DOMENICO GARGIULO, CALLED MICCO SPADARO | AN UNWELCOME ADVANCE

Private collection, France.

"Micco delighted in documenting the less courtly aspects of his surroundings, in much the same way as the group of artists known as the Bamboccianti did in Rome. The note of humour, arguably not seen often enough in Italian baroque painting, is reminiscent of genre scenes from the Low Countries, and reminds us that sometimes paintings can be for nothing more than entertainment."

Edoardo Roberti

This unusual and informal scene is typical of Micco Spadaro's interest in depicting quotidian Neapolitan life, in which horses and mules would have been a constant. A similar detail is included in the lower-right corner of the splendid painting showing the busy marketplace in Piazza del Carmine (fig. 1), in the collection of the Fundaciòn Casa Ducal de Medinaceli in Toledo.¹

¹ B. Daprà, Micco Spadaro, Napoli ai tempi di Masaniello, exh. cat., Naples 2002, pp. 134–35, no. 55, reproduced.