(Orta di Atella circa 1615 – circa 1685 Naples)
Saint Michael defeating Lucifer,
oil on canvas, 158 x 128.5 cm, framed

We are grateful to Nicola Spinosa for suggesting the attribution of the present painting after examination of the orginal. He dates this work to circa 1660 .

Giuseppe Marullo was a pupil of Massimo Stanzione (see B. De Dominici, Vite dei pittori, scultori e architetti napoletani, 1742–1745, III, pp. 106–109).

The present painting can be compared to Saint Michael the Archangel in the church of Saint Michael in Port’Alba (see N. Spinosa, La pittura napoletana del ‘600, Milan 1984, no. 524). Here Marullo displays the influence of Stanzione, as well as an indebtedness to the colour refinements of Francesco Guarino and Bernardo Cavallino.
Marullo was also influenced by the classicist tradition of the Emilian school of painting, especially the Bolognese painter Guido Reni.

The powerful effect of the chiaroscuro adds volume and substance to the bodies as they emerge out from the darkness. The iridescent blue of Saint Michael’s lorica, combined with the brightness of the red crimson cloth, which scenographically crosses the entire left side of the canvas, gives liveliness to the canvas and in turn liberates it from the most rigorous Caravaggist conventions. The present painting also discloses some lingering traces of Mannerism, which is discernable in the depiction of the sandals, finely rendered in blue and gold on the legs of the Saint, or in the bejeweled lorica. Although, with less successful intensity and psychological penetration, the expressiveness of the faces and the grace of the poses is reminiscent of the manner of Pacecco De Rosa, one of Stanzione’s pupils and surely the most resolute follower of Bolognese-Roman classicism.