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

38. (opposite)
Mattia Preti
(Italian,
Naples, 1613-1699)
Pilate
Washing
His Hands,
1663
Oil on canvas, 81 Vs x
72% in. x (206.1 184.8 cm)
Purchase, Gift of J. Pier
pont Morgan
and Bequest
of Helena W. Charlton,
by exchange, Gwynne
Andrews, Marquand,
Rogers,
Victor Wilbour
Memorial, and The
Alfred N. Punnett Endow
ment Funds, and funds
given
or bequeathed by
friends of the Museum,
1978 (1978.402)
39
Rembrandt
Harmensz.
van Rijn
Aristotle with a Bust
Homer, 1653
Oil on canvas,
56 XA x
of
53?/4 in. (143.5x136.5 cm)
Purchase,
butions
or bequeathed
special
and funds
contri
given
by
friends
of the Museum, 1961
(61.198)
Ruffb, he a as a painted half-length figure pendant
to one
by Guercino and another by Rem
brandt. Guercino's and Preti's
are
paintings lost, but Rembrandt's is the Aristotle with a Bust
of Homer (fig. 39).
It was
possibly
Preti's
knowledge
of this picture
that inspired
the remark
able approach
he took to the theme, concentrating
attention on the face of the protagonist,
and that determined him to offer the Pilate
Washing
His Hands to Ruffb, who, however, did
not purchase
it.
Both Guercino's and Preti's canvases
employ
another artistic strategy
to engage the viewer,
and that is the intentional
display
of the action of the paintbrush
to enhance the impression
of movement and spontaneity.
As we have seen in the case of Annibale Carracci's Two Children
a
Teasing Cat, this sort of loose, vigorous
brushwork was associated with Venetian
painting,
and in the sixteenth century it had left a strong
on impression
the Tuscan-born artist
biographer Giorgio
Vasari when he visited Titian's studio. "It is certainly true," Vasari wrote,
"that
[Titian's]
method of working
in these last works is very different from the one he
as a
employed young
man. While his
early works are executed with a certain finesse and 41