Rosso Fiorentino
Biography of Mannerist Painter: Fontainebleau
School.
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Rosso Fiorentino
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Rosso Fiorentino (1494-1540)Contents • Biography |
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One of the most-travelled of Old Masters of the early Cinquecento, Rosso Fiorentino is best known for his highly charged, Mannerist painting, exemplified by his Deposition from the Cross (1521, Pinacoteca Communale, Volterra) and Moses Defending the Daughters of Jethro (1523, Uffizi, Florence). Influenced initially by the work of Michelangelo (1475-1564) and Gothic engraving, he soon switched away from the aesthetics of High Renaissance art to the new style of Mannerism, which allowed his expressiveness greater scope. Around 1523 he moved from Florence to Rome, where he fell under the influence of the late works of Raphael (1483-1520) and the elegant but subdued art of Parmigianino (1503-40), which led to a major change in his painting, typified by his Dead Christ with Angels (1526). Leaving Rome when it was sacked in 1527, Rosso Fiorentino wandered restlessly between Perugia, Citta di Castello, Arezzo and other towns in Italy, before travelling to France at the invitation of the French King, where - along with Francesco Primaticcio (1504-70) - he became one of the key Mannerist artists involved in the Fontainebleau School, a style of art named after the royal palace of the French King Francis I. His most notable work here was his fresco painting and ornamental plasterwork for the Gallery of Francis I. In the process he became an important contributor to French Painting of the 16th century, and his and Primaticcio's style of art became known as the School of Fontainebleau. |
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Giovanni Battista di Jacopo - called il Rosso Fiorentino ("the red-headed Florentine") on account of his hair - was, according to Giorgio Vasari, in addition to being handsome, an excellent musician and skilled in philosophy. Among the most original painters of his generation, Rosso was a temporary pupil of Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530), although he does not appear to have been trained exclusively by one or another master in Florence; perhaps he moved about from workshop to workshop. In any event, he mastered not only drawing but also tempera as well as oil painting. The first fact we have is that he became a member of the painters' guild in 1517, and in the same year was commissioned to fresco an Assumption of the Virgin for the Santissima Annunziata, in the atrium where Pontormo (1494-1556) had also painted. Four years later (1521) Rosso signed and dated his masterpiece, the large Deposition from the Cross made for the Cappella della Croce di Giorno in San Francesco in Volterra, which was moved to the Cathedral and is now in the local Pinacoteca. Several other signed pictures have been preserved from these years when he was working on Renaissance art in Florence; in 1524 he went to Rome and painted frescoes for the Cesi Chapel in Santa Maria della Pace. He remained in Rome, where he also produced several fine Renaissance drawings for engraving purposes, until 1527. Following the sacco di Roma, during which time he was manhandled by ruffians, Rosso fled to Perugia and then to Borgo San Sepolcro. In Umbria Rosso was commissioned to paint the Risen Christ for the Cathedral of Citta di Castello, a work that he finished only in 1530. In that year the painter left central Italy for Venice and soon settled in France, where he was patronized by King Francis I (1494-1547), on whose payroll his name appears under the year 1532. He became master of the stucco and painted decorations of the palace at Fontainebleau and was given a benefice in Paris, where he died five years later, still in the prime of life, rich, famous, and influential. Like the the other contemporary frescoes at the Santissima Annunziata, the Assumption of the Virgin is in poor condition, and Rosso's picture can be deciphered only with difficulty. The figures, their internal proportions, and the treatment of the drapery recall most of all the work of Fra Bartolommeo (1472-1517). At this point Rosso does not seem to have attained a fully liberated personal and identifiable manner. He was also beguiled by Andrea del Sarto's style, and thus he is clinging here to the monumentality of his older contemporaries that proved to be unnatural and ultimately uncharacteristic. By the time he designed the Deposition from the Cross of 1521 for Volterra, Rosso's idiom had become thoroughly individual and even odd, and his lyric instincts were given free rein. The Deposition has its closest connection to one of the same subject produced in a curious collaboration by two leading lyric masters of the previous generation. The Deposition (Accademia, Florence), begun by Filippino Lippi (1457-1504) and finished after his death by Perugino (1450-1523), predates Rosso's by nearly two decades. Rosso also arranged his characters calligraphically; they are laid out almost directly on the picture surface, eliminating any implication of convincing space. He substitutes expressive poses and gestures for volume, emphasizing the emotional content with thoroughly abstract, unnaturalistic colour. Decorum in the High Renaissance painting vocabulary of Leonardo (1452-1519) or Raphael is displaced by an exterior frenzy, and anything approaching a measured modular system has disappeared so that the scale and size perform a different function from that in, say, the School of Athens (1509-11, Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican). Arms and legs are difficult to associate with the bodies they belong to, and single figures and groups are connected unpredictably. The drapery, painted with strong tones, is carefully and quite specifically rendered with a certain dryness and structurally has little to do with the figure to which it pertains, even operating in opposition to its physical integrity. A word should be said about the remarkable quality of the paint, which was vigorously stroked onto the smooth wood surface with controlled brushwork that retains its identity while describing the forms. The composition of the Deposition is dictated by the actual form of the pala: the arrangement of the figures who begin to lower the dead Christ from the Cross continues the movement of the curved top. The horizontal bar of the Cross acts to introduce the curved section and calibrate the vertical thrusts of the Cross and the three ladders. The spatial and visual ambiguities in the painting must have been sought consciously, and they are an important component of Rosso's formal expression. |
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The signed and dated Dei Altarpiece of 1522 (known as Madonna with Ten Saints, Pitti Palace, Florence), originally painted for the Dei family chapel in Santo Spirito, has been enlarged since Rosso's day, altering the composition beyond recognition. The elaborated flat architecture above the Madonna and Child with the ten accompanying saints is not part of the original; neither are additions on the sides and at the bottom. Rosso depends more on modelling to establish the figures, and he creates a more dramatic interaction between darker zones and flickering lights than in the previous examples. The figures remain elongated; they have smallish heads on massive draped bodies, except for St. Sebastian and the Christ Child. Rosso offers no psychological insight into their personalities or how they interact with their companions: they are unique, single images, each a whole unto himself. At this time Rosso must have been aware of forms and figural solutions by Michelangelo, who was active on the Medici tombs and on other Florentine projects in these years. The St. Sebastian has an air common to Michelangelo's Bacchus (then in Rome, however) but even more to his bronze David. An even clearer borrowing can be signalled, one which refers back to Rosso's presumed origins: the saint kneeling beneath the Madonna on the right is unmistakably based on Fra Bartolommeo's St. Bernard from his Vision of St. Bernard (1506, Accademia Gallery, Florence). A third picture from the Florentine years is the Marriage of the Virgin, dated 1523 and still in the Church of San Lorenzo. In manner it is close to the Dei altarpiece, whose St. Catherine, seated in front of the enthroned Mary, reappears as a type in the seated old St. Anne, hands clasped in prayer, and her opposite, the young St. Apollonia, holding an open book; her transparent garment unexpectedly exposes the torso. The main action takes place on a platform up a set of steps, where the handsome bride and bridegroom, whose heads are in profile, are being married by the priest. Painted with intense blond tonalities, the beardless Joseph is as youthful as Mary, contrary to traditional representations or, for that matter, Biblical tradition. There are frequent passages of exceptional virtuosity, as in the magnificent hair of Joseph or that of the disappointed suitor next to him. Rosso has moved, probably more than any other painter of his generation, to a deep, erratic individualization of the world he painted, with an anti-conventional treatment of the human figure, of entire compositions, and of surface handling and colour. He left Florence soon after the Marriage of the Virgin was painted, never to return, as if his explorations into a personal manner within the local usages of the Florentine Renaissance had been exhausted. Rosso's experience of the Renaissance in Rome, from 1524 to 1527, threw his treatment of images into turmoil. Michelangelo's Genesis fresco on the Sistine ceiling had a profound but negative effect upon Rosso, who sought to monumentalize his images in the Cesi Chapel frescoes. The heavy forms depicting the Creation of Eve are specifically related to Michelangelesque prototypes from the ceiling, but they are not taken from the same subject (which Rosso could have done directly had he chosen to do so). Rosso also unmasks an awareness of another wave of Roman painting that had a basically monumental cast - the work of painters trained in Raphael's shop. Judging from the Cesi frescoes, which are the only works that can be securely associated with Rosso's Roman sojourn, the impact of Roman painting was not beneficial. After leaving Rome, Rosso executed his last major Italian commission, the Risen Christ, sometimes (inaccurately) called the Transfiguration, in which he liberated himself from the weight of Michelangelo's presence, although the incongruously muscular child recalls him or, perhaps, Raphael's main follower Giulio Romano (1499-1546). The intensity of a personalized religiosity, aggravated by his experiences during the Sack of Rome, is expressed in a heightened mysticism and complexity. Only the isolated Christ, figuratively reminiscent of Pontormo, is easily read. The picture, trimmed on all four corners to create an imbalanced octagon, still maintains a centrality of composition. Action occurs on or close to the surface, and if certain figures recall Raphael directly, they have become ethereal apparitions. French Mannerism: School of Fontainebleau Rosso's activity in France, centered on his mural painting for the royal palace at Fontainebleau, has not survived in sufficient quality and state of preservation to offer comprehensive judgment about his last decade. The Gallery of Francis I, where stories from the Iliad, the Odyssey, and from Ovid's Metamorphoses are used to allegorize the life of the French monarch, has been variously restored and the frescoes heavily repainted. Nor is his exact share in the stuccoes in the same palace known, although it is usually assumed that Rosso was in charge of their original design. (Note: Other members of the Fontainebleau School included: Benvenuto Cellini, Jean Cousin, Niccolo dell'Abbate, Antoine Caron). It may be symptomatic of French art or merely a turn of fortune that allowed Rosso, who was something of a failure in Rome, to have great success in France. Paintings by Rosso Fiorentino can be seen in some of the best art museums, and churches, across Italy. REFERENCES |
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