MARZIO MASTURZO
(Active in Naples and Rome in the 17th century)
Battle Scene
After the Battle
Pair of oils on canvas 51x73 cm
The painter is among the most celebrated and important battle painters of the Neapolitan tradition: a friend of Salvator Rosa, according to the 18th-century biographer Bernardo De Dominici, with him he moved to Rome and, presumably, joined the so-called "Company of Death".
If the Rosian example, taken from the "battles without a hero" by Aniello Falcone,
is evident in Masturzo's works such as the Battles now in Palazzo Barberini in Rome, the style of our artist progressively differs from it due to a greater fluency of the expressive means of colour, more modern than Rosa's in the free application of the paint, and for the ample use of 17th-century firearms. Masturzo's update with respect to the contemporary battle-painting production of Jacques Courtois, called the Burgundian, and Michelangelo Cerquozzi, called Michelangelo of the Battles, is therefore evident: the influence of these models, present in Rome, is evident in the pair of canvases, where the expressive vivacity and acute realism are accompanied by a careful definition of the landscape, partly realistically devastated by the fury of the war event, and of the majestic sky, softened by rosy hues.
Marzio Masturzo
