After 400 years, a star is born - Federico Barocci

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Barocci

By Judith W. Mann and Babette Bohn with Carol Piazzotta

Inexplicably, sometimes after decades of neglect, finally the ship comes in for a major artist.  When I was a student, Titian was a curious lacuna for scholars, but then his explosion was triggered by the three-volume catalogue of Harold Wethey and by the Wrightsman Lectures of Erwin Panofsky. Federico Barocci (c.1533/35–1612) would never be confused with Titian as a star in the art-historical firmament, but he is the star of this major one-man exhibition that opened at London’s National Gallery at the end of February (27 Feb – 19 May). 

Neglect of Barocci is perhaps understandable owing to his in-between position, both geographically and historically.  He was active principally in Urbino in the last third of the 16th century and exported his large altarpieces not only to Rome and Genoa but also to nearby Perugia and Arezzo.  While he certainly participated in the major movements in Rome and Florence (as well as Venice, to a more limited extent) during the later 16th century, that period also marked a period of transition, defined today more by the eclectic ‘proto-Baroque’ (Sydney Freedberg's term) of the Carracci brothers in Bologna (and later of Annibale Carracci in Rome) rather than by the dominant artistic movements of either Mannerism or Baroque (redefinitions of both are proceeding apace, however). 

A similar case can be made for later painting in Florence, where Santi di Tito (1536–1603) and Ludovico Cigoli (1559–1613) (in many ways a second Barocci) together performed experimentation akin to that of Barocci, albeit a few years after his distinctive oeuvre.  But don't expect a major National Gallery exhibition on those two artists anytime soon.

Barocci, however, deserves this scrutiny and serious public retrospective.  Only four years ago (2008) he received a splendid monograph, with the fitting subtitle 'Allure and Devotion in Late Renaissance Painting', by Stuart Lingo of the University of Washington.  Lingo addressed both formal and spiritual elements of Barocci's paintings within contemporary Italian art theory as a combination of sensuous allure with profound devotion: vaghezza (perhaps best translated as 'tender regard' or allure), colour, and an analogy to musical harmony in the service of religious painting during the  early phase of religious reform of Catholic imagery after the church’s Council of Trent (1545–63).  In the meantime, Andrea Emiliani devoted his scholarly career to the artist and produced the definitive, revised catalogue raisonné in 2008, building on pioneering studies of a generation earlier by Harold Olsen.

The organizers of this exhibition are well immersed in their material.  Judith Mann, an Italian specialist and curator of art before 1800 at the Saint Louis Art Museum, has organized numerous important exhibitions, most notably on Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi (with Keith Christiansen, 2001).  Bohn, a professor at Texas Christian University, is a noted Renaissance graphics specialist, whose 2004 monograph analysed Ludovico Carracci's drawings.  The exhibition catalogue adds a useful brief note on Urbino by Andrea Emiliani before an introduction to Barocci as a developing religious artist by Mann and a closer focus on his drawing technique and design process by Bohn.  A pair of technical study essays by Marzia Faietti (on drawing technique) and by Claire Berry (on red outlines and underpaint) complete the catalogue.  But the bulk of the publication is given over to careful study of the major works on view, so this brief review will focus on what the fortunate visitor to the National Gallery can expect to see this spring.

Barocci innovated in three media: painting, drawing, and etching, and he also used talented engravers in order to distribute his compositions through prints.  The exhibition strives to show his coordinated efforts in all three media on a project-by-project basis, unlike Lingo's analytical overview.  Colour is Barocci's hallmark, especially in the bright, sensuous pastel pinks, reds, blues, and yellows and the shifting hues of couleur changeant of his big altarpieces, which glow within their original church sites, such as the cathedrals of Urbino (no. 12) and Perugia (no. 3) or a chapel in the Chiesa Nuova (Santa Maria in Vallicella, Rome; no. 10).  Along with colour comes a decided energy of his figural compositions, where dramatic gestures and outstretched limbs convey emotion (a good example is the blessing gesture of Christ and the outstretched arms of the Virgin in the Madonna del Popolo; Uffizi, fig. 8). 

Splendid loans from Italy as well as core works from major museums make this a very comprehensive and representative exhibition of Barocci's strengths in depicting the body dynamically within a presentation of glowing colour and light.  To highlight both the artist's achievement and his innovative working process, I want to highlight a pair of mature compositions from the middle of the exhibition: his Senigallia Entombment altarpiece (1579-82; no. 8) and his Annunciation (1582-84; no. 9).  The former picture stresses emotionally interactive dense groups of figures outdoors; the latter offers a simplified and monumental figure pair in an interior.  Both pictures create mood with a luminous horizon.  The exhibition also permits clear reconstruction of the artist's creative process by including loans of many preparatory drawings for individual figures as well as overall compositions.

The Entombment centres on the body of Christ, carried in its shroud across the composition; that horizontal movement, evoking Raphael's famous precedent, is complemented vertically, as Christ is surrounded by a pinwheel of figures.  These include the mournful Magdalene, kneeling in the lower right corner in an orange-yellow robe; she faces not only Christ but also beyond to the Virgin, shrouded in dark blue robes above.  Instruments of the Passion fill the lower left.  The artist prepared his complex composition carefully – with 50 drawings, many of them in black and white (and sometimes red) chalks on tinted blue paper.  Most of them reverse the final composition.  Particularly noteworthy are trois crayons studies of individual heads; fully eight head studies survive for the Entombment (nos. 8.7-8.12). 

Barocci also used full compositional drawings on brown paper, squared for enlargement and transfer (nos. 8.13–14), and he made a reduced version (no. 8.15).  Finally, the artist reproduced his composition (in the same orientation) in an engraving, delegated to professional printmaker Aegidius Sadeler (who moved from Verona to Munich in 1595); earlier engravings after Barocci were produced by another Flemish native, Cornelis Cort (in Italy 1565-78; the absence of engravings after Barocci is a notable omission from this exhibition and points to the current bias against ‘reproductive engravings by scholars of Renaissance painting). 

The Annunciation, a commission for a della Rovere ducal chapel, again conveys Barocci's luminous colour, emphatic gesture, and full-length figural monumentality.  Unusually, the haloed Virgin is placed at the viewer’s left, and the angel kneels below her in a concession of rank.   Exquisite pastel studies for the hands (no. 9.5) and face (no. 9.6) of the Virgin reveal the care taken through soft tonalities to convey her innate tenderness to the devout beholder, the vaghezza discussed by Lingo.  Even the sleeping cat in the corner received its own study (no. 9.2).  Preliminary drawings – again in chalks on tinted paper –reveal that the artist used a male model to pose, nude and draped, for the kneeling Virgin on her pedestal.  Because Barocci created his own etched copy of the work – his last of four and one of the first etchings to use stopping-out [see Background info box] to suggest softer, atmospheric detail in the distance – this picture receives consideration for its print as well. There are three states (nos. 9.8-9.10), including a unique, lighter first state in the British Museum and an impression on green taffeta.

While his own four etchings, also neglected, fully display Barocci's overall inventive versatility, the National Gallery exhibition also includes more unusual preoccupations: landscape drawings (no. 14) and portraits of nobles – drawing studies as well as paintings (nos. 19–23; the latter a self-portrait).  When Mann concludes that 'it is surprising that his art is not more widely known today', she can take consolation that she and Bohn have gone far to remedy that lack.

Barocci by Judith W. Mann and Babette Bohn with Carol Piazzotta is published by Saint Louis Art Museum and Yale University Press, 2012. 360 pp.  214 colour and 46 mono illus, $65.00, £42.75.   ISBN 978-0-300-17477-9