Nicola Vaccaro

Vaccaro attempted to adapt the stylistic features of 17th-century Neapolitan tradition to the new Classicist and Baroque trends towards increasing Arcadian tendencies.

[6] Through this marriage, he forged strong ties with well-known artists of the time such as Andrea Malinconico, Giovanni Do and Giacinto de Popoli, for whom he appears often as a witness at weddings or as a godfather at the baptism of their children.

[5] Nicola attended the drawing classes of the Accademia del Nudo (Academy of the Nude), established in Naples in 1664 and of which his father, Andrea, was director and, at the same time, treasurer.

The theatrical activity of Nicola Vaccaro coincided with the famous season of Alessandro Scarlatti, an important moment for the history of music in Naples.

[1] Nicola Vaccaro was a versatile painter, who covered a wide range of subjects including religious, historical and mythological themes.

He was also able to integrate still lifes and landscapes in his paintings in collaboration with specialist painters such as Abraham Brueghel, Francesco Della Quosta, Aniello Ascione and Andrea Belvedere.

With Francesco Di Maria, Giacomo Farelli and Andrea Malinconico, he regarded the starting points of their working method as the practice of drawing, the knowledge of human anatomy and the study of the great masters of the past.

His style gradually lost its initial formal rigidity and academic composure of the beginnings in favor of a language based on the grace of gestures, the serenity of the mood, on the studied compositional proportions.