Girolamo PESCI

by Rita Randolfi - Biographical Dictionary of Italians - Volume 82 (2015)

He was born in Rome in 1679. The names of the parents are not known; a Pesci family, originally from Città della Pieve, had settled in Filettino near Frosinone, where Pesci executed some altarpieces for two places of worship (Paonessa, I, 2014, p.26)

He studied for eight years at Carlo Maratta, from whom he learned the correct design and balanced composition, then moved on to the school of Francesco Trevisani, from whom he learned an unusual color scheme, with unexpected combinations that were the hallmark of his pictorial production. The first document that recalls Pisci as an autonomous artist is dated October 10, 1699, when he collected thirty scudi for painting a new processional banner, lost, for the Arciconfraternita del Gonfalone, in anticipation of the Jubilee year 1700, during which he also accommodated the old processional standard (Randolfi, 2014, pp. 416-419). Probably thanks to Maratta, in 1704, Pesci executed the fresco for the ceiling of the sacristy of S. Onofrio, cited by Nicola Pio and dated by the same erroneously to 1724, with S. Onofrio the Faith, Hope and Charity where we note a dynamic layout, played on the diagonals, enlivened by a pleasant color (Mandolesi, 1999, p 205). Perhaps of that period is the Self - Portrait , now at the National Museum of Stockholm, painted for Nicola Pio, his most important biographer. Still substantially marattesca reveals the Madonna with Child that appears to the SS. Fabiano and Sebastiano , executed in 1713 for the church of the Confraternita dello Santo Spirito in Carignano. In the same year, Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, known through Trevisani, exhibited at the annual exhibition in the cloister of S. Salvatore in Lauro, the series with the Savior, the Virgin and the Apostles , including the S. Barnaba di Pesci ( beaten at a Christie's auction on 22nd January 2006, lot 31).

Between 1714 and 1724 Pisci fired the altarpiece with St. Teresa of Avila, S. Francesco Saverio, S. Carlo Borromeo for the church of the Fathers of S. Bernardo in Turin, dispersed, but cited by Nicola Pio, and sent in England a Madonna, today in Oxford, and The Bath of Callisto , in Wilton. In 1716 he was welcomed among the members of the Virtuosi al Pantheon. Uncertain, but circumscribable to the early twenties of the eighteenth century, the dating of the two altarpieces for S. Maria delle Grazie in Zagarolo (Rome), with the Immaculate Conception with St. Augustine and St. John the Evangelist and Saints Joseph, Anna and Dominic and the Marian monogram.

The loss of the documents of the conventual fathers, in fact, does not allow to understand if the works, which are cut at the margins, have been made specifically for this church or if they come from the destroyed temple of the conventuals of Gallicano, whose furniture was entirely transferred, in I pay homage to the brief of Benedict XIV of 17 February 1748, in the new church of the fief acquired in 1670 by the Rospigliosi, great admirers of Maratta, who promoted a campaign of renewal from an architectural and decorative point of view in the first decades of the eighteenth century. Dating back to 1721 are portraits, the only ones so far attributed to Pisci, by Maria Clementina Sobiescki (Madrid, Prado) and the one withMaria Clementina Sobiescki with Prince Charles (Lutterworth, Stanford Hall). These effigies had already been remembered by Pio. The link between the Stuart and Pisci could be identified in the cardinal Filippo Antonio Gualtieri, his friend and his teacher Trevisani, commissioned by the pope to deal with the story of the Catholic king James II Stuart driven out of England and welcomed by the court of France, where the prelate he had served as papal nuncio from 1700 to 1706.

In the inventory of the properties of the silversmiths Giardini, dated 1722, two half-heads of Satyrs of Pisci were remembered. Between 1722 and 1726 Cardinal Ottoboni promoted restorations in the church of S. Francesco di Bolsena, entrusting the direction to Andrea Adami, master dean of the chaplains singers of the Papal Chapel, in contact with Trevisani and with Pesci, who painted the ceiling with St. Francis receives the stigmata and the Assumption of the Virgin and another canvas with St. Francis in ecstasy .

In 1724 the same prelate paid Pisci for a head of Moretta . Still in these years is the Madonna in glory with St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist who appear to St. Francis on the vault of the sacristy of the church of the Stimmate in Rome, commission perhaps obtained, once again, through Trevisani, author , for the same place, of two altarpieces. By 1723 Pisci painted in the parish church of Maria SS. Assumed in the sky of Filettino, two canvases: one with the Assumption of the Virgin for the high altar, the other of unspecified and lost subject, but remembered by the local poet Eleuterio Arquati on the altar to the right of the main one, dedicated to the Name of Jesus, mentioned in the pastoral visit of that year led by the bishop of Anagni Giovanni Battista Bassi (Paonessa, 2014, I, p.26). Perhaps of the same period is also aHoly Trinity with St. Francis and St. Nicholas of Bari in the oratory of the SS. Trinity of the same Ciociaria town. Also the angels on a yellow background frescoed on the small dome of the same place seem to belong to the same hand (Paonessa, 2014, I, p.27). Nicola Pio, who had played the role of advisor for the royal gallery of the Rospigliosi and therefore knew well Pisci and other minor artists, all students of Maratta and to whom he dedicated a monograph, attributed to Pesci a S. Antonio Abate , certainly completed within 1724, the year of the publication of his work, in the church of Jesus and Mary in Via del Corso in Rome, lost and replaced in 1765 by another canvas dedicated to the new patron of the chapel, S. Anna , performed by Ermenegildo Costantini.

In the meantime Pisci had gone to live in Piazza di Spagna, on the left side towards the Paolina road, as is clear from the States of Souls of 1725 of the parish of S. Andrea delle Fratte, which shows that he was forty-five and lived with the wife Francesca Torregiani, aged forty, and her nineteen-year-old sons Caterina, seventeen Virginia, Giuseppe di fifteen, a future painter, and a five-year-old Eustace. It is mentioned in the lists of the same parish again for 1731 and 1732.

Through the Academy of Arcadia the two Hungarian brothers Michele Federico and Michele Carlo Althann came into contact with Pietro Metastasio and with the circle of Cardinal Ottoboni. Michele Federico commissioned six paintings to Pisci, five of them destined for the diocese of Vàc. Among them the Martyrdom of St. Gennaro (once in the sacristy of the gothic church of St. Michael) and the St. Bernard presenting his De consideration Books V to Pope Eugene III , St. Bernard who scolds his sister and The Virgin Mary and S Bernardo di Chiaravalle among the divine qualities of the Madonna, signed, dated 1727 and preserved in the sacristy and in the chapel of the Virgin of the Cathedral, a Virgin with the Child , in Vácrátot, another painting at Arayosmarót, both of 1727, and a Crucifixion (1729) at the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest. Pisci painted and signed the date, 1728, the canvas with Saints Domenico, Francesco di Paola and Leonardo in adoration of the Trinity for the church of S. Pietro di Zagarolo. In 1732 he signed and dated a Bathsheba to the bathroom , (Brno, Moravske Museum).

In 1733 also the Pallavicini, relatives of the Rospigliosi, contacted Pesci, perhaps through the architect Ludovico Rusconi Sassi, for the realization of the three ovals with the Wedding of the Virgin , the Nativity and S. Vincenzo Ferrer (attr. Paonessa, 2014, p.93) for the church of S. Andrea in Gallicano.

The canvases, welded in 1734, today blackened and in a poor state of preservation, testify to an involution in the style of Pisci, which is more conventional, as highlighted by R. Engass ( 1975-76, p.49 , 1991, p.191 ) , also about private commissions such as the Noah's Sacrifice in the gallery of Palazzo Chigi in Ariccia, once in the Lemme collection, dated 1735.

In March 1734 Pisci delivered the altarpiece with the Virgin, St. Joachim and St. Anne for St. Joseph at Lungara, where his friend Rusconi Sassi was also active, whose model is kept in Calvi (Benevento) in monastery of the Ursulines, commissioned by the fathers Pii workers for whom Pisci later executed paintings on the walls of the staircase that connected the church of S. Balbina to the house of the same fathers, restored in 1813, 1825 and 1931.

Signed and dated 1738 is a painting with Diana and Atteone (beaten at a Christie's auction on October 26, 1973, lot 129). For the choir of the Roman church of S. Maria Maddalena Pisci made paintings concerning episodes of the life of St. Camillus de 'Lellis, no longer on site, while they remain, the altarpiece with the Assumption of the Virgin and the fresco, retouched to tempera and surrounded by angels and flowers where he reveals all his technical mastery, the ceiling of the sacristy with the Gloria of S. Camillo de 'Lellis and Filippo Neri welcomed in the sky bythe Immaculate of 1739 . The model for the decoration of the sacristy is preserved in the Marini collection in Rome.

Stylistically close to these works is placed the table S. Carlo Borromeo performed for the Giustiniani palace in Bassano, donated by Prince Vincenzo to the local church of S. Maria Assunta. Pisci, moreover, had also drawn up the inventory of the assets of Caterina Giustiniani Savelli. Still by 1739 he painted for the Sacchetti Sassetti di Rieti the Ecstasy of S. Francesco and S. Maria Maddalena (donated by Angelo Sacchetti Sassetti, in 1958, to the local Civic Museum). In the church of Santa Scolastica in Rieti, now deconsecrated and used as an auditorium, Pesci left an Assumption with Saint Benedict, Saint Scholastica, Santa Margherita and San Silvestro pope a few years later.

The circle of admirers of Pisci had definitely widened: in the inventory of the properties of Pier Francesco Albiccini of 1739 is mentioned an Allegory of sculpture , signed, executed as a pendant of an Allegory of Painting of Trevisani, which in 1770 was same collection in Forlì. In 1744 for Michele Carlo Althann, Pisci painted a Susanna at the bathroom (castle of Vizovice, near Brno). In the same year he completed an Assumption of the Virgin and the Wedding at Cana (private collections). Also dating from 1744 to 1745 is a painting with the Israelites who collect the manna in a private Roman collection. The name of Pisci is traced, between 1749 and 1750, in the minutes of the Congregation of the Virtuosi. In 1750 Pisci lived in the alley of the Merangolo, in the district of S. Lorenzo in Lucina, with a second wife, Angela Biondi, and other tenants.

On December 18, 1752, the Chracas reported the news that two paintings were sent by Pisci to Hungary, one representing the Virgin sitting with the Child in her arms , and the other St. Paul, the first hermit , of whom there is no more news .

Pisci died in Rome in 1759, as reported by Nicola Pio.

In 1814 Mariano Vasi recalled a Baptism of Christ in the Gallery of paintings of the Vatican Museums. Based on what was affirmed by Pius, Pisci sent many paintings to England. Among these perhaps the model for a ceiling can be recognized with the Glorification of a holy bishop(appeared at Christie's auction in London on December 12, 1987, lot 143) and a Rebecca at the well (beaten at Christie's auction in London on the 29th October 2003, lot 70), signed.

Sestieri attributed to Pesci a ' Sorrowful , a sermon of s. Giovanni Battista and a Nativity of Mary , in the Doria Pamphili gallery in Rome, and a s. Bernard in adoration of the Virgin in the sacristy of the Cathedral of Var in France.

Paonessa tells Pisci a small painting with Crucifix in the Doria Pamphili gallery in Rome. The following paintings appeared recently as attributed to Pisci: S. Paolo , Rome Babuino Auction, lot 50, June 8, 2010; The Virgin appears to St. Francis , auction Dorotheum, Vienna, April 18, 2012, lot 596; S. Antonio da Padova with Child , Roma Babuino auction, 29 January 2013, lot 123.

Sources and Biblio: N. Pio, Le Vite de pittori, sculptors, architects (1724), edited by R. Engass, Città del Vaticano 1977, pp. 149 s .; N. Roisecco, ancient and modern Rome, I, Rome 1755, p. 296; M. Vasi, Instructional itinerary of Rome or both General description of the most famous works of painting, sculpture, architecture , II, Rome 1814, p. 798; R. Engass, Introducing Girolamo P. , in Burlington Magazine , 1976, n. 880, pp. 491-500 (in Italian) in R. Engass, Girolamo P,: a painter 'in the limelight ', in Colloqui del Sodalizio , V, (1975), pp. 41-51); G. Garas, T ableau baroques inconnus à Budapest , in the Bullettin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux Arts , LIII (1979), pp. 171-188; F. Caraffa - S. Pontesilli, Girolamo P. and Giovanni Silvagni Roman painters in Filettino , in Acts and Memories of the Tiburtina Society of History and Art , 1980, n. 53, pp. 381-389; S. Rudolph, eighteenth-century painting in Rome , Milan 1983, tavv. 565-566; M. Coccia, P. Girolamo , in Painting in Italy. The eighteenth century , II, Milan 1989, pp. 829 s .; S. Iacobini, The constructional events of S. Giuseppe alla Lungara and the architectural project of Ludovico Rusconi Sassi. The architecture from Clement XI to Benedict XIV. Plurality of trends , edited by E. Debenedetti, Rome 1989, pp. 54, 66; A. Negro, in L'Arte for the popes and for the princes in the Roman countryside. Great painting of the '600 and' 700 , (Catal.), I, Rome 1990, pp. 140-144, sheets 49-51; II, I Pallavicini and the reconstruction of the church of S. Andrea in Gallicano , pp.247-251; R. Engass, Girolamo P. bis , in History of Art , 1991, n. 72, pp. 191-194; G. Sestieri, Repertoire of Roman painting of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries , II, Milan 1994, pp. 146 s .; O. Mandolesi, S. Onofrio al Gianicolo: suggestions for the historical reconstruction of eighteenth- century architectural and decorative interventions , in Art for Jubilees and Jubilees of the eighteenth century.Arciconfraternite, churches, artists , I, edited by E. Debenedetti, Rome 1999, pp. 203-211; R. Randolfi, The restoration work carried out in the Oratorio del Gonfalone in the XVIII-XIX centuries from the documents of the Arciconfraternita , in L'oratorio del Gonfalone in Rome. The sixteenth century cycle of the Passion , by MG Bernardini, Cinisello Balsamo 2002, p. 169; A. Pampalone, Parish of S. Andrea delle Fratte , in Artists and Artisans in Rome , I, From the States of the Souls of 1700, 1725, 1750 and 1775 , edited by E. Debenedetti, Rome 2004, p. 44; M. Tani, The cultural revival of the Hungarian '700: the figurative arts in the great ecclesiastical commission , Rome 2005, pp. 58-60; E. Corp., The Stuarts in Italy , 1719-1766, Cambridge 2011, pp. 101 s .; V. Casale - F. Petrucci, The Museum of Roman Baroque: the Lemme collection at Palazzo Chigi in Ariccia , 2007, p. 112; G. Tiziani, A painter of the Albani: Biagio Puccini in Bassano, Ronciglione, Soriano, Civita Castellana and a P. per caso , in Nel Lazio , 2011, n. 1, pp. 75-88; L. Saulli, in Francis the Saint. Masterpieces over the centuries in the territory of Rieti , (Catal.) By A. Imponente - M. Nuzzo, Pavona 2012, p. 266; A. Pampalone, Parish of S. Lorenzo in Lucina , in Artists and Artisans in Rome , III, From the States of the Souls of 1700, 1725, 1750 and 1775 , edited by E. Debenedetti, Rome 2013, pp. 202, 256; L. Paonessa, Girolamo P. Roman painter , in Lazio Yesterday and Today , 2014, n. 590, pp. 25-27; Girolamo P. Roman painter , ibid. , n. 591, pp. 59-61; Girolamo P. Roman painter , ibid. , n. 592, pp. 92-95; R. Randolfi, Additions to Girolamo P. , ibid. , n. 601, pp. 416-419.

Translated from” http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/girolamo-pesci_(Dizionario-Biografico)/