A prominent writer, a master painter, and a treasure of art that for centuries had been largely neglected are brought brilliantly to life in this first important study of one of the great legacies of ...Renaissance art. The immense castle at Cataio, about thirty-five miles from Venice, was built between 1570 and 1573. An extraordinary series of frescoes, painted in 1573, covers the walls of six of its palatial halls. Programmed by Giuseppe Betussi, the forty frescoes depict momentous events in the history of the Obizzi family from 1004 to 1422. Executed by Giambattista Zelotti and assistants, the frescoes, plus ceiling decorations, are painted in a Mannerist, highly illusionist style with such skill that the walls seem to be windows through which one views battle scenes, weddings, political negotiations, and other episodes in the dramatic history of the Obizzi family.Now one of the most distinguished scholars of Italian art takes readers room by room, fresco by fresco, on the first guided tour of this Betussi-Zelotti masterpiece. Writing with characteristic clarity, Irma Jaffe combines art history, iconography, formal analysis, Italian history, and the story of the Obizzi family in a richly detailed esthetic, social and historical introduction to the entire series.Describing and explaining with spirit and authority the composition and meaning of each fresco?each illustrated with full color plates?Jaffe also illuminates the fascinating decorations on the ceilings and overdoors of the great rooms. In figures that personify virtues and vices, to comment on the events painted on the walls beneath them, the values of sixteenth century Italy are reflected with uncommon clarity in both the fresco saga and the decorations above.A full understanding of Mannerism and sixteenth century painting must now include the contribution of Battista Zelotti. In the scenes at Cataio he reveals the possibilities available to Mannerist style in his countless poses of the human figure and of horses, in his variety of settings---indoor and outdoor, land and sea---and in the range of preeminent sixteenth century values such as family rank and pride, personal courage, and religion that are expressed in his Saga of the Obizzi family. Zelotti's masterpiece carries the artificiality inherent in Mannerism to a new level of theatrical drama. Viewing the scenes of fierce battles, magnificent weddings, assassinations, and triumph after triumph, suggests to modern viewers something of the splendor of grand opera.For Renaissance scholars and students, for art historians, for travelers and art lovers interested in the heritage of the Renaissance in Italy and in the glorious estates of the Veneto, Zelotti?s Epic Frescoes at Cataio: The Obizzi Saga will be an indispensable introduction and guide to a treasure hidden in plain sight for many years.
A prominent writer, a master painter, and a treasure of art that for centuries had been largely neglected are brought brilliantly to life in this first important study of one of the great legacies of ...Renaissance art. The immense castle at Cataio, about thirty-five miles from Venice, was built between 1570 and 1573. An extraordinary series of frescoes, painted in 1573, covers the walls of six of its palatial halls. Programmed by Giuseppe Betussi, the forty frescoes depict momentous events in the history of the Obizzi family from 1004 to 1422. Executed by Giambattista Zelotti and assistants, the frescoes, plus ceiling decorations, are painted in a Mannerist, highly illusionist style with such skill that the walls seem to be windows through which one views battle scenes, weddings, political negotiations, and other episodes in the dramatic history of the Obizzi family.Now one of the most distinguished scholars of Italian art takes readers room by room, fresco by fresco, on the first guided tour of this Betussi-Zelotti masterpiece. Writing with characteristic clarity, Irma Jaffe combines art history, iconography, formal analysis, Italian history, and the story of the Obizzi family in a richly detailed esthetic, social and historical introduction to the entire series.Describing and explaining with spirit and authority the composition and meaning of each fresco-each illustrated with full color plates-Jaffe also illuminates the fascinating decorations on the ceilings and overdoors of the great rooms. In figures that personify virtues and vices, to comment on the events painted on the walls beneath them, the values of sixteenth century Italy are reflected with uncommon clarity in both the fresco saga and the decorations above.A full understanding of Mannerism and sixteenth century painting must now include the contribution of Battista Zelotti. In the scenes at Cataio he reveals the possibilities available to Mannerist style in his countless poses of the human figure and of horses, in his variety of settings---indoor and outdoor, land and sea---and in the range of preeminent sixteenth century values such as family rank and pride, personal courage, and religion that are expressed in his Saga of the Obizzi family. Zelotti's masterpiece carries the artificiality inherent in Mannerism to a new level of theatrical drama. Viewing the scenes of fierce battles, magnificent weddings, assassinations, and triumph after triumph, suggests to modern viewers something of the splendor of grand opera.For Renaissance scholars and students, for art historians, for travelers and art lovers interested in the heritage of the Renaissance in Italy and in the glorious estates of the Veneto, Zelotti's Epic Frescoes at Cataio: The Obizzi Saga will be an indispensable introduction and guide to a treasure hidden in plain sight for many years.
For American art, the last week of October 1982 was indeed historic: major surveys of the work of two of the founding fathers of American art, Charles Willson Peale and John Trumbull, opened almost ...simultaneously at the National Portrait Gallery and the Yale University Art Gallery, respectively. Having gone directly from Washington to New Haven and viewing the Trumbull show with the memory of the Peale exhibition perfectly fresh, I had the impression that Peale was the more accurate observer but Trumbull the more ambitious artist. This difference is reflected in their careers: Peale was ever the scientist, analyzing a face or pouring his energies into his natural history museum; Trumbull, except for a period in the 1790s, was ever the artist, yearning to join the company of his avatars, the masters of Western art. The curator of the Trumbull exhibition, Helen A. Cooper, by electing (correctly, in my view) to show the artist's exceptionally broad range rather than only his best work, emphasized the aspect of ambition. That Trumbull's grasp was often short of his reach is true, but in the context of the entire show, his failures still struck me as impressive.
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The Flying Gallop: East and West Jaffe, Irma B.; Colombardo, Gernando
The Art bulletin (New York, N.Y.),
19/6/1/, Letnik:
65, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Not since Salomon Reinach's series of articles on the flying gallop was published in 1900-01 has a comprehensive study of this convention been undertaken. The present essay covers 3000 years and ...ranges over Europe and Asia, proposing solutions to the following problems: Why did the flying gallop appear only at certain places? Was its appearance due to diffusion or independent invention? And, finally, how did it happen that the motif appeared in Western Europe near the end of the 18th century after three millennia of disuse?
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John Smibert is said to have copied the head and bust of Anthony Van Dyck's seated full-length Portrait of Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio during his stay in Italy between 1719 and 1722.
1
Crisp, elegant, ...luscious but subtle in color, Van Dyck's painting was carefully studied by the copyist, whose copy was evidently much admired in Boston where Smibert settled in 1729. When John Singleton Copley wrote his half-brother, Henry Pelham, giving him advice on how to handle chiaroscuro and color he cited as an example available to Pelham in Boston the Smibert Bentivoglio. Copley himself had studied the painting so attentively that Sir Joshua Reynolds, so it is said, recognized the influence of the Flemish master in the young American's work.
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Il ritratto seduto, a figura intera, della poetessa Isotta Brembati è da sempre annoverato tra le opere più ammirate di Giovan Battista Moroni, soprattutto per la sontuosa resa pittorica dei tessuti, ...autentica prova di bravura. Tuttavia gli studiosi hanno spesso segnalato evidenti insufficienze nella resa psicologica e nella collocazione spaziale della figura, anomale in un pittore di tanta accuratezza. L'articolo, basandosi anche su alcune particolarità dell'abbigliamento e sul confronto con altri ritratti femminili di Moroni, avanza l'ipotesi che la tela non sia autografa, bensì il risultato di una collazione di originali moroniani per ottenere un ritratto post mortem di Isotta che fungesse da pendant al ritratto del marito Gian Girolamo Grumelli, il famoso Cavaliere in rosa, questo sì di indubbia autografia. Il bassorilievo con la storia di Elia ed Eliseo raffigurato nel dipinto, sul quale compare anche una frase in spagnolo di cui si sono tentate diverse letture, costituisce la chiave per collocare il dipinto in un preciso momento della storia lombarda, quello del trattato di Cateau-Cambrésis, avvenimento di cui il ritratto costituisce un riscontro immediato nella sperata pacificazione tra filospagnoli e filofrancesi.
