Art History

STEFANO PIERGUIDI

The main objective of the course is to deepen the knowledge of a given moment in the history of artistic literature.
As regards specific objectives, students are expected to learn or assimilate:
- knowledge of the historiographical debate on the chosen theme;
- the ability to analyze the works of art of the period in question through contemporary written texts;
- to elaborate an autonomous judgment on the artistic literature of the moment analyzed through today's critical literature.
In order to pursue these targets, during the course students will be asked to take part actively in the analysis of the critical texts of the historical moment in question. The themes and topics of the course, such as the competencies and abilities to learn, are part of the curriculum of the Study Program in Art History.

The aim is to reconstruct the opinion of contemporaries on the painting and sculpture produced in Rome in the seventeenth century.

Basic knowledge of 17th-century art.

The course aims to analyze the meaning of the concepts of ‘natural’, ‘manner’ and ‘idea’ in 17th-century art literature, starting from Giulio Mancini’s Considerazioni sulla pittura and Giovanni Battista Agucchi’s Trattato, and then examining some emerging episodes of 17th-century Roman artistic production (such as the frescoes in the gallery of Palazzo Farnese by Annibale Carracci; Domenichino’s Diana Hunt; Guido Reni’s Rape of Helena; Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Borghese groups) through the reading of Giovanni Pietro Bellori’s Le vite de’ pittori, scultori et architetti moderni, Carlo Cesare Malvasia’s Felsina pittrice and the Bernini biographies by Filippo Baldinucci and Domenico Bernini.

Silvia De Renzi, Donatella Livia Sparti, Mancini, Giulio, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 68, Roma, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2007, pp. 500-509 (disponibile on line)

Silvia Ginzburg, Domenichino e Giovanni Battista Agucchi, in Domenichino, catalogo della mostra (Roma, Palazzo Venezia), Roma 1996, pp. 121-137.

Evelina Borea, Bellori 1645: una lettera a Francesco Albani e la biografia di Caravaggio, in “Prospettiva”, 100, 2000, pp. 57-69.

Tomaso Montanari, Bellori trent’anni dopo, in Giovanni Pietro Bellori, Le vite de' pittori, scultori e architetti moderni, edizione a cura di Evelina Borea (Torino 1976), Torino 2009, II, pp. 657-729.

Maria Elena Massimi, Malvasia, Carlo Cesare, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 68, Roma, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2007, pp. 296-302 (disponibile on-line)

Stefano Pierguidi, La freccia in aria, ovvero la rappresentazione del tempo in pittura: "La caccia di Diana" di Domenichino e "Le tre Parche" di Simon Vouet, in “Les cahiers d'histoire de l'art”, 7, 2009, pp. 20-25.

Giovanna Perini, L'arte di descrivere: la tecnica dell'ecfrasi in Malvasia e Bellori, in “I Tatti Studies”, 3, 1989, pp. 175-206.

Andrea Bacchi, Denis Mahon, “Studies in Seicento Art and Theory, 1947, in La riscoperta del Seicento. I libri fondativi, a cura di Andrea Bacchi, Liliana Barroero, Genova 2017, pp. 45-59.

ALL TEXTS WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE ONLINE, ON CLASSROOM

Stefano Pierguidi, Analisi delle fonti, connoisseurship e common sense: una nuova ipotesi sul Ritratto di Agucchi di York, in “Notizie da Palazzo Albani”, 36/37, 2007/2008, pp. 103-109.

Donatella Livia Sparti, Novità su Giulio Mancini: medicina, arte e presunta "connoisseurship", in “Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz”, 52, 2008, pp. 53-72.

Stefano Pierguidi, “Li soggetti furono sopra la pittura”: Luca Giordano, Carlo Maratti e il Trionfo della pittura napoletana di Paolo de Matteis per il Marchese del Carpio, in “Ricerche sul ‘600 napoletano. Saggi e documenti”, pp. 93-99.

Stefano Pierguidi, Sull''Amor omnia vincit' del J. P. Getty Museum e la fortuna delle allegorie d'amore a Roma intorno al 1600, in “Bollettino d’arte”, XCI/137-138, 2006, pp. 63-76.

Stefano Pierguidi, Gian Lorenzo Bernini tra teoria e prassi artistica: la speaking likeness, il 'bel composto e il 'paragone', in “Artibus et Historiae”, XXXII/64, pp. 143-164.

ALL TEXTS WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE ONLINE, ON CLASSROOM

Frontal lessons.

4 hours per week, frequency highly recommended

Detailed oral interviews on the topics covered in class and on the exam bibliography.

Recognizing images projected in class

Which 17th-century painting focuses on the depiction of time? (Domenichino's Diana Hunt)
Which artist first developed the theory of ideal beauty? (Giovanni Battista Agucchi)
Who first articulated the hierarchy of genres in painting? (Vincenzo Giustiniani)