(Sarzana 1589–1669 Genoa)
The Mocking of Christ,
oil on canvas, 143 x 136 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, Tajan, Paris, 22 June 1999, lot 35 (as Attributed to Trophime Bigot);
art market, Genoa, 2002;
where acquired by the present owner

Literature:
A. Gesino, M. Romanengo, Excursus fra luce e ombra dell’attività giovanile e prima maturità di Domenico Fiasella, in: Studi di storia dell’arte, 18, 2007, p.126, illustrated p. 131, fig. 57 (as Domenico Fiasella);
A. Orlando, Il caravaggismo Genovese: Strozzi, Fiasella, Borzone, Assereto, Orazio de Ferrari e altre comparse, in: Caravaggio e i Genovesi: committenti, collezionisti, pittori, exhibition catalogue, ed. by A. Orlando, Genoa 2019, p. 225, fig. 23 (as Domenico Fiasella)

This depiction of the episode recounted in the Gospels is represented with intense realism and expression of emotion. Domenico Fiasella demonstrates his ability to combine Bolognese classicism with the innovations in lighting techniques developed by Caravaggio (1571–1610) and elaborated by the first generation of Caravaggist painters.

Domenico Fiasella’s rich cultural inheritance is demonstrated by his careful design, his masterful rendering of fabrics – best exemplified by the bright red of Christ’s mantle and the folds of the shirt of one of the guards – and the dark, foreboding setting, illuminated almost only by candlelight. His work belongs at the stylistic juncture between the most advanced developments of the first and second generation of Caravaggist painters, especially of Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, and the early seventeenth century Genoese figurative painters.

According to Orlando (see literature) the present painting may have been executed in Rome, or after Fiasella’s return to Genoa, since his use of the Caravaggist pictorial language continued long after he left Rome. The stylistic index, the nocturnal setting and the overall composition of the present painting is comparable to Fiasella’s Judith with the Head of Holofernes in the Musei Civici, Novara.