Pietro Testa

Pietro Testa: A self-portrait drawn and etched by him around 1645

Pietro Testa (* 1611 in Lucca in Tuscany , † in the spring of 1650 in Rome ) was an Italian painter, draftsman, etcher and writer. After his hometown Lucca, he was later sometimes called Il Lucchesino . In addition to a number of oil paintings and frescoes, he created many drawings and etchings with allegorical, religious and mythological subjects. His work reveals an independent character and that he was not a dry imitator of the manner of a single master . To this end, Pietro Testa thought intensively about art and made a lot of notes (Düsseldorf Notebook) , inspirations that he undoubtedly wanted to use later for a treatise, but fate no longer allowed this.

Streak of life

Venus and Aeneas: Etching by Pietro Testa around 1640

Pietro Testa's father was a simple trader. Pietro seems to have followed his inclination to drawing quite early on and at some point had his first lessons with Pietro Paolini (1603–1681), Lucca's future painter.

Pietro Testa went to Rome around 1628 and became a pupil of the painter Domenichino (1581–1641). In Rome he is said to have drawn almost all of the existing ancient relics over the course of time: bas-reliefs , statues, etc., whose images he among others for the so-called paper museum (Museo Cataceo) of the scholar and patron Cassiano Dal Pozzo (1588-1657) and for the art collector Marchese Giustiniani (1565–1637) created.

In 1631 Domenichino left Rome to work in Naples , and Pietro Testa joined the workshop of the painter and architect Pietro da Cortona (1596–1669). The departure of his first teacher must have been a severe blow to Testa. He had a very special relationship with Domenichino, actually Domenico Zamperi, and certainly felt related to him. In his notes he names him an artist who not only makes Bologna shine, but the entire century: che tutto questo secolo non che Bologna rende chiarissimo. - The relationship with Cortona was not so happy and probably only lasted a few months because of the great differences.

The Path of Reason: Etching by Pietro Testa around 1645

Landscape with figures: drawing with pen in brown (1626–1650)

In between, Pietro Testa left Rome twice and went to Lucca in 1632 and 1637 to work there. During his first stay, he was commissioned by the city council to produce frescoes in the town hall (Palazzo degli Anziani). Since he did not yet have much experience in this technique (scribing and painting on fresh plaster), the representations failed somewhat and did not satisfy the client. In view of his youth, however, this mishap is understandable and the fact that Pietro Testa has certainly accepted and carried out this quite extensive work suggests a great deal of self-confidence.

In Rome Pietro Testa also created some portraits in churches. Such a fresco in the imperial church of Santa Maria dell'Anima in the chapel at the entrance, but which was later removed; an altarpiece and some other works in the church of Santi Silvestro e Martino ai Monti and an altarpiece in the church of Santa Croce e San Bonaventura dei Lucchesi on the right in the second chapel, which shows Mary in the temple . To this end, he created a number of oil paintings, but mainly many drawings and etchings. - Pietro Testa, whose friends included the painters Pier Francesco Mola (1612–1666) and Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), was a deeply disposed person: he was of a noble and lofty genius and very inclined to worldly wisdom. And so his portraits show a rich ingenuity. If he had had less material worries and more leisure, then he would probably have created even more oil paintings and fewer (quicker) etchings. On the whole, even if the details are sometimes quite different and sometimes quite grotesque (Nagler), Pietro Testa's work has been received with much recognition and admiration by art historians. It is almost unanimously stated that he was unsurpassed in the portrayal of children, and since something like this is counted among the great difficulties, this judgment is evidence of the high art of this man.

Pietro Testa's life ended tragically: In the spring of 1650 he drowned in the Tiber near Via della Lungara in the Trastevere district of Rome.

Some «color samples»:

Damaged fresco in the town hall of Lucca
Profezia di Basilide (Basilides Prophecy)
Rachele nasconde gli idoli di Labano (Rachel hides Laban's idols)
Sacrificio di Ifigenia (Sacrifice of Iphigenia)

literature

Andreas Stolzenburg, Hubertus Gaßner (eds.): Italian drawings 1450–1800 , catalog, Kupferstichkabinett of the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2009
Jessica Popp: Talking pictures: Silent viewers: On the history painting Domenichinos , Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-412-18006-5 ; ISBN 3-412-18006-8
Veronika Birke, Janine Kertéz: The Italian Drawings of the Albertina , General Directory Volume I, Inventory 1 - 1200, Böhlau Verlag, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 1992, ISBN 3-205-05413-X
Elizabeth Cropper: Pietro Testa, 1612-1650: Prints & Drawings , University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 1988, ISBN 0-8122-7960-3 ; ISBN 0-87633-077-4 (digitized version )
Elizabeth Cropper: The Ideal of Painting: Pietro Testa's Düsseldorf Notebook , Princeton University Press, Princeton 1984, ISBN 0-691-04021-4
Georg Kaspar Nagler : New general artist lexicon or news of the life and works of painters, sculptors, builders, engravers, form cutters, lithographers, draftsmen, medalists, ivory workers, etc. , Volume Eighteenth, Verlag von EA Fleischmann, Munich 1848
Giovanni Battista Passeri : Life of the painters, sculptors and builders who worked in Rome and died between the years 1641–1673 , in the Breitkopfische Buchhandlung, Dresden and Leipzig 1786

Web links

Commons : Pietro Testa - Collection of Images

Literature by and about Pietro Testa in the WorldCat bibliographic database

Index entry for Pietro Testa in the Deutsche Biographie database

The British Museum work by Pietro Testa

Remarks

^ Giovanni Battista Passeri: Lives of the painters, sculptors and builders who worked in Rome and died between the years 1641–1673 (1786), p. 213
↑ Jessica Popp: Talking Pictures: Silent Viewers: Zur Historienmalerei Domenichinos (2007), p. 32
↑ In Buchowiecki's Handbook of the Churches of Rome , this work is stated on page 628 as coming from the Domenichino school.
^ Giovanni Battista Passeri: Lives of the painters, sculptors and builders who worked in Rome and died between the years 1641–1673 (1786), p. 209.
↑ It is very likely that Pietro Testa had an accident as a result of the distraction while working. There are other views on this (suicide, murder), but they cannot be proven by anything and thus pure speculation.

personal data
SURNAME	Testa, Pietro
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Testa, Pedro; Testta, Pedro; Testa Lucentinus, Petrus; Lucentinus, Petrus T .; Il Lucchesino
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Italian painter, draftsman, etcher and writer
DATE OF BIRTH	1611
PLACE OF BIRTH	Lucca
DATE OF DEATH	1650
Place of death	Rome

[1] Giovanni Battista Passeri: Lives of the painters, sculptors and builders who worked in Rome and died between the years 1641–1673 (1786), p. 213

[2] Jessica Popp: Talking Pictures: Silent Viewers: Zur Historienmalerei Domenichinos (2007), p. 32

[3] In Buchowiecki's Handbook of the Churches of Rome , this work is stated on page 628 as coming from the Domenichino school.

[4] Giovanni Battista Passeri: Lives of the painters, sculptors and builders who worked in Rome and died between the years 1641–1673 (1786), p. 209.

[5] It is very likely that Pietro Testa had an accident as a result of the distraction while working. There are other views on this (suicide, murder), but they cannot be proven by anything and thus pure speculation.