MALINCONICO, Nicola

(b. ~1663 Napoli, d. 1721 Napoli)

Italian painter, active mainly in Naples. He was a follower of Massimo Stanzione and was influenced by Luca Giordano. He painted mostly religious subjects but painted also still-lifes recalling paintings by Pietro Paolo Bonzi and Paolo Porpora.

Around 1700, he was commissioned by bishop Oronzo Filomarino to decorate the cathedral of Gallipoli in the province of Lecce. He completed there a cycle of paintings with the help of his son Carlo.

His works are in various churches of Naples, Loreto, in the cathedral of Bergamo, in San Gaetano in Vicenza and in the cathedral of Sorrento.

Decorative Still-Life

The main preoccupation of the Neapolitan still-life painters of the second half of the seventeenth century was not to create a perfect and deceptive representation of textures and surfaces, which was the aim of the northern Italian painters, or to an even greater extent, the Dutch masters of still-life. The Neapolitan artists focused on decorative effect expressed through pictorial composition. This intention is reflected in a virtuoso style of painting that seeks to be recognised and esteemed as such.

In this painting Malinconico evokes the sensual delights exclusively through the application of paint and the use of colour. Materials and their imitation in paint did not really interest Neapolitan artists at the end of the seventeenth century. Colour as matter became the prime concern. The still-life’s only role is now decoration.

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Flowers in a Vase

This still-life depicts flowers in a blue painted earthenware vase and a titmouse (a small songbird that searches acrobatically for insects among foliage and branches).

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Moses Striking the Rock

This painting is a bozzetto, a design for a larger painting.

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