Paintings by Carlo Maratti

Pa i n t i n g s b y

Carlo Maratti

Nicholas Hall 1

Carlo Maratti 1625–1713

Carlo Maratti 1625–1713

Essays by Dr. Stella Rudolph and Ian Kennedy Foreword by Nicholas H. J. Hall

Nicholas Hall 17 East 76th Street New York

M M X V II

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Foreword There has never been a monographic exhibition devoted to Carlo Maratti and this tiny focus show certainly does not fill that strange lacuna. Despite his huge importance as the pre-eminent High Baroque painter in Rome, still the center of grand style taste in the second half of the seventeenth century, and painter-in-chief to eight successive popes, there are no paintings by Maratti in the National Gallery, London; the National Gallery of Art, Washington; the Metropolitan Museum, New York; and, indeed, most major American museums.

He is perhaps the most important unknown painter of the seventeenth century, in part because so many of Maratti’s greatest works are altarpieces and still in their original locations in out-of-the-way baroque churches in Rome and the Marche. It is also because the very qualities as an exemplar of high classical style, which made Maratti such a resounding success in his own day, make him seem unapproachable to an audience today. Just as people warm more to Michelangelo than to Raphael and to Caravaggio more than the Carracci, so too it is to Bernini more than to Maratti that most tourists now gravitate.

I hope that Stella Rudolph’s long-awaited catalogue raisonné on the artist will remind a wider audience what an extraordinarily interesting, adaptable, and influential figure Carlo Maratti was. I have known Dr. Rudolph since I was about seven years old, when she was a lecturer for my father’s John Hall Pre-University Course in Venice. Stella is a lecturer of incomparable passion and intelligence, and she was one of the first to get me excited about Old Masters. So, it is a great pleasure for me to be able to work with her on this project. Another childhood memory is walking past Carlo Maratti’s Portrait of Sir Thomas Isham every day, when for a few years my family lived at Lamport. Maratti and his study has, for me, a very personal resonance.

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A quick note on the artist’s name. English-speaking people have for many years referred to this artist as Carlo Maratta. This is incorrect.

His actual name was always Carlo Maratti with an ‘i’. Rudolph believes that the Maratta with an ‘a’ is a corruption originating with the French translation of his name to ‘Le Maratte’, which followed his success with Louis XIV. Dealers in Old Master art, and I am one of these, have worked hard to make our pictures ‘relevant’ to a twenty-first century audience. This can mean making connections between the old and the new, as well as the east and the west. At the same time, however, I think it is important not to run away from what we actually deal in. And an exhibition, modest as this is, is an opportunity to bring to the public’s attention the virtues, presented by serious scholars, of a major, if under-appreciated, ‘Old Master’.

I would like to acknowledge the friends and colleagues who have helped to make this exhibition possible: Michael Bentmore, Pete Bowron, Dominic Chesterman, Molly Dorkin,Yuan Fang, Ian Kennedy, Richard Knight, Fabrizio Moretti, James Neidpath, Earl of Wemyss, Joshua Nefsky, Stella Rudolph, Larry Sunden, Bayan Talgat, Karen Thomas, Marco Voena, and Kristina Weston.

Nicholas H. J. Hall

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An Introduction to the Outstanding and Lengthy career of Carlo Maratti

By Dr. Stella Rudolph

Carlo Maratti was born on May 18th, 1625 in the town of Camerano on the west slope of Monte Conero, situated a few miles south of Ancona in the Marche region bordered by the Adriatic Sea. In fact, his elderly father had migrated as a boy with a group of Dalmatians to this area where he subsequently prospered as a landowner and married a young widow, Faustina Masini. Maratti was carefully educated but very early revealed a precocious artistic talent in experimenting with drawing and colors derived from plants. Some of the former caught the eye of Domenico Corraducci, a member of the most important local family who sent them to Maratti’s stepbrother Bernabeo Francioni, an aspiring painter resident in Rome, who in turn showed them to Andrea Camassei.

This master was so impressed that he advised that the boy should be trained in Rome and, with the help of Corraducci, he arrived there at the age of 11. Bernabeo soon introduced him to Andrea Sacchi who, together with Pietro da Cortona, was one of the foremost painters during the papacy of Urban VIII Barberini (1623–1644).

This rapid chain of events determined Maratti’s future success since he soon became the favorite pupil of Sacchi, who promoted him with paternal affection. In the following years, he underwent a severe curriculum studying the celebrated prototypes of Raphael, Annibale Carracci, Reni, Domenichino, and ancient sculpture of which he made drawings and engravings. That he had fully absorbed his master’s style and figural types is evidenced in the 1644–45 altarpiece of the Madonna with Saints Monica, Augustine, and Dominic painted for Corraducci and now in the Chiesa Parrocchiale of Camerano (fig. 1).Yet Maratti was already experimenting with 6

Top, fig. 1. Carlo Maratti, Madonna with Saints Monica, Augustine, and Dominic, 1644–45, Camerano, Chiesa Parrocchiale.

Above, fig. 2. Carlo Maratti, Cross on the Book, 1645, 34.5 x 44.5 cm., Dorking, The Evelyn Trust Settlement.

Opposite: Carlo Maratti,

The Sacrifice of Noah (detail) 7

Fig. 3. Carlo Maratti, Nativity, 1650, Rome, San Giuseppe dei Falegnami.

1654–58 Augustus Ordering the Closure of the Doors of the Janus Temple (fig. 6) commissioned by Louis Philippeaux de La Vrillière (future Secretary of State to Louis XIV) for his residence in Paris, now in the Palais des Beaux Arts at Lille, and the Union of Dido and Aeneas (fig. 7) added to a landscape

by Gaspard Dughet painted for a member of the Falconieri family, now in the National Gallery of London. He continued to collaborate with Dughet and other landscape painters as well as with still-life specialists like Mario dei Fiori in the Allegory of Summer in the Chigi Palace at Ariccia and the series of mirrors decorated with putti and garlands in the gallery of the Colonna Palace in Rome (fig. 8).

Fig. 4. Carlo Maratti, Nativity, 1655–56, Rome, Palazzo del Quirinale.

other subjects such as the Cross on the Book (fig. 2), an unusual trompel’oeil still-life commissioned in 1645 by John Evelyn, the first of the numerous English travelers who would acquire the artist’s pictures and drawings, and then collaborated with Sacchi on the frescoed decoration of the Lateran Baptistery (San Giovanni in Fonte).

After his return from a sojourn in the Marche in 1647–49, Maratti made his public debut in Rome with the much-admired Nativity altarpiece of 1650 for San Giuseppe dei Falegnami (fig. 3). As witnessed by his paintings for the Alaleona Chapel in Sant’Isidoro Agricola and in the Baptismal Chapel in San Marco (1655–57), this launched his career and thereafter his reputation was on a steady rise; so much so that he was allotted the focal point of the Gallery of Alexander VII Chigi in the Quirinal Palace for his Nativity within the series of paintings by emerging talents supervised by Pietro da Cortona in 1655–56 (fig.

4). Compared with his earlier version of the subject, this masterpiece reveals how Maratti was evolving Sacchi’s manner towards a personal baroque style influenced also by Bernini’s sculptures and Lanfranco’s earlier paintings, as is evidenced by the dramatic 1656–58 Saint Augustine and the Mystery of the Trinity in Santa Maria de’ Sette Dolori (fig. 5). Apart from altarpieces sent to Ascoli Piceno and Palma de Majorca, devotional pictures requested by an increasing number of clients and portraits, such as the splendid 1660–61 pair of Wentworth Dillon and Robert Spencer still in the Spencer Collection at Althorp, are indicative of Maratti extending his range of subjects to historical and mythological scenes, of which significant examples remain: the 8

clockwise, from top left:

Fig. 5. Carlo Maratti, Saint Augustine and the Mystery of the Trinity, 1656–58, Rome, Santa Maria de’ Sette Dolori.

Fig. 6. Carlo Maratti, Augustus Ordering the Closure of the Doors of the Janus Temple, or the Augustean Peace, 1654–58, 280 x 175 cm., Lille, Palais des Beaux Arts.

Fig. 7. Carlo Maratti and Gaspard Dughet, Landscape with the Union of Dido and Aeneas, ca. 1664–68, 152.9 x 223.7 cm., London, National Gallery.

Fig. 8. Carlo Maratti and Mario dei Fiori, Putti and Still life on a Mirror, 1660, Rome, Palazzo Colonna.

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Fig. 9. Carlo Maratti, The Painter Andrea Sacchi, ca. 1661, 67 x 50 cm., Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado.

Fig. 10. Carlo Maratti, Visitation, 1664, Siena, Cappella della Madonna del Voto, Duomo.

Following the death of Sacchi in 1661, sensitively portrayed by his pupil in a canvas now in the Prado Museum in Madrid (fig. 9), Maratti’s talent was evermore in demand. A year later he was elected member of the Accademia di San Luca and Alexander VII Chigi commissioned from him the laterals for the Cappella del Voto in the Duomo of Siena decorated with statues by Bernini, Ferrata, and Raggi; completed in 1664, the Visitation (fig. 10) is still in place, whereas the Rest on the Flight into Egypt was substituted by a mosaic copy in the eighteenth century (fig. 11) and is now in the Gallerie Nazionali d’Arte Antica, Palazzo Corsini in Rome, together with the autograph replica on copper painted for the Chigi pope (fig. 12). It should be remembered that Maratti was employed by eight successive popes and their families (Barberini, Chigi, Rospigliosi, Altieri, Odescalchi, Ottoboni, Pignatelli, Albani). After the death of Pietro da Cortona in 1669, he was reputed the “caposcuola della pittura romana” (the leading painter in Rome) and after that of Bernini in 1680, the most famous Italian artist throughout Europe. Indeed, if the 1672 Madonna with the Five Saints Canonized

by Clement X over the altar of the Altieri chapel in Santa Maria sopra Minerva well documents the taste and style of his maturity as an artist (fig. 13), the majestic 1671 full-length Portrait of Cardinal Antonio Barberini in the Gallerie Nazionali d’Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini in Rome (fig. 14) suffices to explain his renown in this field along with that of Baciccio in that period. In contrast to the formality of the latter picture, the 1672–73 Portrait of Giovan Pietro Bellori in the Briganti Collection, Rome (fig. 15), is instead an intimate homage to his friend and mentor who was writing Maratti’s biography, along with those of Reni and Sacchi, to be added to a new edition of his fundamental Vite 10

Top, fig. 11. Carlo Maratti, Visitation and The Rest on the Flight into Egypt with Bernini sculptures, Siena, Cappella della Madonna del Voto, Duomo.

Above, left, fig. 12. Carlo Maratti, The Flight into Egypt, ca. 1664, oil on copper, 60.3 x 48.6 cm., Gallerie Nazionali d’Arte Antica di Roma, Palazzo Corsini.

Above, center, fig 13. Carlo Maratti, Madonna with the Five Saints Canonized by Clement X, 1672, Rome, Santa Maria sopra Minerva.

Above, right, fig. 14. Carlo Maratti, Portait of Cardinal Antonio Barberini, 1671, Rome, Gallerie Nazionali d’Arte Antica di Roma, Palazzo Barberini.

Left, fig. 15. Carlo Maratti, Portrait of Giovan Pietro Bellori, 1672–73, 97 x 72.5 cm., Briganti Collection.

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de’ pittori, scultori e architetti published in 1672, which however appeared in print only in 1731 (concluded after Bellori’s death in 1696 by Maratti’s pupil Vicenzo Vittoria).

The last thirty years of the seventeenth century were the most intense of Maratti’s career in terms of his artistic production. The vast 1672–73 Triumph of Clemency (fig. 16) frescoed on the vault of the Salone in the Altieri Palace, full of statuary figures levitating on clouds, exemplifies his articulation of the classicizing-academic approach in late Baroque decorations, so different from the illusionistic effects of Baciccio’s frescoed nave vault of the Gesù church situated in the same piazza.Yet Fig. 16. Carlo the poignant representation of the Death of Saint Francis Xavier painted Maratti, The

by Maratti in 1674–79 for the Negroni chapel in the same church Triumph of Clemency, (fig. 17) is nevertheless wholly “baroque” in conception and execution.

1672–73, Rome, Palazzo Altieri.

As for portraiture, it is worth citing his 1677 one of Sir Thomas Isham in the Lamport Hall Preservation Trust, Northamptonshire (fig. 18), both tender and elegant in the representation of the young English nobleman captured in a reflective pause during his “Grand Tour” abroad.

With the enchanting 1679–81 Apollo Chasing Daphne commissioned by the minister Colbert for Louis XIV and now in the Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts at Brussels (fig. 19), Maratti was honored with the brevet of “Peintre du Roi”, thus formally received in the prime court of Europe without moving from Rome. By this time, he had found his most valuable private patron in the very wealthy and discriminating Marchese Niccolò Maria Pallavicini, a Genoese banker who lived in Rome and was in the process of forming the most impressive contemporary art collection there. One of his numerous pictures by Maratti, the 1680– 92 Romulus and Remus now at Sanssouci in Potsdam, is indicative of the superb quality demanded by this exigent connoisseur, whereas another 12

clockwise, from top left:

Fig. 17. Carlo Maratti, The Death of Saint Francis Xavier, 1674–79, Rome, Chiesa del Gesù.

Fig. 18. Carlo Maratti, Portrait of Sir Thomas Isham, 1677, 148 x 121 cm., Northamptonshire, Lamport Hall Preservation Trust.

Fig. 19. Carlo Maratti, Apollo Chasing Daphne, 1679–81, 221.2 x 224 cm., Brussels, Musées royaux des Beaux–Arts de Belgique.

Fig. 20. Carlo Maratti, The Rape of Europa, 1682–84, 248 x 424 cm., Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland.

Fig. 21. Carlo Maratti, Madonna with Saints Francis and James, 1687, Rome, Santa Maria di Montesanto.

canvas of the same scope painted for Paolo Savelli in 1682-84, The Rape of Europa, now in the National Gallery of Ireland, is even garnished with flowers attributed to Karel van Vogelaer (fig. 20).

Pallavicini’s major rival as a patron and collector of Maratti’s work was the banker Francesco Montioni from Spoleto who commissioned him in 1687 the Madonna with Saints Francis and James altarpiece for his family chapel under construction in Santa Maria in Montesanto (fig.

21). Indeed, when Montioni displayed the series of four overdoors with Maratti’s putti hoisting the garlands of flowers painted by Franz Werner van Tamm in 1693–95, two of which are now in the Musée du Louvre 13

in Paris, Pallavicini immediately ordered replicas with variants from the two artists. The same is true of the series of “Donne illustri” (Famous women) that Montioni ordered from Maratti shortly thereafter; again, Pallavicini promptly asked the master for a replica of the Cleopatra Dissolving the Pearl now in the Museo del Palazzo Venezia in Rome (fig. 22) in which the model is ostensibly Maratti’s beautiful daughter Faustina, soon to become the most famous poetess of her day. In fact, her features reappear in the more stately Rebecca and Eliezer at the Well that he painted for Michelangelo Maffei around 1696 (fig. 23).

Maratti’s most spectacular late masterpiece is the Tempio della Virtù, or, more precisely, Marchese Niccolò Maria Pallavicini (1650–1714) Guided to the Temple of Virtue by Apollo with a Self-Portrait of the Artist—now in the National Trust Collection at Stourhead, Wiltshire (fig. 24). A putto (Fame) flies to place a crown of laurels on his head and Pallas Athena writes his virtues on a shield in the distance while Maratti, seated in the right foreground and flanked by the Three Graces, is designing the scene on a canvas. Begun around 1690 and completed before 1700, Maratti retouched it by adding on his breast the Cross of Cavaliere di Cristo, which he received from Clement XI in 1704. This, then, represents not only the apotheosis of Pallavicini but also, in a certain sense, that of Maratti himself. He had recently erected a tomb with his portrait bust in the basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli and in 1699 he was proclaimed “Principe” of the Academia di San Luca for the second time; moreover, following the bestowal of the Cross, both he and Faustina were elected members of the prestigious literary, Academia dell’Arcadia, founded in 1690 on the precedent of the “conversations” held in Rome by Queen Christina of Sweden.

During the last decades of the seventeenth century, Maratti’s “School” held in his studio was the most frequented in Rome, even by foreign artists such as the portraitist Hugh Howard; he trained some three generations of talented painters, several of which had very successful careers, from Berrettoni and Passeri to Pietro de’ Pietri, Andrea Procaccini, Giuseppe Chiari, and Agostino Masucci. In the last years of his life, Maratti increasingly availed himself of their collaboration, especially in the execution of his major commissions due to the frailty of his old age, a case in point being the 1704–07 Assumption of theVirgin 14

clockwise, from top left:

Fig. 22. Carlo Maratti, Cleopatra Dissolving the Pearl, 1693–95, 162 x 113 cm., Venice, Rome, Museo Nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia.

Fig. 23. Carlo Maratti, Rebecca and Eliezer at theWell, ca. 1696, Rome, Gallerie Nazionali d’Arte Antica di Roma, Galleria Corsini.

Fig. 24. Carlo Maratti, Marchese Niccolò Maria Pallavicini (1650–1714) Guided to the Temple of Virtue by Apollo with a Self–Portrait of the Artist, 1690–99, Wiltshire, Stourhead House.

Fig. 25. Carlo Maratti, Christ Child Sleeping Surrounded by Music–Making Angels, 1697, 120 x 98.4 cm., Paris, Musée du Louvre.

lateral canvas in the Albani Chapel of the Duomo of Urbino, completed

by Chiari only in 1726. Consequently, his completely autograph pictures in the ultimate phase are primarily the small devotional ones such as the exquisite 1697 Christ Child Sleeping Surrounded by Music-Making Angels in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (fig. 25). With the election of Cardinal Gianfrancesco Albani as Clement XI in 1700, also from the Marche and a longstanding admirer of his work, Maratti became the most trustworthy 15

advisor for the ambitious artistic projects promoted by this pope.

Moreover, he was commissioned to produce the cartoons for the mosaic decorations in the Baptismal Chapel and the atrium of the Presentation one in the basilica of San Pietro as well as the designs for the statues of the Apostles executed by the foremost sculptors active in Rome for the niches in the nave of San Giovanni in Laterano. Upon the death of his beloved wife Francesca Gommi in 1711, he made an inventory of his conspicuous collection and drew up a testament with subsequent codicils. From the latter it emerges that he was preparing a chaplainship for the town of Camerano and also a chapel in the church of Santa Faustina there adorned by the last altarpiece he painted, Saint Nicholas of Bari and the Three Boys, flanked by portrait busts of himself and Francesca sculpted by his friend Camillo Rusconi.

C ata l o g u e

Carlo Maratti died on December 15th at the venerable age of 88. His solemn funeral in Santa Maria degli Angeli was described as an exceptional event, attended by princes and prelates, ladies of rank, nephews of the Pope, Romans and foreigners plus all the members of the Academia di San Luca. A year later, Pallavicini, nominated his testamentary executor, as well as his gifted pupil, Passeri, died, and in 1716, Francesco Montioni. This sequence of demises was felt by the artistic community as the end of a fulgent and durable epoch. Faustina inherited his collection and sold a large portion of it for a vast sum to King Philip V of Spain in 1722. Quantities of his drawings were thereafter purchased and now are in the academies of San Fernando in Madrid, the Künstmuseum in Düsseldorf, and the Royal Collection in London. Giuseppe Chiari continued to maintain the influence of Maratti’s style and imagery up to 1726 and Agostino Masucci even to 1768; moreover, an ever increasing number of engravings after his paintings and drawings perpetuated Maratti’s inventions as models to be studied. Nevertheless, the Roman scene had already changed with the advent of Pompeo Batoni and other gifted contemporary painters. Therefore, it is interesting to recall in this context the generous comment of Anton Raphael Mengs, registered by G. N. d’Azara in 1783 at the threshold of the Neo-classical period: “Maratti sustained Roman painting so that it did not precipitate as elsewhere”. Fact of matter is that Maratti’s reputation had already eclipsed and would be resurrected only by the re-evaluation during the past century of the period in which he operated, prospered and became a dominant figure.

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The Sacrifice of Noah Oil on its original unlined canvas, oval 101 x 117 cm. provenance Odescalchi Palace, Rome. related literature A. Blunt, ‘Poussin Studies XIII: Early Falsifications of Poussin’, The Burlington Magazine, CIV, no. 716, November 1962, pp. 489-90.

R. E. Spear, ‘The Source of an Early Falsification of Poussin’, The Burlington Magazine, CVI, no. 734, May 1964, p. 234, as a lost work by Maratti or Sacchi.

A. Pigler, Barock-Themen, Vol. 1, Budapest, 1974, p. 27, as Andrea Sacchi.

To be included in Dr. Stella Rudolph’s forthcoming catalogue raisonné.

Set against a vibrant blue sky, the paterfamilias Noah celebrates his survival from the Flood, surrounded by his sons and family. Iridescent blue draperies, the trademark pigment on Maratti’s palette, draw the eye around this artfully contrived ovoid composition. The image is anchored by the brilliant silvery white cloak of the central figure, perhaps Noah’s son Japheth, by tradition regarded as the father of the European people. Recent cleaning and its perfect state of preservation allow one to appreciate all the subtleties of the drawing, the modeling of forms, and the delicate chromatic range of this splendid painting.

Maratti depicts that moment of the covenant between God and Noah when, having celebrated their deliverance from the Flood, Noah and his family give burnt offerings to God, who says, “I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake . . . neither will I again smite any more every thing living as I have done” (Genesis 8:20–21). This pact was sealed with a rainbow as a sign of the covenant “between me and you and every living creature” (Genesis 9:2–17). The scene, which is both a reminder of the power of the wrath of God when challenged by Man’s sin and God’s subsequent reconciliation, was frequently painted by, among others, Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel, Poussin, and Maratti’s contemporaries in Rome, Pietro da Cortona and Romanelli.

Until its recent rediscovery and recognition by Stella Rudolph, this important early work was known only through prints and copies, believed to be after a lost work either by Poussin or by Maratti’s 18

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Fig. 1. Carlo Maratti, preparatory drawing for The Sacrifice of Noah, Private Collection.

teacher, Andrea Sacchi. The painting can be dated to ca. 1649–51, shortly before Maratti completed the highly successful Nativity for the church of San Giuseppe dei Falegnami in Rome, which made his name as an independent artist. The clarity of this composition, articulated with a series of expressive gestures and lapidary profiles, is a powerful statement of Maratti’s intentions as a proponent of an entirely new dramatic, classical style. Maratti deliberately incorporates recognizable elements deriving from antique prototypes, among which is the standing figure to the left modeled on the Apollo Belvedere. The influence of Sacchi, who steeped his pupil in the classical idiom, as Maratti’s numerous early drawings after the antique attest, is evident but there is already here a precocious grace of line, color, and mood which is all Maratti.

Maratti’s working method is evidenced by the existence of several preparatory drawings directly related to this Sacrifice, many now held at the Academia de San Fernando, Madrid. Notable among them is one of the standing figure to the left (inv. no. 1584); the leaning female figure to the left (inv. no. 1584); Noah’s right leg and the arms of the figure behind the altar (inv. no. 1478); the hands and legs of the kneeling figure in the foreground (inv. no. 1572). There is, in addition, a red chalk drawing (formerly Kekko Gallery, Brussels) which shows the entire composition in its oval format (fig. 1).

As noted earlier, this composition was, for understandable reasons, identified first with Poussin and then Sacchi. This was on the basis of two engravings, one by Louis Cossin (fig. 2) made in the seventeenth century then believed to be after a painting by Poussin, and the second by Mathieu Liart (1767; fig. 3) made after a second version of our painting in the collection of the Duke of Devonshire, Chatsworth House, which identified that picture as by Sacchi. Both attributions were questioned by Blunt and Spear (see literature), the latter suggesting

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Fig. 2. Louis Cossin after Carlo Maratti, The Sacrifice of Noah.

Fig. 3. Mathieu Liart after Carlo Maratti, The Sacrifice of Noah, 1767, London, British Museum.

that the Chatsworth painting was by Maratti and that it was after a lost prototype by either Maratti or Sacchi.

This prototype has now resurfaced and is, Rudolph believes, the current painting. The Cossin engraving and some of the Madrid drawings suggest that there may have been another rectangular version with the figure of God and the rainbow. Conservation has shown traces of unpainted ground on some of the edges of this original canvas which, together with the Kekko drawing and the oval format of the Chatsworth picture, lead one to believe that Maratti, who was well capable of updating ideas when he made replicas, originally conceived of his treatment of this subject as an oval. The flow of the figures around the standing patriarch and the positioning of the landscape and ark to the right make it impossible to reconcile this painting with the rectangular version engraved by Cossin.

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The Martyrdom of Saint Andrew Oil on canvas 121.3 x 158.7 cm. provenance (Possibly) the Earl of Waldegrave’s sale; Prestage, London, 16 November 1763, lot 35 (as Guido Reni).

Henry Metcalfe, Hill Street.

Sale; Christie’s, London, 15 June 1850, lot 12.

(Probably) purchased by the 10th Earl of Wemyss (as Guido Reni).

By descent in the family of the Earls of Wemyss and March, Gosford House, East Lothian, to the present owner. literature A. Mezzetti, “Contributi a Carlo Maratti”, in Rivista dell’ Instituto Nazionale d’Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte, Rome, 1955, vol. IV, p. 310, no. 63; pp. 319, 325–26, 331, no. 49.

F. Cummings, Art in Italy 1600-1700, exhibition catalogue, The Detroit Museum of Art, Detroit, 1965, p. 66.

A.S. Harris and E. Schaar, Die Handzeichnungen von Andrea Sacchi und Carlo Maratta, Kunstmuseum, Düsseldorf, 1967, pp. 91–93.

E. Schaar and G. Dieter (eds.), Meisterzeichnungen der Sammlung Lambert Krahe, exhibition catalogue, Kunstmuseum, Düsseldorf, 1969, p. 38.

D. Graf (ed.), Master Drawings of the Roman Baroque from the Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf; A selection from the Lambert Krahe Collection, exhibition catalogue, Victoria and Albert Museum and Scottish Arts Council, London and Edinburgh, 1973, no. 81.

J.K. Westin and R.H. Westin, Transformations of the Roman Baroque, The University Gallery, College of Fine Arts, University of Florida, Gainesville, 1981-82, no. 15.

An Exhibition of Old Master Drawings, Colnaghi, London, 1984, no. 25.

D.H. Steel, Jr., Baroque paintings from the Bob Jones University Collection, Raleigh, North Carolina Museum of Art, 1984, pp. 88–91, illustrated p. 88, fig. 20.

To be included in Dr. Stella Rudolph’s forthcoming catalogue raisonné. exhibited Edinburgh, The National Gallery of Scotland and Arts Council Scottish Committee, Pictures from Gosford House, lent by The Earl ofWemyss and March, 10 August–15 September 1957, p. 9, no. 1.

Saint Andrews, Museum of the University of Saint Andrews, 600th Anniversary, 2011–2013.

Carlo Maratti painted several versions of The Martyrdom of Saint Andrew, a subject also treated by Sacchi (fig. 1, overleaf), though Sacchi’s original source of inspiration was the fresco of Saint Andrew Brought to the Temple (fig. 3, overleaf) by Guido Reni (1575–1642) in the Oratorio di Sant’ Andrea al Celio, in the garden of the church of San Gregorio al Celio, Rome (1608). Maratti clearly employed motifs from these earlier sources; the two warriors coming over the crest of the hill, and the 24

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legs of the leader framing the head of the man behind, are painted in a manner derived ultimately from an engraving of The Entombment after Andrea Mantegna (ca. 1431– 1506). However, Maratti’s vision of this scene is more dynamic than his master’s; the striking and bold poses of the figures create strong animated diagonals that impart a vigorous energy to this composition.

Fig. 1. Andrea Sacchi, Saint Andrew Adoring the Cross of his Martyrdom, 1633–34, 210 x 140 cm., Rome, Basilica di San Pietro, Città del Vaticano.

The earliest known version of Maratti’s The Martyrdom of Saint Andrew is in the Bob Jones University Collection, Greenville (fig. 2) and was historically considered to be that formerly in the collection of the Cardinal Giuseppe Renato Imperiali (1651–1737). This painting was later engraved by a pupil of Maratti, J. J. Frey (1681–1752) (fig. 4), who came to the artist’s studio in about 1709. It seems that the Bob Jones painting was a free version of Sacchi’s altarpiece and probably dates from Maratti’s early career, ca. 1656–60, when he was still under the influence of his master.

One preparatory drawing for the Bob Jones painting includes studies for Maratti’s Adoration of the Kings, painted in 1656 for the church of San Marco, Rome. This suggests that a date of ca. 1656 for the artist’s Martyrdom of Saint Andrew. The present picture and the Bob Jones

Fig. 2. Carlo Maratti, The Martyrdom of Saint Andrew, ca. 1656, 120.6 x 157.7 cm., Greenville, Museum & Gallery at Bob Jones University.

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Fig. 3. Guido Reni, Saint Andrew Brought to the Temple, 1608, fresco, Rome, Oratorio di Sant’ Andrea al Celio.

Fig. 4. Jakob Frey the Elder after Carlo Maratti, The Martyrdom of Saint Andrew, San Francisco, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco.

version are the most similar, in size and format, of all of Maratti’s versions of The Martyrdom of Saint Andrew. On sheets of studies for the Bob Jones picture, there also appear sketches that relate solely to the present painting, which confirms Maratti’s hand in both works and also strengthens the theory that they were painted around the same time. One drawing, now in the Kunstmuseum in Düsseldorf (fig. 5, overleaf), includes studies for the figure of the saint, the left hand of the executioner, and the figure climbing the hill behind them. On the verso of this sheet (fig. 6, overleaf) are studies for arms and legs of Saint Andrew as well as four drawings of the younger female spectator from the Wemyss painting.

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originally drawn with a rider and in the same space as in the Bob Jones painting. The x-rays also illustrate how Maratti re-worked his composition, altering the position of Saint Andrew’s arm and hand and changing the arrangement of his feet.

Fig. 5. Carlo Maratti, Studies for the painting The Martyrdom of Saint Andrew, recto, 28.2 x 42.5 cm., Düsseldorf, Kunstmuseum.

Fig. 6. Carlo Maratti, Studies for the painting The Martyrdom of Saint Andrew, verso, 28.2 x 42.5 cm., Düsseldorf, Kunstmuseum.

A drawing, which was on the London art market in 1984 with P. & D. Colnaghi and was later sold at Christie’s in 1988, includes studies for the head, torso, left arm and hand of the executioner holding the rope, all of which closely resemble the figures in the Wemyss painting. The three studies for a profile of a woman’s head also on this sheet relate to a female figure which is only in the left-hand background of the Wemyss painting, and not any other versions by Maratti. The armored torso in another drawing by Maratti is a study for the warrior in the Wemyss painting. A further sheet of paper displays studies of the torso of one of the executioners that could have been done either in preparation for the Bob Jones version or the Wemyss one, or possibly both.

The other versions of The Martyrdom of Saint Andrew by Maratti are in the Louvre, the Geise Collection in Hamburg, the Gallerie Nazionali d’Arte Antica, Palazzo Corsini, Rome, and in a private collection in Berlin, all which vary slightly from one another. Mezzetti, in his 1955 essay in the Rivista Istituto Nazionale d’archeologia e storia dell’arte, stated that the Palazzo Corsini version, the smallest and the only one on copper, was also an autograph work (A. Mezzetti, op.cit., 1955, p. 341, no. 134).

X-rays of the present work reveal a number of pentimenti which prove that it was painted after the Bob Jones version. The x-rays show a head to the left of the two reclining robed women and an additional figure in front of the soldier, none of which are visible in the present painting but which are present in the Bob Jones version. The horse at the left was 28

Still, the composition of the present work is arguably more successful than that of the Bob Jones picture, and it can be considered the artist’s final version. The facial features of the man draped in a red robe are more refined and his expression is more clearly defined. The group of reclining figures to the right has been brought nearer the picture plane, and this change, together with the altered stance of the soldier on the left, creates a more dynamic composition.

The number of versions related to this composition tell us two important things about Maratti. The first is that, as with the Sacrifice of Noah (see catalogue), early in his career, that is by the 1650’s, Maratti was already a highly successful painter even though he was to dominate the Roman art scene for the next fifty years. The second is that, as a result of Maratti’s extraordinary popularity during his lifetime, he was happy to paint numerous versions of a successful composition, but he often changed or improved elements of the composition with subsequent reiterations.

The inscription on an engraving after the Bob Jones composition by J. J. Frey confirms that it was the version painted for Imperiali.

Giuseppe Renato Imperiali (1651–1737), nominated Cardinal by the Pope Alexander VIII Chigi in 1690, was not only a major patron of Carlo Maratti but also protector of the Scots in Italy. His palace boasted many pictures with Scottish associations and a group of drawings by his friend the Young Prince Charles Edward Stewart. No doubt Imperiali commissioned the picture specifically because Saint Andrew was Scotland’s patron saint.

The story of the martyrdom of Saint Andrew was popular among seventeenth-century artists, particularly the moment depicted here when Andrew first saw the cross and fell to his knees in adoration.

Andrew was a fisherman, the brother of Saint Peter and the first of the Apostles to be called by Christ. The primary account of his life is the apocryphal third-century Acts of Andrew which was the basis for the 29

more well-known account found in the Golden Legend. Andrew preached and converted hundreds of pagans, but when he miraculously cured Maximilla, her husband, the Roman Proconsul Egeas, had Andrew condemned to torture and death by crucifixion. Since the fifteenth century the cross, that has been connected to Saint Andrew and is now called “Saint Andrew’s Cross”, has been transverse in shape. Accounts relay that Andrew requested a variation to the typical Latin cross because he saw himself unworthy of dying in the same manner as Christ.

date, which was perhaps the highpoint of the appreciation of Baroque art in England. Succeeding generations would, under the influence of critics such as John Ruskin, abandon the taste for baroque Italian painting in favor of Gothic and Renaissance art.

Generously lent by the Earl of Wemyss and March.

The 1957 National Gallery of Scotland exhibition catalogue states that the present painting was possibly in the 2nd Earl of Waldegrave’s (1715– 1763) sale in 1763 (Edinburgh, op.cit., 1957, p. 9, no. 1). The painting is now in the collection of the 13th Earl of Wemyss and March, at Gosford House. The 1st Earl, Sir John Wemyss, was created baronet of Nova Scotia in 1625, Lord Wemyss of Elcho in 1628, and the Earl of Wemyss in 1633. The name “Wemyss” was taken from the shire of that name in Fife, as the family was connected to this area through the Macduff Earls of Fife, and it was not until the eighteenth century that the family settled in East Lothian. It was the 5th Earl’s son, Francis (1723–1808), who inherited the fortune of his maternal grandfather, Colonel Francis Charteris, as well as land including Amisfield House and some pictures, on the condition that he took the name Charteris. As his older brother died childless, Francis also inherited the title of 7th Earl of Wemyss.

The majority of the Wemyss’ art collection was accumulated by the 7th and the 10th Earls. Colonel Francis Charteris, father-in-law to the 5th Earl, was the first of the family to have a large collection of pictures, though most of them were sold following his death on 26th June 1732.

His grandson, the 7th Earl (1723–1808), travelled abroad between 1739 and 1744 before succeeding to the title in 1787. He originally lived at Amisfield, twenty miles east of Edinburgh, but went on to commission Robert Adam to build the central part of Gosford House (originally called Wemyss House), designing three principal rooms as picture galleries. In 1771, while the 7th Earl lived at Amisfield, an inventory was made of the works of art, of which fifteen were later included in the exhibition at the National Gallery of Scotland in 1957. This painting, bought after 1850, was probably acquired by the 10th Earl. It is interesting that he was buying a painting thought to be by Guido Reni at this 30

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Portrait of Francesca Gommi Maratti (1660 –1711), Wife of the Painter who Holds a Drawing Depicting Venus Forging the Arms of Cupid Oil on canvas 98.5 x 74.5 cm. provenance Rome, Ceci Collection.

Luigi Koelliker Collection. exhibitions Florence, Palazzo Vecchio, Mostra del Ritratto Italiano, 1911.

Ariccia, Palazzo Chigi, Mola e il suo tempo. Pittura di figura dalla Collezione Koelliker, 22 January–23 April 2005. literature AA.VV., Il Ritratto italiano dal Caravaggio al Tiepolo, Bergamo 1927, pp. 191, 280, Tav. XV. S. Rudolph, An instance of Time thwarted by Love: Carlo Maratti’s portrait of a unusual lady, in “Labyrinthos”, n. 21–24, 1992–93, p. 193.

F. Petrucci, Traccia per un repertorio della ritrattistica romana tra ‘500 e ‘700, in M. Natoli, F. Petrucci (curated by), Donne di Roma, Rome 2003, p. 24.

S. Rudolph, Carlo Maratti. Ritratto di Francesca Gommi Maratti, in F. Petrucci (curated by), Mola e il suo tempo. Pittura di figura dalla Collezione Koelliker, exhibition catalogue, Milan 2005, pp. 228–29.

F. Petrucci, Pittura di Ritratto a Roma. Il Seicento, Rome 2008, vol. II, pp. 342–43, vol. III, p. 650, n. 420.

To be included in Dr. Stella Rudolph’s forthcoming catalogue raisonné.

This painting was recognized a few years ago as a major late portrait of Francesca Gommi by Carlo Maratti. It is an autograph version of a painting of a nearly identical composition (fig. 1, overleaf) but of smaller dimensions in a private collection in London, the identification of whose sitter was made by Rudolph on the basis of portraits of Francesca Gommi drawn by Maratti (Albertina, Vienna, and Academia de San Fernando, Madrid) and to the profile bust of her sculpted in bass relief by Camillo Rusconi in 1712 for her tomb in the church of San Faustina in Camerano. These comparisons allow us to date this portrait to about 1701 and the circumstances that inspired this pair of images are evidently closely connected to the personal life of the artist. Petrucci (see literature) believes this portrait to be earlier in date on the basis of 32

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her youthful appearance; however, we believe that her appearance in this painting is entirely consistent with her actual age in 1701.

The circumstances which surround the genesis of these portraits were brilliantly described by Rudolph in 1992–93 (see literature). Her article is the essential literature on this subject with its references to Maratti’s relationship with Francesca Gommi as well as their daughter and to such tropes in Renaissance portraiture as Titian’s ‘La Schiavona’ (fig. 2).

So eloquent is Rudolph’s article that it is worth quoting her opening paragraph on Maratti as a portrait painter: By the end of the Seicento Carlo Maratti, having reached the age of seventy-five and now the doyen of Roman painters, owed his European renown in no small measure to portraiture, a staple of the diversified pictorial repertory he had purveyed for over half a century. His contribution to the evolution of this genre, in a period when the Baroque style still emanated from Rome, was so faceted and indeed trenchant as to leave a durable imprint on particular modes of representation that now were subsiding from the pitch of novelty into the mainstream of convention. For example, in the 1650s he revitalized the norm for effigies of prelates through a canny dosage of accessories and décor, including the artefice of pictures within the picture that denote the recondite interests of the sitter; in the 1660s he launched the iconography of the Grand Tourist, positioned against a landscape background among the vestiges of antiquity, a scheme that would be perfected by Batoni only generations later; in the 1670s he articulated the society vogue for costume pieces in declensions that range from the trappings of a condottiere (resuscitated to enhance the image of a papal nephew) to the tenue displayed by the most enticing number in the ‘Beauties’ Galleries’ currently in demand as an adjunct to the interior decorations of princely residences. Twenty years later Maratti was at work on an ambitious design for the apotheosis of his major patron in a tableau vivant with Apollo, the Graces and himself among the supporting cast. Having thus sublimated Baroque allegory (from its mythological underpinnings and inflation into grandiose ornamental frescoes) into that apotheotic effigy, his ultimate venture in this sphere was an unwonted attempt to revive the emblematic portraiture coined during the Renaissance.

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On December 20th, 1700 Carlo Maratti was finally able to celebrate a late marriage to Francesca Gommi after the death of his wife from whom he had been separated since 1659. Gommi had been his faithful companion for many years as well as the mother to his daughter Faustina, born in 1679 (see catalogue, pp. 36–39), and her long-delayed marriage to Maratti was now able to be commemorated in these fine portraits, with their touching allusions to her, and the artist’s private life. They convey coded and intimate messages, transmitted through the subjects of the monochrome artworks which Francesca presents to the audience. In the London portrait the ‘painting within the painting’ represents a Cupid Driving Away the Old Man Time in the Act of Threatening a Young Girl, while in the painting exhibited here the drawing represents Venus Forging the Arms of Cupid at the Anvil of Vulcan. Thus, Maratti puts two emblematic glosses on his relationship with Francesca Gommi: the arms of Love will conquer all and the strength of Love will prevail, even over Time. Whether the allusion to Love defeating Time is to the many years Maratti had to wait to wed her or to his Fig. 1. Carlo enduring love for a woman no longer in the first flush of youth is open to Maratti, Portrait of Francesca Gommi interpretation.

This example differs from the London portrait on account of its more vigorous brushstrokes in the draperies and for a more uncompromising naturalism evident in the chiaroscuro with which the artist renders the face of a lady who is approaching fifty years of age. She is portrayed in both portraits showing off the jewelry given by her husband (in this version, the brooch on her shoulder is excluded and the bracelet and little chains are different) and both these dignified, courtly portraits exude the couple’s confidence in their new status. Our painting may be identified with one of the versions described in Francesca’s inventories of 1705 and 1711. A copy by Maratti’s pupil Procaccini, sold at auction at Christie’s in Rome (18 June, 2003, lot 435), reprises the drawing depicting Venus Forging the Arms of Love rather than Time, which suggests that this painting was the original prototype of what was, for the artist, a significant composition.

Maratti, 80 x 69.5 cm., London, Private Collection.

Fig. 2. Titian, ‘La Schiavona’, ca.

1510–12, 119.4 x 96.5 cm., London, National Gallery.

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Portrait of a Lady, probably the Artist’s Daughter, Faustina Maratti Zappi (ca.1679 –1745), as Saint Margaret Oil on canvas 75.3 x 61.9 cm. provenance John William Ellison Macartney (d. 1904), Clogher Palace, Clogher, County Tyrone, Ireland (according to a label on the reverse). with Hall & Knight, New York, 1998.

Private Collection, USA. literature To be included in Dr. Stella Rudolph’s forthcoming catalogue raisonné.

Dated by Dr. Stella Rudolph to ca. 1688–95, this engaging portrait was produced at the height of the artist’s career. It was at about this time that Maratti painted a series of six of the most eminent women of antiquity for one of his principal collectors, Francesco Montioni. Of this series, Cleopatra Dissolving the Pearl is now in the Museo Nazionale, Rome. Although Maratti concentrated primarily on religious and history painting, he was also a distinguished portraitist and the present work is thought to be of Faustina Maratti Zappi, his illegitimate daughter and a considerable personage in her own right. Having received an exceptional education in the liberal arts, she published a collection of Petrarchan sonnets with her husband, Giambattista Felice Zappi, in 1723. She became celebrated in Roman artistic circles as the most accomplished female poet of her age and was deemed a great beauty, attracting the attention of Giangiorgio Sforza Cesarini, a cadet son of the Duke of Genzano, whose attempted kidnapping of her saw him exiled to Naples and then Spain. Her birth was legitimized by Papal Bull in 1698.

This picture bears a marked resemblance to Maratti’s portrait of Faustina Holding a Painter’s Palette in Palazzo Corsini, Rome (fig. 1, overleaf). Executed ca. 1698, when his daughter would have been approximately 19 years old, the sitter exhibits the same distinctive features—the dimpled chin, full cheeks, fine eyebrows, and cupid’s bow lips—as appear in the present work. And yet, she is demonstrably 36

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Fig. 1. Carlo Maratti, Faustina Holding a Painter’s Palette, ca. 1698, Rome, Gallerie Nazionali d’Arte Antica di Roma, Galleria Corsini.

older in the Palazzo Corsini picture, lacking the roundness and adolescent quality of the earlier work. This accords with Stella Rudolph’s suggested dating for the picture, though a date closer to the later end of her 1688–95 range would seem be most appropriate, as Faustina would have been 15 or 16 in that year and is here clearly already beginning to transform into a young adult. The capacious folds of the drapery, the unusually large, lustrous eyes, and the curved position of the tapering fingers are characteristic of Maratti’s portraits of this period, as is the somber tonality of the costume, which emphasizes the paleness of the girl’s complexion. The gossamer, striped scarf across her shoulder is replicated in the impressive allegorical portrait of Maratti’s third wife and Faustina’s mother, Francesca Gommi Maratti, which dates to ca. 1701 (see pages 32–35).

Carlo Maratti is unusual among artists in having given his name to a frame model, though in this he followed Salvator Rosa after whom a frame is also named. Often called a ‘Carlo’ they usually have a lemonyellow water gilding and typically have layers of running ornamental detail, often lamb’s tongue, leading towards the sight edge. This frame was exceptionally popular in England and Rome throughout the eighteenth century. At that time, entire Papal collections, such as the Doria-Pamphilj, were almost completely reframed using this model.

Because it has no center or corner ornament the pattern lent itself to mass production and was widely used on portraits and view paintings.

The example on this Portrait of Faustina is unusually densely carved and of the highest quality.

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Portrait of Faustina Maratti as St Margaret in its Carlo Maratti frame.

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Carlo Maratti—a personal appreciation

By Ian Kennedy Maratti is one of the most understudied of Italian Baroque artists. This situation will soon be remedied by the publication of Stella Rudolph’s monograph, but a brief and apposite summary of his achievement is provided by Pete Bowron in his catalog essay for the exhibition Art in Rome in the Eighteenth Century held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2000: ‘It is difficult today to appreciate adequately’ he writes, ‘the authority that Maratti, this modern “Apelles of Rome”, exercised on the European artistic imagination in the early decades of the eighteenth century. For several generations of painters from the 1670s to the end of the eighteenth century, Maratti was the embodiment of the ideal classical artist and the chief exemplar of the tradition of Roman painting that began with Raphael. Nearly every painter that encountered Maratti’s work was affected profoundly and subtly reoriented his art thereafter toward new ideals of formal dignity, nobility, purity of contour and silhouette, and compositional clarity.’

Maratti was born in Camerano in 1625 near Ancona in the Papal States and died in Rome at a great age in 1713. His first master of any consequence was Andrea Sacchi. Sacchi was a leading light in the trend of baroque classicism, derived from the Carracci, which favored few but tellingly delineated figures that clearly expressed the narrative, as opposed to the so-called High Baroque artist Pietro da Cortona who believed that a larger number of figures allowed for the development of subsidiary themes. Over time, this juste milieu style became a paradigm for a courtly internationalism that was widely embraced by artists from Madrid to Vienna. Maratti’s early style is well exemplified in The Marytrdom of Saint Andrew in the Wemyss Collection, Gosford House (see catalogue). The figures here echo the lithe Hellenistic manner of Sacchi, perhaps most memorably demonstrated not by Sacchi himself but by Poussin in his Realm of Flora in Dresden.

Thereafter, Maratti’s style became crisper and more rhetorical, always in a disciplined way. Above all, it was highly eclectic. To call a work of art eclectic has become somewhat of a put-down as a result of the premium on originality insistently promoted by anti-academic 40

Opposite, fig. 1.

Carlo Maratti, The Triumph of Clemency (detail), 1672–73, Rome, Palazzo Altieri.

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Fig. 2. Carlo Maratti, Virgin Appearing to Saint Philip Neri, ca. 1675, 343 x 197 cm., Florence, Palazzo Pitti.

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trends in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The term was actually coined by Wincklemann in the mid-eighteenth century to describe the art of the Carracci but had a precedent in a longestablished tradition going back to antiquity which recommended selecting the best elements from a variety of sources to produce an ideal whole.

In Maratti’s day, such a policy of judicious choice was regarded as a perfectly acceptable expression of cultural reverence and respect for the great achievements of the remoter and recent past, from Antiquity to the Renaissance and Baroque.

Thus, in Maratti’s oeuvre, one can readily detect the example of many of his most distinguished predecessors and contemporaries from Raphael and Correggio to the Carracci, Domenichino, Guido Reni, Albani, Lanfranco, and Pietro da Cortona.

Maratti established his reputation with a series of altarpieces for Roman churches which, since displayed in public spaces, were equivalent to exhibition pieces in Salons of later generations. Patrons in timehonored fashion included members of leading Roman dynasties and reigning popes and their relatives. Maratti also attained fame with his Madonnas and pictures for private devotion. One of the best is the Christ Child Sleeping Surrounded by Music-Making Angels in the Louvre which reads like a more relaxed and domestic take on the Madonnas of Raphael. Among his altarpieces, a particularly felicitous example is the Virgin Appearing to Saint Philip Neri today in the Pitti Palace in Florence (fig. 2). Here the Virgin has the poise and grace of a Guido Reni and the relationship between her and the adoring saint is discreetly and harmoniously supported by the subsidiary figures.

Harmony is indeed the essence of this picture, achieved by clarity and controlled energy. It is far from experimental but reassuring and beguiling in its good manners and attractive palette. There is also a nervous energy in the draperies which recalls the work of his principle Roman rival Giovanni Battista Gaulli, called Baciccio, who might be rather crudely described as Bernini in paint. In that respect, Gaulli is representative of the more extrovert side of Roman Baroque painting,

triumphantly displayed in his illusionistic ceiling of the Triumph of the Name of Jesus in the church of the Gesù. There the effect is almost explosive as the bad guys are expelled from the heavenly realm and tumble out of the frame into the spectator’s space.

The Gesù ceiling contrasts markedly with Maratti’s nearly contemporary ceiling of the Triumph of Clemency in the Altieri Palace (fig. 1), the family residence of Pope Clement X. Though impressive and weighty when seen in the flesh, it is much less exciting than Gaulli’s fresco, more sculptural in the figures and less illusionistic in presentation.

Maratti did no other quite such ambitious decorations, perhaps realizing that this sort of thing was not his forte. However, in keeping with his wide-ranging vision, Maratti’s Martyrdom of San Biagio in the Basilica of Santa Maria di Carignano in Genoa displays an unusual amount of energy, bringing him closer to the ambient of Bernini and Baciccio. This can perhaps be seen as a response to the Correggesque late Baroque of Genoa itself. Maratta is often site specific, for example, in his Disputation over the Immaculate Conception in the Roman church of Santa Maria del Popolo (fig. 3), where the monolithic detached figures acknowledge the density and weight of Annibale Carracci’s Assumption of the Virgin in the same building. Perhaps Maratti’s best altarpiece is not in Rome but in his native region, his Madonna and Child with Three Saints, painted for the church of San Niccolò, Ancona and today, in the museum there (fig. 4, overleaf). This painting has exceptional intensity and grandeur which, along with the rich golden light, reflects a natural admiration for Titian’s Gozzi altarpiece painted for the church of San Francesco, Ancona and now also in the Ancona Museum.

Fig. 3. Carlo Maratti, Disputation over the Immaculate Conception, 1686, Rome, Cappella Cybo, Santa Maria del Popolo.

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Maratti’s reputation soon became international. His painting of Augustus Ordering the Closure of the Doors of the Janus Temple (Palais des Beaux Arts, Lille) was commissioned by a French patron Louis de la Vrillière for his hotel in Paris built by François Mansart. There it had to compete with other scenes from Roman History by Guido Reni, Pietro da Cortona, Guercino, and Poussin. In keeping with the theme, the painting has a strong classical bias perhaps inspired by the reliefs on the Augustan Ara Pacis in Rome. His most celebrated French commission was the Apollo Chasing Daphne painted for Louis XIV and now in the Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels. The subject is taken from Ovid’s Metamorphosis and was lauded by Maratti’s biographer Bellori as the perfect example of the Horatian tag ut pictura poesis, that is that a painting can achieve all that poetry can do in eloquently telling a story. The French King at the time was under the influence of the austere Madame de Maintenon. He apparently disapproved of the painting as showing too much naked flesh and so assigned it to the Dauphin.

Fig. 4. Carlo Maratti, Madonna and Child with Three Saints, 400 x 222 cm., Ancona, Pinacoteca civica Francesco Podesti.

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Maratti was appreciated in Germany, Austria, and Spain but also in England which notably lacked a native tradition of history painting. After the dispersal of Charles I’s collection during the Commonwealth, the English were just beginning to accumulate that vast store of continental works of art so meticulously recorded by Gustav Waagen almost 200 years later. The first serious British Grand Tourist, the 5th Earl of Exeter, bought a number of Marattis for his refurbished Burghley House where they still remain. Lord Exeter was more interested in acquiring contemporary Italian art than antiquities so Maratti’s studio in Rome was a first port of call. There was also a Maratti room in the Walpole collection at Houghton. These and other Italian Baroque paintings from there were later sold to Catherine the Great, but were fairly recently reinstalled in their former setting in a memorable loan exhibition from the Hermitage. At Stourhead is to be found one of Maratti’s most magnificent if pretentious compositions the Marchese Niccolò Maria Pallavicini (1650–1714) Guided to the Temple of Virtue by Apollo with a Self-Portrait of the Artist. Pallavicini was a banker and rather nouveaux riche, so the Maratti is emblematic of both aristocratic and plutocratic patronage which was to burgeon throughout Europe in the eighteenth century.

The painting also gives an idea of Maratti’s princely status and clout in the Roman art world. Here artist and patron are equals.

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Like many other history painters of his time, Maratti readily turned his hand to portraiture. One of his best is the Portrait of Pope Clement IX, today in the Hermitage (fig. 5). Also painted for the Marchese Pallavicini, it is obviously inspired by the canonical papal portraits of Raphael and Velázquez but is more conventional in its corporate presentation of the sitter, saluting the rank rather than the man, as it were. Maratti also had English sitters, notably the early Grand Tourist Sir Thomas Isham, whose portrait is still with the family of the sitter at Lamport Hall. Maratti’s interpretation is decidedly international and the painting’s elegant formality may reflect the influence of contemporary French portraiture.

After the end of the seventeenth century, Maratti painted less and devoted more of his time to restoration, particularly of the Raphael Stanze in the Vatican. He was twice elected as principle, later in perpetuity, of the Roman Academy di San Luke, founded in the late sixteenth century and the prototype for all later artistic academies.

He was also involved in the art market as a dealer and appraiser as were many of the more influential artists in Rome. His work fetched high prices so he was able to accumulate a large private collection, notably of the Bolognese and Roman school, including landscapes by Dughet and Grimaldi as well as figure paintings. After his death, the paintings inherited by his daughter were sold to the King of Spain.

Through the medium of his pupils, of whom the most faithful were Niccolò Berrettoni and Giuseppe Chiari, Maratti’s style dominated Roman painting until the rise of Neoclassicism and is still detectable in a celebrated fresco by the neo-classicist Mengs in the Villa Albani.

Maratti’s judicious middle-of-the-road style between classicism and Baroque supported Rome’s role in the Academy of Europe and as an essential training ground for artists, even from America like Benjamin West. Francesco Solimena, the leading artist in Naples and considered one of the greatest painters of his day, changed his style after a spell in Rome from the plump dynamic manner of Luca Giordano to something crisper and more Marattesque. However, he mobilized his conventionally academic figures with a flickering chiaroscuro, perhaps in deference to the Caravaggesque tradition which persisted in Naples longer than in another Italian centers. Maratti’s late Baroque classicism also proved very compatible with French taste, which 46

Fig. 5. Carlo Maratti, Portrait of Pope Clement IX, 1669, 123 x 170 cm., St. Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum.

oscillated between the poles of Rubens and Poussin, and thus was important for artists sojourning at the French Academy in Rome.

As long as Grand Tour ideals prevailed, which they did especially in England well into the nineteenth century, Maratti was still a significant, if diminishing, presence. When the Baroque fell from favor later in the nineteenth century he was forgotten until reappraisal of the style in the mid-twentieth century. However, there has still never been a Maratti exhibition and though his drawings are ubiquitous, few of his major paintings can be found in public collections outside Italy. Among the best in America are the Bob Jones’ Saint Andrew, a version of the Gosford House painting, and the Rebecca and Eliezer at the Well in the Indianapolis Museum of Art. There are no Maratti paintings in the National Gallery in Washington nor the Metropolitan in New York, though the latter has a faithfully Marattesque Bathsheba by Chiari. It is to be hoped that the appearance of Stella Rudolph’s monograph will stimulate renewed awareness of Maratti’s work and perhaps restore his reputation, at least among connoisseurs, to something approaching that which he enjoyed in his lifetime.

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p h oto cre dit s Maratti, Carlo. Marchese Niccolò Maria Pallavicini (1650–1714) guided to the Temple of Virtue by Apollo with a Self-portrait of the Artist, 1690–1700. Oil on canvas, 299.7 x 212 cm. Wiltshire, Stourhead House. The Hoare Collection.

Photo: John Hammond. © National Trust Photo Library / Art Resource, NY. Maratti, Carlo. The Madonna with Saints Monica, Augustine and Dominic, 164445. Camerano, Chiesa dell’Immacolata. This photographic reproduction was provided by the Photo library of the Federico Zeri Foundation. The property rights of the author have been met.

Maratti, Carlo. Cross on the Book, 1646. 34.5 x 44.5 cm. Dorking, The Evelyn Trust Settlement. This photographic reproduction was provided by the Photo library of the Federico Zeri Foundation. The property rights of the author have been met.

Maratti, Carlo. Nativity, 1650–60. Rome, San Giuseppe dei Falegnami.

This photographic reproduction was provided by the Photo library of the Federico Zeri Foundation. The property rights of the author have been met.

Maratti, Carlo. Madonna with Saints Francis and James, 1687. Rome, Santa Maria in Montesanto. This photographic reproduction was provided by the Photo library of the Federico Zeri Foundation. The property rights of the author have been met.

Maratti, Carlo. Cleopatra Dissolving the Pearl, 1693-95. Oil on canvas, 162 x 113 cm. Inv. PV 873. Venice, Rome, Museo Nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia. © Scala/Ministero per i Beni e le Attività culturali / Art Resource, NY. Maratti, Carlo, Rebecca and Eliezer at theWell, ca. 1696. Oil on canvas. Inv. n.

402. © Rome, Gallerie Nazionali d’Arte Antica di Roma, Galleria Corsini.

Maratti, Carlo. Christ Child Sleeping Surrounded by Music-Making Angels, 1697.

Oil on wood, 120 x 98 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre. INV.373. Photo: Stéphane Maréchalle. © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY. Maratti, Carlo. The Sacrifice of Noah, ca. 1649–1651. Oil on canvas, oval, 101 x 117 cm. Photo: Joshua Nefsky.

Maratti, Carlo. Preparatory drawing for The Sacrifice of Noah. Private Collection. Photo courtesy of Kekko Gallery.

Maratti, Carlo. Nativity, 1655–56. Rome, Palazzo del Quirinale. This photographic reproduction was provided by the Photo library of the Federico Zeri Foundation. The property rights of the author have been met.

Cossin, Louis. After Maratti, Carlo. The Sacrifice of Noah.

Maratti, Carlo. St. Augustine and the Mystery of the Trinity, 1656–58. Rome, Santa Maria de’ Sette Dolori. This photographic reproduction was provided by the Photo library of the Federico Zeri Foundation. The property rights of the author have been met.

Maratti, Carlo. The Crucifixion of Saint Andrew, ca. 1656. Oil on canvas, 121.3 x 158.7 cm. Private Collection.

Maratti, Carlo. Augustus Ordering the Closure of the Doors of the Janus Temple, or the Augustean Peace, ca. 1660. Oil on canvas, 280 x 175 cm. Lille, Palais des Beaux Arts. Inv.P.49. Photo: Jean Schormans. © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY. Maratti, Carlo. and Dughet, Gaspard. Landscape with the Union of Dido and Aeneas, ca. 1664–68. Oil on canvas, 152.9 x 223.7 cm. London, National Gallery. Holwell Carr Bequest, 1831 (NG95). © National Gallery, London / Art Resource, NY. Maratti, Carlo. and dei Fiori, Mario. Putti and Still life on a Mirror, 1660.

Rome, Palazzo Colonna. © Paul Fearn / Alamy Stock Photo.

Maratti, Carlo. The Painter Andrea Sacchi, ca. 1661. Oil on canvas, 67 x 50 cm. Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado. © Museo Nacional del Prado / Art Resource, NY. Maratti, Carlo. Visitation, 1664. Siena, Duomo, Cappella della Madonna del Voto. © Opera della Metropolitana.

Maratti, Carlo. Visitation and The Rest on the Flight into Egypt with Bernini sculptures. Siena, Duomo, Cappella della Madonna del Voto. © Foto LENSINI Siena.

Maratti, Carlo. The Flight into Egypt, ca. 1664. Oil on copper, 60.3 x 48.6 cm. Rome, Gallerie Nazionali d’Arte Antica di Roma, Galleria Corsini.

Maratti, Carlo. Madonna with the Five Saints Canonized by Clement X, 1675.

Rome, Santa Maria sopra Minerva. This photographic reproduction was provided by the Photo library of the Federico Zeri Foundation. The property rights of the author have been met.

Liart, Mathieu. After Maratti, Carlo. The Sacrifice of Noah, 1767. © London, British Museum.

Sacchi, Andrea. Saint Andrew Adoring the Cross of his Martyrdom, 1633–34.

Oil on canvas, 210 x 140 cm. Rome, Basilica di San Pietro, Città del Vaticano. This photographic reproduction was provided by the Photo library of the Federico Zeri Foundation. The property rights of the author have been met.

Maratti, Carlo. Martyrdom of Saint Andrew, ca. 1656. Oil on canvas. Greenville, Museum & Gallery at Bob Jones University.

Reni, Guido. Saint Andrew Brought to the Temple, 1608. Fresco, Rome, Oratorio di Sant’ Andrea al Celio. © Creative Commons.

Maratti, Carlo. Studies for the painting “The Martyrdom of St. Andrew”, recto.

Inscribed: “C Maratti” (lower left), numerals in pen and brown ink: “63” (upper left). Stamp: “Status Montiun” (lower centre). Red chalk, heightened with white, on grey-brown paper, 28.2 x 42.5 cm. Kunstmuseum, Düsseldorf.

Maratti, Carlo. Studies for the painting “The Martyrdom of St. Andrew”, verso.

Red chalk, heightened with white, on grey-brown paper, 28.2 x 42.5 cm. Kunstmuseum, Düsseldorf.

Frey the Elder, Jakob. After, Carlo Maratti. Saint Andrew. Engraving. San Francisco, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. © Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts.

Maratti, Carlo. Portrait of a Lady, probably the Artist’s Daughter, Faustina Maratti Zappi (c. 1679–1745), as Saint Margaret, ca. 1688–95. Oil on canvas, 75.3 x 61.9 cm.

Maratti, Carlo. Faustina holding a painter’s palette, ca. 1698. © Rome, Gallerie Nazionali d’Arte Antica di Roma, Galleria Corsini.

Maratti, Carlo. Portait of Cardinal Antonio Barberini, 1671. Oil on canvas. Inv. n. 5001. Photo: Mauro Coen. © Rome, Gallerie Nazionali d’Arte Antica di Roma, Palazzo Barberini.

Maratti, Carlo. Portrait of Francesca Gommi Maratti (1660–1711), Wife of the Painter who Holds a Drawing DepictingVenus Forging the Arms of Cupid, ca. 1701.

Oil on canvas, 98.5 x 74.5 cm.

Maratti, Carlo. Portrait of Giovan Pietro Bellori, 1672–73. 97 x 72.5 cm.

Briganti Collection.

Maratti, Carlo. Virgin Appearing to St. Philip Neri, ca. 1675. Oil on canvas, 343 x 197 cm. Florence, Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti. © Scala / Art Resource, NY.

Maratti, Carlo. The Triumph of Clemency, 1672–73. Fresco. Rome, Palazzo Altieri. © Palazzo Altieri, Rome, Italy/Bridgeman Images.

Maratti, Carlo. Death of Saint Francis Xavier, 1674–79. Rome, Chiesa del Gesù. © Scala / Art Resource, NY. Maratti, Carlo. Portrait of Sir Thomas Isham, 1677. 148 x 121 cm. Northamptonshire, Lamport Hall Preservation Trust.

Maratti, Carlo. Disputation over the Immaculate Conception, 1686. Rome, Cybo Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo. © Creative Commons.

Maratti, Carlo. Madonna and Child with Three Saints. 400 x 222 cm. Ancona, Pinacoteca civica Francesco Podesti. © Mondadori Portfolio/Electa/Sergio Anelli/Bridgeman.

Maratti, Carlo. Apollo Chasing Daphne, 1679–81. 221.2 x 224 cm. Brussels, Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique. © Peter Horree / Alamy Stock Photo.

Maratti, Carlo. Portrait of Pope Clement IX, 1669. Oil on canvas, 123 x 170 cm.

St. Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum. © HIP / Art Resource, NY.

Maratti, Carlo. The Rape of Europa, 1682–84. Oil on canvas, 248 × 424 cm.

NGI.81. Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland. © National Gallery of Ireland.

Design: Lawrence Sunden, Inc. Printing: The Studley Press

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© 2017 Nicholas Hall