Showing posts with label Sicily. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sicily. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 23, 2020

Camilliani and Montorsoli - 16th-century Fountain Sculptures

Francesco Camilliani
Fontana Pretoria
1555
marble
Piazza della Pretoria, Palermo

Francesco Camilliani
Fontana Pretoria
(Water Goddess with Merman and Mermaid)
1555
marble
Piazza della Pretoria, Palermo

Francesco Camilliani
Fontana Pretoria
(River God)
1555
marble
Piazza della Pretoria, Palermo

Francesco Camilliani
Fontana Pretoria
(River God with Merman and Mermaid)
1555
marble
Piazza della Pretoria, Palermo

Francesco Camilliani
Fontana Pretoria
(River God)
1555
marble
Piazza della Pretoria, Palermo

Francesco Camilliani
Fontana Pretoria
(River God with Mermaid and Merman)
1555
marble
Piazza della Pretoria, Palermo

Francesco Camilliani
Fontana Pretoria
(River God with Merman and Mermaid)
1555
marble
Piazza della Pretoria, Palermo

Francesco Camilliani
Fontana Pretoria
(River God with Merman and Mermaid)
1555
marble
Piazza della Pretoria, Palermo

CAMILLIANI (Francesco), sculpteur italien, né vers 1525 à Florence, mort en 1586.  Après avoir reçu do son père, Giovanni della Camilla, sa première éducation artistique, il prit pour maître Baccio Bandinelli, et ne tarda pas à devenir un des maîtres de la sculpture florentine.  Les contemporains s'émerveillèrent surtout des travaux qu'il exécuta pour les jardins fameux de don Luigi da Toledo, et des statues d'hommes et d'animaux dont il y entoura une fontaine, achetée plus tard par le Sénat de Palerme et placé, dans cette ville, sur la Piazza Pretoriana.

–  La Grande Encyclopédie: Inventaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Lettres et des Arts (Paris: Lamirault, 1885)

Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli
Fontana de Tritone
ca. 1543
marble
Villa del Principe, Genoa

Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli
Fontana di Orione
(The Tiber)
1553
marble
Piazza del Duomo, Messina

Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli
Fontana di Orione
(The Nile)
1553
marble
Piazza del Duomo, Messina

"While the Frate [Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli] was thus passing his time in Rome, the people of Messina, having determined to erect on the Piazza of their Duomo a fountain with a very great enrichment of statues, had sent men to Rome to seek out some excellent sculptor.  These men had secured Raffaello da Montelupo, but he fell ill at the very moment when he was about to depart with them for Messina, so that they made another choice and took the Frate [Montorsoli], who had sought with all insistence, and even with some interest, to obtain that work.  . . .  Having been provided with rooms, he set his hand to making the conduit for the waters, which come from a distance, and to having marble sent from Carrara; and with great promptitude, assisted by many stone-cutters and carvers, he finished that fountain.  . . .  And since it much pleased the people of Messina, they caused him to make another [below] on the shore, where the Customs-House is; which also proved to be beautiful and very rich.  . . .  In the centre of the great basin of the fountain is a pedestal high in proportion . . . and on the summit is a Neptune of five braccia, who holds the trident in his hand, and has his right leg planted beside a Dolphin.  At the sides, also, upon two other pedestals, are Scylla and Charybdis in the forms of two monsters, fashioned very well, with heads of Dogs and Furies about them."

– from Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects by Giorgio Vasari (1568), translated by Gaston du C. de Vere (1912)

Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli
Fontana del Nettuno
(Neptune between Scylla and Charybdis)
1557
marble
Piazza Unità d'Italia, Messina

Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli
Fontana del Nettuno
(Charybdis)
1557
marble
Piazza Unità d'Italia, Messina

Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli
Fontana del Nettuno
(Scylla)
1557
marble
Piazza Unità d'Italia, Messina

Thursday, September 5, 2019

Antonello da Messina (ca. 1430-1479) - Paintings of the 1470s

Antonello da Messina
Virgin Annunciate (detail)
ca. 1475
oil on panel
Galleria Regionale della Sicilia, Palermo

Antonello da Messina
Virgin Annunciate
ca. 1475
oil on panel
Galleria Regionale della Sicilia, Palermo

Antonello da Messina
Portrait of a Man (Il Condottiere)
1475
oil on panel
Musée du Louvre

Antonello da Messina
Christ at the Column
ca. 1475-79
oil on panel
Musée du Louvre

Antonello da Messina
Madonna and Child enthroned
with St Nicholas of Bari, St Anastasia, St Ursula and St Dominic

1475-76
oil on panel
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

"Antonello da Messina – Outstanding, if ill-documented, painter from Messina in Sicily.  His mature works combine an Italian sense of volumetric structure with Netherlandish technique, notably in the treatment of light and iconography.  He was prized as a master of the small, bust-length portrait in the Netherlandish mode.  Exceptionally, he was also able to work both on the monumental scale of large altarpieces and, for private collectors, on a minute scale approaching that of miniatures.  . . .  An independent master in Messina by 1457, Antonello is said to have been apprenticed in Naples to Colantonio, an able imitator of Netherlandish painting.  Since original works by Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden, as well as by their Burgundian, Provençal and Spanish followers, were available for study in Naples, scholars have abandoned earlier hypotheses of a trip to the Netherlands, although a voyage to central and northern Italy during 1465-71, when Antonello could have absorbed the influence of Piero della Francesca and Mantegna, is still thought likely.  A stay in Venice 1475-76 is well documented.  . . .  A close interaction between Antonello and Giovanni Bellini is universally acknowledged, although scholars disagree as to which artist most influenced the other."

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

Antonello da Messina
Crucifixion with the Virgin and St John the Evangelist
1475
oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Antonello da Messina
Crucifixion with the Virgin and St John the Evangelist
1475
oil on panel
Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp

Antonello da Messina
Portrait of a Young Man
1478
oil on panel
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

Antonello da Messina
Portrait of a Man
ca. 1476
oil on panel
Museo Civico d'Arte Antica, Turin

Antonello da Messina
St Sebastian
ca. 1478
oil on panel, transferred to canvas
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Antonello da Messina
St Sebastian (detail)
ca. 1478
oil on panel, transferred to canvas
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Antonello da Messina
St Sebastian (detail)
ca. 1478
oil on panel, transferred to canvas
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Antonello da Messina
Dead Christ supported by an Angel
ca. 1475-76
tempera and oil on panel
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Antonello da Messina
St Jerome in his Study
ca. 1475
oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Antonello da Messina
Portrait of a Man
ca. 1475-76
oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Antonello da Messina
Virgin Annunciate
ca. 1473
oil on panel
Alte Pinakothek, Munich