Italian Painting from the 17th and early 18th centuries
Here on display are works from several Italian artistic schools ranging from Veneto to Sicily. Examples of naturalistic and experimental styles have been privileged over other works coming out of the tradition of courtly classicism that prevailed in Rome. Two of the works displayed here are 19th century copies of paintings by Pietro Novelli. Novelli, the most important Sicilian painter of the 17th century, developed his personal style by drawing upon a wide range of sources; especially Van Dyck and the Neapolitan followers of Caravaggio.
Many artists from northern Europe, including Rubens and Van Dyck, worked in Genoa and strongly influenced the local painters. Their skillful landscapes, animals, and still lifes were very popular among the nobility; as a result, local painters were encouraged to make use of similar subjects. One of them, Anton Maria Vassallo, exhibits here his country landscapes and mythological scenes. Also the 17th century Venetian style is represented in this room by a small work attributed to a follower of Sebastiano Mazzoni. Mazzoni was an extravagant artist working at a time when painting was still strongly influenced by the great 16th century local pictorial tradition. He was part of an intensely Baroque trend that had been introduced in Venice by three “foreigners”: Domenico Fetti of Rome, the German Johann Liss, and Bernardo Strozzi of Genoa. Most of the paintings in this room, however, come from the Bolognese school, which maintained an excellent reputation thanks to the work of the Carraccis and their pupils, well into the second half of the 17th century. A small chiaroscuro painting, the Concert of Angels, represents Lorenzo Pasinelli, perhaps the most emblematic figure of Bolognese painting during this period. His work as a moderate revisionist of the classical tradition, in a Baroque and neo-Venetian key, and his skill in adapting his artistic language according to occasion, made him something of a mediator between different artistic trends. He served as a reference point for younger artists. The anonymous author of the beautiful Roman Charity was clearly influenced by the Bolognese tradition especially by Pasinelli. Pasinelli inspired even Giuseppe Maria Crespi, the most eccentric and original artist of Bologna’s late Baroque period, in the early years of his career. Influenced by great artists, especially the Venetians and Ludovico Carracci, Crespi went on to develop a very personal style characterized by short rapid strokes made with the tip of the brush and dark, atmospheric chiaroscuro paintings.
A similarly melancholic mood characterizes the three large landscapes in this room - and it is no accident that for many years these works were attributed to Crespi. Antonio Francesco Peruzzini probably painted them during his Bolognese period. Peruzzini, who came from the Marches, worked first with Sebastiano Ricci and then with Alessandro Magnasco for many years. They made an important contribution to the evolution of 18th century landscape painting. Magnasco was born in Genoa but later worked, like Peruzzini (sometimes in collaboration with him), in Tuscany and in Milan. Here Magnasco's style is represented by the work of a follower who imitated his dark shaded Crucifixion scenes. Magnasco's manner, both in his realism and formal stylistic features, is in many ways similar to Crespi's but shows a tendency towards the grotesque and the eccentric with an often brisk and detached tone. The pair of paintings depicting Putti and Fruit are the work of Antonio Amorosi and Giovanni Paolo Castelli, known as “Spadino”. They both belonged to the Roman anti-academic tradition, which was strongly influenced by Flemish art. The artists of this school, in open dispute with classicism, produced still lifes and scenes of country life known as bambocciate. The ceiling, as in the preceding rooms, dates from the arrival of Napoleon’s troops in Bologna (1796) . It is characterized by a French-style decoration with a false curtain and has been attributed to the decorative painter Serafino Barozzi (1735-1810), who worked here together with the ornamentalist Francesco Santini (1763-1840).
