PIETRO BARDELLINO (Naples, 1728 - 1810) Madonna and Child Oil on copper, 25.2X19.2 cm The painting is in excellent condition and its quality justifies the collector's attribution to Francesco de Mura (Naples, 1696 ; 1784). In fact, it is only because of faint traits of style that it is returned to the catalogue of the most gifted of his pupils, Pietro Bardellino. The artist's personality was initially rediscovered by Costanza Lorenzetti in the famous exhibition dedicated to the three centuries of Neapolitan painting in 1938 (cf. C. Lorenzetti, La pittura napoletana del Settecento, in La mostra della pittura napoletana dei secoli XVII, XVIII, XIX, catalogue edited by S. Ortolani, C. Lorenzetti, S. Biancale, Naples 1938, pp. 202-203), but it was Nicola Spinosa's more recent research that provided the most important contributions. To the scholar, in fact, we owe a precise analysis of the production up to his full maturity, when the author was active as a fresco painter in the main royal residences of Ferdinand IV of Bourbon. In our case, the execution can be placed at full maturity, in the eighth decade, when the painter heralds a classicist sensibility about to be combined with a pictorialism of a more rarefied tenor typical of Neapolitan Rococo. Reference bibliography: N. Spinosa, Pietro Bardellino. Un pittore poco noto del Settecento napoletano, in Pantheon, 31, 1973, pp. 264-284 N. Spinosa, in Civiltà del '700 a Napoli, exhibition catalogue edited by R. Causa and N. Spinosa, Florence 1979-1980, I, pp. 270-275 N. Spinosa, Pittura napoletana del Settecento dal Rococò al Classicismo, Naples 1987, pp. 53, 121-125, nn. 153-174, pp. 273-284, figs. 189-214