Florentine Baroque
Charles McCorquodale
The forthcoming exhibition at the Royal Academy, Painting in Florence 16001700, can claim two rather unexpected firsts: incredibly, there has never been a survey exhibition of any area of Italian Baroque painting held at a public institution in London, and there has never been one devoted to this particular aspect in Britain. Of all periods in the history of Italian art, the Florentine seventeenth century retains a certain mystique for a variety of reasons among various sections of the art world. The majority of art historians who have turned their attentions to it have been at least Italian, if not Florentine, and until the early 1970s they were few and far between. Inevitably, the result has been a virtual monopoly of these scholars over research (not in itself unusual in art history) which has had the effect of deterring outsiders.
Because of the novelty of the whole thing and the need for immense amounts of further basic research, the problems of correct stylistic attribution are manifold. Obviously, those most affected by this are the dealers, who, although perhaps willing to buy an unattributed or tentatively attributed picture of the Roman or Bolognese Baroque, have been less willing until recently to stick their necks out and risk much on a Florentine one. The proof of this will be the RA exhibition itself, where many of the attributions have been made in the last few years and some only for the exhibition. One of the ironic twists in the market attitude to Florentine pictures of this period is that the salerooms and dealers are now paying rather more attention to works which they would have avoided a decade, ago. As with every other commodity, with the dwindling supplies of the `big' Baroque names — Carracci, Reni, Guercino and so on — the smaller wayside flowers suddenly appear brighter than anyone noticed previously. It surely cannot be long until the appearance of an art market equivalent to the nouvelle vague of self-sufficiency manuals.
Where do the paintings themselves figure in all of this? They are unquestionably unlike almost anything else produced in the seventeenth century. Renaissance Florence, synonymous in most minds with a healthy naturalism, seems far away from this strange world where repression and religious intensity alternate with many a wild libidinous fling disguising itself unsuccessfully in historical or biblical clothes. The very names of the artists represented in the exhibition evoke an exoticism foreign to the correct, even prim image of Florence evoked in the minds of spinster aunts and peripatetic Victorian virgins reared on Pater and Primitives: Furini, Ficherelli, Martinelli, Pignoni, Lupicini, Dolci, Sagrestani. Furini's Sigismunda, which infuriated Hogarth when it was sold in London as by Correggio, leans in a trance gazing at her lover's bleeding heart on a platter, while Ficherelli's bigamous Sophonisba in an off-the-shoulder chemise prepares to down the poison draught sent her by her new husband in a moment of remorse.
Unlike many Victorian paintings which evoke ambiguous emotions in the beholder without ever visibly relishing the dark side of the moral dilemma involved, the Florentines seem to have developed their talent for doing just that. The possibilities Spectator 9 December 1978 for the psychologist of art are infinite among these paintings. But such themes' considered apart from the technical 021' ity of certain of the Florentines such as Dolci, have limited the public audience for these pictures in the past. Why tills should be so in a collecting age which bal. had its eyes opened to the perversities el Fuseli and the Symbolists is hard to sal: instead of being too removed from coll. temporary experience, the reality glaY that many of the extremes of the Fiore"tine Baroque touch chords which see° only too real. The visitor to Florence wile finds himself armed with introductionstur the private collections where the crew!' (3' the period's art is still to be seen dis' covers a curious connoisseur's subculture. While quality of course remains 3 prime criterion, the more rarefied theme or the more startling the realist,r11 with which particularly macabre detail is conveyed, the more prizepicture becomes. This exhibition has a fairly lengthY his tory, starting with a rejection by t" Edinburgh Festival, and it will he interesting to see how London audieneese" whose taste for the unusual or bizarr! seems as developed as those of any utrihele sophisticated minority, react to problems for the critics' — especially tan%than who .thrive on making little mare descriptive lists — may be considerableis view of the many painters whose oaf! ir included, and the sheer variety of t",e a styles. What is needed in the face ()the show which takes a fairly bold step in the show of unknown or forgotten Pulof ters is a critic with an excess either he enthusiasm or of venom relative to the enthusiasm of his material. It is surPrishillis that the idea of decline or decay cd so central to many aspects of poptilar:70a lure today should arouse such susP.Jej*„as when it is connected with painting: it l-ast presumably this which prevented rile cis major exhibition devoted to later asPie.ci. of this field, The Twilight of the Meul from coming to London after Detroit all FlorenceXhibition is in no way in as tended The e a restitution of unjustly ignored paiwisfo; that particular hobby-horse has, the tunately limped almost out of sight in at' old master paintings world — but as 'ad attempt to evoke an extraordinarY in the art of a city long preferreIiy bY British traveller. The somewhat 2rbitrtiv9 e nature of history's stabs at quati„ita hig assessment has tended to leave Ye of gaps in our apparently secure structur precedence in art (witness, on a 01,duis, more spectacular scale, the recen,t „recovery' by Paris of German ..i/(1'.0,5 ssionism in the Centre PortiPlu°00r Paris-Berlin exhibition), and what W.Aly parents may have seemed a toiathe obscure subject neatly dusted lin aot carpet by Ruskin or Roger FrY (Lhe-e Berenson) suddenly finds its sign'b' for a different generation.
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