Antiveduto Gramatica

Antiveduto Gramatica was born to Sienese parents, Imperiale Gramatica and Artemisia Camoja, while they were staying in Rome in 1569¹. His unusual name – Antiveduto, i.e. “foreseen in advance” – has a strange origin. According to his biographer, Giovanni Baglione, his father had foreseen that his son would be born on their trip, and so he was². Antiveduto showed a natural inclination for drawing and painting from a young age. His father, who had had other sons in the meantime, placed him in the workshop of Giovanni Domenico Angelini, a painter from Perugia working in the papal capital³. Antiveduto received solid artistic training in Angelini’s workshop, based also on the production of small paintings. He practised by producing “various paintings, pictures and heads”, portraits and other subjects to meet patrons’ requests. It was precisely his skill in painting faces so effectively that very soon earned him the nickname “Gran Capocciante”, in other words a true expert in depicting heads.

Between 1590 and 1600, by which time he had left Angelini’s workshop, Gramatica won an increasing number of commissions and enjoyed growing success, thanks chiefly to his skill as a portrait artist. His half-bust portraits, in particular, allowed him to earn a tidy sum and to make a name for himself in Rome’s artistic circles.

At the peak of his career as a successful portrait artist, Gramatica decided to show his colleagues “that he knew not only how to do heads, but also figures”, a decision that led him to try his hand at larger works such as altarpieces and large figurative compositions.

Gramatica soon proved capable of expanding his repertoire beyond portraits, also turning his hand to secular subjects and complex compositions reflecting the Caravaggesque taste that was gaining a foothold in those years.

He became a member of the Congregazione dei Virtuosi al Pantheon in 1604, a mark of the growing acknowledgment of his role in the city’s cultural life. Two years later, in 1606, he and the celebrated Cavalier d’Arpino, Giuseppe Cesari, were tasked with evaluating frescoes painted by various painters in St. Peter’s, an official appointment that reveals the esteem in which he was held in Rome’s artistic circles⁴.

Antiveduto Gramatica lived and worked in the Rome of Annibale Carracci and Caravaggio, forging ties with many of the leading players on the art scene of his day. As a young man, his workshop was one of the first to host the young Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio soon after the latter’s arrival in the city. Caravaggio worked under Antiveduto for a short time, in a collaborative framework that points to a certain proximity between the two men, at least in the early stages of their respective careers⁵.

According to some, the two were even friends, attached to the same powerful protector, Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte. The two artists frequented similar circles and shared prestigious contacts. Del Monte, who is known to have been a patron of Caravaggio, was also one of Gramatica’s main sponsors.

Giovanni Baglione held Antiveduto Gramatica in such consideration that he devoted a long and detailed biography to him in his Vite de’ pittori, scultori et architetti, published in 1642, which is still our main source for the artist’s life and career. Gramatica’s intense rivalry with the painter Tommaso Salini, known as Mao, is, on the other hand, a widely known story. The two men vied for roles and positions of prestige in the Accademia di San Luca, sparking a competition that was to have tragic consequences in the 1620s, as we shall see below.

As for Gramatica’s patrons, he was able to count on a network of contacts at the highest level, including not only Del Monte but also Cardinal Federico Borromeo, a sophisticated collector and influential patron of the arts. In addition to these eminent prelates, he also succeeded in attracting the attention of some of the greatest collectors of the period, including Cardinal Scipione Borghese – Pope Paul V’s powerful nephew and a great art lover, who bought work both by Antiveduto and by Caravaggio – and Vincenzo Giustiniani, a banker and patron of the arts renowned for his support of the more innovative artists. Gramatica’s other important sponsors included Ciriaco Mattei, a member of one of the most active art collecting families in Rome, Alessandro Peretti di Montalto, a cardinal associated with Pope Sixtus V’s family, and Ferdinando Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, who was a true connoisseur of the arts. The Dukes of Savoy also showed appreciation for Gramatica’s work, confirming the spread of his reputation well beyond the walls of the papal capital.

He married a Roman noblewoman called Antonina Oliveri on 2 February 1599, and their first son, christened Imperiale in honour of his paternal grandfather, was born a few months later, on 4 November of the same year. Antiveduto is likely to have had other children in addition to Imperiale, but it was to be his firstborn who followed in his footsteps, embarking on a career as a painter.

Gramatica was a versatile artist, capable of combining different influences. He merged certain features of Caravaggio’s new style and a classicism inspired by Raphael with intelligence and a sense of measure.

He was generally described by his contemporaries as an honest, enthusiastic and tireless painter perfectly at home in the social and cultural fabric of Baroque Rome.

He had been an active member of the Accademia di San Luca since 1593, when he was only twenty-two years old but was already considered a reliable and well-connected artist. Over the following years he took part with assiduity in the guild’s life, holding posts, sitting on committees and constantly contributing to the running of the guild.

His influence within the artistic community was now so solid that he was elected Prince of the Accademia on 17 January 1624, succeeding Agostino Ciampelli in the post. Yet it was precisely in the course of his tenure of that office that latent tension rose to the surface and a serious scandal blew up which was to blight his future. A personal clash had been smouldering between Gramatica and the painter Tommaso “Mao” Salini for quite some time. Salini had been barred several years earlier from joining an important committee, comprising twenty-five members, tasked with managing the Accademia’s treasury. Gramatica was the man behind Salini’s exclusion, with the support of Cav. Pietro Guidotti, and Salini had not forgotten the slight. He was simply waiting for the right moment to get his revenge.

The opportunity arose in 1624, when the Accademia decided to sell a very valuable painting, an altarpiece depicting St. Luke Painting the Virgin, which was considered to be by the hand of Raphael and was a veritable symbol of the institution. The profit from the sale was to be ploughed into building a new church for artists. Ahead of the sale, Gramatica had been commissioned to make a faithful copy of the altarpiece for keeping in the Accademia in place of the original. His copy was completed in 1623, and the entire operation was legitimate, at least in formal terms, and had been collectively deliberated.

But the mood was tense, and Gramatica’s gesture was exploited by his adversaries. In October 1624, Tommaso Salini publicly accused him of wishing to sell the precious Raphael altarpiece to a ranking dignitary for his own personal gain, and to then replace it with his copy in order to profit thereby. Basically, Gramatica was charged with attempting to defraud the Accademia. The charge triggered a fully-fledged scandal. Gramatica tried desperately to defend his good name, upholding the legitimacy of the Accademia’s deliberation and the transparency of his own actions. He claimed to have made the copy in good faith and firmly rejected the charge of personal gain, but by then suspicion had become widespread and had dealt an extremely harsh blow to his image.

His adversaries’ scheming had the desired effect. Overwhelmed by the charges and probably left in the lurch even by some of his own supporters, Gramatica had no choice but to back down. He was forced to resign his post as Prince in the autumn of 1624, and Simon Vouet, a rising star on the art scene in Rome, was elected in his place. It was a terrible blow for Gramatica who, so Baglione informs us, suffered deeply from it, and the ensuing humiliation “was, in part, the reason that his life was shortened”.

Yet the whole affair remains complex and partly obscure⁶. The sale of the painting had been regularly approved by the Accademia’s council on 27 May 1624, and the operation involving a copy by Gramatica was part and parcel of the agreed procedure. It is therefore very likely that the charges brought by Salini were specious, a mere pretext. In other words, the crisis that erupted in 1624 was, in all likelihood, the product of political manoeuvring and personal rivalry that culminated in an irreparable rift. Despite Cardinal Del Monte’s attempt to defend him and to restore order, Gramatica’s reputation suffered irreparable damage as a result of the affair.

From that moment on, his role at the peak of the art world in Rome rapidly began to decline, marking the start of a gradual deterioration in the final years of his life. Losing the post of Prince of the Accademia and the prestige that it entailed, Gramatica lived out the last two years of his life in growing isolation. Yet despite his disenchantment, he continued to paint with dedication right up to the end of his days.

The scandal, however, had marked him deeply and left a shadow that undermined his serenity. Death was not long in coming. Probably already unwell, he drew up his will in early April 1626⁷ and died, at the age of fifty-five, in his house on Via de’ Condotti on 13 April 1626⁸. According to the sources, he was buried in the church of Santa Caterina da Siena on the Via Giulia, the Sienese community’s place of worship in Rome.

In early 17th-century Rome, Antiveduto was unquestionably one of the leading players on the art scene, a contention borne out by Baglione and Mancini who paint a positive picture of the man, highlighting his integrity, his dedication to work and his professional value. Through the work of his son Imperiale and of the pupils in his workshop, his style experienced a certain continuity until at least the 1630s, leaving a trace of his presence in what was a crucial moment for Roman painting.

Alongside his intense public and academic activity, Antiveduto produced a corpus of works that accurately reflects the variety of his interests and the development of his style. One of his earliest successes was the Ecstasy of St. Hyacinth, painted for the high altar of the church of San Stanislao dei Polacchi in Rome. This altarpiece, probably painted some time between 1591 and 1594 and thus marking his official debut on the public art scene, already reveals a certain self-assuredness in terms of technique and a highly individual sense of colour, while continuing to reflect the Late Mannerist tradition, in particular that of Federico Barocci. A mainstay in the reconstruction of Antiveduto’s catalogue is a picture of St. Cecilia now in a private collection in Salinas, the painter’s only surviving signed and dated work (1611), which provides us with a crucial chronological reference for understanding the development of his output, at least in its earlier stages. The musical theme, which he handles here with grace and a sense of measure, returns in his Theorbo Player now in the Galleria Sabauda in Turin. This picture, one of Antiveduto’s best-known works, has recently been ideally reconstructed thanks to the discovery, and acquisition by the same museum, of a complementary fragment already known through a copy of the composition in its original condition⁹. In these warm, almost cosy musical scenes, the artist displays a sophisticated hand and a sober naturalism reminiscent of that promoted by his influential protector, Cardinal Del Monte. A Christ Among the Doctors, now in a private collection in Scotland but originally the property of the Mattei family, was painted in the same period, merging elements of classicism with an intensely dramatic handling of light. A crucial role in Antiveduto’s later career is played by the Parnassus formerly in Cardinal Del Monte’s collection, a complex and ambitious composition inspired by the work of Raphael, that testifies to his adoption of a cultured, mature classicism close in many ways to the style of Domenichino and of the young Poussin. Antiveduto’s career comes to an ideal close with the Adoration of the Shepherds painted for the church of San Giacomo in Augusta in Rome and considered to be one of his last works. For this altarpiece, with its poor and simple setting, he probably drew his inspiration from Caravaggio’s Adoration of the Shepherds in Messina, building a bold and touching scene with humble, strongly characterised figures and a still-life imbued with an everyday flavour. Even in this final phase of Antiveduto’s career, we can detect the style of a sensitive, concrete painter capable of merging tradition and modernity with consistency and balance.