Paintings Drawings Sculptures 2016 - Jean Luc Baroni

Felice Giani
San Sebastiano Curone 1758 - 1823 Rome
35
Christ Driving the Traders from the Temple
Pen and dark brown ink and wash over black chalk, within framing lines. Bears
number in pen and ink: 55 and bears attribution in pencil: Giani.
542 x 802 mm (21 3 /8 x31 1 /2 in.)
Provenance: Mary Brandagee (L.1860c), probably
amongst the large collection purchased from Giovanni
Piancastelli in 1904; Private Collection, Germany.
Born near Genoa, Felice Giani studied in Pavia with
the architect Antonio Galli Bibiena before continuing
his training in the studios of Ubaldo Gandolfi and
Domenico Pedrini in Bologna. In 1780 he came to
Rome, was given lodging by Prince Doria Pamphilj and
enrolled at the Accademia di San Luca in Rome, where
he was a pupil of Pompeo Batoni. Soon thereafter he
embarked on a career as a decorative fresco painter.
In such projects as the decoration of the Palazzo Altieri
in Rome, arguably his masterpiece as a mural painter,
Giani developed a manner of ornamental decoration
which incorporated classical elements inspired by
Roman wall paintings, executed in fresco or tempera
and often combined with stucco work. He also
worked at the Palazzo Chigi and the Villa Borghese
in Rome before returning to Bologna in 1784. For the
next ten years he worked mainly in Faenza (Giani is
sometimes known as Il Faentino) as well as Bologna,
though he travelled widely throughout Northern Italy
and continued to work in Rome. Between 1790 and
1796 Giani hosted a series of informal drawing sessions
at his house in Rome; a salon – open to both Italian
and foreign artists – which became known as the
Accademia dei Pensieri. Among the many artists who
attended the academy were Luigi Sabatelli, Vincenzo
Camuccini, Giuseppe Bossi, Bartolomeo Pinelli and
François-Xavier Fabre. Giani’s most important fresco
commission of the early years of the 19th century was
the decoration of several rooms in the Palazzo Milzetti
in Faenza, executed between 1802 and 1805. Later
Roman commissions included work in the Palazzo di
Spagna and the Palazzo del Quirinale, the residence of
the French viceroy in Rome. In 1803 Giani visited Paris,
where he is thought to have decorated rooms at the
Tuileries and at Malmaison for the Empress Josephine.
He also completed the decoration of the Villa Aldini at
Montmorency, near Paris, in 1813, although the villa
was destroyed five years later. While Giani travelled
frequently between Paris and Italy, little of his French
work survives today. His last and fatal commission was
the decoration of the Bolognese palace of Prince Felice
Baciocchi (widower of Napoleon’s sister, Elisa); nearly
completed in the Autumn of 1822, Giani fell from the
scaffolding injuring his hand and died of gangrene in
January the following year.
The years following his arrival in Rome until he was
summoned to Faenza are considered crucial in Giani’s
development. Like Cades, he was deeply influenced by
sixteenth century masters, particularly Michelangelo
and Tibaldi and developed a Neoclassicism full of
imagination and theatricality, which allied him with
certain French exponents working in Rome, such as Vien
and Peyron 1 . Roberta Olsen, in her review of Ottani
Cavina’s monograph, describes Giani as overcoming
his innate eclecticism by stylistic innovation via his
unifying expressive calligraphy, which he translated into
painted media 2 .
This magnificently bold drawing is the preparatory
study, focusing on the disposition of the figures, for
Giani’s entry in the 1783 prize, concorso clementino di
pittura, of the Accademia di San Luca, for which he was
awarded second prize. The entry drawing itself survives
in the present day Academy and a formal study, identical
to the latter, has also recently come to light 3 . Anna Ottani
Cavina exhibited and published the Academy drawing
as an important early work and noted the influences
of Annibale Carracci (particularly striking in the figure
bending to the ground at bottom left) and also the
painting of the same subject by Cecco del Caravaggio,
which then hung in the Galleria Giustiniani, before
being sent to Paris and later purchased by the Berlin State
Museum. The Carracesque figure is already delineated
in the present work which otherwise shows differences
in detail such as the architecture on the left hand side,
the angle of the rope in Christ’s hand, the Raphaelesque
woman holding her basket with outstretched arms who
here turns her head more earnestly and the arrangement
of the doves; the space is also less formally defined, the
sketched-in planks becoming, as would be expected, a
strict grid of paving in the final work.
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