Читать книгу Baroque Art - Victoria Charles - Страница 6

This direction of Italian art, known as Eclecticism, originated in Bologna. The painter Ludovico Carracci, with his cousins Agostino, who became famous for his erotic etchings, and Annibale, known mostly for his frescos, had founded an influential school of painters at the end of the sixteenth century; an academy that promoted all fields of the painting and drawing trades. The pupils were taught all that was worth copying and were kept away from Mannerism. They were successful in teaching their most talented pupils, by striving for spiritual beauty, to bring extensive and deepened formal beauty into the foreground again.

The greatest combined work of the Carraccis was the decoration of the Large Gallery of the Roman Palazzo Farnese, and they received help from the best pupils of the academy: Giovanni Lanfranco, Guido Reni and Domenico Zampieri, named Domenichino. The intention of the fresco decoration of the ceiling was to show the power of love over the grasping strength and pride of the universe and the soul of man. The artists were ambitious enough to take as examples the arrangement of the ceiling of the Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel and the depiction of Raphael’s mythological Farnesi pictures.

They were not quite successful but they did create a unified decoration with a great deal of painting mastery that can be compared with the masterworks of Raphael and Michelangelo. The presentation of the volutes, medallions with small mythological pictures between the nudes, moulding supports and winged putti (cherubim) clearly show the influence of Michelangelo, and the main pictures in the mirror of the ceiling show the influence of Raphael. The most beautiful pictures are certainly Agostino’s Abduction of Galatea by Polyphemus and Annibale Carracci’s Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne. The most beautiful of his altarpieces is that of Christ who appears to Peter with the Cross on his shoulder as Peter is fleeing from Rome in fear of a martyr’s death in the Campagna. Peter asks, “Lord, whither goest thou?” and Christ answers, “To Rome to be crucified again.” To his contemporaries, it seemed absolutely justified that Annibale Carracci shoud receive the honour of being buried next to Raphael in the Pantheon.

22. Annibale Carracci, Hercules at the Crossroads, 1595–1598.

Oil on canvas, 167 × 237 cm. Museo di Capodimonte, Naples.

23. Annibale Carracci, Galleria di Carracci, 1597–1604.

Fresco. Palazzo Farnese, Rome.

24. Domenico Zampieri also known as Domenichino, Diana with Nymphs at Play, 1616–1617.

Oil on canvas, 225 × 320 cm. Galleria Borghese, Rome.

Guido Reni and Domenichino have already been mentioned among the numerous pupils and followers of the brothers Carracci. However, Reni owes his fame less to his wonderful altarpieces or to the religious frescoes of the Crucifixion of Peter in the Vatican, but rather more to his mythological representations, the head and shoulders and half-figures of the suffering Christ with the crown of thorns, the so-called Ecce homo, the pictures of the Madonna, Mary Magdalene and many others. Among his mythological depictions should be mentioned, above all, those of the frescoes from the years 1612 to 1614. These were commissioned by the art lover Cardinal Scipione Borghese for the ceiling of the casino of the Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi in Rome, and feature the Aurora that floats in front of the sun chariot pulled by the horae, which has become one of the emblems of Italian art of the seventeenth century.

Domenichino, who was mainly active in Rome, was of a somewhat simpler nature, and died after a life that was made miserable mainly by the jealousy of the Neapolitans. Even though he painted very beautiful pictures such as the Hunt of Diana in the Villa Borghese, his main focus was still on religious painting. He was first among the Italians in the seventeenth century to emphasize the moment of religious ecstasy. His main work in this direction is the Communion of Saint Hieronymus in the Vatican Gallery.

The Church could not really oppose the sense of beauty and the cosmopolitan nature of the Italians, so it did not object to the popularity of mythology. These pictures were meant for the living room and thus could not exceed a certain size; the decorative and monumental were avoided in favour of the agreeable and the graceful. This change very well suited another nimble-fingered painter from the school of the Carraccis, Francesco Albani, who, under all sorts of mythological names – gods and goddesses, nymphs and cupids – painted a large number of naked figures in wonderful landscapes. With this he began a direction in painting that was later taken up and further developed by the painters of the Netherlands.

From the Bolognese school there was also Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, who became well known under the name Guercino (The Squinter). Even at an early stage he was influenced by a strong naturalism and was certainly the most important colourist of this school. His pursuit of absolute truth in nature is seen particularly in the Burial and Glory of St. Petronilla (1622–1623), a large altarpiece in the Vatican Gallery which shows, in the lower part, the disinterment of the corpse of St. Petronilla and in the upper part the reception of this saint by Christ and his host of angels. Guercino was more powerful than Reni, but he did not achieve Reni’s depth of emotion in his works. He did achieve great beauty, as is shown by his magnificent ceiling fresco in the Casino Ludivisi with its Aurora riding through the clouds on her chariot (1621). Among his main works are The Repudiation of Hagar (1657) in the Milan Brera and the Sibyl in the Uffizi in Florence. These pictures must have enjoyed great popularity, just like those of Sassoferrato, who was active in Rome and who almost exclusively painted Madonna pictures of a somewhat softer, simpler, more soulful form, which were widely distributed for use in domestic prayer.