Ciro Ferri
Born Rome, ?634; died Rome, 13 Sept 1689.
Italian painter, sculptor, architect and draughtsman. He was the most gifted pupil of Pietro da Cortona, and his style, in frescoes, easel paintings and drawings, remained a remarkably true interpretation of the latter’s Roman Baroque; Pascoli wrote of Ferri: ‘No pupil followed Cortona’s style more closely than Ciro; none so nearly approached the beauty of his art, and the originality of his invention.’ The work of the two artists is at times so close that attributions, especially among their drawings, have often been confused. In his designs for sculpture, architecture and decorative ornament, Ferri was indebted to both Cortona and Bernini. Ferri’s art was important in spreading the decorative style of the Roman Baroque to Florence and to other cities.
1. Rome, Florence and Bergamo, before 1669.
About 1650 Ferri’s father, Giovanni Stefano Ferri, a Genoese woodworker, sent him to study under Pietro da Cortona, in whose studio he remained for about ten years and learnt the principles of art, partly by copying Classical statues and Renaissance paintings. Ciro Ferri formed a close friendship with Cortona, and their collaboration meant that, early in his career, Ferri was involved in the major decorative commissions of the time. In 1656–7, with fellow pupils Lazzaro Baldi and Guglielmo Cortese, he worked under Cortona on the decoration of the Galleria di Alessandro VII in the Palazzo del Quirinale, Rome, for which he painted Cyrus Freeing the Israelites (bozzetto, Rome, Pal. Barberini). In the same period, recommended by Cortona, he worked with Cortese on the frescoed lunettes in the chapel of the Holy Sacrament in S Marco, which was redecorated between 1653 and 1657 on the orders of Niccolò Sagredo. Ferri’s style, from these early works onwards, derived closely from that of Cortona, who delegated to him the task of completing the cartoons for the mosaics of God the Father in Glory (1657–9) for the cupola of the second bay of the right aisle in St Peter’s, Rome. The two lunette frescoes on which he collaborated with Cortese in the Cesi Chapel in S Prassede may also date from this period, though an alternative dating to the early 1660s has also been suggested (Davis).
In 1659 Ferri left for Florence, because in July of that year Cortona decided to entrust him with the completion of the fresco decoration for the unfinished Sala di Apollo, one of the Planetary rooms in the Palazzo Pitti, Florence, the decoration of which had been commissioned by Ferdinando II de’ Medici (see Florence, §IV, 9). Cortona had worked on these rooms from 1641 to 1647 but had since been overburdened with papal commissions in Rome. He probably planned the entire work, including the stuccos, judging by the large number of his surviving drawings (Florence, Uffizi) and by contemporaneous sources. He may also have painted some of the figures on the ceiling. Yet the lunettes, showing Julius Caesar Listening to an Account of Historic Deeds, Virgil Reading his Poem to Augustus, Justinian Ordering Old and Superseded Law Books to be Burnt and Alexander Reading the Poetry of Homer, were painted by Ferri (1659–61), working from cartoons that he had prepared in Rome with the advice and approval of Cortona. Two years later Ferri returned to Florence to decorate the Sala di Saturno (1663–5). It is not clear whether he prepared the cartoons in Rome, under the supervision of Cortona, or independently in Florence. It is beyond doubt that all the work—the central ceiling fresco with the Apotheosis of the Prince, the four lunettes featuring episodes from the lives of ancient rulers and the frescoes of the Muses in the pendentives—were executed in strict adherence to Cortona’s manner, though they do not quite achieve his imaginative brilliance and vitality. Ferri’s drawings for this project, among them a compositional study (Düsseldorf, Kstmus.) and figure studies in red and black chalk (Rome, Gab. N. Stampe) are stylistically close to those by Cortona, yet his forms are less boldly modelled, his lines more sinuous and repetitive.
During his stay in Florence, Ferri also completed a series of paintings for Tuscan churches, among them the Immaculate Conception with Four Saints (1660) for S Francesco in Cortona (untraced) and various canvases for the Medici, Corsini and Gerini galleries, including Alexander Reading the Poetry of Homer (Florence, Pitti). He also designed an Allegory of the Medici Family (cartoon, England, priv. col., see Turner, 1979, fig.), engraved by François Spierre in 1664 for Abbate Giovanni Rimbaldesi.
Ferri left Florence in 1664 and travelled to Bergamo, where he painted a cycle of frescoes (1665–7) in the church of S Maria Maggiore. Meanwhile he also worked independently, producing easel paintings for Florentine patrons, such as Grand Duchess Vittoria della Rovere, for whom he may have painted the Vestal Virgins Tending the Sacred Flame (?c. 1666–7; Rome, Gal. Spada). It was his intention to go to Venice to improve his use of colour through a study of Venetian painting, though it is uncertain if this wish were fulfilled.
2. Rome, 1669–89.
Ferri returned to Rome on the death of Pietro da Cortona in 1669 to complete the latter’s unfinished commissions, the most important of which were the cartoons for the mosaics in the first bay of the right aisle of St Peter’s. Cortona had begun work on these in 1668 but had finished only the drawings for the cupola; Ferri designed the figures of Patriarchs, Prophets and Sibyls in the spandrels and lunettes (finished 1674). He completed (c. 1673–4) the vault fresco begun by Cortona in 1668 in the Gavotti Chapel in S Nicolo Tolentino, for which he himself also designed a marble reliquary-sarcophagus beneath the altar (1676). Between 1667 and 1674 he completed the high altar in S Giovanni dei Fiorentini, begun by Cortona and continued by Borromini.
In 1670 Ferri was awarded one of the most prestigious commissions of the age—to decorate the cupola of S Agnese in Agone in Piazza Navona, Rome. This had to be completed before the Holy Year of 1675 and was to portray God the Father in Glory. The work did not go smoothly: Ferri was perhaps inhibited by the difficulty of planning an entire composition on his own or perhaps feared comparison with Giovanni Battista Gaulli’s brilliantly coloured and spirited Virtues (1666–72) in the pendentives. The project was eventually completed in 1689 by Ferri’s obscure pupil Sebastiano Corbellini, in a stiff and hesitant style.
Although Ferri continued to paint (e.g. Erminia and the Shepherds, early 1670s; Rome, Gal. Doria-Pamphili), from the early 1670s onwards he devoted more of his energies to preparatory drawings for sculpture, architecture, engravings and ornamental works. Among his most elaborate projects was the chapel of S Sebastiano (1672) in S Sebastiano fuori le Mura, where he created a rich design of coloured marbles and an altar elaborated by gilt bronze and amethyst. He also designed the ciborium (1673) for the high altar of the Chiesa Nuova. His renown increased in the artistic circles of Rome, and in 1673 Cosimo III, Grand Duke of Tuscany, anxious to improve Florentine sculpture, turned to him to found an academy at the Palazzo Madama in Rome, where young Florentine artists could study. At the Accademia Fiorentina Ferri instructed both sculptors and painters in drawing; Ercole Ferrata taught sculpture. Ferri’s most promising pupil, Giovanni Battista Foggini, spread the decorative style of the Roman Baroque to Florence.
Ferri’s great skill in designing motifs to be made in bronze, stucco or wood earned him numerous commissions, and he began to devote his time almost exclusively to preparatory design. His most significant project in this field, commissioned by Cosimo III, was the renovation (1675–85) of the choir chapel in S Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi in Florence, which incorporated decorative tondi (1676–9) by Pier Francesco Silvani and his own painted altarpiece (1684; Madrid, Real Acad. S Fernando). Other commissions were the cover for the font in S Giovanni in Fonte, Rome, from Innocent X (1679); the four statues in gilded bronze (1687–9) for the altar of S Ignazio in Il Gesù, Rome; the altar (c. 1682) of S Stefano in the church of the Cavalieri, Pisa; a bronze reliquary (c. 1687–9) in the co-cathedral of St John, La Valletta, Malta; and, finally, another commission from Cosimo III, the 14 tondi, in white and blue glazed terracotta, of the Stations of the Cross, originally in the garden of the convent of S Pietro d’Alcantara near the Villa dell’Ambrogiana, Montelupo (three, Montelupo, SS Quirico e Lucia all’Ambrogiana; one, London, V&A). These were carried out in 1685 according to Ferri’s designs by students at the Accademia Fiorentina: Anton Francesco Andreozzi, Francesco Ciaminghi (d 1736), Giuseppe Piamontini and Camillo Cateni (c. 1662–1732).
Whereas Ferri’s sculpture and architecture show him achieving a successful synthesis of the decorative styles of Cortona and Bernini, which became widely influential, in the painting of these years he developed a more serious, classical style, which suggests the influence of Carlo Maratti, as in the frescoes of c. 1680 or earlier featuring the allegories of Spring, Autumn and Winter on three ceilings in the Villa Falconieri at Frascati. Towards the end of the 1670s he designed one of the tapestries commemorating the significant events of Urban VIII’s life and woven in the Barberini tapestry factory. His subject was Urban VIII Repairing the Walls of Rome (preparatory drawings, Rome, Gab. N. Stampe, and Windsor Castle, Royal Lib.), for which Pietro Lucatelli (c. 1634–1710), another Cortona pupil, made the enlarged cartoon (Berlin, Kupferstichkab.).
From 1681 to 1687 Ferri was Principal of the Accademia di S Luca, of which he had become a member in 1657. In his last years he specialized in designing ephemera, as for example his designs (Berlin, Kupferstichkab.; Florence, Uffizi) for a firework machine for a celebration held in the Piazza Navona to commemorate the capture of Buda from the Turks (engraved by Nicolas Dorigny in 1686). He concentrated especially on designs for ceremonial carriages, including that (Düsseldorf, Kstmus.) for the arrival in Rome on 8 January 1687 of Lord Palmer, Earl of Castlemaine, as ambassador to the Holy See; and another for Rinaldo d’Este, who had come to Rome on 28 October 1688 for nomination as a cardinal. He also made designs for engraving, among them the frontispiece (Rome, Gab. N. Stampe) for La tesi dell’Abate Jo. Francesco Gomez (1677) by Pietro Aguila.
Simonetta Prosperi Valenti Rodinò. "Ferri, Ciro." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T028053 (accessed April 10, 2012).
