Sunday, March 10, 2019

Giovanni Domenico Cerrini (1609-1681) - Rome

Giovanni Domenico Cerrini
Allegory of Painting, with Self-portrait of the Artist
ca. 1639
oil on canvas
Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna

Giovanni Domenico Cerrini
Allegory of Time destroying Beauty
before 1681
oil on canvas
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Giovanni Domenico Cerrini
Apollo and the Cumaean Sibyl
ca. 1650
oil on canvas
Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Perugia

"Born in Perugia in 1609, Cerrini trained under Domenico Scaramuccia, a local painter, along with Scaramuccia's son Luigi.  He is supposed also to have been a student of Guido Reni; in any event he was certainly influenced by Reni as well as by Domenichino.  He worked chiefly in Rome, and at times also in Florence and Naples.  . . .  Cerrini appears to have been one of the last and weakest of the offshoots of the movement radiating from Bologna.  His talent, not unlike that of his compatriot, Giovanni Sassoferrato, lay in cleanly composed pictures of moderate scale involving single figures or groups of half-length figures.  . . .  Unlike Sassoferrato he did not deliberately pursue an archaistic style, yet in the simplified and at the same time emotional manner in which he transformed the Bolognese style, one senses a compatriot of Pietro Perugino.   . . .  In the field of decorative fresco, Cerrini's chief work is the nave ceiling and cupola of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome, parts of which are quite successful in effect."

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

Giovanni Domenico Cerrini
Virgin Mary triumphing over Heresy, with Fall of the Rebel Angels
ca. 1674-75
ceiling fresco
Chiesa Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome

Giovanni Domenico Cerrini
Assumption of the Virgin
ca. 1674-75
cupola fresco
Chiesa Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome

Giovanni Domenico Cerrini
St John the Baptist
before 1681
oil on canvas
private collection

Giovanni Domenico Cerrini
St John the Baptist
before 1681
oil on canvas
Chiesa di San Giacomo Apostolo dei Domenicani, Forlì

Giovanni Domenico Cerrini
St John the Baptist
before 1681
oil on canvas
private collection

Giovanni Domenico Cerrini
Rebecca at the Well
before 1681
oil on canvas
private collection

Giovanni Domenico Cerrini
Penitent Magdalen
before 1681
oil on canvas
Museo d'Arte della città di Ravenna

attributed to Giovanni Domenico Cerrini
Salome with the Head of St John the Baptist
before 1681
oil on canvas
National Gallery, Athens

Giovanni Domenico Cerrini
Mercury
before 1681
oil on canvas
private collection

Giovanni Domenico Cerrini
Holy Family with Angels
1652
etching by Giovanni Battista Benaschi after painting by Cerrini
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
(Achenbach Foundation)

Giovanni Domenico Cerrini
Pentecost
before 1681
drawing
Museo del Prado, Madrid

"Few drawings by Cerrini are known to exist, but this one, bearing a contemporary inscription in the hand of the artist, may be regarded as autograph, particularly as the compositional and figural dispositions are consistent with the artist's paintings.  The seated Virgin at center is surrounded by Apostles striking a variety of attitudes.  The active and crowded scene derives more from Pietro da Cortona than from Cerrini's direct masters, Guido Reni and Domenichino.   It must have been created in the final period of Cerrini's career, when he had fallen under the classicizing influence and grand rhetoric of Carlo Maratti – yet does not correspond directly to any known painting."

– from curator's notes at Museo del Prado