Giovanni Battista Gaulli Circle

Circle of GIOVANNI BATTISTA GAULLI (Genoa, 1639-Rome, ca. 1709).
"Pope Clement IX."
Oil on canvas.
It has bands of tension on the sides.
It conserves frame of the XIX century with faults.
Measurements: 62 x 51 cm; 84 x 74 cm (frame).
Stylistically this work follows the models of the portrait of Pope Clement IX, which is in the collection of the Palazzo Bianco in Genoa and was painted by Giovanni Battista Gaulli. Pope Clement IX, born Giulio Rospigliosi, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from June 20, 166, until his death in December 1669. Giulio Rospigliosi was born into a noble family in 1600 and studied at the Roman Seminary and at the University of Pisa. He held various positions in the Church, including titular archbishop of Tarsus and apostolic nuncio in Spain. As a man of letters, he wrote poetry, dramas and librettos, and was patron of the artist Nicolas Poussin.

Appointed cardinal by Pope Alexander VII, Rospigliosi was elected Pope Clement IX in 1667. His pontificate was marked by mediation in the European wars, and his popularity in Rome was due to his charity, humility and refusal to promote his family's wealth. Clement IX was a patron of the arts, commissioned works by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and inaugurated Rome's first public opera house. He attempted to strengthen Venetian defenses against the Turks in Crete, but failed to gain wider support. In 1669, after learning that the Venetian fortress of Candia surrendered to the Turks, Clement IX fell ill and died.
Giovanni Battista Gaulli , also known as Baciccio, was an Italian artist of the High Baroque and early Rococo periods. He is best known for his grandiose illusionistic frescoes of the vault of the church of the Gesù in Rome Biography. Gaulli was born in Genoa, where his parents died from the plague of 1654. He was apprenticed to Luciano Borzone. In the mid-17th century, Gaulli's Genoa was a cosmopolitan Italian artistic center open to commercial and artistic enterprises from northern European countries, including countries with non-Catholic populations such as England and the Dutch provinces. Painters such as Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck stayed in Genoa for some years. Gaulli's early influences would come from an eclectic mix of these foreign painters and other local artists such as Valerio Castello, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione and Bernardo Strozzi, whose warm palette Gaulli adopted. In the 1660s he experimented with the cooler palette and linear style of Bolognese classicism. He was first noticed by the Genoese art dealer Pellegrino Peri, who lived in Rome. Peri introduced him to Gianlorenzo Bernini, who promoted him. In 1662 he was admitted to the Accademia di San Luca (Academy of St. Luke), a Roman artists' guild, where he would later hold various positions. The following year he received his first public commission, an altarpiece for the church of San Rocco in Rome. He received numerous private commissions for mythological and religious works. However, beginning in 1669, after a visit to Parma, the dome-ceiling frescoed by Correggio in the cathedral of Parma, Gaulli's painting took on a more painterly (less linear) aspect, and the composition, organized di sotto in su ("from below looking up"), would influence his later masterpieces. In his heyday, Gaulli was one of Rome's most esteemed portraitists. Gaulli is not known for any medium other than painting, although numerous drawings in many media have survived.