LUCA FA PRESTO

Luca Fa Presto

by Joan K. Yanni

Luca Giordano (1632-1705), painter of MAG’s recent acquisition, The Entombment, was one of the most acclaimed artists of the Neapolitan Baroque period. In its handbook, the J. Paul Getty Museum claims that, until Picasso, he was the most prolific artist who ever lived. His vast output includes mythological and religious paintings and altarpieces, and fresco cycles for both palaces and churches. Internationally known, he worked in Naples, Venice, Florence and Madrid.

The Entombment

Born in Naples, Luca was the son of mediocre painter Antonio Giordano, who probably taught him the rudiments of the art. He was innately talented. It is said that at the age of eight he painted a cherub into one of his father’s pictures. News of this feat was spread throughout Naples--perhaps by his father--and the viceroy of Naples recommended the child to Jusepe de Ribera. Whether or not the story is true, Giordano’s early work is influenced by Ribera’s use of dark color and drama.

His father subsequently took him to Rome to study with Pietro da Cortona and his circle. Subsequently, in the late 1650s, Luca’s style changed to the light, delicately colored canvases reflecting da Cortona and the vibrant hues of Veronese and Venetian art. The warmth of the faces in his later works recalls the paintings of Rubens, works which he probably saw in Rome.  In fact, he absorbed many influences in his travels, and could imitate any artist’s styles with ease. He often copied the works of Raphael.

In 1663 he returned to Naples.  Remembering the works he had examined in Rome and experimenting with numerous techniques, he began to abandon calm, classical naturalism and to paint in a lively Baroque style that brought new light and color as well as movement and action to his work. His figures moved closer to the front of the canvas, and elements in the composition moved in curving spirals. (Note the statue of Pluto and Proserpine, typically Baroque, in the Fountain Court. The figures twist and spiral upward, ending with Prosepine’s fingers reaching toward the heavens, pleading for rescue.)

Early in his career, Giordano was nicknamed Luca fa Presto, an Italian idiom that means “Luca go quickly,” or “Luca work fast”. Two reasons are given for the name. The first was that it was the result of his father’s incessant prodding, “Luca go quick!” when Giordano had numerous commissions and his father was in need of money. The other was the amazing speed with which he worked as well as his huge output. He was undoubtedly the chief of the Machinisti, as the popular quick-painting decorators of Italy came to be called. In addition, his colleagues and patrons were astonished at the

rapidity with which he covered vast ceilings, domes and walls with frescos.  The Spanish Viceroy, who had never seen such speed before, proclaimed Giordano was “either an angel or a demon.”

                                             

Giordano joined the Neapolitan painters’ confraternity in 1665, then traveled to Florence and Venice. In Venice he won the commission for altarpieces in the Venetian church of St. Maria del Salute and produced The Assumption of the Virgin and The Presentation in the Temple. Though he continued his use of color and drama in these works, he showed his sensitivity to the tastes of his Neapolitan patrons by using Ribera’s dark color in paintings done for Naples sites.

In the late 1670s Giordano began a series of great fresco cycles on the nave vault of the Benedictine abbey of Montecassino (destroyed in WWII). St. Bridget in Glory in the Neapolitan church of St. Bridget followed. Here his daringly foreshortened forms gave a sense of depth to the very low dome.  In Florence he won the commission to decorate the library and gallery of the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi. This complex composition unites  Allegory of Human Progress with Allegory of the Medici Family, the previous owners of the palace. While working on this commission, he found time to hurry back to Naples where he produced the astonishing Christ Driving the Money Changers from the Temple, a huge fresco covering the entrance wall of the Gerolamini Church. Here Christ is set against brilliant light at the center of a magnificent architectural setting.

In 1692 Giordano was called to Spain, where he became court painter. Charles II had declared that only the facile Giordano could tackle the huge ceilings and staircase of his Escorial palace. In the staircase, Giordano painted St. Lawrence in Glory, Adored by Charles V and Philip II, infinite space filled with light and tumultuous figures, the scene observed by the royal family. In the main vault of the monastery church at the Escorial he introduced a new sense of airy space by lightly sketching figures in the distance and concentrating more monumental figures around the edges of the composition. Giordano stayed in Spain for ten years.

He returned to Naples where his last work was the ceiling of the Treasury chapel of St. Martino. When he died in Naples in 1705, his fame was equaled by no other artist of his generation.

MAG’s major new acquisition The Entombment, created around 1650-53, pictures the placing of Christ’s body in a tomb after the crucifixion. The bright red cloak of St John in the foreground of the painting draws attention to the work and illuminates it. The only other light in the picture is the grey-white body of Christ.  Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus support the body and place it in a stone sarcophagus. The Virgin, at left, collapses in despair, while a woman--one of the Marys?--puts a comforting hand on her shoulder. Mary Magdalene, her long hair flowing over her shoulder, watches near the center of the picture, wringing her hands. Other unidentified women and men, shadowed, hover in the background. A large painting (115 1/4 x 79 1/2), it is a touching, emotional work.

Source: Grove Encyclopedia of Art, Catholic Encyclopedia, Google