1596 -1669 · Cortona, Rome, Florence and monumental Baroque

Frescoes open to the sky, dynamic architecture and moving stories make Pietro da Cortona one of the great inventors of Roman Baroque.

Pietro Berrettini, known as Pietro da Cortona, was born in Cortona in 1596 and died in Rome in 1669. Painter, designer and architect, he transformed the Baroque language through a unitary conception of figure, space and decor. In Rome, its immense ceiling of the Barberini Palace, The Triumph of Divine Providence, seemed to abolish real architecture to open the room to a world of allegories, clouds and light. In Florence, from 1637, the Four Ages of the World of the Camera della Stufa then the planetary rooms of the Pitti Palace adapted this show to the celebration of the Medici. Cortona conceived each group as a moving force: swollen, diagonal draperies, shortcuts and warm colors draw the eye without losing the hierarchy of the story. He also paints altar paintings, mythologies, portraits and landscapes. The Virgin and Child and the angels show a tenderness enveloped by celestial movement; The Virgin and Child, Saint Catherine and Saint John organize devotion around an exchange of glances; Rest during the flight into Egypt unites sacred narrative and breathing of the landscape; Virgin and Child with saints deploys a more solemn composition. Architect of Santi Luca e Martina, Santa Maria della Pace and other Roman construction sites, Cortona thinks wall, altar, light and dome like parts of the same theater. His workshop, in particular Ciro Ferri, extends this vision until the end of the century. The "Pietro da Cortona" selection notably compares The Virgin and Child and the Angels and The Virgin and Child, Saint Catherine and Saint John. Its reading favors details.

Cortona does not place the figures in space: he makes their gestures, their draperies and their light the very architecture of the baroque spectacle.