| Cavallino is praised for the delicacy of his technique as well as his sensitive and subtle interpretation of subject matter. The refinement in his painted surface was unequalled. His baptism in 1616 is recorded; he achieved his majority age twenty in 1636. He signed and dated one known work, his Santa Cecilia in Ecstasy dated 1645, Florence, Palazzo Vecchio. In 1646 there are documents for payment for two works, Annunciation and Immaculate Conception of similar sizes. In 1649 there is another payment for an unspecified painting. The year of his death is unknown he presumably died in the Neapolitan plague of 1656. Stanzione was likely in Rome then, and the pictures placed early in Cavallino's career point to close contact with the anonymous Master of the Annunciations. Nonetheless, there are strong affinities between Cavallino and Stanzione, but they emerge later on in his career. Despite his many sources all absorbed and transformed Cavallino he was a distinctive and gifted artist. He drew and composed his figures well, he had a fine and delicate sense of surface; he was very sensitive to textures, colors, and light. Equally important, he had a wonderful ability to convey very subtle states of mind. A universally accepted chronological development has not been proposed. Since only one work is signed and dated, useful guideposts are not available. His early compositions adapt rather conventional formulas and tend to follow the naturalistic tenets of Caravaggism. By the 1630s he developed a more complex approach spatially, psychologically, and technically. A series of striking narratives can be placed in this decade including the Adoration of the Magi (Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum) and Feast of Absalom Schloss Rohrau, Graf Harrach'sche Sammlung. The lynchpin for his entire oeuvre is the quietly rapturous SL CeciUa in Ecstasy dated 1645 in Florence and its bozzetto in Naples. Showing Cavallino's response to the painterly manner of van Dyck, its delicacy, diffuse lighting, and restrained elegance point to a new maturity. Evidently recognizing that he was best suited for easel pictures, Cavallino concentrated on them, rarely painting on very large scale especially after 1640. Late sixteenth and early seventeenth century Northern prints,notably those of Goltzius and Bellange have been cited as inspiration for Cavallino's almost mannerist approach to formulating his compositions in the later 1640s.These include his David and Abigail Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum and, more obviously, his much smaller Saul and the Shade of Samuel (Malibu, J. P. Getty Museum). Despite his many sources, His characters exhibit an elated mood, passionate yet transfixed strongly animated by their states of mind. Less than a century after his death, Cavallino was already ranked among the finest Neapolitan painters, despite the fact that his oeuvre did not contain the large frescoes or ambitious altarpieces which made the reputations of so many other artists. It seems clear that his work, done largely for private patrons, was sufficiently appreciated. It is noteworthy that Cavallino was influential in the eighteenth century an age which could respond to the poetry of his vision. |
