STROZZI, Bernardo

The Evangelist Luke recorded that the birth of Christ was announced first to shepherds, who then went to Bethlehem to find the baby, but his Gospel does not state that they worshipped Jesus. This interpretation was introduced by St. Francis of Assisi, who stressed that the glad news was first revealed to the shepherds to signify the importance of the poor in God’s plan; it remained important to the teachings of the Franciscan religious order, founded by St. Francis. Bernardo Strozzi, a member of a reform branch of the Franciscans, suggests these shepherds’ poverty through their appearance and their humble gift. This combination of a naturalistic treatment of the subject with an artistic mixing of bright colours is characteristic of painting in Genoa at this time. The clarity of the composition is in keeping with the Church’s Counter-Reformation demands that artists should be more concerned with conveying an effective message than displaying their own artistry.

The painting depicts three women as an allegory of the liberal arts, Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. The marble bust of Homer in the foreground represents Poetry.

The mythological story of the contest between the goddess Athena (Minerva to the Romans) and the mortal woman Arachne was perhaps told best by the Roman poet Ovid in his Metamorphoses (Book VI). According to Ovid, Arachne lived in the country of Lydia (which had a legendary reputation for producing some of the most splendid textiles in the ancient world), where she matured into one of the finest weavers ever known. Arachne was in fact so adept at weaving that she became arrogant, and claimed that her ability rivaled that of the goddess Athena. A contest was arranged, and having been bested by the mortal Arachne, the infuriated goddess cursed the girl, turning her into a spider in punishment for her effrontery.

Strozzi’s depiction of Arachne is part of a group of bust length depictions of female allegorical and historical figures and of saints that he began to create early on, perhaps in response to the visit to Genoa of Simon Vouet in 1620-22. Whatever their inspiration, Strozzi produced these beautiful “portraits” throughout his career, adapting his depictions to the theme at hand - refined and ethereal for his saints; sensual and seductive for his profane subjects.

Bernardo Strozzi the last of the three painters who revitalized Venetian painting at the beginning of the 17th century, came to Venice from Genoa in 1631. In his works the artistic language of Fetti and Liss is developed in a more decorative style influenced by Veronese, with a robust exuberance of colour reminiscent of Rubens. Strozzi’s admiration for Veronese even before leaving Genoa is evident in Banquet at the house of Simon, clearly inspired by the works of the great painter, even if the exuberant style is now clearly Baroque.

This is a late work that may have hung in the chapel of Palazzo Gorleri at Diano, Genoa. It combines the careful distribution of figures with attention to the functional details of the narrative. The architectural setting may hint at Veronese’s banquet scenes.

The banquet table is set diagonally in the wide niche. There are two focal points to the composition: Christ defending Mary Magdalene and Simon leaning incredulously over the table. A dense, rich colour, vibrant with atmospheric luminosity renders the figures physically and spiritually alive. The close observation of detail has a post-Caravaggio realism in the brilliant depiction of the servant interrupting the scuffle between a dog and a cat, or of the page bearing a tray of fruit, silhouetted against the sky.

Strozzi’s painting shows David’s triumphant homecoming. He carries Goliath’s head and a sword. Women dance in the background.

The viola da gamba is one of a family of bowed, fretted stringed musical instruments developed in the 1400s and used primarily in the Renaissance and Baroque periods.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 19 minutes):

Francesco Maria Veracini: Suite in F Major

Joseph was the elder son of the Hebrew patriarch Jacob and of Rachel. His numerous older brothers were strictly only half-brothers, being the sons of Leah or of handmaidens. The events of his romantic life story have been depicted continuously in Christian art from the 6th century onwards. The medieval Church saw the episodes of his life as a prefiguration of the life of Christ, and it is to this that he owes his important place in Christian art.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 5 minutes):

�tienne Nicolas M�hul: Joseph, aria

The lute is a plucked string instrument with a fretted neck and a deep round back. The origins of the lute are obscure. Various types of lutes were in use in ancient cultures. The most important point of transfer of the lute from Muslim to Christian European culture might have been in Sicily, where it was brought either by Byzantine or later by Saracen musicians. Over the course of the Baroque era the lute was increasingly relegated to the continuo accompaniment, and was eventually superseded in that role by keyboard instruments. The lute fell out of use after 1800.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 2 minutes):

Francesco da Milano: Tre fantasie for lute

This painting demonstrates the Strozzi is an excellent painter of still-life although he rarely dedicated himself to this genre to produce an “autonomous” still-life.

Shortly after completing his apprenticeship, Strozzi entered the capuchin convent of Santa Barbara in Genoa. Although he was to leave the convent later as a lay preacher, his ascetic inner attitude is evident throughout his ceuvre. Here, he portrays an old woman with jaded skin and white hair who is denying herself the dignity of old age. She is having her hair sumptuously styled and ornamented with ribbons and feathers, is wearing a youthful, low-cut dress and admiring herself with pleasure in the mirror.

The theme of this painting has a long tradition: the old woman who has not learned to give her life any other meaning but that of ornament and vanity, and who is unable to see the truth or recognize her true self in the mirror. Strozzi’s formulation, however, is both individual and new. It makes the most of the surface values, deliberately contrasting the wrinkled skin of the old woman with the fresh complexion of her servant and juxtaposing the firm and rounded forms of youth with the withered slackness of old age. He reveals in the mirror that the old woman’s red cheeks are painted with rouge, and he places a blossoming, scented rose in her wrinkled hand. He also shows us the uncriticizing complacency on her face, leaving it up to the spectator to deduce a sense of embarrassment, emptiness, transparent illusion and moral warning.

In addition to sacred works, Bernardo Strozzi painted some spirited portraits. With dense, soft brushwork, and rich colouring, he achieved a vitality that seemed to have been lost with Titian. His work also reflected the influence of Van Dyck, who had worked in Genoa for the local aristocracy.

Cardinal Federico Cornaro was appointed patriarch of Venice in 1631 and remained in office until 1644 when he moved to the papal court in Rome.

The confident pose, authoritative air, the toga with the golden stole of an imperial knight, and the honorific bulls in full view on the table exalt the social status of this Venetian nobleman, probably Giovanni Grimani.

The honorific bulls are in full view on the table.

This portrait belongs to Strozzi’s mature Venetian years. The man portrayed here has yet to be identified and is distinguished solely by the large white octagonal cross on his robe, demonstrating that he is a member of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.

With flushed cheeks, the child lies fast asleep; its tiny fingers seem to be moving as it dreams. Strozzi foregoes distracting, non-essential details, setting his close-up composition in very compact space in the foreground.

Strozzi, a monk of the Capucines Order, was the most significant painter in Genova at the beginning of the 17th century. He was under the influence of Rubens due to Rubens’s paintings to be seen in Genova. In 1631 he moved to Venice where he painted several religious and mythological paintings.

St Cecilia is a Christian saint and virgin martyr believed to have lived in the 2nd or 3rd century. She is the patron saint of music, her attribute being the organ (often the portative type).

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 3 minutes):

Girolamo Frescobaldi: Ricercar No. 8

In this painting we note the artist’s interest in colour, evident even before his move to Venice in 1630. Soft and delicately graduated pastel tones are emphasized by the light against a dark background. Strozzi also uses chiaroscuro in a way which recalls Caravaggesque tenebrism, creating strong contrasts of light and shade in the folds of the dress.

Bernardo Strozzi frequently portrayed St John the Baptist. In most cases the saint is represented full length.

St Maurice is a legendary warrior saint, the commander of the ‘Theban Legion’, Roman troops from Thebes in Egypt, who served at Agaunum in Gaul (St-Maurice en Valais) in the 3rd century. He is dressed in medieval armour. The story, whose authenticity is debated, relates that the soldiers, at the instigation of Maurice, refused to participate in certain pagan rites. They were punished by the Emperor Maximian Herculeus first by decimation and finally by the wholesale massacre of the legion. Maurice and his fellow officers were executed in A.D. 287.

According to another interpretation, the warrior saint is identified as St Secundus.

Strozzi treated this subject in similar format on several occasions. In this variant he was strongly influenced by the potent art of Rubens, who sojourned in Genoa between 1605 and 1606, painting portraits whose rigorous dynamism made a considerable impact on Genoese art.

This painting is a representative example of the picturesqueness of Bernardo Strozzi’s work with its vivid chromatic effects developed from examples of Rubens’s school.

In Venice, Bernardo Strozzi built a superb reputation for himself as a portrait painter with a profound capacity for physical and psychological characterization and as a painter of religious subjects. An excellent example of his interpretation of a religious theme is St Sebastian Cared for by the Pious Women. It was painted for the church of San Benedetto; its exaggeratedly refined monumental construction is relaxed by the dynamic Baroque rhythm and atmospheric luminosity of the melodramatic evocation of the face of the saint and the still-life vignettes.

This still-life composition shows a basket of fruit, a vase of flowers and fruit on a ledge.

This painting, representing pink and white peonies in a glass vase and peaches, white roses and fruits on a ledge, is one of the few still-lifes by Strozzi that is accepted as fully autograph by all scholars. The design is simple and deliberately unfussy, with most of the objects on a similar pictorial plane. Both the gentle light entering the scene from the left and the cream background pay homage to Caravaggio’s Basket of Fruit in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan.

At the age of seventeen the Genoese Bernardo Strozzi became a Capuchin monk (hence his nicknames of “Il Capucino” or “Il Prete Genovese”), but in 1610 he left his convent in order to tto support his mother and sister by his work as a painter. When the former died and the latter married he was recalled by his order but disobeyed and, to escape imprisonment, fled to Venice where he spent the rest of his life. Influenced to some extent by the painters of Venice but mainly by Caravaggio and Rubens, Strozzi was a versatile and extraordinarily prolific artist, whose work comprises nearly every kind of painting - frescoes, altarpieces, genre scenes and portraits. His approach was natural and robust, his forms vigorous and his colours warm, even fiery. The Annunciation was painted during his late Venetian period.

St Lawrence was a Christian martyr of Spanish birth who died in Rome in 258, one of the most venerated saints since the 4th century. He was ordained deacon by Pope Sixtus II and met his death shortly after the pope’s own martyrdom. Tradition has it that the pope, when arrested, instructed Lawrence to give away to the poor the church’s treasures, consisting of precious vessels and money, for which, as deacon, he was responsible. No sooner had he done so than Lawrence was ordered by the Roman prefect to surrender them to him, whereupon Lawrence, indicating the poor and sick around him, said, ‘Here are the treasures of the Church’. For this he was condemned to be roasted on a gridiron, a torture he underwent with equanimity, merely observing, ‘See, I am done enough on one side, now turn me over and cook the other’.

This is one of the earliest and best versions of a painting by Strozzi that enjoyed great popularity and that was repeated many times by the artist. In this series of similar versions the Rome painting was probably preceded only by a canvas in the Royal Palace in Genoa, which has a reversed composition. The proposed dating of the picture is 1615-20, before the creation of most of the other replicas and before the creation of a later, completely different version of the same subject that belongs to the artist’s Venetian sojourn (c. 1630-1644). This dating places the canvas in a period when Strozzi was adopting a new naturalism after coming into contact with Caravaggio’s works in Genoa. At the same time, however, he did not abandon the lessons learned from the Tuscans, above all from Matteo Rosselli. The Caravaggesque influences are evident here in the accentuated definition of the light-dark contrasts and in the composition of a scene with four half-figures.

Stylistically close to the Calling of St Matthew now in Worcester, this painting is considered the chief masterpiece of Strozzi’s early career.

After moving to Venice, Strozzi was also successful in his later career when he produced large-scale paintings and altarpieces. This filled a gap that had opened in the local school. Strozzi’s early fleshy and thick style was still present in his Venetian canvases with their clear references to Rubens. By this time, however, the opportunity of seeing the work of Titian and other great sixteenth-century Venetian masters had made Strozzi’s work more spectacular.

This painting is a later version of the subject that was repeated many times by the artist. Strozzi tackles an audacious lowered perspective, finding a satisfying point of equilibrium in the chromatic contrast of the beggars’ coarse nakedness, indicative of their poverty, and the Dalmatian red of the young dean. The latter’s grace and gentleness are the counterpoint to the supplicants’ gesticulation.

The scene as a whole can be considered a masterpiece of Italian genre painting. We should not overlook the lively and sharp presence of the cook herself.

Gathered around Tobit are the key figures of the Old Testament account of his life: his wife, Anna, their son Tobias, the loyal dog that accompanied Tobias and the angel on their dangerous journey, and the fish that nearly killed Tobias before he caught it and removed its organs to make a medicine to restore his father’s eyesight. For Strozzi the main means of expression is colour, so bright and rich compared to his other paintings that it seems an eloquent metaphor for the end to the old man’s blindness.

This painting, a biblical story depicted as a genre scene, is one of the several versions of this subject painted by Bernardo Strozzi.

The output of Bernardo Strozzi’s Genoese activity can be divided into two parts, the paintings and frescoes for the aristocracy and the altarpieces and other religious compositions for the Capuchin Order.

St Diego of Alcal� (St Didacus of Alcal�) was a lay brother of the Order of Friars Minor who died in 1463 at Alcal� de Henares, Spain. He was canonized by Pope Sixtus V in 1588.

This composition is from the Venetian years of the artist, and it is known in more autograph versions (Uffizi, Florence, Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm).