GOING FOR BAROQUE Into the Bin - The Metropolitan Museum of Art

24.
Annibale Carracci
The Coronation of the
ca.
Virgin, 1595
Oil on canvas, 46%
x
55% in. (117.8x141.3 cm)
Purchase, Bequest
of
Miss Adelaide Milton
de Groot (1876-1967), by
exchange,
and Dr. and
Mrs. Manuel Porter and
sons Gift, in honor of
Mrs. Sarah Porter, 1971
(1971.155)
of Poussin in Rome).
Of Annibale Carracci's great frescoed vault in the Farnese
palace
in
Rome?one of the reference
points
of later classicizing
artists?Bellori wrote, "We must note
that the an images require
attentive and
ingenious
viewer whose
judgment
resides not in his
or her eyes but in the intellect. Certainly
the mind will not be content with what it takes in at
a glance. Rather, it will remain to understand that mute
eloquence
of colors, since painting
possesses such power that it is not confined to the eyes but
through contemplation
diffuses
through
the mind." Bellori's exalted vision of painting
left little room for mere naturalism or
for pictures purporting
to represent everyday life; he never mentions Annibale's genre sub
jects?as though they might
detract from Annibale's stature as a serious artist. What he
admired were those works Annibale conceived in a more grander,
elevated
style?pictures
like Annibale's noble Coronation
of the Virgin (fig. 24).
The Coronation of the Virgin
does not
speak the language
of everyday life, let alone of the
street. Instead, it adopts
the classical cadence of Raphael (note
the linking
of figures by gesture
and pose)
and the nobility
of Roman
sculpture (exemplified by
the head of God the Father,
which is based on a bust of Jupiter),
and it reinvigorates
this legacy
with a northern Italian
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