Sunday, March 31, 2019

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