Francesco Furini

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Francesco Furini, Study of a Woman holding an Object, red chalk on white paper, c. 1640, private collection
Francesco Furini, Study of a Woman holding an Object, red chalk on white paper, c. 1640, private collection
Artemisia Prepares to Drink the Ashes of her Husband, Mausolus (ca. 1630), attributed to Furini
Artemisia Prepares to Drink the Ashes of her Husband, Mausolus (ca. 1630), attributed to Furini

Francesco Furini (c. 1600 (or 1603) – August 19, 1646) was an Italian Baroque painter of Florence.

His early training was by Matteo Rosselli (whose other pupils include Lorenzo Lippi and Baldassare Franceschini), though Furini is also described as influenced by Domenico Passignano and Giovanni Biliverti (Cantelli 1972). 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, when he became a priest, 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. The frescoes can be seen as a response to Pietro da Cortona, who was at work in the palazzo during these years (Cantelli 1972).

In Robert Browning's series of poems titled Parleyings with certain people of importance in their day, the poet envisions an explanation by Furini that refutes the published assertion by Filippo Baldinucci that (on his deathbed) he had ordered all his nude paintings be destroyed. For Browning, Furini's disrobement of his subjects is emblematic of a courageous search for the hidden truth. Modern research has demonstrated that Furini did not abandon his sensual painting subjects on entering the priesthood.

Furini was rediscovered in the early twentieth century by Arturo Stanghellini.[2] His scantily documented career was sketched by Elena Toesca (Furini, 1950) and brought into focus with an exhibition of his drawings at the Uffizi, 1972.[3]

[edit] Anthology of works

  • Cephalus and Aurora (before 1626, Museo de Arte, Ponce)[4]
  • Hylas and the Nymphs, (shortly before 1633, Galleria Furini, Florence)
  • 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]
  • Frescoes, Salone, Palazzo Pitti (documented 1639-42, Museo degli Argenti)
  • The Three Graces, (Hermitage, St Petersburg)
  • Saint Sebastian (Schleissheim Palace)

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Wittkower p 1993:345
  2. ^ Stanghellini, Francesco Furini, Vita d'Arte 13 [1913).
  3. ^ The exhibition catalogue by Giuseppe Cantelli , Disegni di Francesco Furini e del suo ambiente (Florence: Oschki) 1972. Cantelli attributed seventy-two drawings in the Uffizi to his hand. Documents published by Gino Corti in Antichità Viva (Match-April 1971) appeared too late to be assimilated in the exhibition. Soon after, A. Barsanti recovered more biographical detail to flesh out the modest armature of dates in "Una vita inedita del Furini", Paragone 289, (1974), pp. 67-86.
  4. ^ Often published as by Jacopo Vignali, reattributed to Furini by Cantelli 1972 (cat. no. 2).

[edit] References

  • Cantelli, G., & Furini, F. (1972). Disegni di Francesco Furini: e del suo ambiente. Firenze: Olschki. OCLC 2045642
  • Freedberg, Sydney J. (1993). in Pelican History of Art: Painting in Italy, 1500-1600, 344-345 Penguin Books Ltd. 
  • Web Gallery of Art entry.
  • Wittkower, Rudolf (1993). Pelican History of Art, Art and Architecture Italy, 1600-1750, 1980, Penguin Books Ltd, 345.