Giovanni Andrea de Manozzi
(1592 - 1636) |
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Secular Narratives, Historic Narratives, Mythological Narratives Art Work
| Name: |
Giovanni Andrea de Manozzi |
| Gender: |
Male |
| Place of Birth: |
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| Nationality: |
Italian |
| Birth: |
1592 |
| Death: |
1636 |
| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
Secular Narratives, Historic Narratives, Mythological Narratives |
| Medium: |
Fresco |
| Method: |
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| Style: |
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| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Painting
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Biography
| One of the most talented painters active in early seventeenth-century Florence, Manozzi is considered a pupil of Matteo Rosselli. His activity was concentrated in Florence and nearby towns, except for two trips to Rome, one in 1623 and again in 1627. His output includes fresco decorations for churches, street tabernacles, palaces, and villas. He is probably unique in experimenting with cabinet-sized fresco pictures of penitent saints and the like. Working as court painter to Cosimo II and Ferdinand II de* Medici, Manozzi would have been one of the most important Florentine artists of the century had he lived beyond his forty-four years. His style has a freshness, a spontaneity and immediacy, as well as a delicacy, which was distinctive in his own time and remains unmatched today. He filled his well-conceived compositions with lively and vivid characters who are appealingly human and often humorous. Among his earliest works are the frescoes depicting a choir of music making angels decorating the cupola of the Church of San Salvatore in Ognissanti, which are thought to be from around 1610 to 1615. His next important surviving commission comes from the Convent of Ognissanti where he frescoed the walls of the grand cloister (1616-19) with scenes from the life of St. Francis. In 1621 he produced one of the works for which he is best known today, and which has been frequently cited as an example of his original and charming narrative style: the frescoes illustrating episodes from the life of the Virgin, which were made for the Capella della Crocetta and in 1788 were transferred and re-installed in the Academia di Belle Arti. Here his use of local landscape, and rustic details from contemporary Florentine life to enliven the narrative, show how imaginatively he handled his subjects. In 1623 Manozzi traveled to Rome with Furini* where he reportedly nearly starved until he began to obtain commissions. Sources vary as to the earliest Roman effort. Baldinucci reports that it was his commission for the depiction of Night, as a counterpart to Reni's* Aurora of 1613-14 in the Palazzo Pallavincini Rospigliosi, which initiated his success. Recent scholarship suggests that the dating of this fresco is difficult, so that Giovanni's commission for scenes from the lives of the "Quattro Coronati" in the church of that name may have preceeded his work in the Palazzo Pallavincini Rospigliosi. Regardless of the answer to that question, Giovanni enjoyed success in Rome. His projects included further decorations depicting the abduction of various mythological heroines for the Palazzo Pallavincini Rospigliosi in 1627. Sometime after 1627, he returned to Florence. Of his later paintings, his Scenes from the Life of S. Catherine of Alexandria (dated 1633, Pistoia, Palazzo Pallavincini Rospigliosi) are considered masterworks. In 1634 he began to work (assisted by Volterrano) on the decoration of the "Sala degli Argenti" in the Palazzo Pitti, which remained unfinished at his death. Furini was called in to complete it. The scene of the Muses on Mount Parnassus, and an allegory on the destruction of time, are accepted as having been done wholly by Giovanni. |
Samples of Work
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