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Night and Morning
Luca Giordano·c. 1670
Historical Context
Night and Morning, painted around 1670 and now in the Guildhall Art Gallery in London, is an allegorical composition depicting the transition from darkness to dawn through mythological personifications. Giordano's ceiling paintings and allegories were celebrated across Europe for their luminous color and dynamic movement, qualities that earned him comparison to the great Venetian decorators. The allegorical treatment of time — its passage, its cycles, its effects — was a favorite subject of Baroque patrons commissioning decorative schemes for palaces and public buildings. The painting's presence in London's Guildhall reflects the extensive collecting of Italian Baroque art by British institutions throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Technical Analysis
The contrasting figures of Night and Morning create a dramatic tonal opposition, with Giordano using warm dawn colors against cool nocturnal blues to convey the temporal transition.
Look Closer
- ◆Notice the tonal opposition of the two allegorical figures — Night and Morning rendered through contrasting palettes of cool nocturnal blues against warm dawn colors.
- ◆Look at how Giordano makes temporal transition visible: the shift from darkness to light that happens invisibly in nature is here given tangible form through color and figure.
- ◆Find the mythological personifications used to represent abstract time: Giordano's ability to give concrete visual form to intangible concepts like 'night' and 'morning' was central to his value as a decorative painter.
- ◆Observe that the Guildhall Art Gallery in London holds this circa 1670 work — the City of London's collection, rebuilt after the fire that destroyed much of the original collection, holds important Italian Baroque paintings acquired over centuries.
