CAVALLINO, BERNARDO. - Painter, b. in Naples on 10 Dec. 1622, d. there in Jan. 1654. These data, not deducible from documents but plausible, are reported by De Dominici, the C.'s first biographer; his only signed and dated work (1645) is the St. Cecilia from the collection of P. Wenner in Naples.
The C., initiated into 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 remain at the basis of his pictorial culture, the C. did not hesitate to take instruction from all who could give it to him, and not without understanding he studied paintings by Titian, by Rubens (according to De Dominici), by Saraceni (De Rinaldis). So that at his appearance on the scene of Neapolitan painting of the 17th century the C. would truly seem to sum up the teachings of all, and to advance in his art above all by meditating on the experiences of others, were he not immediately revealed as endowed, more than anyone else, with his own exquisite transfiguring grace, with a most refined taste for color and above all with a ready pictorial imagination that is revealed also in his felicity as a narrator, qualities for which he truly excels over his contemporaries.
Among his works are remembered, in Naples, the Immacolata in St. John of the Nuns, The Denial and the 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 at the Uffizi, in the picture gallery of Lovere, in the museum of Brunswick and in the gallery of Schleissheim Castle near Munich, etc.