Giovanni Battista Caracciolo (called Battistello)

Bio

Battistello was the most important Neapolitan painter active during the first thirty years of the seventeenth century. At that time Naples was the scene of a major artistic and cultural revival and recent studies have shown that this was far more complex than hitherto supposed. In addition to being one of the earliest artists to adopt the revolutionary Caravaggesque style, Battistello was also one of the most original.

Bernardo de Dominici wrote his biography of the artist early in the eighteenth century and research has done much to reconstruct Battistello’s development, thereby increasing the number of paintings that can be securely ascribed to him. The publication of documents relevant to the artist have helped to ‘flesh out’ his career and to establish a more precise chronology while at the same time correcting some of De Dominici’s statements.

Battistello’s cultural roots derive from late Neapolitan Mannerism, and he collaborated with Belisario Corenzio. His first documented work was the monochrome mural painting in fresco with six small putti for the Church of the Monte di Pietà in Naples, where Corenzio was also working.

Not later than 1600, Corenzio made a copy of Caravaggio’s The Calling of Matthew (the drawing inscribed di Belisario is in Naples, Capodimonte), and it is therefore reasonable to assume that Battistello first became aware of the great Lombard master through Corenzio and in consequence had the occasion to study his work long before Caravaggio actually arrived in Naples in September 1606. Battistello’s altarpiece of the Immaculate Conception in Santa Maria della Stella, Naples, can be dated to September or October of 1607 on the basis of recently rediscovered documents. The painting shows Battistello’s intense interest in Caravaggio’s style of the late roman years and most particularly in his Madonna of the Rosary of 1605-6 (now Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum) rather than in any later period of Caravaggio’s development. Battistello would also have come into contact with the Caravaggist Northerner, Louis Finson, who was in Naples after 1604. From this point on Battistello interprets Caravaggism in his own particular way, elaborating his figures in a manner which is almost reminiscent of a revival of fifteenth century forms and exaggerating the contrasts between highlight and shadow, so that the luminous quality of his paint acquires a poetic quality which remains a characteristic throughout his development. This same Caravaggist luminescence may also be seen in Battistello’s frescoes, a medium which Caravaggio himself never attempted and indeed with which he positively refused to experiment.

In 1614 Battistello travelled to Rome and recorded that he met with Orazio Gentileschi there, together with the Veronese Caravaggist artists working on the Sala Reggia at the Quirinale Palace. On this same occasion he met the Emilian Caravaggesque artist, Giovanni Lanfranco, who was then working on the same project. In both 1617 and 1618, at the invitation of Marcantonio Doria, who had already commissioned work as early as 1610, Battistello made repeated trips to Genoa. In 1618 in Florence while executing portraits and religious paintings for Grand Duke Cosimo II, he would have met numerous Florentine artists, as well as acting as the go-between for the Grand Ducal Court and Michelangelo Naccherino, a Florentine sculptor working in Naples. In 1622 he returned permanently to Naples where he became the first artist with a modernised outlook to receive commissions in the Certosa of San Martino, where he continued to work intermittently for the remainder of his career. At San Martino he developed the mature style of his late period collaborating on the project with the sculptor, Cosimo Fanzaga, and also with Lanfranco, who had arrived in Naples in 1631. Battistello also worked with Lanfranco on the ceiling of the Oratorio dei Nobili. It has been suggested that, together with Caravaggio’s own paintings, the earliest and most Caravaggesque of Battistello’s works, one of which is in Seville, were to prove influential on the development of Diego Velasquez’s style.