The figure of the Virgin, in which clear references to Maratta's pictorial solutions emerge, confirms the close adherence to Solimian production of the 1920s through a gradual formal consolidation, supported by the chiaroscuro system, which is found in this work. The portrait in the field of artistic production, present from ancient times to the present day, is a work that depicts an individual characterized by a precise physiognomic reference or by symbolic elements that allow identification. The need for one's own representation has always been felt and portraiture as a genereis connected to the very birth and affirmation of art as a creative necessity.

Religious production

The first group of works is a clear reference to the Academy founded by Francesco Solimena at the end of the seventeenth century. Characterized by Roman models - from Raphael to Maratta - and Bolognese - the Carracci and their disciples - it therefore becomes the pivot around which the orientation of the different generations that come into contact with Solimena in the first half of the eighteenth century gravitates. Thanks to the wide diffusion of this production in the peripheral territories, linked to the Solimena lesson by his disciples - such as Tomajoli and de Majo - and his followers - Francesco Narici, the alternative trends deserve adequate consideration, starting from those that are headed by the Cilento painter Paolo de Matteis. Compared to the aforementioned trends, there is space for some expressions linked to a different orientation, partly aimed at recovering the vision of Francesco De Mura, as emerges from the painting attributed to Bardellino, partly at the reaffirmation of the chromatic values of Giordanesque style, rebalanced in a Rococo key.