Luca Giordano (18 October 1634 – 3 January 1705) was an Italian late-Baroque painter and printmaker in etching. Giordano was one of the most celebrated artists of the Neapolitan Baroque, whose vast output included altarpieces, mythological paintings and many decorative fresco cycles in both palaces and churches. He moved away from the dark manner of early 17th-century Neapolitan art as practised by Caravaggio and his followers and Jusepe de Ribera, and, drawing on the ideas of many other artists, above all the 16th-century Venetians and Pietro da Cortona, he introduced a new sense of light and glowing colour, of movement and dramatic action. He was internationally successful and travelled widely, working in Naples, Rome, Florence, and Venice, before spending a decade in Spain.
Born in Naples, Giordano was the son of the painter Antonio Giordano. In around 1650 he was apprenticed to Ribera on the recommendation of the viceroy of Naples and his early work was heavily influenced by his teacher. Like Ribera, he painted many half-length figures of philosophers, either imaginary portraits of specific figures, or generic types. The St. Luke Painting the Virgin (Museo de Arte de Ponce), perhaps Giordano's first major work, in which the saint is a self-portrait, is reminiscent of Ribera's art from c. 1637.
Giordano was also attracted by Ribera's half-length paintings of philosophers, and himself painted many images of philosophers; the Crates (1660; Rome, Palazzo Barberini) is an impressive example of these dramatic and powerfully naturalistic works. The careful study of physiognomy and expression suggests that Giordano may also have been aware of the treatise De humana physiognomonia (1586) by the Neapolitan scholar Giambattista della Porta.
Giordano acquired the nickname Luca fa presto, which translates into "Luca paints quickly." His speed, in design as well as handiwork, and his versatility, which enabled him to imitate other painters deceptively, earned for him two other epithets, "The Thunderbolt" (Fulmine) and "The Proteus" of painting. He became also noted for his lively and showy use of colour.
About 1652 Giordano made his first journey to Rome. In Rome he absorbed the Baroque art of Pietro da Cortona, whom he may have met, and made many studies (in red chalk on red prepared paper) dall’Antico and after the works of Roman High Renaissance artists. In 1653 Giordano returned to Naples; in the late 1650s, drawing on his ceaseless experiments with other styles, he created an exuberantly Baroque style that brought new light and colour to Neapolitan painting. His Virgin of the Rosary (1657; Naples, Museo di Capodimonte) for the church of the Solitaria, Naples, is almost a homage to Mattia Preti, whom he admired both for his tragic grandeur and for his boldness and freedom. Yet the warmth of the faces also suggests the influence of Rubens, whose art he may have admired in the Chiesa Nuova in Rome and studied in private collections in Naples.
Rubens had a lasting influence on the work of Giordano, who expressed his admiration for the Flemish artist in his Rubens Painting an Allegory of Peace (Madrid, Museo del Prado). In 1658, the year of his marriage to Margherita Dardi, Giordano painted two impressive and celebrated altarpieces for Santa Maria della Verità, Naples, both of which glow with warm Venetian colour and light: St. Thomas of Villanova Distributing Alms and the Ecstasy of St. Nicholas of Tolentino. In a group of more restrained works, painted before 1660 and including the Calling of St. Matthew and the Calling of St. Peter (both Naples, Certosa di San Martino), the Feast of Herod and the Marriage at Cana (both Naples, Museo di Capodimonte), the influence of Paolo Veronese’s rich banquet scenes predominates, although Giordano may also have been interested in similar themes by Preti, such as his Feast of Herod (Toledo Museum of Art).
The lighter palette of two works from 1664, the Virgin with St. Joachim and St. Anna and the Rest on the Flight into Egypt (both Naples, Santa Teresa a Chiaia), suggests that Giordano had also studied works by Nicolas Poussin in Neapolitan private collections; the more tender sentiment draws close to the style of Guido Reni.
In 1665, the year in which Giordano joined the Neapolitan painters’ confraternity, he travelled to Florence and afterwards to Venice. It may have been on this visit that he won the commission for altarpieces for the Venetian church of Santa Maria della Salute. In the period between 1665 and 1676 he gradually transformed his long study of the art of Pietro da Cortona into a highly personal idiom in which various other influences are evident. The Assumption of the Virgin (1667; Venice, Santa Maria della Salute) clearly reflects Titian (as does the Annunciation, 1672; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art), while the Birth of the Virgin and the Presentation in the Temple (before 1674 according to Boschini; both Venice, Santa Maria della Salute) unite Venetian sources with the art of the Roman Baroque. In the Virgin of the Rosary (1672; Crispano, San Gregorio Magno) Giordano experimented with the style of Cortona, as he did yet more freely in his many easel paintings of mythological subjects, such as the celebrated Galatea (before 1677; Florence, Palazzo Pitti).
Yet Giordano's style remained varied, and he continued to produce pictures in the style of Ribera, such as the St. Sebastian Cured by St. Irene (Philadelphia Museum of Art) and the Assumption of the Virgin (New York, Hispanic Society of America). Giordano's imitation of Ribera's style reveals his sensitivity to the tastes of his Neapolitan patrons. In the late 1670s Giordano began a series of great fresco cycles. In 1677 he was commissioned to paint large frescoes divided by a heavy late Mannerist framework on the nave vault of the Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino (destroyed during the World War II).
His severely classical scenes of the Life of St. Benedict (1677–8) are treated as quadri riportati and are reminiscent of the style of Domenichino. There followed the St. Bridget in Glory (1678) in the Neapolitan church of Santa Brigida, inspired by Giovanni Lanfranco’s fresco in the Royal Chapel of the Treasure of St. Januarius in Naples Cathedral; the daringly foreshortened figures in Giordano's pendentives were intended to give a sense of depth to the very low dome. The cycle of the Life of St. Gregorio Armeno (c. 1678–9), in the Neapolitan church of the same name, moves away from the austere style of Monte Cassino, and the scenes are linked by a free compositional rhythm. The narratives fall between devotional history and legend and are deeply influenced by Cortona, both in their narrative style and in the light touch and transparent colour.
Even after Giordano returned to Naples, he frequently worked for clients in Florence, where his art was popular with such collectors as Andrea, Ottavio and Lorenzo del Rosso, the Sanminiati family and Pietro Andrea Andreini. Andreini visited Naples (c. 1678) and brought back to Florence a small group of works by Giordano, among them the Apollo and Marsyas (Florence, Museo Bardini), which spread his fame in the city. Early in 1682 Giordano himself arrived in Florence, having visited Rome, where he doubtless admired Giovanni Battista Gaulli's fresco in the dome and vaults of the Church of the Gesù. He stayed with the del Rosso family, who commissioned many works.In 1682–1683 Giordano painted various fresco series in Florence, including one in the dome of the Corsini Chapel of Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence. In this work he was again inspired by Lanfranco yet also responded to the recent work of Giovanni Battista Benaschi in Santi Apostoli, Naples, while the handling of the paint suggests Jacopo Bassano. The three oil sketches that Giordano prepared for this dome were retained by the patron (two Florence, Galleria Corsini).
In the same period Giordano won the commission from Marchese Francesco Riccardi (1648–1719) to decorate the library and the ceiling of the Biblioteca Riccardiana (Allegory of Divine Wisdom) and the long gallery of the Palazzo Medici Riccardi. The vast frescoes of the latter are contained in the 1670s gallery addition, overlooking the gardens. The planning was overseen by Alessandro Segni and commissioned by Francesco Riccardi. They include the prototypic hagiographic celebration of the Medici family in the center, surrounded by a series of interlocking narratives: allegorical figures (the Cardinal Virtues, the Elements of Nature) and mythological episodes (Neptune and Amphitrita, The Rape of Proserpine, The Triumphal procession of Bacchus, The Death of Adonis, Ceres and Triptolemus).