Mattia Preti (24 February 1613 – 3 January 1699) was an Italian
Baroque artist who worked in
Italy and
Malta. He was appointed a Member of the
Order of Saint John.
Life
Born in the small town of
Taverna in
Calabria, Preti was called Il Cavalier Calabrese (the Calabrian Knight) after appointment as a Knight of the Order of St. John (Knights of Malta) in 1660.[1] His early apprenticeship is said to have been with the "
Caravaggist"
Giovanni Battista Caracciolo, which may account for his lifelong interest in the style of
Caravaggio.
During most of 1653–1660, he worked in Naples, starting with a Saint Nicholas. There he was influenced by another prominent painter of his era,
Luca Giordano. Preti's major works include a series of large fresco
ex-votos depicting the
Virgin or saints delivering people from the plague, which were painted on seven city gates and are now lost - two sketches for them are in the
Capodimonte Museum in Naples, [3] including a bozzetto of the Virgin with the baby Jesus looming over the dying and their burial parties which envisions a
Last Judgement presided over by a woman.[4] Preti also won a commission to supervise the construction, carving, and gilding for the nave and transept of
San Pietro a Maiella, along with producing a Judith and Holofernes and Saint John the Baptist, both still in Naples.
Having been made a Knight of Grace in the
Order of St John, he visited the order's headquarters in
Malta in 1659 and spent most of the remainder of his life there. Preti transformed the interior of
St. John's Co-Cathedral in
Valletta with a huge series of paintings on the life and martyrdom of
St. John the Baptist (1661–1666). In Malta one also can find many paintings of Preti in private collections and in parish churches. His increased reputation led to an expanded circle of patrons, and he received commissions from all over Europe.[5][6]
Preti was fortunate to enjoy a long career and have a considerable artistic output. His paintings, representative of the exuberant late Baroque style, are held by many great museums, including important collections in
Naples,
Valletta, and in his hometown of
Taverna, Calabria.
^Alessandro Cosma.
Paintings for the Knights of Malta. Mattia Preti and the Celebration of Martyrdom. Actual Problems of Theory and History of Art: Collection of articles. Vol. 6. Eds: Anna V. Zakharova, Svetlana V. Maltseva, Ekaterina Yu. Stanyukovich-Denisova. St. Petersburg, NP-Print Publ., 2016, pp. 468–473. ISSN 2312-2129.