Offered by Antichità di Alina
Pastoral Scene with a Figure in Oriental Costume. Neapolitan School, Pietro Bardellino (1728–1819)
Oil on canvas, 62 × 136.5 cm
Attributed to Pietro Bardellino (Naples, 1728–1819)
Naples, circa 1760–1770
Dimensions with frame: 72 × 148 cm
The composition unfolds in an open landscape where three young figures seem to take part in a small pastoral theatre. At the center, a young woman receives a basket of fruit, while on the right a youth dressed in white and wearing a red turban introduces an exotic and lively note, echoing the taste for turqueries and Arcadian masquerades popular in eighteenth-century Naples. The colors, applied in soft glazes, alternate between powdered pinks, pearly greens, and golden ochres, giving the scene a warm and refined harmony.
Pietro Bardellino, active in Naples under the Bourbons of Naples and Sicily, combines here the grace of the local tradition with northern European influences introduced at the court of Maria Carolina of Saxony, wife of King Ferdinand IV of Bourbon.
The softened contours and simplified forms place this painting within the artist’s early maturity, still close to the gentle tonalities of Francesco De Mura, yet already distinguished by a freer touch and a personal decorative sensibility.
This work belongs to the group of pastoral and galant scenes painted by Bardellino for villas and private salons around Naples, conceived to evoke a world of music, theatre, and elegant leisure. The precious treatment of light, while preserving the plastic consistency of the forms, anticipates the more vigorous and classicizing style of his later decorative cycles for the Royal Palace of Caserta.
Bardellino was not only the finest pupil of De Mura but also one of the most accomplished interpreters of eighteenth-century Neapolitan painting. After his master’s death, he became the orchestrator of festive Arcadian imagery and the leading decorator of the Bourbon royal residences, embodying the theatrical grace and cosmopolitan taste of his time.
Canvas relined, in very good condition.
