Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Giacinto Calandrucci (1646-1707) - Palermo and Rome

Giacinto Calandrucci
Transfiguration
before 1707
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Giacinto Calandrucci
Study for Figure of Aurora
ca. 1680-90
drawing
Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf

Giacinto Calandrucci
Study for Ceiling Decoration
1680
drawing, with watercolor
Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf

"Born in Palermo in 1646, Giacinto Calandrucci received his earliest instruction under Pietro del Po before becoming a pupil of Carlo Maratti, who trained him, along with Giovanni Battista Passeri, with particular partiality.  The works produced by Calandrucci for churches and palaces in Rome were considerable in number, but of very uneven quality.  Despite his student-master relationship with Maratti, Calandrucci's art, with its lively energy, reminds one more of the followers of Giovanni Battista Gaulli and Pietro da Cortona, especially in the frescoes.  A banal and vacuous grace often predominates in his oil paintings; characteristic of these are the cavorting and undulating contour lines and the bright, sweet colors.  The total impression of his compositions is thoroughly agreeable, though the execution is lacking in any degree of serious application.  A few years after 1700 he returned to Palermo in order to undertake a major commission for fresco painting which he never completed due to sudden illness.  He died in Palermo in 1707."

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

Giacinto Calandrucci
Angel (half-length
ca. 1665-1700
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Giacinto Calandrucci
Angel with St Francis of Assisi
ca. 1665-1700
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Giacinto Calandrucci
Assumption of the Virgin
before 1707
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

attributed to Giacinto Calandrucci
Entombment (Pietà)
before 1707
drawing
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Giacinto Calandrucci
Martyrdom of St Lawrence
before 1707
drawing
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Giacinto Calandrucci
Madonna and Child in Glory, flanked by St Peter and St Paul
before 1707
drawing
private collection

Giacinto Calandrucci
Angel appearing to St Dominic
before 1707
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

Giacinto Calandrucci
Vision of St John of Matha
before 1707
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Giacinto Calandrucci
Mass of St Gregory
before 1707
drawing
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Giacinto Calandrucci
The Spies returning from Canaan
ca. 1690-1700
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Giacinto Calandrucci
Allegory of Night
ca. 1680-90
drawing
British Museum