Francesco Solimena (Serino 1657 - Napoli 1747),... Lot n° 149

oil on canvas, cm 153x207, Provenance: Sotheby's "Important Old Master Paintings and Sculpture", New York, 26 January 2012, lot. 52; Bonhams, London, 8 July 2015, lot. 22. Bibliography: N. Spinosa, "Francesco Solimena (1657-1747) e le Arti a Napoli", Rome 2018, p. 270 The canvas, at the centre of an attributive controversy that on the antiquarian market saw it removed from Francesco Solimena's catalogue in favour of a workshop collaboration (Riccardo Lattuada), can now be definitively returned to the hand of the brilliant Neapolitan painter, one of the protagonists of the Neapolitan art scene between the end of the seventeenth century and the first half of the following century. We are comforted, in fact, by the opinion of Nicola Spinosa, whom we thank for having reserved for us his attentive attention and for having confirmed his autography, recently reiterated also in the monograph (cf. Spinosa 2018, p. 270), and we present it by removing it from the dispersive context of the atelier and placing it on the ridge of the seventeenth century. The brilliant artist, who, after starting out alongside his father, a former pupil and collaborator of Francesco Guarino, had moved to Naples, immediately conquered by the works of Luca Giordano, Giovanni Lanfranco and Mattia Preti, was at that time, in the years between 1680 and 1690, starting to dilute the frank naturalism he had learned in his youth, of markedly Caravaggio derivation, following the example of the triumphant vocabulary of the Roman Baroque and the widespread chiarismo developed by the last Giordano. In the painting in question, the magniloquent and theatrical structure takes on a typically late-Baroque influence, combining with the frantic dialectic of the onlookers who witness the encounter between Jesus and the woman of Samaria. The humble livor of the incarnates, as well as the evocative stagecraft, document the painter's roots as well as his unmistakable stylistic temperature. Two further version