Rome in the Footsteps of an XVIIIth Century Traveller

And John was clothed with camel's hair, and with a girdle of a skin about his loins; and he did eat locusts and wild honey. Mark 1:6 KJV
Caravaggio painted six times an almost naked young shepherd whom is thought to represent St. John the Baptist during the period he lived in the desert before beginning his predication. In some paintings he is depicted in a moment of almost pagan joy, in another he appears to be sick. In all of them Caravaggio departed from the traditional iconography which portrayed the saint as a hermit. The posture of St. John in this painting calls to mind that of the Dying Gladiator, although the statue is first recorded in 1623 (but reliefs of fallen warriors could be seen in many sarcophagi). You may wish to see a page on a temporary exhibition of paintings by Caravaggio at Palazzo Barberini with more information on his life.

Jusepe de Ribera (1591-1652): Denial of Peter (detail) (1615): Giovanni Lanfranco (1582-1647): St. Peter heals St. Agatha (1614)

Caravaggio had a great influence on the painters of his time, although he did not have pupils, exception made for Mario Minniti.
The Spaniard Jusepe de Ribera after journeys through Italy, settled in Naples in 1616 and soon painted Caravaggesque pictures. (..) He loosened and externalized what he had learned from Caravaggio by an aggressive and vulgar realism and a painterly chiaroscuro with flickering light effects. Ribera found a powerful patron in the Duke of Osuna, the Viceroy of Naples, who appointed him court painter, and later viceroys and Neapolitan nobles were equally attracted by his art. It is an interesting phenomenon that Ribera's passionate and violent pictures satisfied the taste of the Neapolitan court society. What attracted them was probably the essentially Spanish sensual surface quality of Ribera's realism. (..)
In his early Roman years we find Lanfranco engaged on all the more important cycles of frescoes by the Bolognese group, often, however, in a minor capacity. (..) But it was his stay between 1610 and 1612 in his home-town Parma that brought inherent tendencies to sudden maturity. (..) He developed towards a monumental and dynamic Baroque manner with strong chiaroscuro tendencies. (..) It appears that Caravaggio's monumental Roman style helped to usher in Lanfranco's new manner.
Rudolf Wittkower - Art and Architecture in Italy, 1600-1750

Mattia Preti (1613-1699): The Payment of the Tax (Matthew 17, 24-27) (ca 1640)

The painting represents the conclusive moment of an episode in the Gospel of Matthew: Christ orders Peter to catch a fish in Lake Tiberias and pay the tax-gatherers of the day with the silver coin he will find in the fish. Preti was mindful of certain of Caravaggio's innovations, especially at Cappella Contarelli: the light shed on the figure of Christ also falls diagonally across the scene, illuminating the faces of the figures and coming to rest on the details of the fish and coin, so enabling us to identify the characters and the episode depicted. With the exception of Christ and Peter, dressed in traditional garments, the other figures wear XVIIth-century dress, so that the scene appears set in the world the painter lived in daily. See Preti's more classicist frescoes at S. Andrea della Valle and those at Palazzo Pamphilj di Valmontone.

(left) Giovanni Battista Gaulli, il Baciccio (1639-1709): Cardinal Neri Corsini seniore; (right) Justus Sustermans (1597-1681): Vittoria della Rovere with Cross and Calyx, symbols of Religion

Flemish Justus Sustermans was the immensely successful court painter in Florence from 1620 on and a master of the official international style of portraiture which developed in the wake of Van Dyck. Wittkower
The Corsini being one of the most important families of Florence it is natural to see many portraits linked to their hometown in their palace.
Cardinal Neri Corsini seniore was the uncle of Pope Clement XII and the first Corsini to be created cardinal in 1664. Vittoria della Rovere, the only granddaughter of the last Duke of Urbino, married Ferdinando II, Grand Duke of Tuscany and her dowry included many of the masterpieces which today embellish the Uffizi and Palatina Galleries in Florence, such as the Venus of Urbino by Titian.

Gaspard Dughet (1615-1675): Stormy Landscape

In the 1640s a renewed interest developed in the representation of landscape in an almost romantic manner. Many of these landscapes have their skies dark and laden, storms twist and turn the trees, melancholy lies over the crags and cliffs and buildings crumble into ruins. Painted with a tempestuous brownish and grey palette, these wild scenes were soon regarded as the opposite of those of classicist painters. Dughet's early manner may be described as half-way between the classical and the romantic conception of landscape. He painted large frescoes with scenes from the life of Elijah in S. Martino ai Monti and other frescoes depicting landscapes in many palaces, e.g. that of Valmontone.

Luca Giordano (1634-1705): Christ among the Doctors (ca 1660)

The early Luca Giordano in Naples revitalized Caravaggio's heritage; but his was a new, painterly High Baroque Caravaggism. (..) Luca Giordano's stay in Venice in 1653 had a revolutionary effect on local artists. Riberesque in his early phase, Giordano brought to Venice a Neapolitan version of Caravaggio's naturalism and tenebroso. Wittkower
Giordano's mature and late works evolved towards a grand decorative painting with a very rich palette (see an altarpiece at S. Maria in Campitelli).

Carlo Maratta (1625-1713): Rebecca and Eliezer at the Well (detail - ca 1690)

November 1, 1786. The paintings on the walls of the Quirinale palace engaged my attention, and I now formed a new acquaintance with some excellent artists, whose very names had hitherto been almost unknown to me, -- for instance, I now for the first time learned to appreciate and to love the cheerful Carlo Maratti.
J. W. Goethe - Italian Journey - Translation by Charles Nisbet.
Maratta (or Maratti) was by far the leading painter in Rome at the end of the XVIIth century. In 1699 he was appointed Principe a vita of Accademia di San Luca, an unprecedented honour which testifies of his authority among the Roman artists (in addition to paintings he designed funerary monuments, e.g. that to Pope Innocent XI and chapels). The richest Roman families competed for his altarpieces and portraits, e.g. the Cybo. Yet his high classical style which made him so successful in his own day in Rome, was not so appreciated abroad and it does not appeal to today's audience.

Luigi Garzi (1638-1721): The Finding of Moses (ca 1692); a detail of the painting can be seen in the image used as background for this page

The day belonged to versions of Maratti's Late Baroque classicism. (..) The ascendancy of Maratti dates from the mid 1670s. (..) At about this moment artists of the second and third rank changed their manner to fill in with the new fashion. Painters such as (..) the rather banal Luigi Garzi may here be mentioned. Wittkower
In the landscape Garzi depicted Roman ruins (a pyramid and a tomb) and in the background Monte Gennaro, something which became a fashion in the XVIIIth century, especially in portraits of foreign travellers (e.g. Goethe). See paintings by Garzi at S. Paolo alla Regola and S. Caterina a Magnanapoli.

Christian Berentz (1658-1722): (left) still life near a fountain which is decorated by a mask and a dolphin; (right) preparations for a dinner in a Roman villa

It was in the years around 1600 that a long prepared, clear-cut separation between ecclesiastical and secular art became an established fact. Events in Rome hastened this division for the whole of Italy. Still life, genre scenes, and self-contained landscapes begin to evolve as species in their own right at this historical moment. None of these remarkable developments takes place without the active participation of northern, mainly Flemish, artists. (..) Many northern artists were magically drawn to Rome, and Rome became the international meeting place where new ideas were avidly exchanged and given their characteristically Italian imprint. Wittkower
Christian Berentz, a German painter, settled in Rome in the late XVIIth century and he lived there until his death in 1722. He worked with Carlo Maratta, taking care of the landscape details of the master's large paintings. Some of his still lives are set in Roman villas (see his view of Casino Ludovisi del Monte). Other painters specialized in the depiction of flowers, e.g. Mario dei Fiori.

Benedetto Luti (1666-1724): small portraits of women (pastel on paper)

The distinguished Benedetto Luti from Florence, a figure of international reputation, renowned also as collector and teacher, accomplished the transformation of the Marattesque into an elegant and sweet eighteenth-century style. Wittkower
Luti moved to Rome in 1690 and in 1720 he was acclaimed Principe dell'Accademia di San Luca. He was highly praised for his small portraits. Their purpose was to decorate a room of a princely palace with pictures representing the beauties of the family (Sala delle Belle). It appears to have been the general fashion throughout Europe, in those times, to form similar collections. See a small collection at Palazzo Altieri at Oriolo.

Marco Benefial (1684-1764): Vision of St. Catherine Fieschi (ca 1737)

One of three artists who made heroic attempts at leading Roman painting back to a sounder foundation was Marco Benefial (1684-1764), half French, by an intense study of nature and by returning to the classical foundations of Raphael and Annibale Carracci. Wittkower
Catherine Fieschi (1447-1510), of a noble Genoese family, was known because of various writings describing her mystical experiences. She was canonized in 1737 and Benefial was asked to celebrate her in a large painting which refrains from the dramatic depictions of other celestial visions, e.g. St. Teresa by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Benefial was highly regarded until the mid of the XIXth century and he was portrayed in the busts of illustrious personages which Pope Leo XII presented to the City of Rome in the 1820s.

Caspar Van Wittel (1653-1736): Isola Bella and Lake Maggiore

The Dutchman Caspar van Wittel made Italy his home in 1672, and worked mainly in Naples and Rome where he died in 1736. Deriving from the northern microcosmic tradition, in Italy he soon developed a sense for well-composed panoramic views without ever abandoning the principle of factual correctness. Wittkower.
Van Wittel made a specific trip to Lake Maggiore to depict the new palace and garden of the Borromeo family on a small island. The painting is very accurate but the two high umbrella pines on the right are an addition which gives a greater Italian flavour to the landscape. We owe to Van Wittel an almost complete depiction of the Rome of his time (see his view of Isola Tiberina).

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