Source: The Daily Telegraph {Review}

Edition:
Country: UK
Date: Saturday 16, February 2013
Page: 18,19
Area: 1215 sq. cm
Circulation: ABC 555817 Daily
BRAD info: page rate 46,000.00, scc rate 214.00
Phone: 020 7931 2000
Keyword: National Gallery
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,
ne day in 1563,
Federico Barocci
suffered a terrible
misfortune. At the
time, Barocci, a
painter, was living in Rome,
and enjoying a degree of
success enough to inspire
jealousy among a group of
fellow artists, who lured him
to a picnic and there tried
to kill him with a poisoned
salad. Barocci survived and
went on to live for another
half century, back in his
native Urbino but that
poisonous picnic became the
turning point of his life.
Thereafter, he became a
reclusive invalid who very,
very slowly painted pictures
of supernatural sweetness
and beauty. This month, those
pictures become the subject
of a major exhibition at the
National Gallery, Barocci:
Brilliance and Grace. It may
seem a bold decision to give
such a prominent show to an
artist who is by no means a
household name, even among
art historians. But Barocci,
who was born around 1533
and lived until 1612, is a
master well worth reviving.
Earlier this year, I
accompanied Carol Plazzotta,
the curator of the National
Gallery exhibition, on a
pilgrimage around the
Marche region of Italy,
between the Adriatic and the
Apennine Mountains, where
many of Baroccis works can
still be found. Quite a few
hang in the churches for
which they were originally
painted. For me, this was
an introduction to an artist
of compelling subtlety and
charm and a religious
sensibility that seems quite
distant from contemporary
tastes. Baroccis paintings are
remarkable for their ethereal
colour harmonies, and the
complexity and renement
of their designs, but they
also convey a mood of heady,
swooning piety.
Barocci came from a family
of artists, astronomers and
clockmakers. His uncle was
an architect, and his great
uncle Girolamo Genga (1476-
1551) had been a fellow
apprentice with Raphael and
eventually became painter to
the court of Urbino. Barocci,
you might say, was born into
the aristocracy of art.
His work is a bridge
between two eras that
might seem quite distinct:
the High Renaissance and
the 17th-century Baroque.
In his youth, great gures
of the early 16th-century
Renaissance such as Titian
(d. 1576) and Michelangelo
(1475-1664) were still at
work (indeed, Barocci once
encountered the latter in the
street in Rome; Michelangelo
looked at his portfolio of
drawings and encouraged
him).
At the other end of his life,
Baroccis contemporaries
were the masters of the early
17th century, among them
Rubens, who was coming
into his artistic maturity.
His drawings have a supple
freshness that anticipates
not only the 17th century, but
even the 18th. Looking at his
studies of heads, for example,
you think of Watteau.
%
owever, Barocci was
also a man of his own
times, and his era was
the Counter-Reformation.
Among the Protestant British,
that movement has always had
a bad reputation. We associate
it with the Inquisition and the
Spanish Armada. And there
certainly was a repressive,
disciplinarian aspect to the
Catholic church at that time.
But there was also a genuine
Catholic revival taking place
simultaneously. The Counter-
Reformation was the era not
only of the inquisitors and the
index of prohibited books, but
also of missionaries and
mystical saints, such as Teresa
of Avila.
That was the context for
Baroccis art. The unearthly
beauty of his colour, the sweet
expressions of his Madonnas
and Christs (sometimes
verging on sugary to a
northern taste), the melting
looks and passionate gazes
of his saints these were
intended to speak to the
heart and move the viewer to
penitence.
Baroccis 17th-century
biographer, Gian Pietro
Bellori, described how, after
the poisoned salad incident,
it took four years for the
seriousness of his illness to
abate, during which time
he was always in such pain
that be never once took up
his brushes.
He was eventually partially
cured by a minor miracle.
Being miserable, above all
else because he was unable
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Article Page 1 of 4 A15640-1
240225515 - CREHUG - 69265171
Source: The Daily Telegraph {Review}
Edition:
Country: UK
Date: Saturday 16, February 2013
Page: 18,19
Area: 1215 sq. cm
Circulation: ABC 555817 Daily
BRAD info: page rate 46,000.00, scc rate 214.00
Phone: 020 7931 2000
Keyword: National Gallery
to paint, he one day placed
himself, in his prayers, before
the mercy of the glorious
Virgin, with such effect that he
was heard.
The Virgin didnt heal him
completely, but he felt well
enough to complete a small
picture of the Madonna and
Child in thanks. From that
point onwards, he began to
work again, but only painting
for two hours a day.
Barocci was apparently
a man of almost saintly
piousness and, with few
exceptions, his works are
religious in subject (though
slightly surprisingly, he made
nude studies not only for the
gures of his male saints, but
even for Madonnas). His art
has a gentle devoutness, and
a mood that echoes some
16th- and 17th-century poets
in whose verse the writers
relationship with Christ
becomes so intimate as to
be almost amorous.
Barocci lived in a modest
house on a quiet street in
Urbino. He was usually sick
shortly after every meal, and
as a result was rather thin,
though otherwise apparently
robust. He suffered from
insomnia, and, according to
Bellori, in the short period
that he slept, he always
suffered; so it was that during
those wakeful times when he
found relaxation, he would
have someone read stories or
poems to him, from which he
derived pleasure and relief.

psychiatrist might
suggest Baroccis illness
was in some ways
convenient. Indeed, some
scholars suspect that that
salad was not poisoned at all,
but that the painter was the
victim of a psychosomatic
condition that allowed him to
do precisely what he wanted:
withdraw from the stressfully
competitive Roman art world,
and return to the tranquillity
of his home town. Certainly
from that point onwards, he
was able to work in exactly the
way and at precisely the pace
that suited him.
Baroccis methods were
extraordinarily laborious
his altarpiece for the church
of San Francesco in Urbino
allegedly took seven years to
complete. For every picture,
he made an abundance of
drawings, of which a large
number still survive. These
delicate, fresh sketches from
life are among the easiest
of his works for a modern
eye to appreciate. Barocci
drew rst from nature,
looking constantly for useful
ingredients in the people
around him. Bellori noted
that if he chanced to see a
beautiful upward glance of the
eyes, a ne prole of a nose,
or a beautiful mouth, Barocci
would use it as raw material
for a saint or angel.
Next, he would make
small models of the gures,
compositional drawings and
studies of the disposition of
light and dark chiaroscuro
Barocci was a pioneer in
the use of pastel, producing
ravishing studies of individual
heads in that medium. Only
after all this was done was he
ready to begin painting.
The unhurried rate at
which he worked was almost
a selling point, and Baroccis
reclusiveness only added to
his mystique. The Duke of
Urbino, Francesco Maria della
Rovere II a fellow depressive
neurotic took pride in his
ability to obtain works from
this difcult man for his
fellow princes. Baroccis one
mythological picture was
made as a present for the Holy
Roman Emperor Rudolph
II (who probably found it
disappointingly unerotic).
By the last decades of the
16th century, he was perhaps
the greatest painter at work
in Italy, rivalled only by the
Venetian Tintoretto.
So naturally, other rulers
coveted Baroccis services.
On a rare journey away
from the Marche, he visited
Florence. There the Grand
Duke Francesco I de Medici
was so intrigued by Barocci
that he acted incognito as the
painters guide to the Medici
collections. He took him
from room to room, showing
him the pictures and the
statues in order to hear which
were the ones that he held
in most esteem. Finally, a
courtier came with a message,
accidentally revealing who
this guide really was. Then
the Duke tried to persuade
him to come and work in
Florence, offering extremely
favourable terms. But Barocci,
politely pleading poor health
and his need to stay in the
surroundings of his home
city, made his apologies and
returned to Urbino.
Although most great
galleries have an example of
a Barocci, it is still normally to
Urbino that you have to go to
see his work, and also to small
towns in the Marche such as
Senigallia, on the coast, or
Piobbico, nestling near the
.
summits of the Apennines.
But for the next few months,
this brilliant, subtle, very
unBritish painter is on view
in London. Catch him while
you can.
}Barocci: Brilliance and Grace is at
the National Gallery, London WC2
(020 7747 2885), from Feb 27
until May 19
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Produced by Durrants under licence from the NLA (newspapers), CLA (magazines) or other copyright owner. No further copying (including
printing of digital cuttings), digital reproduction/forwarding of the cutting is permitted except under licence from the copyright owner.
Article Page 2 of 4 A15640-1
240225515 - CREHUG - 69265171
Source: The Daily Telegraph {Review}
Edition:
Country: UK
Date: Saturday 16, February 2013
Page: 18,19
Area: 1215 sq. cm
Circulation: ABC 555817 Daily
BRAD info: page rate 46,000.00, scc rate 214.00
Phone: 020 7931 2000
Keyword: National Gallery
Supernatural sweetness and beauty: Federico Baroccis Rest on the Flight into Egypt, left, and oil
studies for heads of St John the Baptist, above left, and Mary Magdalene
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Produced by Durrants under licence from the NLA (newspapers), CLA (magazines) or other copyright owner. No further copying (including
printing of digital cuttings), digital reproduction/forwarding of the cutting is permitted except under licence from the copyright owner.
Article Page 3 of 4 A15640-1
240225515 - CREHUG - 69265171
Source: The Daily Telegraph {Review}
Edition:
Country: UK
Date: Saturday 16, February 2013
Page: 18,19
Area: 1215 sq. cm
Circulation: ABC 555817 Daily
BRAD info: page rate 46,000.00, scc rate 214.00
Phone: 020 7931 2000
Keyword: National Gallery
Produced by Durrants under licence from the NLA (newspapers), CLA (magazines) or other copyright owner. No further copying (including
printing of digital cuttings), digital reproduction/forwarding of the cutting is permitted except under licence from the copyright owner.
Article Page 4 of 4 A15640-1
240225515 - CREHUG - 69265171