Background

Pietro da Cortona was born on November 1, 1596, in Cortona, Provincia di Arezzo, Toscana, Italy to a family of artisans, including his uncle Filippo Berrettini.

Education

Pietro studied in Rome from about 1612 under the minor Florentine painters Andrea Commodi and Baccio Ciarpi and was influenced by antique sculpture and the work of Raphael.

Career

The most important of Pietro da Cortona's earliest paintings were three frescoes (1624 – 1626) in Santa Bibiana, Rome. In the 1620s he designed the Villa del Pigneto near Rome and possibly another villa at Castel Fusano, both for his patrons, the Sacchetti family.

Pietro's fame reached its climax in the 1630s with the design of the church of SS. Luca e Martina, Rome (1635 – 1650), and the ceiling fresco Allegory of Divine Providence (1633 – 1639) in the Barberini Palace there. The design of SS. Luca e Martina derives more from Florentine than Roman sources, resulting in a different type of Baroque architecture from that of either Bernini or Borromini. The ceiling of the Great Hall in the Barberini Palace (now the National Gallery) was conceived as a painted glorification of the Barberini pope, Urban VIII, and is treated illusionistically. Its strong colour and steep perspective recall Veronese, whose work Cortona may have seen in Venice in 1637.

Also in 1637 Pietro visited Florence, where he began painting the frescoes representing the Four Ages of Man for Grand Duke Ferdinand II of Tuscany in the Pitti Palace. In 1640 he returned to finish these and paint the ceilings of a suite of apartments in the palace named after the planets. He treated the entire surface as a single spatial unit, adding a wealth of real stucco decoration, partly gilt, in the carvings. He returned to Rome in 1647, where he painted the vault frescoes of Santa Maria in Vallicella and the ceiling of the long gallery of the Pamphili Palace in Piazza Navona (1651 – 1654) for Pope Innocent X. His chief architectural works of this period were the facades of Santa Maria della Pace (1656 – 1657), perhaps his most ingenious conception, and Santa Maria in Via Lata in Rome (1658 – 1662).

He also produced designs for the modernization of the Pitti Palace and the east front of the Louvre in Paris (1664). He painted religious and mythological easel pictures throughout his life. From 1634 to 1636 he was head of the Academy of St. Luke in Rome. Despite a correspondence in feeling between his architecture and his painting, there is little physical connection between them, and he never decorated one of his own churches.

Achievements

• Pietro da Cortona is considered to be the first artist of the Baroque triumphal and decorative, creating a theatrical and illusionist scenery of complicated symbolism. Its frescoes, located on walls and domes, colors acquire a great luminosity, open skies, clouds and feigned architecture, with figures in motion and multiple foreshortenings, that represent the apotheosis of celestial or earthly. His most famous work is a huge ceiling fresco, "Allegory of Divine Providence and Barberini Power".
  
  As an architect, his work reflects concern by the classical language combined with plastic, such as columns and pilasters elements, giving the wall of strong contrasts of light, modeling the architectural space. His masterpiece is the church of SS. Martina e Luca in Rome (1635 - 1650), which was the first Baroque church designed and built as a complete unity.

Works

More photos

• illustration

  • Title page from the Flora

    1638

• painting

  • The Golden Age

    1637

  • The Age of Iron

    1641

  • Allegory of Divine Providence and Barberini Power

    1639

  • The Rape of the Sabine Women

    1629

  • Romulus and Remus Given Shelter by Faustulus

    1634

  • The Martyrdom of Saint Stephen

    1660

  • Study for the Age of Silver

    1635

  • Madonna and Saints

    1628

  • Ceiling Fresco with Medici Coat of Arms

    1644

  • The Triumph of Divine Providence

    1639

  • Ananias restoring the sight of Saint Paul

    1631

  • Pietà

    1625

  • Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence

  • The Copper Age

  • Holy Family Resting on the Flight to Egypt

    1643

  • Landing of the Trojans at the Mouth of Tiberis

    1654

  • The Alliance of Jacob and Laban

    1635

  • Marcello Sacchetti

    1626

  • Pope Urbanus VIII (Maffeo Barberini)

    1627

  • The Age of Bronze

    1641

  • The Guardian Angel

    1656

  • Ceiling Fresco in the Hall of Saturn

    1665

  • Venus Appearing to Aeneas as a Huntress

    1631

  • The Age of Gold

  • Virgin and Child with Saints

  • Study for the Age of Silver

    1637

  • Return of Hagar

    1637

Connections

Uncle:

Flippo Berrittini

teacher:

Andrea Commodi

teacher:

Baccio Ciarpi

References

• Pietro da Cortona and Roman Baroque Architecture At first a successful painter of the Roman Baroque, Pietro (Berrettini) da Cortona (1597-1669) soon emerged as an architect of equal stature. This book is the first to focus full attention on Cortona's buildings and projects and to assess his position in Roman Baroque architecture.
  2007
• Pietro da Cortona e il Disegno
  1997
• Pietro da Cortona: 1597-1669 Italian Edition
  1997
• Pietro da Cortona a Firenze (1637-1647) Italian Edition
  2010