Lot 33: Attributed to Domenico Gargiulo, called Micco

Attributed to Domenico Gargiulo, called Micco Spadaro (Neapolitan, 1609/10-c. 1675), "Fishermen in a Coastal Landscape with a Village, a Castle, and a Distant City", c. 1650, oil on canvas, unsigned, 35 in. x 46 in., in a later giltwood frame.

Note: A fellow pupil with the famous Salvator Rosa (1615-1673), with whom he painted landscape studies in the open air, Micco Spadaro was also strongly influenced by the tradition of Northern European landscape painting, as represented in Naples by the works of Paul Bril (c. 1554-1626) and Filippo Napoletano (c. 1587-1629); the latter's close association with the printmaker Jacques Callot in Florence probably occasioned Micco's interest in Callot-like genre figures, such as those in this painting. In 1642 Spadaro was commissioned by the Carthusian monks to fresco the prior's apartments in the Certosa di San Martino in Naples, on which he worked through 1647: two painted studies featuring hermit saints, for lunettes in that ensemble, survive in the Museo di Capodimonte (nos. 295 and 299). Those canvases are extremely close in composition and handling to this painting, as well as being similarly proportioned (at 25 in. x 30 in.; three other studies for Gargiulo's related cycle in the monks' choir are virtually identical to this size, at 31 in. x 42 in.). In particular, Micco's modello for the Saint Onofrio lunette (Capodimonte, Naples, no. 299) presents an almost exact reversal of this same scene, with the foreground figure beside a pool under a tree-hung bank; in the middle distance a low strand leads to a matching round-towered fort, approached by smaller figures; an identical headland closes the view. References: Bruno Molajoli, Notizie su Capodimonte (Naples, 1957 / 1964), pp. 54-55, pl. 82; Clovis Whitfield and Jane Martineau, eds., Painting in Naples, 1606-1705: From Caravaggio to Giordano (London, 1982), pp. 248-254, nos. 146-147; Oreste Ferrari, "Spadari, Micco," The Dictionary of Art (Grove, London, 1996), vol. 29, pp. 253-255