Andrea Vaccaro

The catalogue illustration is too yellow. The canvas has a recent relining which is stable, if a little stiff. There is restoration throughout, with the majority of the surface restoration (retouchings) in the dark areas of the background and the shadows of the flesh; the area beneath St. Andrew, for example, is extensively retouched, as is the long outstretched leg of the figure at the right. These retouchings tend to predominate in the lower half of the painting. There are some restored damages throughout and the upper horizontal margin has also seen some damage and subsequent repair. Sold with a gilt wood frame in good condition, with some minor losses.
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Andrea Vaccaro was one of the leading painters in Naples in the second and third quarters of the 17th century, and by 1635 he was exporting numerous pictures to Spain under the guidance of the Neapolitan Viceroy, the Duque de Medina da las Torres.  His naturalistic caravaggesque style was tempered by the elegance of Bernardo Cavallino, with whom Vaccaro came into contact in the 1640s.  This painting demonstrates the influence of Caravaggio, in its classicising naturalism ("naturalismo classicizzato") and use of chiaroscuro.  The biographer Bernardo De Dominici greatly praised the artist and even went so far as to suggest that some of Vaccaro's works had been mistaken for Caravaggio's.¹  Although many of Vaccaro's paintings are signed - normally with his recognisable monogram (as here) - few of them are dated or documented. This, together with the fact that he repeated certain compositions often (The Penitent Magdalene for example²), means that it is difficult to establish a clear chronology for his oeuvre.

This scene of martyrdom is entirely characteristic of the artist's works. The central figure of the saint is shown in stark contrasts of light and shade, and the secondary figures crowd around him rather like in the Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew in the Castle of Opočno in the Czech Republic.³  The soldiers conversing behind Saint Bartholomew are closer still to those standing beside Saint Sebastian in Vaccaro's signed Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, formerly in the collection of Sebastian de Borbón y Braganza, Madrid, and a similar date of execution in the artist's maturity for both works seems plausible.⁴

1  "Vaccaro, il quale, proseguendo la imitazione del Caravaggio ciò fece con sì dotta maestria, che infino a' nostri giorni alcune sue opere sono state prese per mano di quel pittore, e per tali comperate da' dilettanti": B. De Dominici, Vite dei Pittori, Scultori ed Architetti napoletani, vol. III, Naples 1742, p. 136.
2  Three replicas of this composition exist and are in Palermo, Galleria Nazionale, Trapani, Museo di Palazzo Pepoli, and Salerno, Duomo; for which see G. de Vito, "Appunti per Andrea Vaccaro con una nota su alcune copie del Caravaggio che esistevano a Napoli", in Ricerche sul '600 napoletano. Scritti in memoria di Raffaello Causa, 1994-95, pp. 121-23, figs. 49-51.
3  See De Vito, op. cit., p. 117, fig. 45.
4  Reproduced in N. Spinosa, La pittura napoletana del '600, Milan 1984, fig. 832.