Federico Barocci

His work was highly esteemed and influential, and foreshadows the Baroque works of Rubens. He is generally considered the greatest and most individual painter of his time in central Italy.

• Name — Federico Barocci • Born — c. 1535 • Birthplace — Urbino, Duchy of Urbino • Died — 30 September 1612 • Place of death — Urbino, Duchy of Urbino • Known for — Painting • Movement — * Renaissance • Mannerism • Notable Works — The Communion of the Apostles

• Illustration — Annunciation (1592–96) Oil on canvas, Santa Maria degli Angeli, Perugia. He was born at Urbino, Duchy of Urbino, and received his earliest apprenticeship with his father, Ambrogio Barocci, a sculptor of some local eminence. He was then apprenticed with the painter Battista Franco Veneziano in Urbino. He accompanied his uncle, Bartolommeo Genga, to Pesaro, then in 1548 to Rome, where he worked in the pre-eminent studio of the day, that of the Mannerist painters, Taddeo and Federico Zuccari.

After passing four years at Rome, he returned to his native city, where his first work of art was a St. Margaret executed for the Confraternity of the Holy Sacrament. He was invited back to Rome by Pope Pius IV to assist in the decoration of the Vatican Belvedere Palace at Rome, where he painted the Virgin Mary and infant, with several Saints and a ceiling in fresco, representing the Annunciation. During this second sojourn, while completing the decorations for the Vatican, Barocci fell ill with intestinal complaints. He suspected that a salad which he had eaten had been poisoned by jealous rivals. Fearing his illness was terminal, he left Rome in 1563; four years later he was said to experience a partial remission after prayers to the Virgin. Barocci henceforth often complained of frail health, though he remained productive for nearly four decades more. While he is described by contemporaries as personally somewhat morose and hypochondriacal, his paintings are lively and brilliant. Although he continued to have major altarpiece commissions from afar, he never returned to Rome, and was mainly patronised in his native city by Francesco Maria II della Rovere, duke of Urbino. The Ducal Palace can be seen in the background of his paintings, rendered in a forced perspective that seems a holdover from Mannerism. • Illustration — Nativity, 1597, oil on canvas, Museo del Prado, Madrid While Barocci was removed from Rome, the fulcrum of artistic fame and influence, he continued to innovate in his style. At some point, he may have seen coloured chalk/pastel drawings by Correggio, but Barocci's remarkable pastel studies are the earliest examples of the technique to survive. In pastels and in oil sketches (another technique he pioneered), Barocci's soft, opalescent renderings evoke the ethereal. Such studies were part of a complex process Barocci used to complete his altarpieces. An organised series of steps leading up to the final product ensured its speed and success in execution. Barocci did innumerable sketches: gestural, compositional, figural studies (using models), lighting studies (using clay models), perspective studies, colour studies, nature studies, etc. Today, over 2,000 drawings by him are extant. Every detail of his subsequent cartoons for canvases was worked out in this way. A good example is his famed Madonna del Popolo (Uffizi). It is a vortex of colour and vitality, made possible by the great variety of people, poses, perspectives, natural details, colors, lighting and atmospheric effects. There are many surviving drawings for the Madonna del Popolo, from initial sketches to colour studies of heads, to the final full-size cartoon. Despite this painstaking process, Barocci's genius kept the brushstrokes passionate and liberated, and a spiritual light seems to flicker as a jewel across faces, hands, drapery, and sky. • Illustration — Federico Barocci, Madonna del Popolo, 1579 Barocci's embrace of the Counter Reformation would shape his long and fruitful career. By 1566, he joined a lay order of Capuchins, an offshoot of Franciscans. He may have been influenced by Saint Philip Neri, whose Oratorians sought to reconnect the spiritual realm with the lives of everyday people. Neri, who was somewhat ambivalent about the accumulating richness of his Santa Maria in Vallicella, commissioned two completed works from Barocci, the pre-eminent artist of these large pious altarpieces: The Visitation (1583–6) and Presentation of the Virgin (1593–94). Neri is said to have been moved to ecstasy by Barocci's accomplishment in the former painting, which shows the Virgin and Elizabeth greeting each other. In Urbino, where he painted a Descent from the Cross for the cathedral of San Lorenzo at Perugia. He again visited Rome during the papacy of Gregory XIII when he painted two admirable pictures for the Chiesa Nuova, representing the Visitation of the Virgin Mary to Elisabeth and the Presentation in the Temple, and for the Chiesa della Minerva, a Last Supper.

• Painting — Date — Site — Image link • Martyrdom of St Sebastian — 1557 — Urbino Cathedral • Madonna di San Simone — 1567 — Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino • Deposition — 1567–69 — Perugia Cathedral • Rest on the Flight into Egypt — c. 1573 — Pinacoteca Vaticana, Vatican — • Nativity — 1597 — Museo del Prado, Madrid — • The Vision of St Francis — San Francesco, Urbino • Madonna del Popolo — 1575–79 — Uffizi, Florence — • Entombment — 1580-2 — Chiesa della Croce, Senigallia • Martyrdom of San Vitale — 1583 — Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan • Portrait of a Young Man — c. 1580–85 — Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg — • Circumcision — Paris — • Annunciation — 1592–96 — Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli, Assisi, Perugia • Aeneas' Flight from Troy — 1598 — Galleria Borghese, Rome — • St Jerome — 1598 — Galleria Borghese, Rome • Portrait of Francisco II della Rovere — 1572 — Uffizi, Florence • Christ and Mary Magdalen (Noli me tangere) — 1590 — Gemaldegalerie, Munich • Entombment (etching) — 1579–1582 — Getty Museum, Los Angeles • Quintilia Fischeri — c. 1600 — National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. — • Annunciation (etching) • St Francis receives the stigmata (drawing) — Accademia Carrara, Bergamo • Madonna with Sts Simon and Jude — Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino • Vocation of Saints Peter and Andrew — 1586 — Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium • Madonna and Child with the Infant John the Baptist and St Joseph (Madonna with the Cat) — c. 1575 — National Gallery, London • Communion of the Apostles — c. 1603~1608 — Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome —

The authorities additionally record the headings Federico Barochio, Federigo Baroccio, Federico Barrochio, Fiori da Urbino and Federico Barozio. His recorded language was Italian.

Federico Barocci worked in painting and visual arts. His work is associated with Renaissance. He belonged to Order of Friars Minor Capuchin.

Works recorded as notable number 7: Communion of the Apostles, Circumcision, Head of a Shepherd, study for The Circumcision, Madonna of the people, Descent from the Cross, Presentation of Virgin Mary at the Temple and Visitation.