Anno LXV – Terza serie – Numero 117 (775) Settembre 2014

Mauro Pratesi: Longhi 1918 e il caso De Pero

ANTOLOGIA DI ARTISTI

Un ‘San Sebastiano’ di Nicolas Régnier a Capodimonte (Giuseppe Porzio)
Per Pietro della Vecchia in Cadore (Letizia Lonzi)
Un dipinto ignoto di Carlo Maratti a Pietrasanta. Variazioni sul tema della Santa Francesca Romana (Cristiano Giometti)
Un nuovo disegno del giovane Solimena (Simona Carotenuto)
Secular paintings by Domenico Piola (Mary Newcome Schleier)

APPUNTI

Attributions traditionnelles et identifications certaines: dessins de N. Circignani, V. Strada, G. Baglione, P.F. Mola, A. Gherardi et G.D. Piastrini pour des travaux romains (Catherine Loisel)

RICERCHE D’ARCHIVIO

Il contratto per la ‘Presentazione della Vergine al tempio’ di Giovanni de’ Vecchi a Sansepolcro (Lothar Sickel)

SUMMARY

MAURO PRATESI
In 1918 Roberto Longhi began to contribute to the Roman journal Rassegna Italiana, publishing a long critical essay about contemporary events in the art world in Rome, including the inauguration of Piacentini’s Corso cinema and Depero’s production of the Balli Plastici at the Teatro dei Piccoli on 14 April 1918. This important work of criticism was cut by Longhi himself when he published the first volume of the Scritti Giovanili (his youthful writings) as part of his Opere Complete in 1961; this contained only a partial reprint of his 1918 piece, now entitled Illustratori Francesi, and he deleted those parts which in our opinion are the most lively and polemical passages of the whole text. This unabridged republication of Longhi’s writings offers a new and improved understanding of his critical development in the years around 1920.

GIUSEPPE PORZIO
This article presents an unpublished Saint Sebastian by Nicolas Régnier identified in the storerooms of the Capodimonte Museum in Naples. The powerful Classical component of this work, which constitutes a new addition to the substantial group of paintings of this subject by the Franco-Flemish artist, bears witness to the evolution of his naturalistic language in Rome within the circle of the Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani around the years 1622-1624.

LETIZIA LONZI
In 1665 Giovanni Moschetto, an important citizen of Cadore, commissioned an ex voto of unusual iconography: a liberal interpretation of the miraculous image of Soriano Calabro. The article presents this painting, unknown to scholars and attributable to Pietro dellaVecchia because of stylistic parallels with other works he painted for provincial churches. Although not of the highest artistic quality and in poor condition, the work bears witness to the remarkable spread through Venetian territory of pictures from the workshop of this emblematic painter.

CRISTIANO GIOMETTI
This is the first scholarly publication of a painting by Carlo Marattiwith Saint Francesca Romana Receiving the Christ Child from the Virgin, in the Presence of Saints Peter and Augustine in an oratory in Pietrasanta. The work is in very good condition and is mentioned in nineteenth-century sources, but the private character of the small place of worship that houses it has led to its being forgotten, even in the city in which it is located. The painting is of excellent quality and is composed of a series of citations from other works by Maratti; this allows it to be dated to between 1672 and about 1675.

SIMONA CAROTENUTO
The article presents an unpublished early drawing by Francesco Solimena which recently appeared on the art market with an attribution to the Lombard-Piedmontese School of the early seventeenth century. The sheet is in fact a preparatory study for the mounted knight in the fresco of Saints Thecla, Archelaisand Susanna Led to Martyrdom in the church of San Giorgio in Salerno. A reconstruction of the artist’s youthful phase as draughtsman enables the author to date this red chalk drawing to the years in which he was closest to the Baroque idioms of Pietro da Cortona and Luca Giordano, and it shows a close resemblance to the drawings formerly in the Gere collection in London and the Adoration of the Shepherds in Bucharest.

MARY NEWCOME

Schleier In the late seventeenth century Domenico Piola and his workshop supplied designs for a great variety of media, ranging from textiles to ceramics, and decorated numerous palace ceilings with frescoes of secular subjects. It is therefore peculiar that his painted oeuvre is still considered as mostly religious.The present study, a continuation of an article published in 2012, intends to enhance our modern perception of Piola by presenting three paintings with mythological subjects from historic private collections and two others describing the daily pastimes of the nobility.

CATHERINE LOISEL
The study of Old Master Drawings prompts a critical consideration of historic classification and attribution. Bearing in mind these criteria while seeking to understand the specific qualities of Bolognese style in the Seicento, the author has assembled a number of preparatory studies for Roman decorative projects, in the context of the publication of the catalogue of drawings in the Louvre. All these works are unpublished, and each was discovered in the drawings cabinet of various museums, classified as anonymous or given erroneous authorship. Thus an improbable Bartolomeo Schedoni becomes a genuine Niccolò Circignani, a false Guido Reni takes its place in the corpus of Pier Francesco Mola, Antonio Gherardi’s meditation on the decoration of the Cappella dei Musici in San Carlo ai Catinari is revealed thanks to two new sheets, and the oeuvre of Giovanni Domenico Piastrini is enriched by two preparatory drawings.

LOTHAR SICKEL
This article publishes and analyzes the contract for the altarpiece painted by Giovanni de’ Vecchi for the chapel of the Presentation of the Virgin in the church of Santa Maria dei Servi in Sansepolcro, now housed in the Museo Civico there. According to the contract, drawn up in Rome on 15 December 1582, the painting was commissioned by the priest Filippo Farsetti, at that time rector of Santa Maria in Monticelli and (like the painter) a native of Sansepolcro. Various records of payment attached to the document reveal that the altarpiece was completed before 27 September 1583. This new data provides conclusive evidence regarding the genesis of one of the Tuscan painter’s principal works and casts light on his links with some of his fellow-countrymen.