PIETRO da CORTONA (BERRETTINI P.). — Born in Cortona on 10 Nov. 1596, died in Rome on 16 May 1669, was a painter and architect. He began his first studies in painting in Florence and Rome.
Of great importance in his artistic development was his proximity to Domenichino, Annibale Carracci, and above all to Poussin. His first Roman sojourn (1612–37) was rich in works: from the Triumph of Bacchus (Capitoline Gallery), to the frescoes and altarpiece of S. Bibiana (1624–25), the frescoes of Castel Fusano and Palazzo Mattei, the Sacrifice of Polysena, the Rape of the Sabine Women and Darius Defeated by Alexander (1623–30) in the Capitoline Gallery, and the Adoration of the Shepherds in S. Salvatore in Lauro. The altarpiece in S. Maria della Concezione with St. Paul and St. Anne dates to 1631–36; the frescoes in the old chapel of Palazzo Barberini with scenes from the New Testament and the stucco figures of a room with allegories of Peace, Abundance, and scenes from the Old Testament, along with mythological scenes in the corridor, date to 1632–33. Slightly later is the grand allegory glorifying the Barberini family with the Triumph of Divine Providence on the vault of the great gallery (1633–39), a work that more than any other reveals his extraordinary skill as a great perspectivist, an airy decorator of spaces, and a master of foreshortening and breaking through walls, achieving for the first time effects of aerial perspective in open skies. The immense success of this new manner influenced all subsequent painting and spread throughout Europe. From the same period is the fresco with Angels and the Instruments of the Passion in the church of the Vallicella.
Important in 1637 was his journey to northern Italy, where he became acquainted with Correggio and the Venetians, even before completing the frescoes in Palazzo Barberini. In the same year, he had already begun the decoration of Palazzo Pitti (Sala della Stufa) with the Four Ages; in 1641 and 1642 he frescoed the ceiling of the Sala di Venere in collaboration with Ciro Ferri; in 1642–45 the Sala di Giove; in 1646 that of Mars; and in 1647 that of Apollo, the latter completed on his cartoons by Ciro Ferri in 1660.
In 1647 he began his second Roman sojourn, which ended with the artist’s death. The frescoes with scenes from the Aeneid in Palazzo Doria Pamphili in Piazza Navona (1651–54), the dome and pendentives of S. Maria della Vallicella with the Triumph in Glory and four Prophets, and in the same church a few years later, the Assumption in the apse and the Vision of St. Philip Neri on the vault of the nave, date to this period. From the decade 1652–62 are the musicians in the domes of the naves of the second and third bays of St. Peter’s, commissioned by Innocent X; the remaining musicians were completed by C. Ferri in 1661.
After an interval of nearly ten years, he began a career as a simple and sober architect, from the design for the Palazzo della Villa del Pigneto to his participation in the completion of Palazzo Barberini, the church of SS. Luca e Martino (1640–50), the Cappella della Concezione in S. Lorenzo in Damaso (1635), the architectural drawings for Palazzo Pitti, the tribune and dome of the Chiesa Nuova (1647–56), and the churches of S. Maria della Pace and S. Maria in Via Lata. In all these works he is a singular harmonizer of the Baroque of Bernini and Borromini with the restrained Tuscan style of Buontalenti and Ammannati, always sober compared to the Romans, yet rich in a vivid pictorial sensibility that achieves particular effects of movement and relief, especially in the evocative facades of S. Maria della Pace and S. Maria in Via Lata. To him is also owed a Trattato della pittura e scultura, in collaboration with D. Ottonelli (Florence, 1652). — See pl. XCVIII.