Baldassare Franceschini
Baldassare Franceschini (Volterra, 1611 – Florence, January 7, 1690) was an Italian late Baroque painter active mainly around Florence. Franceschini was a better fresco painter than an artist in oils. His works in the latter medium were frequently left unfinished, the cabinet pictures are marked by much invention.
The main source for reconstructing the biography of Volterrano is the life written by Filippo Baldinucci, his direct friend. It is believed to be reliable, despite the writer’s laments at the opening of not having received from the artist, because of his modesty, all the news he needed to draw up a more detailed account. This source adds archive documents mostly tied to payments, available only for some jobs.
He was born in Volterra in 1611 (date given by Baldinucci), son of the local sculptor Gaspare Franceschini, and started his artistic practice from his father, becoming a trainer in Volterra, Florentine Cosimo Daddi.
One of his first buyers was Ludovico Guarnacci, and by Curzio Inghirami, brother of the most powerful Julius, secretary of Christina of Lorraine. Just Julius introduced him to the Florentine environment, and in 1628 he entered a workshop by Matteo Rosselli, one of the most popular artists then active in the city. Because of the pestilence, Franceschini returned to Volterra a year later, where he painted a series of frescoes that are among his first known works: a purification in St. Augustine, an Assumption already in the congregation of the Chaplains of the cathedral and now in the ” Oratorio di Sant’Antonio Abate (1631) and the dream of Elijah in the abbey of San Giusto (1632, but lost the frescoes in the vault and choir). These are works where the influence of Rosselli is read, although some compositional rigidity is still affected by provincialism in its first steps.
Back in Florence, he was five months in Giovanni da San Giovanni’s shop, putting his hand at the altar fresco in the church of San Felice in Piazza, and at the decoration of the Hall of Business in the summer apartments of Palazzo Pitti (today called Sala By Giovanni da San Giovanni in the Silver Museum), where a plum with a feather monochrome in a pot (1635) is given to him. After the death of his maestro (1636), who was the main artist of the Medici court, always for the interest of the landlord Giulio Inghirami, Franceschini is officially presented at court, exposing his work (a lost portable fresco called “basket “, Of which there are a couple of preparatory drawings) at Palazzo Pitti.
The effects of this initiative were not awaited, so that Lorenzo de ‘Medici was entrusted with the important task of frescoing in the Villa La Petraia a cycle of frescoes in the courtyard loggia on the theme of the Medici Fasti, elaborated by Some literate including Ludovico Incontri. To this important undertaking Volterrano worked for almost ten years, from the end of 1636 to 1647, with a long break between 1639 and 1641 to visit, at the expense of Don Lorenzo, Northern Italy and to know the most advanced pictorial achievements Of those areas. It was then in Bologna, Ferrara, Venice, Parma and again in Mantua, Modena and Novellara (where he worked for Alfonso Gonzaga), and probably also in Rome.
On its return, the style of the frescoes, interrupted in half, marked a decisive evolution: the style still based on the precise design, borrowed from Rosselli and Giovanni da San Giovanni, went to more fluid forms and more sunny colors, derived from the influences of Paul Veronese, Pietro da Cortona and above all, Correggio. On November 14, 1646, the last payment for the Petraia cycle was recorded, for a total compensation of 1,304 ducats, above the average of the time, as a testimony to his artistic maturity, highly appreciated by the client.
Taking advantage of winter breaks, the artist had also made significant works in Florence, such as a fresco with St. Michael the Archangel Lucifer hunt and other devils in the company of the wreckage of the church of San Michele in Castello (1637), Watch and Sleep in Castello Medici Villa (1641-42, both commissioned by Don Lorenzo himself), one in the oratory of the Vanchetoni (1639-40) and the frescoes of the Orlandini-Concini Chapel in Santa Maria Maggiore (1642), which Mina Gregori pointed out as before Unmistakably “baroque” public opera in Florence. This cycle was then added to that of Gloria di Santa Cecilia in the chapel Grazzi of the basilica of Santissima Annunziata (1643-44), his first work in the complex served. In these trials the artist has already demonstrated a full maturity and a style designed to become his most appreciated factory trademark, with an enlargement of the Tuscan lesson to more free and baroque forms.
Born among the most appreciated artists of the time, he painted in the fifties many religious works, easel and some frescoes in the palaces of Florentine nobility, such as the palace of Gherardesca (for Guido della Gherardesca), the palace of Valfonda (for Cosimo Riccardi), Palazzo Niccolini (for Filippo Niccolini), San Clemente Palace (for Tommaso Guadagni and his children), Taddei Palace (for Vincenzo Giraldi), the Medici Villa of Castello (for Cardinal Giovan Carlo de ‘Medici, Staggered works and today in the Bardini Museum in Florence). The cardinal also painted a famous portrait, of which there are still some replicas, and some celebrated works such as the Luteist Staffer with the young Giovannino (1662) and Burla del Pievano Arlotto to the diners (1643-44), which was part of a Lost series.
Also important was the cycle in the Cappella Colloredo in Annunziata, where he decorated the vault and the plumes (1650-52), obtaining a nearly doubled compensation during the final estimate (from 240 to 400 ducats).
In 1651 Marquis Niccolini, in anticipation of the decoration of his chapel in Santa Croce, funded a new series of training trips: in August 1651 in Emilia (Bologna, Modena, Sassuolo and Parma) and in February-April 1653 in Rome , Where he also frescoed a room of the Buffalo palace at the Fratte. If Niccolini’s palace frescoes notice a certain Emilian ascension, it is only after the Roman journey that the artist puts hand, with a renewed fastness (derived from Lanfranco, Pietro da Cortona and Gian Lorenzo Bernini), to the chapel Niccolini, completed in 1658-59, with the peducci finished in 1661. The artist, who collected almost 1400 shields for the company.
In 1652 he was enrolled at the Academy of Arts in the design and became an academic in 1654. He lived in the house in via Capponi, which was by Andrea del Sarto and Federico Zuccari.
For old patrons Inghirami also painted in those years a shovel with the Madonna and saints (1659) for the bride Marzia Inghirami of Santa Chiara, now in the Civic Picture Gallery.
In 1664 Abbot Luigi Strozzi, the Florentine emissary of the powerful minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert, commissioned him an important work to be donated to the king of France: the glory of Louis XIV triumphing on Time (now at the Palace of Versailles) Who could have opened the door to an international career at the court of King Sun, very attentive to the novelties coming from Italy.
Inspired by the patterns of recent frescoes by Pietro da Cortona to Palazzo Pitti (especially those of the vault of the Room of Saturn, 1663-1665), the work did not recover the hoped-for success. He soon forgot the craftsman, so much so that he was long attributed to Ciro Ferri.
Active up to a few years before his death, Volterrano was always very much sought after in Florence and Tuscany, touching various genres, from allegorical and mythological painting to devotional works, from the parietal decoration wing portrait. The sixties, seventies and eighties are rich in commissions, although the initial freedom and youthfulness of the party is now becoming more consolidated, sometimes burdened by Baroque rhetoric. Nevertheless, the compositional preference for ascending lines and for the “underneath” vision has been mentioned, which has sometimes earned him the title of “Correggio toscano”.
Among its buyers are the names of the Volterra and Florentine nobility, such as the Incontri (Elemosina of St. Louis of the French in the church of Sant’Egidio), the Marquis Gerini (Go to Calvary and Rest during the escape in Egypt), Cardinals Charles (Sacred Family, Lost) and Leopoldo de ‘Medici (Assumption in Santissima Annunziata, 1671, and Pala di San Filippo Benizi), Prince Mattias (a Lost Victory and Fame in the Medici Lappeggi Villa), to Grand Duke Cosimo III Madonna in glory in the church of Santa Lucia alla Castellina, 1682). Out of Florence, he sent work to Pescia (San Carlo Borromeo who communicates the parades) and to Pisa (pala of the main altar of the church of the Carthusian Pisa, 1681).
At the beginning of the eighties began his last and most demanding work for the basilica of the Most Holy Annunziata, the fresco decoration of the great vault of the grandstand with the glory of the Virgin. Commissioned by Cosimo III already in 1676, it was realized with the help of the student Cosimo Ulivelli between September 1680 and August 1683.
As a portraitist, he performed, among the most important personalities, the young Cosimo III, still prince, Pope Alexander VII and his friend Filippo Baldinucci.
He was also consultant to the writer Giovanni Cinelli, restorer for the great Prince Ferdinando, guilty of Archduke Charles Ferdinand of Austria, with whom he visited northern Italy between 1662 and 1663.
In the years later, despite his seniority and apoptosis, he still managed to perform extreme works, such as the fresco in the Medicea villa of the Poggio Imperiale (Ascension of Santa Maria Maddalena, now detached and in the buildings of Pitti Palace) and those in the Hall of Allegories, both for Vittoria Della Rovere.
He died on January 7, 1690 (common style, 1689 according to Florentine use) and was buried in the company of San Benedetto Bianco, at the San Salvatore church in Camaldoli.