Wednesday 22 May 2013

Week 5: The Pinacoteca or Picture Gallery



The First Pinacoteca of Pius VI. 

Although paintings have been visible in the Vatican, on its walls, ceilings, and on supports in rooms, the actual Pinacoteca, only opened to the public in 1932. [1] It was formed under four popes Pius VI (1775-99), Pius VII (1800- 1823), Pius X (1903-14), and Pius XI (1922-39). The first Pinacoteca was created by Pius VI in a room now known as the Galleria degli Arazzi (Gallery of Tapestries). The space then was made up of three large rooms and Pius VI ordered that a vaulted ceiling be made and embellished. At this point in time the collection consisted of 118 paintings, “of varying provenance.”[2] Three of these that have already been shown (two martyrdoms by Poussin and Valentin; Sacchi’s Mass of St Gregory) were removed from St Peter’s for reasons of conservation- these three were replaced by mosaics. Paintings by Guido Reni, Guercino, Barocci’s Rest on the Flight into Egypt, and a group of flower pictures by Seghers were also exhibited at this time. The works shown in Pius VI’s gallery were only of the sixteenth, seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. According to Mancinelli, pictures of the Byzantine era, the early renaissance, the so-called “primitives,” were out of favour and were kept out of the show. This seems a strange decision as these types of works had already been deposited in the Museo Sacro of the library.[3] Moreover, most of the invective directed at the “primitives” was the result of anti-papist sentiment in Anglo-Saxon cultures, with artists like Fra Angelico accused of a “monkish asceticism,” attitudes hardly to be have been held by the Vatican.[4] This gallery had a short existence as many of its works were ceded under the terms of the Treaty of Tolentino to the French in 1797. As a result of this, and also to give more space to the sculpture collection, the first Pinacoteca was closed down in 1802 and its works dispersed.[5] After Napoleon fell negotiations orchestrated by Antonio Canova and Gaetani Marino secured a number of works for return to Rome. As per the wishes of the Allies’ it was decided not to return the most important works to their place of origin, but to display them in a group, as they were shown in Paris. So the new Pinacoteca opened in 1817, in the six rooms of the Borgia Apartment (above) included 26 works returned from Paris. These included Raphael’s Transfiguration, paintings by Perugino, Reni and Guercino; two predella panels by Fra Angelico, Barocci’s Blessed Michelina and Annunciation; and a Pieta by Giovanni Bellini. To this were added paintings from the Palazzo del Quirinale, Capitoline collections, and Papal apartments, e.g., Titian’s Madonna in Glory, from Venice, and two Veroneses- St Helena and an Allegory.     
  
The Second Pinacoteca of Pius VII. 

Pius VII’s Pinacoteca contained only 44 pictures, “but all of the highest quality.”[6] A catalogue of 1821 tells us that in the first room, the Sala dei Pontefici, three works of the sixteenth-century, and two of the seventeenth, stylistically dissimilar to each other: Raphael’s Transfiguration; Guilio Romano’s cartoon for the Martyrdom of St Stephen, and the paintings mentioned above by Poussin, Valentin and Titian. The second room, the Sala dei Misteri, was even more variegated betraying the lack of any organizational principle. This room boasted the two predella panels by Fra Angelico, Caravaggio’s Deposition, Sacchi’s St Romauld, the Aldobrandini Wedding (a Roman wall painting acquired by Pius VII in 1818) and five other examples of ancient painting discovered recently in excavations in Rome. Despite the upheavals in the Vatican, Pius VII’s Pinacoteca seems to have stayed intact for most of the nineteenth-century. 

Later Years of the Pinacoteca

In 1870, during the papacy of Gregory XVI, 35 pictures were shown, and during the next pope’s reign, (Pius IX) 42 works were available to view. Throughout this period the Pinacoteca “maintained its character as a collection of masterpieces exhibited for the pleasure of the pope.” [7] By 1822, the Pinacoteca had been transferred from the Borgia Apartment (badly lit) to rooms on third floor of the Logge of Gregory XIII. With the coming of a new pope, Gregory XVI, the collection was enhanced by the addition of Guercino’s St John the Baptist and Carlo Crivelli’s Dead Christ. Leonardo’s St Jerome (from the sale of Cardinal Fesch’s     collection) was a latecomer in 1857. Under Pius IX, works by Guercino, Sossoferato, Moretto, and Ribera arrived, and two by Murillo, the Adoration of the Shepherds and San Pedro Arbues, presented by members of the Spanish royal family. Due to the rooms being unsuitable (bad light, uneasy access, too small), the Pinacoteca was moved again under Pius X. The collection was then organized rationally, more scholarly criteria was applied, and the collection substantially increased with 227 works displayed. With conservation in mind, the Pinacoteca was moved to a series of rooms under the library on the ground floor of the building to the west of the Belvedere court. The space consisted of an entrance area, seven galleries and a storeroom. These were vaulted rooms with stuccoed ceilings, walls covered with fabric, windows curtained and a heating system. The organization of the Pinacoteca became the responsibility of the painter Ludovico Seitz (1844-1908) and Professor Pietro D’ Achiardi compiled the first catalogue of the collection. In 1909 Byzantine icons were added from the Museo Sacro, and a collection of so-called “Primitives” including artists like Gentile d Fabriano. The collection was transferred to its present location during the pontificate of Pius XI.




1)      Margaritone d'Arezzo, St Francis of Assisi, c. 1270-80, tempera on panel, height 50 “ (127 cm), width 21 ¼ (53.9 cm).  Condition: Thought to be the earliest work in the Pinacoteca of Pius X when it was transferred in 1909 from the Vatican Library. In 1965 it was restored using “strictly conservative techniques.” (Mancinelli). During restoration it was found that dark red band (at bottom) and background had been re-painted. Hood’s once pointed tip has been abraded, and become rounder. Provenance: not known. Subject and Iconography: Usual representation of the saint; broken inscription at bottom thought to be artist’s signature. M “created a prototype with the single, isolated figure of St Francis” which may have ensured his posthumous fame. (Mancinelli). Critical fortunes: Little is known of Margaritone's life. The only documentary record of his existence dates from 1262, when he lived in Arezzo. However, a fair number of his works are known to survive; unusually for the time, most are signed. Their nature and distribution indicate that Margaritone was much in demand as an artist, both in Arezzo and throughout Tuscany. Outside Italy, his fame rests mainly on his entry in Giorgio Vasari's The Lives of the Artists.

2)      Giotto, The Stefaneschi Triptych (verso), c. 1330, Tempera on panel, 220 x 245 cm. Condition: not known;  original framework and some of the predella panels have been lost over the years. Provenance: probably originally stood in the old cathedral of St Peter’s on the canon’s altar in front of the southern triumphal arch wall. (von Hagen). Linked with Cardinal Stefaneschi, in office under Boniface VIII.

3)      Detail: Cardinal Stefaneschi.

4)      Giotto, The Stefaneschi Triptych (recto), c. 1330, Tempera on panel, 220 x 245 cm.

5)      Detail: Christ in Glory.

6)      Detail: Martyrdom of St Peter.

7)      Bernardo Daddi, Madonna and Child, 1335-40, Panel, Pinacoteca, Vatican, tempera on panel, height, 37 ¾, (96 cm), width, 24 “ (61 cm). Condition: In good condition; restored in 1963. Trans to the Pinacoteca from the Vatican Library by Pius V in 1909. In 1969 Pope Paul VI had the work brought to the Sala dei Papi in the Pontifical apartments, where it remains today. Provenance: not known. Subject and Iconography: Madonna half-length, gentle mood, volumetric modelling with restricted palette.  Madonna close to several of Daddi’s works, like the Madonna in the Berenson Coll. Attribution Issues: Berenson attributed it to Daddi though Siren believed it was a workshop production, a “hypothesis contradicted by the high quality of the painting.” (Mancinelli).

8)      Giovanni di Paolo, Lamentation over the Dead Christ, 1430-35, Tempera on wood, 29 x 30 cm. Condition: not known. Provenance: This panel was part of a predella, which consisted of the following panels: the Crucifixion (Lindenau-Museum, Altenburg), Road to the Calvary (Museum of Art, Philadelphia), Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane (Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome), and Lamentation over the Dead Christ (Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome). The fifth element of the predella is missing. The upper registers of the altarpiece are not known.

9)      Gentile di Fabriano, Quaratesi Polyptych: St Nicholas Saves a Storm-tossed Ship, 1425,tempera on panel, height, 11 13/16 (30 cm), width, 24 7/16 (62 cm). Condition: panel restored in 1973 using “strictly conservative techniques.” It no longer has its original dimensions and the “lacunae along the top of the panel follow the pattern of the molding of the original Gothic frame.” Cleaning of the picture “brought to light the curvature of the horizon.” Until 1972 the four panels remained heavily over-painted, with “losses reconstructed in an arbitrary fashion.” “Irresponsible cleaning, presumably with soda and abrasive compounds. (Mancinelli).  Provenance: From the Quaratesi Polyptych painted 2 years before the artist moved to Rome in 1427. Commissioned from Gentile by the Quaratesi family for the principle altar of San Nicolo sopr’ Arno in Florence and was completed in 1425, as a lost inscription noted. In 1830 the polyptych was dismembered; various panels divided between London, Washington and the Vatican. Four panels entered the Vatican collections during the nineteenth-century; trans to the Pinacoteca in 1909.  Subject and Iconography: This was the central panel of the Quaratesi Polyptych and shows St Nicholas – the patron saint of sailors- rescuing a ship at sea. Attribution Issues. Initially questioned, due to the condition of the panels (Grassi). Critical Fortune: admired by Vasari who thought the altarpiece was the greatest of Gentile’s works.

10)   Sano di Pietro, Flight to Egypt, c. 1445, tempera on panel, height, 12 3/8 (31.5 cm), width, 17 ¾ (45 cm). Condition: in good condition despite a scratch and some small losses inpainted with vertical hatching; pentimenti visible in one of the donkey’s hind legs. Cleaned and restored in 1976.Provenance: originally in the Vatican Library, first exhibited in the Pinacoteca in 1909. Provenance is unknown, though it has been suggested, that along with other panels (Met), they formed a predella of a large, lost altarpiece.  Subject and Iconography: conventional save for inclusion of a servant pulling the donkey along. Dating:  date between 1445-50 favoured before a “qualitative decline in the artist’s work occasioned by the level of commercial activity in his shop.” Mancinelli ). Later date favoured by some scholars (E.E. Gardner and Zeri). Attribution Issues: Sano di Pietro first proposed in 1913 (D’Achiardi).

11)   Fra Angelico, The Birth of St Nicholas, his Vocation and the Gift to the Three Maidens, (from the Perugia Triptych). Condition: Panel restored in 1955 the year of the commemorative exhibition. Some very small paint losses, which have been integrated; altered colour along the bottom is a result of the restorations. Provenance: Perugia Altarpiece was pained by Fra Angelico in 1437 for the Chapel of St Nicholas in the church of St Domenico in Perugia; it was probably commissioned under the terms of a will of a former patron, Benedetto Guidalotti (d. 1429.) In 1797 under the terms of the treaty of Tolentino, the entire altarpiece was removed to the Louvre. At the time of the restitution in 1817 this and another panel were placed on display in the new Pinacoteca. After the predella was taken apart, the main panels of the triptych were moved to St Ursula, also in San Domenico. The triptych was temporarily reassembled in 1955, five hundredth anniversary of the painter’s death.  This panel was at the left of the Perugia triptych. Subject and Iconography:

12)   Giovanni Bellini, Pietà, 1471-74, Oil on panel, 106 x 84 cm, Pinacoteca, Vatican.info to be added.

13)   Leonardo da Vinci, St Jerome, c. 1480, Oil on panel, 103 x 75 cm, Pinacoteca, Vatican. Condition: Described in the 1980s as “surface very dirty and covered by a thick layer of discoloured yellow varnish which alters the original palette.” “Numerous re-touchings intended to disguise the damages incurred in the nineteenth-century.” (Mancinelli).  Described in 2011 as “last restored in the early 1990s, with the picture in “fairly good condition.” (Nethersole). J’s head was cut off in the 19th cent and then re-attached. Provenance: not known if commissioned or origin; first recorded in Rome in the collection of Angelica Kaufmann in the early nineteenth-century, then in collection of Cardinal Fesch. Probably Pius IX the first to exhibit it in the Pinacoteca in 1857. Dating: can’t be fitted comfortably into “concluding years of first Florentine period” 1488-9? (Nethersole).  Subject and iconography: iconography conventional, though odd inclusions like the drawing of a church through the cave opening. Also, some debate whether this is meant to be an anatomical model or a standard religious saint. “Almost an anatomical study which recalls the work of Pollaiuolo.” (Mancinelli).  Critical fortune: always admired: shown in three exhibitions: Lucerne, New York (1980s) and London (2011).

14)   Melozzo di Forli, Music-making Angel, 1480-84, fresco, height, 39 ¾ (101 cm), width, 27 ½ (70 cm). Condition: restored in 1982 using “conservative techniques”, and in “fairly good state.” (Mancinelli). Paint losses which date back to the time the fresco was detached from the wall. Right eye of the angel is now “inpainted with vertical hatching” and the previous halo was heavily re-gilded, but only traces of the original gold remain. Re-touchings may be the work of Camucinni.  (Mancinelli).  Provenance: both angels part of the “Ascension of Christ” the apse decoration of the Basilica dei Santi Apostoli painted by Melozzo shortly after the renovation of the church ordered by Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere (the future Julius II) (Muntz). Another candidate for patron was Cardinal Riario (Vasari). Dating. Thought to have been done just after the fresco showing Sixtus IV and his nephews, Riario and Platina, the new papal librarian, 1480. The Ascension remained in place until 1711, when under Clement XI, the apse was destroyed to enlarge the tribune. What remains of the Ascension is in the Quirinale, while the angels reside in the Pinacoteca.

15)   Melozzo di Forli, Triumphant Christ, 1481-83, Fresco transferred to canvas, Palazzo Quirinale, Rome. This picture is a fragment of a monumental fresco executed in the chancel of the church of Santi Apostoli in Rome. The fresco represented the Ascension of Christ. Only 16 fragments of the fresco survived. The central figure of the ascending Christ appears in the middle of clouds and putti, his arms extended, his hair and beard floating in the breeze, his eyes gazing calmly downward.

16)   Perugino, Saint Benedict, 1495-98, Tempera on wood, Pinacoteca, Vatican. Condition: St Ben rec’d the most damage; Flavia in best condition. In 1797 the backgrounds of all the panels were re-painted blue; the blue was removed during a 19th century restoration. There has been subsequent modern restoration done Provenance: High altar for St Pietro in Perugia; Benedictines in 1485. Contradictory evidence about the terms of the contract. Nap had most of the panels brought to France. Central panel of Ascension in a French provincial museum (Nantes and Rouen). Benedict, Placidus and Flavia were returned to Italy in 1816, and Pius VII had them placed among the masterpieces in the Pinacoteca. Altarpiece considered to be totally autograph, with the possible exception of some of the predella panels..

17)   Perugino, Saint Flavia, 1495-98, Tempera on wood, Pinacoteca, Vatican. Flavia definitely influenced the young Raphael. Similar restoration to the St Benedict- restored in 1981. High quality of execution so P’s authorship reassured. According to Benedictine records the saint is Flavia, sister of Placidus, who was a disciple of St Ben. Together with her brothers Flavia was martyred at Messina during a Saracen raid. Iconography: the crown dosen’t fit- she may be Flavius Domitilla, the neice of Vespasian, or St Catherine of Alexandria.

18)   Raphael, Predella from the Oddi Altarpiece (Annunciation and Nativity), oil on panel (poplar), height 15 3/8 (39 cm), width (74 11/16 (190cm). Condition: not known. Not returned to its original site in Perugia, but placed by Pius VII in the Pinacoteca.. Provenance: probably commissioned by Allesandro Oddi, rather than Maddalena Oddi. Style notes: probably the first collaboration between Raphael and Perugino, though the recent Raphael exhibition had some scholars arguing against Raphael as Perugino’s apprentice. Some of the heads show some resemblance to the heads in Perugino’s paintings in the Pinacoteca

19)   Raphael, Theological Virtues, 1507, Oil on wood, 16 x 44 cm (each), Pinacoteca, Vatican. Condition: Provenance: commissioned by Atalanta Baglione for the altar of her family in the church of San Francesco in Perugia. Raphael probably received the commission in 1506- he signed and dated the principal panel for that year. Originally the altarpiece was composed of a central panel with the Deposition (Galleria Borghese, Rome), a pinnacle representing God with Angels (National Museum, Umbria), and this predella in the Vatican.  Remained in the Vatican until annexed by the French in 1797; returned in 1816 under the restitution of Pius VII. It entered the re-furbished Pinacoteca thus “complementing the group of Raphael’s works acquired by the Braschi pope, Pius VI.” Mancinelli . Attribution Issues. Executed by R with studio assistance (Ragghianti); Pinnacle painted by Domenico Alfani after Raphael’s design (Dussler); but generally accepted as by Raphael’s hand.

20)   Detail: Faith. Executed in grisaille; winged putti carry inscriptions with Greek monograms.

21)   Carlo Crivelli, Pietà, 1430, Oil on wood, Pinacoteca, Vatican. The painting was composed as a lunette. In spite of the ornate Renaissance architectural elements, the representation is basically Gothic.

22)   Paolo Veronese, The Vision of St Helena, c. 1580, Oil on canvas, 166 x 134 cm, Pinacoteca, Vatican. Condition: good; cleaned in 1982. Provenance: Benedict XIV (1740-58) acq it from the Pio di Carpi family, and Pius VII place it in the Pinacoteca about 18 21, where it has remained. Subject and Iconography: St Helena having either a dream or a vision. She wears a crown and a sumptuous dress under a cloak fastened with a brooch, at the centre of which is a cameo with a cupid.  A winged putto holds up the cross, a symbol or manifestation of the vision, that guided her to the place where it was buried. Compare with St Helena in NG; source for that probably an engraving by MAR. Iconography here is not typical of Venice (Gould). Here it is held up and is not above the saint.

23)   Barocci, The Annunciation, 1582-84, oil on canvas, 248 x 170 cm. Condition. Not known, but because damage caused on its journey to Paris, the panel placed on a cloth base, but since this proved too light in weight, it became necessary to transfer it onto a stronger canvas. Provenance: Barocci painted this Annunciation for the chapel of his patron, Francesco Maria II della Rovere, duke of Urbino, in the Basilica of Loreto between the years 1582 and 1584. In 1797 the altarpiece was seized by French troops and transferred to Paris, where it remained until 1815. Probably because of Many copies of the painting are known to exist, they were produced by re-utilization of the same preparatory drawing, either by Barocci himself or by his workshop.

24)   Girolamo Muziano, St Jerome, c. 1585-92, oil on panel, transferred to canvas, height 57 7/8 (147 cm), width 38 8/16 (98 cm). Condition: good; restored in 1981-2. Provenance: Church of Santa, Marta, behind St Peter’s Basilica. St Marta built in 1538 during the pontificate of Paul III. Muziano’s painting decorated the altar of the second chapel. The St Jerome was saved in 1930 when the church was demolished- because “it no longer had a reason to exist.” Subject and iconography. St Jerome in prayer before a crucifix ; in his right hand he grasps a rock; other attributes include his lion and cardinal’s hat.  Attribution issues: never really doubted; questioned in the past (design att to Dan da Volterra). Style notes. Figure close to Michelangelo, a tendency datable to just after M’s arrival in Rome where he was one of the founders of the Acc di San Luca. “Limited colour range, contributes to the sculptural effect” and “the skilful use of glazes recalls the artist’s Venetian origins.” (Mancinelli).  Critical fortune: never really appreciated by scholars; this altarpiece never really attracted interest despite its high quality; only once mentioned in monograph in 1930 (Ugo di Corno).Despite high ranking in seicento Rome, M has suffered because of the prejudice of modern art historians towards the mannerist and baroque (Marciari).

25)   Guercino, Magdalen and Two Angels, 1622, Oil on canvas, 222 x 200 cm. Condition: restored in 1982; background slightly abraded, and dark colours damaged in an earlier over cleaning. Restored by Camuccini at the Quirinale.  Provenance: painted for high altar of a church in Rome dedicated to MM. Dating: work should be dated 1622 when it was engraved by another artist. (Mahon). Or 1623 when it was reg by G’s brother (Porcello)- though maybe subsequent payment. Possibly Cardinal Aldobrandini comm it. After the church it went to the Quirinale, then later to the Pinacoteca under Pius VII in 1821. Subject and iconography. G shows the meeting of MM and the angels at the empty sepulchre of Christ, based on Gospel of John. Subject given a “moralistic Pre-Tridentine interpretation” based on Passeri’s description (Mancinelli). This observed that G painted MM repenting her vanities, lamenting her errors and crouching on the ground. Saint seen as “role model” for the convent woman (Treffers). Style notes: close in style to G’s pre-Roman paintings. Effect close to a “bas-relief against a background.” (Mahon). Critical fortune: much admired; exhibitions in New York (1980s) and London (2000).

26)   Unknown Painter, The Dormition of the Mother of God, 1590s, Tempera on wood with gold leaf, 37 x 29 cm. Condition: not known. Provenance: not known. Subject and Iconography: Scheme of the Dormition was formed in Byzantium in the course of the ninth and tenth centuries. The present icon shows Christ in glory, escorted by candle-bearing angels, within a mandorla surmounted by a seraph with flaming wings. Bearing in his arms the soul of his mother in the form of a new-born infant in swaddling clothes, Christ prepares to take her with him into the glory of heaven. Around the recumbent Virgin on her deathbed below are gathered the apostles. Two small angels fly down from above and join in the general lamentation; their faces, bathed in tears, are buried in their hands, covered in turn by their mantles as a mark of veneration.

27)   Unknown Bulgarian Icon Painter, (4th Quarter, 17th Century), The Resurrection of Christ, 1675-1700, Tempera on linen and wood, 24 x 18 cm. Condition: not known. Provenance: not known. Subject and Iconography: the central idea of this image, whose eastern Christian iconography can be traced back to the high middle ages, consists in the representation of the Savior's triumph over death and over the evil forces of Satan, as celebrated in the Easter troparion of the Byzantine liturgy: "Christ is risen from the dead, by his death he has vanquished death, and to those who were in their tombs he has given life."The present icon represents, at the centre, Christ in glory, resplendent in a burst of golden light. He is placed within an azure mandorla, graduated in tone and hatched with golden rays. Treading upon the gates of hell, which have been thrown off their hinges and flung to the ground, Christ is flanked by two groups of personages: they are the Just of the Old Covenant, prominent among whom are the figures of King David (with the crown), Moses, and Saint John the Baptist. In the persons of Adam and Eve, rising from their tombs in the form of sarcophagi, the whole of humanity is here being won and redeemed. Based on its characteristics this icon may be related to the Byzantine school of Veliko Tarnova of the late seventeenth century.

28)   Caravaggio, The Deposition, aka the Entombment, 1604, oil on canvas, height, 118 1/8 (300 cm), width, 79 13/16 (203 cm). Condition: Restored in 1982. Provenance: commissioned by the Vittrici family, probably towards the end of 1601, for the Chiesa Nuova (Santa Maria in Vallicella) in Rome. Patron probably a nephew of Pietro Vittrici, previously Master of the Household to Pope Gregory XIII, and who had purchased the chapel in 1577. Records show that the painting was finished by Sep 6, 1604. Painting remained in the Vittrici Chapel until 1797, when it was sent to Paris. It was replaced with a copy by Vincent Camucinni. Origianl returned to Rome in 1817 and installed in the new Pinacoteca of Pius VII. At the same time Camuccini’s copy was replaced with one by Michael Köck, which remains in the church. Dating: scholars disputatious; begun 1602, and finished 1604 (Marini).Subject and Iconography: irregularities: Pieta? Tomb? Slab could refer to cornerstone of the church. Some figures not present according to the Gospel.  Seems to owe much to Raphael’s Entombment, Peterzano’s version and Michelangelo’s Pieta. Critical fortune: universally admired; exhibited in Lucerne in 1948. Said to be Caravaggio’s “greatest work” (Baglione).

29)   Guiseppe Maria Crespi, The Holy Family, c. 1735-40, oil on canvas, height 23 ¼ (59 cm), width, 17 5/16 (44 cm). Condition: Restored in 1982; “in a previous cleaning the surface was abraded and the fingers of the Madonna’s right hand severely damaged.”. (Mancinelli). Provenance: From the collection of the Cherubini-Menchetti family who may have given it to Pius XI in 1923, at the time they were ennobled by the pope. First exhibited in the seventeenth-century room of the Pinacoteca in 1924-5. Subject and Iconography: Holy family theme used by Crespi between 1720 and 1740. X-rays taken during the restoration show a different composition was intended. In the finished version Joseph holds a cane, but in the previous version he lifted up the Madonna’s veil, probably to show her weeping face.

 week 5 images on skydrive here. 



[1] See Fabrizio Mancinelli, Art Of the Papal Collections, (ex cat., Met, NY) 131-3.
[2] Ibid, 131.
[3] Ibid.
[4] The topic of “primitives” and taste is discussed by Francis Haskell in Rediscoveries in Art: Some aspects of taste, fashion and collecting in England and France (Phaidon, 1976) 91ff.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Mancinelli, Art Of the Papal Collections, 131.
[7] Ibid, 132.
[8] Various, Raphael: Cartoons and Tapestries for the Sistine Chapel (ex cat., Victoria and Albert Museum, 2010).

Wednesday 8 May 2013

Week 4: From Neoclassicism to Napoleon



Commotions and Collections in 18th Century Rome. 

In their indispensable Taste and the Antique, Haskell and Penny were mainly “concerned with the creation, the diffusion and the eventual dissolution of a “canon” of universally admired antique statues.”   Where the Vatican was concerned the “dissolution” of this canon accelerated during the eighteenth century with a number of key developments ranging from the removal of Vatican statues to the Capitoline museums, and on a much audacious scale, the looting of treasures by the Napoleonic armies towards the end of the century. Also, in this century more and more sculpture is dug up, moved around, re-displayed, annexed, bargained for and sold. It is also the century where academic and erudite interests converged as reflected in the capricci or imaginary views of Rome painted by Panini. These kind of works show accurate representations of famous buildings and statues in Rome: the Colosseum, Trajan’s Column, the Laocoön, the Aldobrandini Wedding and many others known to travellers, scholars and antiquarians in 18th Century Rome. 

The Vatican Collections and the Capitoline.


“The first time that I went into the Capitoline Museum I felt a shock of electricity. I do not know how to describe to you the impression made on me by the bringing together of so much richness. This is no longer just a collection: it is the dwelling place of the gods of ancient Rome; the school of the philosophers; a senate composed of the kings of the East. What can I tell you of it? A whole population of statues inhabits the Capitol; it is the great book of antiquarians.”[1]

Today the Capitoline form a complex of museums devoted to art and archaeology in the Piazza del Campadoglio, on top of the Capitoline Hill in Rome. Formed of three buildings surrounding a central trapezoidal piazza, they were part of a plan thought up Michelangelo in 1536 and subsequently executed over the next 400 years. Since Pope Sixtus IV donated a collection of important ancient bronzes to the people of Rome, the Capitoline has amassed a large collection of ancient Roman statues, inscriptions, and other artifacts; this is supplemented by items of medieval and Renaissance art, not to mention collections of jewels, coins, and other items. The museums are owned and operated by the municipality of Rome. One of the reasons the Capitoline museums are full of Vatican sculpture is that Cardinal Albani transferred many of the papal treasures to the municipal museums. In this period many sculptures emerged, or were purchased by the papacy. For example in 1720, Pope Clement XI bought from the Cesi family a group of well-known sculptures including the Weeping Dacia and the Barberini Captives. Later there was a spate of new discoveries: these included the Faun in Antico and Furietti Centaurs dug up in 1736. Other statues originally in the Vatican collections included the Capitoline Flora, excavated in 1744.  

Hadrianic Refinement and the Vatican. 

Cardinal Albani (1692-1779) was known as “restorer in chief of Antiquity.” He employed the formidable antiquarian Winckelmann as his librarian, who eked out a meagre income despite living in the grand surroundings of the Villa Albani. This seat had gardens planned on the Versailles principle, but Albani more probably had in mind Hadrian’s villa (above) which was a retreat in Tivoli from Rome, 18 miles away.[2]   Hadrian was the “best-educated and the most intellectual of all the Roman emperors,” and he was very keen on music and the arts, as well as developing a love of Greek art and culture.”[3] His sculpture gardens in his villa at Tivoli contained “an elaborate sculptural program that reflected Hadrian’s eclectic taste and documented the extent of his travels.”[4] The current site of Hadrian’s villa boasts a canopus, “a long pool meant to stand for the canal that led from Alexandria to the city of Canopus, also in the Nile delta.”[5] It is easy to see how this blend of the erudite and the scenic would have invited comparisons with the sculpture gardens of the renaissance popes. As Haskell and Penny speculate, Hadrian’s villa might even have been considered the equivalent of the sculpture court of Julius II.[6] Renewed interest in Hadrian’s villa certainly inspired the collecting decisions made by the Vatican curators, especially in the Museo Pio-Clementino. Art from the Hadrianic period is very well represented in the Vatican sculpture galleries. These include such works as the Boy with Goose and the Eros of Cintecelle. But perhaps the art that most captures the Hellenistic taste of Hadrian’s time are the Apollo Musagetes and his muses which may have originally adorned the library of a cultured citizen in Hadrian’s time.   

The Museo Pio-Clementino

Clement XIV and Pius VI were the founders of the Museo-Pio Clemetino. Apart from the renewed interest in sculpture in Rome, the creation of the museum probably reflected the religious and political currents of the eighteenth-century.  When Clement dissolved the Jesuit order in 1773, he considered the Counter-Reformation, which had threatened the existence of the Belvedere collection, at an end.[7] Little had been done to the Vatican collections since the reign of Pius V; apart from the accommodation of several gifts, bequests and purchases had been split up into a “Museo Cristiano” and a “Museo Profano” Clement’s project consisted of two major stages: refurbish the ground floor of Innocent VIII’s villa as a museum; the statue court would have a handsome octagonal loggia. A portico was added to the Belvedere courtyard as can be seen in an engraving by Vincenzo Feoli, all of this supervised by the antiquarian Viscounti who was second only to Winckelmann in his knowledge of classical culture.[8] Clement XIV died in 1774, much mocked for his “supposed attachment to paganism” and his purchase of many sculptures. His museum survived for only a short time before it was drastically altered by his successor Pius VI. Clement’s successor Giaangelo Braschi took the name of Pius VI. As treasurer he had been the energy behind Clement’s artistic reforms. Once in power he ruthlessly pulled down Innocent’s Chapel thus destroying frescoes by Mantegna, carefully looked after under Clement. Statues such as the Apollo Belvedere, the Laocoön, the Commodus as Hercules and the Venus Felix were left in the standing court, but other sculptures such as the Tiber and Nile were relocated. 

Napoleon and the Chariot of Triumphal Art. 

 “It was during the campaign of 1794 in the Low Countries that the Revolutionary Administration in Paris first proclaimed the principle that the Louvre, newly established as a public museum, was the rightful home for such masterpieces of art as could be seized from conquered territory- just as the Bibliothéque Nationale and the Jardin des Plantes were to be supplied with books, manuscripts and specimens of natural history. In the vast amount of rhetoric that this decision stimulated it is impossible to disentangle fully the parts played by brutal greed, high-minded idealism and the appeal to antique precedent. A series of committees was set up and with great efficiency and aesthetic discrimination these supervised a form of looting for which no exact legal framework yet existed.”[9]   

Pope Pius IV died in Valance, on the Rhone, as a prisoner of Napoleon, at the age of 82, on August 29th, 1799. Following the agreement made at the Treaty of Tolentino on Feb 19, 1797, the chief works of his museum were to be delivered to the French. On July 27th and 28th 1798 the plundered art was paraded in a ceremony organised like a Roman triumphal procession. When the Museé Napoleon opened in the Louvre on April 10th, 1800, Napoleon insisted on personally affixing an inscription to the base of the statue of the Apollo Belvedere. As Georg Daltrop points out, far from extinguishing the spirit of the museum, it was to burn brighter with the return of many of the statues back to Rome.[10]     

Slides


1)      Gian Paolo Panini, Imaginary gallery of Ancient Roman Art, c. 1755, Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, c. 1755, oil on canvas.

2)      Interior of St Peter's in Rome, 1750s, Oil on canvas, 75 x 100 cm, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.

3)      Panini, Gallery of Views of Ancient Rome, 1758, Oil on canvas, 231 x 303 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

4)      Weeping Dacia, Musei Capitolini, marble height (keystone), 120 m; (panel) 0.75 m, also known as Germania, Conqueror Province, Weeping Province, Woman Weeping, may have originated as the keystone of an arch in Trajan’s forum. In the Cesi sculpture gardens, though not shown by Heemskerck in his views of the gardens between 1532 and 1536. Purchased by Clement XI and two flanking Barbarian prisoners and placed in the courtyard of the Palazzo dei Conservatori in 1719. Always thought to have been a personification of the province Dacia. No evidence that it was specially admired. In the 18th century Dacia increased in fame- appears in Batoni’s portrait of Peter Beckford in 1766, the Duke of Hamilton in 1775, and William Bankes in 1777. Waned in importance towards the end of the 19th century.  

5)      Pompeo Batoni, Portrait of Peter Beckford, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, probably 1760s.

6)      Antinous Bas-Relief, Villa Albani, Rome, marble, height 1.02 m, typical of the productions attached to Hadrian’s court, dated to the years between the death of Antinous (A.D. 130) and Hadrian (A.D. 138). Recorded in an engraving after an engraving by Batoni (1736). It belonged to Cardinal Albani and had been excavated at Hadrian’s Villa. Relief was restored and placed above a chimney piece in a room named after it, on the piano nobile of the Villa Albani, comp by Oct 1762. Taken by the French in 1798 together with other antiquities in the Villa. From the moment of its discovery acclaimed as a masterpiece, sometimes even competing with the Laocoön. Gibbon: “admirably finished, soft well-turned and full of flesh.” Most associated with Winckelmann “less enthusiastic about Antinous’s relation with Hadrian. He believed that the right hand had been restored wrongly and should have held a pair of reins, not a garland of flowers. W considered the A relief that represented the highest peak of art attained under Hadrian. 

7)      Pompeo Batoni, Portrait of a Young Man, 1760-5, Metropolitan Museum of Art, oil on canvas, 7 1/8 x 69 1/4 in. (246.7 x 175.9 cm).

8)      Portrait of Antinous as Bacchus, 130-138 A.D., Rome, Vatican, Museo Pio- Clementino, Hadrianic period.

9)      Anton von Maron, Portrait of Winckelmann, 1768, Schlossmuseum, Weimar, oil on canvas.

10)   View of Villa Albani, Rome.

11)   Canopus at Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli.

12)   Boy with a Goose, Roman, 1st Century A.D., after a Hellenistic Original of the 3rd-2nd century B.C., Pentelic marble, height 33 ½ (85cm). In 1789 this sculpture was restored, replacing the heads of the boy and the goose. The statue had been discovered that year during excavations by the pontifical museums in the “Roma Vecchia” in the villa “Sette Bassi” in the Via Lantina. A small boy tests his strength by by wrapping his arm around a goose, rather resembling a small Hercules. Pliny mentions a similar figure in bronze. Composition in the group of a pyramid. The original work testifies to the genre and pathos of Greek art of the third century BC. The Roman copyist forsook symbolism and genre and opted for function- it was actually a fountain, water piped through a support at the back. The Met’s reading of this as a sculpture for a shrine of healing, perhaps for a small boy is ingenious, but seems optimistic.

13)   Johann Gerog Heck, Iconographic Encyclopaedia of Science, Literature, and Art, 1857.

14)   Eros of Centocelle, Roman, 2nd century A.D., (Hadrianic period), after a Greek original from the early fourth century B.C., marble, height 33 ½ inches (85 cm), Vatican, Museo Pio-Clemetino. Found at Centocelle in the Via Labicana by Gavin Hamilton, from whom Clement XIV acquired the statue in April 1772. Originally he stood upright, most of his weight on his left leg, the right one relaxed, evident from the current condition of the statue. The right hand may have held an arrow. Proportions classic reflecting the influence of Polykleitos, especially in the way the body is slightly closed on the supporting side. May have been based on a bronze original, while the lifelessness of the marble are typical of roman copies of the fourth century. Though Eros appeared in Greek gymnasiums, in Roman times Eros was the God of death, so this may be a tomb sculpture.

15)   Apollo Musagetes, Roman, 2nd century A.D., (Hadrianic period), after a Greek original, marble, height 79 ¼ inches (202.5 cm), Vatican, Museo Pio-Clemetino.  Discovered at the villa of Cassius at Tivoli, along with eight statues of the Muses. Some restorations, but the head has been part of the sculpture since antiquity. On the arm of the kithara is a relief of Marsyas. Though conceived along Greek lines, the restraint of the drapery is typical of Hadrian’s time. Not seated like the muses, so maybe created as a single figure, and placed next to them afterwards.

16)   Seated Muse, Calliope, Roman, 2nd century A.D., (Hadrianic period), after a Greek original, Pentelic marble, height 50 13/16 (129 cm), Vatican, Museo Pio-Clemetino. Head not the original. Writing tablet in left hand identifies her as Calliope, the Muse of heroic poetry, the epic and the elegy. Her right hand probably originally held a stylus, and she leaned on her right arm. Despite the meditative attitude the pose is natural, as are the deep modelling of the drapery.

17)   Pierini da Vinci, Cosimo I as Patron of Pisa, 1549, Marble, 73 x 160 cm, Musei Vaticani, Vatican.  Until 1981, this relief was set into the south wall of the Galleria delle Statue of the MPC, which once served as the principal wing of the Palazzetto of the Belvedere of Innocent VIII, on the site of the chapel decorated by Mantegna. The relief depicts Cosimo I de Medici, of Tuscany surrounded by personifications of his virtues, expelling from Pisa the many vices. The scene represents Cosimo’s founding of the new university of Pisa in 1542-3. The likeliest reason for the inclusion of Pierino’s relief in the MPC- the only renaissance sculpture in the museum- was to draw a comparison with the sculpture of antiquity.

18)   Furietti Centaurs, Rome, Musei Capitolini, height (young centaur): 1.56 m; (old centaur): 1.34, thought to be copies commissioned by Hadrian of earlier original bronzes from the Eastern Mediterrean. The sculptures were found together at Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli by Monsignor Giuseppe Alessandro Furietti in December 1736; they were the outstanding pieces of his collection of antiquities, which he refused to give to Pope Benedict XIV— at the cost of a cardinal's hat. Furietti was eventually created cardinal priest, by Pope Clement XIII in the consistory of 24 September 1759. After the cardinal's death, his heirs sold the centaurs and the Furietti mosaic of four drinking doves for 14,000 scudi, and they have been in the Capitoline Museum ever since. Both statues bear the signatures of Aristeas and Papias of Aphrodisias, a city in Asia Minor— we cannot be certain about the exact relationship of the signatures to the sculptures, whether as originators of the model or sculptors of these versions. Where the sculptures were produced is not sure either: whether in Aphrodisias, or whether the artists, of whom nothing else is known, had come from there to Rome. To judge by the stylistic date these Hadrianic copies will date to the late 1st or early 2nd century AD. They are generally assumed to be copies of 2nd century BC bronze[4] Hellenistic originals, though recent critical study, notably by Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway, suggests that many sculptural types usually thought to be Hellenistic are in fact Roman pastiches or inventions.

19)   Raphael Anton Mengs, Portrait of Pope Clement XIII, 1758, Oil on canvas, Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice.

20)   Faun in Rosso Antico, Rome, Musei Capitolini, height: 1.68 m, copy of a work possibly made in the workshops of Aristeas and Papias (authors of the Furietti Centaurs). Most sources are satisfied that this was found at Hadrian’s villain 1738. It was given to the Capitoline museum by Benedict XIV in 1746. In 1817 it was placed in a room specially named after it. Reputation of the Faun was partially dependent on the much admired variety of close-grained dark red marble out of which it was made. Travellers were also enthusiastic about the carving. Against that note that Winckelmann does not mention it, nor did the French remove the statue to Paris.

21)   Raphael Anton Mengs, Allegory of the Pio Clementino Museum, 1772, fresco, Vatican Library, 1772.

22)   Domenico di Angelis, Pope Pius VI guides the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus to the Museo Pio-Clementino in 1784.

23)   Vincenzo Feoli, Belvedere Courtyard of Museo Pio-Clementino, engraving, c. 1769.

24)   Venus Felix, Rome, Musei Vaticani (Belvedere Courtyard), marble, height: 2.14 m, regarded as an Imperial portrait, probably of the second half of the second century, perhaps of the younger Faustina. Recorded in the papal collections by 1509, and described in the Belvedere courtyard in 1523. Its site may have been Santa Croce. Group esteemed by visitors to the Belvedere gallery in the 16th century, illustrated by Perrier among the most admired statues in Rome. It seemed to have declined in popularity and neither Winckleman or Visconti expressed any enthusiasm for the statue, and significantly its broken arm was not repaired during the establishment of the Museu Pio-Clementino. The French didn’t want it.

25)   Pudicity, Rome, Musei Vaticani, (Braccio Nuovo), marble, height, 2.09 m, also known as Faustina, Livia, Melpomene, Sabina, thought to be a portrait of the late first century A.D.. First in the Mattei collection; sold to Clement XIV in 1770. Originally in MPC, but moved to Braccio Nuovo in the mid nineteenth-century. Winckelmann believed it was a statue of LIvia, though he probably didn’t like the statue. Despite the statue’s fame it does not seem to have been much copied, partly because it was considered a portrait. By the end of the 19th century scholars realised that the draperies and attitude of the Pudicity originated in sepulchral sculptures in Asia Minor in the second century BC. 

26)   Portrait of Augustus as Imperator, from the villa of Livia at Primaporta, Rome, Braccio Nuovo, Tiberian copy of A.D. 15 of an Augustan original of 20 B.C. The dating of the Prima Porta piece is widely contested. It is thought to be a copy of a bronze original.[1] The sculptor may have been Greek.[2] This original, along with other high honors, was devoted to Augustus by the Senate in 20 BC and set up in a public place. It was found in his wife's villa.It is also contested that this particular sculpture is a reworking of a bronze original, possibly a gift from Tiberius Caesar to his mother Livia (since it was found in her villa Ad Gallinas Albas[3] in the vicinity of the ninth mile-marker of the via Flaminia, and close to a late Imperial gate called Prima Porta) after Augustus' death and in honor of the woman who had campaigned so long for him to become the next Caesar. This would explain the divine references to Augustus in the piece, notably his being barefoot, the standard representation of gods or heroes in classical iconography. Also, the reliefs in the heroic cuirass depict the retrieval of Crassus' standards captured by the Parthians, an event in which the young Tiberius himself took a part, serving as intermediary with the Parthian king, in the act that is shown in the central scene of the armor, possibly his grandest service to his adopted father Augustus. With the introduction of Tiberius as the figure responsible for the retrieval of the standards, he associates himself with Augustus, the emperor and the new god, as Augustus himself had done previously with Julius Caesar. Under this hypothesis, the dating of the statue can be placed during the first years of Tiberius' reign as emperor (AD 14 — AD 37).

27)   Unknown Artist, Apollo Belvedere shown by Napoleon to visitors to his new museum of the French Empire in Paris, 1897.





Week 4 skydrive images available here.





[1] Comte de Caylus, quoted in Haskell and Penny, 64.
[2] Francis Haskell, History and its Images, 352.
[3] Diana E.E. Kleiner, Roman Art (Yale, 1992), 237.
[4] Kleiner, Roman Art, 244.
[5] Kleiner, Roman Art,246.
[6] Haskell and Penny, Taste and the Antique,
[7] Art of the Papal Collections, Met exhibition, 116.
[8] Haskell and Penny, Taste and the Antique, 71.
[9] Haskell and Penny, Taste and the Antique, 108.
[10] Daltrop, Art of the Papal Collections, 119.