Luca Giordano. Maestro del Barocco a Firenze

When he was invited by the Corsini family to fresco the dome of their chapel in the Carmine in 1682, Luca Giordano was more than ready to work for Florence: he had been well received by the Medici in around 1664 on his return from Venice, earning himself a gold necklace as a gift, which he would go on to display in the Self-Portrait now in the Uffizi; in Naples he also had close relationships with Florentines, who collected his paintings and became his friends and protectors. In this city that had become familiar to him, the painter quickly created a circle of important patrons, including members of the Medici family. Of a possessive nature and with boundless ambition, Luca wasted no time marking his new territory by placing his works in crucial sites around the city and managing to eclipse the competition as he had done a few years earlier in Venice, another epicentre of patronage at that time. As a result, the commissions came raining in; in the years 1680–1690, Florence was full of his paintings, dozens of which were unfortunately lost over the following centuries.
Also in 1682 in Florence, where he was to paint the Corsini frescoes, Giordano received from the Marchese Francesco Riccardi the kind of commission that had so far eluded him and which undoubtedly appealed to him greatly, that of a cycle of frescoes with a secular subject in the vast space of a princely palace; this alone would have elevated him to the level of Pietro da Cortona, one of his ideal masters. The Riccardi family also set great store by this project because the frescoes would decorate a recently completed extension to their palace. Such considerable interest from the artist and patrons created a situation conducive to the creation of an important work. The contract was drawn up on 13 August 1682.