Luca Cattapane, attr., Adoration of the shepherds

Luca Cattapane (Cremona, 1597-1620), attr.
Adoration of the shepherds
Oil on canvas, 110 x 90 cm - framed 129 x 101 cm

Ascribed to the Lombard school of the late sixteenth century, the painting exhibits more precisely Cremonese characters: the research conducted on artists active in that area suggest the attribution to Luca Cattapane. The silence of historical sources does not allow us to trace a biography of the painter, whose dates of birth and death are unknown, while his apprenticeship with Vincenzo Campi, whose naturalistic research will continue, freeing himself from the Malossesca manner, is documented. that in 1929 Roberto Longhi commenting on the Beheading of St. John the Baptist - now in the church of Santa Maria Maddalena in Cremona - called him a small Caravaggio. The small canvas in question bears witness to the luministic direction taken from the works of Antonio Campi, as can be seen by looking at the altarpiece of the same subject in Santa Maria della Croce in Crema, while the style of the caricatured expressions and characters are consequent to those conceived by Vincenzo Campi . The knowledge of Luca Cambiaso and his famous nocturnes should not be excluded from the formation of Cattapane. To further substantiate the attributive motivations is the comparison with the Adoration of the Shepherds preserved in the Diocese of Lodi, which has a similar scenic layout and where some figures show interesting formal similarities. In this regard we highlight the faces of the shepherds, whose profiles and anatomical structures correspond to those painted in our composition. The image exudes a remarkable expressive and monumental force, supported by the descriptive will of the faces that stand out from the dark backdrop with a precaravaggesque sensibility. The ancient reference to Jacopo Bassano and to Veronese portraiture can also be deduced, but here translated with sobriety and naturalistic desire. In this regard, the offers placed on the illuminated ground in the foreground are to be observed: the basket filled with eggs, lamb, palm and cross. With regard to the 'light at night' setting, we can only mention the great predecessors such as the Lotto (see the Nativity in the night at the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena), the Savoldo (see the Adoration preserved at the National Gallery of Art in Washington) and the aforementioned Giovanni Battista Trotti (the Malosso), whose great Adoration preserved in the Castello Sforzesco in Milan is proposed. Moreover, the setting "in night time" was the element that favored the critical fortune of Cattapane, considered one of the best painters already by the ancient Cremonese art literature and therefore remembered both in his biographies and in ancient guides of the city. Luigi Lanzi was the first to combine the effects of night lighting that characterize Caravaggio's research by writing: "In the rest or for wanting to create his own style, or to conform to Caravaggio, he painted more bleak than the Campi and with better choice . [...] "Citing the Madonna and Child with Saints Anthony and Paul I preserved in the cathedral of Cremona or the Madonna with Saints Francesco and Nicola exhibited in the Town Hall of Cremona, we can instead find how the physiognomy of the face of Saint John Child is similar to that of the children (indifferently the Christ or the San Giovannino) of the other three paintings. A preparatory drawing by Luca Cattapane depicting the face of a child appeared on the English antiquarian market: also in this sketch emerges the same physiognomy used to render the other children in the paintings, including the one in our canvas.