Bernardo Cavallino (Napoli 1616 - 1656), Saint Antonio from Padova and Child

Oil on panel
cm. 61x38
The painting is accompanied by an expertise from Prof. Nicola Spinosa.

Recognized by Prof. Nicola Spinosa as an autograph work by Bernardo Cavallino, this refined panel is an intimate variant—smaller and compositionally reversed—of the celebrated painting at the Museo di Capodimonte. The work displays the artist’s mature grace and luminous tenderness, hallmarks of his style after 1645. The delicate play of light, the soft gestures, and the inclusion of symbolic details such as the open book and the white lily evoke Cavallino’s poetic spirituality and his refined, Venetian-inspired classicism. A painting of rare elegance and emotional depth, likely created for private devotion, it exemplifies the lyrical sensibility that made Cavallino one of the most sophisticated masters of 17th-century Neapolitan art.