The ascension of Saint Gennaro
1635. Oil on canvas.Not on display
Bishop Gennaro (or Januarius) is the patron saint of Naples, and thus the subject of numerous works from that city’s rich school of painting. According to tradition, he was bishop of Benevento during the Diocletianic Persecution in the third century AD. While visiting Pozzuoli, north of the Gulf of Naples, Gennaro was taken prisoner and tortured in various ways, miraculously emerging unscathed. Finally he was decapitated and buried there.
At the Duomo in Naples, relics of Saint Gennaro are housed in a luxurious chapel built for that purpose in the seventeenth century. The most famous remains are two glass vials in which Gennaro’s followers stored some of his blood. To this day the vials are exhibited to the faithful on the anniversary of his death. The miraculous liquefaction of his blood on that day, 19 september, is considered a sign of his protection of Naples. Among the most important events attributed to Saint Gennaro’s intervention are the end of a plague epidemic in 1526 and the miraculous protection of Naples from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 1631. It was exactly this latter event that Neapolitan painter Andrea Vaccaro extoled in this exalted depiction of his patron.
Vaccaro’s artistic training, traditionally attributed to Girolamo Imparato (active 1573-1621), took place in his hometown and followed the strictest naturalism of Caravaggio. This was the predominant style in Naples during Vaccaro’s youth, as Caravaggio had spent time there and some of his finest followers settled in that city, including Jusepe de Ribera. After visiting Rome, Vaccaro tempered his style with the elegant forms and vivid colours of Bolognese classicism to craft a personal andsuccessful formula that clearly echoes the approaches of Guido Reni and Massimo Stanzione (1585-c.1656/58), who also worked in Naples. To this he added his own sense of naturalism, attaining a refined, pleasing balance that was very appropriate for religious subjects and much in demand among his fellow citizens and Spanish patrons. Vaccaro gained great fame in Madrid during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
In this representation of the principal Neapolitan saint, Vaccaro displays his particular merging of the vernacular with the Bolognese aesthetic. The composition, with the saint sumptuously characterised as a bishop and a host of cherubs carrying him through the clouds with his attributes, draws on Ribera’s painting of the same subject made around 1635 for the convent of the Augustine nuns of Monterrey in Salamanca. The artist sought an image that was both triumphant and measured, eschewing the vertiginous celestial ascensions then characteristic of the High Baroque. The smooth, delicate placement of the saint’s hands and up-turned eyes are indicative of why he reached heaven. His ecstatic gaze towards the light breaking through the sky and his left hand resting on his heart are both allusions to his commitment to God that resulted in his martyrdom. With his other arm, Gennaro reaches for two small vials of blood that symbolise his martyrdom.
The miracle is depicted with a chromatic austerity, in keeping with Vaccaro’s mature work, and the artist’s proud signature appears in the form of gilded initials. (Aterido, A.: Italian Masterpieces. From Spain´s Royal Court, Museo del Prado, 2014, p. 148).
The detailed panorama of Naples that appears in the lower register of the painting must have been the work of a collaborator specializing in this type of veduta, perhaps Didier Barra. (Leone de Castris, P.: Didier Barra e l´imagine di Napoli nel primo Seicento, 2025, p. 36, 39 nt.51)
Aterido Fernández, Ángel, 'Andrea Vaccaro. The ascension of Saint Gennaro'. Italian masterpieces from Spain's royal court, Museo del Prado, National Gallery of Victoria Thames & Hudson, 2014, p.148
