ANTONIO DE BELLIS | Saint Catherine of Alexandria | 安東尼奧・德・貝利斯 |《亞歷山大的聖加大肋納》

By family tradition, said to have been acquired by the present owner’s grandfather from Felix Boix Merino (1858–1932);

Thence by inheritance.

A.E. Pérez Sánchez in Pintura Napolitana de Caravaggio a Giordano, exh. cat., Madrid 1985, pp. 76–77, cat. no. 7, reproduced;

N. Spinosa in Ritorno al Barocco, exh. cat., Naples 2009, pp. 208–9. cat. no. 1.104, reproduced;

N. Spinosa, Bernardo Cavallino e il suo tempo, Rome 2013, p. 468, no. D27, reproduced.

It is only quite recently, in the 1980s, that Antonio de Bellis has come to be recognized as one of the leading personalities of Seicento painting in Naples and details of his life and career are still very scarce. His earliest biographer, Bernardo De’ Dominici, writing in the eighteenth century, praised his works highly: ‘...ad ogni modo si vede in essi l’ottimo componimento, con che sono ideate, il buon disegno, e l’intendimento di chiaroscuro, con belli accidenti di lumi’ (‘...in every instance we see in them the excellent composition with which they are conceived, as well as good design and understanding of chiaroscuro, with beautiful accents of light’).¹ This elegant portrayal of the fourth-century martyr Saint Catherine of Alexandria is a mature work by de Bellis, datable to the years around 1645–50, when he increasingly abandoned the vigorous naturalism of his earlier years for a more refined and formalized elegance. It was during this period that the early influence of Ribera and Massimo Stanzione - whose pupil De' Dominici tell us he was - was to be augmented by that of Bernardo Cavallino, resulting in some of de Bellis’ finest work.

It was after 1640 that de Bellis’ work first began to be more closely associated with that of Cavallino, and indeed the two painters’ work has often been confused since. The elegantly attenuated and exquisitely finished figure of Saint Catherine in this painting is particularly reminiscent of Cavallino’s work in the mid-1640s, such as the famous Saint Cecilia in ecstasy of 1645, now in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence,² or the Saint Catherine of the same date in a private collection.³ As Pérez Sánchez first observed, the sinuous almost serpentine line of the saint’s body strongly recalls the signed Saint Catherine of Alexandria by Francesco Fracanzano (1612–1656), another of de Bellis’ contemporaries in Naples, which is to be found today in the Instituto Nazionale di Previdenza Sociale in Rome.⁴ The two paintings are very similar in conception and it seems quite conceivable that de Bellis may have seen the Saint Catherine in the original. Although on quite different scales – the Fracanzano measures over two metres in height – both paintings share the same golden tones in their draperies, and reveal their authors moving away from the naturalism of Ribera towards a more refined elegance inspired by Stanzione, even if Fracanzano’s work lacks the additional elegance of line de Bellis drew from Cavallino. De Bellis continued this trend in other works from this period such as his Saint Sebastian tended by Saint Irene, which is thought to date to just before 1645,⁵ or the equally Cavallinesque Christ and the Woman of Samaria from the same decade in a private collection.⁶ The tapering fingers and the slightly theatrical gestures found in the latter as well as in the present canvas, seem to be characteristic of de Bellis’ work at this date. Spinosa’s later identification of the saint here as Saint Ursula seems unlikely given the presence just behind her chair, albeit in the shadows, of her normal attribute of the spiked wheel upon which she was tortured.

¹ B. De’ Dominici, Vite de’ Pittori Scultori ed Architetti Napoletani, Naples 1742 (1979 ed.), vol. III, p. 111.

² Exhibited Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art, and Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum, Bernardo Cavallino of Naples, 1984–85, no.44, reproduced.

³ Exhibited Naples 2009, no. 1.94, reproduced.

⁴ Exhibited London, Royal Academy, Painting in Naples 1606–1705, 1982, no. 55.

⁵ Sale, London, Sotheby’s, 9 December 1981, lot 13, and later with Galerie Hahn in Paris; Spinosa 2013, p. 455, no. D9, reproduced.

⁶ Anonymous sale (‘The Property of a Noble Family’), London, Sotheby’s, 10 July 2002, lot 65; Spinosa 2013, p. 463, no. D21.