Artists In 17th Century Rome

Painting as Business in Early Seventeenth-Century Rome offers a new perspective on the world of painting in Rome at the beginning of the Baroque, from both an artistic and a socioeconomic point of view. Biased by the accounts of seventeenth-century biographers, who were often academic painters concerned about elevating the status of their profession, art historians have long believed that in Italy, and in Rome in particular, paintings were largely produced by major artists working on commission for the most important patrons of the time. Patrizia Cavazzini&’s extensive archival research reveals a substantially different situation. Cavazzini presents lively and colorful accounts of Roman artists&’ daily lives and apprenticeships and investigates the vast popular art market that served the aesthetic, devotional, and economic needs of artisans and professionals and of the laboring class. Painting as Business reconstructs the complex universe of painters, collectors, and merchants and irrevocably alters our understanding of the production, collecting, and merchandising of painting during a key period in Italian art history.

"Buildings have lives in time," observes Patricia Waddy in this pioneering study of the relation between plan and use in the palaces of the Borghese, Barberini, and Chigi families.

This brilliant vignette of seventeenth-century Rome, its Baroque architecture, and its relationship to the Catholic Church brings to life the friendship between a genius and his patron with an ease of writing that is rare in art history. By 1650, the spiritual and political power of the Catholic Church was shattered. Thanks to the twin blows of the Protestant Reformation and the Thirty Years War, Rome—celebrated both as the Eternal City and Caput Mundi (the head of the world)—had lost its preeminent place in Europe. Then a new Pope, Alexander VII, fired with religious zeal, political guile, and a mania for creating new architecture, determined to restore the prestige of his church by making Rome the key destination for Europe's intellectual, political, and cultural elite. To help him do so, he enlisted the talents of Gianlorenzo Bernini, already celebrated as the most important living artist—no mean feat in the age of Rubens, Rembrandt, and Velazquez.

Rome: setting the stage / Richard E. Spear -- Naples / Christopher R. Marshall -- Bologna / Raffaella Morselli -- Florence / Elena Fumagalli -- Venice / Philip Sohm -- Five industrious cities / Renata Ago -- The painting industry in early modern Italy / Richard A. Goldthwaite.

Eighteenth-century Rome offers a privileged view of art market activities, given the continuity of remarkable investments by the local ruling class, combined with the decisive impact of external agents, largely linked to the Grand Tour. This book, the result of collaboration between international specialists, brings back into the spotlight protagonists, facts and dynamics that have remained unexplored for many years.

Encompassing the socio-political, cultural background of the period, this title takes a look at the careers of the Old Masters and many lesser-known artists. The book covers artistic developments across six countries and examines in detail many of the artworks on display.