SACCHI, ANDREA
Painter, born in Nettuno (Rome) on 30 November 1599, died in Rome on 21 June 1661.
His major public work is the altarpiece depicting the Miracle of St Gregory, painted for the Vatican Basilica in the Clementine Chapel, commissioned by Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte in 1625 and which, perhaps to please the taste of the latter, is among Sacchi’s works that most clearly shows a certain, albeit very slight, contact with the Caravaggesque world and that of Rubens. The altarpiece representing the Miracle of the Corporal is now in the chapter hall of the Vatican, since in the 18th century it was replaced by a musical composition. Other important works of certain attribution to Sacchi are the four altarpieces executed for the four altars on the piers of St Peter’s Basilica: St Veronica, the Decapitation of St Longinus, The Invention of the Cross and St Andrew, which are also now located in the chapter hall of the Vatican Basilica. The work recognized as Sacchi’s masterpiece is St Romuald Narrating his Vision, in the Vatican Picture Gallery, painted in 1640. His last notable altarpiece depicts the Transit of St Anne (S. Carlo ai Catinari, Rome). Other paintings recognized by critics include: The Drunkenness of Noah, of which two versions exist, one in the Galleria Sciarra in Rome (now property of the Chimiri family in Catanzaro) and the other in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin; The Festival of the Lupercalia (Prado Museum, Madrid), previously attributed to Pietro da Cortona; The Feast of the Gesù, in which the scene of Pope Urban VIII’s visit to the church of the Gesù on the occasion of the centenary of the Jesuits (1630) is depicted with vivid realism.
Sacchi, slow in his work, with his broad and thick brushstroke and his creations of a particular pathetic grandeur full of naturalness, between the dry severity of the true Caravaggisti and the decorative abundance of a Lanfranco and a Pietro da Cortona, marks a moment of serene classicism both formal and chromatic, most interesting for the further developments of Roman painting in the 17th and 18th centuries.
His son and pupil was GIUSEPPE, a Conventual friar who died in his convent in Rome. He painted a notable picture for the church of the SS. Apostoli in Rome. An oil panel depicting St Francis Receiving the Stigmata was removed and alienated by decree of the Sacred Congregation of Bishops and Regulars on 7 September 1703. A Sibyl in Warsaw, attributed to Giuseppe Sacconi, may be his.