Camillo Procaccini

La storia della chiesa piacentina di San Sisto vanta origini illustri: fu infatti l'imperatrice Angilberga che qui, a metà Ottocento, fondò il primo insediamento per poi proseguire con il nuovo impianto architettonico rinascimentale, opera del piacentino Alessio Tramello tra il 1499 e il 15111. La chiesa conserva opere pittoriche che documentano le attente e aggiornate scelte dei monaci benedettini, custodi fino all'inizio dell'Ottocento del complesso. La storia delle pale d'altare in San Sisto inizia con un formidabile exploit, la Madonna Sistina di Raffaello, venduta poi nel Settecento ad Augusto III di Sassonia. Da quel momento la visita della chiesa potrebbe rappresentare la testimonianza di una sorta di vuoto, ma San Sisto resta un magnifico esempio di grande impianto urbano dell'ordine benedettino, che trova attorno al 1500 un nuovo sviluppo artistico i cui capolavori della pittura ancora oggi sono testimoni.

This study investigates the career of Carlo Antonio Procaccini, a member of one of the most prominent artistic families of the early Italian Seicento. Together with his brothers Camillo and Giulio Cesare, he was instrumental in establishing a famous workshop in Milan playing a fundamental role in the artistic renovation of the Borromean era: one of the most fascinating periods in Lombard history. Celebrated by seventeenth century sources, Carlo Antonio’s career has been largely underestimated. The essay re-affirms his legacy as the most important North Italian landscape painter of the first three decades of the seventeenth century, highlighting how his art thrived in the uniqueness of the Milanese artistic environment, characterised by prosperous economy, post-Tridentine reform, Spanish patrons, links with northern Europe and artistic eclecticism.

Il “Martirio di sant’Agnese” di Camillo Procaccini per il Duomo di Milano: precisazioni sulla datazione, in Una vita per l’arte. Studi in onore di Andrea Emiliani, a cura di Marco Baldassari e Pierluigi Carofano, in “Valori Tattili”, 5/6, 2015, pp. 131-143.

24/03/2022 - Comunichiamo che è disponibile il seguente libro:
A. Ugolini - Repertorio della Pittura a Bologna 1460/1580 - ed. EBS Print - Lesmo 2022 - 719 pagine - ISBN 9791259685049.
Si tratta di un testo cartaceo proposto su numerose librerie online.
Sono presenti in Allegato alcune pagine iniziali in PDF.
La sintesi promozionale in controcopertina ricorda che sono elencati oltre 3000 dipinti dotati ciascuno di un riferimento bibliografico; le riproduzioni di vario tipo sono più di 400; le attribuzioni nuove o poco note sono oltre 100.
Le novità riguardano: C. Baglione - G. Borghese - D. Calvart - Agostino Carracci - G.B. Cavalletto - S. Cavalletto - B. Cesi - G.A. Chiodarolo - L. Fontana - P. Fontana - Giacomo Francia - Giulio Francia - Innocenzo da Imola - L. Magnanini detto Fiorino - G. Marchesi - Michele di Matteo - G.A. Paganino - B. Passerotti - F. Pinariccio - A. Pirri - C. Procaccini - E. Procaccini - G.B. Ramenghi - P. de Kempeneer - L. Sabatini - O. Samacchini - D. Tibaldi - T. Vincidor - Maestro della Maddalena Assunta - Maestro della Madonna Parrish - Maestro detto Pseudo Passerotti - Maestro di San Giacinto - Maestro di Castel Bolognese - Maestro detto Amico Friulano del Dosso - Maestro del Sant'Eustachio Figdor.
L'autore si ripropone di menzionare, in una seconda edizione, quei lettori che abbiano segnalato aggiornamenti, in particolare per dipinti omessi o inediti.

11/12/2020 please consider that erroneous keyword Micheli is present instead of correct one "Danieli" - This is the second part about “minor” Bolognese painters, dedicated to artists born in Cinquecento and active before 1580, as Francesco Primaticcio, Giulio Bonasone, Giovanni Battista Fiorini, Girolamo Mirola, Ottaviano Nonni called Mascherino, Felice Pinarezzi called Lasagna and possibly Pasqualini, Domenico Tibaldi, Cesare Aretusi, Francesco Cavazzoni, Ercole Pio, Mario Sabatini, Tiburzio Passerotti, Bartolomeo Cesi, Baldassarre Croce, and Camillo Procaccini. A few notes refer to Carracci before 1580. The beginning of the essay gives updatings to Lorenzo Sabatini and Amico Aspertini (for the latter, a painting is subtracted, and added to Johannes Hispanus). Necessary adjustments touch Jacopo di Lorenzo da Bologna and Forte da Bologna called Giacomo, born in Quattrocento.

The book investigates the artistic trajectory of the three Procaccini brothers: Camillo (1561- 1629), Carlo Antonio (1571-1631) and Giulio Cesare (1574-1625) the most important family of painters working in Northern Italy at the start of the seventeenth century.

The Procaccini’s work is here analysed by interconnecting their individual stories and understanding their success as the combination of mutual artistic choices, high level of specialisation and precise business organisation. In doing so, the book updates the modern scholarly literature, which has focused on the Procaccini’s individual careers, underestimating both their connections as family members and the importance of their bottega as the key locus of artistic growth and stylistic innovation.

The book will be of interest to scholars studying art history, early modern studies, the art market, Italian studies, and Italian history.

The precision with which ancient sources attribute to Camillo Procaccini the paintings originally located in the church of the Milanese College has so far not met with a correspondingly punctual examination of the works and their critical history. The corpus of paintings includes an Annunciation which, unlike the other works (a Birth of the Virgin and a Saint Michael the Archangel), appears to have escaped both ancient and modern contemplation. What emerges from the story of the Guastalla paintings is a real quid pro quo of the printed sources which attribute beyond any doubt the Birth of the Virgin to the “excellent brush of Procaccino”, an ascription remaining identical until well into the 19th century. If for the first two works it is possible to admit they were done in a workshop, or at most are derived from ideas of the master, the Annunciation shows a higher qualitative level diverging from the other paintings and militating in favour of its full authorship. A series of comparisons come to our aid here, since the subject, treated countless times by Camillo, constitutes a wide repertory to draw from.

After revealing new documentary sources to recompose the pictorial collections belonging to Pedro de Toledo, the 5th Marquis of Villafranca, and particularly to reunite
Camillo and Giulio Cesare Procaccini’s pictorial series of the Life of the Virgin and the Passion of Christ, respectively, this article proposes incorporating the hitherto unknown Way to Calvary to the second series and begins to delineate the first series beginning with The Visitation of the Virgin at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas, The Presentation of the Virgin Mary at the Prado Museum of Madrid and The Adoration of the Shepherds and Marriage of the Virgin currently in the art market. Moreover, for the first time, the Procaccini collection belonging to Don Pedro de Toledo is linked to The Ecstasy of the Magdalen by Giulio Cesare exhibited at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
`(I must point out that unfortunately the text contains a serious misprint on p. 97. Where the dimensions (247.2 x 147.5) are stated, they should read 217.2 x 147.5 cm.)

The study investigates the artistic trajectory of the three Procaccini brothers: Camillo (1561-1629), Carlo Antonio (1571-1631) and Giulio Cesare (1574-1625), one of the most important families of painters of the early Italian Seicento. Descending from Emilian background, the Procaccini influenced the evolution of Lombard art, establishing a famous workshop in Milan and playing a fundamental role in the artistic renovation of the Borromean era, one of the most fascinating periods in Milanese art history. Procaccini’s work is here analysed under the reciprocal perspective of the family workshop, interconnecting their individual careers and understanding their success as the combination of mutual artistic choices, high level of specialisation and precise business organisation. In doing so this study updates the modern scholarly literature, which has generally focused on the Procaccini’s individual careers, underestimating both their connections as family members and the importance of their workshop as the key centre of artistic growth and stylistic innovation.

The paper investigates the pictorial decoration of Castello Visconti di San Vito in Somma Lombardo, one of the finest examples of Lombard aristocratic villa of the first half of the seventeenth century. Built on a pre-existent medieval structure, the castle was richly decorated by a secular iconographic program that, drawn from Flemish sources, was executed in the period 1604-1609 by an équipe of painters gravitating towards the bottega Procaccini: the most important Milanese workshop of the time. The study, for the first time, retraces the genesis of this commission as well as the execution of the decorative program. Specifically, it individuates the complex series of iconographic sources used by Carlo Antonio Procaccini and his assistants, highlighting a coexistence of both Emilian and Flemish artistic references that is unprecedented in Lombard early Baroque art.

Abstract: the article aims to assign to Camillo Procaccini of a drawing in the British Museum, previously unattributed. The sheet is the first thought per the Adoration of the shepherds dated 1584, formerly in the church of San Francesco in Bologna, and now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale. At that time Procaccini was only twentythree years old and he was working, alongside with Bartolomeo Cesi, for the bishop of Bologna. The style of the drawing, slightly more calm than usual, must probably be explained by theclose relationship with the colleague.

The handwritten guidebook, 1739 Raccolta delle pitture de’ celebri maestri antiche, e d’autori moderni preserved at the biblioteca Ambrosiana (M 65 suss.), has been known so far in an 19th century transcription kept at the biblioteca Capitolare in Milan, probably commissioned by Aristide Sala. During the 19th century the volume was first owned by Michele Caffi and then by Luca Beltrami who donated it to the Ambrosiana in 1906. The booklet lists and collects the paintings that were in churches and in some public and private palaces in that period in Milan; by comparing the coeval guidebooks made by the Santagostino brothers, by Torre, Biffi and Latuada remarkable elements have appeared: the importance given to architectural quadratures, decorations and to 17th and 18th centuries minor artists, mostly Lombard; inspection visits of both the convents and church sacristies; a very peculiar focus on the series of paintings dedicated and to lives of saints and on the restorations; the presence of several works, most of which today untraceable. the article finally presents two works attributed to Camillo Procaccini and to Agostino Santagostino. The anonymous author of the guidebook is himself a painter and a restorer, perhaps a clergyman who basically integrated the documents Santagostino and Latuada had written.

Il quinto volume di Monza Illustrata esce con una corposa e sfaccettata sezione monografica dedicata a Leonardo e alla sua impronta in Lombardia nei 500 anni della scomparsa del pittore.
La lezione di Leonardo, viva nei cantieri milanesi avviati dal pittore fiorentino, viene qui esaminata attraverso l’opera degli intagliatori Pietro Bussolo e Giacomo del Maino, e la figura di Leonardo “costumista” alla corte degli Sforza è indagata nella sua eredità fiorentina. Un approfondimento sulla maturità del pittore pavese Lorenzo Fasolo permette di ribilanciarne le acquisizioni leonardiane a favore di una più puntuale adesione ai modi di Foppa e Bergognone e ad aperture cinquecentesche in direzione padana. Di Leonardo viene esaminato lo studio della resa degli alberi nei cosiddetti “capitoli aggiunti” agli apografi e ne viene tracciata la sperimentazione e la fortuna, in Lombardia e in Italia settentrionale, della tecnica grafica a pietra rossa fino a Correggio. Infine il monografico ospita un contributo con affondi e inedite trascrizioni sugli scandali che animarono la mostra milanese dedicata a Leonardo nel 1939.
La miscellanea del volume ospita un saggio sulla poco studiata cappella trecentesca dei SS. Maddalena e Magno (in seguito sagrestia) del Duomo monzese e propone un’importante acquisizione al catalogo di Camillo Procaccini in merito a dipinti poco noti del Collegio Guastalla di Monza.

In 1667, Malvasia travelled to Milan to collect information about the brothers Camillo, Carlo Antonio, and Giulio Cesare Procaccini. Eighty years earlier, in 1587, these three Emilian painters had left Bologna to find better opportuni¬ties in Lombardy. Once there, they transformed the local artistic tradition and inaugurated an extraordinary season of artistic production culminating in the spiritual patronage of Federico Borromeo. Read in modern terms, their story can be understood as an example of a seventeenth-century migration that led to sudden success and remarkable achievement. As a centre of artistic growth and stylistic innovation, the Procaccini workshop played a fundamental role in development of Lombard art. This paper investigates the business strategies adopted by the Procaccini family in Milan. It explores how the brothers expanded their workshop by developing different specializations, using influential contacts, and establishing joint ventures with smaller botteghe.

The paper investigates the pictorial decoration of Castello Visconti di San Vito in Somma Lombardo, one of the finest examples of Lombard aristocratic villa of the first half of the seventeenth century. Built on a pre-existent medieval structure, the castle was richly decorated by a secular iconographic program that, drawn from Flemish sources, was executed in the period 1604-1609 by an équipe of painters gravitating towards the bottega Procaccini: the most important Milanese workshop of the time. The study, for the first time, retraces the genesis of this commission as well as the execution of the decorative program. Specifically, it individuates the complex series of iconographic sources used by Carlo Antonio Procaccini and his assistants, highlighting a coexistence of both Emilian and Flemish artistic references that is unprecedented in Lombard early Baroque art.

A seguito del restauro della Sacrestia Aquilonare del Duomo di Milano sono tornate alla luce tracce consistenti della policromia del portale, che vengono confrontate con le fonti documentarie per precisare le fasi della decorazione di Giovannino de Grassi e il ruolo della committenza. Nell'occasione si identifica il complesso programma iconografico, che comprende anche l'interno della sacrestia, dove il restauro ha interessato le vele dipinte nel 1611 da Camillo Procaccini, che erano illeggibili, a causa dei problemi conservativi

BEYOND WORKSHOP BOUNDARIES:  THE LUINI AND THE PROCACCINI

My paper will explore interrelations between the workshops of the brothers Luini and the brothers Procaccini in late 16th century Milan. Milanese draftsmanship of the Cinquecento still remains an understudied and underappreciated subject area and the processes of collaboration and competition between these workshops, two of the most important in the city, have eluded even the best informed experts in the field of old master drawings.

Through comparative analyses of selected works from the oeuvre of Aurelio and Giovan Pietro Luini on the one hand, and Camillo and Giulio Cesare Procaccini on the other, I aim to clarify their reciprocal influences, their workshop collaborations and the effects of these on their art.

‘Who changes country, changes his fortune’ thus begins Malvasia’s account of the Pro-caccini family in the second volume of the Felsina Pittrice, a 17th century history of Bolo-gnese painting. In 1667 Malvasia travelled to Milan to collect information about Camillo (1561–1629), Carlo Antonio (1574–1630) and Giulio Cesare (1574–1625), three Emilian painters who in 1587 left Bologna to find better opportuni¬ties in Lombardy where, throughout three decades, they transformed the local artistic tradition, inaugurating an extraordinary season of artistic production characterized by the spiritual patronage of Cardinal Federico Borromeo and represented by a generation of painters known as pes-tanti: the painters of the plague. Read in modern terms, the Procaccini’s story can be understood as an example of 17th century migration characterized by sudden success, remarkable achievements and precise busi¬ness organiza¬tion. In Milan the family devel-oped a successful workshop orga¬nized halfway between a bottega familiare and a private art school, following a tradition already exemplified by the Carracci’s Bolo¬gnese activity. By employing different artistic specializations, excellent contacts with local patrons and join–ventures with smaller workshops, the Procac¬cini rapidly controlled the Milanese art mar-ket, renovat¬ing the Lombard artistic tradition with the pictorial novelties drawn from the art of Correggio and the Carracci as well as from the naturalistic developments of contemporary Flemish paint¬ers such as Jan Soens, Paul Brill and Jan Brueghel. Starting from these premises, my dissertation investigates the business strategy adopted by the Procaccini, highlighting the fundamental role played by the bottega familiare in the devel-opment of the brothers’ individual careers as well as in the transition of Lombard art from late Mannerism to early Baroque.