Michelangelo Cerquozzi

Michelangelo Cerquozzi was born in Rome as the son of Marcello Cerquozzi and Lucia Vassalli, both Roman citizens. His father was a successful leather merchant and the family was well-off. Michelangelo Cerquozzi started his artistic training at the age of 12 in the studio of Giuseppe Cesari, a history painter in whose studio the young Caravaggio trained upon his arrival in Rome. Various biographers and scholars describe Cerquozzi as an artist in close contact with the circle of Flemish and Dutch artists active in Rome. They place him in the period 1620-1621 as living or working in Rome alongside Jacob de Hase (also known as Giacomo Fiammingo), an Antwerp painter of battles who came to Rome in 1601. He may have studied with Jacob de Hase before this date. Cerquozzi gradually gained recognition starting from 1630 and his works sold very well to all classes of patrons. The early sponsorship of purchasers such as the merchant Dominico Viola played an important role in launching his career. He was also able to secure commissions from prominent patrons including professionals such as the lawyer Raffaelo Marchesi and the doctor Vincenzo Neri and aristocratic clients from the circle of the Barberini family, the Colonna family, Cardinal Rapaccioli, Modenese Count Camillo Carandini, count Carpegna and Monsignor Raggi. Many of his patrons were from circles that supported the Spanish cause in Italy. Cerquozzi would also collaborate on designs of Famiano Strada's De Bello Belgico celebrating Alessandro Farnese's campaigns to recapture the Spanish Netherlands for the Spanish emperor. His friends included Pietro da Cortona, Giacinto Brandi, and Cornelis Bloemaert. ==Work==

General Michelangelo Cerquozzi is best known for painting small canvases depicting genre scenes and his lively Baroque battle scenes. Cerquozzi was recognised as a prominent still life painter, while his multi-faceted career also included religious and mythological compositions. Cerquozzi executed only one public commission in Rome, a lunette depicting the Miracle of Saint Francis of Paolo in the cloister of the Church of Sant’Andrea delle Fratte, which has been lost. He is said to have painted altarpieces for several unidentified Sardinian churches. Cerquozzi’s religious works are generally cabinet-sized pictures and feature, like his genre paintings, small, unidealized figures in naturalistic landscape settings. His mythological canvases, for example Hercules and Herminia and the Shepherds are grounded in a peasant world. He also painted some allegorical paintings, including personifications of the seasons, such as Summer and Spring (both in the Ashmolean Museum). Genre scenes In his genre scenes Cerquozzi shows his indebtedness to the Bamboccianti, the circle of Dutch and Flemish painters around Pieter van Laer and Jan Miel who had developed a new style in Rome rooted in Northern traditions of genre painting. A painting in this style was known as a Bambocciata (plural: Bambocciate). In his early genre works Cerquozzi showed his mastery of the style of Pieter van Laer and Jan Miel in their compact scale, anti-heroic subject-matter and dramatic chiaroscuro effects. Cerquozzi's Party in a garden with Roman artists (Kassel, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister) displays typical bambocciata characteristics in its naturalism and small format. However, rather than the usual low-life figures it depicts groups of finely dressed men and women. These include the artist himself, his doctor Vincenzo Neri and other friends engaged in conversation and games. The Baroque freedom of vision and "plein air" setting of these compositions show Cerquozzi to be a mediator from Caravaggio to the "Baroque". He achieved considerable success with his still lifes, which appear frequently in 17th and 18th century inventories. Collaborations He was a frequent collaborator with various landscape and architectural painters. These included collaborations with the architectural painters Viviano Codazzi (starting from the 1630s) and the landscape painter Angeluccio. Cerquozzi and Codazzi became frequent collaborators. As Codazzi's compositions typically depicted Antique ruins and monuments, the collaboration likely made Cerquozzi move away from the representation of anecdotes of rural life to more elevated and exotic subjects. In 1657 the two artists collaborated on various canvases for Cardinal Flavio Chigi, one of the most important art patrons of his time. Some of the canvases made for Cardinal Chigi treated original subject matter. For instance, a composition entitled ''Women's bath represents a fantastic Renaissance interior in which numerous naked women are shown in sunken pools, possibly a surprising subject for a commission by a Cardinal. This work deals with the anti-Spanish rebellion that took place on 7 July 1647 in the Piazza del Mercato in Naples with the support of France. Cerquozzi framed and objectified his observations on the event in a wide scenic and challenging perspective. He brilliantly used the naturalistic bambocciata'' manner to produce a comic–heroic portrayal of the revolt. Unlike the contemporary treatment of the same subject by Domenico Gargiulo who treats Masaniello twice in a single canvas as a primitive saint, Cerquozzi treated the anti-Spanish revolt, which was a very important event in Europe's balance of power, in a rather even-handed and objective manner even though he was generally regarded as being pro-Spanish. The piece had in fact been commissioned by Bernardino Spada, a pro-French cardinal. ==Notes==