Sunday, January 22, 2017

Hermitage Collection of 16th-century Art from Rome

Perino del Vaga
Lamentation
ca. 1535
oil on panel
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

"A truly great gift is art, who, paying no regard to abundance of riches, to high estate, or to nobility of blood, embraces, protects, and uplifts from the ground a child of poverty much more often than one wrapped in the ease of wealth. ... And whoever has any doubt of this, will be enlightened in this present Life of Perino del Vaga, a painter of great excellence and genius. ... This Perino, the son of a poor father, having been left an orphan as a little child and abandoned by his relatives, was guided and governed by art, whom he always acknowledged as his true mother and honored without ceasing. ... Thus left in Rome, and seeing the ancient works of sculpture and the marvelous masses of the buildings, reduced for the most part to ruins, Perino stood lost in admiration at the greatness of the many renowned and illustrious men who had executed those works. And so, becoming ever more and more aflame with love of art, he burned unceasingly to attain to a height not too far distant from those masters, in order to win fame and profit for himself with his works, even as had been done by those at whom he marveled as he beheld their beautiful creations. And while he contemplated their greatness and the depths of his own lowliness and poverty, reflecting that he possessed nothing save the desire to rise to their height, and that, having no one who might maintain him and provide him with the means to live, he was forced, if he wished to remain alive, to labor at work for those ordinary shops, now with one painter and now with another, after the manner of the day-laborers in the fields, a mode of life which so hindered his studies, he felt infinite grief and pain in his heart at not being able to make as soon as he would have liked that proficience to which his mind, his will, and his necessities were urging him. He made the resolve, therefore, to divide his time equally, working half the week at day work, and during the other half devoting his attention to design; and to this second half he added all the feast-days, together with a great part of the nights, thus stealing time from time itself, in order to become famous and to escape from the hands of others so far as it might be possible."

 from the Life of Perino del Vaga by Giorgio Vasari (1568) translated into English by Gaston du C. de Vere (1912)

Polidoro da Caravaggio
Cupid and Psyche
before 1543
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Polidoro da Caravaggio
Psyche and her Sisters
before 1543
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Polidoro da Caravaggio
Venus at the Forge of Vulcan
before 1543
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Polidoro da Caravaggio
Scene of Battle
before 1543
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

 Girolamo Siciolante da Sermonetea
Allegory of Diligence and Sloth
before 1580
oil on panel, transferred to canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Raffaellino del Colle
Holy Family
before 1566
oil on panel, transferred to canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Raphael
Holy Family
1506-07
tempera and oil on panel, transferred to canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

copy after Giulio Romano
Battle of the Milvian Bridge
16th century
oil on panel, transferred to canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Giulio Romano
Jonah and the Whale
ca. 1531-32
drawing
Hermitage, Saint Peteresburg

Jacopo Caraglio after Rosso Fiorentino
Battle between Hercules and Centaurs
1526-27
engraving
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Baccio Bandinelli
Holy Women at the Empty Tomb
ca. 1525-50
drawing
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Baldassare Peruzzi
Androcles and the Lion
1530s
drawing
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Daniele da Volterra
Sibyl
ca. 1540-45
drawing
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

"Many more drawings on paper, of every type, ranging from first sketches to detailed studies and full-scale cartoons, survive from Italy than from Northern Europe."

This consoling fact is revealed by David Bomford in the 2002 catalog from the National Gallery in London – Underdrawings in Renaissance Paintings.