Giovanni Battista Caracciolo, December 7, 1578–December 23, 1635, was an Italian painter of the Neapolitan school, known as Battistello. He trained in Naples, probably with Francesco Imparato and Fabrizio Santafede, and was profoundly affected by Caravaggio’s arrival in the city in 1606.
Caracciolo became one of the leading early Neapolitan Caravaggists, adapting dramatic light and naturalistic figures to altarpieces, private devotional works, and later fresco decoration. His work also reflects study in Rome and contact with artists including Orazio Gentileschi; major works remain in Naples, Florence, Vienna, Saint Petersburg, and other public collections.
After visits to Rome, Genoa, and Florence, he returned to Naples, where he continued to develop a more classical, expansive manner alongside his tenebrist beginnings. He died in Naples in 1635 and was a formative figure for later seventeenth-century Neapolitan painting.
Giovanni Battista Caracciolo, in a Portrait by Onofrio Giannone, before 1773
Pen and ink
Museo Civico Filangieri, Naples
Two Youths with Grapes, 1605–1610
Oil on poplar panel, 23 × 27.8 in
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
Immaculate Conception with Saints Dominic and Francis of Paola, 1607–1608
Oil on canvas, 131.5 × 82.3 in
Church of Santa Maria della Stella, Naples
Christ and Caiaphas, 1611–1620
Oil on canvas, 30.7 × 40.9 in
State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg
The Liberation of Saint Peter, 1615
Oil on canvas, 122 × 81.5 in
Pio Monte della Misericordia, Naples
Salome Receives the Head of Saint John the Baptist, 1615–1620
Oil on canvas, 49.2 × 60.2 in
Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Christ on the Mount of Olives, 1615–1617
Oil on canvas, 58.3 × 48.8 in
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife, 1618
Oil on canvas, 46.7 × 46.7 in
Collection Rau for UNICEF, Remagen
Madonna of the Purification of the Soul with Saints Francis and Clare, c 1622–1625
Oil on canvas, 118.1 × 74.8 in
Museo di Capodimonte, Naples
The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, c 1625
Oil on canvas, 79.6 × 44.8 in
Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge
The Sacrifice of Abraham
Oil on canvas, 82 × 60.6 in
Dundee Art Galleries and Museums
Baby, 1610–1619
Red chalk on green paper, 3.1 × 3.9 in
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm
Head of a Boy in Profile
Pen and brown ink on paper, 5.4 × 6.1 in
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm
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