Italian Baroque art was a very prominent part of the Baroque art in painting, sculpture and other media, made in a period extending from the end of the sixteenth to the mid eighteenth centuries. [1] The movement began in Italy, and despite later currents in the directions of classicism, the Rococo, Italy remained a stronghold throughout the period, with many Italian artists taking Baroque style to other parts of Europe. Italian Baroque architecture is not covered.
During the Counter Reformation, the Council of Trent (1545–63), in which the Roman Catholic Church answered many questions of internal reform raised by both Protestants and by those who had remained inside the Catholic Church, addressed the representational arts in a short and somewhat oblique passage in its decrees. This was subsequently interpreted and expounded by clerical authors such as Molanus, the Flemish theologian, who demanded that paintings and sculptures in church contexts should depict their subjects clearly and powerfully, and with decorum, without the stylistic airs of Mannerism.
Two of the leading figures in the emergence of Baroque painting in Italy were Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio and Annibale Carracci.
Caravaggio (1571–1610), born and trained in Milan, stands as one of the most original and influential contributors to late sixteenth century and early seventeenth century European painting. Controversially, he not only painted figures, even those of classical or religious themes, in contemporary clothing, or as ordinary living men and women, but his inclusion of the seedier side of life (such as dirty feet) was in marked contrast to the usual trend of the time which was to idealise the religious or classical figure by treating it with the decorum considered appropriate to its status. He used tenebrism and stark contrasts between partially lit figures and dark backgrounds to dramatic effect. Some of his famous paintings are 'The Calling of St. Mathew', 'St. Thomas', 'The Conversion of St. Paul', 'The Entombment', and 'The Crowning of the Christ'. His use of light and shadow was emulated by the Caravaggisti, the followers of Caravaggio, such as Orazio Gentileschi (1563–1639), Artemisia Gentileschi (1592-1652/3), [2] Mattia Preti, Carlo Saraceni and Bartolomeo Manfredi.
Annibale Carracci (1560–1609) came from Bologna where, with his brothers Agostino Carracci (1557–1602) and Ludovico Carracci (1555–1619), he set up an influential studio or academy to train painters. Amongst their various joint commissions, the Carracci carried out the fresco decorations in the Palazzo Fava. There followed a succession of important altarpieces in which the critical lessons of such artists as Correggio, Titian, and Veronese are progressively developed and integrated by Annibale within a unifying concept of naturalistic illusionism, based, in particular, upon an unmannered design that is given optical verisimilitude through the manipulation of pure, saturated colors and the atmospheric effects of light and shadow. Two of his famous paintings are ‘The Assumption of the Virgin Mary’ and ‘A Holy Woman at the Tomb of Christ’. In the 1590s he went to Rome to decorate the gallery in the Palazzo Farnese. This ceiling became highly influential on the development of painting during the seventeenth century. Its exuberance and colour was picked up on by later Baroque painters while the classicising aspects of its design (disegno) influenced painters who followed the more classical cannon.
Other influential painters during this early period who influenced the development of Baroque painting included Peter Paul Rubens, Giovanni Lanfranco, Artemesia Gentileschi and Guercino, whilst artists such as Guido Reni [3] and Domenico Zampieri known as Domenichino, pursued a more classical approach.
The principal painter of the Roman High Baroque, a period that spanned several papal reigns from 1623 to 1667, was Pietro da Cortona. His baroque manner is clearly evident in paintings that he executed for the Sacchetti family in the 1620s and the vault fresco in the Palazzo Barberini (finished 1639) in Rome. During the 1630s, Cortona had a debate at the Accademia di San Luca, the painting academy in Rome, with Andrea Sacchi, a painter with classicising trends, about the perceived differences between their painting styles. The argument essentially concerned the number of figures in a painting and was couched in literary terms, with Cortona arguing for an ‘epic’ approach with an abundance of figures and Sacchi making the case for ‘tragedy’ with fewer figures to convey the messages in a painting.
Baroque painters such as Cortona, Giovan Battista Gaulli and Ciro Ferri continued to flourish alongside the classical trend represented by painters such as Sacchi and Nicolas Poussin, but even a classicising painter like Sacchi's pupil Carlo Maratta was influenced in his use of colour by the Baroque. In the 1672, Gian Pietro Bellori's ‘Lives of the artists’ was published. This promoted classical idealism in art so artists of this trend were included (so was Caravaggio) but some of the leading artists of the seventeenth century were omitted such as Cortona, the sculptor Gianlorenzo Bernini and the architect Francesco Borromini.
Monumental ceiling frescoes mainly date to the latter part of the seventeenth century. [4] Some were dramatically illusionistic such as Gaulli's nave fresco (1674-9) in the church of the Gesu and Andrea Pozzo's nave vault (1691-4) in Sant'Ignazio, both in Rome. [5]
Luca Giordano 1634-1705 was born in Naples and was so prodigious in his output of paintings that he was known as ‘Luca fa presto’ (Luke fast work)
Important Venetian painters included Sebastiano Ricci (1659–1734) and Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (1683–1754) but the greatest baroque exponent was Gianbattista Tiepolo (1696–1770). He is renowned for his light palette of colours used with fluid brush strokes, and it is his frescoes rather than his canvases that exhibit these techniques most effectively. [6] His works include frescoes at the Palazzo Labia and the Scuola Grande dei Carmini in Venice, Villa Valmarana at Vicenza, Villa Pisani at Stra, works at the Würzburg Residence and the throne room at the Royal Palace of Madrid.
An important centre of Italian Baroque painting was Genoa. Many, even from abroad, came to the city to gain Baroque artistic experience, and later went to Venice, Florence, Rome or other important Baroque centres. Prolonged visits to the town were made by artists from other parts of Italy and other countries, including Velázquez, Van Dyck, the French sculptor Pierre Puget, Bernardo Strozzi and Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione.
Another Italian city which had a vibrant Baroque movement was Milan. The city hosted numerous formidable artists, architects and painters of that period, such as Caravaggio. [7]
Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) was the leading sculptor of his day and the favorite artist of several popes and their relatives, who gave him important commissions. His ‘Apollo and Daphne’ in the Villa Borghese in Rome illustrates how he could precisely capture in white marble the dramatic moment when Daphne, fleeing the pursuing sun god, realizes she is metamorphosing into a laurel tree. This ability to make expressive dramatic narratives in sculpture can also be seen in his Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (1645–52), created for the Cornaro Chapel in Santa Maria della Vittoria, the Blessed Ludovica Albertoni in San Francesco a Ripa in Rome, and St Longinus in St Peter's. He was also a fine sculptor of portrait busts. He had a workshop which trained sculptors such as Antonio Raggi and Ercole Ferrata. His main rival in sculpture was Alessandro Algardi.
Melchiorre Caffà (1635–1667) was the pupil of Ferrata and executed ‘The ecstasy of Saint Catherine’ in S Catherina da Siena a Monte Magnapoli in Rome, before his early death.
Filippo Parodi (1630–1702) was an important sculptor from Genoa. Francesco Queirolo executed several sculptures for the Cappella Sansevero in Naples including the technically demanding ‘Deception unmasked’ (after 1750). Giacomo Serpotta was the outstanding Sicilian Baroque sculptor and known particularly for his stucco figures and decorations in several oratories in Palermo.
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Baroque painting is the painting associated with the Baroque cultural movement. The movement is often identified with Absolutism, the Counter Reformation and Catholic Revival, but the existence of important Baroque art and architecture in non-absolutist and Protestant states throughout Western Europe underscores its widespread popularity.
Annibale Carracci was an Italian painter and instructor, active in Bologna and later in Rome. Along with his brother and cousin, Annibale was one of the progenitors, if not founders of a leading strand of the Baroque style, borrowing from styles from both north and south of their native city, and aspiring for a return to classical monumentality, but adding a more vital dynamism. Painters working under Annibale at the gallery of the Palazzo Farnese would be highly influential in Roman painting for decades.
Pietro da Cortona was an Italian Baroque painter and architect. Along with his contemporaries and rivals Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini, he was one of the key figures in the emergence of Roman Baroque architecture. He was also an important designer of interior decorations.
Guido Reni was an Italian Baroque painter, although his works showed a classical manner, similar to Simon Vouet, Nicolas Poussin, and Philippe de Champaigne. He painted primarily religious works, but also mythological and allegorical subjects. Active in Rome, Naples, and his native Bologna, he became the dominant figure in the Bolognese School that emerged under the influence of the Carracci.
The Caravaggisti were stylistic followers of the late 16th-century Italian Baroque painter Caravaggio. His influence on the new Baroque style that eventually emerged from Mannerism was profound. Caravaggio never established a workshop as most other painters did, and thus had no school to spread his techniques. Nor did he ever set out his underlying philosophical approach to art, the psychological realism which can only be deduced from his surviving work. But it can be seen directly or indirectly in the work of Rubens, Jusepe de Ribera, Bernini, and Rembrandt. Famous while he lived, Caravaggio himself was forgotten almost immediately after his death. Many of his paintings were re-ascribed to his followers, such as The Taking of Christ, which was attributed to the Dutch painter Gerrit van Honthorst until 1990.
LudovicoCarracci was an Italian, early-Baroque painter, etcher, and printmaker born in Bologna. His works are characterized by a strong mood invoked by broad gestures and flickering light that create spiritual emotion and are credited with reinvigorating Italian art, especially fresco art, which was subsumed with formalistic Mannerism. He died in Bologna in 1619.
Domenico Zampieri, known by the diminutive Domenichino after his shortness, was an Italian Baroque painter of the Bolognese School of painters.
Francesco Albani or Albano was an Italian Baroque painter of Albanian origin who was active in Bologna, Rome, Viterbo (1609–1610), Mantua (1621–1622) and Florence (1633).
Since ancient times, Greeks, Etruscans and Celts have inhabited the south, centre and north of the Italian peninsula respectively. The very numerous rock drawings in Valcamonica are as old as 8,000 BC, and there are rich remains of Etruscan art from thousands of tombs, as well as rich remains from the Greek colonies at Paestum, Agrigento and elsewhere. Ancient Rome finally emerged as the dominant Italian and European power. The Roman remains in Italy are of extraordinary richness, from the grand Imperial monuments of Rome itself to the survival of exceptionally preserved ordinary buildings in Pompeii and neighbouring sites. Following the fall of the Roman Empire, in the Middle Ages Italy remained an important centre, not only of the Carolingian art, Ottonian art of the Holy Roman Emperors, Norman art, but for the Byzantine art of Ravenna and other sites.
Andrea Sacchi was an Italian painter of High Baroque Classicism, active in Rome. A generation of artists who shared his style of art include the painters Nicolas Poussin and Giovanni Battista Passeri, the sculptors Alessandro Algardi and François Duquesnoy, and the contemporary biographer Giovanni Bellori.
Illusionistic ceiling painting, which includes the techniques of perspective di sotto in sù and quadratura, is the tradition in Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo art in which trompe-l'œil, perspective tools such as foreshortening, and other spatial effects are used to create the illusion of three-dimensional space on an otherwise two-dimensional or mostly flat ceiling surface above the viewer. It is frequently used to create the illusion of an open sky, such as with the oculus in Andrea Mantegna's Camera degli Sposi, or the illusion of an architectural space such as the cupola, one of Andrea Pozzo's frescoes in Sant'Ignazio, Rome. Illusionistic ceiling painting belongs to the general class of illusionism in art, designed to create accurate representations of reality.
Giovanni Lanfranco was an Italian Baroque painter.
The Palazzo Barberini is a 17th-century palace in Rome, facing the Piazza Barberini in Rione Trevi. Today, it houses the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, the main national collection of older paintings in Rome.
The Allegory of Divine Providence and Barberini Power is a fresco by the Italian Baroque painter Pietro da Cortona, filling the large ceiling of the grand salon of the Palazzo Barberini in Rome, Italy. Begun in 1633, it was nearly finished in three years; upon Cortona's return from Venice, it was extensively reworked to completion in 1639. The Palazzo, since the 1620s, had been the palatial home of the Barberini family headed by Maffeo Barberini, by then Urban VIII, who had launched an extensive program of refurbishment of the city with art and architecture.
The Loves of the Gods is a monumental fresco cycle, completed by the Bolognese artist Annibale Carracci and his studio, in the Farnese Gallery which is located in the west wing of the Palazzo Farnese, now the French Embassy, in Rome. The frescoes were greatly admired at the time, and were later considered to reflect a significant change in painting style away from sixteenth century Mannerism in anticipation of the development of Baroque and Classicism in Rome during the seventeenth century.
Carlo Maratta or Maratti was an Italian Baroque painter and draughtsman, active principallly in Rome where he was the leading painter in the second half of the 17th century. He was a fresco and canvas painter who painted in a wide range of genres, including history and portrait painting. He is the leading representative of the classicizing style in the Italian Late Baroque. He worked for prominent clients in Rome, including various popes.
The Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi is a palace in Rome, Italy. It was built by the Borghese family on the Quirinal Hill; its footprint occupies the site where the ruins of the baths of Constantine stood, whose remains still are part of the basement of the main building, the Casino dell'Aurora. Its first inhabitant was the famed art collector Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the nephew of Pope Paul V, who wanted to be housed near the large papal Palazzo Quirinale. The palace and garden of the Pallavicini-Rospigliosi were the product of the accumulated sites and were designed by Giovanni Vasanzio and Carlo Maderno in 1611–16. Scipione owned this site for less than a decade, 1610–16, and commissioned the construction and decoration of the casino and pergolata, facing the garden of Montecavallo. The Roman palace of this name should not be mistaken for the panoramic Villa Pallavicino on the shores of Lake Como in Lombardy. The Palace has also been the scene of important cultural and religious events. On June 6, 1977 Princess Elvina Pallavicini invited in Palazzo Pallavicini Rospigliosi the archbishop monsignor Marcel Lefebvre for a conference on the Second Vatican Council and for the celebration of a Traditiona Mass, under the careful direction of the marquis Roberto Malvezzi, and Frigate Captain marquis Luigi Coda Nunziante di San Ferdinando. Many members of Alleanza Cattolica, the baron Roberto de Mattei, the pharmacologist Giulio Soldani, the sociologist Massimo Introvigne, the psychiatrist Mario Di Fiorino and Attilio Tamburrini and his brother Renato Tamburrini took part to the event.
Giovanni Pietro Bellori, also known as Giovan Pietro Bellori or Gian Pietro Bellori, was an Italian art theorist, painter and antiquarian, who is best known for his work Lives of the Artists, considered the seventeenth-century equivalent to Vasari's Vite. His Vite de' Pittori, Scultori et Architetti Moderni, published in 1672, was influential in consolidating and promoting the theoretical case for classical idealism in art. As an art historical biographer, he favoured classicising artists rather than Baroque artists to the extent of omitting some of the key artistic figures of 17th-century art altogether.
Massimo Stanzione was an Italian Baroque painter, mainly active in Naples, where he and his rival Jusepe de Ribera dominated the painting scene for several decades. He was primarily a painter of altarpieces, working in both oils and fresco. His main subject matter was biblical scenes. He also painted portraits and mythological subjects. He had many pupils and followers as his rich color and idealized naturalism had a large influence on other local artists, such as Francesco Solimena. In 1621 Pope Gregory XV gave him the title of Knight of the Golden Spur and Pope Urban VIII made him a knight of St. John around 1624 and a knight of the Order of Christ in 1627. From then on, he liked to sign his works as "EQUES MAXIMUS".
The Assumption of the Virgin by Annibale Carracci is the altarpiece of the famous Cerasi Chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome. The large panel painting was created in 1600–1601. The artwork is somewhat overshadowed by the two more famous paintings of Caravaggio on the side walls of the chapel: The Conversion of Saint Paul on the Road to Damascus and The Crucifixion of Saint Peter. Both painters were important in the development of Baroque art but the contrast is striking: Carracci's Virgin glows with even light and radiates harmony, while the paintings of Caravaggio are dramatically lit and foreshortened.