Sunday, May 5, 2019

Pietro Berrettini, called Pietro da Cortona (1597-1669) - IV

Pietro da Cortona
Design for a Mace with the Barberini Bees
ca. 1630-35
drawing
Victoria & Albert Museum

Pietro da Cortona
Design for a Frame with the Arms of Pope Urban VIII Barberini
ca. 1630-40
drawing
British Museum

Pietro da Cortona
Design for a Title Page
before 1669
drawing
National Galleries of Scotland

Pietro da Cortona
Fresco Design for Allegorical Figure bestowing Papal Tiara on Urban VIII Barberini 
ca, 1632-39
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Pietro da Cortona
Allegory of the House of Barberini
(design for engraved book illustration)
1631
drawing
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Pietro da Cortona
Allegorical Image with Eagle battling Serpent
before 1669
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Pietro da Cortona
Holy Trinity with St Michael conquering the Dragon
1666
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

"Cortona, it emerges, was a late developer, and the artistic circles he frequented in Rome, where he arrived in c. 1612, were much more varied than had previously been thought.  Pietro matured slowly under the successive guidance of Andrea Commodi and Baccio Ciarpi, and none of his paintings can be securely dated earlier than 1623, the year in which he first emerges as an autonomous artist.  And the circle of his early patrons in Rome – far from being limited to the Sacchetti for whom he executed several  major works – notably included the Albertoni, Colonna, Crescenzi, Mattei and Orsini families, as well as Giovanni Argenti and Giuseppe Paolucci.  To these should be added the inevitable Cassiano dal Pozzo, who  must not only have encouraged Cortona's study of the antique but also put him in touch with influential contemporaries such as Simon Vouet.  It is also worth stressing the early links of the artist – whose piety is underlined by all his biographers – with the Oratorians, for whom he worked up to his death."

– Stéphane Loire in The Burlington Magazine (March 1998) reviewing three 1997 exhibitions mounted in Rome to honor the tercentenary of Cortona's birth

Pietro da Cortona
Golden Statue of Constantine the Great holding a Cross
(tapestry design)
ca. 1636
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Pietro da Cortona (designer)
Golden Statue of Constantine the Great holding a Cross
1636
tapestry woven by Barberini Manufactory, Rome
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Pietro da Cortona (designer)
Constantine burning the Memorials in order to give Tax Concessions to the Christians
1634
tapestry woven by Barberini Manufactory, Rome
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Pietro da Cortona (designer)
Apparition of the Cross before Constantine
1633
tapestry woven by Barberini Manufactory, Rome
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Pietro da Cortona (designer)
Sea Battle between the Fleets of Constantine and Licinius
1635
tapestry woven by Barberini Manufactory, Rome
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Pietro da Cortona (designer)
Constantine slaying the Lion
1637
tapestry woven by Barberini Manufactory, Rome
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Pietro da Cortona (designer)
Constantine ordering the Destruction of Pagan Idols
1637
tapestry woven by Barberini Manufactory, Rome
Philadelphia Museum of Art