Emilian Painting 1500-1600

One of the leading interpreters of the “School of Parma” in the first half of the 16th century, Girolamo Mazzola Bedoli successfully combines, in his artistic expression, the painting of Correggio and Parmigianino and the necessity to promote his new patron, the Farnese court. His style, which straddles Venetian, Lombard and Flemish painting, is characterised by the aristocratic preciosity of the details and the elegant gestures of the characters, elements common both to the large religious altarpieces and to the portraits exhibited in these rooms. In his first documented work, the altarpiece of the Immaculate Conception, which he painted for the high altar of the oratory of the church of San Francesco del Prato (1533-1538), Bedoli portrays a complex allegory of the Immaculate Conception, updated to the doctrinal debate, where the Virgin Mary dominates the scene in the heavens as the Mediatrix of the salvation of mankind. The preciosity of Bedoli’s art explodes in the details of the garments and in the mystical representation of nature, as in the Polyptych of the Abbey of San Martino de’ Bocci, where the Virgin and Child with St. John the Baptist are immersed in the delightful interweavings of the racemes that accompany the divine reincarnation of life in a Nordic formula, alternative to the idealism of central Italy. A case in point is the copy of Correggio’s Virgin with the Bowl, enclosed in a painted monochromatic frame with elegant motifs of classical taste taken from contemporary Roman artistic culture.

Bedoli painted also several portraits the most striking of which are: the collector Bartolomeo Prati, the young Anna Eleonora Sanvitale, daughter of Count Gilberto, who later married a member of the court of Ferrara and was highly esteemed in the literary sphere, and the poet and courtier Luigi Borra. These works, rich in stylistic refinement and complex symbolic references, help define the intellectual and spiritual depth of the artist.

At the end of the 16th century the artistic climate in Parma was characterised by a renewed interest in the work of Correggio. This can be seen in Giovanni Battista Tinti, an eclectic painter close to religious congregations, whose works are characterised by a moderate naturalism inspired by Annibale Carracci, the Flemish painter Calvaert and, towards the end of his career – as may be seen in the small Deposition exhibited here – Cremonese painting. In the banner depicting the Dead Christ embracing the Cross and in the famous episode of Mary Magdalene in the house of the Pharisee, the rich cultural background of Parma’s painting adapts to the simplicity of taste typical of the Counter-Reformation (shown here in the influence of the Bolognese artists, Tibaldi and Samacchini), while the vivid colours are fruit of the artist’s personal sensitivity. Pier Antonio Bernabei’s painting is characterised by chiaroscuro and shimmering lighting effects, graceful putti and gentle expressions, even in the most dramatic of scenes. The processional banner with St. Benedict and St. Jerome in adoration of the Eucharist, a precious testimony to local culture and religiosity between the 16th and 17th centuries, pays homage to Parmigianino and Bedoli in the church of Santa Maria della Steccata. In St. Benedict gives the order to St. Maurus and St. Placidus and in the Flight into Egypt, Parma’s 16th century Mannerism, exquisite and colourful, turns towards the classicism of the Carracci. Mauro Oddi, a court painter under the patronage of Duchess Margherita de’ Medici, wife of Duke Odoardo, studied for six years at the Roman school of Pietro da Cortona: the influence of Roman Baroque, albeit “tempered” by local and Bolognese tradition, can be discerned in the altarpiece with St. Vitalis and St. Maurus with Prayers.

At the turn of the late 16th and early 17th century, two currents of painting emerged that, in contrast with the excessive intellectualism of Mannerism, expressed a new idea of painting that had a profound influence on European art. The first, inspired by Caravaggio, pursued a mystical religiosity expressed through a highly theatrical use of light as a symbol of divine grace and salvation. The second – which flourished in Bologna around Annibale Carracci, his brother Agostino and cousin Ludovico – initiated a pictorial reform based on the study of nature and the great masters of the Renaissance, including Correggio. To convey to the public of the time – illiterate and with the pull of Protestantism to contend with – the moral contents of the Counter-Reformation, it used the simple and direct language of the emotions, but featuring a new realism with the power to stimulate the devotion and engagement of the faithful. A reference to these themes together with the revival of Correggio’s models can be seen in the altarpiece executed by Annibale for the Capuchin friars’ church dedicated to Mary Magdalene with the Deposition with the Virgin and St. Clare, St. Francis, St. Mary Magdalene and S John. This work, considered by Andrea Emiliani to mark the beginning of Baroque painting, is exhibited here for the first time with the two side paintings that flanked it on the high altar, painted by Ludovico with St. Louis IX, King of France and St. Elizabeth. On loan from the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, these works make it possible to reconstruct the typical decorative layout of a Capuchin church. In the Madonna and Child with Saints Agostino Carracci combines his sharp eye for nature and his training in Parma with the influence of the Venetian painters and a style stemming from his work as an engraver. The two large paintings by Ludovico with The Funeral of the Virgin Mary and The Apostles at the Tomb of the Virgin belong to the artist’s maturity as evidenced by the influences of Michelangelo and the colours inspired by Venetian painting

Unlike other artists active in the duchy, Bartolomeo Schedoni, a painter from Modena who had been in service at the Farnese court since 1607, expresses a more autonomous and original language, in which a synthesis of the two great currents of Baroque painting can be perceived. In addition to the influence of Correggio, filtered through the painting of the Carracci, there is a revival of the Caravaggio motifs in the use of light and in the gestures of the characters, which produces an unparalleled theatrical and emotional impact. Ranuccio I was directly involved in decorating the church in the Fontevivo convent with paintings, an important testimony to the charitable activities promoted by the duke and to the Farnese family’s devotion to the Capuchin order. In the paintings executed by Schedoni between 1613 and 1614 and currently exhibited in this room, the traditional iconography of the evangelical figures of the Last Supper, the Deposition and the The Marys at the Tomb, originally placed to the left and right of the high altar, is renewed thanks to the originality of the layout and the fervent gestures of the characters, emphasised by a skilful use of light that gives the scene a highly theatrical expressiveness. The small panel of the Madonna and Child with St. John the Baptist, one of the many variants dedicated by the artist to this theme, stands out for its sensitivity and sweetness, reminiscent of Raphael. As well as foreshadowing the particularly effective synthesis of Italian Baroque painting carried out by the French school, Schedoni’s pictorial language distinctly won over the dukes of Parma, given the fact that the St. Francis is actually a copy of the work commissioned to Schedoni by the registrar of the town of Fanano, in the province of Modena, but which Duke Ranuccio Farnese had kept for himself.

This group of paintings is the work of artists who were influenced in different ways by the innovations brought by Caravaggio’s art at a crucial time for the development of religious painting in Emilia. Evident echoes of Caravaggio can be seen in the formal composition and use of light in the works produced by Leonello Spada between 1614 and 1618, the year in which the Bolognese painter arrived in Parma, at Ranuccio I’s behest, to decorate the Teatro Farnese with his paintings. The time he spent with the master from Lombardy during his stays in Malta and Rome together with his overbearing personality actually earned him the moniker “Caravaggio’s monkey”. In the painting depicting the Capture of Christ, one of Spada’s best-known works, a cross-sample of young rogues is depicted, either shirtless or clad in chain mail tunics, the bright and varied colours of which emphasise the whiteness of Christ’s torso against his red cloak. In Judith and Holofernes, the white sheets are tinged with blood while the vacant eyes and open-mouthed but silent cry of the general’s face hark back to themes typical of Caravaggio, as do the countenances, which, in the case of the old maid, almost verge on caricature. Particularly theatrical is the backlit setting generated by candlelight in the painting of Judith Cutting Off the Head of Holofernes by Trophime Bigot, a very popular choice of subject in France. Lastly, Saint Agatha, a martyr who lived at the beginning of the third century, is the subject of the painting by Giovanni Lanfranco, here depicted in prison at the moment when an angel illuminates the miraculous figure of St Peter who heals the wound on her breast. This pictorial tale described with an essential and touching narrative language is influenced by the naturalism of the Carracci, which melds here with the sharp lighting effects derived from Caravaggio.

The three Parmesan painters – Giovanni Lanfranco, Sisto Badalocchio and Luigi Amidani – whose training was influenced by the artistic achievements of the Carracci, were linked to the Farnese court. The painting depicting the St. Octavius’s Martyrdom, painted by Lanfranco for the Baptistery of Parma on his return from Rome, shows in the diagonal composition of the saint in armour and in the strong backlit effect, interrupted by sudden flashes, a totally Baroque style, featured also in the Ascent to Calvary. Paradise, a work of great visual impact, boasts a spiral composition reminiscent, also in its colours, of the illusionistic effects of Correggio’s domes. The paintings of Luigi Amidani, whose short career was spent between Emilia and Lombardy, reveal an artist inspired by the works of Schedoni, but with his own expressive language, featuring soft light transitions, less vivid colours and more rounded drapery. The works of Sisto Badalocchio, an artist from Parma, are the fruit of a progressive overlapping of models taken from Correggio, Carracci and Schedoni: in St Francis of Assisi receives the stigmata, the sober and intensely expressive approach contrasts with the sudden light of the miraculous event, the figures of the putti and the peaceful bucolic landscape in the distance. The Madonna and Child with St Euphemia and Dominican Saints and the Madonna and Child with St Matthias and St Francis, on the other hand, echo the more modern style of Lanfranco and Bartolomeo Schedoni, particularly in the vivid colours and transparent shadows, while the later Deposition shows the dramatic contrast of light and shadow typical of Caravaggio. The strong relations between Parma and Lombardy typical of this period are borne out by the Marriage of the Virgin by Giulio Procaccini for the Basilica della Steccata, with its striking contrast between the silvery light illuminating the figures and the darkness of the Temple.