Battistello Caracciolo

Giovanni Battista Caracciolo (also called Battistello) (1578–1635) was an Italian artist and important Neapolitan follower of Caravaggio. He was a member of the murderous Cabal of Naples, with Belisario Corenzio and Jusepe de Ribera, who were rumoured to have poisoned and disappeared their competition for painting contracts.

Early life The only substantial early source of biography is Bernardo de' Dominici's unreliable publication of 1742. De Dominici's statements are often contradicted by documented facts and others cannot be substantiated independently. Archival documents state that Caracciolo was born in Naples and baptised on 7 December 1578, as the son of Cesare Caracciolo and his wife Elena. The family lived in the parish of San Giovanni Maggiore. Caravaggio had fled there after killing a man in a brawl in Rome, and he arrived at the end of September or beginning of October 1606. His stay in the city lasted only about eight months, with another brief visit in 1609/1610 leading to his 1610–1615 Baptism of Christ, yet his impact on artistic life there was profound.

Caracciolo, only five years younger than Caravaggio, was among the first Neapolitans to adopt the startling new style with its sombre palette, dramatic tenebrism, and sculptural figures in a shallow picture plane defined by light rather than by perspective. He is considered to be the solitary founder of the Neapolitan school of Caravaggism. Among the other Neapolitan Caravaggisti were Giuseppe Ribera,On 3 May 1626, Caracciolo and Ribera are witnesses to the wedding of Giovanni Do

In 1607, he painted the Immaculate Conception for the Santa Maria della Stella in Naples. It is considered to be his first documented Caravaggesque painting.

In 1612, he made a trip to Rome. A work showing the influence of this visit, and especially that of Orazio Gentileschi, is the Liberation of Saint Peter (1615), painted for the Pio Monte della Misericordia, to hang next to Caravaggio's Seven Works of Mercy painted for the same church. By this time he had become the leader of the new Neapolitan school, dividing his time between religious subjects (altarpieces and, unusually for a Caravaggist, frescos) and paintings for private patrons.

After 1618 he visited Genoa, Rome and Florence. In Rome he came under the influence of the revived Classicism of the Carracci cousins and the Emilian school, and began working towards a synthesis of their style with his own tenebrism – his Cupid, with its bravura handling of the red cloth, shows the influence of the Carracci synthesis. Back in Naples, he translated this into grandiose, wide-ranging scenes including his masterpiece Christ Washing the Feet of the Disciples of 1622, painted for the Certosa di San Martino. He also painted further works in the Certosa di San Martino, Santa Maria La Nova and San Diego all'Ospedaletto and these works of the late second decade of the 17th century onward, show the strong influence of Bolognese classicism he might have been exposed to in Rome.

He died in Naples, in the few days between creating his last will, on 19 December 1635, and 24 December 1635, when it was opened and read.

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