Carlo Saraceni (1579 – 16 June 1620) was an
Italian early-
Baroque painter, whose reputation as a "first-class painter of the second rank" was improved with the publication of a modern monograph in 1968.[1]
Life
Though he was born and died in
Venice, his paintings are distinctly Roman in style; he moved to
Rome in 1598, joining the
Accademia di San Luca in 1607. He never visited
France, though he spoke fluent French and had French followers and a French wardrobe. His painting, however, was influenced at first by the densely forested, luxuriantly enveloping landscape settings for human figures of
Adam Elsheimer, a German painter resident in Rome; "there are few landscapes by Saraceni which have not been attributed to Elsheimer," Malcolm Waddingham observed,[2] and Anna Ottani Cavina has suggested the influences may have travelled both ways.[3] and Elsheimer's small
cabinet paintings on copper offered a format that Saraceni employed in six landscape panels illustrating The Flight of
Icarus;[4] in Moses and the Daughters of Jethro,[5] and Mars and Venus.[6]
When Caravaggio's notorious Death of the Virgin[7] was rejected in 1606 as an altarpiece suitable for a chapel of
Santa Maria della Scala, it was Saraceni who provided the acceptable substitute, which remains in situ, the only securely dated painting of his first decade in Rome. He was influenced by
Caravaggio's dramatic lighting, monumental figures, naturalistic detail, and momentary action, so that he is numbered among the first of the "
tenebrists" or "
Caravaggisti". Examples of this style can be seen in the candlelit Judith with the Head of Holofernes.
Saraceni's style matured rapidly between 1606 and 1610, and the next decade gave way to his fully mature works, synthesizing Caravaggio and the Venetians. In 1616–17 he collaborated on the frescoes for the Sala Regia of the
Palazzo del Quirinale.[8] In 1618 he received payment for two paintings in the church of
Santa Maria dell'Anima. The compositional details of his fresco of The Birth of the Virgin in the Chapel of the Annunciation of the church of
Santa Maria in Aquiro are repeated in a panel on copper at the
Louvre.[9]
In 1620 he returned to Venice, where he died in the same year.
Saint Sebastian, c. 1610–1616, Picture Gallery of the
Prague Castle
Gregory the Great, attributed to the studio of Saraceni, c. 1610, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome
The Penitent Magdalene, Gallerie Accademiae
References
^"un ottimo comprimario" in Francesco Arcangeli's words, quoted by
R. Ward Bissell in reviewing Anna Ottani Cavina, Carlo Saraceni (Milan) 1968, in The Art Bulletin53.2 (June 1971:248-250) p 248.
^Malcolm Waddingham, "A Landscape Masterpiece by Saraceni" The Burlington Magazine114 No. 828 (March 1972:157, 159)
^Anna Ottani Cavina carefully distinguished Saraceni's landscape manner from Elsheimer's in Carlo Saraceni (Milan) 1968.
^Mars and Venus is found in Museo de Arte Saõ Paulo)
"Archived copy". Archived from
the original on 2006-06-10. Retrieved 2006-02-23.{{
cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (
link).
^Giuliano Briganti, Il Palazzo del Quirinale (Rome 1962:37; among his collaborators there was the Venetian
Marcantonio Bassetti, whose preparatory drawings are frequently confused with Sartaceni's (Stephen Polcari, "A Newly-Found Drawing by Saraceni" The Burlington Magazine121 No. 914 (May 1979:307, 312).