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Federico Barocci

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Annunciation (1592-96) Oil on canvas, Santa Maria degli Angeli, Perugia.
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Annunciation (1592-96)
Oil on canvas, Santa Maria degli Angeli, Perugia.

Federico Fiori, Barocci (or Baroccio; also Federigo) (1528–1612) was an Italian Late- Mannerist or proto-Baroque painter. His work fills an oft-overlooked period of art, and while somewhat in lower esteem today, in his time, his work was highly esteemed and influential.

Contents

Early life and training

He was born at Urbino, Italy, and received his earliest apprenticeship with Battista Franco in Urbino. His early career in Rome was mentored by Taddeo Zuccari and his uncle Bartolomeo Genga. In Rome he worked alongside Federico Zuccari on more than one occasion.

Mature work in Urbino

While completing the decorations for the Vatican Casino of Pius IV, Barocci fell ill with intestinal complaints and feared he had been poisoned by jealous rivals. Fearing his illness was terminal, he left Rome in 1563; four years later he was said to experience a partial remission after prayers to the Virgin [link]. He complained of frail health from then on, though he lived and remained productive for nearly four decades more. He never returned to Rome, and was patronized in his native city by Francesco Maria II della Rovere, duke of Urbino. The Ducal Palace can be seen in the background of his paintings, rendered in a forced perspective that seems a holdover from Mannerism.

While Barocci was removed from the fulcrum of artistic fame and influence that was Rome, he continued to attract important altarpiece commissions. At some point he may have seen colored chalk/pastel drawings by Correggio, but Barocci's remarkable pastel studies which are the earliest examples the technique to survive. In pastels and in oil sketches (another technique he pioneered) Barocci's soft, opalescent renderings evoke the ethereal.

Barocci's embrace of the Counter Reformation that would shape his long and fruitful career. A key reformer was Saint Philip Neri whose Oratorians sought to reconnect the spiritual realm with the lives of everyday people. It was Neri who commissioned Barocci later on to paint an altarpiece The Visitation in his Chiesa Nuova. Neri is said to have been moved to ecstasy by Barocci's accomplishment, which shows the Virgin and Elizabeth greeting each other as though within the context of daily Roman life.

Such studies were part of a complex process Barocci used to complete his altarpieces. An elaborate series of steps leading up to the final product ensured its speed and success in execution. Barocci did innummerable sketches: gestural, compositional, figural studies (using models), lighting studies (using clay models), perspective studies, color studies, nature studies, etc. Today, over 2000 drawings by him are extant. Every detail was worked out in this way. A good example is his famed Madonna del Popolo (Uffizi). It is a vortex of color and vitality, made possible by the great variety of people, poses, perspectives, natural details, colors, lighting and atmospheric effects. There are many surviving drawings for the Madonna del Popolo, from initial sketches to color studies of heads, to the final full size cartoon.

Despite this painstaking process, Barocci's genius kept the brushstrokes passionate and liberated. More should be written about the singular radiance of the master's painting technique, in which a spiritual light seems to flicker as a jewel across faces, hands, drapery, and sky.

Critical assessment and legacy

The artist biographer Giovanni Bellori, the Baroque equivalent of Giorgio Vasari, considered Barroci among the finest painters of his time. Barocci's emotive brushwork was not lost on Peter Paul Rubens when he was in Italy. Rubens is known to have made a sketch of his dramatic "Martyrdom of St Vitale", in which the martyr's undulating flesh is the eye of another whirlwind of figures, gestures, and drama. Ruben's "The Martyrdom of St Livinus", for instance, seems to owe much to Barocci, from the putto with the pointing palm frond to the presence of dogs in the lower right corner. He also influenced the Tuscan-Sienese school of painting of Francesco Vanni and Ventura Salimbeni.

Barocci's swirling composition and the focus on the emotional and spiritual are elements that foreshadow the Baroque of Rubens. But even in Federico's Proto-Baroque Beata Michelina can see the makings of Bernini's High Baroque masterpiece Ecstasy of St. Theresa.

Partial anthology of works

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

References

[Category:1612 deaths|Barocci, Federico]]

 

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