The son of a swordsmith—hence the sobriquet—Domenico Gargiulo was one of the leading figures in landscape painting on the Neapolitan art scene. He trained in the workshop of Aniello Falcone in the late 1620s, where he coincided with the painters Carlo Coppola, Andrea di Lione and Salvator Rosa. He became good friends with Rosa, whose style ultimately influenced his energetic painting based on rapid brushstrokes and bright colouring. Later, between 1635 and 1647, he worked closely with Viviano Codazzi, whose solemn classical architectures he filled with nervous, slender characters in a wide variety of poses that denote the influence of prints by Jacques Callot and Stefano della Bella.

Gargiulo also worked for the Carthusian Monastery of San Martino from 1638 on successive series of frescos and views, but an especially significant aspect of his activity was his effort to chronicle life in Naples. His amazingly lively depictions of Masaniello's revolt, the 1656 plague epidemic, and the eruptions of Mt. Vesuvius demonstrate his remarkable powers of observation, as does the painting in the Banco Santander Collection. When we attributed this work to Gargiulo in 1986, we associated the scene with a text published by the Neapolitan biographer and historian Bernardo de Dominici, in which he stated that Captain Genaro Rusca owned a picture by the painter depicting the landing of Infanta María, sister of Philip IV, at Naples en route to Germany, where she was to wed the King of Hungary. This episode, if we give credit to De Dominici's assertion, took place in 1630. However, it is odd that the Infanta, whom we see being escorted by two cardinals, is wearing her hair in a fashion more typical of the 1640s, not in the style usually favoured by Lady María, which we know thanks to Velázquez's portrait (Museo del Prado, inv. no. P1187).

Therefore, instead of the landing of Infanta María, this picture may actually depict the embarkation of Queen Mariana of Austria at the port of Finale in Liguria, where she stopped in August 1649 on her way from Vienna to Madrid to marry Philip IV. Jerónimo Mascareñas wrote a book about Lady Mariana's trip to Spain, Viaje de la Serenísima Reina Doña María Ana de Austria Segunda Mujer de Don Phelipe Quarto deste nombre, Rey Católico de Hespaña, hasta la Real Corte de Madrid, desde la Imperial de Viena, published in Madrid in 1650, which describes the stages of her journey and underscores the important retinue of cardinals, nobles, ambassadors (four of them arrived from Naples), governors and ship captains assembled at Finale to see off the queen before boarding the gondola that would take her to the royal galley bound for Spain.

The mountainous landscape, dotted with coves, castles and fortresses, undoubtedly bears a closer resemblance to that port than to the frequently depicted Gulf of Naples, and the iconic silhouette of Mt. Vesuvius, practically a must in any Neapolitan vista, is conspicuously absent.

In any event, it is an important and highly significant canvas, and its attribution to Gargiulo cannot be doubted. The distant perspective, with the sweeping landscape and tiny figures, the forest of masts and pennants of the fleet—strongly reminiscent of Rosa's work—and the horses in the foreground, so similar to those in the canvases of the Roman emperors held at the Museo del Prado, eloquently attest to the effort that Gargiulo put into this singular work. If the theme is the embarkation of Lady Mariana, it was most likely painted after 1650 and perhaps based on the written account of the journey rather than the artist's own observations, as there is no proof that Gargiulo ever left Naples in those years. Yet it is possible, as has been noted on occasion, that the artist fled the city during the troubled period that followed Masaniello's uprising, precisely in 1649–1650. [Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez / Roberto Alonso Moral]