The Senses as a Subject When Gregorio and Mattia Preti painted their first Allegory of the Five Senses in Rome during the 1630s, they were taking up a subject with a long history. Sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch had been represented individually and in cycles since the Middle Ages, and by the sixteenth centuryContinue reading “Mattia and Gregorio Preti: Two Allegories of the Senses”
Tag Archives: Mattia Preti
Games, Music and Light: Mattia Preti in Rome
Three secular paintings by Mattia Preti, all generally assigned to his early Roman career in the first half of the 1630s, form a closely related group. Both A Concert, c. 1630–35, now in the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, and the Concert in the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, generally dated to the early or mid-1630s,Continue reading “Games, Music and Light: Mattia Preti in Rome”
Luca Giordano (1634–1705) at the Casón del Buen Retiro: The Alegoría del Toisón de Oro and the Last Habsburg Court
Luca Giordano was born in Naples on 18 October 1634, the son of Antonio Giordano and Isabella Imparato. According to Maria Giovanna Sarti, his father was a picture dealer of Puglian origin and also a modest painter, and seems to have introduced him early to the practical world of painting. Although the sources report anContinue reading “Luca Giordano (1634–1705) at the Casón del Buen Retiro: The Alegoría del Toisón de Oro and the Last Habsburg Court”
