Domenico Gargiulo

Domenico Gargiulo called Micco Spadaro was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, mainly active in Naples and known for his landscapes, genre scenes, and history paintings.

Life

Early life and education Domenico Gargiulo was the son of a sword maker. This earned Domenico the nickname 'Micco Spadaro' ('spadaro' means 'sword maker'). He was trained in the workshop of the battle painter Aniello Falcone, where he was a contemporary of Andrea di Leone and Salvator Rosa.

His early works were influenced by Paul Bril whose works he must have known from Bril's 1602 landscape frescoes in the atrium of Santa Maria Regina Coeli in Naples. He was also influenced by Filippo Napoletano. Spadaro’s earliest known works are two dated circular genre scenes, the Fortune Teller and the Inn (both 1636), both close in style to contemporary Roman bambocciante painting. In 1638 he began the fresco decoration of the choir of the Frati Conversi in the Certosa di San Martino, Naples, with fictive tapestries showing scenes from the Old Testament and Carthusian legends in wild and mysterious natural settings. The Carthusians then commissioned him to fresco the prior’s apartment at San Martino (1642–7) with the Baptism, a View of Naples and various landscapes with hermits. Two bozzetti, Landscape with Saints Anthony and Paul and Landscape with Saint Onofrio (both Naples, Museo di Capodimonte), also survive. The freshness and spontaneity of the frescoed landscapes are the result of his sketching expeditions around Naples; the works are wild scenes, with jagged tree trunks and distant views, vibrant with light, and with small bays and rocky cliffs.

In this period Spadaro frequently collaborated with Viviano Codazzi on pictures in which the architectural perspectives were painted by Codazzi and the figures by Spadaro; a typical example is the Villa Poggio Reale (1641; Besançon, Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'Archéologie). Other late works in this vein include small paintings showing scenes from the Neapolitan Revolt of 1647 (all Naples, National Museum of San Martino). All these works show topographically accurate views of parts of the city, filled with crowds of ordinary people, among whom the protagonists of the historical dramas mingle.

In addition to his narrative talent Spadaro was an attentive chronicler who, despite the dramatic nature of the events depicted, enjoyed adding interesting and at times amusing details with a real feeling for pictorial immediacy. In these works Spadaro abandoned the ironic imagery of Callot and della Bella. This was not a consistent shift towards realism, however, for other works of the same period – bambocciate, mythological and religious scenes (all much in demand among connoisseurs) – are animated by a spirit of imaginative fantasy. The Martyrdom of Saint Agatha and the Martyrdom of Saint Ursula (both Naples, priv. col.) are examples of the religious paintings of this period.

Many drawings by Spadaro survive, and most of them are rapidly executed in pen and ink, deeply influenced by Jusepe de Ribera and close in style to the drawings of Salvator Rosa. There is a large collection in Berlin (Kupferstichkabinett). He was patronized by collectors such as Gaspar Roomer. None of the work of his final years is known. Among his pupils were Pietro Pesce and Ignazio Oliva.

Gallery