Federico Barocci and the Oratorians: Corporate Patronage and Style in the Counter-Reformation 9780271090658

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Federico Barocci and the Oratorians

Habent sua fata libelli

Early Modern Studies Series General Editor Michael Wolfe St. John’s University

Editorial Board of Early Modern Studies Elaine Beilin

Framingham State College

Christopher Celenza Johns Hopkins University

Barbara B. Diefendorf Boston University

Paula Findlen

Stanford University

Scott H. Hendrix

Princeton Theological Seminary

Jane Campbell Hutchison

University of Wisconsin–­Madison

Mary B. McKinley University of Virginia

Raymond A. Mentzer University of Iowa

Robert V. Schnucker

Truman State University, Emeritus

Nicholas Terpstra University of Toronto

Margo Todd

University of Pennsylvania

James Tracy

University of Minnesota

Merry Wiesner-­Hanks

University of Wisconsin–­Milwaukee

Early Modern Studies 14 Truman State University Press Kirksville, Missouri

Copyright © 2015 Truman State University Press, Kirksville, Missouri, 63501 All rights reserved tsup.truman.edu Cover art: Federico Barocci, Head of an Old Woman Looking to Lower Right, 1584–86, brush and oil paint on paper (Harry G. Sperling Fund, 1976, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) Cover design: Teresa Wheeler

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Verstegen, Ian. Federico Barocci and the Oratorians : corporate patronage and style in the Counter-Reformation / Ian F. Verstegen. pages cm. — (Early modern studies ; 14) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-61248-132-6 (library binding : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-61248-133-3 (e-book) 1. Barocci, Federigo, 1528–1612—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Oratorians—Art patronage. 3. Santa Maria in Vallicella (Church : Rome, Italy) 4. Christian art and symbolism—Italy—Rome—Modern period, 1500– 5. Counter-Reformation in art. I. Title. ND623.B25V47 2014 759.5—dc23 2014016933

No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any format by any means without written permission from the publisher. The paper in this publication meets or exceeds the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1992.

Contents Illustrations...................................................................................................................... vii Preface................................................................................................................................ xi Introduction: What’s in a Style? Barocci and the Oratorians...................................... 1 Chapter 1: Federico Barocci, Filippo Neri, and Christian Optimism...................... 15 Chapter 2: The Altarpiece Cycle: The Rosary and Coordinated Devotion.............. 43 Chapter 3: The Visitation and the Presentation of the Virgin..................................... 67 Chapter 4: The Nativity of the Virgin for the High Altar and the Institution of the Eucharist for the Pope....................................................................... 95 Chapter 5: Baroccismo into the Seicento.................................................................... 121 Appendix 1: Chiesa Nuova Altars and the Altarpieces Adorning Them............... 143 Appendix 2: Chiesa Nuova Timeline.......................................................................... 146 Appendix 3: Order of Altarpiece Commissions and Completions......................... 148 Appendix 4: Giovan Battista Guerra’s Renovations in the Chiesa Nuova.............. 149 Works Cited.................................................................................................................... 150 Index............................................................................................................................... 163 About the Author.......................................................................................................... 172

Illustrations and Tables Illustrations Plate I: Federico Barocci, Visitation of the Virgin and Saint Elizabeth, 1586, oil on canvas, Chiesa Nuova, Rome (photo by author)............................................A Plate II: Federico Barocci, Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, 1603, oil on canvas, Chiesa Nuova, Rome (photo by Bradley Cavallo)............................ B Plate III: Peter Paul Rubens, Adoration of the Madonna Vallicelliana, 1608, oil on slate, Chiesa Nuova, Rome (image from Wikimeida Commons)................ C Plate IV: Federico Barocci, Head of an Old Man (Filippo Neri?), ca. 1583, charcoal pastel on paper (Galerie Hans, Hamburg)......................................................D Plate V: Federico Barocci, Nativity of Christ, ca. 1597–99, oil on canvas, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan (© DeA Picture Library/Art Resource, NY)................. E Plate VI: Federico Barocci and Alessandro Vitali, Saint Ambrose’s Pardon of Theodosius, 1603, oil on canvas, Duomo, Milan (Fabbrica del Duomo di Milano)..................................................................................................................F Plate VII: Federico Barocci and Alessandro Vitali, Nativity of the Virgin, ca. 1588–­ 1603, oil on canvas, San Sempliciano, Milan (Soprintendenza per i bene storici artistici ed etnoantropologici per la province di Milano).��������������� G Plate VIII: Federico Barocci, The Institution of the Eucharist, 1603–­1608, oil on canvas, Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome (photo by Chris Paprocki).......H

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Fig. 1.1: Guido Reni, Saint Filippo Neri in Ecstasy, 1615, oil on canvas (Biblioteca dell’Istituto centrale per il catalogo e la documentazione)...........................20 Fig. 1.2: Copper engraving from Vita Beati P. Ignatii Loyolae Societatis Jesu fundatoris (Rome, 1609) (New York Public Library)....................................28 Fig. 1.3: Copper engraving from Vita Beati P. Ignatii Loyolae Societatis Jesu fundatoris (Rome, 1609) (New York Public Library)....................................29 Fig. 1.4: Federico Zuccaro, Seven Archangels in Adoration of the Trinity, 1600, oil on panel, Gesù, Rome (photo by Ron Reznick, digitalflashimages.net).....38 Fig. 2.1: Chiesa Nuova (Santa Maria in Vallicella), Rome (photo by author)..........50 Fig. 2.2: Anonymous, Madonna Vallicelliana, within Rubens’s altarpiece, date unknown, fresco, Chiesa Nuova, Rome (photo by author)..........................52 Fig. 2.3: Copper engraving, after Nicolas Beatrizet, Madonna of Loreto (detail), published by Antoine Lafréry, Rome, 1540–­66 (© Trustees of the British Museum).............................................................................................................54 Fig. 2.4: Title page, detail of copper engraving frontispiece from Cesare Baronio, Annales ecclesiastici (Rome: Tipografica Vaticana, 1588), (Ryan Library Collection, St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, Wynnewood, Pennsylvania)..55 Fig. 2.5: Andrea Lilio, Assumption, 1610, fresco, Annunciation Chapel, Chiesa Nuova, Rome (photo by author)......................................................................56 Fig. 3.1: Four scarpigni at the same scale: Barocci, compositional studies, ca. 1582 (left to right: Statensmuseum for Kunst, Copenhagen; Fondation Custodia Collection Fritz Lugt, Paris; Institut Neerlandais, Nationalmuseum, Paris; Stockholm; Stockholm [2])....................................................................... 74–75 Fig. 3.2: Federico Barocci, Visitation, ca. 1582, in the Chiesa Nuova, Rome (photo by author) reduced six times, compared to Edinburgh modello (National Galleries, Scotland) and Berlin 20522 (bpk, Berlin/Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museum, Berlin/photo by Jörg P. Anders/Art Resource).... 76–77

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Fig. 3.3: Federico Barocci, Presentation of the Virgin, ca. 1583, in the Chiesa Nuova, Rome (center, photo by Bradley Cavallo) reduced seven times, compared to (left) Barocci, sketch, with Uffizi 11434 (Suprintendenza Speciala per il Patrimonio Storico, Artistico et Etnoantropologico e per il Polo Museala della città di Firenze) and (right) after Barocci, Presentation of the Virgin, ca. 1610, drawing 2006.11.4 (Woodner Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC)................................................................................. 86–87 Fig. 3.4: Federico Barocci, Lamentation of Christ, ca. 1612, oil on canvas, Biblioteca Comunale dell’Archiginnasio, Bologna (Soprintendenza per il patrimonio storico, artistico et demoetnoantropoligico, Bologna).................................93 Fig. 4.1: Same-­scale comparison of (left) Federico Barocci, The Calling of Saint Andrew, ca. 1588, oil on canvas (El Escorial, Lessing Images) and (right) Federico Barocci and Alessandro Vitali, Nativity of the Virgin, ca. 1588–­ 1603, oil on canvas, San Sempliciano, Milan (Suprintendenza per i beni storici artistici ed etnoantropologici per le province di Milano)..............100 Fig. 4.2: Federico Barocci, Kneeling woman, compositional study, ca. 1585, chalk on paper, Düsseldorf, inv. 162 (Stiftung Museum Kunstpalast-­Horst Kolbert, Düsseldorf /ARTOTHEK)..............................................................105 Fig. 4.3: Federico Barocci, Arm of a child, study, ca. 1583, chalk on paper, inv. 20158 (bpk, Berlin/Kupferstichkabinett/photo by Volker-­H. Cutter/Art Resource)..........................................................................................................107 Fig. 4.4: Same-­scale comparison of (left) Federico Barocci, Circumcision, 1590, oil on canvas (Musée de Louvre, Alfredo Dagli Orti/The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY); (center) Federico Barocci and Alessandro Vitali, Nativity of the Virgin, ca. 1588–­1603, oil on canvas, San Sempliciano, Milan (Soprintendenza per i beni storici artistici ed etnoantropologici per le province di Milano); and (right) Federico Barocci, Visitation of the Virgin and Saint Elizabeth, 1586, oil on canvas, Chiesa Nuova, Rome (photo by author).......................................................................................................... 108–9 Fig. 4.5: Sano di Pietro, Birth of the Virgin, 1448–­1452, tempera and gold on panel (University of Michigan Museum of Art, Museum purchase made possible by the Thirtieth Anniversary Project and the Friends of the Museum of Art, 1977/2.1)...................................................................................................112

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Fig. 5.1: Cristoforo Roncalli, Saint Filippo Neri in Ecstasy, 1600, oil on canvas, Chapel of Filippo Neri, Chiesa Nuova, Rome (photo by author)..............122 Fig. 5.2: Federico Zuccaro, Portrait of Filippo Neri, 1593, oil on canvas, Oratorio of Santa Maria in Galliera, Bologna (Congregazione dell’Oratorio di San Filippo Neri).....................................................................................................127 Fig. 5.3: Cristoforo Roncalli, Saint Domitilla with Saints Nereo and Achilleo, 1601, oil on canvas, Santi Nereo e Acchile, Rome (Mondadori Portfolio/Electa/ Art Resource, NY)...........................................................................................129 Fig. 5.4: Francesco Vanni, Madonna Vallicelliana Adored by Saints Francis and Restituta, 1601, oil on canvas, Santa Maria degli Angeli, Sora (photo by author)...............................................................................................................131 Fig. 5.5: Antonio Viviani, The Apparition of the Angel at the Meal of the Poor, 1603–­ 6, fresco, San Gregorio Magno, Rome (photo by author)..........................134 Fig. 5.6: Federico Barocci, Penitent Saint Jerome, 1597, fresco, Villa Borghese, Rome (Soprintendenza per i bene artistici e storica de Roma).................136 Fig. 5.7: Luca Ciamberlano, after Federico Barocci, copper engraving from Noli me tangere, 1609 (Soprintendenza per i bene artistica e storica d Roma, Gabinetto Fotografico)....................................................................................140

Tables Table 1: Price of artwork in the Chiesa Nuova and the Gesù (in scudi)...................41 Table 2: Subjects of Rosary devotions represented in Chiesa Nuova altarpieces and in the Gesù Chapel of Madonna della Strada................................................66 Table 3: Typology of altarpiece subjects in the Chiesa Nuova....................................66

Preface This project began with material external to my dissertation on Federico Barocci, which became my paper “Federico Barocci, Federico Borromeo, and the Oratorian Orbit.” The paper combined documentary research into Barocci and the Oratorians with my interest in historiography and its theorization. Several years have allowed me to reflect on deeper issues on Barocci and the Oratorians, including Oratorian spirituality, the significance of the iconographic program of the Chiesa Nuova, and Barocci’s ill-fated Birth of the Virgin for the church’s high altar. I am grateful for the hospitality of Padre Alberto Venturoli in the archive of the Chiesa Nuova many years ago, Mons. Marco Maria Navoni of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, and more recently the Archivio di Stato in Florence. In addition, Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Costanza Barbieri, Dave Elder-Vass, Jonathan Gilmore, Paul Grendler, Marcia Hall, Pamela Jones, Bram de Klerck, Jonathan Kline, Stuart Lingo, Laura MacCaskey, Giancarla Periti, and Ulrike Tarnow offered their help, information, or encouragement. Hayden Maginnis offered an insight that set chapter 4 off rolling. Ideas for chapter 1 were first presented in the College Art Association session “Muta Poesis: Interpreting and Picturing Silence” at the 2003 meeting. In particular, I want to single out three people. First, Marcia Hall has been a constant encouragement, and I have been pleased to discuss with her matters relating to Barocci over the years since completing my dissertation under her guidance. Costanza Barbieri first introduced me to the Oratorians in Rome and has been a ready and helpful discussant of matters relating to Filippo Neri and Barocci. Finally, I have had the pleasure to collaborate with John Marciari over the past few years and he has been a precious sounding board for issues dealt with in this book. I thank them all!

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What’s In a Style? Barocci and the Oratorians The national character is not something that can be appealed to as an explanatory historical principle in concrete cases; it is, rather, something which not only demands concrete explanation, but which demands constant reinterpretation in the light of actual events.1 Maurice Mandelbaum, The Problem of Historical Knowledge

In 1586 Federico Barocci, the famous painter from Urbino, delivered his Visitation of the Virgin and Saint Elizabeth (plate 1) to the Chiesa Nuova in Rome, to great applause. Barocci was already well known throughout Italy because of his Deposition (1569) in Perugia and Madonna del Popolo (1579) in Arezzo, but this commission for the fathers of the Congregation of the Oratory would lead to a quarter century of domination of the art scene in Rome. While Barocci was not a resident in the Eternal City, there was no other artist from whom it was harder to get work and no other artist who charged such high prices.2 Yet Barocci’s talents in Rome were almost completely monopolized by the Oratorians. In the early 1590s, the fathers considered having Barocci paint the pendant transept chapels; eventually he only painted the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, which was delivered in 1603. Barocci was bold enough to propose to do the altarpiece for the high altar. Money constraints made this very well-received idea flounder, but Barocci did manage to send one more important work to Rome, his Institution of the Eucharist for the Aldobrandini family chapel in Santa Maria sopra Minerva in 1608. Scholars have noted the remarkable fact of these four altarpiece projects in one very important Roman church; this is due to the special relationship between the works and

1. Mandelbaum, Problem of Historical Knowledge, 286. 2. On Filippo Neri and the Oratorians, see Capecelatro, La vita di s. Filippo Neri; Cistellini, San Filippo Neri.

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Introduction

the founder of the Oratorians, Filippo Neri (1515–95). We know from contemporary documents that the Visitation was Neri’s favorite painting. He was often in the chapel, where he performed miracles or was seen spending hours lost in rapture.3 No doubt the saint’s interest in the painting was due both to the feminine humility of the two bearers of Saint John the Baptist and Christ, and to the way in which Barocci had painted it so sweetly. From that moment on, Barocci would be a model for capturing what the Oratorians appreciated in an altarpiece and, reflexively, the painter helped the fathers understand just what their aesthetic was. But perhaps this remarkability has caused us to move too quickly to facile observations, like Barocci’s “Oratorian piety.” Indeed, it has become quite fashionable to debunk various stylistic concepts with reference to an implicit Zeitgeist thinking and uncovering the “Hegelian unconscious.” At least two important surveys of painting in sixteenth-century Italy specifically invoke Jeroen Stumpel’s criticism of the concept of Mannerism, following his recommendation to abandon the usage of the term, and with it a series of important works from the 1960s that clarified its usage for an earlier generation.4 Is this the end of the long winding down of nineteenth-century historicism, or are any of these ideas still workable? Such doubts are well placed, for a review of the literature shows that attempts to relate artists to various religious bodies have been unsuccessful. Immediate evidence of this fact is that any argument for Barocci’s Oratorian piety would have to contend with Walter Friedländer’s thesis that it was in fact Caravaggio who most exemplified Oratorian values. According to Caravaggio Studies, the humility and earthiness of Filippo Neri’s spirituality—his service to pilgrims and the poor, his unassuming manner, and his impatience with pomp and formality—were an inspiration for Caravaggio’s brutal realism.5 Although Friedländer was sympathetic to Barocci and had written extensively of him in his early work on the Casino of Pius IV, he found it possible to pass over this artist’s demonstrable success with Oratorians, as if his fame alone merely carried him. But of course the Caravaggio industry has not rested content with the Oratorian interpretation, going on to produce Augustinian and Franciscan interpretations.6 Such exercises

3. Incisa della Rochetta and Vian, Il Primo Processo per San Filippo Neri, 1:273, 330, 337, 340, 2:113, 125. Federico Borromeo also contributed his testimony (3:420–25) although he does not mention the anecdote. Bacci, Vita di San Filippo Neri, 221: “stava...nella Cappella della Visitazione dove si tratteneva volentieri piacendogli assai quell’immagine del Barocci”; Bacci, Life of St. Philip Neri, ed. Antrobus, 1:339 (note that the story does not appear in the first edition in 1622, and first appears in the 1636 edition); Baglione, Le vite de’ pittori scultori et architetti, 134: “egli staua in quella cappella a far le sue orationi”; Bellori, “Life of Federico Barocci,” ed. Pillsbury and Richards, 18; and Bellori, “Vita di Federico Barocci,” ed. Borea, 190: “Dicesi che San Filippo si compiaceva molto di questa imagine, e spesso si ritirava nella cappella alle sue divote contemplazioni.” The story does not appear in the first, unillustrated, life of Neri by Gallonio, Vita di San Filippo Neri; however, another episode, of a demon in the guise of a boy taunting Filippo, happened in the same chapel (211). 4. Franklin, Painting in Renaissance Florence; and Bailey, Between Renaissance and Baroque; both citing Stumpel, “Speaking of Manner.” See further Franklin, Review of After Raphael, by Marcia B. Hall. 5. Friedländer, Caravaggio Studies. As a further amplification of Friedländer’s thesis, see Graeve, “Stone of Unction in Caravaggio’s Painting for the Chiesa Nuova.” For overviews, see Cropper and Dempsey, “State of Research in Italian Painting of the Seventeenth Century”; and Toscano, “History of Art and the Forms of Religious Life.” 6. For the Augustinian, see Calvesi, “Caravaggio o la ricerca della salvazione.” For the Franciscan, see Alloisi, “Panigarola e Caravaggio”; and Pupillo, “Pauperismo e iconografia francescana.”

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will continue indefinitely until we think about the units under consideration. Although such interpretations are conducted through source material, such that expressed spiritual goals (or imagery) are matched to similar pictorial strategies in some artist, what is at the base of such readings is a formal similarity. Because of the apparent fruitlessness of this endeavor, most have given up as naïve those gestures of art historians like Friedländer, Panofsky, and others that presume some kind of essential historical entities. While the transgressions of unbridled stylistic history have been many, this study upholds some kind of Oratorian aesthetic, which Barocci satisfied so well. By reflecting on the nature of social collectivity and styles, it will be possible to make a reasonable case for limited social distinctions and style concepts with limited purchase. With this new understanding as background, one may uphold the traditional assertion of an affinity between Barocci and the Oratorians based on a reconsideration of new and previously known data about the theology, iconography, and practices of the Oratory. The relationship can be affirmed more positively, furthermore, by looking at different patrons and artists. For example, looking at Oratorian commissions outside Rome and commissions by Oratorians for other benefices expands our view. Inserting Barocci’s relationships with Federico Borromeo (1564–1631), cardinal and archbishop of Milan, and with Pope Clement VIII (1535–1605) into the Oratorian ambience helps specify what we mean by Oratorian piety.7 Borromeo, the disciple of Neri and benefactor of the Chiesa Nuova, oversaw four concurrent commissions to Barocci that substantially enlarge the Oratorian picture. Clement VIII’s commission was also conceived within the Oratorian sphere. Similarly, by looking at what was being done by students Barocci trained and those he influenced, we are able to see the larger coordination of aesthetic outcomes. Viewing all these forces in a unified context shows the give and take in Barocci’s very busy career, where different bodies did their best to deal with Barocci’s popularity. In this way, the true force of Oratorian interest emerges.

Historiographic Nominalism One could say that the current situation in historiography is a conflation of libertarian and postmodern philosophies that has brought art history to a point where historical difference has been leveled out. The libertarian contribution was the reductive, commonsense reaction to High German art history by E. H. Gombrich.8 Following on the disasters of World War II, Gombrich responded with a libertarian approach to history that banished all reference to collectivist concepts—style, nation—and was content to remain at the level of the individual artist. Gombrich’s art historical position was widely shared in history, by his friend Karl Popper and by others like Pieter Geyl and Karl Löwith.9

7. On Borromeo, see Gabrieli, “Federico Borromeo a Roma”; Agosti, Collezionismo e archeologia cristiana nel seicento; Jones, Federico Borromeo and the Ambrosiana. 8. See especially Gombrich, In Search of Cultural History. Cf. Gombrich, “Father of Art History.” 9. Popper, Poverty of Historicism; Geyl, Toynbee, and Sorokin, Pattern of the Past; Löwith, Meaning in History; Nisbet,

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This commonsense approach was shared by a number of authors and is reflected, for example, in the shrinking importance of the notion of “style” in successive discussions. For example, departing from Meyer Schapiro’s exhaustive “Style” from the 1953 collection Anthropology Today, we can see that each author that followed Schapiro, including James Ackerman and Gombrich himself, continued to limn the concept down in application and importance.10 This ground was well prepared when from another angle disenchanted Marxists found the master narratives of class struggle and emancipation lacking in the 1970s. The way was open for post-structuralist theories in art history that stressed the constructedness of discourses about art and artists. Naming schools was a political act, and the best we could do, as Foucault reasoned, was to mark out the genealogies of ideas. Jean-François Lyotard gave a name to this new tendency: the suspension of “metanarratives.” In addition, the way histories were constructed was seen as a poetic act, which added something to the inert historical material. Thus Hayden White suggested that historians come to historical material with a fictional sense of how the work should be “emplotted.” So, far from letting the material determine the form of the work, it was moral or aesthetic ideas that led the historian toward the final form of his work. As a result, a kind of post-structuralist nominalism reinforced that which Gombrich had already supported. What was forbidden in both the Anglo-Saxon and Continental cases was roughly what Popper had found objectionable in what he called “historicism,” that is, holism and teleology. When young art historians began to be weary of inherited style concepts like “the Zeitgeist,” “the Baroque,” or various unexamined truisms about artists, national schools, or styles, they had at least two sources to support a return to contextualistic studies. In both the Anglo-Saxon and Continental cases, moreover, great energy was devoted to uncovering the “Hegelian” biases of earlier historians. Thus, interestingly, there was a double Oedipal critique of founding figures of the discipline like Erwin Panofsky. Gombrich criticized him for his latent Hegelianism that took for granted the workings of the Zeitgeist and reliance on national characterizations. Reviewing both Panofsky’s newly translated Perspective as Symbolic Form and group of essays edited by Irving Lavin, Three Essays on Style, Gombrich was slightly shocked by some of the sloppy recourses to period style and national character that Panofsky fell back upon. The discussion of the Baroque, for example, mentions “the experience of so many conflicts and dualisms between emotion and reflection, lust and pain, devoutness and voluptuousness [which] had led to a kind of awakening, and thus endowed the European mind with a new consciousness.”11 Similarly, a post-structuralist such as Keith Moxey in quite a different way could criticize the smuggled nationalistic and teleological assumptions in Panofsky’s accounts of Dürer or early Netherlandish naturalism.12

Social Change and History. 10. See Schapiro, “Style”; Ackerman, “Theory of Style”; and Gombrich, “Style.” 11. Panofsky, Three Essays on Style, 75; Gombrich, “Icon” [review of Panofsky, Three Essays on Style]. 12. Moxey, “Perspective, Panofsky, and the Philosophy of History,” in Practice of Persuasion.

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According to this viewpoint, anything valid about groups is restricted to their individual materiality. There are just people, not groups, races, or nations. In addition, individual cultures and cultures in general do not progress. What is especially interesting here are the strict dualities. Either one is a full-blown Hegelian or one is a legitimate nominalist. Especially in the post-structuralist case, however, to be nominalist has a progressive political valence attached to it. To uncover tacit reliance on notions of group or nation, or their development, is an act uncovering the deep historical biases in the Western historical tradition. There are indications that we need to reconsider the case for historical collectives and their styles. For both postmodern and libertarian politics, the absence of a dichotomy of agent and social structure has been disastrous. Libertarianism is unable to understand the structural positioning of resources that constitutes the material conditions of society, let alone the rules that keep it going. On the other hand, by conflating the agent and the structure, postmodernism has forestalled any possibility of analytic clarification of the categories of social life. The same is true for history. In an era of aggressive worldviews and fundamentalism, we need to be able to catch as much of the complexity of the world in theory as possible in order to fight over precisely those slightest gradations between where reality leaves off and trickery begins.13

A Cautionary Tale: The Jesuit Style The major cautionary tale for such an enterprise involving Barocci and the Oratorians is the now almost debunked notion of a “Jesuit style,” which has its origins in nineteenth-century German historiography. The consequences of imputing overarching stylistic ideas to the Oratorian may not seem such a big deal, but when transposing this problematic to the Jesuits, the stakes become quite clear. In an important historical reconstruction, Evonne Levy has shown how “Jesuit” served in primarily German historical writing as a forerunner for the Catholic Baroque.14 As the Jesuits were perceived as being in lockstep with the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century papacy, all of the products of Catholic pomp could be gathered under the concept of the Jesuitenstil. Thus, shortly after Bismarck evicted the Jesuits from Germany in 1872, we find the emergence of the concept of the Barock containing many of the same concepts: degeneration from the Renaissance, rhetorical insincerity, and manipulation of the masses. In the early twentieth century, works on Counter-Reformation art carried over the concepts but not necessarily the framework inherited from the previous century. Work became more limited to painting or architecture. Yet the easy elision of the corporate body (Jesuits) and their products was increasingly under scrutiny, finally giving way to suspicion after the horrors of World War II. An increasing number of works emerged that put to rest

13. For a political critique of “weak ontology,” see Dean, “Politics of Avoidance.” 14. Levy, Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque.

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the notion of the Jesuit style.15 Representing the same kind of Anglo-Saxon commonsense approach as Gombrich, but without the explicit ideological component, is Gauvin Bailey’s contemporary position.16 Against the cliché that all Jesuit churches were modeled after the mother church of the Gesù, and that Jesuits in different parts of the world proceeded according to noster modus procedendi, Bailey’s scholarship instead emphasizes the variety, flexibility, and adaptability of the Jesuit aesthetic. As for emulation of the Gesù in particular, he illustrates the sheer difference between built Jesuit edifices, noting that “anything beyond a basic emulation of its plan was rare,” and concludes that the noster modus is “not a product but a process.”17 Against this nominalist approach, Evonne Levy argues that the Jesuits had to at least “express affiliation” among themselves, and stresses that their buildings in foreign lands, while not looking directly like the mother church, nevertheless “looked like the architectural embodiment of a foreign occupation.”18 She seems to be suggesting that one should not be limited to an overly literal idea of formal similarity. Yet she specifically distinguished rhetoric from propaganda. While the former is attached to ordinary communication, the latter is largely irrational and exceeds the rules of rhetorical analysis. According to Levy, then, the Jesuits did have a style to the degree that they pioneered an extrarhetorical appeal to the religious public. It is a kind of “style” but one that is sublime and beyond analysis. I find that Levy’s approach is a legitimate attempt to get at what exactly lay at the base of Jesuit building strategies. Her link of propaganda to contemporary concerns is admirable in tracing the origins of modern techniques of manipulation. However, this volume is precisely aimed at analyzing how a style or aesthetic can emerge from the actors and the values and social organism they share. Furthermore, I heartily agree that a restricted idea of style based on overt similarity is too limiting. In retrospect, the impossibility of a workable notion of Jesuit style was quite predictable. First, the style referred originally to the Jesuits themselves as a unified way of life, which is much more difficult to defend than a more precise style of architecture. Second, the very political and aggressive aims of the Society itself meant that its efforts were flung across the globe, multiplying the number of instances that would have to be brought under the same umbrella. Furthermore, the Society exercised a practice of tolerance for local customs, meaning its rites and buildings would be modified locally, once again making it difficult to discern any unity in its products. In a sense, the Jesuits are the worst corporate body within which to look for unity. Nevertheless, a broader idea of style based on causal links and problem solving around common values can bear fruit. Indeed, it is possible to broaden the notion of style away from simple perceived similarities, and to also downplay the unconscious inexorability that typically accompanies older formalistic ideas of style. By being more specific and steering

15. See the references in Bailey, “’Le style jésuite n’existe pas,’” 73n2. 16. Bailey, “Le style jésuite n’existe pas”; Bailey, Between Renaissance and Baroque. 17. Bailey, “Le style jésuite n’existe pas,” 45, 73. 18. Levy, “International Jesuit Style”; Levy, Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque.

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7

clear of the presupposition of the holistic interpenetration of ideas, a workable idea of style can be developed, which can parallel and mutually reinforce the idea of a distinct collectivity.

The Emergent Power of Religious Bodies… There is a strong tendency today to historicize these past efforts, which we approach not with a principle of charity but with skepticism. Rather than assume that these past art historians may have been searching for a concept they may have known by another name, we assume they were beholden to completely erroneous ideas. This tendency is especially pronounced in discussions of period and style concept in art and aesthetics, where an industry of finding Hegelian undergirding and influences exists.19 This industry was introduced by E. H. Gombrich, whom we can forgive because he felt so strongly about it. But we may still lament that he relinquished primary witness to the complexity of the German-language tradition in which he was trained.20 Too often we assume that these theorists are wrong because they use Hegel when we should be asking what Hegel was trying to accomplish by introducing his concepts. This assumption is unfortunate, because it makes us develop lazy habits, expecting a neat distinction between commonsense historical ideas and highly speculative, theoretical concepts, when in reality we need to be able to discern the difference between the slightest gradations of the two. More particularly, Gombrich’s empiricist and antimetaphysical leanings have been underscored by postmodern trends in scholarship, so that nominalism is in its ascendancy. Frédéric Vandenberghe’s words about sociology are just as applicable to art history: Weberian by conviction, Durkheimian by convention, sociological theory privileges the epistemological vector over the ontological one and typically proposes the following compromise formation as a “third way” … between the Scylla of reification and the Charybdis of reduction: Ontological individualism (Weber) + methodological collectivism (Durkheim).21

Of course, this strategy is evasive. It pretends that methodological collectivism can somehow get over the presumption of “real” being in groups without dealing with it forthrightly. German Romanticism hatched a number of ideas—Weltanschauung, Zeitgeist—that have apparently been superseded. Yet, one can study Hegel’s concept of the “objektiven Geist” and find its use well into the twentieth century as modern sociology was being formed. Not only was it a part of the transitional generation of Dilthey and Simmel, it continues to be

19. Moxey, “Art History’s Hegelian Unconscious,” in Practice of Persuasion; Wyss, Hegel’s Art History and the Critique of Modernity. Perhaps wisest is James Elkins’s admission that Hegelianism is fundamental to art history as conceived (Stories of Art, 55). 20. Gombrich, In Search of Cultural History. 21. Vandenberghe, “Avatars of the Collective,” 295.

8

Introduction

used to this day.22 It has metaphysical baggage, to be sure, but interpreted charitably is also an approximation of the objectivity, formality, and externality of thought that goes beyond individual psychology. In the interest of workable ideas of style and worldview, I want to review some basic metaphysical ideas that are quite clear-cut and workable, and demonstrate their applicability to concrete historical problems. Far from being in the dustbin of history, they are required for intelligent discussion of history. The sooner we admit this, the better. To make a start into the problem, it is first of all important to recognize that the ontology and methodology presupposed by both libertarian and postmodern nominalism is positivist. In other words, it takes the pronouncements against which it reacts—sociological prediction (Popper) or structuralist “meaning” (Lyotard)—and inverts it. What is taken for granted is that explanation is symmetrical with prediction and that laws of history and society, because subsumptive, are completely deterministic. Stepping out of the positivist shadow, we can see that if society is an open system (unlike a controlled natural science experiment) we should scarcely expect strict determinism. Each constituent part of an event will make its contribution in an unpredictable way. The parts, treated singly, have their own dispositions and powers. Yet having a power and exercising a power are two different things. To retrospectively explain the working of that power is not identical to making a prediction. Here I follow the recent work of Dave Elder-Vass, whose fundamental question is, What is society and does it have causal power?23 If so, what kind? Coming from the critical realist school with sympathies for anti-individualism, he seeks to put the now-canonical writings of Roy Bhaskar and Margaret Archer to general ontological scrutiny.24 His method of proceeding can be summarized in this way. Societies or institutions are not material things. Yet societies and institutions have a causal criterion of existence; they have effects and so, like magnetic fields, have some form of being. Simply put, what Elder-Vass prefers to call a “norm circle” is a group of people bound to a standard practice or normative standard, which they endorse and enforce. The people composing a norm circle are the parts of that social whole. They have their own emergent powers as a consequence of who they are and how they are constituted. But the social whole of the normative community also has new, emergent powers as a consequence of the way it is constituted. This is the emergent, causal power of the social structure.25 Structure, in this view, is a combination of the parts and the relations that make up the social whole. A religious order is comprised of a number of priests. Priests have powers that they exercise as individuals, but when they take part in their devotions they have new powers that they exercise qua priests or the faithful of the order. At the end of the day, the order

22. For a deeper discussion, see my article “Second Vienna School as Social Science.” 23. Elder-Vass, Causal Power of Social Structures, 122; Elder-Vass, Reality of Social Construction. 24. See, e.g., Bhaskar, Possibility of Naturalism; Archer, Realist Social Theory; and Archer, Culture and Agency. 25. This power, if it is to be likened to extensive parts, would be a non-extensive part of the whole, a moment; see Smith and Mulligan, “Pieces of a Theory.”

What’s In a Style? Barocci and the Oratorians

9

itself has causal power because it does things that otherwise would not be done by those individuals. Looked at through Aristotle’s lens, the people are the material cause, the relations among them (enforced through a norm circle) are the formal cause, and their combination is the efficient cause.26 In this way, a social whole—which of course is different from a totality or organic whole (and Elder-Vass avoids speaking of “society” in general)—is a powerful particular with the ability to exercise powers. The individualism/holism debate in social theory is long and complex, but the simplicity of Elder-Vass’s account should impress us. So long as there are objects that have different properties when brought together than they have in isolation, emergence is occurring. People are no different—in social contexts we are justified in attributing causal efficacy to groups. In the following chapters, I will be exploring the function of the Oratorians, the norm to which they devoted themselves, the structures they adopted, the actions they sought out within their institutional roles. The emergent power they exercised individually and collectively has a distinctive physiognomy in comparison to other groups and, as suggested in Mandelbaum’s quote at the outset of this chapter, is itself not a generative entity in its own right. It is not a totality with a group mind, but it is a collective agency with a kind of subjectivity. The power of Oratorian ideas and patronage is only always individuals-plus-relations, not individuals. This quality is “not given as finished entities, but as social products that are always socially and locally constructed in concrete situations of action; [they] are not things, but processes; not reifications, but realizations and concretizations of abstract categories.”27 The collective values shared by members of the Congregation of the Oratory, and those they inspired, are devotion to the Virgin Mary, the importance of personal prayer, the need for secular priests to organize in a relatively informal way, and an affirmative, affective religiosity of Christian “optimism.” In endorsing their “Oratorian” norms (that can overlap any way with others, hence “circle”), they understand that they are engaging in collective intentionality and collective action. The power of the Oratory, in spite of its unassuming form, was a combination of the individuals that composed it and those who were influenced by it and the norm had a causal effect on their personal actions, mediating them. The Oratorian orbit comprised the Oratorians themselves: Filippo Neri, Cardinal Francesco Maria Tarugi (1525–1608; archbishop of Siena, 1597), Cardinal Cesare Baronio (1538–1607), Antonio Gallonio (1556–1605), Antonio Bosio (1575/76–1629), and others. It included also powerful cardinals and bishops who were penitents of Filippo Neri like Archbishop of Bologna Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti (1522–97), Bishop of Verona Cardinal Agostino Valier (1531–1606), Archbishop of Milan Cardinal Federico Borromeo (1564–1631), and Bishop of Cremona Cardinal Paolo Emilio Sfondrato (1560–1618), or penitents of Baronio like Pope Clement VIII.28 All these men exercised their charges through an adherence to the (overlapping) Oratorian norm. This circle linked Rome to Milan, Naples, and Siena.

26. Groff, Critical Realism; Kurki, Causation in International Relations. 27. Vandenberghe, “Avatars of the Collective,” 301. 28. Before Baronio, Clement VIII’s confessor had been the Oratorian Giovan Francesco Bordini.

10

Introduction

These individuals, particularly the prelates (as one cannot belong to more than one religious order at a time), had overlapping commitments in the landscape of late sixteenthand early seventeenth-century Italian religion. The idea of a norm circle suggests these overlapping commitments. The circle is not a community, not a totality. The actions of the individuals, while they have emergent effects, are firmly rooted in the concrete actions of those same individuals. Thus, there is never any suggestion that these same individuals are oversocialized into one mentality or another. All that is important is that the structure of the institution and its resulting actions differ in some way from another institution. Indeed, as we shall see, it is necessary for a group to offset its identity against other groups. In the case of the Oratorians, the primary other group was the Jesuits. That constitutes its “Oratorian” element. The really important fact about institutional realism is the work it can do. Beyond social differentiation, institutional realism is the only way to theorize capitalism or other classic “modes of production.” It is how we understand that we are not the only ones acting (voluntarism), but social structures also act on us. Social structures are not sentient with consciousness, but they do possess causal powers. To sum up, social categories always exist as potential groups, even if they may turn out not to be them. Emergent qualities of groups are essential to productive social science and historical investigation. Extreme atomism and nominalism is the abdication of the scientific ambitions of art history.

…and the Resultant Unity of Their Style The art historical parallel to the previous discussion is finding a consistent style in the products patronized by the Oratorians, or those produced by a single artist like Barocci. I have already noted the reducing fortunes of the idea of “style” in the methodological landscape of art history and here some comments may be made. “Style” suffers from many of the same misunderstandings and presumptions as did “social group.” If normally the social group is understood in a totalizing way as a group for whom actions must proceed deterministically, style is thought to be something produced essentially and necessarily by that self-same totalizing group. If groups are overlapping circles and not totalizing institutions, and if the individuals comprising them and the social structure binding them are merely co-contributors to social action, and if this group is not a unified thing but has an intentionality as a collective, then style can be rehabilitated as well. As noted in the example above before the Jesuit style, some form of style is necessary. Indeed, as pointed out by Marcia Hall in her work on the sixteenth century, it is impossible to go beyond stylistic labels.29 The following remarks are intended to provide a rigorous defense of an Oratorian style, within new ontological limits. Just as a set of endorsed and enforced norms define the norm circle of Oratorians in the late sixteenth century, so too artists seeking to respond to the

29. Hall, “A Note on Style Labels,” in After Raphael.

What’s In a Style? Barocci and the Oratorians

11

Oratorians’ patronage have what can be called a “brief.” As explicated by Michael Baxandall, the brief is a set of literal instructions and tacit expectations, which include “local conditions in the special case.”30 In this way, the brief is a shared intentional object that is more or less successfully approached and mastered, much like the group norm itself. Oratorian painted patronage began in the late 1570s and early 1580s with the establishment of their church, the Chiesa Nuova. The pauperistic and humble elements in the works of Giovan Battista Guerra and Durante Alberti appealed initially to the Oratorian sensibility. However, the arrival of Barocci’s Visitation modified and cemented these ideas into what can be considered the mature Oratorian brief. The brief is not an essential and deterministic idea. Rather, different works are causally related to the degree that they too share in the brief. The unity is discovered ex post facto. Jonathan Gilmore has expounded this idea of style in a remarkably rigorous way in his book The Life of a Style, which articulated a convincing causal theory of style.31 Gilmore’s approach to style is also emergentist but focuses on works of art rather than individuals. Styles, like institutions, are special wholes, but unlike individuals bound within a normative community, works are causally bound by a common brief or problem that they presume and try to solve. Although works of art require individuals to make them, each artist responds to works of art and so it is the works of art, requiring human workers, which create the superindividual group. An institution is both constituted by people and causally effected by people, continually. Styles, on the other hand, can be likened to events—singular groups of works bound in space and time. When two artists work on essentially the same problem they become causally linked and the work they produce belongs to the same style. In Gilmore’s example, Impressionism is a historical event and individual Impressionist artists are parts of that event. Once the style has finished, to paint in that same style does not mean that one is an “Impressionist.” The causal links, analogous to the genetic links tying a population together, have been severed. This biological analogy introduces an interesting extension to the style concept that Gilmore has introduced. If biological groups can be likened to singular individuals (in effect, events), in the manner of David Hull and others, so too could works of art: “a style is a historical particular, a thing that exists over a certain period of time, but not a type of thing of which there can be instances.”32 This is the very definition of nonessentialism. In the same way that the group allows Elder-Vass to escape from the vagaries of totalizing holism, Gilmore’s use of the historical individual relaxes demands for style as a natural kind. The theory of species as historical individuals is realist, although not essentialist. Without claiming species as natural kinds, its realist definition permits speculation about an analogy to causal powers. Here, a brief ontological clarification is necessary. An artist

30. Baxandall, Patterns of Intention, 30. See further the discussion of the Auftrag (“brief ”) in Pächt, which Baxandall perhaps knew; Methodisches zur Kunsthistorischen Praxis. 31. Gilmore, Life of a Style. 32. Ibid., 105. Cf. Hull, “A Matter of Individuality”; and Mishler and Brandon, “Individuality, Pluralism and the Phylogenetic Species Concept.”

12

Introduction

working within a particular style can be said to be subject to that style as a powerful particular. Yet, our previous discussion of social wholes alerted us to the fact that causal power is always a product of both individuals and their relationships to other individuals. So the causal power derives partly from the artist and his or her relation to other artists working under the same brief (norm group), and partly from the works themselves. Pressing the analogy between works of art and people, it is possible that the works of art and their relationship to one another have a causal effect on one another. They form a constellation of previous accomplishment and possibilities for someone working according to that artistic brief. But it could be argued that these works remain just groups of intelligibilia with varying degrees of compatibility and contradiction (e.g., mysticism and empiricism), awaiting mobilization through individual social agency (and hence merely contributing to the formal cause). As artists worked for the Oratorians, the brief evolved and was clarified. With Barocci, we have an example of works that have iconic solidity, but insubstantial, evanescent figures. The stories are humble and the treatment of the figures is ineffably indirect; we tangibly understand the weakness and humility of the Virgin Mary. In any case, it is immediately clear that analogous to a social structure, a style is not the same as a group mind. As with social structures and individuals, it would be a mistake to make an analogy between the effect of artist + relations and the properties of the work itself. But practitioners of that style can participate in collective subjectivity; in fact, the group to which the artists belong is just a normative group. Social holism is to society what the Zeitgeist is to culture. By tethering style to the practitioners of that style, we ensure (as with the case of society) again that styles are social products; they are locally constructed, are processes not things; and are not reifications but abstract categories. By affirming the reality of styles with a strong ontology, we are able to accomplish things similar to what we could with a robust notion of social structure. Not only does this approach enable us to understand the historical and geographic spread of artistic traditions and how they hang together, we can also better understand the community of artists, working on the same problem, and the way in which they are compelled by a Gesamtwillens within a particular intersubjective community. The main advantage of advancing an emergent, institutional theory of society is that it can explain how—even if people are the same—they do much different things in different societies. By rejecting individualism, it is possible to show the structuredness of social life and the way in which different communities differ. By affirming the reality of styles, we likewise learn why art has a history and why different traditions produce work that is different. The greatest example of an individualist theory of art history was that of Gombrich. As important as it is, especially for avoiding self-contradictory holist arguments, that theory does not cut ice. Attention falls back squarely on the individuals in each culture and we lose a sense of the structuring factors present in some historical culture. It should be clear from the foregoing analysis that institutionalism need not suffer from the usual errors of holism/Zeitgeist thinking. Structures become, in a sense, pegs on which life’s events hang. Individuals bring to situations their biological makeup and

What’s In a Style? Barocci and the Oratorians

13

natural propensities or artistic work, but these are met by the prevailing traditions and practices. Fortunately, social life has its own patterns and trends, which complement those on the individual level. We need an understanding of both in order to make sense of general and artistic history.

Barocci as a Corporate Style From what has been said it is obvious that there was nothing inevitable about the way in which Barocci and the Oratorians found their affinity and how it evolved. Marcia Hall has nicely written that “It was fortunate for both Barocci and for Filippo Neri that they found each other, for they were well suited.”33 The channeling of Barocci’s talents toward new subjects and their treatment had an unintended consequence, which was the “Barocci” style. In order to make clear what claims are being made on being half of Barocci, the Oratorians, and their collaboration, I want to stress a few themes that clarify this style in order to overcome the predictable misunderstanding that, in spite of my clarifications, would suggest that Barocci’s individual works had an irresistible (i.e., deterministic) pull on its audiences. To the contrary, I believe the following. The effect of the picture is not entirely compositional. It is interesting that when the Visitation arrived at the Chiesa Nuova in 1586, the duke’s ambassador recorded the opinion of a prominent Roman artist (perhaps Scipione Pulzone) that he expected more of Barocci. That is partly the point. The work is not a tour de force, or not in an obvious sense. The work, indeed, has power because it does not attempt to do everything within its confines. As a vision, it requires the viewer to complete the picture and yet at the same time feel slightly estranged or inadequate in light of what is offered. There is a corollary to this. The effect of the picture is not entirely orthodox. It is not the case that a painting like the Visitation or the Presentation of the Virgin presents works in a new, orthodox manner consistent with the new demands of art after Trent. There is indeed a new scrupulousness in studied details, but adherence to this spirit is not a recipe for a successful painting. The Presentation of the Virgin, for example, is an apocryphal story, its depiction subject to partisan, Marian politics. Barocci is able to present apocryphal stories (e.g., The Rest on the Return from Egypt, Pinacoteca, Vatican; Madonna del Gatto, National Gallery, London) because of his earnest and respectful presentation of the subjects, his rhetoric of address.34 Of the Penitent Saint Jerome in the Borghese collection, Marcia Hall writes that Barocci “was so successful in this aim that no one in the Church took up a Gilio-style attack on Barocci for his ‘error’ in depicting Jerome in the desert with glowing flesh and a red satin robe.”35 Each of these two observations leads to a final point.

33. Hall, After Raphael, 274. 34. For the Rest on the Return from Egypt and Madonna del Gatto, respectively, see Emiliani, Federico Barocci, 1:78–85; Mann, Federico Barocci, 109–19; and Emiliani, Federico Barocci, 2:93–103; Mann, Federico Barocci, 145–57. 35. Hall, After Raphael, 272. Cf. on this point Stoenescu, “Annibale Carracci and the Modern Reform of Altar Painting.”

14

Introduction

Barocci’s person informs the effect of his work: A part of the effect of Barocci’s art is its reference precisely to him, his success, distance, and aloofness, his inaccessibility and his self-sufficiency, and above all, his piety. When one sees the picture, it does not have its effect like a crude, pious work of the past, but like a thoroughly modern work appropriate to a modern creator. Yet without the knowledge that Barocci was an aristocratic bachelor in Urbino, devoted to the local Franciscans and Capuchins, the resultant effect of his altarpieces might be different. Together, the corporate body of the Oratorians and the refined work of Barocci produced their own emergent effect. Before Barocci began to work for the Oratorians, much of his work addressed Christological themes; under the influence of the Oratorians, his earlier works of private devotion, like the Rest on the Return from Egypt and the Madonna del Gatto, were adapted to monumental altarpieces. The Oratorians pressed Barocci’s style to reach new Marian heights.

Chapter 1

Federico Barocci, Filippo Neri, and Christian Optimism Everything is what it is, and not another thing. Bishop Butler, Fifteen Sermons Preached at Rolls Chapel

To say that a painter expresses the ethos of a religious body does not imply determinism or essentialism. Rather, it means that the structure of the order and its practices have the ability to produce certain persistent outcomes due to their commitments and aims. Examining the personalities of Filippo Neri and Federico Barocci and the characteristics of the Oratorians reveals a structure that can account for patronage decisions and artistic choices. Following a materialistic methodology allows a focus on material practices and relations. The more materialistic these are, and the more they are based in the actual historical record, the easier it will be to make meaningful statements about Neri, the Oratorians, or Barocci. In the end the contrast between Jesuits and Oratorians becomes clear. Looking at the personalities and traits of Filippo Neri, the founder of the Congregation of the Oratory, and Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, leads to interesting conclusions about the emphasis and commitments of the two contrasting groups. When it comes to each group’s visual rhetoric, the Oratorians’ focus on direct, uncognized grace and the Jesuit focus on rhetorical description and adornment led the Oratorians to focus their artistic commissions on altarpieces, in contrast to the Jesuit focus on elaborated ensembles of decoration. These different foci explain the Oratorians’ fixation of interest upon the affective potentiality of the altarpiece form.

15

16

Chapter 1

The Late Sixteenth Century in Italy The quarter century from 1582 (the year of the commission of the Visitation) to 1608 (the delivery of the Institution of the Eucharist) was indeed an active period in Roman church history. These are the years of the appearance of what is called the Church Triumphant, the post-Tridentine church full of confidence. There is good reason to regard the papacy of Sixtus V (1585–90) as a turning point of the Catholic Counter-Reformation and therefore of a new attitude to religious imagery—an attitude that was essentially carried on by his successor, Pope Clement VIII (1592–1605).1 The papacies of Paul IV (1555–59), Pius IV (1559–65), Pius V (1566–72), and Gregory XIII (1572–85) had been marked by indecision, dissent, and defensiveness. The severity of Paul IV officially supported the counter-maniera and saw the near destruction of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment. His successor, Pius IV, revived the Council of Trent and oversaw the moderate reform of the church. At the end of his papacy, however, the Netherlands saw its largest period of iconoclasm (1566). Under Gregory XIII, momentum was gaining for a confident offensive to Protestantism, despite setbacks like the Calvinist conquest of Antwerp (1581). In the year Sixtus V assumed the papacy, 1585, Philip II regained the Spanish Netherlands and ejected the Calvinists. Religious images both there and in Rome survived and lived on, and Sixtus wanted to make that fact well known. He loudly proclaimed his position on images in several Vatican commissions (the Scala Santa, the Sistine Chapel of Santa Maria Maggiore, the Biblioteca Sistina).2 These commissions continued a trend, however, where the exigencies of content won out over manual coherence and refinement. They announced the message of the Church Triumphant, but did not necessarily clothe it in a complimentary form. This task would fall—at least until the pontificate of Clement VIII (1592–1605) and the decoration of Saint Peter’s and the Lateran—to the traditional altarpieces adorning individual chapels in the churches of the new religious orders of regular (Jesuits, Theatines, etc.) and secular (Oratorians) clerics that began to be founded in the sixteenth century. Sixtus V Peretti was a Conventual Franciscan from the Marches. He adopted the name Sixtus in emulation of Sixtus IV della Rovere, the general of the Conventual Franciscans, defender of the Virgin, and founder of the Urbino dynasty of della Roveres.3 Sixtus provided the benevolent atmosphere in which these reform orders thrived. He had promoted the Franciscan reform movement of the Capuchins (so important for Barocci’s development in Urbino) and befriended their saintly leader Fra Felice da Cantalice (1515–87). Significantly, both Capuchins and Theatines were still in the grip of reformist asceticism (Santa Maria della Concezione would not be begun and decorated until 1626 and Sant’Andrea della Valle,

1. On the status of the concept of the “Counter-Reformation,” see O’Malley, “Was Ignatius Loyola a Church Reformer?” O’Malley prefers “Early Modern Catholicism.” 2. On Sixtus V’s public commissions, see Zuccari, I pittori di Sisto V; and Hall, After Raphael, 258–67. 3. During his papacy, Sixtus V promoted the Franciscan Saint Bonaventure (1217–74) to the position of doctor of the church, just as his namesake, Sixtus IV della Rovere, had elevated him to sainthood one hundred years earlier.

Federico Barocci, Filippo Neri, and Christian Optimism

17

until 1608) so the churches of the Jesuits and Oratorians took the lead in pioneering Counter-Reformation decoration.4 Ignatius of Loyola founded the Society of Jesus in 1540 and its church, the Gesù, was already built by 1575 (it was begun by Vignola in 1568 and seen to completion by della Porta in 1575).5 Similarly, the Congregation of the Oratory led by San Filippo Neri had been given Santa Maria in Valicella in 1575, which was substantially rebuilt by Martino Longhi in 1582 and subsequently referred to as the Chiesa Nuova.6 Although the Jesuits had a head start in the construction of the church, the Oratorians did their best to quickly set up altars with altarpieces, in some cases preceding those set up at the Gesù. In conformity with the Council of Trent, both Jesuits and Oratorians exerted a new control over interior church design, conceiving their decoration as a program.7 The altar dedications were fixed, and had to be accepted by the patron. Under Alessandro Farnese’s protection, the Gesù pioneered Counter-Reformation church design with its wide nave and large transept arms. Like the Gesù, the Chiesa Nuova also began under Farnese’s influence but perhaps due to the intervention of the new patron, Cardinal Pierdonato Cesi (1522–86), and his architect Giacomo della Porta, it came to look like the Congregation’s former home (and site of della Porta’s earlier work), San Giovanni dei Fiorentini.8 Unlike the Gesù, where Farnese’s princely tastes dictated much of the decoration, the Chiesa Nuova was ruled by corporate decision and therefore more contemplated choices. The result in the Gesù was a great stylistic plurality that the Chiesa Nuova seemed to avoid by the sheer quality of its altarpieces commissioned by the best artists in Rome and abroad. The Gesù pioneered a cross-nave pairing of nave chapels, where the left-hand chapels saw their fulfillment on the right; thus the Chapel of the Apostles is paired with the Chapel of the Martyrs, the Chapel of the Infancy of Christ is paired with the Chapel of the Passion, the Chapel of the Trinity is paired with the Chapel of the Angels, and the Chapel of the Crucifixion is paired with the Chapel of the Resurrection. The Chiesa Nuova is slightly different, owing to its inspiration in the mysteries of the Virgin. It carries on a more traditional chronological program, but maintained the possibility of cross-nave pairing. It is a counterclockwise wraparound pattern beginning in the left transept, wrapping around the church, and ending at the right transept, evoking older monastic orders.9 The entire theme is Mariological but ingeniously typological and is further discussed in chapter 2. For example, on the left side of the nave going toward the high altar, the Annunciation succeeds the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple. Nevertheless, like the Gesù, the same scenes have cross-nave pairs. The Annunciation foreshadows the Assumption of the

4. The Capuchins held San Bonaventura before Santa Maria della Concezione; de Alençon, Il terzo convento dei Cappuccini in Roma. 5. On the decoration of the Gesù, see Hibbard, “‘Ut picturae sermones’”; and Bailey, Between Renaissance and Baroque. 6. On the building and decoration of the Chiesa Nuova, see Strong, La Chiesa Nuova; Kummer, Anfänge und Ausbreitung der Stuckdekoration im römischen Kirchenraum; and Barbieri, Barchiesi, and Ferrara, Santa Maria in Vallicella. 7. This was pioneered in Florence by Cosimo and Vasari; see Hall, Renovation and Reformation. 8. Russo, “I Cesi e la Congregazione dell’Oratorio.” 9. Lavin, Place of Narrative.

18

Chapter 1

Virgin, and the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple foreshadows the Coronation of the Virgin. Thus, just as in the Gesù, it is possible to conceive of chapel design in pairs, an idea that will play an important part in the following discussion. The Oratorians in particular placed characteristic demands on the works that would adorn their chapels. For example, in 1583 they asked Scipione Pulzone to send a cartoon (cartone) of his work to see how it would look in situ in the Chapel of the Crucifixion (1R).10 They also had some control over which artist was picked; in an example discussed below, the patron was given a choice between two artists. Earlier scholarship regarded the artists of the Chiesa Nuova as so many famous men (Barocci, Caravaggio, Rubens) and we can add to this picture more recent views that see an underlying affectivity common to the various works, in spite of their differences.11 Of these artists, the most successful in obtaining Oratorian patronage would of course be Federico Barocci.

Federico Barocci of Urbino Barocci was the artist who came to be central to the Oratorians’ aesthetic. But historiographally he is also often linked to another aesthetic: the Baroque. We have already discussed the theoretical status of style terms like “Mannerism” and the Baroque is no different. By way of discussing Barocci and his contribution to seventeenth-century Italian art it will be possible to clarify the freight we expect style terms and labels to carry. Federico Barocci was born in Urbino to a prosperous family of craftsmen. Since the emigration of his great-grandfather Ambrogio from Milan to work as a sculptor and architect at the court of Federico da Montefeltro, the Barocci increasingly wove themselves into Urbino civic life. Like many former communes in northern Italy, Urbino had an extensive bureaucracy of offices. This was a time of social mobility, as wealthy merchants gained patents of nobility, and this allowed them to occupy these offices and serve on the town council. Some artists were even enfeuded with lands for their long service. The result is that, while Barocci’s ancestors were by no means peers of the ducal house and other lesser aristocrats within the duchy, they were entwined with it in a mutually beneficial way. Each generation found a way to serve their trade and the reigning duke, and anxious patronage seeking was absent.12 It would perhaps be too aggressive to state that Barocci’s exquisite style had a ring of the aristocratic to it. Perhaps more accurate is to say that he inherited the precision of his clock- and instrument-making father and cousins, and his personal talent and individual compulsion to search after perfection produced paintings that were both effortlessly beau-

10. ACO, C.I.2, fol. 30, quoted in Barbieri, Barchiesi, and Ferrara, Santa Maria in Vallicella, 178–79: “Che per deliberare sopra la pittura della Cappella della famiglia Caetano si metta per provare un cartone col Golgotha.” 11. Zuccari, “Cultura e predicazione nelle immagini dell’Oratorio.” Hall sees a commonality in “an understanding that the worshipper’s affective participation must be solicited” (After Raphael, 445). 12. I investigated this in regard to Francesco Paciotti, a contemporary of Barocci, in “Francesco Paciotti, Militare Architecture, and European Geopolitics.”

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tiful and of the finest craftsmanship. It is easy to say that they have an air of confidence with their aristocratic quality. Barocci’s famous portrait of Prince Francesco Maria II della Rovere (1571, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence) victorious on his return from the Battle of Lepanto stylistically mirrors the easy authority of the prince himself. Federico Barocci naturally found commissions around Urbino but he could not avoid the “state religion” of Franciscanism. Saint Francis, from not-too-far-away Assisi, had performed a major miracle in Gubbio—pacifying the wolf that was terrorizing the city—and generations of Franciscans dominated the city of Urbino. The reigning ducal family was extremely devoted to the Franciscans.13 Closer to Barocci’s time, the Capuchin movement was taking off and several of its leaders were from the Marche region. Coupled with the vicinity to the Holy House of the Virgin in the nearby city of Loreto, emphasis in Urbino was placed securely on Marian devotion. There is an interesting coincidence of the announcement of the maturity of Barocci’s style with Capuchin patronage or, more accurately, gratitude. The Madonna of Saint John of ca. 1565 was occasioned by Barocci’s recovery from a poisoning that occurred in Rome, after he convalesced with the Capuchin friars outside Urbino. In gratitude, Bellori tells us, he presented this painting to them as an ex voto. In the painting, Saint John, holding a chalice with the poisonous snake, gives thanks to the Virgin, in the way that Barocci would.14 The painting shows remarkable artistic maturity gained from Barocci’s absorption of the Roman art scene in two prior trips and the digestion of various influences, new technical procedures, and even, perhaps, the reading of Leonardo da Vinci’s Trattato della pittura. An old theory that Barocci was a Franciscan tertiary has been debunked. Barocci was no friar-artist, but his abandonment of the competitiveness of Rome in favor of his patria, his commitment to religious subjects (he only produced one prominent secular work in his career, The Flight of Aeneas from Troy for Emperor Rudolf II), and the fact that he remained a bachelor his entire life, nominate him for special status. In a society increasingly valuing the disposition toward piety of its artists, few could compete with the nonworldly (nevertheless highly sophisticated) Barocci. Barocci’s subsequent career is dominated by works for mostly Conventual Franciscans and the allied Capuchins. Capuchins were the reforming bodies, nominally allied to the Conventuals, and were championed by Barocci’s patron Cardinal Giulio Feltrio della Rovere. Shortly after painting the Saint John, Barocci painted a Madonna and Child with Saints John the Baptist and Francis (ca. 1567, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan) for the friars of Fossombrone.15 Around the same time, Barocci painted the Madonna of Saint Simon for the Conventual church of Urbino, San Francesco (1566, Galleria Nazionale, Urbino).16

13. On this, see “Introduction,” in Verstegen, Patronage and Dynasty, xiii–xxviii 14. Bellori, “Vita di Federico Barocci,” ed. Borea, 185. 15. For the Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Francis, see Olsen, Federico Barocci, 151; Emiliani, Federico Barocci, 1:58–59; Emiliani, Federico Barocci [2008], 1:150–54. 16. For the Madonna of Saint Simon, see Olsen, Federico Barocci, 149–50; Emiliani, Federico Barocci, 1:45–46; Emiliani, Federico Barocci [2008], 1:174–84.

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Fig. 1.1: Guido Reni, Saint Filippo Neri in Ecstasy, 1615, oil on canvas (Biblioteca dell’Istituto centrale per il catalogo e la documentazione).

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Barocci went on to paint two more paintings for this church, the Immaculate Conception (mid-1570s, Galleria Nazionale, Urbino)17 and the painting for the high altar, the Perdono di Assisi (1576, in situ).18 Numerous other commissions could be cited but suffice it to say that Franciscan and Capuchin belief provided the background to Barocci’s native Urbinate spirituality. The emphasis is squarely on Francis and the passion and the imitation of Christ through stigmatization, but there is also a strong Marian element that takes for granted Mary’s immaculacy and her status as co-redemptrix. There is also an emphasis on otherworldly vision, which became a hallmark of Barocci’s work, as he pioneered depicting saints—beginning with Francis in the Perdono—in a state of rapt communion with God. It is useful to discuss visionary iconography, not only because of its importance for seventeenth-century art but for Filippo Neri’s own hagiographic self-fashioning. Following important prototypes well known to Barocci, the painter transformed them into a formula usefully summarized by David Ekserdjian: “what Barocci does is to combine both these elements [physical and spiritual isolation] in a new kind of altarpiece, in which a single saint below on earth is represented in a state of ecstasy as a result of some celestial inspiration… their importance for the art of the next century would be hard to over-estimate.”19 It is really two later works that established Barocci’s unique approach to visionary experience, the Madonna del Rosario and the Beata Michelina. The dual iconography of the Madonna del Rosario is partly explained by its patronage.20 Commissioned by the Senigallia Confraternity of the Rosary and the Assumption, it treats Dominic on a mountaintop receiving the rosary from a remarkably treated Madonna. Barocci’s challenge is to find a formal analog to Dominic’s spiritually privileged station and experience.21 It is in the Cristo vivo and especially the Beata Michelina that Barocci stretches the formal possibilities available to him to show a saint gazing heavenward with impossibly elevated pupils.22 These exemplars were directly known to Guido Reni, who definitively established Neri’s iconography in his 1609 portrait (fig. 1.1).23 In this context of institutionalized Marianism, mutually reinforced by the local strength of the Franciscans and patronage of the ducal house of the della Rovere, it is interesting to note that the reigning duke, Francesco Maria II, indicates that he read the entire Bible for the second time in 1598, utilizing the commentary of Denys the Carthusian (1402–71).24

17. For the Immaculate Conception, see Olsen, Federico Barocci, 161–62; Emiliani, Federico Barocci, 1:122–27; Emiliani, Federico Barocci [2008], 1:298–309; and Lingo, Federico Barocci, 39–48. 18. For the Perdono di Assisi, see Olsen, Federico Barocci, 159–60; Emiliani, Federico Barocci, 1:104–15; Emiliani, Federico Barocci [2008], 1:264–82; and Lingo, Federico Barocci, 63–84. 19. Ekserdjian, Correggio, 294. On the iconography of the Visionary Saint, see Male (L’Art religieux après le Concile de Trente, 151–201), for whom visionary iconography is not considered as a whole “nouvelle.” 20. For the Madonna del Rosario, see Olsen, Federico Barocci, 186–88; Emiliani, Federico Barocci, 2:265–71; Emiliani, Federico Barocci [2008], 2:107–17. 21. Lavin, Review of Federico Barocci, by Harald Olsen. 22. For the Beata Michelina, see Olsen, Federico Barocci, 207–8; Emiliani, Federico Barocci, 2:368–71; Emiliani, Federico Barocci [2008], 2:284–91. 23. For Reni, see the conclusion. 24. Francesco Maria II della Rovere, 15 December 1598, in della Rovere, Diario, ed. Sangiorgi, 101.

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Such an author was not so popular in Italy in that day. Instead, this author was more popular in German and Spanish-speaking lands with a strong mystical tradition. Anticipating our discussion of illuminism in Spain, it is suggestive that Ignatius of Loyola read Carthusian authors, including Denys, when convalescing.25 Coupled with the fact that the Duke of Urbino spent a couple of formative years at the royal court of Madrid, we begin to get a picture of pious and very personal devotion that took for granted an exalted status for Mary. Such ideas are quite close to the animating core beliefs of Filippo Neri.

Christian Optimism The Oratorians intuited Barocci’s style and their delight would only be enhanced after the delivery of his first picture. There are many pitfalls to identifying an artist with an order (or group), but it is clear that the Oratorian sensibilities resonated with Barocci’s work. Of course, this must relate to the way in which Oratorians constituted their own “norm circle,” and from those shared values (which overlapped with others, with the same individuals) endorsed and enforced behavior. In the case of artistic patronage, these values provide the basis for the artistic brief to follow. As a convenient umbrella concept that is the most comprehensive for Oratorian belief and thought, there is no better term than “Christian optimism.” This is one of the most fruitful and maddeningly vague terms for discussing the art produced for the Congregation of the Oratory in Rome—the Oratorians.26 Cardinal Agostino Valier coined the phrase “laetitia christiana” and during Neri’s lifetime applied it to Neri’s personality in his Philippus: Dialogus de laetitia christiana.27 Subsequently, this term became the leitmotif for describing Neri’s personality in his official biographies by Father Gallonio (1600) and Father Bacci (1622). The stories about Neri’s devotion to art, especially the famous account of his praying before Barocci’s Visitation of the Virgin and Saint Elizabeth (plate I) in the Chiesa Nuova, immediately suggest the application of the quality to the art itself. This concept then would encompass not only Barocci’s two paintings but other paintings, as well as the famous recitative dramas produced by the Oratorians.28 For decades the notion of Christian optimism has mixed with other notions about the aesthetic sensibility, aristocracy, and overall high quality of art patronized by the Oratorians, usually at the expense of the Jesuits, with whom they are habitually compared. Our

25. For Denys and Ignatius, see O’Malley, First Jesuits. On the Carthusians during the Catholic Reformation, see Martin, “Carthusians during the Reformation Era.” 26. On Neri’s Christian optimism, see Dupront, “Autour de Saint Filippo Neri”; Jones, Federico Borromeo and the Ambrosiana, 9–10, 87–89; and Armogathe, “Le facezie degli angeli.” The connection to Barocci was made in Emiliani, Federico Barocci, 1:xxxiv–xxxv; Verstegen, “Federico Barocci, the Art of Painting and the Rhetoric of Persuasion”; and Verstegen, “Federico Barocci, Federico Borromeo and the Oratorian Orbit.” 27. Valier, Philippus: Dialogus de laetitia christiana. For a useful discussion of “laetitia” in sixteenth-century thinking, see Periti, “From Allegri to Laetus-Lieto.” 28. On the “religious ethos” of Oratorian music, without, however, reference specifically to “Christian optimism,” see Morelli, “Chiesa Nuova in Rome around 1600.”

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review of recent debates on Jesuit patronage and whether there ever existed a Jesuit style provide an ideal point of departure for what has been written on Christian optimism.29 There is an important difference between Oratorian and Jesuit ideas that emerges along several lines—touching theology, sacred rhetoric, and visual rhetoric—and principally along the lines of the content of Christian optimism. Using an approach based on visual rhetoric makes it possible to underscore concepts that help organize elements about visual arts, namely fatica and quiete. San Filippo Neri had an intensely personal and ecstatic approach to prayer. This approach has been recognized as an inspiration of quietism, the passive approach to prayer and will that was condemned by Jesuits and finally by the Catholic Church in the seventeenth century. The notion of quiete, which underlies the movement, signifies both silence and stillness. The 1675 Guida Spirituale of Miguel de Molinos (1628–96) was the founding document of quietism and stressed a passive giving-over to God.30 Quiete was not only passive enlightenment but also, in placing one’s hands in God, a relinquishment of moral responsibility. The theory was developed further by a member of Neri’s Congregation of the Oratory, Pietro Matteo Petrucci, and then condemned by the Jesuit Paolo Segneri in a work that questioned the harmony between fatica, effort, action, and the word, and quiete, rest, inactivity, and silence. This brief clash between Oratorians and Jesuits can serve as an enlightening axis of concepts, alternating between quiete and fatica, and can ultimately help illuminate Christian optimism. Although quietism did not emerge as a movement until the later seventeenth century, the Jesuits had already attacked the position of Michel de Baye (Baius) of Louvain that emphasized the sufficiency of divine grace, and the Spanish Jesuit Luis de Molina had already enunciated a strong voluntarist position in 1588 in Neri’s lifetime.31 Reflecting on the balance of divine grace and free will in determining human predestination, Molina strongly favored the latter. This aggressive stance, strongly contrary to Calvinist and reformist approaches, upset the long-standing consensus set down by Thomas Aquinas. Such ideas held by Jesuits emphasized the urgent need of free choice for human salvation and well served their idea that “God’s grace was efficacious only or especially through man’s collaboration on earth,” reflected both in their active proselytizing and in their religious iconography.32 Interestingly, one finds abundant evidence that the focus of the Oratorians was often of a private nature, emphasizing personal prayer and meditation. In general, saints express their moral authority through humility, ascetism, and fasting. They express their power

29. See, above all, Bailey, Between Renaissance and Baroque; and Levy, Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque. 30. Molinos was arrested in 1685, recanted his views in 1687, and spent the rest of his life in prison. The main condemning document, which led to a papal processo, was by the Jesuit Paolo Segneri (1624–94): Concordia tra la fatica e la quiete nell’oratione. One of the most influential quietists, Pietro Matteo Petrucci (1636–1701), was an Oratorian who ultimately capitulated his views. Petrucci was born in Jesi, studied in Macerata, and frequented the Oratory of San Filippo Neri of Jesi. He became an Oratorian priest on 2 February 1661, on 20 April 1681 he was made bishop of Jesi in the Chiesa Nuova, and in 1686 was made cardinal by Innocent XI. He recanted his views and resigned his bishopric, but was retained as apostolic visitor. His main work was the Della contemplazione acquistata. 31. Molina, Concordia liberi arbitrii cum gratiæ donis. On Molina, see Doyle, Jansenism; and Leone, Saints and Signs, 124–25. 32. Hibbard, “‘Ut Picturae Sermones,’” 39.

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through their special access to miracles and visions.33 This might sound like any recipe for sainthood, and indeed Neri was canonized in 1622, but these traits were more than a human veneer over a saintly interior. Of most interest to understanding Oratorian spirituality are those elements of personal communion with God. Neri’s very trademark of religious enlightenment was not particularly dramatic; in the midst of his mental prayer he was often found in ecstasy. These altered states lasted for up to an hour and the proof of the saint’s holiness no longer lay in his imitable actions or sagacious words, but in a lack of action and rapt silence, quiete as opposed to fatica. In his famous painting, Guido Reni precisely depicts Neri (see fig. 1.1) in a state of ecstasy as the Virgin miraculously appears to him. (Indeed, we could imagine that he is sitting before Barocci’s Visitation.) It is important to point out that Neri on a stool in the Chapel of the Visitation occurs outside the mass, outside of preaching. It is a part of Neri’s spirituality, not a part of any official function. In the same way that extreme (Dominican) predetermination might appear to verge on Calvinism in its annihilation of good works, ecstasies could also be suspect for, as in the case of the suppression of the alumbrados in Spain, they left the believer in isolation and make no reference to the activity-based sacraments.34 In this regard, it is interesting that Filippo Neri was a close friend of the charismatic Capuchin Fra Felice da Cantalice.35 Because of the spectacular apostasy of its leader, Bernardino Ochino, earlier in the sixteenth century, a shadow of heresy hung over the Capuchins, who would not be recognized officially until 1619. No wonder that the Oratory (not to mention the Society of Jesus and other groups) came under periodic suspicion in its early years.36 The lack of action and speech was conspicuous, and would later become an issue when the quietism propounded by an Oratorian was condemned in the seventeenth century. More importantly, the inactive Neri was also the silent Neri, and both word and act were halted in ineffable ecstasy. Scholars have shown how holy women, because they could not study theology, were more subject to suspicion by the church. Neri may have been subject to the same scrutiny because of his lay and indeed feminine religiosity. Oratorians never became great theologians, exploring instead, as did Baronio, the netherworld of church tradition, where practices and tradition could supplant dogma. In fact, it was an Oratorian, Cesare Baronio, who, upon the invitation of Pope Clement VIII, stepped into the furor as part of what became known as the Congregatio de Auxiliis to offer a strictly orthodox viewpoint.37 Although the controversy could not be resolved for many years—successive popes forbade debating of the respective arguments—Baronio’s nondoctrinaire vision of relative passivity is interesting. Regarding the differences between

33. Ahlgren, Teresa of Avila and the Politics of Sanctity. 34. On the politics of sanctity see ibid.; Ditchfield, Liturgy, Sanctity and History in Tridentine Italy; and Gotor, I beati del papa. 35. On the history of the Capuchins, see Cuthbert, Capuchins; and D’Alatri, I Cappuccini. On Neri and Fra Felice, see Ponnelle and Bordet, St. Philip Neri and the Roman Society of His Times, 363. 36. Ponnelle and Bordet, St. Philip Neri and the Roman Society of His Times, 267–71, 279–83. 37. Calenzio, La vita e gli scritti del cardinale Cesare Baronio, 592–97; Pullapilly, Caesar Baronius, 91–92; Broggio, “Baronio e la controversia de auxiliis”; Leone, Saints and Signs, 296.

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Dominicans and Jesuits as almost inevitable, he refers back to Saint Augustine’s authority to clarify the issue. Neri’s sympathy with Dominicans has often been pointed out and here his quietist leanings would probably have extended to a belief compatible with the Dominicans that fate is predetermined. It is not by accident that later debates surrounding the Oratorians in France and Jansenists in the Netherlands fed directly into the Jesuit-Oratorian controversy. On Neri’s death, plans began immediately for his beatification and eventually his canonization. Stories of his life codified an iconography that importantly was set by Guido Reni and Luca Ciamberlano, working on the illustrations to adorn the life of Neri celebrating his canonization, just as Rubens’s had for Ignatius’s beatification some years earlier. Extremely telling are the respective death scenes. In both, we see a little soul of the departed being borne to heaven. In Ignatius’s death scene (which importantly preceded Neri’s), it is written that Ignatius’s soul passed with great, conspicuous effulgence (“ingenti splendore conspicua”) (fig. 1.2).38 On the other hand, Father Pietro Giacomo Bacci, the author of Neri’s biography, notes how the saint sat up and expired very calmly, “con molto quiete.” (With this in mind it is tempting to think into the seventeenth century and the fact that the Jesuits featured Ignatius’s apotheosis along their nave vault, while the Oratorians instead showed their founder beholding a miracle.) The Jesuit tendency to aggressively promote its saints is well known. For example, around 1600 the fathers circulated broadside prints of Ignatius and his miracles in anticipation of his beatification and ultimate sanctification.39 Later, in the Jesuit church of Antwerp—San Carlo Borromeo—the local Jesuits placed on the high altar two altarpieces of Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier, respectively, even before they were canonized.40 As Gauvin Bailey notes, “the Oratorians never dared to depict as many of their unbeatified members as the Jesuits did in their iconographic cycles, printed or painted.”41 A recent, thorough examination of the beatification procedures of both orders by Ruth Noyes shows not only cooperations between Oratorians and Jesuits, but some strident practices among Oratorians as well. For example, in 1602 the Oratorians translated the body of Neri to the left transept chapel, effectively giving the laypeople a locus of veneration for a holy man not yet canonized or even beatified.42 As a result, Pope Clement VIII formed the Congregazione dei beati, the Congregation on Beatification, to monitor the cults of beati moderni (“modern blesseds”). Both Oratorians (Gallonio, Baronio) and Jesuits (Bellarmino) were agreed that the new beati should be promoted and they clearly pushed the envelope in the support of their saints. Nevertheless, Noyes’s research also demonstrates the Oratorians’ greater circumspection in other matters. For example, their broadsheet of 1600 engraved by Antonio Tempesta

38. A very similar treatment is found in the Life of Ignatius from the Loyola Chapel, now exhibited in the Cappella Farnesiana of the Casa Professa; see Bailey, Between Renaissance and Baroque, fig. 114. Cf. König-Nordhoff, “Ignatius von Loyola.” 39. Noyes, “On the Fringes of Center.” Cf. Levy, Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque, 127–30. 40. Martin, Ceiling Paintings for the Jesuit Church of Antwerp, 30. 41. Bailey, Between Renaissance and Baroque, 19. 42. Noyes, “On the Fringes of Center.”

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shows Neri with a corona about his head; this was before he was beatified, but was nevertheless approved by Pope Clement VIII, while similar ones by the Jesuits were not. Indeed, Tempesta’s sheet shows the modest iconography of Neri that would become a trademark, Filippo kneeling. The Jesuit emphasis on apotheosis and the Oratorian aversion to it is shown further in Guido Reni’s altarpiece for Neri’s chapel (see fig. 1.1), which significantly was not put in place until Neri was beatified (1615) and repeats that iconography. Reni depicted Neri in one of his ecstatic states. Neri is emphatically kneeling, in utter humility, and Reni has taken pains to make the miraculous Madonna and Child slightly more monochrome than Neri’s brilliantly colored figure; furthermore his upward gaze does not directly catch the holy group, who hover nearby just outside of his gaze. His pose and emphatic separation from the heavenly realm stresses his worldliness and her otherworldliness. This iconography continues throughout the seventeenth century in the works of Guercino and Pietro da Cortona. What is ironic is that the Jesuits, who questioned the presumption of communion of God in ecstasy and quiet, themselves betrayed the most forceful iconography of apotheosis in their art. That is, even at this early stage the Jesuits sought a much more aggressive rhetoric of apotheosis that the Oratorians avoided. It cannot be argued that distance from Ignatius’s death explains the advanced iconography, for the Oratorians never adopted such a stance relative to Neri. In a manner very similar to the Franciscans and Dominicans who gave each order its inspiration, this episode shows how Ignatius was likened in the manner of Saint Francis as an alter Christus.43 Neri’s passive death shows his submersion into the corporate identity of the Oratorians, latter-day Dominicans.44 This fortuitous historical example of theological opposition and its concrete display in the hagiographical texts surrounding Loyola and Neri point to pervasive complexes, which in the Oratorian case are passivity, withdrawal from the world, and rapt silence.

Filippo Neri and Ignatius of Loyola This is a good general beginning, with large patterns of ideas that are a useful guide. But to give specificity to the argument we cannot remain solely at the level of theology, as important as it is. We must look at the institutions, practices, and individual actors that animate the scheme. Here it is useful to contrast Neri with Ignatius of Loyola because the latter was older, and recounting his life and the successes of his order allows one to appreciate the religious climate in which Neri came of age. There are no inexorable factors that account for Oratorian and Jesuit ideas, only plainly stated institutional goals and plans for achieving them.

43. Significant of course is the chapel dedicated to Francis of Assisi in the Gesù, for which see Russo, Il ciclo francescano nella chiesa del Gesù in Roma. Perhaps not surprisingly, Capuchins—the newest and most zealous branch of the Franciscans— had the most conflicts with the Jesuits. 44. On the corporate identity of the Dominicans, see Hood, Fra Angelico at San Marco. Maginnis (World of the Early Sienese Artist, 168) finds Saint Thomas Aquinas’s miracle of the speaking crucifix that says, “You have written well of me” (“Bene scripsisti de me”), to be a perfect example of Dominican attitudes as opposed to the Franciscans’ bold promulgation of controversial theological topics and iconographies.

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Born in 1491 in Spain, Ignatius of Loyola was an aristocratic soldier. After experiencing a conversion, he devoted himself to the church, but his military background never left him. His “company” was formulated on the model of a military unit of organization and he eventually swore direct allegiance to the pope, much as would a general. Loyola arrived in 1537, intent on offering himself and his companions to the service of the pope; within three years he had papal approval and within ten years the constitutions were completed and recognized. The military character of the Jesuits is often overblown; however, what is absolutely central to the success of the Jesuits was their ambition and organizational power to achieve their aims. Raised in a native Spanish tradition ripe with mysticism and illuminism, Loyola’s approach to spiritual transformation was quite sensuous, which is reflected in his handbook for spiritual improvement, the Spiritual Exercises.45 It was precisely this that led to his arrests and accusations to be an illuminist (alumbrado). Ironically, the Jesuits’ later course would go some way toward disavowing the mystical elements of Loyola’s thought that were difficult to regulate. As the sixteenth century progressed, suspicion arose in relation to the use of sense in meditation and internal prayer, as the Jesuits adapted a curriculum to address theological debate and reinforce the twin missions of crusading around the globe and active proselytizing.46 In Rome, however, the organization of the order was efficient and expansive. As the order wished to serve the pope, priests needed to be trained. Their task was to convert souls lost to Protestantism or savagery. It is in this context that Neri, a layman, came to Rome to aid pilgrims with the Jubilee year of 1550. Neri seems to both have been attracted to the Jesuit order and recognized that his brand of spirituality was different. He became well known for sending young hopeful men into the service of the Jesuits and was therefore called the campana or bell of the Society of Jesus. This deference to Jesuits as a mere conduit for other orders is significant; he was content to serve those already in Rome.47 The two holy men—Ignatius of Loyola and Filippo Neri—famously met, a fact advertised by both Jesuits and Oratorians in the official biographies of Ignatius of 1609 (see fig. 1.3) and of Neri of 1622.48 Neri at one time considered leading his followers into missionary work. Significantly, however, he was advised that his “Indies” were to be found in Rome (“le tue Indie sono a Roma”).49 The background to the story, however, is significant because it shows the dialectical self-fashioning of each religious group in contrast to the

45. On Spanish mysticism, see Hamilton, Heresy and Mysticism in Sixteenth-Century Spain. On the way in which Loyola’s aims were retrospectively made more militant, see O’Malley, “Was Ignatius Loyola a Church Reformer?” 46. For critiques of sense application in the late sixteenth century, see de Boer, “Invisible Contemplation.” For the reinvigoration of the polemical intent of the Jesuits in the 1580s, see Casareo, “Jesuit Colleges in Rome under Everard Mercurian.” 47. Leone, Saints and Signs, 221. 48. Drawings by Rubens, engraved by Barbé, in Lancicius, Vita Beati P. Ignatii Loyolae Societatis Jesu Fondatoris; Drawings by Guido Reni, engraved by Luca Ciamberlano, in Held, “Rubens and the Vita Beati of Ignatius Loiolae of 1609”; Bacci, Vita di San Filippo Neri; Melasecchi and Pepper, “Guido Reni, Luca Ciamberlano and the Oratorians.” 49. This comes from the testimony of Agostino Ghettini, recalling the time in 1557 when Neri considered taking his companions on a mission; Incisa della Rochetta and Vian, Il Primo Processo per San Filippo Neri, 1:384–85. Cf. Ponnelle and Bordet, St. Philip Neri and the Roman Society of His Times, 211.

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Fig. 1.2: Copper engraving from Vita Beati P. Ignatii Loyolae Societatis Jesu fundatoris (Rome, 1609) (New York Public Library).

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Fig. 1.3: Copper engraving from Vita Beati P. Ignatii Loyolae Societatis Jesu fundatoris (Rome, 1609) (New York Public Library).

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other. It was said by Jesuits that Neri was rejected from joining the order and by Oratorians that Neri declined to join.50 It might seem that Neri’s small order would not be proper competition for the dominating Jesuits; however, it was Neri’s ability to attract powerful acolytes and allies that ensured the persisting power of the Oratorians. If Ignatius was a stern, practical ex-soldier, Filippo was an unassuming holy man who abhorred formality and pretension and was a famous joker. He had his congregation sing religious compositions to the tune of popular songs. His congregation remained informal and was located at the church of San Girolamo della Carità until the little dilapidated church of Santa Maria in Vallicella was given to them in 1575. The men surrounding Filippo did not seek final approval of the order for decades, until 1612 in fact. The fathers took no vows and could even maintain personal property. They always remained, unlike the Jesuits, secular priests. Neri was not the general or even superior-general, as he might have been in other orders. In contrast to the necessary hierarchy of the Jesuits, he insisted that each father have an equal say in the running of the organization and Neri retired from active management of its affairs after several terms as preposito. In Joseph Connors’s words, the Oratory was “equipped to take up only one task, in one city.”51 Whereas the Jesuits had to attend to dogma, in deciding issues in far-flung locales, the Oratorians looked to the traditions of the church. No wonder that Neri’s quiet religiosity inspired the scholarly works of Cesare Baronio, Antonio Gallonio, and Antonio Bosio.52 Since the very structure of the Oratory was corporate, every artistic decision was made by consensus. Their artistic decisions were more inflexible and they resisted patrons with strong personalities. In some cases, they eschewed rich patrons altogether. For example, the Casa next door to the church, designed by Borromini, was largely self-funded. Although Borromini imposed his own sense of elevated models, expensive materials, and elaborate design, it was paid for with small donations managed by the fathers as they saw fit. In the 1630s the Oratorians were determining their religious imagery while the Jesuits awaited Gian Paolo Oliva (1600–1681).53 The Jesuits built colleges and churches and decorated them to inspire their missionaries to be sent around the world. Their dedication to the name of Christ coincided with his circumcision, and the shedding of blood remained forevermore symbolic in their mission. In contrast, the Oratorians rebuilt ancient Christian foundations in Rome in order to underscore continuity of faith and practice with the early church. This had consequences for their individual rhetoric of persuasion. The Oratorians looked backward to the apostles, while the Jesuits had to persuade their pupils and subjects that the contemporary Church Militant was in danger and needed their active intervention.54

50. Levy, Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque, 142. 51. Connors, Borromini and the Roman Oratory, 7. Indeed, there exists no general (as in the Jesuits) or superior-general (as in older monastic orders) of the entire Congregation of the Oratory. 52. Baronio, Annales ecclesiastici; Gallonio, Trattato de gli instrumenti di martirio; Bozio, Roma sotterranea. 53. But see Zuccari, “Aggiornamenti sulla decorazione cinquecentesca di alcune cappelle del Gesù.” 54. On the contrast between Jesuits and Oratorians, see Ponnelle and Bordet, St. Philip Neri and the Roman Society of

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Oratorians and Jesuits Clearly the Oratorians and Jesuits had different aims. The Oratorians, although influential, had a vastly reduced scope of mission in comparison to the Jesuits. Their main focus was the engagement with Rome’s populace and its spiritual shepherding. As such, the Oratorians and Jesuits were not competing for the same crowds. Indeed, the Oratorians read stories of the Jesuits’ brave exploits in the east, and even visited popular sermons, oftentimes by a Jesuit. The Jesuits’ dedication to Christ and his blood contrasts with the Oratorians’ emphasis on Mary. Indeed, as will be seen in the discussion of Barocci’s Institution of the Eucharist, Neri was almost overwhelmed by the real flesh of Christ. Mary was the intercessor who could hear the prayers of Neri and others via indirection. Neri was, thus, an anticleric who was obsessed with the humble and downtrodden, the suffering and defeated. The rhetorical strategy that might unify these various insights would be irony. The key to this irony lies in Neri’s Socrates-like manner and status indeed as a “Christian Socrates.”55 The humble yet wise Socrates had achieved his position through admission of his ignorance. Likewise, Neri was extremely sophisticated but dissembled his behavior in order to disguise it; by likening wisdom to ignorance he achieved paradox or, in short, irony. Indeed, the motto placed beneath Guido Reni’s portrait is “Exaltavit humiles” (“he has exalted the humble”), a line from the Magnificat that derives ultimately from the Gospel of Luke (1:46–55). The source of these lines is indeed striking for Oratorian iconography, because they legendarily came from the Visitation of Mary and Elizabeth, when Saint John in utero kicked in recognition of his Lord. The topicality of Mary’s and Christ’s humility in pregnancy and before birth and the subject of a work adored by Neri is not accidental. In moving on to enlighten the rhetoric of Oratorians, it is first of all important to note that they always denied that they presented sermons at all ex pulpito. After all, the oratorio is the form of devotion that takes place outside a church. They did not discourse on topics but elaborated ragionamenti, and used concrete stories of the early saints for inspiration. These were followed by sung lauds, creating an institutionalized informality that the Oratorians believed followed early Christian practice. Significantly, although Neri and Baronio were aware of the features of early Christian churches and sought to include some in the Chiesa Nuova, there was never any plan to add a bench or synthronon to the apse. Discourse was intended for the oratory.56 Perhaps this reflects the flexibility that Carlo Borromeo also shared when affirming church decoration.

His Times, 323–24; Rahner, “Ignatius of Loyola and Philip Neri”; the twin papers by Zuccari, “La politica culturale dell’Oratorio Romano della seconda metà del cinquecento” and “La politica culturale dell’Oratorio Romano nelle imprese artistiche promosse da Cesare Baronio”; and Leone, Saints and Signs. 55. These references by Agostino Valier and Federico Borromeo to Filippo Neri are conveniently collected by Lavin, “Divine Inspiration in Caravaggio’s Two St. Matthews,” 73n44. 56. Ponnelle and Bordet, St. Philip Neri and the Roman Society of His Times, 265; Herz, “Cardinal Cesare Baronio’s Restoration of SS. Nereo ed Achilleo and S. Cesareo de’Appia.” Cf. Ferrara, “Cesare Baronio e la fabbrica della Chiesa Nuova.”

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Father Gallonio in his La Vita di San Filippo Neri writes how Neri’s sermons were “of useful matters, and necessary to the well-being of the listeners (leaving aside obscure and subtle problems), simply explained without the pomp of words or mixing rhetorical colors [colori rettorici].”57 Such an approach can be likened to the traditional sermo humilis, but in conformity with Neri’s ironic attitude, it is only apparently humble. It proceeds simply via dissimulation in order to reach deeper truths. This attitude is captured in the rhetorical manual written by the same devotee of Neri who had coined the phrase “laetitia Christiana”—Agostino Valier in his De rhetorica ecclesiastica sive modo concionandi libri tres (1574).58 According to John O’Malley, in contrast to calls either to maintain ancient eloquence or priggishly deny it, Valier openly invoked Aristotle and stressed the need for classical elegance to impart emotion. Just as classical as the preaching theory that Valerio adopts is the humanitas that seems to me to animate the treatise. Besides embodying the classical virtues of clarity, order, and simplicity, the treatise emphasizes the human or humane values in Christianity. Valerio, for instance, rejects Stoic apathy and urges the preacher to awaken or instill good affections in his listeners. The preacher should especially arouse the emotion of love—love for God, of course, but also love of parents for their children, of children for their parents, of citizens for their native land, of friends for their friends. He should even try to make the good among his audience love themselves.59

Valier’s references to love indicate that he is working more with the Platonic vocabulary of divine inspiration. The point of such a sermon is to deliver pleasure and delight, which is felt rather than cognized. Rather than arouse emotion through intellectual comprehension, it appeals directly to the heart. In this it attempts to address divine grace through the grace of the preacher. Similar ideas were later expressed by Federico Borromeo in his various tracts, including De nostrorum temporum sacris oratoribus.60 Valier’s approach, and Neri’s for that matter, was not for the purposes of the church writ large. More popular were guidebooks for mainstream preaching, like the Jesuit Cipriano Soares’s De arte rhetorica (1562) or Pedro Fonseca’s Institutionum dialecticarum (1564).61 Not surprisingly, as summarized by Thomas Conley, “Soares…seems to place an unusually high premium on emotion as a component of persuasion, for it is evidently emotion that mainly moves the souls of men—that is, persuades them, in addition to teaching them.62 Persuasion here is Ciceronian, not only in the sense of eloquence but also as an institutional and civic virtue. Jesuit rhetoric in general motivates practical con-

57. Gallonio, La Vita di San Filippo Neri, 144: “I Sermoni erano di materie utili, e necessarie alla salute de gli Ascoltanti, (lasciate da parte le questioni oscure, e sottili) spiegati semplicemente senza pompa di parole, e senza mescolarvi colori rettorici.” 58. The work is most easily accessed as it is appended to De Granada, Ecclesiasticae rhetoricae. On Valier, see Conners, “Homiletic Theory in the Late Sixteenth Century,” esp. 317–23. 59. O’Malley, “Content and Rhetorical Forms in Sixteenth-Century Treatises on Preaching,” 251. 60. Borromeo, De nostrorum temporum sacris oratoribus. On Borromeo’s idea of sacred rhetoric, see Jones, Federico Borromeo; and Giombi, “L’oratoria sacra di Federico Borromeo.” 61. Soares, De Arte Rhetorica Libri tres; Fonseca, Institutionum dialecticarum Libri Octo. 62. Conley, Rhetoric in the European Tradition, 154.

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cerns to citizens, and personal emotion is in the service of action. The Oratorian instead moves to improve the person through love. If Oratorian rhetoric is marked by irony, which in some senses can be seen as a development away from more standard strategies of resemblance (metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche), then the clearest opposition would be found in the straightforward, or even labored or intellectual, aims of the Society of Jesus. Jesuit rhetoric, as exemplified by Soares, or Pedro Fonseca, was based on definitio, that is, descriptive and logical definition in terms of rigorous use of figures and categories of cause and effect.63 This emphasis on elaborating likeness explains the strong attachment to the emblematic imagination and use of words and pictures as memory aids. To be clear, these are not incipient ideas in the heads of priests of each order. The purpose to which they are preaching is central. In general, because the Oratorian focus is so personal, they remain with stories of the lives of the saints or the history of the church, tangible things. No wonder then that each of the altars in the Chiesa Nuova, in distinction to those of the Jesuits, is an ordinary istoria, even if elevated to the dignity of a Misterio. Whereas in the Gesù we find the chapel of the Angels, or the Trinity, at the Chiesa Nuova the altarpieces depict simple stories that are immediately obvious to the average person. This idea of opposition even leads us to see the two new orders as constituting their own opposition in Roman society of the time. That is, the Jesuits were the outward-directed missionaries with a clear message and steadfast purpose while the Oratorians cultivated love, inwardness, and reflexivity. Here we can return to the cooperation among Oratorians and Jesuits noted before. Strangely, it was the Oratorian Cesare Baronio who placed a portrait on Ignatius’s tomb in the Jesuit church of the Gesù. While it appears that the two orders share similar sentiments (and certainly the urge to promote their respective saints), perhaps Baronio is here promoting Ignatius in their manner, as appropriate to them. His actions become, then, a tacit and sometimes acknowledged “divison of labor” between the two orders.64 As suggested in the introduction, this sense of contrasting commitments is common, indeed necessary, for social differentiation.

Barocci and the Visual Rhetoric of the Oratory Oratorian dissembled irony is the rhetorical consequence of “Christian optimism” and it is seen first in works by Neri’s favorite artist, Federico Barocci. As noted previously, while Neri was alive three paintings by Barocci for the Chiesa Nuova were discussed while two were actually painted, the Visitation of the Virgin and Saint Elizabeth of 1586 (plate I) and the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple of 1603 (plate II), but delivered only after Neri’s death. Equally after Neri’s death, another commission, this time for the prized high altar, was seriously discussed but was frustrated by lack of funds before means were secured for

63. Fumaroli, “Définition et description”; Melion, “Artifice, Memory, and Reformatio.” 64. Leone implies but does not formally state that the Oratorians and Jesuits form a semiotic binary in Counter-Reformation Rome; Saints and Signs.

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completion of Rubens’s altarpiece, which adorns the altar even today (plate III). These commissions form the subject of chapters 3 and 4. Barocci’s pictures, too, are misleadingly simple and dissemble their effect, at once intimate but artificial. Barocci seems like such an eminent Oratorian artist because so many works were requested of him. But it was not uncommon to have multiple works by a single artist in churches like the Chiesa Nuova or the Jesuit church of Gesù. Scipione Pulzone, who contributed two works to the Gesù, comes to mind.65 Rather, Barocci is so remarkable for being in such demand and a foreigner, sending his works from far-off Urbino. Is there more to say about what Neri saw in these works? The whole Chiesa Nuova’s iconographical scheme was devoted to Mary and here we have two narratives devoted to her. Not only is the subject feminine, but the treatment is feminine, in the soft sfumato and airy figures. The act of recognition is concentrated on a single gesture outside of narrative unfolding and speech. The sweetness makes the treatments more iconic, outside of time, and hence appropriate to Neri’s own interests. In this context, “feminine” means many things. First, it means the exclusive depiction of women, vulnerable women, a young or pregnant Virgin Mary. Next, it refers to a modest and passive approach to figuration via indirection. Barocci’s paintings are often noted for their gracious, alluring (vago) presentation of holy events, sustained through a realism of parts. Finally, it means colorito, the bearer of the artistic message being the stuff of matter, traditionally feminine, rather than intellective form.66 Delicate color, sfumato contours, and refined yet believable types communicate the direct state of grace of the figures.67 Sixteenth-century categories of thought recognized a faculty of direct apprehension, a non so che, of which grace was the conspicuous example.68 This neo-Platonic idea was well known in both Filippo Neri’s Florence and Barocci’s Urbino, where Castiglione discoursed on grace and Raphael was considered “divine.” Unlike beauty even, which was understood intellectually as a harmony of parts, grace was a sensuous form that affected the soul without introspection.69 Jesuit altarpieces were more traditional, and they follow the more traditional intellectual path. The artistic style of Jesuit altarpieces leads the viewer through an intellectual operation to a thought. The Counter-Reformation treatise writers relied on this intellectual apparatus and added to it. Most importantly here is the Filippo Neri devotee Gabriele Paleotti, archbishop of Bologna, whose Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane (1582) was specifically intended for artists. He distinguishes three kinds of knowledge that painting may impart:

65. Pulzone painted the Lamentation of Christ (1589/91; Metropolitan Museum of Art) and a Seven Angels (1594, lost), which was rejected, ostensibly due to the appearance of contemporary personages, and replaced by a painting of the same subject by Federico Zuccaro (1600, in situ), to be discussed shortly. For differing accounts of the affair, see Bailey, Between Renaissance and Baroque, 211; and Mansour, “Censure and Censorship in Rome.” 66. Sohm, “Gendered Style in Italian Art Criticism”; Jacobs, “Aretino and Michelangelo, Dolce and Titian.” 67. On Barocci’s grace and vaghezza, see Verstegen, “Federico Barocci, the Art of Painting and the Rhetoric of Persuasion”; and Lingo, Federico Barocci. For a similar discussion, see Spear, ‘Divine’ Guido. 68. On the non so che, see Summers, Judgment of Sense; and D’Angelo and Velotti, Il ‘non so che.’ 69. On grace, see Cropper, “On Beautiful Women, Parmigianino, Petrarchismo”; Emison, “Grazia”; and Spear, ‘Divine’ Guido, 102–27.

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the sensuous, the intellectual, and the spiritual. The sensuous is a kind of knowledge common to animals. The second kind of knowledge, the intellectual, was understood by the rational soul. The highest level of spiritual cognition was obtained only by opening oneself to the gift of grace. Further, Paleotti clarified, it “tends more to be awakened in noble souls by means of pious images.”70 Barocci’s strategy can be captured under the idea of his work as a vision, a vision “of divinity soliciting the worshipper to enter and participate in that vision.”71 We already noted his development of iconographies of visionary experiences, but his works as wholes are, in an important way, visions given to the viewer. The idea that Neri’s form of devotion relied on visions rather than recalled images (as in the case of Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises) has been expounded by Costanza Barbieri, on a suggestion of Alessandro Zuccari.72 To elaborate on this idea, this feature has important consequences for what is unique about Oratorian patronage, because of complex phenomenological and semiotic features relevant to the experience of a work like Barocci’s Visitation (plate I). What exactly does it mean for an altarpiece to disclose a vision? On one hand, the definition is technical; the scene should be understood as appearing to the viewer, perhaps as a miracle. On the other hand, a vision must be believable as a vision. Phenomenologically, its figures must possess substantial presence while not appearing ordinary (and unrecognizable as visionary).73 What this means is that the vision has less status as a relational sign than as pure being. It is in some senses pre-pictorial. The corollary is that elements within the vision cannot upset the uninterrupted presence. Artifice as an index of relational sign activity is to be avoided. Reduced scale, conspicuous brushwork, unusual figural conventions, opaque iconographies—these can all destroy presence. Barocci’s famous sfumato fused his scene into a single vision and also guaranteed its verisimilitude.74 The vision with the viewer comprises a dyad. Its opposite is a third-person report, disclosing the relations between external objects. This is not identical but is related to the famous paragone between Guido Reni and Domenichino, about which artist could better create convincing narratives, or istoriare. In an anecdote apparently first reported by Giovanni Battista Agucchi, an elderly woman (vecchiarella) visits the Oratory of Saint Andrew at San Gregorio Magno, and while she has nothing to say about Reni’s Saint Andrew Led to Martyrdom (1608–9) she goes on at length to a young girl (fanciulla) about Domenichino’s Flagellation of Saint Andrew.75 Agucchi and his followers (including Bellori, Malvasia, and others) intended the story to denigrate Reni. However, Reni, who was

70. Paleotti, Discourse on Sacred and Profane Images, 112; and the discussion in Hall, Sacred Image in the Age of Art. 71. Hall, Sacred Image in the Age of Art, 74; Lingo, Federico Barocci, esp. 39–48. 72. See above all Barbieri, “Invisibilia per visibilia”; and Barbieri, “To Be in Heaven,” departing from Zuccari, “La politica culturale dell’Oratorio Romano della seconda metà del cinquecento.” 73. For presence and the factors that mitigate it, see Puttfarken, Discovery of Pictorial Composition. 74. Hall, Sacred Image in the Age of Art. For color phenomenology and ideas of subjectivity, see Verstegen, “Padua Blue between Katz and Kristeva.” 75. On the vecchiarella anecdote, see Spear, ‘Divine’ Guido, 27–31; and Marciari, “Girolamo Muziano and Art in Rome,” 347–51.

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very popular with the Oratorians, represents the Oratorian aesthetic here with his simple devotional compositions (further explored in the final chapter). This opposition is not about liturgy and personal devotion. As noted, Jesuit altarpieces could lead to personal devotion; for example, the chapel of the Madonna della Strada in the Gesù is in one sense a series of visions. But by and large the art treats of those things for which personal agency was a primary concern. The latent maniera or more positively the archaizing of many Jesuit works in Rome recalls the active intellect of the artist. Mannerist artificiality found in material traces in the picture has been transformed into an index of the piety of the artist. The question is an alteration of that which inspired polemics in the middle of the sixteenth century: Who is more important, Michelangelo or the represented subject? In a certain way, the Jesuits sided with the artist but only to the degree that the conspicuous style could stand as a surrogate for the reflective intellect. In his book on Barocci, Lingo details the artist’s struggles with the Congregation of the Misericordia in Arezzo, leading to his Madonna del Popolo of 1579. The members desired the “mystery” of the misericordia, that is, the traditional iconography of Mary protecting a group under her mantle. Barocci felt this would be a poor subject and successfully reduced the literality of the iconography. The Jesuits were somewhat like the Aretines in promoting iconographies like the Seven Archangels or the Trinity. While the Oratorians use the term “mystery” in their discussions of their altarpiece cycle, they mean it in a reduced and literal sense as a narrative with a deeper significance. Indeed, in their practice they are remarkably like Barocci in remaining with a narrative. The consequences are enormous. Instead of baldly naming an allegorical relation, Barocci merely hints at it. The viewer can follow it through, but doesn’t have to. In such a system, the goal is not to recreate the pathos of the event via its sensory recollection, an intellective operation. Rather, it is the overriding sense of humility, tenderness, or grief itself that becomes the analogical content. What is significant in this discussion is the unity between the movements, the moti, of the mind, the mouth, and the body. For the Oratorians, it is their absence, and this is why observers saw Neri transfixed before Barocci’s Visitation (plate I). The intensely meditative altarpiece concentrated his mental state, stilled and immobilized him in the chapel space, and closed his eyes to the world and communication with his fellow man. These arguments really underscore the way in which each religious body develops its identity in contrast to its peer group and competitor. The quietist elements discussed above are less often found in a typical work commissioned by Jesuits, which is significant because the Jesuits were more established. What is perhaps controversially a typical Jesuit work is oriented precisely toward intellectual apprehension. Scipione Pulzone (already mentioned in connection with the Jesuits) and his work in the Chiesa Nuova is informative in comparison with Barocci’s. The slightly archaized outlines of Pulzone’s Crucifixion draw attention to themselves, as does the reduced scale of his Christ figure.76 The purposely awkward forms of the archaizing artist are signs that demand an intellectual act. The same is true of his Lamentation for the Gesù (now in the

76. For the painting, see Barbieri, Barchiesi, and Ferrara, Santa Maria in Vallicella, 56–58.

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Metropolitan Museum of Art). When one views it, one is to regard the pietistic signs like the tears. These mental acts of interpretation have a counterpart in physical action and its mental manifestation in speech. The Jesuit visual rhetoric described above is very close to the “art without time” (“arte senza tempo”) that Federico Zeri proposed for the whole Counter-Reformation.77 His canon of artists, especially Pulzone, Fra Valeriano, and Federico Zuccaro, also has similarities to the “counter-maniera” style described by Marcia Hall, which was pioneered by Michelangelo and Sebastiano del Piombo and attempted to strip away mannerist artificiality in favor of simple medieval-inspired forms. She notes the lack of a Jesuit style at the Gesù due to the powerful personality of its patron, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, and the dictation of patronage by private donors.78 Yet the degree to which some of these works share at least partly in this aesthetic she might be prepared to attribute to a Jesuit context. Gauvin Bailey has made an eloquent and informed survey of prior interpretations of Jesuit art and rightly downplays attempts to polarize Jesuits and Oratorians.79 The two companies had more in common than they had differences. One strategy Bailey follows is to note the optical richness of various Jesuit works. Yet this is ultimately a losing strategy. The proper way to portray the situation is this: in the context of beautiful and charming forms, artists like Barocci invested subtle iconic elements to ensure their works’ devotional power. Contrariwise, artists like Zuccaro began with stronger archaizing outlines and poses and added to them beautiful color and brushwork.80 The two approaches of Barocci and Zuccaro are more or less inverted. To illustrate this point, compare Barocci’s Visitation (plate I) with the Seven Archangels in Adoration of the Trinity of his countryman and friend Federico Zuccaro, painted about 1600 (fig. 1.4).81 Both have stark figures in profile, the Virgin Mary in Barocci’s and two archangels in Zuccaro’s. The profiles give a static air to the picture but in Barocci’s the profile is unobtrusive. Zuccaro’s usage draws more attention to itself, partly because the painting is symmetrical. When Barocci’s work is reproduced in black and white, the figural quality does not stand out, whereas it does in Zuccaro’s. Perhaps that evident figural quality found in photographs explains the low opinion of such works. In color, Zuccaro’s does have much coloristic interest, but it is secondary. Thus, instead of portraying the Jesuits in terms of poverty and lack of aesthetic sensitivity, one should focus on aspects of their visual rhetoric that are not normally attended to, namely, the Jesuit predilection for a more intellectual visual rhetoric, as opposed to the Oratorians’ facile rhetoric. If this difference truly exists, how then are we to deal with the great sharing of artists at the Chiesa Nuova and Gesù: Pulzone, Cavaliere d’Arpino,

77. Zeri, Pittura e Controriforma. 78. Hall, After Raphael, 174–75, 269. 79. Bailey, Between Renaissance and Baroque, 17. 80. See the recent discussion of Stoenescu, “Ancient Prototypes Reinstantiated.” 81. For Zuccaro’s painting, see Bailey, Between Renaissance and Baroque, 212; and Balass, “Five Hierarchies of Intercessors for Salvation.”

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Fig. 1.4: Federico Zuccaro, Seven Archangels in Adoration of the Trinity, 1600, oil on panel, Gesù, Rome (photo by Ron Reznick, digitalflashimages.net).

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Girolamo Muziano, Andrea Lilio? Indeed, what of the fact that Jesuit Cardinal Farnese pursued Barocci for an altarpiece within his church or the fact that many of Barocci’s followers found work at the Gesù, including Francesco Vanni, Ventura Salimbeni, and Andrea Lilio, who worked at both churches?82 The importance of the artistic brief does not rule out historical contingency. Even if different bodies had different ideas of what they wanted, they would not always be able to get it. So it is ahistorical to presume some kind of determinism of taste, but determinism is never perfect. To repeat, any social event is caused by multiple factors and in social life it is impossible to see the pure working of any single tendency. Nevertheless, we can hope to inquire into the contribution these tendencies make in producing the unpredictable whole that is social life. While Fra Valeriano, Federico Zuccari, and Scipione Pulzone served remarkably well for the Jesuits, the isolated success of Barocci for the Oratorians represents a kind of historical experiment in taste. Here we may even have to utter the phrase “proto-baroque,” but what do we mean by it? It is not meant, as explained in the introduction, as a term of periodization or of essential being. Rather, Barocci and his peers become the first in a causal series. The unique conditions at the Chiesa Nuova helped nurture this art and while it is retrospective to mention how developments in the seicento turned out, it is not ahistorical to note that in the late sixteenth century there were different styles available and it just so happens that the style of Filippo Neri’s Oratorians is closer to that of one prominent strain of seicento art connected to Guido Reni and Pietro da Cortona. This of course does not leave Ignatius of Loyola’s Jesuits out of the picture. In many respects, the studied rhetoric or a Domenichino or a Nicholas Poussin remained closer to their ideals.

Money and Fame The preceding argument has highlighted the different aesthetic aims of Jesuit artists, and therefore has not needed to raise issues of aesthetic quality. Yet, it can still be demonstrated that the Oratorians made use of a higher quality of artist in general. That is, although Oratorian thought elevated the lowly and pauperistic, it was not impoverished; indeed, such a duality is in line with their dissemblance.83 This is admittedly a subjective judgment, but by examining payments in each church and the results of the payments, we can make some positive observations. While notions of the mediocrity of Jesuit art were indeed overstated by Sydney Freedberg, Howard Hibbard, and Francis Haskell, the argument for the quality of Oratorian artists has been defended by Alessandro Zuccari and others. Bailey challenged these notions, but this traditional reading of Jesuit patronage has some merit.84

82. Bailey, Between Renaissance and Baroque, 199–200, 220. 83. For Filippo Neri’s wealth, or collection of costly items, see Anonymous, “San Filippo Neri nella scienza e nell’arte sacra.” 84. Freedberg, Painting in Italy, 1500–1600; Hibbard, “‘Ut Picturae Sermones’”; Haskell, Patrons and Painters.

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We may begin with some anecdotal evidence. The resident ambassador for Urbino in Rome, Baldo Falcucci, wrote to the Duke of Urbino in regard to Federico Barocci, noting that the church is “of much nobility and devotion, where they have many paintings by excellent hands in their new structure” (“luogo di molta nobilità et divotione hanno molti quadric et di bonissima mano nella lor fabrica nuova”).85 Similarly, when Peter Paul Rubens wrote to the Duke of Mantua in regard to his commission to paint the high altar, his wording seems to suggest that contemporaries regarded the Chiesa Nuova in a special light. Rubens noted that the church was “decorated by all the most talented painters in Italy, who rival each other.”86 These comments suggest that the Chiesa Nuova was in some senses a “sacred gallery,” combining the best of religious devotion with the new discrimination of the connoisseur. This is not a slight against the Jesuits. Instead, as has been pointed out, the Jesuits spent equally and consistently in an overall sense, completing the whole church’s decoration more or less at the same time. The Chiesa Nuova, on the other hand, placed its emphasis on the altars and in particular on the altarpieces. Indeed, we recall that the majority of altarpiece commissions were given out before those of the Jesuits (appendix 1). Consequently, it should not be surprising that the average price paid for an altarpiece in the Chiesa Nuova was much higher than at the Gesù. Barocci’s Visitation and Wenzel Coebergher’s Pentecost in the Chiesa Nuova cost 550 and 500 scudi, respectively.87 In fact, Gauvin Bailey has noted that 100 scudi was about the average price paid for an altarpiece in the Gesù, not an impressive sum.88 More analytically, there are two measures to look at. The first is taking all the payments for known altarpieces divided by the number of altarpieces, and doing the same solely for those for the choir (high altar and transepts). In the first case, the average altarpiece price at the Chiesa Nuova is 564 scudi and at the Gesù was only 342. Because the Jesuits genuinely put money into their high altar, the second measure is necessary but still telling. For only those altarpieces on the high altar or transepts, the average price is 750 for the Chiesa Nuova and 463 for the Gesù.9 It might be objected that the Jesuits only figured 200 scudi for Baglione’s Lamentation, when 1,000 scudi were promised. This is an important part of the story for the Jesuits who, unlike the Oratorians, fell short in some of their payments. Gauvin Bailey has introduced the potential practice of cut rates given by the artists in order to show sympathy with the religious ends of the Society of Jesus. This is an important mitigating factor that indeed would skew prices. But it should already be clear that the Oratorians did not make such arrangements, least of all for their beloved Barocci, whose 550 scudi fee for the Visitation was extremely generous in spite of its small size. This difference is at least partly due to the way in which the two orders managed their funds and artistic decisions. The difference between Oratorians and Jesuits in this regard

85. Gronau, Documenti artistici urbinati, 156–57. 86. Jaffé, “Peter Paul Rubens and the Oratorian Fathers.” 87. In the following, I am always using silver scudi, scudi di moneta, the standard coin for business transactions. 88. Bailey, Between Renaissance and Baroque.

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was not lost on Borromini himself, who noted that “their buildings were made by princes [da’ Principi], for whom it serves to build big things, but having themselves built their own building permitted them above all their things with modesty keeping their eye only on propriety.” Borromini might seem to be talking only about size and cost, but equally important is the self-management: they make their buildings (and decorate them) themselves.89 Although Borromini was writing much later, his comment about patronage “da’ Principi” was true in Neri and Barocci’s day. Ironically, the modesty Borromini spoke of translated into more expensive paintings in the sense that the parity of quality and lack of

89. Borromini, Opus architectonicum, 8.5, quoted in Connors, “Early Projects for the Casa dei Filippini in Rome,” 110: “tutte cose pratticate nel collegio romano, nella casa professa de’ Padri Giesuiti, nell’abitazione de’ Padri Teatini per non dire de I monaci di S. benedetto, ed altri, dicento, che le fabriche di questi sono state fatte da’ Principi, a’ quail conviene far cose grandi, ma facendo loro medemi la propria Fabrica premevano sopra tutte le cose nella modestia, bastandoli aver l’occhio alla proprieta.”

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any particular project or chapel project taking precedence over any other meant that an overall general level of quality could be assured. After looking at the theology, sacred rhetoric, and visual rhetoric of the Oratorians and the Jesuits, it seems clear that the traditional affirmations about the Oratorians and the contrasts made between them and the Jesuits still have merit. There is clearly something distinctive about Oratorian patronage, and their attempt to pursue four altarpieces from Federico Barocci indicates that they recognized something compelling in his style, something that resonated with their ideas.

Chapter 2

The Altarpiece Cycle: The Rosary and Coordinated Devotion “The paintings should be one of the mysteries of the Holiest Madonna [Misterij della Madonna Santis.ma]”1 “Conditioni cole quali si ha conceder le Cappelle,” ca. 1580

There are some very tangible reasons that Oratorian spirituality, institutional facts, and artistic patronage have a distinct physiognomy, with the Oratorian emphasis on personal devotion in a nonhierarchical context placing emphasis on the cultivation of the personal spirit of the believer. This leads to the question of how, specifically, the Oratorians laid out their church and with it Barocci’s altarpieces. The Chiesa Nuova has a unified program of altarpieces in the manner of other Counter-­ Reformation churches in Italy and throughout Catholic Europe. Federico Barocci’s two completed works, the Visitation (plate I) and the Presentation of the Virgin (plate II), contributed indelibly to the realization of that unified arrangement. Obviously, having multiple works by the same artist contributes to the uniformity of the church. Yet the religious import of that same artist’s style can also contribute harmoniously to the overall message the church seeks to impart. By understanding the accumulating Marian message received by a believer as he or she moved around the church, one can better appreciate Barocci’s importance for the Oratorians.2

1. “Conditioni cole quali si ha conceder le Cappelle,” ca. 1580, ACO, Rome, C.I.26, cited in Barbieri, Barchiesi, and Ferrara, Santa Maria in Vallicella, 160n35. 2. On Neri’s attachment to the Virgin Mary, see Venturoli, San Filippo Neri; and Barchiesi, “S. Filippo Neri e l’iconografia

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During the sixteenth century, it became common for churches to create organized iconographic programs with particular emphasis on altarpieces. The Chiesa Nuova is a prime example of this due to the early emergence of its unified Marian scheme. Many historians point to the Dominican devotion to the rosary as the inspiration for the Chiesa Nuova’s Marian scheme, but the Oratorian church’s Marian focus is actually closer to Franciscan devotions. The Oratorians’ emphasis on the joy of the Virgin is consonant with Neri’s spirituality, and it is the Oratorian’s unique “internal typology” that unifies the altars. Although there is an altarpiece plan, its simplicity militates against heavy typological pairing and is consistent with the directness of the aesthetic experience the Oratorians were seeking to develop.

Unified Altarpiece Programs The interior of the Chiesa Nuova is composed of the high altar—­dedicated to the Birth of the Virgin—­and ten lateral chapels, each assigned to an episode of “mystery” (Misterio) of the life of the Virgin (see appendix 1). Although such an arrangement seems relatively straightforward, no such cycles are known until the sixteenth century. Before then, patrons always exercised their rights to select artistic themes and it was not until new religious movements promoted the laicization of society that the balance of influence tipped in favor of the religious over the patron. Already in the fourteenth century, Siena Cathedral had an iconographic program of altarpieces devoted to patron saints of the city.3 By including these saints within narratives of the life of the Virgin, a program seemingly devoted to the Virgin appeared. Yet this was not the case. Even in churches decorated in the earlier sixteenth century, we find some iconographic programs that appear to be unified, but on closer inspection, are not. One of the first was at Santa Maria Novella in Florence, for which Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici charged Giorgio Vasari with overseeing the project. That program was unified but incorporated older altarpieces, supplemented with newly painted altarpieces. A renovation from scratch began at Santa Croce in Florence with a series of new altarpieces based on the Passion.4 The efforts at the Chiesa Nuova can be classed with those of various bodies that tried to respond to the Council of Trent and provide new solutions to the appointment and arrangement of the church, all of which culminated in the grand projects for Saint Peter’s in Rome.5

mariana della Chiesa Nuova.” 3. Frederick, “Program of Altarpieces for the Siena Cathedral.” 4. Santa Croce’s Passion cycle was undoubtedly influenced by Orvieto Cathedral’s, which was executed between 1556 and 1575, and includes The Betrayal, Christ before Pilate, The Flagellation, The Crowning with Thorns, Ecce Homo, The Way to Calvary, The Crucifixion, The Raising of Lazarus, and The Marriage at Cana. The cycle at Santa Croce (executed in the 1560s and 1570s) includes The Entry into Jerusalem, Ecce Homo, The Flagellation, The Way to Calvary, The Crucifixion, The Deposition, The Resurrection, Christ in Limbo, The Supper at Emmaus, Pentecost, The Doubting Thomas, and The Ascension; Hall, Renovation and Reformation; Swank, “Iconografia controriformistica negli altari delle chiese fiorentine.” 5. The pioneering work on this whole subject began with these two churches in the work of Hall, Renovation and Ref-

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Trent and its interpreters sought to bring order to the church interior, and ensure that mass could be said at its altars without trouble. What is more, the new arrangements allowed for new meditative meanings to be developed.6 While these projects were absolutely essential for new church designs, they had to be translated to the purposes of new religious orders. The earliest experiments in a unified layout were undertaken precisely by the church of the Jesuits, the Gesù, under the patronage of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, and the Chiesa Nuova, proceeding in competition with the Gesù, with Cardinal Pierdonato Cesi trying to outdo his rival. As we shall see, the Chiesa Nuova has precedence at least in the completion of its altarpieces. An interesting thing about the Chiesa Nuova is the closeness of the primary author on church appointment, Carlo Borromeo, to the congregation. His Instructiones fabricae et supellectilis ecclesiasticae was being prepared just as the Chiesa Nuova received its first cornerstone in 1575.7 Marcia Hall has remarked that his book was less influential in publication because its principles were fairly obvious. This is especially true of the Chiesa Nuova, where the young Borromeo was a disciple of Neri and eventually gained an honorary chapel. This would make the Chiesa Nuova an extremely interesting example to study. The most important thing to notice about this conversion is the similarity in focus. The Jesuits, like the Franciscans at Santa Croce, devoted their program to the Passion, culminating in an appreciation of Christ’s full sacrifice. In the same way that affective devotion by the Jesuits led to the emphasis on the memory of place, passage through the church was cumulative. As will be explained below, the attention by Oratorians to “mysteries” somewhat downplayed such anagogical engagement. The iconographic program of the Chiesa Nuova is often attributed to Saint Filippo Neri himself. Indeed, we can expect that the Oratorians’ informality of devotion would be translated to the layout of their church. But it did so for one very important reason. The Chiesa Nuova, true to many other churches dedicated to the Virgin Mary, did not possess a mammoth sacramental tabernacle at its high altar, as could be found on the high altar of the Gesù.8 The Chiesa Nuova may have only had a small, inconspicuous tabernacle on the high altar before that (still small one) by Cirro Ferri was designed.9 (If it were true, as

ormation. Peter Humfrey has dealt with the situation in Venice: “Co-­ordinated Altarpieces in Renaissance Venice.” He says that in San Francesco della Vigna, the Observant Franciscan church of Venice, patrons chose the subjects for the altarpieces (p. 199) and that, contra Goffen, there was no program at the Frari, the Conventual Franciscan church (p. 201). Only in San Giorgio Maggiore (where frames match) can we definitively say that a program existed and it was decided by the presence of relics. Even at the Redentore, there were all lay patrons and no program (p. 211). For a northern Italian example, see Knox, “Unified Church Interior in Baroque Italy.” For the Jesuit (Saint Michael’s) church in Munich, see Smith, Sensuous Worship. For Saint Peter’s, see Rice, Altars and Altarpieces of New St. Peter’s. 6. For the meditative program underlying a fresco group, see Monssen, “Triumphus and Trophae Sacra.” For printed images, see Freedberg, Power of Images, 178–­88. For virtual and physical ways of the Cross (via Crucis), see Kirkland-­Ives, “Alternate Routes.” For altarpieces, see Smith, Sensuous Worship, chaps. 3–­4. 7. Borromeo, Instructiones fabricae et supellectilis ecclesiasticae. See Sénécal, “Carlo Borromeo’s Instructiones.” 8. On Marian churches, see Knox, “Unified Church Interior in Baroque Italy,” 689. For the sacramental tabernacle in the Gesù, see Masheck, “Original High Altar Tabernacle of the Gesù Rediscovered.” 9. This can be seen in Andrea Sacchi’s record of the solemnities for the canonization of Filippo Neri (1622, Vatican Pinacoteca), reproduced in Museo di Palazzo Venezia, La Regola e la Fama, 322, where no tabernacle is visible. For Cirro Ferri’s

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it seems to be, that the Host could be reserved in the Vittrice Chapel of the Pietà, it would go some way toward explaining the appropriateness of Caravaggio’s literal style.) In a sense, the Marian icon was the focus of the altar but was also duplicated throughout the church. Consequently, the very goal-­directed quality within the Gesù, focalized upon the body of Christ upon the high altar, was absent or at least downplayed at the Chiesa Nuova. Much has been said about the Chiesa Nuova and at the same time, the number of studies of unified church interiors have increased. Therefore, it is time to reassess the iconographic design of the Chiesa Nuova, questioning the unity of the Chiesa Nuova’s program and its basis on the Rosary. This reassessment suggests that the Chiesa Nuova altars should be read typologically and affirms that the Gesù’s decorative program should not be given precedence over that of the Chiesa Nuova. While the Gesù’s architectural fabric was more advanced than that of the Chiesa Nuova’s, that fact says nothing about the relative maturity of their iconographic programs.

Misterii della Madonna: The Earliest Indications of a Unified Program Altarpiece programs have been around since the fourteenth century. Moreover, the demands of Albertian and Brunelleschian architecture suggested the harmonization of the church interior with like altars and frames. It took only the combination of the two ideas of thematic and formal unity in the sixteenth century to bring to light the new idea of organized altarpiece programs. Once altars and their altarpieces had been standardized, clerics could spell out larger meanings beyond the individual chapel. In Santa Croce in Florence, Orvieto Cathedral, and the Oratory of the Gonfalone in Rome, the Passion was the subject of the altarpieces.10 The Santa Croce series was able to communicate Eucharistic ideas dear to the Franciscans and was probably designed by Raffaele Borghini. At the Chiesa Nuova, the intent was to communicate Oratorian ideas about the Virgin Mary, so the fathers probably would have relied on the talents of a theologian, although we don’t know whom. By the seventeenth century, the canonical biographies report that Neri intended the arrangement of the altars to center on the mysteries of the Virgin; however, this is a rather late date for this suggestion to appear. Marilyn Lavin has confidently written of the “unity planned from the beginning and carried out without change.”11 It is interesting to follow the actual history and see the desire of the Oratorian fathers for some meditative program within the context of problems of patronage and renovation, for the Chiesa Nuova had an early expansion (1594) immediately after it was built, which complicates any discussion of a unitary plan.

tabernacle, see Barbieri, Barchiesi, and Ferrara, Santa Maria in Vallicella, 52; and Montagu, “Cirro Ferri’s Ciborium in Santa Maria in Vallicella.” 10. See note 4 for the altarpiece cycles. 11. Lavin, Place of Narrative, 256.

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The first mass was held in the Chiesa Nuova on 3 February 1577, even while it was still under construction.12 The first documented altarpiece for the Chiesa Nuova was Cesare Nebbia’s Adoration of the Kings, commissioned in 1578. John Marciari has hypothesized that Nebbia completed a Pentecost around 1579 that was probably also for the Chiesa Nuova, but is now located in the Duomo of Perugia.13 In addition, an anonymous Pietà adorned the Chiesa Nuova’s Chapel of the Pietà, carrying a portrait of Gregory XIII, who had donated the church.14 So even before the important altarpieces of Barocci, Muziano, and Pulzone of the 1580s, the Oratorians appear to have given priority to putting altarpieces quickly on the altars of the Chiesa Nuova. The basis of the Oratorians’ altarpiece program was clearly stated by 1580, as seen in a contemporary document: The Congregation of the Oratory gives authority to whoever would seek in their name to concede the chapels to particular individuals with the following conditions, reserving however, the desires of the Holy Seat or the Vicar. The first is that the deputy submit for consideration that it would be reasonable first of all for one first to pay for the vault and stucco. Nevertheless, the committee should have permission to arrange for this as seems expedient. The chapels should be adorned all in one manner, similar to that already begun. The paintings should be of one of the mysteries of the Holiest Madonna [Misterij della Madonna Santis.ma] according to the sequence already begun. The ornamentation of the painting should be of the same design as in the chapel of monsignor Ponzio, monsignor Silvio, and monsignor Lavaino, so that one is of gilt wood and the other of gold and the columns a mixture. The tabernacles should correspond with one another, that is, gold with gold, marble with marble, with the same kind of mixtures. That the chapels which aren’t stuccoed be stuccoed inside and out in the same way as the others; that the windows be done like those of Mssrs. Ponzio and Silvio. That the banisters be made like the others. That the candelabras [candelieri] be made of wood, like the others. That the chapels be endowed with goods at least as good as those given by Mr. Ponzio. That whoever is ceded a chapel may have burial privileges for himself and his heirs. That inside the chapel he may place a stone on the ground with his arms and an inscription like that of the Lavaiani. That the Congregation has the duty to celebrate mass the week and anniversary of one’s death in perpetuity in whichever chapel has been ceded. That this duty be recorded in the Sacristy.15

12. Cistellini, San Filippo Neri, 1:206. 13. Barbieri, Barchiesi, and Ferrara, Santa Maria in Vallicella, 71; Marciari, “Girolamo Muziano and the Dialogue of Drawings,” 127. 14. For this lost image, which was replaced by Caravaggio’s Entombment, see Zuccari, “Deposizione di Cristo nel Sepolcro.” 15. “Conditioni cole quali si ha conceder le Cappelle,” ca. 1580, ACO, Rome, C.I.26, quoted in Barbieri, Barchiesi, and Ferrara, Santa Maria in Vallicella, 160n35: “La Congreg.ne dell’Oratorio da facultà à chi sarà deputato à trattare in nome suo, di concedere le Cappelle à persone particolari con le infrascritte conditioni, riservato però, quanto sia di bisogno il consenso della Sede Apostolica ò vero del Vicario di N.S.r e non altrimenti. In prima che il detto Deputato metta in considerat.ne che sarebbe ragionevole che anteprima si pagasse il guscio e lo stucco. Non di meno egli in questo particolare habbi faculta di disporre secondo che gli parera spediente. Che le cappelle si ornino tutte ad un modo come è gia incominciato. Che la pittura sia uno de Misterij della Madonna Santis.ma secondo l’ordine incominciato. Che l’ornamento della pittura sia un Tabernacolo del medesimo disegno della Cappella di m. Pontio [Ceva], m. Silvio [Antoniano] e ms. Vincenzo Lavaiano, sia che uno sia di legno tutto dorato l’altro di marmo con colonne di mischio. E che I tabernacoli all’incontro corrispondino l’uno all’altro, cioè oro con oro, e marmo con marmo con la medesima sorte di mischi. Che le cappelle che non sono stuccate si stucchino dentro e fori nell’istesso modo che l’altre. Che si faccia la invetriata come quella di m. Pontio e di m. Silvio. Che si faccino I balaustri

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By a geometrical fluke, the Oratorians had ordered an altarpiece for every alternating opposite chapel by 1583, proving that a program was intended. Beginning with Nebbia’s Adoration of the Kings of 1579 (2L), one can move across the nave to the Pentecost of 1579 (4R) and directly across to Barocci’s Visitation (1582, 4L), and then back across the nave to Pulzone’s Crucifixion (1583, 1R). Altarpieces are fixed, in other words, across the whole length of the church. The Madonna della Vallicella was simultaneously assigned to the first chapel on the left. One phrase is particularly interesting: that the remaining dedications should be given out according to the “sequence already begun” (“second l’ordine incominciato”). The church was originally planned with only four chapels on each side, so the addition of the fifth chapel on each side, and indeed the transept altars, could be worked out flexibly. What is clear, however, is that a tight core of eight chapels was designed contemporaneously with the original four chapels, which also means that the possibility of typological pairing (with the exception of the Crucifixion opposite the Madonna della Vallicella) was intentional, as will be amplified later. Although there was no masterminded template for each chapel, the first completed altars became a model for all others to follow. Mention of the previously completed chapels helps date the document to about 1580. This accords with what has been hypothesized about the Gesù by Howard Hibbard, who suggested that “the iconographic scheme of the whole church was worked out in the early 1580s if not before.”16 There is no information on the church’s iconographic program in the first official biography of Neri, Antonio Gallonio’s Vita di San Filippo Neri (which was prepared in 1601 for Neri’s beatification), although Barocci is mentioned twice.17 In fact, the work focuses almost exclusively on the beatus’s life, with little information on the young congregation, including the decoration of their church. A contemporary letter from the beatification process itself refers merely to the “vita della Madonna.”18 By the seventeenth century, there was no ambiguity. A charge of 1609 states that the altarpieces “devono per ordine rappresentare qualche misterio della Madonna.”19 Six decades later, Father Pietro Giacomo Bacci published what came to be the authoritative biography of Neri. In a section titled “Philip’s Devotion to our Blessed Lady, and to Holy Relics,” Bacci notes that Neri “ordered that a mystery of our Saviour should be painted on each of them [the

come gli altri. Che si faccino un par de candelieri di legno come gli altri. Che le cappelle si dotino tutte in beni stabili almeno con quella dote che ha dato m. Pontio. Che quello à chi si concederà una delle cappelle habbi la seppoltura per se e suoi heredi e che possa far la tomba dentro la cappella. Che possa mettere una lapide in terra dentro la cappella con l’arme et inscrittione come quella del Lavaiano. Che la Congregazione habbi obligo di far celebrare una messa la settimana et un anniversario de morti in perpetuo in ciascuna cappella si concederà. Che del detto obligo se ne tenghi memoria in sacrestia.” Note that as regards the banisters mentioned above, that of the Lavaiana chapel was of wood; cf., ibid., n329. In translating this passage, I was helped by consulting an unpublished manuscript by John Marciari. 16. Hibbard, “‘Ut Picturae Sermones,” 34; Bailey, Between Renaissance and Baroque, 195. 17. Gallonio, Vita di San Filippo Neri, 178, 201. There is no mention of artists in the 1600 Latin edition. 18. Incisa della Rochetta and Vian, Il Primo Processo per San Filippo Neri, 1:64. 19. Archivio dell’Oratorio Romano, Rome, AV 14, fol. 17r–­v, cited in Zuccari, “Cultura e predicazione nelle immagini dell’Oratorio,” 34.

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altars], and that the Madonna should appear in the mystery.”20 Given these statements, it is curious that the program is habitually ascribed to a rosary pattern. There is no indication these mysteries from the “life” of the Virgin would be chronological, but that seems implicit. But how strictly did the fathers hold to the pattern? Like any monumental building program, the Chiesa Nuova (fig. 2.1) went through a complicated history of construction, even in its early history. Cardinal Pierdonato Cesi paid for the church itself, but his untimely death caused disruption in the building, as his brother only reluctantly paid for the façade. This had an indirect effect on the interior program. The perennial struggle over the choice of architect—­the congregation’s or the patron’s—­ provided the usual difficulty, but in the case of the Chiesa Nuova was massively disruptive. The chapels of the new church, built between 1575 and 1594, were made into aisles as the chapels proper were pushed back. Alessandro Nova has likened the first-­stage design to nearby San Girolamo degli Schiavoni,21 and one must seriously consider that the church must have been something of a disaster area, with certain chapels pushed back while others remained temporarily in place. This meant that altarpieces begun for the earlier church had to be accommodated to the new chapels. This expansion was under the command of a single architect, Giacomo della Porta, and executed by a single builder, the lay Giovan Battista Guerra (1547–­1627), but in the interior of the building, the fortunes of the chapels rested with the various patrons. The highest priority was given to the two transepts, and afterward to the chapels themselves, which were executed more or less according to the chronology of commission (see appendix 2). The Chapel of the Visitation presents an anomaly: while Barocci’s altarpiece was received in 1586, the chapel’s reconstruction was not begun until 1598, presumably because Neri was fond of it, leaving the chapel untouched until after Neri’s death in 1595. A similar case concerns the Chapel of the Pietà, because of its special papal indulgence. That chapel was apparently begun not too late, but it was not finished until 1611, along with the Visitation. A document states that in 1602 the chapel still looked old-­fashioned.22 Obviously, the second decorating campaign gave the Oratorian fathers more control than the previous, and it was difficult to make older commissions conform to the new spirit of the system, which may explain the new commissions that emerge around 1600, like those for Coebergher’s and Caravaggio’s works. It appears that at this stage, after having received higher quality works by Barocci, Muziano, and Pulzone, the Oratorians—­when they could not promote their preferred choices (like Barocci for the transept chapels or high altar)—­allowed their patrons to nominate artists based on

20. Bacci, Vita di San Filippo Neri: “quando si ebbero a fabbricare gli altari della chiesa, volle che in ciascheduno di essi si dipingesse un mistero del salvatore, in cui vi dovesse andar dipinta ancora la Madonna Santissima”; and Bacci, Life of St. Philip Neri, ed. Antrobus, 1:154. It is possible that in this official publication, Bacci conducted a bit of self-­censorship in deflecting attention slightly away from the Virgin. 21. Nova, “Il ‘modello’ di Martino Longhi il Vecchio.” 22. Graeve, “Stone of Unction in Caravaggio’s Painting for the Chiesa Nuova,” 234.

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Fig. 2.1: Chiesa Nuova (Santa Maria in Vallicella), Rome (photo by author).

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regional affiliation but with the stipulation that they be of the highest excellence.23 This explains the selection of Caravaggio, Coebergher, and Rubens. Replacement of older altarpieces at this stage can be explained simply in terms of size. For we know that a lost Pentecost and Pietà were in the chapels before Coebergher’s and Caravaggio’s pictures for those chapels were done. The rebuilding took some time, but the primary motivation for the renovations—­aesthetic unity—­was obviously a priority. Documents relating to the Vittrici’s Chapel of the Pietà bear this out, when the fathers expressed their desire to make it the same as the others (“uguagliarla all’altre”).24 In light of this issue of aesthetic unity, it is interesting to see that in one case the altar dedication was outright ignored. This concerns the high altar, where the intended Nativity of the Virgin theme was substituted for Rubens’s sacra conversazione, Adoration of the Madonna della Vallicella (plate III).25 The change was made for complicated reasons. As late as 1604, Federico Barocci (already the author of two paintings in the church) was being considered to paint the Birth of the Virgin. We know this from a letter from the Oratorian Flaminio Ricci in Rome to Cardinal Federico Borromeo in Milan, who writes that Barocci’s “giovane”—­almost certainly Antonio Viviani—­brought with him the news that Barocci could paint a “Natività” (Birth) for the high altar of the church. Ricci related that “the aforesaid Barocci would gladly paint the Nativity for the high altar . . . he has a work that is half-­done, having already for the Duke of Urbino made a drawing and sketch for the King of Spain, which he abandoned when the Duke changed his mind and having made a Saint Andrew in its place, and for this expressed the hope to have it finished in two years.”26 However, designs for the altar began to enclose a space for the Madonna della Vallicella, which was decisively moved to the high altar on 2 August 1606. Against the context of the martyr relics under the altar, the Madonna della Vallicella above it, and a shortage of money, a new patron emerged and suggested his protégé Peter Paul Rubens as the author of the painting. The discontinuity was enough to overturn completely the old idea that was substituted for Rubens’s new sacra conversazione. The Madonna della Vallicella, a medieval icon from the original church, was special because it had been responsible for a major miracle. In 1575 in the first construction of the church, a beam began to fall but was suspended in the air due to the intervention of the Virgin Mary, who interceded through the Madonna della Vallicella. This miracle would later be the subject of a fresco by Pietro da Cortona that

23. Sickel, “Remarks on the Patronage of Caravaggio’s ‘Entombment of Christ.’” 24. Calvesi, Le realtà di Caravaggio, 314. 25. Baronio recounts his mother’s devotion to the Nativity of the Virgin in his native Sora; Calenzio, La vita e gli scritti del cardinale Cesare Baronio della Congregazione del Oratorio, 171. When Baronio filed in the Vatican Library, of which he was librarian, the processo documents related to Filippo Neri’s beatification, he made sure they were deposited on the day of the Nativity of the Virgin, 1605; ibid., 724. 26. Flaminio Ricci to Borromeo, 7 May 1603, ACO, B.IV.19, fol. 61v, quoted incompletely in Olsen, Federico Barocci, and Emiliani, Federico Barocci, but completely by von den Mühlen, “S. Maria in Vallicella,” 269–­70: “il predetto Baroccio farebbe volontieri me.o il quadro della Natività per l’altar maggiore, sì per haver particolare genio a quella istoria, che non solamente a questo della Presentazione con tutto che sia riuscito maraviglioso, et di stupore a tutta Roma, come per trovarsi la fatiga mezza fatta, havendone di già per ordine del Duca d’Urbino fatta un disegno et sbozzo per il re di Spagna, che gli restò poi essendosi detto Duca mutato di pensiero, et havendole fatto fare un S. Andrea in luogo di quello et per questo ricordata speranza che si haverebbe finito in due anni.”

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Fig. 2.2: Anonymous, Madonna della Vallicella, within Rubens’s altarpiece, date unknown, fresco, Chiesa Nuova, Rome (photo by author).

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was placed above the nave in the middle seventeenth century, but for the time being this incident was enough to ensure the placement of the Madonna della Vallicella alongside the Rubens painting and the disruption of the original iconographical scheme. The Oratorian devotion for early Christian martyrs also contributed to their overturning the high altar’s iconography. In 1590 the relics of the martyr-­saints Papia and Mauro were brought from San Adriano, and in 1597 (after Neri’s death, and directly under the supervision of Baronio) the relics of the martyrs Domitilla, Nereo, and Achilleo were brought from Baronio’s titular church of Santi Nereo e Achilleo. The idea of venerating saints as they multiplied must have made the idea of a sacra conversazione that much more appealing. Thus, even though the altar was dedicated on 23 March 1599 to the Nativity of the Virgin and Saint Gregory the Great, it was possible to introduce an altarpiece of a completely different subject. Evidence that some injury had been done to the iconographic program is suggested by the later decision to move the Madonna della Vallicella temporarily to the original chapel, where it remained from 1612 to 1616.27 It can be argued that the iconographic program was not disturbed so much after all by regarding the Madonna della Vallicella on the high altar as a type of the “seat of wisdom” (sedes sapientiae) and more specifically the variety well known in Italy of the Madonna of Loreto, which emphasized a continuity through associations with the birth of the Virgin at the Holy House of Loreto. Perhaps just as interesting are the strong connotations of the Virgin’s immaculacy that the image of the Madonna of Loreto had at this time, which infuse new meanings into the Marian focus of the church. It is of course true that the Office of the Nativity of the Virgin had been used for the Immaculate Conception in the late medieval period.28 And it is also true that the celebration of the nativity of the Virgin was considered proof of the Virgin’s exemption from sin, as stated for example by the French Oratorian Francis de Sales.29 But what is most striking is how the venerable image of the Madonna della Vallicella was reconceived as the Virgin with a crescent moon beneath her, a golden aureole above her head, and Christ blessing the viewer while he holds an orb (fig. 2.2). It has been casually noted that at the time Rubens completed the high altar (1606–­8), the Madonna della Vallicella had been slightly elongated and the crescent moon added to the original fresco, suggesting the Virgin Immaculate.30 While it is true that these attributes suggest the Immaculate Conception, what is more interesting is what happened before this with paintings like those of Durante Alberti (Madonna della Vallicella Adored by Seven Archangels, 1601, Santi Nereo e Achilleo, Rome) and Francesco Vanni (Madonna della

27. Barbieri, Barchiesi, and Ferrara, Santa Maria in Vallicella, 194: “Fu ballottato se si doveva revocar il decreto altra volta fatto di reportar la Madonna dove stava prima et fu concluso che si rinnovasse poiche per essere aperta la porticella vicino a detta cappella et per passo continuo staria con poca decentia, in somma fu concluso che non vi si riportasse altrimenti, nonostante il primo decreto.” Amazingly, it was due to the Oratorians’ wish to keep the door open and the throngs of people coming to visit the chapel that the Madonna was moved back to the high altar. 28. Levy d’Ancona, Iconography of the Immaculate Conception, 41. 29. Mann, “Annunciation Chapel in the Quirinal Palace,” 130. 30. Costamagna, “La più bella et superba occasione di tutta Roma . . . ,” in Museo di Palazzo Venezia, Regola e la fama, 156. These paintings are discussed in the last chapter.

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Fig. 2.3: Copper engraving, after Nicolas Beatrizet, Madonna of Loreto (detail), published by Antoine Lafréry, Rome, 1540–­66 (© Trustees of the British Museum).

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Fig. 2.4: Title page, detail of copper engraving frontispiece from Cesare Baronio, Annales ecclesiastici (Rome: Tipografica Vaticana, 1588), (Ryan Library Collection, Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary, Wynnewood, Pennsylvania).

Vallicella Adored by Saints Francis and Restituta, 1601, Santa Maria degli Angeli, Sora), and with Baronio’s own imprint for his Annales ecclesiastici (1588–­1607).31 For it was these various works that interpreted the Christ child as Salvator Mundi and make the image a kind of Madonna of Loreto even before, and therefore also, making it an Immaculate Conception (figs. 2.3 and 2.4). Although a universal Christian shrine, the Holy House of Loreto had long been under Franciscan protection, which means that immaculist associations were allowed to proliferate. Thus, the Litany of Loreto sung on Saturday at the Holy House became the main source for the attributes of the Immaculate Virgin. Apart from the strong invocation of the Madonna of Loreto found in the imprint of the Madonna della Vallicella, these litanies were not unknown in the Oratorian church. They were reflected in the vault frescoes of the Chapel of the Annunciation in the Chiesa Nuova.32 This vault is interesting not only because it was painted by a Baroccista, Andrea Lilio, but also because Lilio uses one of Barocci’s images to render the Immaculate Conception (fig. 2.5).

31. For Alberti and Vanni, see Museo di Palazzo Venezia, Regola e la Fama, 502–­4, no. 61, and 505–­6, no. 65, respectively. Both are discussed in the conclusion. 32. de Santi, “Litany of Loreto,” in Catholic Encyclopedia, 9:289. For the Chapel of the Annunciation, see Barbieri, Barchiesi, and Ferrara, Santa Maria in Vallicella, 122–­26.

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Fig. 2.5: Andrea Lilio, Assumption, 1610, fresco, Annunciation Chapel, Chiesa Nuova, Rome (photo by author).

Images of the Madonna of Loreto were either imitations of the cult statue in the shrine itself, an image of Mary and the Christ child atop a house as her house miraculously escapes the infidels and lands on the Adriatic coast of Italy, or a Virgin and Child under a baldachin. In many cases, whether it is the flying house or baldachin type, Christ holds the orb and blesses, while attending angels surround.33 As in the case with all images of the throne of wisdom, Mary is elevated as the Mother of God, founding Christ’s contribution from her encompassing lap.34 In this way, the Oratorians understood their image as a variant of the Madonna of Loreto, whose timeless immaculacy was hinted at just as with the Nativity of the Virgin.35 The high altar, one could argue, is the least disruptive to a narrative sequence, especially when an iconic image like Rubens’s sacra conversazione is substituted. Such a non-­narrative

33. For the iconography of the Madonna of Loreto, see Grimaldi and Sordi, L’iconografia della Vergine di Loreto. 34. The classic study of medieval representations of the throne of wisdom is Forsyth, Throne of Wisdom. 35. Several Oratorians made pilgrimages to the Holy House of Loreto. Cardinal Sfondrato had a particular devotion to the Virgin of Loreto, making several gifts to the shrine; Gallagher, “Expression of Piety.”

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image stands outside of time and simply marks the beginning (or end) of the narrative. The high altar, however, points to another problem area of the church, because the Madonna della Vallicella icon had been adorning the fifth chapel on the left, the present Chapel of the Purification, from 1580 to 1608. This was a long time for the chapel to have no altarpiece to fit a sequence. But it was also a concession to the local siting of the church and the real veneration of the icon, which was believed to be ancient. This is the only case of an anomalous altar dedication, reminding us how difficult it was to overcome previous devotion, dedications, and patrons in the service of a new plan. Evidence that once evacuated the new altarpiece would have to conform to the project came after 1605, after the Madonna della Vallicella was removed. The new patron of the chapel, Cardinal Agostino Cusani, requested a picture of his namesake, Saint Augustine, for the altarpiece.36 But in 1616 the Oratorian fathers insisted that the subject be a Purification of the Virgin and the commission was given to the Cavaliere d’Arpino. More evidence of a strict adherence to the decorative program lies in the fathers’ resistance to putting windows and a portrait in the Chapel of the Holy Spirit.37 This evidence goes to show that although certain idiosyncracies evolved, by and large the Oratorians maintained an overall layout from the 1580s. Here it is worth reflecting on the Jesuits once again. They completed the façade of the Gesù the same year that the Oratorian church was begun, leading to the presumption that they led the way in decoration. For example, Hibbard says that the iconographic program in the Chiesa Nuova is “of somewhat later date.”38 Gauvin Bailey writes that the Jesuits may have dedicated their chapels as early as the 1560s and that “most of the contracts for the Gesù side chapels and altarpieces were drawn up in the 1580s and 1590s, when Rubens was still in Flanders and Pietro da Cortona had not yet been born.”39 It is true that the Gesù’s chapels were completed in 1604, when the high altar, nave, and dome were not yet painted. But there is actually something more significant in these dates. Both the Jesuits and Oratorians began worshipping in their churches as soon as they could; however, the Jesuits decorated their church all over, simultaneously. They seem to have given equal weight to altarpieces, chapel wall paintings, the high altar and dome, and pendentives, for all were decorated at the Gesù in the 1580s and 1590s. Comparing the Gesù to the Chiesa Nuova, the Oratorians’ more exclusive emphasis on altarpieces is striking. While it is true that two side chapels—­those decorated by the Cavalier d’Arpino—­lacked completed works, a core of altarpieces at the Chiesa Nuova was done before most of the altarpiece commissions went out at the Gesù. By 1586, the Chiesa Nuova had paintings on three altars (Nebbia in the Three Kings Chapel [1579], Alberti in the Nativity Chapel [probably 1582], Barocci in the Visitation Chapel [1586], and Pulzone in the Crucifixion Chapel [also 1586]). The majority of altarpieces in the Gesù arrived between 1589 and 1592.40 This

36. Barbieri, Barchiesi, and Ferrara, Santa Maria in Vallicella, 140. 37. Ibid., 72. 38. Hibbard, “‘Ut Picturae Sermones,’” 36. 39. Bailey, Between Renaissance and Baroque, 189. 40. In 1589, Muziano’s Crucifixion for the high altar was delivered. The side chapel altarpieces arrived in this order: probably 1590 for Ciampelli’s for the Martyr’s Chapel; 1591 for Pulzone’s for the Passion Chapel; probably 1591 for Bassano’s

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timing may reflect each order’s priorities. But in any case, the Oratorians wanted to get the altarpiece in place as soon as possible, even if the chapel lacked its peripheral decorations. This sense of urgency put them neck and neck (and sometimes ahead) of the Jesuits in the completion of their church.

The Altar Program as a Rosary Devotion The historical evidence is clear: the Oratorians outlined their program by 1580, which also corresponds to their earlier commissions. What, however, was the series supposed to mean? The altarpieces are conceived in chronological order from the life of the Virgin. The Nativity of the Virgin was to be the original high altarpiece, and the program proceeded counter-­ clockwise down the left wall from transept to chapels and wrapped around onto the right wall toward the transept. This is similar to Santa Croce in Florence, except that the beginning is not in the right transept in emulation of early Christian churches, but rather in the left transept. This arrangement combines, according to the brilliant observation of Lavin, the new altar cycle “wraparound” pattern with the old counterclockwise pattern of monastic orders. Filippo Neri would have gained the wraparound idea from Vasari and the Florentine Franciscans at Santa Croce, but the counterclockwise design would have been inspired by monastic arrangements that would have been of interest to the new orders. Different authors, among them Graeve, Lavin, Kummer, and to a degree Zuccari, say that this plan is ultimately derived more specifically from the devotions of the Rosary than simply from the mysteries of the Virgin.41 Rosary devotion was indeed important in late sixteenth-­century Rome, and was solidified by Pius V’s fixing of the form of the fifteen-­mystery Rosary and his proclamation that the Rosary was responsible for the victory at the 1571 Battle of Lepanto.42 In particular, Graeve and Zuccari cite the Rosary book of Alberto da Castello (or Castellano), Rosario della gloriosa Vergine Maria, which Neri is known to have owned; Graeve suggested that Caravaggio had followed that guide for the iconography of his Pietà and Zuccari goes so far as to suggest that the woodcut illustration was the rough model for Barocci’s Visitation.43 Lavin even goes so far as to relate the counterclockwise orientation of the altarpieces to the direction the rosary beads pass during prayer, and supposes that one could go around the church in the manner of a

for the Trinity Chapel; and 1591 for Pulzone’s for the Angels’ Chapel. 41. Graeve, “Stone of Unction in Caravaggio’s Painting for the Chiesa Nuova”; Lavin, Place of Narrative, 256; Kummer, Angänge und Ausbreitung der Stuckdekoration, 147. Zuccari, “Cultura e predicazione nelle immagini dell’Oratorio,” is a special case because he never equates the program with the Rosary, only suggesting that Neri and others took “suggestioni tematiche e iconografiche” (344). Exceptions are the archivally minded authors who literally invoke the 1580 brief; Ponnelle and Bordet, St. Philip Neri and the Roman Society of His Times, 416: “mysteries of the Blessed Virgin”; Cistellini, San Filippo Neri, 1:286: “misteri mariani”; and von zur Mühlen, “S. Maria in Vallicella,” 253: “Marienmysterien.” Barbieri, Barchiesi, and Ferrara, Santa Maria in Vallicella, 27, 166, openly dismisses the Rosary theory. 42. On the iconography of the Rosary, and Rosary-­based rituals that informed images, see Male, L’Art religieux après le Concile de Trente, 466; and Olson, “Rosary and Its Iconography, part I.” 43. Graeve, “Stone of Unction in Caravaggio’s Painting for the Chiesa Nuova,” 235; Zuccari, “Cultura e predicazione nelle immagini dell’Oratorio,” 344. Filippo Neri owned the 1567 edition, still in the collection of the Biblioteca Vallicelliana.

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Rosary devotion. The way in which the altarpieces might be matched to the Rosary devotion is represented in table 1 (page 66). As can be seen from the table, the problem is, of course, that there are thirteen altarpieces and fifteen Rosary devotions. But it is a problem that most authors have not found damning to the theory, if they have even acknowledged it. Graeve believed that while there are inconsistencies, the fact that most of the mysteries of the Incarnation and Glory are represented and that Caravaggio’s altarpiece conflated aspects of the Entombment and Pietà suggests he was covering more of the Passion series. For the most part, only biographical facts sustain the identification of the iconographic program with the Rosary. The closeness of Neri to the Dominican friars of Santa Maria sopra Minerva would explain its genesis, as the Rosary was especially important for the Dominicans. Neri’s ownership of the influential Rosario della Gloriosa Vergine Maria by the Dominican Alberto da Castello would seem to seal the argument. The fact that Neri was indeed devoted to the Rosary is not in question. This devotion is recorded in the biographies, some forty corone were listed in his death inventory, and early portraits show him holding a rosary.44 But this reduction is too simplicistic. Part of the confusion is probably due to Bacci’s early life, in which he discusses Neri’s devotion to the Rosary and then immediately discusses the altars of the Chiesa Nuova.45 It is not the case, first of all, that thirteen of the fifteen mysteries are represented. As a brief glance at table 1 again will show, there are thirteen mysteries in total but only seven of the actual mysteries are present.46 Secondly, it is against the spirit of the Rosary devotion as a vita Christi to eliminate almost all of the Passion mysteries. Graeve argued that Caravaggio’s altarpiece succeeded in melding several Passion themes and thereby addressed those missing. However, the Passion was even included in the abbreviated Rosary devotions of the fifteenth century and included two sets of five based on the Joy and the Passion (leaving out the Incarnation, which is well-­represented in the Chiesa Nuova).47 Graeve’s useful interpretation of Mary’s compassion (and not Christ’s suffering) in this picture, then, becomes evidence militating against the Rosary interpretation of the series. The Rosary interpretation is the most difficult to advance because the number of altarpieces and mysteries do not match, and the last mysteries of the Incarnation and almost all of the Passion are overwhelmingly Christological and find no place for Mary. Castello’s Rosary even culminates without the coronation of the Virgin, the use of which was in flux, but was about to be universally adopted at about the time the Chiesa Nuova’s program was devised.48 The program of the Chiesa Nuova is Mariological—­still of the Ave Maria type

44. For the corone, see Anonymous, “San Filippo Neri nella scienza e nell’arte sacra,” 231. For the portrait with a rosary, see Piero Leone Ghezzi’s print after a Roncalli original in Museo di Palazzo Venezia, Regola e la Fama, 35. Cf. Francesco Villamena’s portrait from Gabriele Paleotti’s De bono senectutis (1595) in ibid., 466–­67, no. 16. 45. Bacci, Vita di San Filippo Neri, 102; Bacci, Life of St. Philip Neri, ed. Antrobus, 1:153–­54. 46. As emphasized already by Wright, “Caravaggio’s Entombment considered in situ”; and Barbieri, Barchiesi, and Ferrara, Santa Maria in Vallicella, 27, 166n87: “poiche solo alcuni di quegli episodi coincidono con I soggetti delle pale d’altare.” 47. Winston-­Allen, Stories of the Rose, figs. 5 and 6. 48. Winston-­Allen, Stories of the Rose, 60, with reference to Peter Canisius.

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of devotion—­and it focuses on Mary; and when it focuses on Christ, it is Christ through Mary’s eyes (as in the case of Muziano’s Ascension, where a deliberation resulted in a specific order for the artist to include the Virgin).49 The final piece of evidence about the motivations of the series lies in the first chapel on the left, the Chapel of the Purification. This chapel was only conceived in 1606, when the venerable Madonna della Vallicella was moved to the high altar to be enclosed by Rubens’s new altarpiece. Knowing that the Passion was not well addressed in the altarpiece cycle (and even the remaining two mysteries of the Incarnation), the fathers instead chose the unusual Candlemas (purification of the Virgin/presentation of Christ) for the chapel’s dedication. This theme includes Christ, but unlike Christ’s disputing in the temple, this is an emphatically narrative event in Mary’s life that betrays an interest in Mary rather than in Christ and, therefore, in the Dominican rosary. What we arrive at instead is a set of narratives that have very little place for Christ at all. Mary is shown as young, vulnerable to an extent, when Christ did not display his divinity (as in the disputation in the temple), or else she is shown grieving, vulnerable again, but on her way to returning to God. The high altar and its theme of the birth of the Virgin can be read as a symbol of absence of sin, which suggested in contemporaries’ minds Mary’s eternal status in heaven. She is close to the divine in the early narratives and undertakes the traditional Jewish rites of presentation and purification. Later, Mary’s divine status reveals itself again and she ultimately assumes and is crowned in heaven. The strict reading of the Dominican Rosary is not satisfactory. Although naturally devoted to Mary, the modern Rosary that Neri knew from Castello, which was codified in contemporary works like Andrea Gianetti da Salò’s Rosario della sacratissima Vergine Maria (1573), had incorporated large parts of Christ’s life. However, the original inspiration in the Song of Songs, culminating in Mary’s assumption and privileged place in heaven, as derived from the tradition of private devotion with a psalter, certainly does inspire the program. It is also worth recalling that at its introduction, the Rosary had immaculist overtones because Sixtus IV popularized it, along with indulgences, for his own pet cause of the Immaculate Conception.50 The Chiesa Nuova, with its immaculist inscription on the front reading, “Amica mea, No macula est in te,” would not be too chained to Dominican, maculist spirituality. This is also the conclusion of Nathan Mitchell in his study of the Rosary, wherein he notes that the popularity of the Rosary was due to the immaculist claims made about Mary.51 Indeed, he argues that this exceptionalism was required for a really popular devotion to take off and capture as much interest as competing Protestant texts. Mainstream Rosary texts, while they included the standard fifteen devotions, could also have appended to them other devotions with strong immaculist connotations, like the Litany of Loreto. For example, Thomas Worthington’s Rosarium sive Psalterium Beatae Virginis Mariae published

49. Barbieri, Barchiesi, and Ferrara, Santa Maria in Vallicella, 67. 50. Ringbom, “Maria in Sole and the Virgin of the Rosary.” 51. Mitchell, Mystery of the Rosary.

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in Antwerp in 1600 references the old psalter in its title (and also has a Virgin and Child remarkably like that used by the Oratorians), and includes the Birth of the Virgin just as was originally intended for the high altar of the Chiesa Nuova. Such books, called in English “Our Lady’s Psalter,” are expressly Marian. Here we have to give credit to sixteenth-­century believers for improvising numerous Rosary devotions, including Filippo Neri, who was known to compose novel devotions.52 As a corollary, we have to recognize a plurality of other Rosary devotions in circulation at the time. For example, the Franciscans had their own beadroll prayer based on seven and twelve mysteries of the Virgin, the former becoming eventually the Franciscan or Seraphic Rosary or Corona (crown) and the latter the Stellarium (crown of stars).53 Such a rosary is seen preeminently in Barocci’s Stigmatization of Saint Francis for the Capuchin church of Urbino, a work known for its scrupulous attention to detail.54 Therein, Fra Rufino sits at his Rosary devotions while Francis has the seraphic vision. The devotion to the Franciscan Rosary is evidenced in many places, as when it was recorded that Sixtus IV’s nephew, prefect of Rome Giovanni della Rovere (d. 1501), recited the Corona daily.55 The seven-­mystery devotion was related to the seven joys of the Virgin and went back at least as far as the fifteenth century; the twelve-­mystery devotion related to the stars about the Virgin’s head (and thereby invoking the Woman of the Apocalypse) and was just as old and led to the devotion—­especially popular later with the Jesuits—­of the Stellarium. Table 2 shows the degree to which the twelve-­mystery devotion approaches the Chiesa Nuova program. Listed are the Chiesa Nuova altar dedications, the standard fifteen Rosary devotions, the standard Franciscan Corona devotions, and lastly the altars of the Chapel of the Madonna della Strada in the Gesù. One can see that of those altar dedications that match, the Chiesa Nuova has most in common with the Franciscan Corona. Although these devotions do not match those of the altarpieces of the Chiesa Nuova perfectly, the emphasis on Mary is a much better fit. More importantly, the mysteries relate to Mary’s joys, which is consonant with Oratorian emphasis on elevated wonder. One can note that Christ in the Temple is rarely shown in sixteenth-­and seventeenth-­ century altarpieces. On the other hand, the “sorrowful” devotions of the Crucifixion and the Entombment in the Chiesa Nuova militate against a pure Franciscan reading of the cycle, since they clearly depart from the canonical joys of the Virgin. In addition, some versions of the seven joys include the metascriptural visit of Christ to the Virgin Mary on his resurrection,

52. Francesco Zazzara, 22 November 1595, in Incisa della Rochetta and Vian, Primo Processo per San Filippo Neri, 1:378–­79; and Ponnelle, Bordet, and Kerr, St. Philip Neri and the Roman Society of His Times, 596–­97. For an allied point about improvised Passion devotions, see Kirkland-­Ives, “Alternate Routes.” 53. For the Franciscan Rosary, see “Rosary,” in Catholic Encyclopedia; Bracaloni, “Origine, evoluzione ed affermazione della Corona Francescana Mariana,” 274; and van Wely, “Het Kransje der Twaalf Sterren,” well summarized by Stratton, Immaculate Conception in Spanish Art. 54. Lingo, “Capuchins and the Art of History,” 359–­60. For the efforts by Franciscans to promote their own Rosary in the later sixteenth century, see McGrath, “Dominicans, Franciscans, and the Art of Political Rivalry.” 55. Frate Gratia, La vita et gesti della bona mem. Sig.re Johan Prefetto (Vatican Library, Cod. Urb. Lat. 1023, fol. 332r; cited in Lightbown, Carlo Crivelli, 261.

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a strongly Franciscan-­marked devotion.56 With this said, it is left to explain the Franciscan-­ seeming slant of the program, as close as it is to Franciscan devotion. Apart from the strong immaculist message engraved on the façade that has just been mentioned, one could also point to immaculist imagery within the church. Alessandro Zuccari makes the convincing case that Barocci’s Immaculate Conception from the Franciscan church of San Francesco in Urbino (ca. 1577, now in Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino) would have been well known to the Oratorian fathers. In fact, when the Barocci imitator Andrea Lilio painted the vaults of the Annunciation chapel, he placed centrally a version of Barocci’s immaculate Madonna (see fig. 2.5).57 The pose has an encompassing gesture, appropriate to a Misericordia that may have functioned happily for the Oratorians as a version of the early Christian orant. More could also be said about the unusual appearance of Mary in Muziano’s Ascension. Although including Mary in the ascension was popular in Byzantine and some earlier Italian examples, this was not the case in post-­Tridentine Italy, where prominant examplars like the Cavalier d’Arpino’s fresco in the Lateran or Jerome Nadal’s version in the Imagines did not feature Mary. Interestingly, a work that does also include Mary is Stradano’s Ascension in Santa Croce, Florence, perhaps suggesting a Franciscan inspiration to this iconography.58 Was Neri, the quiet devotee of Florentine Dominican spirituality, actually more influenced by Franciscans? The façade of the Chiesa Nuova, finished just ten years after Neri’s death, suggests that he was. This is clearly the one sentiment Neri could not share with Dominicans, in spite of his strong identification with their corporate ethos. This discussion can help resolve a curious contradiction: why Barocci, who was so popular with Franciscan-­related clients in Urbino (Conventuals and Capuchins), should instead resonate with the Dominican-­inspired Neri in Rome. In fact, Neri is perhaps less Dominican than we have thought. The general trend in the Catholic Church toward accepting Mary’s immaculacy might not have been acceptable to Dominican theology, but does not necessarily imply rejection of core Dominican themes. Nevertheless, the Dominican Rosary devotion was mostly a vita Christi and therefore automatically inappropriate for the kind of thing Neri wanted. What Neri actually implemented in decorating the altars in the Chiesa Nuova is closer to the joyful narrative of Mary’s life found in the Franciscan devotions.

Internal Typology If anything, the rosary style of devotion was populist, and the fathers of the Oratory strove to make devotion accessible to the visitors of the church. Therefore, each altarpiece followed a chronological order and featured a distinctive episode of the Virgin’s life that was easy to

56. On this tradition, see Breckenridge, “‘Et Prima Vidit.’” In fact, the Capuchins and Jesuits both strongly defended the appearance of Christ to the Virgin; it appears for instance in Nadal’s aforementioned Imagines. 57. Zuccari, “Cultura e predicazione nelle immagini dell’Oratorio,” 347. Lilio follows a reversed print, most likely that of Philippe Thomassin printed in 1591. 58. Swank, “Iconografia controriformistica,” 114, notes the rarity of the iconography. The Virgin also appeared in Naldini’s Ascension in Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence, another church of an immaculist Marian Order (Carmelites).

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recognize. In light of this, it is interesting to think about the chapel decoration because it was previously noted that the Oratorians above all sought to place altarpieces on their altars whereas the Jesuits conceived of their chapels as ensembles for which fresco decoration was just as important. In the Chiesa Nuova side chapels, there is additional decoration only in the vaults and underarches, as each chapel is pierced with a portal leading to the next chapel. Examining each of the chapels in the Chiesa Nuova, one notes that there is no rigid formula for the typological pairings, which are formalized but only broadly significative. The underarch’s painted and stucco decoration can contain Old Testament and New Testament subjects, and emblematic figures. Meanwhile, the vaults in their tripartite decoration (sometimes a rectangle, sometimes a foliated field) feature Old Testament prophets, martyred saints, and elaborations of the narrative below, as when in the Chapel of the Crucifixion a Flagellation fills the central vault field above Pulzone’s Crucifixion, or in the Chapel of the Pietà the Lamentation is found above Caravaggio’s Pietà. In the case of the Chapel of the Visitation, a figure of John the Baptist (whose mother, Elizabeth, is featured in Barocci’s painting) is shown, deepening the significance of the bridge from old to new dispensation. The comparison with the Gesù is actually more striking than the foregoing discussion suggests, for the simple fact that in many cases the stucco and vault decoration was left for much later. For example, in the Chapel of the Visitation, which hosted Barocci’s Visitation, there was no additional decoration until 1618 (see appendix 1). This is true of many other chapels. For many years, the additional decoration simply did not exist to make any meaningful iconographic connections available to the viewer.59 In some cases, there is an explicit meaning developed across the aisle, that is, a typology. While the Florentine mendicant churches do not have a typology, the Gesù certainly does and it is important to investigate this issue for the Chiesa Nuova. Pairing occurred first of all because of architectural features. The Chapels of the Nativity and Ascension, directly across the nave from one another, have unique architectural features.60 This can be explained by the fact that in Giovan Battista Guerra’s (1547–­1627) rebuilding of the church, the Chapel of the Nativity was finished first (1600) and therefore the Chapel of the Ascension (finished only in 1616) had to conform to it, even as the fathers of the Congregation of the Oratory evidently changed their mind about the overall decoration. There is furthermore planning of paired chapels, as in the offer to Barocci to paint both the Presentation of the Virgin and the Coronation of the Virgin. The very act of simultaneous commissions raises the issue of thematic relationship. As noted, the core of eight altars was also formed simultaneously, which in the same way required a consideration of thematic relationship. This would be an example of what Marilyn Lavin has called “internal typology,” that is, “scenes within the same cycle that refer to each other to intensify the reciprocity

59. For the chapel decorations, see Barbieri, Barchiesi, and Ferrara, Santa Maria in Vallicella; and Barchiesi, “S. Filippo Neri e l’iconografia mariana della Chiesa Nuova.” 60. Barbieri, Barchiesi, and Ferrara, Santa Maria in Vallicella, 167n93.

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between them.”61 Basically, the left side of the church represents the life of the Virgin before Christ’s death and the right side, after his death, since the first altarpiece on the right-­hand side is the Crucifixion. This is already significant and allows for such ideas as—­to begin with the visually prominent transept aisles of the Presentation and Coronation—­an idea of an earthly initiation and a divine initiation. Similarly, the Annunciation, which is the appearance of divinity on earth, is traded in the Assumption for Mary’s transport to heaven, home of the divine.62 And so on. This collapses the narrative flow into an alternative cross-­aisle reading. Although we problematized the direct reading of the Rosary as the source of the iconographic program, it is nevertheless significant that there was a tradition of meditating alternately on the joys of the Virgin and the sufferings of Christ during his Passion, that is, alternating between the first five and second five devotions. Broadsides of rosaries, such as Hans Schaur’s in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg (ca. 1481), match the Annunciation with Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Visitation and the Flagellation, the Nativity and Crowning of Thorns, Christ Found Teaching in the Temple and Christ Carrying the Cross, and finally the Death or Assumption of the Virgin and the Crucifixion.63 As noted, the decoration of the two chapels can be quite similar, as with the Chapels of the Annunciation and Assumption. In that example, the vault of the Chapel of the Annunciation (above Passignano’s altarpiece) features the Coronation of the Virgin, which is precisely what Giuseppe Cesari painted across the aisle. The two events fold into one of cosmic significance. This observation confirms Hibbard’s largely forgotten point that in the Chiesa Nuova, there is “also the possibility of reading across [the nave] through an ingenious interlocking system.”64 Hibbard made this observation in explaining the typology formed within the Gesù, yet his observation has not been followed up. For example, Bailey contrasts the Chiesa Nuova to the Gesù, saying, “unlike the Oratorian Chiesa Nuova, which had a more traditional chronological program arranged in a counterclockwise circle, the Gesù had a cross-­nave pairing of chapels.”65 Nevertheless, it is certainly true that the system connecting the altarpieces in the Chiesa Nuova, just like that connecting the altarpieces themselves to the chapel decoration, is not rigorously interlocking, but intuitive and broad in its symbolism. In other words, the typological pairing across the aisle was relatively simple and didn’t require too much theological clarification. In another sense, the clarification of this weak typology within the church fulfills the iconographic program upon mysteries of the Virgin. “Mystery” is a an old term that refers back to Paul’s original creation of an alternate sense to scripture, to set it apart from pagan writing. Because the sacramental and mystical sense

61. Lavin, Place of Narrative, 116. As an example, she cites the Oratorio della Croce in San Francesco, Volterra. Her discussion of the Chiesa Nuova is not classified in this way, because I am noting the effect of typology is relatively weak. 62. See Wimsatt, “Blessed Virgin.” 63. Winston-­Allen, Stories of the Rose, 41–­43. 64. Hibbard, “Ut picturae sermones,” 36. 65. Bailey, Between Renaissance and Baroque, 196.

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was more or less synonymous with the allegorical and spiritual, the nomination of such subjects had an inherent meditative purpose.66 Nevertheless, what is the real significance of these pairings? I believe they are simple truths available to the viewer but not really “cumulative” in a strict iconographic sense. They tend to reinforce a general appreciation of a single mystery without adding a substantial alternative reading. For example, after contemplating Barocci’s Visitation—­as Neri did—­ and the way in which divinity visited the humble Mary, one could turn and look at the Pentecost, yet another case of the workings of the divine spirit. If anything, in line with the Oratorian emphasis on vulnerability of the young Virgin Mary or the grieving Virgin Mary, the mediation becomes one of Mary at two different difficult periods in her life when she, paradoxically, is closest to God, that is birth and assumption. The way in which this paired devotion relies on the early Marian devotion of the Rosary rather than the strict form of the popular Dominican version, means once again that Neri drew from its spirit rather than its codified form. After seeing in the last chapter the basic features of Oratorian structure and commitments, and the aesthetic that they found in Barocci’s painting, this chapter has explored how those commitments play out in the way that Marian spirituality is engineered through the church’s decoration. Although decoration of the Chiesa Nuova is often connected to the Rosary, an attractive theory given Neri’s devotion to the Dominicans, a careful examination shows that Neri and the Oratorians instead improvised their altarpiece cycle based on simple principles of Marian devotion. With their emphasis on simple narratives of the life of the Virgin, the Oratorians focus on the experience brought by the altarpieces themselves, while they neglected the decoration of their chapels, sometimes letting them languish for years. In noting this, we have to revise our understanding of Oratorian chronology of decoration in comparison to the Jesuits, for the Oratorians quickly got altarpieces on their altars, whereas the Jesuits decorated the Gesù as a whole at the same time. The relationship of the Oratorians to the cross-­aisle pairing, or typology, that connects subjects in the church is characteristic of their overall idea of devotion. Just as Barocci sought in his Visitation to suggest the cosmic significance of the mystery without losing sight of the immediacy of the scene depicted, the Chiesa Nuova’s altarpiece cycle itself hinted at larger themes but kept attention squarely on Mary.

66. de Lubac, Exégèse médiévale, 2:19–­27. Cf. Eco, “Modern Concept of Symbol.”

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The Visitation and the Presentation of the Virgin Because of the fervor of their founder, Saint Filippo Neri, who desired that sacred images be painted by excellent artists, Barocci received the commission . . . 1 Bellori, “Life of Barocci”

The two works that cemented Barocci’s reputation in Rome were the Visitation and Presentation of the Virgin, both in the Chiesa Nuova. For an ambitious young painter like Annibale Carracci, Michelangelo da Caravaggio, Giovanni Baglione, and others, these works represented not only the latest in an ineffable “new” style, they were also commissions taken from them by a mysterious forestiere. The Institution of the Eucharist, painted for the pontiff himself, was a kind of dagger in the heart due to its obscene price of (nearly) 1,500 scudi. Some artists painted more in the Eternal City but none painted so prestigiously. In the end, Barocci dominated Roman altarpiece painting for twenty-­five years. It is interesting to consider how Barocci first came to the attention of the Oratorians in light of his core commissions for the Chiesa Nuova, the Visitation and the Presentation of the Virgin, both still in situ. While there are many reasons that Barocci was intuited to be a good choice for Oratorian patronage, the Visitation had the effect of confirming via immediate recognition these intuitions. Its arrival at the church established, within Neri’s lifetime, the direction Oratorian patronage would take. The arrival of the Visitation not only confirmed Oratorian patronage, but also set in motion other actors with similar interests, above all Federico Borromeo, who, through

1. Bellori, “Life of Federico Barocci,” ed. Pillsbury and Richards, 20; and Bellori, “Vita di Federico Barocci,” ed. Borea, 190: “per lo zelo che aveva San Filippo Neri loro istitutore che le sacre imagini si dipingessero da mani eccellenti, fu dato a fare al Barocci il quadro dell’altare . . .”

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his archbishop’s seat in Milan, motivated various commissions. The works that were consequently produced, in particular the Navitivy in the Ambrosiana, round out the widening acknowledgment of Barocci’s aesthetic and his confirmed popularity.

Political Alignments The Oratorians had an aesthetic and an iconographic program that called out for devotional works of the highest order. Within two short years—­1581 through 1583—­the Oratorians had commissioned paintings by the top artists in Rome and, indeed, in Italy: Girolamo Muziano, Scipione Pulzone, and Federico Barocci. It is interesting that Barocci, an artist from Rome, was so highly favored in Rome, especially with Oratorian priests, but it is perhaps worthwhile to emphasize why tiny Urbino was even on people’s minds, for more than Barocci’s reputation was at work here. Indeed, in these commissions and many throughout Italy, the level of involvement of the reigning duke, Francesco Maria II della Rovere, was unusual. Stuart Lingo has convincingly shown how it was at this time in the 1580s that Barocci and Francesco Maria II more or less struck a mutually beneficial bargain.2 Barocci was unwilling to travel and serve as a traditional court artist, as might be found at the papal court. Nor, however, was Urbino big enough for Barocci to attract work in the manner that Titian did in cosmopolitan Venice. Francesco Maria II couldn’t attract artists of the highest caliber and so by aligning his diplomacy to the desires of far-­flung potentates, he became a kind of broker. While this arrangement was relatively unique in Italy, it should not detract from what one might call Urbino’s geopolitical importance in Europe at the time. When the duke’s ambassador was contacted by the Oratorians, the dukes of Urbino—­Guidobaldo II della Rovere and his son, Francesco Maria II della Rovere—­had been Philip II’s commanders in Italy for twenty-­five years.3 Duke Francesco Maria was extremely pious and his profile placed him into a philo-­Spanish group that comprised most of the reforming church; in addition, his duchy and the nearby lands of the Romagna were the breadbasket for troops serving throughout the European continent. Historians have long speculated on Filippo Neri’s canonization as an event that also saw four Spaniards raised to sainthood: Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier, Teresa of Avila, and Isidore the Farmer. But Thomas Dandelet’s Spanish Rome has recently brought to light the interesting convergence of reforming cardinals and the Spanish crown.4 The turn to Spain followed on Paul IV’s failed French-­supported adventure to expel the Spanish from Italy.

2. See Lingo, “Francesco Maria II della Rovere and Federico Barocci.” 3. It is true that Francesco Maria II did not actually confirm his command until 8 November 1582, shortly before Barocci’s commission. This leaves a gap of eight years from his father’s death. The duke, however, had been petitioning Philip II constantly for the condotta and his fortunes—­through his sisters’ marriage alliances, for example—­were strongly tied to the Spanish. 4. Dandelet, Spanish Rome.

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His successors—­Pius IV, Pius V, Gregory XIII, and Sixtus V—­all had important (if imperfect) alliances with the Spanish crown. There is thus no surprise that in 1582, when the new Spanish ambassador to the Holy See, the Count of Olivares, Don Enrico Guzman, arrived in Rome, the pope’s nephew Giacomo Boncompagni offered him a gun salute as castellan of the Castel Sant’Angelo that aroused suspicion in the French community.5 There was even an engagement—­mistaken by the Venetian ambassador Zane as a marriage—­of Duke Francesco Maria II’s sister Lavinia to Giacomo.6 Of the cardinals, Alessandro Farnese (the uncle of the Duke of Urbino) and Girolamo della Rovere already were known to be in the Spanish party, but so were Cardinal Boncompagni, Cardinal Montalto (nephew of Sixtus V), and Cardinal Ippolito Aldobrandini (before his elevation to pope) and then Aldobrandini’s own nephews.7 Interestingly, we can locate our artists within this “Spanish” milieu. Pulzone, for example, in 1574 held the baptism of his son at the church of the XII. Apostoli with Giacomo Boncompagni and Francesca Colonna Orsini as witnesses.8 Muziano did several works for the Cesi family, and Pierdonato Cesi was principal benefactor of the Chiesa Nuova; of course, Muziano was court painter to Gregory XIII Boncompagni. As for Barocci, Spanish interests needed only travel across the palazzo to contact the painter through the duke’s minister, who lived in the same palace as the ambassador to the Spanish crown, both renting from the Duke of Urbino.9 In fact, in the very years that Barocci was working on his altarpiece, at San Lorenzo in Damaso Giacomo Boncompagni again stood as witness at the baptism of Federico Cesi (10–­12 March 1585) along with Donna Maria Pimentel, wife of the Spanish ambassador, the Count of Olivares.10 Therefore, the subjects of the duchy of Urbino had special access to the papal court and their ancestral Franciscan identification and commitment to Marian themes was ready to find quick resonance in Rome. In any case, diplomatic avenues were extremely open and Federico Barocci, who was already by this time closely associated with the ducal della Rovere family, was himself already poised to enter into the symbolic marketplace of religious devotion in Rome.

First Contact It is therefore quite easy to imagine the diplomatic channels by which Barocci came to the attention of the Oratory. But what of more substantial affinities relating to style and function? It is well known that Barocci’s Madonna del Popolo had a great effect upon its unveiling in Arezzo in 1579, earning Barocci a great deal of fame (and the attention of

5. Ibid., 76. 6. Zane, “Relazione del Signor Lazaro Mocenigo.” 7. Dandelet, Spanish Rome, 138–­39. 8. Donò, “Scipione Pulzone (1545–­1598),” 12. 9. This is the Palazzo della Rovere in via Lata, the ancestor of the present Palazzo Doria-­Pamphilj. 10. Narducci, “Documenti riguardanti Federico Cesi,” 781.

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young Tuscan artists). In the late 1570s and early 1580s, Barocci was also personally and collaboratively (with the master engraver Cornelis Cort) engaged in the popularization of many of his compositions in prints; Cort’s engravings of The Rest on the Return from Egypt (1577) and the Madonna del Gatto (1578) were extremely popular, as were Barocci’s etched engravings of the Perdono (ca. 1581) and the Madonna in the Clouds (ca. 1582).11 However, there may be closer connections that preceded this public acclaim and self-­ promotion. Barocci was in Rome around 1555 and again from 1560 to 1563, when Filippo Neri was already well known in the city for his spiritual meetings and works for pilgrims. Both Neri and Barocci’s first patron, Cardinal Giulio Feltrio della Rovere (1533–­78), were connected to the Accademia delle Notti Vaticane, organized by Carlo Borromeo.12 During Barocci’s second stay in Rome (1562), Cardinal Giulio’s doctor, Bartolomeo Eustachio, was called upon to aid an ailing Filippo Neri.13 Ironically, when Barocci became ill the next year, he may have been treated by the same doctor, for Bellori says “but even the cures ordered by Cardinal della Rovere from the best doctors were all in vain.”14 One can speculate on a small neck-­watch made by Barocci’s uncle, Giovanni Maria Barocci, and signed 1563, that was almost certainly owned by Neri. A watch still in Neri’s rooms at the Chiesa Nuova matches one mentioned in Neri’s Processo for beatification and canonization, shaped like an egg with a raised movement to tell the time by touch.15 If it was delivered when Federico was still in Rome, he would have been the natural contact to assure it reached Neri’s hands. One cannot rule out an Oratorian presence in the Marches, if not Urbino, that could have facilitated a connection. While it is true that the Oratory was not established in Fossombrone until 1608, for example, the Oratory had interests in San Saverino and Fermo rather early.16 Domenico Pinelli, the archbishop of Fermo, invited Oratorians to his jurisdiction in 1579; the establishment and ratification of oratories followed.17 The Duke of Urbino and Barocci’s oftentime patron, Francesco Maria II (1549–­1631), even recommended the Urbinate architect Ludovico Carducci to them, a fact surely known to the painter.18 Furthermore, several Marchegians were members of the Oratory.19 Finally, it is interesting that

11. We must not overlook an entrepreneurial motivation on Barocci’s part. As Louis Richards (Pillsbury and Richards, Graphic Art of Federico Barocci) points out, each had a ten-year copyright attached to it, the second at the outset in the anticipation of great popularity. I do not list Barocci’s Annunciation for it was done after he had won the Roman commission. 12. For Cardinal della Rovere, see my “Cardinal Giulio Feltrio della Rovere: Reform and Renewed Ambition,” in Verstegen, Patronage and Dynasty, 89–108. 13. Gallonio, Vita di San Filippo Neri, 135. 14. Bellori, “Life of Federico Barocci,” ed. Pillsbury and Richards, 15; and Bellori, “Vita di Federico Barocci,” ed. Borea, 184: “furono vane tutte le cure che il cardinale della Rovere fece usare per la sua salute da’ medici li piú esperti.” 15. On the watch, see Morpurgo, “L’orologio di S. Filippo Neri”; and Panicali, Orologi e Orologiai. Panicali only wishes to concede that the watch was owned by the congregation, but Morpurgo cites the testimony of Giovanni Battista Zazzara (27 July 1596, the year after Neri’s death), noting Neri’s watch “toccondola con il dito, cognosceva che hora era.” 16. Lingo, Capuchins and the Art of History, 248; with further reference to Carloni, “Luoghi filippini nelle Marche.” 17. On Pinelli and Fermo, see Barbieri, Barchiesi, and Ferrara, Santa Maria in Vallicella, 79. Cf. Cistellini, San Filippo Neri, 1:269–­73, 307, 420–­28, 672. The communities were established and ratified (in parenthesis) in the following years: San Severino, 1579 (1585); Fermo, 1582 (1597); Camerino (1591); Fano, 1598 (1608). Cf. Mariano, Le chiese filippine nelle Marche. 18. On Francesco Maria II and the architect, see Cistellini, San Filippo Neri, 1:424n59. 19. Both Tommaso Bozio (1548–­1610) from Gubbio and Flaminio Ricci (1545–­1610) from Fermo entered the Congre-

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Lavinia della Rovere Orsini (1521–­1601), a cousin of the dukes of Urbino (her grandmother was sister to Julius II), decided to gift large sums of money to the Congregation of the Oratory in 1583, also leaving them, at her death, her home next to the Chiesa Nuova.20 It was Edmund Pillsbury who first hypothesized that a couple of Barocci’s drawings might have been after Neri’s death mask.21 One—­Windsor 5228—­may be safely dismissed since it perfectly matches the Bologna Lamentation as an auxiliary cartoon.22 The other, sold at New York auction to the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas, is too generic to make a definitive connection.23 Another drawing, intermittently on the art market, shows striking suggestions of Neri’s angular features (plate IV).24 Drawn to the scale of Saint Joseph in Barocci’s Circumcision, it nevertheless could have been an homage to the holy man. Further, its laughing face—­removed in the final painting—­seems to provocatively name Neri. That Barocci did or did not make such a drawing is not crucial. What is at issue is a formative influence upon Barocci, one reaching him when he was still young enough to shape his spirituality and indeed approach to making images. In light of so much circumstantial evidence—­Cardinal della Rovere, his doctor Eustachio, the Urbino family ties to the Borromeo family—­it seems most economical to suppose some connection between Giulio Feltrio della Rovere and Neri that brought the religious body and Barocci together. More particularly, the easy aristocratic religiosity held by Giulio Feltrio and displayed in the works by Barocci that he owned would have been communicated to the Oratorians. He was a famous artist, but also one whose style was not a surprise.

The Visitation (Chiesa Nuova) The danger of focusing on the altarpieces Barocci sent off to Rome is the tendency to fall into a “great man” scheme whereby the artist brings about stylistic influence solely through his irresistible style. Fortunately, we do not have to fall into this error because in the period under discussion Sixtus V, a Marchegian, was commissioning works in the Roman style in

gation in 1571. 20. Lavinia della Rovere was the daughter of Niccolo Franciotti della Rovere (son of Julius II’s sister Luchina) and Laura Orsini. Lavinia was married to Paolo Orsini (d. 1581), who fought alongside Guidobaldo della Rovere II for Venice and the Papal States. For Lavinia, see Frettoni, “Lavinia della Rovere,” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 37 (1989); and Cistellini, San Filippo Neri, 1:489. 21. Pillsbury and Richards, Graphic Art of Federico Barocci. For the death mask, see Melasecchi, “Nascita e sviluppo,” 34, fig. 21. 22. As will be outlined in my monograph in progress, coauthored with John Marciari, “Federico Barocci and the Science of Drawing in Early Modern Italy.” 23. Head of an Old Man, 28 x 19.4 cm, Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela. Cf. Master Drawings and Prints, no. 13. 24. Head of Saint Joseph, 23.5 x w: 17.7 cm, red and white chalk with charcoal on faded blue paper; currently Galerie Hans, Hamburg (formerly Arnoldi-­Livie); Emiliani, Federico Barocci, 2:259. This drawing has been connected to the collection of Antonio Tronsarelli, which if true, is especially enticing in that Tronsarelli lived in the Parione district near the Chiesa Nuova; Lafranconi, “Antonio Tronsarelli.” Tronsarelli had a son, Pierfrancesco, who was vicar of the Oratorians’ Neapolitan house; Cistellini, San Filippo Neri, 3:1762.

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the Marches close to Barocci.25 These were not simple provincial works, but included decorations for one of the most revered relics of all Christianity, the Holy House in Loreto. Furthermore, Urbinate artists trained by or associated with Barocci (Antonio Viviani, Andrea Lilio) participated in the Roman projects. And Barocci’s friend Federico Zuccaro, the dean of Roman painting, spent time in the Marches (1582–­83, 1603, 1608).26 Year by year, both Romans and Urbinates were made aware of contemporary developments. Barocci’s first Roman altarpiece commission was for the Chapel of the Visitation of the Chiesa Nuova, obtained in 1582 when Francesco Pozzomiglio bought the rights to the chapel (plate I).27 As noted, the Oratorian fathers exerted strict control over the commission and gave the family two choices of painters to paint the Visitation, Girolamo Muziano and Federico Barocci.28 Barocci was chosen in spite of his reputation for slowness (which was already well known in Rome) and in spite of the fact that he had not set foot there for twenty years. The Oratorians approached the Duke of Urbino’s minister seeking a Barocci altarpiece. The fee that was finally negotiated was quite high, 550 scudi, yet the fathers respected it (although this does not rule out some haggling). The payment is in fact consistent with the going rate Barocci was then receiving. The watershed picture was surely the Madonna del Popolo, a still “regional” work (Arezzo and Urbino are not too distant), a large painting for which Barocci received 300 scudi. For the Senigallia Entombment, the artist asked for 600 scudi and had to settle for 300.29 At around the same time, Barocci broke the 500-­scudi mark for an altarpiece with his work for the Martyrdom of Saint Vitalis in Ravenna. There, he was offered 640 gold ducats, or about 580 scudi.30 Therefore, the Visitation—­smaller and less complex than the Vitalis—­is completely on Barocci’s present career trajectory. The commission has not survived, only the price. Nevertheless, it is not out of hand to suggest that Barocci traveled to Rome to sign the contract. He had done so in 1575 for the altarpiece for the Church of Santa Maria della Pieve in Arezzo, and traveled with it in 1579 to see it properly installed in its church. Barocci likewise traveled to Ravenna to install his Martyrdom of Saint Vitalis. Given that he was still midcareer and this was his first big Roman commission, it seems reasonable that he would have complied with the custom of signing the contract personally. It is interesting to consider in this light his letter to his patron

25. The most important sites were the Holy House (Santa Casa) at Loreto (where Barocci contributed the Annunciation now in the Vatican) and the Sanctuary of Saint Mary of the Virgins (Santuario di Santa Maria delle Vergini) at Macerata. On these monuments see Dal Poggetto, Le arti nelle Marche. 26. Santi di Tito was in Urbino around 1595 on his return trip from Loreto; Bury, “Senarega Chapel in San Lorenzo, Genoa,” 351n57. 27. Visitation of the Virgin and Saint Elizabeth, 285 x 187 cm; see Olsen, Federico Barocci, 179; Emiliani, Federico Barocci, 2:217–­29; Emiliani, Federico Barocci [2008], 2:37–­57; Barbieri, Barchiesi, and Ferrara, Santa Maria in Vallicella, 126–­31; and Mann, Bohn with Plazzotta, Federico Barocci, 197–­211. 28. See 7 June 1582, ACO, C.I.2, fol. 21, quoted in Barbieri, Barchiesi, and Ferrara, Santa Maria in Vallicella: “Che il quadro della cappella di m[aestro] Francesco Pozzomiglio si processi di farlo fare da m[aestro] Federico Barocci da Urbino overo del Mutiano con m[aestro] Federico la opera il mezzo di m[aestro] Antonio da Faenza.” 29. Olsen, Federico Barocci, 169. 30. Ibid., 172–­73.

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in Perugia, Simonetto Anastagi, to whom he “wishes to God to go to Rome.”31 No doubt, Barocci was aware of the decorative projects being undertaken by Gregory XIII and knew it meant fame and wealth. When in Rome, struck by the smiling Filippo Neri, he may have captured the holy man’s visage in the drawing just mentioned. Like Scipione Pulzone, Barocci was probably requested to supply a cartoon to be set in place in the chapel. The cartoon now in the Uffizi (inv. 1784) may have been borrowed from the painter by the Oratorian fathers. In keeping with Barocci’s working method, the overall design was determined from studies and then fixed in a model. Then the model was overlaid with a grid and enlarged into the cartoon. From then, however, Barocci went on to create individual color pastel and oil sketches of different scaled parts (see, for example, the sketch on the cover), and it is this later analytic step that took him so long. It is no surprise that two years after the commission, Cardinal Cesi complained about Barocci’s slowness.32 Despite the delay, everyone was happy with the delivered work. In fact, the duke’s minister, Grazioso Graziosi, reported that lines were backed up outside the church for three days after the unveiling of the painting.33 For the composition of the Visitation, Alessandro Zuccari has suggested that Barocci may have been influenced by the Rosary book of Alberto da Castello, owned by Filippo Neri and still in the Vallicelliana Library.34 The woodcut for the “Salutatione” within the Rosary book is indeed strikingly like Barocci’s final composition, and the supplying of a sample image is consistent with the iconographic control the fathers exerted on their painters. However, a series of very small quick ink sketches, or scarpigni, that record Barocci’s very earliest ideas of the composition show that he was interested in a number of solutions to the traditional iconography. Barocci begins with the viewer looking over the back of Saint Elizabeth toward the Virgin, whom she is embracing (fig. 3.1). Barocci then turns to a more lateral viewing of the scene, introducing a step as one woman walks up to another. Finally, he settles on a solution that is remarkably like the final painting, in which Elizabeth is clearly on the left, the Virgin on the right, and an onlooking maid is on the right, as in the final painting. One way to temper Zuccari’s conclusion without abandoning it altogether is to say that the fathers wanted Barocci to capture the simplicity and directness of the woodcut, so successful for popular devotion, even if he did not have to copy it as a rigid model. Stuart Lingo has shown how the final solution transformed the scene from a narrative istoria to a modern icon.35 In particular, freezing the action into an embrace and Mary’s

31. Federico Barocci to Simonetto Anastagi, 2 October 1573, in Bottari and Ticozzi, Raccolta di lettere, 3:84. 32. There is further correspondence between Cardinal Cesi and Duke Francesco Maria II; cf. BO 1608, fasc. 1, Cesi to Duke of Urbino, 9 March 1585. 33. Grazioso Graziosi to Duke Francesco Maria II, in Gronau, Documenti artistici urbinati, 157: “La tavola . . . piace tanto generalmente ad ogni uno, dico ancora a quelli della professione, che non occorre farvi su pensiero alcuno. Se gli è fatta per tre giorni continui la processione a vederla.” 34. Alberto da Castello, Rosario della gloriosa Vergine Maria appeared in Venice first in 1521 and thereafter in several editions (1534, 1566, 1567). Castellano (d. 1522) was a Dominican friar from Venice. On Castellano’s influence on Barocci, see Zuccari, “Cultura e predicazione nelle immagini dell’Oratorio,” 345. 35. Lingo, Federico Barocci, 84–­89.

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Fig. 3.1: Four scarpigni at the same scale: Barocci, compositional studies, ca. 1582 (left to right: Statensmuseum for Kunst, Copenhagen; Fondation Custodia Collection Fritz Lugt, Paris; Institut Neerlandais, Nationalmuseum, Paris; Stockholm; Stockholm [2]).

turn to a pose in profile create an iconic quality. It is interesting how such a painting fulfills the Oratorian desire to create a “mystery,” both a narrative and allegory. The brilliance of Barocci’s solution is that he is able to suggest the anagogical qualities directly in the narrative, without external indications. The very iconic pose and otherworldly color are enough to allow the viewer to know that more is being suggested here than a chance meeting. The only model we possess for the painting is in Edinburgh.36 The relationship of the painting to this modello is clearly geometrical and can be fixed at 1:6 (fig. 3.2). Barocci regularly relied on a reduction compass to use regular scales so that he could transfer designs quickly and easily.37 Although the figures are of slightly different sizes, it is clear that the architectural background was traced through the various stages of execution and remained constant.

36. Edinburgh, inv. 216, 463 x 316 mm; Emiliani, Federico Barocci, 2:2; Emiliani, Federico Barocci [2008], 2:56. 37. Marciari and Verstegen “Grande quanto l’opera”; and our forthcoming “Federico Barocci and the Science of Drawing in Early Modern Italy.”

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Barocci proceeded immediately from this model to the cartoon, and his scene changed on its path to the final work. There is one drawing in Berlin that was made to be placed directly over the model, thereby correcting the pose of the maid on the right (Berlin 20522). There are also a number of drawings made at the very close ratio of 1:5 (Berlin 20527 and 20531). Judging them according to their function, it is clear that these drawings supplied another provisional model that is now lost. The final painting is too small for these to have contributed to a bozzetto. A compositional drawing one-­fifth the size of the painting would be 57 cm, exactly in Barocci’s range of modelli. Keeping this size in mind, it might be worthwhile to look more closely at a number of reduced copies of the painting that exist, which might reflect this lost compositional drawing, including ones in the Casa Natale di Raffaello (85 x 65 cm) and the Oratorio della Visitazione (78 x 54 cm), both in Urbino.38 Examining these examples in person reveals workshop intervention, but what is more interesting is their approximately fifth-­size scale and the possibility that their scale served the artist in preparing the work, if not themselves, perhaps painted over.

38. For Zuccari’s painting in the the Oratorio della Visitazione, see Museo di Palazzo Venezia, La Regola e la Fama, 526, no. 84. For the Casa di Raffaelle painting, see Cucco, Casa Natale di Raffaello, 89. Other examples can be found in the Museo Albani, Urbino, and the National Gallery of Scotland (inv. 767).

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Fig. 3.2: Federico Barocci, Visitation of the Virgin and Saint Elizabeth, ca. 1582, in the Chiesa Nuova, Rome (photo by author) reduced six times, compared to Edinburgh modello (National Galleries, Scotland) and Berlin 20522 (bpk, Berlin/ Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museum, Berlin/photo by Jörg P. Anders/Art Resource).

Consistent with taking the commission very seriously, Barocci has further drawings at an even larger scale. There are four drawings at 1:2 scale, including U11622r and U11622v (studies of Joseph’s hand and sack, respectively) and Berlin 20515 and 20533 (the arm and hands of Elizabeth and Mary). These drawings show details as they would appear in the final painting. While we need not hypothesize that Barocci attempted a formal bozzetto, it is interesting that these drawings match perfectly a work in the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino, attributed to Barocci’s pupil Antonio Viviani. More likely, Barocci—­perhaps with Viviani or another assistant—­worked up a cartoon at this scale, which remained in the studio after the master’s death. But the coloring—­which would have been more easily appreciated before Borromini’s oratory next door blocked the windows—­is typical of Barocci in brilliantly pairing a wispy,

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monochrome background with bright, shimmering masses of drapery in the foreground. The Virgin is being embraced by Saint Elizabeth, but the iconicity of the image is interrupted as Zachariah looks out suddenly and Joseph stoops to pick up his bag, while an ordinary woman on the right looks on. Barocci combines sweetness with realism. The faces of the women especially are idealized and the draperies are bright and somewhat regularized. At the same time, there are details like the onlooker’s chickens, her straw hat, the donkey on the left, and the brass pot on the ground that are all painted with skillful illusionism. In this way, the plausibility of the image is never lost. It has already been noted that the scene of the Visitation, which relates to the “exaltation of the humble,” was primed to summarize Oratorian values. But the beautiful formal qualities that Barocci imparts to the subject—­its soft, melting sfumato—­must be supplemented with iconography. To lay out the full iconographic significance of Barocci’s treatment of the

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subject, we may rely on an insightful analysis by Ulrike Tarnow.39 Its gist is that although this painting is about the incarnation of God in man, Barocci has done everything he can to stress the absence and powerlessness of Christ in favor of the gentle humility of his mother, Mary, and John’s mother, Elizabeth. In fact, access to Mary’s womb is particularly downplayed and impossible to see, as this area is covered in drapery as Mary reaches to embrace Elizabeth. Instead, we are made to focus on the quiet act of recognition between the two pregnant women, so important for the salvation of the world, but at this point just two expectant mothers. Barocci draws attention to John obliquely, as the dusk sky suggests the setting of the old dispensation of the Mosaic law, while an ingenious visual pun of a metal clamp holding the steps together underfoot—­mostly visible in Gijsbert van Veen’s engraving—­references John’s role as “clamp” (fibula) between the Old and New Testaments.40 As proof that this scene is as humble as it gets, the only sentient being that takes in the scene and has the self-­ consciousness to direct its significance to the viewer is indeed the lowest of the low, the ass, the only figure meeting our gaze. As noted, the Visitation was reincorporated into the rebuilding of all the chapels (1598) overseen by Giovan Battista Guerra.41 The change is evident with a view of the interior of San Girolamo degli Schiavoni where the aisleless church’s nave meets the chapels (and altarpieces). The original back of the chapel would have terminated with the painting but this was extended into semicircular apses behind them. Barocci’s work underwent the same adaption and in fact Guerra was paid for refounding the wall behind the chapel.42 When Barocci’s work arrived, the Chiesa Nuova already housed works by Durante Alberti and Cesare Nebbia, but the Visitation set a new standard. Barocci’s altarpiece certainly had the opportunity to exert wide influence, as it was engraved by Gisjbert van Veen above in 1588 and again by Philippe Thomassin in 1594. But what is most important to point out is the way that Barocci provided a chromatic counterpart to the pietistic sentiment expressed by Pulzone and Muziano; they directed the counter-­maniera toward the same ideal but could go nowhere near to reaching it as had Barocci. The Visitation came to the special attention of Filippo Neri himself, the leader of the Oratorians. Upon his death in 1595, when the processo for his sanctification was begun,

39. Tarnow, Artefice Cristiano. 40. As noted by Tarnow, the fifth-­century church father Petrus Chrysologus had referred to John as “Legis et gratiae fibula.” It is worth pointing out here that van Veen’s print matches Barocci’s modello almost perfectly, suggesting that Barocci must have had some direct connection with van Veen’s workshop in order to have it engraved and distributed. 41. As noted in chapter 2, the old church was demolished in 1575 and later rebuilt. In 1582 Martino Longhi began rebuilding the church (choir and cupola in 1590–­91, barrel vault over nave in 1592–­93, and façade in 1604–­6). Patrons saw to the decoration of their individual chapels until 1582. However, in 1594 it was decided to enlarge the church and make the old private chapels part of the aisles. As Alessandro Nova has shown (“Il ‘modello’ di Martino Longhi il Vecchio”), Longhi’s original design was used for San Girolamo degli Schiavoni, a single-­entrance work. The new design required two side entrances for the aisles. The new chapels were built from then until as late as 1617 (with the exception of the Chapel of the Pietà—­which Caravaggio would eventually decorate—­that had special indulgences), and the transept in 1588. The Chapel of the Visitation was not altered until after Neri’s death because of his affection for Barocci’s work, discussed below. 42. He was paid “nel refondare et alzare la parte di muro dreto la cappella della Visitatione” in 1598; Barbieri, Barchiesi, and Ferrara, Santa Maria in Vallicella, 128.

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witnesses reported seeing him in the chapel, where he performed miracles or was seen in ecstasy.43 He was said to perform his own personal devotions before it, sometimes spending hours lost in rapture. It was Father Bacci who recorded Neri’s preference for the painting and his raptures there in later editions of his biography of 1622, recalling how “he would stay in the Chapel of the Visitation where he pleasurably and willingly contemplated the image of Barocci.”44 This story was repeated by Baglione and Bellori.45 These stories about Barocci and Filippo Neri are more or less unique in art history, and they cannot have been lost on followers of Neri like Federico Borromeo. To be sure, when Gregory XIII and other cardinals came to view Niccolò Circignani’s frescoes in the Jesuit novitiate church of Santo Spirito Rotondo, they were brought to tears.46 One might even remark that they influenced the work on the instruments of martyrdom, Trattato de gli instrumenti di martirio (1591), by the Oratorian Gallonio. Already the two differ in the sense that Circignani’s works are directed to novitiates leaving Rome and Gallonio’s is for the spiritual devotion of those remaining in Rome: “the scenes of martyrdom painted by Circignani . . . were meant to nurture their zeal of evangelization, Gallonio’s treatise was probably meant to enliven the apostolic ardor of the young members of the Oratory.”47 But Circignani’s main aim was traditional in the Tridentine sense, to instruct and inspire to piety. He relied on mnemotechniques to bring the image before the mind’s eye for contemplation; in Leslie Korrick’s words, the weeping “was the response to the phantasms generated by the frescoes in the mind of the meditant.”48 Barocci’s images are different in being themselves visions. Barocci did not produce a “miraculous image” but he did produce—­due to his biography, style, and body of work—­an appropriate locus of the miraculous.49 For example, Father Gallonio in his 1601 biography of Neri noted that the saint was once again before Barocci’s image when a demon appeared to him.50 The demon disguised himself as a boy and taunted Neri, who got up from his devotions and chased the demon away. Barocci’s image, and Neri’s own processo imbricated with

43. Incisa della Rochetta and Vian, Il Primo Processo per San Filippo Neri, 1:273, 330, 337, 340, 2:113, 125. Federico Borromeo also contributed his testimony (3:420–­25) although he does not mention the anecdote. 44. Bacci, Vita di San Filippo Neri, 221: “stava . . . nella Cappella della Visitazione dove si tratteneva volentieri piacendogli assai quell’immagine del Barocci.” As noted, the story does not appear in the first, unillustrated, life of Neri by Gallonio, Vita di San Filippo Neri. 45. Baglione, Le vite de’ pittori scultori et architetti, 134: “egli staua in quella cappella a far le sue orationi.” Bellori, “Life of Federico Barocci,” ed. Pillsbury and Richards, 18; Bellori, “Vita di Federico Barocci,” ed. Borea, 190: “Dicesi che San Filippo si compiaceva molto di questa imagine, e spesso si ritirava nella cappella alle sue divote contemplazioni.” 46. This is recorded by the rector, Michele Lauretano, in his diary. For documentation, see Korrick, “On the Meaning of Style.” 47. Leone, Saints and Signs, 214. 48. Korrick, “On the Meaning of Style,” 177. 49. On the rare occasion of a modern work attaining the status of “miraculous,” and then only in the early years of the sixteenth century, see van Kessel, “How to Make an Image Work.” 50. Gallonio, Vita di San Filippo Neri, ed. Russo, 211. The research of Maria Bonadonna Russo (who edited Gallonio’s Vita of Neri) has shown through other evidence that the episode must have happened in 1589. In Gallonio’s life, the event is listed under the year 1584 (before the installation of Barocci’s altarpiece), and the illustration in Bacci’s life covers numerous episodes (in 1555, 1584, 1593) and shows Neri before a crucifix.

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it, were subject to the same chaste skepticism of the Counter-­Reformation mind-­set. Yet within those confines, they worked together to spur a modern miracle, or series of miracles. The remarkable mark of approval of a Counter-­Reformation saint for an artist has fueled more than anything the myth of Barocci, painter of “Oratorian piety.” Without deciding on the issue as yet, we may say that the fact that Barocci was a favorite of Neri must have led to his next remarkable commissions four years later. In the meantime Barocci does not seem to have waited expectantly for further word from Rome, for he was busy with so many other projects. The year he completed the Visitation, Barocci agreed to treat a secular subject, The Flight of Aeneas from Troy, for Emporer Rudolf II. He did the Madonna del Rosario for the church of San Rocco, Senigallia, the port city of the duchy, and he did the Circumcision (now in the Louvre) for a confraternity in Pesaro. Senigallia and Pesaro were important stops for both papal and royal legations and there is every indication that Barocci regarded these as both religiously fulfilling and important (not to mention well-­paying) commissions.

The Presentation of the Virgin (Chiesa Nuova) and the Proposed Santa Prassede (Milan) Barocci’s success with the Visitation, and especially its favor with Filippo Neri, demonstrated to the Oratorians what they were actually after. This is an important methodological point. Religious patronage is a compromise of many contingent facts, the religious desires of the religious order being only one. Retrospectively, however, one can recognize a successful action and imitate it. Retrospective determinism is not the same thing as a group determined to act a certain way, without exception. In 1590 Pope Sixtus V died. After the fifteen-­day papacy of Urban VII Castagna (1590), a great friend of the Oratory was elected, Niccolò Sfondrato (Gregory XIV, 1590–­91), who was the uncle of Neri’s pupil Paolo Emilio Sfondrato. If Gregory XIII had promoted the Oratory and Sixtus V had been relatively indifferent, Gregory XIV had legitimate sympathy and enthusiasm for Filippo Neri.51 Yet he died only after ten months. After another short papacy, that of Innocent IX (1591), Cardinal Ippolito Aldobrandini was elected Clement VIII in 1592 (d. 1605). He shared many of Sixtus’s ideas and continued his building and decoration programs.52 Remarkably, Clement too was born in the Marches, but at that time it was directly under della Rovere sovereignty.53 Clement was sympathetic to the Capuchins (his court preacher was one). His connections to the Oratory were particularly strong, and he was a close friend of the Oratorians Silvio Antoniano and Cesare Baronio, his confessor.

51. Ponnelle and Bordet, St. Philip Neri and the Roman Society of His Times, 515. 52. On Clement’s patronage of the arts, see Abromson, Painting in Rome during the Papacy of Clement VIII; Macioce, Undique splendent; and Freiberg, Lateran in 1600. 53. Clement’s father, Silvestro, had worked there in exile from the Medici and Clement himself was born in Fano. His sister Giulia married and contined to live in Senigallia. Her son, Cinzio, was a cardinal whose titulary church (like Giulio della Rovere and the della Rovere popes, Sixtus IV and Julius II) was San Pietro in Vincoli.

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In these years it is difficult to distinguish where Barocci’s fame ends and appreciation of his unique style begins. In any case, the Visitation set off a great deal of interest in the artist. The success of the painting may have led Cardinal Alessandro Farnese to request a work by Barocci for himself. But like many after him, Farnese would be discouraged from negotiating a commission and he seems instead to have turned to Girolamo Muziano, who began his Circumcision for the high altar in 1587.54 In the following years, Clement VIII would play an important role in patronizing Barocci. For now, we are interested in the immediate echoes of the arrival of the Visitation. We know that around that time, Gabriele Paleotti—­whom we saw earlier giving the best theological justification of the effect of Barocci’s painting in his 1582 treatise—­made overtures to obtain a painting for his chapel in the Bolognese church of San Pietro.55 Likewise, another devotee of Neri, Cardinal Sfondrato (who will be mentioned again in the context of another later Barocci commission) sought out a painting.56 Knowing that the cardinal would not likely get one directly from Barocci, the Duke of Urbino considered trading one of his own for one of Sfondrato’s Raphaels, including the Madonna of Loreto (Musée Condé, Chantilly). Official Oratorian patronage kept apace too. Around 1591, the idea was promoted to have Barocci provide both a Presentation of the Virgin in the left transept and a Coronation of the Virgin for the right transept.57 It is interesting to note that at exactly this time invitations were made by the Duke of Urbino, Francesco Maria II della Rovere, to two Oratorians—­C esare Baronio and Tommaso Bozio—­to become bishop of Senigallia and archbishop of Urbino, respectively, within the duchy of Urbino.58 There is no causal link with Barocci here, of course, but the sympathy between ducal house and enlightened cleric is evident. Equally worth pointing out is the great friendship between Archibishop of Turin Cardinal Girolamo della Rovere and Filippo Neri.59 Although from the Vinovo branch of the family, Cardinal Girolamo della Rovere was treated as parente of the dukes of Urbino, and was regarded as an ally who was papabile in the College of Cardinals, and in fact might have taken Clement VIII’s seat if he had not died in the conclave.

54. Gronau, Documenti artistici urbinati, 188–­89. 55. For Paleotti’s attempted commission, see Bianchi, La politica delle immagini. The year before, when he was received into the Order of the Golden Fleece, Duke Francesco Maria II was hosted in Cardinal Paleotti’s home; Signorotto, “Urbino nell’età di Filippo II.” 56. See the letter from Duke Francesco Maria della Rovere to his mother, Vittoria Farnese, 1 November 1596, ASF, filza 294, fol. 279, in Gronau, Documenti artistici urbinati, letter CCLXXVI, 193. John Shearman has made reference to further documents in the Corsini Archive, Florence; see Brown, Genius of Rome. 57. G. Fedeli to Talpa, 6 December 1591, ACN.XI.1.174, cited in Ponnelle and Bordet, St. Philip Neri and the Roman Society of His Times, 414; Strong, La Chiesa Nuova; Emiliani, Federico Barocci, 2:347–­59; Cistellini, San Filippo Neri, 1:757; Barbieri, Barchiesi, and Ferrara, Santa Maria in Vallicella, 190n395; and Verstegen, “Federico Barocci, Federico Borromeo and the Oratorian Orbit.” A copy of this letter was provided to me by Father Giovanni Ferrara of the Congregazione dell’Oratorio di San Filippo Neri, for which I am extremely grateful. 58. For Baronio, see Capecelatro, La vita di S. Filippo Neri, 2:603; Calenzio, La vita e gli scritti del cardinale Cesare Baronio, 265. For Bozio, see Piero Craveri, “Bozio, Tommaso,” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 13:568–­71. 59. Ponnelle and Bordet, St. Philip Neri and the Roman Society of His Times, 485, 488–89.

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As regards this new commission, it is important that two altarpieces were offered to Barocci. This pairing of two works is not unique: contemporaneously Barocci proposed to provide two companion paintings for the Sacramental Chapel of Urbino Cathedral, a Last Judgment (1599, in situ) and a Fall of Manna. However, it makes sense for aesthetic reasons to have the same artist paint flanking laterals in a chapel. The reason we may go on to support the idea that Barocci was seen to embody so effectively an Oratorian aesthetic is that he was offered two altarpieces in the large and prestigious transept chapels of the church. One need only recall how violently Caravaggio reacted to the award of one transept chapel to Baglione to see how prestigious the offer of two was. As noted in chapter 2, the transept pairing would have taken on special significance as an “internal typology” linking different events of the Virgin’s life. The Coronation of the Virgin, as viewed from across the aisle from the Presentation of the Virgin, would be seen as the proper fulfillment of the earlier episode. More particularly, the earthly initiation into the Jewish religion and the world of man would be fulfilled in Mary’s expanded role as queen of heaven. There, she receives a holy initiation to the spiritual realm through her coronation by Christ. The left transept chapel (containing the Presentation) belonged to Cardinal Pierdonato Cesi, the benefactor of the church. This further cemented its importance. The right transept chapel belonged to the Glorieri family. The fact that Barocci could be proposed, even provisionally, for two altars reminds us that for the previous commission of the Visitation, the Pozzomiglio family had to choose between Barocci and Muziano. In addition, further formal factors linked the two chapels together. They of course shared the same altar designs, but also the same polychrome marble, inspired by recent chapels of Santa Maria Maggiore and the Gesù. They even share vault frescoes by Paris Nogari and Paul Brill.60 But just as Barocci never finished the Fall of Manna to complement his Last Supper for Urbino Cathedral (it was given to his right-­hand assistant Alessandro Vitali), it was decided that he would never be able to finish both the Presentation of the Virgin and the Coronation of the Virgin together, and it was concluded that the commission for the latter work would be handed over to Giuseppe Cesari, the Cavaliere d’Arpino. However, Cesari suffered the same delays and, although the chapel decoration was finished relatively quickly, the artist did not finish his contribution until 1615.61 Indeed, the painting is not altogether distinguished and one can only wonder what Barocci might have done with such a commission. Thus, Barocci simply proceeded in 1592 to provide the Presentation of the Virgin for the Cesi Chapel, now for Angelo Cesi, bishop of Todi and brother of the deceased Pierdonato (see plate II).62 The contract for this work is lost, but record of one early payment survives,

60. Barbieri, Barchiesi, and Ferrara, Santa Maria in Vallicella, 89, 117. 61. The chapel was dedicated 1593, and Paris Nogari frescoed the chapel in the same year. Cesari was commissioned 11 December 1592. See Röttgen, Il Cavaliere d’Arpino, 125–­26. 62. Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, 383 x 247 cm; Olsen, Federico Barocci, 190–­91 (written before the cleaning revealed the date); and Emiliani, Federico Barocci, 2:347–­59; Emiliani, Federico Barocci [2008], 2:249–­67; Barbieri, Barchiesi, and Ferrara, Santa Maria in Vallicella, 116–­21.

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of 300 scudi.63 In chapter 1, it was speculated that this very large work must have been commissioned for at least 750 scudi if the previous Visitation fetched 550. Indeed, that is the fee that Cavalier d’Arpino received for the Coronation of the Virgin. Contracts differ from commission to commission, but the 300 scudi could easily be one of two equal payments, with a final payment of perhaps 100 to 200 scudi upon completion. Given that Barocci was at that time negotiating even higher prices, the price may have been even higher, so 750 scudi actually becomes a conservative guess. Either way, this payment further underscores the lengths the fathers would go to in order to secure a work from Barocci. It is important to note that in the same year, the Fabbrica del Duomo of Milan approached Barocci about an altarpiece for their altar of Santa Prassede (21 May 1592).64 The very first inquiries came from the Urbino expatriate Giovanni Battista Clarici directly to the painter.65 As a follow-­up, another Milanese expatriate from Urbino, Guidobaldo Vincenzi, wrote on 27 January 1592 that the Fabbrica would send the money “even tomorrow” if the painter was amenable to the project. Clarici had gone so far as to send information about the chapel and its lighting in his first communication. However, Barocci made excuses in a lost letter to Pietro Antonio Lonato, which was quoted by Guidobaldo Vincenzi: the light in the chapel was not appropriate and he had doubts the result would give the deputies satisfaction.66 As the archivist (Fert Sangiorgi) who compiled these documents notes, these are thin excuses that mask the fact that Barocci was overextended. By July he had withdrawn the commission. Thus, the Santa Prassede commission came to naught and the contract passed on to Ambrogio Figino.67 This would simply be an inquiry to a busy painter, except for the possibility that the transaction was most likely initiated by Neri’s acolyte Federico Borromeo himself. This suggestion is made more plausible by the fact that Santa Prassede had been the titular church of his illustrious cousin Carlo Borromeo. As a close follower of Neri, Borromeo’s sensibilities aligned both with Oratorian spirituality and Barocci’s style. This expanded Oratorian orbit and its resulting demand for paintings outside of Rome explains ironically why Barocci could have done even more than the impressive number of two altarpieces for the Chiesa Nuova. The lack of success must be owed to Barocci’s numerous commissions, including that for the Chiesa Nuova. While Borromeo was headquartered in Rome since 1586 (and until mid-­1601) he did not encourage the commission from Rome. He spent the summer and autumn of 1592 in Milan and was in Pesaro in January 1593, and may then have made a

63. Emiliani, Federico Barocci [2008], 2:72: “Confesso io Federigo Bonaventura d’avere ricevuto schudi tre cento di Paoli a dieci paoli p. Schudo a buon conto del opera che o preso a fare per il sudetto Mons.re de Todi.” 64. ASFD, Ordinazioni Capitolari; cited in Bonomelli, “Federico Barocci e la committenza milanese,” 21. 65. Guidobaldo Vincenzi to Ludovico Vincenzi, 27 January 1593, BUU, busta 37, fasc. IV, fol. 379, in Sangiorgi, Committenze milanesi a Federico Barocci, letter I, 15. 66. Guidobaldo Vincenzi to Ludovico Vincenzi, 2 July 1593, BUU, busta 37, fasc. IV, fol. 381, in Sangiorgi, Committenze milanesi a Federico Barocci, letter II, 17: “non vi ha quell lume ch’egli desidera, onde dubita di non dare soddisfattione.” 67. 10 September 1595, Annali della fabbrica del duomo di Milano, 5:303; 5 December 1597, 5:322; 29 November 1598, “per l’anchona di S. Prassede,” 5:330–­31; Sangiorgi, Committenze milanesi a Federico Barocci, 31.

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special trip to Urbino to meet the master (if they did not actually negotiate the commission).68 This is the first possible case of contact between Barocci and Borromeo. In spite of the importance of his second Chiesa Nuova commission, Barocci did not proceed with greater speed, but began his usual exhaustive process of composing studies for the work. It would only be finished ten years later, in 1603, when the painting was finally delivered to Rome from Urbino. No model or cartoon exists for the painting, but the existence of the cartoon is indicated in the inventory of Barocci’s study taken at his death in 1612. A cartoon is clearly indicated for the Presentation in the Chiesa Nuova, as big as the work and in black and white on water tinted with watercolor.69 This addition of color in the cartoon is extremely interesting and suggests some kind of experimentation on Barocci’s part. The minuta also mentions that it was not very finished. As with the Visitation (and Pulzone’s Crucifixion), the fathers of the Chiesa Nuova could have demanded this or a model. What made matters worse was the fact that the 1590s were probably the peak of Barocci’s artistic activity. In addition to agreeing to work on the Chiesa Nuova and Urbino Cathedral paintings, Barocci was extremely busy with one commission in particular, Crucifixion with Three Saints, first negotiated with great patience by the Genoese nobleman Matteo Senarega in 1585 and placed in Genoa Cathedral in 1596.70 This great work earned Barocci the remarkable fee of 1,000 scudi, and was admired by both Rubens and Van Dyck in their stays in Liguria. Nevertheless, the Presentation of the Virgin received even greater acclaim, in accordance with its greater size and more prestigious placement in the transept. The Oratorians wrote immediately to Angelo Cesi in Todi of the “incredibile applauso et sadisfattione non solo nostra ma di tutta Roma.”71 A rare letter records Barocci’s thanks.72 Fewer early sketches survive for the Presentation than for the Visitation, making it harder to trace Barocci’s progress. But Uffizi 11434 (shown with a copy of Barocci’s modello in the Woodner Collections of the National Gallery, Washington; fig. 3.3) demonstrates that he quickly chose a more centralized presentation of the subject, perhaps as more fitting for the larger space. Barocci strongly submerged the traditional sense of the story, in which the

68. On the Milan trip, see Gabrieli, “Federico Borromeo a Roma,” 170. Emiliani mentions an Urbino trip; Federico Barocci, 2:320. But he and many other authors seem to extrapolate from the diary of Francesco Maria II, who clearly indicated that Borromeo visited Pesaro on January 19, 1593; della Rovere, Diario, ed. Sangiorgi, 63. However, this is not confirmed in Rivola, Vita di Federico Borromeao. 69. “Minuta dello studio del S.or Baroccio,” in Calzini, Studi e notizie, 78: “Cartone della presentazione della Madonna che è in Roma nella chiesa nuova, grande quanto l’opera di chiaro oscuro, in carta tinta d’acquerella, non molto finito.” 70. Emiliani, Federico Barocci, 2:307–­15. 71. Flaminio Ricci to Angelo Cesi, 30 March 1603, ACO, B.IV.19, fol. 60–­61, cited in Bonadonna Russo, “I Cesi e la Congregazione dell’Oratorio,” 151. 72. Federico Barocci to Flaminio Ricci, 20 June 1603, ACO, B.IV.9, fol. 723: “Al ritorno del mio giovane ho ricevuto la gentilissima lettera della quale ho in teso molto gusto e piacere, che sono restate sodisfatti de l’opera mia, che ne ringratio infinitamente che m’habbia fatta questa gratio et di nous lo prego che p[er] sua bonta mi doni forte e me de le loro ferventi horationi, di poterli servire, come io desidero p[er] obbligo mio et p[er] molti meriti e bonta loro alli quali con ogni efetto di core, me li offero et racomando in gratia.”

Federico Barocci and the Oratorians

Plate I: Federico Barocci, Visitation of the Virgin and Saint Elizabeth, 1586, oil on canvas, Chiesa Nuova, Rome (photo by author).

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Federico Barocci and the Oratorians

Plate II: Federico Barocci, Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, 1603, oil on canvas, Chiesa Nuova, Rome (photo by Bradley Cavallo).

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Plate III: Peter Paul Rubens, Adoration of the Madonna della Vallicella, 1608, oil on slate, Chiesa Nuova, Rome (image from Wikimedia Commons).

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Plate IV: Federico Barocci, Head of an Old Man (Filippo Neri?), ca. 1583, charcoal pastel on paper (Galerie Hans, Hamburg).

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Plate V: Federico Barocci, Nativity of Christ, ca. 1597–99, oil on canvas, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan (© DeA Picture Library/Art Resource, NY).

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Plate VI: Federico Barocci and Alessandro Vitali, Saint Ambrose’s Pardon of Theodosius, 1603, oil on canvas, Duomo, Milan (Fabbrica del Duomo di Milano).

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Plate VII: Federico Barocci and Alessandro Vitali, Nativity of the Virgin, ca. 1588–1603, oil on canvas, San Sempliciano, Milan (Soprintendenza per i beni storici artistici ed etnoantropologici per le province di Milano).

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Plate VIII: Federico Barocci, The Institution of the Eucharist, 1603–1608, oil on canvas, Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome (photo by Chris Paprocki).

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young Virgin Mary rushes up the stairs of the temple to the priest to serve God.73 Instead, Mary is compliant, underscoring the image of humility already seen in the Visitation. Like the previous Visitation, this painting has a neutral, architectonic background against which the bright figures are staged. Unlike the former work’s off-­center perspective, however, the Presentation has a central vanishing point and the lines converge on the young Virgin’s head. Although the carved smooth columns on the altar tabernacle do not match Barocci’s fictive fluted columns, there is a perspectivally correct spatial gradient of diminution, creating a satisfying illusion of depth. The Presentation can be considered a more complex elaboration of the Visitation; the figures are smaller and more numerous. The same high-­ key colors are repeated and again we find the animals: birds, a ram, a calf. The iconography of the Presentation of the Virgin was strongly connected to various apocryphal lives of the Virgin, including the Golden Legend, and it shared a kinship with the Nativity of the Virgin, even to the degree of the structure of the office. The Franciscans advanced the cult of the Presentation of the Virgin and indeed, Sixtus IV had the feast placed into the Roman breviary. As efforts in the sixteenth century began to remove apocryphal elements from the missal and breviary, the feast was increasingly marginalized until finally removed by the Dominican Pius V, only to be reintroduced by the Franciscan Sixtus V.74 This subject’s inclusion in the Chiesa Nuova indicates the slightly partisan immaculist quality of the church’s decoration already discussed in chapter 2. The idea of iconographic control arises again and the idea that Barocci had to literally follow Alberto da Castello’s Rosary is weakened when the image of the Presentation is compared to Barocci’s painting. There the scene is strictly lateral, with the priest on the left and the Virgin and her family on the right. Barocci instead chose to maintain Mary’s iconicity, however, through its strict symmetry. Figures have their backs turned to the viewer, however, so Barocci has them turn back to talk, and in bowing down to receive the priest’s blessing, the Virgin Mary reveals her face to us. If the Visitation exalted the humble by highlighting the way in which Mary and Elizabeth were modest handmaidens to Christ’s awesome revelation, the Presentation of the Virgin emphasizes the young Virgin Mary’s close observance of her faith’s rituals, her ready compliance. The Jewish attendants and animals brought in for sacrifice all point to the Mosaic dispensation, and the fact that Mary is but a girl seems to exaggerate the unlikelihood of her contribution to the redemption of mankind and, thereby, her heroism. In this way, Neri’s attention to the Virgin Mary as inverted Christ-­type, emphasizing all those unexpected qualities required for Christ’s own mission, is maintained. When the Presentation of the Virgin was finally finished in 1603, a lot of time had passed since the painting was commissioned. Neri had died in 1595 and the Gesù and the Chiesa Nuova had both been filled with a number of works, including paintings by Federico Zuccaro and the favorite of Rudolf II, Hans van Aachen. The younger painters Giovanni

73. Lafontaine-­Dosogne, Iconographie de l’enfance de la Vierge. 74. For the fortunes of the breviary and missals, see Kwatera, “Marian Feasts in the Roman, Troyes and Paris Missals and Breviaries.”

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Fig. 3.3: Federico Barocci, Presentation of the Virgin, ca. 1593, in the Chiesa Nuova, Rome (center, photo by Bradley Cavallo) reduced seven times, compared to (left) Barocci, sketch, Uffizi 11434 (Suprintendenza Speciala per il Patrimonio Storico, Artistico et Etnoantropologico e per il Polo Museala della città di Firenze) and (right) after Barocci, Presentation of the Virgin, ca. 1610, drawing 2006.11.4 (Woodner Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC).

Baglione and Michelangelo da Caravaggio were also finishing some of their first big commissions. But now with the delivery of the Presentation of the Virgin, Barocci’s reputation was now indelibly stamped in the seventeenth century. Whatever painters may have thought of him, with this painting Barocci issued a monumental challenge to contemporaries with his sweet, effortless style, which was not lost on patrons. More importantly, his latest work in the Chiesa Nuova firmly established a successful aesthetic of emulation; if the first painting may have been an anomaly, now there was no question of what a “perfect” Oratorian work looked like.

The Milanese Scene: The Nativity At this point, it is worthwhile to look beyond the Chiesa Nuova proper in order to appreciate the full significance of Barocci’s efforts in the late sixteenth century. In addition to interest from the Chiesa Nuova and the Fabbrica del Duomo, other Catholic patrons in

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the Oratorian circle were also seeking out work from Barocci. Foremost among these was Cardinal Federico Borromeo, archbishop of Milan, who was working in “Spanish” Milan, from where the Duke of Urbino was despatching troops to fight in the religious wars in France and the Netherlands.75 In 1595 Federico Borromeo took over the archbishropric of Milan and remained there from July 1595 to March 1597 to establish his position. In the late 1590s there was a sense that Barocci had to be nearing completion of the Presentation of the Virgin and the Milanese were prepared to occupy him next; little did they know that he would not finish the altarpiece until 1603. On 17 March of 1597, sometime around Borromeo’s return to Rome, the Council of Deputies ordered a 76 Like the Santa Prassede of a few years earlier, this was an attempt to Nativity from Barocci. occasion an altarpiece from Barocci for the Duomo of Milan.77 The Vincenzi correspondence gives a particularly clear picture of what happened. The Council of Deputies again strongly wanted an altarpiece, but this time they resorted to sending an emissary as well as coordinating their efforts with Archbishop Borromeo himself. As Guidobaldo, in Milan, explained to his brother Ludovico in Urbino, one of the deputies, Guido Mazenta, was planning to make a pilgrimage to Loreto at Easter of that year (1597) and wanted to bring money and engage Barocci directly.78 Guidobaldo reasoned that if the archbishop of Milan, Borromeo, worked directly with the Duke of Urbino, Francesco Maria II, they together could “command” (commandare) the painter to execute the work. What is important about this turn of events is that it coupled coordinated action of the archbishop and direct intervention by an emissary.

75. For Francesco Maria II’s military campaigns, see Ugolini, Storia dei conti e duchi d’Urbino, 2:396; and della Rovere, Diario, ed. Sangiorgi, 19–­20, 69, 78–­79. 76. ASFD, Ordinazioni Capitolari, quoted in Bonomelli, “Federico Barocci e la committenza milanese,” 21: “Incarico affidato a Federico Barocci di dipingere una tavola rappresentante il Presepio.” See also Sangiorgi, Committenza milanesi a Federico Barocci, 19–­20: “credo che sarà un Presepio”; 22–­23: “opera sua d’un Presepio.” 77. This reverses what I had argued in “Federico Barocci, Federico Borromeo and the Oratorian Orbit.” I therefore accept the criticism found in Redín, “Algunos apuntes sobre la Natividad de Federico Barocci”; however, I do not believe the Prado picture is the original. 78. Guidobaldo Vincenzi to Ludovico Vincenzi, 12 March 1597, BUU, busta 37, fasc. IV, fol. 401, in Sangiorgi, Committenza milanesi a Federico Barocci, 19. Mazenta is interesting because he was known to possess certain of Leonardo da Vinci’s manuscripts.

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It is precisely at this time that the Duke of Urbino ordered his own “presepio”; not an altarpiece, however, but a small devotional work. While Barocci set to work on this for his duke, the painter was haggling with the Milanese about the price of their “presepio.” On 19 June 1597 he stated that he couldn’t say when he would be done with his other commitments. In August 1598, the Milanese were getting impatient and asked that he either send back the money he had taken or accept the commission. He replied, lamely, that he had been thinking of how to approach the commission but it was clearly not a high priority for him.79 Against this indecision, it should be pointed out that there was also correspondence about individual devotional works. The dual vassal of Spain and Urbino Pietro Antonio Lonati, for example, was seeking a work from Barocci. It is my conjecture that Archbishop Borromeo increasingly saw how difficult it was to negotiate a work with Barocci and, using the tactics that had developed in relation to an altarpiece for the Duomo, began to investigate his own work. It is in the context of renewed interest in Barocci that we have to place two nearly identical paintings, one belonging to Archbishop Borromeo and the other Philip III of Spain. Because these are not so well documented and there is controversy about the respective intervention of Barocci, they should be examined in some depth. Contrary to how these two paintings are typically discussed, the two should be separated. The duke paid Barocci the fee for the archbishop’s painting, typically ascribed (with some doubts) to Barocci’s pupil Alessandro Vitali, but the archbishop’s painting is Barocci’s original; the work in Spain is the supervised copy. One of the paradoxes about these two paintings, clearly laid out by Pamela Jones, is that Borromeo was very clear and well-­informed about the copies in his collection.80 Yet the Ambrosiana painting is habitually ascribed to Vitali against Borromeo’s own records. In order to answer this, we need to underscore just how intimately involved Borromeo actually was in the production of the painting. A series of letters in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana written between 1597 and 1600 seems to relate to this commission, although the subject of the painting is not actually ever mentioned. These letters share one very important fact: all were written by Borromeo from Rome in full understanding of the workings of the Roman Oratory.81 Furthermore, Borromeo was in both Senigallia and Pesaro in May 1598 accompanying Pope Clement VIII on his way to take possession of the duchy of Ferrara, and may have been in Urbino in December 1598 on the

79. Nanno Vincenzi to Guidobaldo Vincenzi, 9 September 1598, BUU, busta 38, fasc. VI, fol. 819, in Sangiorgi, Committenza milanesi a Federico Barocci, letter XI, 26–­27: “di già va pensando al’opra.” 80. Jones, Federico Borromeo. 81. Jones (ibid.) cited four letters without disclosing their contents; they are from BA, G. 261, which is a series of drafts of letters written by Borromeo between 1597 and 1600. The letters are Borromeo to Fra Damiano (fol. 364r, letter #1176), Borromeo to Barocci (fol. 364v, letter #1177), Borromeo to Fra Damiano (fol. 391r, letter #1301), and Borromeo to Barocci (fol. 391v, letter #1302). In addition there are two others: Borromeo to Barocci (fol. 302) and Borromeo to Barocci (fol. 354). I fully cite them in the following notes.

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way back, when he no doubt discussed the work with Barocci.82 The tangible result of this discussion was Borromeo’s further appreciation of Barocci and his issuance of two prints of the Senigallia Entombment, which he may have seen in person, one by Raffaello Guidi and one by the Flemish engraver Egidius Sadeler.83 Analysis has shown that Barocci most likely directly supplied a drawing to Sadeler—­probably Louvre 2852—­from which he created the print.84 The letters are extraordinary because they indicate that Borromeo sent a Capuchin friar, Fra Damiano, to Urbino for the summer of 1599 to oversee one of Barocci’s works and actually to transport it back to Milan when Barocci was done. The painting was finished by August 1599 and in September 1599 Barocci wrote to Borromeo returning the thanks and promising to continue serving the cardinal as best he could.85 The documents are not equivocal and it is not possible to be certain which extant painting the two men are discussing, but the best hypothesis seems to be that they are discussing the Nativity in the Ambrosiana in Milan (plate V).86 This Nativity is most often presumed to be a copy by Barocci’s pupil Alessandro Vitali of Barocci’s own Nativity for King Philip III and his wife, Margaret of Austria (now in the Prado).87 The closeness in date to the actual Prado Nativity, however, raises the issue of which came first, for the payments are more or less contemporary. If we examine the actual payments, we see that both payments from the Duke of Urbino—­for the Nativity and its copy—­

82. Again, the Urbino trip is mentioned by Emiliani, Federico Barocci, 2:320. Again, however, it is not confirmed in Rivola, Vita di Federico Borromeao. Sangiorgi criticizes Emiliani, noting that the Duke of Urbino’s diary notes that Cardinal Borromeo passed outside of Pesaro on December 1598, without addressing him (“Passo per di fu.ori della citta il cardinal Borromeo, senza dire niente,” 15 December 1598; della Rovere, Diario, ed. Sangiorgio, 102). But of course Barocci was in Urbino and the duke in Pesaro. However, he does not note that Borromeo certainly was one of the sixteen cardinals who accompanied the pope in May 1598 (“Arrivo in Sinigaglia il Papa con 16 cardinali et io l’incontrai alli confini: smonto a hore 23 ½,” 1 May 1598; ibid., 97). Given that the arrival in Ferrara was very ceremonial, if Borromeo indeed visited Barocci in 1598 it would most likely be in December when he apparently was traveling alone. 83. Schmarsow, Federigo Barocci, 165. The dedication of the Sadeler print reads, “Federico Borromeo Cardinali ampliss. mo Tit. S. Mariae de Angelis Archiepiscopo Mediolanensi in devoti animi testimonium.” 84. For the claim that Barocci directly supplied drawings for this print, see Marciari and Verstegen, “Grande quanto l’opera.” Bonita Cleri has uncovered documents that show that Barocci gave an unspecified drawing to a Flemish merchant, with the hope of having the Entombment engraved by Giovanni Stradano (Jan van der Straet) but the drawing apparently passed to Sadeler without reimbursement to Barocci; Cleri, “Sulle tracce di un cartone preparatorio di Federico Barocci.” 85. Borromeo’s assurance is partially cited by Bandera, “Nuova ragguagli sui rapporti fra F. Borromeo e F. Barocci”; Barocci to Borromeo, 2 September 1599 (BA, G. 185 inf., #82). I publish here the full letter: “L’obbligo tutto dov’essere dalla parte mia che V.S. Ill.ma et Rev.ma si sia così degnata di gradire il quadro mandatoli, qual seben conoscevo non esser degno di comparire in cotosta città nelle mani di tanto Principe confidai nondimeno dall’altra parte, che dovesse (come spero) ogni sua imperfettione ricoprissi sotto il purpurro Manto dell’Autorità sua, Il Disiderio certo e stato prontiss.mo (di cio se sia più che sicura) et ella con la gentiliss.ma natura sua so non mancherà di suplire in quella parte, ove avrò (per non potere, e saper più) mancato io. La ringrazio infinitam.te dei singolari favori, et offerto fattemi, ech’ella di suo pugno non si sia sdegnata d’honorarmi tanto, et insieme andro’ di continuo conservando quel vivo desiderio, ch’arde nel mio core di servirla, me l’inchino, e bacio con ogni humilità la sacra veste il s.r. la conservi, et essalti. d’Urbino il diz. di S.bre 1599. Di VS. ll.ma et Rev. ma, Humiliss.mo serv.re, Federico Barocci.” Of curious interest is the notice (G. 261 inf., fol. 302v): (undated copies of letters from 1597 to 1600); Borromeo to Barocci: “Federico Barocci. M. Mag.co Sig.re . . . manderà il quadro da Fossombrone.” Fossombrone was the hometown of Damiano. 86. Nativity, 134 x 106 cm, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan; Olsen, Federico Barocci, 198, Emiliani, Federico Barocci, 2:320; Emiliani, Federico Barocci [2008], 2:206–­8; and Jones, Federico Borromeo, 227–­28. As Jones (Federico Borromeo) notes, the painting is first recorded in Borromeo’s codicil of 1607. 87. Nativity, 134 x 105 cm, Prado, Madrid; Olsen, Federico Barocci, 196–­98; Emiliani, Federico Barocci, 2:318–­29; Emiliani, Federico Barocci [2008], 2:188–­201; and, most recently, Turner, “A Nativity by Barocci.”

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took place before the arrival of Fra Damiano, in 1597 and 1598, respectively. This means that any attempt to assign paintings to either payment is problematic. There is no natural progression. In addition, we know that a new painting was made under Fra Damiano’s nose. Therefore, it makes sense to think that a supervised copy was made in 1599 by Barocci and that Vitali’s copy does not necessarily have anything to do with either the Prado or Ambrosiana paintings. Another possibility exists as well, which is to say that although the Duke of Urbino had paid for a painting in 1597, it was not done when Fra Damiano arrived for the summer of 1599. When the painting was completed, the duke, as was his custom, made it a gift to the powerful prelate Borromeo. It might seem likely, then, that Barocci oversaw both, not unlike the multiple versions of the Rest on the Return from Egypt of twenty years previous, until one considers the poorer visual quality of the Prado picture. That painting simply does not stand up to the Ambrosiana version, and when coupled with the extremely high payments made to Barocci and the fact that the conservation reports for the Ambrosiana version attest to its high quality, it is clear that the interventions of Federico Borromeo and the Duke of Urbino on behalf of Barocci ensured an autograph work.88 Perhaps then Barocci’s work for the duke simply became a gift for the well-­respected Borromeo. If anything, the Prado version might be the Vitali-­supervised copy, especially since it was not sent to Spain until several years later, when the Duke of Urbino must have searched about for a suitable gift to celebrate Philip III’s wedding.89 Examining the Prado version, one sees the poor, formless treatment of the hands of Saint Joseph and the Virgin Mary, which are typical of Alessandro Vitali’s work (for example, the portraits of Prince Federico Ubaldo della Rovere). Because of Bellori’s authority and the fancy provenance of the painting at the Spanish court, historians have tended to take its status for granted. In a documentary context, however, it is more reasonable that the Ambrosiana painting is the autograph version, given Federico Borromeo’s direct involvement and the duke’s more tangible need to impress him. The Nativity exemplifies Lingo’s analysis of Barocci’s compositions as proceeding from history to mystery. The usual narrative emphasis upon the discovery of the nativity by the shepherds is firmly subordinated to the act of Mary’s recognition of Christ’s divinity. Although Mary has just given birth to Christ, he is no longer a part of her and he clearly—­although his newborn visage does not reveal it—­becomes the object of veneration. Using light as a symbol of Christ’s divinity, the Virgin basks in the glow of her Lord. It is interesting to compare this message to the other Marian works, in which, as we say, Mary’s humility became a focus of devotion. This painting fits this pattern because it simultaneously places clear emphasis upon Christ and indirectly elevates Mary through her selfless devotion to the Lord. And indeed a closer study of the correspondence reveals that Borromeo looked at the

88. I am happy to acknowledge an anticipation of this argument of which I was not aware in 2003 (“Federico Barocci, Federico Borromeo and the Oratorian Orbit”): Mojana, “Tre lettere per un dipinto.” 89. The work was only sent in 1605 as a wedding present for Philip III and Margaret of Austria (Gronau, Documenti artistici urbinati, 172–­76). Duke Francesco Maria II’s payments are almost concurrent with those from Milan (19 August 1597: 272.44 scudi paid to Barocci for “un quadro della natività di N. S.”). Olsen, Federico Barocci, 197, writes that “the Milan replica may be by Barocci.”

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work very closely. First, in June 1599, he mentioned that he was sending Father Damiano90 to help Barocci finish the painting, but more likely to serve as a visual reminder that Barocci should tend to his obligation.91 At the end of August when the painting was finally delivered, Borromeo wrote to Father Damiano that the painting “was entirely to my taste”92 and then wrote to Barocci that the work was “beautiful, and for which it is held the first citizens of this city who have seen it, for which I hold it most dear and remain highly obligated.”93 Later in the year, Borromeo added that he would “value it as one of the most valuable things that he has.”94 With the completion of the Nativity, Barocci had completed two major altarpieces painted for the Chiesa Nuova and Filippo Neri and a small picture, after an initial failure, obtained by his acolyte Federico Borromeo. While the Presentation was not delivered until 1603, drawings, discussions, and other already completed works filled the minds of Oratorians and gave flesh to greater things to come from the author of the Visitation. At this point, plans became much more tangible in Milan, where the experience with the Nativity led to a strongly orchestrated program for two new altarpieces to adorn the Duomo.

The Milanese Scene: Saint Ambrose’s Pardon of Theodosius and the Lamentation of Christ for Milan Cathedral The smallish Nativity, successfully obtained even while the Presentation had not been yet delivered, must have given the Milanese hope for bigger things from Barocci. On 24

90. Borromeo to Fra Damiano, 5 June 1599 (BA, G. 261 inf., #1176, fol. 364r): “P. Fr. Damiano cap.no, Molto R. Pre. mio car.mo sarà dato l’ubbidenza alla P. V. di trattenersi a Urbino tutta l’estatte e cosi havrei voluto poter operare che Fr. Mario da S. Angelo dovesse venir a Roma a predicar questo anno s.to [i.e. 1600] ma essendo egli in concetto ai superiori di non eser saggito buono per Roma bisognerà haver patienza Io no fò fretta al quadro per che non manchi il s.r Fedrico d’Urbino di ridurlo ad ogni perfetione come a lui med.o me scrivo et alla P. V. d’cuore mi offero.” 91. Borromeo to Barocci, 5 June 1599 (BA, G. 261 inf., #1177, fol. 364v): “S.r Federico Barocci, Molto Mag.co. S.re. Ho impetrata l’ubbidienza per il P[adre] Fr[a] Damiano da i suoi superiori per tutta questa estate, si che egli potrà alcuna volta veder faticar V.S. intorno al quadro, se bene non voglio già che egli la solleciti ma che ella con tutta la comodità sua attenda pure ridurlo in ogni perfetione e si ricordi intanto di prevalersi di me ne tutto quel che io posso voler per suo servitio.” 92. Borromeo to Damiano, 28 August 1599 (BA, G. 261 inf., #1301, fol. 391r): “P. Fr. Damiano. Ho sentito contento che la P. V. sia restata consolata di esser richiamata a Urbino, dove di che havrà anco contento Il S.r. Barocci al quale scrivo ringratiandolo vivam.te ch’l quadro ha ricevuto che è stato intieramente a gusto mio, et io vole resto particolarm.te obligato come fù alla P. V. che sia stata mezzana di farmelo havere et con restar sempre pronto ad ogni piacer suo e della P. V. prego Il S.r. Iddio.” 93. Federico Borromeo to Federico Barocci, 28 August 1599 (BA, G. 261 inf., #1302, fol. 391v): “S.r Federico Barocci. Ho ricevuto il quadro mandatomi da V.S. il quale com’è bellissimo, e per tale è tenuto da valent’ huomini di questa città che l’hano veduto, così l’havro io molto caro, e ne resta con molta obligatione a V.S. che tanto prontam.te si è disposta a lei a compiacermene voglio che basta essermi offerto una volta per accioche ella sappia quanto havrò caro farli servitio in ogni sua occorrenza, piaciarle pur dunque darmene occasione liberam.te che io per fine.” 94. Federico Borromeo to Federico Barocci, 11 December 1599 (BA, G. 261 inf., #1134, fol. 354v): “S.r Fedrico Barozzi. Molto Mag[nifi]co.Sig[no]re Foresto con obligatione molto stretta all’amorevolezza di V.S. e del P[adre] Fra Damiano, per il quale ella s’è disposta a compiacermi del quadro ch’io stimerò per una delle più care cose che io mi habba si per esser opera della sue mani, come per esser stato ove pero di con cose v. più de parre di haver che resto contentisso. Non voglio già che ella si persuada in alcun modo che io lo debba ricevere in dona; se ben veggo q[ua]nto prontamente nel offeriste ma vorre pure che ella non per pagamento ma mi segno di recognitione riceva quei denari che havrò sempre di giovarli in ogni sua occorrenza. Non mancherò di operare che il P[adre] Fra Damiano non sia rimosso da Urbino per questa state e li farò sempre piacere conforme al merito suo che sarà il fine con pregar a V.S. dal Iddio quanto ella desidera.”

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February 1600, the Milanese ordered two altarpieces for the Duomo, one for the Chapel of San Giovanni Buono (Lamentation of Christ), and the other for the Chapel of San Ambrogio (Saint Ambrose’s Pardon of Theodosius).95 Here we recognize a familiar story, where Barocci enters optimistically into a commission for two altarpieces, as he had for Urbino Cathedral and also (almost) for the Chiesa Nuova. The payments followed rapidly for both (22 April 1600; 22 September 1600; 23 November 1600; 24 June 1601; 20 December 1601), and Barocci gave priority to the Saint Ambrose’s Pardon of Theodosius (plate VI) that was to be painted with the help of his assistant Alessandro Vitali.96 The painting was finished by 14 July 1603 and was delivered just three months after the Presentation was sent to Rome. Although this painting was dependent on the Presentation as its visual model and was therefore considered derivative, the quality of the Saint Ambrose’s Pardon of Theodosius has recently been positively reconsidered. As he did with most of his workshop pictures, Barocci took care to ensure that the picture was touched up and equal to his name. Based on these details, it is possible to describe exactly Barocci’s role in its completion. The fact that the subject was a pardoning immediately suggests that the painting’s composition was based on the Presentation. Barocci had been used to using his cartoons to build the basis of other works for which he could not devote his entire attention.97 One such example is the Saint Agatha in Prison (Museo Diocesano, Urbino) contracted to Barocci and Vitali, for which Barocci revised his cartoon for his Immaculate Conception (Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino). Similarly, Barocci provided the public act of pardoning upon an altar on the similar structure of the Presentation. Indeed, Barocci took advantage of the smaller scale of Saint Ambrose’s Pardon by changing the Virgin Mary into Theodosius, which is confirmed by the fact that the two works match up. By using the cartoon, Barocci literally built the formula of success for his Presentation into the Saint Ambrose’s Pardon of Theodosius.98 However, there is no doubt that its speed of execution was aided by Vitali’s intervention.99 The use of this shortcut allowed for Barocci to spend some time putting the finishing touches on the painting, which explains its quality.

95. Later (23 April 1600) Barocci wrote a letter thanking the deputy of the Fabbrica del Duomo. On 22 April 1600 Barocci received 200 ducatoni from the Opera del Duomo of Milan for the Lamentation; on 22 September he received another 300 lire for Saint Ambrose’s Pardon of Theodosius; on 23 November his assistant Vitali accepted “quaranta scudi di dieci pauli l’uno, et diciotto grossi, e un reale e mezzo a buon conto del quadro che faccio per il Domo di Milano.” On 24 June 1601 Vitali received “ducatoni sette e pauli venti che’egli mi ha pagato per ordine del Sig. Flaminio Ferrari”; on 20 December Vitali received “lire 300 imp” and Barocci received “di scudi 100 d’oro (lire 600 imp.).” Letters of 24 February 1600 (ASFD, Ordinazioni Capitolari), 23 April 1600 (ASFD, Mandati di pagamento), 22 September 1600, 23 November 1600, 24 June 1601, and 20 December 1601 (ASFD, Ordinazioni Capitolari); all of these letters are discussed in Bonomelli, “Federico Barocci e la committenza milanese,” 21–­22. Bonomelli (ibid., 21) cites a document that immediately followed a payment, and again shows Barocci’s intimacy with Borromeo. And see 23 April 1600, ASFD Ordinazioni Capitolari: “soddisfare (com’ è mio debito) tutti codesti Sig.ri suoi colleghi e la città insieme per l’opera promessa da me per il Domo di Milano. Si degnino pure (a lor cortesia) pregare il Signore che mi dia vita e santità che possa mandare ed effetto quanto ho promesso e quanto ho in animo di fare.” 96. The painting measures 182 x 326 cm; Olsen, Federico Barocci, 228; Emiliani, Federico Barocci, 2:392. 97. Verstegen, “Barocci, Cartoons, and the Workshop.” 98. For the visual juxtaposition at the same scale, see ibid., 111, figs. 4a–­b. 99. Bandera, “Nuovo ragguaglio sui rapporti fra F. Borromeo e F. Barocci.”

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Fig. 3.4: Federico Barocci, Lamentation of Christ, ca. 1612, oil on canvas, Biblioteca Comunale dell’Archiginnasio, Bologna (Soprintendenza per il patrimonio storico, artistico et demoetnoantropoligico, Bologna).

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Barocci’s overextension was evident when on 2 October 1601 he reported to Urbino Cathedral that he could not complete the Fall of Manna because of lack of time. At the same moment, the Milanese were avidly watching Barocci’s progress on the Presentation commission; thus on 17 December of the same year the Urbinate Ludovico Vincenzi wrote to his expatriate brother, Guidobaldo, in Milan that “Il quadro per Roma è in buon termine.”100 Nevertheless, the Lamentation of Christ (fig. 3.4) was never finished, although Federico Borromeo eventually set it up in its unfinished state. If the Visitation resonated personally with Filippo Neri, it created a kind of model or clarified the brief that the Oratorians were after with their sacred works. The Presentation of the Virgin, although delivered after Neri’s death, continued to confirm it, as did a number of other works for Federico Borromeo—­both personal and for bodies under his pastoral guidance. This ends the “official” story of Federico Barocci at the Chiesa Nuova, but there remains an unexamined chapter in this saga: the high altarpiece that Barocci almost painted. Considered together with the Institution of the Eucharist, a sublimated Oratorian work for Clement VIII, the devotee of Neri, the Nativity of the Virgin for the high altarpiece will give a complete account of Barocci’s congruence with Oratorian taste.

100. Ludovico Vincenzi to Guidobaldo Vincenzi, 27 December 1601, BUU, busta 38, fasc. IV, fol. 578, in Sangiorgi, Committenza milanesi a Federico Barocci, letter XXI, 36.

Chapter 4

The Nativity of the Virgin for the High Altar and the Institution of the Eucharist for the Pope So far three works have been discussed: three paintings were proposed, but only two were completed. The last work that Barocci proposed for the Chiesa Nuova and that the Oratorian fathers carefully considered was Nativity of the Virgin, intended for the high altar. In the end, the painting for the high altar was completed by Peter Paul Rubens, but despite the change in artist, there are hidden continuities between the original iconographic program and Rubens’s final painted arrangement that reveal details about Oratorian spirituality, putting into final relief the Oratorians’ devotion to Mary. The saga of the high altar began immediately with the installation of Presentation of the Virgin in 1603. Barocci must have been particularly ambitious, for he sent word with those delivering the painting to Rome that he would be happy to paint the altarpiece for the high altar as well.1 The high altar was dedicated to the birth of the Virgin (Deparae Virgini) and

1. Flaminio Ricci to Borromeo, 7 May 1603, ACO, B.IV.19, fol. 61v, quoted incompletely in Olsen and Emiliani but completely by von den Mühlen, “S. Maria in Vallicella,” 269–­70: “Al Signore Cardinale Borromeo. Milano. Essendo venuto qua un giovane del Baroccio a portare il quadro che Monsignore di Todi ha fatto pe la sua cappella della Presentazion nella nostra chiesa, si è lasciato intendere, che il predetto Baroccio farebbe volontieri me.o il quadro della Natività per l’altar maggiore, sì per haver particolare genio a quella istoria, che non solamente a questo della Presentazione con tutto che sia riuscito maraviglioso, et di stupore a tutta Roma, come per trovarsi la fatiga mezza fatta, havendone di già per ordine del Duca d’Urbino fatta un disegno et sbozzo per il re di Spagna, che gli restò poi essendosi detto Duca mutato di pensiero, et havendole fatto fare un S. Andrea in luogo di quello et per questo ricordata speranza che si haverebbe finito in due anni. Per tanto mi è parso avisarne Vostra S. Illustrissima per non lasciarsi uscire cosi bella occasione di dare compimento al detto Altar maggiore condotto a quel buon stato nel quale hora si vede per causa di Vostra S. Illustrissima havendoci ella somministrata con molto charita tutta la spesa, che ne si e fatta. Poiche con ottocento, o al più mille scudi, che si dassero fra termine di due anni il pittore ce la d avere

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Saint Gregory the Great. Following the set Marian dedication of the altars, this altar was preordained to be decorated with a Nativity of the Virgin. The youth who delivered Barocci’s message also brought drawings and sketches of a possible work, implying that Barocci was well aware of both the program and the need. The documents recall an aborted canvas (already “mezza fatta” and “sbozzo”) for the king of Spain: a Nativity of the Virgin begun some twenty years prior but eventually switched for a copy of another work (The Calling of Saint Andrew). Andrea Emiliani has hypothesized that this “sbozzo” was the basis for the work completed by Barocci’s pupil Alessandro Vitali, the Nativity of the Virgin now in San Simpliciano, Milan, and formerly in a church in Montegranaro, near Ascoli Piceno (plate VII).2 This chapter affirms Emiliani’s suggestion and recovers the intent of this work for Oratorian spirituality. As part of the church fabric, the altar was to be paid for out of the general funding. The Oratorian fathers had used Federico Borromeo’s money for the accouterments of the altar and directed the Cesi’s munificence toward completing the façade.3 The honor of the high altar per se, however, was promised to Bishop Cesi, who upon discovering Cardinal Federico Borromeo’s stemma on the high altar withdrew his funding, creating a temporary financial crisis; indeed, work on the façade stopped in March 1603.4 But although money—­and the shortage of money—­directly dictated whether Barocci’s work was commissioned, it did not influence the Oratorians’ desire for the work, which seems to have been earnest. Just after Barocci had received a payment (20 March 1603) for Saint Ambrose’s Pardon of Theodosius,5 Ludovico Vincenzi wrote to Guidobaldo in Milan (16 April 1603) that “Il Baroccio finalmente finì il quadro per Roma,”6 showing the Milanese, and hence Borromeo’s, concerns. It is only with this in mind that we can understand Barocci’s offer to paint the high altar, reported to Borromeo in a letter of 7 May 1603. Considering the money he and the Opera del Duomo were paying for the Milan cathedral projects, it is easy to understand Borromeo’s advice to the Roman Oratorian father Flaminio Ricci on 13 June 1603 to wait until September to decide on the matter.7

finito, et alla Congregatione restasse una perpetua memoria della charità Sua. Non intendendo pero ella essergli grave in ciò ne in nessuna altra cosa oso proponerle semplicemente l’occasione per et i loro bisogni restando poi sodisfatti di tutto quello che sarà di sodisfattione a V. S. Illustrissima alla quale favecamo tutti humilmente riverenza et per questo diamo dal DD. larga renunce causa di tanti benefici fatti alla Congregazione sua devotissima 7 di Maggio.” 2. Nativity of the Virgin, San Simpliciano, Milan, 320 x 230 cm; Emiliani, Federico Barocci, 2:348, 367; Emiliani, Federico Barocci [2008], 2:282–­93; Alpini, Pinacoteca di Brera, no. 86. 3. An agreement of 28 June 1595 assured Bishop Cesi’s rights to “mettere l’arme sue”; Ponnelle and Bordet, St. Philip Neri and the Roman Society of His Times, 419. 4. Cesi’s contribution was 15,000 scudi to Borromeo’s 4,000. It is interesting that Angelo Cesi and Borromeo had corresponded before about artistic matters. Cf. A. Cesi to F. Borromeo, 4 September 1599, BA, G. 185, fol. 91, regarding a “ritratto di B. Jacapone.” 5. ASFD, Ordinazioni Capitolari, quoted in Bonomelli, “Federico Barocci e la committenza milanese,” 22: “lire 570 imp. a buon conto della tavola di S. Ambrogio, qual esso va’ pingendo.” 6. Ludovico Vincenzo to Guidobaldo Vincenzo, 16 April 1603, BUU, busta 38, fasc. IV, fol. 609, in Sangiorgi, Committenza milanesi a Federico Barocci, letter XXVI, 40. 7. Federico Borromeo to Flaminio Ricci, 13 June 1603, ACO, B.IV.9, fol. 706, first published in Squarzina, “I Giustiniani e l’Oratorio dei Filippini,” 381 (incorrectly as Baronio; my transcription is also adjusted): “M. R. Padre mio Car[issi]mo. Io

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As everyone waited, Flaminio Ricci again wrote to Borromeo (27 June 1603),8 but in vain, for payments continued to Barocci and his assistant Vitali for the Milan cathedral projects. On 14 July 1603 the Opera decided on a payment for Vitali and on 22 July more moneys were ordered for Barocci for the altarpiece of Saint Ambrose’s Pardon of Theodosius.9 There is little doubt that the Oratorian fathers and Federico Borromeo would have liked Barocci to paint the high altar of the Chiesa Nuova; however, the Oratory’s money problems and Borromeo’s own payments for the Milanese works at the time slowed his decision about the high altar. Shortly thereafter, Barocci’s involvement with the high altar became more or less impossible when the pope contacted the Duke of Urbino (13 August 1603) to commission an altarpiece by Barocci for his family chapel in Santa Maria sopra Minerva. The slow and elderly Barocci could not be pulled from this papal commission to work on the Chiesa Nuova. Already on 1 October 1603 Barocci received his first payment (283.38 scudi) for the Institution of the Eucharist for Santa Maria sopra Minerva. By the time Flaminio Ricci wrote to Borromeo again in 1604, the opportunity to engage Barocci for the high altar had largely passed.10 A complex series of events then occurred. Since 1580 the medieval Madonna della Vallicella had occupied the altar of the Purification of the Virgin (1L). This painting was associated with many miracles, among which was one recorded later in Pietro da Cortona’s fresco over the nave (in which Neri beheld the image miraculously keep the old church from falling upon it after a beam had broken). The painting was moved to the high altar by a decree of 2 August 1606, seemingly without any premeditation.11 However, already in 1604—­when Barocci’s project was weakened but still alive—­the medieval image was included in Ricci’s and Borromeo’s discussions of the high altar.12 The need to accommodate the image, as well as the reliquaries Baronio had recently provided to honor the martyrs buried beneath the altar, ultimately led to the abandonment of the prescribed iconographic subject of the Nativity of the Virgin in favor of Rubens’s eventual sacra conversazione.13

non son alieno dall’opera propostami da V[ostra] P[aternità] con la sua lettera: et per l’inclinazione chi io ho ai padri, et alla chiesa, volontieri l’impranderei. Ma per altri rispetti di considerationi, io non posso hora deliberari, ne promettere cosa alcuna di certo. Al prossimo Settembre io potrò meglio far risolutioni, et mi riserbo a gli’ tempo di dire a V. P. gl’ch’io giudicarò di poter fare. Adesso io mi rac[coman]do alli orationi sui, e di gli altri padri agli sarà contenta di salutar per parti mia. Et Dio nostro signori la contenti.” 8. Flaminio Ricci to Federico Borromeo, 27 June 1603, BA, G. 191 inf., fol. 107r (cited but not transcribed in Calvesi, Le realtà di Caravaggio, 402n147): “Restano tutti i Più sodisfattiss.i [sic] risponde VS. Ill.na in materia del quadro per l’Altar Maggiore della n.ra chiesa, et in conseguenza con molt’obbligo alla sua buona volontà, che ne dimostra, et ne ha fatto conoscer più volte con gl’effetti. Et perche la Devot.e et part.e Affett.e che ciascuno le porta è grande come sà può credere che ci compiaceremo tuti di quello, che in ogni tempo sarà di sodisfatt.e a VS. Ill.ma.” 9. ASFD, Ordinazioni Capitolari, cited in Bonomelli, “Federico Barocci e la committenza milanese,” 22: “ducatoni cento che fano lire cinquecentosettanta imperiali.” 10. Flaminio Ricci to Federico Borromeo, 4 March 1604, ACO, B.IV.10, fol. 425, quoted in Russo, “I Cesi e la Congregazione dell’Oratorio,” 120–­21; and von den Mühlen, “S. Maria in Vallicella,” 270. Squarzina, “I Giustiniani e l’Oratorio dei Filippini,” 381, noting a letter of March 6, says a new patron—­Giustiniani, the predecessor of Serra—­was proposed. However, she gives no reference. The letter does not seem to exist. If instead she meant the letter of March 4, it does not support the discussion of a new patron at that time. 11. On the celebrations that accompanied the translation, see Russo, “La Madonna della Vallicella.” 12. See the uncited passage of the letter cited in note 10 (Ricci to Borromeo, 4 March 1604), where reference is made to the Madonna along with the other accoutrements of the altar (ACO, B.IV.10, fol. 424). 13. This is the main finding of von den Mühlen, “S. Maria in Vallicella,” 269–­70. She ascribes the change in program to

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After Angelo Cesi died in November 1606, his family rapidly lost interest in Chiesa Nuova projects and the Madonna della Vallicella already upon the altar provided a makeshift solution until a new benefactor came on the scene, Cardinal Giacomo Serra. His money enabled the Oratorians to resume discussions of a true high altarpiece, but by then he had in mind his own protégé, the young Peter Paul Rubens.14 If Borromeo had not already been making payments to Barocci’s workshop in 1604, he may have been willing to fund the altarpiece and the high altar might very well have been adorned by a Barocci painting, whether The Nativity of the Virgin or something else closer to Rubens’s invention. Thus we can see how close Barocci truly came to completing the altarpiece for the high altar of the Chiesa Nuova, the “più bella e superba occasione in tutta Roma,” as Rubens excitedly wrote back to Mantua.15 For a few months in the summer of 1603, the fathers of the Congregation of the Oratory considered Federico Barocci’s proposal to finish a previously begun altarpiece for the high altar of the Chiesa Nuova in Rome. Different explanations have been offered for why this idea was rejected, the most popular being the arrival on the scene of Cardinal Serra, his protégé Peter Paul Rubens, and money to pay for the altarpiece. It has been suggested that Barocci’s proposed altarpiece for the Chiesa Nuova is The Nativity of the Virgin, now in the Milanese church of San Simpliciano (plate VII). There are good reasons for accepting this suggestion. Considering the glory this work almost received, it has received too little attention from art historians. No doubt this is because it was finished by Barocci’s pupil Alessandro Vitali, and not too successfully at that. Nevertheless, the opportunity to publish the picture in color and reflect on its pedigree allows us to reclaim a Barocci near-­masterpiece. The only evidence about this work comes from a letter written by the Oratorian Flaminio Ricci in Rome to Cardinal Federico Borromeo in Milan. Ricci informs us that Barocci’s “giovane” brought with him the news that Barocci could paint the altarpiece for the high altar of the church. We can surmise that this was his pupil Antonio Viviani, who subsequently stayed on in Rome and worked in San Gregorio Magno, in the Sforza Palace, and in Paul V’s apartments in the Vatican.16 Ricci then related this to Borromeo: “the aforesaid Barocci would gladly paint the Nativity for the high altar . . . he has a work that is half done, having already for the Duke of Urbino made a drawing and sketch for the King of Spain, which he abandoned when the Duke changed his mind and having made a Saint Andrew in its place, and for this expressed the hope to have it finished in two years.”17

Cesare Baronio. 14. Cardinal Giocamo Serra offered 300 scudi for the high altar only if the young Rubens was selected; Jaffé, Rubens and Italy, 94–­95. 15. Jaffé, Rubens and Italy, 119n27. 16. Viviani is documented in Urbino around 1600 but begins receiving payments at San Gregorio Magno, of which Cesare Baronio was comendatore, in November 1603, surely not a coincidence; O’Neil, “Patronage of Cardinal Cesare Baronio.” Viviani’s work in San Gregorio Magno is discussed in the next chapter. 17. Flaminio Ricci to Borromeo, 7 May 1603, ACO, B.IV.19, fol. 61v. For a fuller discussion of this passage, see

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Indeed, Barocci did complete a Calling of Saint Andrew (Musées Royaux des Beaux Arts, Brussels) in 1583 for a Pesarese church and painted a copy of it for the king of Spain a few years later (fig. 4.1, now in El Escorial).18 This would place the period of production in the mid-­to late 1580s, which means that the work Barocci had apparently begun was abandoned at that time in favor of the simpler copy, only to be raised again in negotiations with the Oratorians. So the questions are (1) Can we safely assume that this is the work Barocci referred to during his negotiations? (2) To what degree had the work been finished and how much can therefore be ascribed to Barocci or how much to Vitali? (3) What are the sources for the iconography of the altarpiece? and finally (4) Why was the idea of the Barocci altarpiece ultimately rejected?

Is the Nativity of the Virgin in San Simpliciano the Correct Work? The Roman letter only makes reference to a “Natività.” So we must ask: Was the painting now in San Simpliciano the work referred to? “Natività” is most easily taken to mean a Birth of Christ, and Edmund Pillsbury suggested that the incomplete Nativity in the Rasini Collection, Milan (an early version of the Prado and Ambrosiana Nativity already discussed), is the work referred to in the letter.19 Although the fact that it is unfinished satisfies Barocci’s story to the Oratorians, this work is surely too small (133 x 107 cm). It is a devotional altarpiece and could not have served on the high altar of a major Roman church. The first clue is that the letter refers to a painting that was originally intended for the king of Spain. That the king most likely wanted a substantial work is suggested by the size of the painting actually delivered: the Calling of Saint Andrew (in El Escorial) is 320 x 236 cm.20 Searching around for other paintings, the Madonna della Gatta, recently restored at the Uffizi, is of the proper size; this painting shows Zachariah and Elizabeth visiting the Holy Family and therefore could be mistaken for a Nativity. But it was painted in the 1590s and would not have been “mezza fatta” in 1603, so it cannot be the painting mentioned.21 The case for Barocci-­Vitali’s Nativity of the Virgin in Milan looks the most promising.

chapter 2, n26. 18. Calling of Saint Andrew, 315 x 235 (Brussels) and 320 x 236 cm (El Escorial); Emiliani, Federico Barocci, 1:188–­97; Emiliani, Federico Barocci [2008], 2:5–­18. The copy of the Calling of Saint Andrew was delivered to King Philip II in July 1588, perhaps after Francesco Maria II was inducted into the Order of the Golden Fleece; cf. Gronau, Documenti artistici urbinati, 160–­61. It should be pointed out that although it was no doubt simpler to copy this painting, it is not an insubstantial work. According to John Marciari, the painting bears pentiments and is generally of superior quality. The duke stressed the fact that Barocci had painted it from scratch and not as a copy, which is confirmed by the pentimiento of the man with an oar in the background. 19. Pillsbury, review of Federico Barocci, by Emiliani. 20. The painting was mailed 18 July 1588 and arrived 14 November of the same year; Gronau, Documenti artistici urbinati, 161. 21. The painting is not dated. I connect it to payments made in the Duke of Urbino’s Libro di Spese, from 1588 to 1592; however, there is no agreement. See Natali, Il Miracolo della Madonna della Gatta; and Emiliani, Federico Barocci [2008], 2:138–­49.

Fig. 4.1: Same-­scale comparison of (left) Federico Barocci, The Calling of Saint Andrew, ca. 1588, oil on canvas (El Escorial, Lessing Images) and (right) Federico Barocci and Alessandro Vitali, Nativity of the Virgin, ca. 1588–­1603, oil on canvas, San Sempliciano, Milan (Suprintendenza per i beni storici artistici ed etnoantropologici per le province di Milano).

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The problem is that a work that was half completed and of sufficient quality to be offered to the king of Spain and the Oratorians ought to be better known—­through copies, preparatory drawings, and the like—­if it was really so important. Whatever Barocci proposed for the king and the Oratorians would have had to be a compelling work that required much preparation. As the Nativity of the Virgin stands today, it does not seem to satisfy these criteria. However, the iconography in that work has a trecento source and more preparatory graphic work exists than has been supposed. Not surprisingly, more versions of the painting do exist, including an identical copy now in a parish church outside of Milan and a version executed exclusively by Vitali in Sant’Agostino, Fermo.22 The echoes of this painting are found in so many later works that this apparently insignificant work is clearly more influential than previously thought. The similarity in size between the Nativity of the Virgin (320 x 230) in San Simpliciano, Milan, and the Calling of Saint Andrew is striking (see fig. 4.1), and gives credibility to the idea that Barocci was instructed to complete a work of a set size for the king of Spain. A rereading of an old document helps confirm this connection. A painting for the king is first mentioned in 1583, in the Duke of Urbino’s correspondence with his Florentine ambassador. Francesco Maria wrote to Simone Fortuna in regard to the Grand Duke of Florence’s request for a portrait of himself and in passing mentioned a work requested by the king of Spain for the Escorial.23 A letter of 1586 from the Duke of Urbino to his agent in Madrid, Bernardo Maschi, notes that it has been two years (“doi anni”) since a large painting (“un quadro grande”) was ordered from Barocci.24 Things get even more interesting when we also consider a similar request for a painting from the king of Spain’s ambassador in Rome, the Count of Olivares, Guzman (ambassador from 1582 to 1592). In a letter of February 1588 from the Duke of Urbino’s minister in Rome, Grazioso Graziosi, to Duke Francesco Maria II, the minister mentions the long desire (“alcuni mesi”) by the Spanish ambassador, Guzman, for a work of 10 by 15 palmi (about 2 by 3 meters), which is very close to the sizes of both Birth of the Virgin and Calling of Saint Andrew.25 The painting was to be an Epiphany or an Adoration of Christ (“Epifania

22. For the copy, see Nativity of the Virgin, Parrocchiale, Copreno (outside Milan), (apparently) formerly in San Maria della Torre, Urbino; Alpini, Pinacoteca di Brera, no. 47. It can be verified to be two-­thirds (66 percent) smaller than the original and hence derived from the cartoon. For Vitali’s independent work, see Birth of the Virgin, 264 x 178 cm, Sant’Agostino, Fermo, commissioned by Silvio Sciarra, placed 1609; Dania, Pittura a Fermo, 73–­74, fig. 24. This version seems to be Vitali’s complete invention and the result is not impressive. 23. Francesco Maria della Rovere to Simone Fortuna, 8 October 1583, ASF, filza 285, fol. 465, in Gronau, Documenti artistici urbinati, letter CXCVIII, 154. 24. Francesco Maria della Rovere to Bernardo Maschi, 11 May 1586, ASF, filza 286, fol. 515, in Gronau, Documenti artistici urbinati, letter CCVI, 158. 25. Grazioso Graziosi to Duke Francesco Maria II della Rovere, 2 February 1588, ASF, Cl. I F.107, fol. 10–­11: “Vostra alt.za si raccordara’ che alcuni mesi sono il Sig. Amb. Di Spagna mi motivo’ di dessiderare un quadro di mano del Baroccio per una sua Capella di Spagna et che io gia per qualche pesua quanto sia difficil cosa di’posser’havere dusfattione di esso Baroccio gli andai motivando tutte le difficulta’ cosi della natura come della complesione et delle molte opere con’che sempre lui si ritrovava et soprattutto la impossibilita’ de v’e’ che stanti le dette sue qualita’ et il non essere ne con meni ente, ne possibile di levarti del tuo trove, V. Alt.za possa con tutta la sua authorita’ cavare di esso niente qui construtto di quello che comportino le medesime sue qualita’ allegandoli anco qualire esempio di cose passate nei servizi propri di V. A. oper’se a per’altri le sodisfattione de’ quali lepremessero più che le sue. Talire per all’hora mi parve di vedere de S.C. restasse

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cio’e’ l’Adoratione del Re”). Of course, the naming of the subject opens up the possibility that Barocci later changed the subject from a Nativity of Christ to one of Mary. The letter was only written five months before the delivery of Calling of Saint Andrew. Although it speaks of a painting for the Count of Olivares and not the king of Spain, it is possible that Barocci began the count’s painting and since he became quickly occupied with a painting for the king, he later conflated the patron. In fact, Barocci may have conflated the two paintings because the Duke of Urbino was pressuring him to work instead on a painting for the king. Indeed, the work for the Count of Olivares was never delivered. After the duke informed his ambassador in Rome, Grazioso Graziosi, how difficult it was to get a picture from Barocci, Graziosi suggested that Barocci himself write to the Spanish ambassador to make the refusal more credible.26 These exchanges went back and forth.27 In the end, as also happened to a later Spanish count, the grandees simply didn’t have enough clout to sway the overworked and temperamental Barocci.28 Perhaps with the arrival of this letter and after beginning work on the Nativity of the Virgin, Barocci, under pressure from Duke Francesco Maria II, simply decided to copy a work. In this context—­with the Spanish ambassador living in the Palazzo della Rovere in via Lata with Graziosi—­one can easily imagine Barocci starting blindly on a work, only to have its subject changed. The time constraint might have even caused his decision to simply paint a copy. If that is how the Nativity of the Virgin was left, what remains to be explained is what happened to it next. Fert Sangiorgi has hypothesized that Barocci may have already shopped the altarpiece to the convent of the Angelic Sisters of Saint Paul at San Paolo Converso (July 1600) when they were seeking a work by Barocci.29 The first evidence of a Barocci work in Milan is the letter of Guidobaldo Vincenzi to his brother Ludovico in Urbino. He speaks on behalf of the nuns of San Paolo Converso, as a go-­between to Urbino. He indicated that there was a space of 3 by 4 braccie, and asked his brother to find out if Barocci’s recently completed Last Supper (1599, Duomo, Urbino) might be

sodisfatione. Hora come che più non raccordarse di questo raggionamento a metta lama m’ha di nusus afrontas del medesimo prantandom un disegno in mano dell’opera che vuole, et uncaricandomi di mandarlo a V. Alt.za con pregarela in suo nome, che voglia interponersi a fare acettare quest’opera a detto Baroccio et nonostante che io gli habbia movivato in contrario le medesime difficulta’ s.E. non dimeno ha valuto ad ogni modo ch’io mando questo disegno supplicando l AV a provarsi di farle questo favore. Il Disegno credo che verra con questo ma in caso che il Corr. Facesse difficulta’ di portarlo VA intanto verra’ pensando alla risolutione da farne quando legiungera’. Il quadro ha’ da’essere in Tela largo palmi dieci, et alto quindici con l’Istoria dell’Epifania cio’e’ l’Adoratione del Re.” 26. Francesco Maria della Rovere to Grazioso Graziosi, 11 February 1588, ASF, filza 163, fol. 1395, in Gronau, Documenti artistici urbinati, letter CCLXXIX, 195–­96; Grazioso Graziosi to Francesco Maria della Rovere (suggesting that Barocci should himself write), 17 February 1588, ASF, filza 169, fol. 837, letter CCLXXX, 196. 27. Francesco Maria della Rovere to Grazioso Graziosi, 22 February 1588, ASF, filza 163, fol. 1408, in Gronau, Documenti artistici urbinati, letter CCLXXXI, 197; Francesco Maria della Rovere to Grazioso Graziosi, 15 January 1589, ASF, filza 313, fol. 440, in Gronau, Documenti artistici urbinati, letter CCLXXXII, 197; Francesco Maria della Rovere to Grazioso Graziosi, 21 June 1590, ASF, filza 288, fol. 504, in Gronau, Documenti artistici urbinati, letter CCLXXXIV, 198. 28. This is the Count of Chinchón, Diego Fernández Cabrera-­Bobadilla (d. 1608), who requested a Barocci painting. A work by an unknown author was shipped in 1606 and lost for two years until it finally surfaced in Madrid in 1608. 29. Guidobaldo Vincenzi to Ludovico Vincenzi, 12 April 1600, BUU, busta 37, fasc. IV, fol. 420, in Sangiorgi, Committenza milanesi a Federico Barocci, letter XIV, 28–­29.

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copied by a good pupil. The subtext to all this is that Barocci had been negotiating two commissions with the Duomo of Milan and the nuns probably asked for a copy because they knew they had no chance of acquiring an original.30 Guidobaldo went on to confirm that the squarish Last Supper would not work, but that he was interested in copies of the Stigmatization of Saint Francis (1595, Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino) or the now-­lost Assumption (formerly Duomo, Urbino). But crucially he also asked about “anco se vi fosse qualche altra cosa.”31 This “other thing” might have been the Nativity of the Virgin that was unfinished in Barocci’s workshop. The possibility suggested by Sangiorgi is especially enticing because the Angelic Sisters of Saint Paul in possession of San Paolo Converso was headed by the prioress Paola Antonia Sfondrato,32 sister of Cardinal Paolo Emilio Sfondrato, a devotee of Filippo Neri. Cardinal Sfondrato had been unsuccessfully seeking a painting by Barocci at just that time, and his interest in Francesco Vanni (and Guido Reni) was precisely motivated by his appreciation for Barocci’s style. Finally, Cardinal Federico Borromeo, the archbishop of Milan, was at that time helping negotiate Barocci’s works with the Duomo and was himself a follower of Filippo Neri. More than anyone, Borromeo would have been aware of what was available in the Barocci workshop for—­if such can be said of Barocci—­quick delivery. Thus an “Oratorian orbit” linked Barocci to these various agents in Milan. The idea that the Nativity of the Virgin was completed in some way for such a Milanese body as the Angelic Sisters must be discounted, however, for two reasons. First, the size doesn’t work out: 3 by 4 braccie (assuming one braccio is about 58.4 cm) equals 233.6 x 175.2 cm, much smaller than the Nativity of the Virgin’s 320 x 230 cm.33 More importantly, the documentation related to the painting finds its origins in the town of Montegranaro near Ascoli Piceno, which is just right for the kind of studio work the Nativity of the Virgin seems to have ended up as. Therefore, it is best to leave the San Paolo Converso scenario as an enticing possibility that has no proof supporting it. Nevertheless, this letter indicates a date close to that of Barocci’s proposal for the Chiesa Nuova that suggests how the letter might have spurred Barocci to think about how he could finish and sell this altarpiece.

What Did the Nativity of the Virgin Look Like When It Was Promised to the Oratorians? It is important to ask the question, “What did the work look like at the time?” if only to know how much Barocci contributed and how much his workshop—­probably Alessandro

30. Verstegen, “Federico Barocci, Federico Borromeo and the Oratorian Orbit.” 31. Guidobaldo Vincenzi to Ludovico Vincenzi, 7 June 1600, BUU, busta 37, fasc. IV, fol. 414, in Sangiorgi, Committenza milanesi a Federico Barocci, letter XVI, 30–­31. 32. On the church’s decoration, see de Klerck, Brothers Campi. Cf. de Klerk, “La chiesa di San Paolo Converso.” On Paola Sfondrato, see Baernstein, Convent Tale. 33. Interestingly, it is exactly the size of the Madonna della Gatta: 233 x 179 cm.

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Vitali—­added. What exactly did Barocci mean when he said that half the work was done (“fatiga mezza fatta”) and when he said he had made “un disegno et sbozzo”? It is clear that he made a drawing; this is confirmed in Flaminio Ricci’s letter of 7 May 1603 to Federico Borromeo that mentions a “disegno.” But “sbozzo” is more ambiguous. Either he “made a sbozzo” in the nominative sense or he “sbozzo-­ed it,” in the past participle. In an earlier publication I surmised that he meant “roughed out,” as in abbozzato.34 However, a reconsideration of the term sbozzo, especially in light of the analysis of the term by Maurizio Calvesi, leads one to abandon that interpretation in favor of drawings.35 The term sbozzo first of all occurs in an Oratorian context in the commissioning of the work that would supplant Barocci’s project, Rubens’s Adoration of the Madonna della Vallicella. In the document of 25 September 1606, the artist was told to paint “il detto quadro . . . secondo il disegno, o sbozzo mostrato loro dal detto signor Pietro Paolo.”36 Here, disegno and sbozzo are used as synonyms, and have an equal meaning. There is clearly no reference to underpainting, sketching, or blocking-­in of the final painted support. Next we have a document relating to Caravaggio: a 5 April 1600 commission for a lost work. The work, the contract says, must “conforme allo sbozzo per esso signor Michelangelo fatto per detto signor Fabio.”37 This document is obviously interesting for the lack of drawings from Caravaggio’s hand that survive. But again it is clear that the document refers to something already finished that was shown to signor Fabio. This cannot refer to a roughed-out painting. Finally, independent corroborating evidence comes from the contemporary edict published by the cardinal vicar of Rome, Cardinal Rusticucci. In his instructions to painters working in Rome and the requirements they must adhere to, Rusticucci notes that artists must submit a drawing or “sbozzo” to local authorities before beginning work.38 This third bit of information seems decisive in showing three instances in a Roman milieu around 1600 of the use of sbozzo referring to some kind of preparatory drawing. If the phrase “disegno et sbozzo” must refer to two drawings, this suggests an advanced idea of the composition. Unfortunately, only one potential candidate exists: a quick sketch in charcoal and pastel in the Düsseldorf Kunstmuseum der Stadt (fig. 4.2).39 The technique is similar to the pastel used for the compositional sketch for the Vatican Annunciation (1584) and the Sodalizio dei Piceni Virgin and Child and Saints, originally for the Franciscan church of Cagli (ca. 1590).40 Are there any other drawings for which

34. Verstegen, “Federico Barocci, Federico Borromeo and the Oratorian Orbit,” following Emiliani (Federico Barocci, 348, 367) who similarly interpreted sbozzo as abbozzato. 35. Calvesi, “Uno ‘sbozzo’ del Caravaggio.” The document was first published by Massetti, “Un dipinto del Caravaggio.” 36. Jaffé, Rubens and Italy; Calvesi, “Uno ‘sbozzo’ del Caravaggio,” 150. 37. Calvesi, “Uno ‘sbozzo’ del Caravaggio,” 150. 38. Rusticucci, “Editto per gli altari et pitture.” 39. Kunstmuseum der Stadt, Düsseldorf, inv. FP 168 (recto), charcoal and pastels on colored paper, 21.5 x 20.8 cm; Emiliani, Federico Barocci, 2:2, fig. 811; Emiliani, Federico Barocci [2008], 2:283, fig. 76.1. 40. Virgin and Child with Saints Geronzio and Mary Magdalene and Donors, ca. 1590, 270 x 213 cm, Sodalizio dei Piceni, Rome (formerly San Francesco, Cagli); Olsen, Federico Barocci, 226–­27; Emiliani, Federico Barocci, 2:272–­75; Emiliani, Federico Barocci [2008], 2:118–­27. For the drawings specifically, see Bertelà, Disegni di Federico Barocci, 2:23, 120.

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Fig. 4.2: Federico Barocci, Kneeling woman, compositional study, ca. 1585, chalk on paper, Düsseldorf, inv. 162 (Stiftung Museum Kunstpalast-­Horst Kolbert, Düsseldorf /ARTOTHEK).

preparatory drawings could have been made? Is it plausible that they weren’t kept because no one recognized a Barocci work in them? To return to the letter of 1603, Ricci wrote that Barocci had already made a “disegno et sbozzo.” In light of Barocci’s working method, this does not refer merely to a quick drawing like the one in Düsseldorf. This is especially true since the “fatiga mezza fatta,” that is, half the work was done. Rather, Viviani must have been using disegno to refer to a black and white disegno compito, which was perhaps more finished and could be called, after Bellori, a cartoncino, and using sbozzo to refer to a color sketch. Since the Nativity was replaced by The Calling of Saint Andrew, it is worthwhile to point out that Barocci

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may have painted just such a sbozzo for it, the one now in the Contini-­Bonacossi Collection in Milan.41 Thus sbozzo still refers to a small portable drawing, but hints at the eventual meaning of bozzetto. Some evidence for more extensive graphic preparation is found in an unpublished drawing in Berlin (fig. 4.3). Never connected to a painting project, this drawing is exactly to scale of the baby Virgin Mary’s arm. It follows Barocci’s tendency to work out pastels for the flesh parts of his paintings. It cannot be a sole drawing; perhaps others will turn up once people begin looking for them. More importantly, since the work is full size, it proves that a cartoon existed for the painting (which would be necessary for the two copies), given further proof it was “mezza fatta.” Some use of the same terminology is found in Barocci’s correspondence for his commission of the Lamentation of Christ, agreed to in 1600 but still not done in 1608. Barocci wrote that “ho fatto il cartone, et mezzo abozzato l’opera et tutte le altre fatiche da me sollite farsi, ho compite.”42 Normally, for Barocci, this would mean that the painting was literally “half done,” and had gone through enough drawings to support a light study, and perhaps a color study. Judging again from Barocci’s other works, it would mean that Barocci also would have finished the cartoon and even blocked in the canvas. But here the rest of the story must be qualified, for there are interesting clues about the surviving drawings to help us see pretty clearly that the Nativity has the hallmarks of a studio picture, undertaken with elements from other works. First of all, the Düsseldorf study is done hastily in a manner not typical of an autograph work, but similar to that for the partly workshop Virgin and Child and Saints, which lacks a proper surviving modello. Also, the life-­size drawing of the putto’s leg is in chalk and not in pastel. Many contemporary works use pastel for life-­size figures. The use of chalk is a time-­saving shortcut. Thus, I do not believe that disegno and sbozzo refer to true light and color models (there is no beautiful painted bozzetto for the composition lost in some collection waiting to be found) but rather to simpler drawings, whose finish and quality were stretched in Barocci’s description. When Viviani mentioned the drawings, they were tangible proofs that the slow Barocci could actually deliver the work in the two years he mentioned, and also showed what he would attempt. What Viviani did not let on—­or perhaps did not know—­is that the work he was promoting for his master was already an expedient that would not share the same painstaking preparation as either the Visitation or Presentation of the Virgin in the same church. This fact can be proven by glancing at a timeline. If indeed Barocci was panicking in 1588 because the work he had started was switched from being for the Count of Olivares to being for the king of Spain, he would have turned to what he was presently working on. In this case it would have been the Circumcision for the Oratory of the Name of Jesus in Pesaro (1590, Louvre, Paris). Indeed, I believe that the very reason the Duke of Urbino

41. Illustrated in Borea, Review of Mostra di Federico Barocci by Emiliani; Emiliani, Federico Barocci [2008], 2:18. 42. Federico Barocci to the Deputies of the Fabbrica del Duomo, 21 May 1608, in Annali della fabbrica del duomo di Milano, 5:56; and Sangiorgi, Committenza milanesi a Federico Barocci, letter XLIII, 51.

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Fig. 4.3: Federico Barocci, Arm of a child, study, ca. 1583, chalk on paper, inv. 20158 (bpk, Berlin/ Kupferstichkabinett/photo by Volker-­H. Cutter/Art Resource).

asked Barocci to switch to a copy was because he realized that the hodgepodge he was going to deliver to the Count of Olivares was not suitable for a major diplomatic gift to the king of Spain. Looking at the Nativity of the Virgin as we see it today, its debt to the Circumcision is obvious. The Zachariah figure on the left and the sole angel both derive from the Circumcision, as do the genre details in the foreground. What is more surprising is that they are taken from the painting at life-­size, that is, they are literal borrowings (see fig. 4.4). The same is true for the head of the baby Virgin, which is derived from the head of little Saint John in the Madonna della Gatta, the maid in profile on the left is also flipped from the Visitation, and finally the figure bearing the Virgin Mary is a clever adaptation of the figure of Saint Sebastian, all from works of the 1580s. In sum, the Nativity of the Virgin appears to be a work very much like the Virgin and Child and Saints (ca. 1590, Sodalizio dei Piceni, Rome).43 Although composed of different elements,

43. Virgin and Child with Sts. Geronzio and Mary Magdalene, and Donors, ca. 1590, 270 x 213 cm, Sodalizio dei Piceni,

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Fig. 4.4: Same-­scale comparison of (left) Federico Barocci, Circumcision, 1590, oil on canvas (Musée de Louvre, Alfredo Dagli Orti/The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY); (center) Federico Barocci and Alessandro Vitali, Nativity of the Virgin, ca. 1588–­1603, oil on canvas, San Sempliciano, Milan (Soprintendenza per i beni storici artistici ed etnoantropologici per le province di Milano); and (right) Federico Barocci, Visitation of the Virgin and Saint Elizabeth, 1586, oil on canvas, Chiesa Nuova, Rome (photo by author).

it was undertaken with authorship by Barocci.44 But what then was Barocci talking about in his message to the Oratorians? If the Nativity was merely analogous to other workshop pictures, a derivative work with, however, autograph preparatory drawings, it would not follow that Barocci would demand the extraordinary fee of 800 to 1000 scudi. Nor for that matter would he find it fit for a high altar in Rome rather than a provincial church. This paradox can be resolved by realizing that Barocci would not have allowed the work to proceed as is. Barocci followed a very standard pricing structure, where he expected less money for his collaborative works. For example, while Barocci painted the Last Supper in the Duomo for 600 scudi, his assistant Vitali (with his assistance) received some 250 to 300 scudi,

Rome (formerly San Francesco, Cagli); Olsen, Federico Barocci, 226–­27; Emiliani, Federico Barocci, 2:272–­75; Emiliani, Federico Barocci [2008], 2:118–­27. 44. Here is a good place to mention an omission. Earlier, I had ascribed a cartoon fragment to the Madonna di San Simone (ca. 1566, Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino). It is clearly for the painting in the Sodalizio dei Piceni; Verstegen, “Three Cartoon Fragments for Barocci’s Madonna di San Simone.”

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slightly less than half (this is consistent with copies from within a workshop). Therefore there is only one conclusion about the Nativity: graphically the work was well advanced and at its abandonment represented an autograph but incomplete Barocci. It was only later that (probably) Vitali simplified the forms and coarsened the drawing on the way to completing it. In other words, at the time of passing along his message, the work still had the potential to be an authentic Barocci. In a recent study, I argued provocatively that there are no true independent commissions from the brush of Vitali before Barocci’s death.45 First of all, this suggests that many of them are not really Vitali commissions at all, but rather joint commissions given to Vitali with the provision that Barocci supervise the work and contribute partially to it.46 As a practical consequence, examining any commissions will show that they are derived—­usually very literally—­from previous works by Barocci. This is true of the Saint Agatha in Prison (Museo Albani, Urbino), the little-­known Vision of Saint John of Patmos (Cathedral, Fermo), and

45. Verstegen, “Barocci, Cartoons, and the Workshop.” 46. See for example the contemporary documents published by Franco Negroni for the Barocci-­Vitali Saint Agatha in Prison (1598, Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino); “Appunti su A. Vitali, C. Ridolfi e G. Cialdieri.”

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Saint Ambrose’s Pardon of Theodosius (Duomo, Milan). Each derives from a previous Barocci commission: Immaculate Conception (Galleria Nazionale, Urbino), Presentation of the Virgin (Chiesa Nuova, Rome), and Stigmatization (Galleria Nazionale, Urbino), respectively.47 What this means for the Nativity of the Virgin is that elements that are unaccounted for cannot be casually attributed to Vitali’s intervention, and this strengthens the chronological placement of the major work on the canvas to circa 1588. The principal element is the figure of the maid who holds the newborn Virgin Mary. It must be held extremely suspicious to suggest that Vitali simply invented the figure circa 1603, because graphically he did not operate in this way. If he had invented this figure, how can one explain its genesis? Given Barocci’s involvement with this picture—­on the model, as noted already, of the Virgin and Child and Saints in the Sodalizio dei Piceni—­we may make a further comparison to another derivative but autograph work, the Madonna of Saint Lucy in the Louvre.48 The figure of the Virgin Mary in the Madonna of Saint Lucy actually precedes the similar but not identical figure in the Madonna del Rosario in Senigallia.49 In other words, Barocci’s intervention was so strong for this seemingly workshop picture that he actually invented figures in it. This is not unusual when one considers the situation with the Saint Agatha in Prison, a joint commission with Vitali, that later served as the model of the much more famous Beata Michelina.50 What Barocci was doing in the Nativity of the Virgin was pioneering a figure type that he would explore much more vigorously in the figures of Saint John and the Virgin in his later Crucifixion with Three Saints in Genoa. The same logic applies to the baby Virgin Mary figure. In the same way, the figure of the baby Virgin Mary from the Nativity became the model for the Christ child in the Madonna della Gatta (Uffizi). Thus we may surmise that the Nativity, if it was actually based on Barocci’s extensive drawings, sat in the workshop for some years. He appears to have dusted it off first for San Paolo Converso and then for the Oratorians, before it was eventually finished (by Vitali) for a Marchegian church. The very reason that Vitali entered the picture is, of course, because Barocci was extremely busy and Vitali’s assistance allowed the master to complete more works. Observers still noted relative authorship, and Vitali’s intervention meant a reduced price. This is what patrons like the nuns of San Paolo Converso wanted: a work that would not cost too much and that they could expect to receive in a short time. This explains why the work, in spite of its off-­putting faces painted a little too blandly by Vitali, is of such chromatic quality. Furthermore, if the canvas was sitting in the studio for so many years, and Sangiorgi’s hypothesis is correct that Barocci saw an opportunity to sell it when the nuns of San Paolo Converso approached him, he might have worked on it more. When the Chiesa Nuova commission fell through, Barocci probably did work on the Nativity of the Virgin to get it ready to sell to a provincial church in

47. Verstegen, “Barocci, Cartoons, and the Workshop,” figs. 2b, 4b. 48. For the Madonna of Saint Lucy, see Olsen, Federico Barocci, 224–­26; Emiliani, Federico Barocci, 2:128–­35; Di Giampaolo, “Federico Barocci: Un disegno per la Santa Lucia del Louvre.” 49. For the Madonna di Rosario, see Olsen, Federico Barocci, 186–­88; Emiliani, Federico Barocci, 2:265–­71; Emiliani, Federico Barocci [2008], 2:107–­17. 50. Verstegen, “Barocci, Cartoons, and the Workshop,” figs. 3a, 3b.

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Montegranaro, although with Vitali’s intervention. Therefore, the work for the Chiesa Nuova would have been his, and worth the high price tag, and the one that the Marchegian church got was aided by Vitali and therefore probably—­were we to discover the payments—­cost less.

The Iconography Since we can be reasonably sure that the San Simpliciano Nativity of the Virgin is the painting intended for the high altar of the Chiesa Nuova, it deserves more attention. It has never, until now, been reproduced in color. This has hurt its chances for an adequate assessment of its quality and interest. Also the finishing of the faces by Vitali is not of the highest quality, and certainly below Barocci’s standard. Nevertheless, given the argument that this painting was largely conceived of by Barocci, it is worth close consideration. It is clear that the painting’s inspiration comes from Andrea del Sarto’s treatment of the same subject in the cloister of Santissima Annunziata in Florence. The atmosphere and treatment, in addition to the cozy interior with the large fireplace, derive directly from Sarto’s picture. If Barocci began to think of this work in the 1580s, it makes sense because he also reinterpreted Sarto’s Visitation from the same church for his version in the Chiesa Nuova. What is striking is Barocci’s use of the stark profile in both the Nativity and the Visitation. The resting of the elbow of the holy grandmother, Saint Ann, also occurs in another Florentine source, Domenico Ghirlandaio’s fresco in the choir of Santa Maria Novella. However, the reaching over of the body is alien to both, as is the skewed bed. Here, a source suggested to me by Hayden Maginnis is quite suggestive. The lost fresco by Pietro Lorenzetti on the exterior of the Ospedale of Santa Maria della Scala in Siena (ca. 1335) seems to have shown the bed skewed in this angle with the emphatic leaning of Saint Ann and a prominent maid warming a blanket before the fire. The fresco does not exist today, but is known in important versions such as that of Sano di Pietro (fig. 4.5) and the Osservanza Master’s Birth of the Virgin (1440s, Museo di Arte Sacra, Asciano). Sano’s predella adorned an altarpiece originally in the Cappella dei Signori of the Palazzo Pubblico.51 This might seem like an obscure source, but the Ospedale was one of three artistic poles in the city of Siena, along with the cathedral and Palazzo Pubblico. The fresco was also extremely well known, and influenced Francesco di Giorgio’s grisaille fresco in the Bichi chapel of Sant’Agostino (1488–­94) in Siena and other very public monuments.52 Maginnis has also stressed that Siena was along every itinerary leading from Florence to Rome.53 We know that Barocci visited Florence at least twice, and it is logical to assume that he had been in Siena.54 In a chapel in which Francesco di Giorgio—­the collaborator of Barocci’s

51. Maginnis, “Lost Frescoes of Siena’s Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala.” Cf. Norman, Siena and the Virgin, 93–­95. 52. See Seidel, “Die Fresken des Francesco di Giorgio in S. Agostino in Siena.” 53. Maginnis, World of the Early Sienese Artist, 17. 54. Fontana, “Evidence for an Early Florentine Trip by Federico Barocci.” According to Bellori, after installing his Madonna del Popolo in Arezzo (1579), Barocci toured Florence and was invited by the Grand Duke of Tuscany to become court painter.

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Fig. 4.5: Sano di Pietro, Birth of the Virgin, 1448–­1452, tempera and gold on panel (University of Michigan Museum of Art, Museum purchase made possible by the Thirtieth Anniversary Project and the Friends of the Museum of Art, 1977/2.1).

grandfather on the engines of war reliefs outside of the Urbino’s Palazzo Ducale—­painted this subject, Barocci would have taken notice and perhaps been led to the original with more assurance.55 Many nativities of the Virgin have the features of a skewed bed, leaning Ann, or maid warming a blanket, but rarely all three. The warming blanket is very rare, although Federico Zuccaro popularized it in a print of the Nativity of the Virgin engraved by Cornelis Cort (perhaps Zuccaro and Barocci noted the feature together while passing through Siena together?).56 This feature became extremely popular in works featuring the nativity in the late sixteenth century but it is not shown with the other distinguishing elements of the Sienese iconography—­the perspective vanishing point at the left and the skewed

55. Joseph Connors pertinently notes in his review of the 1993 Francesco di Giorgio exhibition in Siena (Review of Francesco di Giorgio architetto): “Here the Birth of the Virgin is shown in a room close in style to the private apartments in the Palazzo Ducale at Urbino, and the Nativity takes place in front of a stable that echoes, with a little more decoration, the nave of Urbino Cathedral.” 56. Cornelis Cort, Birth of the Virgin, after Federico Zuccaro, 1568; Bierens de Haan, L’Oeuvre gravé de Cornelis Cort, 45, no. 19; Sellink, Cornelis Cort, 2:84, no. 94.

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bed. Another print by Cort, issued in 1568, shows the “Sienese” leaning Virgin.57 It is as if Barocci, ruminating over these examples, decided to combine Cort’s sources based upon his memory or knowledge of Lorenzetti’s original. In this context, the similarity of Barocci’s altarpiece to Sano’s predella is striking. Whereas the Osservanza Master’s composition has a turned fireplace (like the Düsseldorf drawing), Sano’s is flat against the far wall. The maid in Barocci’s work is a mirror image of Sano’s. Maginnis notes the awkwardness of the Sano example, as in the eccentric placement of the Virgin, and suggests that for this reason the Osservanza Master’s version is closer to Pietro Lorenzetti’s original. This may be true. But the affinities between Barocci’s work and that of Sano, which Barocci would have seen in the chapel of the Palazzo Pubblico, are quite striking. There are of course deeper reasons why Barocci might have been influenced by Lorenzetti’s trecento prototype. As we know from previous discussions of archaism and miraculous icons like the Madonna della Vallicella, such images were appreciated for their powers and their spiritual authority. The stark profiles in Barocci’s Visitation and Nativity were specifically intended to lend these modern religious works some of the spiritual authority of the earlier prototypes. We have already seen how Barocci repeatedly enlivens iconic images with narrative details. This is a case where he seems legitimately to have sought out a venerable image as inspiration for his painting. Interestingly, where we would expect the drawing in Düsseldorf to be more obviously retrospective, which it is to a degree with the infant Mary placed centrally and iconically, the opposite appears to be the case. He began more conventionally and as he proceeded sought to invoke more directly Lorenzetti’s prototype. Instead of dissimulating the trecento source, he makes it unmistakably recognizable.

Why Did the Oratorians Choose a Non-­Narrative Altarpiece? The investigation of the Barocci-­Vitali Nativity of the Virgin in San Simpliciano, Milan, sheds light on why it never made it to the high altar of the Chiesa Nuova. The most important insight comes from the research of Ilse von den Mühlen, who published the architectural drawings by Giovan Battista Guerra for the high altar. She showed how Guerra intended from the start to include the Madonna della Vallicella above the altarpiece, which suggests the transformation of the altar into a reliquary place.58 Whether the intention was for Barocci’s painting to stand alone with the Madonna della Vallicella above it, as in Guerra’s plan, or to have the Madonna della Vallicella appear within

57. Cornelis Cort, Birth of the Virgin, after Federico Zuccaro?, 1578; Bierens de Haan, L’Oeuvre gravé de Cornelis Cort, 20; Sellink, Cornelis Cort, 2:84–85, no. 95. The design for this print is usually attributed to Federico Zuccaro as well; however, he and Cort seem to have parted ways in 1578, and as Wendy Thompson points out (“Federico Zuccaro’s Love Affair with Florence”), if it were by Zuccaro then Cort surely would have added his name to the print. Furthermore, the drawing connected to the print, in Brussels, has no connection to Zuccaro; Bierens de Haan, L’Oeuvre gravé de Cornelis Cort, 45, no. 19. 58. von den Mühlen, “S. Maria in Vallicella.” She ascribes the change in program to Cesare Baronio. Related is Steven Ostrow’s discussion of the rejection of Rubens’s first altarpiece (Grenoble) because it was not adequately a tabernacle; Art and Spirituality in Counter-­Reformation Rome, 174–­80.

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the painting, as in Rubens’s eventual solution, the Nativity of the Virgin is simply too small for either of these options to have worked. However, this did not spell directly the end of a Nativity of the Virgin, because in 1604 when Barocci’s proposal had not yet been rejected the image was included in discussions of the high altar.59 If I may quote my formulation of 2003, “Still, the need to accommodate the image, in addition to the reliquaries that were recently provided by Baronio to honor the martyrs buried beneath the altar, ultimately led to the abandonment of the prescribed iconographic subject of the Nativity of the Virgin in favor of Rubens’s eventual sacra conversazione.”60 In addition to the iconographic and practical reasons for the substitution, there is also an economic justification. Barocci had proposed to paint the altarpiece for between 800 and 1,000 scudi, a sizable amount. As a general expenditure for the Congregation, the cost of the altar was to be covered by the order and the Oratorians simply had no money at the time. If their primary benefactor, Cardinal Federico Borromeo, had not been busy spending money—­ironically on other Barocci projects in Milan—we might see a Barocci on the high altar of the Chiesa Nuova today. This is of course what made Serra’s proposal so attractive. He in effect transferred the logic of the side chapels’ patronage to the high altar. Serra’s proviso was that the high altarpiece had to be by Rubens, who was paid only 300 scudi. Indeed Rubens ended up working very hard for that fee, because his initial painting was rejected and his final version of the high altarpiece consisted of three paintings. By providing funds for the high altarpiece, Serra solved the problem with Barocci’s expensive proposal. Nevertheless, there are undoubtedly deeper issues at work here. They can be summarized by the Oratorians’ desire to mark the high altar sufficiently as a repository of holy substance. In these years most Roman churches were obtaining massive sacramental tabernacles on their high altars; notably among them was the Gesù. The Oratorians resisted this liturgical development because the emphatic presence of the relic of Christ would have conflicted with the Marian message of the altarpiece cycle’s iconography. Pietro da Cortona’s fresco of the Saint Michael and Angels with the Instruments of the Passion in the sacristy suggests that the Eucharist may have been reserved there, and discussions as late as the 1650s suggest that the Oratorians were lax in definitively moving the Eucharist to the high altar.61 As noted previously, the tabernacle that Cirro Ferri eventually designed for the high altar is relatively modest by Roman standards. Increasingly, the promotion of the cult of the Madonna della Vallicella had given the Oratorians outlets for reconsidering the high altar’s iconography. To be sure, as Laura MacCaskey has pointed out, no church in Rome actually had a Nativity of the Virgin on its high altar and it is possible that the triumphalist tenor of the times might have regarded this subject as metaphorically putting the church under scrutiny.62 One reason to think

59. Flaminio Ricci to Federico Borromeo, 4 March 1604, ACO, B.IV.10, fol. 425. 60. Verstegen, “Federico Barocci, Federico Borromeo and the Oratorian Orbit,” 23. 61. Barbieri, Barchiesi, and Ferrara, Santa Maria in Vallicella, 38, 143–­47. 62. MacCaskey, “Tainted Image/Sacred Image,” 146: “a representation of the Virgin’s Nativity at the high altar, as

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that the Oratorians might actually have been happy with this radical iconography is that the subject of the altarpiece for the high altar was only formulated around 1590, well into the triumphalist phase of Counter-­Reformation art.63 In fact, when deliberations began with Barocci, this phase was just beginning. The fact that in 1606 the idea was entertained of taking away the Madonna della Vallicella shows just how equivocal the Oratorian fathers were about leaving the icon on the high altar. In fact, apart from subsidiary fresco decoration in the chapels, the subject of the Nativity of the Virgin was never assimilated into any other space in the church; if the fathers of 1606 were not happy with Rubens’s altarpiece and had moved the Madonna della Vallicella, the subject very well could have made its way back there.64 As MacCaskey argues, the inscription on the façade, “non macula est in te,” ought to have diffused the maculist tendencies of the high altar. This seems to throw some doubt on the idea that the Nativity of the Virgin must have overwhelming maculist valence. The subject of the Nativity of the Virgin appeared in many churches of orders believing in the Immaculate Conception, including Valeriano’s in the Jesuit Gesù and Domenico Passignano’s in the Barberini chapel in Theatine Sant’Andrea della Valle, while others presented the subject in contexts not incompatible with immaculist claims, like Andrea Lilio’s in Santa Maria Maggiore, Guido Reni’s in the Quirinal Palace, and Cavaliere D’Arpino’s in Santa Maria di Loreto.65 Seen in this light, the iconography on the high altar of the Chiesa Nuova provides something of a thematic parallel to the circumcision on the high altar of the Gesù. It focused on thematic issues highly significant to the respective orders, and both fit in with the larger decoration and stood outside of it. It is in this context that a Nativity of the Virgin had to be reconciled somehow with the altar as a space of relics and indeed the tabernacle. Thus, it seems clear that the decision eventually to go with Rubens’s tabernacle form was based on all three of these factors together—­ rededication of the altar as a reliquary, money, and the politics of reserving the Host—­each complexly interrelated. Whatever the exact causes, by 1606 it was clear that no directly narrative altarpiece would be used. Instead, Rubens was instructed that “In da un lato, son li Santi Martiri Papia e Mauro, dall altra li Santi Nereo et Achilleo et Flavia Domitilla, in mezzo, San Gregorio Papa, di sopra, la Madonna Santissima con molti altri ornamenti.”66

envisioned by Filippo Neri in 1575, would have contradicted the notion of triumph prevalent in Rome at the time of Neri’s decorative program.” It is worth pointing out that, at least as the Nativity of the Virgin appears now, the child is not being washed, avoiding potential maculist readings. 63. Barbieri, Barchiesi, and Ferrara, Santa Maria in Vallicella, 167n87. 64. Eugenie Strong identifies a scene of the Dormition of the Virgin in the vault fresco by Aurelio Lomi as the Nativity of the Virgin, but see Barbieri, Barchiesi, and Ferrara, Santa Maria in Vallicella, 78. 65. Fra Valeriano, Nativity of the Virgin, Chapel of the Madonna della Strada, Chiesa Nuova; included with the image is the inscription “quae est ista quae progreditur quasi aurora consurgens?” (Who is she that cometh forth as the morning?,” from Song of Sol. 6:10); Bailey, Between Renaissance and Baroque, 251. For other examples, see Domenico Passignano, Nativity of the Virgin, left lunette, Chapel of the Assumption, Theatine church of Sant’Andrea; Andrea Lilio, Nativity of the Virgin, fresco along upper nave, Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome; Pietrangeli, Santa Maria Maggiore, 298; Guido Reni, Nativity of the Virgin, Annunciation Chapel, Quirinal Palace; Mann, “Annunciation Chapel in the Quirinal Palace,” 130; Cavaliere d’Arpino, Nativity of the Virgin, choir lateral, Santa Maria di Loreto; and Lingo, “Greek Manor and a Christian Canon,” 34. 66. Incisa della Rochetta, “Documenti editi e inediti sui quadri del Rubens nella Chiesa Nuova,” 163–­67.

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Nevertheless, in light of the discussion in chapter 2, it can be seen how the notion that Rubens’s altarpiece is completely nonnarrative is not true. As noted, the Feast of the Conception of Mary on 8 December had been celebrated as the Immaculate Conception since the time of Sixtus IV. Because the Madonna della Vallicella—­as translated in the late sixteenth century under the influence of Baronio—­was understood as a variant of the Madonna of Loreto and carried with it strong immaculist connotations, it also carries with it some narrative charge as the conception and, to a degree, birth of the Virgin Mary. Therefore, Barocci’s rejected altarpiece was replaced, in a more than figurative sense, by the icon itself, connotative of the Holy House of Loreto where Mary was born. By this time Barocci had already begun work on the Institution of the Eucharist for Pope Clement VIII and Vitali had been instructed to complete the Nativity of the Virgin for a Marchegian church. If by chance Barocci had been engaged for the Nativity of the Virgin, we would see a different, much finer, painting. As it ended, the work was still caught within the Oratorian orbit through the interests of some patron who was influenced by all the discussion surrounding Barocci by Cardinal Borromeo, Cardinal Sfondrato, and his sister, and who recognized the desirability of these works.

The Institution of the Eucharist for Santa Maria sopra Minerva It was probably seeing Barocci’s Presentation in the Chiesa Nuova at its unveiling in 1603 that led Pope Clement VIII four months later to commission the Institution of the Eucharist for his family’s Aldobrandini Chapel at Santa Maria sopra Minerva (plate VII).67 The pope had already been the guest of the Duke of Urbino (during his possession of Ferrara in 1598) and had seen Barocci’s works and received a small gift of a gold holy water flask painted by Barocci.68 On 13 August of 1603 the pope communicated with the Duke of Urbino’s minister, Giacomo Sorbolongo, about an altarpiece, and he in turn contacted the duke.69 Given the issues we have been discussing, is it possible the pope knew that Barocci’s high altar idea would falter? Did he advance himself opportunistically? The pope did not have the money issues temporarily plaguing the Oratorians and he was able to win from Barocci one last great work. However, the very reason that the pope was aware of these happenings was because, very much like Federico Borromeo, he was

67. Institution of the Eucharist, 290 x 177 cm; Olsen, Federico Barocci, 209–­10; Emiliani, Federico Barocci, 2:377–­85; Emiliani, Federico Barocci [2008], 2:296–­310. Barocci received payments on 1 October 1603 (283.38 scudi), 23 September 1604 (200 scudi), and in 1607 (1,000 scudi), for a total of 1,483.38 scudi. 68. The visit to Pesaro took place on the 3rd and 4th of May 1598. For the flask painting, a copy of which is in the National Gallery of Scotland, see Olsen, Federico Barocci, 199. In addition, the pope’s nephew Pietro Aldobrandini was in constant contact with the duke from 1598 to 1601 for the purchase of properties from the estate of the duke’s widow, Lucrezia d’Este. 69. Giacomo Sorbolongo to Duke Francesco Maria II, 13 August 1603, ASF, filza 149, fol. 1652, in Gronau, Documenti artistici urbinati, 176–­77: “Stasera uerso il tardi il Papa mi ha fatto chiamare, et quando sono stato dentro, mi ha detto ridendo, che se bene era cosa leggieri, per la quale mi hauea fatto dimandare, era però un suo gusto et seguitò, come fà fabricare una Capella qui nella Minerua in memoria de’ suoi, Padre, Madre et fratelli, et desiderando, che nell’altare di essa ci fosse il quadro fatto da uallente huomo, se bene qui ce ne sono et in particulare ha Iseppino, non dimeno si sodisfarebbe assai hauerlo di mano del Baroccio . . .”

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very close to the Oratory. The Institution of the Eucharist, like the works for Milan Cathedral, can thus be considered a sort of sublimated Oratorian work. Recall that Neri had been Clement VIII’s confessor until the former’s death in 1595, and that honor was continued by Cesare Baronio. Baronio and Silvio Antoniano were at the heart of Clement’s numerous Jubilee year (1600) projects in the Navi Piccole and Nave Clementina.70 Furthermore, as Zygmunt Wazbinski has pointed out, Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, the childhood friend of Duke Francesco Maria II della Rovere, was then presently aiding the Medici with their tombs in Santa Maria sopra Minerva.71 By this time, the Cavaliere d’Arpino was the pope’s most important artist (as Guerra and Nebbia had been for Sixtus). A middle-­aged man, d’Arpino was ideal to direct projects like the monumental transept decorations of Saint John Lateran and occasionally provide a fresco or altarpiece himself. What status did Barocci hold now in Clement’s eyes? Barocci was a famous, and also an excellent, painter of altarpieces. The pope needed a devotional altarpiece, and for a combination of prestige and service, no one (not even the Cavaliere) could provide a better product.72 It is useful to pause and consider the prestige of this commission at Santa Maria sopra Minerva. Although Institution of the Eucharist was not painted for a papal building, one should recall that Clement’s work on his family chapel was succeeding Sixtus V’s massive work; and after Clement’s death and Paul V’s immediate plans to provide a pendant chapel to Sixtus’s, the Aldobrandini family would have ensured its richness. Furthermore, Santa Maria sopra Minerva was especially sought after because of its deposits of the relics of Saint Catherine of Siena. The chapel was outfitted with the best polychromy and statues; Barocci’s altarpiece was its final touch. Not unlike the Oratorian fathers, the pope desired to relate the work closely to its context, and he made the artist intimately aware of the small space available, the design of the chapel, and the way the altarpiece would be shadowed by the backlighting of the window.73 The Duke of Urbino warned that Barocci had been particularly sick and would require patience, yet the artist soon provided two drawings, which the duke’s minister, Malatesti, made available to the pope. Among them may be that now found in Chatsworth, showing Satan accompanying Judas at his communion, which Christ signaled with a mere piece of bread.74 This would be quite a strongly propagandistic iconography if maintained.

70. Chappell and Kirwin, “Petrine Triumph,” 119–­70; Freiberg, Lateran in 1600. 71. Wazbinski, Il Cardinale Francesco Maria del Monte. 72. The aformentioned letter of 13 August 1603 mentions d’Arpino, who is referred to as “Iseppino.” The same letter continues asking that d’Arpino not be told about the commission; Abromson, Painting in Rome during the Papacy of Clement VIII, 93–­94: “desidera non si sappia da altri tal pratica, massime per rispetto d’Iseppino.” 73. On 27 August 1603 the duke notified the receipt of all the designs of the chapel (Emiliani, Federico Barocci, 2:377). The chapel was frescoed by Cherubino Alberti with a Triumph of the Holy Cross. 74. Chatsworth (inv. 361), 33.9 x 46.1 cm; see Scrase, Touch of the Divine, 168–­70, no. 59. For the iconography, see Velli, “Federico Barocci, Clemente VIII e la ‘comunione di Giuda.’” She suggests in her iconographical analysis that this would have been a totally unique Communion of Judas. It should be noted that demons are not uncommon in such pictures. For example, the Cantagallina brothers included one in their Last Supper (1604), now in the Museo Civico of Sansepolcro.

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According to Bellori, the pope was unhappy with the representation of the devil so near to Christ in depicting Judas’s betrayal, which could have led to confusions, and Barocci then corrected it.75 However, the pope then wished it to be darkened to a night scene—­so that it would be in conformity with the actual gospel—­and finally accepted Barocci’s plans.76 While this is the kind of control to be expected of a pope or sovereign, it is also quite consistent with the pattern we have seen with Oratorians and their artists. Both the models are prepared at one-­fifth (1:5) the size of the altarpiece, which is consistent with a medium-­ sized altarpiece by Barocci.77 Interestingly, while only a couple of drawings survive that clearly prepare the ink models shown to the pope, there are at least five drawings for a lost cartoon or other intermediate drawing or painting at 1:3 scale.78 These studies are mostly black and white chalk on tinted paper, and represent objects more or less as they will appear in the final painting, with slight adjustments to contours and lighting. The painting was not finished when Pope Clement died in 1605, when Barocci was already in his seventies. Meanwhile, although the Saint Ambrose’s Pardon of Theodosius was installed for Milan, they still awaited its companion, the Lamentation of Christ. Borromeo was sensitive to the pan-­Oratorian need to balance Barocci’s unique slowness against the demand for his work and now he saw the problems he would have faced with a high altarpiece project. Not long after the final payment (July 1607) for the Institution of the Eucharist for Rome, Giovan Battista Talento Fiorenza was writing from Milan to Francesco Maria II (30 April 1608) complaining about Barocci’s tardiness in regard to the Lamentation of Christ.79 Barocci (21 May 1608) wrote that he was almost finished with this work but the death of his brother—­the instrument-­maker Simone Barocci—­made it difficult for him to work.80 On 24 July 1608 the duke reported to Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, nephew of the deceased Pope Clement VIII, that the Institution of the Eucharist was finished. In 1609 it was installed in the chapel, which had not yet been finished because of the cardinal’s exile.

75. Bellori, “Life of Federico Barocci,” ed. Pillsbury and Richards, 20; and Bellori, “Vita di Federico Barocci,” ed. Borea, 198: “disse il Papa che non gli piaceva il Dimonio si dimesticasse tanto con Giesù Christo.” Contemporary documents only record the pope’s wish to change the gesture; Malatesta Malatesti to Duke Francesco Maria II, in Gronau, Documenti artistici urbinati, 181: Roma, 22 November 1603: “si potesse desiderare alquanto più aperta et espressa l’attione dell’Istitutione del S.mo Sacramento col moto della mano più staccata in atto di porgerlo.” 76. Malatesta Malatesti to Duke Francesco Maria II, 21 February 1604, ASF, filza 151, fol. 81v, in Gronau, Documenti artistici urbinati, 183: “vorrebe vedere la mano del Christo più vicino all’atto del communicare e più staccata dal petto, come fin all’hora parmi li scrivessi, l’altra che vi s’aggiunghino lumieri, che rimostrino esser stata di notte tale institutione stantissima, e però mando l’un e l’altro.” Efforts to ascribe the Pope’s request to a fashion for Caravaggio’s works seems unlikely. 77. See Marciari and Verstegen, “Grande quanto l’opera,” 22–­23, on the similarly sized Senigallia Entombment, which also has a modello at 1:5 scale. 78. At 1:5 scale, these are Uffizi 11282 and Berlin 20253. At 1:3 scale, the drawings are Getty no. 83.GB.279, Berlin Kupferstichkabinett 20334, 20331, 20329, 20318, and Uffizi 11605. 79. Giovan Battista Talento Fiorenza to Francesco Maria II, 30 April 1608, ASF, filza 195, fol. 1042, in Gronau, Documenti artistici urbinati, 186; and Sangiorgi, Committenza milanesi a Federico Barocci, 50. 80. Federico Barocci to the Deputati della Fabbrica del Duomo, 21 May 1608, in Annali della fabbrica del duomo di Milano, 5:56, and Sangiorgi, Committenza milanesi a Federico Barocci, 51: “Ho fatto il cartone, et mezzo abozato l’opera, et tutte l’altre fatiche da me solite farsi ho compite, resta solo che vi rimette le mane, il che di già avrei fatto se non mi succedeva la morte di mio fratello, qualie mi ha travagliato tanto, che ancor io gli ho havuto a fare compagnia, et sono stato un mese in letto.”

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With the rise of the Borghese family, the cardinal remained a threat in the Eternal City and found it best to stay away from Rome after his uncle’s demise. The final negotiations were done with this nephew, but in the end Barocci’s extravagant, nearly 1,500 scudi fee was paid directly by the duke, as a gift to the pope’s memory. In conception the Institution of the Eucharist is not so different from the Presentation, save for the nocturnal setting. The preponderance of black makes the yellow and orange of the apostles’ already bright robes that much more brilliant. The foreground shadowed figures and theatrical drape across the top enhance the illuminated emergence of the miraculous scene. If this is a sublimated Oratorian work, its subject is firmly Christological and does not reflect the Marian focus of the Chiesa Nuova. The chapel was dedicated to the Crucifixion and the larger church hosted the Archiconfraternità del Santissimo Sacramento, indulgences for which were renewed by Paul V in 1607. All these facts refer directly to the act of communion featured in Barocci’s work.81 In this, it is highly affirmative of the Catholic sacrament of communion and its proper use. Filippo Neri was particularly devoted to administering frequent communion to his devotees and was instrumental in developing the Forty Hours (Quarant’ore) devotion at Santa Maria sopra Minerva. In adopting this chapel, the Aldobrandini family was affirming a tenet of the reforming church as well as the devotion of Neri. But even here Neri had a particular relationship to the holy Host that is reflected in Barocci’s treatment. For Neri, the miracle of transubstantiation is an overwhelming, awesome fact, which caused him to tremble and stutter while performing mass. It is as if Christ’s direct presence was too powerful to behold. In pictorial form, Barocci presents a vision of harmony as the apostles (with the exception of Judas) take communion. Peter is foremost, and the Host that stands for Christ undergirds the succession of the popes as Peter stands for Christ. Both the Dominicans and the Oratorians had a corporate ethos, and that ethos inspired Clement VIII and is reflected in Barocci’s suave treatment. There was some negative critical reception by 1611; comments sounded that the painting was too small and was overwhelmed by the statues and niches of the chapel.82 Gary Walters has taken this criticism to mean that Barocci’s works “never were meant for the bruising Roman light nor, for that matter, to shed light themselves on the Church Triumphant.”83 While he may be correct that the work loses itself in the chapel, John Shearman has remarked positively how, when the painting is seen in situ in the chapel, “its figures have seemed to glow like jewels among black velvet.”84 We can raise the question of who could have successfully negotiated such a commission. The pope, after all, requested a night scene in a dark chapel. Furthermore, if it is correct that Carlo Maderno’s

81. On the church, see Palmerio and Villetti, Storia edilizia di S. Maria sopra Minerva in Roma; on the confraternity, see Black, Italian Confraternities in the Sixteenth Century, 96. 82. BAV, Urbino lat. 1079, fol. 185, quoted in Orbaan, Documenti sul Barocco in Roma, 187; and Emiliani, Federico Barocci, 2:379–­80: “con molte figure che per esser piccole non corrispondono alla grandezza delle statue poste nelle faciata e nei nicchi della medesima cappella ornata di marmi finissimi.” 83. Walters, Federico Barocci, 149. 84. Shearman, “Barocci at Bologna and Florence,” 50.

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altar design had to accommodate the flanking statues already in place, then Barocci was faced with a fixed area.85 Walters also hints that because of the critical comments about the painting, the Duke of Urbino was forced to pay for it. This is an assumption of quite far-­reaching consequences. It suggests that the work was for all practical purposes rejected and that it remained in the chapel only due to the duke’s intervention. But it was not unusual that Barocci’s fee was paid by Francesco Maria II, who did so for royalty as an act of generosity and respect.86 The further inference that Barocci did not fit in with the times is more debatable. Bellori noted that the painting was held in such high esteem by the pope that he “not only gave Barocci the highest praise, but also presented the artist with a golden necklace of great value.”87 Bellori was of course wrong that the pope was alive to receive the work, but the story points to a seicento writer’s positive assessment of a work he could be expected to know something about. This chapter has spent a great deal of time examining what an altarpiece dedicated to the Nativity of the Virgin could have meant for the Chiesa Nuova. Although Barocci’s potential participation was only an option for a short period of time, the subject had long been set aside for the most important space in the church, the high altar. By examining what Barocci actually did produce and left aside, we get a better idea of how his artistic thought could have rounded out the experience in the Chiesa Nuova. It seems that Barocci would have happily accommodated this project into his busy schedule for the honor and importance of the commission. This receptivity explains how successfully he executed the Institution of the Eucharist for the pope’s personal family chapel in Santa Maria sopra Minerva. Although a Christological subject was called for, due to the dedication and associations of the chapel, the final painting can be called a kind of sublimated Oratorian work to the degree that it stresses concord in the church and Christ’s perfectly institutionalized authority in overseeing the most important sacrament: communion.

85. Hibbard, Carlo Maderno and Roman Architecture, 133–­35. 86. The most conspicuous cases are Barocci’s works for the Hapsburgs, The Flight of Aeneas from Troy (lost) for Rudolf II in Prague, and the Calling of Saint Andrew (Escorial) for Philip II and the Nativity (Prado) for Philip III and the Crocifisso Spirante (Prado) for Philip IV. All were paid for directly by the Duke of Urbino. 87. Bellori, “Life of Federico Barocci,” ed. Pillsbury and Richards, 20; and Bellori, “Vita di Federico Barocci,” ed. Borea, 198: “oltre le lodi grandissime, donò al Barocci una collana d’oro di molto valore.”

Conclusion

Baroccismo into the Seicento Federico Barocci was at the center of Oratorian patronage for some twenty years, yet he did not substantially contribute to the formation of an Oratorian iconography and the strand of Oratorian decoration of the Chiesa Nuova that leads from Guido Reni (see fig. 1.1) and Guercino in 1610s and 1620s to Pietro da Cortona in the 1630s through 1660s. It was the collection of testimony leading up to Neri’s beatification and its first cohesive presentation in Gallonio’s Vita di San Filippo Neri that created the material for an iconography of San Filippo Neri.1 Although Gallonio’s Vita was not illustrated, inset oil paintings by Cristoforo Roncalli (Pomarancio) in the new chapel dedicated to Neri in the Chiesa Nuova were able to establish the key scenes relating to the newly beatified holy man (fig. 5.1). In fact, the Oratorians relied heavily on Roncalli in the period around 1600. What is the relation of Barocci’s altarpieces to Roncalli’s narratives, of Barocci’s aesthetic to Roncalli’s local production? Although this is not evident in his two altarpieces within the church—­the Visitation and the Presentation—­the most direct contribution that Barocci would make was through his ecstatic saints, particularly as evidenced in Reni’s Saint Filippo Neri in Ecstasy (see fig. 1.1). Stephen Pepper and Olga Melasecchi argued that that patronage was only an individual affair: Neri preferred Barocci, then Baronio (after Neri’s death) liked Roncalli, and Scipione Borghese (after Baronio’s death) chose Reni.2 A close examination of Baronio’s and Borghese’s choices of artists whose styles echo Federico Barocci’s reveals a recurring Baroccismo in Oratorian patronage. Borghese’s interest in Reni is a continuation of such Baroccismo, not a deviation from the interests of Baronio and Roncalli.

1. Incisa della Rochetta and Vian, Il primo processo per san Filippo Neri; Melasecchi, “Nascita e sviluppo dell’iconografia di S. Filippo Neri”; Leone, Saints and Signs, 282–­320. 2. Melasecchi and Pepper, “Guido Reni, Luca Ciamberlano and the Oratorians.”

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Fig. 5.1: Cristoforo Roncalli, Saint Filippo Neri in Ecstasy, 1600, oil on canvas, Chapel of Filippo Neri, Chiesa Nuova, Rome (photo by author).

In fact, during the years after Filippo Neri’s death, Baronio undoubtedly demonstrated his personal taste in commissions to Baroccisti like Francesco Vanni and Antonio Viviani. By addressing this question of continuity, we are able to assess the claims made at the outset of this study regarding the importance of Oratorian patronage for seventeenth-­ century art. The Oratorian commitment to an art devoted to simple narratives with a deep meditative dimension, an art of grace and intuitive prehension, becomes an undercurrent of seicento art. Such art does not dominate the seicento, but is a discernible presence.

Barocci and Reform Painting One fact that has been overlooked in following the trail of commissions to Barocci and his workshop is the general interest of reforming artists in Barocci. While the Oratorians were discovering Barocci, so too was a whole generation of artists seeking a model for a more effective religious image. At two principal points—­the completion of the Visitation in 1586 and of the Presentation (and discussions of the Nativity of the Virgin) in 1603—­Roman artists had different levels of awareness of the contribution of their elder contemporary. However, interest in Barocci was really a pan-­Italian event, because Barocci was central to the reform of painting in Rome, Tuscany, and Emilia-­Romagna. To return to the Chiesa Nuova, the Oratorians may not have only patronized artists who were Baroccesque, but they selected artists who were at least of the reformed category.

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The Florentine influence on the Chiesa Nuova chapels is significant, accounting for the works by Passignano and Lomi, who were of the reform generation. Santi di Tito, who had painted alongside Barocci back in the 1560s in the Casina of Pius IV, pioneered a reformed style in Florence in the succeeding generation and prepared the way for younger painters to discover Barocci.3 When Barocci’s Madonna del Popolo was installed in Arezzo, Filippo Baldinucci tells us that Gregorio Pagani and Ludovico Cigoli together visited the city to see the painting, and were so impressed that Cigoli went on with Domenico Passignano to Perugia to see the earlier Deposition from the Cross. These artists simultaneously rediscovered life drawing and made a close study of artists from two previous generations—­Raphael and Andrea del Sarto. Also among those younger artists influenced by Barocci’s captivating naturalism were the Carracci in Bologna. Annibale, his brother Agostino, and their cousin Ludovico made up the Carracci painting family and the founding members of the Carracci Academy, established in 1582 in Bologna.4 The Carracci may have made a similar journey, this time to Ravenna, to see Barocci’s recently completed Martyrdom of Saint Vitalis in the church of San Vitale. Annibale’s Baptism (1583–­85) in San Gregorio, Bologna, shows the influence of Barocci. The Pietà shows the synthesis of Barocci and Correggio; Charles Dempsey calls it the “first painting in a recognizable and definable Baroque style.”5 If one chooses to think in terms of winners and losers, we would have to conclude that Barocci’s naturalistic observation of nature and the human form, his attention to the light and color of atmosphere, and his subtlety with the aria of his heads, singled him out as a winner from the Oratorian viewpoint. But the forceful chiaroscuro that the Carracci developed, and that is shown to such effect in the Farnese Gallery in Rome, has precisely the public, rhetorical voice that Barocci personally lacks, so the Carracci style can also be considered a winner from the Jesuit viewpoint. So while the Oratorians promoted a Baroccisti style of subtle naturalism suitable to personal or private devotion, the Jesuits promoted the Carracci’s style of stronger contrasts suitable to a more public setting. Because each style was suited to its context, both styles were successful. Within the Roman art world, we can identify the point when a native Barocci style became viable. Within the massive artistic projects overseen by Sixtus V (1585–­90) in Rome, dozens of artists were brought together in a way that imitated the eclecticism of the contemporaneous Carracci Academy. It was in 1588 that Francesco Vanni of Siena, after becoming acquainted with Barocci’s pupils and imitators Antonio Viviani and Andrea Lilio while working together in Rome, himself became a conspicuous imitator of Barocci.6 In the seventeenth c­ entury, critics debated the relative merits of devotional paintings of iconic subjects and frescoes of narrative or storie. These critics do not mention Barocci in exactly those terms, but his approach is clearly more suited to the devotional and indeed he was

3. See Hall, After Raphael. 4. Dempsey, Annibale Carracci. 5. Ibid., 14. 6. See Marciari,“Francesco Vanni.”

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never a great frescoist. Vanni’s talent too lay with altarpieces, and his chromatic richness and devotional focus on a few figures will be repeated with his friend Guido Reni, both under the umbrella of Oratorian patronage.

Cesare Baronio and the Oratory after Neri Baronio was the spiritual but not official head of the Oratory after Neri’s death. Although he was a committed churchman and strongly devoted to the paleo-­Christian movement, this does not necessarily tell against the progressiveness of his aesthetic sensibilities. What is important is that Baronio was intimately associated with Neri for decades and came to strongly identify with his values. Important also is that Baronio had been to Pesaro with Clement VIII to take possession of Ferrara (1598) and while there may have gained further knowledge of Barocci’s works (or met the master). When Neri died in 1595, Barocci’s project for the Presentation was still under way and Federico Borromeo was pursuing various projects in Milan, both personally and institutionally. Around 1600 the Chapels of the Pietà and Pentecost were adorned with paintings by Caravaggio and Coebergher, respectively, so one might wonder why those remaining altars in the Chiesa Nuova weren’t also decorated by Baroccesque artists. Although the Oratorian fathers gave parameters for patrons and insisted that the painters be of the highest quality, they could not control the patron’s choice of artist. When they did have control, as when they used Cardinal Cesi’s money for his own chapel or the high altar, they sought out Barocci. Roncalli, because he was frequently patronized by the Oratorians, must be given particular attention. Roncalli was a good artist whose output was not alien to Baronio’s aims, and the Oratorians selected him for several commissions, but when Baroccesque painters became available to Baronio—­especially Barocci’s pupil Antonio Viviani (1560–­1620) and the Barocci imitator Francesco Vanni—­he immediately employed them rather than Roncalli.7 These commissions with Roncalli, Viviani, and Vanni were made after 1603, when Barocci was very much alive and his great Presentation of the Virgin had just been installed in the Chiesa Nuova. Clearly Baronio was not moving on to new artists; he was seeking out the next best thing to Barocci, who had just completed an important picture and was still in discussion about a Nativity for the high altar. While it is true, as Melasecchi and Pepper argue, that it was Scipione Borghese who could have precipitated Reni’s entry into Oratorian patronage, it is harder to support their assertion that Roncalli was exclusively Cesare Baronio’s artist, because Roncalli also had other commissions. When one recognizes that Roncalli was not tied exclusively to one particular patron, then the succession of Reni is less puzzling. After Neri died, but while Baronio was still alive, Borghese was never the preposito of the Chiesa Nuova; this honor fell instead on Baronio (1593–­96), Angelo Velli (1596–­1602), Flaminio Ricci (1602–­8), and

7. This is not even to mention works by Andrea Lilio in the Chiesa Nuova.

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Angelo Velli again (1608–­11).8 This meant that his Borghese’s agency for dictating Oratorian patronage was weakened. Before discussing the individual artists, it should be pointed out that there was already something of a sharing of Barocci’s style quite early, with the first arrival of Baroccisti in Rome to work on one of Sixtus’s great projects in the Lateran Palace, the Scala Santa, Santa Maria Maggiore, and more. Barocci’s Visitation arrived in Rome in 1586 and with it Antonio Viviani, who joined the Sistine projects. During Sixtus’s reign, numerous artists from areas of della Rovere sovereignty gained prominence. The presence of Marchegian artists has been noted before, but often not forcefully enough. Gauvin Bailey notes a Tuscan contingent, and Alessandro Zuccari, after noting the Marchegian group, notes others.9 However, there was a long-­standing tradition of a new pope patronizing artists from his own hometown or region. Before Sixtus’s election, the most prominent example was the rise of the Bolognese group of Lorenzo Sabatini, Denys Calvaert, Baldassare Croce, Raffaellino da Reggio, and Giovanni Guerra.10 But Barocci followers were already in Rome, beginning with the very Urbino-­friendly papacy of Gregory XIII. Already in the late 1570s Giorgio Picchi of Casteldurante, Pasquale Cati of Jesi, and Antonio Cimatori were working in Rome. These artists were also part of the Bologna-­dominated projects in the Vatican. Giovan Battista Lombardelli (1537–­92) worked in the Logge of Gregory XIII (1576–­77) and later with Cati, and Cesare d’Ancona (and Roncalli) painted the Sala Vecchi degli Svizzeri. Viviani was among the Marchegian artists who worked on the Sistine projects such as the Scala Santa, Sistine Chapel, and San Giovanni in Laterano11 Also participating in those Sistine projects were Giorgio Picchi (1550–­99?) of Casteldurante12 and Terenzio Terenzi of Urbino.13 Other Marchegians not from Della Rovere lands included Cesare and Vincenzo Conti and Andrea Lilio from Ancona;14 however, there are also several Urbinate artists gravitating around the Palazzo Peretti in via Parione and the nearby church of the Marchegians, San Lorenzo in Lucina. At the same time, Pasquale Cati was painting the Altemps chapel in Santa Maria in Trastevere and his well-­known Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence (both painted ca. 1585/89) in San Lorenzo in Panisperna.15 Terenzio

8. Dalos, “I Prepositi della Congregazione dell’Oratorio a Rome.” In an interesting slip, Melasecchi and Pepper note that Borghese was commendatore of the Oratorians, when they obviously mean San Gregorio Magno. But since their article is about the Oratorian patronage, clarifying the fact is useful. 9. Zuccari, I Pittori di Sisto V, 100n83; Bailey, Between Renaissance and Baroque. 10. On this see Marciari, “Raffaellino da Reggio in the Vatican.” 11. Zuccari, I Pittori di Sisto V, 95–­97. 12. For Picchi, see Moretti, “La celebrazione dei Della Rovere in due dipinti di Giorgio Picchi,” 144. In 1580 Picchi had already been inscribed in Accademia di San Luca; “Giorgio Picchi da Casteldurante,” ASL, Libro di Introiti, fols. 79v, 80r. 13. For Terenzi, see Bertolotti, Artisti Urbinati in Roma prima del Secolo XVIII, 32; and Lorenza Mochi Onori, “Terenzio Terenzi ditto il Rondolino,” in Arbizzoni, Pesaro nell’età dei della Rovere, 2:165–­80. 14. Zuccari, I Pittori di Sisto V, 78–­79, 95–­96. Bertolotti (Artisti Urbinati in Roma prima del Secolo XVIII) also mentions Riccio d’Urbino at work on the Sistine Chapel (22), Giovanni Paolo Severo in San Giovanni in Laterano (24, 64), and Ascanio Fenicio (8–­10). 15. For Cati, see Baglione, Le vite de’ pittori scultori et architetti, 112–­13; Cati is inscribed in the Academy of Saint Luke in 1577 and 1581 (1 February 1577 and 25 June 1581); ASL, Libro di Introiti.

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d’Urbino became indissolubly linked to Sixtus’s nephew Cardinal Peretti-­Montalto, after being introduced to him by Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte “come suo paesano.”16 Terenzio, in fact, had begun in the Marche working for the Monsignore Giuliano della Rovere, the natural son of Cardinal Giulio Feltrio della Rovere. He went on to work not only for Cardinal Montalto but also for Prince Michele Peretti and his bride, Margherita della Somaglia.17 The agency of Oratorian theologians in these and later projects should also not be underestimated, for they may have had some influence in the choice of artists. During the papacy of Sixtus V, a Marchegian, one can expect to see him supporting artists from his home region, but when an Oratorian is involved, as in Silvio Antoniano’s design of the iconographic program of the Sistine Chapel in Santa Maria Maggiore, it appears that stylistic selection was also considered, as will be noted in the case of the Navi Piccole below.

The Chapel of Filippo Neri During Filippo Neri’s life, there were already efforts by patrician families and religious communities to possess an image of the holy man in the odor of sainthood. One such portrait, now in the Oratorio of Santa Maria di Galliera in Bologna, was painted by Federico Zuccaro in 1593 (fig. 5.2).18 Of course Zuccaro was a friend of Barocci and in this context it is worth recalling the drawing on the European art market discussed in chapter 3, which can plausibly be related to Neri (see plate IV).19 The existence of a possible portrait by Barocci is interesting in light of the possible connections between the Oratory and Barocci, but there is a whole family of such portraits that can be traced back to Roncalli, the artist most connected to, and most relied upon by, the Oratorians in the years around 1600.20 Olga Melasecchi has adduced evidence showing that Roncalli had recourse to the wax death mask of Neri, and from this derived a prototype from which to create a group of portraits.21 Roncalli painted the images of the life of Filippo Neri that seem to have been moved from Neri’s personal rooms to his chapel (see fig. 5.1). This group included also a pair of altarpieces (1596/97): first, Filippo Neri Having a Vision of the Virgin in Heaven (now lost,

16. Baglione, Le vite de’ pittori scultori et architetti, 157. 17. See for example Terenzio’s Immaculate Conception, 1608–­10, Santa Maria della Concezione, Rome; Valone, “Mothers and Sons.” 18. Museo di Palazzo Venezia, Regola e la Fama, 454–­55, no. 4. 19. There is a notice of a portrait of Baronio by Barocci (titled Cardinal Baronius) in the inventory of Lord Burlington’s collection; it was in the Red Velvet Room along the West Front; Rosoman, “Decoration and Use of the Principal Apartments of Chiswisk House,” 668. This is untraced but from the Rosoman’s reconstruction would have been a large, probably half-­length, portrait. The author goes on to state that “Lord Burlington was in general unusually accurate in his attributions of paintings in his collections” (667). 20. Barbieri, Barchiesi, and Ferrara, Santa Maria in Vallicella, 115; Chiappini di Sorio, “Cristoforo Roncalli alla Chiesa Nuova.” 21. Melasecchi, “Nascita e sviluppo.”

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Fig. 5.2: Federico Zuccaro, Portrait of Filippo Neri, 1593, oil on canvas, Oratorio of Santa Maria in Galliera, Bologna (Congregazione dell’Oratorio di San Filippo Neri).

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but a copy is in San Girolamo della Carita, and it was also engraved by Mattheus Greuter in 1606), and a Filippo Neri and Virgin and Child, which seems to have been the model for Reni’s later altarpiece.22 Ruth Noyes has pointed to the politics underlying the developing iconography of Neri and its promotion of Neri as a kind of Mary-­like intercessor. Here we are most interested in how different styles might serve different (and new) iconographies. Roncalli was a familiar of the Chiesa Nuova, called “amicissimo” by Bacci in his Life of Filippo Neri. Thus, he can be considered to hold a status similar to the lay member of the Oratory Giovan Battista Guerra. It is for this reason Roncalli would have been the appropriate choice to record the true likeness of the would-­be saint. Roncalli was furthermore entrusted with drawing scenes of Neri’s life, which are closely related to the paintings of the life of Neri but only part of the group had been engraved when Guido Reni’s work came to be preferred by the Oratorians. It is clear that Roncalli was popular with the Oratorians and that should not be underestimated. But while it is true that Reni took over Roncalli’s job of illustrating the Life of Neri, it may be too strong to say that the Oratorians “cancelled” Roncalli. After all, he was physically absent from Rome after 1605 when he went to work in Loreto, a commission whose prestige is proven by Caravaggio’s attack on Roncalli upon hearing news of the commission. Without putting too much emphasis on Roncalli, it should be noted that he was able to offer the Oratorians—­just as Cavaliere d’Arpino did for Clement VIII—­works in a reformed style not antithetical to that of Barocci. The famous letter by Vincenzo Giustiniani, which lists the artists “di maniera,” presents an enticing grouping accurate to early seventeenth-­century tastes, including as it does Barocci, Passignano, and the Cavaliere d’Arpino (all contributors to the decoration of the Chiesa Nuova). The list also mentions “Romanelli,” which can be convincingly read as “Roncalli,” thus rounding out the group.23

Projects for Other Churches and Saint Peter’s As the year 1600 approached, Baronio was adorning the chapel of Filippo Neri and creating a new iconography of the life of the saint, but other commissions outside of the church were equally important for motivating Oratorian iconography. These other commissions show the Madonna della Vallicella becoming a kind of Madonna of Loreto, which sublimates her birth and propagates the cult of her icon. In addition, works for papal projects show the expansion of the Oratorian orbit and interest in the Baroccesque style. Because members of the Oratory increasingly obtained honors as cardinals and bishops, they had new avenues to spread ideas and patronage, and new churches to decorate. In 1596, Clement VIII elevated both Cesare Baronio and Francesco Maria Tarugi to

22. Melasecchi, “Nascita e sviluppo”; Noyes, “On the Fringes of Center.” 23. See, for example, Haskell, Patrons and Painters, 95.

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Fig. 5.3: Cristoforo Roncalli, Saint Domitilla with Saints Nereo and Achilleo, 1601, oil on canvas, Santi Nereo e Acchile, Rome (Mondadori Portfolio/Electa/Art Resource, NY).

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the cardinalate. Baronio resisted requests to take a bishop’s post, but the next year Tarugi became archbishop of Siena. Baronio received as his titular cardinal’s church of Santi Nereo e Achilleo in Rome and Tarugi was awarded San Bartolomeo all’Isola. Baronio had several other benefices as well. He was commendatore of San Gregorio Magno, the Camaldolese monastery on the Celian hill in Rome, and also was a patron in his hometown, Sora, where he funded the Capuchin church, Santa Maria degli Angeli. It was at Santi Nereo e Achilleo especially that Baronio could exercise both his cardinal’s duty to care for his ancient church and piously restore it; however, he contributed painted decoration to all of these institutions. For example, Roncalli painted works for both Santi Nereo e Achilleo (Saint Domitilla with Saints Nereo and Achilleo; fig. 5.3) and San Gregorio Magno (The Madonna and Child with Saints Andrew and Gregory).24 Tarugi was not as zealous in his care for his titular church, but as archbishop of Siena he did bring Francesco Vanni into Oratorian notice, favoring him especially for his Baroccesque style. In 1597 Tarugi became archbishop of Siena where Vanni belonged to the Congregazione del Sacro Chiodo, a pious organization supported by Neri.25 Baronio and Borromeo were also members of the group. Once Tarugi brought Vanni to Oratorian notice, it is not surprising that Vanni soon found new commissions in Rome, not in the Chiesa Nuova, but in other contexts for Cardinals Sfondrato and Baronio. Sfondrato was heavily influenced by Baronio in his restoration of his own titular church, Santa Cecilia in Trastevere. In undertaking his restoration, he found the body of the early Christian martyr Cecilia uncorrupted. This spectacular discovery created a sensation in Rome, which led to the creation of a permanent shrine containing Stefano Maderno’s life-­size effigy and to Sfondrato commissioning the Oratorian Tommaso Bozio to write a publication celebrating the discovery.26 In a similar vein, Vanni produced the tender Death of Saint Cecilia (1601, Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, Rome), evoking the pathos of an innocent girl after death.27 Alongside his commissions for Sfondrato, Vanni found more projects with Baronio. For the Capuchin church of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Sora, Baronio’s hometown, Vanni painted The Madonna della Vallicella Adored by Saints Francis and Restituta for the high altar (fig. 5.4).28 He also painted portraits of Filippo Neri and Cesare Baronio.29 Both of these works of Vanni, in certain senses, reflected Barocci’s style, but because they promoted the cult of the Madonna della Vallicella, they were not true figural compositions. Instead, they were kinds of picture-­tabernacles containing and honoring the sacred image inside, similar to the high altar and Rubens’s altarpiece for the Chiesa Nuova

24. The contract for the latter work was signed 27 July 1602 (painting signed and dated 1603). The price was 200 scudi; Pedrocchi, San Gregorio al Celio, 100; Museo di Palazzo Venezia, La Regola e la Fama, 88, fig. 83, and 93, fig. 90. 25. Vanni joined the Sacro Chiodo in 1580, for which see Nardi, “Matteo Guerra e la Congregazione dei Sacri Chiodi.” 26. Bozio, Historia Passionis Beatae Caeciliae Virginis. 27. Marciari, “Francesco Vanni,” 21–­22. 28. Museo di Palazzo Venezia, La Regola e la Fama, 505–­6; Marciari, “Francesco Vanni,” 18–­21. 29. Museo di Palazzo Venezia, La Regola e la Fama, 487. In the Biblioteca Vallicelliana are two letters from Vanni to Baronio (AV 1607, G. 92, 12–­13).

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Fig. 5.4: Francesco Vanni, Madonna Vallicelliana Adored by Saints Francis and Restituta, 1601, oil on canvas, Santa Maria degli Angeli, Sora (photo by author).

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discussed in chapter 4. More interesting for us would be the delicate Madonna and Child images that the Oratorians may have acquired from Vanni, like that donated by Tarugi to the Neapolitan Oratorians or the Madonna della Pappa (ca. 1599) by Vanni, which may be the work that began the relationship between Vanni and Sfondrato.30 This private devotional work descends directly from Barocci’s images of the holy family derived from apocryphal sources (especially the Rest on the Return from Egypt), and shows an angel feeding the child while Joseph entices him with cherries, both miraculous foods that sprang up for the hungry family. During these years around 1600 Roncalli was one of the top artists in Rome. He contributed to prestigious papal projects in both the Lateran and the Navi Piccole in New Saint Peter’s, painting two frescoes in the Lateran (Saint Simon and Sylvester Baptizing Constantine) and the altarpiece of Ananias and Sapphira Struck Dead (now in Santa Maria degli Angeli, Rome).31 Vanni’s influence with the Oratory increased, however, when he was invited to Rome to paint the important commission for the Fall of Simon Magus for Clement VIII’s so-­called Navi Piccole project in Saint Peter’s, to which Roncalli, Passignano, and Cigoli also contributed. Baglione reports that “Il cardinal Baronio propose Francesco Vanni” and it is probably the case that Baronio chose Vanni for his Baroccismo.32 Vanni had first encountered Barocci’s style in the workshops of Sixtus V, and coming to Rome a second time allowed him to influence a group of reform-­minded artists sensitive to Barocci’s work. In particular, Vanni was friendly with the young Guido Reni and was probably very responsible for expanding and cementing Reni’s artistic style. These examples show that while Barocci was still working on the Presentation in the 1590s, and on projects for Milan, Oratorians as patrons or advisors were pursuing works in Barocci’s style. Rather than see the decade as dominated by one artist or another (or one patron or another) it is better to see the general reformist, Baroccesque slant of works ordered by the Oratorian orbit.

After the Presentation After the plan for the high altar at the Chiesa Nuova was definitively changed, and Barocci was set to work to create the Institution of the Eucharist, he was largely regarded as too old for much more to be expected of him. Indeed, in his correspondence, the Duke of Urbino habitually refers to Barocci as old, sick, and melancholic. Therefore, after 1604 once the

30. Marciari and Boorsch, Francesco Vanni, 138–­41, no. 42. It is important to notice that Barocci, too, seems to have produced a Madonna della Pappa. This painting, formerly in Wilton House, exists in an eighteenth-­century print by Christophe LeBlon; Tempesti, “Una scheda per il Barocci,” 50, fig. 7. 31. The Nave Clementina was painted from 1597 to 1600; Roncalli’s altarpiece was completed in June 1604; Chappell and Kirwin, “A Petrine Triumph.” 32. On the Sora altarpiece, see Museo di Palazzo Venezia, La Regola e la Fama, 505–­6. On the Saint Peter’s altarpiece, see Chappell and Kirwin, “A Petrine Triumph,” who report that Vanni and Passignano were called to Rome perhaps in late 1602. Vanni received his first payment 4 December 1602, and the work was done by June 1603. Abromson (Painting in Rome during the Papacy of Clement VIII) suggests Vanni got the commission because he was Tuscan.

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project for a Barocci altarpiece on the high altar stalled, the Oratorians entered a new phase, in which they sought a definitive replacement of the irreplaceable artist, Barocci. It was precisely at this time that Baronio began to patronize Barocci’s direct pupil Antonio Viviani. It is clear that Viviani was Barocci’s “giovane” who had delivered the Presentation of the Virgin to the Chiesa Nuova and informed the fathers that the master would gladly paint the altarpiece for the high altar. Just as he had after delivering the Visitation to the Chiesa Nuova in 1586 and gotten fresco work for Sixtus’s projects, Viviani took the opportunity to remain in Rome and got work again as a frescante. It is clear that he brought with him numerous drawings by Barocci (or copies of them) and earned some bit of status as a minion of the mysterious artist in far-­away Urbino. Viviani worked on the so-­called Triclinium Pauperum in the monastery of San Gregorio Magno in Rome, working for Baronio in his role as commendatore. Viviani painted seven scenes, many of which are pastiches of Barocci compositions and payments for that work continued from 21 November 1603 to 16 February 1606.33 Morton C. Abromson and Alessandro Zuccari have suggested that Viviani was most likely chosen for the closeness of his style to Barocci.34 Important proof of some sympathy between the churchman and artist is that Mancini called Viviani “amatissimo” to Baronio.35 The seven scenes depicted are, starting with the entrance door, The Care of Saint Gregory/Election of Probo as Abbot of the Monastery of the Celio; The Apparition of the Angel at the Meal of the Poor (fig. 5.5); Saint Gregory Writing/Saint Barbara; San Nereo; Sant’Achilleo; Flavia Domitilla/Saint Gregory Inviting Augustine and Other Monks to Convert the English; and The Monks in front of King Etelbert/Saint Gregory in Adoration of the Virgin. The work most recognizably indebted to Barocci is the Apparition, a take on Barocci’s Urbino Last Supper, which was only finished in 1599. Viviani must have brought numerous cartoons copied from Barocci’s and this, no doubt, was part of his celebrity once in Rome. It can be seen in both the examples of Vanni and Viviani that Baronio avidly commissioned Baroccesque artists, directly or indirectly, when he had the chance. But it is here that the theory that Roncalli monopolized Oratorian commissions becomes difficult to sustain. Baronio also put Vanni and Viviani to work quite extensively. When we compare Roncalli to Reni it is easier to fall into generalizations, as in the switch from Roncalli’s “old Oratorian style of depiction—­a kind of subdued Mannerism—­to Guido Reni’s modern style of delicate naturalism.”36 But as we shall see, this is owed simply to Reni’s amazing gifts. It is generally assumed that it was Scipione Borghese’s personal predilections that brought him to impress Reni’s virtues on the Oratorians, but it is interesting to note that

33. Payments are recorded from 21 November 1603 (15 scudi) to 16 February 1606, for a total of 227 scudi; Pedrocchi, San Gregorio al Celio, 81. 34. Zuccari, “La politica culturale dell’Oratorio Romano nelle imprese artistiche promosse da Cesare Baronio”; O’Neil, “Patronage of Cardinal Cesare Baronio at San Gregorio Magno.” A similar surrogate interest in Barocci was expressed in Milan in commissions to Giovan Andrea Urbani for a copy of the Stigmatization in 1601. See Sangiorgi, Committenza milanesi a Federico Barocci, 30, 35. 35. For Mancini’s comment, see Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, 246: “Fu amatissimo dal cardinal Baronio.” 36. Melasecchi and Pepper, “Guido Reni, Luca Ciamberlano and the Oratorians,” 596.

Fig. 5.5: Antonio Viviani, The Apparition of the Angel at the Meal of the Poor, 1603–­6, fresco, San Gregorio Magno, Rome (photo by author).

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Viviani was helping to paint Paul V Borghese’s private apartments around the same time that his nephew Scipione was introducing Reni to the Oratorians.37 I suggest that after helping deliver Barocci’s Presentation of the Virgin in 1603 or the Institution of the Eucharist in 1608, Viviani stayed in Rome in order to undertake these commissions for Borghese. He would leave Rome for good after Barocci’s death in the hope of filling the artistic vacuum created in the duchy of Urbino. And we should not forget that Scipione Borghese was personally a collector of Barocci. Monsignore Giuliano della Rovere (first cousin of the Duke of Urbino) gave Borghese a copy of Barocci’s Flight of Aeneas from Troy (originally made for the emperor), the only surviving version of that painting, in addition to Barocci’s small, beautiful devotional image of Saint Jerome also in the Borghese gallery (fig. 5.6).38

Guido Reni, alter Baroccius The arrival of the Presentation of the Virgin in 1603 continued to fuel interest in Barocci in Rome, as did the arrival of the Institution of the Eucharist in 1608, but that painting marked the official end of Barocci’s production. The 1608 painting must have been regarded as another miraculous accomplishment, yet Barocci barely finished it and was effectively at the end of his career by then; indeed he died just four years later in 1612. By that time, Barocci’s major patrons were gone: Clement VIII had died in 1605, opening the way for a Borghese papacy with Paul V, and Cesare Baronio, the second great personality of the Roman Oratory, died in 1607. The way was clear for new patrons and new artists. There is no question that Guido Reni was keenly aware of the style and works of his older contemporary, Federico Barocci. Part of the reason that Reni has not been recognized as a follower of Barocci has to do with the slow rehabilitation of Barocci’s reputation. Recent scholarshop has made it easier, now as never before, to acknowledge that Barocci was simply the highest paid artist of his day and that he would have indeed been an important model to follow. While scholars might note Reni’s occasional borrowings from Barocci and Barocci’s influences on Reni—­especially the overall pietizing style of Barocci’s works and Reni’s so-­called seconda maniera in which shadows give way to a blonde, white heightened reality—­we should push that connection much farther.39 Reni had an idea that he could move much further than imitating Barocci’s style to the point of actually emulating it, mastering, and competitively mobilizing it. In fact, it can be argued that Reni actually fashioned his career in some imitation of Barocci and attempted to capitalize on Barocci’s absence from the art market after his death in 1612. Unusual

37. ASR, record of payments from 8 March to 20 July 1613: “nella stantia maggiore dell’archivio della libreria del palazzo Vaticano”; Bertolotti, Artisti Urbinati in Roma prima del Secolo XVIII, 33; Corbo and Componi, Fonti per la Storia Artistica Romana al Tempo di Paolo V, 97; cf., Fumagalli, “Paolo V Borghese in Vaticano.” 38. For the paintings, see Emiliani, Federico Barocci, 2:303–­305; Emiliani, Federico Barocci [2008], 2:168–­71. They do not appear in an early Borghese inventory (ca. 1615–­30); Coliva and Schütze, Bernini Scultore e la nascita del Barocci in casa Borghese. 39. For Reni’s second manner, see Spear, The ‘Divine’ Guido, esp. 293–­94. This section expands brief comments originally made in Verstegen, “Federico Barocci, the Art of Painting and the Rhetoric of Persuasion.”

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Fig. 5.6: Federico Barocci, Penitent Saint Jerome, 1597, fresco, Villa Borghese, Rome (Soprintendenza per i bene artistici e storica de Roma).

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evidence will be adduced from various sources that add up to make Guido Reni into an alter Baroccius. Barocci famously left Rome in 1563 due to a poisoning. According to Bellori, after Barocci had helped finish the frescoes in the Casina of Pius IV, he began frescoes in the Vatican apartments and had just finished a Moses and the Serpent (ca. 1563, Museo Etrusco Vaticano) when a jealous painter poisoned his salad.40 This incident led Barocci to go home to Urbino to recover, where Bellori says he was aided in prayer by the Capuchin friars outside of town. This was something of a topos for Guido Reni, who similarly finished frescoes in Rome in order to secure his reputation (the Quirinal Chapel), but then avoided fresco thereafter. Just as the Casina of Pius IV was for Barocci, the Quirinal Chapel was Reni’s last ambitious fresco cycle. Carlo Cesare Malvasia reports that Reni was “distressed about being able to withstand such fatigue” and during Reni’s lifetime it was said that fresco actually made him sick.41 It is just as easy to explain Bellori’s colorful story about Barocci in terms of a similar temperament. Fresco was demanding physical work and placed one in the hotbed of competitive Roman pursuit of mural painting. Fresco was said to have made Antonio Viviani, the pupil of Barocci and probable acquaintance of Reni, deaf, thereby earning him the nickname “il Sordo.” Such a temperament could also feed into the idea of a devout character. The Vita devota was a strong topos for many Counter-­Reformation artists, including not only Barocci and Reni, but also Girolamo Muziano and Francesco Vanni.42 What is more significant, however, is that shortly after completing the Quirinal Palace frescoes is when Reni moved back to Bologna, in direct comparison to Barocci and the Casina. Reni’s action of making his name in Rome, then using that to his advantage in his home province to dictate a market based solely (or largely) on altarpiece commissions, is something he learned directly from Barocci. Furthermore, the market was ready for a Baroccesque master to corner the devout style (stile devoto) of a painter of loveliness (vaghezza) with Barocci’s death in 1612. And with the death of most of Barocci’s direct imitators (Vanni died in 1610 and Salimbeni in 1614) and emulators (Cigoli died in 1613 and Viviani left Rome to fill the vacuum created by Barocci’s passing) the way was open in Rome for another solitary master to monopolize the market in graceful altarpieces. Instrumental in Reni’s choice of Barocci to emulate must have been his friendships with Francesco Vanni and Luca Ciamberlano, the engraver from Urbino.43 Reni’s association with the Carraccis would have predisposed him to share their appreciation of Barocci’s work. Evidence of this early imitation by Carracci protégés is found in the portrait of Reni painted by Domenichino. Under the surface of that portrait is evidence of a copy of Barocci’s Stigmatization of Saint Francis, probably studied after Villamena’s print,44 and no doubt

40. Bellori, “Life of Federico Barocci,” ed. Pillsbury and Richards, 184; Bellori, “Vita di Federico Barocci,” ed. Borea, 15. 41. Spear, ‘Divine’ Guido, 31. 42. Fumaroli, L’École du silente, 217; Bernini, “La vita devota del pittore Federico Barocci.” 43. The classic article on Reni’s debts to Vanni is Cellini, “Stefano Maderno, Francesco Vanni e Guido Reni”; but now see McGarry, “Young Guido Reni.” 44. Brown, Genius of Rome, 150n11. Its size is 64.5 x 52 cm.

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an exercise in mastering a particularly influential treatment of the stigmatization theme. Once the painting was finished, it had served its purpose and the canvas was reused. However, a stronger, extremely tangible demonstration of Reni’s appreciation of the virtues of Barocci’s work was his friendship with Vanni, and there are even echoes of Vanni’s works in Reni’s, though these are not often commented upon.45 After dallying with the style of Caravaggio in his Martyrdom of Saint Peter (Pinacoteca, Vatican), Reni reached an early, mature synthesis in his fresco of Saint Andrew Led to Martyrdom (1608) for San Gregorio Magno, where Viviani had just worked. Reni was engaged with fellow Carracci academician Domenichino to decorate another oratory, that of Saint Andrew, whose patron was the new commendatore of San Gregorio, Scipione Borghese. For the oratory at Saint Andrew, Reni painted a more iconic treatment of his subject than Domenichino, whose Flagellation of Saint Andrew presents all the best of a narratively focused Albertian istoria. Domenichino’s painting, indeed, is self-­consciously rhetorical and was therefore greatly admired by Poussin. It is not out of place to compare Domenichino’s rhetorical approach in his Flagellation of Saint Andrew to some of the Jesuit art discussed earlier. In this early moment of stylistic search and mastery, Reni, on the other hand, probably increasingly saw the advantages of the Baroccesque approach, which would have been confirmed with Vanni’s continuing influence. Reni continued this approach in the frescoes for the Quirinal Palace frescoes that preceded his definitive departure from Rome. Ciamberlano provided Reni with a direct link to Urbino and the transmission of more direct motifs and inspirations. By 1612, Ciamberlano was accepting payments for Reni, as in the case cited by Melasecchi and Pepper.46 At that time, Roncalli had already been contracted to provide the drawings for the Life of Filippo Neri; most of the forty-­six drawings associated with that project (now in the Biblioteca Vallicelliana) have been convincingly attributed to Roncalli by Melasecchi and Pepper. A 1607 reference to Roncalli suggests that he was undertaking these drawings—­most of which were reminiscent of the artist’s earlier efforts in the painted scenes of the beatus’s life—­to provide a sufficiently impressive illustrated Life of Neri in anticipation of sainthood. Melasecchi and Pepper are equally convincing in comparing the drawing styles of Roncalli and Reni; Reni seems to have replaced Roncalli shortly after the drawings began to be engraved, ultimately leaving Roncalli’s unpublished. Roncalli’s is a “different artistic outlook,” not based on life study and descended from the “older narrative tradition of Salviati and Vasari, where the space is ill-­defined and the surface pattern of the figures’ poses tends to undermine the dramatic action.” Reni, instead, places his scene “in a convincing spatial setting, giving a naturalistic character to the miraculous event.”47

45. Most conspicuous are Guido Reni’s Conception of the Virgin Immaculate (ca. 1610) in the Quirinal Palace, Rome, and Fathers of the Church Disputing the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception (ca. 1625) in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, where the figure of the seated Virgin, seen from the side, is a direct quotation from Vanni’s various versions: Pinacoteca, Siena; and Santa Margherita, Cortona (1602); see Marciari and Verstegen, “New Reattributed Painting by Francesco Vanni in Malta.” 46. Melasecchi and Pepper, “Guido Reni, Luca Ciamberlano and the Oratorians,” 596n5. 47. Ibid., 598, 599, 600.

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Where I differ from Melasecchi and Pepper is in what this change of artist means for Baronio’s aims and patronage. It is true that in 1609 another effort for Neri’s sanctification was gearing up and that Rubens’s Life of Ignatius of Loyola had raised people’s expectations for the quality of work for the Life of Neri, but Ciamberlano’s role in raising standards should not be underestimated. Ciamberlano was fresh from Urbino, having left there the year after Barocci had provided Santa Maria sopra Minerva with his Institution of the Eucharist, and had himself engraved Barocci’s Noli me tangere (fig. 5.7). He had some authority in conveying Barocci’s style and it may have been he who recognized in Reni’s work the qualities required for a Life whose artistic quality could compete with the Jesuits. Recall that Vanni was in Siena at the time when the Oratorians were seeking a team to work on the Life of Neri, and Viviani was best as a frescoist. There simply were no more Baroccisti to which to turn. Of course, Melasecchi and Pepper argue that after Baronio’s death in 1607, Borghese asserted his personality in choosing Reni over Roncalli, but this argument overlooks the fact that Borghese probably also hired Viviani, who was working in the papal palace painting frescoes at that time. Borghese may or may not have been involved in the choice of Reni for the Life of Neri, but Reni was closer than anybody else in being able to emulate Barocci’s style. Along with Reni came Ciamberlano, also from Urbino and possibly a pupil of Barocci, who had an important role in directing the project. This explains why Reni was able to step into the spotlight when he did; in a sense, he had received the Oratorians’ official stamp of approval as a Baroccista. It should be remembered that Reni, a product of the Carracci academy, never let go of the artificiality of his first teacher, Denys Calvaert, and when arriving in Rome was attracted to the manner of the Cavaliere d’Arpino. It is true that Reni was not a Baroccesque painter when the Aldobrandini were seeking his works in the early years of the seventeenth century. Agucchi’s inventory of 1603 lists three paintings by Reni; this was before his definitive turn toward Oratorian patronage and his friendship with Ciamberlano.48 The artist was well known to Cardinal Aldobrandini when in 1604 he commissioned Reni to paint the Crucifixion of Saint Peter. Painted in a Caravaggesque style in response to a challenge by Cavaliere d’Arpino, the work is clear evidence of Reni’s stylistic searching at the time. Despite their lack of a consistent style, all these works place Reni (along with his friend Vanni) squarely in Clement VIII’s milieu of Oratorian thought and appreciation of Barocci’s style. By the time Reni began to paint for the cardinal in the Duomo of Ravenna, near the time of his engravings for the Oratorians and his Filippo Neri in Ecstasy, he had assimilated the lessons of the older painter from Urbino.49 It is in this context that Reni was so enthusiastically chosen around 1610 to begin drawings for the Life of Filippo Neri and the portrait of Neri. As Reni continued to work on the drawings of the Life of Filippo Neri with Ciamberlano, his outlook could only have improved. Vanni had died in 1610 and in 1612 Barocci also passed away; although Viviani was in Rome around that time, he left for Urbino to cash in

48. D’Onofrio, “Inventario dei dipinti del Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini.” 49. Hibbard, “Notes on Reni’s Chronology.”

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Fig. 5.7: Luca Ciamberlano, after Federico Barocci, copper engraving from Noli me tangere, 1609 (Soprintendenza per i bene artistica e storica d Roma, Gabinetto Fotografico).

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on the vacuum created by the death of his master. In Rome, the way was open for someone adopting the sweet, lyrical style of Barocci and his followers for Oratorian patronage. Shortly after this, Reni, in a move that parallels Barocci’s own exodus from the Eternal City, left the competitive bustle of Rome for the relative tranquility of Bologna. Even then, Reni’s interest in Oratorians, and their reciprocal interest in him, did not end. When negotiating contracts in Naples, he produced an image for the Neapolitan Oratorians, the Girolamini, in his Meeting of Young Christ and John the Baptist (ca. 1626/28) and Saint Francis (ca. 1626/28).50 It was in Bologna that Reni adopted his second manner (seconda maniera), which in many respects is even closer to Barocci’s style than his earlier works. In its extensive use of white and overtly pietizing style, a work like the Meeting of Young Christ and John the Baptist becomes almost a meditation on Barocci’s style, as Marc Fumaroli properly intuited.51 Much more could be said about Reni’s late treatments of subjects that Barocci had also attempted, like the Annunciation (1584, Vatican, Pinacoteca), Crucified Christ (1604, Prado, Madrid), and Immaculate Conception (1570s, Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino). The latter two subjects show specific debts to Barocci’s great antecedents. Especially noteworthy are Barocci’s Crucified Christ (1604, Prado), which anticipates Reni’s similar work for the Capuchins of Rome, and the Immaculate Conception (Urbino, Galleria nazionale delle Marche) that is strikingly like Reni’s for the Infanta of Spain (1625, Metropolitan Museum of Art). But suffice it to say that these paintings by Barocci were aided in their transfer to Reni by the engraver from Urbino, Luca Ciamberlano. At this point it is helpful to review. For Melasecchi and Pepper the transition from Roncalli to Reni appears exaggerated for two reasons: first, differences in patronage are overemphasized, Roncalli with Baronio and Reni with Scipione Borghese; and second, Reni appears so different because his affinity with Barocci is underestimated. The result is that Oratorian patronage in general appears fragmented and to be the result of individual agents (e.g., Neri, Baronio, Borghese). But Baronio clearly shows an interest in Baroccesque artists, and Roncalli is a practical substitute when Barocci was not available. There is a good case for highlighting the Baroque elements of Reni’s style, yet the contrast between Reni’s style and Roncalli’s is significantly greater than the contrast between Reni and Barocci, his strong inspiration. In the second decade of the seventeenth century, most of the personalities changed in the Oratorian orbit of patrons and artists. In addition to the central figures already gone (Baronio and Clement VIII), other influential Oratorians (Gallonio, d. 1605) and penitents of Neri (Paleotti, d. 1597, and Valier, d. 1606) had died as well. Only younger patrons like Neri’s penitents Paolo Emilio Sfondrato and Federico Borromeo lived on, and provided continuity with the past. Borromeo prominently maintained his interest in Barocci well

50. For these works, see Pepper, Guido Reni, no. 81, fig. 107 (Young Christ and John the Baptist), no. 80, fig. 98 (Saint Francis). 51. Fumaroli, L’École du silence. See further his discussion of the topos of the vita devota common to both Barocci and Reni; Bernini, “La vita devota del pittore Federico Barocci”; Fumaroli, L’École du silence, 217; Spear, ‘Divine’ Guido.

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into the seventeenth century. He saw to the completion of Barocci’s Lamentation of Christ, intended for Milan’s duomo and left unfinished at Barocci’s death. He continued to aquire works by Barocci’s students, including a Mater dolorosa and Imago Pietatis by Viviani and Vitali’s copy of Barocci’s Rest on the Return from Egypt.52 When one considers which artists the Oratorians chose—­Barocci when he was available and Baroccisti when he was not—­it is clear that Barocci’s style appealed to early Oratorian sensibilities and that his style gradually solidified into an Oratorian brief that other artists followed. What is more, Barocci’s style concretized the shared values of the Oratorians and those sympathetic to them. Barocci, and Reni after him, forced the painting into becoming an object of devotional contemplation, giving its subject to the viewer as if the viewer were having a vision. Barocci passed the baton, as it were, to the seicento artists who worked for the Oratory: Guercino, Algardi, and above all Pietro da Cortona. But the connection between Barocci and the Congregation of the Oratory was never inevitable: rather, a saint and his congregation engaged a painter sympathetic to their sensibilities, and as they worked together to decorate the Oratorian church, an aesthetic was born.

52. For Viviani’s Mater dolorosa and an Imago Pietatis in the Ambrosiana, see Jones, Federico Borromeo, 261–­62. The Rest on the Return from Egypt was acquired sometime between mid-­1611 and mid-­1618 (when two inventories were taken); at the same time Borromeo also continued to show interest in Francesco Vanni.

Appendixes Federico Barocci and the Oratorians

Appendix 1 Chiesa Nuova altars and the altarpieces adorning them High Altar

Left Transept

Right Transept

L5

R5

L4

R4

L3

R3

L2

R2

L1

R1

144

Appendix 1

145

High Altar, Madonna and Saints

(no patron, 1597). Altarpiece, Peter Paul Rubens, 1608.

Left Transept, Presentation of the Virgin

(Cesi) Altarpiece, Federico Barocci, 1593–1603 Chapel, Giovan Battista Guerra, 1592 Stucco, Guglielmo Frassinelli, 1592–94 Statues, Antonio Paracca, 1591–92 Vault, probably Paris Nogari, 1593

L5, Annunciation (Cappella Ruspoli, 26 July

1589) Altarpiece, Domenico Cresti il Passignano, 1590–91 New chapel, 1589–91 Stucco, unknown artist, before 1591 Vault, Andrea Lilio, 1590–91

L4, Visitation (Cappella Pizzamiglio) Altarpiece, Federico Barocci, 1582–86 New chapel, Giovan Battista Guerra, 1598–1611 Stucco, unknown artist, 1618? Vault, Matteo Brancavaleri, 1618 (stucco) and Carlo Saraceni, 1618 (painting) L3, Nativity (Cappella Antoniano, 1582) Altarpiece, Durante Alberti, 1582? New chapel, Giovan Battista Guerra, 1597–1600 Stucco, unknown artist, before 1603 Vault, Roncalli, 1599–­1603 L2, I Three Kings (Cappella Ceva, 6 March 1578)

Altarpiece, Cesare Nebbia, 1578–81 New chapel, unknown artist, 1607–­19 Stucco, unknown artist, by 1619 Vault, Baccio Ciarpi?, after 1621

L1, Purification (Cappella Cusano)

Altarpiece, Giuseppe Cesari d’Arpino, 1617–27 New chapel, unknown artist, 1608–­17 Stucco, Pietro Intralegni, 1614 Vault, d’Arpino, 1620 (from 1580 to 1606 the Madonna della Vallicella was here)

Right Transept, Coronation of the Virgin

(Cappella Glorieri, 7 November 1591) Altarpiece, Giuseppe Cesari d’Arpino, 1592–1615 New chapel, 1592–94 Stucco, Guglielmo Frassinelli, 1592–94 Statues, Flaminio Vacca, after 1594 Vault, Paris Nogari, 1593

R5, Assumption (Cappella Amici or Pinelli)

Altarpiece (now lost), Aurelio Lomi, 1587 Altarpiece, Giovan Domenico Cerrini, 1640 Stucco, unknown artist, by 1587 Vault, Aurelio Lomi, by 1587

R4, Holy Spirit/Pentecost (Cappella Lavaiana then

del Campo)** Altarpiece (removed), Cesare Nebbia, probably 1579 Altarpiece (lost), Wenzel Coebergher, 1598–1603 New chapel, Giovan Battista Guerra, 1596–1601 Vault, unknown artists, 1598–1601 and 1601–2

R3, Ascension (Capella Cevoli, 1580) Altarpiece, Girolamo Muziano, 1581–87 New chapel, Giovan Battista Guerra, 1594–1616 Vault, unknown artist, after 1624

R2, Pietà (Cappella Vittrice, 29 September 1580)

Altarpiece, Michelangelo Caravaggio, 1602–4 New chapel, Giovan Battista Guerra, 1596–1611 Stucco, Pietro Castelli and Pietro Intralegni, 1611 Vault, Angelo Caroselli, 1611–12

R1, Crucifixion (Cappella Caetano, by 1583)

Altarpiece, Scipione Pulzone, 1583–86 New chapel, Giovan Battista Guerra, 1594–1606 Stucco, Stefano Longo, 1620–21 Vault, Giovanni Lanfranco, 1621

Location, Subject (patron, date of concession, if known). Type, artist, date of commission/installation.

Appendix 2 Chiesa Nuova Timeline1 1575

On 15 July, Pope Gregory XIII recognizes the Congregation of the Oratory. Sta. Maria in Vallicella is given to the Oratorian Fathers. On 17 September, Alessandro de’ Medici (later Leo XI) lays the first stone.

1577

On 23 February, Alessandro de’ Medici celebrates the first mass in the Chiesa Nuova. The makeshift church is covered with a wooden roof. Cesare Nebbia is commissioned to paint the Three Kings for the Ceva Chapel. In late 1580 or early 1581, Pier Donato Cesi becomes major patron of church, bringing his architect Martino Longhi. The Madonna della Vallicella is moved to the Chapel of the Purification. Girolamo Muziano is commissioned to paint the Ascension for the Cevoli Chapel. Cesare Nebbia finishes the Three Kings for the Ceva Chapel. Martino Longhi begins the rebuilding of Santa Maria in Vallicella. Federico Barocci is commissioned to paint the Visitation for the Pizzamiglio Chapel. Durante Alberti (probably) commissioned to paint and completes the Nativity for the Antoniano Chapel. Scipione Pulzone is commissioned to paint the Crucifixion for the Caetano Chapel. On 21 March, Giacomo della Porta becomes head architect; Longhi is executive architect. Cardinal Pierdonato Cesi dies. Federico Barocci finishes the Visitation for the Pizzamiglio Chapel. Scipione Pulzone finishes the Crucifixion for the Caetano Chapel. Girolamo Muziano finishes the Ascension for the Cevoli Chapel. Digging of the foundation of the transepts begun.2 The apse, transept, and dome are begun. Giovan Battista Guerra begins to rebuild the Ruspoli Chapel of the Annunciation. The apse, transept, and dome are finished. Domenico Cresti il Passignano is commissioned to paint the Annunciation for the Ruspoli Chapel. The apse is dedicated on Easter. Martino Longhi dies. Giovan Battista Guerra completes the Ruspoli Chapel of the Annunciation. Giuseppe Cesari d’Arpino is commissioned to paint the Coronation of the Virgin for the Glorieri Chapel. Barocci is commissioned to paint the Presentation in the Temple for theCesi Chapel. Giovan Battista Guerra begins to build the right transept. Giovan Battista Guerra finishes the left transept. In August, the nave vault is begun.

1578 1580

1581 1582

1583 1585 1586 1587 1588 1589 1590 1591 1592

1. All dates come from Barbieri, Barchiesi, and Ferrara, Santa Maria in Vallicella, unless otherwise noted. 2. Ponnelle, Bordet, and Kerr, St. Philip Neri, 411.

146

Appendix 2

1593 1594

1596 1597 1598 1599 1600 1602 1603 1604 1606 1607 1608 1611 1615 1616 1617 1627

147

With the transept chapels done, Angelo Cesi, brother of deceased patron, funds the construction of the façade. Early in the year, the nave vault is finished. Giovan Battista Guerra begins to rebuild the Chapels of the Crucifixion and the Ascension. On 21 March, a contract for stonecutters for façade is made. Giovan Battista Guerra begins to rebuild the Chapels of the Pietà and the Holy Spirit. Giovan Battista Guerra begins to rebuild the Chapel of the Nativity. Wenzel Coebergher is commissioned to paint the Pentecost for the del Campo Chapel. Giovan Battista Guerra begins to rebuild the Chapel of the Visitation. High altar dedicated on 23 March to the Nativity of the Virgin and San Gregorio Magno. Giovan Battista Guerra completes the Chapel of the Nativity. Michelangelo da Caravaggio is commissioned to paint a Pietà for the Vittrice Chapel. Wenzel Coebergher finishes the Pentecost for the del Campo Chapel. Federico Barocci finishes the Presentation of the Virgin for the Cesi Chapel and offers to do the high altarpiece. Michelangelo da Caravaggio finishes the Pietà for the Vittrice Chapel. Giovan Battista Guerra completes the Chapel of the Crucifixion. Rubens begins the altarpiece for the high altar. Giovan Battista Guerra begins to rebuild the Chapel of the Three Kings. Peter Paul Rubens finishes the altarpiece for the high altar. Giovan Battista Guerra completes the Chapel of the Purification. Giovan Battista Guerra completes the Chapels of the Pietà and the Visitation. Giuseppe Cesari d’Arpino finishes the Coronation of the Virgin for the Chiesa Nuova. Giovan Battista Guerra completes the Chapel of the Ascension. Giuseppe Cesari d’Arpino is commissioned to paint the Purification for the Cusano Chapel. Giovan Battista Guerra completes the Chapels of the Three Kings and the Purification. Giuseppe Cesari d’Arpino finishes the Purification for the Cusano Chapel.

Appendix 3 Order of Altarpiece Commissions and Completions 1578 1580 1581

F Cesare Nebbia is commissioned to paint the Three Kings for the Ceva Chapel. F The Madonna della Vallicella is moved to the Chapel of the Purification. F Girolamo Muziano is commissioned to paint the Ascension for the Cevoli Chapel. G Cesare Nebbia finishes the Three Kings for the Ceva Chapel.

1582

F Federico Barocci is commissioned to paint the Visitation for the Pizzamiglio Chapel. F Durante Alberti (probably) is commissioned to paint the Nativity for the Antoniano Chapel. G Durante Alberti (probably) completes the Nativity for the Antoniano Chapel.

1583 1586

F Scipione Pulzone is commissioned to paint the Crucifixion for the Caetano Chapel. G Federico Barocci finishes the Visitation for the Pizzamiglio Chapel. G Scipione Pulzone finishes the Crucifixion for the Caetano Chapel.

1587 1590 1591 1592 1598 1602 1603

G Girolamo Muziano finishes the Ascension for the Cevoli Chapel. F Domenico Cresti il Passignano is commissioned to paint the Annunciation for the Ruspoli Chapel. G Domenico Cresti il Passignano finishes the Annunciation for the Ruspoli Chapel. F Giuseppe Cesari d’Arpino is commissioned to paint the Coronation of the Virgin for the Glorieri Chapel. F Federico Barocci is commissioned to paint the Presentation in the Temple for the Cesi Chapel. F Wenzel Coebergher is commissioned to paint the Pentecost for the del Campo Chapel. F Michelangelo da Caravaggio is commissioned to paint a Pietà for the Vittrice Chapel. G Wenzel Coebergher finishes the Pentecost for the del Campo Chapel. G Federico Barocci finishes the Presentation of the Virgin for the Cesi Chapel.

1604 1606 1608 1615 1617 1627

G Michelangelo da Caravaggio finishes the Pietà for the Vittrice Chapel. F Rubens begins the altarpiece for the high altar. G Peter Paul Rubens finishes the altarpiece for the high altar. G Giuseppe Cesari d’Arpino finishes the Coronation of the Virgin for the Chiesa Nuova. F Giuseppe Cesari d’Arpino is commissioned to paint the Purification for the Cusano Chapel. G Giuseppe Cesari d’Arpino finishes the Purification for the Cusano Chapel.

148

Appendix 4 Giovan Battista Guerra’s Renovations in the Chiesa Nuova 1589

begins to rebuild the Chapel of the Annunciation.

1591 1592 1594 1596 1597 1598 1600 1606 1607 1608 1611 1616 1617

completes the Chapel of the Annunciation. begins to build the right transept; finishes the left transept. begins to rebuild the Chapels of the Crucifixion and the Ascension. begins to rebuild the Chapels of the Pietà and the Holy Spirit. begins to rebuild the Chapel of the Nativity. begins to rebuild the Chapel of the Visitation. completes the Chapel of the Nativity. completes the Chapel of the Crucifixion. begins to rebuild the Chapel of the Three Kings. begins to rebuild the Chapel of the Purification. completes the Chapels of the Pietà and the Visitation. completes the Chapel of the Ascension. completes the Chapels of the Three Kings and the Purification.

149

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ASR

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AV

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BA

Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan

BAV Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticanus, Vatican City BO

Biblioteca Oliveriana, Pesaro

BUU Biblioteca Universitaria, Urbino

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Index Bold indicates an image; T indicates a table. See also list of Illustrations and Tables (pp. vii–­x) and Index of Artworks (pp. 170)

A Aachen, Hans van, 85 Abromson, Morton, 133 Ackerman, James, 4 Agucchi, Giovanni Battista, 35–­36 Alberti, Durante, 11, 53 Aldobrandini, Ippolito (cardinal), 69, 118 altarpieces. See also Chiesa Nuova; Gesù chapel; Index of Artworks aesthetic unity of, 51 and Barocci, 21, 35, 67, 71–­80 comparison of Sano, Barocci, and Osservanza Master, 112, 112–­13 cycles of, 45n by Rubens (see also under Index of Artworks) of Santa Croce, 44, 46 of Siena Cathedral, 44 styles of Jesuit, 34, 36, 57–­58 Oratorian, 15, 17, 46, 57–­58, 62–­63, 113–­16 and tabernacles, 45, 47, 85, 114–­15, 130 thematic relationship of, 63 typology of, 66T, 82 Ambrosiana library, xi, 88–­89 Anastagi, Simonetto, 73 d’Ancona, Cesare, 126 anecdotes about Barocci, 137 of money and fame, 40 about Neri, 2n3, 30, 79–­80 about Reni/Domenichino, 35–­36 Angelic Sisters of Saint Paul, 102–­3 Antoniano, Silvio, 117, 126 Archer, Margaret, 8 architecture, 6, 46, 49 d’Arpino, Cavaliere, 37, 57, 62, 83, 117, 128 art. See also Index of Artworks. drawings/models, 74–­76, 84, 105–­6, 117–­18, 128, 138 frescoes, 63, 79, 82, 97, 111, 114, 123, 132, 134,

136, 137 knowledge types in, 34–­35 prices for, 41T, 67, 72, 82–­84, 108, 110–­11, 114, 119–­20 prices of artwork, 40, 41T, 67, 72, 114 rare features of, 112–­13 sfumato, 34, 36, 77 terms used for, 105

B Bacci, Fr. Pietro Giacomo, 25, 48–­49, 59, 79, 128 Baglione, Giovanni, 132. See also under Index of Artworks Bailey, Gauvin Alexander, xi, 6, 25, 37, 39–­40, 57, 64, 125 Baius (Michel de Baye), 23 Baldinucci, 123 Barbieri, Costanza, xi, 35 Barocci, Federico, 83–­84, 128. See also under Index of Artworks after the Presentation, 132–­35 biography of, 18–­22 borrowings of artistic figures, 107–­11 career’s end/death of, 135–­36 compositional drawings of, 74–­76, 84, 105, 106, 117–­18 correspondence archive of, 88–­89 derivative works of, 109–­10 diplomatic connections, 69–­71 and Francesco Maria II della Rovere, 19, 70 iconography of, 12, 36, 73–­74, 77–­78 imagery of, 12, 36, 73–­74, 77–­78 money and fame, 39–­42 and patronage/commissions, 19, 83–­84 piety of, 2, 14, 19 poisoning of, 137 and reform painting, 122–­24 reputation of, 1, 67–­68, 82–­83, 117, 119–­20, 132–­35 retrospective determinism of, 80 163

164

Index

Barocci, Federico, continued and Roncalli, 121–­22 scarpigni of, 74–­75, 77 into the seicento, 121–­42 spirituality of, 21 styles of Baroque, 18–­19, 39 and color, 77, 85 compared with Zuccaro, 37 as corporate, 13–­14 as feminine, 34 influences on, 70–­74 and Jesuit/Oratorian contrast, 15, 123 and Oratorians, 3, 11, 33–­39 as visionary, 21, 35 time line for artworks, 99–­111 and Vitali, 98–­111 and Viviani, 133 working methods of, 72–­78, 95–­99, 118–­19 Barocci, Giovanni Maria, 70 Baroccismo, and patronage/comissions, 121–­22 Baronio, Cesare (cardinal), 9, 24–­25, 30, 33, 55, 81, 117, 124–­28, 130–­33, 141. See also under Index of Artworks Baxandall, Michael, 11 Baye, Michel de (Baius), 23 beatification, 25–­26 Beatrizet. See Index of Artworks Bellarmino, Roberto Francesco Romolo (cardinal), 25 Bellori, Gian Pietro, 19, 67, 70, 118, 120 Bhaskar, Roy, 8 Bolognese artists, 125 Boncompagni, Giacomo (cardinal), 69 Borghese family, 119 Paul V (pope), 135 Scipione, 121, 124, 133–­35, 138 Borromeo Carlo, 45, 70 Federico (cardinal), 3, 9, 32, 51, 67–­68, 87–­89, 98, 141–­42 Borromini, Francesco, 30, 41 Bosio, Antonio, 9, 30 Bozio, Tommaso, 81, 130 briefs, 11–­12, 22, 39, 142 Brill, Paul, 82

C Calvaert, Denys, 125 Calvesi, Maurizio, 104 Calvinism, 16, 24 Cantalice, Fra Felice da, 16, 24 capitalism, 10 Capuchins, 16, 19, 24, 137 Caravaggio, Amerighi, 2–­3, 51, 104, 124, 128

Carducci, Ludovico, 70 Carracci family, 123–­24, 137. See also under Index of Artworks Carthusianism, 22 Castello, Alberto da, 58–­59 Cati, Pasquale, 125. See also under Index of Artworks Cecila (martyr), 130 Cesari, Guiseppe, 64 Cesi Angelo (bishop), 82 Federico, 69 Pierdonato (cardinal), 17, 45, 49, 69, 82 chapels. See also Chiesa Nuova; Gesù chapel Aldobrandini Chapel, 1, 116 Bichi of Sant’Agostino, 111 Capella dei Signori, 111 Chapel of Pentecost, 124 Chapel of San Ambrogio, 91–­94 Chapel of San Giovanni Buono, 91–­94 Chapel of the Annunciation, 55 Chapel of the Ascension, 63 Chapel of the Crucifixion, 18, 63 Chapel of the Holy Spirit, 57 Chapel of the Pietà, 47, 49, 51, 63, 124 Chapel of the Purification, 57, 60 Chapel of the Visitation, 49, 63 of Chiesa Nuova, 57 decoration of, 63 of Neri, 126, 128 pairings of, 17–­18, 63–­64, 82, 144–­45 Quirinal Chapel, 137 Sistine Chapel, 126 typology of, 63, 66T, 82 Chiesa Nuova, 17, 50. See also chapels; churches/ cathedrals and altarpieces, 33, 40, 43, 46–­47, 57–­58, 71–­86, 95–­99, 144–­45 artists of, 18, 40 donated by Gregory XIII, 47, 49 Guerra’s renovations, 149 iconography of, 45–­46, 57, 95–­99, 114–­15 and Marian devotion, 59–­60, 90–­95 and prices of artwork, 41T, 67, 72 and reformed painting, 123 and Rosary devotion, 66T Santa Maria in Vallicella, 50 time line, 146–­47 and Tridentine church design, 44–­45 wraparound pattern of, 17, 58 Christian optimism, 22–­26 Christology, 59, 119 churches/cathedrals. See also Chiesa Nuova Orvieto Cathedral, 46 projects for, 128–­32 San Girolamo della Carità, 30

Index San Paolo Converso, 102–­3 Santa Maria in Vallicella, 30, 50 Santa Maria sopra Minerva, 1, 116–­17 Santi Nereo e Achilleo, 53 Siena Cathedral, 44 Saint Peter’s Basilica, 44–­45, 128–­32 Ciamberlano, Luca, 25, 137–­39, 141. See also under Index of Artworks Cigoli, Ludovico, 123, 132 Cimatori, Antonio, 125 Circignani, Niccolò, 79 Clarici, Giovanni Battista, 83 Clement VIII (pope), 3, 9, 16, 25–­26, 69, 80–­82, 116–­17 Coebergher, Wenzel, 51, 124. See also under Index of Artworks Congregation of the Oratory. See Oratorians Congregation on Beatification, 25 Congregazione del Sacro Chiodo, 130 Conley, Thomas, 32 Connors, Joseph, 30 Conti Cesare, 125 Vincenzo, 125 Cort, Cornelis, 70, 112–­13. See also under Index of Artworks Cortona, Pietro da, 39, 51–­52, 97, 114, 121. See also under Index of Artworks Council of Trent, and church design/decoration, 16–­ 17, 44–­45, 115 Counter-­Reformation, 16–­17, 34–­35, 122, 132 Count of Olivares, 69, 101–­2 Croce, Baldassare, 125 Cusani, Agostino (cardinal), 57

D Damiano, Fra, 89 della Porta, Giacomo, 17, 49 della Rovere. See also under patronage/commissions Francesco Maria II (Duke of Urbino), 8–­19, 22, 68, 70, 81, 87–­90, 97, 101–­2, 116–­20, 132 Giovanni, 61 Girolamo (cardinal), 69, 81 Giuliano (Msgr.), 126, 135 Giulio Feltrio (cardinal), 19, 70, 126 Lavinia, 40, 69, 71 della Somaglia, Margherita, 126 Dempsey, Charles, 123 Denys the Carthusian, 21–­22 determinism, of historical laws and society, 8 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 7 Domenichino (Domenico Zampieri), 35–­36, 39, 138. See also under Index of Artworks Dominicans, 24–­25, 59–­60, 62

165

Duke of Urbino, 8–­19, 22, 68, 70, 81, 87–­90, 97, 101–­ 2, 116–­20, 132 Duomo of Milan, 83, 92, 96–­97

E Ekserdjian, David, 21 Elder-­Vass, Dave, 8, 11 Emiliani, Andrea, 96 Eustachio, Bartolomeo, 70

F Falucci, Baldo, 40 Farnese, Alessandro (cardinal), 17, 37, 39, 45, 69 Ferri, Cirro, 45, 114 Fonseca, Pedro, Institutionum dialecticarum, 32–­33 Forty Hours devotion, 119 Foucault, Michel, 4 Franciscans, 16, 19, 55, 61–­62 Francis de Sales, 53 Francis Xavier (saint), 25 Freedberg, Sydney, 39 Friedländer, Walter, 2–­3 Fumaroli, Marc, 141

G Gallonio, Fr. Antonio, 9, 22, 25, 30, 79 La Vita di San Filippo Neri, 32, 48, 121 Gesù chapel altarpieces, 33, 36–­37, 38, 45–­46, 57–­58, 114 architecture of, 46, 57, 63 iconography of, 48 and prices of artwork, 40, 41T and Rosary devotion, 66T and Tridentine church design, 45 Geyl, Pieter, 3 Ghirlandaio, Domenico, 111 Gilmore, Jonathan, Life of a Style, 11 Giorgio, Francesco di, 111 Giustiniani, Vincenzo, 128 Glorieri family, 82 Gombrich, E. H., 3–­4, 7, 12 grace, as category of thought, 34 Graeve, Mary Ann, 58–­59 Graziosi, Grazioso, 101 Gregory XIII (pope), 16, 57 Gregory XIV (pope), 80 Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri), 26, 121 Guerra, Giovan Battista, 11, 49, 63, 78, 113, 125, 128, 149 Guidi, Raffaello, 89 Guzman, Enrico (Count of Olivares), 69, 101–­2

H Hall, Marcia, xi, 10, 37, 45

166

Index

Haskell, Francis, 39 Hibbard, Howard, 39, 48, 57, 64 history/historiography contextual, 4 and determinism, 8 Hegelian, 4–­5, 7 and holism, 4, 9, 11–­12 impressionist, 11 individualist theory of, 12 Italian sixteenth century, 16–­18 of Jesuit style, 5–­7 libertarian, 5 Marxist, 4 and metaphysical ideas, 8 nominalist, 3–­4, 7 of Oratorians, 3 positivistist, 8 postmodern, 5 post-­structural, 4–­5 and stylistic labels, 10 and teleology, 4 Holy House of Loreto, 55, 72 Hull, David, 11

I iconography of Barocci, 12, 36, 73–­74, 77–­78 of Chiesa Nuova, 45–­46, 57, 95–­99, 114–­15 Franciscan, 62 of Gesù chapel, 48 immaculist/maculist, 115 Jesuit, 25, 34, 36, 123 of Marian devotion, 116 and Nativity of the Virgin, 101, 111–­15 of Neri, 21, 26, 45, 121, 128 new/developing, 128 of Oratorians, 114–­15 and politics, 128 of Presentation of the Virgin, 85–­86 and the Rosary, 59 of Siena Cathedral, 44 of Sistine Chapel, 126 Ignatius of Loyola, 22, 25 as alter Christus, 26 beatification of, 28 Jesuit/Oratorian depictions of, 25 and Neri, 26–­30 self-­fashioning of, 27, 30 Society of Jesus (Jesuit) founder, 17, 27 Spiritual Exercises, 27 imagery of Barocci, 79–­80 Counter-­Reformation, 16, 34–­35 of Gallonio, 79

immaculist, 62, 115 of Oratorians, 30, 35

J Jansenists, 25 Jesuits and Church Militant, 30 and Counter-­Reformation art, 17 decoration pattern of, 57–­58 and Gesù chapel, 57 iconography of, 25, 34, 36, 123 Loyola as founder of, 15 mission agenda of, 27 and Oratorians, 10, 15, 22–­23, 25, 30–­33, 37, 42 and Passion devotion, 45 and payment to artists, 40 and quietism, 24–­25 style of, 5–­7, 15, 39 Jones, Pamela, 88

K king of Spain. See Phillip II; Phillip III Korrick, Leslie, 79 Kummer, Stefan, 58

L Lavin, Irving, 4, 58 Lavin, Marilyn, 46, 63–­64 Levy, Evonne, 5–­6 Lilio, Andrea, 39, 55, 62, 115, 123, 125. See also under Index of Artworks Lingo, Stuart, xi, 36, 68, 73 Lombardelli, Giovan Battista, 125 Lonati, Pietro Antonio, 88 Longhi, Martino, 17 Lorenzetti, Pietro, 111, 113 Löwith, Karl, 3 Loyola. See Ignatius of Loyola Lyotard, Jean-­François, 4, 8

M MacCaskey, Laura, xi, 114–­15 Maderno Carlo, 119–­20 Stefano, 130 Madonna della Vallicella cult, 130–­31 Madonna of Loreto, 53–­55, 72 Maginnis, Hayden, xi, 111 Malvasia, 35, 137 Mancini, Giulio, 151 Mandelbaum, Maurice, 1, 9 Mannerism, 2, 18 Marciari, John, xi, 47

Index Marian devotion and Chiesa Nuova, 59–­60, 90–­95 cult of the Madonna della Vallicella, 114–­15 of Franciscans, 61–­62 and Madonna of Loreto, 53 and Neri, 22, 31, 34 of Oratorians, 22, 31, 34, 43–­46, 65 and “Our Lady’s Psalter,” 61 and Presentation of the Virgin, 85 and the Rosary, 59–­60 and transept pairing, 82 in Urbino, 19 Maschi, Bernardo, 101 Mazenta, Guido, 87 Medici, Cosimo de’ I, 44 Melasecchi, Olga, 121, 124, 138–­39, 141 Milan: Ambrosiana archive of, 89–­90 Lamentation of Christ, 91–­94, 93 and Nativity of the Virgin, 86–­91 and Oratorian orbit, 103 Saint Ambrose’s Pardon of Theodosius, 91–94, 118 Mitchell, Nathan, 60 Molina, Luis de, 23 Montalto, Francisco Peretti (cardinal), 69, 126 Monte, Francesco Maria del (cardinal), 117, 126 Moxey, Keith, 4–­5 Mühlen, Ilse von den, 113 Muziano, Girolamo, 39, 62, 69, 72, 81, 137. See also under Index of Artworks mystery, as sacramental term, 63–­64, 73–­74

N Nadal, Jerome. See Index of Artworks Navoni, Marco Maria, xi Nebbia, Cesare. See Index of Artworks Neri, Filippo and altarpieces, 26, 48–­49, 58 anecdotes about, 2n3, 30 and Barocci works, 36, 71, 126, plate IV beatification/canonization of, 24–­25, 29 biographies of, 22, 25, 32, 48, 121 and Caravaggio, 2 chapels of, 126, 128 and Dominicans, 25, 62 Forty Hours devotion of, 119 founder of Oratorians, 2, 9 and Girolamo della Rovere, 81 iconography of, 21, 26, 45, 121, 128 illness of, 70 irony of, 31 and Jesuits, 15, 27, 31–­33 and Loyola, 26–­30 and Marianism, 22, 31, 34 mission focus of, 31

167

portrait of (by Zuccaro), 126, 127 preference for Visitation, 78–­79 rhetoric of, 32 Roncalli works of, 126–­27 and Rosary devotion, 59, 61 self-­fashioning of, 21, 23, 27, 30 style of, 30 Nogari, Paris, 82 Nova, Alessandro, 49 Noyes, Ruth, 25, 128

O Ochino, Bernardino, 24 Oliva, Gian Paolo, 30 O’Malley, John, 32 Oratorians affinity with Barocci, 2–­3, 22, 67–­68, 121–­24, 126, 133 altarpiece program of, 15–­17, 47–­48, 57–­62, 114 artistic consensus of, 30, 122 chapel decoration of, 63 and Clement VIII, 80, 116–­17 and Counter-­Reformation art, 17, 122, 132 Francis de Sales, 53 Girolamini, of Naples, 141 iconography of, 36 imagery of, 30, 35 influence of, 128–­29 and Jesuits, 15, 22–­23, 31–­33, 42 in the Marches, 70 and Marian devotion, 22, 31, 34, 43–­46, 65, 95 and Neri, 15, 30, 124–­26 and payment to artists, 40 physiognomy of, 43 political alignments of, 68–­69 rhetoric of, 31 and Roncalli, 121 as secular priests, 30 structures and actions of, 9 style of, 39, 62–­63, 132 and Vanni, 132 Orsini, Francesca Colonna, 69 Orsini, Lavinia della Rovere, 40, 69, 71 Ospedale of Santa Maria della Scala (Siena), 111 Osservanza Master. See Index of Artworks

P Pagani, Gregorio, 123 Paleotti, Gabriele (cardinal), 9, 81 Discorso intorno alle imagini . . . , 34–­35 Panofsky, Erwin, 3 Perspective as Symbolic Form, 4 Passignano, Domenico, 18, 115, 123, 132 patronage/commissions, 148 of Anastagi, 73

168

Index

patronage/commissions, continued and Barocci, 19, 83–­84 and Baroccismo, 121–­22 by Baronio, 130, 132 of Borghese, 138 and Borromeo, 45, 96–­97, 141 and Borromini, 41–­42, 122 of Cesi, 69, 96 for Chiesa Nuova, 11, 45, 49, 69, 95–­99 and Clement VIII, 81, 116–­17 of della Rovere, 21, 71, 97, 119–­20, 125 of Farnese, 45 as individual affair, 121 influence of, 44 of Lonati, 88 and the Milanese, 86–­91, 96–­97 and Oratorians, 18, 22, 30, 35, 49, 51, 67–­71, 81, 83, 87, 121–­22, 124 and Reni, 124, 137–­38, 141 and Roncalli, 124, 128, 141 of Serra, 114 of Sfondrato, 141 significance of, 82 Paul IV (pope), 16 Paul V (pope), 135 Pepper, Stephen, 121, 124, 138–­39, 141 Peretti, Michele (prince), 126 Peretti-­Montalto (cardinal), 126 Periti, Giancarla, xi Petrucci, Pietro Matteo, 23 Philip II, king, 16 Philip III, king, 88, 101 Picchi, Giorgio, 125 Piceni, Sodalizio dei. See Index of Artworks piety, 2, 36 Oratorian, 3, 23–­24 Pillsbury, Edmund, 71, 99 Pimentel, Maria, 69 Pinelli, Domenico (abp), 70 Pius IV (pope), 16 Pius V (pope), 16, 58, 85 Platonism, in Neri’s rhetoric, 32 political alignments and Neri, 128 of Oratorians, 68–­69 Pomarancio (Cristoforo Roncalli), 121 popes Clement VIII, 3, 9, 16, 69, 80–­82 Gregory XIII, 16, 57 Paul IV, 16 Pius IV, 16 Pius V, 16, 58, 85 and sainthood, 16n Sixtus IV, 16, 60, 85 Sixtus V, 16, 71–­72, 85

Popper, Karl, 3–­4, 8 Poussin, Nicholas, 39, 138 Pozzomiglio, Francesco, 72 predestination and Dominican predetermination, 24 and free will, 23 vs. voluntarism, 23 production modes, 10 Pulzone, Scipione, 18, 34, 36–­37, 39, 69. See also under Index of Artworks

Q quietism, 23–­24, 26, 36

R realism, 10–­12 Redin, Gonzalo, 87n Regio, Raffaellino da, 125 relics of martyrs, 53 religious bodies, 7–­13 Reni, Guido, 26, 39, 115, 121. See also Index of Artworks as alter Baroccius, 135–­42 compared with Roncalli, 138 and Domenichino, 35–­36 and iconography of Neri, 25, 31, 128 leaves Rome, 141 mature work of, 138 and patronage/commissions, 124, 137–­38, 141 style of, 137–­38, 141 and Vanni, 138 rhetoric and irony, 31, 33 of Jesuits, 6, 32–­33 persuasion vs. love, 32–­33 visual, 15, 23, 33, 37–­38, 138 Ricci, Flaminio, 51, 96–­98, 104–­5, 124 Roman Catholic church. See Council of Trent; Counter-­Reformation Roncalli, Cristoforo (Pomarancio), 118, 121, 124–­25. See also Index of Artworks compared with Reni, 138 drawings of Neri, 128, 138 and Oratorians, 126 and patronage/commissions, 124, 128, 141 reputation of, 132 style of, 128, 138 as substitute for Barocci, 141 Rosary devotion, 58–­65, 66T Rubens, Peter Paul, 34, 40, 48, 50–­51, 53, 57, 60, 97–­ 98, 114. See also Index of Artworks Rufino, Fra, 61 Rusticucci, Girolamo (cardinal), 104

Index

S

Sabatini, Lorenzo, 125 Sadeler, Egidius, 89 Salimbeni, Ventura, 39 Salò, Andrea Gianetti da, 60 Sangiorgi, Fert, 1–­2, 103, 110 Sano di Pietro. See Index of Artworks Sarto, Andrea del, 111 sbozzo, 96, 104–­6 Schapiro, Meyer, Anthropology Today, 4 Schaur, Hans, 64 Segneri, Paolo, 23 Senarega, Matteo, 84 Senigallia. See Index of Artworks Serra, Giacomo (cardinal), 98, 114 Sfondrato Niccolò, 80 Paola Antonia, 103 Paolo Emilio (cardinal), 9, 81, 103, 130, 141 Shearman, John, 119 Siena, 111–­12 Siena Cathedral, 44 Simmel, Georg, 7 Sixtus IV della Rovere (pope), 16, 60, 85 Sixtus V Peretti (pope), 16, 71–­72, 85 Soares, Cipriano, De arte rhetorica, 32–­33 social structure, 8–­12 Society of Jesus. See Jesuits sociology, development of, 7–­8 Stradano, Giovanni. See Index of Artworks Stumpel, Jeroen, 2 style. See also under artist’s names; Barocci, Federico as abstract categories, 12 Baroque/Baroccesque, 4–­5, 18, 123, 128, 133, 141 and biological analogy (Gilmore), 11 concept of, 4, 11 critics of, 123–­24 derivation of, 12 emergentist, 11 essentialism, 11 German Romanticism, 7–­8 of Jesuits, 5–­7, 15, 39 Neoplatonic, 34 of Neri, 3 nonessentialist, 11 Oratorian, 39, 62–­63, 132 post-­structuralist, 4–­5 proto-­baroque, 39 reformed, 16–­17, 34–­35, 122–­24, 128 of seincento artists, 128 structuralist, 8 symbols, in Visitation, 77–­78

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T tabernacles. See under altarpieces Tarnow, Ulrike, xi, 78 Tarugi, Francesco Maria (cardinal), 9, 128, 130 Tempesta, Antonio, 25–­26 Terenzi, Terenzio, 125–­26 Theatines, 16 typology, 62–­65, 66T

U d’Urbino, Terenzio, 125–­26

V Valeriano, Fra, 37, 39, 115 Valier, Agostino (cardinal), 9 De rhetorica ecclesiastica . . . , 32 Philippus: Dialogus de laetitia christiana, 22 Vandenberghe, Frédéric, 7 Vanni, Francesco. See also under Index of Artworks death of, 139 and Gesù chapel, 39 influence of, 132 patronage/commission for, 122 and Reni, 137–­38 and Sfondrato, 103 style of, 122–­24, 130, 133 Vita devota style of, 137 Van Veen, Gisjbert, 78 Vasari, Giorgio, 44 Velli, Angelo, 124–­25 Villamena, Francesco, 137 Vincenzi Guidobaldo, 83, 87, 101 Ludovico, 96, 101 Vitali, Alessandro, 82, 88, 92, 98–­100, 103–­11. See also Index of Artworks Viviani, Antonio, 51, 76, 105–­6, 122–­25, 133. See also Index of Artworks Baroccesque style of, 133 voluntarism, 10, 23

W Walters, Gary, 119–­20 Wazbinski, Zygmunt, 117 White, Hayden, 4 women, depiction of, 34 Worthington, Thomas, Rosarioum sive Psalterium Beatae Virginis Mariae, 60–­61

Z Zeri, Federico, 37 Zuccari, Alessandro, 35, 39, 58, 62, 73, 125, 133 Zuccaro, Federico, 37, 39, 72, 85, 112, 126. See also Index of Artworks

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Index

Index of Artworks Bold indicates an image; T indicates a table

A Anonymous Madonna della Vallicella, 48, 51, 52, 53, 57, 60, 97, 98, 116 Pietà, 47

B Baglione. See also in main index Lamentation, 40 Barocci. See also in main index Arm of child study, 107 Assumption (lost), 103 Beata Michelina, 21, 110 Calling of Saint Andrew, 99, 100, 105 Circumcision, 106–­7, 108 Coronation of the Virgin, 18, 63–­64, 82–­83 Cristo vivo, 21 Crucifixion with Three Saints, 84, 110 Deposition from the Cross, 1, 123 Fall of Manna (unfinished), 82, 94 Flight of Aeneas from Troy, 19, 80, 135 four scarpigni, 74–­75 Head of an Old Man, plate IV Immaculate Conception, 21, 62, 110 Institution of the Eucharist, 1, 116–­20, plate VIII kneeling woman, drawing, 105 Lamentation of Christ, 91–­94, 93, 118, 141 Last Supper, 82, 102–­3 Madonna and Child with Saints John the Baptist and Francis, 19 Madonna della Gatta, 99, 110 Madonna del Popolo, 1, 36, 69–­70, 72, 123 Madonna del Rosario, 21, 80, 110 Madonna in the Clouds, 70 Madonna of Saint John, 19 Madonna of Saint Lucy, 110 Madonna of Saint Simon, 19 Martyrdom of SaintVitalis, 72, 123 Moses and the Serpent, 137 Nativity of Christ, plate V Noli me tangere (engraving of), 140 Penitent Saint Jerome, 136

Perdono di Assisi, 21, 70 Presentation of the Virgin at the Temple, 1, 33, 67, 80–­86, 86–­87, 92, 110, plate II sketch, 86 Rest on the Return from Egypt, 14, 132, 142 Stigmatization of Saint Francis copy, 137–­38 Virgin Mary’s arm drawing, 106 Visitation of the Virgin and Saint Elizabeth, 1, 2, 33, 35, 37, 40, 48, 63, 67–­68, 71–­80, 125 illustrations of, 76–­77, 100, 108–­9, 125, plate I Barocci-­Vitali Nativity of the Virgin, 51, 86–­91, 88, 99, 103–­11, 108–­9, 116, plate VII Saint Agatha in Prison, 92, 109, 110 Saint Ambrose’s Pardon of Theodosius, 91–94, 96, 110, 118, plate VI Stigmata of Saint Francis, 61, 102, 110, 137–­38 Vision of Saint John of Patmos, 109 Baronio. See also in main index Annales ecclesiastic (engraving of), 55 Beatrizet, Madonna of Loreto engraving, 54

C Carracci. See also in main index Baptism, 123 Pietà, 123 Castello, Rosario della gloriosa Vergine Maria, 58, 59 Cati. See also in main index Matyrdom of Saint Lawrence, 125 Ciamberlano. See also in main index engraving of Barocci’s Noli me tangere, 139, 140 Coeburgher. See also in main index Pentecost, 40 copper engravings frontispiece from Baronio, Annales ecclesiastici, 56 Madonna of Loreto (Beatrizet), 54 Noli me tangere (Ciamberlano), 56 Vita Beati P. Ignatii Loyolae Societatis Jesu fundatoris, 28, 29 Cort. See also in main index Madonna del Gatto, 70 Nativity of the Virgin, 112

Index

The Rest on the Return from Egypt, 70 Sienese Virgin, 113 Cortona. See also in main index Saint Michael and Angels with the Instruments of the Passion, 114

D Domenichino. See also in main index Flagellation of Saint Andrew, 35–­36 Flagellation of SaintAndrew, 138 portrait of Reni, 137

L Lilio. See also in main index Assumption, 56

M Maderno. See also in main index effigy of Cecelia, 130 Molinos, Guida Spirituale, 23 Muziano. See also in main index Ascension, 62 Circumcision, 81

N Nadal, Imagines, 62 Nebbia Adoration of the Kings, 47, 48, 49 Pentecost, 4

O Osservanza Master, Birth of the Virgin, 111, 112–­13

P Piceni, Virgin and Child and Saints, 104, 107 Pulzone. See also in main index Crucifixion, 36, 48 Lamentation, 36–­37

R Reni. See also in main index Annunciation, 141 Crucified Christ, 141 Immaculate Conception, 141 Martyrdom of Saint Peter, 138 Meeting of Young Christ and John the Baptist, 141 Saint Andrew Led to Martyrdom, 138 Saint Filippo Neri in Ecstasy, 20, 21, 24, 121, 128 Saint Francis, 141 Roncalli. See also in main index Ananias and Sapphira Struck Dead, 132 Fall of Simon Magus, 132 Filippo Neri and Virgin and Child, 128

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Filippo Neri Having a Vision of the Virgin in Heaven (lost), 126, 128 Madonna and Child with Saints Andrew and Gregory, 130 Saint Domitilla with Saints Nereo and Achilleo, 129, 130 Saint Filippo Neri in Ecstasy, 122 Saint Simon, 132 Sylvester Baptizing Constantine, 132 Rubens. See also in main index Adoration of the Madonna della Vallicelliana, 104, plate III Life of Ignatius of Loyola, 139 Nativity of the Virgin Mary, 95, 114, 115 sacra conversazione, 114

S Sano di Pietro, Birth of the Virgin, 111, 112 Senigallia, Entombment, 89 Stradano, Ascension, 62

V Vanni. See also in main index Death of Saint Cecilia, 130 Madonna della Pappa, 132 Madonna della Vallicella Adored by Saints Francis and Restituta, 130, 131 Vitali-­Barocci. See Barocci-­Vitali Viviani. See also in main index Apparition of the Angel at the Meal of the Poor, 134 Imago Pietatis, 141 Mater dolorosa, 142 Triclinium Pauperum (seven scenes), 133

Z Zuccaro. See also in main index Portrait of Filippo Neri, 127 Seven Archangels in Adoration of the Trinity, 37, 38

About the Author Ian Verstegen is Associate Director of Visual Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He completed his doctorate at Temple University, working with Marcia Hall. His current research focuses on early modern and modern aesthetics, historiography, and art history. His monograph A Realist Theory of Art History was published in 2013 by Routledge. He is editor of Maurice Mandelbaum and American Critical Realism (Routledge, 2014) and Patronage and Dynasty: The Rise of the della Rovere in Renaissance Italy (Truman State University Press, 2007).

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