Mattia Preti

Neapolitan, 1613 - 1699

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Italian painter (1613-1699)

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Four men and one woman gather around a dead man who is dressed in a bright honey-gold cape and pointed hat, his stone-gray face resting on a stump or column in this dark vertical painting. All the people have peachy skin or light skin tinged with green. Shown from the knees up, Saint Gennaro, the dead man, twists and slumps to our right. On the stump, his eyes are closed and his lips parted. His hands are crossed at his waist and bound with rope. He wears a tall hat rising to a peak in the center. His cloak drapes over a white tunic, and red seeps from around his neck. On our right, a brown-haired woman is shown from the waist up, bending down in front of Saint Gennaro’s face. The light falls across the scene from our right, so her profile is in shadow. She holds a silver chalice in one hand and squeezes something, perhaps a rag or sponge, over the chalice with her other hand. A clean-shaven man with dark curly hair stands behind the stump. That man’s body faces us as he leans to our right and tilts his head down over Saint Gennaro, his shadowed face obscured. His left hand is under the dead man’s head and his right hand clutches his own chest. Behind the dead man and to our left, a bald, gray bearded man bends over and spreads his arms wide over and across the saint’s back. His brow is furrowed, and he looks at Saint Gennaro with deep-set eyes. Along the left edge of the canvas, a bald man with a hooked nose and large ears stands and angles his body to our right, his face in profile. He leans back from the dead man, his right hand holding a knife or sword with a bird-shaped hilt. The fourth man close to Saint Gennaro looks on to our right, from behind the stooping woman. The people gathered around Saint Gennaro wear clothes in muted shades of gray, brown, and white. The edge of a building rises up along the left edge of the composition. In front of a distant mountain to our right, more people are gathered, some with swords raised and others looking on with mouths gaping. One faint head, the face painted in tones of ash gray, peeks over the shoulder of the fourth man. Yellow streaks near the horizon also illuminate the undersides of heavy, dark gray clouds above.
Mattia Preti, The Martyrdom of Saint Gennaro, c. 1685, oil on canvas, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 2000.75.1

The Martyrdom of Saint Gennaro

Mattia Preti · c. 1685 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2000.75.1

A light-skinned, clean-shaven man sitting cross-legged on the floor nearly fills this almost square painting. His body is angled to our right, and he bends forward, using a knife to cut a block of dried tobacco leaves on a wood board. A straight-edged bowl is nearby to collect the flakes. The man’s head is unevenly shaved so is short on the side and bushier down the middle of his head to the back. He has a round nose, and his pink lips are parted. He wears a golden-yellow vest over a white shirt, the puffy sleeves roll up to expose the upper arms. A scarlet-red overskirt drapes across his hips over roomy slate-gray, knee-length pants. He is barefoot, and we see the underside of the toes closer to us. A scale and two roll-sized loaves of bread on a white cloth sit on the ground in front of him along the bottom edge of this canvas. Light falls across the scene from our left so the far side of his face is in shadow, as is the space behind the man. Only the top of the head of a second man, also bald, and a hand holding a long, glowing tobacco pipe are clearly visible in the shadows. The man lies with his head toward us, and his body disappears behind the other person.
Mattia Preti, A Man Cutting Tobacco, 1660s, oil on canvas, Patrons' Permanent Fund, Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund, and New Century Fund, 2023.19.1

A Man Cutting Tobacco

Mattia Preti · 1660s · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2023.19.1