Friday, April 26, 2019

Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli, called Morazzone (1573-1626)

Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli
Jacob wrestling with the Angel
ca. 1610
drawing
British Museum

Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli
Jacob wrestling with the Angel
ca. 1610
oil on canvas
Museo Diocesano, Milan

Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli
Holy Family with an Angel offering a Honeycomb to the Christ Child
before 1626
drawing
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli
Holy Family with an Angel offering a Honeycomb to the Christ Child
before 1626
oil on canvas
National Trust, Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire

"Morazzone's father, a master mason, took him to Rome in 1592, where he painted frescoes in several churches.  He also may have worked for a Mannerist painter and studied in academies or with Francesco Vanni's brother.  By 1598 Morazzone had returned to Lombardy, where he became one of the region's principal painters, specializing in altarpieces and frescoes for churches and other religious organizations.  His Roman training contributed to his classical style, and the pietist and mystical Counter-Reformation teachings of St. Charles Borromeo encouraged mysticism and pathos in his art."

– from curator's notes at the Getty Museum

"Seicento painting in Milan developed under the shadow of the great counter-reformer St. Charles Borromeo.  His spirit of devotion was kept alive by his nephew Archbishop Federico Borromeo.  It was he who in 1602 commissioned a cycle of paintings to honour St. Charles's memory.  These large canvases depicting scenes from his life were increased in 1610, the year of St. Charles's canonization, to over forty to include portrayals of his miracles.  Many of these pictures were due to the three foremost Milanese painters of the early Seicento, Giulio Cesare Procaccini (1574-1625), Giovanni Battista Crespi, called Cerano (c. 1575-1632) and Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli, called Morazzone (1573-1626).  A study of their works gives the measure of Milanese 'history painting' at this period: influences from Venice (Veronese, Pordenone) and from Florentine, Emilian (Pellegrino Tibaldi), and northern Mannerism (e.g. Bartholomeus Spranger) have been superimposed upon a local foundation devolving from Guadenzio Ferrari."

– Rudolf Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy 1600-1750, originally published in 1958, revised by Joseph Connors and Jennifer Montagu and reissued by Yale University Press in 1999

Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli
Annunciation
ca. 1607-1617
oil on canvas
Raccolta d'Arte, Antico Ospedale Maggiore, Ca' Granda, Milan

Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli
Adoration of the Magi
ca. 1600
oil on panel
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli
Adoration of the Magi
ca. 1620
oil on canvas
Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan

Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli
Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery
before 1626
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nîmes

attributed to Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli
Raising of Lazarus
ca. 1615-20
oil on panel
National Gallery of Canada

Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli
Modello for Madonna of the Rosary with St Dominic
ca. 1617
oil on canvas
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
   
attributed to Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli
Ecstasy of St Francis
ca. 1615
oil on canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli
The Crowning with Thorns
ca. 1610
oil on canvas
Fondazione Roberto Longhi, Florence

Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli
The Flagellation
ca. 1615-20
oil on canvas
Museo del Prado, Madrid
 
Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli
Pentecost
1615
oil on canvas
Museo d'Arte Antica del Castello Sforzesco, Milan