CAVALLINO, BERNARDO

CAVALLINO, BERNARDO. — Painter, born in Naples on 10 December 1622, died there in January 1654. These dates, not deducible from documents but plausible, are reported 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., trained in art by Andrea Vaccaro, a direct student of the works left in Naples by Caravaggio and of those of Battistello Caracciolo, was soon drawn into the orbit of Artemisia Gentileschi and Massimo Stanzione.

A reworker of the chiaroscuro schemes of Caravaggesque origin, which remained the foundation of his pictorial culture, C. did not hesitate to draw instruction from anyone able to provide it, and studied, not without understanding, paintings by Tiziano, Rubens (according to De Dominici), and Saraceni (De Rinaldis). Thus, when he appeared on the scene of seventeenth-century Neapolitan painting, C. would seem truly to sum up the teachings of them all and to advance in his art above all by reflecting on the experiences of others—were it not that he immediately revealed himself to be endowed, as few others ever were, with an exquisite gift for transfiguring grace, an extremely refined taste for color, and, above all, a ready pictorial imagination, also evident in his gift as a narrator: qualities through which he truly surpassed his contemporaries.

Among his works are to 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, and numerous paintings in the picture gallery of the National Museum, in the Filangieri Museum, and in various private collections. Other paintings by him are in Rome, in the National Gallery of Ancient Art; in Florence, at the Uffizi; in the picture gallery of Lovere; in the Brunswick Museum; and in the gallery of the castle of Schleissheim near Munich, etc.