Michelangelo Cerquozzi

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Michelangelo Cerquozzi (1602 - 1660) was an Italian Baroque painter.

Born and active mainly in Rome, he is best known for small canvases of genre scenes,^[1] and for being one of the Italian proponents of the Bamboccianti style practised by a Dutch painter in Rome, Pieter van Laer. He apparently trained with Pietro Paolo Bonzi, called initially il Gobbo di Frutti for his still life paintings.^[2] Cerquozzi joined the Accademia di San Luca in 1634; however over the next two decades, many prominent painters, such as Andrea Sacchi in Rome and Francesco Albani and Guido Reni in Bologna, disparaged this "low-class" thematic. In addition, in the competitive art world, Cerquozzi had many rivals for the same patrons, including a young Salvator Rosa.

His friends included Domenico Viola, Pietro da Cortona, Giacinto Brandi, Paulus Bor and Cornelis Bloemaert. He became known for making battle pictures, and was nicknamed Michelangelo delle Battaglie ^[3] In 1647, he collaborated with Jan Miel, Giacomo Borgognone, and others on illustrations for second volume of Famiano Strada's De Bello Belgico celebrating Alessandro Farnese's campaigns in the Netherlands for the Spanish emperor. Cerquozi also received commissions from Cardinal Rapaccioli and Modenese Count Camillo Carandini. He painted a canvas in 1648 on the Revolt of Masaniello.^[4] After 1647, he collaborated with the Neapolitan Viviano Codazzi.

Haskell comments on how the diminutive, doll-like populace of the low-class Bamboccianti scenes would have seemed innocent and disarming to the aristocratic patrons of Cerquozzi and company; while grand manner painting often adhered to life-size figures in large canvases. This, however, would not apply to the mythology-populated landscape scenes of a Claude Lorrain. Cerquozzi himself also painted some canvases on mythologic canvases, for example Hercules and Herminia and the Shepherds albeit grounded in a peasant world. The tonalities of his paintings are earthen, and there is an affection for the forested landscape.