Rome in the Footsteps of an XVIIIth Century Traveller

XVth century Florentine Madonnas by: (left) Neri di Bicci; (right) Gherardo di Giovanni di Miniato from the collection of Henriette Hertz, a German philanthropist and art collector who lived at Palazzo Zuccari and who in 1913 donated this and other paintings to the Italian State

The term "Madonna" may be generally used of representations of Mary, with or without the infant Jesus, where she is the focus and central figure of the image, possibly flanked or surrounded by angels or saints. The "Seated Madonna and Child" is a style of image that became particularly popular in Florence and was imitated elsewhere. These representations are usually of a small size suitable for a small altar or domestic use. They show Mary holding the infant Jesus in an informal and maternal manner (unlike the Byzantine iconography). These paintings often include symbolic references to the Passion of Christ. The "Adoring Madonna" is another pattern which became popular during the Renaissance. These images show Mary kneeling in adoration of the Christ Child.
Neri di Bicci (1419-1490) was one of the most appreciated painters of XVth century Florence. In addition to altarpieces and frescoes his workshop produced many small devotional paintings. In that shown above the Child holds a pomegranate, a symbol of the Passion. Gherardo di Giovanni di Miniato (1445-1497) is best known as a book illustrator who was highly praised by Giorgio Vasari.

(left) Crucifixion with Sts. Jerome and Francis by Benvenuto di Giovanni from Siena (Collection of Monte di Pietà - late XVth century); (right) Annunciation with donors by Filippo Lippi from the Hertz Collection (1440 ca - the image used as background for this page shows a detail of this painting)

The XVth century was a period of great economic development for Florence and other Italian towns thanks to their trade and banking activities and their textile industry. This is reflected in parallel developments in their works of art which show a greater attention to aesthetic aspects in the use of brilliant and varied colours. The Annunciation by Filippo Lippi (one of his many depictions of this subject) is set in the house of the rich donors (thought to belong to the Bardi family) and it shows the richness of the furniture, the elegance of its design and the existence of an upper floor. The columns separate the painting in three areas which in earlier works of art formed a triptych. You may wish to see other works by Filippo Lippi at Spoleto.

(left) Madonna with Sts. Michael the Archangel and Peter by Lorenzo da Viterbo (1472, from S. Maria at Cerveteri); (right) detail of a Nativity by Antoniazzo Romano (1485-1490)

Rome and Latium relied on painters from Tuscany and Umbria for the decoration of their churches during most of the XVth century. Some local painters emerged only in the second half of the century. Lorenzo da Viterbo is best known for his decoration of Cappella Mazzatosta in his hometown. His Madonna and Saints have a monumental and solemn posture which suggests the painter was familiar with the works of Piero della Francesca and of those of some Florentine painters.
Giorgio Vasari shortly mentioned Antoniazzo Romano in The Lives by saying that he was one of the finest Roman painters in the late XVth century. It was only in 1871 that Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle in A History of Painting in Italy were able to identify some of his works, although they attributed them to two different painters having the same name.

Antoniazzo Romano: (left) St. Sebastian and donors (1480-1485); (right) Madonna with St. Paul and St. Francis (1487)

During the XXth century many other works were attributed to Antoniazzo Romano and eventually in 2013 an exhibition at Palazzo Barberini provided an overall outline of his painting. Works attributed to him can be seen in other pages of this website, namely:
a large fresco at Bracciano depicting scenes of the life of Virginio Orsini:
a triptych at Subiaco;
a Nursing Madonna at Rieti;
an Annunciation at S. Onofrio;
a Procession led by Pope Sixtus IV at S. Pietro in Vincoli;
a Madonna and Saints at Palazzo dei Conservatori;
a Madonna at S. Spirito dei Napoletani;
an Annunciation at S. Maria sopra Minerva (his last known work).

Pietro Vannucci, il Perugino: (left) Penitent Saint Jerome in the desert with the infant Jesus and Saint John the Baptist as a child (1490-1500): (right) St. Philip Benizi (1505-1507)

Perugino became far more famous over the centuries than other painters of his time, for having made some of the frescoes of Cappella Sistina and having defined a new way of representation for religious art. Perugino's left picture should be a desert scene according to the title. Although Jerome is knelt in front of his rock cave, the landscape is all but barren. In fact, with its lake surrounded by green trees this country looks more like the peaceful paradise of Eden than like a desert. It is a serene landscape, an ideal place to live in, conform to the kind of ideal places Perugino liked to design. He composed the scene around the tree of hope, which is situated exactly along the middle vertical axis of the frame (see Perugino's frescoes at Collegio del Cambio in Perugia).
The portrait of Saint Filippo Benizi, one of the seven founders of the Order of the Servants of Mary is a more academic work. It was part of a polyptych made for SS. Annunziata, a church of Florence near the convent of the Servites in 1500. The inscription Servus tuus / sum ego / et filius / ancille tue is a reference to the Virgin Mary. The polyptych was dismantled in 1654 and the portrait of Benizi was eventually acquired by the Italian State. The saint is portrayed in a relief at S. Marcello, the Roman church of the Servites.

(left) Vincenzo Tamagni or da S. Gimignano (1492-1530): The Marriage of the Virgin (1526); (right) Francesco Salviati (1510-1563): Charity (?)

The posture of the figures in the painting by Tamagni is based on a famous depiction of the same subject by Raphael. Vasari mentions Vincenzo da S. Gimignano among the painters who assisted Raphael in the decoration of the Papal Apartments: Vincenzio showed great diligence in his manner and softness in his colouring, and his figures were very pleasing in aspect; in short, he always strove to imitate the manner of Raffaello da Urbino.
Francesco Salviati from Florence, a close friend of Vasari, came to Rome in 1531 and he was highly impressed by the works of Michelangelo, whom he portrayed in the oratory of a Florentine brotherhood. The influence of the great master can be seen also in another of his Roman paintings. Usually Charity was portrayed holding three babies, so the subject of Salviati's work is not entirely clear and it could be a depiction of Sacred and Profane Love.

(left) Giorgio Vasari: Allegory of the Immaculate Conception with the inscription "Quod Eva tristis abstulit, tu redis almo germine" (1541 - Collection of Monte di Pietà); (right) Nicolò Circignani, il Pomarancio: Massacre of the Innocents (1570 - from S. Agostino in Città di Castello)

The altarpiece by Vasari shows both the influence of the Transfiguration of Raphael (it opens in another window) and of Michelangelo's nudes. In his Ricordanze (Memories) he noted: I remember how on August 10, 1540, Messer Bindo of Antonio Altoviti, citizen of Florence, commissioned a panel painting for his chapel in the church of SS. Apostoli in Florence. The content of the painting was the Tree of Sin, where tied up to the tree are Adam and Eve and many patriarchs and prophets. At the top of the painting Our Lady dressed with the radiance of the sun and untied them and at her feet the head of the serpent tied up and twisted around the tree.
Vasari painted several copies of this subject. The Altoviti had a palace in Rome with frescoes by Vasari.
The influence of Michelangelo is evident also in one of the first works by il Pomarancio. We know that it was criticized for its nudities. In ca 1580 he moved to Rome where he was commissioned the decoration of S. Stefano Rotondo with depictions of martyrdoms and that of Oratorio del SS. Crocifisso with much lighter subjects.

Jacopo Zucchi (1541-1596): Betsabea at her bath (1574)

The painting depicts the biblical story of Bathsheba, who is seen bathing by King David from the loggia of his palace leading to their affair. The subject is an excuse to portray female nudities in a set of classical elegance and, although based on a biblical episode, it reminds of pagan events (see Ulysses watching the toilet of Penelope in a cinerary urn at Perugia).
Zucchi was a pupil of Vasari and he settled in Rome in 1572 where Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici commissioned him the decoration of his villa and of his city palace. While guidelines were issued by the Council of Trent on the decoration of churches, many cardinals felt they did not need to comply with them in the privacy of their palaces. You may wish to see The Miracle of the Snow at S. Maria Maggiore where Zucchi depicted a grand ceremony of his time, rather than an event of the IVth century. See also a fresco by Taddeo Zuccari depicting female nudities, now at Palazzo Barberini.

Portraits: (left) Bartolomeo Veneto: an unidentified gentleman (1512); (right) Scipione Pulzone: Cardinal Giovanni Ricci (ca 1570)

The ancient Romans had a great tradition in portraits as proved by an extraordinary number of busts. Christianity focussed on the conventional depictions of Christ and Saints, but in the XIVth century painters began to portray the powerful and the rich as donors. Under the influence of Flemish and German artists and thanks to the development of oil painting portraiture became a genre of his own. Raphael portrayed popes and members of the Papal Court and Galleria Barberini houses many XVIth century portraits including those of two members of the Colonna family.
Cardinal Giovanni Ricci (1497-1574) from a family of Montepulciano, was the first owner of Villa Medici and a collector of antiquities.

Early XVIIth Century Masters

Annibale Carracci with the assistance of Innocenzo Tacconi: Pietà (Lamentation) between St. Cecilia and St. Hermenegild (1603)

This portable altarpiece was commissioned by Cardinal Odoardo Farnese when Annibale Carracci was painting the ceiling of the main hall of Palazzo Farnese. The choice to portray St. Hermenegild, a VIth century Visigothic king who was regarded as a Catholic martyr rebelling against the tyranny of an Arian father provides an insight into the feelings of the Cardinal who was forced into the ecclesiastical career by his father. During his whole life he hoped to be assigned a throne, either in Italy or in Portugal, the country of his mother, similar to what had occurred to Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici who succeeded his brother as Grand Duke of Tuscany.
Annibale Carracci was the leader of a group of painters from Bologna who settled in Rome at the end of the XVIth century and who had a great influence on Italian painting for the whole of the next century. They are collectively known as the Bolognese school and their paintings show a deep knowledge of classical sculpture as well as of the works by Raphael and Michelangelo.

Guido Reni (1575-1642): (left) Penitent Mary Magdalene (1633); (right) fresco portraying a sleeping putto

According to a popular account Mary Magdalene with her brother Lazarus and her sister Martha left Israel after the Passion of Jesus and settled in Provence. Mary Magdalene retired to a cave and lived as a hermit until she was carried to Heaven by the angels. The subject of the painting is sombre, but Reni's Mary Magdalene is a beautiful woman, thus combining in the same work sacred and profane sensibilities.
The small fresco was made by Reni to show his skill in this technique in order to obtain the commission of a fresco altarpiece by Cardinal Francesco Barberini who was so pleased by it that he had it detached from the wall to decorate a sort of small tabernacle.
Guido Reni, another painter from Bologna, acquired such a fame that until the XIXth century he was simply referred to as Guido, similar to Michelangelo and Raphael. Galleria Barberini houses a famous portrait by him which is assumed to depict Beatrice Cenci. His skill in portraiture led many cardinals to commission him their portraits, e.g. Cardinal Bernardino Spada. See some frescoes by Reni in the three detached chapels of S. Gregorio al Celio.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1573-1610): Judith and Holofernes

The paintings by Reni were universally acclaimed for their beauty, but a restricted number of members of the upper Roman society e.g. Cardinal Scipione Borghese, were impressed by the vigour of the works by a young painter from a small town near Milan who did not have a proper workshop. His overall production is a realistic depiction of what went on in the streets and taverns of Rome in the early XVIIth century. A page on a 2025 temporary exhibition on Caravaggio provides a relatively detailed account of his life and of the developments of his painting.

(left) Orazio Borgianni (1574-1616): The Holy Family with St. Elizabeth and St. John the Baptist from the Nunnery of S. Silvestro in Capite; Carlo Saraceni (1579-1620): The Virgin Mary with St. Anne from S. Simeone Profeta

The dark backgrounds and the cold light of the two paintings shown above testify to the influence which Caravaggio had on the painters of his time, although not a direct one because he worked alone and only Mario Minniti, one of his models can regarded as a pupil. Many paintings of Galleria Barberini come from churches and religious institutions which were confiscated after Rome became the Capital of Italy in 1871.

Valentin de Boulogne (1591-1632): Jesus Driving the Merchants from the Temple, from the Collection of Monte di Pietà (1618-1622) (see another painting by Valentin at Galleria Spada)

The list of Caravaggio's followers is long and contains masters of real distinction (..) apart from a host of northerners, among whom the Italo-Frenchman Valentin should here be mentioned.
Rudolf Wittkower - Art and Architecture in Italy 1600-1750
Another foreign painter who settled in Rome and was greatly influenced by Caravaggio was Gerard von Honthorst whom the Romans called Gherardo delle Notti because his subjects were depicted in a nocturnal setting (see one of his paintings at Chiesa dei Cappuccini). Palazzo Barberini houses also some fine landscapes by Paul Bril, a Flemish painter who settled in Rome.

Guercino (1591-1666): Flagellation of Christ (1658); (right) Mattia Preti (1613-1699): The Rich Man and Lazarus (detail) from the Collection of Monte di Pietà

The collections of Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica are split between Palazzo Barberini and Palazzo Corsini: the exhibits of the former mainly cover Italian painting until the mid of the XVIth century, those of the latter mainly cover the second half of that century and the next one, but there are many exceptions. See two late XVIIIth century paintings at Palazzo Barberini.