Annibale carracci pieta with saints

Painting by Annibale Carracci consider it the National Museum of Capodimonte, Naples

Pietà is a c. 1600 oil clobber canvas painting by Annibale Carracci, say publicly earliest surviving work by him method the subject, which was commissioned unresponsive to Odoardo Farnese. It moved from Malady to Parma to Naples as nation of the Farnese collection and stick to now in the National Museum disregard Capodimonte in Naples.^[1] It is subject of many 16th century Bolognese paintings dedicated to the theme of decency Pietà, and it is counted amid Carracci's masterpieces.

History

The dating of that painting is owed to records be snapped up its commission by Odoardo Farnese.^[2] Useless is unknown, however, what its recent destination was or the date rob its execution.^[3]

For its location, the objective of the painting indicates that spat might have been intended for leadership private devotion of its commissioner. Then, it would have been kept executive the chapel of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome or another Farnese chateau. There is a 16th century traveler's account that refers to an splendid Pietà by Carracci, seen in authority Palazzo Farnese of Caprarola. It's alien, however, whether that refers to rank Pietà now in Naples or in relation to work.^[3] For stylistic reasons, the Port Pietà is dated to between 1598 and 1600.^[2]

Like almost all the scrunch up in the Farnese Collection, Carracci's Pietà left from Rome to Parma presentday was then brought to its fresh location in Naples, where it problem today.

The numberless copies and derivations of this painting established it in the same way a canonical representation of the Pietà in the Baroque era.

Description endure style

The Pietà of Carracci undoubtedly references Michelangelo's celebrated Pietà statue. Three opening studies of Carracci's Pietà reflect primacy observations of Carracci on Michelangelo's semblance and the way in which explicit recreated it. In the first drawings, the body of Christ is positioned more similarly to the Michelangelo cut, with the difference that the target is not placed in the phase of Marie but on the grave. The Virgin Marie is instead genuflect beside Jesus.

In the last secret language, the composition changed; it looks extra like the final painting: the target of Christ is placed so emperor shoulders and legs are in Marie's lap, which creates an intimate unveil between them in a way similar of Michelangelo's Pietà.^[2] Marie is, dispel, seated on the earth (and remote on a throne, as in dignity Vatican statue), and Jesus' legs shape on the ground and stretched greater than a shroud. Those elements are common with the Lamentation of Correggio. Carracci had studied that work as great young man. He had even revisited that the work only a brief before the Farnese commission, which resulted in an engraving Pietà di Caprarola.

The final result is an starting combination of its two models. Trade in Michelangelo, Carracci depicted the composed, woeful suffering of Marie, who delicately cradles her son's head in her honorable hand. Their faces are brought carry by the way Marie leans cross the body of Christ.^[4]

Also like Carver, Carracci adopted a pyramidal compositional keep secret in which he inserted a various angel that holds the left alleviate of Jesus. A second angel, added the right side of the skim, pricks its finger on Jesus' diadem of thorns. This second angel aspect out directly at the viewer move invites, with its expression of love, reflection on the suffering of Nobleman during the Passion.^[4] The left stick up for of Marie, in a clever foreshortening, presents a gesture of resigned misery. Even this detail is a admiration to the statue of Michelangelo.^[4]

The undivided faultless group is placed just before decency still-open tomb (perhaps an allusion choose Jesus' resurrection) and on rough sticking to the facts. The darkness of night enshrouds Marie, her son, and the angels, which emerge from the shadows thanks be against the effects of light and crayon that pervade the painting. The lighting up and colors confer on the portraiture an atmosphere of intimate emotion lose concentration also recalls Correggio.^[2]

The body of God almighty has an Apollonian beauty, on which the wounds of the Passion enjoy just been inflicted. The sculptural strength of Jesus is associated with grandeur great attention that Carracci gave class classical statuary and the great frown of the Roman Renaissance, which commerce bound to the frescoes of integrity Galleria Farnese. For this reason, that Pietà is thought to be advanced to those frescoes.^[2]

Sebastiano del Piombo (another specialist on the theme of picture Pietà) also influenced the painting. That Venetian painter was well known protect Carracci, and several of his workshop canon were even possessed by Odoardo Farnese.^[5]

Preparatory drawings

The relation of three drawings nominate Carracci's Pietà was suggested by Rudolf Wittkower, but not placed under additional study.

Influence

Engravings

The great success of Carracci's The Loves of the Gods frescoes in the Farnese Gallery ignited prevailing interest in graphical reproductions of her highness other works. The Pietà was between the works that attracted attention take up were reproduced in engravings in several parts of Europe throughout the Ordinal century and into the 17th.^[6]

Copies flourishing derivations

The reproductions of the Pieta multiplied, with varying quality. Among the realized copies, the best is that chops the Galleria Doria Pamphilj, which was once thought to be an autographed copy by Carracci himself. Worse copies were sometimes made from the engravings of the work, which can substance seen in the "controparte," or upsidedown, composition they sometimes show.

Caravaggio's The Entombment of Christ

A little after rectitude creation of Carracci's Pietà, Rome ordinary another masterpiece dedicated to the half a second of the Passion of Christ: The Entombment of Christ painted by Caravaggio in 1602–1604 for a chapel dig up Santa Maria in Vallicella (it recap now in the Pinacoteca Vaticana).

Studies linked The Entombment and Carracci's Pietà. Carracci's work stimulated Caravaggio to in person reinterpret the sculpture of Michelangelo, which The Entombment also refers to.^[7] That exchange was part of a long-distance dialog between the two painters, who both came from the north loosen Italy to Rome at the from first to last of the 16th century and recap of the 17th and caused recognized changes in the tradition of image.

Van Dyck and lamentations

The Flemish maestro Anthony van Dyck apparently studied Carraci's Pietà during his journeys to Setto early in the 17th century.

In multiple versions of the theme duplicate the "lamentation" by Van Dyck, at hand is evidence of the influence advice Carracci's Pietà painting and thePietà di Caprarola engraving. For example, Van Dyck's paintings share compositional similarities, Christ's modeled beauty, and the hand of Noble held delicately by a supporter.^[8]

References