View of the Interior of a Building

This work and its pair in the Colección Santander have traditionally been catalogued as the work of an anonymous, late 17th-century artist. In a recent oral communication, however, Nicola Spinosa suggested an attribution to Coccorante.

Despite the fact that De Dominici included Coccorante’s biography in his text of 1744 and that some further information has subsequently come to light, little is known of the artist’s life and work. It would seem that he trained with Angelo Maria Costa and possibly with Gabriele Ricciardelli although there is little similarity between his style and theirs. Some signed works by Coccorante are known while others have been attributed on the basis of shared characteristics. Only two dated works are known, from 1739, while a pair of overdoors depicting the marriage of Charles of Bourbon and Maria Amalia of Saxony can be dated to 1738. As a result, very little is known of Coccorante’s style for most of his career.

Like its pair, the present painting has characteristics not generally found in the work of this Neapolitan painter, for example, the size of the two canvases, which are larger than any other known works. In addition, the buildings are not depicted as ruins and the setting is not as fantastical as in other compositions. Furthermore, this scene does not include small figures or the presence of the sea, as is the case in other firmly attributed works. Coccorante frequently painted pairs of works but they generally consist of two contrasting scenes of night and day or a calm and stormy sea, which is not the case here. For all these reasons the attribution must remain a tentative one.