Retooling Medievalism for Early Modern Painting in Annibale Carracci’s Pietà with Saints in Parma

Livia Stoenescu

doi:10.3390/rel12080609

Abstract

Annibale Carracci (1560–1609) drew on the Italian Renaissance tradition of the Man of Sorrows to advance the Christological message within the altarpiece context of his Pietà with Saints (1585). From its location at the high altar of the Capuchin church of St. Mary Magdalene in Parma, the work commemorates the life of Duke Alessandro Farnese (1586–1592), who is interred right in front of Annibale’s painted image. The narrative development of the Pietà with Saints transformed the late medieval Lamentation altarpiece focused on the dead Christ into a riveting manifestation of the beautiful and sleeping Christ worshipped by saints and angels in a nocturnal landscape. Thus eschewing historical context, the pictorial thrust of Annibale’s interpretation of the Man of Sorrows attached to the Pietà with Saints was to heighten Eucharistic meaning while allowing for sixteenth-century theological and poetic thought of Mary’s body as the tomb of Christ to cast discriminating devotional overtones on the resting place of the deceased Farnese Duke.

Highlights

Annibale Carracci (1560–1609) drew on the Italian Renaissance tradition of the Man of Sorrows to advance the Christological message within the altarpiece context of his Pietà with Saints (1585)
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Great Cupola by Correggio in the Cathedral of Parma, and had the occasion to make the works he produced for the Duke that were so well received that they opened his way to go to Rome under the protection of Cardinal Odoardo Farnese (Agucchi [1646] 1947, p. 240; Malvasia [1667] 1967, p. 403)

Summary

Imago Pietàtis in a Novel Altarpiece Context

While the historical characters in the Pietà with Saints strike new and dramatic gestures, the depiction of Christ betrays a concentrated study of illustrious Renaissance predecessors. Modena and the narrative ideas of Cima da Conegliano’s Lamentation (Figure 4). During his first visit to Parma, Annibale made a copy of Correggio’s Lamentation, originally in the Del Bono Chapel of the Church of St. Giovanni Evangelista. In engravings of the subject of the Pietà such as the 1597 Il Cristo di Caprarola (Figure 5), Annibale demonstrates the degree to which he mused on the dramatic disposition of historical characters around Christ in Correggio’s Lamentation 1597 Il Cristo di Caprarola (Figure 5), Annibale demonstrates the degree to which he mused on the dramatic disposition of historical characters around Christ in Correggio’s Lamentation

Annibale

The Funerary Altarpiece and Church Altar

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