Art and Reform in the Late Renaissance

After Trent

Jesse M. Locker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429863363
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: History of Architecture

Drawing on recent research by established and emerging scholars of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century art, this volume reconsiders the art and architecture produced after 1563 across the conventional geographic borders. Rather than considering this period a degraded afterword to Renaissance classicism or an inchoate proto-Baroque, the book seeks to understand the art on its own terms. By considering artists such as Federico Barocci and Stefano Maderno in Italy, Hendrick Goltzius in the Netherlands, Antoine Caron in France, Francisco Ribalta in Spain, and Bartolomeo Bitti in Peru, the contributors highlight lesser known "reforms" of art from outside the conventional centers. As the first text to cover this formative period from an international perspective, this volume casts new light on the aftermath of the Renaissance and the beginnings of "Baroque."

1
On the “Reform” of Painting

Annibale Carracci and Caravaggio

Clare Robertson^*

Vincenzo Giustiniani in his Discorso on painting, probably written around 1617–1618, regarded the styles of Annibale Carracci (1560–1609) and Caravaggio (1571–1610), along with Guido Reni (1575–1642), as being the greatest in recent painting thanks to their union of painting di maniera and painting from nature.¹ Giustiniani was one of the most perceptive connoisseurs and collectors of his time, owning works by all three artists. The modern art historian would certainly agree that Annibale and Caravaggio were, in their very different ways, key figures in the emergence of what we now label the Baroque style, which has long been associated with post-Tridentine art. However, the nature of that association is very far from clear: many attempts have been made to link their art, particularly with the desire in Northern Italy, in the Bologna of Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti (1522–1597) and the Milan of the future saint, Carlo Borromeo (1538–1584), for “reform” in the visual arts, although the arguments put forward have been far from conclusive, and not always mutually compatible. Moreover, in recent studies it has become increasingly clear that artists’ responses to religious demands varied considerably from place to place, and were variously nuanced. Even in Rome, the center of the Catholic Church, stylistic variety in the decoration of churches and chapels was remarkably diverse.²

The term “reform” was first applied to Annibale’s art by Donald Posner.³ While Annibale’s art was unquestionably new in its naturalism and dependence on study from life, I would argue that “reform” is not a particularly helpful label, and that a less intentional charge might be more appropriately acknowledged. Discussions of the Carracci’s links with Paleotti’s attempts at religious reform, particularly in the visual arts, have proved difficult.⁴ Indeed it seems that artists of the older generation, such as Prospero Fontana, who were still practicing a post-Vasarian Mannerist style, were more involved with Paleotti’s efforts.⁵ It was precisely these artists who condemned Annibale’s earliest altarpieces: according to biographer Carlo Cesare Malvasia, they derided the early realism of Annibale’s altarpieces as showing no respect, polish, or decorum.⁶ These works might seem to the modern eye to conform to demands for clarity in post-Tridentine art, but it seems that issues of style were not easily articulated by the theologians who entered into the debate on images, and artistic developments around the turn of the seventeenth century in Italy were far from dictated by the edicts of Trent, or by the writers who expanded on them.

By the time that Annibale Carracci moved to Rome, after a difficult start in Bologna, he had established a style of religious painting that might seem to be entirely suited to a certain Counter-Reformation audience. Through his study of Correggio and Venetian art, he had developed a way of conveying religious narrative that was at once very clear but also affecting, and this stylistic development would continue in his altarpieces in response to what he saw in Rome. This is apparent in his first public altarpiece, the St. Margaret in Santa Caterina dei Funari (Plate 2), painted for the tutor of his principal patron Odoardo Farnese, Gabriele Bombasi. While this reprised a figure painted in his earlier Madonna of St. Luke of 1592, it was also a new kind of altarpiece in Rome, featuring a single saint as its focus.⁷ It even attracted the approbation of Caravaggio.⁸

While Annibale was a successful artist who had powerful patrons, when Caravaggio arrived in Rome, by contrast, he had, as far as we know, painted no previous religious works. He would have been aware of the various strands of naturalism in the Lombard tradition.⁹ His earliest essays into the field were relatively modest: his St. Francis in Ecstasy, the lyrical Rest on the Flight into Egypt, and his Penitent Magdalene.¹⁰ The latter two works seem to have been made for Girolamo Vittrici.¹¹ The Magdalene is particularly singled out by Bellori for his use of a girl from the street, and implicitly, a lack of idealism, precisely the kind of criticism that had been leveled at Annibale’s first religious works.¹² Yet these works marked the beginnings of a success that Caravaggio would achieve in painting religious scenes for a secular setting, often in a gallery—which would achieve their apogee in his works for the Mattei family.¹³

When Annibale and Caravaggio first started in Rome, religious art was in theory strictly controlled in the wake of the Tridentine decrees. The Cardinal Vicar of Rome, Girolamo Rusticucci, issued a draconian edict in 1593, that ordered all public sacred work to be approved by him or a deputy; otherwise artists were threatened with fines or even prison. So, too, Clement VIII (r. 1592–1605) ordered a Visitation to the city’s churches shortly after his accession, in part with a view to removing “erroneous” images. In practice, neither measure had much effect.¹⁴ Counter-Reformation orders and congregations, such as the Jesuits and the Oratorians, exercised significantly more control over what was displayed in their churches, although their concerns were primarily to do with “correct” iconographic content. Style does not seem to have been a major issue, and indeed the Jesuits and Oratorians seem to have been tolerant of a remarkable range of style, provided that religious content was deemed appropriate, and presumably conducive to devotion. Thus, the Oratorians could welcome the work of artists as diverse as Barocci, whose work was famously adored by Filippo Neri, the Cavalier d’Arpino, Rubens, and Caravaggio, the last admittedly working in his most classical mode.¹⁵

Despite the attacks by post-Tridentine writers, such as Giovanni Andrea Gilio da Fabriano,¹⁶ which were often focused around Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, and which subsequent art historians have regarded as essentially hostile to Mannerist art, Roman patrons seem to have been remarkably tolerant of a wide variety of artistic approaches. Rome was, of course, highly cosmopolitan, and patrons would often commission works from artists from their own regions in Italy, but equally from abroad, particularly when it came to artists such as brothers Paul and Matthijs Bril and Peter Paul Rubens from Northern Europe. In fact, the plurality of style encouraged by Roman patrons is one of the most distinctive features of the period. A number of artists who have been associated with different aspects of post-Tridentine “reform” were given commissions in Rome in various churches, not least Federico Barocci, Ludovico Cigoli, and Santi di Tito.¹⁷ Papal commissions, by contrast, tended to be given to tried and tested firms, such as that of the Cavalier d’Arpino, for example in the Lateran transept, whose style looked back to the pontificate of Sixtus V (r. 1585–1590).¹⁸

Annibale’s Roman altarpieces pose significant problems, since we know very little about the circumstances of their commissions, apart from the very public works for the Cerasi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo and the Herrera Chapel, formerly in San Giacomo degli Spagnoli.¹⁹ Most of the religious works that he painted in Rome were apparently commissioned by Cardinal Odoardo Farnese and his immediate entourage. Due, in part, to the destruction of major parts of the Farnese archives, the planned destinations of some of Annibale’s most important religious works are obscure.²⁰ We do know that his first work in Rome, the Christ and the Woman of Samaria, was intended for the Cardinal’s private chapel in Palazzo Farnese.²¹ His celebrated Christ in Majesty With Saints, which has been much discussed in recent literature, particularly as an expression of Odoardo’s unrealistic hopes to inherit the English throne, was destined for even greater obscurity as far as the contemporary Roman audience was concerned, since it was sent to the monastery at Camaldoli (Figure 1.1).²² The same applies to the Virgin and Child With Saints Francis and Dorothy, commissioned by Benedetto Gelosi, and largely the work of Annibale’s pupil Innocenzo Tacconi. The commission apparently came about through connections with Cardinal Odoardo, but its installation in Gelosi’s chapel in Spoleto Cathedral would, again, have ensured that it was little known to a Roman public.²³ It was, however, known to Bellori, who described it as una degna opera di Annibale (a worthy work of Annibale) and discussed it at some length.²⁴

Annibale’s service to Odoardo Farnese was fairly exclusive, and it was difficult for other patrons to obtain works from him, increasingly so as his health failed in his later years. Even the papal nephew, Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, apparently impressed by the unveiling of the ceiling of the Farnese Gallery, could only acquire a limited number of works, and these again were destined for private locations. The most significant were, of course, the Aldobrandini lunettes for the private chapel of his palace on the Corso (now Palazzo Doria-Pamphilj).^2...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Plates
• Introduction: Rethinking Art After the Council of Trent
• 1 On the “Reform” of Painting: Annibale Carracci and Caravaggio
• 2 Sculpture, Rupture, and the “Baroque”
• 3 Spanish Painters in the Forefront of the Tridentine Reform
• 4 Judgment, Resurrection, Conversion: Art in France During the Wars of Religion
• 5 Reform After Trent in Florence
• 6 Quella inerudita semplicità lombarda: The Lombard Origins of Counter-Reformation Affectivity
• 7 The Allure of the Object in Early Modern Spanish Religious Painting
• 8 Federico Barocci, History, and the Body of Art
• 9 Neither for Trent nor Against: Faith and Works in Hendrick Goltzius’s Allegories of the Christian Creed
• 10 Francisco Ribalta’s Last Supper as a Symbol of Reform in Early Modern Valencia
• 11 Water in Counter-Reformation Rome
• 12 A Missionary Order Without Saints: Iconography of Unbeatified and Uncanonized Jesuits in Italy and Peru, 1560–1614
• 13 Bernardo Bitti: An Italian Reform Painter in Peru
• 14 Painting as Relic: Giambattista Marino’s Dicerie Sacre and the Shroud of Turin
• 15 Resisting the Baroque in Seventeenth-Century Florence
• List of Contributors
• Photo Credits
• Index