BAROCCI, FEDERICO. - Painter, b. at Urbino, according to Bellori in 1528 (according to other sources in 1535), d. there on 30 Sept. 1612. His great-grandfather was Ambrogio B., a Milanese sculptor who settled at Urbino under Federico di Montefeltro. Directed toward drawing by his father, he joined Giambattista Franco, a Venetian painter summoned by Duke Guidobaldo to fresco the vault of the choir of the episcopal palace, who insisted that B. devote himself intensely to the study of the antique. He then moved to Pesaro, to the painter and architect Bartolomeo Genga. At the age of twenty, spurred by the example of his great fellow-countryman Raphael, he went to Rome, where he won the praise of Giovanni da Udine and of Michelangelo. He then returned to Urbino and remained there for some years; during that time, a painter having arrived there with some pieces of cartoon and pastel heads by Correggio, he was wholly taken by that manner which so corresponded to his inclination. Returning to Rome in 1560, he worked there on his best-known works, beginning with the decorations in the Casina of Pius IV in the Vatican gardens.
B. painted almost always sacred subjects: in Rome, the Last Supper in S. Maria sopra Minerva, the Presentation of Mary and the Visitation at the Chiesa Nuova, the Annunciation (formerly at Loreto), the Rest on the Flight into Egypt (formerly at Perugia), the B. Michelina (formerly at Pesaro) in the Vatican picture gallery; at Perugia the Deposition from the Cross in the cathedral; at Florence, the Madonna del popolo in the Uffizi gallery, where the Self-Portrait and the Portrait of Francesco Maria II della Rovere also are; at Milan, The Martyrdom of St. Vitalis at Brera (formerly at Ravenna); at Urbino, The Last Supper and the St. Sebastian in the cathedral. Among the few secular works, besides the series of portraits, mention should be made of the Aeneas Fleeing from Troy in the Borghese gallery, painted for Rudolf II and replicated for Card. della Rovere.
For Schmarsow, B. is the founder of the Baroque, and, more precisely defined, an essentially Correggesque painter who, like Correggio, anticipated various aspects and characteristic movements of the Baroque. From Correggio he also derived, carrying it to the point of mawkishness, a love for grace and delicacy of forms. He was a great lover and a most careful observer of the truth, whence the great number of his drawings. For his figures he used wax models, on which he studied the drapery. He took great care over the harmony of colors, so much so as to call painting music. Often, to soften transitions, he used his thumb instead of the brush, and altered the tints with cinnabar and blues in the cartoons, arriving at excessive gradations. Barocci's art influenced Rubens, Van Dyck and Murillo.
Bibliography7 works
Vincenzo Golzio