Thursday, April 20, 2017

Design Initiatives by Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi

Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi
Design for ceiling decoration
before 1658
drawing
British Museum

Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi
Design for wall of garden terrace
before 1658
drawing
British Museum

"A parallel movement towards individuation occurs in painting, where the idea of the sketch becomes in the seventeenth century a significant means of individualizing an artist's work. . . . Certainly the sketch ceases to be purely or mainly instrumental, and then its speed and nonchalance, no longer signs of its unimportance, come to mean something else. . . . For paint to be individualized the subject must be obscured. . . . The parts are winning at the expense of the whole, and the primary sensation is deliberate loss of control in the interest of energy. . . . Sketches in architecture mean something different, more unmistakable holiday or licence. . . . Perhaps an agitated surface conveys a transformative vision, a transversal of values in which hideous realities are reversed by a movement more like extravagant wit than spiritual discovery."

 from Reflections on Baroque by Robert Harbison (London: Reaktion Books, 2000)

Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi
Sketch for wall decoration
before 1658
drawing
British Museum

Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi
Designs for candlestick
before 1680
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi
Design for wall decoration
before 1658
drawing, watercolor
British Museum

Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi
Design for wall decoration with angels
 before 1658
drawing
British Museum

Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi
View of a town
before 1680
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi
Two fountains in a garden
before 1658
drawing
British Museum

Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi
Ruin with window overgrown by tree
before 1658
drawing
British Museum

Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi
Excavation of ancient tomb
before 1680
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi
Architectural base supported by nude figures
before 1658
drawing
British Museum

Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi
Study for the top of a catafalque
before 1680
drawing
British Museum

Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi
St Paul with another Saint
before 1658
drawing
British Museum

Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi
Ancient 'Marforio' statue in Rome, from above
before 1658
drawing
British Museum