The Bolognese Academy,
Carracci Family, and
Illusionism
Maria Korol
Sara Rasoulian
Scott Stormer
Sumbla Yasdanie
Historical Context
Counter Reformation
• Challenging the
Protestant
Reformation
• Treaty of Westphalia,
1648
• Promotion and
restoration of Latin
Catholicism
Bridging the gap between
the imperfect world
and the world beyond
• Lifting the barrier
• Blending angles into
our imperfect world
Served the interest of
court society and the
church
The Bolognese Academy
•
Established by the Carracci
family members
– Agostino (1557-1602) and
Annibale Carracci (1560-1609)
– Ludovico Carracci (15551619)
Founded on the premise that art
can be taught - primacy of
studio training
• Promoted the traditions of the
Renaissance and the Classical
model
• Advanced the study of anatomy
and life drawing
• Primary movement in Baroque
art
•
•
Upper left: Annibale Carracci, detail of Loves of the Gods
ceiling fresco at he Palazzo Farnese Gallery, Rome, Italy.
Below it: Annibale Carracci, Assumption of the Virgin
Mary, 1600-01,Oil on canvas, 245 x 155 cm
Cerasi Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome
PIETRO DA CORTONA, Triumph of the Barberini, Ceiling Fresco in
the Gran Salone, Palazzo Barberini, Rome, Italy, 1633-1639
PIETRO DA CORTONA, Triumph of the Barberini
(Divine Providence), 1633-1639
•
Commissioned by Pope
Urban VIII for the
Grand Salon of the
Palazzo Barberini in
Rome
•
Central composition
exhibits flying maidens
holding aloft the papal
keys, tiara, with robe
belt above a swarm of
heraldic giant golden
bees
•
the “Barberini Bees”
represent teamwork
and industriousness,
two well-known
Barberini characteristics
•
The most important
decorative commission
of the 1630s.
Characteristics:
•
Heroic
•
Christian undertones
•
Symbolism
•
Illusionistic
Cultural Influences
•
Venice and Northern Italy from 1600-1800 remained a flourishing artistic center, even
as its political and economic status declined over the course of two centuries. Venice
was a cultural capital of Europe, and the Academy in Bologna founded by the Carracci
family trained artists in a classical tradition. Foreign artists were attracted to
Northern Italy because of the aristocratic families commissioning art works. The
Bolognese Academy became the center for progressive art at the time, Naturalism
infused with Classicism ushered in the Baroque style, and the reform efforts by the
Carracci family influenced a generation of artists in Italy.
•
The concern with truth and nature became a big part of the culture in Italy. The
Bolognese school developed around the Carracci family attempted to get rid of
mannerism by returning to High Renaissance principles of clarity and balance. The
school most likely started as a casual gathering of young artists with similar ideas,
wanting to reform art. The Carracci family turned to Correggio, Titian, and Veronese
for inspiration and used there styles into their own works. Around 1580 the Carracci
family opened the Bolognese School. The new style of simple, clear, direct pictures,
portraying the truth of the subject fit the demands of the Counter-Reformation which
advocated that there be no barriers for the observer and object in religious art. The
Counter- Reformation advocated the truth to common experiences and inspires
human faith. The academy emphasized drawing from life, and connecting truth to
nature. Gestures and expression of figures for the art works encouraged the viewer to
become an active participant in the piece. The excessive amount of Mannerist
painters at the time led to the Carracci family to take it upon themselves to reform art
through research and experiment. The Carracci family reformed the style of painting
by referencing it to the Roman models of Renaissance art. The success of the
academy led Annibale to receive an invitation to decorate the ceiling of the Palazzo,
and soon the movement became the most influential force in Italian Baroque painting.
Cultural Influences continued
•
Baroque art returned to Renaissance principles, and addressed the senses, emotions,
and intellect of the viewer. Caravaggio was already in Rome before Annibale.
Caravaggio was the first artist to really grasp the full illusionistic potential of
Bolognese techniques, and his style was associated as a product of the naturalistic
conventions.
•
Annibale’s work represented what might be and what should be. Caravaggio’s work
represented more of what is the truth in direct observation. However, Annibale was
heavily influenced by Caravaggio’s work, and Caravaggio became the leader behind
an entire school of Baroque Naturalists (secondary movement).
•
The new reform efforts influenced a new generations of artists and art work. Artists
like Reni, Domenichino, Albani, and Lanfranco were all trained by the Carracci at
their academy in Bologna. In 1625, Lanfranco painted the dome of the church of
Saint’ Andrea della Valle in Rome with his “Assumption of the virgin”, The painting
was inspired by Correggio’s Renaissance ceiling in Parma. The illusionistic effects
helped make the painting one of the first high baroque masterpieces. Lanfranco’s
work in Rome and Naples became critical to the development of illusionism in Italy,
and Domenichino went on to become Rome’s leading painters.
•
The accomplishment of the Carracci Family included achieving a revitalization of
traditions of Italian Renaissance painting. These new principles of reform influenced
the course for painting in Italy and France in the 17th century, but with greater clarity
of purpose and intellectual force.
ANTONIO DA CORREGGIO, Assumption of the Virgin, 1526-1530, Fresco 1093 x
1195 cm Cathedral of Parma
ANTONIO DA CORREGGIO, Assumption of the Virgin
1526-1530, fresco, Cathedral of Parma
“Assumption of the Virgin” by Correggio portrays the assumption of Mary into heaven. The painting was done
in plaster with water-soluble pigments which served as the inspiration for the baroque style of dramatic
illusionistic ceiling painting. Correggio used the sotto in su perspective, which means seen from below in Italian.
The technique creates an illusion that the figures are floating in space above the viewer, which was common in
Baroque fresco cycles.
Correggio was one of the most important northern Italian painters, and the Parma ceiling is one of his best know
pieces. Correggio was influenced by Andrew Mantegna, with his invention of foreshortening. The new technique
allowed the viewer to be pulled back into the art piece. He was also influenced by classical works of Leonardo,
Raphael, and the Venetians, and he was inspired by the intense coloring of the local Bolognese school. The
illusionistic effects with steeply foreshortening figures floating above the viewer inspired numerous Baroque
artists including Annibale Carracci who was Correggio’s greatest predecessors (his influence can be seen in
Carracci’s Farnese ceiling). The painting shows a view of the sky with rings of clouds where hundreds of figures
performed a dance in celebration of the Assumption. His use of illusionism enhances the dramatic effect of the
piece.
Subject and Style of the Bolognese Academy
•
•
•
•
•
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The Carracci brothers Agostino and
Annibale, and their cousin Ludovico
formed the Academy of the
Progressives (Bolognese Academy) at
the beginning of 1580 in response to
the Mannerist style, which they
regarded as false and artificial.
They rejected the Mannerist use of
previous artworks as models, and
promoted the direct observation of
nature.
They emphasized the importance of
drawing, and the use of preliminary
sketches.
The main subject for their works was
Classic mythology with Christian
undertones.
The Bolognese Academy style was
influenced by that of High
Renaissance artists such as
Michelangelo and Raphael.
Top left: CARRACCI, Annibale, Self-Portrait in Profile, 1590s, Oil
on canvas, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence Below it: CARRACCI,
Annibale,The Flight into Egypt, 1603, Oil on canvas, 122 x 230 cm,
Galleria Doria-Pamphili, Rome
Palazzo Farnese, Rome, Italy
• Annibale Carracci was
commissioned to paint
frescoes in the palace of
Cardinal Odoardo
Farnese in 1595.
• Annibale first painted
the Camerino (small
room) with the stories of
Hercules.
• In 1597 he started his
masterpiece “Loves of
the Gods” in the larger
gallery of the Farnese
palace.
Image on the right: Annibale Carracci, Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne, central panel of Loves of the
Gods, 1597-1602, Rome, Italy, 1597-1601
•
•
The Loves of the Gods gallery in the Palazzo Farnese represents a
great collection of classical paintings, with illusionistic elements
such as the painted frames and painted sculpture.
It shows the influence of High Renaissance works such as the
Sistine Chapel’s ceiling fresco by Michelangelo, and the frescoes
in the Vatican Loggie by Raphael.
The “Toolbox” of Illusionism
•
Perspective: A method of presenting an
illusion of the three dimensional world
on a two-dimensional surface.
(developed by Brunelleschi in the Early
Renaissance)
•
Foreshortening: the use of perspective to
represent the apparent visual contraction
of an object that extends back in space at
an angle to the perpendicular plane of
sight. (developed by Mantegna in the
Early Renaissance)
•
Trompe L’Oeil: French, “fools the eye.”
A form of illusionistic painting that aims
to deceive viewers into believing that
they are seeing real objects rather than a
representation of those objects.
•
Painters such as Pietro da Cortona,
Giovanni Battista Gaulli, and Fra Andrea
Pozzo would further investigate and
develop Illusionism in the form of ceiling
frescoes, mostly produced for Catholic
churches, during the Baroque period.
Italian Baroque ceiling frescoes:
Materials and Processes
•
The first part of the overall plan
of a ceiling fresco started with an
extensive amount of preliminary
drawings, many of which used
red chalk. The Caracci academy
was well known for it’s use of life
studies, and for Annibale’s
commitment to the study of
nature. So the first parts in the
process of monumental ceiling
frescoes in the High Baroque era
consisted of the design phases
and studies from life for the
majority of the figures in the
compositions.
•
Top left: a life study, a seated ignudo looking upward, 15981599, black chalk heightened with white on gray-blue paper,
laid down 495 x 384 (19 1/2 x 15 1/8), Musee du Louvre, Paris.
Below it: , a drawing in sinopia pigment, Annibale Carraci,
attributed, St. Sebastian. Red chalk on heavy cream laid
paper, c. 1606.
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Many of these survive, although there obviously must have been many
more. Annibale would also use this phase of the process to design the
overall composition through his drawings before proceeding onto the
larger cartoons.
This leads to the next phase of the process, again another preliminary
stage before actually being involved in the painting of the ceiling. The
next part of this process, after the initial life studies and planning of the
overall design, consisted of the execution of large-scale cartoons which
would be used by the artist to quickly transfer the drawings to the
plaster surface of the ceiling. Also, it is interesting to note that even
though these large-scale cartoons seemed to provide for direct copying
by the artist, there was some amount of freedom that the artist had in
improvising with his figures as he saw fit to suit the overall composition
within the actual setting of the ceiling.
Before the actual painting process could take place, artists would begin
by transferring their cartoons to the plastered surface by sketching
them in on this surface in a red pigment called sinopia. This was
responsible for later giving this first layer it’s name of sinopia, due to
artist’s primarily using this pigment for their initial underdrawings.
This first layer, divided into sections, was also called the arriccio. On
top of this, the next layer of plaster was placed, called the intonaco, and
this became the top and final surface in which the artists would directly
paint on. But before the cartoons could be transferred directly to the
ceiling, it had to be plastered first which leads to a discussion of the
first steps in the actual process of fresco.
•
Fresco painting is generally divided into two types, buon fresco and fresco secco. Buon fresco
consists of painting directly on wet plaster or mortar also called intonaco, with pigment mixed
with water. In this process, a binder is not needed as the pigment mixed with water is enough to
hold the pigment to the wall. This is in contrast, to fresco secco, which is done on dry plaster.
•
The majority of Italian Baroque ceiling frescoes were done using the process of buon fresco, which
requires the artist to plan very carefully how much work he will be able to get done in a day due to
the drying nature of the plaster. The artist would plan this by having a section of the wall
plastered in the buon manner, and this area was called the gionarata which is translated to mean a
day’s work. This was the area that the artist planned on finishing in the course of a day’s work and
this would give the artist between 10 and 12 hours before the plaster dried.
•
Once this area dried, the artist could no longer paint on this area without first removing the
plaster and starting over. This is one reason why some areas that needed to be redone due to
mistakes or other reasons were generally re-painted using fresco secco, which allowed the artist
to work on dry plaster although there were limitations with this process as well.
•
A typical fresco would consist of between 10 and 20 gionarata and over the course of many
centuries the divisions between these gionarata can sometimes be seen from the ground although
it was common for artists to paint these areas a secco and due to the fragile nature of a secco
painting these sections have sense fallen off.
•
Fresco secco also had other limitations making it a medium that was not as commonly used as
buon fresco, one of these being the limitation on colors that could be used. This meant that only
stable pigments could be used, and other less stable pigments could not be used in the fresco
secco process.
•
One of the most common pigments used in a secco was a color called azurite blue and artists
sometimes used a secco painting specifically to allow for a broader range of colors that was
allowed through the use of fresco secco. The combination of mainly fresco buono for the vast
majority of the ceiling combined with parts of fresco secco for corrections and concealing the
divisions between individual gioranta was the main process in completing a ceiling fresco.
Bottom Left: Detail from a fresco by Giovanni
Battista Tiepelo.
Left: a view of an Italian High Baroque ceiling.
Bottom Right: Giovanni Battista Gaulli, adoration
the name of Jesus. 1674-9. Fresco, Rome, Gesu,
ceiling of the nave.
FRA ANDREA POZZO,
Glorification of Saint Ignatius, ceiling fresco in the nave of Sait’Ignazio,
Rome Italy, 1691-1694
FRA ANDREA POZZO
Glorification of Saint Ignatius, ceiling fresco in the nave of Sait’Ignazio, Rome 1691-1694
•
An analysis of this work can start by exploring the first
impressions of the viewer as opposed to an immediate detailed
analysis of all of it’s parts. This is a good way to start, because of
the fact that this ceiling, like so many other High and Late
Baroque ceiling frescoes, is so grand and large in it’s
composition and overall complexity, that the most important
aspect of it is the initial response that it evokes.
•
This is a good example of something being more than just the
sum of its parts, although these individual aspects of the work
are important when taken together due to the fact that it is these
that together make the work something exceptionally large and
grand.
•
The subject of this fresco is an allegory of the missionary work of
the Jesuits and there are personifications of the continents of
Europe, Africa, Asia, and America. To start with, this Baroque
ceiling is exceptional in it’s complexity, typically ornamental in
true Baroque fashion, although in it’s own unique way.
The use of perspective in the Pozzo ceiling
•
The degree of illusionism that is achieved in the Pozzo ceiling is very impressive,
and this reflects his very deep understanding of the systems of perspective that
were first developed by Brunelleschi and later refined and applied to painters by
Alberti.
•
Although, the application of these systems of perspective is very different and
much more sophisticated and refined in terms of the illusionistic qualities that
can be obtained from it, then in works of earlier Renaissance masters. This
higher degree of illusionism is a hallmark and key attribute of High and Late
Baroque ceiling frescoes.
•
Although it is obvious that the use of perspective is based on the linear formulas
of Brunelleschi and Alberti. There is a high degree of spatial depth that is
contained within this ceiling with all diagonals converging towards a central
point, typical of true linear perspective. The spatial depth of the picture moves
towards the center from all sides with the corners being represented as being
closest to the viewer with distances being represented as further away as space
is represented moving away from the corners and towards the center of the
composition.
•
The farthest implied distance is directly in the center of the picture drawing the
viewer’s attention to this point. All architectural elements and figures point
towards this central area which further enhances the illusion of the perspective
system used in this ceiling. There is also a use of aerial perspective with figures
becoming less clearly defined as the implied distances become greater.
The Illusionistic Qualities
The Influence of Michelangelo (Renaissance) on the Pozzo (Baroque) Ceiling
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The degree of illusionism in the Pozzo ceiling is remarkable and is made
apparent by studying the side figures and their relationships with the actual
windows of the church directly below the ceiling. From this one can gain a
sense of the incredible illusionism that was achieved in this fresco, for one
cannot tell at all where the actual architecture ends and the ceiling begins.
•
It is interesting to look at some of the individual figure groups in this ceiling
in more detail sense it is these individual groups that interact to make up the
whole of the composition, along with the architectural elements. The
individual figures share a lot in common with earlier Renaissance models,
particularly those of Michelangelo. Pozzo’s palette is also similar in ways to
this Renaissance master, showing a clarity and vividness of color, lacking
sharp contrasts that are sometimes typical of the Baroque, and instead
reflecting this Renaissance influence. The expressive poses and gestures of
the individual figures also reflect these earlier Renaissance influences, and
Pozzo may or may not have quoted directly from Michelangelo’s famous
figures in his Sistine frescoes. The handling of drapery is also very similar to
that of Michelangelo’s with drapery being handled in large simplified folds
focusing on a unity of color with delicate highlights. Although there are also
some areas with very expressive flying drapery that is very much a Baroque
and not a Renaissance attribute.
Top right: Detail of the prophet Jonah from Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling.
Bottom left: Example of the illusionism that was achieved in the Pozzo
ceiling fresco.
To summarize some of the key features of the
Pozzo ceiling, it may be noted that this particular
Baroque fresco is unique in it’s balance of
classical and baroque elements with the
expression and extravagance of the figure groups
balanced and contained within the classical
arches and columns. Also, the spacing of the
figure groups, and the amount of open space that
is left within the composition serves to balance the
baroque aspects with these classical ones. This
balancing makes this particular Baroque fresco a
truly amazing example of High Baroque
illusionism.
Sources
• Janson, H. W., and Janson, Anthony. History of Art.
Harry N. Abrams Incorporated, sixth Ed. New York,
2001.
• Kleiner, Fred S. and Mamiya, Christian J. Gardner’s Art
Through the Ages, Western Perspective, Volume II.
Thomson Wadsworth, U.S., 2006.
• Web Gallery of Art. http://www.wga.hu/framese.html?/html/c/correggi/frescoes/duomo.html 06 May,
2007.
• Web Museum, Paris. Carracci.
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/carracci/
• In addition, many general information sites on the artists
and their works of Baroque Illusionism can be found on
the World Wide Web