currents. Weightless, except for the face inclined toward her elegant fingers, the Blessed Virgin seems to be made of the same material as the background sky.

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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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