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| Bartolomeo Manfredi The Triumph of David ca. 1615 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
Bartolomeo Manfredi – Mantuan-born Roman painter, imitator of Caravaggio, the low-life aspects of whose art he exaggerated to the detriment of spiritual qualities. He executed Caravaggesque genre subjects, which had been characteristic of Caravaggio's early, light-hued phase, in the tenebrist manner of Caravaggio's later style. His work, known only from ca. 1610, has sometimes been confused with that of Valentin [de Boulogne]. It is Manfredi, more than Caravaggio himself, who influenced the northern Caravaggisti in Rome.
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| Giovanni Lanfranco Joseph and Potiphar's Wife ca. 1615-17 oil on canvas Galleria Borghese, Rome |
Giovanni Lanfranco – Painter from Parma, he introduced to Rome the illusionism of Correggio's domes, initiating a new phase of Baroque decoration. . . . A pupil of Agostino Carracci, after his master's death in 1602 Lanfranco joined Agostino's brother Annibale in the service of the Farnese in Rome. Despite rivalry with Annibale's pupils and followers, notably Guercino, Reni and Domenichino – which caused him to retire back to Emilia 1609-11 – Lanfranco was able to establish himself as one of the leading painters of successive papal courts and powerful aristocratic patrons, modifying the classicizing style of the Carracci school through an admixture of Caravaggesque chiaroscuro and the freer, more painterly mode of Correggio.
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| Bernardo Strozzi The Lamentation ca. 1615-17 oil on canvas Accademia Ligustica di Belle Arti, Genoa |
Bernardo Strozzi – One of the leading Italian 17th-century painters. Born in Genoa, he ultimately settled in Venice. The modern viewer of his vigorous, painterly and colourful religious and genre pictures, and his swaggering portraits, may be startled to learn that Strozzi became a Capuchin – that is, a strictly observant Francisco friar: he is thus also called 'Il Cappucino' and 'Il Prete Genovese' (the Genovese priest).
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| Domenichino Diana and her Nymphs at the Hunt (detail) ca. 1616-17 oil on canvas Galleria Borghese, Rome |
Domenico Zampieri, called Domenichino – One of the Bolognese pupils of the Carracci, Domenichino became, after Annibale Carracci's death in 1609, a leading painter in Rome. His frescoes in S. Gregorio al Celio and S. Luigi de' Francesi are foremost examples of the style known as Early Baroque Classicism which was influenced by Raphael and the Antique. Poussin was to be deeply impressed with these works in the 1620s, and he was also influence by Domenichino's small landscape paintings.
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| Guido Reni Conversion of St Paul ca. 1615-20 oil on canvas Monasterio El Escorial |
Guido Reni – One of the greatest Italian painters of the 17th century, a subtle colourist, a master of graceful line and composition. His unique synthesis of naturalism and idealizing classicism was an important influence. A Bolognese, trained mainly by Lodovico Carracci, Reni followed Annibale Carracci to Rome shortly after 1600. His early works fuse classical principles of composition with the dramatic power and use of light of Caravaggio. In 1612 he was called to Napels; but in 1614 he renounced his southern Italian successes to return to his native Bologna.
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| Anonymous Roman follower of Caravaggio Tobias healing his Father's Blindness ca. 1615-20 oil on canvas Gemäldegalerie, Berlin |
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| Rutilio Manetti St Augustine washes the feet of Christ (detail) 1618 oil on canvas Collegiata di Santa Maria Assunta, Casole d'Elsa |
"Siena at this period had at least one painter worth recording apart from the Barocci followers Ventura Salimbeni and Francesco Vanni. Rutilio Manetti, Vanni's pupil, was also not unaffected by Barocci's manner. But only with his conversion to Caravaggism does he emerge as an artist of distinction. In the following years his vigorous genre scenes are reminiscent of Manfredi and Valentin or even the northern Caravaggisti."
– Rudolf Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy: the Early Baroque, 1600-1625, originally published in 1958, revised by Joseph Connors and Jennifer Montagu (Yale, 1999)
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| Battistello Caracciolo Noli me tangere ca. 1618 oil on canvas Museo Civico di Palazzo Pretorio, Prato |
"When Caravaggio came to work in Naples in 1606-7, the Mannerists were in full command of the situation, and he never swayed [them]. The only exception to the rule was Giovanni Battista Caracciolo, called Battistello, the solitary founder of the 'modern' Neapolitan school who, in opposition to the Mannerists, developed his new manner based on the deeply felt experience of Caravaggio. [Battistello's painting] is not only a monument of orthodox Caravaggism, but its specific qualities, the hard contrasts, the compositional austerity and mute intensity reveal a talent of the first rank."
– Rudolf Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy: the Early Baroque, 1600-1625, originally published in 1958, revised by Joseph Connors and Jennifer Montagu (Yale, 1999)
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| Domenico Fiasella (il Sarzana) Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost 1618 oil on canvas Basilica di Santa Maria di Nazareth, Genoa |
"The development of the early seventeenth-century native Genoese painters, [including] Domenico Fiasella, called il Sarzana, runs to a certain extent parallel. They begin traditionally enough . . . and only Fiasella, who had worked in Rome from 1607 to 1617, is really swayed by the Caravaggisti. In the course of the third decade they all attempt to cast away the vestiges of Mannerism. It would seem that the prolific Fiasella, who lived longest and was much in fashion with the Genoese aristocracy, must be regarded as the least interesting and original of this group of artists [which also includes Bernardo Strozzi, Andrea Ansaldo, Luciano Borzone, and Gioacchino Assereto].
– Rudolf Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy: the Early Baroque, 1600-1625, originally published in 1958, revised by Joseph Connors and Jennifer Montagu (Yale, 1999)
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| Orazio Gentileschi The Vision of St Frances of Rome ca. 1618-20 oil on canvas Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino |
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| Orazio Gentileschi The Vision of St Frances of Rome (detail) ca. 1618-20 oil on canvas Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino |
Orazio Gentileschi – Born in Pisa, Orazio came to Rome in 1576 and in the early 1600s was drawn to Caravaggio's manner, albeit remaining loyal to his Tuscan heritage, apparent especially in his range of colours which included blues, yellows and violets. After a stay in Paris, 1623-25, he became court painter to Charles I of England, where he died.
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| Cecco del Caravaggio (Francesco Buoneri) The Resurrection (detail) ca. 1619-20 oil on canvas Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Cecco del Caravaggio (Francesco Buoneri) The Resurrection (detail) ca. 1619-20 oil on canvas Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Cecco del Caravaggio (Francesco Buoneri) The Resurrection (detail) ca. 1619-20 oil on canvas Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Cecco del Caravaggio (Francesco Buoneri) The Resurrection (detail) ca. 1619-20 oil on canvas Art Institute of Chicago |
"The Resurrection, the only documented painting by Francesco Buoneri, was commissioned in 1619 by the Tuscan ambassador to Rome, Piero Guicciardini, as one of several altarpieces for his family's chapel in Florence. In a turn of events that was not uncommon in the rapidly evolving artistic scene of early 17th-century Rome, the painting was rejected by Guicciardini and sold to another collector. The Resurrection exaggerates the bold contrast of light and dark and the realistic treatment of sacred figures that Caravaggio had introduced into Roman painting."
– from curator's notes at the Art Institute of Chicago
(unless otherwise indicated, artist profiles adapted from The Yale Dictionary of Art and Artists by Erika Langmuir and Norbert Lynton)