Mattia Preti

Bio

The primary source for the life of Mattia Preti is De Dominici’s colourful biography. De Dominici was the son of a pupil of the artist and from him we learn that Preti left his native Taverna in 1630 to join his brother Gregono, working as a painter in Rome. Longhi identified The Flagellation of Christ, in San Giovanni Calibita, Rome, as one of his earliest productions there. It is retardatory and betrays late Mannerist traits. His work quickly became caravaggesque in style, following the Manfrediana methodus, which can best be seen in a number of compositions of musicians and cardplayers. The neo-Venetian artists in Rome (Mola, Testa, and Poussin) soon attracted his interest and broadened the basis of his style and subject matter, as evidenced by The Triumph of Silenus (Tours, Musée des Beaux Arts) and the altarpiece of Saint Andrew in the Hofkirche, Lucerne. De Dominici adds that Preti was an outstanding swordsman and cut quite a swathe through Roman society, where he enjoyed the special favours of Donna Olympia Aldobrandini. In 1642 Urban VIII made Preti a knight of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem.

Preti’s movements in the 1640s are obscure. According to De Dominici, he went to Spain and Flanders, where he exchanged works with Peter Paul Rubens. This may be possible (though Rubens died in 1640), but there is no corroborating evidence. It is more likely that he travelled in Italy and had an opportunity to study Emilian painters such as Lanfranco, but above all Guercino, whose influence was profound and who (according to De Dominici) interceded on Preti’s behalf in a competition. He may also have visited Venice at this time.

By the end of 1650 Preti returned to Rome where, in the apse of Sant’ Andrea della Valle, he produced his great frescoes of the Martyrdom of St. Andrew which are situated beneath Domenichino’s celebrated frescoes. From 1653 to early 1656 he was in Modena, where he worked in the Duomo and in San Biagio.

In 1656, the year of a devastating plague which wiped out much of the population and many artists, Preti arrived in Naples, the city with which his art is now most closely identified. Here, inspired by the examples of Ribera and Caracciolo, he perfected his earlier tenebrist style adding all the experience he had synthesised from his travels. In the following decade he produced his greatest and most original works.

In 1660-61 he frescoed the Palazzo Pamphili at Valmontone, near Rome, and then he left Italy to settle in Malta. There his activity is somewhat mysterious, though he painted a huge cycle of pictures for the Co-Cathedral at La Valletta, provided altarpieces for many of the island’s churches, and exported numerous works back to Italy, in particular to his native town which he is documented as having visited in 1672 on the occasion of his brother’s funeral.