GIORDANO A FAVORITE AT COURT.
No painter, not even Titian himself, was more caressed at court, than Giordano. Not only Charles II., but Philip V., delighted to do him honor, and treated him with extraordinary favor and familiarity. His brilliant success is said to have shortened the life of Claudio Coello, the ablest of his Castilian rivals. According to Dominici, that painter, jealous of Giordano, and desirous of impairing his credit at the court of Spain, challenged him to paint in competition with him in the presence of the King, a large composition fifteen palms high, representing the Archangel Michael vanquishing Satan. Giordano at once accepted the challenge, and in little more than three hours, produced a work which not only amazed and delighted the royal judge, but confounded poor Coello. "Look you, man," said the King to the discomfited Spaniard, and pointing to Luca Fa-presto, "there stands the best painter in Naples, Spain, and the whole world; verily, he is a painter for a King."
Both Charles and Queen Mariana of Neuberg, sat several times to Giordano for their portraits. They were never weary of visiting his studio, and took great pleasure in his lively conversation, and exhibitions of artistic skill. One day, the Queen questioned him curiously about the personal appearance of his wife, who she had learned was very beautiful. Giordano dashed off the portrait of his Cara Sposa, and cut short her interrogation by saying, "Here, Madame, is your Majesty's most humble servant herself," an effort of skill and memory, which struck the Queen as something so wonderful as to require a particular mark of her approbation,—she accordingly "sent to the Donna Margarita a string of pearls from the neck of her most gracious sovereign." Giordano would sometimes amuse the royal pair, by laying on his colors with his fingers and thumb, instead of brushes. In this manner, says Palomino, he executed a tolerable portrait of Don Francisco Filipin, a feat over which the monarch rejoiced with almost boyish transport. "It seemed to him as if he was carried back to that delightful night when he first saw his beautiful Maria Louisa dance a saraband at the ball of Don Pedro of Aragon. His satisfaction found vent in a mark of favor which not a little disconcerted the recipient. Removing the sculpel which the artist had permission to wear in the royal presence, he kissed him on the crown of the head, pronounced him a prodigy, and desired him to execute in the same digital style, a picture of St. Francis of Assisi for the Queen." Charles, on another occasion, complimented the artist, by saying, "If, as a King I am greater than Luca, Luca as a man wonderfully gifted by God, is greater than myself," a sentiment altogether novel for a powerful monarch of the 17th century. The Queen mother, Mariana of Austria, was equally an admirer of the fortunate artist. On occasion of his painting for her apartment a picture of the Nativity of our Lord, she presented him with a rich jewel and a diamond ring of great value, from her own imperial finger. It was thus, doubtless, that he obtained the rich jewels which astonished Palomino, and not by purchase. Charles II., dying in 1700, Giordano continued for a time in the service of his successor Philip V., who treated him with the same marked favor, and commissioned him to paint a series of pictures as a present to his grandfather, Louis XIV., of France.