Baroque and Rococo
Mattia
Preti
Mattia Preti
(b Taverna, Calabria, 24 Feb 1613; d Valletta, Malta, 3 Jan 1699).
Italian painter and draughtsman. Although he was trained and had his first success as a painter in Rome during the 1630s and 1640s, he is traditionally associated with the Neapolitan school. It was in Naples between 1653 and 1660 that he made his most lasting mark, contributing to the evolution of the exuberant late Baroque style and providing an important source of inspiration to later generations of painters, notably to Francesco Solimena. From 1661 he was based in Malta, where his most substantial undertaking was the decoration of St John’s, Valletta. Preti’s mature style is intensely dramatic and unites a Caravaggesque realism and expressive chiaroscuro with the grandeur and theatricality of Venetian High Renaissance painting.
Sophonisba Receiving the Goblet
c. 1670
Oil on canvas, 198 x 174 cm
Musee des Beaux-Arts, Lyon
St. George on Horseback
c.1658
Oil on canvas
Conventual Church of St. John, Valletta, Malta
