Giulio Mancini (21 February 1559 – 22 August 1630) was a seicento physician, art collector, art dealer and writer on a range of subjects. His writings on contemporary artists like

Caravaggio Michelangelo Merisi (Michele Angelo Merigi or Amerighi) da Caravaggio, known as simply Caravaggio (, , ; 29 September 1571 – 18 July 1610), was an Italian painter active in Rome for most of his artistic life. During the final four years of hi ...

and

Annibale Carracci Annibale Carracci (; November 3, 1560 – July 15, 1609) was an Italian painter and instructor, active in Bologna and later in Rome. Along with his brother and cousin, Annibale was one of the progenitors, if not founders of a leading strand of th ...

remain one of our earliest sources of biographical information; his ''Considerazioni'' being an important source on art in early 17th-century Rome.

Biography

Mancini was born in

Siena Siena ( , ; lat, Sena Iulia) is a city in Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the province of Siena. The city is historically linked to commercial and banking activities, having been a major banking center until the 13th and 14th centuri ...

and attended the University of Padua, where he studied medicine, astrology and philosophy. He went to

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 ...

in 1592, where he practised medicine; from 1595 at the Hospital of Santo Spirito. He became personal physician to pope Urban VIII in 1623. The pope was a notable patron of the arts, and their relationship was such that, in 1628, Mancini was made an apostolic protonotary and a canon of St. Peter's. Mancini's writings went unpublished until the 20th century; his ''Considerazioni sulla pittura'' (thoughts on painting), written between 1617 and 1621, remaining so until 1956. His advice to the collector gives us insight into the contemporary art market in Rome; his notes on spotting fakes were the first indication of how sophisticated these pastiches had already become by the early 17th century. In the ''Considerazioni'', he distinguishes four tracts of painting in his contemporary Rome: that of Caravaggio; that of Carracci; the third of Giuseppe Cesari; and the fourth of everybody else, the mannerist painter

Cristoforo Roncalli Cristoforo Roncalli (c. 1552–1626) was an Italian mannerist painter. He was one of the three painters known as ''Pomarancio'' or ''Il Pomarancio''. Life Roncalli was born in Pomarance, a town near Volterra. His training occurred in ...

for instance. There is evidence that he knew, at least Caravaggio, well, having attended to the artist when he was ill and staying at the Palazzo Madama, probably in 1595. Mancini was also well acquainted with Caravaggio's benefactor, Francesco Maria del Monte. As dealer he most notably sold Caravaggio's '' The Death of the Virgin'' to Vincenzo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua for 280 scudi in 1607; a transaction proposed to the Duke by

Peter Paul Rubens Sir Peter Paul Rubens (; ; 28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640) was a Flemish artist and diplomat from the Duchy of Brabant in the Southern Netherlands (modern-day Belgium). He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque traditio ...

and brokered by Giovanni Magno. Mancini, Giulio – Apologia dell'occhio, 1795 – BEIC 1402608

In his private life, Mancini was known as a self-confessed atheist, someone who moved in libertine circles, an art lover and a connoisseur. He was a member of the

Accademia degli Umoristi The Accademia degli Umoristi (Academy of the Humorists) was a learned society of intellectuals, mainly noblemen, that significantly influenced the cultural life of 17th century Rome. It was briefly revived in the first half of the eighteenth cent ...

, a literary club founded in 1603, which members included Giovanni Battista Guarini, Alessandro Tassoni, and

Gian Vittorio Rossi Gian Vittorio Rossi, also known as Giano Nicio Eritreo, (1577–1647) was an Italian poet, philologist, and historian. Life and works Rossi was born in Rome to a well-to-do family and lived his entire life in the city of his birth. He was educ ...

. He also wrote on such diverse subjects as dancing and the ways of courtiers. Upon his death, Mancini left his fortune to be distributed among the students of Siena.

Footnotes

Works

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Mancini, Giulio 1558 births 1630 deaths Italian art historians Papal physicians