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From: Maria Loh
Category: Exhibitions
Date: 08 March 2001
Giovan Pietro Bellori: L'idea del bello Palazzo degli Esposizioni, Rome In 1672 Giovan Pietro Bellori wrote the Vite which sought to identify the twelve best artist of the seventeenth century: Annibale and Agostino Carracci, Fontana, Barocci, Caravaggio, Rubens, Van Dyck, Duquesnoy, Domenichino, Lanfranco, Algardi, and Poussin. The current show at the Palazzo degli Esposizioni is organized around this text. Each room in the show is more or less dedicated to one of these artists. One enters the exhibition through a pair of heavy dark curtains to see Annibale Carracci's Hercules at the Crossroads. Incidentally, the detail of Vice whose translucent costume flutters around her classical figure (rather than modestly garbed Virtue) was selected for the exhibition poster. This is a well-known painting, which inspires little awe in the flesh and blood. Of greater interest, however, are Carracci's drawings on the wall to the left. Especially the first one, which is a figure study. The boldness of his contour lines slides effortlessly into thinner cross-hatched lines, and forms emerge almost magically from a few gestures. Also of interest are Agostino Carracci's prints, especially the erotic ones, which are infrequently seen or included in general Carracci surveys. Exiting one art historical chapel and entering into another, the visitor comes across a plethora of images and objects, many with no rhyme or reason-definitely a preference for quantity rather than quality (e.g., the unnecessary addition of some random caravaggsiti mentioned by Bellori in the Vite in the Caravaggio room). The largest room, not surprisingly, was dedicated to Poussin. Another exhibition currently at the Villa Medici entitled Autour de Poussin attests to the public's strangely unwavering support of one of the most overrated painters of the seventeenth-century. Aside from the two monumental Seven Sacraments series, the two self-portraits, and some of the late landscapes (none of which are included here), Poussin was for all practical purposes a clumsy painter. The viewer needs only to look at the expression of the figures in the Rape of the Sabines and then go down the hall to see Guido Reni's earlier Massacre of the Innocents to see how deficient the French national media darling is. Reni's expressions, gestures, and forms breathe and move rather than sit mask-like, poised as if in a French thtre. His use of colour, moreover, is almost psychological rather than merely illustrative as in Poussin's case. Note, for instance, the way the Magdalene's golden locks flow mellifluously into her dress in the Reni painting hung on the adjacent wall. The thick brushstrokes disappear into each other with such abstraction to heighten the ecstatic expression of the saint. Crispy draperies in luscious Gucci colors transform into entities unto themselves. One might also want to linger in the Rubens room to look at the quality of his drawings, skipping the Van Dycks (the Royal Academy show in London was far better), and then end by visiting what I have always thought to be the ugliest painting of the Seicento: Lanfranco's Magdalene in the Clouds (the precise title may be different, but you won't be able to miss it even though it is a small painting). In between these main rooms are various alcoves and hallways of random things, such as the reclining Sleeping Ariadne statue, whose presence in the exhibit can only be justified as being objects "seen" or "owned" by seventeenth-century Romans (?). Ornamental visual footnotes, they are lovely to see in person, but serve no evident purpose in the thematic premises of the show. Upstairs more stuff chronicling Bellori's interest in archaeology is unnecessarily crammed into the exhibit. Moreover, moving from one room to another makes the act of comparison rather difficult. It would have been infinitely more satisfying to see all the paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures in one central room, with all of the gadgets and trinkets stored in another adjunct exhibit for curiosity seekers. And this is the main problem with the show. Bellori's Vite was an important and ambitious project in his day not because it was another compendium of artist lives, but because it was a monument of critical judgment. Bellori did not limit himself to regional favoritism, as was the case with previous writers such as Giorgio Vasari's Vite (1550/1568) and Carlo Ridolfi's Maraviglia (1648) and he certainly did not aim for a blockbuster scale production. He made a deliberate aesthetic choice by constructing a canon of twelve high-quality artists. A second part of the Vite was projected, but never finished which would have included biographies of Maratta, Reni, Sacchi, et al. (Reni, however, is oddly well represented in this show). His decisions today may be disputed, but in his own day these were the artists that best defined his "idea of beauty." The curators of this show may have benefited from reading Bellori's text a little closer and following theory in practice by limiting the sheer number of things included in the exhibit. In the back of the Poussin room are a number of ancient statues of fallen figures, which have been placed eerily on a slanted step. One art historian was overheard at the opening exclaiming "Oh bird droppings! How amusing!" And this seems to be the problem with Roman exhibits in general during this millenial tourist frenzied year: quality is simply sacrificed for quantity so that people get their money's worth at the end of the day. Peccato, Bellori would have been disappointed.
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