Anton Domenico Gabbiani (13 February 1652 – 22 November 1726) was an Italian painter and active in a late

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including ...

style.

Biography

Born in

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico ...

, Gabbiani first apprenticed with the

Medici The House of Medici ( , ) was an Italian banking family and political dynasty that first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de' Medici, in the Republic of Florence during the first half of the 15th century. The family originated in the Mu ...

court portrait painter

Justus Sustermans Justus Sustermans, Joost Sustermans or Suttermans, his given name Italianised to Giusto (Antwerp, 28 September 1597 – Florence, 23 April 1681), was a Flemish painter and draughtsman who is mainly known for his portraits. He also painted histor ...

, then with the Florentine

Vincenzo Dandini Vincenzo Dandini (1607–1675) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, active mainly in Florence. He was a pupil of his brother, Cesare Dandini in Florence, then he moved to Rome and worked in the studio of Pietro da Cortona. Among his pu ...

; subsequently moved to Rome in 1673, where he studied under the Medici-sponsored Accademia Fiorentina, led by

Ciro Ferri Ciro Ferri (1634 – 13 September 1689) was an Italian Baroque sculptor and painter, the chief pupil and successor of Pietro da Cortona. He was born in Rome, where he began working under Cortona and with a team of artists in the extensive fresc ...

and Ercole Ferrata. This latter tutelage and his style has led Gabbiani to be described as one of the ‘’Cortoneschi’’ or followers of

Pietro da Cortona Pietro da Cortona (; 1 November 1596 or 159716 May 1669) was an Italian Baroque painter and architect. Along with his contemporaries and rivals Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini, he was one of the key figures in the emergence of Roman ...

, albeit second-generation. In 1678–79, he traveled to

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...

, where he worked in the studio of

Sebastiano Bombelli Sebastiano Bombelli (October 1635; 4 May 1719) was an Italian painter, mainly active in Venice, during the Baroque period. Biography He was born in Udine on 14 or 15 October 1635 (baptized on the 15th), educated and trained under the guidance o ...

, returning to his native Florence in 1680, where he was often patronized by Grand Prince Ferdinando, the son of the Grand Duke Cosimo III. He painted the portrait of his patron surrounded by musicians (c. 1685; Pitti Palace). He frescoed the ''Apotheosis of Cosimo il Vecchio'' in the ceiling of the Sala da Pranzo in the Villa di

Poggio a Caiano Poggio a Caiano is a town and '' comune'' in the province of Prato, Tuscany region Italy. The town, birthplace of Philip Mazzei, lies south of the provincial capital of Prato. Sister towns Poggio a Caiano has two sister cities: * Charlott ...

. Gabbiani also completed works on sacred subjects. He painted in the church of

San Frediano in Cestello San Frediano in Cestello is a Baroque-style, Roman Catholic church in the Oltrarno section of Florence, region of Tuscany, Italy. The name ''cestello'' derives from the Cistercians who occupied the church in 1628. Previously the site had a 1450s ...

. By 1684, he completed an ''Annunciation'' for the Pitti Palace. He completed a ''St. Francis de Sales in Glory'' (1685) for the church of Santi Apostoli. His pupils included Giovanna Fratellini,

Ignazio Enrico Hugford ''A miracle of St. Francis of Paola'' by Hugford. Ignazio Hugford, or Ignatius Heckford (1703–1778), was an Italian painter active mostly in Tuscany in an early Neoclassic style. Life and work Ignazio Hugford was born in Pisa, the son of a r ...

(also a biographer),

Benedetto Luti Benedetto Luti (17 November 1666 – 17 June 1724) was an Italian painter. Early life Luti was born in Florence on 17 November 1666. Career In 1691, he moved to Rome, where he was patronized by Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, an en ...

Pietro Marchesini Pietro Marchesini (April 7, 1692 - October 24, 1757) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, active in Tuscany. Biography He was born in Pistoia. He was patronized by Lorenzo Maria Gianni, and studied with Anton Domenico Gabbiani in Floren ...

of Pistoia,

Ranieri del Pace Ranieri Del Pace (Pisa, May 7, 1681 – February 27, 1738), also called Giovanni Batista Ranieri Del Pace, was an Italian painter of the late Baroque period, active mainly in Tuscany. He trained under Giovanni Camillo Sagrestani. Lanzi describ ...

Giovanni Battista Giovanni Battista was a common Italian given name (see Battista for those with the surname) in the 16th-18th centuries. It refers to "John the Baptist" in English, the French equivalent is " Jean-Baptiste". Common nicknames include Giambattista, Gi ...

Tommaso Redi Tommaso Redi (22 December 1665 – 10 October 1726) was an Italian painter, active during the late-Baroque in his native Florence. He initially apprenticed with the Florentine painter Anton Domenico Gabbiani (1652–1726), and then moved t ...

, and his brother

Gaetano Gabbiani Gaetano Gabbiani was an Italian painter, active in 18th century Florence. the nephew of Antonio Domenico Gabbiani, studied under his uncle, and became a meritorious portrait painter in pastel A pastel () is an art medium in a variety of fo ...

Frescoes of the ''Palazzina Meridiana''

Gabbiani’s masterpiece is considered to be his ceiling frescoes for the ''Palazzina Meridiana'', specifically in the ''Sala Meridiana'' adjacent to the Pitti Palace and Boboli Gardens.For an excellent review of the work and iconography see ''A Private Homage to Galileo. Anton Domenico Gabbiani's Frescoes in the Pitti Palace'', Thomas Frangenberg; Jacopo Cicognini. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes (1996) pp. 245-273 This work underscores the frequent, yet somewhat ostentatious

patronage of arts related to science. The Salone was so named because it encased a Meridian line (a metal strip along floor and wall) with which one could make annotations of solar time, by noting where a beam of sunlight pointed at high noon. The Palazzina once formed the south west corner of the Pitti, and is little visited. When the frescoes were painted, the Palazzina rooms were part of the mezzanine apartment of Grand-prince Ferdinando de' Medici, son of the Grand Duke Cosimo III and child-pupil of Vicenzo Viviani. Viviana was a court scholar who had been devoted to Galileo in the master’s last years, and even published some of his papers posthumously. For the Sala Meridiana, Gabbiani adopted a panoramic ceiling similar to both Cortona’s apotheotic frescoes in

Palazzo Barberini The Palazzo Barberini ( en, Barberini Palace) is a 17th-century palace in Rome, facing the Piazza Barberini in Rione Trevi. Today, it houses the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, the main national collection of older paintings in Rome. History ...

and in the ''Sal di Marte'' in the Pitti itself. Open sky is depicted above and around the cornice a circumferential horizon of activity. Originally, the room was pierced by a hole in the ceiling, now sealed, originally located near the trunk of the frescoed tree. At noon, a sun beam through the hole, alit on the meridian strip. The iconography is complex, and was described by his Gabbiani’s pupil Hugford as ''Time raising up Arts and Sciences to the temple of glory and trampling Ignorance''. Some of the icons can be identified, Father Time sits below the tree, near the column. His symbols, detailed in Cesare Ripa’s ''Iconologia'' (1603), are the scythe, circle and hourglass, and are lofted about by neighboring putti. The woman on his arm is Scienza or Knowledge preening herself in the mirror. Ignorance has ass’s ears supine by broken column. But the genius of the work is the lonely bearded figure on the side, behind a cannon and beside an

armillary sphere An armillary sphere (variations are known as spherical astrolabe, armilla, or armil) is a model of objects in the sky (on the celestial sphere), consisting of a spherical framework of rings, centered on Earth or the Sun, that represent lines of ...

, detached from the lofty bombast. The portrait matches the portrait by Susterman of

Galileo Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. Commonly referred to as Galileo, his name was pronounced (, ). He was ...

, who sits on the sidelines, behind a symbol of his contribution to the science of ballistics. Perhaps he awaits Time, who points to him, to defeat ignorance, and rescue him from the ignominy he suffered at the hands of the Roman

Inquisition The Inquisition was a group of institutions within the Catholic Church whose aim was to combat heresy, conducting trials of suspected heretics. Studies of the records have found that the overwhelming majority of sentences consisted of penances, ...

References

Notes

External links

Exhibition (2003-4: Il Gran Principe Ferdinando de' Medici e Anton Domenico Gabbiani
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gabbiani, Anton Domenico 1652 births 1726 deaths 17th-century Italian painters Italian male painters 18th-century Italian painters Painters from Florence Italian Baroque painters 18th-century Italian male artists