Descrizione
Storia dell’arte n. 155-156 – Nuova Serie 1/2 | 2021
Valter Curzi
Sul pittore dotto nella Roma del Settecento: Pompeo Batoni e Domenico Corvi
The studies on the art in Rome in the Eighteenth century are going to progressively clarify the cultural and collective practices between the arts, opening new spaces for discussion and dialogue, especially for the first half of the century.
The Academies, above all, beginning with the Academy of Arcadia, as well as museums and private or public theatres, increased the debates around sacred and profane topics, involving the artists that took advantage of a new sociability intended to make social differences less evident.
Both the common fruition of literary knowledge as well as the study and promotion of the Antique identified fields of intellectual exchange that required the participation of those who practice the art of drawing. Artists – such as Pompeo Batoni and Domenico Corvi – move in this context as protagonists. At a young age, the first one was the author of a series of paintings by his invention, that are analyzed in this essay, taking their erudite meaning into special account. The image of the artist as a philosopher, advocated by the second one, is compared in this contribution both with the iconographic themes adopted by the Master from Viterbo and with the international treatises on the artistic profession.