Bartolomeo Manfredi

Though Giovanni Baglione and Bellori claim that Bartolomeo Manfredi was born in Mantua¹, he was in fact born in Ostiano, near Cremona, to Mercurio and Maddalena Manfredi and was christened in that city on 25 August 1582², as Gigli and the papal physician and biographer Giulio Mancini both confirm³. According to Mancini, a crucial source for our knowledge of Manfredi’s life, he trained in Milan, Brescia and Cremona, but it is Mantua that he may have first come into contact with Cristoforo Roncalli, known as Il Pomarancio, who was imprisoned in that city in 1595⁴. Baglione certainly testifies to the relationship between the two men, telling us that Manfredi, «as a young man, was with Cav. Pomarancio», and Mantua also provided the backdrop for the first known episode in the painter’s life when, on 23 November 1596 at the age of only fourteen, he was detained at night «with swords and daggers […], and claims to be a servant of Signor Eugenio Barcha»⁵.

The first definite mention of Manfredi in Rome is dated 1607, when he is mentioned by the Governor’s Criminal Court⁶, but a further two traces may be a record of his early years in Rome. It is perfectly plausible to suggest that he may be the «Bartolomeo, servant of Caravaggio» named in the famous trial of 1603 in which Giovanni Baglione sued Caravaggio and his fellows Orazio Gentileschi, Onorio Longhi e Filippo Trisegni for libel⁷; and it is equally plausible, given the circumstance and the individuals involved, to suggest, as Gianni Papi does, that Manfredi may be the «Bartolomeo, painter» who, together with Francesco Bianchi, known as L’Acquasparta, a painter about whom we unfortunately know absolutely nothing, attacked «out of jealousy» in that same year, 1603, a certain Giovanni Antonio Galli, known as Lo Spadarino, who enjoyed a relationship with Caravaggio as close as that of Manfredi himself⁸.

Naturally, Manfredi’s discovery of Caravaggio’s painting is the event on which his biographers place the greatest emphasis, inasmuch as it played a crucial role in forging his artistic career. Baglione highlights the fact that, after embarking on his career in the “academies” where he «devoted his energies to drawing» (probably a reference to the circle of Pomarancio, whom Manfredi may have come to Rome to join), he began to emulate Caravaggio’s style so well that his work was mistaken for that of the Master. This consideration was to fuel the fundamentally negative image of Manfredi as a copyist of Caravaggio – an image to which Bellori also contributed by stating that Manfredi «was not a mere imitator, he transformed himself into Caravaggio, and in painting he appeared to look at nature through the master’s own eyes». The individual personality of Manfredi’s style by comparison with that of Caravaggio, on the other hand, was stressed by Giulio Mancini – who, as we shall see, was closely involved in the painter’s life and artistic career – underscoring his greater «diligence and finesse».

The most famous mention of Manfredi in biographical sources, however, is found in the Teutsche Akademie by the German painter and historian Joachim von Sandrart, although not in his Life of Bartolomeo but in that of the Flemish painter Gérard Seghers, in which he informs us that Seghers was a follower of what he calls the «Manfrediana Manier»⁹, which is translated as «Manfrediana Methodus» in Christian Rodius’s edition of 1683¹⁰. Scholars commonly use the term today to describe a form of naturalist painting, embraced chiefly by foreign painters, in which the preferred subjects are gaming, tavern scenes or gypsy women reading their hapless victims’ palms. Manfredi is considered the forerunner and a pioneer in this genre, even though – as has been quite rightly argued – the genre’s theorisation is purely a product of modern scholarship (especially since Sandrart uses it to refer to an artist fairly distant from Manfredi). And as Gianni Papi has pointed out on more than one occasion, Manfredi’s leading role in this kind of iconography should actually be revised in favour of the young Ribera and of Caravaggio himself, albeit without in any way underrating his influence on such painters as Tournier, Règnier e Valentin.

As we have seen, the papal physician and biographer Giulio Mancini enjoyed fairly close ties with Manfredi, and if we follow the thread of those ties, we shall see that they perfectly map out Manfredi’s artistic career. We know of the two men’s relations from Giulio’s correspondence with his brother Deifebo, a resident of Siena, in which the painter is mentioned on several occasions between 1613 and 1622¹¹.

Everything began in 1613, when Mancini informed his brother that he wished to commission a copy of a painting by Caravaggio owned by Cardinal Del Monte, a now lost Cupid Chastised, which he intended to submit to Agostino Chigi in Siena. Del Monte refused to allow the picture to be copied, so Mancini decided to have a new painting of the same subject made, commissioning it from the young Manfredi, whom he calls «a young man of great promise» and one «who will soon be held in great esteem». Manfredi took months to paint the picture, however, and it appears to have enjoyed only a lukewarm reception from Agostino Chigi, although he did go on to purchase another work by the painter, a now lost Susannah and the Elders, again through Mancini’s good offices.

In his subsequent correspondence with his brother, Mancini complainesabout Manfredi at length, probably on account both of his sluggishness and of Chigi’s poor opinion of him, going as far as to suggest that he would have been better off commissioning work from Antonio Carracci, whom he considered to be «more inventive and a better painter than the one who made the Cupid». Mancini adds an anecdote suggesting that Manfredi’s financial situation cannot have been particularly buoyant around 1613, because the painter went “weeping” to Mancini to offer him a picture which, however, Mancini agreed to pay for only if Agostino Chigi was pleased with it.

The two brothers do not mention Manfredi again until 1618, by which time everything seems to be going swimmingly for the painter. His career appears to have finally taken off, and Mancini informs his brother of his lucky purchase at a good price of a Denial of Peter (possibly the painting now in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum in Brunswick¹²), adding «that Bartolomeo, who made the Cupid for Messer dello Spedale, is held in such high regard that he is esteemed greater than Michelangelo [i.e. Caravaggio], and a picture of his has now been sold to His Most Serene Highness, our master, [for a price of] many hundreds of scudi». Mancini is referring here to Cosimo II and, perhaps, to the Crowning of Thorns now in the Uffizi¹³. In a subsequent letter, Mancini alludes to several of Manfredi’s paintings purchased by the Grand Duke, perhaps having himself purchased further pictures by Manfredi: probably the companion pieces entitled The Concert and The Card Players now in the Uffizi, both of which were seriously damaged in a car-bomb attack in 1993¹⁴.

Thus by the end of the 1620s, Manfredi’s career was at a peak and it is clear that this was due in part at least to his ability to meet the demand for a particular kind of painting, which we might call “Caravaggesque”. If the presence of two of his pictures in the collection of Vincenzo Giustiniani¹⁵ is clear evidence of his prestige in Rome, the favour of a patron of Cosimo II’s calibre undoubtedly bolstered that prestige also outside the confines of Rome. In fact, one of the consequences of Cosimo’s patronage was the purchase of two of his paintings by Piero Guicciardini, the Grand Duke’s agent in Rome¹⁶, and the esteem afforded him by the Accademia del Disegno in Florence, which Mancini tells us owned a portrait of him¹⁷, and possibly even young Francesco Furini’s decision to move to Rome deliberately in order to be able to study under him¹⁸.

Manfredi’s last years are devoid of any important events. Baglione describes his premature death and the long illness that marked his final years. We find proof of the suffering that afflicted him a document discovered by Patrizia Cavazzini concerning a courtesan named Maddalena Petrini¹⁹. The woman was seized by the guards one night in July 1622 for being in breach of the curfew. She claimed that she was out and about at that ungodly hour because she had gone to knock on the door of «one who loves me and who refused to open up to me […] Bartolomeo Manfredi, who is ill in bed».

Manfredi died on 12 December 1622, but we know that he was not short of important commissions even in the final years of his life, given that death took him just as he was about to start working on four paintings commissioned from him by Vincenzo Gonzaga, yet not before finishing a number of works «that were already well on the way to completion»²⁰.