Giuseppe Cesari
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Giuseppe Cesari (c. 1568 - July 3, 1640) was an Italian Mannerist painter, also named Il Giuseppino and called Cavalièr d'Arpino, because he was created a Cavalière di Cristo by his patron Pope Clement VIII. He was much patronized in Rome by both Sixtus V.
Contents |
[edit] Biography
Cesari's father had been a native of Arpino, but Giuseppe himself was born in Rome. Here he was apprenticed to Niccolò Pomarancio. Cesari is stigmatized by Lanzi as not less the corrupter of taste in painting than Marino was in poetry; indeed, another of the nicknames of Cesari is "Il Marino de Pittori" (the pictorial Marino).
There was spirit in Cesari's heads of men and horses, and his frescoes in the Capitol, which occupied him at intervals during forty years, are well coloured; but he drew the human form ill. His perspective is faulty, his extremities monotonous, and his chiaroscuro defective.
Cesari ranks as the head of the Idealists of his period, as opposed to the Naturalists, of whom Caravaggio was the leading champion, the so-called idealism consisting more in reckless facility, and disregard of the common facts and common-sense of nature, than in anything to which so lofty a name could be properly accorded. He was a man of touchy and irascible character, and rose from penury to the height of opulence. His brother Bernardino assisted in many of his works. Cesari became a member of the Accademia di San Luca in 1585. In 1607, he was briefly jailed by the new papal administration. He died in 1640, at the age of seventy-two, or perhaps of eighty, at Rome.
His only direct followers were his sons Muzio (1619-1676) and Bernardino (d. 1703). Pier Francesco Mola (1612-66) apprenticed in his studio. In c. 1593-94, Caravaggio held a job at Cesari's studio as a painter of flowers and fruit.
[edit] Selected works
- Cappella Olgiati in Santa Prassede (1592)
- Frescoes in Salon of the Palazzo dei Conservatori (now Capitoline Museum, 1595-56)
- Cappella Paolina in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore (1609)
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
[edit] Sources
Gash, J. (1996). Caravaggio, in Turner, J. (ed). The Dictionary of Art. London: Macmillan
