Saturday, April 30, 2022

Ubaldo Gandolfi (1728-1781) - Late Baroque in Bologna

Ubaldo Gandolfi
The Visitation
1767
oil on canvas
private collection

Ubaldo Gandolfi
Mercury lulling Argus to Sleep
ca. 1770-75
oil on canvas
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Ubaldo Gandolfi
Mercury preparing to behead Argus
ca. 1770-75
oil on canvas
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Ubaldo Gandolfi
Head of a Young Man with a Scarf
(character head)
before 1781
oil on canvas
Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice

Ubaldo Gandolfi
Head of a Young Man
(character head)
before 1781
oil on canvas
Museo Civico di Modena

Ubaldo Gandolfi
Head of a Bearded Man
(character head)
before 1781
oil on canvas
private collection

Ubaldo Gandolfi
Head of an Old Woman
(character head)
ca. 1778
oil on canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Ubaldo Gandolfi
Head of a Young Woman
(character head)
ca. 1775-78
oil on canvas
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Ubaldo Gandolfi
Judith with the Head of Holofernes
before 1781
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Ubaldo Gandolfi
Académie
before 1781
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Ubaldo Gandolfi
Académie
before 1781
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Ubaldo Gandolfi
Académie
before 1781
oil on canvas
private collection

Ubaldo Gandolfi
Académie
before 1781
oil on canvas
private collection

Ubaldo Gandolfi
Model posed as St Sebastian
before 1781
oil on canvas
private collection

Ubaldo Gandolfi
Figure Study for Sleeping Legionary at the Resurrection
before 1781
oil on paper, mounted on canvas
private collection

"The art of the Bolognese Gandolfi family – the brothers Ubaldo (1728-1781) and Gaetano (1734-1802) and Gaetano's son Mauro (1764-1834) – has been considered the final flowering (or final decline) of the Bolognese Baroque style, begun almost two centuries earlier by the Carracci family.  In spite of admiration for their work, serious investigation into their development and influences has been undertaken only recently.  Like other artists of the Bolognese school, the Gandolfi fell into obscurity in the nineteenth century; not until the 1930s did a monograph on their work appear.  In the past twenty years or so, research has clarified the artists' œuvres and examined their relationship to each other and to Italian and European artistic movements."

"One cannot discuss the drawings of the Gandolfi without discussing the paintings, and this is as it should be.  . . .  Ubaldo was the most traditional of the family – the iconographical clarity, compositional austerity, and emotional directness recall Bolognese paintings of the Counter-Reformation, while the innocent sweetness of the characters reminds one of Correggio's pervasive influence in north Italian art.  Specific references to the Carracci, Guercino, and Giuseppe Maria Crespi abound.  Ubaldo's drawings also depend on his Bolognese predecessors, principally the Carracci.  His red chalk sheets, especially his drawings after the nude model, study the natural forms of the human figure, explore the light as it falls on the model, and employ hatching similar to that of the Carracci in the 1580s."    

– excerpted from Diane De Grazia's review of Bella Pittura: the Art of the Gandolfi (exhibition catalogue by Mimi Cazort), published in the Summer 1995 issue of Master Drawings

Friday, April 29, 2022

Corrado Giaquinto (1703-1766) - Neapolitan Rococo

Corrado Giaquinto
The Holy Trinity
before 1766
oil on canvas
Pinacoteca della Città Metropolitana di Bari

Corrado Giaquinto
The Virgin presenting St Helena and Emperor Constantine to the Holy Trinity
1744
oil on canvas
(ceiling painting)
Basilica di Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, Rome

Corrado Giaquinto
Triumph of Joseph
before 1766
oil on canvas
Pinacoteca della Città Metropolitana di Bari

Corrado Giaquinto
Triumph of Joseph (detail)
before 1766
oil on canvas
Pinacoteca della Città Metropolitana di Bari

Corrado Giaquinto
A Sorceress
ca. 1752-54
oil on canvas
Pinacoteca Civica Fortunato Duranti, Montefortino

Corrado Giaquinto
Allegory of Peace and Justice
1753-54
oil on canvas
Indianapolis Museum of Art

Corrado Giaquinto
Autumn
ca. 1740-50
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Corrado Giaquinto
St Nicholas of Bari
before 1766
oil on canvas
Musée Fesch, Ajaccio, Corsica

Corrado Giaquinto
Martyrdom of St Lawrence
before 1766
oil on canvas
Musée Fesch, Ajaccio, Corsica

Corrado Giaquinto
Emperor Theodosius repenting before St Ambrose
before 1766
oil on canvas
Pinacoteca della Città Metropolitana di Bari

Corrado Giaquinto
Descent from the Cross
ca. 1754
oil on canvas
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Corrado Giaquinto
The Sudarium displayed by Cherubs
1754
oil on canvas
Biblioteca Museu Víctor Balaguer, Barcelona

Corrado Giaquinto
Rest on the Flight into Egypt
1764
oil on canvas
Detroit Institute of Arts

Corrado Giaquinto
Moses and the Serpent of Bronze
1743-44
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

Corrado Giaquinto
Triumph of Galatea
ca. 1752
oil on canvas
Milwaukee Art Museum

"Born in Molfetta, near Bari, Giaquinto trained in Naples and was influenced by the work of Neapolitan painters Luca Giordano and Francesco Solimena.  In 1727 he left Naples for Rome, where his style became increasingly classicising.  Once his reputation was established, Giaquinto was invited twice to the Savoy court in Turin (in 1733 and 1735-39).  In 1740 he became a member of the Academy of Saint Luke in Rome and, having set up a studio he undertook a number of large decorative schemes.  In 1753 Giaquinto was summoned by the king of Spain, Ferdinand VI, to Madrid where he succeeded Jacopo Amigoni (1680/2-1752) as court painter.  Giaquinto's most significant commission in Madrid was the fresco decoration of the recently-built Royal Palace.  In 1762, after nine years at the Spanish court, Giaquinto moved back to Naples where he continued working for the Spanish monarchy until his death."

– from biographical notes at the National Gallery, London

Thursday, April 28, 2022

Pietro Longhi (1701-1785) - Venetian Modes

Pietro Longhi
The Hairdresser (Il Perrucchiere)
1760
oil on canvas
Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice

Pietro Longhi
The Hairdresser (La Pettinatrice)
1760
oil on canvas
Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice

Pietro Longhi
The Toilette
1760
oil on canvas
Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice

Pietro Longhi
The Fitting
ca. 1755-60
oil on canvas
Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice

Pietro Longhi
Portrait of a Patrician Family
1752
oil on canvas
Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice

Pietro Longhi
Family Concert
1752
oil on canvas
Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice

Pietro Longhi
The Masked Visitor
1760
oil on canvas
Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice

Pietro Longhi
The Visit to the Convent
1760
oil on canvas
Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice

Pietro Longhi
The Painter in his Studio
ca. 1740-46
oil on canvas
Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice

"A student of Antonio Balestra of Verona, Pietro Longhi began his career in 1732 as a painter of altarpieces.  In Bologna around 1730 he had become acquainted with Giuseppe Maria Crespi's tradition of painting the lives of common folk.  Longhi soon began painting genre scenes of the life of peasants and servants, and later the customs of the Venetian nobility in a sort of updated international style derived from French and English models.  Contemporary Venetian artists Rosalba Carriera and Jacopo Amigoni were among those who influenced his work in soft, delicate tones and precious, luminous chromaticism.  In his prolific work in the service of patrician Venice, he captured fragments of Venetian life with great powers of observation and biting irony: the settings are aristocratic palaces, bourgeois mansions, and the city's narrow, colorful campielli."  

– Daniela Tarabra, European Art of the Eighteenth Century, translated by Rosanna M. Giammanco Frongia (Getty Museum, 2008) 

Pietro Longhi
The Fortune Teller
1752
oil on canvas
Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice

Pietro Longhi
The Perfume Seller
ca. 1756
oil on canvas
Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice

Pietro Longhi
The Charlatan
1757
oil on canvas
Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice

Pietro Longhi
The Rhinoceros
1751
oil on canvas
Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice

"This painting documents an unusual event in Venice, the exhibition of a rhinoceros.  An animal until then unknown in Italy, it created a sensation throughout Europe."

Pietro Longhi
La Furlana 
1750
oil on canvas
Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice

Pietro Longhi
La Polenta
1740
oil on canvas
Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice

Pietro Longhi
The Doughnut Seller
1755
oil on canvas
Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice


Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Giandomenico Tiepolo (1727-1804) - Style Inheritor

Giandomenico Tiepolo
Head of a Philosopher
ca. 1758-64
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Giandomenico Tiepolo
Head of a Philosopher (detail)
ca. 1758-64
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Giandomenico Tiepolo
Head of a Magus
ca. 1757-59
oil on canvas
Palazzo Pretorio, Prato

Giandomenico Tiepolo
Head of a Magus
ca. 1757
oil on canvas
Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio

Giandomenico Tiepolo
Marriage of Frederick Barbarossa and Beatrice of Burgundy
ca. 1752-53
oil on canvas
(after Tiepolo fresco in Würzburg)
National Gallery, London

Giandomenico Tiepolo
Rebecca at the Well
1751
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Giandomenico Tiepolo
Widow of Darius supplicating Alexander the Great
ca. 1750-53
oil on canvas
Detroit Institute of Arts

Giandomenico Tiepolo
Rinaldo before the image of Armida
(scene from Gerusalemme Liberata)
ca. 1791
detached fresco
(from Villa di Zianigo)
Ca' Rezzonico, Venice

Giandomenico Tiepolo
Holy Family with Saint
1749
detached fresco
(from Cappella di Zianigo)
Ca' Rezzonico, Venice

Giandomenico Tiepolo
Golgotha
ca. 1750-60
oil on canvas
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Giandomenico Tiepolo
Descent from the Cross
1772
oil on canvas
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Giandomenico Tiepolo
Lamentation at the Foot of the Cross
ca. 1750-60
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

Giandomenico Tiepolo
Punchinellos in Cavalcade
1791
detached fresco (grisaille)
Ca' Rezzonico, Venice

Giandomenico Tiepolo
Dance in the Country
ca. 1755
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Giambattista and Giandomenico Tiepolo
Meeting of Anthia and Habrocomes
(scene from The Ephesian Tale by Xenophon of Ephesus)
ca. 1743-44
oil on canvas
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

"Giandomenico Tiepolo (1727-1804) was one of nine children of the great 18th-century Venetian master Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770).  He spent the first half of his life by his father's side, assisting him with commissions as they travelled across Europe together.  Domenico worked with his father on the interior decorative schemes for the Würzburg Residence and Villa Valmarana near Vicenza, as well as a spectacular series of trompe l'oeil frescoes for the throne room of Charles III at the Royal Palace in Madrid.  By the 1740s, the younger Tiepolo had also begun making his own work, often on biblical themes.  But it was after 1770, when his father died in Madrid, that Domenico's art came into its own."  

– profile from Christie's sale catalog, July 2020