The exhibition that recently opened at the Gallerie d'Italia of Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano in Naples opens up new perspectives of knowledge on an exceptional European artistic moment, the Neapolitan seventeenth century, with one objective: to reconsider some lesser-known artistic personalities linked to art by the great Jusepe de Ribera to put in the right light the historical and cultural value of one of the most fervent seasons of the artistic civilization of southern Italy. The exhibition, not as impressive as those dedicated in the past to the discovery of this enormous cultural season, but very precious, revolves around one of the most fascinating and mysterious paintings of the Italian seventeenth century, the Santa Caterina d'Alessandria, and the recognition of Giovanni Ricca as its author.
The exhibition, born from the collaboration between Intesa Sanpaolo and the Turin Museums Foundation, is curated by Giuseppe Porzio, art historian and author of an important monograph, The Ribera school, which crowns a long process of research that has thrown new light on art in Naples in the first half of the seventeenth century. And it is precisely to Porzio that we owe the definitive attribution, after a radical philological revision, based on unsuspected connections between partly already known, largely unpublished, works and documents of the Saint Catherine to Giovanni Ricca (Naples, 1603-1656?) , thus unraveling a complex critical story that has seen the work attributed in the past to other artists with various attributions, from the Resin Master to Bartolomeo Bassante.
«The discovery of the paternity of the painting took place almost by chance - explained Giuseppe Porzio, in the press conference to present the exhibition - there were no biographical references, the painter's name only appeared at the bottom of the payments. I was lucky enough to identify the documents of a "marriage trial" preserved in the Diocesan Archive: Ricca was about to get married and presented himself before the official of the Curia to declare his civil status free. It was an exceptional practice for a Neapolitan: it was obligatory to do it only for foreigners, but his baptismal certificate had been lost, so he was called to declare his personal details and also his acquaintances in front of witnesses. From the documents we discover that he was born in 1603 and that he is Neapolitan but also that he lived in the parish of Sant'Anna di Palazzo. The baptisms of the children then emerged from the parish registers with the participation, as godparents, of other painters of the time, which opened up a network of relationships between the figures. The person who marries Ricca is Caterina Rossa and it is emblematic that her most famous painting is the "Santa Caterina" with this vermilion color of her clothes and hair, recurring in Ricca's corpus. In the same "trial" also appears a certain Diego da Molina known for having testified at the marriage trial of Ribera, point of intersection and trace of biographical relationships between the two artists. In 1656, traces of Ricca are lost in the documentation, so that is probably the date of his death, but there will still be work to do ».
The painting, acquired by the Turin Civic Museums in 2006 from the collection of the publisher Giulio Einaudi, becomes an occasion in the Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano exhibition to retrace a fundamental moment in seventeenth-century Italian art, marked by the impact caused by the arrival in Naples of the great Spanish artist De Ribera following the Viceroy Duke of Osuna in 1616.
Jusepe de Ribera Italianized with the nickname of lo Spagnoletto due to his short stature, was one of the greatest protagonists of European painting of the seventeenth century and one of the most important painters who followed the trend of Caravaggism in Naples together with Luca Giordano, Massimo Stanzione, Mattia Preti , Bernardo Cavallino and Battistello Caracciolo, making the city an artistic center of international importance.
And Giovanni Ricca, a painter trained in nature on whom until a few years ago there was little and fragmentary information, now emerges as one of the most important personalities active in Naples in the orbit of de Ribera.
Alongside the Santa Caterina d'Alessandria, the exhibition presents other works by Giovanni Ricca, almost all of recent attribution, including the Transfiguration of 1641, formerly in Santa Maria della Sapienza in Naples, the Martyrdom of Saint Ursula from the De Vito Foundation. By de Ribera we can admire two works from around 1620, the Christ at the column in the Galleria Sabauda in Turin, a variant of the better known version in the Girolamini picture gallery in Naples, and the intense Magdalene in the Capodimonte Museum, intimately linked to Saint Catherine for style and critical story.
The exhibition includes canvases by other artists related to de Ribera and Ricca: Hendrick De Somer, the so-called Master of the Annunciations to the Shepherds and Francesco Guarino. The latter, represented by key pieces in the permanent exhibition of Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano, complete the picture of a figurative culture born on Caravaggesque foundations and evolved towards forms of refined classicism.
“The review briefly illustrates – explains Porzio about Ricca – the path of this rediscovered master: from the remarkable production of half-length female saints and biblical heroines that marks the start under the banner of de Ribera's models, up to the documented canvases of church destination on which the reconstruction of the figure of the master hinged, such as the monumental transfiguration for the church of Santa Maria della Sapienza in Naples, now in storage at the prefecture building and therefore difficult to access. Alongside these works appear paintings by other artists in connection with Ribera, whose critical events intertwined with those of Ricca: Francesco Guarino, the master of announcements to the shepherds and above all the Flemish Hendrix de Somer, of whom the collections of Intesa San Paul retain some of the most representative evidence. the exhibition therefore offers an important opportunity to verify and deepen knowledge of seventeenth-century Neapolitan painting, opening up a hitherto unpublished perspective on this exceptional moment in European art”.
