Friday, April 21, 2017

Portraits and Evocations by Carlo Maratti

Ignazio Enrico Hugford (draughtsman)
Portrait of Carlo Maratti
ca. 1769-75
engraving
British Museum

Carlo Maratti
Portait of a man
possibly Don Maffeo Barberini (1631-1685)

ca. 1670-85
drawing
British Museum

"There are those who have accused Maratti of "lack of individual warmth" (as Burckhardt phrased it) and of limited originality vis-à-vis nature. The charge is not unreasonable. Maratti's artistic will was almost exclusively directed toward the expression of that which is noble and full of pathos, and in his sacred scenes there was little room allowed for individual, intimate or personal elements. Yet the fact that he could at the same time be an excellent observer of reality, when it proved necessary, is revealed in his portraits in which, for all their formal nobility, a strong talent for naturalistic representation is evident."

Carlo Maratti
Study for portrait of Domenico Guidi, sculptor
1680
drawing
British Museum

Carlo Maratti
Study for portrait of Domenico Guidi, sculptor
1680
drawing
British Museum

Carlo Maratti
Study for portait of Cardinal Antonio Barberini
ca. 1660-65
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

Carlo Maratti (draughtsman)
Portrait of Salvator Rosa
etching by Thomas Worlidge
ca. 1715-66
British Museum

Carlo Maratti
Study for monument to Pietro da Cortona
allegorical figure of winged time
trampling envy and holding portrait aloft

ca. 1675
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

"After Caravaggio, Annibale Carracci and Pietro da Cortona, Carlo Maratti was the fourth founder of an important school of painting in the Roman Seicento. His influence, and in some cases, his direct instruction of pupils was the most powerful factor in Roman painting during the last decades of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century. Pietro da Cortona and his followers, on the other hand, faded more and more into the background.  Maratti's return to the tradition of Annibale Carracci and Raphael clearly shows the direction in which his intentions tended: he sought a rejuvenation of the severe Roman monumental style which threatened to degenerate due to the effects of a purely decorative school of painting. It was clearly Maratti's greatest ambition to become, like Carracci before him, a reformer of the art of painting. But he lacked that most essential quality, which had been possessed by Annibale, required in order to play such a role: a direct and naive relationship with nature. Maratti was unquestionably as preeminent and earnest a draftsman as any other painter; most especially, he possessed to the utmost degree a command over every aspect of the depiction of the human figure. But he was not gifted with Carracci's immediate sensuality and affinity with nature."

 this passage and the one above from Baroque Painting in Rome by Hermann Voss, first published in German in 1925, translated into English and revised by Thomas Pelzel in 1997

Carlo Maratti
Head of youth
ca. 1667
drawing (probably for portrait)
British Museum

Carlo Maratti
Holy women tending St Sebastian
ca. 1680
drawing
British Museum

Carlo Maratti
Adoration of the shepherds
ca. 1651-56
drawing (for fresco lunette)
British Museum

Carlo Maratti
St Matthew
ca. 1703
drawing (for statue)
Royal Collection, Windsor

Carlo Maratti
St Matthew
ca. 1703
drawing (for statue)
British Museum

Carlo Maratti
St John the Evangelist
ca. 1703
drawing (for statue)
British Museum

Carlo Maratti
Blessed Pietro Igneo Aldobrandini
passing unharmed through flames

ca. 1710
drawing (for engraving)
British Museum

"The drawing [immediately above] must date from the end of the artist's life when, unable to paint because of ill-health, he was much occupied with making designs for engravings; such a dating is supported by the untidy yet still robust style of the drawing. Beato Pietro Aldobrandini, surnamed Igneus, was a Vallombrosan monk from a prominent Florentine family, who later became Cardinal Bishop of Albano. In 1063, in a dispute between the Florentine citizens and Pope Alexander II over the Pope's appointment of the simoniacal Peter of Pavia as Archbishop of Florence, it was decided that God should judge the legality of the appointment through the ordeal of fire. On behalf of Florence, Pietro Aldobrandini undertook the fiery test and, wearing only his alb, maniple and stole and carrying a cross in his hand, he passed between two flaming piles of wood unharmed. The citizens of Florence were therefore vindicated and the archbishop was deposed."

curator's notes, British Museum