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(3) Geronimo d’Auria
( fl Naples, 1573–1619). Son of (1) Giovan Domenico d’Auria. After the death of his father, in 1573 he worked on the completion of the tomb of Fabrizio Brancaccio in S Maria delle Grazie a Caponapoli, Naples. In June of that year he received payment for a statue of Marcello Caracciolo, Conte di Biccari, for the Caracciolo di Vico Chapel, S Giovanni a Carbonara, Naples, and in September he received further payment, from Bernardino Rota, for works carried out by his father in the Rota Chapel, S Domenico Maggiore, Naples. From 1576 Geronimo received a series of important commissions for the church of the Annunziata, Naples. Apart from the lavabo in the sacristy, based on the designs of the Neapolitan painter Giovan Bernardo Lama and executed in collaboration with Salvatore Caccavello, other surviving works by Geronimo include the wooden panels with scenes from the Old and New Testaments on the sacristy benches, again executed in collaboration with Caccavello and, in the decorative sections, with the Neapolitan carver Nunzio Ferraro. The work, one of the greatest achievements of Neapolitan sculptural art from the second half of the 16th century, reveals considerable variations in both style and quality. The scenes created by Geronimo often contain echoes of the classicizing academicism of his father and rarely achieve the extraordinarily dramatic quality of his more gifted colleague Salvatore Caccavello, to whom several figures of Prophets have been attributed. After this early phase Geronimo developed a style that was markedly influenced by the Counter-Reformation and by the presence in Naples of the Florentine sculptors Michelangelo Naccherino and Pietro Bernini, who dominated Neapolitan sculpture during the 16th and 17th centuries. This dry, academic style gained widespread popularity among members of the Neapolitan nobility, who commissioned numerous funerary monuments and sculptures from Geronimo for their private chapels. In 1583 he executed the large funerary structure for the Mastrogiudice family in the parish church of Monteoliveto and between 1586 and 1590 the funerary monument of Giovanbattista Minutolo in Naples Cathedral. Before 1590 he completed, in collaboration with Francesco Cassano, the sculptures for the Turbolo Chapel, S Maria la Nova, Naples. Again in collaboration with Cassano, he began work in 1590 on the sculptures, funerary monuments and epitaphs for the Barone Chapel, Nola Cathedral. In 1592 he received payment for a statue of the Virgin and Child for the Montalto Chapel, S Maria del Popolo agli Incurabili, Naples. In 1593–4 he executed a statue of St John the Baptist, universally acknowledged as his greatest work, for the Rota Chapel, S Domenico Maggiore.
Part of the Auria, d’ family
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