Agostino Masucci (1691-1758) - Rome

Agostino Masucci
Portrait of architect Filippo Juvarra
before 1736
oil on canvas
Accademia di San Luca, Rome

Agostino Masucci
Portrait of Francisco Pescatori Baroni Mastigoli y Pasqual
ca. 1740-50
oil on canvas
private collection

Agostino Masucci
Portrait of Cardinal Niccolò del Giudice
before 1743
oil on canvas
private collection

Agostino Masucci
Portrait of Pope Benedict XIV
ca. 1743-58
oil on canvas
Royal Castle, Warsaw

"Born in 1691, Agostino Masucci was supposedly Carlo Maratti's last pupil, though on the basis of chronology he could have studied with him only briefly.  Masucci's altarpieces are clear, cool and cultivated in style.  His painterly technique is smooth as porcelain; his compositions are pleasant, though thoroughly conventional.  In his Madonna paintings he imitated his master with only limited success.  His portraits are more significant; in his own time he was considered to be Maratti's legitimate heir in this field."

– Hermann Voss, from Baroque Painting in Rome (1925), revised and translated by Thomas Pelzel (San Francisco: Alan Wofsy, 1997)

Agostino Masucci
The Madonna with the Seven Founders of the Servite Order
ca. 1728
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Agostino Masucci
Solemnisation of the Marriage of James Stuart, the Old Pretender, and Maria Clementina Sobieska in Rome
ca. 1735
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland

attributed to Agostino Masucci
St Casimir
before 1758
oil on copper
Royal Castle, Warsaw

Agostino Masucci
St Gregory the Great in Prayer
ca. 1730-35
oil on canvas
Fondazione Cavallini Sgarbi, Ferrara

Agostino Masucci
Studies for the Head of St Peter, and Sketch of a Prophet
before 1758
drawing
private collection

Agostino Masucci
Studies for The Education of the Virgin
before 1758
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Agostino Masucci
Assumption of the Virgin
ca. 1710-25
drawing
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Agostino Masucci
The Continence of Scipio
before 1758
drawing
private collection

Agostino Masucci
Studies for the head of Pope Benedict XIII
and Sketch for an Altarpiece
ca. 1724-30
drawing
National Gallery of Canada

Agostino Masucci
Diana, a Nymph, and three Shepherds in a Landscape
before 1758
drawing
British Museum

Giuseppe Passeri (1654-1714) - Religious Imagery

Giuseppe Passeri
Archangels Gabriel, Michael and Raphael
before 1714
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Giuseppe Passeri
Rest on the Flight into Egypt
before 1714
drawing
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Giuseppe Passeri
Virgin and Child enthroned, adored by a Bishop and a Monk
before 1714
drawing
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Giuseppe Passeri
Christ between Moses and Elijah
before 1714
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Giuseppe Passeri
Christ and the Samaritan Woman at the Well
before 1714
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

A High-Toned Old Christian Woman

Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.
Take the moral law and make a nave of it
And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus,
The conscience is converted into palms,
Like windy citherns hankering for hymns.
We agree in principle. That's clear. But take
The opposing law and make a peristyle,
And from the peristyle project a masque
Beyond the planets. Thus, our bawdiness,
Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last,
Is equally converted into palms,
Squiggling like saxophones. And palm for palm,
Madame, we are where we began. Allow,
Therefore, that in the planetary scene
Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed,
Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade,
Proud of such novelties of the sublime,
Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk,
May, merely may, madame, whip from themselves
A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres.
This will make widows wince. But fictive things
Wink as they will. Wink most when widows wince.

– Wallace Stevens (1922)

attributed to Giuseppe Passeri
Magdalene washing the feet of Christ
before 1714
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

Giuseppe Passeri
The Flagellation
before 1714
drawing
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Giuseppe Passeri
St Augustine with Angels in Adoration of the Crucified Christ
ca. 1685-95
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

Giuseppe Passeri
Descent from the Cross
before 1714
drawing
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Giuseppe Passeri
Descent from the Cross
before 1714
drawing
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Giuseppe Passeri
Pietà
ca. 1708-14
drawing
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Giuseppe Passeri
Studies of a Mourner
before 1714
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Giuseppe Passeri
Triumph of St Thomas Aquinas
before 1714
drawing
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Giuseppe Passeri
Four Saints
ca. 1675-1700
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Giuseppe Passeri (1654-1714) - Late Baroque Narratives

Giuseppe Passeri
Rinaldo and Armida
before 1714
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Giuseppe Passeri
Armida shunned by Companions of Rinaldo
ca. 1685-90
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Giuseppe Passeri
Rinaldo reclaimed by his Companions
before 1714
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Giuseppe Passeri
Two helmeted Soldiers conferring
before 1714
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

Giuseppe Passeri
Hero crowned by Victory
before 1714
drawing
Royal Collection, Great Britain

from Up and Be a Hero

Up my friend, be bold and true,
There is noble work to do,
Hear the voice which calls on you,
     "Up, and be a hero!"

                *     *     *

There is seed which must be sown,
Mighty truths to be made known,
Tyrannies to be o'erthrown,
     Up, and be a hero!

                *     *     *

If thou only art but true,
What may not thy spirit do,
All is possible to you,
     Only be a hero!

– Alexander McLachlan (1874)

Giuseppe Passeri
Battle outside Walled Town
before 1714
drawing
Royal Collection, Great Britain

attributed to Giuseppe Passeri
Soldiers abducting a Woman
before 1714
drawing
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Giuseppe Passeri
Triumph of Semiramis
before 1714
drawing
British Museum

Giuseppe Passeri
Gods on Olympus
before 1714
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Giuseppe Passeri
Sacrifice of Manoah
before 1714
drawing
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Giuseppe Passeri
Decapitation of two Martyrs
before 1714
drawing
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Giuseppe Passeri
Moses and the Daughters of Jethro
before 1714
drawing
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
(Achenbach Foundation)

Giuseppe Passeri
Woman rescued from a Well by Saint descending from Heaven
before 1714
drawing
Victoria & Albert Museum

Giuseppe Passeri
Angel appearing to Hagar and Ishmael in the Wilderness
before 1714
drawing
British Museum

Giuseppe Passeri (1654-1714) - Rome

Giuseppe Passeri
Aurora in her Chariot
before 1714
drawing
British Museum

Giuseppe Passeri
Apollo in the Heavens
ca. 1675-1700
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Giuseppe Passeri
Cardinal Albani is offered the Tiara
1700
drawing
Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf

Giuseppe Passeri
Portrait-sketch of a Young Man
ca. 1703-1713
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

"Giuseppe Passeri was born in Rome in 1654, a nephew of the painter and author Giovanni Battista Passeri, who was his first master.  He then entered the studio of Carlo Maratti, who was especially fond and supportive of the precocious youth.  Beginning in the mid-1670s he emerged as a painter of frescoes and altarpieces in Rome and received numerous commissions.  He also attained a great reputation among the Roman aristocracy as a portraitist; his attractive social bearing and his gift for witty and stimulating conversation may have contributed a good deal to his success.  . . .  Among Maratti's students Passeri was perhaps the least inclined toward monumental representation.  His easel paintings and frescoes are distinguished, in a decorative sense, by a rather light and buoyant quality, without being otherwise noteworthy in their originality of concept or formal arrangement.  In his use of color he is among the best painters of the entire school at this time.  In his manner of applying paint there is often a loose, almost quivering quality that is strikingly different from the generally slick finish of other artists of the Maratti school.  This is most evident in his drawings, which are powerfully shaped with a brush before a dark ground and which are very interesting in their free and inventive handling.  Similar qualities are to be found in his preparatory sketches for paintings."

– Hermann Voss, from Baroque Painting in Rome (1925), revised and translated by Thomas Pelzel (San Francisco: Alan Wofsy, 1997)

Giuseppe Passeri
Birth of the Virgin
ca. 1680
drawing
British Museum

Giuseppe Passeri
Birth of the Virgin
ca. 1680
oil on canvas
Milwaukee Art Museum

Giuseppe Passeri
Christ driving the Money-Changers from the Temple
ca. 1710
drawing
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Giuseppe Passeri
Christ driving the Money-Changers from the Temple
ca. 1712-14
oil on canvas
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Giuseppe Passeri
Assumption of the Virgin
before 1714
drawing
British Museum

Giuseppe Passeri
Assumption of the Virgin
before 1714
drawing
Royal Collection, Great Britain

after Giuseppe Passeri
Assumption of the Virgin
ca. 1729-42
etching and chiaroscuro woodcut by Nicolas Le Sueur and Paul Ponce Antoine Robert
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
(Achenbach Foundation)

Giuseppe Passeri
St Peter freed from Prison by an Angel
before 1714
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Giuseppe Passeri
St Joseph as Foster-Father of Christ
before 1714
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Giuseppe Passeri
Angel appearing to Sleeping Figure
before 1714
drawing
British Museum