Lot 1126 Dα

This adoration of the shepherds is a bozzetto painted by the artist himself for his altarpiece in the church of Santa Maria Donnalbina, as demonstrated by Nicola Spinosa in a certification of 2011. The image depicts the final composition with a few differences, and thus plays a central role in the genesis of the altarpiece. The painting was part of an innovative decorative scheme for the Neapolitan church.

The composition focuses on the Virgin presenting the Christ Child to the shepherds in the centre. Shepherds file in from all sides and angels fill the skies, strewing flowers upon the holy family. Solimena has depicted the nativity in an opulent, densely populated and vividly coloured composition. The Christ Child forms the central source of light in the scene, highlighting the faces of Mary, Joseph and the shepherds crowded around them. In contrast to pictorial tradition, Solimena has not painted the work as a solemn nocturne, but allows a glowing beam of light to illuminate the entire scene from the upper left. The artist has made the figures of the shepherds and shepherdesses as diverse as possible, with one playing a flute, another with his back to the observer raising his hat in greeting, a woman kisses Christ's feet, another holds her hands clasped in prayer and yet another leads a young boy towards the infant Jesus. Despite this plethora of characters, the compositional scheme is clearly discernible as comprising of three distinct registers. The yellow and ochre tones which dominate the palette lend the work a light and joyful atmosphere.

Aside from a few minor differences, the present bozzetto is very close to the final composition, which becomes clear upon comparison with the finished altarpiece. The position of the sheep in the lower right has been altered slightly, and one of the two angels between the columns on the left is missing from the final piece, but apart from this, the bozzetto expresses Solimena's completed concept almost exactly. The development of the work becomes clear when one also takes into account Solimena's first bozzetto and a pastel sketch predating the current work.
The composition and colouring of the unfinished first bozzetto from the De Giovanni Collection in Naples differ fundamentally from those of the present work, and thus from the finished altarpiece (cf. exhib. cat. Naples/Vienna 1994: Barock in Wien. Kunst zur Zeit der österreichischen Vizekönige. Naples 1994, p. 200-201, no. 34). The Christ Child is placed differently, Mary is praying and the shepherd with his back to the viewer holds a hand before his face, blinded by the light emitting from the infant saviour. The colours in this work also appear much darker than the glowing palette of the altarpiece. Solimena's pastel drawing, which is today kept in the Albertina in Vienna (cf. illus. 1; inv no. 24385), presents a further stage in the genesis of the Santa Maria altarpiece. In this work the artist has apparently not fully solved the problems of overlap within the composition. However, it does already show how Solimena has arranged the disparate figures to form a harmonic composition through the use of shading and highlighting techniques. The artist has made several other changes between this work and the De Giovanni bozzetto, as in the sketch the holy family already occupy the same final position as in the finished work and we encounter the figure of the greeting shepherd with his back to the viewer for the first time. However, the repoussoir figure of the woman with a basket of eggs in the foreground is missing, and in her stead we see a figure of a woman crouching and apparently observing her own baby in a basket, who is thus isolated from the main depiction.

The “Adoration of the Shepherds” in the church of Santa Maria Donnalba in Naples was part of a commission which in terms of scope and import represented the seminal effort of Francesco Solimena's career as a painter of religious works. The monumental altarpiece, measuring 390 x 240 cm, previously graced the transept of the church, positioned opposite an “Adoration of the Magi”. Solimena's other works for this church included altarpieces with the Annunciation, Visitation, Flight to Egypt and Joseph's Dream, as well as a fresco depiction of Paradise. The works all date from between 1695 and 1701, and the present work can also be dated to around this time. This was the phase of Francesco Solimena's rise to become the leading painter in Naples following Luca Giordano's appointment to the Spanish court. It was also the period in which he distanced himself from the style of predecessors such as Mattia Preti to develop a neoclassical repertoire which Nicola Spinosa describes as “matrice classicista e 'neorinascimentale'”.