Il ‘primo’ Ippolito Borghese nei depositi di Capodimonte (e un’aggiunta a latere). Due singolari casi iconografico-attributivi: la Maddalena penitente e i Tre Santi vescovi

The Capodimonte storerooms hold two paintings of the first phase, still rather obscure, of the activity of Ippolito Borghese (1568-1623/24), the late Mannerist Umbrian painter who moved to Naples in the last decade of the 16th century. The refined Repentant Magdalen, formerly in the D’Avalos collection, displayed in the exhibition was only attributed to Borghese in 1972 by Giovanni Previtali, who, however, interpreted the figure as a Roman Lucretia. The canvas is an important missing link in the reconstruction of Borghese’s early Neapolitan period, in a dense intertwining that involves other works by the painter: the Saint George of the Diocesan Museum of Ischia (1598); a Saint Catherine of Alexandria, also in Ischia, which here is attributed to Borghese; the Three Holy Bishops, the other work from the Capodimonte store- rooms that documents the stylistic facies of the Umbrian artist in the early 1600s and points to his contacts with the architect-painter Giovan Battista Cavagna.