''Saint Nicholas'' is a c. 1653 painting by

Mattia Preti Mattia Preti (24 February 1613 – 3 January 1699) was an Italian Baroque artist who worked in Italy and Malta. He was appointed a Member of the Order of Saint John. Life Born in the small town of Taverna in Calabria, Preti was called ''Il Ca ...

, the first work he produced after moving to

Naples Naples ( ; ; ) is the Regions of Italy, regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 908,082 within the city's administrative limits as of 2025, while its Metropolitan City of N ...

and showing the three gold balls which are a traditional attribute of the saint. It is now in the

Museo nazionale di Capodimonte Museo di Capodimonte is an art museum located in the Palace of Capodimonte, a grand Bourbon palazzo in Naples, Italy designed by Giovanni Antonio Medrano. The museum is the prime repository of Neapolitan painting and decorative art, with sever ...

in the same city. Nicola Spinosa, ''Mattia Preti. Tra Roma, Napoli e Malta'', Napoli, Electa, 1999, ISBN 978-8851001292., p. 128. He also produced a larger version of the work in 1657 which is now in the Pinacoteca civica in

Fano Fano () is a city and ''comune'' of the province of Pesaro and Urbino in the Marche region of Italy. It is a beach resort southeast of Pesaro, located where the ''Via Flaminia'' reaches the Adriatic Sea. It is the third city in the region by pop ...

, with an early copy after the Capodimonte version now in the church of Santa Teresa degli Scalzi in Naples.

History

The first archival reference to the work is in a document dated 20 December 1653 in which Isabella Gallo pays the artist 40

ducat The ducat ( ) coin was used as a trade coin in Europe from the later Middle Ages to the 19th century. Its most familiar version, the gold ducat or sequin containing around of 98.6% fine gold, originated in Venice in 1284 and gained wide inter ...

s to settle a fee (agreed at a total of 50 ducats) for a painting of

Nicholas of Bari Saint Nicholas of Myra (traditionally 15 March 270 – 6 December 343), also known as Nicholas of Bari, was an early Christian bishop of Greeks, Greek descent from the maritime city of Patara (Lycia), Patara in Anatolia (in modern-day Antalya ...

. She wanted the painting for the church of San Domenico Soriano, the centre of the

Calabria Calabria is a Regions of Italy, region in Southern Italy. It is a peninsula bordered by the region Basilicata to the north, the Ionian Sea to the east, the Strait of Messina to the southwest, which separates it from Sicily, and the Tyrrhenian S ...

n community in Naples and a church for which Preti also painted dome frescoes, destroyed during the 19th century. It was placed in the Gallo-Coscia chapel, which was dedicated to Saint Nicholas and had been bought for 150 ducats by Isabella on the death of her husband Domenico Coscia, a native of

Catanzaro Catanzaro (; or ; ), also known as the "City of the two Seas" (), is an Italian city of 86,183 inhabitants (2020), the capital of the Calabria region and of its province and the second most populated comune of the region, behind Reggio Calabr ...

. When the religious order was suppressed in 1806, the work and Preti's ''

Saint John the Baptist John the Baptist ( – ) was a Jewish preacher active in the area of the Jordan River in the early first century AD. He is also known as Saint John the Forerunner in Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy, John the Immerser in some Baptist ...

'' and ''

Judith and Holofernes Judith and Holofernes may refer to: * Judith beheading Holofernes, a biblical episode from the deuterocanonical Book of Judith, often shown in art ''Judith and Holofernes'' or ''Judith with the Head of Holofernes'' may also refer to: Artworks 15t ...

'' from the same church were added to the Real Museo Borbonico in the Palazzo dei Regi Studi (on what is now the site of the National Archaeological Museum of Naples). In 1843 the ''Saint Nicholas'' was engraved and published in all the guidebooks to the city, becoming one of the best-known works in the Bourbon collections. It was highly appreciated by 19th and 20th century art historians and painters, who praised its

chiaroscuro In art, chiaroscuro ( , ; ) is the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition. It is also a technical term used by artists and art historians for the use of contrasts of light to ach ...

Roberto Longhi Roberto Longhi (28 December 1890 – 3 June 1970) was an Italian academic, art historian, and curator. The main subjects of his studies were the painters Caravaggio and Piero della Francesca. Early life and career Longhi was born in December 1 ...

wrote of it "Preti's creation is the harmonic outcropping of mass along main planes of light".

References

Bibliography

* Nicola Spinosa, ''Mattia Preti. Tra Roma, Napoli e Malta'', Napoli, Electa, 1999, ISBN 978-8851001292. * N. Spinosa, ''Pittura del Seicento a Napoli - da Mattia Preti a Luca Giordano, natura in posa'', Napoli, Arte'm, 2010. {{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Nicholas Paintings in the Museo di Capodimonte 1653 paintings Paintings by Mattia Preti Paintings of Saint Nicholas