Friday, July 1, 2016

Italian Painting of the 16th century at the Prado

Sophonisba Anguissola
Portrait of Giovanni Battista Caselli, poet of Cremona
1557-58
oil on canvas
Prado
 
Carlo Portelli
Charity
1570s
oil on canvas
Prado

"Strengthened by its references to Raphael and Michelangelo, by artists' travels, and by the circulation of models expedited by the growing availability of printed materials, the stylistic phenomenon of Mannerism spread internationally, ultimately becoming the lingua franca of court art in the late Renaissance. In more than one country, in fact, there was a direct transition from late-Gothic art to Mannerism. In a political atmosphere characterized by the rise of the large nation-state, which absorbed small local powers, art tended toward a European-wide "globalization," taking standardized forms. One crucial factor was the Sack of Rome (1527): Raphael's collaborators, who continued to form a tight-knit school even after the master's death, abandoned Rome and scattered to a variety of European courts, both large and small. The aristocratic ideal and the firm stability of power was expressed through a three-dimensional, almost crystallized form. The explicit or tacit reference to classical formal models, whether ancient statues or engravings taken from the work of Raphael, could be appreciated only by individuals with a refined, current understanding of art; it thus became a sort of coded language accessible only to an elite."  

 Stefano Zuffi in European Art of the Sixteenth Century, translated by Antony Shugaar (Getty Museum, 2006)

Agnolo Bronzino
Portrait of Garcia de Medici
ca. 1550
oil on panel
Prado

Paolo Veronese
Portrait of Livia Colonna
ca. 1570-72
oil on canvas
Prado

Paolo Veronese
Youth Between Virtue & Vice
ca. 1581
oil on canvas
Prado

Paolo Veronese
The Martyrdom of St Mena
1580
oil on canvas
Prado

Giovanni Agostino da Lodi
St Anthony Abbot
ca. 1510
oil on panel
Prado

Annibale Carracci
Virgin & Child with Infant St John the Baptist
ca. 1599-1600
oil on panel
Prado


Leandro Bassano
The Crowning with Thorns
1590s
oil on canvas
Prado

Giacomo & Giulio Francia
St Jerome, St Margaret, and St Francis
1518
oil on panel
Prado

Giulio Romano & Giovanni Francesco Penni
The Visitation
ca. 1517
oil on canvas
Prado

Titian
Posthumous portrait of Empress Isabel of Portugal, consort of Charles V
1548
oil on canvas
Prado

Daniele da Volterra
Portrait of a young man
ca. 1550-55
oil on canvas
Prado

Bernardino Licinio
Portrait of a young woman
ca. 1525-30
oil on canvas
Prado

I am grateful for the beautiful reproductions made available by Museo del Prado.