Carlo Maratta
(1625 - 1713) |
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Secular Narratives, Portraiture, Art Work
| Name: |
Carlo Maratta |
| Gender: |
Male |
| Place of Birth: |
Camerino |
| Nationality: |
Italian |
| Birth: |
1625 |
| Death: |
1713 |
| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
Secular Narratives, Portraiture, |
| Medium: |
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| Method: |
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| Style: |
Italian High Baroque |
| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Painting
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Biography
| Acclaimed as the greatest living artist during the second half of the seventeenth century, Maratta carried forward the grand manner of painting which Rubens had developed during the early part of the century, and which Pietro da Cortona and Andrea Sacchi had advanced in Italy. Maratta forms an important link between the art of the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. His approach, in which sentiment is always tempered by rationality, found many adherents, particularly in eighteenth-century France. In many respects it was Maratta's popularity in his own age which has resulted in the decline of his reputation in modern times. The artificial and contrived world of official baroque painting remains too rarified to be generally appreciated. However, within his milieu, Maratta justly deserved his reputation. His paintings admirably filled their function as religious or political expressions of their era. His spontaneous and vivid painterly style, his superb draftsmanship, and his large body of paintings deserve to be more fully appreciated. A precocious talent, Maratta was already studying with his half-brother Bernabo at age eleven. Together they traveled to Rome. There Maratta joined Andrea Sacchi's studio, remaining with him until his death in 1661. Sacchi's chief assistant and collaborator, Maratta was also his artistic heir, striving to achieve a pictorial style that is both decorative and grand, monumental and graceful. An intensive study of Reni, Albani, Titian, Lanfranco, Pietro da Cortona, Raphael, and Correggio helped shape his style. Except for travels to the Marches before 1650 and ca. 1672, Maratta worked in Rome. The "grand manner" of painting he promoted ultimately became associated with the vast decorative programs of Louis XIV in France. By 1646 Maratta was serving private clients such as John Evelyn. He made his public debut in 1650 with an altarpiece of The Adoration of the Shepherds for the church of S. Giuseppe dei Falegnani, Rome, where it remains. His public success was immediate and long-lasting. Painter to six Popes, Maratta was patronized by the elite from Rome and abroad. Among his patrons was the Florentine Paolo Francesco Falconieri, who was one of the first to collect biblical and mythological easel pictures from the artist. Maratta later succeeded Bernini as the pre-eminent Italian artist of his day. After becoming principe of the Accademia di San Luca in 1664, he was honored as principeperpetuo in 1701, His career spanned five decades, during which easel pictures, portraits, engravings, drawings, and decorative mural cycles were produced in prodigious numbers. No matter how simple or complex his images were, they always permit isolated areas of focus, a device which quickly engages and orients the viewer, providing access to the picture and its organization. The individual figures constituting an image can always be clearly read and are endowed with equal measures of grace and dignity. Maratta's close friendship with the biographer and critic Bellori and his association with Sacchi, with whom Poussin* was also friendly, resulted in a generally classical orientation during Maratta's early career. His figures were generalized and idealized, his color controlled by emphatic line and contour, his compositions stable and calm. Yet Maratta's style, like that of many other baroque painters, cannot be simply categorized as classical or baroque. Maratta painted to suit the location, purpose, and subject of his commission. After 1650 to the early 1660s, Maratta enjoyed numerous important commissions in which his style varied subtly, at times more rigidly classical, at other times quite deliberately baroque. His frescoes for the Church of S. Isidoro Agricola in Rome (Flight into Egypt and Nativity painted for the Capella di S. Giuseppe between 1653 and 1655) show him casting a long look at Lanfranco in order to structure his compositions. His St. Rosalia among the Plague Victims (dated 1660, Florence, Galleria Corisini), painted for the Barberini family, has similar compositional devices. His St. Augustine with the Child (dated ca. 1665, Rome, S. Maria dei Sette Dolori), wherein he successfully juxtaposes a massive, standing dark saint who looms like an apparition over the small, nude, delicately sunlit, reclining Christ Child, reveals his diversity and imagination. Despite the calculated deliberation of this painting, its impact remains fresh, spontaneous, and captivating. Drawn toward the delicacy of Correggio and the decorative grace of Pietro da Cortona, Maratta incorporated elements of their approaches into his mature style, which developed in the mid-1660s. His Immaculate Conception, painted between 1665 and 1671 for S. Agostino, Siena, demonstrates his mature style. Successive tiers of saints lead the eye toward the brightly lit, massive yet graceful figure of the Madonna, who occupies the upper third of this large canvas. Zigzagging diagonals interlock the bold, movemented masses, knitting the composition together while retaining the integrity of the individual components. This balance between energetic movement and harmonious, clearly read compositions remained a characteristic of his work throughout his life. Other important commissions from this period include St. Bernard and Victor IV, painted 1656-58 for S. Croce in Gcrusalemme, Rome, and Augustus Making a Sacrifice to Peace (dated 1661, Lille, Musee des Beaux- Arts), painted for Louis XIVs secretary of state. Secular subjects such as Summer (dated 1659, Ariccia, Palazzo Chigi) began to crop up and became more numerous during the later part of his career. A rival of the Genoese painter Gaulli (Baciccio),* whom Bernini was promoting in Rome during the 1670s, Maratta had attained a stature and a style which, according to many scholars, made it impossible for artists to emulate Gaulli. As Baciccio was painting his masterpiece, the Adoration of the Name of Jesus for the ceiling of the nave of the Gesu, Maratta was painting The Clemency of Pope Clement X for the salon of the Palazzo Altieri. Maratta allowed his figures to float - but not to soar - into infinity, as Baciccio had done in the Gesu; and Maratta did not balance large and small forms within the composition, as Baciccio did. Instead, Maratta created a more earthbound image rooted in logic and occupied by fewer figures and elements. From 1674 to 1679 Maratta was painting his altarpiece depicting the Death of St. Francis Xavier for the church of the Gesu, while Baciccio was executing the same subject as an altarpiece for S. Andrea al Quirinale. Interestingly enough, Maratta here (perhaps inspired by Baciccio's ceiling) contrasted the earthbound and collapsed form of the saint with the airborne angels bearing the saint's departed spirit. Certainly Maratta's work is grand and ceremonial, but it is not without pathos - though, in comparison, Baciccio's interpretation is so mystical it could be called a vision. Orders for altarpieces and decorations continued unabated. One of Maratta's finest paintings from the 1680s is The Virgin and Child between St. Charles Borromeo and St. Ignatius (dated 1685, Rome, S. Maria Vallicella). Here his familiar device of interlocking zigzag diagonals enlivens the otherwise calm, balanced, and symmetrical composition, while the individual figures, particularly the Virgin and angels, are painted with a delicacy and softness that contrasts with their massive forms. Among his secular works are a Birth of Venus (dated 1680, Frascati, Villa Falconieri), an Apollo and Daphne (Brussels, Mus6e d'Art Ancien), and a Romulus and Remus (dated 1692, Potsdam, Sans-Souci). Besides his decorative programs and altarpieces, Maratta was a gifted portraitist. His Portrait of Clement IX (Vatican City, Pinacoteca Vaticana) is a masterpiece of insight and ceremony, other notable portraits include that of Alderano Cybo (Marseille, Musee des Beaux-Arts). Candid, selfassured, and dignified, Cybo, like Clement IV, is presented in a manner that clearly influenced the French portrait painters of the early eighteenth century. An excellent draftsman, Maratta left behind a huge body of drawings, of which many are preserved in the S. Fernando Academy of Madrid and the Kunstmuseum, Dusseldorf. |
Samples of Work
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