Mattia Preti (1613-1699)Mattia Preti was born in the small town of Taverna Calabria - hence the reference to him as il cavalier calabrese. His early biographer claimed he travelled to Spain and the Netherlands, apart from his visit to N. Italy. Yet his artistic basis was in effect laid in Naples where he received his early training with Giovanni Battista Caracciolo (d.1637) that accounts for his life-long interest in caravaggism. He moved to Rome where he met the Northern Caravaggists and, more importantly for his art, he embraced the new Neo-Venetian currents, as well as the illusionism and scenographic skills of Pietro da Cortona (d.1669), a great Baroque decorator.Stylistically Preti preferred to be eclectic, keeping his mind and eyes open to the lesson of the other painters' art such as that of Lanfranco, Guercino, Rubens, Reni and in Particular the opulent chromaticism of Paolo Veronese (d.1588). Mattia Preti ranks as one of the outstanding Baroque decorators of his time and in fact we find among his chief decorative works the impressive cycles in S. Andre della Valle and S. Carlo ai Catinari - both in Rome - as well as the cupola of S.Biago in Modena. Preti returned to Naples between 1656 and 1660 at the time when the city was laid waste by a violent outbreak of the plague which induced the authorities to commission the Ex-voto of the plague, the sketches for which are now held by the Capodimonte Museum Naples. He next undertook the great decorative cycle in the church of S. Pietro in Maiella completed in 1660.
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