Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli, known as “Il Morazzone”

Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli was born in Morazzone, close to Varese, in 1573, the son of Cesare Mazuchi del Tachino and Ermelina da Fagnano. According to the painter Giovanni Baglione, who penned the first printed biography of the artist¹, his father took him to Rome, where he is likely to have been able to count on the presence of an uncle, Camillo, and of a substantial community of residents born in Morazzone, who continued to stay in touch with their home town². The papal capital at the time was in the throes of frenzied architectural and decorative renovation due, among other things, to the two special jubilee years called by Pope Sixtus V in 1585 and 1590 ahead of the regular jubilee year of 1600. It was in this particularly vibrant context that the young Morazzone took his first steps in the field of painting. According to man of letters and art connoisseur Girolamo Borsieri writing in 1619, the painter frequented the workshop of Ventura Salimbeni, an exponent of Sienese Late Mannerism, and “the Roman Academies” thus in all likelihood other workshops in the capital³, coming into contact in particular (on the basis of stylistic evidence) with the work of the Cavalier d’Arpino, one of the most celebrated masters in the city at that time.

Baglione mentions Morazzone’s output while in Rome, telling us that he worked in the church of Santa Maria Maddalena al Corso, in the courtyard of St. John Lateran in the sacristy of St. Peter’s in the Vatican. These two latter commissions, the product of which is now lost like the others mentioned above, point to the artist’s gradual acceptance in the papal entourage. The only surviving evidence of his early work in Rome, however, is the decoration of the Chapel of the Conception in San Silvestro in Capite, with its frescoes of the Visitation and the Adoration of the Magi painted for the Modena-born Bishop of Gravina Antonio Maria Manzoli some time before the end of 1596. The two frescoes clearly reveal the stylistic influence of the Cavalier d’Arpino, but in terms of their composition – especially in the Visitation – Morazzone appears to have looked closely at the same subject painted by Federico Barocci for the church of Santa Maria in Vallicella some ten years earlier.

After a promising start to his career in Rome, at any rate, the artist was compelled to return home, where he is recorded in July 1597⁴, in connection with the wounding of a certain Alessandro del Rio, known as Lo Spagnolo, whose connection with the influential Cardinal Montalto may be behind Morazzone’s sudden decision to flee the papal capital.

The year after his hasty return home, the artist began work on the decoration of the Chapel of the Virgin of the Rosary in San Vittore in Varese, completing the commission the following year. In stylistic terms, the decoration is extremely close to his fresco work in Rome, but it was about this time that he began to rub shoulders with such Lombard artists as Giovan Battista della Rovere, known as Il Fiammenghino, who was charged with conducting an assessment of his work.

1598 was a year of considerable importance for Morazzone, not only because it marked the start of his career in Varese but also from a personal standpoint. In August of that year, his father bought an aristocratic residence from the Castiglioni family (part of which is still standing⁵) and the artist himself married Anna Castiglioni, probably a member of another branch of the same family, with whom he was to have eight children. This union with one of the area’s leading families doubtless contributed to the painter’s social elevation. The prestige that Morazzone achieved can be gauged from the fact that in the course of his lifetime he was called on more than once to stand godfather or to witness acts drawn up in his home town.

This recognition of his talent as an artist even outside his local area led him to gradually occupy a place on the art scene in Milan, where in the early years of the 17th century two other leading artists, Giovan Battista Crespi known as Il Cerano and Giulio Cesare Procaccini, were beginning to make a name for themselves. As early as in 1602, working cheek by jowl with Paolo Camillo Landriani known as “Il Duchino”, Morazzone contributed to the production of two large paintings in a cycle of Stories from the Life of Charles Borromeo commissioned by Milan Cathedral. Alongside this prestigious commission in Milan, Morazzone was also involved in the decoration of the Chapel of the Way to Calvary at the Sacro Monte in Varallo (1602-7), where he was explicitly asked to imitate as closely as possible the decoration of the Chapel of the Crucifixion, frescoed by Gaudenzio Ferrari between 1517 and 1520. The request prompted him to test new styles of expression and a narrative vocabulary that was both complex and effective in terms of its impetus, realism and theatrical quality, in keeping with the Sacro Monte’s devotional requirements.

In his subsequent work, beginning with the decoration of the chancel of the collegiate church in Arona (1603) where the (then only) Blessed Charles Borromeo had been christened, Morazzone consolidated his style in a rapid sequence of commissions, in the course of which he gradually began to experiment also with illusion and perspective. An example of this can be seen in the particularly bold foreshortening and original composition of his Pentecost, commissioned for the Hall of the Congregations in Milan’s Tribunale di Provvisione in 1605 and completed by 1615 (now in the Pinacoteca del Castello Sforzesco in Milan).

It was probably in early 1608 that he completed the Allegory of the Province of Susa (Turin, Galleria Sabauda), part of a series of large canvases with Allegories of the Provinces Ruled by the House of Savoy (mostly now lost) commissioned from a number of Lombard artists, including Cerano, Giovan Battista della Rovere known as Il Fiammenghino, Camillo and Giulio Cesare Procaccini, by Charles Emmanuel I of Savoy for his daughters’ respective weddings with the Dukes of Mantua and Modena⁶. This commission marked the painter’s first contact with the Savoy court, for which he was also to work in later years, and the start of the most fertile period in his career, in the course of which he was involved in many important projects in Lombardy. In Como, he painted the Standard of St. Abbondio (1608) and frescoed the Sacrestia dei Mansionari in the Cathedral (1608); in Varese, he frescoed the Sacro Monte’s Chapel of the Flagellation (1608-9) and St. Mary Magdalen in San Vittore (1611); and in Borgomanero, he painted St. Roch and the Plague-Stricken (1612). He continued to work for the Sacro Monte in Varallo, frescoing first the Ecce Homo Chapel (1609/10-14) and then the Chapel of the Condemnation of Christ (1610-11), and was involved in several prestigious projects in Milan, for example in the church of Sant’Antonio Abate for which he painted the Adoration of the Magi or the church of San Raffaele for which he painted the Dream of Elijah (both c. 1610).

In these works Morazzone perfected his style, marked by a strongly eclectic spirit, in which the influence of Tuscan and Roman Mannerism overlapped with his study of the style of Gaudenzio Ferrari and a handling of perspective reminiscent of such Venetian masters as Pordenone and Tintoretto or Pellegrino Tibaldi. The result was a style consisting of a bright, dense palette and robust bodies with sinuous and expressive gestures, built into compositions that were extremely clear and direct in conveying their religious message while simultaneously engaging the observer’s interest.

Morazzone at this time began to attract the interest and appreciation of thinkers and art lovers who broadcast his reputation. They included, in particular, Girolamo Borsieri of Como, whom Morazzone is likely to have met while working in that city and who mentions him in his Supplimento alla Nobiltà di Milano (1619) and, above all, Giovan Battista Marino, one of the most celebrated Italian poets of his day, who called Morazzone the «immortal Apelles of Insubria» as early as in 1615 and asked him for a few drawings for his Galeria (1620), which contains poems praising the artists of the time.

In the second half of the decade, Morazzone worked in the Chapel of the Institution of the Porziuncola (1616-17) on the Sacro Monte in Orta dedicated to the life of St. Francis, and frescoed Stories from the Life of the Virgin in the Chapel of the Rosary in San Vittore in Varese (1616-17), while also producing a series of remarkable altarpieces, including the Virgin of the Rosary with St. Dominic and St. Catherine of Siena for the Certosa di Pavia (1617) and St. Charles Borromeo in Glory (1616-20) for the collegiate church in Borgomanero. In 1617 or just after, he joined with Cerano and Giulio Cesare Procaccini to paint the Martyrdom of St. Rufina and St. Secunda – famously christened the “Painting by Three Artists” (“Quadro delle tre mani”) because it was painted by three different masters – now in the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan. Morazzone was reponsible for the central part, with the executioner wielding his sword, the page and the angel with the martyr’s palm, Procaccini for St. Rufina and the angel in the right foreground, and Cerano for the knight in the background, St. Secunda beheaded and the angel with the dog bottom left. The three artists’ different areas of responsibility probably reflect a specific request from the patron, sophisticated collector Scipione Toso, intended to highlight the individual style of each artist. Morazzone painted the three figures commissioned from him in dramatic poses, displaying muscular anatomies emphasised by strongly contrasting light that are typical of his figurative vocabulary.

All these works bolstered the painter’s reputation and, confirming the extent to which his work was appreciated in Milan, his Christ among the Doctors was part of Federico Borromeo’s donation to the Ambrosiana in Milan (where it still hangs today), a remarkable token of the esteem harboured by the archbishop of Milan who founded the Accademia Ambrosiana in 1620, although he chose the better-established Cerano to teach painting there. In that same year, Morazzone completed his last major decorative cycle, in the Chapel of Good Death in San Gaudenzio in Novara, developing a grandiose and disturbing vision of the Memento Mori which is remarkable both for its strength and its modernity.

From this moment on, the artist’s output started to dwindle, although he began to work and to travel further afield. In 1621, he is recorded at the court of Ferdinando Gonzaga in Mantua, where he was commissioned a painting, and the following year he was summoned by Charles Emmanuel I of Savoy to paint now lost frescoes in the Castle of Rivoli. His Madonna and Child with St. John the Baptist Appearing to St. Charles Borromeo for the church of Santa Maria Assunta in Sestri Ponente is also likely to have been painted at around this time (c. 1622). Morazzone began to suffer from a mysterious ailment in September 1622, leading to delays in the completion of works commissioned from him. In 1625, he was frescoing he dome of Piacenza cathedral, although he only painted the squinches (David and Isaiah). The fact that Guercino was then summoned to complete the decoration in 1626 suggests that Morazzone had died early that year or just before, either in Piacenza on perhaps in his home town.