Domenico Gargiulo, called Micco Spadaro (Naples 1609/10-1675)

Domenico Gargiulo trained in Naples in the workshop of Aniello Falcone from 1628, together with Andrea di Leone and Salvator Rosa. His early works where profoundly indebted to Jacques Callots' engravings of figures and to Filippo Napoletano's rendering of figures and imaginary landscapes.
The figure standing in the centre of this composition, wearing a red cap and with his hands held behind his back, also appears in Spadaro's tondo of The Fortune Teller, signed and dated 1636, now in the Fondi Collection, in Naples. While the figures grouped around the fire closely relate to those in the Interior of a Prison, painted by Spadaro and Viviano Codazzi in 1643, now in a private collection in Italy (D. Marshall, Viviano e Niccolo' Codazzi, Milan, 1993, p. 114, no. VC 31).
We are grateful to Dr. David Marshall for confirming the attribution on the basis of photographs. This picture is also sold with a copy of a letter of expertise from Professor Alberto Cottino confirming the attribution. Both consider this painting to be an early work by the Neapolitan artist.