Bernardo Strozzi’s style is unique in his use of rapid brushstrokes and contrasting lights that blend well with the vivid colour combinations. He had learned this from Sienese Mannerism, the work of Federico Barocci and the masters of Lombard Mannerism such as Giulio Cesare Procaccini and Cerano. The contrast between light and shadow is a homage to the work of Orazio Gentileschi, while the great freedom of touch and the warm, bright colour stems from an encounter with the Nordic light of Pietro Paolo Rubens.
The next Genoese auction of Old Masters Paintings on 9 June 2022 will feature two paintings depicting St. Apollonia and St. Cecilia. They are an important contribution to Bernardo Strozzi’s catalogue due to their extraordinary quality and pictorial fluency and to their illustrious provenance, such as the Chigi collection in Rome (lots 1289-1290, both with an estimate of 40,000-70,000). These two masterpieces, which we can date for the Saint Apollonia to the mid-1930s, and for the Saint Cecilia to the 1940s, show his pictorial style consisting of thick brushstrokes and an excellent stratigraphic conception. This was achieved by hardening the pictorial paste to accentuate luminosity and obtain by ‘reserve’ the darks that emerge from the preparation and on which the volumes emerge thanks to fluid highlights. From the early 1920s onwards, Strozzi coined a language that responded perfectly to the chromatic sentiment of Pietro Paolo Rubens and the naturalism of his Milanese colleagues, arriving at a fully Baroque expressiveness, but in which a taste for portraying ‘au naturel’ is evident. The confines imposed by the surface do not limit his ability to evoke a scenic depth, obtained thanks to the perspective fugue suggested by the sloping luminosity of the background, an appropriate artifice to suggest the ‘all-roundness’ of the figures and their coherent inclusion in space.
Bernardo Strozzi
(Campo Ligure, 1581 – Venezia, 1644)
Santa Cecilia
Olio su tela, cm 71X56
Stima € 40.000 – 70.000
Bernardo Strozzi
(Campo Ligure, 1581 – Venezia, 1644)
Santa Apollonia
Olio su tela, cm 71X56
Stima € 40.000 – 70.000