Pietro Novelli
Pietro Novelli was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, active mainly in Palermo. Also known as il Monrealese or Pietro "Malta" Novelli to distinguish him from his father, Pietro Antonio Novelli. He was also nicknamed by contemporaries as the Raphael of Sicily.
Biography
He was born in Monreale, and died in Palermo. He initially trained with his father, a painter and mosaicist. His father died in 1625 from the bubonic plague. As a young apprentice he was a fellow pupil with Gerardo Astorino. In 1618, he moved to Palermo and apprenticed with Vito Carrera and studied perspective with the mathematician Carlo Maria Ventimiglia. His first dated work is from 1626: St. Anthony Abbot for the church of Sant'Antonio Abate in Palermo. The development of his style owed much to Anthony van Dyck, who visited Sicily in 1624 and whose altarpiece, the Madonna of the Rosary in the oratory of Santa Maria del Rosario in Palermo was highly influential for local artists.Also important for Novelli’s artistic development was the time he spent in Rome and Naples c. 1630/31–3. In Rome he probably studied the works of Raphael and Michelangelo, of Caravaggio and the Bolognese painters, Pietro da Cortona, Nicolas Poussin and Diego Velázquez. In Naples he came into contact with the works of Jusepe [de Ribera] and with the contemporary Neapolitan naturalist painters, and he was deeply affected by the art of Andrea Vaccaro and Massimo Stanzione.
A direct influence from Caravaggio can be seen in the fresco of Daniel in the Lions’ Den, where the angel is derived from that in Caravaggio’s Nativity. Novelli returned to Sicily in 1637. Probably soon thereafter he painted Judith and Holofernes, which shows his close links with Artemisia Gentileschi and Ribera. The Trinity Sending the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin, which also postdates his time in Naples, is an eclectic work in which the elegance and idealism of van Dyck blend with the naturalism of Caravaggio or Ribera. Other works of the 1630s, which opened the most productive phase of Novelli’s career, include the canvas of St. Benedict Distributing Bread to the Religious Orders, the Virgin with St. Rosalie and St. John the Baptist and St. John the Baptist Preaching.
At the end of the 1630s and the beginning of the 1640s he produced some fresco cycles, in which the influences of Guido Reni, Lanfranco and, especially, Domenichino are discernible. In the last years of his life he painted for the church of San Matteo in Palermo the Presentation in the Temple and the Marriage of the Virgin.
Novelli was injured during the revolution in Palermo in 1647, and died from his wounds. His pupils included Andrea Carreca, Francesco Maggiotto, Francesco Giselli, Michele Blasco, Vincenzo Marchese, Giacomo lo Verde, and Macri da Girgenti. He was also an architect and stage set designer.