MARZIO MASTURZO
Active in Naples and Rome (?) in the second half of the 17th century
Battle between Christian and Turkish cavalries
oil on canvas, cm 58×170
The author of this canvas, the ‘battle painter Marzio Masturzo, is an intriguing personality, both because of his close proximity, as recorded by chronicles, to two of the founding figures of the battle genre, Salvator Rosa – of whom he was, according to Bernardo De Dominici (1744), a friend and pupil– and Aniello Falcone, as well as because of his “characteristic painterly fluency”, likely deriving from an appreciation of Luca Giordano. Giancarlo Sestieri has identified the Neapolitan master as the author of this work, and includes this battle painting among the “excellent” group within Masturzo’s oeuvre. While identifying a corpus clearly defined by stylistic and technical characteristics, the scholar has also highlighted a group of paintings of superior quality within the artist’s production, notably the two pendant battle paintings in the Galleria Nazionale in Palazzo Barberini.
Characteristic of the Neapolitan painter, as repeatedly emphasized by Sestieri, are not only the rapidity of execution and the markedly exaggerated physiognomies of the protagonists, but also the presence of lateral wings formed by fortified hills dominated by towers. The horizontal format of the painting suggests its function as a ‘sovrapporta’.