Bartolomeo Pinelli (November 20, 1781 – April 1, 1835) was an Italian
illustrator
An illustrator is an artist who specializes in enhancing writing or elucidating concepts by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text or idea. The illustration may be intended to clarify complicat ...
and
engraver.
Life
Pinelli was born and died in the
Trastevere
Trastevere () is the 13th ''rione'' of Rome: it is identified by the initials R. XIII and it is located within Municipio I. Its name comes from Latin ''trans Tiberim'', literally 'beyond the Tiber'.
Its coat of arms depicts a golden head of a lio ...
neighborhood of
Rome
, established_title = Founded
, established_date = 753 BC
, founder = King Romulus (legendary)
, image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg
, map_caption ...
, the son of an artisan who modeled religious statues. Pinelli was educated first in
Bologna
Bologna (, , ; egl, label= Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nat ...
and then at the
Accademia di San Luca
The Accademia di San Luca (the "Academy of Saint Luke") is an Italian academy of artists in Rome. The establishment of the Accademia de i Pittori e Scultori di Roma was approved by papal brief in 1577, and in 1593 Federico Zuccari became its fir ...
in Rome. He return to live in Trastevere, then a poor quarter of Rome. His initial studio was on Piazza Sciarra on the Corso. His son,
Achille Pinelli
Achille Pinelli (1809 – 5 September 1841) was an Italian painter. Born in Rome, he was the son of the painter Bartolomeo Pinelli and his wife Mariangela Gatti.
Pinelli has left about two hundred watercolors painted between 1826 and 1835, prese ...
, was a famous watercolorist in his own right.
An extremely prolific engraver, his illustrations depicted the costumes of the Italian people, the great epic
poems
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in a ...
and numerous other subjects, including popular customs. In general, the most recurring subject is Rome, the ancient city as well as the modern one: its inhabitants and its monuments.
In his first years of independent work, he painted figures in watercolor in the style of the painter
Franz Kaiserman. Starting in 1807, he produced an album of 36 watercolors, entitled ''Scene e Costumi di Roma e del Lazio'' (Scenes and Costumes from Rome and the Lazio). His first series of engravings, begun in 1809, was entitled ''Raccolta di cinquanta costumi pittoreschi incisi all'acquaforte'' (Collection of 50 picturesque costumes engraved with acquaforte). In 1816 he finished the illustrations for his work ''La Storia Romana'' ( it, Roman History) and, in 1821, those for the work ''La Storia Greca'' ( it, Greek History). He held in high regard the traditions and religions of ancient Greece and Rome, and completed a series of engravings of the pantheon of classical gods. The artistic tradition of exaltation of a class beyond the law finds roots in the baroque era artist
Salvatore Rosa
Salvator Rosa (1615 –1673) is best known today as an Italian Baroque painter, whose romanticized landscapes and history paintings, often set in dark and untamed nature, exerted considerable influence from the 17th century into the early 19th ...
.
He also produced a series of prints on ''La Storia del Brigante Decapitito'' (Story of the Decapitated Brigand), about a brigand who, while he sleeps, is decapitated by his wife in revenge for having murdered her child. This particular work illustrates the attention Pinelli lavished on popular tales, and the idealized admiration that had developed among some of the educated and aristocratic class for brigand culture. Pinelli suggested that brigands or ''banditti'' in their quest for independence from the laws imposed by absolute rulers, an inheritance of the desire for liberty in ancient Republican Rome. For Pinelli, Italian nationalism would coalesce around a return to the values of Ancient Romans. An example of the paradoxical patrons for his depictions of brigands are two paintings owned by the Duchess of Devonshire.
Between 1822 and 1823 he finished a set of fifty-two prints for the a satiric poem called ''
Il Meo Patacca''.
He died poor on April 1, 1835.
Works
Oreste Raggi, writing in 1835, the same year that the artist died, cites many of Pinelli's designs and
watercolor
Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (British English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin ''aqua'' "water"), is a painting method”Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to t ...
s, and around forty collections of engravings published in Rome under ten different editors.
Among those:
* ''Collection of Roman costumes'' (1809) – 50 copperplate engravings
* ''Another collection of Rome costumes'' – 50 copperplate engravings
* ''The carnival of Rome'' – one copperplate engraving
* ''Collection of Fifty Customs of the Neighbourhood of Rome, comprising diverse deeds of the Brigand''
* ''Roman History'' – 101 prints
* ''History of the emperors, starting from Ottavio'' – 101 prints
* ''Dante, Hell, Purgatory and Paradise'' – 145 prints
* ''Costumes of the Roman countryside'' (1823) – 50 copperplate engravings
*
Torquato Tasso
Torquato Tasso ( , also , ; 11 March 154425 April 1595) was an Italian poet of the 16th century, known for his 1591 poem ''Gerusalemme liberata'' (Jerusalem Delivered), in which he depicts a highly imaginative version of the combats between ...
's ''
Jerusalem Delivered
''Jerusalem Delivered'', also known as ''The Liberation of Jerusalem'' ( it, La Gerusalemme liberata ; ), is an epic poem by the Italian poet Torquato Tasso, first published in 1581, that tells a largely mythified version of the First Crusade i ...
'' – 72 prints
*
Ariosto
Ludovico Ariosto (; 8 September 1474 – 6 July 1533) was an Italian poet. He is best known as the author of the romance epic ''Orlando Furioso'' (1516). The poem, a continuation of Matteo Maria Boiardo's ''Orlando Innamorato'', describes the ...
's ''
Orlando Furioso
''Orlando furioso'' (; ''The Frenzy of Orlando'', more loosely ''Raging Roland'') is an Italian epic poem by Ludovico Ariosto which has exerted a wide influence on later culture. The earliest version appeared in 1516, although the poem was no ...
'' – 100 prints
*
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: t ...
's ''
Aeneid
The ''Aeneid'' ( ; la, Aenē̆is or ) is a Latin Epic poetry, epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Troy, Trojan who fled the Trojan_War#Sack_of_Troy, fall of Troy and travelled to ...
'' – 50 copperplate engravings
* ''Collection of ancient costumes''
* ''Greek History'' – 100 copperplate engravings
* ''Costumes of the Kingdom of Naples'' – 50 copperplate engravings (1828)
* ''Meo Patacca'' – 50 copperplate engravings
* ''Swiss costumes'' (1813) – 16 copperplate engravings
File:16costumi.jpg, Frontispiece from ''Collection of 15 Swiss Costumes''
Bartolommeo_Pinelli_(1781-1835),_Cleombrote_banit_par_Leonidas_II,_Roi_de_Sparte,black_chalk,craie_noire,_plume_et_encre_brune_et_noire_lavis_brun,71_x_102_cm..jpg, ''Cleombrotus ordered into banishment by Leonidas II, King of Sparta'', Mougins Museum of Classical Art
The MACM, the Mougins Museum of Classical Art (Musée d’Art Classique de Mougins) is an art museum located in the village of Mougins, in the Alpes-Maritimes department, France. It is 30 minutes from Nice airport and 15 minutes from the centre o ...
Bibliography
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References
External links
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''Aneddoti su Pinelli''by Giggi Zanazzo (in Romanesco)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pinelli, Bartolomeo
Italian illustrators
Painters from Rome
1781 births
1835 deaths
18th-century Italian painters
Italian male painters
19th-century Italian painters
Italian neoclassical painters
19th-century Italian male artists
18th-century Italian male artists