Giovanni Baglione

Giovanni Baglione was born in Rome some time between 1566 and 1568. In the absence of a certificate of baptism, the painter’s birth can be gauged by subtraction, given that his death certificate tells us he died on 30 December 1643 aged “roughly 77 years old” – although a number of documentary clues would suggest postdating his birth by a couple of years. The son of a Trastevere butcher, Giovanni was steered towards a career as a painter, after his father’s death, by a Florentine named Francesco Morelli († 1595). Under the guiding hand of Morelli, whose biography we are in a position to reconstruct today but whose corpus of paintings continues to elude us, Baglione enjoyed typical late Mannerist training, developing an excellent drawing technique based on the study of the 16th-century masters, and experimented extensively with the technique of fresco painting. Traces of the young artist’s earliest work, when he was probably still an apprentice in his master’s workshop, can be found in painting cycles promoted under the pontificate of Sixtus V (Scala Sancta, Vatican Library: 1587–9) and in those associated with the Vejano branch of the Santacroce family (Palazzo Santacroce in Oriolo Romano: c. 1588–94). Baglione is also recorded as working in Naples, in the portico of the Carthusian monastery of San Martino (1591–2). The artist’s early work appears to be marked by a particular interest in the Emilian late Mannerists then working in Rome (Bertoja, Raffaellino da Reggio) and in those of Sienese origin, such as Vanni and Salimbeni, both of whom are known to have worked closely with Baglione. In the 1590s, however, Baglione’s painting chiefly reflects the influence of the academic style of Federico Zuccari and, above all, of the Cavalier d’Arpino, in whose “team” Baglione worked on several occasions over a fifteen-year period (in San Nicola in Carcere, the Clementine aisle of St. John Lateran and the Pauline Chapel in Santa Maria Maggiore).

Despite this variety of influence on his work, which was supplemented in 1600 by the dominant influence of Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro style, Baglione managed to perfect an increasingly independent and easily recognisable style of his own, with moments of surprising naturalism, as early as in the late 1590s (frescoes in the choir of the Madonna dell’Orto, 1598). This places him in the company of other idiosyncratic “Caravaggesque” figures such as Antiveduto Grammatica and Orazio Gentileschi, the latter being especially close to Baglione in several of his works painted in the very early years of the 17th century. Baglione’s adoption, at an early age, of Caravaggio’s novel style in the Contarelli Chapel (July 1600) was therefore preceded by an independent and very lively exploration of naturalism and of the study of models from life. The versatility and quality of this stylistic approach lay at the root of his clash with Caravaggio, a clash that was professional even more than it was personal, leading to the famous trial of 1603, whose proceedings provide us with valuable information on the art world in early 17th-century Rome. The rift with Baglione (and Caravaggio’s scornful treatment of him) centred on an enormous (now lost) altarpiece for the church of the Gesù in Rome, for which the artist was paid the exorbitant sum of 1,000 scudi and which shows the extent of his growing success and popularity with ecclesiastical patrons.

Baglione’s skilful promotion of both his own person and his art as early as the first decade of the 17th century earned him such important titles as Knight of the Supreme Order of Christ in 1606 (celebrated in a Self-portrait now in a private collection) and Prince of the Academy of St. Luke (1607, 1619), as well as Regent of the Confraternity of St. Joseph of the Holy Land or of the Virtuous of the Pantheon. In the early years of the 17th century, Baglione began to pursue a complex self-promotion strategy designed to conceal his humble origins and to allow him to feign membership of the noble Baglioni family of Perugia. The social status to which the artist aspired so fervently is also confirmed by his affluent lifestyle, with a large residence in Via dei Condotti from the 1610s and ownership, from the late 1620s, of a vineyard and even a carriage.

The most intensely Caravaggesque period in Baglione’s abundant output – despite still being strongly independent and recognisable inasmuch as it was adapted to an academic cultural substratum and continued to reflect 16th century draughtsmanship – includes what are perhaps his most successful paintings for private display, for example the Palmer University St. Sebastian (1601–3), the Ecstasy of St. Francis (of which several versions are known, cf. Chicago, Art Institute: 1601), the two versions of Sacred Love Defeating Profane Love painted for Benedetto Giustiniani (Berlin, Gemäldegalerie and Rome, Palazzo Barberini: 1601–2), Judith with the Head of Holofernes (private collection: 1605–10), Christ Meditating on the Passion (1606) and Judith and Holofernes (1608; both in Rome, Galleria Borghese). Alongside his extensive production of altarpieces, Baglione worked a great deal also for the market and his works could be found in the most prestigious collections of his day, the inventories for which hint at the vast repertoire of an artist capable of ranging from canonical depictions of saints in adoration or being led to their martyrdom to the most abstruse episodes in ancient history, to complex allegories and even to erotic subjects. Caravaggesque naturalism, which Baglione soon embraced and exploited as an up-to-date technical and stylistic expedient, and, in part, also his study of models from life, were gradually grafted onto his underlying Mannerist draughtsmanship and his strong propensity for an overstated handling of human relations, occasionally marked by exuberant rhetoric.

The list of Baglione’s prestigious commissions expanded considerably in the first two decades of the 17th century, thanks chiefly to the protection first of the powerful Cardinal Paolo Emilio Sfondrati and then of Cardinal Scipione Borghese. His most significant work of the period includes the Resurrection of Tabitha in St. Peter’s (1604–6, of which only a few fragments have survived) and his extensive fresco decoration of the Chapel of Paul V in Santa Maria Maggiore (Chapel of Santa Francesca Romana, 1610–13).

From the 1620s, Baglione’s output begins to appear wearier and more repetitive, possibly also with lapses in quality which can be laid at the door of his workshop assistants. His style gradually becomes more artificial, showing a predilection for moralising and allegorical themes often built around conventional exempla virtutis, with something of a serial production feel to them (see his numerous versions of Mary Magdalen). Yet for all that, we still occasionally encounter significant episodes that show us a master ceaselessly updating his work and responding to the stimulus of new stylistic developments. His output in this period includes the remarkable pictures he painted in Mantua (Allegory of Peace and Justice Reconciled, London, Kensington Palace: 1622) and a cycle of Muses now in Arras (Musée des Beaux-Arts: 1620–2) but designed for the dressing room of Ferdinando II Gonzaga. The most important result of Baglione’s time in Mantua was his novel and immediate encounter with the work of the Duke’s artists (particularly Rubens and Fetti) and with the great Venetian artists of the previous century. Thus, it would appear that we can directly peg his experience in Mantua to the now ageing master’s inclination to turn his hand to themes of an erotic nature, which link him and place him (once again) in direct contact with Orazio Gentileschi, who was on the point of leaving Rome for good, and more importantly, with the latter’s daughter Artemisia and with the Emilian painter Giovanni Lanfranco. In 1626, Baglione was selected from among the most important artists working in Italy for the Duke of Alcalà’s Apostolado project, for which he was to paint the figure of St. James the Less (now in a private collection). At the end of the decade, Baglione returned to paint in St. Peter’s, producing one of the large overdoors with a Washing of the Feet (1629) now known through smaller versions painted on canvas (Rome, Gallerie Nazionali, Palazzo Barberini and Pinacoteca Capitolina).

While we still know of several important public decorative projects in Rome (Santi Quattro Coronati, Santa Maria dell’Orto, Santa Maria della Consolazione, San Luigi dei Francesi and Santi Cosma e Damiano) dating to the 1630s, by this time Baglione seems to have gradually doffed the garb of a painter to don that of a man of letters and an art expert, thus repositioning himself in the Barberini entourage. The final results of this “intellectual” effort on his part are his celebrated guide entitled Le nove chiese di Roma (1639), which is remarkable for the accuracy of its attributions and for the correctness of the information he provides, and, above all, Le vite dei pittori, scultori e architetti, a work of fundamental importance for our knowledge of painting in Rome from the second half of the 16th century to the first half of the 17th century (1642).

Baglione died in his affluent residence on Via dei Condotti in December 1643 and is buried in his own chapel in the basilica of Santi Cosma e Damiano.