Rome in the Age of Bernini
Outline for Lectures 5 and 6
These two lectures were concerned with the beginnings of Baroque architectural church design and painting in Baroque Italy. Your basic textual sources for these will be Wittkower and the beginning of Varriano.
A note on the links: I've tried to find a good sampling of the works we saw in class, especially if the photos weren't that good. Please do not worry about any accompanying text. Your responses to any questions involving these are to come from your readings and my lectures.
The Gesu
We traced the revival of painting styles first from the now rather tired style of Mannerism, a type (the name is modern, please remember) characterized most notably by its artificiality of composition and sophisticated color. As examples of that style we looked at:
- Jacopo Pontormo's Deposition of c. 1528.
- Francesco Salviati's Charity of 1554/58.
These won't show up on any exams by themselves, but you should be able to invoke them as background to any discussion of the origins of Italian Baroque painting. By the way, you may find Charles McCorquodale's The Baroque Painters of Italy to be useful in studying the following painters and their art. It's a small, elegant book on reserve in the Art Library. Start from page 16. This has several of the paintings I showed in class that aren't in Wittkower (or aren't in color).
Carracci and Caravaggio
These two artists can without any hesitation be called the greatest painters of the Italian Baroque. Also, if this were a class on Baroque Painting in Europe, we would be tracing their influence on artists all over Western Europe to at least the end of the seventeenth century.
Annibale Carracci (1560-1609)
- The Bean Eater of 1580/90. A color reproduction.
- The Assumption of the Virgin From the Cerasi Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome, 1600/01. Remember that this is the altarpiece between Caravaggio's paintings of St. Paul and St. Peter.
- The Flight into Egypt 1603. Read Wittkower on this.
- The
Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne from the Farnese Palace Gallery, about
1597-1604. I forgot to tell you: formerly the Gallery had a collection of
ancient Roman sculpture arrayed along the walls beneath the
paintings. Some of the sculptures were copied into the paintings, so that
there was a visual connection between the sculpture and the
painting. Think here about precedent (Raphael) and about visual
technique, particularly about "quadro riportato."
Follwers of Carracci
- Guido Reni (1575-1642) Also from Bologna. 1600-1614 in Rome,
then returned to Bologna for the rest of his life. Began working close to
Caravaggio; his style changed to one even less obviously connected with
the Caravaggisti.
- Aurora 1614. From the Casino Rospiglioso, Palazzo Pallavicini, Rome. This is yet another example of "quadro riportato" painting.
- Bacchus 1615/20.
- Cleopatra 1635/40. From Reni's last years in Bologna.
- Guercino (1599-1666) Our third painter from Bologna, or
nearby. We looked at him in terms of his use of "di sotto in su" ceiling
painting.
- Aurora 1621/23. Fresco, Casino Ludovisi, Rome.
- Guido Reni (1575-1642) Also from Bologna. 1600-1614 in Rome,
then returned to Bologna for the rest of his life. Began working close to
Caravaggio; his style changed to one even less obviously connected with
the Caravaggisti.
Caravaggio (1573-1610)
- Boy with a Basket of Fruit Ca. 1593.
- The Musicians 1595/96.
- The Basket of Fruit ca. 1597.
- Martha and Mary Magdalene ca. 1598. We didn't see this in class but you've seen it elsewhere on this Web site...
- Judith Beheading Holofernes ca. 1598. Considered also in the light of the subsequent popularity of the theme, especially in the paintings of Artemisia Gentileschi.
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