Too Many Levels of Reality: An Almost Abandoned Idea in Pietro da Cortona's Barberini Ceiling

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size SummaryThe great ceiling fresco by Pietro da Cortona in Palazzo Barberini in Rome was painted, 1632–1639, in the age of quadratura ceilings filled with perspectives of soaring false architecture. Pietro da Cortona consciously evaded these extremes, painting a fully realistic architectural framework. Through painting the architectural elements instead of having them made in stucco, he could play freely with figures passing in front of them and thus acquire highly illusionistic effects. The article points to a hitherto uncommented detail where the artist seems to have played with yet another level of reality. This deeper level would, however, have undermined the entire iconographic programme, and the suggestion is made that it was an idea originally intended for an earlier version of the ceiling.Christian LovénThe Swedish National Archives,Box 12541,SE-102 29 StockholmSwedenE-mail: christianloven@hotmail.comNotes1. Photographs by permission from Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit á Culturali, 2010.Hans Posse, »Das Deckenfresco der Pietro da Cortona in Palazzo Barberini [The ceiling fresco by Pietro da Cortona in Palazzo Barberini in Rome]« Jahrbuch der Preuszischen Kunstsammlungen, Vol 40, 1919, pp. 93–118, 126–173; Walter Vitzthum, »A Comment on the Iconography of Pietro da Cortona's Barberini Ceiling«, The Burlington Magazine, Vol 103, No 703, 1961, pp. 426–433; Jörg Martin Merz, Pietro da Cortona. Der Aufstieg zum führenden Maler im barocken Rom [Pietro da Cortona. The rise to leading painter in Baroque Rome] Tübingen, 1991, pp. 234–274.2. This article relies heavily on Ingrid Sjöström, Quadratura. Studies in Italian ceiling painting (Stockholm Studies in the History of Art 30), Stockholm 1978.3. Sjöström, 1978, pp. 82–83.4. Cf. Sjöström, 1978, p. 56.5. Sjöström, 1978, pp. 84–86.6. Section drawing in John Beldon Scott, »The Art of the Painter's Scaffold. Pietro da Cortona in the Barberini Salone«, The Burlington Magazine, Vol 135, No 1082, 1993, fig. 22.7. Merz, 1991, fig. 378 attempts to reconstruct the original layout; cf. Posse, 1919, pp. 168–169.8. Anna Lo Bianco, »I disegni preparatory [The preparatory sketches]«, Quaderni di Palazzo Venezia, 2, Il voltone di Pietro da Cortona in Palazzo Barberini [The vault by Pietro da Cortona in Palazzo Barberini] Roma, 1983, pp. 83–84.9. The relations between the actual surface and the illusionistic painting have been treated by a number of scholars, for instance Sven Sandström, Levels of unreality. Studies in structure and construction in Italian mural painting during the Renaissance (Figura. Nova series 4), Uppsala, 1963.10. Johannes Volkelt, »Illusion und ästhetische Wirklichkeit [Illusion and æsthetic reality]«, Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, Vol 13, 1919, p. 348.11. Angeka Ndalianis, »Architectures of the Senses. Neo-Baroque Entertainment Spectacles«, Rethinking Media Change. The Aesthetics of Transition, ed. David Thorburn and Henry Jenkins, Boston 2004 (2003), p. 360.12. Sandström, 1963, passim; for an example of ambiguity, see, pp. 71–74.13. Cf. Sjöström, 1978, p. 34 and fig. 6.14. Frederick Hartt, »Gonzaga Symbols in the Palazzo del Te«, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 13, No. 3–4, 1950, pp. 182–186; Posse, 1919, p. 163.15. Bruno Zanardi, »Il restauro e le techniche di esecuzione originali [The restoration and the original techniques of execution]«, Quaderni di Palazzo Venezia, 2, Il voltone di Pietro da Cortona in Palazzo Barberini, Roma, 1983, pp. 24–25; Beldon Scott, 1993, pp. 327–337.16. Beldon Scott, 1993, pp. 334–336.17. Sandström, 1963, pp. 49–51.