Saturday, March 9, 2019

Ciro Ferri (1634-1689) - Rome

Ciro Ferri
Reconciliation of Jacob and Laban
before 1689
oil on canvas
private collection

Ciro Ferri
Penitent Magdalen with Angels bearing Instruments of the Passion
1660
oil on canvas
Museo Nacional de San Carlos, Mexico City

Ciro Ferri
Mystic Marriage of St Catherine
ca. 1686
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Ciro Ferri
Joseph and Potiphar's Wife
before 1689
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Angers

"Ferri was born in Rome in 1634 and, beginning in the 1650s, was a student and collaborator of Pietro da Cortona.  Among the followers of Cortona, Ferri was the one who stood closest to his master in terms of personality and style; when he fully applied his talents his art is difficult to differentiate from that of Cortona.  His use of color, however, is usually noticeably duller and less cheerful, his draftsmanship less solid and certain, and his compositions more schematic.   . . .  Yet his talent for adaptability was astonishing.  All told, one might consider Ferri to be the prototype of that later phase of the Cortonesque manner that took the style of the master in his maturity, with its consummate ease and certainty, as its example, but without having resource to Cortona's own independent concept of nature or his solid artistic foundation."

– Hermann Voss, from Baroque Painting in Rome (1925), revised and translated by Thomas Pelzel (San Francisco: Alan Wofsy, 1997)

Ciro Ferri
Hall of Saturn Ceiling
1663
fresco
Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Ciro Ferri
Moses defending the Daughters of Jethro
ca. 1660-89
oil on canvas
Museu de Arte de São Paulo

Ciro Ferri
Elijah and the Widow of Serepta
ca. 1669-89
oil on canvas
National Trust, Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire

Ciro Ferri
Abraham expelling Hagar and Ishmael
ca. 1669-89
oil on canvas
National Trust, Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire

Ciro Ferri
Adoration of the Shepherds
1670
oil on copper
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Ciro Ferri
Coriolanus at the Gates of Rome
ca. 1680-87
oil on canvas
Bildergalerie Sanssouci, Potsdam

Ciro Ferri
Group of Saint on Clouds
(study for fresco inside a dome)
ca. 1670-75
drawing
Royal Collection, Great  Britain

Ciro Ferri
Angel and Putto supporting Drapery-Swag
before 1689
drawing
Royal Collection, Great  Britain

Ciro Ferri
Victorious Warrior
(design for relief-work on the back of a coach)
ca. 1683-85
drawing
Royal Collection, Great  Britain

Ciro Ferri
Académie
before 1689
drawing
British Museum