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Luca Giordano<break strength="x-strong"/> (Naples, 1634 -1705)<break strength="x-strong"/> Portrait of a Prelate, 1676-77<break strength="x-strong"/> Red chalk on pink prepared paper, 258x159 mm<break strength="x-strong"/> Luca Giordano's graphic production, although not comparable to his pictorial work, appears to be characterized by a constant evolution. After an initial youthful phase, with an agitated style - characterized by a faint watercolour pen mark - the Artist arrives, in his later creations, at a freer and more serene language in which he also uses charcoal and sanguine. In this Portrait of a Prelate, the rapid and incisive drawing appears to be a synthesis of the Neapolitan artist, who embodies the strength of the engraver and the attention to anatomical details derived from his teacher Jusepe de Ribera. The work, which depicts a high Jesuit prelate, can be dated around 1676-77. In those years Luca Giordano was contacted by the Jesuits who commissioned a Saint Francis Xavier for the high altar of the church of San Ferdinando in Naples. The elegance and charm of the profile formula of the Portrait hark back to classic models by Pliny and Quintilian, taken from Florentine painting of the 14th and 15th centuries. Giordano intended the classic only as a formal model, no longer an aesthetic ideal to look to. The lesson of Caravaggio first, then that of Ribera, meant that his attention was focused on the slight roughness of the nose, on the natural signs left by ungenerous time on the forehead, at the sides of the eyes, and also under the chin and neck, partly hidden from view by the shirt and the lapel of the cassock. The sheet features on the back a male figure of mature age, intent on writing (or drawing). It could be a self-portrait of the Neapolitan painter, at the time forty-two years old, when he was not yet using the large glasses that would later characterize his image.