Lot 12: GIOVANNI BERNARDO AZZOLINO Last Supper

GIOVANNI BERNARDO AZZOLINO
Last Supper
Oil on board,

This picture is one of the most outstanding masterpieces of Giovanni Bernardo Azzo- lino, a painter of Sicilian origin but who trained and spent his entire career in Naples. Azzolino may rightly be considered one of the most important rediscoveries in art history in recent years, both on the basis of Bernardo De Dominici's account ("Vita di Giovan Bernardino Siciliano , pittore e scultore" in Vite dei pittori, scultori ed architetti napoletani 1742; published in Naples by Paparo, edited by F. Sricchia Santoro and A. Zezza, Vol. III, 2008 p. 229 et seq.) and thanks to more recent scholarship ( V. Farina, Al sole e all’ombra di Ribera. Questioni di disegno e pittura a Napoli nella prima metà del Seicento, Longobardi 2014 ).
The Last Supper is remarkable for its sharp naturalism influenced both by the extremely modern experiments of Ribera (who married Azzolino's daughter Francesca and was in close contact with his father-in-law) and by Azzolino's enthusiasm and interest in the classicism of Domenichino, as we learn from De Dominici who underscores this dual Caravaggesque and Carraccesque strain in the great Sicilian painter's work.
His grandiose development of still-life, his variety of expression and his perfectly poli- shed draughstmanship defining his individual images all come together to make this work a significant example of early Neapolitan naturalism which is utterly new and in- novative, depending only to a minor extent on the novel achievements of Caravaggio. Azzolino was a highly experienced artist who was also possessed of vast cultural kno- wledge. A comparison between the Last Supper and one of his most superlative altar- pieces of known date, his majestic St. Dominic Distributing Rosaries in the church of San Pietro Martire in Naples (published and thoroughly discussed in G. Previtali, La pittura del Cinquecento a Napoli e nel Vicereame, Turin 1978, p. 159, ) painted in 1640, prompts us to date the Last Supper to the same period, thus including it among the masterpieces of the painter's mature years. Still reminiscent in some ways of the great Flemish Mannerism of Teodoro d'Errico, at the same time it partakes fully of the great debate on modern painting being conducted in the kingdom of Naples.
cm 210 x 140

cm 210 x 140

Oil on board,