Orazio Gentileschi
(1563 - 1639) |
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frescos, secular narratives Art Work
| Name: |
Orazio Gentileschi |
| Gender: |
Male |
| Place of Birth: |
Pisa, Italy |
| Nationality: |
Italian |
| Birth: |
1563 |
| Death: |
1639 |
| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
frescos, secular narratives |
| Medium: |
oil painting |
| Method: |
oil painting |
| Style: |
Baroque |
| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Painter
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Biography
Perhaps the most original interpreter of Caravaggio, Orazio Gentileschi combined a clear, precise realism with a daringly original sense of design and pose to create some of the finest paintings of the entire seventeenth century. His influence was profound and includes his daughter, Artemisia, a celebrated painter in her own right.
Born in Pisa to the Florentine goldsmith Giovanni Battista Lomi, Orazio first trained with his half brother Aurelio Lomi, a mannerist. That Tuscan orientation toward clearly portrayed, simple figures with earnest expressions described with pure, primary colors was the heritage Orazio brought with him to Rome. His arrival is variously dated between 1576 and 1585, with most scholars fixing the earlier date. Only thirteen years old in that year, Orazio lived with his uncle Gentileschi and took that name. First documented as assisting Cesare Nebbia in the Biblioteca Sistina in the Vatican between 1588 and 1589, Orazio is not known to have worked independently until he was thirty, when we have the frescoes portraying The Circumcision ca. 1593, Rome, Santa Maria Maggiore. Together with the fresco of St. Thaddeus ca. 1600 for the right transept of S. Giovanni in Laterano, The Circumcision frescoes are still rather unremarkable. In fact, Orazio seems to have taken longer than most artists to mature, since modern scholars suggest that he did not really establish himself until around 1605. Painting for clients in Rome and the Marches, the pictures dated to this early period show Orazio shaping his style.
By 1600 Orazio had befriended Caravaggio, whose paintings, particularly St. Catherine of Alexandria and the Repentant Magdalen, became important sources for him in part because they reinforced the realism, restraint, and coloration that he had experienced in Tuscany. But from the first Orazio adapted rather than copied. His Madonna in Glory (ca. 1600, Turin, Santa Maria al Monte, now Museo Civico) already demonstrates his love of contours and edges, his evident concern for design, which would remain his hallmarks even as Caravaggio's figure types and lighting were utilized. By 1603, according to Orazio's testimony during Baglione's* famous lawsuit against Caravaggio, their friendship had ended but Caravaggio's influence had not. During his formative years Orazio likely painted the two versions of St. Francis Supported by an Angel (Rome, Galleria Nazionale, Palazzo Corsini; Madrid, Prado) as well as his exquisitely painted Penitent Magdalen (Fabriano, Santa Maria Maddalena), which show him looking at Elsheimer* and Saraceni* as well as Caravaggio.
By 1604 Orazio was admitted to the Roman Academy and in 1605 he joined the Society dei Virtuosi of the Pantheon; his standing among artists was further assured by his major altarpiece, The Circumcision of Christ, done for the Chiesa del Gesu in Ancona. In this grand composition composed of more full-length figures than, any of his other surviving pictures, Orazio carefully balanced narrative decorum with painstaking realism. When Caravaggio abruptly left Rome in March 1606, it may have left Orazio (among others) freer to emulate his style more closely. Orazio's St. Michael and the Devil (ca. 1605-8, Farnese, San Salvatore) and David Slaying Goliath (ca. 1605-10, Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland) as well as his Christ Crowned with Thorns (ca. 1610-15, Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum) lake many of their principal cues from Caravaggio's models. Yet these too do not copy, but emulate; they show Orazio adopting a preferred format: single figures or pairs, picked out by light against a darker background, caught up in action or engaged in deep contemplation.
Brilliantly evoking a moment in time and giving it a preternatural permanence, Orazio endowed his characters with a palpable yet restrained emotional state brought on by their earlier actions. His David in Contemplation after the Defeat of Goliath (ca. 1610, Rome, Galleria Spada, with a smaller copper version in Berlin, Dahlem Museum, GemSldegalerie) and Judith and Her Maidservant (ca. 1611-12, Hartford, Wadsworth Atheneum) show Orazio rapidly finding his own, highly personal voice among the chorus of Caravaggisti.
Orazio also collaborated with Agostino Tassi, a specialist in architectural painting, on a number of occasions, notably in the papal palace on the Quirinale in 1611 and Scipione Borghese's Casino delle Muse also on the Quirinale, as well as in the loggetta of the Palazzo Rospigliosi at Montecavallo between 1611 and 1612. Tassi's attack on Artemisia Gentileschi and the resulting rape trial, which ended with Tassi's acquittal in 1612, doubtless inspired Orazio's departure from Rome for Fabriano in 1613. Working there until around 1620 Orazio matured, finding his own personal idiom while executing his many commissions. For the Chapel in Fabriano Cathedral he provided frescoes of Scenes from the Passion of Christ as well as several altarpieces including a Crucifixion. For S. Benedetto he painted a Su Charles Borromeo, and for the church of S. Domenico he produced the Madonna of the Rosary. His images were gaining the subtlety, reserve, and monumentality that would place him among the geniuses of his age. Increasingly sensitive to just the right placement of figures so that where they touched would have a delicacy bordering on the mystical, Orazio reached new heights with his Madonna Presenting the Child to Sta. Francesco Romana (ca. 1617-18, Urbino, Palazzo Ducale).
Returning to Rome briefly between 1619 and 1621, Orazio saw his opportunities for commissions diminished by the ascent of Pope Gregory XV from Bologna, whose support was extended to his fellow Emilians, Guercino,* Lanfranco,* and Domenichino.* Orazio thus moved to Genoa, where he was active from 1621 to 1624, working for Giovanni Antonio Sauli and Marcantonio Doria, executing a number of projects most of which have now been lost. He also continued to supply altarpieces to other centers. His Sts. Cecilia, Valerianus, and Tiburtius Visited by the Angel (Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera) was probably painted shortly after his arrival in Genoa for the church of Sta. Cecilia in Como. Its exquisite sensitivity to the spaces between figures and the relations between them argues for a dating around 1621. Shortly thereafter he produced his two marvelous essays on the Annunciation (Genoa, San Sird; Turin, Galleria Sabauda), which are a further exploration of these ideas.
For his private Genoese patrons, Orazio not surprisingly turned to the nude, painting [wo DanaSs (one in a private collection, the other in the Cleveland Museum of Art). Here Orazio's sense of monumentality, directness, and realism removes any trace of eroticism or sensuality, endowing the scenes with the meditative coolness of a religious work. They also show Orazio rethinking the structure of his figures, giving them a tension between the second and third dimensions. That becomes amply evident in Orazio's marvelous Lute Player (Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art), which argues for its placement in this phase of Orazio's career as well. Sharing the same contemplative spirit of the Danae, the large spotlit figure is portrayed so that contour as well as interior form find a wonderful visual equilibrium. Orazio's Lute Player alone would place him among the first rank of seventeenth-century painters. No one can excel him for the delicacy of his details, the subtlety of light, the refinement of his allusions, or the ineffable mood that haunts his works.
Finally, Orazio's several versions of Lot and His Daughters (Ottawa, National Gallery of Art; Berlin, Dahlem, Museum, Gemaldegalerie; Lugano, Thyssen-Bornemisza collection) have been dated to his Genoese years. Here the figure relationships have become more complex, oddly confusing, and strangely aligned, a direction he would follow even more daringly on occasion after his departure from Genoa. From 1624 to 1625/6 Orazio was in Paris working for Marie de' Medici, where he painted Public Felicity Triumphant over Dangers (Paris, Louvre) and perhaps his Diana the Huntress (Names, Mus6e des Beaux-Arts de Nantes). With her wonderfully twisted form, Diana is the logical successor to Orazio's Genoese experiments.
Despite his importance for such French painters as the Le Nain brothers,* La Hyre,* and Philippe de Champaigne,* Orazio declined to remain in Paris, perhaps because of Rubens's* greater success there. Having met the Duke of Buckingham, he accepted an invitation to England, where he arrived in September or October 1626. After Buckingham's assassination in 1628, Orazio became court painter and spent the remainder of his life working for Charles I, supported by both English and Dutch patrons. He provided large decorative programs for Greenwich House, York House, Somerset House, and Marlborough House, of which only fragments survive and which were completed with the help of his daughter Artemisia. His various experiments with the Rest on the Flight into Egypt (dated 1626, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum; Paris, Louvre; Birmingham, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery) are dated to his English period. More obviously classicizing, in response to his Parisian experience are his tame, though sumptuous, Finding of Moses (Madrid, Prado) painted for Philip IV of Spain and the version done for Charles I in Yorkshire, (Castle Howard). Two versions of Joseph and Potiphar's Wife (Hampton Court, H.M. the Queen; New York, Paul Drey) are yet another set of experiments in creating a carefully calculated tension between the second and third dimensions (dated 1633, Madrid, Prado). |
Samples of Work
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