Pietro della Vecchia

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Dice Player , National Gallery of Finland

Pietro della Vecchia , previously listed as Pietro Muttoni due to a misunderstanding , (* 1602 or 1603 ; † September 8, 1678 in Venice ) was an Italian Baroque painter . He painted in many genres and created altarpieces, portraits, genre scenes and caricatures. He also created pastiches of the works of leading Italian painters of the 16th century. Della Vecchia was sought as an art expert and evaluated works of art. He worked in Venice for most of his life, apart from a brief stay in Rome.

Name and parentage

The confusion with the name Muttoni (the name of a collection), under which it is mostly listed until the 1970s / 1980s (also in Thieme-Becker), happened at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century by the art historian Luigi Lanzi (1732-1810) in his Storia pittorica della Italia (who in turn was a mistake by F. Bartoli in his art history of Rovigo 1793). In reality, from the beginning it was called Della Vecchia, the name of a long-established Venetian family. His father Gasparo della Vecchia was also a painter.

Life

Della Vecchia may have been born in Vicenza in 1602 or 1603 . The first documents in which it can be proven date from 1626 and 1628 and are invoices for the execution of the flag for the Brotherhood of the Carmelites in San Marco. Between 1629 and 1640 he was accepted into the painters' guild of Venice. His first dated painting is the Monte Calvario in the Church of San Lio in Venice from 1633.

The Doubt of St Thomas

He probably went to the painter from Padua Alessandro Varotari (called Padovanino, 1588-1649) in the apprenticeship, where he developed a strong interest in Venetian painters of the 16th century, in particular Titian and Giorgione . His early works also show a great influence from Carlo Saraceni (1579–1620) and his pupil Jean Le Clerc (1587 / 88–1633). As Tenebrists, both show influences of Caravaggio's light and dark painting . LeClerc left Venice as early as 1621/22. Della Vecchia was probably soon after in Rome and worked in Padovanino's studio from around 1625/26. The influence of Padovanino is particularly evident in paintings from 1635 onwards. From around 1640 onwards, there is also an influence of the Genoese painter Bernardo Strozzi (1588–1644).

Pietro della Vecchia was known for being able to imitate the style of the Venetian masters of the 16th century very well. He painted portraits, religious scenes, grotesque scenes and idyllic country images in anticipation of the Rococo style.

Pietro della Vecchia a son-in-law of the Caravaggist Nicolas Régnier (Renieri), who also worked as an art dealer in Venice (marriage 1630). His wife Clorinda Renieri was also a painter and was portrayed as a spirit world, of high stature and great beauty .

In the 1640s he was considered one of the leading painters of religious subjects in Venice and in 1640 became the official painter of the Republic of Venice ( pitor ducal in San Marco), for whom he supervised the execution of mosaics in the Basilica of San Marco from 1640 to 1673 and for this designed the templates (also as a painting in the original format instead of the cardboard drawings that had been common up until then).

He is buried in the church of San Canciano in Venice.

Pictures of him are among others (besides Venice) in the Hermitage, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, in the Art Institute of Chicago, in Prague, Moscow, in the Prado and in the State Gallery in Würzburg.

gallery

  • Allegory of the Smell

  • Aloysio Garzoni , around 1640, Hermitage

  • Venus and Mars

  • The red warrior

  • Illumination de Saint François Borgia , Musée des beaux-arts de Brest

  • Landscape with Soldiers

  • The fortune teller

literature

  • Bernard Aikema: De schilder Pietro della Vecchia en de erfenis van de Renaissance in Venetië , dissertation, Amsterdam 1986 (with an English summary)
  • Bernard Aikema:  della Vecchia, Pietro. In: Massimiliano Pavan (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 37:  Della Fratta – Della Volpaia. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1989.

Web links

Commons : Pietro della Vecchia  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Donna di molto spirito, grande statura e di grande avenenza . T. Temanza, Zibaldon 1738
personal data
SURNAME Vecchia, Pietro della
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Muttoni, Pietro
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian painter
DATE OF BIRTH 1602 or 1603
PLACE OF BIRTH unsure: Vicenza
DATE OF DEATH September 8, 1678
Place of death Venice