MAGINI, Carlo

Carlo Magini was an Italian painter of the BaroqueGLOSSARYThe period in art history from about 1600 to about 1750. In this sense the term covers a wide range of styles and artists. In painting and sculpture there were three main forms of Baroque: (1) sumptuous display, a style associated with the Catholic Counter Reformation and the absolutist courts of Europe (Bernini, Rubens); (2) dramatic realism (Caravaggio); and (3) everyday realism, a development seen in particular in Holland (Rembrandt, Vermeer). In architecture, there was an emphasis on expressiveness and grandeur, achieved through scale, the dramatic use of light and shadow, and increasingly elaborate decoration. In a more limited sense the term Baroque often refers to the first of these categories. The development of the Baroque reflects the period's religious tensions (Catholic versus Protestant); a new and more expansive world view based on science and exploration; and the growth of absolutist monarchies. period. He painted still-lifes in a style reminiscent of Spanish bodegónGLOSSARYImage, especially Spanish, in which still-life predominates, though it is often part of a kitchen or eating scene. The term was mainly used up to c. 1650 in Spain. These genre scenes were sometimes set in the rough public eating establishments from which they take their name. By association, however, the term was applied to a wide range of genre paintings depicting figures of humble origin, often with food and drink. As early as the 1590s Flemish and Italian kitchen and market scenes were referred to as bodegónes in Spanish inventories. Such paintings were imitated by Spanish artists. Bodegónes, such as those by Diego Velázquez, were often regarded as inconsequential and even disreputable by contemporary society. They were generally monochromatic so as to emphasize relief and volume. Due to the still-life aspects of bodegónes, over time the term came to refer to still-lifes in general; up until the mid-17th century, Spanish still-lifes, like their Dutch counterparts, were referred to by their specific contents. paintings.

In 1990, Pietro Zampetti carefully compiled a catalogue of the works of Carlo Magini. He had catalogued no less than ninety-eight still-lifes from among the corpus of the artist, a native of Fano (in the Marches region), whose creation in this domain nevertheless remains nearly undocumented. It became possible to identify a coherent group around this nucleus. Magini was documented as a figure painter - of portraits in particular - but he also developed his own speciality, in the form of table settings with different, apparently unrelated, elements in juxtaposition, with a focus on light and visibility. They are all composed along the same severe lines, in antithesis to typical baroque frivolity, and yet have borrowed from a highly original and effective naturalist aesthetic.

The establishment of a timeline within this series of still-lifes remains elusive, as the works seem never to have been dated and rarely, if at all, documented. The signature in French, 'Charles Magini/peintre/Fano', found on several paintings, allowed this group to reclaim its true author, having previously been attributed to Paolo Antonio Barbieri and other supposedly French or Spanish Seicento masters.