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Lot Essay
This beautifully preserved painting depicting Charity is an important early work by the Neapolitan painter Luca Giordano. It combines Caravaggio’s dramatic use of chiaroscuro with the naturalism of the Spanish painter Jusepe de Ribera, with whom Giordano trained in Naples.
Of the three theological virtues, it is Charity, Saint Paul tells us, that is the foremost: 'And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity' (I Corinthians 13:13). The term 'charity' was widely understood as virtually synonymous with 'love', and to the Church, charity was both the love of God – amor dei – and the love of family or neighbors –amor proximi. By the beginning of the fourteenth century there appeared in Italian art an image of Charity as a woman nursing two infants, deriving perhaps from the tradition of the Virgin Mary as the Virgo Lactans. This became the standard representation of the subject throughout European art, evolving over the course of the Renaissance into an image of three or four infants surrounding a mother, who exposes one breast to feed them.
The present painting is a fine and rare work from an early phase in Giordano's long and prolific career. Identified as a work by the artist at the time of its sale in 2000 and subsequently published by Giuseppe Scavizzi (loc. cit.), the painting relates iconographically and stylistically to Giordano's Charity in the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence (inv. 1890, no. 5135), datable to circa 1665 (O. Ferrari and G. Scavizzi, Luca Giordano: L'opera completa, 1992, p. 281, no. A193; II, pl. 271). Scavizzi further notes the influence of Guido Reni on the young Giordano and the relationship of the present painting to Reni's Charity in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (fig. 1), where infants are similarly scrambling all over the seated figure of Charity.
Giordano was born in 1634 in Naples, where he trained with his father, the painter Antonio Giordano. Through the backing of the Viceroy of Naples, the artist entered the studio of Jusepe de Ribera. After Ribera's death in 1652, the young Giordano moved to Rome, assisting Pietro da Cortona with important commissions. By 1674 he had completed three altarpieces for the church of Santa Maria della Salute in Venice, where he absorbed the rich coloring of Titian and Veronese. From 1692 to 1702 Giordano served as court painter to King Charles II of Spain, decorating, among other important works, the ceilings of the Escorial, the Cathedral of Toledo and the Buen Retiro in Madrid. Used to working on a large scale and at speed, Giordano became known as 'Fa Presto' (meaning 'does it quickly') on account of his productivity and swift method of working. Following his tenure in Spain, Giordano returned to his native Naples a wealthy man, leaving the huge sum of 300,000 ducats to his son in 1705.
Of the three theological virtues, it is Charity, Saint Paul tells us, that is the foremost: 'And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity' (I Corinthians 13:13). The term 'charity' was widely understood as virtually synonymous with 'love', and to the Church, charity was both the love of God – amor dei – and the love of family or neighbors –amor proximi. By the beginning of the fourteenth century there appeared in Italian art an image of Charity as a woman nursing two infants, deriving perhaps from the tradition of the Virgin Mary as the Virgo Lactans. This became the standard representation of the subject throughout European art, evolving over the course of the Renaissance into an image of three or four infants surrounding a mother, who exposes one breast to feed them.
The present painting is a fine and rare work from an early phase in Giordano's long and prolific career. Identified as a work by the artist at the time of its sale in 2000 and subsequently published by Giuseppe Scavizzi (loc. cit.), the painting relates iconographically and stylistically to Giordano's Charity in the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence (inv. 1890, no. 5135), datable to circa 1665 (O. Ferrari and G. Scavizzi, Luca Giordano: L'opera completa, 1992, p. 281, no. A193; II, pl. 271). Scavizzi further notes the influence of Guido Reni on the young Giordano and the relationship of the present painting to Reni's Charity in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (fig. 1), where infants are similarly scrambling all over the seated figure of Charity.
Giordano was born in 1634 in Naples, where he trained with his father, the painter Antonio Giordano. Through the backing of the Viceroy of Naples, the artist entered the studio of Jusepe de Ribera. After Ribera's death in 1652, the young Giordano moved to Rome, assisting Pietro da Cortona with important commissions. By 1674 he had completed three altarpieces for the church of Santa Maria della Salute in Venice, where he absorbed the rich coloring of Titian and Veronese. From 1692 to 1702 Giordano served as court painter to King Charles II of Spain, decorating, among other important works, the ceilings of the Escorial, the Cathedral of Toledo and the Buen Retiro in Madrid. Used to working on a large scale and at speed, Giordano became known as 'Fa Presto' (meaning 'does it quickly') on account of his productivity and swift method of working. Following his tenure in Spain, Giordano returned to his native Naples a wealthy man, leaving the huge sum of 300,000 ducats to his son in 1705.