CAVALLINO, BERNARDO. — Painter, born in Naples on 10 December 1622, died there in January 1654. These details, not deducible from documents but plausible, are communicated by De Dominici, the first biographer of C.; his only signed and dated work (1645) is the St Cecilia in the collection of P. Wenner in Naples.
C., introduced to art by Andrea Vaccaro, studied directly the works left in Naples by Caravaggio and those of Battistello Caracciolo, soon being drawn into the orbit of Artemisia Gentileschi and Massimo Stanzione.
A re-elaborator of the chiaroscural schemes of Caravaggesque origin, which remain at the base of his pictorial culture, C. did not hesitate to draw lessons from whoever could offer them, and without lacking understanding he studied paintings by Titian, Rubens (according to De Dominici), and Saraceni (De Rinaldis). Thus, when he appeared on the scene of Neapolitan painting of the 17th century, C. seemed truly to summarize the teachings of all, and to advance in his art above all by meditating on others’ experiences, were he not immediately revealed as gifted with a most exquisite transforming grace, a most refined taste for colour, and above all a ready pictorial imagination that is also revealed in his felicitous narrative skill, qualities for which he truly excels his contemporaries.
Among his works may be recalled, in Naples, the Immaculate Conception in S. Giovanni delle Monache, The Denial and Liberation of St Peter in the church of the Gerolamini, numerous paintings in the picture gallery of the National Museum, in the Filangieri Museum and in various private collections. Other paintings of his are in Rome in the National Gallery of Ancient Art, in Florence in the Uffizi, in the picture gallery of Lovere, in the museum of Brunswick and in the gallery of Schleissheim Castle near Munich, etc.