Portrait of Pope Clement IX

portrait

Apart from demonstrating the favours granted by important Roman patrons, Maratti's portraits are also perhaps the most lively and penetrating part of his work. He took pains to capture the exact physiognomy of his sitters in whom he sometimes seemed to uncover an incurable feeling of melancholy hiding just below the surface. Here his admiration for Raphael's portraits is evident, but he has added a more stylish air to suit the tastes of the high Baroque.

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About the Artist

Carlo Maratti

1625 – 1713

Carlo Maratti (Maratta) Italian painter, the leading painter in Rome in the latter part of the 17th century. As the pupil of Andrea Sacchi he continued the tradition of the classical Grand Manner, based on Raphael, and he gained an international reputation particularly for his paintings of the Madonna and Child, which are reworkings of types established during the High Renaissance. The rhetorical splendour of his work is thoroughly in the Baroque idiom, however, and the numerous altarpieces he painted for Roman churches (many still in situ) give whole-hearted expression to the dogmas of the Counter-Reformation. Maratta was also an accomplished fresco painter, and the finest portraitist of the day in Rome. He had a large studio and his posthumous reputation suffered when the inferior works of his many pupils and imitators were confused with his own paintings.

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