Jacopo Butera

Francesco Solimena · c. 1695

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

117 × 91.6 cm (46 1/16 × 36 1/16 in.); Framed: 116.9 × 91.8 × 2.6 cm (46 × 36 1/8 × 1 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Baroque

This portrait of Jacopo Butera carries the quiet authority that made Francesco Solimena the most celebrated painter in Naples at the close of the seventeenth century. Solimena trained under his father and then absorbed the grand theatrical energy of Luca Giordano, developing a style that balanced Baroque dynamism with a cooler, more controlled finish. His portraits in particular show a painter who understood how to use deep shadow and selective light to give a sitter both physical presence and psychological weight — Butera emerges from a dark ground with the kind of composed dignity that suggests rank without spelling it out. The handling of the fabric and the fall of light across the face reflect the technical confidence of a painter who had already completed major fresco commissions across Naples by this point in his career. Solimena's workshop became a training ground for the next generation of European painters, and his influence reached as far as Austria and France through prints of his compositions circulating widely across the continent. This hand-painted oil reproduction is made on canvas using traditional oil paints, allowing the tonal depth and warm-to-cool contrasts that define Solimena's palette to come through as they do in the original held at the Art Institute of Chicago.