Background
Most famous of Cortona's works, and characteristic of his style, is the ceiling fresco he painted for the Barberini Palace in Rome, an allegorical glorification of Pope Urban VIII, a member of the Barberini family. With spectacular illusion the roof seems to open to permit clouds from the sky and crowds of draped figures to swarm into the vault through an imaginary architectural framework. The opulent colors of the painting and the vigorous sense of movement contribute to the magnificent richness of effect.
The work on the Barberini ceiling occupied Cortona from 1633 to 1639, except for a journey to Florence and Venice in 1637. The great 16th-century Venetian paintings, and especially Veronese's Triumph of Venice in the Doge's Palace, deeply influenced Cortona's style, and he became the leader of the Neo-Venetian movement in Rome.
From 1640 to 1647 Cortona lived in Florence, where he painted the allegorical frescoes of the planets in the Pitti Palace. Here Cortona anticipates Luca Giordano by his brilliant light and aerial atmosphere, where sculptural figures move in the diaphanous sky within stuccoed frames.
Cortona's greatest work for the Counter-Reformation was the decoration of apse, nave, and tribune in Santa Maria in Vallicella (1646-1665). Here he painted the heavenly host and a miracle of St. Filippo Neri in vibrant colors and luminous splendor. Cortona designed the entire decoration of the church, an ensemble of coffered ceilings, gilded cornices and stuccoed figures dividing the painted areas.
As an architect, Cortona to some degree anticipates Borromini. In architectural design, as in painting, he achieved a unification of elements, spatially through the use of open perspective to unite the exterior and interior space as in Santa Maria della Pace, Rome, and pictorially through the use of elaborate light and shade to emphasize the decorative and illusionistic character of the building, as in SS. Luca e Martino, Rome. Cortona died in Rome on May 16, 1669.