Pietro Berrettini da Cortona

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Cortona, Pietro da ( Pietro Berrettini) (b Cortona, Tuscany, 1 Nov. 1596; d Rome, 16 May 1669). Italian painter, architect, decorator, and designer; he was the most influential Italian painter of his generation and ranks second only to Bernini as the most versatile genius of the full Roman Baroque style. Cortona is named after the town of his birth, where he probably had some training with his father, a stonemason, before settling in Rome in about 1612. His first major works there were frescos in the church of S. Bibiana (1624–6), commissioned by Urban VIII ( Maffeo Barberini), and the patronage of the Barberini family played a major part in his career. For their palace he painted his most famous work, a huge fresco, Allegory of Divine Providence and Barberini Power, on the ceiling of the Gran Salone. He began this in 1633, but interrupted the work in 1637 to go to Florence, where he painted two frescos commissioned by the Grand Duke Ferdinand II de' Medici on the walls of the Sala della Stufa in the Pitti Palace; the subjects are the Golden Age and the Silver Age. After returning to Rome he completed the Barberini ceiling in 1639. One of the key works in the development of Baroque painting, it is a triumph of illusionism, for the centre of the ceiling appears open to the sky and the figures seen from below (di sotto in sù) appear to come down into the room as well as soar out of it. It demonstrates Cortona's belief, which came out in a debate with Andrea Sacchi in the Accademia di S. Luca in about 1636, that a history painting could be compared with an epic and was entitled to use many figures; Sacchi, intent on classical simplicity and unity, argued for using as few figures as possible.

For most of the period from 1640 to 1647 Cortona again worked in Florence, continuing his decorations in the Pitti Palace. He first completed his Four Ages of Man decorations in the Sala della Stufa with scenes of the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, then began a series of allegorical ceiling paintings in five rooms named after the planets (the work was completed by his pupil Ciro Ferri (1634–89)). These paintings are combined with sumptuous stucco ornamentation, and this form of decoration was widely influential, not only in Italy, but also in France. (Cortona turned down an invitation to visit Paris from Cardinal Mazarin, but his style was taken there by his best pupil, Romanelli.) From 1647 until his death Cortona again worked in Rome, his major paintings from this period being an extensive series of frescos in S. Maria in Vallicella (the Chiesa Nuova, 1647–65), in which, as in his Pitti decorations, paint and stucco are magnificently combined. Throughout his career he painted easel pictures of religious and mythological subjects, and he also designed cartoons for a number of tapestries on the history of Constantine (1626–41) for the Palazzo Barberini (now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art), completing a series that had been begun by Rubens.

Cortona once wrote that architecture was merely a pastime for him, but he ranks among the greatest architects of his period. His masterpiece is the church of SS. Martina e Luca in Rome (1635–50), which was the first Baroque church designed and built as a unified whole. Although his architecture has all the vigour of his painting, there is less correspondence between the two fields than might be imagined. He never decorated any of his own churches, and indeed they were not designed with fresco decoration in mind, making their impact through grandeur of form rather than richness of ornament. His great contemporary reputation sank in the next century with that of many other Baroque artists. In a famous passage in his Dizionario delle belle arti (1797), Francesco Milizia wrote: ‘Borromini in architecture, Bernini in sculpture, Pietro da Cortona in painting…represent a diseased taste—one that has infected a great number of artists.’

Cortona, Pietro da ( Pietro Berrettini) (1596–1669). Italian painter, architect, decorator, and designer, second only to Bernini as the most versatile genius of the full Roman Baroque style. He is named after his birthplace, Cortona in Tuscany, where he probably had some training with his father, a stonemason, before settling in Rome in about 1612. His first major works there were frescos in the church of S. Bibiana (1624–6), commissioned by Urban VIII ( Maffeo Barberini), and the patronage of the Barberini family played a major part in his career. For their palace he painted his most famous work, a huge fresco, Allegory of Divine Providence and Barberini Power, on the ceiling of the Gran Salone. He began this in 1633, but interrupted the work in 1637 to go to Florence, where he painted two frescos commissioned by the Grand Duke Ferdinand II de'Medici on the walls of the Sala della Stufa in the Pitti Palace: the Golden Age and the Silver Age. After returning to Rome he completed the Barberini ceiling in 1639. One of the key works in the development of Baroque painting, it is a triumph of illusionism, for the centre of the ceiling appears open to the sky and the figures seen from below (di sotto in sù) appear to come down into the room as well as soar out of it. It demonstrates Cortona's belief, which came out in a debate with Andrea Sacchi in the Accademia di S. Luca in about 1636, that a history painting could be compared with an epic and was entitled to use many figures; Sacchi, intent on classical simplicity and unity, argued for using as few figures as possible. For most of the period from 1640 to 1647 Cortona again worked in Florence, continuing his decorations in the Pitti Palace. He first completed his Four Ages of Man decorations in the Sala della Stufa with the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, then began a series of allegorical ceiling paintings in five rooms named after the planets (the work was completed by his pupil Ciro Ferri (1634–89 )). These paintings are combined with sumptuous stucco ornamentation, and this form of decoration was widely influential, not only in Italy, but also in France. (Cortona turned down an invitation to visit Paris from Cardinal Mazarin, but his style was taken there by his best pupil, Romanelli.) From 1647 until his death Cortona again worked in Rome, his major paintings from this period being an extensive series of frescos in S. Maria in Vallicella (the Chiesa Nuova, 1647–65), in which, as in his Pitti decorations, paint and stucco are magnificently combined. Throughout his career he painted easel pictures of religious and mythological subjects, and he also designed cartoons for a number of tapestries on the history of Constantine (1626–41) for the Palazzo Barberini (now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art), completing a series that had been begun by Rubens.

Cortona once wrote that architecture was merely a pastime for him, but he ranks among the greatest architects of his period. His masterpiece is the church of SS. Martina e Luca in Rome (1635–50), which was the first Baroque church designed and built as a complete unity. Although his architecture has all the vigour of his painting, there is less correspondence between the two fields than might be imagined. He never decorated any of his own churches, and indeed they were not designed with fresco decoration in mind, making their impact through grandeur of form rather than richness of ornament. His great contemporary reputation sank in the next century with that of many other Baroque artists. In a famous passage in his Dizionario delle belle arti (1797), Francesco Milizia wrote: ‘Borromini in architecture, Bernini in sculpture, Pietro da Cortona in painting…represent a diseased taste—one that has infected a great number of artists.’

Cortona, Pietro Berrettini da (1596–1669). With Bernini and Borromini, one of the great masters of Roman Baroque. Trained as a painter, Cortona settled in Rome around 1611, where he was patronized by the Sacchettis, for whom he designed the Palazzetto del Pigneto (1626–36). Although the building no longer exists, it made his reputation at the time, for it was approached through a series of ramps and terraces leading up to the entrance exedra, a design influenced, no doubt, by the Roman temple of Fortuna at Palestrina (Praeneste), and containing other Antique allusions, including semicircular apses screened by columns and derived from Roman thermae. The façade was one of the first curved fronts in Rome. He came to the notice of Cardinal Francesco Barberini(1597–1679), for whom he created the sensational Baroque ceiling-fresco (completed 1639) in the saloon of the Palazzo Barberini. His first church was Sts Luca e Martina (1634–69) in the Forum: the central part of the front has a convex plan, and columns are sunk into the wall in the manner of Michelangelo's Laurentian library-vestibule in Florence. Inside the church (a Greek cross on plan) the walls are articulated by means of Ionic columns and pilasters (the capitals are of the angular type), giving a unity to the entire composition enhanced by the lack of colour (the interior is painted white).

Under Pope Alexander VII (1655–67) da Cortona built two of the finest Baroque church façades in Rome. The front of Santa Maria della Pace (1656–9) has a half-elliptical porch of paired Tuscan columns and an upper storey with a recessed convex central section: the plastic qualities recall Michelangelo at his Mannerist best. Da Cortona carried the main elements of the façade over the adjacent buildings, creating a unified piazza resembling a theatre with boxes, with the church-front appearing as the backdrop. With the façade of Santa Maria in Via Lata (1658–62) in the Corso, da Cortona achieved a deceptive simplicity and grandeur with an in antis (see anta) porch and an upper storey featuring an arch continuing the profile of the entablature. The design was reminiscent of elements from Diocletian's Palace at Spalato and the temples at Baalbek.

Bibliography

Briganti (1962);
Norberg-Schulz (1986);
Placzek (ed.) (1982);
Jane Turner (1996);
Varriano (1986);
Wittkower (1982)

Pietro Berrettini da Cortona , 1596–1669, Italian baroque painter and architect, b. Cortona. The Barberini family commissioned him to paint frescoes for the vast ceiling of their palace in Rome, which resulted in the exuberant Allegory of Divine Providence and Barberini Power (1633–39). The work, filled with swirling clouds and figures, was one of the most influential of baroque decorative schemes. It is a paramount example of baroque illusionism . In Florence he executed frescoes of the Four Ages and the rich ceiling decoration in the Pitti Palace, the Allegories of the Virtues and Planets. In these seven rooms the ceilings are unified with the structure of the rooms by stucco ornamentation. Pietro's pupil Ciro Ferri (1634–89) completed the work in the Pitti Palace. Almost equally ornate were Pietro's early architectural designs, such as that for the church of SS. Martina e Luca (1635–50) in Rome, which Pietro finished at his own expense. Later he turned to a greater simplification and massiveness in the facades of Santa Maria della Pace (1656–57) and Santa Maria in Via Lata (1658–62). His architectural works are among the most significant of the baroque period.