Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Rococo Painting in Italy

Corrado Giaquinto
Allegory of Justice and Peace
1753-54
oil on canvas
Prado

"Imitations produce pain or pleasure not because they are mistaken for realities, but because they bring realities to mind. When the imagination is recreated by a painted landscape, the trees are not supposed capable to give us shade, or the fountains coolness; but we consider how we should be pleased with such fountains playing beside us and such woods waving over us."

 from Samuel Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare (1765)

Alessandro Magnasco
The Tame Magpie
ca. 1707-08
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini
Bacchus and Ariadne
1720s
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Marco Ricci
Roman Capriccio
18th century
gouache
Morgan Library, New York

Marco Ricci
Classical Capriccio
18th century
gouache
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Sebastiano Ricci
Bacchus and Ariadne
ca. 1700-1710
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

Sebastiano Ricci
Fall of the Rebel Angels
ca. 1720
oil on canvas
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

Gian Paolo Panini
Roman ruins with figures
ca. 1730
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

Jacopo Amigoni
Bacchus and Ariadne
18th century
oil on canvas
private collection

Jacopo Amigoni
Venus and Adonis
18th century
oil on canvas
private collection

Giambatista Pittoni
Sacrifice of Polyxena
1733-34
oil on canvas
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Giambattista Pittoni
Sacrifice of Isaac
18th century
oil on canvas
San Francesco della Vigna, Venice

Jacopo Amigoni
The singer Carlo MarĂ­a Broschi, known as Farinelli
1750
oil on canvas
Real Academia, Madrid

Jacopo Amigoni
The singer Farinelli with companions 
ca. 1750-52
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

The final painting is a group portrait depicting (from left to right) the librettist Pietro Metastasio, soprano Teresa Castellini, counter-tenor Carlo Maria Broschi known as Farinelli, the painter Jacopo Amigoni, and at far right Farinelli's dog and Farinelli's personal page-boy. Farinelli lived from 1705 to 1782. His posthumous fame has now remained alive in continuous, well-documented remembrance for about 250 years, as no other deceased European singer can claim.