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Mattia Preti, born in Taverna, Calabria, is one of the most outstanding painters of the Neapolitan school in the second half of the seventeenth century. Known by his nickname, "Il Cavaliere Calabrese," he was included by Bernardo de Dominici in that author's Vite dei Pittori, Scultori ed Architetti Napoletani, which is now a fundamental source of information about his life. Preti moved to Rome together with his brother Gregorio around 1628. There he is mentioned for the first time in the Accademia di San Luca in 1632, registering himself as a painter one year later, together with Gregorio. In 1636 both lived in the San Biagio a Montecitorio area of the city.
The present Concert dates from the artist's early period when he lived in Rome in the 1630s. The canvas shows the indirect influence of Caravaggio even though it was painted at a time when the Caravaggist movement did not have the importance in Rome that it enjoyed in earlier decades. In the composition, of horizontal format, Preti placed three seated figures around table who stand out against a very dark background. The canvas forms part of a group of paintings of similar characteristics in which elegantly dressed figures, strongly moulded by light, amuse themselves at cards or dice or playing musical instruments and singing, as in the present painting. The subject and Preti's interpretation of it have been related to the presence of a large group of Dutch, French and Flemish artists living in Rome in the seventeenth century. But in addition to the work of these artists, that of the distinguished Caravaggist painter Bartolommeo Manfredi should be born in mind, an artist who specialised in subjects with card players and soldiers, and who popularised these subjects more than Caravaggio himself.
The present work is part of a group of similar paintings, among which are The Card Party, recorded in the Visconti Collection in Rome, The Game of Draughts in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, the Concert with three Figures in the Hermitage, Saint Petersburg, and the Concert with three Figures in the Longhi Collection. They are lit by a selective chiaroscuro which leaves large areas of the canvas in darkness, including some of the most expressive elements such as the faces and hands. Through this strongly contrasted light we can make out the way in which the figure with the bow and violin gazes out towards the spectator. Published for the first time by Nicolson in 1979, the painting was first catalogued as a work with studio participation. In 1983 Young rejected this opinion and considered it to be totally autograph. This last opinion was upheld in the monographic exhibition devoted to the artist in the Museo Capodimonte, Naples, in 1999, in which the canvas could be studied next to other securely autograph works of the same type and date.
Mar Borobia
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