Painting Domenico Antonio Vaccaro was born in
Naples as the son of
Lorenzo Vaccaro. His father Lorenzo was a pupil of
Cosimo Fanzago. Domenico Antonio Vaccaro first studied under his father. He subsequently trained in the workshop of
Francesco Solimena. Among his earliest surviving paintings, executed during the 1690s, are the
Penitent St. William of Aquitaine (Naples,
Santa Maria della Verità), a work of complex composition, charged colours and dramatic
chiaroscuro inspired by
Mattia Preti’s work, and a bozzetto (Naples,
National Museum of San Martino) for the proposed vault decoration of the sacristy of
San Domenico Maggiore.
Bernardo de' Dominici suggested that it was Domenico’s failure to secure the San Domenico commission, which went to Solimena, that dissuaded him from pursuing a career as a painter. Certainly, from around 1707 he appears to have practised almost exclusively as a sculptor and architect, until during the 1730s he resumed painting, executing large works in an individualistic Rococo style for the Collegiata at Marigliano, the Monteverginella in Naples, and for many other Neapolitan churches.
Sculpture Domenico’s earliest sculptures were made in collaboration with his father, whom he helped to complete the bronze equestrian monument to
Philip V of Spain for the Piazza del Gesù in Naples (1702–5). In 1707 he carved the marble
antependium, the
Dead Christ with Angels, for the high altar of
San Giacomo degli Spagnoli. After Lorenzo’s death Domenico completed his unfinished figures of
Providence and
Divine Grace (1708) for the Cappella di San Giovanni Battista in the church of the
Certosa di San Martino. He continued his family’s involvement in the major redecoration programme at the Certosa for another 13 years. He provided figures of
Solitude (1707) and
Penitence (1708) for the Cappella di San Bruno and monumental half-length busts of St. Januarius and St. Martin (1709) for the Chiostro Grande. In 1709–19 he made four reliefs of the
Four Evangelists and the imposing high altar relief of the
Trinity and the Virgin Consigning the Keys of the City of Naples to St. Januarius for the Cappella di San Gennaro, and his colourful
stucco and marble decoration of the Cappella di San Giuseppe (1718–19) is one of the most important early 18th-century decorative ensembles in Naples. Domenico’s contemporary Cappella del Rosario, with graceful white stucco garland-bearing angels balanced on the architraves and
putti and
cherubs flitting over the walls, is characteristic of his light-hearted barocchetto architectural decoration. From 1719–24 he was occupied on the decoration of the
crypt of San Paolo Maggiore, carving four atmospheric marble reliefs of the
Life of St. Cajetan. For the same church he executed one of his most appealing works, the tender and naturalistic marble group of the
Guardian Angel (1724), in which the influence of Solimena’s painterly style is especially evident. Domenico’s carved
obelisk and its bronze statue of St. Dominic in the Piazza San Domenico, Naples, date from 1737. In addition to his religious commissions, Domenico Vaccaro also produced portrait busts for funerary monuments, among them those of Vincenzo Petra and his brother Domenico Petra (marble, 1701) for their chapel in
San Pietro a Majella, and that of Anna Maria Caterina Doria (marble, 1730), in the same church. Like his father, he provided models for
silversmiths, such as that for the monumental silver statue of the Virgin Immaculate, finished by 1724 for the high altar of the church of the
Gesù Nuovo. He also made crib figures (e.g. Naples, National Museum of San Martino; Munich,
Bavarian National Museum).
Architecture Domenico Vaccaro was among those artists who introduced the light-hearted
barocchetto style of architectural decoration to Naples. At Santa Maria delle Grazie,
Calvizzano, near Naples, he added transepts and a choir to an earlier church. His extensive use of white stucco rather than coloured decoration for the interior accentuates the impression of height, and is so applied as apparently to abolish the conventional architectonic elements. In the centralized church of
Santa Maria della Concezione a Montecalvario in Naples (1718–24), Domenico supervised the design and execution of the decoration, carved the sculpture and provided the painted altarpiece. Again all superfluous decoration is eliminated, and large windows in the elongated central octagon accentuate the brilliant light created by the white stucco decoration, whose forms are inspired by Cosimo Fanzago’s. The towers and concave profiles of Domenico’s church façades are related to those of Francesco Borromini. His most engaging architectural device, however, was his use of
maiolica tiles in the redecoration of the Chiostro delle Clarisse (1739–42) at
Santa Chiara, Naples. The coloured narrative tiles that clad the piers and benches dividing the original
Gothic garden lend a bucolic note to this city cloister. Domenico also designed the church of San Giovanni at
Capua, and he reconstructed the
Cathedral of Bari. He helped reconstruct the church of
Santa Maria della Pace, damaged after an earthquake. Domenico’s most ambitious secular architectural commission was the Palazzo Tarsia in Naples (1732–9). This magnificent palace, conceived on a larger scale than any hitherto in the city, was never completed and its elaborate terraces, ramps and gardens were destroyed in the 19th century. Its design perhaps owed something to
Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt’s plans for the
Belvedere, Vienna. Domenico also designed the Palazzo Caravita at
Portici and the
Palace of the Immacolatella at the water's edge in central Naples. ==Selected works==