Massacre of the Innocents

Around 1640 the dark manner that Naples had taken from Caravaggio was beginning to loosen. Flemish paintings were turning up in private collections in the city, among them a Rubens of Herodias holding the head of John the Baptist, and Van Dyck was being collected there as well. Bernardo Cavallino had started out from Caravaggio's manner as painters like the Frenchman Simon Vouet had reworked it in Naples, and in this canvas the colour has already moved on, warmer and closer to enamel. The subject comes from the Gospel of Matthew, Herod's soldiers killing the children of Bethlehem in the hope that the newborn Christ would be among them. The picture hung for years in the Perrino collection in Naples before it came to Milan.