Florentine painter of biblical and mythological subjects heavy with female nudes, and of single half-length nudes in oppressive bluish tones with strong sfumato. In the 1630s he became a priest and devoted himself to religious works in the manner of Guido Reni.
A cultivated artist, enamoured of theatre and literature, Francesco Furini was the inventor in Florence of a fluid, blurry style, and its principal practitioner, creating a true school of painting that endured to the end of the century in Florence.
The picture shows the general view looking towards the north and west walls in the Sala Terreno (called the Room of Giovanni da San Giovanni) in the summer quarters of Ferdinando II de’ Medici on the ground floor in the Palazzo Pitti.
The Palazzo Pitti in Florence, purchased from the Pitti family by the wife of Duke CosimoI de’ Medici in 1549 and renovated and expanded by Bartolommeo Ammanati, served as a residence of royal proportions for roughly 350 years. It was occupied by the dynasties of the Medici, the Habsburgs, and finally the Savoyards, and subjected to constant adaptations and alterations. Intensive use by ruling families resulted in the lavish decoration of all floors. Fresco painters from three centuries contributed to the fixed decor of the public rooms and living quarters. Of its numerous apartments two suites of rooms stand out because of their decoration, function and size. These took their present form under Grand Duke Ferdinando II de’ Medici (1610-1670), and for the most part they were spared later encroachments owing to their high-quality frescoes. These are the reception rooms in the left (north) wing used by Ferdinando II. The rooms on the cooler ground floor, directly connected with the Boboli Gardens by way of a loggia and a terrace, served him as a summer apartment (Appartamento d’Estate); his winter quarters (Appartamento d’Inverno), reached by way of a large staircase and capable of being heated, lie directly above these on the piano nobile.
Several different painters worked on the decoration of the large hall on the ground floor (Salone Terreno). Its virtuoso wealth of forms, the scenographic bravura of its architectural painting, and its strikingly original programmatic concept, makes the room an outstanding example of seventeenth-century Florentine painting, standing as it does between tradition and modernism. The east wall of the Salone and the ceiling was painted by Giovanni da San Giovanni in 1635-36, the south wall by Cecco Bravo in 1638, the west wall by Ottavio Vannini in 1639-41, and the north wall by Francesco Furini in 1640-42.
The wall paintings deal with Lorenzo de’ Medici and the return of the Golden Age under his rule.
Furini was much appreciated for his poetic application of Leonardo’s sfumato to the representation of shapely nudes. The episode, a tragic one, is related in classical fashion: Hylas was Hercules’s beloved armor-bearer on the adventure of the Golden Fleece. Attracted by his beauty, a water nymph pulled him under the waves and he was seen no more.
This work is unanimously considered by critics as a masterpiece of Furini’s early maturity. His skillful composition, with its sensual weave of bodies that seem to twist rhythmically in a dance, depicts the moment in which two nymphs wind themselves around the young Hylas’s neck, while the group of nymphs on the right shows expressions of disappointment. The charming nocturnal setting, under a threatening lapis-lazuli sky with skilfully created lighting effects that mould the sinuous naked bodies, all accentuate the drama of the scene.
Furini, a central figure of Florentine seventeenth-century painting and a student of Passignano and of Bilivert, was in Rome in 1619. There he absorbed the foundations of the Caravaggesque style through his exposure to Manfredi. Next he went to Venice, where he developed a complex and individualistic baroque style; precious and hazily atmospheric.
The dependence of the figure of Judith on a statue of Giambologna (the Mars now at the Berlin State Museum) has been noted: the same artistic reference appears in other works of the painter. The Judith and Holofernes is identifiable as the same one that Baldinucci described in the Vitelli collection, a painting commissioned directly from Furini by his “illustrious benefactor” and which later passed into the Salviati collection. Dating to about 1636, the work belongs to the period of the painter’s maturity. The figure of Judith can be connected to another painting of Furini’s with a similar subject (Florence, private collection) which belongs to an immediately subsequent moment of the artist’s career.
Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 17 minutes):
Alessandro Scarlatti: La Giuditta, oratorio, Part I (excerpts)
Francesco Furini, a Florentine painter who completed the decoration of the Sala degli Argenti in the Palazzo Pitte begun by Giovanni da San Giovanni, was famous for his nudes.
The allegorical figures of Painting and Poetry represent the famous theme explored by Horace in Ars Poetica. The concept of UT PICTURA POËSIS (“so in painting as in poetry”) is expressed by Furini in the Sapphic kiss and embrace of the two figures, arranged almost symmetrically, and in the interplay of gestures which visually represent the mutual relationship between the two sister arts. Painting, depicted on the left, holds a palette and brushes in one hand, tools for art as the imitator of nature, and a mask in the other, a reference to the imitation of human actions. Poetry, on the right, holds a quill, while the inkwell sits atop the scroll signed with the motto CONCORDI LVMINE MAIOR. This motto was coined by Furini himself and aims to emphasize the Horatian concept of unity between the two arts, serving as a reminder that both painting and poetry are of greater quality when seen in the same light.
The painting, dated 1626, was commissioned by the prestigious Accademia del Disegno in Florence to mark the celebrations of its patron saint, St Luke, in 1624. The painting met with such appreciation as to earn the painter membership of the institution, and inspired a second version of the subject by Galileo Galilei. Indeed, the work represents a fundamental moment of Furini’s career, highlighting his maturing style in the context of Florentine painting in the early seventeenth century.
The subject of Samson and Delilah, drawn from the Old Testament (Judges 16: 19-20), was frequently treated in seventeenth-century painting. It allowed artists to illustrate the supremacy of passion, and its unfortunate consequences once reason lays dormant.
This painting was initially attributed to Cecco Bravo. There has always been a palpable resemblance between these two anti-classical, avant-garde painters, whose frescoes stand facing one another on opposite walls of the Giovanni da San Giovanni room in Palazzo Pitti.
Furini was a Florentine painter of biblical and mythological subjects heavy with female nudes, and of single half-length nudes in oppressive bluish tones with strong fumato. He completed the decoration of the Sala degli Argenti in the Pitti Palace, begun by Giovanni Manozzi (1592-1636).
In the 1630s he became a priest and devoted himself to religious works in the manner of Guido Reni.
Based in part on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, this masterpiece is one of the works that translated into visual terms Giovan Battista Marino’s poem “L’Adone” (Adonis), and was painted very soon after the poem’s publication in Paris in 1623. Several inspirational sources and quotations can be observed in this canvas, e.g. the Hellenistic Laoco�n group (at the left of the painting) and Raphael’s Entombment (in reverse, at right), Caravaggio’s Entombment.
The picture shows the north wall of the Salone Terreno (Room of Giovanni da San Giovanni) on the ground floor of the Palazzo Pitti. It shows Lorenzo de’ Medici and the Accademia Platonica in Careggi (left) and Allegory of the Death of Il Magnifico (right).
Lorenzo is shown at the Villa Careggi, a view of which is seen in the background, with members of the Platonic Academy founded by Marsilio Ficino. Among them it is possible to identify Poliziano, Landinio, and Pico della Mirandola. They are grouped around a seated figure of Plato. Lorenzo extends his hand to Philosophy, depicted as a female nude seen from the back.
The Allegory was inspired by Ariosto’s Orlando furioso and is associated with Lorenzo’s rise to immortality.
