Giovanni Baglione: Artistic Reputation in Baroque Rome.

Maryvelma Smith O'Neil. Giovanni Baglione: Artistic Reputation in Baroque Rome.

Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. xiv + 404 pp. + 15 col. and 108 b/w pls. index. bibl. $125. ISBN: 0-521-57038-7.

Against the litany of monographs on Caravaggio, recent English-language books are beginning to emerge which balance the picture of painting in Rome around 1600. Thus we have recent studies of the chapels of Santa Maria Maggiore, the transept of San Giovanni in Laterano, and now a monograph on one of the most successful painters of the day, Giovanni Baglione. This recent turn of events is most welcome in challenging preconceived notions of art in the Eternal City at the turn of the seventeenth century. Indeed, one could recommend that any seminar on Caravaggio read this book first for historical balance. For it is not so much that we know Caravaggio was not the only artist around but merely deal with him because he is so interesting; rather, we subtly dismiss the other artists around him. Maryvelma Smith O'Neil enters headlong into these historiographical quandaries by treating the event that made Baglione the butt of historians' jokes, the libel trial he instigated against Caravaggio which gave us the irascible Lombard artist's famous one-liner: "I don't know of any painter who thinks that Giovanni Baglione is a good painter." It is a curious situation to face, when we know that contemporary writing was riddled with rhetorical tropes and yet take Caravaggio's statements as an untarnished record of an underdog fighting the art establishment.

O'Neil provides the first full account of Baglione's life (only a German thesis preceded hers) and includes several color plates and appendices with a list of his paintings, drawings, and the documents surrounding his work, including a full transcription of the libel trial, which shows a more complicated picture than heretofore imagined. Furthermore, there is a whole chapter on Baglione's literary activities as the author of the single most indispensable set of lives for the period after Vasari, the Le vite de' pittori scultori et architetti dal pontificato di Gregorio XIII. del 1572 in fino a' tempi di Papa Urbano Ottavo nel 1642 (1642). O'Neil proceeds carefully and ably, but her job of resurrecting Baglione's "artistic reputation" is made easy by his sheer success as found in the historical record. It is telling that Baglione participated in several of the most important commissions in Rome around 1600, the Nave Clementina of San Giovanni in Laterano, the Navi Piccole in St. Peter's, the Cappella Paolina in Santa Maria Maggiore, as well as an oversized altarpiece for a transept in the Gesu. In addition, Baglione occupied several important honorary positions: knighthood in 1606, principe of the Academy of St. Luke (98), and a magistrate of one of the Rome's rioni. The facts do not lie. Baglione was along with Cavaliere d'Arpino the most successful Roman painter in the first couple of decades of the seventeenth century.

Given this information, there are two ways to proceed: either one takes these facts and attempts to account for our remarkable neglect, or else we ask ourselves to simply acclimate to the new facts. O'Neil seems to take the second route, and along the way makes note of the painter's abilities and fine draftsmanship. But Baglione's works do not look like Caravaggio's or Annibale Carracci's. Each has excelled in the popular imagination because one produces works of astonishing naturalism while the other adopts a style-less classicism reminiscent of Raphael. The implicit idea that most historians of the early Baroque work with is that a trait of style equals a trait of painterly reform. Singing the praises of Baglione will not erase his traits that we happily pass over and classify as "late Mannerist." Even if Baglione is not a mannerist, we must admit that he has personal mannerisms (like the big eyes) and, even in spite of O'Neil's protestations, occasionally awkward drawing that might offend the modern viewer. The author is enticing when we hear--following Mancini--of Baglione's style as an alternative to the Caravaggist and Carracci programs (117-18). One would like to hear more of this, and also the reasons why we have been so susceptible to ignore it. Even so, this is a pioneering work which serves to introduce not only Baglione but the Roman art world around 1600 in exemplary fashion.

IAN VERSTEGEN

Temple University