Aniello Falcone[126] and Salvator Rosa, who is to be mentioned more at large elsewhere, are the greatest boast of this school, though Rosa frequented it for a short time only, and chiefly profited by the instruction of Falcone. The strength of Falcone lay in battles, which he painted in all dimensions, from the Sacred books, history, or poems. Countenance, arms, dresses were in unison with the national character of the combatants. His expression was vivid, the figures and movements of his horses select and natural, and his tactics correct, though he had neither served in, nor seen a battle. He drew with precision, everywhere consulted the life, and laid his colour on with equal strength and finish. That he instructed Borgognone is not probable. Baldinucci, who published the Memoirs of that Jesuit, is silent on that head; but they knew and esteemed each other. He had a numerous set of scholars, and with them, and the assistance of some other painters, contrived to revenge the murder of some relative and of a pupil assassinated by the presidial Spaniards: for, at the revolutionary hubbub of Maso Aniello, he and his gang formed themselves into a troop, which they called "the Company of Death," and, protected by Ribera, who palliated their proceedings at court, spread horrid massacre, till, scared by the return of order, this band of homicides dispersed, and sought their safety in flight. Falcone himself retired for some years to France, which has many of his works; the rest escaped to Rome, or sought the usual asylums of revenge and murder.
A numerous set of various but inferior artists, in power and pursuit, fills the remaining period of this epoch and the Neapolitan catalogues of art: the best of these issued from the desperate School of Falcone, to whose method they adhered in all their diverging branches. Of these Domenico Gargiuoli, nicknamed Micco Spadaro, a character as fierce as pliant, leads the van—no contemptible figurist in large, but of endless combination in groups of small proportion. The perspectives of Viviano Codagora, his sworn brother, receive an exclusive lustre from his figures. The battles of their fellow scholar, Carlo Coppola, might sometimes be mistaken for those of Falcone, had he given less fulness to his horses. Paolo Porpora left battles to paint quadrupeds, but chiefly and best, fish and sea-shells: in fruit and flowers he was far surpassed by Abraham Brueghel, who at that time had settled at Naples. Giuseppe Recco and Andrea Belvedere, from the same school, excelled in game and birds; and the last still more in flowers and fruit, so as to contest superiority in that branch with Giordano, asserting that no figurist could reach the polish, or give the finish required in minute objects. Luca maintained, that the more implies the less, and, composing a picture of game, fruit, and flowers, gave it such an air of illusion, that Andrea, shrinking from his presence crestfallen, retired among the literati of the day, of whom he was not the least.
After the middle of the seventeenth century, the revolutionary style of Luca Giordano[127] reversed every preceding principle, and, by the suavity of its ornamental magic, enchanted the public taste. A vast, resolute, creative, talent attended him from infancy: in his eighth year he is said to have painted, and not for the first time in fresco, two infant angels, for the church of Sta. Maria La Nuova.[128] Struck with wonder, the Vice Rè Duke Medina de Las Torres placed him with Ribera, whose principles he studied for some time, but, aspiring to a more ample theatre of art, escaped to Rome, followed by his father, Antonio, a weak artist, but an unceasing monitor, and the more relentless because he placed all his hopes on the rapid success of his son. To insure it, he did not, if we believe one writer, suffer Luca to intermit his labours by regular meals, but fed him whilst at work, as birds their callow young, perpetually chirping into his ear, Luca, dispatch![129]—Luca, dispatch! repeated his fellow-students, till the joke became nickname, by which he is oftener distinguished than by his own.
So brutal a method would have excited in a mind less vigorous nothing but weariness and despondency, but to the combining spirit of Luca gave with portentous velocity of hand the rudiments of that varied power, which, to a degree of deception, taught him to imitate the predominant air of every master's style in line and colour, which he was set or chose to copy,[130] and he had in nearly endless repetition, copied the best of what Rome possessed of its own, the Lombard, Venetian, and foreign schools, when he entered that of Pietro da Cortona, whose wide-extended and ostentatious plans met most congenially his own.
No single master's manner did he, however, exclusively adopt. His first works exhibit the pupil of Ribera, with evident aims at the energy of that style; his subsequent and best manner is marked by the beauties and the faults of Pietro da Cortona, the same contrast of composition, the same masses of light, with equal monotony of expression, which in female features was often supplied by his wife; a predilection for the ornamental splendour of Paolo Veronese distinguishes with less advantage a third class of his works—in this, stuffs are mixed with draperies, the tints are less vigorous, the chiaroscuro less decided, the execution heavier. It has been observed, that his works, when compared with the finished masterpieces of the classic schools, are little better than embryos, that he carried nothing to perfection, and that the delusive power alone, by which he united a number of jarring parts in one pleasing whole, can save him from sinking to the mediocrity which overwhelmed his imitators. But it ought likewise to be considered, what was the object of his exertions, and the end which he pursued;—they were, by conquering the eye, to become the favourite of the public, and he was made for both. Others see by degrees, arrange, reject, select;—into the fancy of Giordano, the subject with its parts showered at once; the picture stood complete before him. In colour, little solicitous about the dictates of art, or the real hues of Nature, he created an ideal and arbitrary tone, which represented the air of things without diving into their substance, and, content with absolute dominion over the eye, left it to others to inform the mind. If his method was compendiary; none ever knew better how to improve an accident to a beauty, and give to the random strokes of haste the look of deliberate practice. That he knew the laws of design, we know, but debauched by facility and the rage of gain, neglected the toil of correctness: hence likewise the superficial manner in which he often laid on his colours, diluted, unembodied, and unable to retain the fugitive imagery of his pencil.
Naples is full of Giordano—few, if any in so vast a metropolis, are the churches that want his hand. In that of the P.P. Girolamini, the Expulsion of the Venders is one of his most admired works; but the best of his frescoes, in which he seems to have concentrated his powers, are those in the treasury of the Certosa. The cupola of S. Brigida, rapidly painted in competition with Francesco di Maria, exhibits the first specimens of that flattering tone which baffled the learning of his rival, intoxicated the vulgar, and corrupted the growing taste. The admired picture of St. Xavier, of copious composition and the most seductive colour, was the work of one day and a half. Among the public and private paintings at Florence, the chapel Corsini and the gallery Riccardi are by the hand of Luca; nor was he unemployed by the Sovereign; and Cosmo III., in whose presence he invented and coloured a large composition with momentary velocity, declared him a painter formed for princes. He obtained the same praise from Charles II. of Spain, whom he served for thirteen years, but from the multitude of his works might be supposed to have served during a long life. There he continued the series of pictures begun by Cambiasi, in the church of the Escurial, on the most extensive plan, but inferior in style and execution to the frescoes of Buon-Ritiro. Of his oil pictures, that of the Nativity, for the Queen Mother, has shared unlimited praise, as combining with superior felicity of execution, a research and a depth of study seldom found in his other works.
Grown old, he returned to Naples, loaded with riches and honours, and soon after died, regretted as the first painter of his time.
Though Giordano did not propose his process as a model of imitation to his scholars, it may easily be guessed that his success made a deeper impression on them than his precepts, and that without previously submitting to the labours of his education, they attempted to snatch with the charms the profits of his manner. Hence a swarm of bold craftsmen and mannerists was let loose upon the public, who with gay mediocrity overwhelmed what yet was left of principles in art. Of these, his favourites were Aniello Rossi, and Matteo Pacelli, who accompanied him to Spain, returned well pensioned, and continued to live in obscure ease. Niccolo Rossi, Giuseppe Simonelli, Andrea Miglionico and Ramondo de Dominici, came nearer their master; and the Spaniard Franceschitto, as he had raised the hopes, might have excited the jealousy of Luca, had he not been intercepted by death. He left a specimen of his powers in the picture of S. Pasquale, at Sta. Maria del Monte.
But the best of his pupils, and heir of his dispatch, was Paolo de' Matteis, a name that ranks with the foremost of that day, not unknown to France or Rome; his chief abode was, however, Naples, where his frescoes are spread over churches, galleries, halls and ceilings; if unequal to those of his master in merit, nearly always produced with equal speed. It was his unexampled vaunt to have painted the enormous Cupola del Gesù Nuovo in sixty-six days, a boast which Solimene checked with the cool reply, that the work told its own tale without assistance: and yet it possesses beauties, especially in the parts that imitate Lanfranco, which excite wonder, considering the fury of execution. Nor, if he chose to work with previous study and with diligence, as in the church of the 'Pii Operai,' in the gallery Matatona, and in many private pictures, was he destitute of composition, grace of outline, or beauty of countenance, though little varied. His colour at the onset was Giordanesque; in the sequel he increased the force of his chiaroscuro, though not without delicate gradation of tints: particularly in Madonnas and Infants, which give an idea of Albano's suavity, and the Roman style. A school more numerous than distinguished by talent, contributes little to his celebrity.