Tag: kingdom of naples

Scipione Pulzone

Scipione Pulzone, “Portrait of Jacopo Boncompagni”, 1574, Oil on Canvas, 121.9 x 99.3 cm, Private Collection

Born in 1544 at the coastal city of Gaeta in the Kingdom of Naples, Scipione Pulzone, also known as Il Gaetano, was a Neapolitan painter of the late Italian Renaissance. He painted many important religious works; however, he excelled in portraiture with exceptionally rendered artistic details. One of the most celebrated artists in Rome, Pulzone was also one of the most original portraitists of the Counter Reformation, that period of Catholic resurgence that was initiated in response to the Protestant Reformation in Europe.

Scipione Pulzone is believed to have been a student of Jacopino del Conte, an Italian Mannerist painter active in both Rome and Florence. His portrait style was influenced by the works of Raphael and the international style of work from the Hapsburg court in Austria, particularly the portraits done by Anthonis Mor. Mor’s formal style of court portraits, with grandiose and self-possessed ostentation, was extremely influential on court painters throughout Europe.

Many of Pulzone’s paintings, particularly his religious scenes, show the strong influence of painter Girolamo Siciolante de Sermoneta’s latter works, which were executed in the reformist naturalist style. Pulzone painted his “Mater Divinae Providentiae”, an image of Mary and the Child Jesus, around 1580. In 1664, the painting became the possession of the Barnabite Fathers who placed the art piece in a small chapel at the rear of Rome’s San Carlo ai Catinari church where it continues to draw many religious followers.

In 1593, Scipione Pulzone finished his 1588 commissioned altarpiece “The Lamentation”  for the Passion chapel on the right side of the Chiesa del Gesù, the mother church of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). Intended to complement the austere interior space of the church, this painting rejected popular stylistic motifs and avoided narrative anecdotal details to create a meditative, devotional icon. Finely rendered details such as the tears of the Virgin, the crown of thorns held by Saint John, and the pallor of Christ’s body are presented to the viewer for contemplation.

Pulzone worked in both the Florentine and Neapolitan courts, as well as, in Rome, where he was commissioned to paint the portraits of two Popes, Pius V and his successor Gregory XIII known for commissioning the Gregorian calendar. While in Rome, Pulzone painted two major works: the 1585 “Our Lady of the Assumption” for Rome’s church of San Silvestro al Quirinale and “Christ on the Cross” for Rome’s Santa Maria in Vallicella. 

Scipione Pulzone died in Rome on the first of February in 1598 at the age of fifty-four. 

Notes: Scipione Pulzone’s “The Lamentation”, originally at the  Chiesa del Gesù, was anonymously gifted to New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1984 (Accession Number 1984.74). It is currently listed as not on view.

At the online Artsy, there is an article on Scipione Pulzone’s 1574 “Portrait of Jacopo Boncompagni”, which includes the history of the painting and Boncompagni’s life, as well as, the two men’s close personal relationship. Pulzone named his first-born son Giacomo (Jacopo is a variant of the classical name Giacomo) and Boncompagni was selected to became Giacomo’s godfather. This article is located at: https://www.artsy.net/artwork/scipione-pulzone-called-il-gaetano-portrait-of-jacopo-boncompagni-three-quarter-length-in-armor

Top Insert Image: Scipione Pulzone, Portrait of Unidentified Noblewomen, circa 1580-1589, Oil on Canvas, 119 x 91.2 cm, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland 

Second Insert Image: Scipione Pulzone, “Self Portrait”, 1564, Oil on Canvas, 43.5 x 34.5 cm, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands

Bottom Insert Image: Scipione Pulzone, “Portrait of Urban Vii”, circa 1590, Oil on Canvas, 131 x 99 cm, Private Collection

Calendar: February 15

Year: Day to Day Men: February 15

The Edge of the Known World

The fifteenth of February in the year 1472 marks the birth date of Piero di Lorenzo de’ Medici, who was the eldest son of Lorenzo de’ Medici and Clarice Orsini, a daughter from the noble Roman house of Orsini. Piero was the lord of Florence from 1492 until his exile in 1494.

Piero di Lorenzo de’ Medici was raised alongside his younger brother Giovanni, who would later be installed as Pope Leo X, and his cousin Giulio who later became Pope Clement VII. As the eldest son, he was educated to succeed his father as the head of the Medici dynasty. Piero studied under classical scholar and poet Angelo Poliziano and Catholic priest Marsillo Ficino, the head of the newly restored Florence Academy. 

Piero de’ Medici was arrogant, disruptive and had an undisciplined character. He was constantly at odds with his older and richer cousins Lorenzo and Giovanni, the two sons of Pierfrancesco de’ Medici. Piero was also a suspect in his teacher Angelo Poliziano’s death by poisoning in September of 1494. .

In 1486, Piero’s uncle Bernardo Rucellai, a member of Florence’s social and political elite, arranged a political marriage between Piero and Tuscan noblewoman Alfonsina Orsini. The marriage took place with Rucellai standing as proxy for the groom; Piero finally met Alfonsina in 1488. Their union produce three children: two daughters Luisa and Clarice, and a son named Lorenzo who later became the Duke of Urbino. Baptism records show that Piero had a third daughter named Maria in February of 1492.

Upon the death of his father Lorenzo de’ Medici in 1492, Piero de’ Medici became the leader of Florence. The peaceful existence between the Italian states, established by his father, collapsed in 1494 with King Charles VIII of France’s decision to assert hereditary claims to the Kingdom of Naples. After settling issues with the city-state of Milan, King Charles VIII sent envoys to Florence to ask for support for his claims. After five days, Piero de’ Medici responded that Florence would remain neutral, an answer that was unacceptable to King Charles who subsequently threatened Florence. 

Piero attempted to form a resistance but received little support from the Florentine elite who had fallen under the influence of the fanatical Dominican priest Girolamo Savonarola. Piero’s own cousins allied themselves with both pledges and funds to King Charles VIII. At the end of October in 1494, Piero, without consulting the governing Signoria of Florence, visited King Charles at his camp and acceded to all of the king’s demands by surrendering the cities of Pisa and Lvorno as well as four fortresses in the area. 

Upon his return to Florence to report his actions to its Signoria, Piero de’ Medici encountered strong public outrage. King Charles VIII, following his conquest of the Kingdom of Naples, made his entrance as ruler into Florence on the seventeenth of November. Because of his isolation and lack of allies, Piero de’ Medici had not sent an army to stop the invasion, thus fuelling the resentment of the Florentine people who finally forced him and his family into exile. Their palazzo was looted, and the Republic of Florence was re-established.

Piero and his family fled to Venice with the aid of French diplomat Philippe de Commines, a servant of King Charles VIII. They supported themselves by the sale of the Medici jewels. Piero tried several times to reinstate himself in Florence but he was rejected. After the French lost the Battle of Garigliano, Piero de’ Medici drowned in the Garigliano River on the twenty-eight of December in 1503 while attempting to flee the battlefield. He was buried in the Abbey of Monte Cassino.

A member of the Medici family would not rule Florence again until 1512, when Giovanni de’ Medici forced the city to surrender. In the next year, he was elected Pope Leo X which solidified the Medici’s power.