Florentine

Baroque

Art American

from

Collections

Between April I7 and June 15 The Metropolitan Museum of Art will be host to an exhibition of Florentine baroque art from American collections, organized by members of the Department of Art History and Archaeology of Columbia University. Including a selection of drawingsand sculptures, the show is focused on thirty-seven oil paintings of this little-known period of Florentine art. It begins with a few late mannerist works, of which we may single out a little portable altar by Jacopo Ligozzi with a precious frame of marble mosaic (lent by the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College). The greatest Florentine artist of the years around 600owas undoubtedly Ludovico Cigoli, the counterpartin Tuscany to Caravaggioin Rome and the Carracciin Bologna. Cigoli participated actively in the rebirth of a newly expressive religious imagery based on the precepts of the Counter Reformation; this aspect of his art is represented by St. Francis in Ecstasy, one of a number of paintings lent by Governor Luis Ferre's Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico. The exhibition concentrates on works produced by artists born around 600o. Among them, the Allegory of Charity by Cesare Dandini, recently lent to the Museum, represents the gaily colorful, self-conscious, slightly mocking character of some of these attractive pictures. Dandini's painting is a kind of secular Madonna; other paintings in the exhibition, although ostensibly religious, are redolent with coloristic and even worldly effects. Artists like Francesco Furini and Cecco Bravo painted in a mystical, magical, and sensuous manner that seems to characterize this school. Sharp contrasts between the pietistic and the profane are common, parallelingthe better-known Spanish works of this period, and seem to characterize the decadent, repressive, and somewhat isolated court of the later Medici. One of the few Florentine artists of the seventeenth century still enjoying an uneasy fame is Carlo Dolci, whose slick icons have made him an almost notorious symbol of disreputable religiosity. The exhibition reveals him as a brilliant colorist whose amazAllegory of Charity,by Cesare detailed images have their own contemporary appeal. The show closes, chronoDandini (about 1595-1658), Italian ingly with a few virtuoso examplesof Florentine bronze casting of the later baroque (Florence). Oil on canvas, 59 x 52 logically, inches(includingframe). Anonyperiod by the outstanding masters of the genre, G. B. Foggini and the medalist Masmous loan, L 68.162 similiano Soldani.
HOWARD HIBBARD

Professor of Art History, Columbia University Art fromAmerican Exhibitioncatalogue:Florentine Collections, Baroque by HowardHibbard and JoanNissman.136 pages.42 black-and-white color cover. 912 x 62 inches. illustrations,
Paper, $2.50.

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