Like Plautilla, Elpidio grew up in his father’s workshop attended by artists, intellectuals and clients. Elpidio became an amateur artist, in close relationship with masters such as Gian Lorenzo Bernini (his terracotta bust of Pope Alexander VII is in the show), Pietro da Cortona, Andrea Sacchi, Giovan Francesco Grimaldi and Giovan Francesco Romanelli, author of the Madonna del Rosario for the church of Santi Domenico e Sisto in Rome, restored for the occasion in the laboratory of the National Galleries. But Elpidio aspired to an ecclesiastical-diplomatic career, first serving Cardinal Giulio Mazzarino (evoked in the exhibition by a powerful Portrait of Cardinal Giulio Mazarino, attributed to Pietro da Cortona), and later Jean-Baptiste Colbert, as an agent of Louis XIV in Rome, thus becoming a key figure in the political and artistic dialogue between Paris and the Holy See. Plautilla Bricci and Elpidio Benedetti: a story of parallel livesĮlpidio was the son of the Bolognese Lucia Paltrinieri and Andrea, an embroiderer native of Poggio Mirteto whose “ paonazza” planet and the corporal bag (1622), donated by Gregorio XV Boncompagni to the Bolognese archdiocese he had held for nine years before rising to the papal throne, are included in the exhibition. Andrea Benedetti also led a parallel life as an art dealer in his workshop in Banchi in the Ponte district, dealing with works by the most sought-after names of the moment: from Guido Reni to Rutilio Manetti. Church of Santa Maria in Monte Santo, Rome. Plautilla Bricci, Madonna and Child, c. 1635–40, oil on canvas, 224 x 150 cm. He must have directed Plautilla’s debut with the Madonna and Child of Santa Maria in Montesanto (1640 ca.). While Orazio chose to promote Artemisia as a “miracle in painting,” Bricci launches Plautilla as a miracle of virtue: on the back of the canvas the signature of the young artist (“depicted about the year 1640 by Plautilla Bricci a Roman spinster”) is accompanied by the report of a prodigious event: the work had been finished by the Madonna herself! This debut guaranteed her a favorable position in the mass production industry of devotional images and must have attracted the attention of the man who was to become her mentor and main patron: Abbot Elpidio Benedetti. Plautilla’s debut: The miraculous icon of Santa Maria in Montesanto Like Orazio Gentileschi for Artemisia, Giovanni not only provided his daughter’s apprenticeship but also created her first network of contacts and professional opportunities. In the workshop of her father Giovanni (son of a Ligurian mattress-junk dealer who emigrated to Rome in the 1560s) she acquired much more than the rudiments of drawing and colouring. In addition to being a painter from the circle of Arpino, Giovanni Bricci was also a polygraph and poet, actor and comedian, musician and composer. Plautilla’s mother, Chiara Recupiti, of Neapolitan origins, may have been a relative of Ippolita, the virtuous singer in the service of Cardinal Montalto. Like almost all of her woman artist colleagues, Plautilla was the daughter of an artist. In a newly renovated Galleria Corsini with a wi-fi network, an app to support the visit, and new lighting, the exhibition, curated by Yuri Primarosa, brings together for the first time the entire graphic and pictorial production of the artist, with a section on her unfortunately now demolished architectural masterpiece: Villa Benedetta-Il Vascello. In the entrance hall, a “wall of the talented women” (a reinterpretation of the concept of the Room of the Beauties?) juxtaposes the Portrait (or Self-portrait) of Faustina Maratta (Corsini) and the Self– portrait of Artemisia Gentileschi from Palazzo Barberini to the Girl with a Compass (an Allegory of Architecture or Astronomy) of the Spada Gallery, already on the cover of Mazzucco’s book, with Portrait of an architect, likely an effigy of Bricci, from a Californian private collection. In the picture below, the identification of the sitter as Plautilla was proposed in recently by Clovis Whitfield, and the attribution of the painting to Antonio Gherardi was proposed by Francesco Petrucci.Īrtist active in Rome, mid-17th century, Portrait of an architectures (Plautilla Bricci?), oil on canvas, 66.1 x 52.7 cm. The “wall of talented women” at Galleria Corsini.
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