十字架を崇めるナポリの守護聖人たち

In 1656 plague swept through Naples and killed something close to half the city. When it finally lifted, a new church was raised at Poggioreale over ground where many of the dead lay buried, and the Spanish viceroy commissioned paintings for its altars. This is one of them, made around 1660 by the young Luca Giordano. It gathers the patron saints of Naples at the foot of the cross, the holy protectors a plague city would have turned to when nothing else worked. Giordano was still in his twenties, near the start of a career that would make him the fastest and most sought-after painter in Naples. Here he was marking the end of the disaster that had emptied the streets he grew up on.