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Lot Essay
Federico Barocci was an important painter and draughtsman of the second half of the 16th and the early 17th century, and although his oeuvre as an etcher consists of only four prints, he also left a significant mark on the history of printmaking in Italy. One of the rising talents of Italian Mannerism, he went to Rome twice during the 1550-1560s, but eventually settled in his hometown of Urbino, where he spent the rest of his life, battling with chronic illness. Under the reign and patronage of the Montefeltro and della Rovere dukes, Urbino became one of the most enlightened courts of the Renaissance, attracting and employing some of the most celebrated artists, writers, thinkers and scientists of their time, and provided a fertile artistic and commercial environment for the artist.
The city itself and the surrounding countryside features prominently in many of Barocci’s compositions.
In the present etching, one can glimpse in the background ‘the spire of the fourteenth-century Church of San Francesco, in the North-East district of the city of Urbino’ (Baroni, 2020). The artist would eventually be buried in this church at the corner of today's Piazza della Repubblica, and this is where his altarpiece of the Perdono di Assisi can still be found. The composition is based on his painting of the same subject, now in the Museo e Pinacoteca Civica A. Vernarecci in Fossombrone. The space is divided into three pictorial planes: the foreground with the figure of the Saint; in the middleground Brother Leo is shown turned away from the miraculous event, with his back towards the viewer; the city and the mountains are seen in the background. By re-locating the event, which took place at La Verna in Tuscany, to the environs of Urbino, the artist presumably sought to make it more relatable for his local audience.
Saint Francis receiving the Stigmata is only the second etching he ever made, but already shows his innovative technical approach. The print is his first experiment with the stopping-out method, used to vary and calibrate the depth of the lines. The prominent foreground is deeply etched, while the middle- and background is 'stopped out' to varying degrees: after a short period in the acid-bath, Barocci covered these areas with etch-ground to reduce the exposure of the plate to the acid, thereby creating lighter, shallower lines to suggest depth and distance. This handling of the plate allowed him to achieve an 'atmospheric' rather than a purely linear perspective, an effect that by Barocci's time was commonly taught and practiced in painting, but difficult to achieve in the print medium. He developed the technique further in subsequent two etchings, the Perdono (B. 4) and the Annunciation to the Virgin (B.1).
Half a century later, we find strong echos of Barocci's prints in Rembrandt's work, in particular in his Saint Francis beneath a Tree praying (NH 299), but also in the Virgin and Child in the Clouds (NH 188), which clearly relates to Barocci's etching of the same subject (B. 2).
L. Baroni, L. Toccacieli, Federico Barocci – La Stampa dell’Annunciazione - Due letture a confronto, Milano, 2020, p. 65-73.
The city itself and the surrounding countryside features prominently in many of Barocci’s compositions.
In the present etching, one can glimpse in the background ‘the spire of the fourteenth-century Church of San Francesco, in the North-East district of the city of Urbino’ (Baroni, 2020). The artist would eventually be buried in this church at the corner of today's Piazza della Repubblica, and this is where his altarpiece of the Perdono di Assisi can still be found. The composition is based on his painting of the same subject, now in the Museo e Pinacoteca Civica A. Vernarecci in Fossombrone. The space is divided into three pictorial planes: the foreground with the figure of the Saint; in the middleground Brother Leo is shown turned away from the miraculous event, with his back towards the viewer; the city and the mountains are seen in the background. By re-locating the event, which took place at La Verna in Tuscany, to the environs of Urbino, the artist presumably sought to make it more relatable for his local audience.
Saint Francis receiving the Stigmata is only the second etching he ever made, but already shows his innovative technical approach. The print is his first experiment with the stopping-out method, used to vary and calibrate the depth of the lines. The prominent foreground is deeply etched, while the middle- and background is 'stopped out' to varying degrees: after a short period in the acid-bath, Barocci covered these areas with etch-ground to reduce the exposure of the plate to the acid, thereby creating lighter, shallower lines to suggest depth and distance. This handling of the plate allowed him to achieve an 'atmospheric' rather than a purely linear perspective, an effect that by Barocci's time was commonly taught and practiced in painting, but difficult to achieve in the print medium. He developed the technique further in subsequent two etchings, the Perdono (B. 4) and the Annunciation to the Virgin (B.1).
Half a century later, we find strong echos of Barocci's prints in Rembrandt's work, in particular in his Saint Francis beneath a Tree praying (NH 299), but also in the Virgin and Child in the Clouds (NH 188), which clearly relates to Barocci's etching of the same subject (B. 2).
L. Baroni, L. Toccacieli, Federico Barocci – La Stampa dell’Annunciazione - Due letture a confronto, Milano, 2020, p. 65-73.