The Gathering of the Manna

Between 1638 and 1640, Domenico Gargiulo frescoed the Cappella del Tesoro (Chapel of Treasure) in the Certosa di San Martino, Naples, and included a Gathering of the Manna in a lunette above the entrance (fig. 1). Publishing both paintings in 1994, Giancarlo Sestieri noted that the artist took an entirely different approach to the subject in the present canvas compared to that of the fresco, crowding the composition with grouped figures (loc. cit.). Despite its departure in composition, the canvas is stylistically similar to the San Martino painting, leading Sestieri to date it to around the same moment as the fresco and no later than 1645. The paintings share the same cool palette and golden light so typical of the artist at that time.

Gargiulo appears to have absorbed the influence of numerous contemporaries. The vast landscape and open sky are reminiscent of Claude while the naturalistic treatment of the trees and foliage recall Salvator Rosa, whom the artist would have known early in his career, from his time in the workshop of Aniello Falcone in 1628. In his slender figures, with their expressive faces and broad gestures, parallels can be drawn with those in the narrative paintings of Nicolas Poussin of the 1630s, which Gargiulo may have known firsthand.