Battistello Caracciolo

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Giovanni Battista Caracciolo, (also called Battistello), (c1570 - 1637, was an Italian artist and important Neapolitan follower of Caravaggio.

Battistello, The Liberation of St Peter. Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples. Regarded as Battistello's masterpiece, it vividly captures the emotion of the scene as Peter is led from prison by an angel.

Caravaggio arrived in Naples in late 1606 after killing a man in a brawl in Rome. His stay in the city lasted only about eight months, with another brief visit in 1609/1610, yet his impact on artistic life there was profound. Battistello, only a few years younger than Caravaggio, adopted the master's startling new style with its sombre palette, dramatic tenebrism, and sculptural figures in a shallow picture plane defined by light rather than by perspective. Among the Neapolitan Caravaggisti were Giuseppe Ribera, Carlo Sellitto, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Carraciolo's pupil, Mattia Preti, early in his career.

Giovanni Battista Caracciolo called Battistello, Sleeping Cupid. Whitfield Fine Art

One of his earliest works under the influence of Caravaggio was the Liberation of St Peter (1608-09), painted for the same church (the Chiesa del Monte della Misericordia) as the master's The Seven Acts of Mercy - the painting is now in the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples. His painting became more polished after a trip to Rome in 1614, by which time he had become the leader of the Neapolitan school, dividing his time between religious subjects (altarpieces and, unusually for a Caravaggist, frescos) and paintings for private patrons.

Battistello, Salome. Uffizi Gallery, Florence. The painting illustrates Battistello's mastery of the visual language of Caravaggio.

After 1618 he visited Genoa, Rome and Florence. In Rome he came under the influence of the revived Classicism of the Carracci cousins and the Emilian school, and began working towards a synthesis of their style with his own Caravaggism - his Cupid,[1] with its bravura handling of the red cloth, shows the influence of the Carracci synthesis. Back in Naples, he translated this into grandiose, wide-ranging scenes frescos including his masterpiece The Washing of the Feet of 1622, painted for the Certosa di San Martino.