MASTER OF MARTYRS (active in Naples in the first half of the 17th century) Martyrdom of St Lawrence, c. 1630 Oil on canvas, 99X126 cm Provenance: Rome, private collection The catalogue of this anonymous master active in Naples during the first half of the 17th century has yet to be clearly delineated. The first studies are owed to Leone de Castris published on the occasion of the exhibition Il Barocco a Lecce e nel Salento (Cf. P. Leone de Castris, in Il Barocco a Lecce e nel Salento, exhibition catalogue edited by A. Cassiano, Lecce 1995, p. 64), in which the scholar made known two versions depicting the Adoration of the Golden Calf from a private collection and the Provincial Museum of Lecce that Giancarlo Sestieri catalogued among Domenico Gargiulo's followers (Cf. G. Sestieri, G. Daprà, Domenico Gargiulo. Detto Micco Spadaro, paesaggista e cronista napoletano, Milan-Rome 1994, pp. 50-51). To these works must be added the Martyrdom of St. Stephen belonging to the Diocesan Museum in Naples (fig. 1; cf. G. Porzio, in Il Museo Diocesano di Napoli. Percorsi di fede e arte, catalogue edited by Pierluigi Leone de Castris, Naples 2008, pp. 134-135, no. 42) and probably the Martyrdom of St. Lawrence from the Departmental Museum of Cognac, which Brejon de Lavergnée attributed to the atelier of Micco 'vers' Scipione Compagno and reveals clear affinities with the canvas presented here. It is therefore possible to identify the artist's stylistic koinè, whose characters undoubtedly reveal the influence of Spadaro, but find more points of comparison with Scipione Compagno and especially Cornelio Brusco, without forgetting the similarities with Carlo Coppola and Johann Heinrich Schönfeld.