LUCA GIORDANO
(Naples, 1634 – 1705)

A Guardian Angel Leading a Child

Oil on canvas
40 x 29 ⅝ inches (101.6 x 75.2 cm)

Provenance:

Cavaliere Rocco Martuscelli (1801–1853), Naples, Italy; Washington, DC; and New York
Private Collection, Pennsylvania.

Literature:

Giuseppe Scavizzi, Luca Giordano: Nuove Opere / Aggiunte al Catalogo, 2003–2023, Todi, 2024, p. 44, cat. no. 138.

One of the leading lights of the Neapolitan Baroque, Luca Giordano gained international acclaim during his lifetime. He travelled widely throughout Europe and was commissioned by some of the greatest patrons of his day to undertake major projects in Naples, Venice, Florence, and Madrid. Giordano was a prolific painter and draughtsman, and his rapid execution earned him the nickname “Fa Presto,” or “work quickly.” The artist’s legendary speed is self-evident in the bold and fluent passages of his work.

This striking painting of a Guardian Angel leading a child by the hand is a newly discovered work by the artist, one which has recently emerged from an American collection, having been in the country already for over a century and a half. It counts as one of the earliest Italian Baroque paintings to have entered an American collection. 

The subject of a guardian angel with a child blossomed in the seventeenth century, undoubtedly influenced by the popularity over the previous centuries of depictions of Archangels, and in particular, the Biblical episode of Tobias and the Archangel Raphael.[i] Depictions of Tobias and the Angel were especially beloved from the Renaissance on as an image of a child being looked after by an angel, but also due to the special role of the Archangel Raphael as a protector of travelers and health. While an old label on the reverse of our painting describes it as a depiction of Tobias and the Angel, this identification is incorrect, as one of the main attributes of treatments of this subject—the fish caught by Tobias—is notably absent. Furthermore, the dark and brooding setting, the presence of the man being led away by another angel in the lower background, and the fact that the principal angel points upwards towards a divine light together signal that the theme of this painting is the saving of a soul.

Although a late painting by the artist, likely dating from Giordano’s tenure as Court painter to King Charles II in Madrid, the composition hearkens back to Giordano’s youth as it echoes the celebrated painting of the theme by Pietro da Cortona (Fig. 1). That work was commissioned in 1656 by Pope Alexander VII and was to inspire paintings by Ciro Ferri, Baciccio, and Maratta, among others. In his Life of Giordano, De Dominici relates that, following his apprenticeship with Ribera, the young artist studied for three years in Rome with Cortona—in precisely the same years in which his Guardian Angel was painted.[ii] While Cortona’s influence on Giordano’s painting style is well known, the reference to such a singular work is unusual and may have been the consequence of a specific commission.

Giordano’s painting is filled with movement and drama, as the angel and child are dynamically posed and wrapped in billowing drapery (Fig. 2). Compared with Pietro da Cortona’s painting—which similarly plays out along a diagonal axis—Giordano’s work presents a more spirited treatment of the theme. The child’s forward movement is especially felt in his stance, and the fact that the angel is flying reads much more clearly here, with the angel’s proper left leg kicked backwards towards the edge of the canvas. Giordano’s painting also stands out for the characteristically loose and rapid application of the paint both in the rendering in the figures and in the description of the hazy clouds. Notable also is the great sensitivity to light and its effects in the fiery aura that emanates from the angel’s head, which serves as of the main light sources of the scene, casting its rays onto the fabrics and even the clouds behind the figures.

According to a label on the reverse of the painting, our painting was brought to the United States by Cavaliere Rocco Martuscelli (1801–1853). The label reads: “‘Tobit and the Angel’ / by ‘Giordano’ / Purchased of Rocco - / Martuschelli (sic) Charge D’Affair from Naples” (Fig. 3). Martuscelli served as the First Consul General and then as Chargé d’Affaires (after 1846) in Washington DC for the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and also as representative for the Duke of Parma (after 1850). His obituary notice at the time of his death in New York in November 1853 described him as “Envoy Extraordinary from the Court of Naples, aged 52. He had served in this country as the Chargé of his sovereign for fourteen years, and was highly esteemed by all who knew him.”[iii]

Luca Giordano’s authorship of our painting has been confirmed by Dr. Giuseppe Scavizzi (written communication, December 2023). Scavizzi will include the painting in a forthcoming publication devoted to works by the artist that have come to light since the publication of the catalogue raisonné and its supplement co-authored with Oreste Ferrari.[iv] He has written of this work: “This is one of the most beautiful Giordano’s I have ever seen. It is a subject he painted often; this one I believe is late, in the 1690s, when his brushwork was free and the colors intense.”

[i] The tale of the adventures of Tobias and the Archangel Raphael is told in the Book of Tobit, one of the books of the Old Testament Apocrypha. Tobias was the son of the blind Tobit, and he was accompanied on a journey by the Archangel Raphael in human form. In most representations of the subject, Tobias is represented as a young man or a small boy. He often holds a fish representing the “great fish” that leaped out of the Tigris River and that Raphael directed Tobias to catch and gut, preserving the heart, liver, and gall.  The gall would cure his father Tobit’s blindness, and the burned heart and liver would drive the demons away from Sarah, Tobias’s future wife. 

[ii] Bernardo De Dominici, Vite de’ pittori, scultori, e architetti napoletani, Naples, vol. 3, 1745, pp. 396-397.

[iii] “American Obituary from 1853,” The American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge, for the Year 1855, Boston, London, and Paris, 1855, p. 327. A full description of his funeral appeared as “Obsequies of the Neapolitan Minister,” New York Daily Herald, November 11, 1853, p.4.

[iv] Oreste Ferrari and Giuseppe Scavizzi, Luca Giordano: L’opera completa, Naples, 1992 and 2000; Oreste Ferrari and Giuseppe Scavizzi, Luca Giordano Nuove ricerche e inediti, Naples, 2003; and Giuseppe Scavizzi, Luca Giordano: His life and Work, Naples, 2017.