Pietro da Cortona

Pietro da Cortona, il meccanismo della forma

Pietro da Cortona - Events

Pietro da Cortona was born in Cortona in 1597 and died in Rome in 1669.
After a brief training in his native province, Pietro arrived in Rome as a very young man in 1612, and entered the workshop of his fello Tuscan, Baccio Ciarpi.
The atmosphere of Rome in the early 17th century provided creative incentives that enabled him to develop a truely innovative language.
Here he encountered the magnificence of Rubens, the poetic vein of Guercino and the new spatial sense of Lanfranco; but it was, above all, from the classical world he encountered in Rome that he drew his inspiration, creating an art which would bring this past to life again with a vehement and passionate vitality.

Palazzo Barberini
His was an enchanting and joyful art that, for the first time, engaged the viewer with its captivating rhytm.
The esteem earned by the painter is demontrated by the important commissions that succeded each other during these years. The ceiling fresco in the Salone Barberini, where Cortona created a superabundant decorative composition incorporating hundreds of figures is a true monument of the baroque ideal; the same decorative genius is displayed in the frescoes in the Villa Sacchetti, the Palazzo Mattei, the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, the Palazzo Pamphilij i Rome, and in the Chiesa Nuova, entirely decorated by the painter during the course of his brilliant career.

Alongside these frescoes we may place his easel paintings: canvases with religious and mithological subjects, landscapes and portraits, which now hang in museums and private collections throughout the world, as well as his large historical paintings, made for the Sacchetti family, today in the Pinacoteca Capitolina.

Church of SS. Luca and Martina Like his contemporary Bernini, Cortona manifested his creative vein in many different ways. He was also an architect, whose works includes the Church of Saints Luca and Martina and the harmonious and scenographic facade of Santa Maria della Pace, all of which make a fundamental contribution to the image of baroque Rome.
The fertility gave birth to a school to which belonged such famous artists as Ciro Ferri, Guglielmo Cortese, Giacinto Gemignani and many others.
His school reflected a strong baroque current which propagated the style of Cortona throughout the century.

Other events

Autumn 1997 marks the fourth-hundredth anniversary of the birth of the famous baroque painter Pietro da Cortona.

The anniversary is celebrated by three great exhibitions:

Costantino uccide il leone In response to the importance attached by the organizers to the city of Rome, it is planned to make those buildings that contain unmovable works of the artist open to the public.
It will be possible, for example, to admire the frescoes of the Galleria in the Palazzo Pamphilij, which today houses the official residence of the Brasilian Embassy, the works in the Palazzo Barberini and the Palazzo Mattei, as well as buildings by Cortona the architect. These include the Churches of the Saints Luca and Martina, S. Maria della Pace and Santa Maria in via Lata.
It is precisely in order to heighten public awarness of such important works of art, spread all over the city, that a guide to the Itinerari cortoneschi has just been published.

Meny others events are foreseen for the celebration of Pietro da Cortona:

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