MARIANI, CESARE – S. Stephen Carried to the Sepulchre. Fresco destroyed in the bombing of 19 July 1943 – Rome.
The condemnation) extends the doctrine even to the case of a legitimate sovereign who gravely abuses his position, bringing ruin upon the fatherland and despising public laws and religion. Mariani, however, expressly qualifies this judgment as personal. Indeed, General C. Aquaviva, warned by the superiors in France of Mariani’s opinion—which, despite many limiting clauses, was undoubtedly reprehensible—deplored its publication and ordered it to be corrected (cf. Jouvany, op. cit. in bibl., nn. 86-87, 157). And when the assassination of Henry IV by Ravaillac stirred the French Parliament against Mariani and the Jesuits as instigators of regicide, Aquaviva again prohibited, under pain of excommunication (6 July 1610), any member of the Order from publicly or privately advocating, whether as advisor, teacher, or in writing, the liceity of killing kings or princes under any pretext of tyranny or of diminishing their lives; and shortly thereafter (14 Aug. 1610), he specifically prohibited all writings for or against Mariani’s book (ibid., n. 157). The other work that caused a stir was: De monetae mutatione (the fourth treatise of the work Tractatus septem). In it, Mariani openly accused the ministers of Philip III of ruining the people by debasing the currency; he was therefore confined, as if in prison, in a Franciscan convent and released only a year later. His irascible temperament also led him to take sides in 1593 against General Aquaviva and in favor of a separatist movement within the Order in Spain (cf. his Discursus de erroribus qui in forma gubernationis Societatis Jesu occurrunt, published posthumously in Bordeaux in 1625). His native city erected a monument to him in 1888.
MARIANI, CESARE – Painter, b. in Rome on 13 Jan. 1826, d. there on 21 Feb. 1901. A pupil of Tommaso Minardi, he soon distinguished himself among his fellow students, who more strictly followed the rigorous “Purist” principles, by a greater freedom in drawing and a distinctive pictorial taste that developed further.
A fervent and passionate draughtsman, he surpassed the academic “manner” of the Roman milieu of his time, aligning himself with Fracassini in terms of imaginative affinity and richness of color. Extremely industrious until his later years, he would prepare his large religious fresco compositions with vivid studies from life, in oils and pastels, from which the mural painting gained prominence and originality. From the vast body of his pictorial works—almost all in the major churches being restored or newly built—one may single out the following, in which, over time, his rich imagination and independence from the usual conventions of mid-19th-century painting become ever more evident. In Rome: the frescoes of S. Lucia del Gonfalone (1865), S. Salvatore in Onda, those following the compositions of C. Fracassini in S. Lorenzo (1869; unfortunately completely destroyed by the war), others in S. Maria in Aquiro (1871), S. Giuseppe de’ Falegnami, and S. Maria di Loreto al Foro Traiano (1873). In 1879 he frescoed the great ceiling of the Ministry of Finance with a luminous and bold allegory that strongly recalls the late-Cortonesque tradition. Characteristic for the strength of their coloring and the clarity of their composition are the two frescoes in S. Rocco, Rome (1883). More extensive decorations, covering the entire church interior, were executed in 1890 in S. Emidio at Ascoli and in 1899 in S. Maria delle Grazie at Teramo.