[121] Conclusion
Federico Barocci was at the center of Oratorian patronage for some twenty years, yet he did not substantially contribute to the formation of an Oratorian iconography and the strand of Oratorian decoration of the Chiesa Nuova that leads from Guido Reni (see fig. 1.1) and Guercino in 1610s and 1620s to Pietro da Cortona in the 1630s through 1660s. It was the collection of testimony leading up to Neri’s beatification and its first cohesive presentation in Gallonio’s Vita di San Filippo Neri that created the material for an iconography of San Filippo Neri.1 Although Gallonio’s Vita was not illustrated, inset oil paintings by Cristoforo Roncalli (Pomarancio) in the new chapel dedicated to Neri in the Chiesa Nuova were able to establish the key scenes relating to the newly beatified holy man (fig. 5.1). In fact, the Oratorians relied heavily on Roncalli in the period around 1600.
What is the relation of Barocci’s altarpieces to Roncalli’s narratives, of Barocci’s aesthetic to Roncalli’s local production? Although this is not evident in his two altarpieces within the church—the Visitation and the Presentation—the most direct contribution that Barocci would make was through his ecstatic saints, particularly as evidenced in Reni’s Saint Filippo Neri in Ecstasy (see fig. 1.1). Stephen Pepper and Olga Melasecchi argued that that patronage was only an individual affair: Neri preferred Barocci, then Baronio (after Neri’s death) liked Roncalli, and Scipione Borghese (after Baronio’s death) chose Reni.2 A close examination of Baronio’s and Borghese’s choices of artists whose styles echo Federico Barocci’s reveals a recurring Baroccismo in Oratorian patronage. Borghese’s interest in Reni is a continuation of such Baroccismo, not a deviation from the interests of Baronio and Roncalli. In fact, during the years after Filippo Neri’s death, Baronio undoubtedly demonstrated his personal taste in commissions to Baroccisti like Francesco Vanni and Antonio Viviani.
By addressing this question of continuity, we are able to assess the claims made at the outset of this study regarding the importance of Oratorian patronage for seventeenth-century art. The Oratorian commitment to an art devoted to simple narratives with a deep meditative dimension, an art of grace and intuitive prehension, becomes an undercurrent of seicento art. Such art does not dominate the seicento, but is a discernible presence.
[122] Fig. 5.1: Cristoforo Roncalli, Saint Filippo Neri in Ecstasy, 1600, oil on canvas, Chapel of Filippo Neri, Chiesa Nuova, Rome (photo by author).
Barocci and Reform Painting
One fact that has been overlooked in following the trail of commissions to Barocci and his workshop is the general interest of reforming artists in Barocci. While the Oratorians were discovering Barocci, so too was a whole generation of artists seeking a model for a more effective religious image. At two principal points—the completion of the Visitation in 1586 and of the Presentation (and discussions of the Nativity of the Virgin) in 1603—Roman artists had different levels of awareness of the contribution of their elder contemporary. However, interest in Barocci was really a pan-Italian event, because Barocci was central to the reform of painting in Rome, Tuscany, and Emilia-Romagna. To return to the Chiesa Nuova, the Oratorians may not have only patronized artists who were Baroccesque, but they selected artists who were at least of the reformed category.
[123] The Florentine influence on the Chiesa Nuova chapels is significant, accounting for the works by Passignano and Lomi, who were of the reform generation. Santi di Tito, who had painted alongside Barocci back in the 1560s in the Casina of Pius IV, pioneered a reformed style in Florence in the succeeding generation and prepared the way for younger painters to discover Barocci.3 When Barocci’s Madonna del Popolo was installed in Arezzo, Filippo Baldinucci tells us that Gregorio Pagani and Ludovico Cigoli together visited the city to see the painting, and were so impressed that Cigoli went on with Domenico Passignano to Perugia to see the earlier Deposition from the Cross. These artists simultaneously rediscovered life drawing and made a close study of artists from two previous generations—Raphael and Andrea del Sarto.
Also among those younger artists influenced by Barocci’s captivating naturalism were the Carracci in Bologna. Annibale, his brother Agostino, and their cousin Ludovico made up the Carracci painting family and the founding members of the Carracci Academy, established in 1582 in Bologna.4 The Carracci may have made a similar journey, this time to Ravenna, to see Barocci’s recently completed Martyrdom of Saint Vitalis in the church of San Vitale. Annibale’s Baptism (1583–85) in San Gregorio, Bologna, shows the influence of Barocci. The Pietà shows the synthesis of Barocci and Correggio; Charles Dempsey calls it the “first painting in a recognizable and definable Baroque style.”5
If one chooses to think in terms of winners and losers, we would have to conclude that Barocci’s naturalistic observation of nature and the human form, his attention to the light and color of atmosphere, and his subtlety with the aria of his heads, singled him out as a winner from the Oratorian viewpoint. But the forceful chiaroscuro that the Carracci developed, and that is shown to such effect in the Farnese Gallery in Rome, has precisely the public, rhetorical voice that Barocci personally lacks, so the Carracci style can also be considered a winner from the Jesuit viewpoint. So while the Oratorians promoted a Baroccisti style of subtle naturalism suitable to personal or private devotion, the Jesuits promoted the Carracci’s style of stronger contrasts suitable to a more public setting. Because each style was suited to its context, both styles were successful.
Within the Roman art world, we can identify the point when a native Barocci style became viable. Within the massive artistic projects overseen by Sixtus V (1585–90) in Rome, dozens of artists were brought together in a way that imitated the eclecticism of the contemporaneous Carracci Academy. It was in 1588 that Francesco Vanni of Siena, after becoming acquainted with Barocci’s pupils and imitators Antonio Viviani and Andrea Lilio while working together in Rome, himself became a conspicuous imitator of Barocci.6 In the seventeenth century, critics debated the relative merits of devotional paintings of iconic subjects and frescoes of narrative or storie. These critics do not mention Barocci in exactly those terms, but his approach is clearly more suited to the devotional and indeed he was [124] never a great frescoist. Vanni’s talent too lay with altarpieces, and his chromatic richness and devotional focus on a few figures will be repeated with his friend Guido Reni, both under the umbrella of Oratorian patronage.
Cesare Baronio and the Oratory after Neri
Baronio was the spiritual but not official head of the Oratory after Neri’s death. Although he was a committed churchman and strongly devoted to the paleo-Christian movement, this does not necessarily tell against the progressiveness of his aesthetic sensibilities. What is important is that Baronio was intimately associated with Neri for decades and came to strongly identify with his values. Important also is that Baronio had been to Pesaro with Clement VIII to take possession of Ferrara (1598) and while there may have gained further knowledge of Barocci’s works (or met the master).
When Neri died in 1595, Barocci’s project for the Presentation was still under way and Federico Borromeo was pursuing various projects in Milan, both personally and institutionally. Around 1600 the Chapels of the Pietà and Pentecost were adorned with paintings by Caravaggio and Coebergher, respectively, so one might wonder why those remaining altars in the Chiesa Nuova weren’t also decorated by Baroccesque artists. Although the Oratorian fathers gave parameters for patrons and insisted that the painters be of the highest quality, they could not control the patron’s choice of artist. When they did have control, as when they used Cardinal Cesi’s money for his own chapel or the high altar, they sought out Barocci.
Roncalli, because he was frequently patronized by the Oratorians, must be given particular attention. Roncalli was a good artist whose output was not alien to Baronio’s aims, and the Oratorians selected him for several commissions, but when Baroccesque painters became available to Baronio—especially Barocci’s pupil Antonio Viviani (1560–1620) and the Barocci imitator Francesco Vanni—he immediately employed them rather than Roncalli.7 These commissions with Roncalli, Viviani, and Vanni were made after 1603, when Barocci was very much alive and his great Presentation of the Virgin had just been installed in the Chiesa Nuova. Clearly Baronio was not moving on to new artists; he was seeking out the next best thing to Barocci, who had just completed an important picture and was still in discussion about a Nativity for the high altar.
While it is true, as Melasecchi and Pepper argue, that it was Scipione Borghese who could have precipitated Reni’s entry into Oratorian patronage, it is harder to support their assertion that Roncalli was exclusively Cesare Baronio’s artist, because Roncalli also had other commissions. When one recognizes that Roncalli was not tied exclusively to one particular patron, then the succession of Reni is less puzzling. After Neri died, but while Baronio was still alive, Borghese was never the preposito of the Chiesa Nuova; this honor fell instead on Baronio (1593–96), Angelo Velli (1596–1602), Flaminio Ricci (1602–8), and [125] Angelo Velli again (1608–11).8 This meant that his Borghese’s agency for dictating Oratorian patronage was weakened.
Before discussing the individual artists, it should be pointed out that there was already something of a sharing of Barocci’s style quite early, with the first arrival of Baroccisti in Rome to work on one of Sixtus’s great projects in the Lateran Palace, the Scala Santa, Santa Maria Maggiore, and more. Barocci’s Visitation arrived in Rome in 1586 and with it Antonio Viviani, who joined the Sistine projects. During Sixtus’s reign, numerous artists from areas of della Rovere sovereignty gained prominence. The presence of Marchegian artists has been noted before, but often not forcefully enough. Gauvin Bailey notes a Tuscan contingent, and Alessandro Zuccari, after noting the Marchegian group, notes others.9 However, there was a long-standing tradition of a new pope patronizing artists from his own hometown or region. Before Sixtus’s election, the most prominent example was the rise of the Bolognese group of Lorenzo Sabatini, Denys Calvaert, Baldassare Croce, Raffaellino da Reggio, and Giovanni Guerra.10
But Barocci followers were already in Rome, beginning with the very Urbino-friendly papacy of Gregory XIII. Already in the late 1570s Giorgio Picchi of Casteldurante, Pasquale Cati of Jesi, and Antonio Cimatori were working in Rome. These artists were also part of the Bologna-dominated projects in the Vatican. Giovan Battista Lombardelli (1537–92) worked in the Logge of Gregory XIII (1576–77) and later with Cati, and Cesare d’Ancona (and Roncalli) painted the Sala Vecchi degli Svizzeri.
Viviani was among the Marchegian artists who worked on the Sistine projects such as the Scala Santa, Sistine Chapel, and San Giovanni in Laterano11 Also participating in those Sistine projects were Giorgio Picchi (1550–99?) of Casteldurante12 and Terenzio Terenzi of Urbino.13 Other Marchegians not from Della Rovere lands included Cesare and Vincenzo Conti and Andrea Lilio from Ancona;14 however, there are also several Urbinate artists gravitating around the Palazzo Peretti in via Parione and the nearby church of the Marchegians, San Lorenzo in Lucina. At the same time, Pasquale Cati was painting the Altemps chapel in Santa Maria in Trastevere and his well-known Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence (both painted ca. 1585/89) in San Lorenzo in Panisperna.15 Terenzio d’Urbino [126] became indissolubly linked to Sixtus’s nephew Cardinal Peretti-Montalto, after being introduced to him by Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte “come suo paesano.”16 Terenzio, in fact, had begun in the Marche working for the Monsignore Giuliano della Rovere, the natural son of Cardinal Giulio Feltrio della Rovere. He went on to work not only for Cardinal Montalto but also for Prince Michele Peretti and his bride, Margherita della Somaglia.17
The agency of Oratorian theologians in these and later projects should also not be underestimated, for they may have had some influence in the choice of artists. During the papacy of Sixtus V, a Marchegian, one can expect to see him supporting artists from his home region, but when an Oratorian is involved, as in Silvio Antoniano’s design of the iconographic program of the Sistine Chapel in Santa Maria Maggiore, it appears that stylistic selection was also considered, as will be noted in the case of the Navi Piccole below.
The Chapel of Filippo Neri
During Filippo Neri’s life, there were already efforts by patrician families and religious communities to possess an image of the holy man in the odor of sainthood. One such portrait, now in the Oratorio of Santa Maria di Galliera in Bologna, was painted by Federico Zuccaro in 1593 (fig. 5.2).18 Of course Zuccaro was a friend of Barocci and in this context it is worth recalling the drawing on the European art market discussed in chapter 3, which can plausibly be related to Neri (see plate IV).19
The existence of a possible portrait by Barocci is interesting in light of the possible connections between the Oratory and Barocci, but there is a whole family of such portraits that can be traced back to Roncalli, the artist most connected to, and most relied upon by, the Oratorians in the years around 1600.20 Olga Melasecchi has adduced evidence showing that Roncalli had recourse to the wax death mask of Neri, and from this derived a prototype from which to create a group of portraits.21
Roncalli painted the images of the life of Filippo Neri that seem to have been moved from Neri’s personal rooms to his chapel (see fig. 5.1). This group included also a pair of altarpieces (1596/97): first, Filippo Neri Having a Vision of the Virgin in Heaven (now lost, [128] but a copy is in San Girolamo della Carita, and it was also engraved by Mattheus Greuter in 1606), and a Filippo Neri and Virgin and Child, which seems to have been the model for Reni’s later altarpiece.22
[127] Fig. 5.2: Federico Zuccaro, Portrait of Filippo Neri, 1593, oil on canvas, Oratorio of Santa Maria in Galliera, Bologna (Congregazione dell’Oratorio di San Filippo Neri).
Ruth Noyes has pointed to the politics underlying the developing iconography of Neri and its promotion of Neri as a kind of Mary-like intercessor. Here we are most interested in how different styles might serve different (and new) iconographies. Roncalli was a familiar of the Chiesa Nuova, called “amicissimo” by Bacci in his Life of Filippo Neri. Thus, he can be considered to hold a status similar to the lay member of the Oratory Giovan Battista Guerra. It is for this reason Roncalli would have been the appropriate choice to record the true likeness of the would-be saint.
Roncalli was furthermore entrusted with drawing scenes of Neri’s life, which are closely related to the paintings of the life of Neri but only part of the group had been engraved when Guido Reni’s work came to be preferred by the Oratorians. It is clear that Roncalli was popular with the Oratorians and that should not be underestimated. But while it is true that Reni took over Roncalli’s job of illustrating the Life of Neri, it may be too strong to say that the Oratorians “cancelled” Roncalli. After all, he was physically absent from Rome after 1605 when he went to work in Loreto, a commission whose prestige is proven by Caravaggio’s attack on Roncalli upon hearing news of the commission.
Without putting too much emphasis on Roncalli, it should be noted that he was able to offer the Oratorians—just as Cavaliere d’Arpino did for Clement VIII—works in a reformed style not antithetical to that of Barocci. The famous letter by Vincenzo Giustiniani, which lists the artists “di maniera,” presents an enticing grouping accurate to early seventeenth-century tastes, including as it does Barocci, Passignano, and the Cavaliere d’Arpino (all contributors to the decoration of the Chiesa Nuova). The list also mentions “Romanelli,” which can be convincingly read as “Roncalli,” thus rounding out the group.23
Projects for Other Churches and Saint Peter’s
As the year 1600 approached, Baronio was adorning the chapel of Filippo Neri and creating a new iconography of the life of the saint, but other commissions outside of the church were equally important for motivating Oratorian iconography. These other commissions show the Madonna della Vallicella becoming a kind of Madonna of Loreto, which sublimates her birth and propagates the cult of her icon. In addition, works for papal projects show the expansion of the Oratorian orbit and interest in the Baroccesque style.
Because members of the Oratory increasingly obtained honors as cardinals and bishops, they had new avenues to spread ideas and patronage, and new churches to decorate. In 1596, Clement VIII elevated both Cesare Baronio and Francesco Maria Tarugi to the [130] cardinalate. Baronio resisted requests to take a bishop’s post, but the next year Tarugi became archbishop of Siena. Baronio received as his titular cardinal’s church of Santi Nereo e Achilleo in Rome and Tarugi was awarded San Bartolomeo all’Isola.
[129] Fig. 5.3: Cristoforo Roncalli, Saint Domitilla with Saints Nereo and Achilleo, 1601, oil on canvas, Santi Nereo e Acchile, Rome (Mondadori Portfolio/Electa/Art Resource, NY).
Baronio had several other benefices as well. He was commendatore of San Gregorio Magno, the Camaldolese monastery on the Celian hill in Rome, and also was a patron in his hometown, Sora, where he funded the Capuchin church, Santa Maria degli Angeli. It was at Santi Nereo e Achilleo especially that Baronio could exercise both his cardinal’s duty to care for his ancient church and piously restore it; however, he contributed painted decoration to all of these institutions. For example, Roncalli painted works for both Santi Nereo e Achilleo (Saint Domitilla with Saints Nereo and Achilleo; fig. 5.3) and San Gregorio Magno (The Madonna and Child with Saints Andrew and Gregory).24
Tarugi was not as zealous in his care for his titular church, but as archbishop of Siena he did bring Francesco Vanni into Oratorian notice, favoring him especially for his Baroccesque style. In 1597 Tarugi became archbishop of Siena where Vanni belonged to the Congregazione del Sacro Chiodo, a pious organization supported by Neri.25 Baronio and Borromeo were also members of the group. Once Tarugi brought Vanni to Oratorian notice, it is not surprising that Vanni soon found new commissions in Rome, not in the Chiesa Nuova, but in other contexts for Cardinals Sfondrato and Baronio.
Sfondrato was heavily influenced by Baronio in his restoration of his own titular church, Santa Cecilia in Trastevere. In undertaking his restoration, he found the body of the early Christian martyr Cecilia uncorrupted. This spectacular discovery created a sensation in Rome, which led to the creation of a permanent shrine containing Stefano Maderno’s life-size effigy and to Sfondrato commissioning the Oratorian Tommaso Bozio to write a publication celebrating the discovery.26 In a similar vein, Vanni produced the tender Death of Saint Cecilia (1601, Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, Rome), evoking the pathos of an innocent girl after death.27 Alongside his commissions for Sfondrato, Vanni found more projects with Baronio. For the Capuchin church of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Sora, Baronio’s hometown, Vanni painted The Madonna della Vallicella Adored by Saints Francis and Restituta for the high altar (fig. 5.4).28 He also painted portraits of Filippo Neri and Cesare Baronio.29
[131] Fig. 5.4: Francesco Vanni, Madonna Vallicelliana Adored by Saints Francis and Restituta, 1601, oil on canvas, Santa Maria degli Angeli, Sora (photo by author).
Both of these works of Vanni, in certain senses, reflected Barocci’s style, but because they promoted the cult of the Madonna della Vallicella, they were not true figural compositions. Instead, they were kinds of picture-tabernacles containing and honoring the sacred image inside, similar to the high altar and Rubens’s altarpiece for the Chiesa Nuova discussed [132] in chapter 4. More interesting for us would be the delicate Madonna and Child images that the Oratorians may have acquired from Vanni, like that donated by Tarugi to the Neapolitan Oratorians or the Madonna della Pappa (ca. 1599) by Vanni, which may be the work that began the relationship between Vanni and Sfondrato.30 This private devotional work descends directly from Barocci’s images of the holy family derived from apocryphal sources (especially the Rest on the Return from Egypt), and shows an angel feeding the child while Joseph entices him with cherries, both miraculous foods that sprang up for the hungry family.
During these years around 1600 Roncalli was one of the top artists in Rome. He contributed to prestigious papal projects in both the Lateran and the Navi Piccole in New Saint Peter’s, painting two frescoes in the Lateran (Saint Simon and Sylvester Baptizing Constantine) and the altarpiece of Ananias and Sapphira Struck Dead (now in Santa Maria degli Angeli, Rome).31 Vanni’s influence with the Oratory increased, however, when he was invited to Rome to paint the important commission for the Fall of Simon Magus for Clement VIII’s so-called Navi Piccole project in Saint Peter’s, to which Roncalli, Passignano, and Cigoli also contributed. Baglione reports that “Il cardinal Baronio propose Francesco Vanni” and it is probably the case that Baronio chose Vanni for his Baroccismo.32 Vanni had first encountered Barocci’s style in the workshops of Sixtus V, and coming to Rome a second time allowed him to influence a group of reform-minded artists sensitive to Barocci’s work. In particular, Vanni was friendly with the young Guido Reni and was probably very responsible for expanding and cementing Reni’s artistic style.
These examples show that while Barocci was still working on the Presentation in the 1590s, and on projects for Milan, Oratorians as patrons or advisors were pursuing works in Barocci’s style. Rather than see the decade as dominated by one artist or another (or one patron or another) it is better to see the general reformist, Baroccesque slant of works ordered by the Oratorian orbit.
After the Presentation
After the plan for the high altar at the Chiesa Nuova was definitively changed, and Barocci was set to work to create the Institution of the Eucharist, he was largely regarded as too old for much more to be expected of him. Indeed, in his correspondence, the Duke of Urbino habitually refers to Barocci as old, sick, and melancholic. Therefore, after 1604 once the [133] project for a Barocci altarpiece on the high altar stalled, the Oratorians entered a new phase, in which they sought a definitive replacement of the irreplaceable artist, Barocci.
It was precisely at this time that Baronio began to patronize Barocci’s direct pupil Antonio Viviani. It is clear that Viviani was Barocci’s “giovane” who had delivered the Presentation of the Virgin to the Chiesa Nuova and informed the fathers that the master would gladly paint the altarpiece for the high altar. Just as he had after delivering the Visitation to the Chiesa Nuova in 1586 and gotten fresco work for Sixtus’s projects, Viviani took the opportunity to remain in Rome and got work again as a frescante. It is clear that he brought with him numerous drawings by Barocci (or copies of them) and earned some bit of status as a minion of the mysterious artist in far-away Urbino.
Viviani worked on the so-called Triclinium Pauperum in the monastery of San Gregorio Magno in Rome, working for Baronio in his role as commendatore. Viviani painted seven scenes, many of which are pastiches of Barocci compositions and payments for that work continued from 21 November 1603 to 16 February 1606.33 Morton C. Abromson and Alessandro Zuccari have suggested that Viviani was most likely chosen for the closeness of his style to Barocci.34 Important proof of some sympathy between the churchman and artist is that Mancini called Viviani “amatissimo” to Baronio.35 The seven scenes depicted are, starting with the entrance door, The Care of Saint Gregory/Election of Probo as Abbot of the Monastery of the Celio; The Apparition of the Angel at the Meal of the Poor (fig. 5.5); Saint Gregory Writing/Saint Barbara; San Nereo; Sant’Achilleo; Flavia Domitilla/Saint Gregory Inviting Augustine and Other Monks to Convert the English; and The Monks in front of King Etelbert/Saint Gregory in Adoration of the Virgin. The work most recognizably indebted to Barocci is the Apparition, a take on Barocci’s Urbino Last Supper, which was only finished in 1599. Viviani must have brought numerous cartoons copied from Barocci’s and this, no doubt, was part of his celebrity once in Rome.
It can be seen in both the examples of Vanni and Viviani that Baronio avidly commissioned Baroccesque artists, directly or indirectly, when he had the chance. But it is here that the theory that Roncalli monopolized Oratorian commissions becomes difficult to sustain. Baronio also put Vanni and Viviani to work quite extensively. When we compare Roncalli to Reni it is easier to fall into generalizations, as in the switch from Roncalli’s “old Oratorian style of depiction—a kind of subdued Mannerism—to Guido Reni’s modern style of delicate naturalism.”36 But as we shall see, this is owed simply to Reni’s amazing gifts.
It is generally assumed that it was Scipione Borghese’s personal predilections that brought him to impress Reni’s virtues on the Oratorians, but it is interesting to note that [135] Viviani was helping to paint Paul V Borghese’s private apartments around the same time that his nephew Scipione was introducing Reni to the Oratorians.37 I suggest that after helping deliver Barocci’s Presentation of the Virgin in 1603 or the Institution of the Eucharist in 1608, Viviani stayed in Rome in order to undertake these commissions for Borghese. He would leave Rome for good after Barocci’s death in the hope of filling the artistic vacuum created in the duchy of Urbino. And we should not forget that Scipione Borghese was personally a collector of Barocci. Monsignore Giuliano della Rovere (first cousin of the Duke of Urbino) gave Borghese a copy of Barocci’s Flight of Aeneas from Troy (originally made for the emperor), the only surviving version of that painting, in addition to Barocci’s small, beautiful devotional image of Saint Jerome also in the Borghese gallery (fig. 5.6).38
[134] Fig. 5.5: Antonio Viviani, The Apparition of the Angel at the Meal of the Poor, 1603–6, fresco, San Gregorio Magno, Rome (photo by author).
Guido Reni, alter Baroccius
The arrival of the Presentation of the Virgin in 1603 continued to fuel interest in Barocci in Rome, as did the arrival of the Institution of the Eucharist in 1608, but that painting marked the official end of Barocci’s production. The 1608 painting must have been regarded as another miraculous accomplishment, yet Barocci barely finished it and was effectively at the end of his career by then; indeed he died just four years later in 1612. By that time, Barocci’s major patrons were gone: Clement VIII had died in 1605, opening the way for a Borghese papacy with Paul V, and Cesare Baronio, the second great personality of the Roman Oratory, died in 1607. The way was clear for new patrons and new artists.
There is no question that Guido Reni was keenly aware of the style and works of his older contemporary, Federico Barocci. Part of the reason that Reni has not been recognized as a follower of Barocci has to do with the slow rehabilitation of Barocci’s reputation. Recent scholarshop has made it easier, now as never before, to acknowledge that Barocci was simply the highest paid artist of his day and that he would have indeed been an important model to follow. While scholars might note Reni’s occasional borrowings from Barocci and Barocci’s influences on Reni—especially the overall pietizing style of Barocci’s works and Reni’s so-called seconda maniera in which shadows give way to a blonde, white heightened reality—we should push that connection much farther.39
Reni had an idea that he could move much further than imitating Barocci’s style to the point of actually emulating it, mastering, and competitively mobilizing it. In fact, it can be argued that Reni actually fashioned his career in some imitation of Barocci and attempted to capitalize on Barocci’s absence from the art market after his death in 1612. Unusual evidence [137] will be adduced from various sources that add up to make Guido Reni into an alter Baroccius. Barocci famously left Rome in 1563 due to a poisoning. According to Bellori, after Barocci had helped finish the frescoes in the Casina of Pius IV, he began frescoes in the Vatican apartments and had just finished a Moses and the Serpent (ca. 1563, Museo Etrusco Vaticano) when a jealous painter poisoned his salad.40 This incident led Barocci to go home to Urbino to recover, where Bellori says he was aided in prayer by the Capuchin friars outside of town.
[136] Fig. 5.6: Federico Barocci, Penitent Saint Jerome, 1597, fresco, Villa Borghese, Rome (Soprintendenza per i bene artistici e storica de Roma).
This was something of a topos for Guido Reni, who similarly finished frescoes in Rome in order to secure his reputation (the Quirinal Chapel), but then avoided fresco thereafter. Just as the Casina of Pius IV was for Barocci, the Quirinal Chapel was Reni’s last ambitious fresco cycle. Carlo Cesare Malvasia reports that Reni was “distressed about being able to withstand such fatigue” and during Reni’s lifetime it was said that fresco actually made him sick.41 It is just as easy to explain Bellori’s colorful story about Barocci in terms of a similar temperament. Fresco was demanding physical work and placed one in the hotbed of competitive Roman pursuit of mural painting. Fresco was said to have made Antonio Viviani, the pupil of Barocci and probable acquaintance of Reni, deaf, thereby earning him the nickname “il Sordo.”
Such a temperament could also feed into the idea of a devout character. The Vita devota was a strong topos for many Counter-Reformation artists, including not only Barocci and Reni, but also Girolamo Muziano and Francesco Vanni.42 What is more significant, however, is that shortly after completing the Quirinal Palace frescoes is when Reni moved back to Bologna, in direct comparison to Barocci and the Casina. Reni’s action of making his name in Rome, then using that to his advantage in his home province to dictate a market based solely (or largely) on altarpiece commissions, is something he learned directly from Barocci. Furthermore, the market was ready for a Baroccesque master to corner the devout style (stile devoto) of a painter of loveliness (vaghezza) with Barocci’s death in 1612. And with the death of most of Barocci’s direct imitators (Vanni died in 1610 and Salimbeni in 1614) and emulators (Cigoli died in 1613 and Viviani left Rome to fill the vacuum created by Barocci’s passing) the way was open in Rome for another solitary master to monopolize the market in graceful altarpieces.
Instrumental in Reni’s choice of Barocci to emulate must have been his friendships with Francesco Vanni and Luca Ciamberlano, the engraver from Urbino.43 Reni’s association with the Carraccis would have predisposed him to share their appreciation of Barocci’s work. Evidence of this early imitation by Carracci protégés is found in the portrait of Reni painted by Domenichino. Under the surface of that portrait is evidence of a copy of Barocci’s Stigmatization of Saint Francis, probably studied after Villamena’s print,44 and no doubt [138] an exercise in mastering a particularly influential treatment of the stigmatization theme. Once the painting was finished, it had served its purpose and the canvas was reused. However, a stronger, extremely tangible demonstration of Reni’s appreciation of the virtues of Barocci’s work was his friendship with Vanni, and there are even echoes of Vanni’s works in Reni’s, though these are not often commented upon.45
After dallying with the style of Caravaggio in his Martyrdom of Saint Peter (Pinacoteca, Vatican), Reni reached an early, mature synthesis in his fresco of Saint Andrew Led to Martyrdom (1608) for San Gregorio Magno, where Viviani had just worked. Reni was engaged with fellow Carracci academician Domenichino to decorate another oratory, that of Saint Andrew, whose patron was the new commendatore of San Gregorio, Scipione Borghese. For the oratory at Saint Andrew, Reni painted a more iconic treatment of his subject than Domenichino, whose Flagellation of Saint Andrew presents all the best of a narratively focused Albertian istoria. Domenichino’s painting, indeed, is self-consciously rhetorical and was therefore greatly admired by Poussin. It is not out of place to compare Domenichino’s rhetorical approach in his Flagellation of Saint Andrew to some of the Jesuit art discussed earlier. In this early moment of stylistic search and mastery, Reni, on the other hand, probably increasingly saw the advantages of the Baroccesque approach, which would have been confirmed with Vanni’s continuing influence. Reni continued this approach in the frescoes for the Quirinal Palace frescoes that preceded his definitive departure from Rome.
Ciamberlano provided Reni with a direct link to Urbino and the transmission of more direct motifs and inspirations. By 1612, Ciamberlano was accepting payments for Reni, as in the case cited by Melasecchi and Pepper.46 At that time, Roncalli had already been contracted to provide the drawings for the Life of Filippo Neri; most of the forty-six drawings associated with that project (now in the Biblioteca Vallicelliana) have been convincingly attributed to Roncalli by Melasecchi and Pepper. A 1607 reference to Roncalli suggests that he was undertaking these drawings—most of which were reminiscent of the artist’s earlier efforts in the painted scenes of the beatus’s life—to provide a sufficiently impressive illustrated Life of Neri in anticipation of sainthood.
Melasecchi and Pepper are equally convincing in comparing the drawing styles of Roncalli and Reni; Reni seems to have replaced Roncalli shortly after the drawings began to be engraved, ultimately leaving Roncalli’s unpublished. Roncalli’s is a “different artistic outlook,” not based on life study and descended from the “older narrative tradition of Salviati and Vasari, where the space is ill-defined and the surface pattern of the figures’ poses tends to undermine the dramatic action.” Reni, instead, places his scene “in a convincing spatial setting, giving a naturalistic character to the miraculous event.”47
[139] Where I differ from Melasecchi and Pepper is in what this change of artist means for Baronio’s aims and patronage. It is true that in 1609 another effort for Neri’s sanctification was gearing up and that Rubens’s Life of Ignatius of Loyola had raised people’s expectations for the quality of work for the Life of Neri, but Ciamberlano’s role in raising standards should not be underestimated. Ciamberlano was fresh from Urbino, having left there the year after Barocci had provided Santa Maria sopra Minerva with his Institution of the Eucharist, and had himself engraved Barocci’s Noli me tangere (fig. 5.7). He had some authority in conveying Barocci’s style and it may have been he who recognized in Reni’s work the qualities required for a Life whose artistic quality could compete with the Jesuits.
Recall that Vanni was in Siena at the time when the Oratorians were seeking a team to work on the Life of Neri, and Viviani was best as a frescoist. There simply were no more Baroccisti to which to turn. Of course, Melasecchi and Pepper argue that after Baronio’s death in 1607, Borghese asserted his personality in choosing Reni over Roncalli, but this argument overlooks the fact that Borghese probably also hired Viviani, who was working in the papal palace painting frescoes at that time. Borghese may or may not have been involved in the choice of Reni for the Life of Neri, but Reni was closer than anybody else in being able to emulate Barocci’s style. Along with Reni came Ciamberlano, also from Urbino and possibly a pupil of Barocci, who had an important role in directing the project. This explains why Reni was able to step into the spotlight when he did; in a sense, he had received the Oratorians’ official stamp of approval as a Baroccista.
It should be remembered that Reni, a product of the Carracci academy, never let go of the artificiality of his first teacher, Denys Calvaert, and when arriving in Rome was attracted to the manner of the Cavaliere d’Arpino. It is true that Reni was not a Baroccesque painter when the Aldobrandini were seeking his works in the early years of the seventeenth century. Agucchi’s inventory of 1603 lists three paintings by Reni; this was before his definitive turn toward Oratorian patronage and his friendship with Ciamberlano.48 The artist was well known to Cardinal Aldobrandini when in 1604 he commissioned Reni to paint the Crucifixion of Saint Peter. Painted in a Caravaggesque style in response to a challenge by Cavaliere d’Arpino, the work is clear evidence of Reni’s stylistic searching at the time. Despite their lack of a consistent style, all these works place Reni (along with his friend Vanni) squarely in Clement VIII’s milieu of Oratorian thought and appreciation of Barocci’s style. By the time Reni began to paint for the cardinal in the Duomo of Ravenna, near the time of his engravings for the Oratorians and his Filippo Neri in Ecstasy, he had assimilated the lessons of the older painter from Urbino.49 It is in this context that Reni was so enthusiastically chosen around 1610 to begin drawings for the Life of Filippo Neri and the portrait of Neri.
[140] Fig. 5.7: Luca Ciamberlano, after Federico Barocci, copper engraving from Noli me tangere, 1609 (Soprintendenza per i bene artistica e storica d Roma, Gabinetto Fotografico).
As Reni continued to work on the drawings of the Life of Filippo Neri with Ciamberlano, his outlook could only have improved. Vanni had died in 1610 and in 1612 Barocci also passed away; although Viviani was in Rome around that time, he left for Urbino to cash in [141] on the vacuum created by the death of his master. In Rome, the way was open for someone adopting the sweet, lyrical style of Barocci and his followers for Oratorian patronage. Shortly after this, Reni, in a move that parallels Barocci’s own exodus from the Eternal City, left the competitive bustle of Rome for the relative tranquility of Bologna.
Even then, Reni’s interest in Oratorians, and their reciprocal interest in him, did not end. When negotiating contracts in Naples, he produced an image for the Neapolitan Oratorians, the Girolamini, in his Meeting of Young Christ and John the Baptist (ca. 1626/28) and Saint Francis (ca. 1626/28).50 It was in Bologna that Reni adopted his second manner (seconda maniera), which in many respects is even closer to Barocci’s style than his earlier works. In its extensive use of white and overtly pietizing style, a work like the Meeting of Young Christ and John the Baptist becomes almost a meditation on Barocci’s style, as Marc Fumaroli properly intuited.51
Much more could be said about Reni’s late treatments of subjects that Barocci had also attempted, like the Annunciation (1584, Vatican, Pinacoteca), Crucified Christ (1604, Prado, Madrid), and Immaculate Conception (1570s, Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino). The latter two subjects show specific debts to Barocci’s great antecedents. Especially noteworthy are Barocci’s Crucified Christ (1604, Prado), which anticipates Reni’s similar work for the Capuchins of Rome, and the Immaculate Conception (Urbino, Galleria nazionale delle Marche) that is strikingly like Reni’s for the Infanta of Spain (1625, Metropolitan Museum of Art). But suffice it to say that these paintings by Barocci were aided in their transfer to Reni by the engraver from Urbino, Luca Ciamberlano.
At this point it is helpful to review. For Melasecchi and Pepper the transition from Roncalli to Reni appears exaggerated for two reasons: first, differences in patronage are overemphasized, Roncalli with Baronio and Reni with Scipione Borghese; and second, Reni appears so different because his affinity with Barocci is underestimated. The result is that Oratorian patronage in general appears fragmented and to be the result of individual agents (e.g., Neri, Baronio, Borghese). But Baronio clearly shows an interest in Baroccesque artists, and Roncalli is a practical substitute when Barocci was not available. There is a good case for highlighting the Baroque elements of Reni’s style, yet the contrast between Reni’s style and Roncalli’s is significantly greater than the contrast between Reni and Barocci, his strong inspiration.
In the second decade of the seventeenth century, most of the personalities changed in the Oratorian orbit of patrons and artists. In addition to the central figures already gone (Baronio and Clement VIII), other influential Oratorians (Gallonio, d. 1605) and penitents of Neri (Paleotti, d. 1597, and Valier, d. 1606) had died as well. Only younger patrons like Neri’s penitents Paolo Emilio Sfondrato and Federico Borromeo lived on, and provided continuity with the past. Borromeo prominently maintained his interest in Barocci well [142] into the seventeenth century. He saw to the completion of Barocci’s Lamentation of Christ, intended for Milan’s duomo and left unfinished at Barocci’s death. He continued to aquire works by Barocci’s students, including a Mater dolorosa and Imago Pietatis by Viviani and Vitali’s copy of Barocci’s Rest on the Return from Egypt.52
When one considers which artists the Oratorians chose—Barocci when he was available and Baroccisti when he was not—it is clear that Barocci’s style appealed to early Oratorian sensibilities and that his style gradually solidified into an Oratorian brief that other artists followed. What is more, Barocci’s style concretized the shared values of the Oratorians and those sympathetic to them. Barocci, and Reni after him, forced the painting into becoming an object of devotional contemplation, giving its subject to the viewer as if the viewer were having a vision. Barocci passed the baton, as it were, to the seicento artists who worked for the Oratory: Guercino, Algardi, and above all Pietro da Cortona. But the connection between Barocci and the Congregation of the Oratory was never inevitable: rather, a saint and his congregation engaged a painter sympathetic to their sensibilities, and as they worked together to decorate the Oratorian church, an aesthetic was born.
Notes
1. Incisa della Rochetta and Vian, Il primo processo per san Filippo Neri; Melasecchi, “Nascita e sviluppo dell’iconografia di S. Filippo Neri”; Leone, Saints and Signs, 282–320.
2. Melasecchi and Pepper, “Guido Reni, Luca Ciamberlano and the Oratorians.”
3. See Hall, After Raphael.
4. Dempsey, Annibale Carracci.
5. Ibid., 14.
6. See Marciari,“Francesco Vanni.”
7. This is not even to mention works by Andrea Lilio in the Chiesa Nuova.
8. Dalos, “I Prepositi della Congregazione dell’Oratorio a Rome.” In an interesting slip, Melasecchi and Pepper note that Borghese was commendatore of the Oratorians, when they obviously mean San Gregorio Magno. But since their article is about the Oratorian patronage, clarifying the fact is useful.
9. Zuccari, I Pittori di Sisto V, 100n83; Bailey, Between Renaissance and Baroque.
10. On this see Marciari, “Raffaellino da Reggio in the Vatican.”
11. Zuccari, I Pittori di Sisto V, 95–97.
12. For Picchi, see Moretti, “La celebrazione dei Della Rovere in due dipinti di Giorgio Picchi,” 144. In 1580 Picchi had already been inscribed in Accademia di San Luca; “Giorgio Picchi da Casteldurante,” ASL, Libro di Introiti, fols. 79v, 80r.
13. For Terenzi, see Bertolotti, Artisti Urbinati in Roma prima del Secolo XVIII, 32; and Lorenza Mochi Onori, “Terenzio Terenzi ditto il Rondolino,” in Arbizzoni, Pesaro nell’età dei della Rovere, 2:165–80.
14. Zuccari, I Pittori di Sisto V, 78–79, 95–96. Bertolotti (Artisti Urbinati in Roma prima del Secolo XVIII) also mentions Riccio d’Urbino at work on the Sistine Chapel (22), Giovanni Paolo Severo in San Giovanni in Laterano (24, 64), and Ascanio Fenicio (8–10).
15. For Cati, see Baglione, Le vite de’ pittori scultori et architetti, 112–13; Cati is inscribed in the Academy of Saint Luke in 1577 and 1581 (1 February 1577 and 25 June 1581); ASL, Libro di Introiti.
16. Baglione, Le vite de’ pittori scultori et architetti, 157.
17. See for example Terenzio’s Immaculate Conception, 1608–10, Santa Maria della Concezione, Rome; Valone, “Mothers and Sons.”
18. Museo di Palazzo Venezia, Regola e la Fama, 454–55, no. 4.
19. There is a notice of a portrait of Baronio by Barocci (titled Cardinal Baronius) in the inventory of Lord Burlington’s collection; it was in the Red Velvet Room along the West Front; Rosoman, “Decoration and Use of the Principal Apartments of Chiswisk House,” 668. This is untraced but from the Rosoman’s reconstruction would have been a large, probably half-length, portrait. The author goes on to state that “Lord Burlington was in general unusually accurate in his attributions of paintings in his collections” (667).
20. Barbieri, Barchiesi, and Ferrara, Santa Maria in Vallicella, 115; Chiappini di Sorio, “Cristoforo Roncalli alla Chiesa Nuova.”
21. Melasecchi, “Nascita e sviluppo.”
22. Melasecchi, “Nascita e sviluppo”; Noyes, “On the Fringes of Center.”
23. See, for example, Haskell, Patrons and Painters, 95.
24. The contract for the latter work was signed 27 July 1602 (painting signed and dated 1603). The price was 200 scudi; Pedrocchi, San Gregorio al Celio, 100; Museo di Palazzo Venezia, La Regola e la Fama, 88, fig. 83, and 93, fig. 90.
25. Vanni joined the Sacro Chiodo in 1580, for which see Nardi, “Matteo Guerra e la Congregazione dei Sacri Chiodi.”
26. Bozio, Historia Passionis Beatae Caeciliae Virginis.
27. Marciari, “Francesco Vanni,” 21–22.
28. Museo di Palazzo Venezia, La Regola e la Fama, 505–6; Marciari, “Francesco Vanni,” 18–21.
29. Museo di Palazzo Venezia, La Regola e la Fama, 487. In the Biblioteca Vallicelliana are two letters from Vanni to Baronio (AV 1607, G. 92, 12–13).
30. Marciari and Boorsch, Francesco Vanni, 138–41, no. 42. It is important to notice that Barocci, too, seems to have produced a Madonna della Pappa. This painting, formerly in Wilton House, exists in an eighteenth-century print by Christophe LeBlon; Tempesti, “Una scheda per il Barocci,” 50, fig. 7.
31. The Nave Clementina was painted from 1597 to 1600; Roncalli’s altarpiece was completed in June 1604; Chappell and Kirwin, “A Petrine Triumph.”
32. On the Sora altarpiece, see Museo di Palazzo Venezia, La Regola e la Fama, 505–6. On the Saint Peter’s altarpiece, see Chappell and Kirwin, “A Petrine Triumph,” who report that Vanni and Passignano were called to Rome perhaps in late 1602. Vanni received his first payment 4 December 1602, and the work was done by June 1603. Abromson (Painting in Rome during the Papacy of Clement VIII) suggests Vanni got the commission because he was Tuscan.
33. Payments are recorded from 21 November 1603 (15 scudi) to 16 February 1606, for a total of 227 scudi; Pedrocchi, San Gregorio al Celio, 81.
34. Zuccari, “La politica culturale dell’Oratorio Romano nelle imprese artistiche promosse da Cesare Baronio”; O’Neil, “Patronage of Cardinal Cesare Baronio at San Gregorio Magno.” A similar surrogate interest in Barocci was expressed in Milan in commissions to Giovan Andrea Urbani for a copy of the Stigmatization in 1601. See Sangiorgi, Committenza milanesi a Federico Barocci, 30, 35.
35. For Mancini’s comment, see Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, 246: “Fu amatissimo dal cardinal Baronio.”
36. Melasecchi and Pepper, “Guido Reni, Luca Ciamberlano and the Oratorians,” 596.
37. ASR, record of payments from 8 March to 20 July 1613: “nella stantia maggiore dell’archivio della libreria del palazzo Vaticano”; Bertolotti, Artisti Urbinati in Roma prima del Secolo XVIII, 33; Corbo and Componi, Fonti per la Storia Artistica Romana al Tempo di Paolo V, 97; cf., Fumagalli, “Paolo V Borghese in Vaticano.”
38. For the paintings, see Emiliani, Federico Barocci, 2:303–305; Emiliani, Federico Barocci [2008], 2:168–71. They do not appear in an early Borghese inventory (ca. 1615–30); Coliva and Schütze, Bernini Scultore e la nascita del Barocci in casa Borghese.
39. For Reni’s second manner, see Spear, The ‘Divine’ Guido, esp. 293–94. This section expands brief comments originally made in Verstegen, “Federico Barocci, the Art of Painting and the Rhetoric of Persuasion.”
40. Bellori, “Life of Federico Barocci,” ed. Pillsbury and Richards, 184; Bellori, “Vita di Federico Barocci,” ed. Borea, 15.
41. Spear, ‘Divine’ Guido, 31.
42. Fumaroli, L’École du silente, 217; Bernini, “La vita devota del pittore Federico Barocci.”
43. The classic article on Reni’s debts to Vanni is Cellini, “Stefano Maderno, Francesco Vanni e Guido Reni”; but now see McGarry, “Young Guido Reni.”
44. Brown, Genius of Rome, 150n11. Its size is 64.5 x 52 cm.
45. Most conspicuous are Guido Reni’s Conception of the Virgin Immaculate (ca. 1610) in the Quirinal Palace, Rome, and Fathers of the Church Disputing the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception (ca. 1625) in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, where the figure of the seated Virgin, seen from the side, is a direct quotation from Vanni’s various versions: Pinacoteca, Siena; and Santa Margherita, Cortona (1602); see Marciari and Verstegen, “New Reattributed Painting by Francesco Vanni in Malta.”
46. Melasecchi and Pepper, “Guido Reni, Luca Ciamberlano and the Oratorians,” 596n5.
47. Ibid., 598, 599, 600.
48. D’Onofrio, “Inventario dei dipinti del Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini.”
49. Hibbard, “Notes on Reni’s Chronology.”
50. For these works, see Pepper, Guido Reni, no. 81, fig. 107 (Young Christ and John the Baptist), no. 80, fig. 98 (Saint Francis).
51. Fumaroli, L’École du silence. See further his discussion of the topos of the vita devota common to both Barocci and Reni; Bernini, “La vita devota del pittore Federico Barocci”; Fumaroli, L’École du silence, 217; Spear, ‘Divine’ Guido.
52. For Viviani’s Mater dolorosa and an Imago Pietatis in the Ambrosiana, see Jones, Federico Borromeo, 261–62. The Rest on the Return from Egypt was acquired sometime between mid-1611 and mid-1618 (when two inventories were taken); at the same time Borromeo also continued to show interest in Francesco Vanni.