Giuseppe Crespi

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Giuseppe Maria Crespi
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Giuseppe Maria Crespi
Self-Portrait c.1700
Born(1665-03-14)14 March 1665
Bologna
Died16 July 1747(1747-07-16) (aged 82)
Bologna
NationalityItalian
EducationCarlo Cignani
Known forPainting Genre

Giuseppe Maria Crespi (March 14, 1665 – July 16, 1747), nicknamed Lo Spagnuolo ("The Spaniard"), was an Italian late

genre paintings
.

Giuseppe Crespi, together with

Old Masters
painters of that period.

Biography

Crespi was born in

Medici
. He was nicknamed "the Spanish One" (Lo Spagnuolo) because of his habit of wearing tight clothes characteristic of Spanish fashion of the time.

By age 12 years, he apprenticed with

Carlo Maratti, on a visit to Bologna, is said to have invited Crespi to work in Rome, but Crespi declined. Maratti's friend, the Bolognese Carlo Cignani invited Crespi in 1681–82 to join an Accademia del Nudo for the purpose of studying drawing, and he remained in that studio until 1686, when Cignani relocated to Forlì and his studio was taken over by Canuti's most prominent pupil, Giovanni Antonio Burrini
. From this time hence, Crespi worked independently of other artists.

His main biographer, Giampietro Zanotti, said of Crespi: "(He) never again wanted for money, and he would make the stories and caprices that came into his imagination. Very often also he painted common things, representing the lowest occupations, and people who, born poor, must sustain themselves in serving the requirements of wealthy citizens". Thus it was for Crespi himself, as he began a career servicing wealthy patrons with artwork. He is said to have had a camera optica in his house for painting.[1] By the 1690s he had completed various altarpieces, including a Temptation of Saint Anthony commissioned by Count Carlo Cesare Malvasia, now in San Niccolò degli Albari.

Cupid and Psyche

He journeyed to Venice, but surprisingly, never to Rome. Bearing his large religious canvas of Massacre of the Innocents and a note from Count Vincenzo Rannuzi Cospi as an introduction, Crespi fled in the middle of the night to Florence in 1708, and gained the patronage of the Grand Duke Ferdinand III de' Medici.[2] He had been forced to flee Bologna with the canvas, which while intended for the Duke, had been fancied by a local priest, Don Carlo Silva for himself. The events surrounding this episode became the source of much litigation, in which Crespi, at least for the next five years, found the Duke a firm protector.

An eclectic artist, Crespi was a

quadraturists, though in all likelihood, his style would not have matched the requirements of a medium then often used for grandiloquent scenography. He was not universally appreciated, Lanzi quotes Mengs as lamenting that the Bolognese school should close with the capricious Crespi. Lanzi himself describes Crespi as allowing his "turn for novelty at length to lead his fine genius astray". He found Crespi included caricature in even scriptural or heroic subjects, he cramped his figures, he "fell in to mannerism", and painted with few colors and few brushstrokes, "employed indeed with judgement but too superficial and without strength of body".[3]

The Seven Sacraments

One celebrated series of canvases, the Seven Sacraments, was painted around 1712, and is now in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden. It was originally completed for Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni in Rome, and upon his death passed to the Elector of Saxony. These imposing works are painted with a loose brushstroke, but still maintain a sober piety. Making no use of hieratic symbols such as saints and putti, they utilize commonplace folk to illustrate sacramental activity.

The Seven Sacraments
Baptism
 		Confirmation
 		Confession
 		Communion
 		Ordination
 		Matrimony
 		Extreme Unction

Crespi and the genre style

Searching for Fleas

Crespi is best known today as one of the main proponents of baroque genre painting in Italy. Italians, until the 17th century, had paid little attention to such themes, concentrating mainly on grander images from religion, mythology, and history, as well as portraiture of the mighty. In this they differed from Northern Europeans, specifically Dutch painters, who had a strong tradition in the depiction of everyday activities. There were exceptions: the Bolognese Baroque titan of fresco, Annibale Carracci, had painted pastoral landscapes, and depictions of homely tradespeople such as butchers. Before him,

Giandomenico Tiepolo
to name a few.

He painted many kitchen scenes and other domestic subjects. The painting of

Botticellian
beauty, but a mortal, her lapdog asleep on the bed-sheets.

In another genre scene, Crespi captures the anger of a woman at a man publicly urinating on wall, with a

picaresque
cat also objecting to the man's indiscretion.

  • Searching for Fleas
    Searching for Fleas
  • Kitchenmaid
    Kitchenmaid
  • Dice players
    Dice players
  • The Courted Singer
    The Courted Singer

Later works and pupils

True to his

John Nepomuk confessing the Queen of Swabia, made late in Crespi's life. In this painting, much is said by partially shielded faces. His Resurrection of Christ is a dramatic arrangement in dynamic perspectives, somewhat influenced by Annibale Carracci
's altarpiece of the same subject.

While many came to work in the studio, Crespi established after Cignani's departure, few became notable. Antonio Gionima was moderately successful. Others included Giovanni Francesco Braccioli; Giacomo Pavia; Giovanni Morini; Pier Guariente; Felice and his brother Jacopo Giusti;[5] and Cristoforo Terzi.[6] He may also have influenced Giovanni Domenico Ferretti. While the Venetian Giovanni Battista Piazzetta claimed to have studied under Crespi, the documentation for this is nonexistent.

Two of Crespi's sons, Antonio (1712–1781) and Luigi (1708–1779) became painters. According to their account, Crespi may have used a camera obscura to aid in depiction of outdoor scenes in his later years. After his wife's death, he became reclusive, rarely leaving the house except to go to daily mass.

Partial anthology of works

Self-portrait (1725-1730), Pinacoteca di Brera

Notes

  1. ^ Lanzi p. 162.
  2. ^ "Artist Info". www.nga.gov. Retrieved 2017-08-18.
  3. ^ Lanzi p. 162-3.
  4. ^ "Giuseppe Maria Crespi | Italian painter". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2017-08-18.
  5. ^ Guida di Pistoia per gli amanti delle belle arti con notizie, by Francesco Tolomei, 1821, page 177-178.
  6. ^ Hobbes, 1849, p. 68

References

External links

Media related to Paintings by Giuseppe Maria Crespi at Wikimedia Commons

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