beside the easel

Self-Portrait, 1600's Pietro Berrettini was born in his namesake city of Cortona on November 1, 1596. One of the greatest giants of the Baroque era, his name has unfortunately lost much of its former glory in the shadow of others. What makes Pietro unique is not necessarily his technique but his approach to art—nicknamed cortonismo by his peers— essentially a monumental scale with multiple figures and grandiose storytelling. Pietro also did interior decoration and some architecture, and with his powerful patrons of the Barberini family he was able to secure some very large commissions, including massive ceiling frescos that have to be seen to be believed. For a period of four years he was also director or principe , of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome in which he designed the building for. It was the second greatest school in Italy (Accademia degli Incamminati was the first) which fostered a long list of teachers or principe that any art student today could only imagi...

The Persian Sybil, 1600's Domenico Zampieri  was born October 21, 1581 in Bologna. A student of the Accademia degli Incamminati he would work in Rome with Annibale Carracci in Rome on the Farnese frescoes. His career would be defined by his work with not only paintings but ceilings and frescoes. Nicknamed Domenichino for his short height, he was also known as Il Bue (the ox) for his stubbornness and disciplined work methods. Although not a well-known figure in the Baroque it is his use of color and the way he painted women in particular that makes Domenichino unique. His rivalry with former collegue Giovanni Lanfranco would greatly upset him over the years, eventually bringing him to work in Naples where he could work without needless comparison to him. The Persian Sybil demonstrates his particular genius for painting women. Draped in vivid blue and red with traces of yellow, Domenichino's effortless grace and strong face of this lovely woman is mesmerizing. Note the m...

I don't think there is any other artist in history who is as well known for painting a massive fresco by himself.The loner. The genius. The perfectionist. The terribilitá. The homosexual (if he was indeed gay, which is still being debated). We think we know him, but we really don't know him at all. His genius was based on a solid training with a fanatical attention to anatomy. His perfectionism comes from a father who was probably pretty hard on him for most of his life. His personality was probably not as dramatic as history conveys him— in fact, I suspect he was quite introverted, preferring to observe rather than talk excessively. Just don't piss the guy off. Even so, the labours of his art reveal he had to have had an inordinate amount of patience, or he would not have been able to deal with the many projects from Pope Julius II and their problems. Although I do love sculpture very much, it's painting that I want to talk about in this blog, and since Michelangelo...