The Landing of the Infanta Marìa at Naples

This important canvas, which came to light a few years ago, must be the one that the Neapolitan biographer and historian, Bernardo de Dominici describes with some precision in the life of Domenico Gargiulo and which had been given up for lost until Pérez Sanchez identified it in 1985.

The episode depicted, if we are to believe De Dominici, took place in 1630. The Infanta’s entry into Naples was on August 3rd because although she had left Spain in 1629, the voyage was enormously delayed on account of the epidemics in northern Italy. The men of her entourage (the halberdiers dressed in red) are like those who appear in the pictures of battle scenes in the Buen Retiro, making it easy to date the canvas closer to 1630 than to 1649, as could be assumed if it were believed that it portrayed Doña Mariana of Austria. Nevertheless, it is surprising that the figure of the Infanta, who is moving forward flanked by two cardinals, is wearing a head-dress closer to the 1640 fashion than that worn by the Infanta María and with which we are familiar through Velázquez’s picture (Prado, no. 1187).

It is possible that the picture did not reproduce the episode directly (Micco Spadero was scarcely 20 years old when it occurred), but rather that it was a reconstruction done some years later. Who knows whether it might not have been painted after the Masaniello uprising, using portraits of a later date of the Queen of Hungary, perhaps close to her death in 1649.

The hilly countryside, with many inlets, castles and fortresses is more like a Ligurian landscape than the Gulf of Naples, which has been repeated so many times, and it is surprising not to see the typical silhouette of Vesuvius, which can hardly be omitted.

In any event, it is an important and very significant canvas, and there is no doubt about its attribution to Gargiulo. The distance, with the landscape and the small figures, the forest of Navy masts and pennants – so like those of Rosa – and the horses in the foreground, so similar to those in the pictures of the Roman emperors housed in the Prado, perfectly express the effort put by Gargiulo into this remarkable work.