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| Ignazio Enrico Hugford (draughtsman) Portrait of Carlo Maratti ca. 1769-75 engraving British Museum |
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| Carlo Maratti Portait of a man possibly Don Maffeo Barberini (1631-1685) ca. 1670-85 drawing British Museum |
"There are those who have accused Maratti of "lack of individual warmth" (as Burckhardt phrased it) and of limited originality vis-à-vis nature. The charge is not unreasonable. Maratti's artistic will was almost exclusively directed toward the expression of that which is noble and full of pathos, and in his sacred scenes there was little room allowed for individual, intimate or personal elements. Yet the fact that he could at the same time be an excellent observer of reality, when it proved necessary, is revealed in his portraits in which, for all their formal nobility, a strong talent for naturalistic representation is evident."
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| Carlo Maratti Study for portrait of Domenico Guidi, sculptor 1680 drawing British Museum |
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| Carlo Maratti Study for portrait of Domenico Guidi, sculptor 1680 drawing British Museum |
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| Carlo Maratti Study for portait of Cardinal Antonio Barberini ca. 1660-65 drawing Royal Collection, Windsor |
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| Carlo Maratti (draughtsman) Portrait of Salvator Rosa etching by Thomas Worlidge ca. 1715-66 British Museum |
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| Carlo Maratti Study for monument to Pietro da Cortona allegorical figure of winged time trampling envy and holding portrait aloft ca. 1675 drawing Royal Collection, Windsor |
"After Caravaggio, Annibale Carracci and Pietro da Cortona, Carlo Maratti was the fourth founder of an important school of painting in the Roman Seicento. His influence, and in some cases, his direct instruction of pupils was the most powerful factor in Roman painting during the last decades of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century. Pietro da Cortona and his followers, on the other hand, faded more and more into the background. Maratti's return to the tradition of Annibale Carracci and Raphael clearly shows the direction in which his intentions tended: he sought a rejuvenation of the severe Roman monumental style which threatened to degenerate due to the effects of a purely decorative school of painting. It was clearly Maratti's greatest ambition to become, like Carracci before him, a reformer of the art of painting. But he lacked that most essential quality, which had been possessed by Annibale, required in order to play such a role: a direct and naive relationship with nature. Maratti was unquestionably as preeminent and earnest a draftsman as any other painter; most especially, he possessed to the utmost degree a command over every aspect of the depiction of the human figure. But he was not gifted with Carracci's immediate sensuality and affinity with nature."
– this passage and the one above from Baroque Painting in Rome by Hermann Voss, first published in German in 1925, translated into English and revised by Thomas Pelzel in 1997
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| Carlo Maratti Head of youth ca. 1667 drawing (probably for portrait) British Museum |
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| Carlo Maratti Holy women tending St Sebastian ca. 1680 drawing British Museum |
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| Carlo Maratti Adoration of the shepherds ca. 1651-56 drawing (for fresco lunette) British Museum |
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| Carlo Maratti St Matthew ca. 1703 drawing (for statue) Royal Collection, Windsor |
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| Carlo Maratti St Matthew ca. 1703 drawing (for statue) British Museum |
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| Carlo Maratti St John the Evangelist ca. 1703 drawing (for statue) British Museum |
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| Carlo Maratti Blessed Pietro Igneo Aldobrandini passing unharmed through flames ca. 1710 drawing (for engraving) British Museum |
"The drawing [immediately above] must date from the end of the artist's life when, unable to paint because of ill-health, he was much occupied with making designs for engravings; such a dating is supported by the untidy yet still robust style of the drawing. Beato Pietro Aldobrandini, surnamed Igneus, was a Vallombrosan monk from a prominent Florentine family, who later became Cardinal Bishop of Albano. In 1063, in a dispute between the Florentine citizens and Pope Alexander II over the Pope's appointment of the simoniacal Peter of Pavia as Archbishop of Florence, it was decided that God should judge the legality of the appointment through the ordeal of fire. On behalf of Florence, Pietro Aldobrandini undertook the fiery test and, wearing only his alb, maniple and stole and carrying a cross in his hand, he passed between two flaming piles of wood unharmed. The citizens of Florence were therefore vindicated and the archbishop was deposed."
– curator's notes, British Museum