FIAMMINGO, Paolo - b. ~1540 Antwerpen, d. 1596 Venezia - WGA

FIAMMINGO, Paolo

(b. ~1540 Antwerpen, d. 1596 Venezia)

Paolo Fiammingo (Pauwels Franck), Flemish painter and draughtsman, active in Italy. He was registered in the Antwerp Guild of St Luke in 1561. By 1573 he was in Venice and an assistant in Tintoretto’s workshop, where he specialized in landscape backgrounds (e.g. the paintings, 1579-80, for the church of San Rocco). From 1580 Paolo produced several series of paintings for the German banker and patron Hans Fugger (e.g. the Nine Planets, 1592; Munich, Alte Pinakothek). Paolo remained based in Venice, where he eventually opened a successful studio. As was customary, he made preparatory drawings for his landscape and figure compositions, sometimes pasting two together to change a design (e.g. the Temptation of Christ, c. 1596; New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery).

Although he painted many religious pictures, his reputation was based on a particular type of mythological fantasy derived from the example of Giorgione. He gave a Venetian softness and grace to the theme of Classical demigods in a landscape, and his dreamlike landscapes anticipate the Italianate Flemish school later associated with Paul Bril and Jan Brueghel the Elder, for example the late Landscape with Mythological Figure (1592-96; London, National Gallery) or Acqua (1580; known from two copies, both Rome, Museo Capitolino). The latter is one of the Four Triumphs of the Elements (Valencia, Colegio del Patriarca) commissioned by Fugger. Paolo’s masterpieces in this field are the four stunning Allegories of Love (c. 1585; all Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum), comprising Amore letheo, the Punishment of Love, Reciprocated Love and Love in the Golden Age, the latter two of which became rapidly known through prints by Agostino Carracci.

Apollo and Poseidon Punishing Troy

This recently discovered painting (on loan to the Sz�pm�v�szeti M�zeum, Budapest from a private collection) is the only known sixteenth-century representation of the theme. The story is related by both Homer (in the Iliad) and Ovid (in the Metamorphoses).

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Doge Ziani Receiving the Benediction of Pope Alexander III

In this canvas on the wall of the Sala del Maggior Consiglio Fiammingo appears to be adapting himself willingly to the uniformity of Tintoretto’s influence, from whose formulas he was able, like many others, to extract those elements which almost automatically amplified the rhetorical discourse to be depicted. The responsibility for maintaining a homogeneous idiom on the walls of the Sala del Maggior Consiglio went to Tintoretto, not only on account of the numerous painting with which his workshop was entrusted, but also, indirectly, because he established himself as an example to be followed.

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St Roch in Solitude Comforted by an Angel (detail)

Paolo Fiammingo was one of the many foreigners who arrived in Venice during the second half of the sixteenth century, with a serious reputation as a landscape specialist, a field still perceived as the dominion of the northerners. Around 1580, he had been entrusted with a large area of a canvas by Jacopo Tintoretto in the church of San Rocco. In the St Roch in Solitude Comforted by an Angel, the clearly and tenderly painted background of the hut with its typical sloping roof and the little bridge over the river flowing tranquilly toward the foreground with the highly individualistic portrait of a dog is by the artist from Antwerp.

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