Giovanni Battista Agucchi

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Portrait of Agucchi by Annibale Carracci, 1615–1620, York Art Gallery

Giovanni Battista Agucchi (20 November 1570 – 1 January 1632

art theory. He was the nephew and brother of cardinals, and might have been one himself if he had lived longer. He served as secretary to the Papal Secretary of State
, then the Pope himself, on whose death Agucchi was made a titular bishop and appointed as nuncio to Venice.

He was an important figure in Roman art circles when he was in the city, promoting fellow-Bolognese artists, and was close to

Galileo
.

Career

Domenichino, Portrait of Cardinal Girolamo Agucchi, older brother of Giovanni Battista, 1604–05

Agucchi was born into a noble family in Bologna. He began his career in 1580–82 assisting his much older brother Girolamo Agucchi (1555–1605), later briefly a cardinal from 1604 to 1605, who was governor of Faenza in the Papal States, then studied at Bologna and Rome. He was made a canon of Piacenza Cathedral, then from 1591 worked for his uncle Cardinal Filippo Sega, an important diplomat for the Papacy, accompanying him when Sega was papal nuncio (ambassador) to France, then returning with him to Rome in 1594, and continuing in his service until Sega's death in 1596.[1][2]

He then followed his brother Girolamo into the service of Cardinal

Leo XI and his replacement by Pope Paul V in 1605 meant the loss of papal favour for both men, and Agucchi was able to spend most of his time on his personal interests until 1615, when Aldobrandini returned to favour and office.[1][2] He was also a protege of the art-loving Cardinal Odoardo Farnese
, acting as his secretary.

Aldobrandini died in 1621 and Agucchi became secretary (Segretario dei Brevi) to the new

Apostolic nuncio to the Republic of Venice. Venetian politics were at this period highly polarized between pro- and anti-papal factions, and Agucchi's period largely coincided with the unstable reign of Doge Giovanni I Cornaro, (r. 1625–29) whose election Agucchi had striven for, but whose reign was something of a disaster. Agucchi left Venice in 1630 to avoid the plague, and died the following year in the Castello San Salvatore at Susegana, after a period in Oderzo.[1][2]

In the art world

Annibale Carracci, the Cyclops Polyphemus in his frescos for the Palazzo Farnese

Agucchi was a cultivated intellectual, and the friend of many artists, playing a significant role in introducing

Holy Communion to Annibale before his premature death in 1609, and composed his epitaph for the Pantheon.[7]

Grottaferrata Abbey, Cappella dei SS Fondatori) is a portrait of Agucchi.[9]

Cardinals Odoardo Farnese and Pietro Aldobrandini were politically opposed, although less so after a marriage between the two families in 1600,

Sant'Onofrio in Rome, which are still in place. This was in 1604, completed 1605, at the time Domenichino was living with Agucchi.[12]
The church also contains Domenichino's portrait of the Agucchis' uncle, Cardinal Sega, on his memorial.

From Annibale Carracci Cardinal Aldobrandini commissioned a set of decorative frescos with religious subjects in landscapes for his palace in Rome, now containing the Doria Pamphilj Gallery and still in the family, the Domine, quo vadis? in the National Gallery, London, and a Coronation of the Virgin bought by the Metropolitan Museum of Art from the Mahon collection. By 1603 he owned six works by Carracci, including two of the above.[10] The Bolognese artist Guercino only spent the years of Gregory XV's papacy in Rome, where his style changed in the direction of classicism. Denis Mahon suggested that this change was mainly in response to the urgings of Agucchi; like most commentators Mahon thought that the change was on the whole not an improvement.[13] Eva-Bettina Krems suggests that Agucchi is a likely candidate for the connection that introduced the Lombard sculptor Ippolito Buzzi to Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, who provided a steady stream of work to him over several years.[14]

Portrait in York

The fine and intimate portrait in

San Giacomo Maggiore in Bologna, for which there are drawings in the British Royal Collection (Royal Library, MS. 1742).[2]

Writings

Domenichino, St. Cecilia Distributing Alms, fresco, 1612–15, San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome

Agucchi's main published writing is a very incomplete but nonetheless significant Trattato della pittura ("Treatise on painting"), probably written in 1615, whose manuscript is in the library of the University of Bologna (MS. 245), who also have an unpublished Latin biography of his brother Vita Hieronymi Agucchi (MS 75). The Trattato was published posthumously in Rome in 1646, using the pseudonym Gratiadio Machati, which Agucchi had used in his lifetime (a convention for a cleric writing on secular matters). It was included in the preface by G. A. Mosini, the pseudonym of Giovanni Antonio Massani, to a collection of prints after Annibale Carracci called Diverse figure al numero di ottanta ("Eighty different figures"). There is an English translation by Denis Mahon (1947), who did much to stimulate interest in Agucchi as a theorist who had been previously overlooked.[2][17]

The Trattato "is a lively document on official Roman art circles during the years 1607–15 and concentrates specifically on exalting the idea della bellezza, which Agucchi identifies particularly in ancient sculpture."[2] The work shows signs of having been influenced by discussions with Domenichino, reflecting a division of national and regional schools of painting that the latter claimed as his own in a letter, and is essentially that used until the 20th century, distinguishing in Italy the Roman, Venetian, Lombard, and Tuscan (Florentine and Sienese) schools. It has been suggested that the Trattato may have been in effect a collaboration, with the polished prose of Agucchi writing up Domenichino's thoughts, although this is mostly thought not to be the case.[18]

Agucchi drew from

naturalism of Caravaggio and his followers was also deplored.[20]

The period was generally lacking in writing on art theory, apart from the series of lectures for the Accademia di San Luca by Federico Zuccari, its first president. These were published as L'idea de' Pittori, Scultori, ed Architetti (1607), and have been called "the swan song of the subjective mysticism of Mannerist theory". The lectures themselves were abandoned when the first were received with hostility by the Bolognese and Caravaggisti alike. The Idea may have provoked Agucchi into beginning his own work. Despite its delayed and obscure publication, Agucchi's ideas represent the earliest exposition of "the classical-idealist theory" that was to be dominant in most of the Roman art world in the 17th century.[21]

The younger

antiquary Francesco Angeloni, was a close friend who had also worked for the Aldobrandini, in his case Pope Clement VIII, and owned at least a copy of the York portrait.[22] Angeloni raised his nephew Gian Pietro Bellori (1613–1696), introducing him to Agucchi and the Bolognese artists in Rome. Bellori was to follow many of Agucchi's ideas in his own very influential writings on art.[23]

Silvia Ginzburg has pointed out that an earlier piece by Agucchi, Descrizione della Venere dormiente di Annibale Carrazzi ("Description of Annibale Carracci's Sleeping Venus"), written around 1603 but not published until 1678, shows rather different attitudes to painting, appreciating the rapidity of Carracci's style and his ability to paint without first drawing – neither qualities the Trattato approves of. She suggests that reaction to the style of Caravaggio accounts for the change, which may also be referred to in a letter by Agucchi of 1603.[24]

Agucchi was also interested in

satellites of Jupiter in 1611; Galileo had made the first recorded observations of these in 1609.[25][26]

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d Zapperi
  2. ^ a b c d e f Young
  3. ^ Ginzburg, 5; Young; Zapperi
  4. ^ Ginzburg, 6, 8 n. 30
  5. ^ Young; Zapperi; Wittkower, 38–39
  6. ^ Wittkower, 57, 63 (63–68 on the scheme)
  7. ^ Ginzburg, 8 n. 29
  8. ^ Young; Finaldi and Kitson, 60
  9. ^ Young; Image of the fresco – the monk to the right of the cross seems the most like Domenichino's portrait in York, from some five years later
  10. ^ a b Finaldi and Kitson, 38
  11. ^ Wittkower, 38–39, 80 on Apollo frescos; 39 quoted
  12. ^ Finaldi and Kitson, 60
  13. ^ Finaldi and Kitson, 15–16, 21 n.37, summarizing Seicento studies
  14. ^ Krems
  15. ^ Ginsburg, throughout, p. 10 on it passing to his niece as heir
  16. ^ National Gallery Archived 5 October 2013 at the Wayback Machine, Portrait of Monsignor Agucchi, 1603-4, Annibale Carracci
  17. ^ translation and edition by Denis Mahon in his Studies in Seicento Art and Theory (London, 1947); on Mahon, see Finaldi and Kitson, 15–16, and [1]. There is a long extract, with an introduction here, pp. 24–30
  18. ^ Zirpolo, 47–48; Finaldi and Kitson, 15–16
  19. ^ Zirpolo, 47
  20. ^ Zirpolo, 47–48; Young
  21. ^ Wittkower, 39 (quoted, "swan song" quote is by R. Lee), 266
  22. ^ Fletcher, 666 and note 19; also Ginzburg, 10–11, complicating matters
  23. ^ Young; Zirpolo, 48
  24. ^ Ginzburg, 8–10
  25. ^ Young; Zirpolo, 47
  26. ISBN 978-0-226-27903-9
    .

References

Further reading

  • Mahon, Denis, Studies in Seicento Art and Theory (London, 1947)
  • Land, Norman, "The Anecdotes of G. B. Agucchi and the Limitations of Language," Word & Image 22, 1 (January–March 2006), pp. 77 – 82.
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