Sebastiano Ricci
Italian, 1659 - 1734
Painter and draughtsman. He painted light and colourful religious, historical and mythological subjects with a fluid, painterly touch. His rediscovery of Paolo Veronese, whose settings and costumes he borrowed, was important to later Venetian painters. Sebastiano was an itinerant artist, celebrated throughout Europe.
1. Life and work.
(i) Venice, Bologna and Parma, to 1690.
Sebastiano was the son of Livio and Andreana Ricci. According to Pascoli, he moved at the age of 12 to Venice, where he was apprenticed to the Milanese painter Federico Cervelli (c. 1625–1700), from whom he early acquired a free style of painting. He also responded to the brilliant colour and airy space of Luca Giordano, who had painted three altarpieces for S Maria della Salute, Venice. Temanza’s assertion (1738) that Sebastiano Mazzoni was ‘il maestro di Sebastiano’ seems unlikely, since Mazzoni is not mentioned by Ricci’s early biographers, not even by his friend Giovanni Camillo Sagrestani, whose memoir of Sebastiano (c. 1716; see Matteoli, 1971) reports that he left Cervelli’s studio at the age of 21, still an inexperienced painter, and went to work for an otherwise unknown art dealer near the Rialto.
Ricci left Venice for Bologna after 16 June 1681 (Moretti, 1978). He had made a young Venetian woman, Antonia Maria Venanzio, pregnant, and had then tried to poison her. He had been imprisoned, but the intervention of a noble supporter had obtained his release. Having arrived in Bologna he entered the studio of Giovanni Gioseffo dal Sole and was given lodging by Ferdinando Pisani, for whom he apparently produced several history paintings (untraced).
In 1682 the Confraternità di S Giovanni dei Fiorentini commissioned Ricci to paint an altarpiece, the Beheading of St John the Baptist (untraced); the contract, confusingly, says that he had lived in Bologna for some time. Both this work, known through a print by Giuseppe Moretti (Parma, Bib. Palatina), and the damaged Birth of St John (before 1706; Bologna, Pin. N.) reflect the influence of Cervelli, while the sharp contrasts of light and dark are also indebted to the tenebrosi.
On 9 December 1685 Ricci and Ferdinando Galli-Bibiena, who had been in Parma since 1684 and with whom Ricci also collaborated on theatrical design in Parma and Bologna, received a commission from Federico II Rossi, Marchese of San Secondo, to decorate the oratory of the Madonna del Serraglio in San Secondo Parmense. Ricci decorated two cupolas above the nave and choir with an Assumption of the Virgin and an Angelic Choir; this is his earliest known fresco painting and probably played a decisive role in determining the course of his subsequent career as a decorative painter. In a composition that strongly recalls Correggio, bodies float freely and almost weightlessly upwards. In the four ovals in the walls the inspiration is derived largely from the decorations executed in 1665 by Carlo Cignani in S Michele in Bosco, near Bologna. Cignani recommended Ricci to Ranuccio II Farnese, 6th Duke of Parma, for the decoration of the Duchess’s apartment on the ground floor of the Palazzo Farnese in Piacenza, where Ricci was commissioned to paint a series of works portraying scenes from the Life of Pope Paul III (1687–8; Piacenza, Mus. Civ.). These are uneven in quality. The coarseness of the rendering in certain of the paintings may possibly be due to their intended placement high up on the walls. These narrative scenes show how Ricci moved from his early use of chiaroscuro towards a far greater classicism and a lighter palette, closer to that of his Bolognese contemporaries. Upon his return to Bologna (1688) he was again involved in an amatory escapade which ended badly, this time with the daughter of his friend Antonio Francesco Peruzzini, a landscape painter. Intervention by the Duke of Parma secured his release from prison.
(ii) Rome and Lombardy, 1691–5.
In 1691 Ricci, financed by Ranuccio, who gave him a monthly stipend, moved to Rome to complete his studies. He lived in comfort in the Palazzo Farnese, attended by his own servant. In 1692 he received a commission (paid 1696) from the illustrious Colonna family for the decoration of the Palazzo Colonna, Rome, where he painted the vast fresco of the Allegory of the Battle of Lepanto in the Sala degli Scrigni, the northern part of the sumptuous salone that had been decorated in 1675–8 by Giovanni Coli and Filippo Gherardi. This composition, which glorifies Marcantonio II Colonna, was inspired by Annibale Carracci’s Galleria in the Palazzo Farnese, while its airy, spacious quality is indebted to the decorative art of Pietro da Cortona. An altarpiece from this period, the Guardian Angel (1691–4; Pavia, S Maria del Carmine), was probably executed in Rome and illustrates Ricci’s response to the Roman art of Giovanni Battista Gaulli and Pietro da Cortona.
In 1694 Ricci travelled to Lombardy. His most important work in Milan was the decoration of the church of S Bernardino alla Ossa, where he frescoed the cupola (with the Souls of the Blessed Ascending to Heaven) and the four pendentives, each with the apotheosis of a saint (1694–5). The elegance of the figures and the illusionism are again indebted to Gaulli.
(iii) Venice, Vienna and Florence, 1696–1711.
In 1696 Ricci was back in Venice, where he married the Dutchwoman Maddalena van der Meer. In the years around 1700 he had many commissions in and around Venice. One of his most important undertakings was the decoration of the basilica of S Giustina in Padua, where he painted an altarpiece, Pope St Gregory Invoking the Virgin to Liberate Rome from the Plague (1700), and frescoed the chapel of SS Sacramento with the Exposition of the Eucharist to the Apostles (documented 1700–01). Some of the figures, painted on stucco, project beyond the architectural framework, a development of a technique that Ricci had practised in S Bernardino in Milan.
Ricci’s mastery of illusionism reached a peak with the decorations in S Marziale, Venice, where he painted, for the ceiling of the nave, three oval canvases showing the iconographically rare Legends of St Martial (before 1702). He had recently been commissioned to restore the badly damaged fresco by Veronese in the church of S Sebastiano, Venice, and in the S Marziale paintings Veronese’s influence unites with those of Bolognese classicism and the art of Lombardy to create a fresh and luminous decorative style. The canvases are full of steeply foreshortened architecture and cloud-borne figures, who draw the spectator upwards into an airy space; the colours—pinks, golds and olive greens—are paler and more transparent, and the figures have attained a new elegance and delicacy. With this work Ricci makes a definite break with the late Baroque tradition. In 1701/2 he was in Vienna, where he produced his monumental Allegory of the Princely Virtues for the Blue Staircase ceiling in Schloss Schönbrunn; although akin to his ceiling in the Palazzo Colonna, Rome, it is again indebted to Veronese. His altarpiece depicting SS Proculus, Firmus and Rusticus in Bergamo Cathedral was painted shortly afterwards.
In 1704 Ricci was back in Venice. The Continence of Scipio (Windsor Castle, Berks, Royal Col.), a favourite theme, probably dates from this period; with its theatrical and brilliant colouring and a setting derived from Veronese, it epitomizes Ricci’s decorative history paintings. In 1704 he was commissioned by the Grand Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici to paint an altarpiece, the Crucifixion with the Virgin, St John and St Carlo Borromeo (Florence, Uffizi), intended to replace Andrea del Sarto’s Madonna of the Harpies (Florence, Uffizi) in the church of S Francesco de’ Macci, Florence (Fogolari, 1937). By 1706 he was also in contact with the Marucelli family, and later in the year he joined Marco Ricci in Florence, where he decorated five rooms on the ground floor of the Palazzo Marucelli (documented to 1706–7). The programme for this ambitious and intellectually complex cycle, consisting of oils and frescoes on the theme of princely virtues, may have been inspired by Orazio Marucelli. A square anteroom with a ceiling painting, the Taming of Cupid , rich in brilliant reds and greens and lively diagonals, precedes the culminating frescoes of the Sala d’Ercole, which show the heroic deeds of Hercules against landscape backgrounds that were possibly painted by Marco Ricci (Gamba, 1924–5). The architectural setting was by the Florentine quadraturista Giuseppe Tonelli (1668–1732).
Probably in 1707–8 Ricci decorated a small room in the Palazzo Pitti for Grand Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici, perhaps again collaborating with Tonelli (Chiarini, 1973). In 1708 he visited Venice for a few months, when he may have painted the Virgin and Child with Saints (Venice, S Giorgio Maggiore). The Pitti ceiling fresco shows Venus and Adonis, while further Ovidian scenes decorate the walls. In these works Ricci moved away from the still recognizably Baroque vigour of the Marucelli frescoes towards a new style, increasingly free, fluent and nervous. The lighter, paler colours and evanescent, sweetly sensual beauty are wholly 18th-century in character and foreshadow the French Rococo. By 1711 Ricci was back in Venice for in that year he painted an Allegory of Glory in the Sala dello Scrutinio in the Palazzo Ducale. Although the circumstances of his departure from Venice remain unclear, it is generally accepted that he travelled to England in the winter of 1711–12 in the company of his nephew, who had already worked there with Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini.
(iv) England and France, 1712–16.
Sebastiano Ricci’s first English patron was Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington, for whom he painted four canvases (c. 1713–14) to adorn the monumental staircase in Burlington House, London: Diana and her Nymphs Bathing, the Triumph of Galatea and the Meeting of Bacchus and Ariadne were executed as wall paintings and Cupid before Jupiter on the ceiling; they all remain elsewhere in the building, which now houses the Royal Academy. The Meeting of Bacchus and Ariadne derives from Annibale Carracci’s Galleria Farnese, yet is softer, paler and more elegant. Sebastiano also made ceiling paintings (untraced) for some of the rooms on the lower floor and three upright overmantels, originally for Burlington House but placed in Chiswick House in 1729. His Bacchus and Ariadne (London, N.G.), painted in silvery tones, is characteristic of the easel paintings of this period. An elegant and sensuous work, it is derived from a painting by Giulio Carpioni and, like the latter’s work, re-creates the warmth and colour of 16th-century Venetian mythological painting.
In 1713 Ricci worked on the ceiling of the Great Room of the house belonging to Henry Bentinck, 2nd Earl of Portland, in St James’s Square, London; he also produced decorative paintings for the chapel of Portland’s country residence, Bulstrode House, near Gerrards Cross (all untraced). Perhaps because of nationalistic concerns, the commissions for the cupola of St Paul’s Cathedral and the ceiling of the Prince of Wales’s bedroom in Hampton Court went to the English painter James Thornhill rather than to Ricci. The last work Sebastiano executed before his return to Italy was the decoration (c. 1715–16) of the chapel in the Chelsea Royal Hospital. In the summer of 1716 he and Marco returned to Venice, visiting Paris en route at the invitation of the Académie de France, into which they were admitted. The following year Sebastiano painted the Allegory of the Sciences (Paris, Louvre) as a morceau de réception. In Paris he met Antoine Watteau, Jean Jouvenet and other artists.
(v) Last works, 1717–34.
On his return to Venice Sebastiano lived grandly in an apartment in the Calle del Salvadego, as befitted the status of an internationally celebrated painter. In 1717, to celebrate the wedding of Marchese Gabrielli to Maria Teresa Valvasone, he was commissioned to decorate the ballroom of the Palazzo Gabrielli (now Pal. Taverna) in Rome; these eight mythological scenes, showing the loves of the gods, are among the loveliest of Ricci’s mythological works, rich in colours and costumes that recall Veronese. In these years Sebastiano was working closely with Marco: in 1718 they provided a series of wall paintings (frag. Belluno, Mus. Civ.) for the Villa Vescovile di Belvedere at Belluno. In 1719 Sebastiano was made director of the theatre of S Angelo, for which Marco was providing stage designs. Sebastiano painted the figures and Marco the landscape and architecture on the Allegorical Tomb of the 1st Duke of Devonshire (U. Birmingham, Barber Inst.) and the Allegorical Tomb of Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovel (Washington, DC, N.G.A.), both in the series commissioned during the 1720s by Owen Mcswiny. In 1724–33 they collaborated on a series of commissions from the House of Savoy that began with the Expulsion of Hagar (1724; Turin, Gal. Sabauda) for Victor-Amadeus II, King of Sardinia. Joseph Smith hung in his Venetian palazzo another of their collaborative works, a set of seven large canvases depicting scenes from the Life of Christ (1724–30; four Windsor Castle, Berks, Royal Col.; two London, Hampton Court, Royal Col.; one untraced). In 1727 Sebastiano Ricci worked on the enormous painting of Moses Striking the Rock (Venice, Accad.) for the monastery church of SS Cosma e Damiano on the Giudecca in Venice. Marco was most probably responsible for the landscape background. Earlier in the same year, in March, Sebastiano had completed an important commission from the city, the cartoons (Venice, Doge’s Pal.) for mosaics on the façade of the basilica of S Marco. The mosaics were executed by Leopoldo dal Pozzo (d 1745) and the work, with its subtle shadings and monumental figures, was highly praised by Ricci’s contemporaries. In the year before his death he completed two paintings for the church of S Rocco in Venice: St Helena Finding the True Cross and the Miracle of St Francis of Paola.
2. Working methods and technique.
Ricci was a prolific draughtsman, whose drawings may most fruitfully be studied in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, Berks, and at the Accademia in Venice. The Windsor Collection has an album of 211 drawings that belonged to Joseph Smith, and the Accademia an album of 133 drawings from the collection of Anton Maria Zanetti (i). His early drawings, such as the one in black chalk of Job Taunted by his Wife (1695; Windsor Castle, Berks, Royal Col.), remain linked to 17th-century traditions of draughtsmanship and reflect the influence of Luca Giordano and Francesco Solimena. His later drawings, in pen and bistre wash, show a lighter, more delicate style, and the drawings of his last years, such as Christ and the Woman of Samaria (Venice, Accad.), are increasingly free and vigorous and use more strongly coloured washes. He experimented frequently with poses and figures, producing sheets of figure studies (e.g. New York, Met.) that are reminiscent of Veronese’s. His more elaborate compositions were prepared through a series of such studies followed by more finished compositional studies, as, for example, those for the Adoration of the Magi (Windsor Castle, Berks, Royal Col.). Blunt and Croft Murray commented that ‘Ricci worked out his compositions as carefully as a French classical painter of the seventeenth century’.
Ricci also made oil sketches that he himself valued highly: among the earliest is the outstandingly lovely Venus and Adonis (Orléans, Mus. B.-A.), made for the ceiling of the Palazzo Pitti, Florence. In later sketches his touch became increasingly spirited and fluid, culminating in the two oil sketches St Helena Finding the True Cross and the Miracle of St Francis of Paola (both Washington, DC, N.G.A.); these were made for the S Rocco altarpieces and, with their very pale colours and vibrant light, seem to foreshadow the art of Tiepolo.
Dulcia Meijers. "Ricci (i)." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T071895pg1 (accessed April 12, 2012).
Person TypeIndividual
Italian, about 1520 - 1563
