Wednesday, March 6, 2019

Carlo Saraceni (1579-1620) - Venice and Rome

Carlo Saraceni
Mars and Venus
ca. 1605-1610
oil on copper
Museu de Arte de São Paulo

Carlo Saraceni
Mars and Venus
ca. 1600
oil on copper
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Carlo Saraceni
St Cecilia with an Angel
ca. 1610
oil on canvas
Palazzo Barberini, Rome

Carlo Saraceni
Martyrdom of St Cecilia
ca. 1610
oil on canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

"Born in Venice in the early 1580s, Saraceni moved to Rome at a young age, where, after a short apprenticeship with Camillo Mariani, a painter and sculptor of minor importance, he entered Caravaggio's circle.  He gained his initial reputation through a few small paintings executed for private patrons, and later obtained commissions for larger works, chiefly altarpieces, in which the influence of Caravaggio is very evident.  . . .  Saraceni was closely associated with the northern painters of the Caravaggesque school, especially with Adam Elsheimer, to whom, in works of small scale, his manner reveals obvious affinities.  . . .  Although Saraceni received his formal training in Rome, his art betrays a certain antipathy against strict and controlled draftsmanship which, characterized by Baglione as a maniera debole, is probably to be regarded as an aspect of his Venetian heritage.  . . .  He was never quite at home in Rome.  The quality of emotionally vacuous objectivity in his art, his disregard for proper disegno, and his preference for color and chiaroscuro as his primary media, seem to have engendered little appreciation among the Romans.  . . .  Saraceni remained active in Rome until about 1615.  He spent the rest of his life in Venice, where he died in 1620 without exerting any meaningful influence, either through his own works or through his students."

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

Carlo Saraceni
Angel appearing to the Wife of Manoah
ca. 1610
oil on copper
Kunstmuseum, Basel

Carlo Saraceni
Virgin and Child with St Anne
1610
oil on canvas
Palazzo Barberini, Rome

Carlo Saraceni
Virgin and Child with St Anne and an Angel
before 1620
oil on copper
private collection

 Carlo Saraceni
Moses defending the Daughters of Jethro
ca. 1609-1610
oil on copper
National Gallery, London

Carlo Saraceni
Judith with the Head of Holofernes
ca. 1610-15
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Carlo Saraceni
St Gregory the Great
ca. 1610
oil on canvas
Palazzo Barberini, Rome

attributed to Carlo Saraceni
Four Assassins murdering a Bishop
before 1620
drawing
British Museum

Carlo Saraceni
The Deposition
before 1620
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Carlo Saraceni
Beheading of St John the Baptist
before 1620
etching
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Carlo Saraceni
Paradise
ca. 1598
oil on copper
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York