The Goddess Flora
Ca. 1697. Oil on canvas.Not on display
The goddess Flora is seated on steps or a kind of dais, holding a cornucopia of flowers and distributing blossoms among the women gathered before her. This is a collaborative work between two Neapolitan artists, Luca Giordano -a painter very popular with the Spanish court under Charles II- and Andrea Belvedere. Belvedere is now believed to be responsible for the flowers, the minute and precise brushstrokes of which are completely unlike Giordano´s signature style, ruling out his role in their execution. Furthermore, X-ray analysis confirms the contribution of two hands: one, without a doubt, Giordano´s, characterised by the vigorous, prolonged brushstrokes applied to the figure of the goddess and her companions; and a second -completely distinct from Giordano´s- in the flowers, which were painted once the figures had been completed. This dual attribution is further supported by documentary evidence that proves the involvement of other studio artists in Giordano´s works, including Giuseppe Recco, Giovanni Battista Ruoppolo, Giuseppe Ruoppolo and Abraham Brueghel.Giordano´s collaboration with the artist Belvedere was particularly intense. Belvedere lived in Spain between 1694 and 1700, apparently called there from Naples by Giordano himself, and where, according to Bernardo de Dominici (a Neapolitan art historian and painter of the late-Baroque period), he painted for the king and nobles in the court. Little is known about the terms under which he worked for Giordano, or the activities he carried out in Spain beyond the small number of works that are attributed to him. In contemporary biographies of Giordano written by De Dominici and Filippo Baldinucci, both authors acknowledge their indebtedness to Belvedere for information he provided regarding Giordano´s sojourn in Spain.Art historian Giuseppe De Vito first attributed the flowers to Belvedere in 2002. A comparison of this painting with the two major works by Belvedere in the Prado´s Collection (P549, P550), dispels any doubts one might harbour about the authorship of the flowers in the painting. After examining photographs of the unrestored painting, Ferrari and Scavizzi concluded in 2003 that additional studio artists may also have contributed to the work. Their assessment was most likely based on the appearance of heavily repainted areas and not examination of the painting itself, which was in storage in a government building from 1931 for many years. However, following its restoration in 2007 by Isabel Molina one can clearly see that it is an autograph work in which the characteristic elements of Giordano´s style are evident (Úbeda de los Cobos, A.: Portrait of Spain. Masterpieces from the Prado, Queensland Art Gallery-Art Exhibitions Australia, 2012, p. 114).
