DOCSLIB.ORG

James Clifton Arthur K

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
James Clifton Arthur K Elegance and Refinement The Still-Life Paintings of Willem van Aelst tanya paul james clifton arthur k. wheelock, jr. julie berger hochstrasser melanie gifford, anikó bezur, andrea guidi di bagno, and lisha deming glinsman THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, HOUSTON NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON 2 arthur k. wheelock, jr Contents First published in the United States of America EXHIBITION ITINERARY Directors’ Foreword 7 in 2012 by The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston gwendolyn h. goffe and earl a. powell iii Skira Rizzoli Publications, Inc. March 11–May 28, 2012 300 Park Avenue South New York, NY 10010 National Gallery of Art, Washington Acknowledgments 8 www.rizzoliusa.com June 24–October 14, 2012 james clifton and arthur k. wheelock, jr. Publication © 2012 Skira Rizzoli Publications, Inc. THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, HOUSTON Copyright © 2012 by The Museum of Fine Arts, Publications Director: Diane Lovejoy Cultivating Virtuosity: Houston. Assistant Publications Director: A Biographical Portrait of Willem van Aelst 11 Christine Waller Manca tanya paul All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be Associate Editor: Jennifer Roth Bucci reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, SKIRA RIZZOLI PUBLICATIONS, INC. “The Most Exquisite Imitation of Reality”: photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior Associate Publisher: Margaret Rennolds Chace Northern Art and Artists at the Medici Court 25 consent of the publishers. Editor: Julie Di Filippo james clifton Printed in the United States of America Designed by Patricia Fabricant “Guillelmo” in Amsterdam: 2012 2013 2014 2015 / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Set in Whitman type by Kent Lew Van Aelst’s Painterly Style in Amsterdam 37 arthur k. wheelock, jr. Library of Congress Catalog Control Number: 2011939295 ISBN-13: 978-0-8478-3821-9 An Uncommon Painter and His Subjects 51 julie berger hochstrasser This book accompanies the exhibition Elegance and Refinement: The Still-Life Paintings of Willem van Aelst, organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Making of a Luxury Image: the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Van Aelst’s Painting Materials and Artistic Techniques 67 Sarah Campbell Bla!er Foundation, Houston. melanie gifford, anikó bezur, The catalogue for this exhibition received generous andrea guidi di bagno, and lisha deming glinsman funding from the Netherland-America Foundation. jacket (front): Detail of cat. 17, Catalogue of the Exhibition 91 Flowers in a Silver Vase, 1663 tanya paul jacket (back): Detail of cat. 7, Still Life with Melon, 1652 with james clifton, melanie gifford, frontispiece: Detail of cat. 21, Hunt Still Life with a Velvet Bag and arthur k. wheelock, jr. on a Marble Ledge, c. 1665 page 6: Detail of cat. 11, Vase of Flowers with a Watch, 1656 bibliography 172 pages 90–91: Detail of cat. 6, index 180 Still Life with Flowers on a Marble Ledge, 1652 photography credits 183 JAMES CLIFTON “The Most Exquisite Imitation of Reality”: Northern Art and Artists at the Medici Court n the morning of October 22, 1667, proceeded to Amsterdam, “the largest, most after hearing Mass at the church of the beautiful, and richest” city in all of Holland, OSantissima Annunziata, the twenty- Flanders, and Germany,3 where they remained five-year-old Prince and future Grand Duke of for three weeks. The party moved through- Tuscany, Cosimo III de’ Medici (fig. 1), set out out the Republic: Haarlem (Marchetti notes from Florence with a retinue of more than fifty more beautiful women), Leiden, The Hague, people—including a valet, a doctor, a secretary, Scheveningen, Delft, Rotterdam, Dordrecht, a quartermaster, a treasurer, a confessor, and and then on to Antwerp (still more beautiful— five cooks—on the first of two journeys across and notably large—women!) and elsewhere the Alps.1 The party passed through Switzerland in the Spanish Netherlands, and back to the and Germany on the way to the Netherlands; Republic for further touring before returning to nearly two months after leaving Florence, they Florence, where they arrived on May 12, 1668. entered the Dutch Republic. Cosimo’s maestro The prince was home only a few months before di casa, Filippo Marchetti, noted that Arnhem, setting out again, this time to Spain, England, the first city they entered, was “very beauti- France, and back to the Netherlands. ful, clean, and lovely, highly populated, and in Cosimo traveled grandly; he was often particular full of very beautiful women who met with salutes of trumpet, drums, and artil- are very tall and white-skinned.”2 The rest of lery. He toured a variety of public institutions, the Republic proved equally attractive to the where he was entertained by local o!cials. visitors. After a brief visit to Utrecht—whose On one occasion, for example, the Amsterdam great size and beauty, wide and straight streets, burgomasters and other o!cials showed network of canals, large and beautiful buildings, his party the town hall, with its richly deco- indescribable cleanness, and very beautiful rated rooms and magnificent clockwork, and women drew Marchetti’s attention—the party treated them to pastries and exquisite wine, Detail of cat. 7 24 25 Hague, strolled among the people, and joined a crowd to watch a woman skillfully and grace- fully skating on a frozen Amsterdam canal. As Cosimo’s personal secretary Apollonio Bassetti wrote in a letter from Amsterdam, in spite of the gloomy weather, the prince remained “ever in full health and no less fully satisfied with the sojourn in this city, where his inquisitive desire finds continuous nourishment.”5 On both trips and throughout the Netherlands, Cosimo was welcomed into the homes of well-known private collectors who showed him their paintings, sculptures, decora- tive arts objects, and cabinets of curiosity filled with exotic wonders—both natural and artifi- cial—often from the Republic’s far-flung trad- ing posts, from which the collectors made the prince gifts. Paintings were brought to Cosimo for his delectation and possible acquisition, and pontificate was spent in Florence; a Rogier van the Flemish painter and draftsman Johannes artists visited him. He, in turn, paid visits to the der Weyden Deposition triptych in Ferrara, seen Stradanus (Jan van der Straet, 1523–1605), studios and homes of leading artists, and some- in 1449 and praised by the antiquarian Ciriaco who also spent many years in Florence produc- times ordered or acquired works. Among them d’Ancona, a Medici agent; a Jan van Eyck Saint ing frescoes, oil paintings, and the designs for were Gerrit Dou, Frans van Mieris, Caspar Jerome owned by Lorenzo de’ Medici;10 and, numerous tapestries and prints for the Medici, Netscher, Jan Davidsz. de Heem, Otto Marseus perhaps most important for Florence, Hugo van such as the Boar Drive toward a Pit, part of a van Schrieck, and Willem van Aelst, who was der Goes’s monumental triptych, the Adoration series of forty-four engravings of hunt scenes described by Corsini as among “the best mas- of the Shepherds of around 1473–78 (fig. 2), dedicated to the late Cosimo I and published ters of the country, . who painted many commissioned and sent to Florence by by Philips Galle in Antwerp in 1578 (fig. 3). The things for the Signor Cardinale Giovan Carlo Tommaso Portinari, the manager of the Bruges Dutch artist and biographer Karel van Mander [de’ Medici] in Italy.”6 He also saw paintings branch of the Medici bank.11 lamented in 1604 that the “beautiful city of by Rembrandt and may have met this “famous The Medici, one of Europe’s premier Florence . enticed and retains for her own painter,”7 as Corsini called him. banking families of the late Middle Ages and enrichment . pearls from our Netherlands”— The eighteenth-century biographer of the Renaissance, had been active collectors of that is, artists of merit.13 with toasts drunk to the health of the Grand house of Medici, Jacopo Riguccio Galluzzi, Netherlandish art since the fifteenth century.12 In the seventeenth century, the Medici’s pri- Duke of Tuscany, to the health and preserva- asserted that the Dutch paid homage to Cosimo After the family, in the person of Cosimo I mary portraitist, and one of the most renowned tion of the Dutch States, to Cosimo himself, because of their high opinion of his father, (1519–1574), gained the hereditary title and portraitists anywhere in Europe, was a Fleming: and on and on for an hour. But his purpose the Grand Duke Ferdinando II, as prince and powers of Duke of Florence in 1531 (and then Justus Suttermans (1597–1681).14 He and his was educational and pleasurable rather than protector of artists and men of letters.8 But Grand Duke in 1569), their collecting acceler- assistants painted innumerable portraits of overtly political.4 In Amsterdam alone he vis- Ferdinando and Cosimo were only the latest ated, and they began employing artists, as well the Grand Dukes Ferdinando II and Cosimo ited a publishing house, a printer, an insane of a long line of wealthy Italians to value the as scientists, musicians, literati, and craftsmen, III, other Medici family members—brothers, asylum, the East India company, a synagogue, art and culture of the Netherlands. In the fif- from all over Europe at their court. Some art- sisters, and spouses, both in Florence and “various churches of the heretics” (as his com- teenth century, even the Italians accounted Jan ists from north of the Alps gained international elsewhere—and various luminaries associated panion, the Marchese Filippo Corsini, put it), van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden among renown under the aegis of the Medici, foremost with the Medici court.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • David and Bathsheba Oil on Canvas, in a Painted Oval 47.5 X 37.7 Cm (18½ X 15¼ In)
    Michele Rocca (Parma c. 1666 - Venice? 1751) David and Bathsheba oil on canvas, in a painted oval 47.5 x 37.7 cm (18½ x 15¼ in) The warm, pastel palette, rich painterly effects, graceful sense of movement and the coquettish display of the women in David and Bathsheba are typical of Michele Rocca’s work and indicate that his painting, although grounded in the Baroque tradition, resonated more with the emerging French Rococo movement. The size of the composition and its decorative appeal are also characteristic of Rocca’s small-scale cabinet pictures of mythological and biblical scenes that gave him his reputation as a petit maître in eighteenth-century Rome. The scene illustrates a biblical passage from the second book of Samuel in which ‘David arose from off his bed, and walked upon the roof of the king's house: and from the roof he saw a woman washing herself; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon’ (11:2). In the upper right of the composition, King David can be seen spying on Bathsheba from his balcony. The nude Bathsheba, clutching provocatively at a piece of blue drapery, is unaware of his covetous gaze or the events soon to befall her. Two attendants flutter around, one holding a string of pearls to adorn her mistress while the other bathes her feet. Bathsheba, with pale soft skin, a voluptuous figure and fair hair, is the picture of feminine allure. Bathsheba’s beauty compelled David to summon her to him, and after learning she was the wife of Uriah, 125 Kensington Church Street, London W8 7LP United Kingdom www.sphinxfineart.com Telephone +44(0)20 7313 8040 Fax: +44 (0)20 7229 3259 VAT registration no 926342623 Registered in England no 06308827 the Hittite, David ordered him to be killed so he was free to marry her.
    [Show full text]
  • A Rediscovered Altarpiece by Pietro Da Cortona and Insights Into the Collaboration Between the Master and His Pupils by GIOVAN BATTISTA FIDANZA
    A rediscovered altarpiece by Pietro da Cortona and insights into the collaboration between the master and his pupils by GIOVAN BATTISTA FIDANZA THIS ARTICLE ILLUMINATES the working methods of Pietro preaching and praised the work for its style and colour, especially da Cortona and his collaboration with his assistants and pupils for the contrapposto of the women in the foreground (see Appendix during the last fifteen years of his life, when the artist received a 2). 3 In contrast, he thought poorly of Cortona’s celebrated large number of commissions but also suffered from poor health. Martyrdom of St Lawrence in the church of SS. Michele e Gaetano Donatella Sparti has studied his studio practice in his workshop in Florence. While the Bolognese art historian Marcello Oretti, in via della Pedacchia, Rome, to which he moved in 1652. 1 writing in 1777, seemed unsure of the attribution, 4 the local It appears to have been a sort of ‘industrial production line’, scholar Lucio Bosi, writing in 1820, was confident that it was the whereby the master conceived the composition and made the work of Cortona. 5 The last person to record the work in Forlì abbozzi , while part of the overpainting (in some cases, all of it) was Giovanni Casali who, in his guide to Forlì of 1838, 6 and was entrusted to his pupil–collaborators who had proved their again in his revised edition of 1863, 7 listed an altarpiece by P ietro ability to assimilate his pictorial language. According to Sparti, da Cortona of St John Chrysostom evicting the adulteress this was a fluid entrepreneurial arrangement between master and from the temple in the presbytery of the Dominican church of assistants.
    [Show full text]
  • The History of Painting in Italy, from the Period of the Revival of the Fine Arts to the End of the Eighteenth Century
    THE HISTORY OF PAINTING IN ITALY, FROM THE PERIOD OF THE REVIVAL OF THE FINE ARTS, TO THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: TRANSLATED gmn tj)e O^rtgtnal Btaltan OF THE ABATE LUIGI I.ANZI. By THOMAS ROSCOE. IN SIX VOLUMES. VOL. VI. CONTAINING THE INDEXES. LONDON: PKINTED FOR W. SIMPKIN AND R. MARSHALL, STATIONERS'-HALL COURT, LUDGATE STREET. 1828. ND }. IVl'Cieery, Tooks Court, Cliancery-Iane, Londou. J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM UBRABX CONTENTS OF THE SIXTH VOLUME. Page Index I. Professors of Painting mentioned in the 1 worJc ; together with the dates, 8fc. ... Index II. Historical and Critical Publications re- lating to the Art, cited in the Work . .167 Index III. Of some of the most important Matters contained in the Work 197 that ** ^''itft regard to the Abbreviations of words adapted in the above Indexes, to dates birth, and that d. to the deaths of artists. The rest »f b. is applied of of lUill be perfectly intelligible to the English reader. FIRST INDEX. Artists referred to in this work, noting the periods of their Birth and Death, and the authoritiesfor the dates. A. Abate (!') Ciccio, v. Solimene. Abati, or dell' Abate, Niccolo, a Modenese, b. 1509 or 1512, d. 1571. Tiraboschi. Vol. iv. p. 46, and vol. v. pp. 48, 57. • Giovanni, his father, d. 1559. Tiraboschi. iv. 48. Pietro Paolo, brother of Niccolo. Tiraboschi. iv. 48. — Giulio Camillo, son of Niccolo. Tiraboschi. ib. Ercole, son of Giulio, d, 1613. Tiraboschi. ib. Pietro Paolo, son of Ercole, d. 1630, aged 38. Tira- boschi. iv. 50. Abatini, Guido Ubaldo, of Cittk di Castello, d.
    [Show full text]
  • La Pala Di Anton Domenico Gabbiani
    CHIESA DEI SANTI APOSTOLI di FIRENZE La pala di Anton Domenico Gabbiani s i l l a b e ISBN 978-88-8347-624-2 © 2011 Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali Soprintendenza Speciale per il Una finestra sul cielo Patrimonio Storico, Artistico ed Etnoantropologico e per il Polo Il dipinto di Anton Domenico Gabbiani ora restau- Museale della città di Firenze rato e restituito alla comunità parrocchiale di Santi Riscattata dalle condizioni in cui l’aveva lasciata l’al- Apostoli raffigura uno dei grandi santi della Contro- luvione del 1966, la grande pala di Anton Domenico riforma cattolica, Francesco di Sales, nobile savoiardo Gabbiani della chiesa dei Santi Apostoli mostra l’ef- © 2011 s i l l a b e s.r.l. morto nel 1622 e canonizzato appena 33 anni dopo, fetto di un sapiente e accurato recupero, attraverso Livorno nel 1655. Con la sua predicazione Francesco aveva il restauro compiuto da Andrea e Giacomo Granchi www.sillabe.it riportato all’antica fede intere popolazioni attratte dal (i discendenti di Vittorio Granchi) sotto la direzione calvinismo e, ordinato vescovo nel 1602, aveva messo di Maria Matilde Simari, funzionario di zona della in pratica le riforme tridentine nella difficile diocesi nostra Soprintendenza. direzione editoriale: affidatagli, Ginevra, la città stessa di Calvino. Col santo vescovo che trionfa su un pilastro di nubi Maddalena Paola Winspeare Il Gabbiani, pittore della corte medicea, investe la popolato e sorretto da angeli atletici, oltre il quale si progetto grafico: Laura Belforte figura del santo di eleganza aristocratica, mettendo apre la veduta di Ginevra fra la montagna e il lago, un dipinto del pieno Seicento fiorentino torna a far redazione: Nicola Bianchini in evidenza le insegne gerarchiche: l’abito violaceo, la croce pettorale e la mitria.
    [Show full text]
  • ITALIAN ART SOCIETY NEWSLETTER XXIX, 1, Winter 2018
    ITALIAN ART SOCIETY NEWSLETTER XXIX, 1, Winter 2018 An Affiliated Society of: College Art Association Society of Architectural Historians International Congress on Medieval Studies Renaissance Society of America Sixteenth Century Society & Conference American Association of Italian Studies President’s Message from Sean Roberts Scholars Committee member Tenley Bick, exploring the theme of “Processi italiani: Examining Process in Postwar March 21, 2017 Italian Art, 1945-1980.” The session was well-attended, inspired lively discussion between the audience and Dear Members of the Italian Art Society: speakers, and marks our continued successful expansion into the fields of modern and contemporary Italian Art. Dario As I get ready to make the long flight to New Donetti received a Conference Travel Grant for Emerging Orleans for RSA, I write to bring you up to date on our Scholars to present his paper “Inventing the New St. Peter’s: recent events, programs, and awards and to remind you Drawing and Emulation in Renaissance Architecture.” The about some upcoming dates for the remainder of this conference also provided an opportunity for another in our academic year and summer. My thanks are due, as series of Emerging Scholars Committee workshops, always, to each of our members for their support of the organized by Kelli Wood and Tenley Bick. IAS and especially to all those who so generously serve CAA also provided the venue for our annual the organization as committee members and board Members Business Meeting. Minutes will be available at the members. IAS website shortly, but among the topics discussed were Since the publication of our last Newsletter, our the ongoing need for more affiliate society sponsored members have participated in sponsored sessions at sessions at CAA, the pros and cons of our current system of several major conferences, our 2018 elections have taken voting on composed slates of candidates selected by the place, and several of our most important grants have Nominating Committee, the increasingly low attendance of been awarded.
    [Show full text]
  • Big Business: Pietro Da Cortona
    The widespread practice of distributing portraits of [Fig. 3, showing Lanfranco’s and Sacchi’s cartoons members of the Church, aristocracy, and legendary hanging on the walls left and right, and Fig. 8], and famous men and women created a huge market for to Romanelli, his [Cortona’s] student, and that the copyists, though copies of portraits, like those of petitioner not only is satisfied with this same price, landscapes, tended to be relatively cheap, mirroring the but that for those [cartoons] for the pendentives and lower esteem and value of those genres in the hierar- lunettes he has on his own initiative reduced [the fee] chy of painting.200 Payments by the Chigi are charac- to 150 scudi. And because Your Lordship can with teristic: 90 scudi in 1662 to Giovanni Maria Morandi more certainty of fairness make the petitioner rejoice for eight portraits of various sizes of Cardinal Chigi, in your favors by treating him equal to the others three of which were copies; in 1673, 10 scudi for five . entreats you to consider that all the altarpieces portrait copies by the unknown Cintio Bocchi; and in done for St. Peter’s cost 1,000 scudi apiece, [even 1686, 1.8 scudi for an anonymous copy 3 palmi high though] they are not more than a fourth [in size] of (67 cm) of the “Ecc.ma Sig.ra D. Agnese Chigi.”201 one said cupola. As for the . single pendentive by Further examples could be cited of payments to the the Cavalier Lanfranco, it is equivalent to a portion endless copyists ignored by Mancini, Baglione, and the of a cartoon of the cupola made by the petitioner; other early biographers, but the prevailing pattern of and because if one alleges that in size there is a dif- prices would not be altered, nor would the impression ference of some palmi, the petitioner states he has of a thriving market for copies that kept many Roman never experienced that paintings are bought and sold painters engaged.
    [Show full text]
  • CIRO FERRI I LA CUPULA DE SANT'agnese in AGONE a LA PINTURA CATALANA I VALENCIANA DEL SEGLE XVIII* David Albesa Casado
    CIRO FERRI I LA CUPULA DE SANT'AGNESE IN AGONE A LA PINTURA CATALANA I VALENCIANA DEL SEGLE XVIII* David Albesa Casado CIR0 FERRI: ROMANUS PZCTOR CELEBERRZMUS Ciro Ferri (1634-1689) nasqué i morí a Roma, on fou conegut sobretot com a pintor i dissenyador. La seva activitat artística s'ha de situar a la segona meitat del segle XVII. Fou un dels artistes més afavorits per algunes de les famílies més influents d71tilia:la família dels Barberini, Medici, Pamphili, Chigi i Borghese. Va despertar la simpatia i les lloances de tothom. Francesco Saverio Baldinucci ens diu en aquest sentit: ((fuCiro Ferri uomo di grande civilta e granditissimo nelle conversazioni e rnolto arnato da Principi, cardinali e signori d'ogni rango, essendo stato liberale, cortese e di sornrrza attrattiva con tutti (...). Con li suoi scolari era amorevole e caritativo, e di singolare comunicativa nell'insegnares.' Alumne i deixeble predilecte de Pietro Berrettini da Cortona (1596-1669), Adhuc va estar sota la direcció d'Andrea Sacchi (1599-1661), Car10 Maratti (1597-1669) i Bernini (1598- 1680).2Col.labori íntimament amb Cortona en moltes de les seves empreses picthriques, i fins i tot va continuar-ne les obres després de la mort de Cortona, com per exemple, la decoració de la Sala D'Apol.10 del Palau Pitti a Florkncia, els cartons per la cúpula de la nau dreta de la FAbrica de S. Pietro del Vatici, I'absis de I'església de Santa Maria in Vallicella (Chiesa Nuova) o la decoració de la capella Gavotti de S. Nicola da Tolentino, a Roma.
    [Show full text]
  • A Drawing for Pietro Da Cortona's Rape of the Sabine Women
    A Drawing for Pietro da Cortona’s Rape of the Sabine Women Martin Olin Director of Research Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Stockholm Volumes 24–25 Foreword Dr. Susanna Pettersson Director General Associate Professor Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, (An Unpublished Drawing on Panel by Salvator (In the Breach of Decorum: Painting between is published with generous support from the Rosa Depicting a Landscape with a Philosopher Altar and Gallery, Fig. 9, p. 163). Friends of the Nationalmuseum. and Astrological Symbols, Fig. 6, p. 22). © Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY 2.0 © The Capitoline Museums, Rome. Archivio (In the Breach of Decorum: Painting between Nationalmuseum collaborates with Svenska Fotografico dei Musei Capitolini, Roma, Sovrinten- Altar and Gallery, Fig. 13, p. 167). Dagbladet, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, denza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali. © The John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Grand Hôtel Stockholm, The Wineagency and (A Drawing for Pietro da Cortona’s Rape of the Sarasota. Bequest of John Ringling, 1936. Nationalmusei Vänner. Sabine Women, Fig. 2, p. 28). (In the Breach of Decorum: Painting between © Bibliothèque Nationale France, Paris. Altar and Gallery, Fig. 19, p. 173). Cover Illustration (The Entry of Queen Christina into Paris in 1656, © Uppsala auktionskammare, Uppsala Étienne Bouhot (1780–1862), View of the Pavillon by François Chauveau, Fig. 2, p. 32). (Acquisitions 2017: Exposé, Fig 4, p. 178). de Bellechasse on rue Saint-Dominique in Paris, © Finnish National Gallery/ Sinebrychoff Art 1823. Oil on canvas, 55.5 x 47 cm. Purchase: the Museum, Helsinki. Photo: Jaakko Lukumaa Graphic Design Hedda and N. D. Qvist Fund. Nationalmuseum, (Self-Portraits and Artists’ Portraits as Portraits of BIGG NM 7434.
    [Show full text]
  • Bernini & the Roman Baroque
    BERNINI & THE ROMAN BAROPAINTINGS FROM PALAZZOQUE CHIGI IN ARICCIA TRAVELING EXHIBITION SERVICE he term Baroque connotes an abundance of detail, a sense of irregularity, and a sort of eccentric redundancy—all hallmarks of an extraordinary generation of Tartists who converged in Rome at the dawn of the seventeenth century. This artistic style became a cultural phenomenon, spreading concurrently from Naples to Venice, Vienna to Prague, and Bohemia to St. Petersburg, finally assuming its full global dimensions when it reached the Americas. Bernini and the Roman Baroque: Paintings from Palazzo Chigi in Ariccia explores the genesis of this one-of-a-kind artistic movement. Through a selection of 55 works from 40 artists, this exhibition illuminates Bernini’s influence and explores how it resonated across the Baroque movement. 1 1. Carlo Maratti, called “Il Maratta,” and Mario Nuzzi, called “Mario del Fiori”, The Summer, 1658-59, oil on canvas, Palazzo Chigi, Ariccia. 2 BERNINI AND THE ROMAN BAROQUE TRAVELING EXHIBITION SERVICE 3 INTRODUCTION At the beginning of the seventeenth century, artists Bernini and the Roman Baroque comprehensively maps definitively set aside the Caravaggesque model for a the rich spectrum of genres and pictorial styles that more transversal dialogue between the real and the characterize Baroque aesthetics. Its many luminous supernatural, the superfluous and the necessary. After examples of these diverse categories—not only history the death of the Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens, painting but also alternative genres such as portraiture, the debate between “naturalists” and “classicists” self-portraiture and landscaping, as well as preparatory (respectively, followers of the styles of Caravaggio sketches used for large decorative frescoes—epitomize and Annibale Carracci) originated a new figurative Baroque’s ultimate goal of elevating the viewer in mind language, namely the “Baroque,” which found in Gian and soul, communicating the moral and spiritual messages Lorenzo Bernini its undisputed protagonist.
    [Show full text]
  • 118-San Giovanni Battista Dei Fiorentini
    (118/32) San Giovanni Battista dei Fiorentini San Giovanni Battista dei Fiorentini is a 17th century minor basilica, parish and titular church dedicated to St John the Baptist, and situated at Via Acciaioli 2, which is at the north end of the Via Giulia in the rione Ponte. It is also the regional church for expatriates from Florence. It is more commonly known as San Giovanni dei Fiorentini. (1) History Pope Julius II ordered the Via Giulia to be cut through the network of filthy alleys between Via di Monserrat and the river in order to relieve dangerous congestion caused by crowds of pilgrims, and this was opened in 1508. A group of Florentine expatriates, including the Florentine Pope Leo X de Medici, decided to build a magnificent church on a prime site at the north end of the new street. Jacopo Sansovino won the competition to design it, against competitors like Raphael, Giuliano da Sangallo and Baldassare Peruzzi. He started building in 1519, but ran into serious trouble with the foundations at the river end. He was trying to build on an old sandbank, and the logistics overwhelmed him. He was dismissed in favor of Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, a military engineer as well as an architect, who succeeded with the foundations but did not manage to complete the church. Construction ground to a halt by the time of the Sack of Rome in 1527. (1) (g) Attempts to build a church on the designs of Michelangelo were carried out 1559-62 but failed. Vasari in 1568 reported that the fabric stood only “long arm above the water”.
    [Show full text]
  • 109-Sant' Agnese in Agone
    (109/33) Sant'Agnese in Agone St Agnes at the Circus Agonalis Piazza Navona Sant'Agnese in Agone (also called Sant'Agnese in Piazza Navona) is a 17th-century Baroque church in Rome, Italy. It faces onto the Piazza Navona, one of the main urban spaces in the historic center of the city and the site where the Early Christian Saint Agnes was martyred in the ancient Stadium of Domitian. [1] According to legend St. Agnes was a beautiful young girl who was born in the late third century shortly before Rome converted to Christianity. When she was about thirteen years old, she renounced marriage in favor of Christ, and her frustrated suitors betrayed her Christianity to the authorities. She was consigned to a brothel, but when she was stripped of her clothes, her nakedness was hidden from view by the sudden and spontaneous growth of her hair. Continuing to resist the threats of her persecutors, she was condemned to be burned at the stake, but the flames refused to touch her. Ultimately she was beheaded (305 AD), and was buried on the Via Nomentana, where one of Rome’s oldest churches (dating from around 350 C.E. and still intact) was built on the site of her martyrdon in her honor. [7] [c] [e] History Piazza Navona Piazza Navona is a very interesting example of the evolution of the fabric and the urban space. From its creation as a Roman stadium, to a medieval market, to culminate as a superb baroque square, Piazza Navona has never lost its playful character and its power to attract people.
    [Show full text]
  • PRINCE GIOVANNI BATTISTA PAMPHILJ (1648–1709) and the DISPLAY of ART in the PALAZZO AL COLLEGIO ROMANO, ROME Stephanie C. Leon
    PRINCE GIOVANNI BATTISTA PAMPHILJ (1648–1709) AND THE DISPLAY OF ART IN THE PALAZZO AL COLLEGIO ROMANO, ROME Stephanie C. Leone, Boston College pon the death of his father Camillo in July 1666, Giovanni Battista Pamphilj’s legal status Uchanged dramatically: the eighteen-year-old prince became the primogenito of his wealthy and powerful family. With his inheritance came responsibilities, including the oversight of his father’s unfinished artistic projects at Sant’Agnese in Agone, Sant’Agostino, Sant’Andrea al Quirinale, the Collegio Innocenziano, and the Palazzo al Collegio Romano. The latter was the new wing, begun in 1659, which had been added to the Palazzo Aldobrandini al Corso (fig. 1), owned by his mother, Princess Olimpia Aldobrandini (1622–1681). After Olimpia, the sole heir to the great Aldrobrandini fortune, married Camillo Pamphilj in 1647, the couple moved into her palace rather than his, the Palazzo Pamphilj in Piazza Navona. The architect Antonio Del Grande designed Camillo’s new wing as a trapezoidal block to the northwest of the Aldobrandini property, between the Piazza al Col- legio Romano and the large courtyard (figs. 2, 3). Today, this unified palace is known as the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj al Corso. Under Camillo, construction was completed and the interior decoration was begun, but the task of outfitting the new rooms fell to Giovanni Battista.1 In this article—drawing on the information provided by two inventories of the palace’s con- tents, dating from ca. 1680 and 1709, respectively—I shall analyze and attempt to reconstruct the furnishings in Prince Pamphilj’s noble, winter, and mezzanine apartments.
    [Show full text]