(Cilento 1662–1728 Naples)
Lamentation of Christ
oil on canvas, 151.3 x 205 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private European collection

We are grateful to Erich Schleier for suggesting the attribution to Paolo de Matteis on the basis of a high resolution digital photograph. We are also grateful to Giuseppe Napoletano for confirming the attribution on the basis of a high resolution digital photgraph and to Riccardo Lattuada for independently confirming the attribution after examination of the present painting in the original.

The present painting displays the influence of celebrated compositional schemes from seventeenth century Italian painting such as Annibale Carracci´s Pietà in the Louvre, Paris and moreover the painting of the Pietà by Jusepe de Ribera also in the Louvre, Paris. The Ribera composition seems to have played a key role in the depiction of Christ’s body, as well as the figure of Nicodemus and that of Joseph of Arimathea. However, in the present painting Paolo de Matteis maintained a clearly individualised stylistic manner, as well as the pictorial style and physical types that are still linked to the works of the mature phase of Paolo de Matteis’s Neapolitan master, Luca Giordano, from around 1680-90. Lattuada has suggested that the vigorous brushwork and the strong chiaroscuro of the present painting allow a dating to around 1690, when de Matteis still oscillated between the reworking of Roman visual sources and the style of Luca Giordano, with whom he worked in Naples during the viceroyalty of Don Guzman de Haro, Marchese del Carpio, whose term lasted from 1683 to 1687.

Riccardo Lattuada intends to include it in the artist’s catalogue raisonné, on which he is working in collaboration with Giuseppe Napoletano, and we are grateful to Riccardo Lattuada for his help in cataloguing the present lot.

Provenance:
Private European collection

We are grateful to Erich Schleier for suggesting the attribution to Paolo de Matteis on the basis of a high resolution digital photograph. We are also grateful to Giuseppe Napoletano for confirming the attribution on the basis of a high resolution digital photgraph and to Riccardo Lattuada for independently confirming the attribution after examination of the present painting in the original.

The present painting displays the influence of celebrated compositional schemes from seventeenth century Italian painting such as Annibale Carracci´s Pietà in the Louvre, Paris and moreover the painting of the Pietà by Jusepe de Ribera also in the Louvre, Paris. The Ribera composition seems to have played a key role in the depiction of Christ’s body, as well as the figure of Nicodemus and that of Joseph of Arimathea. However, in the present painting Paolo de Matteis maintained a clearly individualised stylistic manner and the pictorial style and physical types that are still linked to the works of the mature phase of Paolo de Matteis’s Neapolitan master, Luca Giordano, from around 1680-90. Lattuada has suggested that the vigorous brushwork and the strong chiaroscuro of the present painting allow a dating to around 1690, when de Matteis still oscillated between the reworking of Roman visual sources and the style of Luca Giordano, with whom he worked in Naples during the viceroyalty of Don Guzman de Haro, Marchese del Carpio, whose term lasted from 1683 to 1687.

Riccardo Lattuada intends to include it in the artist’s catalogue raisonné, on which he is working in collaboration with Giuseppe Napoletano and we are grateful to Riccardo Lattuada for his help in cataloguing the present lot.