La caduta degli angeli ribelli

Luca Giordano painted this towering canvas around 1666 in Naples, a city where the long shadows of Caravaggio and the Spanish painter Ribera still shaped how younger artists handled darkness. You can see that inheritance in the lower half, where the rebel angels tumble into a murky, bruised gloom, all straining muscle and shadow. Then the eye climbs toward the Archangel Michael at the top, and the whole mood changes to the bright, airy colour Giordano had picked up from Venetian painting. Two worlds meet on one surface. It later travelled north to Vienna, where it served as an altarpiece in the Minorite church before the Habsburg emperors took it into their collection.