(Piano Vetrale 1662–1728 Naples)
The Triumph of Galatea,
oil on canvas, 148.5 x 198.2 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private European collection

We are grateful to Riccardo Lattuada for suggesting the attribution of the present painting on the basis of a photograph.

We are also grateful to Giuseppe Napoletano for independently endorsing the attribution. He dates this painting to circa 1710–1715.

This large mythological scene relates to a signed work by Paolo de Matteis, dated 1700 of the same subject conserved in the collection of the Banca d’Italia. Despite the compositional differences, some recurring elements can be found in both compositions, such as the physiognomies of the faces, the colour scheme and the graceful poses of the figures; the two dolphins on the left are repeated identically in both compositions.

Having started at an early age in Luca Giordano’s workshop, Paolo de Matteis moved to Rome around 1682, tempering his Neapolitan training with the classicism of Carlo Maratta and the artists active in the milieu of the French Academy.

The subject of the sea nymph Galatea being carried in triumph by inhabitants of the sea and flying cupids enjoyed great popularity in seventeenth and eighteenth century painting: Giordano depicted the subject in the monumental canvas now in the Uffizi, Florence, and de Matteis himself returned to the subject several times, as in the aforementioned painting and in the work now conserved in the Brera, Milan but originally in the convent of Santa Giustina in Padua; another version was executed by the artist for the castle of Pommersfelden.

Two sketches depicting the Triumph of Galatea are recorded among the artist’s possessions at the time of his death (see Getty Provenance Index database, Archival Inventory I-398, p. 6, no. 0029 and p. 26, no. 0390), another painting with the same subject is documented in 1718 in Naples in the collections of Domenico di Capua (see Getty Provenance Index database, Archival Inventory I-70, p. 8, no. 0035).

A double-sided sketch by Paolo de Matteis for the figure of Galatea (Metropolitan Museum, New York, acc. no. 68.172.11899, p.), previously linked by art historians to the canvas now in the Brera, may, in fact, relate to the present painting.