Capriccio with The Colosseum, The Arch of Constantine, and The Tower of Maecenas
ca. 1640s
58" x 76" Framed: 65.5" x 84"
Painting, oil on canvas
58" x 76" Framed: 65.5" x 84"
Painting, oil on canvas
Gagliardi was a master of the capriccio, an architectural fantasy in which well-known ruins and other renowned architectural sites and features are combined to depict a fictional location.
This piece is an important execution of two-point perspective, first developed in painting in the 15th century.
In this architectural capriccio Gagliardi shows the Colosseum, the Arch of Constantine, and the Arch of Titus in their correct geographical relationships, as well as an unfamiliar and fantastic multi-layered building on the right, which can be identified as the Tower of Maecenas.
The Tower, as documented by Suetonius in the Lives of Caesars, was the site from which Nero watched the burning of Rome. This unusual building was the subject of an engraving by Giacomo Lauro as published in Antiquae Urbis Splendor, 1612. Gagliardi apparently relied on a different source for his building ,which is more conceptual and less detailed than Lauro's version, nevertheless providing an unusual view into Roman history and architecture.
David Marshall tentatively dates this painting to the 1640s, when Gagliardi's work was close in style to Viviano Codazzi.
This piece is an important execution of two-point perspective, first developed in painting in the 15th century.
In this architectural capriccio Gagliardi shows the Colosseum, the Arch of Constantine, and the Arch of Titus in their correct geographical relationships, as well as an unfamiliar and fantastic multi-layered building on the right, which can be identified as the Tower of Maecenas.
The Tower, as documented by Suetonius in the Lives of Caesars, was the site from which Nero watched the burning of Rome. This unusual building was the subject of an engraving by Giacomo Lauro as published in Antiquae Urbis Splendor, 1612. Gagliardi apparently relied on a different source for his building ,which is more conceptual and less detailed than Lauro's version, nevertheless providing an unusual view into Roman history and architecture.
David Marshall tentatively dates this painting to the 1640s, when Gagliardi's work was close in style to Viviano Codazzi.
About the Artist
(1606 - 1659)
Filippo Gagliardi was a painter, draftsman, and architect active in Rome from the early 1630s until his death in 1659. Known as 'Filippo delle Prospettive', Gagliardi was an expert in perspectival painting and instruction. He learned the art of perspective from the quadraturist M. Zaccolini, as Gagliardi himself states in his Treatise on Perspective. The manuscript of the Treatise, preserved at the Academy of St. Luke of Rome, was written by Gagliardi probably no later than the 1630s.
Between 1632 and 1636 Gagliardi lived in Via del Babuino, together with his elder sister Caterina (born in 1597) and her husband, the painter Cesare Possenti.
Throughout his career, Gagliardi collaborated with Filippo Lauri, Andrea Sacchi and Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, with Gagliardi contributing perspective work and architectural detail in paintings such as the Carosello in honor of Christina of Sweden, with figures by Filippo Lauri. He produced numerous architectural paintings showing grand structures in strong chiaroscuro, including a set of four in the Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi in Rome, with figure work by Castiglione, and two in the Musée de Peinture e de Sculpture, Grenoble (inv. MG767, 768).
He also created drawings from which engravings were drawn to illustrate printed volumes, and contributed illustrated architectural perspectives to Giovanni Battista Ferrari's Hesperides siue De malorum aureorum cultura et usu (1646). He created some printed portraits as well, including those of cardinals Antonio and Francesco Barberini.
On February 12th 1651 Gagliardi married Caterina Giannotti, a widow seventeen years his senior, with whom he lived in the parish of S. Andrea delle Fratte.
As an architect, Gagliardi aided in the renovation of the church of San Martino ai Monti in Rome from 1647-54, commissioned by the general father of the Carmelites, GA Filippini. The work incuded construction of six cantories, the decoration of the upper area of the central nave with statues (by Paolo Naldini) and architectural elements in stucco, and the restructuring of the crypt equipped with a new decoration and a large entrance staircase. Between 1649 and 1652, Gagliardi frescoed the fake perspectives next to the windows in the central nave and the two views of the Interior of S. Pietro in the Vatican and of S. Giovanni in Laterano in the left aisle.
At the same time Gagliardi continued as a painter, including paintings for the papal residence at the Quirinale in 1654.
He was a member of the Accademia di San Luca, an association that formed with the goal of elevating the work of Baroque artists, including painters, sculptors, and architects, from at least 1638. He served as principe of the Accademia from 1656–58. He was also a member of the Congregazione dei Virtuosi del Pantheon.
Gagliardi died between October and December 1659.
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