874281

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Federico Barocci Author(s): Walter Friedlaender Source: The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 106, No. 733, The Italian Seventeenth Century (Apr.,

1964), pp. 186-187Published by: The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/874281Accessed: 18-04-2015 15:08 UTC

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LETTERS

A Landscape by Pieter Bruegel the Elder SIR, The splendid new Alpine Landscape, a study for the Solicitudo Rustica by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and published in your Decem- ber 1963 issue, pp.56o ff., by Christopher White, is by no means as isolated a case as the author seems to suppose. It is rather a case analogous to the Paysage Alpestre in a private collection in London (cf. Tolnay, Bulletin des Musdes Royaux de Belgique, I960, p.9), the motifs of which the master used in his Insidiosus Auceps. In both instances, a lost preparatory drawing done for the engraver should be presumed.

The series in question of Large Landscapes was engraved by Hieronymus Cock without date. The date of 1555 was first established in my book on Bruegel's drawings (Die Zeichnungen Pieter Bruegels, Munich, 1925, No.14, and in the second edition, 1951, No.23). This date is found on the bottom of one of the drawings made for this series, the Mountain Ravine, Paris, Louvre.

The Louvre drawing of Solicitudo Rustica, which was con- sidered an original, has been recognized as a copy in my book (Ist ed., p.72) and I am glad to see that Mr White shares my doubts.

Mr White complains that scholars describe this sheet as a copy 'without saying after what'. However, I offered two hypotheses: in my first edition (p.72), I stated, 'Unbedingt nur Kopie nach der verschollenen Vorlagezeichnung'; and in my second edition (p.46, No.AI2), 'copy, after the engraving, made around I58o to I6oo'. Now I am inclined to think the first hypothesis was correct.

CHARLES DE TOLNAY

Mr White writes: Dr Tolnay's intervention seems pointless.

He implies that I consider the new British Museum drawing to be unique, if that is what he means by 'isolated'. If he cares to read my article again, he will see that I clearly state that it shares this distinction with the Mountain Ravine in the Louvre.

I am well aware of the similarities, and also the wide differences of both viewpoint and detail, between the Paysage Alpestre and the engraving Insidiosus Auceps. My point was that the British Museum sheet and the Louvre Mountain Ravine are the only drawings we know, which could have been used directly by the engraver. That there are individual motifs common to several drawings and prints is well known.

Dr Tolnay's two hypotheses as to the original of the Louvre drawing of Solicitudo Rustica are mutually exclusive. He can hardly complain if I did not take either of them seriously.

The Literature of Art

Federico Barocci BY WALTER FRIEDLAENDER

THE biography of Federico Barocci by Harald Olsen, which appeared without illustrations in 1957, has now come out in a second edition with the addition of 206 plates, which are mostly clear and good.* They are absolutely necessary for our understanding of the text. It is a pity, however, that there was not enough space to illustrate a few of the comparisons to other painters made in the analytical section. The text itself, translated

from the Danish (rather awkwardly), is revised but not fundamentally changed. Since the book in its first form was reviewed by Marilyn Aronberg Lavin (THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE XCIX, 166) and as I agree with most of her arguments and criticisms, I limit myself to some general notes.

The fame of Federico Barocci (c.1535-1612) was quite con- siderable in his own time. Bellori, the most prominent represen- tative of classicistic-idealistic art theory, an admirer of Annibale Carracci, and still more of Nicolas Poussin, nevertheless included in his limited selection of the most significant artists of the period a lengthy essay on Federico Barocci, although the character of Barocci's art did not conform at all with his classicistic views. This speaks as well for Bellori's objectivity and understanding as it does for Barocci's value among his contemporaries and follow- ers. Somewhat later, Roger de Piles, a fervent Rubenist, in his famous Balance des peintres (a kind of grade-sheet of the most famous artists) gives Barocci high marks; out of eighteen points (which Rubens alone merits) Barocci receives fourteen for composition, fifteen for design, and ten for expression, as against the Carraccis' fifteen, seventeen, and thirteen points in these respec- tive categories. But in spite of these high evaluations of Barocci reflecting two different points of view he is never placed in the rank of the gods or demi-gods as are Tintoretto, Correggio, Veronese, Annibale Carracci, Guido Reni etc. Barocci is not a genius, as Olsen sometimes suggests, but an extremely amiable painter who can ascend to a certain surprising grandiosity, especially in his later works.

At the beginning of my career I was under the spell of Ba- rocci's works; he helped me to escape from the overwhelming superiority of the High Renaissance and to venture into the ir- regular and fantastic world of the Baroque, or what was under- stood by that term in the first decade of this century. At that time I had an opportunity to write for the Prussian Historical Institute in Rome a monograph on Pirro Ligorio's Casino of Pio IV in the Vatican gardens, which first had interested me because of the light-coloured ceiling frescoes by the young Barocci decorating the first two rooms of this delightful 'coffee-house'. Having become involved in the study of Barocci in my first Roman years, I was often tempted to continue studying the artistic character of this most charming painter. However, despite the almost feminine attraction of many of Barocci's early works, the weakness and often the flabbiness of his figures, above all of the nudes, somewhat disenchanted me. Barocci's colour system, as described extensively by Bellori and as also explained in Olsen's book, was extremely elaborate and certainly more advanced than that of his predecessors of the maniera. The use of small, coloured wax figurines may be the reason for the extreme softness of Barocci's figures, which sometimes shine as if they were made of soap (a very fine soap). In his later and deeply serious works, the adop- tion of a sfumato which may extend to a true chiaroscuro gives compositions such as the Eucharist or Aeneas' Flight from Troy (his only profane work) a much more virile character. De Piles, although he rated Barocci highly in other aspects (as mentioned), gives him only six points for colour - a very low grade - while he gives Correggio fifteen and Veronese sixteen. The drawings also lack the grandeur which would be expected ofa first-rate painter, but, alas, they have been preserved in great quantity and meth- odically catalogued. (In both editions of his book, Olsen fills twenty-four pages with an index of the drawings.) They are in general inoffensively graceful and very well executed, often with chalk on coloured paper, but they are for the most part too mild and not very significant; they lack an independent vitality. Bellori must have seen the enormous collection of drawings which had originally been in Barocci's house, because he often uses drawings to explain the composition of a painting. Olsen blames Bellori for being interested in only this aspect of them and believes

* Federico Barocci. By Harald Olsen. 302 pp + many figs. on 123 pl. Copen- hagen (Enjar Munksgaard), D.Kr.122.

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THE LITERATURE OF ART

the biographer does not appreciate the proper value of the drawings themselves. However, Barocci's drawings seem to me also of interest only in so far as they are explanatory of the finished painting.

In Olsen's new book, all of the facts are presented and anno- tated, and most of the problems are mentioned either in the text or in footnotes. He goes far beyond Schmarsow's already exten- sive work on Barocci and has brought together with astonishing industry and enthusiasm all that it is necessary to know (and occasionally much that it is not necessary to know). But I am afraid at the end, after one has worked through the descrip- tions and analyses, one does not have a clear idea either of Barocci's stylistic position or of his moral importance in the period between the maniera and the Baroque. Schmarsow was, I think, the first to call Barocci 'Baroque' because of his manner of composition which shows an advance in this direction: uniplanar composition on the basis of crossing diagonals, three-dimension- ality not only of the figures but also of space, and union of the colour scheme. The last point is characterized in a very significant way by an anecdote which Bellori relates. When the young and timid youth came to Rome in the fifties to paint the frescoes in the Casino of Pio IV, Federico Zuccari, later the 'principe' of the maniera and an alleged relative of Barocci, offered him the brush asking him to finish the figures of two angels, perhaps to make fun of the newcomer. Barocci painted the figures 'con tanta unione' that everyone was astonished, and Zuccari found nothing to correct; he could only add contours between the colours. In doing so he manifested clearly the difference between linear maniera and the new approach to the baroque conception. We may surmise that the well-bred young painter from Urbino thanked his supposed cousin warmly (inwardly he was surely furious); he kept this 'unione' throughout his work in minor as well as in grand subjects, creating a new pastel style leading away from linear mannerism. Characteristically he thought of this style as his 'musica'.

Barocci has a decidedly delicate and lyrical feeling for genre painting, for landscape, for cats and dogs, for birds on green branches, and for the sweet and innocent forms of young women as in the Vatican Riposo, the Nativity in the Ambrosiana, and the Madonna del Gatto. He would have become an excellent genre painter in the sense of Boucher if the overwhelming demand for subjects of Christian mythology (especially in the very bigoted court of Urbino) had not put his originally naive and open artistic inclinations in fetters.

But it is astonishing how deeply supernatural and mystical powers influenced his subconscious. None of Barocci's contemporaries had dared to bring into tangible experience the human desire to melt into the divine without the help of significant symbols of Christian allegory.

In the Beata Michelina in the Vatican, one of the most astonishing paintings of Barocci's old age, the miraculous nun from Pesaro kneels on top of a mountain in deepest conversation with God, as Elias on Mount Carmel, in storm and night with her clothes blown by the violent wind into large folds. There is no vision if it is not caused by the torment of her psyche, reflected in the uproar of the elements; the Divine and the miraculous are incorporated in her. This type of internal vision materialized with great force appears here for the first time as a psychosomatic rendering of ecstasy which relates it to Lanfranco's St Margaret of Cortona in the Pitti, painted about twenty-five years later, and still more to the famous St Teresa by Bernini to whom Barocci's painting was surely familiar. The folds of St Teresa's garment are also broken into a multitude of shapes, however, not as the result of an external tumult.

In the same category belong also the various representations of St Francis which, mainly through Barocci, gained new momen-

tum in the second half of the sixteenth century with almost the same devotion and force as in the thirteenth century. This re- newed interest in the illustration of the St Francis legend, which appears most fully in the works of Barocci and, later, Cigoli, is a consequence of the general reform of the Franciscan order under Gregory XIII. It would have been worth while if the author of this new biography had discussed the historical background of the revival in different towns in Italy and especially in Urbino. (Cf. Friedlaender: Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism in Italian Paint-

ing, note 20, PP.73-4.) The conception of St Francis seen through Barocci is both lyrical and naturalistic. No one has worked with such assiduity and originality on the Perdono of the saint as did Barocci in his etching of this subject. Since the time of Giotto no one has represented different phases of the Franciscan legend with such poetry and piety.

It has been suggested that the character of Barocci's art was influenced by the ideas and doctrines of San Filippo Neri, the most beloved saint in Rome. It is true that there are two important paintings by Barocci in the Chiesa Nuova (Sta. Maria in Vallicella), the Visitation (1583-6) and the Presentation of the

Virgin (I593-4), both ordered before the death of Neri in 1595- A third, as well, was commissioned, but Barocci, being a slow worker, did not deliver it and the order was given to Cesari d'Arpino. These commissions do not mean that the paintings from Barocci's hand reflect in any way the fundamentally pietistic outlook of the popular saint. Filippo himself was not very interested in art, although he may have been pleased by the content of special paintings; it is well known that he would have preferred to have had the walls of his church white- washed. The decorations of the sumptuous Chiesa Nuova have nothing to do with the humbleness, the directness, or the reality of Filippo's doctrines (partly based on Loyola's Spiritual Exercises), but they attest to the joyful spirit of the new generation, the spirit of the ecclesia triumphans, later evident in the paintings of Rubens and Pietro da Cortona. The only painting in the Chiesa Nuova which corresponds to the older and more severe religious spirit of Loyola and Neri is Caravaggio's grandiose Deposition which was in the chapel of Neri's fervent adherent, Vittrice. Barocci was chosen to do the paintings because at this time, in the last quarter of the century, he was the most coveted altar- painter in Italy and of special attraction as a religious painter. The popular approach to the Divine Mystery of the Madonna del Popolo - with a new intimacy indicated by greater bodily relation between divine and human beings - may have been inspired by Neri. But this is not to say that Barocci's art as a whole was influenced by the spirit of San Filippo.

A mysterious sickness overcame Barocci in early manhood and reoccurred throughout his long life. One may assume that this prolonged disease was not exclusively related to natural causes but also pathologically aggravated. Bellori relates that Barocci suspected having been poisoned by envious colleagues during a festive merenda (perhaps celebrating the completion of the Casino decorations) and even describes the symptoms of the malady. The psychological consequences of this incident, which lasted throughout his life allowing him only a few working hours each day, may have caused Barocci to become more meditative and solitary, and is probably the cause of his almost exclusive occupa- tion with sacred subjects and of his predilection for Franciscan themes. In 1566, not long after his return from Rome, he joined a lay order of the Capucchins, a recent off-shoot of the Francis- cans. Despite the physical and psychic impediment he lived a long and full life in Urbino, working slowly but producing a great many important works. His paintings gave impetus to ideas preparatory to the Baroque and, throughout Italy, to a deepening exploration of the explosive power with which the human soul approaches the divine.

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http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jspArticle Contentsp. 186p. 187Issue Table of ContentsThe Burlington Magazine, Vol. 106, No. 733, The Italian Seventeenth Century (Apr., 1964), pp. i-lxiv+146-198Front Matter [pp. i-lxiv]Exhibitions-April [p. lxii]EditorialRpertoire des Catalogues de Ventes [p. 147]Orazio Borgianni in Italy and in Spain [pp. 146-159]Bernini's Barcaccia [pp. 159-171+175]Bernini: Two Unpublished Drawings and Related Problems [pp. 170+172-178+181]Shorter NoticesA Lost Altar-Piece by Giovanni Battista Passeri [p. 179]Two Signatures of Giovanni Battista Passeri [pp. 179-181]Baroque Drawings at Dsseldorf [pp. 180+182-183]The Date of the Aldobrandini Lunettes [pp. 183-184]LettersRpertoire des Catalogues de Ventes [pp. 184-185]Goya and His Times [p. 185]A Landscape by Pieter Bruegel the Elder [p. 186]The Literature of ArtReview: Federico Barocci [pp. 186-187]Review: untitled [p. 188]Review: untitled [pp. 188-189]Review: untitled [pp. 189-190]Current and Forthcoming ExhibitionsAllan Ramsay at the Royal Academy [pp. 190-191+193]General [pp. 192-196]London [pp. 194-197]Publications Received [pp. 197-198]Foreign Auction Sales [p. 198]Back Matter

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