Luca Giordano, called Fa Presto Naples 1634 - 1705

We are grateful to Prof. Nicola Spinosa for endorsing the attribution to Luca Giordano after first-hand inspection of the painting. Although not endorsed by Prof. Giuseppe Scavizzi, who has seen the painting only from photographs, an attribution of this picture to Giordano seems highly plausible. The plasticity of the figures and markedly Venetian influence, in both figure-types and composition, find parallels in other works by Giordano from the first half of the 1660s, and the fact that this painting is executed on a Venetian canvas would strongly suggest a date of execution in 1665, during Giordano’s six-month sojourn in the city. In his Vita of Luca Giordano, Filippo Baldinucci notes that in 1665 the artist travelled to Florence and then on to Venice, where he executed numerous works in the style of Ribera. This is corroborated by Marco Boschini who wrote in his Le ricche miniere della pittura veneziana (Venice 1674): “Veramente di questo virtuoso soggetto ogni giorni di più si accrescono le opere in Venezia sì in pubblico come in privato...ed è molto in universale gradita la sua contribuzione [Truly more works by this masterly figure increase every day in Venice, either in public or in private collections... and his contribution is very much enjoyed by all]” (cited by O. Ferrari, in O. Ferrari & G. Scavizzi, Luca Giordano. L’opera completa, Naples 1992, vol. I, p. 58). Indeed collectors of Giordano’s paintings are recorded in Venice before the artist’s arrival in the city: the Marchese Fonseca, for example, had already acquired two works by him in 1662 (op. cit., p. 50).

Giordano’s paintings from this period are at times not dissimilar to works by Giovan Battista Langetti, Johann Carl Loth or the young Antonio Zanchi, to whom some of his paintings were formerly attributed (see, for example, Giordano’s extremely “Venetic” David and Bathsheba in the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, datable to circa 1663 and attributed to Zanchi until as recently as 1966; O. Ferrari & G. Scavizzi, ibid., vol. I, p. 278, cat. no. A175, reproduced vol. II, p. 554, fig. 253). The most closely comparable work to the present painting is Giordano’s picture of the same subject formerly with Galleria Gebhardt, Munich, which is datable to circa 1663-5 (ibid., vol. I, p. 277, cat. no. A166, reproduced vol. II, p. 551, fig. 243). Although less dramatic in composition than the Munich painting, where Lucretia is shown in contrapposto stretching right across the picture space, Tarquin grips the dagger and forces himself on Lucretia in an equally violent manner, and Giordano has chosen to include a negro servant-boy - a motif borrowed from 16th-century Venetian artists, in particular from Paolo Veronese - in the background of both representations. Giordano’s use of chiaroscuro and the plasticity of his figures (note, in particular, the solidity of Tarquin’s right arm here) betray the artist’s Neapolitan roots and distinguish him from his Venetian contemporaries.