During the Italian Baroque, some of history"s most inspired and imaginative fresco cycles were created in palaces, villas, churches, chapels, monasteries, and abbeys; on walls, ceilings, vaults, and domes. Yet until recently critics generally viewed the great painters of the Baroque era in Italy-Pietro da Cortona, Luca Giordano, Francesco Solimena, and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo - with aesthetic and ideological reservations. Rather than admiring the virtuosity, power, and achievements of these gifted artists, scholars tended to reduce Baroque monumental painting, with its playful illusions and superb artistry and creativity, to the status of decoration at best. Since the last decade of the twentieth century, however, art historians and researchers have rediscovered Baroque painting in Italy, for the first time truly appreciating its theatrical splendor and complex, layered content borrowed from classical fables, poems, and myths.
Incorporating this new scholarship into one indispensable volume, "Italian Frescoes: The Baroque Era, 1600-1800" presents the Italian Baroque period in its full grandeur, from the arrival in Rome of the style of Annibale Carracci and his pupils through the end of the eighteenth century, when after the long predominance of Baroque forms and expressions the pendulum swung back, bringing a brief revival of High Renaissance style. Supplementing Dr. Steffi Roettgen"s insightful text are 420 brilliantly reproduced, full-color images and 71 black-and-white illustrations and building plans. Of the twenty-two fresco cycles featured, two-thirds are from the secular sphere and the rest from sacred places, contradicting the common notion that Baroque monumental painting is found mainly in cathedrals and other sites of worship. Together, these outstanding cycles, located in major art centers - Venice, Florence, Turin, Rome, and Naples - document vital artistic trends such as the increasing explosion of spatial boundaries by means of painted perspective and the creation of spectacular works without the painted architectural structures of earlier cycles.
The volume opens with an illustrated Introduction outlining the principles of Baroque wall and ceiling painting, followed by discussions of the church as a theatrum sacrum in which the range of subject matter was virtually inexhaustible, and of a secular sphere in which decoration of private and public rooms seemed to be under the auspices of Olympus. The main section of the book examines the fresco cycles, each representing a notable feat in the history of art. An authoritative essay introduces each cycle and is followed by a portfolio of full- and double-page color plates, many of them newly photographed. A diagram of each site is also provided. The cycles include such renowned interiors as Cortona and Ciro Ferri"s Planet Rooms in Florence"s Palazzo Pitti, which depict the life stages of the Ideal Hero; the Grande Galleria in Rome"s Palazzo Colonna, said to be "possibly more beautiful than Versailles" and considered the most magnificent secular space from the Roman Baroque; and the sacristy of San Paolo Maggiore in Naples, decorated by Solimena with a combination of Baroque verve and academic perfection that would set the tone for Italian painting in the first half of the eighteenth century. The survey also encompasses many lesser-known gems, such as frescoes by Tiepolo and his son in the Villa Valmarana ai Nani, near Vicenza, that are famous not only for their painterly charm, but also for their unusual depiction of four of the most famous epics in Western literature.
Формат издания: 28 см х 33,5 см. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге Italian Frescoes: The Baroque Era (Steffi Roettgen)