Luca Giordano

Luca Giordano (18 October 1634 - 3 January 1705) was an Italian late Baroque painter and printmaker in etching. Born in Naples, Giordano was the son of Antonio Giordano, an undistinguished painter. At a precocious age, Giordano was apprenticed to Ribera on the recommendation of the viceroy of Naples. He supposedly later worked under Pietro da Cortona. He acquired the nickname of Luca Fà -presto (Luke Work-fast). This nickname was apt since he showed an astounding celerity in handling the brush, but it is said to have been given to him by his father, poverty-stricken and greedy of gain, was perpetually urging his boy to exertion with the phrase, "Luca, fà presto". The youth obeyed his parent to the letter, and would actually not so much as pause to snatch a hasty meal, but received into his mouth, while he still worked on, the food which his father's hand supplied. His speed, in design as well as handiwork, and his versatility, which enabled him to imitate other painters deceptively, earned for him two other epithets, "The Thunderbolt" (Fulmine) and "The Proteus" of painting. Giordano acquired a style fusing Venetian and Roman styles. He combines the ornamental pomp of Paul Veronese with the lively complex schemes, the "grand manner" of Pietro da Cortona. He was noted also for lively and showy colour, and between 1682-83 he painted various fresco series in Florence, including in the dome of Corsini Chapel of the Chiesa del Carmine. In the large block occupied by the former Medici palace, he painted the ceiling of the Biblioteca Riccardiana (Allegory of Divine Wisdom) and the long gallery of the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi. The vast frescoes of the latter are contained in the 1670s gallery addition, overlooking the gardens. The planning was overseen by Alessandro Segni and commissioned by Francesco Riccardi. They include the prototypic hagiographic celebration of the Medici family in the center, surrounded by a series of interlocking narratives: allegorical figures (the Cardinal Virtues, the Elements of Nature) and mythological episodes (Neptune and Amphitrita, the Rape of Proserpine, the Triumphal procession of Bacchus, the Death of Adonis, Ceres and Triptolemus)