GIORDANO - Holy Mass celebrated on the banks of the G.
(photograph by Anderson)
In 1692 he went to Spain and stayed there until 1702; he then returned to his homeland.
An artist exceptionally gifted with fertile imagination, with sureness of line and touch, master of every subtlety of craft, capable of reproducing the characteristics of every painter to the point of counterfeiting, G. in nearly 60 years of uninterrupted labor composed with dizzying speed - hence the nickname "fa presto" - a brilliant, pleasing output, devoted to scenographic decoration, to dramatic movement and to the architecture of masses, but tending toward easy effects and often lacking depth of thought. After his youthful Riberian production, one discerns in his works, from time to time, the decisive influence of Pietro da Cortona, of Veronese, of Rubens and of Lanfranco; and this happens without any order but through a bold re-creation that can only be defined as Giordanesque. The astonishing quantity harmed the quality of his production. Nevertheless, the selection of a dozen works can lead one to place G. in the foremost ranks of Neapolitan Baroque painting. The mythological scenes of the salon of Palazzo Riccardi in Florence (1682), the Expulsion of Heliodorus in the church of the Gerolamini in Naples (1684), the sumptuous vault of the grand staircase of the Escorial in Madrid, with the Exaltation of Philip II (1692-94) prove his gifts as a great fresco decorator. The Rubensian Judgment of Paris in the Federico Museum in Berlin, the monumental Martyrdom of St. Peter of the Galleries of Venice (1692), the Calling of Sts. Peter and Andrew and the Tribute Money of the Carthusian monastery of S. Martino in Naples (1704), the Jesus among the Doctors of the Corsini in Rome - the latter expressed in the so-called blond manner of Veronese taste - show his great possibilities in oil painting. But the absolute masterpiece remains always the vault frescoed with the Triumph of Judith, in the chapel of the treasure of S. Martino (1704), an airy composition, which constitutes the first essay of authentic Baroque painting in Naples and the starting point for the great decoration of the southern eighteenth century. L. G. was also a painter of portraits, of still lifes and of genre scenes.
He can best be appreciated in the beautiful drawings and sketches, where the impetuosity and freshness of his inventiveness appear more evident.