1630 - 1650: Painting Steeped in References
The profusion of Italian art and the richness of the regional centres make it difficult to make any chronological or stylistic generalizations about 17th Century Italy. Nevertheless, the common factor linking the painters represented in this room is that they belonged to the generation born around the turn of the century and active from 1620-1630. Their artistic background encompassed a series of prestigious examples: the whole of the 16th Century (Florence, Venice and Parma) and the Carracci, Caravaggio and their very similar followers. A masterpiece of Lombard painting like Cairo's Mariage mystique de sainte Catherine (Mystic Marriage of St Catherine) reveals an extraordinarily complex visual culture. Nuvolone, another Milanais and a contemporary of Cairo, showed the same orientation towards a soft, sensuous style, less violent and morbid than that of their masters Cerano and Morazzone.
The development of Le Guerchin, born between Ferrara and Bologne and a true link between the two schools, can be seen in the museum's two pictures. In about 1630, in le Martyre de saint Jean et saint Paul (The Martyrdom of St John and St Paul), the painter was still sensitive to the art of Caravaggio and produced a composition where the expression was free and full of contrasts. On the other hand, the Gloire de tous les saints (Glory of All the Saints), finished in 1647, is a lovely example of Le Guerchin's late, calmer phase. The Venetian, Vecchia, was an extreme exponent of the logic of a culture based on the use of models from the past. He is in fact best known as an imitator of the great 16th Century Venetian painters.
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