Pietro da Cortona
Biography of Baroque Painter, Quadraturista,
Architect.
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Pietro da Cortona
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Pietro da Cortona (1596-1669)Contents • Biography |
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One of the great Old Masters of the 17th century, Cortona - named after his native town in Tuscany - is exceeded only by Bernini (1598-1680) as the most talented painter/architect of Baroque art in Rome. An important contributor to the Vatican's propaganda campaign of Catholic Counter-Reformation Art, his major patron was the powerful Barberini family, for whose palace he produced his most famous fresco painting Allegory of Divine Providence and Barberini Power (1633-9). This ceiling work with its open-sky optical effects perfectly exemplifies the foreshortening and other illusionist devices which were so characteristic of Baroque painting. It also reflects Cortona's attitude that history painting could take on the character of an epic, for which a multitude of figures was appropriate. In contrast, Cortona's rival Andrea Sacchi (1599-1661) believed that classical purity required the fewest possible figures. Cortona's fantastic wall and ceiling frescoes - anticipating those of Tiepolo a century later - also included the Four Ages of Man (Sala della Stufa) and the allegorical Planet paintings for the Pitti Palace in Florence (1637-47), as well as the gold and stucco decorations in the Chiesa Nuova (1647-65). In addition to these large scale murals, Cortona completed a body of oil painting - predominantly Christian art - including altarpiece canvases like The Birth of the Virgin (1643, installed in the Chiesa Nuova, now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Perugia) and The Passerini Madonna (1626-8, installed in the Passerini Chapel in S Agostino, now in the Museo Communale, Cortona). Admired also for his tapestry art, Cortona in addition happened to be one of the great Baroque architects, his masterpiece being the Church of SS Martina e Luca in Rome (1635-64). |
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Born Pietro Berrettini and brought up in Cortona by the Florentine Andrea Commodi, in 1612 he accompanied the latter to Rome at a time when the artistic life of the city, during the reign of Pope Paul V, was rich in contrasts and many different styles. To begin with, Pietro was too busy making drawings from Trajan's Column and other classical remains, or from Raphael of Polidoro, to be aware of other influences such as Caravaggism. However, about 1620, his first patron the Marquis Marcello Sacchetti introduced him to Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588-1657) - secretary to Cardinal Francesco Barberini (1597-1669) and patron of the French classicist Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) - from whom Cortona acquired the taste for classical antiquity which was to mark his work for the rest of his life. He learned, too, of the change that painting had undergone between 1620 and 1630, as exemplified by the Baroque manner of Giovanni Lanfranco (1582-1647) - himself influenced by Agostino Carracci (1557-1602) and Correggio (1494-1534) - see the latter's awesome work The Assumption of the Virgin (Parma Cathedral) (1526-30)n (1524-30). After painting two frescoes in the Villa Arrigoni (now called the Villa Muti) at Frascati (c.1616) he demonstrated his adherence to the new Roman High Baroque in three works painted some time before 1624: The Sacrifice of Polyxena and The Triumph of Bacchus (Capitoline Gallery, Rome), and The Oath of Semiramis (Mahon Collection, London), as well as in frescoes for the gallery ceiling of the Palazzo Mattei (before 1625: Scenes from the Life of Solomon). All Cortona's works display his gift for breathing life into his flamboyant mythological world and creating a convincing atmosphere, thanks to the examples of Rubens (1577-1640) and, above all, Titian (1487-1576). The latter's influence dominated Rome from 1621, the date of the arrival of the Ludovisi Bacchanals. Pietro was one of the first practitioners of the neo-Venetian style, as exemplified by his mythological painting Triumph of Bacchus, which was to play such an important part in the development of Nicolas Poussin. Frescoes in the Church of S. Bibiana But it was the religious paintings for the Church of S. Bibiana, Rome (1624-6), commissioned by Pope Urban VIII, which brought Pietro's first real fame. From thenon he was intensely active. Between 1627 and 1629 he was engaged on decorating the chapel and the long gallery in the Villa Sacchetti at Castel Fusano (his rivalry with Andrea Sacchi, who worked under him, probably dates from this time). His most famous work during these years is The Rape of the Sabines (1629, Capitoline Gallery, Rome), a masterpiece of Roman High Baroque, in which two opposing principles are at work: an atmosphere vibrant with passionate emotions, and underlying it, a classicism derived from Raphael (1483-1520). There is in addition a new awareness of nature. Pietro also painted altarpieces (St Bernard Offering the Rule to the Virgin, 1626, Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio; The Virgin with Four Saints, 1628, Church of S. Agostino, Cortona) - religious art reflecting the sense of hierarchy of the Counter-Reformation campaign. Masterpiece: Allegory of Divine Providence and Barberini Power A leading member of the Academy of St Luke from 1634 to 1638, Pietro da Cortona was at the height of his powers when he painted the ceiling of the Gran Salone in the Palazzo Barberini between 1633 and 1639. This Allegory of Divine Providence and Barberini Power - one of the best Baroque paintings - was inspired by the Gallery of the Palazzo Farnese and created an astounding trompe l'oeil illusion of the ceiling being a vast open sky in which the painted figures hovered like celestial beings in the heavens. In embodying this idea of divine investiture in pictorial terms, Pierro also created a picture to serve 17th-century absolutism. This was the period of his academic dispute with Sacchi about composition and the restriction of the number of figures. At the same time he was beginning to move away from the Baroque. These two tendencies are opposed in the Palazzo Barberini paintings and are thrown into relief by Sacchi's paintings of Divine Wisdom in an adjoining room (1629-33). Baroque in atmosphere, it is classical in the limited number of figures. At the invitation of Ferdinand II, Duke of Tuscany, Pietro made three visits to Florence. On the first of these, in June 1637, he began decorating the Pitti Palace with frescoes of the Four Ages of the World in the same neo-Venetian style as the Barberini ceilings. After their completion in 1641, he began work on the Planets rooms in the Pitti, using white and gold stucco for the first time, but by 1647 he had only managed to finish the rooms of Venus, Jupiter and Mars, leaving the room of Apollo to be completed by his pupil, Ciro Ferri (1634-89), who also painted Saturn's room. Chiesa Nuova, Palazzo Pamphili Returning to Rome for the last time in 1647 during the papacy of Innocent X (Pamphili), Pietro decorated the cupola of the Chiesa Nuova (a more up-to-date version of Lanfranco's decor for the Church of S. Andrea della Valle) and the gallery ceiling in the Palazzo Pamphili (The Story of Aeneas, 1651-4). In this, the greatest achievement of his final years, Pietro adapted his style to the flowery Baroque of Francesco Borromini (1599-1667), the architect of the gallery. Returning to the system of division into sections, and using paler colours, he gave unity to the whole series by renouncing stucco and by painting one continuous sky behind all the different scenes. At the same time he designed the cartoons for the cupola of the right-hand nave of St Peter's Basilica in Rome (1652) and painted the Sacrifice to Diana (1653, Palazzo Barberini). Another monumental work executed by Cortona during this period was the oil painting known as The Martyrdom of St Lawrence (1653, Cappella Franceschi, Florence). It was commissioned by Baron Filippo Franceschi for his family chapel, where it decorates the altar to this day. Towards the end of his life Cortona expanded his already immense activities to include architecture and devoted only a small part of his time to painting. He acted merely as the director for the decoration of the gallery of the Montecavallo Palace, well as the apse of the Chiesa Nuova, and left the decoration of the Quirinal entirely to painters of the 'classical Baroque' school. In his last decorative work, the vault of the nave in the Chiesa Nuova (Vision of St Philip Neri during the Building of the Church, 1664-5), he created a new illusion: this was to separate the decorative section from the pictorial section by depicting a kind of open window in the ceiling. In this he anticipated the great Rococo fresco painter Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770). He showed the same gift for fresh ideas in his altarpiece art, for example that in the Church of S. Carlo ai Catinari (St Charles Carrying the Sacred Nail to the Plague-Stricken, 1667), which is painted with great technical freedom. As one of the greatest architects in the service of Pope Urban VIII, he was involved in several important design projects including those associated with the churches of SS. Luca e Martina (1635-64, Rome); St Maria della Pace, facade (1656-7, Rome); and St Maria in Via Lata (1658-62, Rome). For more about architectural design of the period, see: Baroque Architecture. Devoting himself to the service of the rich and powerful - his career spanned the reigns of six popes - Pietro da Cortona was the painter of the Church triumphant and of absolutism. He is the founder of an art whose heirs include Luca Giordano (1632-1705), Andrea Pozzo (1642-1709) - see his immortal work Apotheosis of St Ignatius (1688-94) - Francesco Solimena (1657-1747) and Tiepolo. Paintings by Pietro da Cortona can be seen in many of the best art museums throughout the world. |
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• For more about the Italian Baroque,
see: History of Art.
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