Guido Ubaldo Abbatini

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Guido Ubaldo Abbatini (* around 1600 in Città di Castello , Province of Perugia , † 1656 in Rome ) was an Italian painter and mosaicist .

Life

Guido Ubaldo Abbatini went to Rome as a teenager and received his first artistic training as an apprentice to the painter Giuseppe Cesari , known as Cavaliere d'Arpino. Shortly afterwards, however, he turned to the manner of Pietro da Cortona . As an artist he was not very independent.

Since the election of Urban VIII as Pope (1623) Abbatini has been one of the many collaborators of Bernini , a favorite of the Pope. He remained closely associated with Bernini on a permanent basis. Between 1630 and 1650 he painted frescoes for various Roman churches as part of various artistic projects by Bernini. In the Cornaro Chapel of the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria , for example, he created the illusionistic ceiling fresco depicting the glory of the Holy Spirit above Bernini's famous sculpture of the rapture of St. Theresa from 1647 to 1652 . He also painted the altarpiece of the Assumption of Mary with angels and children in the Cappella Angelo Pio of the Church of Sant'Agostino around 1649 , around the same time the frescoes and decorations in the Cappella Raimondi of the Church of San Pietro in Montorio and in 1650 together with Giovanni Francesco Romanelli frescoes the sacristy of the Santo Spirito Church in Sassia .

In St. Peter's Basilica Abbatini created 1630-1633 Chiaroscuro wood paintings in the chapels under the dome piers. In the same basilica he also worked as a mosaicist and there, since 1634, he completed the mosaics of the Cappella della Madonna in the frieze above the vaulting , which were designed by the master of this genre, Giovanni Battista Calandra , as well as a mosaic that was still unfinished after the death of Calandra (1644) from his own boxes . In 1649 he restored the mosaic of Navicella in the vestibule of the basilica.

In the Vatican, Abbatini painted frescoes from 1635 to 1637 in the Sala di Carlo Magno depicting the life of Charlemagne . This independent work shows that he preferred a moderately classical style. He also decorated the Sala della Contessa Matilde di Canossa in the Vatican from 1637 to 1642 with frescoes based on the boxes by Giovanni Francesco Romanelli, which show scenes from the life of Margravine Mathilde .

Around 1653 Abbatini was commissioned to decorate the dome of the Sacrament Chapel of St. Peter's Basilica with mosaics. From 1654 he was busy making the mosaics in the dome of the chapel of St. Sebastian , using the boxes made by Pietro da Cortona. In 1654, Cardinal Fausto Poli commissioned Abbatini to carry out a series of frescoes for the Church of San Fortunato in Poggioprimocaso near Cascia .

Abbatini was also active as a portraitist from time to time. He created a surviving portrait of Pope Urban VIII , which today belongs to the Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica in Rome. A second portrait of Urban VIII drawn by him is in a private collection. Abbatini's portraits of Innocent X and Cardinal Rinaldo d'Este are also kept in private collections, while his portrait of Cardinal Francesco Barberini is in the Palazzo Chigi in Ariccia near Rome. Other portraits of Abbatini, such as that of Cardinal Orazio Giustiniani and the title page painted by him in the book Aedes Barberinae ad Quirinalem a Comite Hieronymo Tetio Descriptae (since 1987 in the National Gallery of Art in Washington ), published by Girolamo Teti in 1647, are known through reprints.

Abbatini also executed theatrical decorations and architectural designs in oil for Bernini, such as the facade of the Palazzo di Monti Citorio (today in the Palazzo Doria-Pamphilj in Rome).

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g R. Kultzen: Abbatini, Guido Ubaldo . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 1, Seemann, Leipzig 1983, ISBN 3-598-22741-8 , p. 53 f.
  2. ↑ Ann Sutherland Harris: Abbatini, Guido Ubaldo. In: Grove Dictionary of Art . 1996, Volume 1, p. 20.
personal data
SURNAME Abbatini, Guido Ubaldo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Abbatini, Guidobaldo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian painter and mosaicist
DATE OF BIRTH around 1600
PLACE OF BIRTH Città di Castello , Province of Perugia
DATE OF DEATH 1656
Place of death Rome