Fabrizio Boschi (1572-1642)
pittore barocco di «belle idee» e di «nobiltà di maniera»

edited by R. Spinelli

exhibition catalogue: Florence, Casa Buonarroti, 26 July-13 November 2006

The Fabrizio Boschi exhibition held at the Casa Buonarroti in Florence (26 July-13 November 2006) is part of a cycle initiated by the institution in the 1990s with two events devoted to Artemisia Gentileschi and Cecco Bravo: works by these three painters feature prominently in the Casa Buonarroti since Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger, renowned man of letters and influential figure in 17th-century Florence, called upon their services to decorate the sumptuous Baroque rooms that were to house the family’s rich art collections.

Relying extensively on Filippo Baldinucci’s detailed Life of the artist, where the biographer dwells at length on Boschi’s hot temper, but also on his liveliness, inventiveness and “persistent imagination”, Riccardo Spinelli pieces together the development of Boschi’s long and varied career in his introductory essay (“Note sul percorso figurativo di Fabrizio Boschi, 1572-1642”) and in the catalogue entries.

On display at the exhibition are significant works dating from the last decade of the 16th century such as The Israelites collecting the manna sent by God (Florence, Gallerie Fiorentine) and St Claire taking the veil from St Francis (Caen, Musée des Beaux-Arts), as well as acclaimed 17th-century works such as the one depicting St Peter and St Paul as they are arrested and led to their deaths (1606), painted by Boschi for the Galluzzo Certosa and today at San Salvi, The Vision of St Bernard of Clairvaux from San Frediano in Cestello (1630-31) with its preparatory study, and others illustrating lively scenes of great emotional impact such as St Peter freeing a girl possessed by the devil from the church of San Pietro in Jerusalem at San Gersolè (c. 1619-20) and The Chastity of Susannah from the Palazzo della Provincia in Siena (1620). Also on display are numerous sketches and drawings of remarkable quality; of particular beauty is a study (Vienna, private collection) of Herodias offering Salome the head of St John the Baptist, the subject of a later painting (c. 1627-30, from the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire in Chambéry).