Saint Lawrence

Bartolomeo Cesi Italian

Not on view

Cesi was an artist devoted to the Counter-Reformation belief, expressed most forcibly in the 1582 treatise of the Bolognese Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti, that the proper function of painting was the clear communication of a religious message. Like the Carracci brothers, Cesi reacted against the complexity and artificiality of much sixteenth-century painting and returned to the study of nature, beginning each work with careful drawings from the model and abstracting from these to create an ideal form. In his late works, however, such as this modello for an altarpiece of 1619, Cesi strove for an increasingly severe geometry and reductive purity that were far removed from the dramatic action and externalization of emotion characteristic of the Carracci.

Saint Lawrence, Bartolomeo Cesi (Italian, Bologna 1556–1629 Bologna), Pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash; squared in black chalk

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Saint Lawrence, Bartolomeo Cesi (Italian, Bologna 1556–1629 Bologna), Pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash; squared in black chalk
Saint Lawrence, Bartolomeo Cesi (Italian, Bologna 1556–1629 Bologna), Pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash; squared in black chalk

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