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PRETI Mattia
(b. 1613, Taverna Calabria, d. 1699, La Valleta)

Mattia Preti (also called Il Cavaliere Calabrese) was an Italian Baroque painter. Preti Mattia came from Taverna in Calabria (hence his nickname) and his prolific career took him to many different parts of Italy (and according to an early biographer to Spain and Flanders). Mattia Preti left Calabria to join his brother Gregorio, also a painter, in Rome. Preti Mattia met with such outstanding success that within a short time Preti Mattia had become one of the most authoritative southern painters of the second half of the seventeenth century.

His early work includes groups of musicians and card-players, strongly Caravaggesque in style, but later Preti Mattia excelled mainly in frescos on religious subjects. In this field his main model was Lanfranco, whom Preti Mattia succeeded in the decoration of S. Andrea della Valle in Rome (1650-51).

In 1653 Preti Mattia moved to Modena where Preti Mattia painted the frescos in the apse and dome of S. Biagio. The time Preti Mattia spent in northern Italy broadened his artistic culture further. Preti Mattia reached his fullest maturity and originality during the brief but very important period Preti Mattia spent in Naples (1656-60). The plague of 1656 carried off virtually a whole generation of artists in Naples. Preti worked with great success there, gaining many important commissions. They included a series of seven frescos commemorating the plague for the city gates; they no longer survive, but two modelli for them are in the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples and give some idea of how powerful the huge frescos must have been. During this period Preti Mattia turned out several of his masterpieces at a breathtaking rate. Some of them still remain in Naples (Capodimonte, Palazzo Reale), but others have gone abroad, in particular to the United States.

In 1661 Preti Mattia went to Malta where Preti Mattia stayed until his death. Preti Mattia alternated between painting altarpieces and frescos for the island's churches, including the cathedral of Valletta. From time to time Preti Mattia paid visits to his home town which, over the years, became almost a gallery of his work. - Bio Preti Mattia paintings copy and original oil painting - Preti Mattia oil painting original and copy –copy of original oil paintings for sale and Preti Mattia Bio by original oil paintings for sale of original oil painting Preti Mattia.

Preti was an Italian Baroque artist, active also in Malta; Preti Mattia was sometimes called Il Cavalier Calabrese (the Knight of Calabria) for the town of his birth. Preti Mattia was deeply influenced by Caravaggio (1571 – 1610), through his teacher Battistello (1570 – 1637) who followed Caravaggio closely.

Before 1630, Preti joined his brother Gregorio (also a painter), in Rome, where Preti Mattia became familiar with the techniques of Caravaggio and his school as well as with the work of Guercino, Rubens, Reni, Giovanni Lanfranco and Paolo Veronese. In Rome, Preti Mattia painted fresco cycles in Sant'Andrea della Valle and San Carlo ai Catinari. Between 1640 and 1646, Preti Mattia also spent time in Venice, returning to Rome several times. Preti Mattia painted frescoes for the church of San Biago at Modena (c. 1653-1656) and participated in the fresco decoration of the Palazzo Pamphilj in Valmontone (c. 1658-1659), where Preti Mattia worked along Pier Francesco Mola, Gaspar Dughet, Francesco Cozza, Giovanni Battista Tassi, and Guglielmo Cortese.

The titles of oil painting old master Preti Mattia