Tuesday, October 24, 2017

SPADA PALACE - SPADA GALLERY (third part)

Room III
The room was known as GALLERY OF THE CARDINAL and was designed in the years 1636/37 by Paolo Marucelli (1594/1649)
Ceiling decorations “Four parts of the world, the four elements and the four seasons” 1698/99 by Michelangelo Ricciolini (1654/1715)
“Portrait of Youth” maybe by Annibale Carracci (1560/1609)
“Allegory of the Massacre of the Innocents” about 1639 and “Sacrifice of Iphigenia” 1640 by Pietro Testa (1612/50) Lucca engraver who committed suicide in the Tiber for disappointments in his painting career
“Astronomers” about 1645 and Cain and Abel” by Niccolò Tornioli (1598/1651)
The Astronomers exalts the new astronomical discoveries and in particular the telescope of 1609 by Galileo Galilei
At the center of the picture is Nicolaus Copernicus showing the phases of the moon, to the left Ptolemy and Aristotle, and on the right the woman with the turban is Astronomy itself. Galileo Galilei (1564/1642) had recently died and this painting was a burning issue at the time
Some scholars saw a quote of the Narcissus attributed to Caravaggio in the man on the right looking into the telescope, as well as one of the reasons they would ascribe with certainty the Narcissus to Caravaggio
“The Vestal Virgins” about 1670 by Ciro Ferri (1634/89)
“Landscape” about 1555 by the visionary Niccolò dell'Abate (about 1510/71)
“There are two scenes socially opposite: the aristocratic wild boar hunting with knights and ladies in the foreground, and the popular procession with the greasy pole in the distance. The fantasy architecture that gives the entire composition a fairytale feel, refers to the Flemish landscapes and to those of Dosso Dossi” (Maria Lucrezia Vicini)
“Feast of Mark Anthony and Cleopatra” about 1701 by Francesco Trevisani (1656/1746) from Istria, with Cleopatra dissolving a pearl in wine to show her indifference to wealth
“In the episode, described with theatrical taste, are placed precious details that combine features of sixteenth-century Venetian tradition with those of Roman classicism” (Maria Lucrezia Vicini)
“Summer and Autumn” and “Spring and Winter” by Luigi Garzi (1638/1721)
“The Abduction of Aeneas” copy of Giacinto Campana (1600/about 1650) from the original by Guido Reni now in the Louvre. Reni himself revised this copy
“The Death of Dido” about 1631 by Giovanni Francesco Barbieri aka Guercino (1591/1666) composed almost like a scene out of the newly born Italian musical theater, also known as opera, the most comprehensive art form that would eventually spread throughout the world
“The work is remarkable for the scenographic vision and the richness of the costumes is made with plastic and coloristic sense, characteristics of the artist's work, learned from experiences in Veneto, Bologna and Ferrara” (Maria Lucrezia Vicini)
Two paintings of the same subject “Boreas Abducting Orythia” one by Francesco Solimena (1657/1747) and one by Giovanni Francesco Romanelli (1610/62) from Viterbo, a pupil of Pietro da Cortona
“Bacchus” by Pier Francesco Mola (1612/66)
“Spring or Flora” about 1680 by Carlo Cignani (1628/1719)
“Looting of a village” by Peter Snayers (1592/1666)
Very realistic “Portrait of young man” by a follower of Annibale Carracci
“View of a beach by moonlight” by Egbert van der Poel (1621/64)
“Death of Cleopatra” 1706 and “Death of Marcantonio” 1702 by Domenico Maria Muratori (1661/1742) for Cardinal Fabrizio Spada
“Christ and the Samaritan” about 1677 and the sketch of “Triumph in the name of Jesus” for the vault of the Chiesa del Gesù (Church of Jesus) by G.B. Gaulli aka Baciccio (1639/1709)
“S. Lucia's shoulders” about 1632 by Francesco Furini (1603/46)
In this very original painting S. Lucia holds a plate with her eyes which had been removed by the torturers. An opportunity for the Florentine Francesco Furini to show off his specialty: painting beautiful bare backs of women
“He preferred the female figure and created a kind of refined painting genre whose subject, inspired by the poems of chivalry, the biblical tradition and mythology, were appreciated by scholarly collectors. Deeply stimulated by the trip to Venice and the painting by Pietro da Cortona (working in Florence in 1637), Furini became in his maturity a painter increasingly fluid and soft” (Carlo Bertelli, Giuliano Briganti, Antonio Giuliano)
“Portrait of Angela Mignanelli” about 1730 by Marco Benefial (1684/1764)
“The smug expression of the face, not rigid, but natural and of remarkable psychological intensity is enhanced by using soft and pasty brush strokes which give brightness to the eyes, sweet and mysterious at the same time. (...) The artist seems to overcome the ways of Roman portraiture of the seventeenth-eighteenth century and get closer to the French one, anticipating more casual formal solutions that will be in vogue especially in the second half of 1700s at the hands of Mengs, Goya, and Pier Leone Ghezzi” (Maria Lucrezia Vicini)
“Landscape with windmills” 1607 by Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568/1625)
At the center of the room two globes 1616/22 by the Dutch cartographer William Bleau
“Statue of a philosopher sitting” of the beginning of the first century AD
Room IV
“David with the Head of Goliath” about 1610 by Orazio Lomi aka Orazio Gentileschi (1563/1639) from Pisa
About 50 cm (20 inches) of the painting in the lower part have been lost, where the body of Goliath was
“The painting, in which the hand of Agostino Tassi has been identified in the landscape, reflects the classicist ideals of Carracci's style, and the realistic ones that enrich the scene into several parts, as one can see in the rendering of the coat. A terse light affects the body of David, enhancing the volumetric characteristics, in memory of the original Tuscan Mannerist training of the painter” (Maria Lucrezia Vicini)
“Christ and the adulteress” and “Christ tempted by the devil” by Mattia Preti (1613/99)
Christ and the adulteress is a work of extraordinary visual impact and powerful religious significance. The dizzying cleavage of the adulterous woman stuns and draws the eye inexorably as Christ indicates it and watches us expliciting in the act the message of salvation by grace that disregards human works
The message is clear: God's mercy can save us from the sins of the flesh, even from such white and unavoidably erotic flesh
Isn't this cleavage after all so dazzling illuminated by the same light that comes from the right and that shines on Christ's face and also on the beautiful gesture of forgiveness of His left hand?
“La Pietà” by Orazio Borgianni (1578/1616)
“Allegory of Astronomy” by G.B. Magni aka Modenino (about 1592/1674)
Five paintings of the so-called Bamboccio Pieter Van Laer (about 1595/1642)
“The value of detectable anti-rhetorical realism in his paintings reveals a fundamental part of the culture of the Dutch painter in addition to his mastery in the use of light and shadow. His painting and that of his many followers - the Bamboccianti such as Jan Miel, Michiels Sweerts - proposed the discovery of a papal city not monumental, of a Rome that invited reflection on social policies” (Carlo Bertelli, Giuliano Briganti, Antonio Giuliano)
Three paintings in the so-called bambocciante style including “Death of the donkey” and the historical view “Revolt of Masaniello” by Michelangelo Cerquozzi (1602/60)
“Accents more distinctly typical of everyday life than the ones of Pieter Van Laer are detectable in the lively folklore scenes of Cerquozzi, also a follower of Laer, even if he developed an independent style facing also sacred subjects of large format, battles and still lifes” (Carlo Bertelli, Giuliano Briganti, Antonio Giuliano)
“The Holy Family with St. John the Baptist” and “Herodias with the head of St. John the Baptist” by Jean Valentin aka Valentin de Boulogne (about 1591/1632)
“St. John the Evangelist” by the Frenchman Nicolas Tournier (1590/post 1657)
“Market” about 1650 by Willem Reuter (1642/1681), influenced by Michiel Sweerts
“Allegory of Vanity” by Andrea Podestà (about 1608/before 1674)
“Capture of Christ” by a follower of Gherardo delle Notti, maybe Trophime Bigot (about 1579/1649)
“S. Cecilia” and “Madonna nursing the Child” by Artemisia Gentileschi (1593/about 1652)
“Worthy disciple of her father Orazio and highly regarded since 1614 in the Florentine art scene, she lived for a long time in Naples, where the local painting environment represented by artists like Cavallino and Caracciolo was deeply influenced by the Caravaggio's knowledge of Artemisia. She inherited from her father the taste for precious fabrics and a preference for the rendering of golden and firm flesh through a naturalistic study of shadows and lights rousing stunningly beautiful effects” (Carlo Bertelli, Giuliano Briganti, Antonio Giuliano)
“Both works have been painted in her youth and are characterized by the delicate and refined drawing of colors, for the firmness and for the expressive intensity of the two female figures, the result of the artistic experiences of his father” (Maria Lucrezia Vicini)
Plaster cast “Divine love defeats profane love” about 1630 maybe a model of the bas-relief at the Galleria Doria Pamphilj by the Flemish artist François Duquesnoy (1597/1643)

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