Giovanni Lanfranco

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Giovanni Lanfranco (26 January 1582 - 30 November 1647) was a prominent Italian Baroque painter.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Independent work 3 Legacy and critical assessment 4 Selected works 5 Sources 6 References

[edit] Biography

Lanfranco was born in Parma, where he began as an apprentice to the Bolognese Agostino Carracci, working alongside Sisto Badalocchio in the local Farnese palaces. When Agostino died in 1602, both artists movedto the large and prominent Roman workshop of Annibale Carracci which was completing the large masterpiece in the Palazzo Farnese gallery ceiling. Lanfranco's contribution was to the panel of Polyphemus and Galatea (replica in Doria Gallery). Afterward, while still in the employ of Carracci, Lanfranco, along with Guido Reni and Francesco Albani, frescoed the Herrera (San Diego) Chapel in San Giacomo degli Spagnoli (1602-1607). He also participated in fresco decoration of San Gregorio Magno and the Cappella Paolina in Santa Maria Maggiore.

[edit] Independent work

By 1605, Lanfranco was obtaining independent commissions, for example painting the Camerino degli Eremiti in the Palazzetto Farnese (also known as Casino della Morte, which was once a low building on the Via Giulia, adjacent to the church of Santa Maria dell'Orazione e Morte. The camerino had been constructed by Cardinal Odoardo Farnese next to his palace and gardens, and was destroyed in 1734 to allow for the construction of the present church of aforementioned church. Of the canvases and frescoes by Domenichino, Girolamo Pulzone, Paul Bril, and Lanfranco, some are still conserved in the church. Lanfranco contributed the eccentric Translation of the Magdalen, now in the Capodimonte Museum in Naples,^[1].

After Annibale Carracci died in 1609, and with the Bolognese school temporarily out of favor, Lanfranco returned to Parma for two years, where he met Bartolomeo Schedoni and where he painted the altarpiece for the Ognissanti church. Lanfranco also painted in Orvieto, Vallerano, Leonessa and Fermo.

Returning to Rome the end of 1612-1615, Lanfranco and the three other main Carracci trainees, Reni, Albani, and Domenichino, competed for Roman patronage. Reni was soon to depart to Naples and Bologna. For the following decades in Rome, Lanfranco and Domenichino developed a bitter rivalry for the main fresco commissions. A measure of the competition can be gauged from Lanfranco publicly accusation of Domenichino, and not wholly without merit, of plagiarism in his painting of the Confession of St. Jerome, now in the Vatican.

Unlike Domenichino, Lanfranco was eclectic in styles. His works can resemble the late work of Ludovico Carracci. Other works were influenced by Caravaggio, for example the altarpiece depicting the Inspiration of Saint Luke at Piacenza(1611). In others, he assimilated the style of his compatriot and predecessor of the past century, Antonio Correggio, including his Adoration of the Shepherds painted before 1608 for the Marchese Clemente Sannesi and his brother the Cardinal Jacopo^[2].

Lanfranco's studio became quite active, painting frescoes in the Palazzo Mattei and decorating the Buongiovanni Chapel in Sant'Agostino (1616). He painted an altarpiece of Virgin with Saint James and St Anthony Abbot. Soon, Lanfranco became the pre-eminent painter of circle of Pope Paul V. Lanfranco also decorated painted frescoes for the Palazzo Costaguti and the Buongiovanni Chapel in Sant' Agostino (1616), and a large ceiling fresco in quadratura at the Villa Borghese: The Gods of Olympus and personification of the rivers.

In the following year, Lanfranco together with Agostino Tassi and Carlo Saraceni decorated the Sala de' Corazzieri and Sala Regia of the Palazzo del Quirinale. His formal Presentation at the Temple has the sunlit Carraci-like style [1]. In 1622, he painted the Ectasy of Saint Margaret of Cortona (Galleria Platina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence) as an altarpiece for Santa Maria Nuova in Cortona, where Margaret live and died. The painting could well have inspired the pose in Bernini's famous St Theresa in ecstasy. In 1623-1624, he decorated the Sacchetti Chapel in San Giovanni dei Fiorentini^[3] in Rome.

While Paul V's successor, Gregory XV, preferred works by Guercino and Domenichino, Lanfranco won commissions for the Crucifix Chapel in Santa Maria in Vallicella. Lanfranco's crowning masterpiece, however, and one of the major church fresco decoration of the late 1620s, was his Assumption of the Virgin frescoed on the dome of Sant'Andrea della Valle. Completed in 1627 in sotto in su perspective, the crowded array of figures is a landmark in Baroque painting with bright golden coloration and energy. Lanfranco was influenced by Correggio's pioneering decoration of the Duomo di Parma.

Urban VIII commissioned him a large fresco portraying St. Peter Walking on Waters (1628, now fragmentary), for which Lanfranco gained the title of Knight of the Order of Christ. In 1631, Lanfranco was named Prince (Principe) of the Academy of Saint Luke, the artist's guild in Rome. There is also a fresco by Giovanni Lanfranco above the monument of Pope Clement VIII in Santa Maria Maggiore in (Rome).

From 1634 to 1646, Lanfranco began decorating the dome and pendentives of the Jesuit church of the Gesù Nuovo in Naples in 1634-1637. In 1637-1638, he frescoed the nave and choir of the Certosa of San Martino. This was followed by the decoration of Santi Apostoli in 1638-1646 and the dome of the Cappella of San Gennaro in the Cathedral of Naples. These works would invigorate the efforts of the grand manner Napolitan painters of the second half of the 17th century: Preti, Giordano and Solimena^[4]. He died in Rome in 1647, where his last work was apse of San Carlo ai Catinari.

[edit] Legacy and critical assessment

Lanfranco was a versatile and eclectic trainee of the Carracci, and continued their tradition with dramatic flair compared to the often restrained Domenichino, who mimiced mainly Annibale's grand manner. Also Lanfranco bridged traditions, mannerist and baroque, tenebrist and the colorist palate.

[edit] Selected works

• Hagar in the wilderness (Louvre)
• Coronation of the Virgin with St. Augustine and St. William of Aquitaine
• Palazzo Quirinale frescoes
• Alexander tended by the doctor and Alexander refusing water to drink from his men
• Six works by Lanfranco, including Assumption of the Virgin
• Website for Lanfranco exhibition in Parma & Rome, with biography and many works.

[edit] Sources

• Domenichino Affair, Elizabeth Cropper, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art.
• Wittkower, Rudolf (1993). “4”, Pelican History of Art, Art and Architecture Italy, 1600-1750, 1980, Penguin Books Ltd, p 80-88.
• [2]
• Francis P. Smyth and John P. O'Neill (Editors in Chief (1986). National Gallery of Art, Washington DC: The Age of Correggio and the Carracci: Emilian Painting of the 16th and 17th Centuries, 483-493.

[edit] References