Note sui dipinti di Paolo De Matteis a Pistoia
Giuseppe Napoletano
Paolo De Matteis was born in Piano del Cilento (Salerno) in 1662 and was a painter active in Naples in the last decade of the seventeenth century and the first decades of the eighteenth century. After a brief period at the Accademia di San Luca in Rome, where he met the art of Carlo Maratta, the painter returned to Naples, became the most important pupil of Luca Giordano and he obtained international assignments. At the master’s death, De Matteis was one of the greatest painters of Naples in the first half of the eighteenth century, together with Francesco Solimena, his major rival. The present study analyzes the style and the patronage of the known production of De Matteis preserved in Tuscany between Arezzo and Pistoia.