Scenes of Early Christian Female Martyrs

religious

A narrative scene painted on a wall as a framed picture was referred to as a "quadro riportato," which to seventeenth-century thinking suggested that a framed panel painting had been translated into the medium of fresco. Ciampelli's wall pictures in the clerestory of the church of Santa Bibiana belongs to this category. Here the legends of early Christian female martyrs are narrated in a series of six simulated panel pictures.

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Scenes of Early Christian Female Martyrs

About the Artist

Agostino Ciampelli

1565 – 1630

Italian painter. He was a pupil of Santi di Tito, whom he followed in the creation of a new naturalist style that satisfied the demands of the Counter-Reformation church for a direct and simple religious art. The clarity of his early Calling of St Andrew (Pescia Cathedral) and the modest domestic interior in the Birth of the Virgin (1593; Florence, San Michelino Visdomini) are indebted to Santi. He was appointed 'Camarlingo' of Florentine Accademia del Disegno in May 1594. He went to Rome with Giovanni Balducci, presumably at invitation of Cardinal Alessandro de' Medici then engaged in redecorating his new titular church, Santa Prassede. Accommodated by the Cardinal in his own palace, in the sala of which was hung a painting by Ciampelli of the 'Marriage at Cana', brought from Florence. While in Rome, Agostino painted a Crucifixion for Santa Prassede, angels on the walls of the apse of Santa Maria in Trastevere, and frescoes in the little church of Santa Bibiana. Two of his finest works in fresco are in the Chiesa del Gesù, representing the Martyrdom of St Andrew, and a Glory of Saints and Angels on the ceiling.

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