Franceschini Baldassare Volterrano
(1611 - 1689) |
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Muralist, Secular Narratives, Art Work
| Name: |
Franceschini Baldassare Volterrano |
| Gender: |
Male |
| Place of Birth: |
Volterra |
| Nationality: |
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| Birth: |
1611 |
| Death: |
1689 |
| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
Muralist, Secular Narratives, |
| Medium: |
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| Method: |
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| Style: |
Baroque |
| Fine Art Profession(s): |
1884
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Biography
| Seventeenth-century Florence's most innovative and spirited painter, Volterrano is still too little appreciated. His large murals and his smaller easel pictures have a lightness, grace, and verve rarely found during the seventeenth century, establishing him as an important precursor to the rococo. The son and pupil of a minor sculptor, Gasparo Franceschini, Volterrano gained the sponsorship of the Inghirami family; they arranged for his transfer to Florence at age sixteen, where he studied with the leading painter, Matteo Rosselli. By 1634 he became Giovanni da San Giovanni's assistant on a project to decorate the Sala degli Argento in the Palazzo Pitti. Baldinucci reports that Giovanni da San Giovanni soon broke with Volterrano out of jealousy over his pupil's precocious talent. After Giovanni's premature death in 1636, Volterrano naturally succeeded him as a preferred painter among ecclesiastical and royal patrons in Tuscany. Contact with Pietro da Cortona, trips to Lombardy, the Veneto, Rome, and Parma all had a decided impact on Volterrano, giving him exposure to diverse sources in order to broaden his own style. Correggio was particularly important to him, so much so that Volterrano's contemporary, the biographer Gaburri called him "the Correggio of the Florentines." Although it is not yet the subject of as much attention as his talents merit, Franceschini's career has been fleshed out by the research of the past several decades. Credited to his earliest years are some of the pictures (done while he was still with Giovanni da San Giovanni) in the Palazzo Galli Tassi in Florence. Frescoes of a life-sized young couple and a servant carrying two plates have been attributed to Franceschini, revealing the free brushmarks and freshness that are his hallmark. Using the illusionistic traditions so well established by Veronese, Franceschini brought them up to date, injecting the realism that would be a recurrent theme in some of his domestic decorations. Clearly aware of his abilities, the Medici regularly made use of Volterrano's talents. In 1636 Don Lorenzo commissioned him to execute a series depicting the life of Cosirao I for the Medici Villa La Petraia. Volterrano worked there until 1646, taking time off in 1641 to visit Parma and Venice. The Villa de Petraia frescoes are among Volterrano's most famous early works. Filled with the rich anecdotal details, Volterrano's fresco incorporated a Tuscan realism that began with the Quattrocento. Prince Don Lorenzo also commissioned Volterrano to decorate the Villa Medici di Castello, near Florence. Of his work there, the ceiling fresco Vigilance and Steep already shows the sprightly airborne figures that he would continue to use with such success later on. Other decorations for that villa include an Allegory of Night in the dining room, and a Chariot Race and Hercules and Cacus among other scenes in another room. Around the time his Petraia commission was completed, Volterrano probably executed the image destined to bring him his greatest fame: the Trick of the Pievano Arlotto (Florence, Palazzo Pitti), which portrays the fifteenth-century parson famous for his practical jokes. Using tempera on canvas, Volterrano shows a group gathered around the table suddenly interrupted by the news of Arlotto's trick. As mundane and direct as any Dutch genre scene, Volterrano's is more spontaneous and energetic than even the most rowdy of Jan Steen's boisterous images, yet it has the grace, luminosity, and delicacy that makes it characteristically Volterrano's own. It is undoubtedly one of the freshest paintings done in Italy during the entire century. When Don Lorenzo died in 1648, Volterrano lost his most devoted patron, but the Medici family, Florentine nobles, and regional churches continued to supply commissions. For the ceiling of the Palazzo di San Clemente, he painted St. Martin Giving Away His Cloak. Here his interest lay in creating an airy illusion, in keeping with the location of the image on the ceiling. Thus the saint and beggar are seen from below against a luminous sky; both are convincingly drawn and beautifully composed. At Quinto (near Florence) in the Compagna di San Michele, Volterrano portrayed St. Michael Conquering the Devil, convincingly portraying the devil falling from the sky into the viewer's space. Full of vibrant action and brilliant illusionism, Volterrano's ceiling is a highly original refinement of the advances made by Pietro da Cortona in 1639 with his Barberini ceiling. Volterrano continued to be in demand for his ability to handle both large and small decorative fresco programs. He himself evidently was proudest of his portrayal of Angels Ministering to Christ in the Wilderness (monogrammed and dated 1650, Florence, Depositi delle Galleria Florentine), done for the Convent di S. Teresa in Florence. Executed under the patronage of the Grand Duchess Vittoria della Rovere for the convent's refectory, the fresco shows a gracefully arranged composition in which both mature and childlike angels minister to Christ with tenderness, and with such refinement of movement that the whole scene takes on the feeling of a magical picnic in the park. From 1652 to 1664 he was at work on the decorations in the Niccolini chapel in S. Croce, still acknowledged to be among his finest efforts. Between 1680 and 1683 Volterrano was engaged on the most ambitious of his known fresco decorations, his Coronation of the Virgin produced for the cupola of SS. Annunziata in Florence. Though the work is not quite as brilliant or tightly composed as some of his earlier efforts, the ceiling is nonetheless a triumph, showing a myriad of individual figures in diverse gestures observing the Virgin's triumph at the pinnacle of the cupola. Perhaps because of the scale of the project, or more likely because of its function as a religious work, Volterrano here tempered the lightness of his earlier presentations and endowed the entire image with sobriety, giving his characters a greater sense of psychological and physical gravity than in other examples of his ceiling paintings. Volterrano's smaller-scale frescoes, such as his depiction of Venal Love (Florence, Palazzo Pitti) are masterpieces of vivacious, sensual characterization; they are executed with apparent rapidity and ease. Besides Furini, no other Florentine master produced such frankly erotic pictures, but Volterrano's light-hearted interpretation anticipates the rococo. Quite a different sensibility is evident in Volterano's surviving altarpieces. While many of the facial types and figure types are reminiscent of those found in his fresco paintings, the overall effect is calmer and more ponderous, the figures are given more weight. In St. Louis of France Touching the Scrofulous (Florence, S. Maria Nuova), Volterrano's dependence on Matteo Rosselli is evident. There is an earnest piety, a simple realism made more dramatic by murky, tenebrous lighting. His portrayals of Assumptions (such as the example in Vallombrosa and the Convent of Santa Lucia in Quinto) have none of the fabulous weightlessness and airiness of his frescoes. His most notable altarpiece for his native Volterra was a large Madonna and Child with Saints, commissioned in 1639 and completed in 1655 for the Church of Santa Chiara. Now in the Pinacoteca, the picture was, on the basis of numerous surviving drawings, one of his most carefully worked out endeavors. Besides his frescoes and altarpieces, Volterrano showed himself to best advantage as a portrait painter and painter of similarly conceived allegorical or religious figures. Among the finest surviving examples of his work in this vein are Portrait of a Youth (now in the Stibbert Museum, Florence) and his glorious portrayal oiSanta Cecilia (London, National Gallery). In both these figures Volterrano presented the viewer with a vibrantly executed being possessed of delicate, if elusive, feelings. One senses in these pictures an artist who might have understood Guido Reni's late style. Details of physiognomy (in the case of the portrait) are elucidated, but smoothed into an image which retains a marvelous balance with the overall design. A prodigious draftsman, Volterrano also left behind a considerable body of drawings which establish him as one of the leading masters in the medium. Now scattered worldwide, his drawings and his paintings deserve greater recognition. |
Samples of Work
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