M a t t i a P r e t i Taverna, Calabria, 1613 - Malta 1699 Solomon offering Incense to Pagan Gods & Esther and Ahasuerus Oil on Canvas, 204 by 318 cm PROVENANCE: Probably Pompeo d’Anna, Naples, before 1676; Count Otto Almeida, Castle of Mondsee (Austria) up until 1973; Private Collection, Switzerland EXHIBITIONS: Mattia Preti tra Roma, Napoli e Malta Capodimonte Naples, 1999, p. 190/191, catalogue edited by Prof Nicola Spinosa, entry by Dr Mariella Utili LITERATURE: G. Labrot, Collections of paintings in Naples, 1600-1680, 1992, p 131 Mattia Preti tra Roma, Napoli e Malta Capodimonte Naples, 1999, p. 190/191, catalogue edited by Prof Nicola Spinosa, entry by Dr Mariella Utili The story of Solomon worshipping idols at the end of his life is one of the morality tales of the Old Testament, illustrating how even the the wisest man on earth cold be drawn away from God: and this was the result of the influence of his wives and concubines. He had many of them, which was breaking God’s law, and he chose foreigners too, who worshipped idols, and they begged and persuaded him to take part in these rituals, and this is is the subject of this canvas. This is Solomon in all his glory, and would have been read as signifying that all his wisdom and riches were meaningless compared with knowing and obeying God. It is a scene of tremendous grandeur, with the spiral column from the Solomonic Temple in Jerusalem that would have been even more familiar from Bernini’s Baldacchino over the High Altar in St Peter’s. The setting behind the main figures, with the Roman statue that is one of the idols that King Solomon is offering incense to, provide magnificent perspectives that give a vivid sense of a theatrical space to the Neapolitan palazzo interior. These pictures would have been on their own above the benches of a reception room, with very little else to diminish the significance of the story. The Old Testament book of Esther records how this Jewish heroine interceded with her husband King Ahasuerus of Persia, sometimes identified with Xerxes He reigned in the 4th century BC, and having dismissed his queen, Vashti, because she had offended him, the King chose Esther to replace her, not knowing she was Jewish. Esther, an orphan, was ‘fair and beautiful’ and had been brought up by her cousin, Mordecai. The King's chief minister, Haman, an enemy of the Jews and personal foe of Mordecai, decreed that all Jews in the Persian Empire should be massacred, and Mordecai asked Esther to intercede with the King. To enter the King’s presence without being summoned was forbidden on pain of death, even if you were his Queen. This is the scene where Esther, dressed in her finest robes, went to plead the case of her people to the King and entered the Royal Chamber. Ahasuerus holds out his Golden sceptre to signify that he would receive her and Esther swooned with relief, while Haman looks on. Esther then invited the King to a banquet and her intercession on behalf of her people succeeded. This is the subject also of the large painting by Artemisia Gentileschi in the Metropolitan Museum, a work some fifty years earlier. In the tradition that Caravaggio contributed so much to, these illustrations of the complex setting s of the Old Testament were among those that were seen as most successful in bringing these ancient figures and narratives to life. We are grateful to Dr John Spike for confirming (verbal communication) that these pictures are fully autograph works of the early 1670s. Mattia Preti (also called Il Cavaliere Calabrese) came from Taverna in Calabria (hence his nickname) and his prolific career took him to many different parts of Italy (and according to an early biographer, to Spain and Flanders). Mattia Preti left Calabria to join his brother Gregorio, also a painter, in Rome. He met with such outstanding success that within a short time he had become one of the most authoritative southern painters of the second half of the seventeenth century. His early work includes groups of musicians and card-players, strongly Caravaggesque in style, but later he excelled mainly in frescos on religious subjects. In this field his main model was Lanfranco, whom he succeeded in the decoration of S. Andrea della Valle in Rome (1650-51). In 1653 he moved to Modena where he painted the frescos in the apse and dome of S. Biagio. The time he spent in northern Italy broadened his artistic culture further. He reached his fullest maturity and originality during the brief but very important period he spent in Naples (1656-60). The plague of 1656 carried off virtually a whole generation of artists in Naples. Preti worked with great success there, gaining many important commissions. They included a series of seven frescos commemorating the plague for the city gates; they no longer survive, but two modelli for them are in the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples and give some idea of how powerful the huge frescos must have been. During this period he turned out several of his masterpieces at a breathtaking rate. In 1661 he went to Malta where he stayed until his death. He alternated between painting altarpieces and frescos for the island's churches, including the cathedral of Valletta. From time to time he paid visits to his hometown, which, over the years, became almost a gallery of his work. Some of them still remain in Naples (Capodimonte, Palazzo Reale), but others, like the present works, went abroad, in particular to Austria, for after Archduke Charles of Austria conquered the city in 1707 there was a long period of Austrian hegemony that brought a lot of Neapolitan treasures to Vienna. These years in Malta were among his most productive, and he continued to work for important patrons in Naples and other cities throughout the peninsula. The patron was in all probability the rich Neapolitan merchant Pompeo d’Anna, who also had another work by Preti from the Old Testament, the Story of Dina (Genesis, 34, 1 - 31). This work was also included in the major retrospective dedicated to Preti in 1999 at the Galleria Nazionale di Capodimonte in Naples. Pompeo d’Anna had trading interests in London, Cadiz and Lisbon, and he had the post of Customs Receiver for the Kingdom in Naples, a lucrative position in a town that was perhaps the most important port in the whole of the Mediterranean. His palazzo was on the Riviera di Chiaia, and he had an outstanding collection of works of art, including, apart from the works that De Dominici (Vite dei Pittori napoletani, 1745) saw there, pictures by Matthias Stomer and Massimo Stanzione, and a great range of still-life pictures. The Neapolitan palazzo interior was a place of great splendour, and the reception rooms intended to impress the visitors, both the foreigners who came to the city with trade from ports like Constantinople, Lisbon, Cadiz and Cairo, as well as northern ports in England and Holland, would have been struck by the magnificence of their host. Malta was the place where Preti chose to spend the last forty years of his life, and yet he remained completely in touch with his patrons, who were often,involved in international trade as was the case with Pompeo d’Anna, and had a profound admiration for his interpretation of the themes from the Old Testament in which he really excelled. It is also true that some of these magnificent compositions, with their complex perspectives, their tremendous variety of figures in all poses, their vivid stage-like effects that made the events of the Bible come triumphantly to life, were painted with colours that have endured and are still as fresh as when they were first delivered. Dr John Spike in describing this singular evolution of his style and palette in these years, notes (La carriera pittorica di Mattia Preti, Rome, 1989, p. 43) that during the years in Malta Preti produced some of his most impressive designs with a relatively restricted range of pigments, producing some of the finest results since he had shown his ability as a colourist in his early career. Another patron who, according to the biographer De Dominici, had a canvas with the same subject as the Solomon was the Presidente della Razionale (from 1655-1666) in Naples, Antonio Caputo, but this was a smaller work which is described as an overdoor.

M a t t i a P r e t i

Taverna, Calabria, 1613 - Malta 1699

Solomon offering Incense to Pagan Gods

Esther and Ahasuerus

Oil on Canvas, 204 by 318 cm

PROVENANCE:

Probably Pompeo d’Anna, Naples, before 1676;

Count Otto Almeida, Castle of Mondsee (Austria) up until 1973;

Private Collection, Switzerland

EXHIBITIONS:

Mattia Preti tra Roma, Napoli e Malta Capodimonte Naples, 1999, p. 190/191, catalogue edited by Prof Nicola Spinosa, entry by Dr Mariella Utili

LITERATURE:

G. Labrot, Collections of paintings in Naples, 1600-1680, 1992, p 131

Mattia Preti tra Roma, Napoli e Malta Capodimonte Naples, 1999, p. 190/191, catalogue edited by Prof Nicola Spinosa, entry by Dr Mariella Utili

The story of Solomon worshipping idols at the end of his life is one of the morality tales of the Old Testament, illustrating how even the the wisest man on earth cold be drawn away from God: and this was the result of the influence of his wives and concubines. He had many of them, which was breaking God’s law, and he chose foreigners too, who worshipped idols, and they begged and persuaded him to take part in these rituals, and this is is the subject of this canvas. This is Solomon in all his glory, and would have been read as signifying that all his wisdom and riches were meaningless compared with knowing and obeying God. It is a scene of tremendous grandeur, with the spiral column from the Solomonic Temple in Jerusalem that would have been even more familiar from Bernini’s Baldacchino over the High Altar in St Peter’s. The setting behind the main figures, with the Roman statue that is one of the idols that King Solomon is offering incense to, provide magnificent perspectives that give a vivid sense of a theatrical space to the Neapolitan palazzo interior. These pictures would have been on their own above the benches of a reception room, with very little else to diminish the significance of the story.

The Old Testament book of Esther records how this Jewish heroine interceded with her husband King Ahasuerus of Persia, sometimes identified with Xerxes He reigned in the 4th century BC, and having dismissed his queen, Vashti, because she had offended him, the King chose Esther to replace her, not knowing she was Jewish. Esther, an orphan, was ‘fair and beautiful’ and had been brought up by her cousin, Mordecai. The King's chief minister, Haman, an enemy of the Jews and personal foe of Mordecai, decreed that all Jews in the Persian Empire should be massacred, and Mordecai asked Esther to intercede with the King.

To enter the King’s presence without being summoned was forbidden on pain of death, even if you were his Queen. This is the scene where Esther, dressed in her finest robes, went to plead the case of her people to the King and entered the Royal Chamber. Ahasuerus holds out his Golden sceptre to signify that he would receive her and Esther swooned with relief, while Haman looks on. Esther then invited the King to a banquet and her intercession on behalf of her people succeeded. This is the subject also of the large painting by Artemisia Gentileschi in the Metropolitan Museum, a work some fifty years earlier. In the tradition that Caravaggio contributed so much to, these illustrations of the complex setting s of the Old Testament were among those that were seen as most successful in bringing these ancient figures and narratives to life.

We are grateful to Dr John Spike for confirming (verbal communication) that these pictures are fully autograph works of the early 1670s. Mattia Preti (also called Il Cavaliere Calabrese) came from Taverna in Calabria (hence his nickname) and his prolific career took him to many different parts of Italy (and according to an early biographer, to Spain and Flanders). Mattia Preti left Calabria to join his brother Gregorio, also a painter, in Rome. He met with such outstanding success that within a short time he had become one of the most authoritative southern painters of the second half of the seventeenth century. His early work includes groups of musicians and card-players, strongly Caravaggesque in style, but later he excelled mainly in frescos on religious subjects. In this field his main model was Lanfranco, whom he succeeded in the decoration of S. Andrea della Valle in Rome (1650-51).

In 1653 he moved to Modena where he painted the frescos in the apse and dome of S. Biagio. The time he spent in northern Italy broadened his artistic culture further. He reached his fullest maturity and originality during the brief but very important period he spent in Naples (1656-60). The plague of 1656 carried off virtually a whole generation of artists in Naples. Preti worked with great success there, gaining many important commissions. They included a series of seven frescos commemorating the plague for the city gates; they no longer survive, but two modelli for them are in the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples and give some idea of how powerful the huge frescos must have been. During this period he turned out several of his masterpieces at a breathtaking rate. In 1661 he went to Malta where he stayed until his death. He alternated between painting altarpieces and frescos for the island's churches, including the cathedral of Valletta. From time to time he paid visits to his hometown, which, over the years, became almost a gallery of his work. Some of them still remain in Naples (Capodimonte, Palazzo Reale), but others, like the present works, went abroad, in particular to Austria, for after Archduke Charles of Austria conquered the city in 1707 there was a long period of Austrian hegemony that brought a lot of Neapolitan treasures to Vienna.

These years in Malta were among his most productive, and he continued to work for important patrons in Naples and other cities throughout the peninsula. The patron was in all probability the rich Neapolitan merchant Pompeo d’Anna, who also had another work by Preti from the Old Testament, the Story of Dina (Genesis, 34, 1 - 31). This work was also included in the major retrospective dedicated to Preti in 1999 at the Galleria Nazionale di Capodimonte in Naples. Pompeo d’Anna had trading interests in London, Cadiz and Lisbon, and he had the post of Customs Receiver for the Kingdom in Naples, a lucrative position in a town that was perhaps the most important port in the whole of the Mediterranean. His palazzo was on the Riviera di Chiaia, and he had an outstanding collection of works of art, including, apart from the works that De Dominici (Vite dei Pittori napoletani, 1745) saw there, pictures by Matthias Stomer and Massimo Stanzione, and a great range of still-life pictures. The Neapolitan palazzo interior was a place of great splendour, and the reception rooms intended to impress the visitors, both the foreigners who came to the city with trade from ports like Constantinople, Lisbon, Cadiz and Cairo, as well as northern ports in England and Holland, would have been struck by the magnificence of their host.

Malta was the place where Preti chose to spend the last forty years of his life, and yet he remained completely in touch with his patrons, who were often,involved in international trade as was the case with Pompeo d’Anna, and had a profound admiration for his interpretation of the themes from the Old Testament in which he really excelled. It is also true that some of these magnificent compositions, with their complex perspectives, their tremendous variety of figures in all poses, their vivid stage-like effects that made the events of the Bible come triumphantly to life, were painted with colours that have endured and are still as fresh as when they were first delivered. Dr John Spike in describing this singular evolution of his style and palette in these years, notes (La carriera pittorica di Mattia Preti, Rome, 1989, p. 43) that during the years in Malta Preti produced some of his most impressive designs with a relatively restricted range of pigments, producing some of the finest results since he had shown his ability as a colourist in his early career.

Another patron who, according to the biographer De Dominici, had a canvas with the same subject as the Solomon was the Presidente della Razionale (from 1655-1666) in Naples, Antonio Caputo, but this was a smaller work which is described as an overdoor.

V I E W D E T A I L F U L L S C R E E N