Massimo Stanzione Artwork valuations, appraisals and auction estimates

"Pivot of the Neapolitan school at the end of the second quarter of the 1600s" and "irrepressible presupposition, almost up to the neoclassical results of the last eighteenth century": this is how Raffaello Causa defined Massimo Stanzione in his introduction to the catalog of the 1983 Turin exhibition on Painting Neapolitan from Caravaggio to Luca Giordano, placing him among the greatest and most authoritative representatives of the artistic scene of the 17th century Neapolitan city. Stanzione was undoubtedly one of the leaders of Neapolitan painting in the first half of the century, capable of establishing himself personally, alternating important private commissions and paintings of profane subjects (see the "Sacrifice to Bacchus" in the Prado Museum, Madrid) with works of wide scope for the churches of Naples, such as the large altarpiece of the Madonna del Rosario in the Cacace chapel in San Lorenzo Maggiore. but also to create a true artistic legacy from which the most important personalities of the following generation emerged: among others, Francesco Guarini, Onofrio Palumbo and Giuseppe Marullo, with an influence that extended up to Francesco Solimena.