Bernardo Cavallino was probably the most individual and refined painter in Naples in the first half of the 17^th century. Documentary evidence for his life and work is almost non-existent, and he remains enigmatic and elusive as a personality. His work, seemingly largely painted for private patrons rather then public commissions, combines complex and dramatic compositions with a highly refined and naturalistic style and virtuoso brushwork. The biographer Bernardo de Dominici, writing his Vite in 1742-43, considered him one of the five most important Neapolitan painters of the preceding century.