An exhibition in Cortona investigates the architectural and pictorial Baroque of Pietro da Cortona

The Museum of the Etruscan Academy and the City of Cortona (MAEC) welcomes in its halls, from June 18 to September 18, 2022, the exhibition Del Barocco Ingegno. Pietro da Cortona and the Architectural Drawings of the 17th and 18th Centuries from the Gnerucci Collection, curated by Sebastiano Roberto (University of Siena) with the collaboration of Mario Bevilacqua (University of Florence) and Massimo Moretti (Sapienza University of Rome).

Works from the rich and unpublished collection of architectural drawings from the 17th and 18th centuries collected by the multifaceted bibliophile Paolo Gnerucci, as well as graphic works from important public institutions and private collections, will be on display. Architectural drawing in theBaroque age will be the main theme of the exhibition itinerary, and the protagonist will be one of the great artists of the architectural and pictorial Baroque, Pietro da Cortona, active between the Tuscany of the Medici, the Rome of the Popes and the European courts.

The itinerary will offer precious autograph studies by Pietro Berrettini da Cortona, of which there will also be three-dimensional models of three masterpieces: the church of Saints Luke and Martina in the Roman Forum, the design for the Chigi Palace in Piazza Colonna in Rome, and the design for the Louvre Palace for the King of France Louis XIV. Numerous drawings of Baroque architecture studied for the occasion by various Italian universities and leading specialists in the field will enrich the itinerary, as well as numerous unpublished designs of ephemeral apparatuses conceived for religious and grand ducal celebrations. The scholars who have analyzed these drawings have also wondered about the long path that these works have traversed, from the ateliers of the artists, as evidence of complex design work, to the present collection, passing through a centuries-old and erudite collecting still to be reconstructed.

The collection of drawings in the Gnerucci collection, of high graphic quality and documentary richness, as well as the recognition of the aforementioned autograph studies by Pietro da Cortona, has made it possible to undertake a scientific and organic study of the presence of workshops of stonemasons and architects active in the seventeenth century in Cortona and its immediate area, informed by the emerging Roman and Florentine innovations of the time. Reconstructions to which are added small testimonies traceable to the ingenuity of Grand Ducal architects active in both Florence and Rome.

The works on display come from various institutions, such as the MAEC, the Library of the Municipality of Cortona and the Etruscan Academy, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Cabinet of Drawings and Prints of the Uffizi, the Marucelliana Library in Florence, the National Academy of St. Luke, and the Center for the Study of the Culture and Image of Rome - Sapienza University of Rome.

Great guest of the exhibition will be Pietro da Cortona’sSelf-Portrait from the Uffizi. Made between 1664 and 1665 at the behest of Leopold de’ Medici, the painting shows the artist at the height of his career.

Various themes will be addressed in the sections, such as the Cortonese architectural workshops of the Radi and Berrettini, the church of San Francesco in Cortona and the story of the making of the precious reliquary of the Holy Cross, the beginnings of Pietro da Cortona’s drawing of architecture and figures from antiquity, Pietro da Cortona’s design studies for grand ducal factories in Florence, the models of Pietro da Cortona’s architectural designs and achievements for the courts of Rome and Paris, the cult of relics and the sacred apparatuses set up in Cortona’s churches, and finally Cortona a national and international center of cultural promotion. On display for the first time in Cortona will be the so-called Berrettini Codex preserved in the Marucelliana Library in Florence: this is the collection of reliefs and design sketches by Filippo Berrettini, a Cortonese architect in the service of the grand ducal court and cousin of the great Pietro da Cortona.

“The not easy undertaking of a systematic study of the entire corpus of design drawings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has led to the identification of important projects of monumental architecture of the Tuscan and Roman Baroque, which remained for a long time in the workshops of their creators as testimonies and models of creative work,” said curator Sebastiano Roberto. “Among them is a rich graphic repertoire of innovative architecture for the seventeenth-century updating of many churches in Cortona and its territory, an important and significant introduction to the most precious nucleus of the collection, namely some unpublished compositions by Pietro da Cortona and his assistants for Rome and the Popes of the seventeenth century, which are presented here in a dialogic comparison with other celebrated autograph drawings from the prestigious graphic collections of the Uffizi and with reconstructive models of the projects. Cortona, barycentrically located between Rome and Florence, welcomed the innovations of the new language of the Baroque, fostering the growth and fortune of its artists and architects, about whom too little is still known, but whom the exhibition seeks to highlight. The fascination, and in some ways even the complexity, of these precious drawings consists in their significance not as definitive or, so to speak, ’presentation’ works to clients, but as initial elaborations on paper of the creative process and early formal solutions, preserved later in notebooks and albums used for the circulation of models and for the training of new generations of architects. This exhibition event is an opportunity to show the public, through the ingenious creation of great architectures, the central role played by the city of Cortona and its architects in the broader European artistic and cultural debate of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and to offer scholars new perspectives for research on Baroque architecture. With the hope, finally, that the acquisition of this valuable collection of drawings by the Accademia Etrusca and the city of Cortona can be brought to fruition.”

The exhibition is promoted by the Etruscan Academy of Cortona in agreement with the Center for the Study of Culture and Image in Rome and the scientific collaboration of the Central Institute for Graphics. It also benefits from the Patronage of the Municipality of Cortona and the Accademia Etrusca, and is supported by Banca Popolare di Cortona and MB Elettronica.

The exhibition is assisted by tours to discover the presence of Pietro da Cortona and the architecture designed by the Berrettini and Radi workshops. The guided tours, along Cortona’s major religious and residential buildings, form an ideal network of connections between the exhibited designs and the city.

For info: www.cortonamaec.org

Hours: Daily from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Image: Design for a Quarantore display, detail (18th century)

An exhibition in Cortona investigates the architectural and pictorial Baroque of Pietro da Cortona

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