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Maniera sfumata, dolce, e vaga”: the recent canonization of Federico Barocci

Maniera sfumata, dolce, e vaga”: la canonisation récente de Federico Barocci
Arnold Witte
p. 161-168
Riferimenti:

Luciano Arcangeli, Federico Barocci: i disegni della Galleria nazionale delle Marche = The Drawings of the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Rome, 2012. 110 p., 100 col. ill.; 25 €.

Federico Barocci, 1535-1612: l’incanto del colore, una lezione per due secoli, Alessandra Giannotti, Claudio Pizzorusso eds., (exh. cat., Siena, Santa Maria della Scala, 2009-2010), Cinisello Balsamo, Silvana Editoriale, 2009. 432 p., 270 col. ill. ISBN: 978-8-83661-423-3; 35 €.

Peter Gillgren, Siting Federico Barocci and the Renaissance Aesthetic, Farnham/Burlington, Ashgate, 2011. 342 p., 24 col. and 143 b/w ill. ISBN: 978-0-75466-868-8; £ 74.

Stuart Lingo, Federico Barocci: Allure and Devotion in Late Renaissance Painting, New Haven, 2008. 294 p., 100 col. and 100 b/w ill. ISBN: 978-0-30012-125-4; $ 75.

John Marciari, Ian Verstegen, “Grande quanto l’Opera: Size and Scale in Barocci’s Drawings”, in Master Drawings, 46/3, fall 2008, p. 291-321.

August Schmarsow, Federico Barocci, un capostipite della pittura barocca, Luigi Bravi ed., with an introduction by Andrea Emiliani, Urbino, Accademia Raffaello, 2010 (Italian translation of Federigo Barocci: ein Begründer des Barockstils in der Malerei, Leipzig, 1909). 164 p., col. and b/w ill. ISBN: 978-8-87663-465-9; 40 €.

Voci dell'indice

Índice geográfico:

Italie

Índice cronologico:

1500

Persone citate:

Federico Barocci
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Testo integrale

  • 1  Federico Barocci, Renaissance Master of Color and Line, Judith Walker Mann, Babette Bohn eds., (ex (...)

1The painter Federico Barocci has received renewed attention in the last decade: monographs and exhibitions manifest an increased interest in his life, work and impact on later artists. The (sub)titles of recent exhibitions such as Brilliance and Grace (London, The National Gallery, 2013), Renaissance Master of Color and Line (Saint Louis Art Museum, 2012) or L’incanto del colore (Siena, Santa Maria della Scala, 2009-2010) highlighted the visual attraction of his work for the general beholder1. Academically, his canonical status has also grown since the early twentieth century, from a mere subsidiary phenomenon for the study of a transitional phase in art history to that of an artist in his own right, who is finally being recognized in a broader context. Recent discoveries grant him a still more central position in the field, especially with respect to research on workshop practice between the Renaissance and the baroque period.

  • 2  Stephanie Ruhwinkel, Die Zeichnungen Federico Baroccis im Martin-von-Wagner-Museum Würzburg, Weima (...)
  • 3  The posthumous article by Christel Thiem, “Barocci-Studien: elf in einer Privatsammlung entdeckte (...)
  • 4  Heinrich Wölfflin, Kunsthistorische Grundbegriffe, Munich, 1917, p. 96; the Last Supper in Urbino (...)
  • 5  Werner Weisbach, Der Barock als Kunst der Gegenreformation, Berlin, 1921, p. 93-100; Nikolaus Pevs (...)

2Significantly, most recent publications on Barocci were written by Italian and Anglo-Saxon scholars. The sole exception to this is Stephanie Ruhwinkel’s catalogue of Barocci drawings in the Martin von Wagner Museum in Würzburg – which actually is a long-awaited inventory of works rediscovered in the 1970s.2 Still, many recent English and Italian publications in one way or another build upon positions first formulated in the early twentieth century in German debates on the painter and his historical context, in which he was often mentioned only cursorily.3 Characteristically, Heinrich Wölfflin considered Barocci as an entwicklungsgeschichtlichen Zwischenglied or “intermediate stage in [art historical] development,” as his work mixed stylistic features of the Renaissance and the baroque.4 The same goes for Werner Weisbach, who stressed the sentimental value of Barocci’s art, and for Nikolaus Pevsner, who considered his figures as governed by abstract schemes, and ultimately as austere and lacking in sensuality.5

  • 6  August Schmarsow, Federigo Baroccis Zeichnungen eine kritische Studie I-III, Leipzig, 1909-1914 (...)
  • 7  The term was used by Harald Olsen, Federico Barocci, Copenhagen, 1962, p. 127; it was first used i (...)
  • 8  Andrea Emiliani, Federico Barocci (Urbino 1535-1612), 2 vols., Bologna, 1985, p. XI.
  • 9  Arnold Hauser, Der Manierismus: Die Krise der Renaissance und der Ursprung der modernen Kunst, Mun (...)

3The first monograph on Barocci therefore started by reconstructing the artist’s oeuvre on the basis of extant works and contemporary sources: August Schmarsow’s series of articles published from 1908 to 1914 fashioned him as the “founder” of the baroque style.6 While Schmarsow mainly discussed the authenticity of Barocci’s drawings, Harald Olsen (in 1955) and Andrea Emiliani (in 1974, 1985 and 2008) focused on paintings, with continuing attention to their relation with the works on paper. Both did so on the basis of the description of the painter’s artistic process by Giovanni Pietro Bellori, thereby positioning Bellori as a crucial contemporary source on the painter. With respect to his position in art-historical development, Barocci was classified as “proto-baroque” by Olsen, thereby circumventing the (then still unresolved) discussion between Weisbach and Pevsner.7 Andrea Emiliani, on the other hand, deemed the stylistic in-between position of the painter a mere problem of definition; instead, he argued for viewing him as a “reformer” working in a situation of cultural and social upheaval.8 Notwithstanding the ideological take on mannerism in his introduction (in which he weighed in on the 1960s debate on the period, referring in particular Arnold Hauser’s position)9, the main part of Emiliani’s book consisted of a connoisseurial catalogue that maintained the traditional comparison of Barocci’s paintings with preparatory studies on paper. His approach was therefore based on the concept of authenticity, and it also explains why Emiliani, in his introduction to the recent Italian translation of Schmarsow’s foundational text (in Schmarsow, 2010), can still subscribe to his precursor’s monographic approach, wherein the painter’s individual qualities were proof of his vorauseilende Genialität (anticipating genius).

Barocci as a religious painter

  • 10  For an overview of the discussion on Counter-Reformation art, see John W. O’Malley, Trent and All (...)
  • 11  Giovanni Baglione, Le vite de’pittori, scultori et architetti, Rome, 1642, p. 134: “i cuori a divo (...)

4From 2000 onwards, the discussion on Barocci shifted towards an evaluation of his work in historical, cultural and especially religious contexts, coinciding with the new take on the Counter-Reformation10. It also signified a step away from Bellori’s stylistic and technical view on the painter towards Giovanni Baglione’s statement that Barocci “led the [beholder’s] hearts back to devotion.”11 One of the most influential publications furnishing such a new perspective was Stuart Lingo’s Federico Barocci: Allure and Devotion in Late Renaissance Painting (Lingo, 2008). Its central focus lay on the terms vaghezza and divoto, as these had been applied specifically to Barocci in Baglione’s contemporary evaluation of his work. Lingo explains these terms in the context of late Cinquecento art criticism, showing how they traditionally resulted in opposite demands: a painter might produce devout works adhering to religious decorum, but these often lacked visual attraction that might “lure” the beholder into admiration, while vaghezza equaled lasciviousness and thus clashed with devotional expectations (Lingo, 2008, p. 6-7, referring to Baglione, 1642, cited n. 11, p. 134). Lingo applied this dichotomy to Barocci’s work, regarding his paintings as the outcome of a continuous exchange between artistic development and religious demands in the late sixteenth century – or, phrased differently, as the product of a constant and productive tension between archaizing and innovative tendencies.

5Lingo therefore interpreted Barocci’s works as either a presentation of an unusual subject in a seemingly conventional form – as in the Rest on the Return from Egypt (c. 1533-1612, Vatican City, Vatican Museums) where, according to Lingo, an unfamiliar moment is chosen from an otherwise predictable subject matter – or as a traditional subject in an unexpected guise – as with the Madonna del Popolo (1579, Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi; Lingo, 2008, p. 225-231). Thanks to Barocci’s self-chosen retreat in Urbino – as a result of his illness – there are many letters documenting the dealings between the painter and his patrons in which this tension (and also, Lingo states, his artistic persona) becomes visible. In other compositions as well, Barocci inserted innovative elements meant to capture the attention of those beholders who were aware of the contemporary debates on art, while at the same time following traditional schemes that satisfied his ecclesiastical patrons who needed liturgically effective works. Although Lingo does not draw this conclusion, it is tempting to say that Barocci mediated between the formalistic stylistic currents of late mannerism and the religious demands of the Counter-Reformation – a tension that was resolved in the early baroque; and in this sense, Lingo’s work could be seen as a return to the central issue in the Pevsner-Weisbach discussion, but with recent insights on the Counter-Reformation and in a much more detailed interpretation.

Ricorreva sempre al natural”: Barocci’s workshop practice

  • 12  Estimations range from 1500 to 2000 known works on paper; see Babette Bohn, “Drawing as Artistic I (...)

6Another recurrent focus that has recently attracted growing attention in the study of Barocci’s work is the artistic process; this is sparked by the exceptionally large number of studies and preparatory designs that have survived.12 Bellori’s meticulous discussion of Barocci’s creative methods – which described the development from individual poses to group composition, from natural position through little wax figurines to clothed characters, from charcoal drawing through pastel or oil sketch, and from monochrome bozzetto in full size to completed painting – has furthered this particular strand in Barocci studies. This subject (which had triggered Schmarsow’s studies) not only furnished important arguments for scholars like Lingo in their analysis of his paintings, but it has also led in the last decade to quite a number of publications specifically on Barocci’s works on paper. Not all of these have led to new insights; some were meant to display the holdings in particular museums or countries to a wider audience. Furthermore, no publication – not even those dealing primarily with Barocci’s paintings – has resisted the temptation to relate the drawings to Bellori’s report.

  • 13  August Schmarsow already noted the provenance of this collection in “Federico Baroccis Zeichnungen (...)

7An example of this focus on Barocci’s drawings is the catalogue of drawings in the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche in Urbino by Luciano Arcangeli (Arcangeli, 2012). The author relates the provenance of 166 drawings from the painter’s studio, via his pupil Antonio Viviani.13 The works on paper in the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, to a greater extent than those in other collections that can be traced back to the workshop, such as those in Berlin or Würzburg, document the material process in that they bear traces of workshop use and reuse. Barocci’s workshop was, according to Arcangeli, a veritable production line, strictly organized in phases (Arcangeli, 2012, p. 7). He assumes, however, that Barocci was not too strict in the application of techniques in particular phases, as works on paper had a much higher status for him than for many other late Cinquecento artists. He even granted them the status of finished works and used them accordingly, as in the painting Madonna di San Simone (1567, Urbino, Galleria Nazionale delle Marche), in which Barocci glued oil studies on paper of the donors’ faces onto the finished canvas (Arcangeli, 2012, p. 14). Arcangeli also assumes that Bellori’s account was influenced by his own conviction, namely that drawing after nature was a strict requirement for artists of his own generation. Barocci’s spontaneous sketches of compositions alla macchia were therefore not mentioned in Bellori’s description, as this phase distracted from his own rhetorical aims (Arcangeli, 2012, p. 15).

  • 14  Arcangeli, 2012, p. 40, referring to Giovanni Pietro Bellori, Le vite de’pittori, scultori et arch (...)

8Arcangeli also describes the workshop as an essentially didactic context in which drawings were copied and paintings were traced with the help of lucidatura, damaging the surface of the work itself (as is visible in the Senigallia Entombment [1579-1582, Senigallia, Chiesa della Croce], a fact already remarked upon by Bellori14). Finally, the interaction between Barocci and his pupils is also taken up as an argument affecting the question of authenticity, leading Arcangeli to reattribute a number of drawings to Barocci – he regards sheets with extensive tracings as palimpsests, in which the original drawing by the master was traced over and over by his pupils in order to grasp the essence of the figural composition (Arcangeli, 2012, p. 40). As quite a number of drawings from the Viviani donation have been ignored in the literature, this is a clear attempt to re-evaluate them, but with little impact on the general discussion of Barocci’s technique.

  • 15  Bellori, 1672, cited n. 14, p. 194.

9Besides the procedures in the workshop, Bellori’s statement that Barocci “ricorreva sempre al natural” (“always referred to life”) is a crucial topic for most scholars, conjuring up many questions with respect to the status of drawing in the artistic process.15 In the catalogue of the exhibition in Siena, for example, Simonetta Prosperi Valenti Rodinò states in “Studio e metodo. Fortuna del disegno di Federico Barocci” (Federico Barocci, 2009, p. 66-75) that Bellori’s description suggested a typology of drawings and studies that in reality was far less restricting: certain types of studies, such as the “primi pensieri” done prior to the nude studies, were largely ignored by him – a suggestion that echoes Arcangeli. Nor does she follow the strict relation between particular stages in the design process and the use of certain materials; in the sketches with an obvious character of direct observation, as well as in the pastels and oils with, for example, the studies of heads, Prosperi Valenti Rodinò tends to see a realist basis traceable to the painter’s wanderings in the city of Urbino in search of inspiration (Federico Barocci, 2009, p. 69). She also posits that final studies of the entire composition may have had the function of confirming figures in their final position and/or specifically aided in the distribution of chiaroscuro and colors over the picture plane. Indeed, Prosperi Valenti Rodinò uses the comparison of a “puzzle” to describe the way Barocci handled his works on paper in relation to the finished works, while still retaining (and reinforcing) Bellori’s essential idea that Barocci “ricorreva sempre al natural” (Federico Barocci, 2009, p. 69).

New approaches?

  • 16  Gillgren refers to iconic authors in the field of visual studies (Norman Bryson, Wolfgang Kemp and (...)

10Even though Bellori and the mannerist debate have loomed large over Barocci and his work, some authors have tried to move beyond these benchmarks. Peter Gillgren’s study Siting Federico Barocci and the Renaissance Aesthetic places the painter’s work in the context of visual culture studies (Gillgren, 2011). The Lacanian concept of the psychological gaze – constituting domination of the subject over the object, but also resulting in a feeling of longing in the subject for the object of its gaze – is applied to the relation between the beholder, the painting and the figures in the painting; and, according to Gillgren, this gaze is poetic according to Renaissance aesthetics. This conflation of various terms (as well as Gillgren’s attempt to marry the power-laden act of gazing to essentially democratic concepts of communication and intersubjectivity) and the problematic issue of “historical” versus “historiographical and hermeneutical” approaches leads to a muddy analytical perspective in which the modern spectator is “meeting with the artist’s presence through his art,” although the substitution of the work for its maker is not discussed at all (Gillgren, 2011, p. 17 and 34-39). Instead of reconstructing a “period eye” in the sense of Michael Baxandall – and discussing a historical Renaissance aesthetics – Gillgren considers beholding a work of art as a fundamentally timeless and universal act that is nonetheless related to Renaissance poetical ideas.16

11It does not surprise that Gillgren cannot make this amalgam of perspectives work. He ends up with a rather traditional reading of Barocci’s works, albeit with sometimes interesting observations on the relation between mimetic and symbolic elements in paintings, such as the foreground figures in the Madonna del Popolo functioning as allegories (Gillgren, 2011, p. 113-114). On the other hand, artistic influences from other painters are examined with reference to the most obvious canonical works, showing little in-depth analysis of the art of the period, while discussion of the relations between figures in the painting, the beholder standing in front of it and the iconographic subjects are recurrent elements in almost any present-day study of late Cinquecento art. Also, the consideration of spatial context and its impact on the experience of works of art remains superficial, leading to cryptic statements such as, “The spectator and her world were thus interlaced with the aesthetic space of the painting” (Gillgren, 2011, p. 113). Gillgren is unable to summarize what new insights his proposed methodical approaches add to our current knowledge on Barocci; nor does his approach clarify why Barocci was such a successful artist in the period of the Counter-Reformation.

12A more successful attempt to move beyond the traditional reading of sources and artworks has been made by John Marciari and Ian Verstegen, whose 2008 article “Grande quanto l’Opera: Size and Scale in Barocci’s Drawings” not only introduces a radically different perspective on individual works but also implies that a more critical approach of Bellori as a source has become inevitable (Marciari, Verstegen, 2008). Their study looks at technique as well as at the actual – material – size of drawings and sketches in relation to one another and to the finished works of art. They reveal that Barocci often made studies of compositional details right up to the very end of the artistic process, when the pose and position of figures had already been determined. Verstegen and Marciari make clear that Bellori described the meticulous artistic process only from his own perspective, idealizing some steps and missing other, crucial ones.

  • 17  Giovanni Pietro Bellori, The Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors, and Architects – A New Trans (...)

13To name but one conclusion, the evidence in Barocci’s extant drawings suggests that Bellori’s description of how he made group compositions was erroneous. Barocci probably never used live models in devising group constellations, but rather combined previously drawn single studies in a montage to form a composition he had already thought out – a procedure that already had been used in Raphael’s workshop. In other words, this phase was inserted by Bellori to stress the importance of drawing after living models (the “ricorreva sempre al natural”), so as to downplay the artistic imagination at work at this stage of producing a painting. Furthermore, the similarity with Bellori’s description of Annibale Carracci’s process of devising compositions, for example both artists’ tendency to go outside and draw (the faces of) people they saw on the street, is striking.17

14The logic of using fixed ratios between different cartoncini is explained by Marciari and Verstegen with reference to the Barocci family trade of scientific instrument-making, suggesting that the painter possessed reduction compasses with various ratios. Finally, his pastel studies, in which the pastel served as a substitute for oil colors (except when Barocci chose to do these color studies directly in oil), were predominantly at the full size of the final composition, such as the head study of a bearded man [Windsor Castle, Royal Library] which was made for the Urbino Last Supper; in some instances, they were then applied to the painting itself, as in the donor portraits in the Urbino Madonna di San Simone. Even if the observation of the natural world was indeed crucial for Barocci, the later historiography has too strictly observed what Bellori stated; although some authors have signaled the author’s own rhetorical aims, only Marciari and Verstegen were able to formulate a fundamental critique of this source.

Fortuna critica: Barocci as mannerist or baroque?

15Finally, Barocci’s impact on later artists, and in a secondary sense also his position in the history of art, has been the subject of recent publications. Although, in general, an exhibition on “the followers of” runs the risk of offering a bleak view of the original genius, the exhibition held in Siena threw a broad and rather interesting perspective on the reception of Barocci’s work (Federico Barocci, 2009). The forward chronological view also implies a recognition of the Urbinate painter’s relation to the baroque. This is most clearly expressed by Tomaso Montanari, who stresses Baroccesque influences on artists who heralded the baroque, such as Annibale Carracci and Peter Paul Rubens (Federico Barocci, 2009, p. 216-225). Moreover, Montanari points out the inclusion of Barocci in Bellori’s work under the heading of “contemporary” artists, and therefore his continuing relevance in the 1670s. Laura Bonelli demonstrates that Francesco Vanni, through Paulo Sfondrato, served as an intermediary between Barocci and the Carracci school and thereby justified the inclusion of Barocci into the “pantheon” of painting as devised by Bellori (Federico Barocci, 2009, p. 104-111).

  • 18  See for example Dawn of the Golden Age: Northern Netherlandish Art 1580-1620, Ger Luijten ed., (ca (...)
  • 19  On Barocci’s life by van Mander, see Helen Noë, Carel van Mander en Italië: beschouwingen en notit (...)

16The discussion by Giovanna Capitelli of the impact of Barocci’s early reproductive prints, for example after the Rest on the Return from Egypt, on the artistic evolution north of the Alps is on more solid ground (Federico Barocci, 2009, p. 204-215). It was Cornelis Cort who made a print after this painting in 1575, therefore constituting an early link between the Italian painter and his Dutch and Flemish colleagues. As Capitelli argues, quite a few Dutch mannerist artists, such as Hendrik Goltzius, Abraham Bloemaert and Jacques de Gheyn, were influenced by Barocci, a fact that is hardly recognized in the literature on Dutch mannerism.18 It also explains why at such an early moment, in 1604, a Dutch biography of the Italian painter was offered in Karel van Mander’s Schilder-Boeck (Federico Barocci, 2009, p. 204-206). With respect to Rubens, Capitelli maintains that the Flemish master was influenced by the Urbinate painter but he certainly was not “il più grande conoscitore” of his oeuvre outside of Rome. On this assumption, a number of drawings after Barocci once ascribed to Rubens are de-attributed here (Federico Barocci, 2009, p. 346-347, cat. 75 and 76). On the other hand, the production method of Barocci’s workshop is presented here as similar to that applied by Rubens in his own workshop, dividing up the process amongst several assistants, a fact that helped him to guarantee such a large output throughout his life (Federico Barocci, 2009, p. 210).19 In other words, the diversified influences of Barocci on later artists is exemplified in this exhibition, showing that, with a broader view on “influence,” the impact of the Urbinate painter on seventeenth-century art was far-reaching indeed. It is another sign that the general opinion of the painter is that, although he may have worked in the late Cinquecento, he paved the way for the baroque. Bellori’s principal goal in describing Barocci’s vita has therefore received new acknowledgement.

   

17The publications on Barocci of the last decade have reintroduced his work into the scholarly debate on the late Cinquecento and posed anew the question on his position in art-historical development. Characteristic of most studies is the tendency to look back into the historiographical context and re-evaluate the available sources – for example, Lingo’s decision to counter the almost suffocating shadow cast by Bellori over the later literature and return to Baglione. This critical evaluation is also noticeable in other publications, but it is not always consistent, as some elements of Bellori’s account might be accepted while others are refuted. But a true starting point for the re-evaluation of Bellori lies in confronting his text with new approaches to Barocci’s work, especially technical aspects. Marciari and Verstegen offered a striking insight into Barocci’s artistic technique and, through this, call for a general approach of his Le vite de’pittori, scultori et architetti moderni not only on a conceptual level, but also with regard to his description of artistic practices in general.

18Without exactly stating it, the subtext of most recent publications is that Barocci should be considered a canonical artist, one who exemplifies the character of his age. This means that while Bellori’s account, with its stress on Barocci’s impact on Seicento artists, has been unveiled as a biased report, its message on Barocci’s importance has been assimilated by most scholars. At the same time, there is a tendency to look back and reassert prior positions that agree with this canonization of individual genius – as Emiliani did in his evaluation of Schmarsow’s approach (Schmarsow, 2010). After a century of studies on the painter, Schmarsow’s central concept that Barocci belongs to the (proto-)baroque has thus largely been accepted – perhaps because the approach of the late Cinquecento has shifted in the meantime towards that of Counter-Reformation art. And in this shift, Barocci has spiralled up to a central position.

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Note

1  Federico Barocci, Renaissance Master of Color and Line, Judith Walker Mann, Babette Bohn eds., (exh. cat., Saint Louis, Saint Louis Art Museum/London, The National Gallery, 2012-2013), New Haven, 2012; Federico Barocci, 2009.

2  Stephanie Ruhwinkel, Die Zeichnungen Federico Baroccis im Martin-von-Wagner-Museum Würzburg, Weimar, 2010. This publication fulfilled the promise made in 1975, when these drawings, discovered in the collection of the museum, were first shown to the public with a brief catalogue in typoscript; see Erich Hubala, Federico Barocci, Handzeichnungen, Würzburg, 1975.

3  The posthumous article by Christel Thiem, “Barocci-Studien: elf in einer Privatsammlung entdeckte Pastell- und Kreidezeichnungen von Federico Barocci,” in Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, 50, 2008, p. 35-52 is not discussed here as it presents a limited number of newly discovered pastels and drawings.

4  Heinrich Wölfflin, Kunsthistorische Grundbegriffe, Munich, 1917, p. 96; the Last Supper in Urbino is discussed here in the context of the visual plane-depth opposition.

5  Werner Weisbach, Der Barock als Kunst der Gegenreformation, Berlin, 1921, p. 93-100; Nikolaus Pevsner, “Gegenreformation und Manierismus,” in Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, 46, 1925, p. 249 and 258.

6  August Schmarsow, Federigo Baroccis Zeichnungen eine kritische Studie I-III, Leipzig, 1909-1914 and Schmarsow, 2010, p. 3-5.

7  The term was used by Harald Olsen, Federico Barocci, Copenhagen, 1962, p. 127; it was first used in Harry Mänz, Die Farbgebung in der italienischen Malerei des Protobarock und Manierismus, Berlin, 1934, although this book dealt with more general developments between 1430 and 1600.

8  Andrea Emiliani, Federico Barocci (Urbino 1535-1612), 2 vols., Bologna, 1985, p. XI.

9  Arnold Hauser, Der Manierismus: Die Krise der Renaissance und der Ursprung der modernen Kunst, Munich, 1964, of which Einaudi published an Italian translation in 1965.

10  For an overview of the discussion on Counter-Reformation art, see John W. O’Malley, Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era, Cambridge (MA), 2000, especially p. 119-143.

11  Giovanni Baglione, Le vite de’pittori, scultori et architetti, Rome, 1642, p. 134: “i cuori a divotione riduceva.”

12  Estimations range from 1500 to 2000 known works on paper; see Babette Bohn, “Drawing as Artistic Invention: Federico Barocci and the art of design,” in Federico Barocci, 2012, cited n. 1, p. 33f.; see also Thiem, 2008, cited n. 3, p. 39.

13  August Schmarsow already noted the provenance of this collection in “Federico Baroccis Zeichnungen – Eine kritische Studie. II Die Zeichnungen in den übrigen Sammlungen Italiens,” in Abhandlungen der philologisch-historischen Klasse der königlich sächsische Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, 28, 1911, p. 3-6, but described only 50 drawings.

14  Arcangeli, 2012, p. 40, referring to Giovanni Pietro Bellori, Le vite de’pittori, scultori et architetti moderni, Rome, 1672, p. 179.

15  Bellori, 1672, cited n. 14, p. 194.

16  Gillgren refers to iconic authors in the field of visual studies (Norman Bryson, Wolfgang Kemp and Mieke Bal), yet his exact take on the myriad approaches that constitute visual culture studies remains unclear.

17  Giovanni Pietro Bellori, The Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors, and Architects – A New Translation and Critical Edition, Tomaso Montanari, Hellmut Wohl eds., Cambridge, 2005, p. 84, mentions Annibale using “modelled figures in relief” in his preparations for the figures of the terms in the Farnese Gallery. See also Clare Robertson, The Invention of Annibale Carracci, Cinisello Balsamo, 2008, p. 47 and 71-73.

18  See for example Dawn of the Golden Age: Northern Netherlandish Art 1580-1620, Ger Luijten ed., (cat. expo., Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 1993-1994), Amsterdam/Zwolle, 1993.

19  On Barocci’s life by van Mander, see Helen Noë, Carel van Mander en Italië: beschouwingen en notities naar aanleiding van zijn “Leven der dees-tijtsche doorluchtighe italiaensche schilders”, The Hague, 1954, p. 166-169.

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Per citare questo articolo

Riferimento cartaceo

Arnold Witte, «Maniera sfumata, dolce, e vaga”: the recent canonization of Federico Barocci»Perspective, 1 | 2015, 161-168.

Riferimento elettronico

Arnold Witte, «Maniera sfumata, dolce, e vaga”: the recent canonization of Federico Barocci»Perspective [Online], 1 | 2015, Messo online il 31 janvier 2017, consultato il 28 mars 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/perspective/5818; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/perspective.5818

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Autore

Arnold Witte

Universiteit van Amsterdam/Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome

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