(b. 1578, Roma, d. 1644, Roma)

Simulated loggia architecture with landscape views 1619-21 Fresco Palazzo Lancellotti, Rome

The picture shows the simulated loggia architecture with landscape views in the Sala de' Palafrenieri in the Palazzo Lancellotti, Rome.

For Baroque fresco decorations it was necessary to create 'quadratura' - perspective produced with the aid of a grid of squares - based on architectural principles. Most painters of quadratura, whether for stage sets or in the context of decorative painting, were either architects or specialists in the proper rendering of foreshortened architecture. They were accordingly ill-equipped for the depiction of figures, the very reason for the existence of ceiling pictures. Consequently, they were required to collaborate with figure painters (pittori figuristi), and there were any number of such collaborations in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: Tassi and Domenichino, Tassi and Guercino, Colonna and Albani, Haffner and Canuti, and Mengozzi Colonna and Tiepolo, to name only a few. Teams like these frequently worked together for years.

Just as figure painters could make themselves independent of the quadraturista, there are instances in which the quadratura painter eschewed the collaboration of a figurista. One of these is provided by the versatile Agostino Tassi, who was not only a specialist in festival decorations, mock architecture, landscape prospects, and seascapes, but also functioned successfully on repeated occasions as his own figure painter. He created in Rome's Palazzo Lancellotti a work that set new standard, and not only in its monumental dimensions. In three years he and his workshop transformed the two-story Sala de' Palafrenieri on the piano nobile into a double loggia whose arcades open out onto expansive sea and landscape prospects. Colourful parrots and peacocks are perched on the upper-story balustrades.

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Author: TASSI, Agostino Title: Simulated loggia architecture with landscape views Time-line: 1601-1650 School: Italian Form: painting