Baroque and Rococo

 

Baroque and Rococo Art Map

Pietro da Cortona




 

Pietro da Cortona

(b Cortona, ?1 Nov 1596; bapt 27 Nov 1597; d Rome, 16 May 1669).

Italian painter, draughtsman and architect. He was, together with Gianlorenzo Bernini and Franceso Borromini, one of the three leading artists of the Roman Baroque. As a painter he developed the early Baroque style, initiated by Annibale Carracci, to a magnificent and imposing High Baroque. His fresco decorations set a standard for European Baroque painting until they were eclipsed by Giambattista Tiepolo’s works and those of other Venetian masters of the 18th century. As an architect Cortona was far less influential. His imaginative designs for façades and stucco decorations were, however, conclusive and independent solutions to problems central to Roman Baroque architecture.

Nativity of the Virgin
canvas
Musee du Louvre, Paris

The Guardian Angel
1656
Oil on canvas, 225 x 143 cm
Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome