Italian Painting Research Articles

A Cluster of Mirrors: Constructing Artemisia Gentileschi across the Media

With the objective of understanding the historical figure of Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1653), this article analyses and compares the construction of some works by the artist and the character Artemisia in The Passion of Artemisia (2002) Susan Vreeland’s novel. Inspired by the life and work of the Italian painter, the narrative uses pictorial markers to tell the story of the character.

The forger's identikit: A multi-technique characterization of Pippo Oriani's fake paintings

This work is part of a multi-disciplinary study aimed at creating the first scientific database to support the future authentication of paintings on the art market. In particular, five fake paintings attributed to the Italian painter Pippo Oriani (1909–1972) have been characterized. Since no scientific literature concerning the material composition used by the artist is available, the five paintings were studied with a multi-technique approach aiming at better understanding the forgery process. The obtained results can be used in the future as a first step to support the authentication of Oriani's artworks on the art market. In particular, it allows to evaluate the consistency of data obtained from future scientific investigations on Oriani's artwork with the forgery process reported in the present database. Non-invasive diagnostic tools, such as UV imaging, IR and IR-false colour photography, XRF, μ-Raman and FTIR spectroscopies have been used to fully characterize the fake paintings. The combination of these techniques led to obtaining useful information on the support preparation method, the pictorial materials, and the execution technique of the artist/forger(s).A wide range of inorganic pigments and organic dyes have been detected, together with the use of oil and wax as binders. The results revealed a strong similarity among the different paintings, thus supporting the idea that the forger(s) knew very well the original Oriani's pictorial technique.The detailed identification of all the materials used in the forgery process for Oriani's fake paintings will help to support the authentication of other ambiguous paintings in future cases.

Vom bleibenden Recht der Antike in der künstlerischen Moderne Europas: Fernando Pessoa und Giorgio de Chirico

Modernism in the early 20th century has usually been viewed as a radical break with the past and tradition. Nevertheless, there are a great deal of direct references to classical antiquity in many works of modernist artists. This apparent contradiction forces us to rethink the notion of a radical break between the new and the past. It is with this in mind that the present article focuses on one of the most exiting periods in European cultural history. In particular, the article refers to two attempts to revitalize classical antiquity during the first decades of the 20th century. These two attempts are illustrated by the Portuguese writer, Fernando Pessoa, and the Italian painter, Giorgio de Chirico. Their works are not only characteristic of the marked revival of classical antiquity in the first years of Modernism, but they also reveal that this revival is more than a simple “new classicism”. Insofar as this new/ past dualism, the work of Pessoa and de Chirico should be better described as an updated mythological thinking.

Comprehensive study of 12th century wall painting fragments from the St. George Cathedral of the Yuryev Monastery in Veliky Novgorod (Russia) using complementary physico-chemical methods

A total of 7 complementary methods have been applied to investigate unique pre-Mongolian 12th century wall paintings from the St. George Cathedral of the Yuriev Monastery in Veliky Novgorod, Russia. Both archaeological samples from the main space of the Cathedral and fragments in situ in the stairs tower of the Cathedral were studied. For the first time in Russia, sensitive neutron methods were used to study the elemental composition of pigments and plasters—neutron activation analysis and prompt gamma activation analysis. This research made it possible to determine elemental and mineral composition of the pigments and plasters used during creation of wall paintings; identify the technique of paintings; make assumptions about the different time of the paintings creation in the main space of the Cathedral and in its stairs tower; as well as reconstruct the presumable original view of the painting of the St. George figure. The discovery of the expensive lazurite pigment attested to the high status of the ktetor of the Cathedral’s murals. The obtained data were compared with Byzantine and Italian paintings of the same period churches.

Macro X-ray fluorescence analysis of XVI-XVII century Italian paintings and preliminary test for developing a combined fluorescence apparatus with digital radiography

Using portable instruments for the preservation of artworks in heritage science is more and more common. Among the techniques, Macro X-Ray Fluorescence (MA-XRF) and digital radiography (DR) play a key-role in the field, therefore a number of MA-XRF scanners and radiographic apparatuses have been developed for this scope. Recently, the INFN-CHNet group, the network of the INFN devoted to cultural heritage, has developed a MA-XRF scanner for in-situ analyses. The instrument is fully operative, and it has already been employed in museums, conservation centres and out-door fields. In the present paper, the MA-XRF analysis conducted with the instrument on four Italian artworks undertaking conservation treatments at the conservation centre CCR “La Venaria Reale” are presented. Results on the preliminary test to combine DR with MA-XRF in a single apparatus are also shown.

The Art of the Jesuit Mission in 16th-Century Japan: The Italian Painter Giovanni Cola and the Technological Transfer at the Painting Seminario in Arie

The Jesuit Mission in Japan was characterized by the establishment of the first painting Seminario in the Far East supervised by the Italian Jesuit Painter Giovanni Cola, who arrived in Nagasaki from Rome in 1583. The activity of the painting school focused on the production of sacred images needed for the Missionaries' evangelization effort, and it soon became a hub of Renaissance technology. European pigments were made available to Japanese and Chinese painters who trained at the Jesuit facility. New archaeometric studies have enabled to present in this work, for the first time, a renewed interpretation of historical records, also revealing, along with documentary evidence, that Arie, a place located in Kyushu, where the Seminario stayed between 1595 and 1597, played a major role as it hosted the first European glass workshop in the Far East. The systematic use of pigments introduced at Arie influenced the production of scared images both in Japan and China. However, the overall technological transfer proved an asymmetrical process due to the fierce persecution of Christians from 1614, and, as a consequence, local production of imported pigments will not start until the lifting of the ban on Christianity in 1873 with the return of Europeans to Japan.

The Burke Collection of Italian Manuscript Paintings ed. by Sandra Hindman and Federica Toniolo

Reviewed by: The Burke Collection of Italian Manuscript Paintings ed. by Sandra Hindman and Federica Toniolo Andrew H. Chen Sandra Hindman and Federica Toniolo, eds. The Burke Collection of Italian Manuscript Paintings. London: Ad Ilissum, 2021. 472 pages, 300 color illustrations. £80. ISBN: 978-1-912168-20-0. The volume under review is a catalogue of forty-three objects from the collection of T. Robert Burke and Katherine States Burke. It opens with a foreword by the Burkes briefly explaining the story of the collection, followed by some remarks by editors Sandra Hindman and Federica Toniolo and a characteristically thoughtful essay by Christopher de Hamel. The authors of individual entries are the world experts on their respective topics, and one will find the same names in other catalogues of a similar caliber, such as that of the Fondazione Cini, as well as in the indispensable Dizionario biografico dei miniatori italiani of 2005. The catalogue proceeds by region, beginning with Umbria and Tuscany. As signaled in the foreword, the Burke collection is especially strong in its Tuscan holdings. One finds Florentine miniatures by the usual suspects: Pacino di Bonaguida, the Master of the Dominican Effigies, the Santa Maria degli Angeli school, and Francesco di Antonio del Chierico. Siena is represented by Lippo Vanni, Andrea di Bartolo, Giovanni di Paolo, Sano di Pietro, and Pellegrino di Mariano Rossini. We then pass to Lombardy via Emilia-Romagna, and from there to the Veneto, from which come paintings by Cristoforo Cortese and the Master of the Murano Gradual. The catalogue concludes with a painting from mid-fifteenth-century Rome, catalogued by Francesca Manzari, and a Michelangelesque early seventeenth-century miniature whose style would seem to connect it, according to Elena Calvillo, to Giovanni Battista Castello (1547–1639). The attribution has been rejected by Castello specialist Elena De Laurentiis, however, and so the work is listed in the Burke catalogue as Anonymous. Anyone who has worked on manuscript illumination will recognize that the Burke collection is an important one. For the most part the artworks [End Page 225] are extremely fine, with a few exceptions (the cutting by the Master of the Dominican Effigies [entry 9], for example, is hardly his best work). The quality of the catalogue is generally very high. Where enough is known about the person in question, entries are preceded by a biography “situating them in a history of Italian manuscript painting” (13). In this respect the volume follows the model of Carl Strehlke’s monumental Italian Paintings in the John G. Johnson Collection of 2004. Many of the entries have lists of related leaves and volumes, synthesizing decades of research, and these will be vital for future scholarship on any of these artists. As the editors emphasize in their preface, authors were encouraged to include as many images as reasonable of comparative material, encompassing altar-pieces and wall paintings as well as other miniatures. Paul Holberton Publishing deserves to be complimented for having delivered a handsome book with (for the most part) splendid illustrations of such parallels and marvelous details of the Burke miniatures themselves. The division of works by region and, within the Tuscany section, between the Sienese and Florentine cultural milieus is convenient, but of course does not reflect the complexity of real situations. Don Simone was born in Siena but is known for his work in Florence, and Don Silvestro was a Florentine whose work was heavily influenced by Sienese painting. Andrea di Bartolo spent significant time working in the Veneto, and his work there was certainly known to Cortese. Of the works in the Burke collection, the one that I found the most intriguing, because stylistically the most unfamiliar, was the beautiful, if slightly disconcerting, miniature of John the Baptist and the Messiah, catalogued as Umbrian (entry 3). No doubt Tiziana Franco is right about the style of the subsidiary decoration, but the figure style is unmistakably northern Italian. As observed in Franco’s entry, Pia Palladino already suggested as much back in 2000 but was wrong in suggesting an affinity between the Burke painting, which is clearly from the first half of the fifteenth century, and the Verona choir books of the 1360s–70s...

New Names for the Old Sacristy of the Siena Hospital: Pseudo‐Scripts, Hidden Signatures, and the Ludic Self

While working on the scaffolding of Vecchietta's frescoes in the sacristy at the Santissima Annunziata, Siena (1446–49), thirteen‐year‐old Benvenuto di Giovanni and another garzone, Guasparre d'Agostino, signed together their names in Greek letters hidden among pseudo‐scripts on the hem of the cloak of a seemingly unimportant figure painted about three metres high up on a wall. Previously ignored, this signature is important in that, combined with unpublished documents, it sheds light on Benvenuto di Giovanni's youthful career and, more broadly, the first steps of a garzone on their way to becoming a master. The first known signature in Greek ever to appear in fifteenth‐century Italian painting, but enmeshed among pseudo‐scripts, Guasparre and Benvenuto's marks are not proof of antiquarian culture. Instead, this signature begs for a historicized concept of both linguistic knowledge and artistic authorship. Hidden, it betrays an interest in the signature as a locus of playful negotiation of identity, suspended between concealment and revelation.

Уявлення про османів в Італії в XV-XVI століттях: дослідження крізь текстиль

The article is an attempt to supplement the knowledge of Italians' ideas about Ottomans during the 15th and 16th centuries, using the preserved antique textiles of both cultures, as well as fabrics' mentions in written and visual sources. Modern technological research methods of ancient textiles make it possible to clarify their attributive data, which in turn contributes to more definite conclusions about artistic exchanges in the field of decoration of expensive textiles. Thus, for example, it turned out that two fabrics from the collection of the Khanenko Museum, which were considered Italian, are the work of Ottoman masters. If the structure of the Italian and Ottoman fabrics of the period under the study are quite different, visually – they are often almost identical. Despite the fact that the trade in Ottoman fabrics was not widespread in Italy during the 15th and 16th centuries, Italian painters and weavers still actively imitated the textile products of the Middle East. Written sources, especially epistolary and inventory, are also filled with references to Ottoman fabrics and "turkish-style" textiles. Since there were few authentic silks from West Asia in the secular space of Italian cities at the time, it is likely that citizens could even associate Ottoman culture with certain types of local textiles that looked like "Turkish". The number and peculiarities of their description in written sources suggest the Italians' enormous interest in Ottoman culture, "cautious concern" for the growing Ottoman Empire, and recognition of its dominance over many Asian peoples. All this took place in spite of the permanent wars between the Venetian Republic and the Ottomans. The entry into Italian fashion of fabrics "in the Turkish style" was lightning fast. However, local authors emphasized the antiquity of this fashion tradition, to some extent rooting the idea of ​​kinship between the two cultures.

Artefactual Skills for Simulating Impasto Effect in Digital Painting: An Adobe Photoshop Solution

Impasto is one of the fascinating techniques in studio painting that traces its foundation to the period between the 17th and 19th century Italian painters like van Gogh. It is characterised by thick application of paint in a plastering mode to artistically model forms on a canvas using either a bristle brush or a palette knife. When effectively executed, the technique finishes with the effect of ridges that cast shadows under grooves created by the thick application to give the painting its unique tactile contrasting appearance. In digital painting, the painterly effect of impasto is simply impossible to execute. Most of the well-known graphic application software cannot offer any applicator that can render the characteristic effect excellently. The author of this paper has developed a practical scheme for achieving this result using the Craquelure Filter in Adobe Photoshop version 21. The principal objective of the author is to employ the descriptive and demonstrational research methods to illustrate this artefactual scheme, which constitutes a practice-led exercise under the design-based research scheme. In this scheme, the author engages two of the major digital painting techniques: “Digital photo-art” and “Traditional digital painting” techniques to execute a figure painting composition in impasto style.

“Whoever Belongs to God Hears What God Says” (John 8:47): The Other as Deaf in Two Frescoes by Filippo Lippi and Gualtiero Padovano

This essay explores the Christian visualization of religious Otherness in connection to deafness in Italian paintings of the 15th and 16th centuries. Following the words of John 8:47 “Whoever belongs to God hears what God says”, theologians developed through centuries the idea of a Christian community based on listening to God with the ears of the spirit or the ears of the heart. Hence, deafness is conceived as the hallmark of the Christian Other: Jews, heretics or false believers are therefore perceived as ”spiritually” deaf. The essay aims to investigate how Christian images depict the Other as deaf as opposed to the Christian who listens. To this end, it focuses mainly on two frescoes that stand out for the originality with which they illustrate this contrast: the Disputation of St Stephen with the Elders of the Sanhedrin (1452-1567) by Fra Filippo Lippi in Prato’s Cathedral and St Anthony of Padua preaching to the fishes (1530-1537) attributed to Gualtiero Padovano in the Oratory of the Walnut Tree near Padua. Starting from this iconographic analysis, I reflect on the effect these frescoes might have had on their viewers. Conceived to be seen by Christians, their main purpose appears to be the construction of Christian identity based on listening: a listening Us versus the deaf Other.

The Naked Truth: Temptation and the Likely ‘Fall’ of Catholic Education

This article highlights one likely ‘fall’ to which Catholic education is susceptible in the modern era due to the oppressive climate in which it operates. Our critical method in arguing for this position is to oscillate between two texts—one written and one visual: Genesis 3: 1–18 and Masaccio’s painting of ‘The Expulsion’. The hope is that one will inform and enrich a deeper understanding of the other. As part of this exercise in creative hermeneutics, we first argue that the dramatic story of the fall through pride or amor sui (self-love) and its resultant feeling of shame is a universal one in which readers (listeners) glimpse the long history of their own fears and desires. Second, we show how one 15th century Italian painter represented the tragic consequences of the Faustian self by examining Masaccio’s painting in some detail. Third, we investigate St. Augustine’s writings on this narrative and suggest how some forms of self-elevation align dangerously with the promotion of the autonomous self in contemporary education. We also critically examine exegetical writings from Jewish and Christian perspectives to draw out further meanings of the narrative. Fourth, we point to the themes of hiding and forgiveness embedded in the account which leads us neatly into the last fifth section where we discuss the text’s implications for contemporary Catholic education. Here, the focus is on one likely ‘fall’ of Catholic education when it fails to live up to its distinctive mission to place love unconditionally at its centre. In a highly market-driven, managerial climate of competition where league tables, bureaucratisation, and data analysis assume an overwhelming significance allied to institutional survival and kudos, the temptation is to show the worth of the school by emphasising its examination success and employment rates rather than through its service to others, especially those who have been forgotten. Although we are highly sensitive to the conflictual demands on Catholic institutions at the present time from a variety of stakeholders, we conclude that their healthy continuation depends on their public, ethical avowal to love everyone unreservedly with assistance from God’s grace and when this aspiration fails, to seek forgiveness. The article is not concerned with strategies of resistance against those developments in education contrary to a Catholic philosophy.

Specialization and the firm in Renaissance Italian art

Renaissance Italian painters are among the most innovative and consequential artists in human history. They were also successful managers and business owners, always in search of commissions for their workshops. Indeed, their ability as managers and entrepreneurs was just as important as their talent for painting. This paper develops a framework to understand the organization of the production of paintings—frescoes and altarpieces—during the Italian Renaissance. We argue that Renaissance artists faced a trade-off between costly delegation and the sacrifice of gains from specialization in the performance of those tasks necessary for executing a painting. Applied to the historical record, our framework accounts for several features of the organization of this industry: why Renaissance artists dabbled as entrepreneurs; why they performed several duties that did not require any artistic talent; and why they set up firms to aid them in the execution of some tasks while delegating other tasks to independent contractors.

Chemical, morphological and mechanical study of the ageing of textile flax fibers from 17th/18th-century paintings on canvas

• Flax yarns from ancient italian canvases were compared to a modern yarn. • SEM and FTIR highlighted a past re-lining intervention, which resulted in a higher stiffness. • Changes in fibre mechanical behaviour and structure were evidenced through SHG and AFM. • NMR analysis gave information on changes into hemicellulose content with ageing. A variety of techniques were used to investigate flax yarns sampled from four selected Italian paintings on canvas dated between the 17th and 18th centuries and compare them with a modern flax yarn. The goal was to establish their state of preservation and highlight the critical issues thanks to a combined approach that used SEM, atomic force microscopy, nanoindentation, nuclear magnetic resonance, second harmonic generation imaging microscopy and FTIR spectroscopy. The condition of the flax fibres was assessed, and the results showed that two of the four canvases were in a generally good state of preservation, while the other two exhibited signs of biological attack and brittleness due to a previous re-lining intervention.

Remp’s Ceiling Paintings in the Palais Attems in Graz


 
 
 In the 17th and 18th century reproductive prints were one of the main mediators of artistic solutions and played a key role in the creation of ceiling paintings. This article discusses their use in three monumental frescoes in the Palais Attems in Graz, made by Franz Carl Remp (1674–1718) between 1705 and 1711, for Ignaz Maria Count Attems (1652–1732). All three frescoes testify of Remp’s use of reproductive prints made after works by Italian painters Pie- tro da Cortona (1596–1669) and Annibale Carracci (1560–1609). In some cases, Remp’s scenes are almost identical copies of depictions in reproductive prints, while sometimes they served as a compositional template or source for motifs, which he combined with other visual sources creating a whole new iconographic message.
 
 

Art in the Time of Pandemic: Elisabetta Sirani, Artistic Agency, and Capitalist Social Reproduction

Art in the Time of Pandemic: Elisabetta Sirani, Artistic Agency, and Capitalist Social Reproduction

“The Thirteenth Century Men”: Looking to the Past to Critique the Present

Admirers of John Ruskin founded the Association for the Advancement of Truth in Art, a short-lived but influential art and political reform movement active from 1863 to 1865. With a stated mission promulgated by a house organ called the New Path, the group’s artists, architects and critics claimed to constitute an art movement. They were bound by formal membership, and all espoused dedication to Ruskin’s medievalism and credo of “truth to nature.”This commitment earned the artists recognition as American Pre-Raphaelites. Their paintings were touted by the New Path as vibrant agents of reform yet were also negatively critiqued for rejecting post-Renaissance illusionism, embracing instead seemingly retrogressive models found in the early Italian paintings. Two collections of early Italian paintings were also on view in New York during the 1860s. These received largely negative popular reception, a response extended to the paintings of the American Pre-Raphaelites. Ironically, these collections introduced American audiences to the early history of Western European painting, ultimately introducing the discipline of art history in the United States.

A Journey Inside the Perception of the Self-Image - from the 15th Century Italian Portrait to the Glamorized Image on the Facebook

This article aims to present the philosophical perspective upon the birth of the idea of the individual and the consequences of the discovery of the self-image on the techniques of image reproduction from the Renaissance to the present day. The process of projecting the self-image into the public space acquires a special importance with the elaboration of the portrait technique in the Italian painting of the 15th century. Through Leonardo da Vinci's paintings, this technique of reproducing self-image reaches a certain perfection. Following the evolution of this kind of projections and reproductions of the self-image, it is found that there is an obvious tendency by which the individual tends to free himself from certain patterns, or rather canons, which a certain epoch imposes. This process manifested in the visual arts corresponds to a new philosophical perception of man opened by the works of Ficino and Pico della Mirandola. The assertion of a new type of dignity, correlated with the idea of the microcosm, of the Renaissance man will lead to an affirmation of his own personality and especially to an increase of the will to power reflected more and more in the works of art. With the resurgence of the Italian renaissance, artists and philosophers experienced a decline, but found a favorable space for their development at the court of Elizabeth I, Queen of England. The art of portraiture, but also the philosophy of renaissance survives and is even more flourishing at the court of this queen. But the most important moment of this renaissance is marked by Dutch art after its liberation from Spanish rule. From this moment on, the emancipation of the individual will occur on an unimaginable scale until then.

A damned soul with goiter. "The life of Christ" (c. 1480) by Giovanni Martino Spanzotti.

The church of San Bernardino in Ivrea (Piedmont) houses a cycle of frescoes of "The Life of Christ"by the Italian painter Giovanni Martino Spanzotti. In the painting, a damned soul of the Hell with a large bi-lobar goiter is represented, confirming the interest of Renaissance artists towards thyroid diseases.

Hector de Garriod (1803–1883): a marchand amateur in Risorgimento Italy

Abstract Baron Hector de Garriod (1803–1883) was a Savoyard nobleman who resided in Florence for most of his life, from 1835 to 1883, taking an active part in the social and artistic life of the city in the years of the Risorgimento and after the unification of Italy. His correspondence, surviving in a private archive in Cortona, and other documents that have surfaced in Italy and elsewhere in Europe, shed fresh light on this interesting yet neglected marchand amateur – his activities as an art dealer, his relationships with international museum agents and his dealings with renowned art collectors. Specific attention is paid here to Garriod’s private collection, now kept at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Chambéry, which represents one of the most important bequests of seventeenth-century Italian paintings to a French museum.