Bernardo Cavallino

N. Spinosa, 'Altre aggiunte a Bernardo Cavallino e ad Antonio De Bellis', in Studi in Onore di Maria Pia Di Dario Guida, G. Bongiovanni, G. De Marco and M.K. Guida (eds), Naples 2022, n.p., reproduced fig. 2.

Unknown until its recent rediscovery, this depiction of the Virgin and Child has been identified by Prof. Nicola Spinosa as an early work by Bernardo Cavallino. Datable to circa 1640, this picture is characteristic of the artists' transitional style displaying the influences of his contemporaries Aniello Falcone ( 1600–1656) and Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1653), with whom he collaborated a couple of years earlier on the monumental Lot and His Daughters now in the Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio.¹

Capturing both figures in a moment of tender exchange heightened by the intimate scale of the canvas, this work bears close stylistic similarities with the artist’s Saint Dorothy (Private collection), notably in the pose of the Virgin and the rendering of the draperies.² It can also be associated with The Dream of Saint Joseph (Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie, Warsaw), whose figure models are directly comparable.³

¹ http://emuseum.toledomuseum.org/objects/55087/lot-and-his-daughters?ctx=9e4b859a-6c8e-439e-a5a0-79a635c2e240&idx=0

² N. Spinosa, Grazia e tenerezza 'in posa'. Bernardo Cavalllino e il suo tempo 1616 –1656, Rome 2013, p. 316, no. 52, reproduced; http://catalogo.fondazionezeri.unibo.it/scheda/opera/54408/Cavallino%20Bernardo%2C%20Santa%20Dorotea

³ Spinosa 2013, p. 327, no. 63, reproduced; https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Cavallino_Dream_of_Saint_Joseph.jpg