Federico Barocci

Federico Barocci (b. c. 1532–d. 1612) was the most famous and well-paid Italian artist of the later 16th and early 17th centuries. Born in Urbino to a prosperous artisan family, he traveled to Rome in the early 1950s and then again in the early 1560s, receiving a papal commission through his elder countryman Taddeo Zuccaro. In the meantime, he began to receive local commissions, leading to his breakthrough Deposition in Perugia Cathedral in 1569. The work announced Barocci’s mature, reforming style, which disciplined latent Maniera (Mannerist) influences in Italy at the time in favor of life observation and careful construction of the painting through numerous stages of drawing. Barocci went on to provide a series of important altarpieces in Arezzo (Madonna del Popolo, 1579) and Ravenna (Martyrdom of St. Vitalis, 1583), leading to a series of important Roman commissions that cemented his reputation (Visitation, 1586; Presentation, 1603, both Chiesa Nuova; and Communion of the Apostles, 1608, Santa Maria sopra Minerva). Barocci’s reputation was strong in the 17th century but dropped off in the 18th, perhaps due to the sentimentality of his painting. Therefore, literature about the artist is not large, in spite of the fact that research has picked up substantially over the last few years. Today, Barocci is recognized for his importance for his time and also—in spite of ideas about his painting style—one of the most brilliant draftsmen of the Early Modern period. For a review of Barocci’s recent change in critical acceptance, see “‘Maniera sfumata, dolce, e vaga’: The Recent Canonization of Federico Barocci.” Perspective 1 (2015): 161–168 (cited under Monographs).