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Sebastiano Ricci

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The Dream of Aesculapius (c. 1718)
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The Dream of Aesculapius (c. 1718)

Sebastiano Ricci (Belluno, July 1659 - Venice, 15 May 1734) was a prominent late Baroque Italian painter.

Contents

Early years

Son of Livio and Andreana, he was born in Belluno on August 1, 1659. In 1671, he apprenticed to Federico Cerebri of Venice (c1625 - c1699). Others claim Ricci’s first master was Sebastiano Mazzoni (1611-1678). In 1678, a youthful indiscretion led to an unwanted pregnancy, and Ricci tried to avoid marriage by poisoning the young woman. He was imprisoned, but ultimately released after intervention of a nobleman, probably someone from the Pisani family. Surprisingly, he wedded this Venetian woman in 1691, though as detailed below, this was a stormy union.

After his arrest, he removed himself to Bologna, where he domiciled near the Parish of San Michele del Mercato. His painting style was there apparently influenced by Giovanni Gioseffo dal Sole. On September 28, 1682 he is contracted by the "Fraternity of Saint John of Florence" to paint a "Decapitation of John the Baptist" for their Oratory. On December 9, 1685, the Count of San Segundo near Parma, commissioned for the decoration of the Oratory of the Madonna of the Serraglio, which he completes in collaboration of Ferdinand Bibiena by October 1687, receiving a compensation of 4,482 Liras. In 1686, the Duke Ranuccio Farnese of Parma commissions a “Pieta” for a new Capuchin convent. From 1687 to 1688, the apartments of the Parmese Duchess in Piacenza are decorated by Ricci with canvases recalling the life of the Farnese pope: Paul III.

Mature Life

Apparently in 1688, Ricci abandons his wife and daughter, and escapes from Bologna to Turin with Magdalen, the daughter of the painter Giovanni Francisco Peruzzini. He is again imprisoned, and nearly executed, but for the intercession of the Duke of Parma. The duke employs him and assigns him salary of 25 crowns and lodging in the Farnese palace in Rome. In 1692, he is commissioned to copy the “Coronation of Charlemagne by Raphael” in Vatican City, on behalf of Louis XIV, only finished in 1694. The death in December, 1694, of Ranunccio Farnese, his protector, forces Ricci to abandon Rome for Milan, where he completed by November of 1695 frescoes in the Ossuary Chapel of the Church of San Bernardino dei Morti. In June 22, 1697, the Count Giacomo Durini hires him to paint in the Cathedral of Monza.

In 1698, he returns to Venetian republic for a decade. By August 24, 1700, he frescoes the chapel of the Santissimo Sacramento in the church of San Giustina of Padua. In 1701, the Venetian geographer Vincenzo Coronelli Maria commissions a canvas of the Ascension to insert in the ceiling of sacristy of the Basilica of the SS Apostoli in Rome. In 1702, he frescoes the ceiling of the Blue Hall in the Schönbrunn Palace, with the “Allegory of the Principal Virtues” and the “Love of Virtue”, that illustrates the education and dedication of future emperor Joseph I. In Vienna, Frederick August II, the elector Saxony, requests an “Ascension” canvas, in part to convince others of the sincerity of his conversion to Catholicism, which allowed him to become King of Poland. In 1704 he executes in Venice a canvas of “San Procolo” (Saint Proculus) for the Dome of Bergamo and the Crucifixion for the Florentine church of S. Francisco de' Macci.

Florentine Fresco Masterpieces

In the summer 1706, he travels to Florence, where he completes a large decorative fresco series on allegorical and mythological themes [link] for the now-called Marucelli-Fenzi palace (now housing departments of University of Florence). Ricci, along with the quadraturista Giuseppe Tonelli, is then commissioned by the Grand Duke Ferdinando de' Medici to decorate rooms in the Pitti Palace, where he paints the "Venus takes Leave from Adonis". The heavenly depictions are airier and brighter than prior Florentine fresco series. These works gained him fame and requests to travel abroad and shows the rising influence of Venetian painting into other regions of Italy.

In 1708 he returns to Venice, completing a "Madonna with the Child" for San Giorgio Maggiore. In 1711, now painting alongside his grandson, the also well-known Marco Ricci, he paints two canvases: "Esther to Assuero" and "Moses saved from the Nile", for the Taverna Palace.

Travels to London and Paris

He then travels to London with his grandson, Marco Ricci, where Lord Burlington commissions for 770 pounds eight canvases of mythological subjects: "Cupid in front of Jove", "Encounter of Bacchus and Ariadne", “Diana and the Nymphs”, "Bacchus and Ariadne", "Venus and Cupid", "Diane and Endymion", and a "Cupid and Flora". He also frescoed now lost works for Count of Portland.

By the end of 1716, with his grandson, he leaves England for Paris, where he meets Watteau and perhaps Fragonard, and submits his “Triumph of the Wisdom over Ignorance” in order to gain admission to the Royal French Academy of Painting and Sculpture, which was granted May 18, 1718. He returns wealthy to Venice in 1718, and buys comfortable lodgings in the Old Procuratory of St. Mark. That same year, the Riccis decorate the villa of Bishop Giovanni Francisco Bembo in Belvedere, near Belluno.

Last years

From 1724 to 1729, Ricci works intensely for the Royal House of Savoy: In 1724 he paints the “Rejection of Agar” and the “Silenus adores the Idols”, in the 1725 “Madonna in Gloria”, in 1726, he completes in Turin the “Susanna presented to Daniel” and “Moses causes water to gush from the rock”; He is admitted in October 1727 to the Clementine Academy of Venice.

Critical Assessments

"Ricci, leaning at first on the example of splendid art of the Veronese, made a new ideal prevail, one of clear and rich coloristic beauty: in this he paved the way for Tiepolo. The painting of figures of the Roccoco to Venice remains incomprehensible in its evolution without Ricci... Tiepolo germinated the work started by Ricci to such a richness and splendor that it leaves Ricci in the shadows... although Sebastiano is recognized in the combative role of forerunner "(Derschau).

"He is the master of a resurrected-fifteenth century style, whose painterly features are enriched with nervous express and, typically 17th century" (Rudolph Wittkower).

"We perceives in him that synthesis of the baroque decorativeness and individualized and substantial painting, that we will see later again in Tiepolo. On one side the influence of Cortona, directed and indirect, and on the other the observant painting of the hermit Magnasco; more intense, substantial and freed academic impulses, the airy, shining influences become, to the open air, magical coves, as well as gloomy corners. A new synthesis that opened wide new painting horizons, even if the scene is not that of a ballet, it is felt like bing in the wonders of the color, in more vibrating, acute, agile accents "(Moschini).

"At the start of the Baroque..Venetians remained isolated from the outside…from the great ideas of the baroque painting… The Ricci are the first traveling Venetian painters... and succeed to inaugurate the so-called roccoco rooms of Pitti and Marucelli palaces."(Roberto Longhi).

Ricci "brought back in the Venetian tradition a wealth of chromatic expression resolved in a new vibrating brilliance brightness…by means of the intelligent interpretation of the Veronese chromatics and of the brushstrokes of a Magnasco-like touch, from the 16th century impediments, he takes unfashionable positions against "tenebrous styles", is against the new Piazzetta - Federico Bencovich. He supplied a valid painterly idiom for .. Tiepolo to use after his defection from the Piazzettism "(Pallucchini).

"Venice, still more than Naples, collects the Ricci inheritance of the prodigioso trade of Luca Giordano... Sebastiano throws again it, widens he then, refines it for the school of Sebastiano Mazzoni "(Argan)

Works

References

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