DOCSLIB.ORG

The Treatise on Painting As a Guide to Nature: Light and Color

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Treatise on Painting As a Guide to Nature: Light and Color _full_alt_author_running_head (neem stramien B2 voor dit chapter en nul 0 in hierna): 0 _full_alt_articletitle_running_head (oude _articletitle_deel, vul hierna in): The Treatise on Painting as a Guide to Nature _full_article_language: en indien anders: engelse articletitle: 0 The Treatise On Painting As A Guide To Nature 9 Chapter 1 The Treatise on Painting as a Guide to Nature: Light and Color Janis Bell In the century leading up to the publication of Leonardo da Vinci’s Treatise on Painting in Paris in 1651, copies circulated in manuscript in the Italian cities of Florence, Bologna, Milan, Mantua, Urbino and Rome. The number of surviving copies is nearly fifty, yet may only represents a fraction of the number of copies created.1 Leonardo’s ideas on painting were valued by artists and litterati in the seven decades between the first documented appearance of these abridged copies in Florence (ca. 1580) and the Parisian publication.2 Even if some nega- tive comments about the utility of his precepts have come down to us, the fact that writers incorporated Leonardo’s ideas into their published and unpub- lished works testifies to their high valuation. Carlo Pedretti was the first to em- phasize these “plagiarisms,” but we now recognize these borrowings as typical of the way practical knowledge was regarded as shared wisdom, thus free from the confines of authorship given to ancient texts and philosophical specula- tions.3 Clearly, Leonardo had much to add to the developing discourse on 1 A. Mark Smith, From Sight to Light: The Passage from Ancient to Modern Optics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016): 17, n. 43 cites research of Eltjo Buringh, estimating the survival rate of medieval manuscripts at 1 out of 15 produced. I wish to thank A. Mark Smith for commenting on an early version and Claire Farago and the University of Colorado for supporting my research on this topic as part of our collaborative study of the Trattato. All translations of chapters quoted here derive from Claire Farago, Janis Bell, and Carlo Vecce, The Fabrication of Leonardo da Vinci’s Trattato della pittura, 2 vol. (Leiden: Brill, 2018) and the ideas I develop in this essay derive from that collaboration. 2 For a detailed history of this publication, see Farago et al, Fabrication, especially 1–72. 3 Carlo Pedretti, “Belt 35: A New Chapter in the History of Leonardo’s Treatise on Painting,” in Leonardo’s Legacy: An International Symposium, ed. Charles O’Malley (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969): 149–170; Carlo Pedretti, “Il ‘Trattato della pittura’ di Leonardo plagiato da Pietro Accolti nel 1625,” Raccolta Vinciana 19 (1962): 292–294. On issues of authorship and non-authorship in the written sharing of practical knowledge, see Pamela O. Long, Openness, Secrecy, Authorship. Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001) and Pamela Smith, The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004398443_003 10 Bell painting, documented in a bibliography of printed sources that Raphaël Trichet Du Fresne, editor of the 1651 Trattato edition, appended to his life of Leonardo.4 Today, numerous manuscript treatises and letters supplement that bibliography, giving us a broader idea of the evolving discourse on art criti- cism.5 This study focuses on the chapters on light and color in the Trattato, which comprise a significant portion of the published work. The anonymous editors responsible for the abridgment of the Libro di pittura, Melzi’s compilation from the original manuscripts, left intact nearly all the chapters on color in Books 2 and 3 when they prepared a much shorter version.6 The Church wanted accu- racy in pictorial representations, thus providing a fertile environment for the return to nature, as later seventeenth-century writers would characterize the reform of the Carracci and Caravaggio, to whom the painters of their age were greatly indebted.7 Early art historians relying on formal analysis such as Walter Friedlaender and Sidney Freedberg reinforced that idea of a return to nature after a period of excessive artifice (labelled as a period style called “Manner- ism”) and those who followed emphasized the importance of light and color in this reform, particularly on the part of artists working around 1600, including Barocci, the Carracci, and Caravaggio.8 Bellori and Félibien both mentioned Leonardo’s treatise in connection with Annibale Carracci—not because he had access to it but because they believed his works exemplified Leonardo’s 4 Kate Steinitz, “Early Art Bibliographies. Who Compiled the First Art Bibliography?” Burlington Magazine 114 (1972): 829–837. 5 There is currently no overview to supplant the erroneous conclusion of Denis Mahon, Studies in Seicento Art and Theory (London: The Warburg Institute, 1947) that a lack of publications indicates a lack of interest in ‘theory’ by early Seicento artists and collectors, but many manu- scripts have now been published; see Giulio Mancini, Considerazione sulla pittura, Ed. by Adriana Marucchi (Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1956); Vincenzo Giustiniani, Discorso sulle arte e sui mestieri, ed. Anna Banti (Florence: Sansoni, 1981); Elizabeth Cropper, The Ideal of Painting: Pietro Testa’s Düsseldorf Notebook (Princeton: University of Princeton Press, 1984). Filippo Camerota, ed., Linear Perspective in the Age of Galileo. Ludovico Cigoli’s Prospettiva pratica (Florence: Olschki, 2010). 6 Farago, et al., Fabrication (as in n. 1): I: 233–238. 7 Giovanni Pietro Bellori, Le Vite de’ pittori, scultori, e architetti moderni (Rome: Mascardi, 1672); Carlo Cesare Malvasia, Felsina pittrice: vite de’ pittori bolognesi (Bologna: Barbieri, 1678). The return to nature is only a part of these writers’ views of the reform. 8 Walter Friedlaender, Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism in Italian Painting (New York: Schocken, 1957); Sidney Freedberg, Circa 1600: A Revolution of Style in Italian Painting (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983). In particular, Charles Dempsey, Annibale Carracci and the Beginnings of Baroque Style (Glückstadt: Augustin, 1977), argued that Annibale presented a new solution to the integration of color and chiaroscuro..
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Eckhard Leuschner Roman Virtue, Dynastic Succession
    Originalveröffentlichung in: Studia Rudolphina 6 (2006), S. 5-25 ECKHARD LEUSCHNER ROMAN VIRTUE, DYNASTIC SUCCESSION AND THE RE-USE OF IMAGES: CONSTRUCTING AUTHORITY IN SIXTEENTH- AND SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY PORTRAITURE A hallmark of seventeenth-century portraiture commander, with the modern portrait head was the simultaneous existence of highly of Alessandro added by the sculptor Ippolito original artistic solutions and, alongside Buzio.1 Alessandro's statue was not the last this, an unprecedented number of imitations, of these assemblages of ancient and modern replications and copies. While the increase in parts to be displayed in the room. In 1630, for the latter can partly be explained by technical example, the city's governing council decreed innovations in the production and diffusion that a similar monument be erected to the of every kind of imagery, some of the most recently deceased general Carlo Barberini (Fig. fascinating and, at the same time, provoking 1). On this occasion, another classical Roman cases of images being constantly re-used were torso was joined to a portrait head produced by motivated by more complex reasons, some of Gianlorenzo Bernini, while Alessandro Algardi which will be discussed in this paper. I will contributed the arms and legs.2 explore examples of both material re-use, i.e. Why did the city of Rome order this kind the integration of physical parts of the old of patchwork imagery when it could have had work into the new, and of the use of forms or complete statues made by Buzio, Bernini or compositions by way of copying and imitation. Algardi? The most obvious explanation, of The first part of the text analyses the recurring course, is time and money: with the largest references to visual and literary models of segment of the sculpture already supplied "Roman" virtue and dynastic succession in in the form of the classical torso, the artists the self-representations of early-seventeenth- had less work to do and could charge only a century nobility.
    [Show full text]
  • Observing Protest from a Place
    VISUAL AND MATERIAL CULTURE, 13001700 Sheila McTighe Representing from LifeLife inin Seventeenth-century Italy FOR PRIVATE AND NON-COMMERCIAL USE AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS Representing from Life in Seventeenth-century Italy FOR PRIVATE AND NON-COMMERCIAL USE AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS Visual and Material Culture, 1300–1700 A forum for innovative research on the role of images and objects in the late me- dieval and early modern periods, Visual and Material Culture, 1300–1700 publishes monographs and essay collections that combine rigorous investigation with critical inquiry to present new narratives on a wide range of topics, from traditional arts to seemingly ordinary things. Recognizing the fluidity of images, objects, and ideas, this series fosters cross-cultural as well as multi-disciplinary exploration. We consider proposals from across the spectrum of analytic approaches and methodologies. Series Editor Dr. Allison Levy, an art historian, has written and/or edited three scholarly books, and she has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, from the Nation- al Endowment for the Humanities, the American Association of University Wom- en, the Getty Research Institute, the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library of Harvard University, the Whiting Foundation and the Bogliasco Foundation, among others. www.allisonlevy.com. FOR PRIVATE AND NON-COMMERCIAL USE AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS Representing from Life in Seventeenth- century Italy Sheila McTighe Amsterdam University Press FOR PRIVATE AND NON-COMMERCIAL USE AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS Cover illustration: Claude Lorrain. An artist studying from nature. 1639. Oil on canvas. Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio, USA / Gift of Mary Hanna / Bridgeman Images. Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Newgen/Konvertus isbn 978 94 6298 328 1 e-isbn 978 90 4853 326 8 doi 10.5117/ 9789462983281 nur 685 © S.
    [Show full text]
  • Caravaggio's Capitoline Saint John
    Caravaggio’s Capitoline Saint John: An Emblematic Image of Divine Love Shannon Pritchard With an oeuvre filled with striking, even shocking works, mid-1601 on the invitation of the Roman Marchese Ciriaco Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio’s Saint John the Baptist Mattei and his two brothers, Cardinal Girolamo Mattei and in the Wilderness, still remains one of his most visually com- Asdrubale Mattei, and remained there for approximately two pelling works (Figure 1).1 The painting, now in the Capitoline years.4 Thirteen years later, his painting was recorded in the Museum in Rome, was completed around 1601-02 during the 1616 inventory of Ciriaco’s only son and heir, Giovanni Battista height of the artist’s Roman career.2 At first glance, the nude Mattei, at which time it was listed as “Saint John the Baptist figure, splayed from corner to corner across the entire canvas, with his lamb by the hand of Caravaggio.”5 From this point produces an uneasy response in the viewer. The boy’s soft, forward, the painting is documented in numerous invento- curly hair, prepubescent body and coquettish turn of the head ries, and these records reveal that uncertainty over the subject endow the image with an unexpected sensuality. It is precisely matter was present virtually from the beginning. In 1623, this quality that has spawned nearly four hundred years of Giovanni Battista Mattei bequeathed the painting to Cardinal debate about the identity of Caravaggio’s nude youth, the sup- Francesco Maria del Monte, in whose 1627 inventory it was posed John the Baptist.
    [Show full text]
  • I Dipinti a Soggetto Musicale Realizzati Da Caravaggio Per Del Monte, Si
    I dipinti a soggetto musicale realizzati da Caravaggio per Del Monte, si relazionano a tale contesto oltre che nella selettiva scelta icongrafica, nel taglio orizzontale della tela ove le figure aggettano verso il primo piano, sovente contrassegnato dalla presenza di un tavolo. Il liuto al di là della sua evidente funzione musicale diviene strumento emblematico dall’elevato potere seduttivo, tanto da determinare la consuetudine nobiliare di arredare «le camere e gli studi [...] d’instrumenti musici» e le stanze: «di liuti, viole, violoni, lire, flauti [...] perché questi tali instrumenti dilettano molto alle orecchie e ricreano molto gli animi i quali come diceva Platone, si ricordano dell’armonia» (Castiglione 1554) Gli strumenti musicali dunque, ricolmano le stanze dei palazzi in forma di camere delle meraviglie, sorta di piccoli musei privati atti a testimoniare un particolare interesse collezioni- stico, come riporta in proposito il Borghini: «figure di teste e di marmo antiche [...] molti pesci secchi naturali chiocciole di madreperla [...] liuti d’avorio e d’ebano, arpicordi, viuole» BORGHINI 1584, Intorno al 1580, molti dei musicisti fiorentini e romani11 solevano riunirsi in compagnia di gentiluomini e letterati, nel palazzo fiorentino del conte Giovanni Bardi di Vernio (1513-1612): qui dissertavano sulle possibilità di conoscere quale fosse l’antica musica dei Greci con l’intento di farla rivivere nei tempi moderni. Il liutista Vincenzo Galilei (1533-1591) aveva an- nunciato la sua scoperta degli Inni di Mesomede e composto a riguardo il Dialogo della musica antica e moderna (1581). La persuasione di quei dotti era che recuperando la melopea dell’antica poesia greca, fosse possibile ricusare le sofisticazioni del contrappunto; piegando la monodia verso una diligente recitazione.
    [Show full text]
  • Türme Und Territorium: Vincenzo Giustiniani Als Adeliger »Konzeptkünstler«
    Originalveröffentlichung in: Cremer, Annette C. u.a. (Hrsgg.): Fürst und Fürstin als Künstler : herrschaftliches Künstlertum zwischen Habitus, Norm und Neigung, Berlin 2018, S. 117-141 Türme und Territorium: Vincenzo Giustiniani als adeliger »Konzeptkünstler« Christina Strunck Das zweibändige Stichwerk Galleria Giustiniana, das die kostbarsten Skulpturen der Sammlung Giustiniani verewigt, zeigt als letzte Abbildung eine Ansicht der Insel Chios aus der Vogelperspektive, eingebettet in eine friedliche Mittelmeerszenerie. Im Himmel prangt zwischen Wolken eine aufwendig gerahmte Kartusche mit dem Text: INSULAE ET URBES SUPRA DUO SECULA / IN ARCHIPELAGO POSSESSAE A PATRITIA / GENUENSI IUSTINIANORUM FAMILIA / ANTEQUAM SOLIMANUS TURCAR. TYRANNUS / EAS ANNO 1566 OCCUPARET.1 Die Graphik, wohl relativ kurz vor dem Tod des Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani im Dezember 1637 entstanden2, ist vor allem wegen der genannten In­ schrift interessant. Zum einen verweist sie darauf, dass die über zwei Jahrhunderte lang (genauer: seit 1362) von der Familie Giustiniani kontrollierte Insel Chios 1566 von den Türken erobert wurde; zum anderen sucht sie die problematische soziale Stellung der Familie genauer zu bestimmen. Wie der Text besagt, gehörten die Giustiniani dem Genueser Patriziat an — also einer Schicht, deren Mitglieder die Unterscheidung durch Adelsränge prinzipiell ablehnten und sich einheitlich als cives nobiles bezeichneten.3 Adelstitel,4 die von auswärtigen Machthabern verliehen worden waren, durften innerhalb der Republik Genua nicht verwendet werden.1 Gleichzeitig war es den Giustiniani aber wichtig, nach außen hin ihren quasi »königlichen« Status zu demonstrieren.5 Die Formulierung »INSULAE ET URBES [...] POSSESSAE« impliziert die souveräne Herrschaft über die inzwischen verlorene Insel und somit eine wichtige Voraussetzung für die Anerkennung fürstlichen Rangs. In Rom, wo die Familie nach der Flucht vor den Türken ansässig wurde, musste der soziale Status neu ausgehandelt werden.
    [Show full text]
  • Caravaggio in Rome: Part III from Santa Maria Del Popolo to Flight
    Caravaggio in Rome: Part III from Santa Maria del Popolo to Flight Even before the paint had dried on the final painting of the St Matthew Trilogy for the Contarelli Chapel in the Chiesa Luigi di Francesi, Caravaggio’s reputation had grown to the extent that he had become the most famous and sought after painter in Rome and as such attracted many new commissions. Around 1601-3 he was still in Cardinal del Monte’s household, but with the the approval of the Cardinal, also spent time in the Palazzo Mattei. He continued to arouse intense loyalty from rich and powerful would-be patrons, who never failed to support him when he was in trouble, which with his volatile personality, was an increasingly regular occurrence. The immense privileges offered by his patrons and protectors enraged his rivals and many years later, one of his biographers the painter Mancini, in his account, suggests both envy and malice in equal measure. The Santa Maria del Popolo, is one of three renowned churches that are situated around the Piazza del Popolo, one of most beautiful squares in Rome. Located just inside the Northern Gate, it was the first church, which pilgrims came upon on entering the city. Such now was Caravaggio’s status, that he was commissioned by Monsignor Tiberio Cerasi to paint two paintings for the Cerasi Chapel, designed by Carlo Madreno 1600-1; this much sought after commission was received even before Caravaggio had completed the St Matthew Trilogy in the Contarelli Chapel. At the time, Caravaggio had again descended into the Roman underworld of taverns, drinking, quarrelling and womanising, with his chums, Prospero Orsi and Orazio Gentileschi.
    [Show full text]
  • Lucas and Cornelis De Wael: Their Family Network in Antwerp and Beyond.” in Family Ties: Art Production and Kinship Patterns in the Early Modern Low Countries , Ed
    Stoesser, Alison. “Lucas and Cornelis de Wael: Their Family Network in Antwerp and Beyond.” In Family Ties: Art Production and Kinship Patterns in the Early Modern Low Countries , ed. Koenraad Brosens, Leen Kelchtermans, and Katlijne van der Stighelen, 225-39. Turnhout: Brepols, 2012. Stolzenberg, Daniel. Athanasius Kircher and the Secrets of Antiquity . Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2013. _____. “Four Trees, Some Amulets, and the Seventy-two Names of God: Kircher Reveals the Kabbalah.” In Athanasius Kircher: The Last Man Who Knew Everything , ed. Paula Findlen, 149-70. New York: Routledge, 2004. Strunk, Christina. “L’‘humor peccante’ di Vincenzo Giustiniani. L’innovativa presentazione dell’Antico nelle due gallerie di palazzo Giustiniani a Roma (1630- 1830 circa).” In Caravaggio e i Giustiniani: toccar con mano una collezione del Seicento , ed. Silvia Danesi Squarzina, 105-14. Milan: Electa, 2001. Szanto, Mickaël. “Antwerp and the Paris Art Market in the Years 1620-1630.” In Mapping Markets for Paintings in Europe, 1450 – 1750 , ed. Neil de Marchi and Hans J. van Miegroet, 328-42. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006. Slatkes, Leonard Joseph. Dirck van Baburen (c. 1595-1624); A Dutch Painter in Utrecht and Rome . Utrecht: Haentjens, Dekker and Gumbert, 1965. Sparti, Donatella Livia. La casa di Pietro da Cortona: architettura, accademia, atelier e officina . Rome: Palombi, 1997. Talvacchia, Bette. “Raphael’s Workshop and the Development of a Managerial Style.” In The Cambridge Companion to Raphael , ed. Marcia B. Hall, 167-85. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Thompson, Wendy. “‘Pigmei pizzicano di Gigante’: The Encounter between Netherlandish and Italian Artists in Seventeenth-century Rome.” Ph.D. Dissertation: The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 1997.
    [Show full text]
  • GIOVE Virtual Giustiniani Collection (Engl
    PRE: GIOVE Virtual Giustiniani Collection (engl. version) Maximilian Benker environment Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2001 21:17:43 +0000 GIOVE The Giustiniani Collection in a virtual environment http://www.fu-berlin.de/giove/index.htm The history of the Project In 1960 Luigi Salerno published the inventory of the painting collection of Vincenzo Giustiniani in the Burlington Magazine. For the History of Art this was not only an important discovery because it was now possible to verify old ascriptions by the names and measures given in the inventory. It was also the rediscovery of one of the most important collections of the early 17th century in Rome that regained it's profile from a list of more than 600 paintings. Because - different from other private collections of the same period - the Giustiniani collection can today no longer be admired in it's original place. At the end of the 18th century it was sold and dispersed all over the world. In 1815 the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm III. bought 157 paintings of the Giustiniani collection in Paris. For this reason the greatest, today still known part of the collection is in the possession of the Berlin Gemaeldegalerie and the Stiftung Preussische Schloesser und Gaerten. The research of Salerno was the offspring of many studies on the roman history of collections. But only through the discovery of two inventories from the possession of cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani, the elder brother of Vincenzo, by Prof. Silvia Danesi Squarzina it is obvious, that it was not Vincenzo alone who as a connoisseur and patron of the arts, was responsible for the fame of the collection that spread over the whole of Europe.
    [Show full text]
  • Domenichino II Illustrated
    Domenichino, Albani and Viola The pictures Domenichino painted before and during the stay with the Agucchi brothers seem to have been independent easel paintings, done to show his application and inventiveness with small figures in action. The Doria Flight into Egypt is a signal example of his early mastery of the new idiom of landscape with small figures, but at the same time the decorative context in which it was placed meant that it would not have had the prominence it has enjoyed in modern times - as the work of Annibale. It was the ‘viva efficacia di esprimere gli affetti che fu sua propria, destando i moti e movendo i sensi’, as Bellori put it (1672, p. 290), and this speciality would in the biographer’s words be extremely sought after ‘per essere hoggi in grandissima stima’. His early landscapes with figures had an immediate following among some of the other Bolognese painters who had come down to Rome, and the genre began to compete with the landscapes of the Northern artists like Bruegel and Brill, and Baglione writes of the goldsmith Bartolomeo Loto who made works of this kind in his workshop - they must have been quite precious editions of the new landscape form. But the main development of the Carraccesque landscape was in fact decorative, and we know of a number of interiors - and exteriors - where the new style was fashionable, from patrons like Odoardo Farnese, Pietro Aldobrandini, Scipione Borghese, Alessandro Peretti Montalto, Vincenzo Giustiniani, Cardinale Pio. The scale varied greatly, some of the individual paintings were quite large, and there were others painted outside ‘a fondo di viali’ to increase the illusion of rus in urbe.
    [Show full text]
  • L'artista E Il Banchiere “Caravaggio Ei Giustiniani”
    Mostre L'artista e il banchiere Cristina Terzaghi “Caravaggio e i Giustiniani”. L’esposizione appena aperta a Roma racconta dell’incontro artistico tra Michelangelo Merisi e la nobile famiglia romana. Un’occasione rara per ammirare alcuni capolavori del pittore Come e quando si conobbero il giovane e inquieto pittore Michelangelo Merisi, approdato a Roma da Caravaggio in circostanze ancora piuttosto oscure, e il colto e nobile Vincenzo Giustiniani, vero e proprio “boss” della cultura e del mercato artistico romano, è difficile affermarlo con precisione. La prima notizia che riguarda il soggiorno romano di Caravaggio lo vede già bazzicare la zona dove il marchese aveva da poco preso splendida dimora, l’attuale sede del Senato della Repubblica. Varcando la soglia dell’esposizione che oggi vi è allestita, interamente dedicata all’attività collezionistica della famiglia Giustiniani (Vincenzo, ma anche il fratello, cardinale Benedetto, grande estimatore del Merisi legato a Federico Borromeo, che ospitò durante i suoi giovanili studi romani), non è comunque difficile immaginare con quanta curiosità e trepidazione i potenti fratelli Giustiniani avessero spiato quello che avveniva nella chiesa dirimpetto al palazzo: San Luigi dei Francesi. Cappelle private a parte, è giocoforza che i due nobili sentissero assolutamente familiare la chiesa che vedevano ogni qualvolta si affacciavano alla finestra e, da fini intenditori quali erano, pare altrettanto naturale che prestassero grande attenzione alle vicende decorative dell’edificio. Quando il ben informato di turno recò loro la notizia che Matteo Contarelli aveva deciso di rivolgersi a Caravaggio per completare i lavori della cappella in San Luigi, che il Cavalier d’Arpino (il pittore più in voga nella Roma del momento) aveva rifiutato di portare a termine, par strano che Vincenzo non sapesse di chi si stava parlando.
    [Show full text]
  • Caravaggio E I Giustiniani – Toccar Con Mano Una Collezione Del Seicento Roma, Palazzo Giustiniani, 25 Gennaio – 15 Maggio 2001
    CMC CENTRO CULTURALE DI MILANO CARAVAGGIO E I GIUSTINIANI: TOCCAR CON MANO UNA COLLEZIONE DEL SEICENTO interviene Marco Bona Castellotti Milano 27/02/2001 ©CMC CENTRO CULTURALE DI MILANO Via Zebedia, 2 20123 Milano tel. 0286455162-68 fax 0286455169 www.cmc.milano.it Centro culturale di Milano Mostra: Caravaggio e i Giustiniani – toccar con mano una collezione del Seicento Roma, Palazzo Giustiniani, 25 gennaio – 15 maggio 2001 Marco Bona Castellotti, 27 febbraio 2001 Buonasera a tutti. Queste mie brevissime conversazioni sono state annunciate da un foglietto un po’ esornativo: non aspettatevi delle vere e proprie conferenze, la mia idea era di illustrare molto brevemente alcune mostre in corso che vengono in tal modo consigliate. Il tema dovevano pertanto essere le mostre, più che i loro contenuti - è evidente che bisogna partire dai contenuti per arrivare alla forma, all'involucro; di essi però non aspettatevi un tipo di approfondimento che sarebbe invece necessario se si trattasse di vere e proprie lezioni. E così vado alla ricerca di alcune mostre - che anzitutto devo aver visto, perché sarebbe disonesto parlarvene senza una cognizione diretta dell’argomento; tra le moltissime che stanno pullulando un po’ dappertutto ne ho scelte tre, due già aperte, la terza, dedicata a Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, che sarà inaugurata alla fine della settimana a Rimini. Di questa non vi posso dire granché oggi, ma quando ci vedremo in aprile saprò cosa contiene. La mostra di stasera è quella dedicata - ne hanno parlato tutti quindi già certamente saprete di cosa sto per parlare - alla collezione Giustiniani; è stata inaugurata a Roma mi pare il 25 del mese scorso in Palazzo Giustiniani, e ha un brutto sottotitolo, “toccar con mano i capolavori una collezione del Seicento”, che tuttavia trae ispirazione da un quadro bellissimo, scelto per la copertina del catalogo e per il manifesto, appeso ovunque: “L’incredulità di Tommaso” di Caravaggio.
    [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]