Una voce polifonica del secondo Settecento napoletano: altri disegni e bozzetti per Francesco La Marra

Abstract

Rediscovered in the 1960s, the figure of Francesco La Marra (1728-1787), a master originally from Martina Franca who arrived in Naples in 1748, just one year after Francesco Solimena’s death, continues to reveal new surprises. La Marra's reputation has primarily endured thanks to a series of etchings based on designs attributed to Mattia Preti, Luca Giordano, and Francesco Solimena—the Raccolta dei Cinquanta Disegni Originali, published posthumously in Naples in 1792 by the Terres brothers—and his fame as a marginal figure in the Neapolitan artistic scene. However, La Marra was not merely the creator of numerous figurative sketches, often distinguishable by their defined neoclassical style, nor did he confine himself to producing pastiches of others' compositions. Like one of his principal influences, Luca Giordano, La Marra distinguished himself by his ability to surprise and deceive with drawings executed à la manière de Solimena, Giordano, and Francesco De Mura. His graphic corpus, along with his rarer and exquisitely refined oil sketches on paper, long believed to be 18th-century French works, continues to unveil new discoveries. On this occasion, new attributions are presented in the collections of the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Prado, the Albertina, and the State Museum of Copenhagen.