GIAQUINTO, Corrado (Molfetta, 1703 – Naples, 1766)
Already in Naples at the age of sixteen, Giaquinto was apprenticed to Nicola Maria Rossi, then to Solimena. His spiritual master, however, was undoubtedly Luca Giordano, whose example opened the way for the young Giaquinto’s blend of Solimena’s spectacular, stormy, and three-dimensional world with more graceful forms, colours and clear, limpid backgrounds. Giaquinto lived in Naples until 1727, then moved to Rome where he befriended Sebastiano Conca. The frescoes painted in San Nicola dei Lorenesi (1731) reveal his love of the work of the great 17th-century Roman decorative painters as well as revealing the influence of the near contemporary Dalmatian painter Francesco Trevisani. In 1733 Giaquinto was in Turin on Juvarra’s request. He painted two frescoes in the Villa della Regina (Apollo and Daphne, The Death of Adonis). He also absorbed the influence of painters of the stature of Beaumont and Crosato as well as De Mura and Van Loo. His altarpiece in the Collegiata of Rocca di Papa, the Assumption of the Virgin, commissioned by Cardinal Ottoboni, is dated 1739, while his frescoes in San Giovanni Calibita in Rome are dated 1740–1741. Giaquinto left more evidence of his presence during his second sojourn in Turin which took place between 1740 and 1742. These include his two canvases in Santa Teresa (The Rest During the Flight into Egypt, The Death of Saint Joseph) and the fresco of The Glory of Saint Joseph. Back in Rome, Giaquinto continued to produce fine works, such as his paintings for the Ruffo chapel in San Lorenzo in Damasio, his canvases for the ceilings of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, (The Apparition of the Cross, and The Virgin Presents Saint Helena and Constantine to the Holy Trinity: the frescoes of Episodes from the Life of Moses were painted later), and in the frescoes in the Palazzo Ercolani-Borghesi. His masterpiece of these years is the Trinity with freed Slaves (1742–1743) for the high altar of Santissima Trinità degli Spagnoli on the Via Condotti, vibrant with sinewy naturalism, possibly prompted by Mattia Preti’s work in San Giovanni Calibita. A similar impulse towards monumentality characterises his Baptism in Santa Maria dell’Orto (c. 1750).
By this period, Giaquinto was a painter of international renown. His works reached every point of the Italian peninsula, from Pisa (Nativity of the Virgin in the Duomo), to Cesena (another very refined one on the same subject in the church of the Suffragio; the frescoes in the dome of the Madonna del Popolo in the Duomo), and from Naples to Apulia. In the ten years from 1753 to 1762, Giaquinto moved to Madrid where he achieved great academic honours (appointed director of the Academia de San Fernando) as well as professional ones (as supervisor of the royal tapestry manufactory in Madrid). Here, Giaquinto also displayed his ability to work at great speed and still produce astounding results: in 1755, for example, he frescoed the Royal Chapel in the Royal Palace, painted seven canvases for the Palace of Aranjuez, supplied further canvases for the Salesian convent in Madrid (he frescoed the vault and dome of its church after 1758), and finally painted the famous frescoes in the Royal Palace depicting The Birth of the Sun in the Hall of the Columns, and Spain Saluting Religion and the Church on the staircase. Giaquinto had an enormous influence on Spanish painters, particularly the young Goya. Back in Naples from 1762 onward, his work was also important for Neapolitan artists, particularly by those with more academic leanings who sought to emulate the moderate classicism and formal elegance attained that had been achieved by the artist as a result of studious application.
Roberto Contini
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