Art Christmas Poster 2004 The Constant Gaiety of Barocci’s Work “A certain lively, spiritual grace,” this is the masterpiece of Federico Barocci. The Madonna di san Giovanni, painted out of gratitude to the Blessed Virgin by Cristina Terzaghi Federico Barocci, a native of Urbino, was in Rome during the 1560s. Like every self-respecting painter, he had gone there, at the age of twenty, to perfect his technique. In the capital he had won the prestigious commission of decorating the villa of Pope Pius VI in the Vatican Gardens (1561-1563), but after the considerable work involved Federico seemed totally exhausted, hoping only for a benefice upon returning to his native Urbino, as his seventeenth century biographer, Giovan Pietro Bellori informs us. However, we learn from the same source, “Even this hope turned out to be a vain one, since before the bitterness of this malady was reduced, four years passed, in which he knew only pain, never able to touch a brush.” It is at this point that, “suffering above all else for not being able to paint, he entrusted himself to the glorious Virgin with such effect that his prayer was heard. Feeling quite better, he made a small painting of the Virgin with her Son Jesus blessing the young St John, and gave it in homage to the Capuchin Fathers of Crocicchia, two miles outside Urbino, where he often stayed on an estate of his, and, since now the friars have left, the painting is conserved in the convent in the city.” In fact, an ancient register lists it as being there. The work was later passed to the National Gallery of the Marches at Urbino, where it is found to this day. So Our Lady with Child and St John the Evangelist, universally known as the Madonna di san Giovanni, came to be painted in this way, out of the artist’s gratitude to the Virgin and for his friendship with the Capuchins of Crocicchia. There was no question of a commission for this painting on the part of churches, convents or local gentry, quite rare for a painting of the era; and the private, familiar purpose of the painting is reflected in the tone of the canvas itself. Our Lady is seated on a rock, supporting the child’s foot in a way that betrays, amongst other things, a reference to Raphael’s Madonna of Orleans, a painting that Barocci had seen at the court of the Duke of Urbino. The composition spreads harmoniously along the diagonal that the figure of the Virgin and child form with St John’s leg and extended foot, thus connecting the figures in a single tender embrace, following a theme very dear to sixteenth century Venetian painting (well known to Barocci, who was immediately in contact with the figurative culture of Titian), that of the Sacred Conversation. Though starting from a well-established tradition, Barocci expresses in this work the modernity of his vision of reality, “a certain lively, spiritual grace” that occurs constantly in his works. It was in Rome that Federico came into contact with St Philip Neri’s Oratory. In the 1580s, the Oratorians commissioned him to paint the Visitation for the altar of their beautiful Chiesa Nuova, one of the artist’s masterpieces. Before this painting, St Philip Neri himself went into ecstasy, showing how much the Saint’s perception of reality had in common with that of the painter. Even the Madonna di san Giovanni seems to vibrate with “constant gaiety” deriving from the certainty of the goodness of reality, so dear to the Oratory. Everything in this work appears beautiful and smiling: the Child who offers a flower to the evangelist, St John represented as a young man of singular beauty who, in his turn, pays homage to the Virgin in the pose of a medieval knight. Even the details, such as the linen basket and the evangelist’s iconographic attributes (chalice and eagle), are positioned so as to form part of this harmony, which finds in its colors one of its highest expressive instruments, true vehicles of that gladness that had probably stolen the heart of Barocci.