Painter and architect, born in Cortona, C Italy. With Bernini he ranks as one of the great figures of the Baroque in Rome. With Lanfranco and Guercino he was the founder of the Roman High Baroque style in painting. He specialized in highly illusionistic ceiling painting in which paint is combined with stucco and gilt, notably in his Allegory of Divine Providence and Barberini Power (163339) in the Palazzo Barberini in Rome.
Pietro da Cortona, byname of Pietro Berettini (November 1, 1596- May 16, 1669) was a prolific artist and architect of High Baroque. In painting, Cortona is best known for his frescoes, where he competed with Andrea Sacchi and others, but he is equally reknown for his architecture.
Biography
Early years
Pietro da Cortona was born in the town of Cortona, then part of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, to a family of artisans.
Together these men helped gain him his first major work in Rome (1624-26), a fresco decoration in the newly constructed [Gianlorenzo Bernini| In 1626, Cortona also painted for the brothers, large canvases (now in Capitoline Gallery) of The Sacrifice of Polyxena, The Triumph of Bacchus, and The Rape of the Sabines, and was engaged in the decoration of Castel Fusano near Ostia, using a team including the young Andrea Sacchi.
Grand Salon of Palazzo Barberini
Fresco cycles were numerous in Cortona's Rome; In 1633, Pietro da Cortona began the fresco painting of ceiling of the Palazzo Barberini (now the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome), commissioned Pope Urban VIII (Maffeo Barberini). Completed six years later, the huge unitary fresco represents an Allegory of Divine Providence and Barberini Power.
Cortona's panegyric trompe l'oeil extavaganzas have lost favor in minimalist times; Cortona, like Bernini in sculpture, appears reactionary, patronizing; yet if excellence in art is measured by the ability to match style to intent within the limitations of the medium, then Cortona was triumphant. He was among the first of the fresco painters that dispensed with the architectural masonry of the roof, erasing it away with painted integral architecture and a broad, non-framed vista.
By this time, Cortona was recognized among the top artists of his generation, and was elected director of the Academy of St Luke (Rome) during 1634-38.
Frescoes in Palazzo Pitti
Cortona had been patronized by the Tuscan community in Rome, hence it was not surprising when in 1637, he was asked to paint a series of frescoes for the Palatine Gallery in the Palazzo Pitti in Florence. The Grand Duke Ferdinando II de' Medici recalled him in 1641 to paint the 'Bronze Age' and 'Iron Age' frescoes. Cortona's next decorations for the Pitti were a series of allegorical, stucco framed ceiling frescoes for the grand-ducal apartments, depicting astrological deities such as Jupiter, Mars, and Venus.
Late works
For a number of years, Cortona was involved for decades in the decoration of the ceiling frescoes in the Oratorian Chiesa Nuova (Santa Maria in Vallicella) in Rome, a work not finished until 1665 .
Towards the end of his life he devoted much of his time to architecture, but he published a treatise on painting in 1652 under a pseudonym and in collaboration.
Cortona and Andrea Sacchi were involved in theoretical controversies regarding the number of figures that were appropriate in a painted work. Cortona lobbied for an art that could accommodate many subplots to a central concept.
Other than Ferri, others that hewed to his style or worked under Cortona were Giovan Francesco Romanelli, Andrea Camassei, Giacinto Gimignani, and Paolo Gismondi (1612-1685).
Architectural projects
Among Pietro's more important architectural projects are the church of San Martina e Luca, the church of the painter's guild, in the Roman Forum (completed in 1664.
He also renovated the exterior renewal of the ancient Santa Maria della Pace (1656-1667), and the façade (with an unusual loggia) of Santa Maria in Via Lata (appr.
One influential work, in its day, was the design and decoration of the Villa Pigneto commissioned by the Marchese Sacchetti .
Anatomical plates
Prior to becoming famous as an architect, Pietro drew anatomical plates that would not be engraved and published until a hundred years after his death.
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