Donato Creti

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Donato Creti (1671 - 1749) was an Italian painter of the Rococo period, active mostly in Bologna.

Born in Cremona, he moved to Bologna, where he was a pupil of Lorenzo Pasinelli. He is described by Wittkower as the "Bolognese Marco Benefial", in that his style was less decorative and edged into a more formal neoclassical style. It is an academicized grand style, that crystallizes into a manneristic neoclassicism, with crisp and more frigid modeling of the figures. Among his followers were Aureliano Milani (1675-1749), Francesco Monti (1685-1768), and Ercole Graziani the Younger (1688-1765). Two other pupils were Domenico Maria Fratta and Giuseppe Peroni^[1].

[edit] Astronomical canvases

One memorable conceit in Creti's output is a series of small canvases on astronomical bodies commissioned in 1711 by the Bolognese count Luigi Marsili. The canvases, intended as a gift to the Pope Clement XI, were meant to accentuate the need for the Papal States to sponsor an astronomical observatory. Creti's canvases depict known celestial bodies, disproportionately sized and illuminated, above nocturnal landscapes. With the support of Clement XI, the first public astronomical observatory in Italy was opened in Bologna a short time later. The eight small canvases display the sun, moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and a comet. Uranus had not been discovered until 1781. His Jupiter depicts the Great Red Spot (first reported in 1665) and at least two moons [1]. See Francesco Fontana for engravings of the planets from the prior century.

[edit] Other works

• Cleopatra at Blanton Museum.
• Alexander threatened by his father at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.

[edit] References

• Wittkower, Rudolf (1993). in Pelican History of Art: Art and Architecture Italy, 1600-1750, 1980, Penguin Books Ltd, p471-2. 
• Catholic Encyclopedia article