Sunday, July 31, 2022

Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) - Faces and Figures I

Gianlorenzo Bernini
Self Portrait
ca. 1623
oil on canvas
Galleria Borghese, Rome

Gianlorenzo Bernini
Self Portrait
ca. 1625
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Gianlorenzo Bernini
Self Portrait
ca. 1625-30
oil on canvas
Musée Fabre, Montpellier

Gianlorenzo Bernini
Self Portrait
ca. 1638-40
oil on canvas
Galleria Borghese, Rome

Gianlorenzo Bernini
Self Portrait
ca. 1665-70
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

Gianlorenzo Bernini
Portrait of Nicolas Poussin
ca. 1628-29
oil on canvas, mounted on panel
York City Art Gallery

Gianlorenzo Bernini
Portrait of a Man
ca. 1630
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

Gianlorenzo Bernini
Apostles Andrew and Thomas
1627
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

Gianlorenzo Bernini
David
ca. 1624-25
oil on canvas
Palazzo Barberini, Rome

Gianlorenzo Bernini
Portrait of Pope Clement IX
ca. 1668-69
oil on canvas
private collection

Gianlorenzo Bernini
St Sebastian
ca. 1635-45
oil on canvas
private collection

Gianlorenzo Bernini
Christ Mocked
ca. 1630
oil on canvas
private collection

Gianlorenzo Bernini
Académie
ca. 1649-50
oil on canvas
private collection

Gianlorenzo Bernini
Académie
ca. 1618-24
drawing
Princeton University Art Museum

Gianlorenzo Bernini
Half-Length Figure-Study from the Back
ca. 1630
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor
 
"Gianlorenzo Bernini, a child prodigy, continued to grow in artistic stature throughout his life and to work into extreme old age.  Not an introspective or intellectual genius like his great predecessors Donatello, Leonardo and Michelangelo, he must be identified with those orthodox beliefs and aspirations of triumphant Catholicism and of secular absolutism for which he found such compelling visual embodiments.  For this reason, his reputation – as he himself predicted – waned after his death, and has never been high in non-Catholic countries.  . . .  In an age of increasing doubt, he died affirming, in his art as, paradoxically for so accomplished a courtier, in his private life, the certainty of individual salvation to the point of mysticism."  

– Erika Langmuir and Norbert Lynton, Yale Dictionary of Art and Artists (2000)

Saturday, July 30, 2022

Marco Benefial (1684-1764) - A Roman Borderline

Marco Benefial
Portrait of British painter John Parker
1761
oil on canvas
Accademia di San Luca, Rome

attributed to Marco Benefial
Portrait of an Old Woman
ca. 1750
oil on canvas
Palazzo Buonaccorsi, Macerata

Marco Benefial
Jonah
ca. 1718
fresco
Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano, Rome

attributed to Marco Benefial
Portrait of a Young Woman
before 1764
oil on canvas
Palazzo Buonaccorsi, Macerata

attributed to Marco Benefial
Portrait of a Young Woman
before 1764
oil on canvas
Palazzo Buonaccorsi, Macerata

Marco Benefial
Rest on the Flight into Egypt
ca. 1750
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Carcassonne

Marco Benefial
Vision of St Catherine of Genoa
1747
oil on canvas
Palazzo Barberini, Rome

Marco Benefial
Vision of St Philip Neri
1721
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Marco Benefial
St Lawrence healing the People
ca. 1721-25
oil on canvas
Museo del Colle del Duomo, Viterbo

Marco Benefial
St Margaret of Cortona
discovering the Corpse of her Lover

before 1764
oil on canvas
Musée Fesch, Ajaccio, Corsica

Marco Benefial
Baptism of San Tranquillino di Roma
ca. 1721-25
oil on canvas
Museo del Colle del Duomo, Viterbo

Marco Benefial
Seated Sibyl
1733
drawing
(study for fresco)
British Museum

Marco Benefial
Figural Studies
before 1764
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

attributed to Marco Benefial
Youth kissing an outstretched hand
before 1764 
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Marco Benefial
Self Portrait
1731
drawing
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

"If the Rococo phase forms, as it were, the anti-conventional 'left wing' of Marrattesque classicism, a new 'right wing' began to emerge for which that insipid manner was too Baroque and formalistic.  It was mainly three artists who made heroic attempts at leading Roman painting back to a sounder foundation: [among them] Marco Benefial (1684-1764), half French, pupil of the Bolognese Bonaventura Lamberti, by means of an intense study of nature and by returning to the classical foundations of Raphael and Annibale Carracci.  . . .  In varying degrees, all three artists take up special positions on the borderline between Rococo and Neo-classicism.  These masters stuck tenaciously to Late Baroque formulae of composition.  Nor is the lyric, languid, and often sentimental range of expressions really divorced from contemporary painting."

– Art and Architecture in Italy, 1600-1750 by Rudolf Wittkower (1958), revised by Joseph Connors and Jennifer Montagu for Yale University Press (1999)

Friday, July 29, 2022

Giovanni Battista Benaschi (or Beinaschi) 1636-1688

Giovanni Battista Benaschi
Personification of Time (detail)
ca. 1675-80
oil on canvas
Palazzo Buonaccorsi, Macerata

Giovanni Battista Benaschi
Study for Prophet
1680-82
drawing
(study for fresco)
Royal Collection, Windsor

Giovanni Battista Benaschi
Personification of Time
ca. 1675-80
oil on canvas
Palazzo Buonaccorsi, Macerata

Giovanni Battista Benaschi
Figure Study
before 1688
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Giovanni Battista Benaschi
Head of an Apostle
before 1688
oil on canvas
National Trust, Hatchlands, Surrey

Giovanni Battista Benaschi
Sacrifice of Abraham
before 1688
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Giovanni Battista Benaschi
Sacrifice of Abraham
before 1688
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Brest

Giovanni Battista Benaschi
Study of Bearded Figure
before 1688
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Giovanni Battista Benaschi
Studies for Figure of Male Saint in Clouds
before 1688
drawing
British Museum

Giovanni Battista Benaschi
Adam and Eve mourning the death of Abel
before 1688
oil on canvas
Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid

Giovanni Battista Benaschi
Study for Angel
before 1688
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Giovanni Battista Benaschi
Study of Trumpeters
before 1688
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Giovanni Battista Benaschi
Studies for Figure of the Magdalen
before 1688
drawing
British Museum

Giovanni Battista Benaschi
Study for Console with Emblems of the Four Evangelists
before 1688
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Giovanni Battista Benaschi
Glory of Angels
before 1688
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

"Hailing from Turin, where he began his training under the court painter Esprit Grandjean, Giovanni Battista Beinaschi (or Benaschi) had settled in Rome by 1652.  He first found employ working for the engraver Pietro del Pò, for whom he made copies after Annibale Carracci's frescoes in the Galleria Farnese, and after Giovanni Lanfranco's work in San Andrea della Valle and San Carlo Catinari.  The latter artist, in particular, was to have a profound influence on Beinaschi's style – the works of Lanfranco and Beinaschi often so close as to confuse scholars.  In 1664 Beinaschi moved to Naples to work primarily in fresco on a number of decorative cycles for churches within the city." 

– from biographical notes published by Christie's, London

Thursday, July 28, 2022

Bernardo Bellotto (1722-1780) - Traveling Vedutista

Bernardo Bellotto
Upper Reaches of Grand Canal facing Santa Croce, Venice
ca. 1740-50
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

Bernardo Bellotto
Upper Reaches of Grand Canal facing Santa Croce (detail)
ca. 1740-50
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

Bernardo Bellotto
Entrance to Grand Canal, with Santa Maria della Salute, Venice
ca. 1740-50
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Bernardo Bellotto
Entrance to Grand Canal, with Santa Maria della Salute (detail)
ca. 1740-50
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Bernardo Bellotto
Piazza di San Giovanni in Laterano, Rome
1744
oil on canvas
private collection

Bernardo Bellotto
Piazza della Signoria, Florence
1742
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Bernardo Bellotto
Piazza San Martino, Lucca
before 1750
oil on canvas
York City Art Gallery

Bernardo Bellotto
Ruins of Devín Castle, Bratislava
ca. 1759-60
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Bernardo Bellotto
View of Prina from Sonnenstein Castle
ca. 1759-60
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Bernardo Bellotto
View of Prina with the Fortress of Sonnenstein
ca. 1755-65
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Bernardo Bellotto
View of Schloss Hof, Austria
ca. 1759-60
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Bernardo Bellotto
View of Schloss Hof, Austria
ca. 1759-60
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Bernardo Bellotto
Miodowa Street, Warsaw
1777
oil on canvas
Royal Castle, Warsaw

Bernardo Bellotto
Bridgettine Church and Arsenal, Warsaw
1780
oil on canvas
Royal Castle, Warsaw

Bernardo Bellotto
Lobkowitzplatz, Vienna
ca. 1759-60
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

"Born in Venice in 1722, Bellotto had a precocious talent.  He received his earliest training with his uncle, the celebrated view painter Canaletto, from about 1735 onwards, and was accepted into the Fraglia dei Pittori (Venetian painters' guild) at the age of just 16.  In the 1740s Bellotto traveled extensively around the Italian peninsula, producing views of various cities including Florence, Rome, Verona and Turin.  He was called to Dresden in 1747, and the subsequent year was appointed Court Painter to Augustus III, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony.  Following the escalation of the Seven Years' War around 1758, Bellotto worked at the courts of Vienna (ca. 1758/59-1761) and Munich (1761), before returning again to Dresden (1761-66).  He spent the last 13 years of his life in Warsaw, at the court of Augustus III's successor, Stanislaus II August Poniatowski."

"Bellotto tends towards a more silvery light than Canaletto, as well as a cooler palette and a greater sense of monumentality.  Even when one of his compositions derived from a painting by his uncle, Bellotto tended to increase it in both size and scale.  . . .  Today, Bellotto is best known for his views of northern European cities, characterised by panoramic compositions, strongly contrasted use of light and shadow, and meticulous attention to architectural detail.  Such was Bellotto's precision that his late views of Warsaw played a crucial role in that city's reconstruction after the Second World War."   

– from curator's notes at the National Gallery, London