Italian painting of the XIII-XV centuries. The greatest Italian artists Paintings of the great Italian artists

Until the 13th century, Italy was dominated by the Byzantine tradition, hostile to any free development or individual understanding. It was only during the 13th century that the fossilized image scheme was revived in the work of some great artists, especially Florence.

A new, reality-oriented perception of color harmony and a deeper expression of feelings appears. Among the artists of the 13-14 centuries, we can name such artists as Ercole de Roberti, Francesco Francia, Jacopo de Barbari.

Italian painting of the 15th - 16th centuries

During this period, such a style of painting as mannerism was widespread. It is characterized by a departure from the unity and harmony of man with nature, everything material and spiritual, and in this way he stands in contrast to the Renaissance.

The great center of painting is Venice. Titian's contributions largely defined 16th-century Venetian painting, both in terms of the master's artistic achievements and his productivity. He mastered all genres equally, shone in religious, mythological and allegorical compositions, and created numerous breathtaking portraits. Titian followed the stylistic trends of his time and in turn influenced them.

Veronese and Tintoretto - in contrast to these two artists, the duality of Venetian painting of the mid-16th century is revealed, the calm manifestation of the beauty of earthly existence at the end of the Renaissance in Veronese, the assertive movement and extreme otherworldliness, and in some cases also the exquisite seduction of a secular nature, in the work of Tintoretto. In Veronese’s paintings one does not feel any problems of that time; he paints everything as if it could not be otherwise, as if life is beautiful the way it is. The scenes depicted in his paintings lead a “real” existence that does not allow any doubt.

It is completely different with Tintoretto; everything he writes is filled with intense action and is dramatically moving. Nothing is immutable for him, things have many sides and can manifest themselves in different ways. The contrast between deeply religious and secularly piquant, at least elegant, paintings, as evidenced by his two works “The Rescue of Arsinoe” and “The Fight of the Archangel Michael with Satan,” draws our attention to the originality of mannerism inherent not only in the Venetian Tintoretto, but also which we noticed in Parmigianino, which comes from the traditions of Correggio.

Italian painting of the 17th century

This century is marked as a time of increasing Catholicism and church consolidation. The flourishing of painting in Italy was associated, as in previous centuries, with the division into separate local schools, which was a consequence of the political situation in this country. The Italian Renaissance was understood as the starting point of a far-reaching search. We can distinguish artists of the Roman and Bolognese schools. These are Carlo Dolci from Florence, Procaccini, Nuvolone and Pagani from Milan, Alessandro Turchi, Pietro Negri and Andrea Celesti from Venice, Ruoppolo and Luca Giordano from Naples. The Roman school shines with a whole series of paintings to the parables of the New Testament by Domenico Fetti, learned from the examples of Caravaggio and Rubens.

Andrea Sacchi, a student of Francesco Albani, represents the distinctly classical direction of Roman painting. Classicism, as a movement opposed to Baroque, has always existed in Italy and France, but had different weight in these countries. This direction is represented by Carlo Maratto, a student of Sacchi. One of the main representatives of the classicist tendency was Domenichino, who studied with Denis Calvart and Caracci in Bologna.

Pier Francesco Mola, under the influence of Guercino, was much more baroque, stronger in the interpretation of light and shadow, in conveying a warm brown tone. He was also influenced by Caravaggio.

In the 17th century, the expressively developed forms of the Baroque with its inherent sense of “naturalness” and in the depiction of miracles and visions, staged, however, theatrically, blurred the boundaries between reality and illusion.

Realism and classicism tendencies are characteristic of this era, regardless of whether they are contrasted with Baroque or perceived as components of this style. Salvator Rosa of Naples was a landscape painter of very considerable influence. His works were studied by Alessandro Magnasco, Marco Ricci, and the Frenchman Claude-Joseph Vernet.

Italian painting made a powerful impression on the whole of Europe, but Italy, in turn, was not free from the reverse influence of the masters of the North. An example of following the style of Wauwermann's painting, but with an individually developed and easily recognizable handwriting, is Michelangelo Cerquocci with his "Robbery after the battle." He developed as an artist in Rome under the influence of the Haarlem-born and Rome-based Pieter van Laer.

If Venetian painting of the 17th century gives the impression of an intermezzo, an interlude between the great past of the 15th and 16th centuries and the coming flowering in the 18th century, then in Bernardo Strozzi Genoese painting has an artist of the highest rank, who brought essential accents to the picture of Baroque painting in Italy.

Italian painting of the 18th century

As in previous centuries, individual schools of Italian painting had their own identity in the 18th century, although the number of truly significant centers decreased. Venice and Rome were great centers for the development of art in the 18th century, Bologna and Naples also had their own outstanding achievements. Thanks to the masters of the Renaissance, Venice was in the 17th century a high school for artists from other cities in Italy and throughout Europe in general, who studied here Veronese and Tintoretto, Titian and Giorgione. These are, for example, Johann Lis and Nicola Regnier, Domenico Fetti, Rubens and Bernardo Strozzi.

The 18th century begins with artists such as Andrea Celesti, Piero Negri, Sebastiano Ricci, Giovanni Battista Piazzetta. The most characteristic expression of his originality is given by the paintings of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Antonio Canal and Francesco Guardi. The magnificent decorative scope of Tiepolo's works is clearly expressed in his monumental frescoes.

Bologna, with its convenient connections to Lombardy, Venice and Florence, is the center of Emilia, the only city in this area to produce outstanding masters in the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1119, the oldest university in Europe with a famous law faculty was founded here; the spiritual life of the city significantly influenced Italian painting of the 18th century.

The most attractive are the works of Giuseppe Maria Crespi, especially the series “Seven Sacraments of the Church” completed in 1712. The Bologna school of painting has in Crespi an artist of European caliber. His life dates back half to the 17th and half to the 18th century. As a student of Carlo Chignani, who in turn studied with Francesco Albani, he mastered the academic artistic language that had distinguished Bolognese painting since the time of Carraci. Crespi traveled to Venice twice, teaching himself and inspiring others. Pianzetta especially seemed to remember his works for a long time.

Bolognese painting of the early 18th century, different from that of Crespi, is represented by Gambarini. The cold coloring and drawn clarity, the attractively anecdotal content of his paintings force, in comparison with the strong realism of Crespi, to attribute him rather to the academic school.

In the person of Francesco Solimena, Neapolitan painting had its representative recognized throughout Europe. In Roman painting of the 18th century, a classical tendency appears. Artists such as Francesco Trevisani, Pompeo Girolamo Batoni and Giovanni Antonio Butti are examples of this. The 18th century was the century of Enlightenment. Aristocratic culture in all areas in the first half of the 18th century experienced a brilliant flowering of the late Baroque, manifested in court festivities, magnificent operas and princely acts.

The Italian Renaissance (Italian Renaissance) is designated as a period of major cultural change in Europe, between the 14th and 16th centuries. It was from this era that a constellation of famous Italian artists emerged, who admired and showed the whole world the beauty of nature and the human body. So, let's look at the 10 most famous masters of the Italian Renaissance.

1. Rafael Santi

Rafael Santi (known to all of us as Raphael) was born in Urbino to Giovanni Santi, a court painter. The young Raphael began his studies at court, where he was inspired by the works of great artists such as Andrea Mantegna and Piero della Francesca. Raphael was also a student of Pietro Perugino, and his early works reflect the influence of his Italian Renaissance teacher. In the period 1500 and 1508, Raphael worked in central Italy, and was famous for his images of Madonnas and portraits. In 1508, Pope Julius II asked him to decorate the papal rooms in the Vatican, where he performed his best works, such as the School of Athens in the Stanza della Segnatura.

"Santi"

2. Leonardo da Vinci

The works of Leonardo da Vinci are often considered to embody humanistic ideals during the Italian Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci was a master of various art forms, however, he became famous for his paintings. Leonardo was the illegitimate child of a Florentine notary and a peasant woman. The young man formed his own style while studying in the workshop of the Florentine painter Andrea del Verrocchio. Unfortunately, only 15 of his paintings are available today, among them the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper, two of his most recognizable and imitated works.

3. Michelangelo

Like his contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo was a master of various artistic fields, the most important, of course, was painting. The Vatican's Sistine Chapel contains the most impressive frescoes in the history of Western art: images illustrating nine scenes from the Book of Genesis on the ceiling, and the Last Judgment on the altar wall, both by the artist. Michelangelo completed the frescoes on the ceiling of the chapel in approximately four years, the composition covers more than 500 square meters and includes at least 300 images. This extraordinary work of art undoubtedly influenced many Baroque decorative artists for many years to come.

4. Sandro Botticelli

Another painter belonging to the famous Florentine school is Sandro Botticelli. Little is known about his youth; it is clear that he was a student of Fra Filippo Lippi, and was inspired by the monumental paintings of Masaccio. Early Renaissance master Botticelli's exquisite painting of the Madonna and Child, as well as his life-size altar wall paintings, became famous during his lifetime. He is primarily known for two works depicting mythological scenes - "The Birth of Venus" and "Spring" - both paintings are housed in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

5. Titian

Tiziano Vecellio, known as Titian, was the greatest Venetian artist of the 16th century. Titian is famous, first of all, for his ability to use colors and their shades - he equally mastered the skill of drawing portraits, landscapes, mythological scenes and religious themes. As a teenager, he worked with prominent Venetian artists such as Giorgione and Giovanni Bellini. He also painted for royal families throughout Europe, including King Philip II of Spain. During his career, Titian painted portraits of many of the leading figures of his time, from Pope Paul III to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.

"Self-portrait". National Prado Museum

6. Tintoretto

Jacopo Robusti (Comin), known by his nickname Tintoretto (his father was a dyer, or tintore in Italian), is next on the list of leading Italian painters of the Renaissance. He combined the use of Titian's color and the dynamics of Michelangelo's forms. His work is characterized by large-scale subjects, such as his work The Last Supper. The picture is characterized by ingenuity, spectacular lighting - the play of light and shadow and the use of gestures and body movements in dynamics. Because of his passion for his work and his impulsiveness in drawing, Tintoretto earned another nickname: II Furious.

"Self-Portrait"

7. Masaccio

Masaccio left an indelible mark on the world of painting, although his life was short - he died at the age of 26. Born in 1401, he made significant contributions to painting thanks to his skill in creating dynamic images and movements, as well as his scientific approach to perspective. In fact, he is considered by many to be the first great painter of the Italian Renaissance and an innovator of the modern era of painting. Masaccio's work was influenced by the works of the sculptor Donatello and the architect Brunelleschi. Unfortunately, in our time only four works have survived, the authorship of which does not raise questions, while other works were written in collaboration with other artists

8. Domenico Ghirlandaio

Domenico Ghirlandaio was the head of a large and productive workshop in Florence, which also included his two brothers. Many later famous artists spent time in his studio, among them Michelangelo. The Early Renaissance painter became famous for his detailed subjects, which often included leading figures of the time, such as his chronicling of contemporary Florentine society. The most significant commissions he received were from Pope Sixtus IV, who summoned him to Rome to paint the Sistine Chapel.

"The Calling of the First Apostles"

9. Andrea del Verrocchio

You may have noticed that Andrea del Verrocchio has already been mentioned on our list. He had a huge influence on successful painters of the Italian Renaissance. Among his students were the aforementioned Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and even Leonardo da Vinci. Its patrons were the influential Medici family, representatives of the Venetian state and the Municipal Council of Pistoia. The versatile artist has produced many sculptures. There is only one known artistic creation signed by Verrocchio: the altar wall in the Cathedral of Pistoia. Despite this, many other paintings are attributed to his workshop.

"The Baptism of Christ"

10. Giovanni Bellini

Born into a family of artists, along with his father Jacopo and brother Gentile, Giovanni Bellini completely changed painting in the Venetian region. By using pure colors and soft transitions, Bellini was able to create rich shades and highlighted shading. These innovations in color had a profound influence on other painters such as Titian. Bellini added disguised symbolism to many of his works, which is usually attributed to the Northern Renaissance.

"Madonna of the Meadow"

TADDEO DI BARTOLO TADDEO DI BARTOLO
Born around 1362 in Siena (?), died in 1422 in the same place. Sienese school. Possibly studied with Giacomo di Mino de Pelliccio; was influenced by Andrea Vanni and especially Bartolo di Fredi. He worked in Siena, San Gimignano, Genoa, Pisa, Perugia, Volterra.
St. Paul
Wood, tempera. 22.5X17.5. GE 9753. Part of the predella. On the book in the hands of St. Paul: ad roma/nos (to the Romans).
"St. Paul” was listed as the work of an unknown Sienese artist of the 14th century, until M. Lacloth (orally) attributed it, quite convincingly, to Taddeo di Bartolo.
A small fragment reveals Taddeo di Bartolo’s characteristic planar solution of forms, combined with rich color. The artist, with a keen sense of color, compares the red cloak, embroidered with gold ornaments along the edge, with Paul’s reddish beard and hair, and with the cold surface of the sword.
A close analogy to the Hermitage painting is the predella from the collection. H. L. Moses in New York (reproduced: Berenson 1968, pi. 477).
The New York predella includes five figures, of which are especially close to St. Paul is the one in the center, and the figure of St. Andrey. The position of the heads, the pattern of the eyes, eyebrows, mouth, and wrinkles on the forehead are similar. The ornaments along the edge of the cloak and halos are identical. Origin: post, in 1954 from the Department of the East of the State Hermitage. Previously: collection. Uspensky.

In guidebooks and catalogs of the Hermitage of the mid-19th century. no mention is made of pre-Renaissance works. It is not without reason that in 1859 A.I. Somov noted: “The ancient Florentine school, the ancestor of all local schools in Italy, does not exist in our Hermitage.”

Madonna from the Annunciation scene
Wood, tempera. 122x41. GE 5521. Paired with GE 5522. The top is rounded.
Signature at the bottom of the pedestal: LVCE OPVS
Angel from the Annunciation scene
Wood, tempera. 122x41. GE 5522. Paired with GE 5521. The top is rounded.
Gospel of Luke, I, 26-38.
Apparently the paintings were the wings of a triptych. This conclusion can be drawn on the basis of the composition: when compared together, the doors do not coincide in terms of perspective, thereby forcing us to assume the presence of a connecting link, that is, the central part of the altar.
Upon receipt, the paintings were listed as the work of an unknown Italian artist
XV century Then they tried to decipher the signature as the name of the Lombard master Luca Chiverchio. The current attribution was made by Vsevolozhskaya (1972) on the basis of stylistic similarities with such works by Luca Baudo as “Adoration of the Child” (City Museum, Savona), “Nativity of Christ” (Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan). “The Nativity of Christ” is dated 1501 and has the same brief signature as the Hermitage panel. The artist used a similar signature in the late period of his creativity. By analogy with the Milanese painting, the Hermitage works can also be dated to 1500-1501.
Origin: post, in 1925 from the Shuvalov Palace Museum in Leningrad. Previously: collection. Counts Shuvalov in St. Petersburg.

This was the case not only with the Florentine school, but also with other Italian schools. This was explained by the fact that until the beginning of the 20th century, that is, during the approximately 150-year existence of the museum, the official leadership showed almost no interest in the so-called “primitives”.
The term “primitives” is used in relation to the earliest works of Italian painting. This definition is conditional and not entirely successful; in this case it does not mean elementary, simplicity. Rather, we should turn to a different meaning of the Italian word - root, original. Then it will become clear that we must keep in mind the basis, those sources from which the art of the Renaissance gradually arose.
The Hermitage possesses primitives primarily thanks to Russian collectors, especially the Counts Stroganov - Pavel Sergeevich and Grigory Sergeevich. The brothers' love for art was hereditary: their ancestor A. S. Stroganov, a philanthropist and passionate collector, helped Catherine II complete the Hermitage.
G1. S. Stroganov became interested in the works of the early Renaissance back in the middle of the last century. Describing his collection in St. Petersburg, the director of the Berlin Museum, Professor G. F. Vagen, emphasized that P. S. Stroganov “belongs to those rare collectors who ... appreciate the spiritual content of paintings of the 14th and 15th centuries.” After death
P. S. Stroganov in 1912 Lippi’s “Adoration of the Child of the Philippines” was transferred to the Hermitage, which occupies a worthy place in the permanent exhibition of Italian art.
The collection of G. S. Stroganov was located in Rome, where he lived for many years. Grigory Sergeevich was well versed in painting: he himself identified the author of “Madonna from the Annunciation Scene”, naming the name Simone Martini. This fold of the diptych, as well as the reliquary of Fra Angelico, were donated to the Hermitage in 1911 by the heirs of G. S. Stroganov, who intended to bequeath to the museum most of the things that belonged to him.
In 1910, the formation of a small section of primitives was facilitated by the fact that some paintings purchased on the initiative of Prince G.G. Gagarin in the 60s were transferred from the Russian Museum to the Hermitage. XIX century for the museum at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. Now it was possible to say: “In Hall VI, ... there are three or four primitives, of which one is of the Giotto type, truly remarkable... We have not represented this era of Italian painting at all... from now on, teachers who read the history of art based on our examples can begin not with Beato Angelico, but with the very emergence of Italian painting.”

St. James the Younger
Wood, oil. 68.7X43. GE 4109. Part of a polyptych.
On the halo: SANCTVS IACOBVS When the painting was in the collection of Count G. S. Stroganov, Vagen (1864), describing it, called the depicted saint Jacob the Elder. However, he does not have one of the main attributes of James the Elder - the conch shell, the symbol of the pilgrim. Rather, James the Younger is presented, who in type was likened to Christ; This is how he is in the Hermitage painting. The attributes - staff and book - are typical of James the Younger.
Vagen (1864) wrote that he did not know
artist Niccolo Orvietann - under this name the painting was listed in the collection. G.S. Stroganov - and added that the transfer of nnkarnata is reminiscent of Niccolo Alunno. A German researcher noted the talent of the author of “St. Jacob" both as a draftsman and as a colorist.
Hark (1896) attributed the painting to Bergognone and classified it as a late stage of the master's work. He believed that the name Npkkolo Orvietani could be the name of the customer, and not the artist.
The attribution of Bergognone is confirmed by comparison with such paintings by the master as “St. Elizabeth with St. Francis" and "St. Peter the Martyr with St. Christopher" (Ambrospana, Milan). St. face type Jacob is the same. what about St. Francis, and the curly hair and the ornament along the edge of the cloak are repeated in the image of St. Christopher. The Hermitage door can be dated to ca. 1500. Origin: post, in 1922 in the Stroganov Palace Museum in Petrograd. Previously: collection. Count G. S. Stroganov in St. Petersburg. Hermitage catalogues: Cat. 1958. p. 69; Cat. 1976, p. 76.

Coronation of Mary
Wood, tempera. 120X75. GE 6662.
The plot goes back to the "Golden Legend" of Jacopo da Voragine (circa 1230-1298). The coronation scene of Maripus appears in Italian art in 1270/80 and becomes a favorite theme of 14th-century Venetian painting. A certain compositional scheme was developed: Christ and Mary sit on a throne, behind which heaven and angels were often depicted. All this is also present in the Hermitage painting, where, however, Christ is presented without a crown (a rarely seen motif), but with a scepter in his hands. The coronation of the Madonna was simultaneously perceived as her glorification. Mary's gesture of prayer introduces the theme of intercession into the glorification scene.
The painting entered the Hermitage as a work by an unknown Italian artist of the 14th century. In Cat. 1958 and 1976 were included as the work of Caterino Veneziano (?). Pallucchini (1964) admitted that The Coronation of the Madonna may refer to the early stage of Donato's activity, still imitating Paolo Venezpano.
The Hermitage painting is stylistically close to both the works executed by Caterino himself (The Coronation of Mary, Accademia, Venice; The Coronation of Mary, triptych, Accademia, Venice) and those created jointly with Donato (The Coronation of Mary, Galeria Querinpe - Stampaglia, Venice). However, the types of faces (especially angels), more strongly marked by the Byzantine tradition, suggest that the work can be more closely related to the works of Caterino Veneziano.
Origin: post, in 1923 from the State Russian Museum Hermitage Catalogs: Cat. 1958, p. 109; Cat. 1976, p. 101

The founders of humanism, which dates back to the 13th century, were Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374) and Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375). Based on antiquity, the new worldview turned its gaze to man. Thus, humanism opposed the church-theological attitude towards the world. However, for the XIV century. There is a certain gap between humanistic thought and art that has not yet become secular. Here humanism will reap its fruits only with the advent of the early Renaissance (XV century).
XIV century took place under the sign of the struggle of cities against feudal lords; It was the cities that became the centers of a new culture. In fragmented Italy, as it remained throughout its centuries-old history (until the middle of the 19th century), during the Trecento5 the leading role in the political, economic and cultural spheres belonged to Florence.
Giotto (1267-1337) is often called the father of Western European painting. Sometimes any Florentine painter of the 14th century is considered in comparison with his work, sometimes these masters are generally called “Giottistas,” although the influence of one, even the most brilliant, artist cannot become decisive for an entire century. But it is difficult to overestimate the innovation of Giotto, who decisively broke with the arbitrariness of connections and the conventionality of the setting of Byzantine painting. A new relationship arises between Giotto’s works and the viewer, different from the previous period of art, when the icon, mosaic or fresco contained the idea of ​​greatness, the incomprehensibility of the deity, and thus the figurative embodiment existed according to its own laws, not based on specific realities.
Giotto was the first to give religious subjects life-like credibility. In his laconic paintings, created in Florence, Padua, and Assisi, the narrative unfolded not on a plane, but in depth, and the characters grieved or rejoiced like mere mortals. Such painting could not help but shock his contemporaries.
After Giotto, it was possible to fill in new details and develop the solutions he proposed, retreat from his quests, find oblivion in Gothic retrospections, as would happen on the verge of the 14th-15th centuries, but it was no longer possible to radically change the general line of development of painting.
Giotto is primarily a monumentalist; very few of his easel works have survived. Only a few museums in the world can be proud of owning them. The Hermitage, unfortunately, does not belong to this group.
In our museum, Florentine painting has been represented since the mid-14th century. This is the moment when, after a series of disasters experienced - the economic crisis, uprisings, the terrible plague epidemic of 1348 - a reassessment of values ​​occurs: increased religiosity dictated a return to the “icon”. Giott's humanity for some time again gave way to the abstract solemnity and constraint of the saints, in which the masters sought to emphasize the significance and high hierarchical position they occupied in the heavenly spheres. Not a single Florentine master of the 14th century. cannot be compared with Diaotto. Only at the beginning of the Quattrocento did a new reformer, Masaccio (1401-1428), one of the founders of the early Renaissance, appear. And the more decisive is the revolution that took place at the turn of two centuries - the XIV and XV, if we remember that along with the painting of Masaccio there was an international Gothic style, refined and sophisticated, which came from the courtly and knightly circles of northern Europe, that in the same city they continued to work with this artist later followers of Giotto, and such a master as Bicci di Lorenzo (1373-1452), a much older Masach. as if he did not notice the changes that had occurred in Florentine art, still likening the flat figures of saints to elegant appliqué against the background of ribbed fabrics.
For all the independence of the Florentine school, it itself received impulses from other artistic centers and became a source of influence.

Crucifixion with Mary and John
Wood, tempera. 62X31. GE 277. In a Gothic frame.
“The Crucifixion” is one of a relatively small number of works by the artist, executed with miniature care. Despite the fact that the figures are presented on a golden background, Pietro achieves a certain depth of space through their arrangement. The laconic composition is interpreted emotionally in conveying the deep but restrained grief of Mary and John. Echoes of the artist’s acquaintance with Giotto’s paintings are felt in some of the massiveness of the figures.
Above the crucifix, at the triangular end, there is a pelican feeding its chicks with its blood - a symbol of the atoning sacrifice of Christ (see: Reau L. Iconographie de 1’art chretien. Paris, 1955, 1, p. 95).
The painting entered the Hermitage as a work by an unknown Sienese artist of the 14th century, in Cat. 1912-1916 is included with the same attribution in Cat. 1958 - Ambrogio Lorenzetti school. The authorship of Pietro Lorenzetti was established by Vsevolozhskaya (1981) on the basis of a stylistic comparison with the right wing of the triptych (Museum, Dijon) and Pietro’s “Crucifixion” (Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan). “The Crucifixion with Mary, John and Mary Magdalene” (National Pinacoteca, Siena, inventory No. 147, 82×42.5) in composition and proportions is a close analogy to the Hermitage painting; the figure of the crucified Christ is repeated in both cases almost without changes. In Cat. 1976 “Crucifixion”, by analogy with the altar from Dijon, is dated 1335-1340. Based on a comparison with the “Crucifixion” from the National Pinacoteca in Siena, it seems more convincing to date the Hermitage painting to the second half of the 1320s (see: Mostra di opere d’arte restaurate nelle province di Siena e Grosetto. Genova, 1981, p. 47).
Origin: post, in 1910 from the State Russian Museum. Previously: MAX in St. Petersburg, acquired for the Academy of Arts by Vice-President Prince G.G. Gagarin Hermitage Catalogs: Cat. 1912-1916, No. 1944; Cat. 1958. p. 123; Cat. 1976, p. 106 Literature: Vsevolozhskaya 1981, No. 3

Close relationships existed between Florence and the second major city of Tuscany - Siena. In a certain sense, these two schools are antipodes. In Florence, with its constant desire for democratic freedoms, monumental art took shape, speaking in a simple and clear language; interest in space prevailed here. In the conditions of aristocratic Siena, easel works were preferred to monumental paintings; they strived for elegance, decorativeness, and color harmony. Siena learned the lessons of Gothic more easily than Florence.
The largest master of the Sienese school of the first half of the 14th century, Simone Martini (about 1284-1344), was a soulful lyricist in painting by his temperament. Like no one else, Simone managed to make line an expressive means of conveying not only forms, but also moods. In Martini's works, color is marked by a richness of finely chosen combinations with a typically Siennese conviviality.
The exhibition displays a diptych panel depicting the Madonna from the Annunciation scene by Simone. According to V.N. Lazarev, “...this precious icon is one of the pearls of the Hermitage collection. in the purity of its lyrical sound and the melodiousness of its lines can only be compared with the best sonnets of Petrarch.”
Along with Simone Martini, the Lorenzetti brothers, Pietro (worked from 1306-1348) and Amrogio (mentioned 1321-1348), played an outstanding role in the development of Sienese painting. Perhaps both of them were victims of the Black Death, which killed more than half of the inhabitants of Tuscany. There is an assumption that the brothers headed a large workshop, the works of which were widely known in Siena. Based on the achievements of the Florentines, Lorenzetti directed attention to the perspective expansion of space, to the precise way of expressing thoughts in artistic images; Both were distinguished by the ability to write a lyrical story, to create a fascinating narrative based on impressions of the life around them. It is worth noting that Ambrogio demonstrated in the Allegory of Good Government, one of the famous frescoes in the Palazzo Pubblico, an interest in antiquity that was not so common among painters of that time.
In the second half of the trecento, Siena did not put forward a single artist of the caliber of Simone Martini or the Lorenzetti brothers. Npccolo di Ser Sozzo (1340-1360s) worked during this period, whose work was “discovered” only in the 30s. of our century. There are few works by this master, and it is all the more important that the Madonna and Child by Piccolo was recently discovered in the Hermitage collections. Having been influenced by Martini and Lorenzetti, Ser Sozzo undoubtedly had contacts with Florentine culture, as evidenced by the item in our collection. In it, plasticity, balance of composition, monumental figures are organically combined with a purely Siennese color scheme, delicate and bright.
One of the first representatives of international Gothic in Siena, Bartolo di Fredi (worked from 1353-1410) led an actively working workshop. Characterizing the features of this pan-European style on the verge of two centuries, A. Ershi wrote: “The nobility’s longing for the past was reflected not only in the themes of the commissioned paintings, but also in the style of painting, since the Gothic style, which was already in decline, was resurrected. Art was expected to praise the romantic (in the original sense of the word) perception of life, looking back to the past - to chivalric romances; they expected compensation, rewards for positions lost in real life, and this often led to unbridled exaggerations. The result was a cult of stunning luxury, an idealization that deliberately distorted reality, and a stylized language - that is, everything that characterizes the international Gothic."

Madonna and Child; four saints
Wood, tempera. 40X16. GE 6665, paired with GE 6666.
Left wing of the diptych.
On the scroll in the hands of John there is a half-erased inscription: EC1/ VOX/.. .NA/TI./ES/ RT.S (vox clamantis in deserto) (/Behold/ the voice of one crying in the desert). Gospel of Matthew, 3, 3.
Crucifixion; four saints
Wood, tempera. 40x16. GE 6666, paired with GE 6665.
Right wing of the diptych.
Among the saints on the left wing of the diptych can be identified St. Nicholas, St. Christopher, John the Baptist. On the right - St. Francis and St. Elena.
Likhachev (1911) considered the diptych an Italian work of the 14th century, Talbot Riche (1940) - the work of the Venetian school of the 13th century, Lazarev (1954, 1965) classified the folding to the group of monuments “occupying a separate place in Venetian painting of the first half of the 14th century.” and connected it with the works of masters whose starting point of creativity was miniature painting. The diptych combines Byzantine features (the type of Madonna with a baby playing in her arms, the row arrangement of figures) with Gothic features (elongated proportions). Lazarev brought together the Hermitage fold of icons with scenes from the life of Christ: one of them is kept in the City Museum of Trieste, the other in the State Museum of Western and Eastern Art in Kyiv.
Pallucchini (1964), who conventionally called the artist “Master of the Leningrad Diptych,” did not see a connection between the Hermitage work and the icon from Trieste, but agreed that the diptych was created in the same vein as the painting from Kiev, just like the triptych from the Archaeological Museum in Spo-summer.
In Cat. The 1958 and 1976 diptychs were listed as the work of an unknown artist of the Rimini school of the 13th century.
Origin: post, in 1923 from the State Russian Museum. Previously: collection. N.P. Likhacheva in St. Petersburg.
Hermitage catalogues: Cat. 1958, p. 141; Cat. 1976, p. 116

A typical example of International Gothic in the exhibition is a polyptych, executed perhaps in the immediate circle of one of the most significant adherents of this style, Gentile da Fabriano (circa 1370-1427), who worked in various centers of Italy. The brittle fragility of the contours highlights the figures of five exquisitely elegant saints against the shining background, and the color scheme of the altar is magnificent in its unexpected color combinations.
After the work of Giotto, the Byzantine tradition turned into one of the most conservative components of the trecento. But it was precisely this that Venetian painting of the 14th century stubbornly followed.
The rich patrician republic, the “pearl of the Adriatic,” connected the West with the East thanks to trade routes. Her constant contacts with Byzantium led to the fact that Venice accepted the aesthetics of Byzantine painting easily and organically, as something of its own, and not imported from the outside. Greek craftsmen constantly worked in the city, in particular, they mainly worked on the mosaic decorations of the Cathedral of San Marco.
Among the Venetian artists, Paolo Veneziano (worked 1333-1358) creatively interpreted the Byzantine heritage. Perhaps one of Paolo’s followers painted “The Child Christ in the Temple of Jerusalem.” If we compare this fragment with the works of the Florentine and Siena school, we can feel how much we are once again immersed in medieval images and ideas. It is this work, in our opinion, that serves as a clear illustration of the exact characteristics of M. Dvorak’s medieval thinking. Such an embodiment of the “incomprehensibility of divine thought” is the youth Christ in the picture, which is shown in his relationship with the people around him and the building of the temple; drawing this relationship, you understand that it is Christ who is above everything, below everything, outside everything, in everything.”
Such an embodiment of the incomprehensibility of divine thought is the youth Christ in the picture, which is expressed in his relationship with the people around him and the temple building. Assessing this relationship, you understand that it is Christ who is above everything, under everything, outside everything, in everything.
The expression of the Hermitage icon was appreciated in art history literature: “Currently, I do not know of another work that could be compared with a small board, the only part of the surviving polyptych with the image of “Christ among the wise”, stored in the Hermitage reserves: a unique fragment in its own way in terms of expressive power, almost Cimabueva,” wrote R. Pallucchini.
When you get acquainted with the works of the Venetian school exhibited at the exhibition - and all of them mainly date back to the second half of the 14th - early 15th centuries - you have to be surprised at how quickly, by the end of the 15th - beginning of the 16th centuries, Venice caught up, and in many ways and was ahead of the leading Quattrocento school - Florence.
Obviously, at present, the features and significance of the Pisan school of painting of the 14th century have not yet been fully identified. The opinion continues to exist that Pisa at this time gravitated toward the art of other cities. But Pisa experienced the main flowering of painting in the previous, 13th century. It is from this period that one of the earliest monuments in the exhibition dates back to - a cross with the image of the “Crucifixion” by Ugolino di Tedice (worked in the second half of the 13th century). This cross confirms that on the soil of Tuscany, Ppza absorbed and transformed the Byzantine forms penetrating here.
The beginning of the early Renaissance is rightly associated with the support gained by Italian masters in ancient art. But antiquity was not the only source of the Renaissance. Without the preparation completed in the 14th century, the emergence of a new system of thinking, a new art, would have been impossible. The Renaissance absorbed not only antiquity, but also the naturalism of Gothic and the traditions of Byzantine painting. No matter how Byzantium transformed various forms, “the human figure, which was at the center of interest of ancient artists, remained the main subject of depiction for the Byzantines.”
Trecento was by no means “inept”, as Vazarn imagined. Italy had to go through this century to open a new page in the history of art, which we associate with the highest achievements of human genius.
This exhibition could not have been carried out without the enormous work done by the Hermitage restorers. I take this opportunity to express my deep gratitude to all of them, especially T. D. Chizhova. They removed the old notes and multi-layer varnish and returned the paintings there. where possible, pristine freshness and brilliance of colors.

FOPPA, VINCENZO FOPPA, VINCENZO
Born in Brescia around 1430, died in 1515/16 in Milan. Lombard school. He was influenced by Donato de'Bardi, Mantegna, Bellini, Bramante. Worked in Pavia, Brescia, Bergamo, Milan.
St. Stephen
Wood, tempera. 89x34. GE 7772, paired with GE 7773.
Fold of the polyptych.
On the halo: SANCVS STEFANVS PROMAR-TIRVS.
archangel Michael
Wood, tempera. 91x34. GE 7773, paired with GE 7772.
Fold of the polyptych.
On the halo: SANCTVS MICH.. .ANGELVS INTER. ..
The leaves of the polyptych date back to the early stage of the activity of Foppa, one of the largest representatives of the Lombard school during the period of its transition from Gothic to Renaissance art. In this work, the artist tried to combine the traditional lessons of Lombard art with the advanced trends of Dutch painting. In iconographic terms, the calmly standing figures of saints easily fit into the familiar scheme, while the problem of light is perceived freshly and directly. With the interest characteristic of the Netherlands, Foppa conveys the play of light on the metal armor of the Archangel Michael, and his softer glide along the sharp folds of the dalmatic of St. Stefan.
As Medica (1986) proved, the doors from the Hermitage were part of the same polyptych as two boards depicting John the Baptist and St. Dominica from a private collection in Bergamo. The sizes of the fragments are the same, the golden halos are the same. It is especially significant that the low parapet in front of which each saint stands is located on the same level. The artist seems to imply a single space for all figures. Obviously, in the center of the polyptych there was a Madonna and Child, which John the Baptist points to.
Medica names St. as a prototype for the figure. Stephen "St. Stefan" by Donato de'Bardi (collection of Cicogna Mozzoni, Milan, reproduced: Zeri F. Diari di lavoro 2. Torino, 1976, fig. 41).
Medica dates all the doors to approximately 1462 and rightly notes in them the combination of the Lombard tradition with Dutch influences, perceived by the young Foppa thanks to his study of the samples of Donato de'Bardi.
The doors entered the Hermitage as the work of an unknown Lombard artist of the 15th century, then they began to be considered works! circle of Bergognone. In Cat. 1958 and 1976 are included as works of the Foppa school. The present attribution was made by Vsevolozhskaya (1981) based on a comparison with the polyptych di Santa Maria della Grazia (Brera, Milan, inv. no. 307) and “St. Catherine and St. Agnes" (Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, inventory No. 37.706). Vsevolozhskaya was the first to draw attention to the similarities between the Hermitage saints and “St. Dominic" from a private collection. in Bergamo.
Origin: post, in 1921 through GMF. Previously: collection. N.K. Roerich in St. Petersburg; collection Colonel Modgiardini in Florence (according to a pre-existing inscription on the back of one of the doors).
Hermitage catalogues: Cat. 1958, p. 203; Cat. 1976, p. 146
Literature: Vsevolozhskaya 1981, No. 33. 34; Medica M. Quattro tavole per un polittico di Vincenzo Foppa.- Paragone, 1986, 431-433, p. 12-14

FUNGAI, BERNARDINO FUNGAI, BERNARDINO
Born in 1460 in Siena, died in 1516 in the same place. Sienese school. He studied with Giovanni di Paolo and was influenced by Francesco di Giorgio, Pietro di Domenico, Perugino, and Signorelli. He worked mainly in Siena.
The Generosity of Scipio Africanus
Wood, oil, tempera. 62X166. GE 267. Casson board.
Under the figures are the names of the characters: SPONSVS; LVCEIVS; SCIPIO; LVCEI FILIA. Above the figure: LELIVS.
The plot is borrowed from the “Roman History” of Titus Livy. According to Livy, the general Publichus! Cornelius Scipio (235-185 BC), nicknamed Africanus, after the capture of New Carthage, returned the captive girl to her fiancé Allucius, and presented the ransom offered by the parents for their daughter to Allucius in the form of a wedding gift.
Following the tradition established in the paintings of cassons (chests for storing dowry), Fungai combined three episodes from different times in one scene. In the center, Scipio Africanus returns the bride to the groom, on the left, Allucius leads the horsemen placed at the disposal of the magnanimous commander, on the right, the soldiers lead the captive to Scipio.
The action takes place against the backdrop of a detailed landscape that betrays the influence of the Umbrian school. Painting by Italiana a Pietroburgo.-’L’Arte, 1912, fasc. 2, p. 123-124; Voinov 1922, p. 75; Weigelt S. Die sienesische Malerei des vierzehnten Jahrhunderts. Firenze - Mtinchen, 1930, S. 73, 111; Marie R., van. 1924, 2, p. 90-92; Lazarev 1959, p. 284-285, approx. 264; Italian painting of the XIII-XVIII centuries. 1964, no. 2; Berenson 1968, p. 119; Vsevolozhskaya 1981, No. 4, 5
was initially listed as the work of an unknown Umbrian artist. In Cat. 1922 was included as a work of the Pinturicchio circle. Fungai may have been influenced by Pinturicchio when he worked in Siena in 1508-1512. Based on Pinturicchio's influence, the cassone wall is dated to the late period of Fungai's work - 1512-1516. The current attribution, accepted by all researchers, was made (orally) by O. Siren.
Paired with the “Generosity of Scipio Africanus,” the cassone panel “The Death of Sophonis” is kept in the Pushkin Museum. Both compositions are built on the same principle and the central figures are repeated almost completely. Origin: post, in 1902 from the collection. F. Russova in St. Petersburg
Hermitage catalogues: Cat. 1907-1912, No. 1892; Cat. 1958, p. 206; Cat. 1976, p. 147-148 Exhibitions: 1922 Petrograd, No. 48 Literature: Thieme U.- Becker F. Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Kunstler. Leipzig, 1916, S. 587; Voinov 1922, p. 77; Borenius T. Unpablisched Cassone Panels III.- The Burlington Magazine, 1922, April, p. 189-190; Schu- bring P. Cassoni. Truhen und Truhenbilder der italienischen Fruhrenaissance. Leipzig, 1923, 1, S. 138, 355; Berenson 1932, p. 211; Marie R., van. 1937, 16, p. 481; Pigler A. Barockthemen. Eine Auswahl von Verzeichnissen zur Iconographie des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts. Budapest, 1956, 2, S. 404; Italian painting of the XIII-XVIII centuries. 1964, no. 29, 30; Berenson 1968, p. 150; Vsevolozhskaya 1981, No. 45; Italian Cassoni from the Art Collections of the Soviet Museums. Leningrad, 1983, No. 15-19

PAOLO VENEZIANO (MAESTRO PAOLO), follower
PAOLO VENEZIANO (MAESTRO PAOLO)
56. The Child Christ in the Jerusalem Temple
Wood, tempera. 25X18.5. GE 6670. Fragment of a polyptych. Gospel of Luke, 2, 42-52 Following the laws of Byzantine painting, the artist does not create a closed space in which the action takes place. Christ is depicted simultaneously both in the temple and outside it - he dominates everything and everyone. There is not and cannot be a single point from which the scene would be perceived, since it is oriented not so much to the real as to the inner vision of the one who is viewing it. But given the general trends that characterize the Byzantine direction in Venetian painting of the 14th century, the master conveys the intensity of passions in the highest degree - the despair that possessed the elders, p. 3; Venturi L. Saggio sulle opere d’arte italiana a Pietroburgo.- L’Arte, 1912, fasc. 2-3, p. 123; Reinach S. Repertoire de peintures dn Moyen Age et de la Renaissance (1280-1580). Paris, 1922, 5, p. 314; Meiss 1951, p. 169; Meiss M. Notes on Three linked Sienese styles.- The Art Bulletin, 1963, 45, March, p. 47; Klesse 1967, p. 249; De Benedictis 1979, p. 24, 96 whom the child Christ surpassed in wisdom, the attention with which Mary and Joseph listened to the words of Christ.
Lazarev (orally) identified the painting as the work of Lorenzo Veneziano; in Cat. The 1958 and 1976 work is included as a work by Paolo Veneziano (?). Pallucchini (1964), who first published the fragment, also believed that its author was associated with Paolo Veneziano and worked at the beginning of the second half
XIV century The artist undoubtedly finds points of contact with Paolo Veneziano, and in particular with the master’s polyptych from the Accademia in Venice (Inv. No. 16), a connection with which was pointed out by Pallucchini (1964). However, unlike the creator of the Venetian polyptych, the author of the Hermitage fragment remained alien to the innovations of the Gothic style. Origin: post, in 1923 from the State Russian Museum. Previously: until 1914 collection. N. P. Likhacheva in St. Petersburg Hermitage Catalogs: Cat. 1958, p. 148; Cat. 1976, p. 120
Literature: Pallucchini 1964, p. 56

UNKNOWN ARTIST OF THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OF THE LATE XIV-EARLY XV CENTURIES.
Scenes from the Lives of Christ and Mary
Wood, tempera. 42X54 (framed 50X61.5]. GE 4158
Top row: Annunciation (Gospel of Luke, 1, 26-38); Meeting of Mary with Elizabeth (Gospel of Luke, 2, 39-56); Nativity of Christ (Gospel of Luke, 2, 6-7); Bringing to the temple (Gospel of Luke, 2, 22-38); The Child Christ in the Jerusalem Temple (Gospel of Luke, 2, 41-52); Prayer for the cup (Gospel of Matthew, 26, 36-44; Mark, 14, 32-42; Luke, 22, 39-46). Middle row: The Flagellation of Christ (Gospel of Mark, 15, 15; John, 19, 1); The reproach of Christ (Gospel of Matthew, 27, 28-30; Mark, 15, 17-19; John, 19, 2-3); Carrying the cross (Gospel of Matthew, 27, 31-32; Mark, 15, 20; Luke, 23, 26; John, 19, 16-17); Crucifixion with Mary and John.
Bottom row: Resurrection of Christ; The Ascension of Christ (Gospel of Mark, 16, 19; Luke, 24, 51); Descent of St. Spirit (Acts of the Apostles, 2, 1-4); Ascension of the Madonna (LA CXVII, 1), Coronation of the Madonna (LA CXVII, 1).
In fifteen scenes (five in each row), the artist, in a somewhat naive manner, with a love for a detailed and entertaining story, presented various episodes from the history of Christ and Mary.
Judging by the manner of execution, this minor master worked in Florence at the end of the 15th century. He was undoubtedly influenced by Baldovinetti, Rosselli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Botticelli. For example, a wall with cypress trees visible behind it is a motif that goes back to a number of works by Baldovinetti. The figure of Mary is in general terms close to the Madonna in Baldovinetti’s “Annunciation” (Uffizi, Florence).

St. Bernard of Siena
Wood, tempera. 41x31 (in a Gothic frame 49x36). GE 4767. Part of a polyptych.
On the scroll in the hand of St. Bernardina: Pater manifestavi nomen tuum hminbs (Father, I have revealed your name to men). Gospel of John, 17, 6.
In Cat. 1922 and in Cat. 1957 and 1976 the saint was not identified. St. Bernardin of Siena in the vestment of the Order of St. Francis, of which he became a member in 1402. Iconographically, this is an elderly ascetic monk, in this case he is identified by one of his attributes: on the scroll there is an inscription with words from the Gospel of John (see: Kaftal G. Saints in Italian Art . Iconography of the saints in Central and South Italian Schools of painting. Florence, 1965, p. 198).
In Cat. 1922 painting was attributed to a North Italian artist (?) of the late 15th century. It seems that the author of the Hermitage fragment could have been a Sienese master who worked in the middle of the 15th century, and not only because one of the most popular Sienese saints is depicted, but also because the interpretation of the image and forms gives reason to assume that the author of the picture could have been in contact with with the circle of Sano di Pietro.
Origin: Post, 1920
Hermitage catalogues: Cat. 1958, p. 142; Cat.
1976, p. 116
Exhibitions: 1922 Petrograd, No. 15 Literature: Voinov 1922, p. 76

Scenes from the life of St. Giuliana di Collalto
Wood, tempera. 73x64.5 (size of each stamp is 28x30). GE 6366. Part of a polyptych.
In the upper left stamp above the heads of the nuns: VEATA / GVLIANA. Above the head of Christ: IC.XC. In the upper right stamp between the angel and St. Juliana: BEA/TA GVLI/ANA. Above the group Juliana is in: BEATA/GVLIANA. In the lower right stamp above the deceased Juliana: VEATA GVLIANA.
Pallucchini (1964) suggested that the Hermitage fragment was the left part of a polyptych that was previously located in the Church of St. Biagio and Cataldo on the island of Giudecca, and its central part was a board with the figure of St. Giuliana (private collection, Venice, reproduced: Pallucchini 1964, fig. 599).
Several episodes from the history of St. are depicted. Juliana. Giuliana di Collalto (1186-1262) is a historical figure, founder and first abbess of the monastery of St. Viaggio and Cataldo on the island of Giudecca. The beginning of the cult of the saint dates back to the end of the 13th century.
In the upper left stamp, the saint receives bread from Christ, which saved the nuns from hunger. In the upper right stamp, the figure of Juliana is repeated twice: she prays to the angel to heal the nun who broke her arm on the tombstone, and here she herself heals the young man. The artist depicted him holding the third, broken one, with his now healthy hands. The lower mark on the right depicts the construction of the monastery. The last episode refers to the posthumous history of the saint. After her body was buried in the cemetery church of the monastery, a mysterious light became visible above the tomb. The sarcophagus was opened in 1290 and it was discovered that Juliana’s remains were not touched by decay, her body was transferred to the monastery, and people, coming to the tomb, began to be healed. A married couple with a sick child is presented.
The subject of the fragment was correctly identified by Pallucchini (1984), who attributed the painting to Master Donato, a relatively conservative artist in the circle of Paolo Veneziano, and dated it to the 1360s. Previously, in the Hermitage “Scenes from the Life of St. Juliana”, received as a work by an unknown Italian artist of the 14th century, were included in Cat. 1958 as “Scenes from the Life of St. Julita" by the Paduan master Giusto di Giovanni de Menabuoi (?). V. Lazarev (orally) considered that the Hermitage painting should be excluded from the circle of Paolo Veneziano. Muraro (1970) held the same opinion.
Origin: post, in 1923 from the State Russian Museum. Previously: collection. N. P. Likhacheva in St. Petersburg Hermitage Catalogs: Cat. 1958, p. 94; Cat. 1976, p. 116

UNKNOWN ARTIST OF THE VENETIAN SCHOOL OF THE XIV CENTURY.
St. Philip and St. Elena
Wood, tempera. 64x39. GE 6704. Paired with GE 6705
On a golden background near the halos are the names of the saints: .S/F/I/LI/P SCA/LE/NA.
Lawrence and St. Elizabeth
Wood, tempera. 64x39. GE 6705. Paired with GE 6704
On a golden background near the halos are the names of the saints: S/L/A/VR/EN/ CI/VS S/EL./BE/TA.
The figures of saints were made by an artist who strived for monumentality and a pure sound of bright colors. Sharp contours emphasize the rigid interpretation of the folds.
There is a group of works, which include “Saints” from the collection. Hermitage. They were painted, apparently, by an artist associated with the (mosaic) workshop at the Cathedral of San Marco (Lazarev 1954, 1965). These works include The Last Judgment (Museum of Art, Worcester, Massachusetts), Francis of Assisi, Unknown Saint, St. Catherine, St. Nicholas" (Galeria Sabauda, ​​Turin). Pallucchini (1964) conventionally called the artist “Master of the Last Judgment,” believing that this is one of the most interesting individuals of the Venetian school of the second quarter of the 14th century.
Lazarev (1965) admitted the possibility that the “Last Judgment” and “Saints” from the Hermitage and Galeria Sabauda originally constituted a single altar. Davis (1974) did not see sufficient grounds for such an assumption.
By analogy with the Last Judgment (see Devies 1974), the Hermitage fragments could have been made between 1325 and 1350.

UNKNOWN ARTIST OF THE VENICE SCHOOL OF THE FIRST HALF OF THE 15TH CENTURY.
Madonna and Child, St. Francis of Assisi and St. Vincent Ferrer
Wood, tempera. GE 6663. 180×169.5 On the book of St. Vincent: Timet/ edeus/ etdat/ eilliho/ nores./ quia/ venit/ horaim/dicii/ eius. (Fear God and give glory to him, for the hour of his judgment has come.) Revelation of John, 14, 7. Above the head of the Madonna, under the overhead frame, are the remains of a Greek inscription in red paint: MP 0V (Mother of God). There are also strokes of paint - a test palette of the artist who selected color combinations. At the bottom of the frame is the coat of arms of the Venetian Matteo da Medio; the coat of arms is inscribed in a circle, on the preserved part of the field there is a “squirrel fur” motif. The name of Matteo da Medio is inscribed in two circles on the sides of the coat of arms: MTTV DMO. On the step of the throne on the right side, some person, separated from us by centuries, scratched a drawing of a sailboat.
A similar type of composition - a Madonna and Child on a throne and saints standing on either side of it - was called a “holy interview” (“sacra conversazione”). The image was given outside the real situation, without specific motivation, as something timeless, eternal. The central figure (as in a Hermitage painting) could be highlighted in size, which emphasized its primacy and significance; lateral ones (their number could be different) - as equivalent. This type of composition, filled with new content, will exist throughout the Renaissance.
In Cat. 1958 The saint on the right side of the picture was incorrectly named Dominic. The text from the "Revelation of John" on the book and the gesture pointing to Christ in the mandorla indicate that St. Vincent Ferrer (see: Kaftal G. Saints in Italian Art. Iconography of the saints in Central and South Italian Schools of Painting. Florence, 1965; see also: Kaftal 1978).
Likhachev (1911) considered the icon a rare example of the activity of the Cretan-Venetian school of the 14th century. Schweinfurt (1930) was inclined to believe that the painting could be included among the Venetian works of the 14th century. At the same time, he noted the very close connection between Venetian artists and Italo-Byzantine workshops on the territory of Venice. Bettini (1933) added that the icon outlined a division between Venetian and Cretan traditions.
Lazarev (1954, 1959) attributed the painting to the workshop of Caterino and Donato, dating it to the 1370s. Pallucchini (1964) explained the difference he saw in the style between the central and side figures by saying that the Madonna could have been done by Donato, and the saints perhaps by Caterino.
G. Fiocco (orally) attributed the painting to Jacobello di Bonomo. With this attribution the painting is included in Cat. 1958, and in Cat. 1976 - as the work of an unknown Venetian artist
XIV century
The Correr Museum in Venice houses an icon depicting the Madonna and Child on a throne (61X48), which repeats the composition of the central part of the Hermitage work. In the museum catalog it is attributed to an artist of the Cretan-Venetian school of the early 15th century. (see: Mariacher S. II Museo Correr di Venezia. Di-pinti dal XIV al XV secolo. Venezia, 1957, p. 131-132).
In collection Willamsen in Copenhagen there is a “Madonna and Child”, compositionally close to the central part of the Hermitage painting. Dated 1325 (see: Willumsen J. E. La jeunesse du peintre el Greco. Essai sur la transformation de l’artiste byzantin en peintre europeen. Paris, 1927, 1, p. 75).
Pallucchini (1964) believed that the icon from the Correr Museum repeats the Hermitage one in a more fractional and decorative manner, and the icon from the collection. Willamsen, in turn, is a repetition of the version from the Correr Museum.
The painting from the Hermitage could hardly have been created earlier than the first half of the 15th century, as Kaftal (1978) rightly dated it. The basis for this dating may be the image of St. Vincent Ferrer (1350-1419), canonized in 1455. He could have been depicted before canonization, but unlikely during his lifetime in the image of a saint standing at the throne of the Madonna.
Thus, the creator of the Hermitage icon rather repeated the previously established composition depicting the Madonna and Child, and works from the Correr Museum and coll. Willamsen precedes, rather than repeats, the central part of the Hermitage work.

Miracle with a guest
Wood, tempera. 15X35. GZ 7657. Part of the predella.
Upon admission to the Hermitage, the plot of the painting was defined as genre, and under the name “The Shop” it was included in Cat. 1958.
The correct decoding of the plot belongs to Gukovsky (1965, 1969). As a source, he turned to “The Image of One of the Miracles of the Body of Christ,” a book published in Florence at the end of the 15th century. and currently known in three copies (one in the Corsini Library, Rome; two in the Trivulzio collection, Milan). The book consists of sixteen pages and is a kind of “script” for one of those performances that were often performed in Florence during the Renaissance.
The Hermitage painting depicts three episodes. On the left side, Gulslmo Jambekkari, after drinking wine, loses money in the osteria. On the right side, Gulelmo’s wife comes to a Jewish moneylender to buy back a dress pawned by her husband. The moneylender Manuel demands that the woman bring him a host (communion wafer) in return. It is immediately presented how Manuel burns the brought host on a brazier, pierces it with a sword, and a miracle occurs: the wafer, symbolizing the body of Christ, begins to bleed.
The woodcut illustrating the “Image of one of the miracles of the body of Christ,” which Gukovsky compared with the Hermitage fragment, is very close to the right side of the painting, so he assumed that the engraving served as a prototype for the pictorial solution (reproduced: Goukovsky 1969, fig. 2).
Gukovsky believed that, due to its small size, this work could be the predella of a small portable altar, but rather served as a decoration for furniture.
According to Gukovsky, the author of “The Miracle of the Host” was either Uccello or one of the artists from his workshop. However, this is contradicted by a comparison with Uccello’s predella on the subject “Desecration of the Host” (National Gallery, Urbino). The clarity and novelty in the construction of space in Uccello is very different from the more conservative solution of space in the Hermitage work. Origin: post, in 1933 from the collection. B. N. Chicherin in Leningrad.
Hermitage catalogues: Cat. 1958, p. 142; Cat. 1976, p. 117
Literature: Gukovsky M.A. The so-called “Store” of the Hermitage and its probable author. - Theses of reports of the scientific session dedicated to the results of the work of the State Hermitage in 1965. L.-M., 1966, p. 39-41; Goukovsky M. A. A representation of the Host: a puzzling painting in the Hermitage and its possible author.- The Art Bulletin, 1969, 101, p. 170-173

Master of the Imola Triptych
Worked in the first half of the 15th century. Emilia's school. He was influenced by Venetian masters and Lombard miniaturists. A group of works by this master, close in style to Antonio Alberti, was identified by Padovani on the basis of similarity with the triptych “Madonna and Child, St. Christina and Peter the Martyr" from the collection. Pinakothek of Imola (see: Padovani 1976, p. 49--50).
Madonna and Child, John the Baptist and Anthony the Abbot
Wood, tempera. 43.5x29.5. GE 9751 At the bottom right on the Madonna's cloak is an illegible false signature and date MSSS. In the upper left corner on the scroll of the prophet Isaiah: Iae... .ppfte. In the upper right corner on the scroll of the prophet David: Davt ppfte. On the book in the hands of God the Father: Ego sum/lux mn/di qui sequitn/ me n..ambu/lat i te/nebr;s. (I am the light of the world; whoever follows me will not walk in darkness). Gospel of John, 8, 12. On a scroll in the hands of John the Baptist: Esce agnus dei (Behold the lamb of God). Gospel of John, 1,
29, 36. On the same scroll are the remains of the letters of his name: OGAh.
The signature and date date back to the 19th century, which proves the presence of zinc white in the paint. Below, under the layer of varnish, on which the signature and date are located, they are not repeated.
The composition is constructed in such a way that an ornamental three-part frame separates the prophets from the other characters; thereby showing that the prophets Isaiah and David precede Christ and at the same time predict his appearance in the world.
God the Father points to the baby, explaining with a gesture to whom the gospel lines inscribed on the book are addressed.
The painting was received as a work by an unknown northern Italian artist of the 15th century. Can be identified as the work of the Master of the Imola Triptych, as it shows close similarities to a number of paintings attributed to him. This is the “Nativity” (in 1910 it was owned by the antiquarian Paolini in Rome; reproduced: Padovani 1976, fig. 38); “The Adoration of the Magi” (Kister’s collection, Kreuzlingen, reproduced: Padovani 1976, fig. 39); “Madonna of Humility” (Cassa di Risparmio, Ferrara, reproduced: Padovani 1976, fig. 33).
Not only are individual details repeated, but, what is much more important, there is a single stylistic principle in all these works. A provincial artist, like the Master of the Imola triptych, working already in the first half of the 15th century, gives preference to a non-perspective solution to space. The figures are characterized by strict verticalism, slightly softened by a slight tilt of the heads, the faces are drawn rigidly and carefully. Ruby red is often introduced as an accent color (in the Hermitage painting these are the robes of God the Father and the Baptist).
The date - 1430 - proposed by Padovani for the "Nativity" and "Adoration of the Magi", by analogy can be accepted for the "Madonna and Child and Saints".

MASTER OF THE MARRIED COUPLE DATINI MAESTRO DEI CONIUGI DATINI
Worked in the second half of the 14th century. Florentine school.
Blessing Christ
Wood, tempera. Diam. 43 (tondo). GE 270. Upper part of the painted cross.
In the XIV century. in Tuscany and, in particular, in Florence, painted crosses depicting the crucifixion were widespread. Often at the top they were decorated with medallions with a half-figure of Christ blessing. The Hermitage tondo also had a similar purpose. Iconographically, the blessing Christ belongs to the type of Christ Pantocrator (see: Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie. Rom; Freiburg; Basel; Wien, 1968, 1, S. 392-394).
The Tondo entered the Hermitage as a work by an unknown Tuscan master of the 14th century. Giotto's circle. According to the information given in Cat. 1922, Ainalov attributed the tondo to Tommaso Giottino, and Lipgart to Bernardo Daddi. Lazarev (1928) believed that the work was made under the direct influence of Giotto, and dated it to the 20s of the 14th century.
In Cat. 1958 and 1976 fragment was included as a work of Giotto’s school: Ambrogio di Bondone (?). Corti (1971) published the Hermitage tondo as the work of an unknown Florentine master of the second half
XIV century Boscovich (1975) included it in the list of paintings by Pietro Nelli. Tartuferi (1984) agreed with this attribution. As an analogy, he cited a medallion with the image of Christ blessing, completing the “Crucifixion” from the church of San Donato in Poggio, Pieve, the school of Pietro Nelli. Noting the much higher quality of the painting from the Hermitage, Tartuferi pointed out the similarities in the interpretation of hair, clothing and ornament. On this basis, he suggested that the masters proceeded from one prototype, moreover, perhaps from one drawing.
Bellosi (1984) attributed the Hermitage tondo to the artist, whom he conventionally called "Master of the Datini Married Couple" after the painting "Trinity" (Capitolian Museum, Rome), which bears the coat of arms of the merchant from Prato, Francesco Datini, and himself, his wife and adopted the daughter is depicted kneeling at the foot of the crucifix. For the Capitoline painting, Bellosi proposed a date of around 1400. In his opinion, the “Master of the Consort of the Datini Couple” could be either Tommaso del Mazzo, who collaborated with Pietro Nelli, and later - around 1391 - with Niccolò di Pietro Gerini, or Giovanni di Tano Fei, worked for the Datini family. The similarity between God the Father in the Capitoline painting and the blessing Christ in the Hermitage tondo is so great that there is no doubt that both works belong to the same master. Bellosi's hypothesis seems quite convincing. Origin: post, in 1910 from the State Russian Museum. Previously: MAX in St. Petersburg
Hermitage catalogues: Cat. 1958, p. 93; Cat. 1976, p. 91
Exhibitions: 1922 Petrograd, No. 3 Literature: Prokhorov 1879, No. 2; Voinov 1922, p. 76; Lasareff 1928, b. 25-26; Corti G. Sul com- mercio dei quadri a Firenze verso la fine del secolo XIV.- Commentari, 1971, 22, p. 86; Boskovits 1975, p. 420; Tartuferi A. Due croci di-pinte poco note del Trecento Fiorentino.- Arte Cristiana, 1984, gennaio - febbraio, p. 6; 12 nota 16; Bellosi L. Tre note in margine a uno studio sull’arte a Prato.- Prospettiva, Aprile 1983 - Gennaio 1984, 33-36, p. 46

MASTER OF THE CORONATION OF MARY OF CHRIST CHURCH
MAESTRO DELL'INCORONAZIONE CHRIST CHURCH
Worked in the second half of the 14th century. Florentine school. This conventional name was proposed by Ofner (1981) for the works of an unknown follower of the Chione brothers, which Ofner grouped around the Coronation of Mary from Christ Church, Oxford.
Coronation of Marin
Wood, tempera. 78.5X49.7. GE 265. Top rounded
On the scroll of John: ECC/E/AG/NVS/VOX (Behold the lamb... the voice [of him crying in the wilderness]). Gospel of John, 1, 29; Matthew 3, 3. At the bottom of the board between the coats of arms of the Florentine families Seristhorpe and Gherardeschi: AVE. GRATIA. PLENA DOMIN... (Rejoice, full of grace! Lord...). Gospel of Luke, 1,
28. On the back of the board there is an inscription that is currently only readable in infrared rays: Les armes... sont de la maison de Seristori... autres sont de Gherardeschi de florence. Ecole de Toscane (This is the coat of arms of the house of Seristori, another Gherardeschi from Florence. Tuscan school).
The upper semicircular board, which depicts the crucifixion with Mary, John, St. Francis and St. Dominic, was connected to the base by a later overlay frame.
The central composition represents the coronation of Mary according to the type that developed in Florentine painting of the second half of the 14th century. This corresponds to the arrangement of the figures of Christ and Mary, sitting (without a visible throne) against a background of richly ornamented fabric, the sharp end of the crown, the isolation of the main characters from the saints by a certain conventional frame to which the drapery is attached.
According to Ofner (1981), during the coronation scene there are St. Paul, St. Matthew, unknown saint, St. Bartholomew, John the Baptist, St. Louis of Toulouse (on the left side of the composition); St. Andrew, St. Peter, St. Catherine, two holy bishops, St. Jacob (on the right side of the composition), two angels playing music.
The painting was received as a work by an unknown Florentine artist of the 14th century. Lazarev (1959) considered that it could be attributed to the Bionde school. Ofner (1981) attributed it to the Master of the Coronation of Mary of Christ Church. The closest analogy to the Hermitage painting is “The Coronation of the Madonna” from the former. collection Luigi Bellini in Florence (reproduced: Offner 1981, fig. 53). In both paintings, the type of faces, fabric patterns, and musical instruments in the hands of angels are repeated.
Origin: post, in 1899, gift of the former. Director of the Hermitage I. A. Vsevolozhsky. Previously: collection. Baron P.K. Meyendorff in St. Petersburg.
Hermitage catalogues: Cat. 1900-1916, No. 1851 Literature: Lazarev 1959, p. 296, approx. 311; Offner 1981, p. thirty

Master from Fucecchio
Worked in the middle of the 15th century. Florentine school. The pseudonym for this artist, whose works were most often included in the list of works by Francesco d’Antonio, was suggested by van Marle (see: Marie R., van. 1937, 16, p. 191-192). He was influenced by the early works of Masaccio and Sienese painters. Collaborated with Paolo Schiavo. Sometimes the Master of Fucecchio is associated with the Master of Cassona degli Adimari.
Madonna and Child with Two Angels
Wood, tempera. 49x35. GE 4113 Upon admission to the Hermitage, the painting was included in the inventory as a work by Giovanni Boccati da Camerino.
“Madonna and Child with Two Angels” is a close analogy to the works attributed to the work of the Master from Fucecchio. His paintings repeat a very special type of female face with a straight nose, a small, capriciously outlined mouth, and a round, apple-like chin (“Madonna and Child with Angels”, location unknown, reproduced: Fremantle 1975, no. 1142; “Madonna and Child and angels", reproduced in the same place, No. 1143; in the latter case, the gesture of the baby holding his mother by the neck is repeated). The figures of angels with their arms crossed on their chests, with their grace and subtlety of contours, confirm the master’s contact with examples of Sienese art.
Origin: post, in 1922 from the Stroganov Palace Museum in Petrograd.

Master of Marradi
Worked at the end of the 15th century. Florentine school. The pseudonym was proposed by Zern on the basis of a group of works in the church of Badia del Borgo near Marradi (see: Zeri F. La mostra “Arte in Valdesa a Cerialdo.” - Bollettino d'Arte, 1963, 48, luglio - settembre, p. 249, note 15). The master from Marradi is the circle painter Domenico Ghirlandaio, active around 1475 in Florence and its environs. He painted cassons, revealing points of contact with the art of Bartolomeo di Giovanni. At a late stage of creativity (around 1490) he was influenced by Piero della Francesca.
Madonna in glory
Canvas, tempera. 80x48. GE 4129 The Madonna is presented in glory, in a mandorla, surrounded by cherubs. Iconographically, this type of composition is closely related to the “Assumption of the Madonna”, when Mary was often depicted seated, in a strictly frontal pose, with hands folded in prayer, in a mandorla supported by angels (for example, Antonio Veneziano’s fresco “The Assumption of the Madonna”, Monastery of San Tommaso, Pisa ).
The painting entered the Hermitage as a work by an unknown Florentine master of the second half of the 15th century.
The current attribution was proposed orally, independently of each other, by M. Lacloth and E. Fey.
The closest analogy to “Madonna in Glory” is a painting on the same subject from the collection. Courtauld Institute in London (reproduced: Fahy E. Some Early Italian Pictures in the Gambier-Parry Collection. - The Burlington Magazine, 1967, March, p. 135, ill. 31). The similarity of the painting style is manifested in the interpretation of the Madonna’s face, in the rendering of round, dense clouds and the mandorla in the form of thin golden rays, and in the interpretation of the folds of clothing. However, the pose of Mary in the Hermitage painting differs from the pose of the Madonna in the London collection.
Origin: post, in 1926 from the Stroganov Palace Museum in Leningrad

St. Christopher
Wood, tempera. 108x46. GE 5504. The end is pointed. Fold of the polyptych.
On the sphere in the baby's hand: ASIA/ AFRICA/ EVROPA.
According to legend, St. Christopher carried the infant Christ across the river. The artist shows an interest in detail characteristic of Giotto's later followers: he depicts a variety of fish swarming in the water (they symbolize evil forces), showing, along with the eel and the stingray, a fantastic toothy fish with a fin reminiscent of a bird's wing. Baby to hold on the shoulder of St. Christopher, grabbed a lock of his hair.
At the 1922 exhibition “St. Christopher" was exhibited as a work by an unknown (Northern Italian?) artist of the mid-14th century. The catalog of the same exhibition gives the opinion of Lipgart, who considered the fragment to be the work of the Gaddi circle. Voinov (1922) also attributed the work to the Tuscan school, attributing it to Giotto's circle.
Perhaps M. Gregory is right (orally, 1985), suggesting that the author of this polyptych panel could be Lorenzo di Bicci; this does not contradict Liphart's attribution.
A certain stylistic similarity to “St. Christopher" discovers with "St. Michael" on the altar door from the church of Santa Maria Assunta, Loro Ciuffenna (reproduced: Fremantle 1975, fig. no. 848). The similarity can be noted in the posing of the figure and in the interpretation of the forms, especially the legs, slightly visible through the short clothes. In both cases, a short cloak is depicted with a peculiar pattern of folds in the lower part.
The Hermitage fragment was created by an artist who knew his craft well: he skillfully achieves the impression of three-dimensional figures, somewhat harshly but clearly models the face, hair, and clothing. All this does not contradict Lorenzo’s manner, but the stylistic leveling of the art of Giotto’s later followers does not make it possible to finally insist on the name Lorenzo di Bicci. Origin: post, in 1919 from the Department of Monument Protection. Previously: collection. A.K. Rudanovsky in St. Petersburg Exhibitions: 1922 Petrograd, No. 17 Literature: Voinov 1922, p. 76

Madonna and Child, Saints and Angels
Wood, tempera. 52x36.5 (in a Gothic frame - 92X54, frame covered with new gold). GE 5505
On the scroll in John's hand: ESSE AG... (Behold the lamb]). Gospel of John, 1, 29, 36
The Madonna is depicted sitting on a throne with a baby in her arms; near the throne on the right side of the composition are St. Peter, Archangel Michael, St. Elizabeth and the angel; in the left - St. Christopher, John the Baptist, St. Catherine and the angel. At the top is Christ at the Last Judgment.
The painting, which arrived at the museum as the work of an unknown Sienese master of the early 14th century, reveals similarities with works attributed either to Pietro JIorenzetti or the so-called Master of the Dijon Altarpiece. Under this pseudonym Diold (see: Dewald E. T. Pietro Lorenzetti. - Art Studies, 1929, p. 154-158) grouped a number of works stylistically close to the triptych from the Museum in Dijon (44X50). Previously they were mainly attributed to Pietro Lorenzetti, and later many scholars continued to consider the altarpiece to be his work (see: Laclotte M. De Giotto a Bellini. Les primitifs italiens dans les Musees de France. Mai - Juillet 2e ed. Editions des Musees Nationaux, 1956 , pp. 11-12). In Cat. 1922 it was noted that, according to Lipgart, the author of the Hermitage painting was Pietro Lorenzetti. Lazarev (1959) believed that this was an early work by the Master of the Dijon Altarpiece. In Cat. 1958 “Madonna and Child, Saints and Angels” is included as a work by the Master of the Dijon Altarpiece, and in Cat. 1976 - as belonging to the circle of Pietro Lorenzetti.
Inferior in quality, the Hermitage work in many ways (compositionally, in type, understanding of space) resembles, in addition to the Dijon Altarpiece, “Madonna and Child, Saints and Angels” (Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan, 55X26), “Madonna and Child” (collection. Bernson, Florence) Pietro Lorenzetti and “Madonna and Child, Saints and Angels” (Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore); most researchers attribute the Baltimore painting to Pietro Lorenzetti.
It seems possible to attribute the Hermitage painting to the circle of Pietro Lorenzetti and date it to the late 1330s - early 1340s.

St. Romuald
Wood, tempera. 122.5X42.5. GE 271, paired with GE 274. Part of the polyptych.
Apostle Andrew
Wood, tempera. 122X42. GE 274, paired with GE 271. Part of the polyptych.
In 1910, three fragments arrived from the State Russian Museum to the Hermitage, which are in Cat. 1912 were included as works by an unknown 14th-century Florentine master.
Two boards - “Apostle Andrew” and “St. Romuald" - remained in the Hermitage, the third - "Madonna and Child and Angels" - was transferred to the Pushkin Museum in 1924 (nv. No. 176, 164 × 92).
Although in Cat. 1912, all three parts of the polyptych were reproduced side by side; it is not known whether it was recognized that they constituted a single altar image. Subsequently, Lazarev (1928, p. 31), who identified the Moscow painting as a work of Christiani, did not consider the doors depicting saints as belonging to the same polyptych. Later (1959) he attributed them to the school of Nardo di Cione, possibly Giottino. In accordance with Lazarev's attribution, the valves were included in Cat. 1958 as a work by Nardo di Cione with a question.
To the small oeuvre Christiani Ofner (Offner R. A ray of light on Giovanni del Biondo and Niccolo di Tommaso. - Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 1956, 7, S. 192.) added two paintings - “St. Bartholomew" and "St. Dominic" from the Bandini Museum in Fiesole (122x42.6 each).
Finally, Dzeri (1961) correctly attributed the Hermitage works to Cristiani and, based on Ofner’s article, completely reconstructed a five-part polyptych, the central part of which is in the Pushkin Museum, two left wings in the Hermitage, two right ones in the Bandini Museum. The fact that they form a single whole is proven not only by formal aspects - the same sizes of the side doors, the pattern of the fabric under the feet of the saints, the three-quarter turn of the figures towards the center - but also by the stylistic features of the art of Giovanni di Bartolomeo. Slightly elongated figures, in which, however, there is nothing of the fragility of the Gothic style, are distinguished by the sculptural clarity of their volumes and almost completely fill the space. The folds of clothing fall in a geometrically precise rhythm. Logical balance marks not only the compositional structure, but also the color scheme of the polyptych. Clothes of St. Romuald and St. Dominic, closing the altar, are bright white (for Dominic, they are also set off by a black cloak), and the elegant brocade of St. Bartholomew harmonizes with the greenish-pink robe of St. Andrey.
Dzeri (1961) believed that it was not St. Romuald, and St. Benedict. St. Romuald is the founder of the Camaldulian Order, which followed the rules of the Order of St. Benedicta. Both could be represented in a white monastic robe with a staff and a book in their hands. Origin: post, in 1910 from the State Russian Museum. Previously: MAX in St. Petersburg, acquired for the MAX by the vice-president of the Academy of Arts, Prince G.G. Gagarin in the 1860s.
Hermitage catalogues: Cat. 1912, No. 1976, 1975; Cat. 1958, p. 140; Cat. 1976, p. 89-90 Exhibitions: 1920 Petrograd; 1922 Petrograd, No. 9, 10 (the saints in the exhibition catalog are named incorrectly - St. James and St. Bernardine).

Madonna and Child Enthroned, St. Nicholas, St. Lawrence, John the Baptist and St. James the Younger
Wood, tempera. 132x162. GE 6443. Five-part half-fiction.
On the throne step there is a signature: IOHAS B...THOL FECIT. On the scroll of John the Baptist: ECCE/AGN/DEI/qui/toli.../pec.../ (Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin [of the world]). Gospel of John, 1, 29 Despite the signature, the author of the polyptych was not immediately identified; deposits of the paint layer on the crack running down the middle of the signature made it difficult to read. Only the first word - Giovanni and the last - did (fecit) are clearly readable.
Upon admission to the museum, the polyptych was identified as a work by a Tuscan master of the 14th century, then by Giovanni Menabuop.
There are three signed works by Giovanni di Bartolomeo: the polyptych “John the Evangelist and eight scenes from his life” (Church of San Giovanni Fuoricivitas, Pistoia, dated 1370); “Madonna and Child with Six Angels” (City Museum, Pistoia), “Madonna and Child” (collection of Rivetti, Biella, dated 1390).
At present, the Hermitage polyptych can be added to this group of works, revealing stylistic similarities with a number of works by Cristiani, but what is especially important is that the signature on it coincides with the artist’s signature on the polyptych from Pistoia. A stylistic comparison shows that the Hermitage polyptych was created somewhat later than the Pnstoy polyptych, perhaps in the second half of the 1380s. The artist strove for a strict balance of geometric forms and pure, sonorous color combinations.

Crucifixion with Mary and John
Wood, tempera. 85.5X52.7 (in a Gothic frame - 103x57.7). GE 4131 On the tablet of the cross: I.N.R.I. Below on the frame: PATER NOSTER QVIES INCIELIS SAN-TIFI (Our Father who art in heaven). Gospel of Matthew, 6, 9
In the handwritten catalog of the collection of Count P. S. Stroganov (1864), “The Crucifixion” was listed as the work of an unknown follower of Giotto in the 14th century.
M.I. Shcherbacheva (orally) attributed the painting to Giovanni dal Ponte; this attribution is reflected in Cat. 1958 and 1976.
However, the author of the Crucifixion is not Giovanni dal Ponte, who was strongly influenced by Lorenzo Monaco and developed the Gothic traditions in the painting of Florence, but Niccolo di Pietro Gerini. This artist, according to Lazarev, “brings the Giottesque tradition into the 15th century. like no one else, contributing to its degeneration into an academic system, lifeless and schematic" (Lazarev
1959, p. 92).
It was precisely the limited repertoire of the artist in the field of composition, types and gestures that made it easier to determine the name of the author of the Hermitage work, which is a direct analogy to the “Crucifixion with Mary and John and St. Francis" (National Pinacoteca, Siena, inv. No. 607, 122×64).
The most significant difference between the Leningrad and Siena paintings comes down to the fact that in the latter Madonna and John do not stand, but sit at the foot of the cross and the figure of St. is placed between them. Francis hugging the crucifix.
Niccolo di Pietro Gerini appears as a late follower of Giotto. The conventionality of space and the golden background contrasts especially clearly with the emphasized solution of volumes.
Boskovits dated the Sienese painting to 1390-1395 (Boskovits 1975, p. 415). The same dating can be accepted for the Hermitage work, which belongs to the master’s mature style, distinguished by its subtle development of color and clear design. Origin: post, in 1926 from the Stroganov Palace Museum. Previously: collection. Count P. S. Stroganov, purchased in 1855 in Rome from Troyes for 200 francs.
Hermitage catalogues: Cat. 1958, p. 90; Cat. 1976, p. 89.
Literature: Kustodieva T. “The Crucifixion with Mary and John” by Niccolo di Pietro Gerini. - SGE, 1984, [issue] 49, p. 4-5
GIOVANNI DI BARTOLOMEO CRISTIANI GIOVANNI DI BARTOLOMEO CRISTIANI
Active 1367-1398, born in Pistoia. Florence school. Influenced by Maso di Banco and Nardo di Chpone.

Evangelist Matthew (?), St. Nicholas (?), St. Victor (?), St. Louis of Toulouse, Evangelist Mark
Wood, tempera. 94×29 (size of each leaf). GE 5501.
Five-part polyptych. All five boards have the same accession number.
It is unknown what the polyptych looked like in its original form, and whether all the doors have reached us. In this work - in the posing of the figures, in the grace with which the movements of heads and hands are conveyed, in the predilection for richly ornamented fabrics, in the extremely exquisite color scheme - the features of international Gothic are clearly perceptible.
Benoit in the preface to Cat. 1922 wrote about the belonging of the five saints to “some first-class master from the circle of influence of Gentile da Fabrpano (the possibility cannot be ruled out that this is the work of the master himself).” This opinion seems quite convincing, especially after the recent restoration, which revealed the chromatic richness and subtlety of color.
Gentile da Fabriano (c. 1370-1427) was one of the leading exponents of the International Gothic style. He worked in the region of Marche, Venice, Brescia, Florence, Siena, Rome.
In Cat. 1922 provides the opinions of various researchers about the authorship of the Hermitage work. Zharnovsky spoke in favor of Gentile himself, Ainalov - the Umbrian Bopfpgli. Lipgart believed that the polyptych could have been created by Pietro di Domenico Montepulciano. Voinov (1922) attributed the painting to the circle of Gentile da Fabriano.
In Cat. 1958 and 1976 polyptych is included as the work of an unknown artist of the Dalmato-Venetian school of the 15th century, with an indication that this work is close to the circle of the Venetian master Michele Giambono, who was also influenced by Gentile da Fabrpano.
Obviously, the idea of ​​proximity to Giambono was suggested by the polyptych of this artist from the Civic Museum in Fano or the door of the polyptych depicting St. Jacob (signed) from the collection. Academy in Venice. In these works there is a certain similarity with the Hermitage in the placement of the figures on a uniquely configured stand and in the interpretation of the folds, but the type of faces is different, and the figures themselves are squat and heavy.
The names of the two saints depicted are beyond doubt: they are St. Louis of Toulouse (or Anjou) is a French bishop in a mantle decorated with royal lilies and with a crown at his feet, as well as the Evangelist Mark, near whom a small lion can be seen.
The definition of the remaining saints is controversial. Saint with a millstone in his hands in Cat. 1958 and 1976 named Victor. But none of the Italian saints with this name had a millstone as an attribute. A rare French saint, Victor of Marseilles, could be represented with the millstone, but he was depicted as a knight with a banner, reminiscent of St. George. Among the saints revered in Italy, Panteleimon could be represented with a millstone. But it was usually emphasized that he was primarily a healer, and in his hands this dark-haired young man held a box of pills, like a saint. Cosmas and St. Damian.
According to compositional logic, a couple of St. Mark must be compiled by one of the evangelists. Since the saint has no other attributes besides a pen and a book, this is most likely Matthew: when all four evangelists were depicted, Matthew was usually holding a book.
The holy bishop is named in Cat. 1958 and 1976 by Nikolai, which is quite possible, although to be completely sure, the usual golden balls for Nikolai are not enough.
Origin: post, 1919. Previously: collection. A. A. Voeikova in St. Petersburg.
Hermitage catalogues: Cat. 1958, p. 142; Cat. 1976, p. 117.
Exhibitions: 1920 Petrograd, p. 5; 1922 Petrograd, No. 23-27.
Literature: Voinov 1922, p. 76
Mentioned from 1392 to 1411. A student of his father, Niccolo di Pietro Gerini, worked in his workshop. He was influenced by Spinello Aretino, with whom he collaborated, and Lorenzo Monaco. He worked mainly in Florence and San Gimignano, as well as in Cortona.

Nativity of Christ
Canvas (translated from wood in 1909 by I. Vasiliev), tempera. 213x102. GE 4153.
On the Madonna's halo: QVIA EX TE ORTVS EST SOL IVSTICIE CRIST (for from you the sun of justice has risen). On the lapel of the dress: ET BENEDICTVS FRV (blessed is the fruit). On the sleeve lapel: TYI IHS (your [womb] is Jesus). Gospel of Luke, 1, 42. On a scroll in the hands of angels: GLORIA IN EXCSIS DEO (Glory to God in the highest). Gospel of Luke, 19, 38; Gospel of Luke, 2, 8-20.
In the Inventory of the Stroganov Palace 1922 (No. 409), the painting was listed as the work of an unknown German artist. Obviously, this idea was prompted by the fabulous atmosphere in which the action takes place, and in some cases the somewhat harsh interpretation of the folds, reminiscent of wood carvings.
Upon entering the Hermitage, the painting was attributed to the Northern Italian school of the late
XV - early XVI centuries, and in Cat. 1958 is included as attributed to Spanzotti, a painter of the Piedmontese school. Finally, D. Romano (1970) named the true creator of the work - Gandolfino da Roreto - and gave the painting a high rating.
Following the tradition established in the Piedmontese school, Gandolfino interprets the Nativity of Christ as a scene taking place among the ruins in the presence of little angels.
The dilapidated architecture with antique elements perhaps symbolizes paganism, which is being replaced by Christianity. Latin inscriptions included in the design of Mary's dress and inscribed on a scroll in the hands of soaring angels glorify the newborn. The artist shows great interest in details (in particular, the filled purse on the belt of St. Joseph), many of them are endowed with symbolic meaning. Joseph holds a staff with a knob in the shape of a salamander - one of the symbols of Christ (Gospel of Luke, 12, 49). The ancient idea of ​​the salamander’s invulnerability in fire and its asexuality led to the fact that in Renaissance art it began to be perceived as the personification of chastity (see: Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie. Rom; Freiburg; Basel; Wien, 1972, 4, S. 11). Thistle is a hint of original sin, which Christ is destined to atone for.
In terms of composition, images and architecture, the Hermitage painting is close to a work on the same subject from the Church of Santa Maria Nuova in Asti.
Origin: post, in 1926 from the Stroganov Palace Museum in Leningrad.
Hermitage catalogues: Cat. 1958, p. 181: Cat. 1976, p. 83.
Exhibitions: 1984 Leningrad, No. 2 Literature: Romano G. Casalese del Cinquecento. L'avvento del manierismo in una citta padana. Torino, 1970, p. 22

Madonna and Child with Angels
Canvas (translated from wood in 1860 by Tabuntsov), tempera. 94.5x82.5. GE 276.
On the Madonna's halo: AVE MARIA GRATIA PLENA DO... (Hail, Marnia, full of grace, [God be with you]). Gospel of Luke, I, 28. On the baby's halo: VERE FILIIO AISUM AUE (True son, glory). On a scroll in the hands of a baby: Ego s/um lux/ mundi/ veritas/ et vita (I am the light of the world... truth and life). Gospel of John, 8, 12; 14, 6.
In the type of faces of the Madonna and angels, in the rhythmic structure of the composition, the influence of Simone Martini is undoubtedly felt. However, the understanding of form is different, volumes are not so softly modeled, the contour becomes clearer and more dominant. The picture was scheduled for Kat. 1916 (under No. 1999) as the work of an unknown Florentine artist of the 14th century, but was not included in this catalogue.
Shcherbacheva (1941) correctly determined that the work was created by a Sienese master
XIV century She considered its author Nadeau Ceccarelli and dated the Madonna and Child with Angels to the 1350s. More convincing is the opinion of M. Laclote and M. Longeon, who (orally) consider the painting to be the work of Bartolo di Fredi.
The attribution of Bartolo di Fredi is confirmed by comparison with such works of the artist as “St. Lucia" (Metropolitan Museum, New York) and "Adoration of the Magi" (National Pinacoteca, Siena). The style can be dated to ca. 1390.
Origin: post, in 1910 from the State Russian Museum. Previously: MAX in St. Petersburg, acquired for the MAX by the vice-president of the Academy of Arts, Prince G.G. Gagarin in the 1860s.

Madonna and Child, Saints and Angels.
On the back of the board: Crucifixion with Mary and John
Wood, tempera. 151X85. GE 8280. The top is pointed.
On the steps of the throne there is a signature: ANTONIVS DE-FLORENTIA. On Mary's halo: AVE MARIA GRATIA (Hail Mary, full of grace). Gospel of Luke, 1, 28.
On the halo of the Baptist: S IOVANES VAT... On the scroll in the hand of St. John: ESSE ANGN.. (Behold the lamb). Gospel of John, 1, 29, 36. On the halo of St. bishop (inaudible): S LIE.. .VS.. .PIS. On the back of the board: on the cross: INRI. On Mary's halo: VIRGO MARIA. On John's halo: IOVANES VANG... At the triangular end in the Annunciation scene: AVE. MARIA. GRATIA. PLENA (Hail Mary, full of grace).
The painting is a banner that believers carried during religious processions.
On the front side, in a triangular finish, is a blessing Christ surrounded by seraphim. On the reverse side, at the foot of the crucifix, in addition to the traditional figures - Mary and John - there are two more monks in white robes with hoods that cover their faces so that only the eyes are visible through the slot. Each of them has a whip on their shoulders for self-flagellation. Dzeri (1980), based on the image of the monks, believed that the banner belonged to the Capuchin order.
Above the crucifix, in a triangular finish, is a scene of the annunciation, the composition of which completely repeats the work of Fra Angelico on the same subject from the parish church of Monte Carlo in Tuscany.
Despite the presence of a signature, it remains unclear who was the author of the Hermitage banner. There were several artists who bore the name Antonio da Firenze. Shcherbacheva (1957) suggested that the author of the icon was Antonio da Firenze, who worked in the late 15th - early 16th centuries. (died around 1504-1506). In 1472 this Florentine master moved to Venice. Shcherbacheva explained her stay in the north of Italy as a combination of features coming from Masaccio, Masolino, Fra Angelico, Castagno with a purely Venetian predilection for the richness of ornamental motifs, a sonorous colorful palette, and a golden background.
Fiocco (1957) believed that the nature of painting does not allow the banner to be dated far beyond 1440. He saw in Antonio da Frentz an artist influenced by Castagno II, who worked as a mosaicist in the mid-15th century. in Venice.
Dzeri (1960) compared the Hermitage icon with the triptych “Madonna and Child, St. bishop and St. Catherine" (Bernson's collection, Florence), identifying Antonio da Firenze with Antoppo di Jacopo, mentioned in the lists of the guild of St. Luke in 1415, and then in documents 1416, 1433, 1442. Dzeri's point of view seems to be the most convincing. It was supported by Gukovsky (1981). Origin: post, in 1936 through LGZK. Previously: collection. M. P. Botkin in St. Petersburg.

Italian art and painting

The history of Italian art is the art of Italy itself in time and space. After the Etruscan civilization and especially after the Roman Republic and Empire, which dominated this part of the world for many centuries, Italy took a central place in European art during the Renaissance. Italy also demonstrated European artistic dominance in the 16th and 17th centuries thanks to Baroque artistic movement. It re-established a powerful presence on the international art scene starting in the mid-19th century with movements such as Macchiaioli, Futurism, Metaphysics, Novecento, Spacialism, Arte Povera and Transavantgarde.

Italian art has influenced some major movements for centuries, producing many great creators, including painters and sculptors. Today Italy occupies an important place on the international art scene, with several major art galleries, museums and exhibitions; The country's significant art centers include its capital, Rome, as well as Florence, Venice, Milan, Naples, Turin and other cities.

"The Triumph of Galatea" by Raphael

Etruscan art

Etruscan bronze figures and terracotta funerary reliefs are examples of the powerful traditions of central Italy, which had weakened by the time Rome began building its empire on the peninsula. The Etruscan paintings that have survived to this day are mainly wall frescoes from burials, mainly from Tarquinia. It is the most important example of pre-Roman Italian art known to scholars.

The frescoes are executed using the technique of painting on top of fresh plaster, this was done so that when the plaster dries, the painting becomes part of the plaster and an integral part of the wall, helping it to survive so well (and indeed, almost all surviving Etruscan and Roman painting is represented only by frescoes). Colors were created from different colored stones and minerals that were ground and mixed together, small brushes were made from animal hair (even the best brushes were made from ox hair). From the middle of the 4th century BC. The use of chiaroscuro to depict depth and volume began. Sometimes scenes from everyday life are depicted, but most often they are traditional mythological scenes. The concept of proportion does not appear in any of the surviving frescoes, and we often find images of animals or people with some disproportionate body parts. One of the most famous Etruscan frescoes is the painting of the Tomb of the Lionesses in Tarquinia.

Roman art

Rome under Emperor Constantine, photo: Campus Martius, public domain

The Etruscans were responsible for the construction of Rome's early monumental buildings. Roman temples and houses copied Etruscan models with great accuracy. Elements of Etruscan influence on Roman temples included a podium and an emphasis on the facade to the detriment of the other three sides of the building. Large Etruscan houses were grouped around a central hall in much the same way that Roman large town houses were later built around an atrium. The influence of Etruscan architecture gradually waned during the Republic due to influences (especially Greek) from other parts of the world. Etruscan architecture itself was influenced by the Greeks, so when the Romans adopted Greek styles, they did not become alien to their culture. During the Republic there was probably a constant adoption of architectural influences mainly from the Hellenistic world, but after the fall of Syracuse in 211 BC. Greek works of art poured into Rome. In the 2nd century BC, a stream of these works, and more importantly by Greek craftsmen, continued to flow into Rome, having a decisive influence on the development of Roman architecture. Towards the end of the Republic, when Vitruvius wrote his scientific work on architecture, Greek architectural theory and examples of architectural work took precedence over everything else.

As the empire expanded, Roman architecture spread over large areas and was used to create both public buildings and some large private buildings. In many areas, elements of style, especially decoration, were influenced by local tastes, but the architecture remained recognisably Roman. Local architectural styles were influenced to varying degrees by Roman architecture, and in many regions Roman and vernacular elements are found combined in the same building.

By the 1st century AD, Rome had become the largest and most developed city in the entire world. The ancient Romans came up with new technologies to improve the city's sanitation systems, roads and buildings. They developed a system of aqueducts that brought fresh water into the city through pipes, and built sewers that removed the city's waste. The richest Romans lived in large houses with gardens. Most of the population, however, lived in tenement buildings made of stone, concrete or limestone. The Romans developed new technologies and used materials such as volcanic soil from Pozzuoli, a village near Naples, to make their cement stronger and stronger. This cement allowed them to build large concrete apartment buildings called insulas.

Statue known as "Augustus of Prima Porta", Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License

Wall paintings decorated the homes of the rich. The paintings often depicted garden landscapes, events from Greek and Roman mythology, historical scenes, or scenes from everyday life. The Romans decorated floors with mosaics - designs or patterns created from small colored tiles. Richly colored paintings and mosaics helped make the rooms of Roman houses visually larger and brighter, as well as flaunt the owner's wealth.

In the Christian era of the late empire, 350-500. AD, wall paintings, mosaic decorations on ceilings and floors, and funerary sculptures flourished, while full-size all-round sculpture and painted panels gradually disappeared, most likely for religious reasons. When Constantine moved the capital of the empire to Byzantium (renamed Constantinople), Roman art began to be influenced by eastern influences, giving birth to the Byzantine style of the late empire. When Rome was devastated in the 5th century, artisans moved to and found work in the Eastern capital. Almost 10,000 workers and artisans worked on the creation of the Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, this was the final accord of Roman art under Emperor Justinian I, who also ordered the creation of the famous mosaics of Ravenna.

Medieval art

Throughout the Middle Ages, Italian art primarily included architectural decoration (frescoes and mosaics). Byzantine art in Italy was very formal and elaborate decoration, with standardized calligraphy and striking use of color and gold. Until the 13th century, art in Italy was almost entirely regional, influenced by external European and Eastern movements. After approx. 1250, the art of different regions had developed common characteristics, so there was a certain unity and deep originality.

Byzantine art

After the fall of its western capital, the Roman Empire survived for another 1,000 years under the leadership of Constantinople. Byzantine craftsmen were involved in important projects throughout Italy, and Byzantine styles in painting can be seen until the 14th century.

Gothic art

The Gothic period marks the transition from medieval art to the Renaissance, and is characterized by styles and attitudes developed under the influence of the Dominican and Franciscan monastic orders founded by St. Dominic and St. Francis of Assisi respectively.

This was a time of religious controversy within the church. The Franciscan and Dominican orders were founded as an attempt to resolve these disputes and return the Catholic Church back to basics. The early years of the Franciscans are especially remembered for the charity of St. Francis, and the Dominicans are remembered as the order most responsible for the rise of the Inquisition.

Gothic architecture originated in northern Europe and spread south to Italy.

Renaissance Art

In the Middle Ages, artists and sculptors tried to give their works a religious character. They wanted viewers to focus on the deep religious meaning of their paintings and sculptures. But the artists and sculptors of the Renaissance, like the writers of this era, sought to depict people and nature realistically. Medieval architects designed huge cathedrals in order to emphasize the greatness of God and humble the human spirit. Renaissance architects designed buildings whose proportions were based on those of the human body, and whose decorations imitated ancient patterns.

Art of the 1300s and early 1400s

In the early 1300s, the Florentine artist Giotto became the first artist to depict nature realistically. He created magnificent frescoes (painting on wet plaster) for churches in Assisi, Florence, Padua and Rome. Giotto made an attempt to create realistic figures that showed real emotions. He portrayed many of his characters in real-life settings.

A remarkable group of Florentine architects, painters and sculptors created their work in the early 1400s. Among them were the artist Masaccio, the sculptor Donatello and the architect Filippo Brunelleschi.

Masaccio's best work was a series of frescoes that he created around 1427 in the Brancacci Chapel of the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. These frescoes realistically depict biblical scenes of emotional intensity. In these works, Masaccio used Brunelleschi's system to create linear perspective.

Donatello tried to depict the dignity of the human body in his sculptures with realistic and often dramatic detail. His masterpieces include three statues of the biblical hero David. In the version completed in the 1430s, Donatello's David is depicted as a graceful, naked youth, shown moments after he has killed the giant Goliath. The work, which stands about 5 feet (1.5 meters) tall, was the first large free-standing sculpture of a nude person created in Western art since antiquity.

Brunelleschi was the first Renaissance architect to revive the ancient Roman style of architecture. In his projects he used arches, columns and other elements of classical architecture. One of his most famous buildings is the beautifully and harmoniously built Pazzi Chapel in Florence. This chapel, whose construction began in 1442 and was completed around 1465, was one of the first buildings built in the new Renaissance style. Brunelleschi was also the first Renaissance artist to master linear perspective, a mathematical system by which artists could demonstrate space and depth on a flat surface.

Art of the late 1400s and early 1500s

The outstanding representatives of the art of the late 1400s and early 1500s were three masters. These were Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci.

Michelangelo was an outstanding painter, architect and poet. In addition, he has been called the greatest sculptor in history. Michelangelo was a master of depicting the human body. For example, his famous statue of the leader of the Israelite people, Moses (1516), gives an extraordinary impression of physical and spiritual power. These qualities are also evident in the biblical and classical frescoes that Michelangelo painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. These frescoes, painted from 1508 to 1512, are among the greatest works of art of the Renaissance.

"David" by Michelangelo

Palazzo Pitti

Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts

National Bargello Museum

National Museum of San Marco

National Archaeological Museum of Florence

Opera del Duomo Museum

Palazzo Vecchio

Orsanmichele Museum

Gem processing workshop

Palazzo Rosso

Palazzo Bianco

Palazzo Reale

Pinacoteca Brera

Poldi Pezzoli Museum

Sforza Castle

Pinacoteca Ambrosiana

National Archaeological Museum of Naples

City Museum of Padua

G. Palermo

Palazzo Abatellis

National Gallery of Parma

Magnani Rocca Foundation

G. Perugia

National Museum of Umbria

National Museum of San Matteo

City Museum of Prato

Cathedral Museum

Reggio Calabria

National Museum of Magna Graecia

Capitoline Museums

Montemartini Center

National Roman Museum

Gallery Doria Pamphilj

Palazzo Barberini

Palazzo Corsini

National Etruscan Museum

Castel Sant'Angelo (Castel Sant'Angelo)

Spada Gallery

National Pinacoteca of Siena

Palazzo Publico

Museum of the Siena Cathedral (Museum of Duomo Works)

Sabauda Gallery

Palazzo Reale (Royal Palace)

Palazzo Madama

G. Urbino

National Gallery Marche

G. Venice

Academy Gallery

Ca" d'Oro

Scuola San Rocco

Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni

Some gems of Italian art

"The Tempest" by Giorgione

N.A. Belousova

The art of the 18th century (settecento in Italian) represented the final stage of the centuries-long evolution of the great classical art of Italy. This is the time of pan-European popularity of Italian artists. St. Petersburg, Madrid, Paris, London, Vienna, Warsaw - there was not a single European capital where Italian masters were not invited, where, fulfilling orders from the royal courts and nobility, they did not work as architects and sculptors, fresco painters or theater decorators, landscape or portrait painters.

It would be wrong to explain such a wide resonance of Italian artistic culture in this period by the fact that its masters embarked on the path of fundamentally new artistic discoveries, as was the case in the Renaissance and in the 17th century. Rather, we can say that Italian masters were sometimes inferior in terms of the historical perspective of their achievements to artists from other countries, for example France and England. Moreover, Italian architects and painters were more closely connected than artists of other national schools with the nature of figurative thinking and the language of forms of the masters of the previous, 17th century. The pan-European success of the Italians was facilitated, first of all, by the extremely high general level of their art, which absorbed the centuries-old fruitful traditions of the great previous eras, then by the uniformly high development of all types of plastic arts and the presence in Italy of a large number of talented masters.

The most valuable achievements of Italian art of the 18th century. are associated not only with architecture and monumental and decorative painting, where such a great master as Tiepolo played a decisive role, but also with various genres of easel painting (primarily architectural landscape), with theatrical and decorative art and graphics. In addition to its ideologically substantive aspects and its vivid and imaginative reflection of the era, its main advantages lay in its exceptionally high artistic quality and virtuoso painting skill, thanks to which the prestige of the brilliant Italian maestry remained extremely high.

One of the reasons for the wide distribution of Italian craftsmen throughout Europe was also that they could not fully find application for themselves in their homeland. Exhausted by wars, Italy turned from the end of the 17th to the beginning of the 18th century. not only to a politically fragmented, but also to an almost ruined country. Its southern part was subject to the Spanish Bourbons; Tuscany was ruled by members of the House of Habsburg, Lombardy was in the hands of Austria. The feudal order that dominated the lands owned by the clergy and aristocracy, rising prices, low wages of workers employed in manufactures - all caused discontent and unrest among the masses, resulting in unorganized uprisings of the poor, which could not succeed in the conditions of the country's subjugation to foreigners and due to its economic backwardness. Only the Venetian Republic and the Papal States with its capital Rome retained their state independence. It was Venice and Rome that played the most prominent role in the spiritual and artistic life of Italy in the 18th century.

Although in comparison with the brilliant heyday of the 17th century, Italian architecture of the 18th century shows a certain decline, it still gave many interesting solutions. Even in the difficult economic conditions of this century, the Italians retained their characteristic passion for the construction of huge, majestic structures, as well as the monumental language of architectural forms. And yet, in the splendor of individual famous monuments of this time, one senses rather a kind of inertia of the former grandiose scale of construction activity, rather than an organic correspondence to the conditions of reality. This dependence on the past, expressed more strongly in Italy than in many other national art schools in Europe, was reflected here, in particular, in the predominant role of the Baroque style, which very slowly retreated before the sprouts of new classicist architecture.

A close, essentially inextricable connection with the architecture of the 17th century. especially noticeable in the monuments of Rome. Roman architects of the first half of the 18th century. retained the large urban planning scale of their thinking. They used economic opportunities that were more modest than before to create individual large structures that worthily completed a number of well-known architectural complexes and ensembles.

In the 18th century, the facades of two famous early Christian basilicas in Rome were erected - San Giovanni in Laterano (1736) and Santa Maria Maggiore (1734-1750), which occupy a dominant position in the architecture of the adjacent areas. The builder of the facade of the Lateran basilica, Alessandro Galilei (1691-1736), chose the façade of the Roman Cathedral of St. Peter, created by Carlo Maderna. But, unlike the latter, he gave a more artistic solution to a similar topic. In its two-story facade with huge rectangular and arched openings and a colossal order of half-columns and pilasters, greater than Maderna’s, the severity and clarity of massive architectural forms is more sharply shaded by the restless movement of the huge statues crowning the facade. The external appearance of the Church of Sita Maria Maggiore, the facade of which was built according to the design of Ferdinando Fuga (1699-1781), testifies to the lightening and calming of Baroque architectural forms. Fuga was also the builder of the elegant Palazzo del Consulta (1737), an example of Roman palace architecture of the 18th century. Finally, the façade of the Church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme provides an example of a highly individual solution to a Baroque church façade in an aspect that has fascinated many Italian architects since the time of the Gesù.

In Roman architecture of this time one can also find an example of a square, which is like a kind of open vestibule in front of a church building. This is the very small Piazza Sant'Ignazio, where, in contrast to the curvilinear outlines of the surrounding brick facades, the whimsical elegance of its forms, which are closer to Rococo than to Baroque, the impressive stone mass of the facade of the Church of Sant'Ignazio, built in the previous century, stands out effectively.

Among the most spectacular monuments in Rome is the famous Spanish Steps, built by the architects Alessandro Specchi (1668-1729) and Francesco de Sanctis (c. 1623-1740). The principle of a picturesque terraced composition, developed by Baroque architects when creating palace and park ensembles, was used here for the first time in urban development. Divided along a steep slope, a wide staircase unites into a coherent ensemble the Piazza di Spagna located at the foot of the hill with the highways passing through the square located at the top of this hill in front of the two-tower facade of the church of San Trinita dei Monti. A grandiose cascade of steps, sometimes merging into a single swift stream, sometimes branching into separate marches that run from top to bottom along a complex curvilinear channel, is distinguished by its exceptional picturesqueness and richness of spatial aspects.

The decorative tendencies of the late Baroque triumph in the famous Trevi Fountain (1732-1762), created by the architects Niccolò Salvi (c. 1697-1751). The pompous facade of the Palazzo Poli is used here as a backdrop for a huge wall fountain and is perceived as a kind of architectural decoration, inextricably linked with sculpture and rapidly cascading water streams.

One of the most interesting buildings in the southern regions of Italy should be named the royal palace in Caserta near Naples, built by Luigi Vanvitelli (1700-1773). This multi-storey building, grandiose in scale, is in plan a gigantic square with cross-shaped buildings intersecting inside it, which form four large courtyards. At the intersection of the buildings there is a colossal two-tiered lobby in which huge galleries and majestic grand staircases coming from different sides converge.

Architecture developed in more historically promising forms in the northern regions of Italy - in Piedmont and Lombardy, where progressive trends were more clearly revealed in the economy and culture. The largest architect here was Filippo Yuvara (1676-1736), a native of Sicily, who worked in Turin, Rome and other cities and ended his career in Spain. Yuvara is the author of many different buildings, but in general the evolution of his work follows from lush, compositionally complex structures to greater simplicity, restraint and clarity of architectural language. His early style is represented by the facade of the Palazzo Madama in Turin (1718-1720). There is more ease and freedom in the so-called hunting castle of Stupinigi near Turin (1729-1734) - a huge country palace, extremely complex and whimsical in its plan (which is attributed to the French architect Beaufran). The strongly elongated low wings of the palace contrast with the high central building placed at their intersection, crowned with a fancy dome, above which the figure of a deer rises. Another famous building of Yuvara - the unusually impressive monastery and church of Superga in Turin (1716-1731) located on a high hill - in its form foreshadows a turn towards classicism.

In its completed forms, classicism is most clearly expressed in the work of the Milanese architect Giuseppe Piermarini (1734-1808), of whose many buildings the most famous is the Teatro della Scala in Milan (1778). This is one of the first theater buildings in European architecture designed for a huge number of spectators (its hall seats over three and a half thousand people), which then became a model for many opera houses of modern times in its architectural and technical qualities.

Since the 1680s The Venetian Republic, exhausted by wars, having lost its dominance in the Mediterranean in the fight against the Turks, began to lose its possessions in the East one after another, and its economic decline became obvious and inevitable. In addition, the aristocracy and rigidity of the forms of the state apparatus gave rise to acute social contradictions and repeated attempts on the part of the bourgeois-democratic part of Venetian society to change this regime through radical projects for its reconstruction. But although these attempts did not have significant success, one should not think that Venice has completely exhausted its capabilities. Here the new bourgeoisie grew stronger, a layer of intelligentsia grew, due to which the culture of the Venetian settechento was imbued with complex and contradictory phenomena. A particularly striking example in this regard is not so much painting as the literature and drama of that time.

Venice has preserved its unique splendor of life, which in the 18th century. It even acquired a kind of feverish character. Holidays, carnivals, masquerades, when all classes in the city were equalized and under the mask it was impossible to distinguish a patrician from a plebeian, continued almost throughout the year and attracted crowds of travelers to Venice, among whom were kings, representatives of the nobility, musicians, artists, actors, writers and just adventurers.

Along with Paris, Venice set the tone in the literary, theatrical and musical life of the 18th century. As in the 16th century, it remained an important center of book printing. There were seventeen drama and opera theaters, music academies, and four women’s orphanages—“conservatories”—turned into excellent music and vocal schools. With its musical triumphs, Venice surpassed Naples and Rome, creating unsurpassed schools of organ and violin playing, flooding the international musical world of that time with its amazing singers. Outstanding composers and musicians lived and worked here. The theaters of Venice were crowded, church services, where monastery choirs and nun soloists sang, were attended like theaters. In Venice and Naples, along with the dramatic theater, realistic comic opera also developed, reflecting urban life and morals. An outstanding master of this genre, Galuppi was close in the spirit of his work to the greatest playwright of the 18th century. Carlo Goldoni, with whose name a new stage in the history of European theater was associated.

Goldoni radically transformed the comedy of masks, pouring new content into it, giving it a new stage design, developing two main dramatic genres: comedy of manners from bourgeois-noble life and comedy from folk life. Despite the fact that Goldoni acted as an enemy of the aristocracy, his plays enjoyed enormous success in Venice for a time, until he was ousted from the Venetian stage by his ideological opponent - the playwright and poet, the impoverished Venetian Count Carlo Gozzi. The latter again turned in his theatrical romantic plays (“fiabah”) - “The Love for Three Oranges”, “Princess Turandot”, “King Deer” - to the heritage of improvisational comedy of masks. However, the main role in the development of Italian drama belonged not to them, but to the comedies of Goldoni, whose realistic work was associated with new educational ideas.

The theatrical art of Venice was also reflected in the nature of its architecture and especially decorative painting. The development of the latter was to a large extent associated with a huge demand for magnificent theatrical and decorative paintings of churches and especially palaces not only among the Venetian nobility, but also outside Italy. But along with this direction, a number of other genres also developed in Venetian painting: the everyday genre, the city landscape, the portrait. Like Galuppi's operas and Goldoni's comedies, they reflected the everyday life and holidays of Venetian life.

The connecting link between the art of the 17th and 18th centuries in Venice is the work of Sebastiano Ricci (1659-1734). The author of numerous monumental and easel compositions, he relied heavily on the traditions of Paolo Veronese, as exemplified by such works as “Madonna and Child with Saints” (1708; Venice, Church of San Giorgio Maggiore) and “The Magnanimity of Scipio” ( Parma, university), even in iconographic terms dating back to the 16th century. Although he paid tribute to the official pathos of the Baroque, his creations have more liveliness and attractiveness than most Italian painters of this movement. His temperamental painting style, bright colors combined with increased theatricality of the images made him popular not only in Venice, but also abroad, in particular in England, where he worked with his nephew and student, the landscape painter Marco Ricci (1679-1729).

The latter usually painted landscapes in the compositions of Sebastiano Ricci, and such a joint work of both masters was the large painting “The Allegorical Tomb of the Duke of Devonpng” (Birmingham, Barberra Institute), reminiscent of a lush backstage theatrical set. The landscape works of Marco Ricci himself are compositions that are romantic in mood, executed in a broad painterly manner; in them one can discern some features of commonality with the landscapes of Salvator Rosa and Magnasco.

The initial stage of Venetian painting of the 18th century. presents the work of Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (1683-1754). He studied with the Bolognese painter Giuseppe Maria Crespi, adopting his lively, unique style of painting with extensive use of chiaroscuro. The fresh and strong influence of Caravaggio's realism was also reflected in his paintings. Piazzetta is restrained and refined in its palette, which is dominated by deep, sometimes as if blazing from within, colors - chestnut red, brown, black, white and gray. In his altarpiece in the Gesuati Church in Venice - “St. Vincent, Hyacinth and Lorenzo Bertrando” (c. 1730), with three figures of saints located along an upward diagonal - the black, white and gray chitons of his characters form a color scheme that is striking in its harmony and subtle monochrome.

Other compositions on religious themes - “St. Jacob Led to Execution” and the ceiling in the Venetian church of San Giovanni e Paolo (1725-1727) were also executed by the artist in a broad pictorial manner. Piazzetta is an artist of a transitional time; the pathos of his paintings on religious subjects and at the same time full-blooded realism and vitality of the images, deep chiaroscuro, spirituality and mobility of the entire pictorial fabric, rich hot colors, and sometimes exquisite color combinations - all this partly brings his art closer to that direction of the Italian school of the 17th century. , which was presented by Fetty, Liss and Strozzi.

Piazzetta painted many genre paintings, but the everyday element is poorly expressed in them, their images are invariably shrouded in a romantic haze and fanned with a subtle poetic feeling. Even such a purely genre interpretation of the biblical plot, as, for example, in his “Rebekah at the Well” (Milan, Brera), acquires a lyrical-romantic connotation in Piazzetta. Reclining in fear on the edge of the stone pool, clutching a shiny copper jug ​​to her chest, Rebekah looks with fear at Abraham's servant, who offers her a string of pearls. His shadowed figure in a chestnut brown robe contrasts with the shining gold, golden pink and white tones that form the colorful silhouette of Rebekah's figure. The heads of cows, dogs and camels cut off by the frame on the left side of the picture, the picturesque figures of peasant women behind Rebekah (one of them with a shepherd’s crook) add a pastoral touch to the picture.

Piazzetta’s most famous genre compositions include “The Fortune Teller” (Venice, Accademia). He also owns a number of portraits.

Piazzetta's creativity, however, is not limited to his paintings. He is the author of magnificent drawings, including preparatory sketches and finished compositions, executed in pencil and chalk. Most of them are female and male heads, depicted either from the front, sometimes in profile or three-quarter turns, interpreted in a three-dimensional chiaroscuro manner, striking in the extraordinary vitality and instantaneous accuracy of the captured appearance (“The Man in a Round Cap,” “The Standard Bearer and the Drummer,” Venice, Accademia, see illustrations).

The grandiose scope of the monumental and decorative art of the Settecento is associated primarily with the name of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770), whose style was formed under the influence of his teacher Piazzetta and Sebastiano Ricci. Enjoying enormous fame during his lifetime, Tiepolo worked not only in Italy, but in Germany and Spain. His compositions also decorated royal palaces and estates in Russia in the 18th century. Using the best traditions of decorative painting of the Renaissance and the 17th century, Tiepolo extremely strengthened the theatrical and entertainment side of his work, combining it with a living perception of reality. Without ever losing its sensation, Tiepolo combined a keen sense of real phenomena with those principles of convention that are characteristic of monumental and decorative painting. These interpenetrating principles determined the originality of his artistic language. However, the features of life's truth in the depiction of individual events and characters were not combined in Tiepolo's work with an in-depth psychological disclosure of artistic images, which in general led to a certain repetition of individual techniques and constituted a limited side of his art.

The artist's fertility was inexhaustible; his brilliant creative activity lasted more than half a century. Tiepolo's brushes include a huge number of frescoes, altarpieces, easel paintings, and many drawings; he was also one of the most remarkable etching masters.

An example of the early period of activity of Tiepolo, who began working around 1716, is the frescoes in the Venetian church of the Scalzi -

"Apotheosis of St. Teresa" (1720-1725), where he first introduced his new spatial and decorative solutions, a number of easel paintings on mythological themes (among them the large canvas "The Rape of the Sabine Women", c. 1720; Hermitage) and especially ten huge decorative panels painted by the artist to decorate the palace of the Venetian patrician Dolfino (c. 1725).

Five paintings from this series - “The Triumph of the Emperor”, “Mucius Scaevola in the Camp of Porsenna”, “Coriolanus under the Walls of Rome” and others - are in the Hermitage collection. A strong and expressive rendering of heroic subjects, a plastic, vitally convincing interpretation of figures, a spatial pictorial composition built on bright colorful contrasts with the use of light and shadow effects, testify to Tiepolo's early maturing skill.

The frescoes in the archbishop's palace in Udine date back to 1726, painted mainly on biblical themes. Thirty-year-old Tiepolo appears in them as an experienced artist with remarkable coloristic skill, as exemplified by “The Appearance of the Angel to Sarah,” “The Appearance of Three Angels to Abraham,” and especially the fresco “The Sacrifice of Abraham”; in the poses and gestures of the biblical characters they resemble a magnificent performance.

Turning to easel painting, Tiepolo creates no less impressive decorative compositions, such as the one painted in the late 1730s. a large three-part painting for the Church of San Alvise in Venice - “The Road to Calvary”, “The Flagellation of Christ” and “The Crowning with Thorns”, where bright and brilliant colors are replaced by gloomy and deep colors, the composition becomes more spatial and dynamic, and the vital convincingness of his images is expressed even more stronger than in the frescoes.

The brilliant flowering of Tiepolo’s decorative talent began in the early 1740s, when he painted a number of mythological paintings, among them “The Triumph of Amphitrite” (Dresden) - a sea goddess serenely reclining on a chariot in the shape of a shell, which horses and sea deities are rapidly rushing across turquoise green waves. In the overall exquisite color scheme, Amphitrite’s red cloak, stretched by the wind like a sail, stands out as a bright spot.

In the 1740-1750s. Tiepolo creates one after another wonderful decorative cycles, altarpieces and small easel paintings. The families of the Venetian patricians, as well as monasteries and churches, compete with each other in their desire to possess the works of his brush.

The artist transformed dizzyingly high church lampshades into bottomless heavenly spaces with swirling clouds, where light-winged angels and saints hovered over the heads of worshipers. Religious and mythological subjects were replaced by magnificent celebrations, marriages, feasts and triumphs. In his compositions, the artist achieved amazing effects of “daylight” lighting by combining white tones with pale blue and gray undertones, and deep spatial pauses separating architectural forms and flows of human figures from each other created a feeling of airy lightness and weightlessness. The subtle, gentle harmony of his colors, a vibrant sense of color, the dynamism of compositions, inexhaustible pictorial imagination, the bold solution of the most complex long-term problems - all this amazed Tiepolo’s contemporaries to the same extent as it surprises us now.

Between 1740-1743 he painted huge plafond compositions for the Venetian churches of Gesuati, degli Scalzi, Scuola del Carmine and others. It is worth dwelling on the painting of the Church of the Scalzi - the largest in size and most majestic fresco, executed in these years by Tiepolo together with the artist Mengozzi Colonna, who was a quadraturist, that is, a painter who performed ornamental parts and architectural painting in Tiepolo's compositions. The interior decoration of the church, built by Longhena in the 17th century, was distinguished by purely baroque splendor, completed with a magnificent Tiepolo lampshade with a huge composition “Transfer of the Madonna's House to Loreto” (this lampshade was destroyed in 1918). The ceiling painting, as if continuing the actual architectural decoration of the church walls, framed a huge fresco, built on the comparison of light plans of varying intensity and depth, which created the illusion of an endless celestial space illuminated by light. The image unfolded almost parallel to the plane of the ceiling, and not into its depth, as decorators did in the 17th century. By placing the main scene of the Transference not in the center of the ceiling, but at its edge and leaving the rest of the space almost empty, Tiepolo achieves the complete illusion of the rapid aerial flight of a mass of human figures. Some of the figures are separated from the central scene and placed against the background of the fresco frame, such as the figure representing heresy and falling headfirst towards the viewer. With these effects, the artist seems to connect the heavenly scene with the real interior of the church. Such picturesque optical illusions corresponded to the nature of Venetian worship of the 18th century, which was a kind of ceremonial church performance, imbued with secular rather than religious sentiments.

The remarkable frescoes of Tiepolo in the Venetian Palazzo Labia date back to the time after 1745, where the artist came closest to the decorative principles of Veronese. Two frescoes located on opposite walls of the Great Hall depict “The Feast of Anthony and Cleopatra” and “The Meeting of Anthony and Cleopatra.” The ceiling features a number of allegorical figures.

Entering the spacious ballroom of Palazzo Labia, the viewer loses the sense of real architectural space, because its limits are expanded by the picturesque decoration, which turned the walls of the Venetian palazzo into a luxurious theatrical spectacle. Tiepolo skillfully used the wall space between two doors and two windows above them, thus combining real architecture with illusory architecture. In the “Feast” scene, the steps on which the dwarf is depicted with his back to the viewer lead to a wide marble terrace with a Corinthian-style colonnade and choir, under the shadow of which the Egyptian queen and the Roman general feast. Cleopatra, wanting to prove to Antony her contempt for wealth, throws a priceless pearl into a glass of vinegar, where it should dissolve without a trace. The relationship of human figures with the perspective construction of the scene is conveyed flawlessly. The composition, saturated with light and air, is built along two intersecting diagonals, leading the viewer’s gaze into depth; the viewer seems to be invited to step onto the terrace and take part in the feast. It is interesting that the middle of the fresco is not filled with figures; the artist gives here an effective spatial pause.

As much as this fresco is filled with calm, all the figures in “The Meeting of Anthony and Cleopatra” are engulfed in movement. Without pursuing the goal of being faithful to historical truth, Tiepolo turns his heroes rather into actors, dressed in the Venetian fashion of the 16th century. These episodes from the history of Antony and Cleopatra provided such grateful material for Tiepolo’s creative imagination that he left many versions of them in his monumental and easel canvases. These are “The Feast of Anthony and Cleopatra” in the museums of Melbourne, Stockholm and London, “The Meeting of Anthony and Cleopatra” in Edinburgh and Paris.

In the 50-60s, Tiepolo's painting skills reached enormous heights. Its color becomes unusually refined and acquires delicate shades of cream, gold, pale gray, pink and lilac.

His frescoes in the bishop's palace in Würzburg date back to this period (see Art of Germany). Working there for three years, between 1751 -1753, Tiepolo created magnificent decorative paintings, completely consistent with the architectural design of the palace. Their pompous theatrical character corresponds to the fantastic and somewhat pretentious architectural and sculptural decoration of the imperial hall. The ceiling depicts Apollo on a chariot, racing Beatrice of Burgundy through the clouds to her fiancé Frederick Barbarossa. A similar motif was encountered more than once among decorators of the 17th century. (in Guercino, Luca Giordano and others), but nowhere did he achieve such spatial coverage, such radiant bottomlessness of the atmosphere, such brilliance in conveying the movement of soaring figures.

Above the cornice of the short wall of the hall, skillfully using lighting, Tiepolo places a fresco depicting the wedding of Barbarossa. In a complex interior composition with motifs in the spirit of Veronese, he presents a crowded wedding ceremony, painted in sonorous and joyful colors - blue-blue, crimson, yellow, green, silver-gray.

In addition to these frescoes, Tiepolo painted a huge, about 650 sq. m, a ceiling above the palace staircase, where Olympus was depicted. He seemed to “break through” the undivided surface of the ceiling, turning it into a boundless heavenly space. Having placed Apollo among the rushing clouds, along the cornice around the walls he depicted personifications of different parts of the world - Europe in the form of a woman surrounded by allegorical figures of the sciences and arts (certain characters were given a portrait character; among them he depicted himself, his son Giovanni Domenico and assistants), America, Asia and Africa with images of animals and peculiar architectural motifs. This lampshade is also one of the pinnacles of decorative art of the 18th century.

Upon returning to Venice, Tiepolo, who was at the zenith of his fame, became president of the Venice Academy of Painting and led its activities for two years.

The best creations of Tiepolo's decorative genius include his frescoes in Vicenza in the Villa Valmarana, dating back to 1757, where the artist worked with students and his son Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (1727-1804). In the paintings of this villa, where Tiepolo turns to new decorative solutions, his style acquires special sophistication and splendor. The artist now builds his compositions parallel to the plane of the wall, returning again to the traditions of Veronese. The wall plane turns into an antique peristyle, through the columns of which a view of the beautiful landscape opens. Large spatial pauses between figures, an abundance of light, white, lemon yellow, pale pink, soft purple, light brown, emerald green tones of his palette give the picturesque ensemble of Villa Valmarana a clear and joyful character, imbued with a brightly vital feeling of the images of ancient and Renaissance poetry.

The frescoes in the main hall of the villa - the so-called Palazzo - depict the scene, the “Sacrifice of Iphigenia” and related episodes. The other three halls were painted with frescoes on themes borrowed from Homer's Iliad, Virgil's Aeneid and the Renaissance poems - Ariosto's Roland Furious and Torquato Tasso's Jerusalem Liberated. In all these scenes there is a lot of movement, lightness, grace and emotionality, suggested by the drama of the literary subjects chosen by Tiepolo.

It is interesting that the great German poet Goethe, having visited this villa, immediately noted the presence of two styles in it - “refined” and “natural”. The latter is especially expressed in the work of Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, who in 1757 painted a number of rooms in the “Guest House” (the so-called Forestiera) adjacent to the villa. For a long time, the works of father and son Tiepolo went under the same name; Now the features of the creative appearance of the young Tiepolo were more clearly defined. Thus, in his frescoes of the Villa Valmarana, the genre and everyday principle is more strongly expressed, in contrast to the style of his father. Such are his paintings “Peasant Lunch” or “Peasants on Rest” with wide landscape backgrounds or the beautiful “Winter Landscape” depicting two magnificently dressed Venetian women. On other walls, carnival episodes are presented, serving as a vivid illustration of the mores of Venetian life in the 18th century. Tiepolo the Younger also painted genre paintings in the Palazzo Rezzonico in Venice. However, some of his genre works are considered to have been performed together with his father. His best achievements include a series of brilliantly technical etchings, each sheet of which depicts an episode of the flight of Joseph and Mary with the baby to Egypt.

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo himself is also known as a portrait painter. His portraits of Antonio Riccobono (c. 1745; Rovigo, Accademia Concordi), Giovanni Querini (c. 1749; Venice, Querini-Stampaglia Museum) are very bright and expressive in character.

Around 1759, Tiepolo painted a large altarpiece of “St. Tekla saves the city of Este from the plague” (Cathedral in Este), created in a different coloristic key than his secular compositions. Deep dark tones emphasize the dramatic tension of this scene, the images of which were created under the influence of the great Venetian painter of the 16th century. Tintoretto.

Tiepolo spent the last years of his life in Madrid, commissioned by the Spanish King Charles III to paint the ceiling lamps of his palace. A huge fresco "Triumphs of the Spanish Monarchy" (1764-1766) is painted on the ceiling of the throne room. As in Würzburg, the ceiling is transformed into a heavenly space, framed by figurative compositions representing the Spanish colonies and provinces. However, it is executed in a more flat manner than the earlier decorative cycles.

A special area of ​​Tiepolo's creativity consists of his drawings, brilliant in their artistry. Executed with sanguine or feather with a wash, they are distinguished by the generality of their forms, intense dynamics and - despite the sketchy fluency of the graphic manner - great dramatic expressiveness. They often serve as preparatory sketches for individual parts of his larger compositions; sometimes they have independent significance. His drawings of men's heads, rendered with unusual plasticity, are marked by a sense of life's truth and rare observation. He also has sharp and expressive caricatures of the clergy, Venetian dandies, and characters from the Comedy of Masks.

Using the etching technique, Tiepolo executed various mythological, allegorical and romantic scenes, the meaning of which is almost impossible to reveal. They contain images of astrologers, people in oriental robes, gypsies, and warriors. Distinguished by their extremely picturesque chiaroscuro style, these etchings had a certain influence on the graphics of the largest Spanish painter at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. Francisco Goya.

Bound by his time, Tiepolo could not rise in his work to that high measure of humanity, depth and integrity that was characteristic of the great masters of the Renaissance. The appearance of many of his heroes is based on life observations, as exemplified by a number of his female characters - Cleopatra, Armida, Amphitrite - almost always going back to the same real prototype - the daughter of a Venetian gondolier Christina, but not distinguished by genuine internal significance. The meaningful side of his bright and festive art is embodied not so much in the expressiveness of individual images and characters, but in the entire complex of pictorial and plastic motifs, in their amazing richness and sophistication.

Tiepolo's painting was not properly appreciated in the 19th century, since it was far from the artistic problems that were being solved in the art of that century. Only later did Tiepolo take his rightful place in the history of art as one of the brilliant masters of the 18th century, who created his own style and pictorial and decorative system, which completed the centuries-long evolution of monumental painting of classical artistic eras.

For Italian painting of the 18th century. It was characterized by its division into genres. The everyday genre, landscape, and portrait became widespread in it, and the artists each specialized in their own form of art. Thus, the Venetian artist Pietro Longhi (1702-1785) chose as his specialty the depiction of small gallant scenes, visits, masquerades, concerts, gambling houses, dance lessons, folk entertainment, charlatans, and rare animals. Not always correct in design, sometimes quite elementary in color scheme, small in size, Longhi’s paintings - “Dance Lesson” (Venice, Accademia), “Behind the Toilet” (Venice, Palazzo Rezzonico), “Rhinoceros” (ibid.) - were used significant success. His narrative painting, which Goldoni called the sister of his muse, brought to us the peculiar and poetic spirit of the “age of the mask”, carefree street life, intrigue, frivolity and entertainment, characteristic of Venice of this time.

The Italian portrait was represented by a number of masters, of whom the most significant was Giuseppe Ghislandi, who was then called (after becoming a monk) Fra Galgario (1655-1743). A native of Bergamo, he worked for a long time in Venice, where he studied the works of Giorgione, Titian and Veronese. His brushes include numerous, mainly male portraits, which combine the external representativeness and methods of psychological characterization inherent in Baroque portraits with the grace, grace and elegance characteristic of the 18th century. A remarkable colorist who had mastered the best traditions of Venetian painting, Ghislandi depicted nobles posing for him in wigs, huge triangular hats and rich camisoles embroidered with gold, using bright crimson, purple, green and yellow tones in his painting. But he never obscured with this pomp the realistic essence of the portrait image. Each of his portraits is deeply individual, be it a male portrait, where the model is very clearly depicted - a gentleman with an arrogant face, full sensual lips and a large nose (Milan, Poldi-Pezzoli Museum), or an elegant full-length portrait of Count Vialetti, or a self-portrait painted in dark “Rembrandt” colors, or a charming portrait of a boy (1732; Hermitage).

Alessandro Longhi (1733-1813) - son of Pietro Longhi - is known mainly as a portrait painter. Giving his models a ceremonial, festive look, he strives to characterize them through the furnishings surrounding them. This is the portrait of the famous composer Domenico Cimarosa (Vienna, Liechtenstein Gallery). He is depicted in a lush satin cloak, with the score in his hands, turning towards the viewer an arrogant and handsome, but devoid of deep expressiveness, young face, framed by a white wig. Next to him on the table is a viola d'Amour, a violin, a flute, a horn and an inkwell with a feather. The portrait of Goldoni (Venice, Correr Museum) is written in the same spirit: the famous playwright is depicted in full dress, surrounded by the attributes of his profession.

The Venetian artist Rosalba Carriera (1675-1757) began her career as a miniaturist, but gained wide fame for her numerous portraits painted in pastels. Her coloring was distinguished by great tenderness and some faded tones, which was explained by the specificity of the pastel technique. All her life she painted portraits and poetic allegories. Without pursuing the goal of achieving complete resemblance, she extremely flattered her models, sometimes giving them a sentimental and aristocratic character, thanks to which she enjoyed enormous success among the European nobility of the 18th century. and was elected a member of the French and Venetian Academies.

But the most significant phenomenon among the various genres of Venetian painting of the 18th century was the city landscape, the so-called veduta (that is, view), which combined elements of an architectural painting and the landscape itself.

Venetian landscape painting was primarily perspective painting, reproducing real motifs of the city landscape. However, each of the Vedutists had their own artistic language and their own pictorial vision, therefore, despite a certain repetition and borrowing of motifs from each other, they were never boring and the same. In love with the beauty of Venice, they became its true biographers and portraitists, conveying the subtle poetic charm of its appearance, capturing in countless paintings, drawings and engravings squares, canals dotted with gondolas, embankments, palaces, festive festivities and poor neighborhoods.

The origins of the Venetian vedata should be sought in the painting of the 15th century, in the works of Gentile Bellini and Vittore Carpaccio, but then the city landscape did not play an independent role and served the artist only as a backdrop for festive chronicles and narrative compositions.

At the beginning of the 18th century. Luca Carlevaris creates a type of Venetian cityscape, which, however, in comparison with the works of subsequent Vedutistas, had a rather primitive character. A true master in this field was Antonio Canale, nicknamed Canaletto (1697-1768).

The son and student of the theater artist Bernardo Canale, Antonio left Venice for Rome and there became acquainted with the work of Roman landscape painters and theater decorators, mainly the Panninis and the Bibbiena family. His style developed very early and did not undergo any pronounced changes along the way of its development. Already in Cayaletto’s early work “Scuola del Carita” (1726), the principles of his artistic perception were clearly expressed. There is little movement in his cityscapes, there is nothing illusory, changeable or impermanent in them, nevertheless they are very spatial; colorful tones form plans of varying intensity, softened in their contrast by chiaroscuro. Canaletto paints views of lagoons, marble Venetian palaces, stone lace of arcades and loggias, rusty-red and grayish-pink walls of houses reflected in the rich green or bluish water of the canals, along which gondolas decorated with gold glide and fishing boats scurry, and crowds of people crowd on the embankments , one can see idle nobles in white wigs, monks in cassocks, foreigners and working people. With precise, almost directorial calculation, Canaletto groups small genre mise-en-scenes; in them he is life-like, sometimes even prosaic, and extremely meticulous in conveying details.

“The Grand Canal in Venice” (Florence, Uffizi), “The Square in Front of the Church of San Giovanni e Paolo in Venice” (Dresden), “The Stonemason’s Court” (1729-1730; London, National Gallery) are among Canaletto’s best works. Among his paintings located in Soviet museums, one should name “Reception of the French Embassy in Venice” (Hermitage) and “Departure of the Doge for Betrothal to the Adriatic Sea” (A. S. Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts).

Having gained wide popularity since the 30s. as an artist who has no equal in his genre, Canaletto was invited to London in 1746, where, on orders from English patrons, he painted a number of city landscapes in which his color, deprived of bright and plastic chiaroscuro lighting, loses its former sonority and diversity, becoming more subdued and local. These are “View of Whitehall”, “City of London under the arch of Westminster Bridge”, “Holiday on the Thames” and a number of others.

In addition to painting, Canaletto paid great attention to engraving, which between 1740-1750. received brilliant development in Venice. Almost all Venetian landscape painters - Marco Ricci, Luca Carlevaris, Canaletto, Bellotto - were major masters of etching. What was sometimes lacking in Canaletto’s large canvases - movement, the spirituality of the entire pictorial fabric - fully appeared in his etchings, imbued with a real poetic feeling. Using a masterful linear technique in them, achieving deep and soft light-and-shadow transitions through thin parallel shading of varying intensity, Canaletto at the same time made the paper “work,” interrupting slightly wavy horizontal strokes with light verticals or shading light areas with them. Both the heavens and the clouds floating on them, as if driven by a light breeze, and the water and trees come to life in his engravings. Quick and bold contours, fluent strokes give vital authenticity and reality to his “Port of Dolo” - a small square on the shore of a water basin, along which a young couple moves - a gentleman in a wig and camisole, leading a lady in a magnificent dress by the arm, involuntarily evoking viewer the romantic images of Manon Lescaut and the Chevalier des Grieux from the story of Abbot Prevost.

Bernardo Bellotto (1720-1780) - nephew and student of Canaletto - was also one of the outstanding vedutistas of the 18th century. The clear perspective distribution of plans, the extremely high, almost photographic accuracy in the reproduction of nature, the somewhat smoothed surface of his paintings give them a certain lifelessness, caused to a certain extent by the fact that Bellotto widely used the reflections of a camera obscura in his works. His city vedutes are not distinguished by the breadth of artistic generalization; they have little mood, movement, or airiness, but they are of great artistic and documentary value. In addition to Italy, from 1746 to 1766 he worked at the courts in Vienna and Dresden, and from 1768 he was a court painter in Poland, where he created many views of Warsaw. Judging by the thoroughness of the depicted details, it can be assumed that these vedutes give a more or less correct idea of ​​the architecture, cityscape and life of that time.

Venetian Settecento painting sparkled with another name - Francesco Guardi (1712-1793), an excellent artist who brought the great coloristic traditions of Venetian painting almost to the 19th century.

He was a student of his older brother, Giovanni Antonio Guardi (1698/99-1760), a gifted painter, in whose workshop he worked for almost half of his life. Senior Guardi, who created several altar paintings: “The Death of St. Joseph" (Berlin); "Madonna and Child and Saints" (church in Vigo d'Anaunia), obviously, with the participation of his younger brother, in his own way came into contact with Sebastiano Ricci and Piazzetta.

The early works of Francesco Guardi include several altar paintings - “The Crucifixion” (Venice, private collection), “Lamentation” (Munich). However, the most significant work of this period is the oil painting of the organ in the Church of Arcangelo Raffaele in Venice depicting scenes from the life of Tobias (c. 1753). A number of plot and compositional motifs for this painting were borrowed by the artist from other Italian painters, but the bold and unusual coloristic solution turns it into a completely original work. Distant, like shimmering landscapes, shimmering luminous pink, purple, red, lemon, golden-orange, gray and blue tones, fragility and vibration of shadows, whimsical, almost capricious colorful juxtapositions distinguish her pictorial structure. Among all the Venetian masters, Guardi most of all shows a penchant for conveying the air environment, subtle atmospheric changes, the light play of sunlight, the humid Wursian air of lagoons, painted in the finest shades of color. With light, as if trembling strokes of the brush, Guardi not only sculpted the form, but also achieved extraordinary mobility and spirituality of the entire pictorial surface of the picture as a whole.

The painting “Alexander in front of the body of Darius” (Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts), which is a free copy of a painting by an Italian painter of the 17th century, dates back to the same years. Langetti. It is difficult to imagine a more non-classical interpretation of the ancient plot. However, Guardi’s bravura picturesqueness and the genuine whirlwind of his light blue, red, dark brown, greenish colorful spots do not obscure the clear compositional structure of the picture in the form of an ellipse, which is intersected by the diagonally located body of Darius - the semantic center of the composition.

But the most important side of Guardi's work is associated with the development of landscape painting, when he, from the 1740s. under the influence of Marieschi and Canaletto, whose drawings he copied for a long time, he began to work in the field of architectural landscape. Following Canaletto, Guardi at the same time sought to overcome the linear-perspective construction of his guide.

In 1763, on the occasion of the beginning of the reign of the new Doge Alvise IV Mocenigo, marked by a number of brilliant festivities, Guardi painted twelve large Venetian vedas, almost exactly using Canaletto's compositions engraved by Brustolon for his paintings. Such borrowings, as we see, were encountered in Guardi’s painting practice more than once, but this did not reduce the dignity of his paintings; Guardi's airy-colored interpretation transformed the dryly authentic vedutes into images of Venice, full of awe, movement and life.

Guardi was a great master of drawing. His main technique is pen drawings, sometimes highlighted with watercolors. In them he looked primarily for movement and instantaneous impression. The earlier drawings are marked by rocaille motifs, the lines are rounded, whimsical and flexible, the movement is exaggerated, in the later ones much greater generalization appears; washes with ink and bistrom give them an incomparable picturesqueness. Many of them are made directly from life - they capture the running clouds, the movement of water, the sliding of gondolas, their incorrect reflections, the temperamental and bold turns of the figures. Buildings, staircases, loggias, colonnades are outlined in unfinished, bravura, abrupt strokes crossing each other. Both the airy grace of Venetian architecture and its constructiveness were conveyed by the artist with an amazing sense of line, at once intermittent and generalized.

The most characteristic artistic techniques of Guardi in his painting include free variations on the same favorite theme, the so-called capriccio. He finds more and more new motives for his constant “model”, he paints Venice, which he has not left all his life, at different hours of the day, discovering more and more colorful nuances, giving his landscapes either a romantic look, or coloring them in the sad tones of lyrical reflection .

In the 1770s, Guardi reached the pinnacle of his skill. With thin and free strokes, he paints squares, canals, streets, dilapidated buildings, outskirts and poor quarters of Venice, its secluded courtyards, deserted lagoons, quiet alleys, unexpectedly ending in a wide shaded arch, from the arch of which, like a giant transparent drop, hangs a glass lantern, as if melting in the pink evening air (“City View”; Hermitage). Essentially, Guardi transformed the type of decorative stage vedata? which dominated Venetian painting in the mid-18th century, into a landscape of the most subtle lyrical sound, imbued with deeply personal experience.

By 1782 there are two large series of “Celebrations”, performed by Guardi according to official orders. The first of them consisted of four canvases dedicated to the stay of Pope Pius VI in the Venetian Republic, the second was painted in honor of the visit of the heir to the Russian throne, Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich, to Venice and included five paintings. Four of them have survived - “Ball at the Teatro San Benedetto” (Paris), “Gala Concert” (Munich), “Banquet” (Paris), “Feast in St. Mark" (Venice).

“Gala Concert” is one of the artist’s most brilliant works. This picture captures that elusive thing that was especially inherent in Guardi’s mastery - the spirit of the gallant celebration of the 18th century is conveyed. Here the music itself seems audible, flying from the light bows of a female violin orchestra. In the soft flickering of candles illuminating the high ballroom, warm air seems to sway in waves; Luxurious ladies' toilets flash in blue, red, yellow, brown, silver-gray tones, painted in a whirlwind of trembling luminous colorful strokes. With light strokes of the brush, Guardi outlines faces, wigs and hats, sometimes with transparent or impasto spots, denoting figures.

In 1784, Guardi, fulfilling the official order of the procurator of the republic, painted the painting “The Rise of a Balloon in Venice” (Berlin), depicting an event that was unusual for that time. Using a familiar motif, Guardi places in the foreground a shadowed stone canopy, under which curious spectators crowd, and framed by columns, a pinkish cloudy sky with a swinging hot air balloon can be seen.

In his later works, Guardi came to the greatest generalization and laconicism of pictorial means. In one of the artist’s last excellent paintings, “The Venetian Lagoon” (c. 1790; Milan, Poldi Pezzoli Museum), executed in a restrained color scheme, but rich in shades of color, nothing is depicted except a deserted bay with several gondolas and flowing humid air, in which the outlines of churches and palaces visible in the distance seem to melt.

Modest, devoid of external effect, small paintings by Guardi were not sufficiently appreciated in their time and remained in the shadows next to the works of Tiepolo, full of brilliance and splendor. Only many decades later was the true significance of his works revealed, which are not only outstanding monuments of the Settecento, but also harbingers of many achievements of realistic landscape in the art of the 19th century.

Simultaneously with the Venetian school, which occupied a leading position in the art of the Settecento, other schools in Italy also developed.

The largest representative of the Neapolitan school was Francesco Solimena (1657-1747), whose style was associated with late Baroque painting of the 17th century. Having been influenced by Lanfranco, Luca Giordano, Pietro da Cortona and Preti, Solimena worked mainly in the field of decorative painting, frescoing Neapolitan churches (San Paolo Maggiore, San Domenco Maggiore, Gesu Nuovo). His brushes also include altar images, paintings on religious and allegorical themes and portraits.

Solimena's spectacular painting style with its dark brown spots contrasting with yellow and lilac tones and strokes of red, his dynamic compositions at the same time bear the imprint of a peculiar chill as in the depiction of characters whose impulses are devoid of the passionate pathos that distinguished the images of the Baroque masters the previous century, and in color, where a general lilac-gray tone slips through.

Among his students, Giuseppe Bonito (1707-1789) should be noted. Working at first in the spirit of Solimena, Bonito later moved away from it towards the everyday genre, but could not completely break with the principles of the decorative style. The subjects of his paintings, bright but somewhat cold in color, are mainly carnival scenes.

In the first half of the 18th century. Among the various artistic movements of Italy, a clearly defined genre, democratic in content, arose. This direction, which researchers called pittura della realita (painting of the real world), united many masters who turned to depicting everyday life and chose various everyday and common scenes as subjects for their paintings. Working simultaneously with Bonito was the Neapolitan Gasparo Traversi (worked between 1732 and 1769), a bright and interesting artist who was influenced by the art of Caravaggio. It is distinguished by sharp chiaroscuro, relief sculpting of the form, lively, sharp composition, and temperamental turns of the figures. Among his best works are “The Wounded” (Venice, Brass collection), “Secret Letter” (Naples, Capodimonte Museum), and “The Drawing Lesson” (Vienna).

We also find masters of this trend in Lombardy, including Bergamo and Brescia. Among them are Giacomo Francesco Chipper, or Todeschini, obviously German by origin, but who worked all his life in Italy, and Lcopo Ceruti (worked in the second quarter of the 18th century). The first is the author of numerous genre paintings of unequal quality, depicting shoemakers, musicians, card players, and women at work. Jacopo Ceruti was the most outstanding representative of this trend. The characters in his paintings are almost always working people. Among his best works are “The Washerwoman,” a young woman washing clothes in a stone basin; her face with huge sad eyes is turned to the viewer (Brescia, Pinacoteca). “Beggar Negro”, “Young Man with a Pipe”, “Woman Weaving a Basket” - all these images, conveyed with lively observation, are distinguished by great strength and a sense of artistic truth. Among other Lombard painters, one can name Francesco Londio, who worked in Milan. In Rome in the first half of the 18th century. Antonio Amorosi, the author of scenes from the life of the common people, stands out.

In general, however, the development of this trend in Italy was short-lived - its democratic tendencies did not find the proper response and support in the social and artistic environment of that time.

The artistic life of Rome was in its own way no less intense than in Venice. From the beginning of the 18th century, Rome became a genuine international artistic center, where not only people of art, but scientists, archaeologists, major historians and writers of that time flocked.

Excavations of Ancient Rome, Herculaneum, Pompeii, and the temples of Paestum in Southern Italy revealed before the eyes of the people of that time the treasures of ancient art, which became available for viewing. Filled with the spirit of romantic discoveries and surprises, Italy irresistibly attracted young artists of all countries and nationalities, for whom a trip to Rome became a cherished dream, and receiving the Rome Prize was the highest award after years of apprenticeship spent within the walls of academies. A very significant role in introducing the history of ancient art was played by the works of the famous German art historian Winckelmann, a passionate enthusiast of ancient culture, an eyewitness to the great archaeological discoveries, to the description of which he devoted a number of his works. The most general of them was his book “History of Ancient Art” (1764), where for the first time the general course of development of Greek art was traced, the character of which Winckelmann defined by the concepts of “noble simplicity and calm grandeur.” Despite a number of errors and incorrect assessments of the social and ideological essence of Greek art, an idea of ​​which Winckelmann could get mainly from Roman copies of Greek originals, his book was a true discovery for people of the 18th century.

It is therefore not surprising that the Italian artists of the Roman school could not ignore ancient motifs in their work. One of them was Pompeo Batoni (1708-1787), who wrote a number of compositions on mythological and religious subjects, distinguished by some sweetness of images and cold coloring - “Thetis gives Achilles to be raised by Chiron” (1771), “Hercules at the Crossroads” (1765) (both - Hermitage), “Penitent Magdalene” (Dresden, Art Gallery).

The French Academy also played a major role in the artistic life of Rome, gathering around itself young painters, whose artistic activity was more lively and fruitful than the lifeless, artificially programmatic creativity of the Roman neoclassicists, led by the German painter Raphael Mengs. Among the French masters who worked in Rome were the painters Vienne, Hubert Robert, Fragonard, Subleira, David, the sculptor Pajou, the architect Soufflot and a number of others. In addition, there was a colony of German artists. Many of the French masters developed motifs of the classical landscape, already in the 17th century. represented by the largest French painters who lived in Italy - Poussin and Claude Lorrain. In this genre, along with the French, the Venetian Francesco Zuccarelli (1702-1788), the author of idyllic landscapes, worked in this genre, as well as a representative of the Roman school, the famous “ruin painter” Giovanni Paolo Pannini (1697-1764), who depicted not only Roman vedutes, but also various outstanding events of their time, as well as the interiors of churches.

The majestic ruins of the Colosseum, dilapidated colonnades in Pompeii and Paestum, mausoleums, obelisks, reliefs, statues gave boundless scope to the artistic imagination and attracted painters, draftsmen and engravers, who performed free compositions based on ancient motifs, combined with depictions of scenes from everyday life. “Rome, even when destroyed, teaches,” Hubert Robert wrote in one of his paintings. These landscapes enjoyed great success among the Roman and French nobility and, like the Venetian vedutes, became widespread in the art of the 18th century.

But the most outstanding phenomenon in the field of this genre was the work of the famous master of architectural drawing, archaeologist and engraver Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778), who inspired entire generations of artists and architects with his architectural fantasies. A Venetian by birth, he lived almost his entire life in Rome, where he was drawn by “an irresistible desire to study and see those famous cities where so many great things were done, and to paint their monuments - witnesses of the great past,” as his biographer writes.

Deeply passionate about studying the architectural heritage of Italy, Piranesi also became acquainted with the work of the large and extensive family of theatrical architects and decorators Bibbien - natives of Bologna, but who worked, following the example of most Settecentist masters, in addition to Italy in various European cities - Bayreuth, Vienna, Prague and others. Their treatises and teachings on perspective illusionism, as well as the decorative works of Andrea Pozzo,

The Pannini brothers of Valeriani had a great influence on him. In the works of Piranesi, the style of the late Roman Baroque almost closely merges with the style of the emerging classicism. Interest in theatrical and decorative compositions contributed to the rooting in his works of a perspective-perspective perception of space and deep contrasting chiaroscuro.

One of his early works, published in 1745 and 1760, is a suite of fourteen large engravings “Dungeons” (“Carceri”) depicting endless multi-story vaulted rooms crossed by beams, staircases, galleries, drawbridges, where in the contrasts of darkness and light, blocks, levers, ropes, wheels, chains hanging from the ceilings are intricately interspersed with fragments of antique columns, friezes and bas-reliefs. These fantastic compositions, probably inspired by modern theater sets by Piranesi, are distinguished by their immense scope, but nevertheless clearly outlined in their details, by an architecturally crystallized space.

Piranesi's architectural talent could not actively express itself in the actual construction of Italy at that time. “The modern architect has no choice but to express his own ideas with drawings alone,” wrote Piranesi, creating his “imaginary architecture” in separate etching series. His main cycles are dedicated to the majestic buildings of ancient Greece and Rome.

Not striving for an accurate archaeological reconstruction of the monuments of ancient architecture, Piranesi, in addition to a free interpretation, surrounded them with a special romantic aura, which caused sharp reproaches and attacks on him from contemporary scientists and archaeologists. His etchings are rather memorial monuments to the great past of Rome, which he worshiped with undying passion.

In 1747, Piranesi released a series of etchings “Views of Rome”, in which he achieves an extraordinary monumentality of the architectural image thanks to the maximum approach of the depicted buildings to the foreground, shown, moreover, from a very low point of view. Small figures of people seem small and insignificant compared to the huge columns and arches. Always working in the etching technique, Piranesi softened the contours with deep black-velvet shadows, giving an extraordinary picturesqueness to all his compositions. In his depictions of Roman bridges, he especially emphasizes the power of ancient Roman buildings, conveying their proud grandeur. The same mood permeates the etching “Castle of St. Angel in Rome."

The monumental four-volume suite “Roman Antiquities,” published in 1756, is distinguished by its amazing breadth of material coverage. Piranesi’s most remarkable creations include his last suite of etchings with views of the ancient Greek temple of Poseidon in Paestum. Piranesi's engraving needle works wonders here, giving these compositions the deepest picturesque thanks to the harmonious distribution of light and soft black-velvet shadows. What is even more striking here is the variety of points of view: the giant colonnades appear before the viewer from different angles, the distant plans seem to be buried in soft and warm air, the foreground, free and light, devoid of any clutter previously characteristic of Piranesi, is successfully filled with staffage - under the shadow of dilapidated columns Artists have settled down and antiquity lovers are wandering around. After Piranesi’s death, some of the unfinished engravings of this cycle were completed by his son Francesco (c. 1758/59-1810), who adopted his father’s graphic style.

The artistic results achieved by the masters of the Roman school in the 18th century were generally less significant than the achievements of Venice. But her main merit was the promotion of the ideas of ancient art. And they, in turn, having received a new social focus, saturated with deep content and high civic pathos, served as a powerful stimulus for the creativity of advanced European masters on the eve of a new era, ushered in by the French bourgeois revolution of 1789.