Mattia Preti : on presence and absence. The context for a new reading of Preti's portrait of Gregorio Carafa

Abstract

Mattia Preti’s vast ouvre is inhabited by humanity engaged in sacred and profane narratives. Presence concerns the story depicted, acted out by a choice of appropriate characters, and narrative dictates the types and modes of the characters portrayed. Most of Preti’s models, the ones he referred to when painting his narratives are, and probably will remain, anonymous. Most can be recognised by comparing facial traits and physiognomies. Preti’s model for St John the Baptist in his Baptism of Christ (National Museum of Fine Arts, 1667) takes on the role of an executioner in the Martyrdom of St Catherine (Church of St Catherine of Italy, 1658). The model for his Seneca (Private Collection, Malta, mid-1680s) also features as one of the executioners in the Martyrdom of St Andrew (Luqa Parish Church, 1687) and his model of an old man who Preti adopts for his St Publius (Church of St Publius, Rabat, 1680s) becomes St Nicholas (Siggiewi parish church, early 1680s), St Andrew (Zurrieq Parish Church, 1668) and St John the Almoner ( National Museum of Fine Arts, Valletta, 1680). This set repertoire of figures and facial types inhabiting Preti’s canvases is the fruit of the artist’s ecxceptional memory for which his copious repertoire of drawings serves the purpose of an aide memoire1. Understanding to what extent these are idealised creations of the mind albeit guided by a real presence would be elusive given that we have no knowledge of his models other than their presence as actors in his paintings. These models remain to all intents and purposes fictitious, anonymous and relatively realistic. This paper examines self-portraits and portraits by Mattia Preti, particularly his portrait of Gregorio Carafa, as visuals of identity. It explores the dialectic between resemblance and presence, the artist’s use of attributes to define identities and spatial relationships defining the artist’s presence. Attributes define the artist’s identity much like they define the identity of saints and heroes. Resemblance, too, based on relative comparisons concerning imagery and text, can identify presence. Both, and the way presence is grounded within the landscape of the picture plane can provide insight into purpose, roles and personalities. The core arguments discussed in this essay were presented in the seminar Mattia Preti e Gregorio Caraffa: due Cavalieri Gerosolomitani tra Italia e Malta (June 2013) in a paper entitled Mattia Preti: On Biographies and Brushwork, which have since then been developed and re-proposed as a context for reading Preti’s only known portrait of Gregorio Carafa.