AGOSTINO MITELLI (1609-1660)

SHEET OF DECORATIVE STUDIES
Inscribed in pen & ink u.l. Mitelli
Pen & ink
13.5 x 18.5 cm
 
 
PROVENANCE
The 'Wunder Album', given by Luigi Bisi (1814-1886) to the artist Giuseppe Gibelli (d.1932), 
upon graduation from the Brera Academy, in Milan in 1884;
By descent to his grandson Robert A. Baldini;
Dr. Richard P. Wunder (1923-2002), Middlebury, Vermont;
By whom separated from the Album and sold together with another (previously with the Nonesuch Gallery), Christie's, London, 07.07.1976, lot 40;
Anonymous sale, Christie's, London, 24.03.1982, lot 16 (as above);
Where acquired by Professor Eric Gerald Stanley, FBA (1923-2018)
 
 
EXHIBITED
(Within the 'Wunder' Album) Middlebury, Middlebury College, Architectural, Ornament, Landscape, and Figure Drawings collected by Richard Wunder, 1975, cat. no. 62. (framed together with the other which sold at Christie's in 1976)

 
 
 
 
 
Mitelli was born in Battedizzo, near Bologna, and worked for the most part in northern and central Italy. He studied at first under Gabriello Ferrantini and Girolamo Curti, the latter of whom was a leading painter of quadratura, an Italian practice not unlike trompe l’oeil of painting ceilings to create the illusion of ‘opening up’ architectural spaces, generally ceilings. Unlike trompe l’oeil and other similarly illusionistic techniques, quadratura was rooted firmly in secento theories of and mathematical treatises on perspective. Mitelli would continue this tradition which he had inherited, specialising in grand Baroque ceilings that seem to extend infinitely-skyward. Together with his friend and collaborator Michelangelo Colonna (who handled the figurative elements of their substantial commissions), Mitelli became the best-known exponent of the technique. His decorative schemes and paintings can be found in Bologna, Parma, Modena, Florence, Rome, Genoa, and even Madrid, where Mitelli and Colonna worked at the Royal Alcazar and Palace of Buen Retiro. 
 
Mitelli had numerous students, whose work in turn spread his reputation and techniques, among them his son Giuseppe Maria Mitelli (1634-1718), who produced a series of prints after his father’s small-scale designs (including the present sheet). Mitelli helped to cement Bologna as the centre of the ‘School’ of artists who specialised in quadratura, and his influence can be felt right through to the Bibiena family and until the advent of more austere neoclassical architecture.