Francesco Furini
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Francesco Furini (c.1600 (or 1603) – August 19, 1646) was an Italian Baroque painter of Florence.
Furini's early training was by Matteo Rosselli, though he is also described as influenced by Domenico Passignano and Giovanni Biliverti. Both Lorenzo Lippi and Baldassare Franceschini were also trained by Rosselli. He befriended Giovanni da San Giovanni. Traveling to Rome in 1619, he also would have been exposed to the influence of Caravaggio and his followers. Among his pupils are Simone Pignoni (1611-98)[1] and Giovanni Battista Galestruzzi. At the age of forty, he became a priest for the parish of Sant Ansano in Mugello.
Furini's work reflects the tension faced by the conservative, mannerist style of Florence when confronting then novel Baroque styles. He is a painter of biblical and mythological set-pieces with a strong use of the misty sfumato technique. In the 1630s, he became a priest and his style paralleled that of Guido Reni.
Freedberg describes Furini's style as filled with "morbid sensuality". His frequent use of disrobed females is discordant with his excessive religious sentimentality, and his polished stylization and poses are at odds with his aim of expressing highly emotional states. His stylistic choices did not go unnoticed by more puritanical contemporary biographers like Baldinucci. Pignoni also mirrored this style in his works.
One of his masterpieces, and not reflective of the style of his canvases, is the airy fresco in Palazzo Pitti, where on order of Ferdinando II de Medici, between 1639-1642, Furini frescoed two large lunettes depicting the Platonic Academy of Careggi and the Allegory of the Death of Lorenzo the Magnificent.
In Robert Browning's series of poems titled Parleyings with certain people of importance in their day, the poet envisions a explanation by Furini that refutes the published assertion by Baldinucci that (on his deathbed) he had ordered all his nude paintings be destroyed. For Browning, Furini's disrobement of his subjects is emblematic a courageous search for the hidden truth.
[edit] Anthology of works
- Faith, (1638, Palazzo Pitti)
- St John the Evangelist, (1630s, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon)
- The Birth of Rachel, (Alte Pinakothek, Munich)
- Judith and Holofernes, (1636, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome)
- Lot and his Daughters, (Museo del Prado, Madrid)
- Bound Andromeda, (Hermitage, St Petersburg)
- Bound Andromeda, (National Galleries, Budapest, Hungary) [1]
- Crucifixion with angels, Saint Bartholemew, Saint John, and Mary Magdalen, (San Bartolomeo, Todiano in Preci)[2]
- Penitent Magdalen [3]
- Hylas and the Nymphs, (Galleria Furini, Florence)
- The Three Graces, (Hermitage, St Petersburg)
[edit] References
- Freedberg, Sydney J. (1993). in Pelican History of Art: Painting in Italy, 1500-1600, 344-345 Penguin Books Ltd.
- [4] Web Gallery of Art
- Wittkower, Rudolf (1993). Pelican History of Art, Art and Architecture Italy, 1600-1750, 1980, Penguin Books Ltd, 345.
- ^ Wittkower p345
