The picture gallery of Pio Monte della Misericordia

Rest in Egypt.
Francesco De Mura, 1751 ca

Among the most sentimental works of De Mura's production, the painting illustrates the Holy Family resting during the journey in Egypt. The almost bucolic scene, focuses only on one side of the composition where the three figures are gathered, who with a game of looks relate to each other. The close and peaceful setting, is given by the tenuous twilight, reinforced by some points of color: the rosy skin of the child, the usual pink and the blue of the clothing of the Madonna, the ocher of the mantle of St. Joseph and the red of the cloth under the pillow.Critics have compared the painting to the fresco done by the artist at the church of Nunziatella, in 1751, which offers a chronological point of reference.

Equestrian portrait of Carlo di Tocco
Agostino Beltrano 1648 ca. (attributed)

Great and majestic, the portrait of an exponent of the Tocco family, attributed to Beltrano, is among the few seventeenth-century examples of official portraiture in Naples executed on the great Spanish examples. The character has an imperious and dignified pose, he rides a trot. Sumptuous and brilliant red feathers stand out from the hat, which reflect the saddle-cloth and the red band at the waist. The armor, the lace of the collar, the Golden Fleece and the boots, enrich the image with precious details
the painting is related to Massimo Stanzione's ways.

Equestrian portrait of Leonardo di Tocco
Giovanni Stefano Maja, 1725 ca.

From the typical characters of official portraiture of the eighteenth century, this painting executed by the Genoese painter active in Naples in the twenties of the eighteenth century, was conceived as a pendant of the equestrian portrait executed by Beltrano. As a matter of fact, the character depicted in this painting on a soaring horse (this time) is a descendant of carlo tocco. Leonardo, Prince of Acaja and Montemiletto, Vicar General of the further Principality for Charles of Bourbon in the mid-18th century.

Four ruins
Leonardo Coccorante, 1745 ca.

The artist, court painter of Charles of Bourbon, is one of the greatest exponents of painting of perspectives of the first half of the '700.
This continues the tradition of landscape painting begun by Francois de Nomé and Viviano Codazzi.
Stimulated by the ancient ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii, in these four views the buildings are framed with a lateral and grazing perspective rather than a frontal point of view. it is a new method inspired by the theories of contemporary scenographers, such as Ferdinando Galli Bibiena.
The view at night creates a suggestive atmosphere, emphasizes with clear cuts of light on time-corroded architectures

Sepolture of Christ
Giovanni Baglione, 1608

Baglione, official artist of the Vatican, sent the canvas from Rome, paid 120 scudi. In this work he blends his sixteenth-century and mannerist formation with the naturalistic language of Caravaggio: despite the strong hostility between the two, this work is among the most Caravaggesque in the production of Baglione.



When the chapel was rebuilt, in the second half of the seventeenth century, all the paintings already placed on the altars of the first chapel were preserved. with the exception of that of the Baglione, the only one to be replaced: in 1671, the Government of the Pio Monte della Misericordia exhibited the Deposition of Luca Giordano.

Saint Antonio Abbot
Jusepe de Ribera, 1650 ca.

The Spanish painter is among the highest Caravaggesque expressions in Naples, in the middle of the seventeenth century.
Ribera depicts the saint half-length. as often happens in his painting he strengthens the expressive datum, especially in the face, with the eyes turned upwards and the lips parted.
From the dark background we can hardly recognize the iconographic attributes of the Saint: the stick and the bell. The Caravaggesque technique is carried to its extreme consequences by flashes of light that gather thick on the pictorial surface.

Scene of dread
Francesco De Mura, 1755-57


The sketches were preparatory to the realization of the frescoes of the Sedile di Porto in Naples. This is one of the five civil buildings, in which the representatives of the constituency met, before destruction during the early 19th century. The paintings describe the people witnessing the divine intervention that saves San Gennaro from the first martyrdom. A third sketch, in respect of the willpower of the donator, was sold to carry out works of mercy. Nowadays it is kept in the State Museum of Stuttgart: it represents the main scene of the Saint who comes out unharmed from the furnace.

Aurora and Titone
Francesco De Mura, 1763-1768

Preparatory studies, in two variants with fine differents, for the lost, excecuted in one of the bedroom of Maria Carolina of Austria and Ferdinando IV of Borbone in the Palazzo Reale in Naples. The composition show, in the light colors and in the figures without any emotional tension, the style of painter, here on the line between Classicism and Rocoro.

Portrait of painter’s wife
Francesco De Mura, 1735 ca.

One of the most famous portrait of neapolitan 700, with precise somatic features, but tipically related to the official portraiture, the women is Anna Ebreù, married with the painter in 1727. De Mura, althought remain anchored to a sort of Solimena addiction, very frequently in his portrait, start to underline a sort of luministica in the garment. Despised in painter testament ,professional laundres, De Mura depict her elegant and in aristocratic and precius behavior.

The Negation of St. Peter
Master of Judgment of Solomon, Around 1625
Of unknown French or Belgian origins, the unknown painter, author of the Judgment of Solomon preserved in the Galleria Borghese, is one of the first foreign followers of Caravaggio in Rome who deals with the lesson of Merisi with the mediation of Bartolomeo Manfredi's "method". Particular attention should be paid to the rendering of lights on the woman's armor, embers and velvets.

View of the Amalfi coast
Antoon Sminck Pitloo, around 1820
Splendid example created by the Dutch painter, with the difficult watercolor technique. At the beginning of the 19th century, Pitloo inaugurated the great season of landscaping in Naples, and gave life to the famous Posillipo School, which will have among its greatest exponents the pupil Giacinto Gigante.

View of the Villa Borghese
Giovan Battista Bassi, 1817

Bassi, who has Emilian origins, was active in Rome in the first half of the nineteenth century. He was friend with Canova and Camuccini. He approached foreign painting by painting ideal and aestheticizing views. The airy and defined landscape is the protagonist here: the small scenes of everyday life take second place compared to the careful, bright and clear view, rendered in the details of the plants, in the profile of the little temple in the background, in the immobile reflections on the pond water .

Brutus's oath in front of Lucrezia's body,
Domenico Corvi, 1788

The scene depicts the Roman episode of Brutus' oath in front of Lucrezia's body, who committed suicide to escape the dishonor of the violence suffered by Sesto, son of Tarquinio the Superb. Following the same path of David and his oath of Orazi, Corvi organizes the scene with the exaltation of the exemplary Roman story, as for the usual trait of the neoclassical painting of the late eighteenth century in Rome.

Meeting of Jacob with Rachel
Luca Giordano, around 1652

Work of the second half of the seventeenth century, before the entry of Luca Giordano to the workshop of Ribera. It consists in a pure exercise on the great Venetian themes of the '500, studied, probably, from the canvases that the painter's father was haggling; the results, almost as a counterfeiter of the time, explain the unjust accusation made to Luca Giordano to appropriate easily the style of others.

Massimo Stanzione, Sant’Apollonia, around 1640

Pietà, Cesare Fracanzano, 1645

Trained at the Ribera workshop, Fracanzano demonstrates his knowledge of Roman baroque painting and the production of Lanfranco and Stanzione. The great monumentality and emotional beauty of these canvases show how the painter still keeps the echoes of the Master Ribera alive, however lightening the colors and the vivacity of the narration.