Alessandro Turchi
Born Verona, 1578; died Rome, 22 Jan 1649.
Italian painter. He first studied in Verona with Felice Brusasorci in whose studio he was recorded in 1597 (Brenzoni). Dal Pozzo reported that Turchi completed Brusasorci’s Fall of the Manna (Verona, S Giorgio) after his master’s death in 1605; his early Veronese paintings, such as the Adoration of the Shepherds (1608; Verona, S Fermo), are ambitious, with many figures and elaborate backgrounds, echoing the local tradition of which Paolo Veronese was the most distinguished exponent. Turchi may have gone to Venice with his fellow pupil, Marcantonio Bassetti, before moving to Rome c. 1614–15. He was paid for work in the Sala Regia of the Palazzo del Quirinale in 1616–17 (Briganti), where he collaborated with a team of artists, among them Giovanni Lanfranco and Carlo Saraceni. His part was to paint an oval medallion with the Gathering of the Manna (in situ) in a style that suggests Lanfranco’s influence. He soon found patrons for altarpieces and cabinet paintings, among them Cardinal Scipione Borghese. By 1619 he had settled permanently in Rome and was a member of the Accademia di S Luca, meetings of which he attended regularly thereafter. He continued to receive commissions for altarpieces for churches in Verona throughout his career but if he returned it was only for brief visits.
Turchi’s mature work is uneven. His provincial training had been thoroughly absorbed and he was not able to adjust completely to the taste of the capital despite living there for many years. His compositions are often stiffly organized and reveal a poor understanding of the relationship between the setting and the figures, on which he lavished most of his attention. As he became more independent of Brusasorci, he simplified his compositions, reducing the cast of characters in his major altarpieces and placing the emphasis clearly on the figures. The carefully observed faces and hands and the dark, neutral backgrounds echo Caravaggio; the dignified, simply rendered figures owe something to Guido Reni and Lanfranco as well as to earlier 16th-century north Italian artists such as Domenico Morone and Moretto. He painted the Forty Martyrs (c. 1619) for S Stefano in Verona and four altarpieces for Roman churches: the Holy Family with God the Father in Glory (c. 1619; S Lorenzo in Lucina), the Virgin and Child with St Felix of Cantalice (c. 1630; S Maria della Concezione), the Flight into Egypt (c. 1632–5; ex-S Romualdo, Rome; versions Madrid, Prado; Manchester, C.A.G.) and the Madonna in Glory with Angels (S Salvatore in Lauro). Turchi also made a number of paintings of mythological and religious subjects, on slate and copper as well as on canvas, for Roman collectors. He prided himself on his delicate, sfumato modelling of drapery and flesh, and it was the elegant surface polish of such works as Hercules and Omphale (c. 1620; Munich, Alte Pin.) and Lot and his Daughters (Dresden, Gemäldegal. Alte Meister) that appealed to private collectors with a taste for mild eroticism presented as biblical or mythological narrative.
In 1637 Turchi was elected Principe of the Accademia di S Luca after Cortona’s four-year term of office, which indicates a certain standing not only among his fellow artists but in papal circles, for the Barberini were closely involved with the Accademia in those years. In the following year he joined the more exclusive Congregazione dei Virtuosi al Pantheon (Gaudenzio). His reputation for mythological pictures was sufficient to attract one powerful French patron, Louis Phélypeaux de La Vrillière, who commissioned a Death of Antony and Cleopatra in 1640 along with works by Guercino and Cortona. The compositional study for this (Stockholm, Nmus.), in pen and wash, as are all his known drawings, is characteristic of the light and delicate pen work of his late drawings in this medium. The painting shows Turchi moving towards a clearer, more classical style, which is also evident in such late altarpieces as the austere Ecstasy of St Francis (1644; Verona, S Maria in Organo). A comparison of the Adoration of the Magi (c. 1635; Grezzana, priv. col., see 1974 exh. cat., fig.) with the S Fermo altarpiece shows how Turchi accommodated his Veronese taste for densely figured compositions with rich surface pattern and texture to a simpler, grander style indebted to Bolognese idealism and north Italian realism. Yet Turchi remained out of the mainstream of developments in Rome, more akin to later peripheral figures such as Giovanni Domenico Cerrini and Sassoferrato than to the leading artists of the Bolognese school—Domenichino, Lanfranco and Guido Reni.
Ann Sutherland Harris. "Turchi, Alessandro." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T086581 (accessed April 16, 2012).
