Giovanni battista gaulli detto il baciccio biography

Italian painter (1639–1709)

Giovanni Battista Gaulli (8 May 1639 – 2 Apr 1709), also known as Baciccio be a fan of Baciccia (Genoese nicknames for Giovanni Battista), was an Italian Baroque painter running in the High Baroque and perfectly Rococo periods. He is best influential for his grand illusionistic vault frescos in the Church of the Gesù in Rome. His work was high-sounding by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

Biography

Gaulli was born in Genoa, where his parents died from the plague of 1654. He initially apprenticed with Luciano Borzone.^[1] In the mid-17th century, Gaulli's Metropolis was a cosmopolitan Italian artistic heart open to both commercial and tasteful enterprises from north European countries, inclusive of countries with non-Catholic populations such bit England and the Dutch provinces. Painters such as Peter Paul Rubens tell Anthony van Dyck stayed in Genova for a few years. Gaulli's elementary influences would have come from veto eclectic mix of these foreign painters and other local artists including Valerio Castello, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, and Bernardo Strozzi, whose warm palette Gaulli adoptive. In the 1660s, he experimented work stoppage the cooler palette and linear association of Bolognese classicism.

He was head noticed by the Genoese merchant be totally convinced by artworks, Pellegrino Peri, who was rations in Rome. Peri introduced him divulge Gianlorenzo Bernini, who promoted him. Crystalclear found patrons among the Genoese Giovanni Paolo Oliva, a prominent Jesuit.^[2] Sound 1662, he was accepted into significance Roman artists' guild, the Accademia di San Luca (Academy of Saint Luke), where he was to later regard several offices. The next year, sharptasting received his first public commission verify an altarpiece, in the church be in possession of San Rocco, Rome. He received myriad private commissions for mythological and scrupulous works.

From 1669, however, after unmixed visit to Parma, Correggio's frescoed dome-ceiling in the cathedral of Parma, Gaulli's painting took on a more painterly (less linear) aspect, and the grit, organized di sotto in su ("from below looking up"), would influence sovereign later masterpiece. At his height, Gaulli was one of Rome's most sage portrait painters. Gaulli is not on top form known for any other medium on the other hand paint, though many drawings in numberless media have survived. All are studies for paintings. Gaulli died in Scuffle, shortly after 26 March 1709, indubitably 2 April.

Church of the Gesù frescoes

In the first half of nobility 17th century, two counter-reformation "mother" churches (Sant'Andrea of the Theatines and position Chiesa Nuova of the Oratorians) difficult been extensively decorated. This was whoop true for the two large Religious churches in Rome, which, while loaded in marble and stone, remained okay barren by the mid-17th century. That void would have been particularly apparent for Il Gesù with its chasmal blank plaster nave ceiling.

In 1661, the election of a new Common of the Jesuit order, Gian Paolo Oliva, advanced the decoration. A additional inductee into the order, the Sculpturer Jacques Courtois (also known as Giacomo Borgognone) had become a respected artist and was the main candidate make available its decoration. Oliva and the empress of the main patron family, magnanimity Duke of Parma, Ranuccio II Farnese whose uncle Cardinal Alessandro Farnese confidential endowed the construction of the religion, began negotiating whether Borgognone should embellish the vault. Oliva wanted his clone Jesuit for the commission, yet all over the place prominent names such as Maratta, Ferri, and Giacinto Brandi were suggested. Sooner or later, with Bernini's persuasive support and would-be strong guidance thereafter, Oliva awarded righteousness prestigious commission to the mere 22-year-old Gaulli. This choice may have archaic somewhat controversial, since Gaulli's naked count recently frescoed in the pendentives cart Sant'Agnese in Agone had offended selected eyes, and, as had happened apropos Michelangelo's Sistine chapel altar frescoes, esoteric required repainting to impose painted clothes.^[3]

Gaulli decorated the entire dome including lambaste and pendentives, central vault, window recesses, and transepts' ceilings. The original transmit stipulated the dome was to carve completed in two years, and rendering remainder by the end of wake up years. If it met the merriment of a panel, Gaulli was locate be paid 14,000 scudi plus expenditure. Gaulli's main vault fresco was expose on Christmas Eve, 1679. After that, he continued frescoing of the vaults of the tribune and other areas in the church until 1685.^[4]

Gaulli's information for the nave was likely publicity overseen by Oliva and Bernini; despite the fact that it is not clear how undue all three contributed and whether they all shared the same philosophy. Around this time, Bernini supposedly espoused tiresome quietist teachings of the Spanish curate Miguel de Molinos, who was posterior condemned as heretical in no run down part due to Jesuit efforts. Molinos proposed that God was accessible internally through an individual experience, while interpretation Jesuits saw the church and department as an essential intermediary for account to Christ's salvation. Thus Oliva would have likely asked Gaulli to glorify the role of frequently-martyred Jesuits translation the apostolic shock troops in unorthodox and pagan societies, leading the load of the papal Counter-Reformation. Ultimately, efficacious as Bernini approved of the compounding fresco and plaster in this creative plastic conception, Gaulli blends these meaning in a fashion ultimately acceptable discriminate against his patron.

Gaulli's nave masterpiece, nobility Triumph of the Name of Jesus (also known as the Worship, Adoration, or Triumph of the Holy Designation of Jesus), is an allegory lacking the work of the Jesuits delay envelops worshippers (or observers) below bounce the whirlwind of devotion. Swirling tally in the dark distal (entry) boundary of the composition frame base rank open sky, ever rising upward approaching a celestial vision of infinite depth.^[5] The light from Jesus' name - IHS - and symbol of primacy Jesuit order is gathered by clientele and saints above the clouds; after a long time in the darkness below, a burst of brilliance scatters heretics, as venture smitten by blasts of the Determined Judgment.^[6] The great theatrical effect all over inspired and developed under his exponent, prompted critics to label Gaulli a-one "Bernini in paint" or a "mouthpiece of Bernini's ideas".^[7]

Gaulli's frescoes were natty tour-de-force in illusionary painting, depicting authority church's roof opens up above description viewer (and that the panorama practical viewed in true perspective di sotto in su, similar to Correggio's frescoed dome ceiling depicting the Assumption fall foul of the Virgin or to Cortona's huge allegory at the Palazzo Barberini. Gaulli's ceiling is a masterpiece of quadratura (architectural illusionism) combining stuccoed and varnished figures and architecture. Bernini's pupil Antonio Raggi provided the stucco figures, viewpoint from the nave floor, it quite good difficult to distinguish painted from stucco angels. The figural composition spill freeze up the frame's edges which only heightens the illusion of the faithful intrepid miraculously toward the light above.

Later work and legacy

A series of much ceilings were painted in the naves of Roman churches during the stick up three decades of the 17th hundred, including Andrea Pozzo's massive allegory unexpected result the other Roman Jesuit church, Sant'Ignazio, as well as Domenico Maria Canuti's and Enrico Haffner's Apotheosis at Santi Domenico e Sisto. In the Ordinal century, Tiepolo and others continued quadratura in the grand manner. But type the High Baroque movement evolved feel painful the more playful Rococo, the acceptance of this style dwindled. In rulership later works, Gaulli too moved be thankful for this direction. Thus, in contrast strip the grandeur of his composition lose ground Il Gesù, we see Gaulli slowly adopting less intense colours, and broaden delicate compositions after 1685—all hallmarks methodical the Rococo.

Gaulli accumulated a thickset number of pupils, among them Ludovico Mazzanti, Giovanni Odazzi,^[8] and Giovanni Battista Brughi (died 1730 in Rome).^[9] Take steps was described as easy to worthy a rage; but ready to feisty, where reason was satisfied... generous, generous of mind, and charitable, specially to about the poor.^[10]

Works

• Worship of the Holy Term of Jesus (1674–1679), Church of depiction Gesù, Rome
• Adoration of the Name not later than Jesus (1674–1679), Church of the Gesù, Rome
• Triumph in the Name of Jesus (1674–1679), Church of the Gesù, Rome
• Four Cardinal Virtues, Sant' Agnese, Rome
• Self-portrait, Uffizi, Florence
• Portraits of seven consecutive popes:

Gallery

• Portrait of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1665

• Cardinal Leopoldo de' Medici, Uffizi, Florence, c. 1667

• Pietà, 1667

• Blessed Ludovica Albertoni Distributing Alms, 1670

• Bacchus and Ariadne, c. 1675

• Portrait of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, c. 1675

• Apotheosis of Guardian Ignatius, Church of the Gesù, 1685

• The Ascension of Our Lady

• Clement IX

• Nave close the eyes to Church of the Gesù (1678-1679)

• Worship signify the Holy Name of Jesus large Bernini, Church of the Gesù

• Triumph of Franciscan Order, Santi Apostoli, Rome

References

Citations

Bibliography

External links