The Art of
Guido Cagnacci
Xavier F. Salomon
The Frick Collection, New York in association with Scala Arts Publishers, Inc.
The Art of
Guido Cagnacci
Xavier F. Salomon
The Frick Collection, New York in association with Scala Arts Publishers, Inc.
dedicates a long passage to Cagnacci’s paintings and, specifically, to another Cleopatra (fig. 2) by the artist: But in front of the piggy Cagnaccis, let us be ill-behaved: this [the painting] is so haunted by a clientele eager for turgid tits like those of a butcher’s wife, and for large notaries’ armchairs in the faux sixteenth-century style that abolishes trimmings and contours and creates a void around these important nipples on a skin that is full of buttery healthiness, and around these studs over red leather just stretched by the upholsterer . . . Forget about landscapes, forget about furnishings. To the substance, to the point: “A fainting fit in the studio! It had never happened before!” made to look like—be patient, madam—a “Death of Cleopatra,” a little genre scene. With her asp in her hand looking like an asparagus (“Keep the aspidistra!”), and the other women and girls of the maison thrown from their beds without being able to dress, she, hesitantly, lowers, dying, her white underwear and cerulean skirt; and maybe the patron is a repulsive commendatore with an Oedipus complex, who has given to a brothel (like Proust) the furniture of his father’s office—a judge or a lawyer who always spoke ill of those hussies—and now there they all are, on the armchair that he was so fond of, with the index finger and the thumb joined, like someone who has caught on the skin or on the faux-leather a small, improper insect in the native land of “Mom.”5
The early 1960s saw the rediscovery in Italy of Cagnacci, a painter who had long languished on the lists of provincial artists and appeared only sporadically in art history texts. A first selection of his paintings (twelve attributed to him, all from Rimini and surrounding towns) was shown in Mostra della Pittura del ’600 a Rimini, an exhibition presented at the Palazzo dell’Arengo in Rimini between August and October 1952. 6 This exhibition, curated by Francesco Arcangeli, marked the first time that a substantial number of works by Cagnacci were displayed together. The 1952 exhibition was an optimistic beacon for culture in an area of Italy ravaged by conflict. The heavy bombing of Rimini during World War II had destroyed most of the city, and its reconstruction began with an exhibition celebrating the city’s artistic achievements. Seven years later, in 1959, the exhibition in Bologna featured ten works by Cagnacci, among them, foreign loans from Vienna and Lyon. The presence of the two paintings of Cleopatra (now in Milan and Vienna)
Fig. 2. Guido Cagnacci, Death of Cleopatra (detail of fig. 46)
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dedicates a long passage to Cagnacci’s paintings and, specifically, to another Cleopatra (fig. 2) by the artist: But in front of the piggy Cagnaccis, let us be ill-behaved: this [the painting] is so haunted by a clientele eager for turgid tits like those of a butcher’s wife, and for large notaries’ armchairs in the faux sixteenth-century style that abolishes trimmings and contours and creates a void around these important nipples on a skin that is full of buttery healthiness, and around these studs over red leather just stretched by the upholsterer . . . Forget about landscapes, forget about furnishings. To the substance, to the point: “A fainting fit in the studio! It had never happened before!” made to look like—be patient, madam—a “Death of Cleopatra,” a little genre scene. With her asp in her hand looking like an asparagus (“Keep the aspidistra!”), and the other women and girls of the maison thrown from their beds without being able to dress, she, hesitantly, lowers, dying, her white underwear and cerulean skirt; and maybe the patron is a repulsive commendatore with an Oedipus complex, who has given to a brothel (like Proust) the furniture of his father’s office—a judge or a lawyer who always spoke ill of those hussies—and now there they all are, on the armchair that he was so fond of, with the index finger and the thumb joined, like someone who has caught on the skin or on the faux-leather a small, improper insect in the native land of “Mom.”5
The early 1960s saw the rediscovery in Italy of Cagnacci, a painter who had long languished on the lists of provincial artists and appeared only sporadically in art history texts. A first selection of his paintings (twelve attributed to him, all from Rimini and surrounding towns) was shown in Mostra della Pittura del ’600 a Rimini, an exhibition presented at the Palazzo dell’Arengo in Rimini between August and October 1952. 6 This exhibition, curated by Francesco Arcangeli, marked the first time that a substantial number of works by Cagnacci were displayed together. The 1952 exhibition was an optimistic beacon for culture in an area of Italy ravaged by conflict. The heavy bombing of Rimini during World War II had destroyed most of the city, and its reconstruction began with an exhibition celebrating the city’s artistic achievements. Seven years later, in 1959, the exhibition in Bologna featured ten works by Cagnacci, among them, foreign loans from Vienna and Lyon. The presence of the two paintings of Cleopatra (now in Milan and Vienna)
Fig. 2. Guido Cagnacci, Death of Cleopatra (detail of fig. 46)
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Fig. 15. Guido Cagnacci, St. Peter, ca. 1635. Oil on canvas, 667 ⁄ 8 × 337 ⁄ 8 in. (170 × 86 cm). Museo della Città, Rimini
Fig. 16. Guido Cagnacci, St. Francis, ca. 1635. Oil on canvas, 671 ⁄ 8 × 34 in. (170.5 × 86.5 cm). Museo della Città, Rimini
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Fig. 15. Guido Cagnacci, St. Peter, ca. 1635. Oil on canvas, 667 ⁄ 8 × 337 ⁄ 8 in. (170 × 86 cm). Museo della Città, Rimini
Fig. 16. Guido Cagnacci, St. Francis, ca. 1635. Oil on canvas, 671 ⁄ 8 × 34 in. (170.5 × 86.5 cm). Museo della Città, Rimini
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Fig. 22. Guido Cagnacci, Assumption of the Magdalene, ca. 1640−45. Oil on canvas, 771 ⁄ 2 × 571 ⁄ 2 in. (197 × 146.2 cm). Schloss Schleissheim, Munich
Fig. 23. Guido Cagnacci, Assumption of the Magdalene, ca. 1640−45. Oil on canvas, 753 ⁄ 4 × 541 ⁄ 2 in. (192.5 × 138.5 cm). Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence
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Fig. 22. Guido Cagnacci, Assumption of the Magdalene, ca. 1640−45. Oil on canvas, 771 ⁄ 2 × 571 ⁄ 2 in. (197 × 146.2 cm). Schloss Schleissheim, Munich
Fig. 23. Guido Cagnacci, Assumption of the Magdalene, ca. 1640−45. Oil on canvas, 753 ⁄ 4 × 541 ⁄ 2 in. (192.5 × 138.5 cm). Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence
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Fig. 29. Guido Cagnacci, Glory of St. Valeriano, 1642−44. Oil on canvas, 1613 ⁄ 8 × 91 in. (410 × 231 cm). Pinacoteca Civica, Forlì
Fig. 30. Guido Cagnacci, Glory of St. Mercuriale, 1642–44. Oil on canvas, 1613 ⁄ 8 × 91 in. (410 × 231 cm). Pinacoteca Civica, Forlì
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Fig. 29. Guido Cagnacci, Glory of St. Valeriano, 1642−44. Oil on canvas, 1613 ⁄ 8 × 91 in. (410 × 231 cm). Pinacoteca Civica, Forlì
Fig. 30. Guido Cagnacci, Glory of St. Mercuriale, 1642–44. Oil on canvas, 1613 ⁄ 8 × 91 in. (410 × 231 cm). Pinacoteca Civica, Forlì
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Fig. 34. Guido Cagnacci, Allegory of Human Life, ca. 1655. Oil on canvas, 26 × 22 in. (66 × 56 cm). Nelson and Leona Shanks Collection, Andalusia, Pennsylvania
Fig. 35. Guido Cagnacci, Allegory of Human Life, ca. 1655. Oil on canvas, 427 ⁄ 8 × 337 ⁄ 8 in. (109 × 86 cm). Fondazione Cavallini Sgarbi, Ferrara
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Fig. 34. Guido Cagnacci, Allegory of Human Life, ca. 1655. Oil on canvas, 26 × 22 in. (66 × 56 cm). Nelson and Leona Shanks Collection, Andalusia, Pennsylvania
Fig. 35. Guido Cagnacci, Allegory of Human Life, ca. 1655. Oil on canvas, 427 ⁄ 8 × 337 ⁄ 8 in. (109 × 86 cm). Fondazione Cavallini Sgarbi, Ferrara
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Valenzin, Michiel, 80 Valeriano, St., 53 Venetian Senate, 78 Venice, 20, 64–68, 72, 78, 82 Vermeer, Johannes, 90 Veronese, Paolo Feast in the House of Simon, 60 Supper in the House of Simon, 78 Triumph of Mordecai, 99–100 Vertova, Luisa, 14–15 Vienna, 82–83, 90, 100 Villani, Msgr. Giacomo, 100 Virgin and Child with Saints Sebastian, Roch, and Hyacinth (ca. 1620–25), 21–22, 24 Virgin and Child with Three Carmelite Saints (ca. 1630), 31–32, 32, 80 Virgin Reading (ca. 1655), 72–73, 73 Vision of St. Jerome (ca. 1660–62), 90–92, 91 Voragine, Jacobus de, Golden Legend, 96 Vouet, Simon (1590–1649), 21 Temptation of St. Francis (1624), 98, 99
San Rocco (Montegridolfo), 21 San Sebastiano (Venice), 60 Santarcangelo, 19, 31, 32–34, 38 Scannelli, Francesco, Microcosmo della Pittura, 20 Schloss Schleissheim (Munich), 44, 45, 84 Sebastian, St., 53 Servites, Order of, 78 Shanks Collection (Andalusia, Pennsylvania), 68, 72 Simon, Norton, 94–95 Sole, Gioseffo Dal, 72 Spada, Cardinal Bernardino, 62 Spada, Msgr. Virgilio, 62 Stivivi, Teodora Arianna, 29–31, 61 Stivivi family, 31 Supper in the House of Simon (Veronese), 99–100 Tarquinius, Sextus, 43, 85 Temptation of St. Francis (Vouet), 98, 99 Teresa of Avila, St., 31–32, 38, 87 Tesi, Mauro, 48 Three Jesuit Martyrs of Japan (ca. 1631), 32, 34 Triumph of Mordecai (Veronese), 60 Turcius, 41
Wilhelm, Archduke Leopold, 82–83, 89, 90–92 Woman with Two Fighting Dogs (ca. 1655–60), 81–82, 81 Zanotti, Giampietro, 11, 14, 61, 64
Urbania, 38
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