Filippo Lauri

Lauri, Filippo

(b Rome, 25 Aug 1623; d Rome, 12 Dec 1694).

Italian painter and draughtsman. He painted both large decorative works and small cabinet pictures, and Francesco Saverio Baldinucci (1663–1738), whose biography of Lauri is the most complete, tells us that he ‘worked with great originality in every kind of painting ... rendering landscapes, fruits, flowers, animals and architecture’. He studied first with his father, Balthasar Lauwers (1578–1645), a Flemish landscape painter whose name was Italianized as Lauri, and then with his elder brother, Francesco Lauri (1612–37), and with his brother-in-law, Angelo Caroselli. At least until the death of Caroselli (1652) he worked as a copyist. Francesco had been a pupil of Andrea Sacchi, and Filippo, who was thus trained in a classical tradition, developed an elegant style, indebted to 17th-century Bolognese painters, particularly Domenichino and Francesco Albani. His art was admired by princely Roman families, and among his earliest works were two frescoed ceilings (1651–c. 1653; untraced) for the casino built by Girolamo Farnese (1599–1668) at Porta San Pancrazio (Baldinucci). In 1654 Lauri became a member of the Accademia di S Luca, Rome, of which he later became Principe (1684–5), and in the same year painted a Flight into Egypt (untraced) for the church of Rocca Sinibaldi, near Rieti. There followed three pictures (1656; untraced) for the cathedral at Sorrento, and Lauri collaborated with Filippo Gagliardi (d 1659) on a large canvas, Nocturnal Festivity for Queen Christina of Sweden (1656; Rome, Pal. Braschi), adding over 200 small figures to Gagliardi’s architectural setting.

In 1656 and 1657, under the direction of Pietro da Cortona, Lauri participated in the decoration of the Gallery of Alexander VII in the Palazzo del Quirinale, Rome, where he painted Gideon and the Fleece—in collaboration with Gaspard Dughet—and the Sacrifice of Cain and Abel. He also, according to Baldinucci, executed ‘a quarter of the chiaroscuro decoration’ (destr. 19th century) for the walls of the gallery between the frescoed scenes. In 1659 (Golzio) he was paid for a canvas, Spring, one of a series of the Four Seasons painted for Cardinal Flavio Chigi to adorn the Palazzo Chigi at Ariccia (in situ). Giacinto Brandi, Carlo Maratti, and Bernardino Mei also worked on this series, in which the still-life elements were painted by the flower painter Mario Nuzzi. Shortly after 1662 Lauri replaced Carlo Cignani on the decoration of the gallery of the Casino Farnese in Rome, for which only bozzetti remain (Rome, priv. col., see Bodart, ii, figs 73a–d). On the ceiling he painted the Four Seasons and on the walls ‘beautiful architectural ornament, enriched by festoons, foliage and statues painted in chiaroscuro’ (Baldinucci).

Around 1668–70 Lauri frescoed two scenes, the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise and Adam and Eve with the Infants Cain and Abel after the Fall, on either side of a window in the lunette of the Mignanelli Chapel, S Maria della Pace, Rome, a commission he won through Pietro da Cortona. There followed, in 1671, his most perfect surviving work, the decoration of a small room in the Palazzo Borghese, Rome, with a ceiling painting, the Marriage of Bacchus and Ariadne, and over the windows small tondi with charming Ovidian scenes. Lauri decorated the walls with mythological scenes, Latona with the Sun and Moon, Diana and Actaeon, the Birth of Adonis and Venus and Mars, again in collaboration with Gaspard Dughet, with whom he worked until the latter’s death in 1675. Bozzetti for some of these decorations survive (Rome, di Castro priv. col., see Bodart, ii, figs 68–70). Lauri sometimes collaborated with other artists: he worked, for example, with Jan Frans van Bloemen on Hagar and the Angel (Castle Howard, N. Yorks).

Lauri’s small mythological and religious scenes, in landscape settings, possess an idyllic charm that anticipates 18th-century art. Among his many cabinet paintings, which were popular with collectors from northern Europe, are the Stoning of St Stephen (Toulouse, Mus. Augustins), Venus with Pan (Montpellier, Mus. Fabre) and the graceful Jacob’s Flight from Laban (London, Hampton Court, Royal Col.). His Pastoral Landscape with Herdsmen and Animals (1682; Goulborn priv. col., see Salerno, p. 689) is a rare signed and dated painting, unusually close to Claude Lorrain. A small group of drawings securely attributed to Lauri is in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, Berkshire.

Bibliography

N. Pio: Vite (1724); ed. C. Enggass and R. Enggass (1977), pp. 198, 203–4

F. S. Baldinucci: ‘Vita di Filipo Lauri’ (MS.; c. 1725–1730); ed. B. Riccio in Commentari, x/1 (1959), pp. 3–15

F. S. Baldinucci: Vite (1725–30); ed. A. Matteoli (1975), pp. 167–78

L. Pascoli: Vite, i (1730), p. 30; ii (1736), pp. 77, 137–53, 421

V. Golzio: Documenti artistici sul seicento nell’Archivio Chigi (Rome, 1939), pp. 267, 280

D. Bodart: Les Peintres des Pays-Bas méridionaux et de la principauté de Liège à Rome au XVIIème siècle (Brussels and Rome, 1970), i, pp. 167–76; ii, figs 68–73

A. Busiri Vici: Jan Frans Van Bloemen ‘Orizzonte’ e l’origine del paesaggio romano settecentesco (Rome, 1974), pp. 125–8

L. Salerno: Pittori di paesaggio del seicento a Roma (Rome, 1977–8), ii, pp. 684–9

M. Bevilaqua: Il Monte dei Cenci: Una famiglia romana e il suo insediamento urbano tra medioevo ed età barocca (Rome, 1988), pp. 175, 290

Franco Moro

Grove Art online

accessed 2/26/14

E. Reluga