Carlo Maratta
Carlo Maratta (born May 13, 1625 in Camerano near Ancona (Marken) , † December 15, 1713 in Rome ; also known as Carlo Maratt I , Italian) was the main master of the classicist movement of the Roman high baroque , at the beginning Raphael , then Annibale Carracci then his teacher Andrea Sacchi stood.
life and work
Maratta showed a pronounced artistic talent from an early age. Therefore, in 1637, at the age of 12, his family sent him to Andrea Sacchi in Rome to study painting. He stayed with him for many years and considered him his best friend and greatest mentor throughout his life . His first major commission was for the frescoes in S.Giovanni in Fonte, Florence. As early as 1650, in the manner of his teacher Sacchi, he created the Adoration of the Shepherds for the Church of S. Giuseppe dei Falegnami in Rome - an altarpiece that made him famous and earned him a visit to Pope Alexander VII , who entrusted him with further commissions. Some of his altarpieces still hang in Roman churches to this day and are admired for their dignity and size. In 1653/4 an order to make frescoes in S. Isodor, Florence followed.
During his time in Rome he was known in Italy as "Maratti" because the name was more common in Italy. Maratta, however, was his correct name.
His style of painting was characterized by a strict, clearly structured composition with clearly separated contours of the individual figures in mostly full-length representation. Its moderate color scheme, based on that of the Caracci brothers and still in the Upper Italian Venetian tradition of the High Renaissance .
But especially as a portrait painter of his time, he still has an important position. In 1669, for example, he painted the portrait of Pope Clement IX in a seated pose in the cardinal chair (see illustration below). After the death of Pietro da Cortona (1669), he assumed a leading role in the Roman artistic world until the 18th century. As a painter, he was closely connected to the papal atmosphere.
His famous painting The Virgin Appears to St. Philip Neri was created around 1670 and can be seen today in the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, and a year later he painted the Immaculate Conception in the high baroque style, which can be admired in the National Gallery in Cosenza (Palazzo Arnone) and was gladly adopted in its kind by some successors in the style. In 1676 an order for the Cardinal Palace Altieri in Rome followed.
In addition to altarpieces, Maratta also painted portraits , e.g. B. the baroque garden designer André le Nôtre , made frescoes and designed sculptures and many drawings. In doing so, he created a multifaceted oeuvre, both in terms of artistic technique and the variety of topics. His repertoire ranged from small, lyrical-looking devotional pictures to altar compositions that were certainly mastered in large format.
In the following years he carried out numerous works with religious subjects, which he, like his teacher, carried out in the tradition of the classical academic painting style based on Raphael and which he and his teacher became the “leading painter of Rome” towards the end of the 17th century let. In 1686 he painted Maria Immaculata for the Church of S. Maria del Popolo, Rome .
He gained an international reputation in particular for his pictures of the Madonna and Child , a frequently used subject from the heyday of the Renaissance . He created numerous pictures, some of which hang in the Louvre , Paris, but many in major European museums and smaller galleries. He also demonstrated his artistic talent in architecture and drew designs for numerous Roman buildings.
Because of the large number of orders, he finally maintained a large studio with many apprentices and employees, which posthumously earned him a bad reputation, as in some cases inferior works by his numerous students were confused with his own works, whereby he only prepared their sketches and drawings.
Bathsheba in the bath was created around 1690 , an Old Testament theme that is now kept in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
He received special recognition from the German art theorist Johann Joachim Winckelmann , who was in Rome during his time, and from the Italian pamphlet writer and friend Giovanni Pietro Bellori , on whose work The Painter's Idea his ideas of the classicist theory of painting were based and which he did sought to realize.
Maratti was appointed president ( Principe ) of the Accademia di San Luca around 1700 , two years later Pope Clements XI made him head of the antiquities of Rome and he was finally given an order of knights. Afterwards he was responsible for the restoration of the Raphael frescoes in the Vatican rooms.
1704 he was by Pope Clement XI. Knighted, received a Christian order and in the same year became court painter to Louis XIV of France, who had seen his picture of Apollo and Daphne from 1681 and deeply admired his painting. From 1706 Maratti could no longer paint due to a visual impairment, but continued to run his workshop. He exerted a significant influence not only on his countless students, who created high baroque works of art for churches in his sense, but above all on the Saxon court painter Anton Raphael Mengs .
He is buried in an urn in the vestibule of S. Maria degli Angeli in Rome in a dignified tomb with a bust and a plaque specially made for him. We know exactly about his life from his friend Bellori, mentioned above, who wrote a vita about him in 1731 . His hometown Camerano in the Marche honors him a. a. with a theater that bears his name and opened a Maratti Museum in 2002. There is also a bronze monument with the bust of the famous painter in Piazza Roma.
Significant works
- Works in European collections
Drawings and etchings
- Works from the holdings of the British Museum
- Faith and Justice , around 1676
literature
- Carlo Maratta . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General lexicon of fine artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 24 : Mandere – Möhl . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1930, p. 52-54 .
- Ann Sutherland Harris, Eckhard Schaar: The hand drawings by Andrea Sacchi and Carlo Maratta (= catalogs of the Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf ). Düsseldorf 1967.
- Peter Dreyer: Notes on the painting and drawing oeuvre of the Maratta School. Giuseppe Chiari: Pietro de'Pietri: Agostino Masucci . In: Journal for Art History . tape 34 , issue 3. Munchen / Berlin 1971, p. 184-207 , JSTOR : 1481797 .
- Luca Bortolotti: MARATTI (Maratta), Carlo. In: Mario Caravale (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 69: Mangiabotti – Marconi. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 2007.
- Kurt Zeitler: Draftsman in Rome. Exhibition cat., Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 2012.
Web links
- Luca Bortolotti: Maratti, Carlo. ( treccani.it )
- Directory of Carlo Maratta's paintings in European and American museums
Individual evidence
- ↑ Maratta and his successors. Retrieved April 3, 2017 .
- ^ Giovanni Pietro Bellori: Le Vite inedite del Bellori. Vite di Guido Reni, Andrea Sacchi e Carlo Maratti . Ed .: Michelangelo Piacentini. Rome 1942.
- ^ Works by Maratti in European collections. Retrieved April 2, 2017 .
- ^ Works by Carlo Maratti. Retrieved April 2, 2017 .
- ↑ Faith and Justice ( getty.edu ).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Maratta, Carlo |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Maratti, Carlo (maiden name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Italian painter of the Roman school |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 13, 1625 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Camerano near Ancona |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 15, 1713 |
| Place of death | Rome |