Portraiture and Baroque

The evolution of the portrait in painting through the analysis of a work

The genus of the ritratto in painting it is certainly not an invention of the seventeenth century at all  less constitutes a marked peculiarity but it is in this century that portraiture, as well as other pictorial genres, reach full artistic dignity, connoting  strong values ​​never fully developed in the past. 

The century, as most people know, opens with the dictates indicated by the new one Church Against reformed, premises that will have a strong impact on the canons of religious art and which will cross-cut other forms of art.

The early seventeenth century therefore marks a clear break with the now worn-out painting  perhaps too intellectualistic of late mannerism, rigorously logical and demonstrative, often for the benefit of a few users; the portraiture itself shines  a spirit of artistic renewal of its own, imagined with a new feeling,  often dramatic and excited.

In this regard it would be sufficient to mention the portrait of Giovan Carlo Doria on Horseback by Rubens  preserved at Palazzo Spinola in Genoa or the marble bust of Francesco I d'Este  by Bernini kept in the Estensi galleries of Modena.

Portraiture is imbued with all the content/formal demands expressed by the nascent phenomenon of baroque, on the entire use of the rhetoric understood as the latter art of persuasion, an essential tool for the artist's communication.
Un modus operandi which fits into the broader and more colorful context  iconographic and iconological of baroque art, which aims to amaze but above all to educate and persuade.

Large aristocratic families begin to rely onelocutio of the portrait for  tout their lineage, sometimes with more pomp and exuberance than ever before. We become aware of the work of art focused in the macro area of ​​communication, we are at the dawn of the first forms of advertising.

The rhetoric of the courtly and celebratory portrait almost seems to unbolt the purposes of the now obsolete fifteenth-sixteenth century portraiture, probably more linked to reflecting the psychology of the character, "the movements of the soul" to quote Leonardo da Vinci, in favor here of a representation linked above all at the professional status of the painted character, to enhance his function, imposing a sense of authority and authority, arousing admiration and awe through the sumptuousness of his clothes and the use of particular expedients within the composition.

The portrait can often tell, for those who are able to read it, an elusive reality aimed at hiding social, political and religious uncertainties, all disguised by that innate desire for the ephemeral and stupor mundi typical of the period.

The words of Monsignor Giovan Battista Agucchi who, in his "Treatise on Painting” of 1610, argued that:

"the most advanced form of portraiture was that which, going beyond the resemblance to the subject, depicted the characters as they should have been, depending on their position in the world"

This broad premise on the evolution that goes through the portrait genre between the 500s and 600s is a useful preamble for approaching the painting  presented here. This is a wonderful work ascribed to a painter of the area of  Gian Paolo Cavagna (Bergamo 1550-1627) depicting a  portrait of a gentleman with a ruff.

Made in oil on canvas and equipped with a beautiful frame in ebonized wood and style  golden, it belongs to the collections of ancient paintings of the seller Antichità La Pieve. 

As in the vast majority of cases, portraits are intrinsically linked to the identity of the depicted subject, in symbiosis with the culture in which the artist and the subject are immersed in spite of other portraits which merge so much into the anecdotal that they merely serve as a souvenir photo.

The character portrayed is framed in this cultural climate in which portraiture found a happy season, a season in which Lombardy was governed by the Spanish government from which the fashion for black clothes (called "Spanish-style") probably derived. The structure of the figure is restrained, cut to three-quarters of its height, grandiose in its full occupation of the surrounding space that is timidly hinted at. The man's pride is underlined here, not only by his gaze and the pose he assumes, erect and stiff, but also by his austere and squared silhouette of his dark dress that almost inspires fear and reverence at the sight. A calm and guarded intellectualism shines through her gaze and continues up to the volume she holds in her right hand.

Precious fabrics, cuts, embroidery, applied finishes and other forms of superficial ornaments were the distinctive feature of this era well exemplified in our painting. Relegated to the edges of the frame, a curious golden table clock lights up  the color temperature of the work while in his right hand he shows off a book,  two clear symbolic references evocative of the status symbol of the noble.  A typical ornament of the time was the gorget which was attached to a modest ornament  around the neck it became a real separate accessory, in linen, decorated with lace,  carvings and embroidery, fan-shaped, supported by iron slats.

The work is finished by the author by covering a good portion of canvas with a monochrome gray background on which the presence of a column is just hinted at, a typical cultured reference often present in portrait painting.

White Gloves by Alessandro Odierna
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