Francesco Furini (c. 1600 (or 1603) – August 19, 1646) was an Italian

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 t ...

painter of Florence, noted for his sensual

sfumato Sfumato (, ) is a painting technique for softening the transition between colours, mimicking an area beyond what the human eye is focusing on, or the out-of-focus plane. It is one of the canonical painting modes of the Renaissance. Leonardo da V ...

style in paintings of both secular and religious subjects.

Biography

He was born in Florence to an artistic family. His father, Filippo, was a portrait painter; his sister Alessandra also became a painter; and another sister, Angelica, was a singer in the court of Cosimo II de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany.Langmuir 2008 Furini's early training was by

Matteo Rosselli Matteo Rosselli (10 August 1578 – 18 January 1650) was an Italian painter of the late Florentine Counter-Mannerism and early Baroque. He is best known however for his highly populated grand-manner historical paintings. Biography He first appre ...

(whose other pupils include Lorenzo Lippi and

Baldassare Franceschini Baldassare Franceschini, called Il Volterrano after his birth place Volterra and, to distinguish him from Ricciarelli, Il Volterrano Giuniore (16116 January 1689) was an Italian late Baroque painter and draughtsman active principally around Flo ...

), though Furini is also described as influenced by Domenico Passignano and

Giovanni Biliverti Giovanni Biliverti (surname also written as Bilivelt and Bilivert or other variants) (Florence, 25 August 1585 – Florence, 16 July 1644) was an Italian painter of the late-Mannerism and early-Baroque period, active mainly in his adoptive city o ...

.Cantelli 1972 He befriended

Giovanni da San Giovanni Giovanni da San Giovanni (20 March 1592 – 9 December 1636), also known as Giovanni Mannozzi, was an Italian painter of the early Baroque period, active in Florence. Biography Born in San Giovanni Valdarno, he trained under Matteo Rosselli. ...

. Traveling to Rome in 1619, he also would have been exposed to the influence of

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 his followers. Among his pupils are

Simone Pignoni Simone Pignoni (April 17, 1611 – December 16, 1698) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period. He apprenticed with Fabrizio Boschi, then with the more academic and puritanical Domenico Passignano, and finally with Francesco Furini. He is ...

and

Giovanni Battista Galestruzzi Giovanni Battista Galestruzzi (1618–1677) was an Italian painter and etcher of the Baroque period. Born in Florence, he was a pupil of the painter Francesco Furini, then moved to Rome, where he joined the Accademia di San Luca in 1652. He was a ...

. Furini's work reflects the tension faced by the conservative, mannerist style of Florence when confronting then novel

styles. He is a painter of biblical and mythological set-pieces with a strong use of the misty

technique. In the 1630s his style paralleled that of

Guido Reni Guido Reni (; 4 November 1575 – 18 August 1642) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, although his works showed a classical manner, similar to Simon Vouet, Nicolas Poussin, and Philippe de Champaigne. He painted primarily religious ...

. An important early work, ''Hylas and the Nymphs'' (1630), features six female nudes that attest to the importance Furini placed upon drawing from life. Furini became a priest in 1633 for the parish of Sant'Ansano in Mugello.Cappelletti Freedberg describes Furini's style as filled with "morbid sensuality". His frequent use of disrobed females is discordant with his excessive religious sentimentality, and his polished stylization and poses are at odds with his aim of expressing highly emotional states. His stylistic choices did not go unnoticed by more puritanical contemporary biographers like

Baldinucci Baldinucci is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Anthony Baldinucci (1665–1717), an Italian Jesuit priest and missionary *Filippo Baldinucci (1625–1696), an Italian art historian and biographer * Pietro Paolo Baldinucci, Ital ...

. Pignoni also mirrored this style in his works. One of his masterpieces, and not reflective of the style of his canvases, is the airy fresco in Palazzo Pitti, where on order of Ferdinando II de' Medici, between 1639 and 1642, Furini frescoed two large lunettes depicting the '' Platonic Academy of Careggi'' and the ''Allegory of the Death of Lorenzo the Magnificent''. The frescoes can be seen as a response to

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 ...

, who was at work in the palazzo during these years. Furini traveled to Rome again in the year before his death in 1646.

Legacy

In Robert Browning's series of poems titled ''Parleyings with certain people of importance in their day'', the poet envisions an explanation by Furini that refutes the published assertion by

Filippo Baldinucci Filippo Baldinucci (3 June 1625 – 10 January 1696) was an Italian art historian and biographer. Life Baldinucci is considered among the most significant Florentine biographers/historians of the artists and the arts of the Baroque period ...

that (on his deathbed) he had ordered all his nude paintings be destroyed. For Browning, Furini's disrobement of his subjects is emblematic of a courageous search for the hidden truth. Modern research has demonstrated that Furini did not abandon his sensual painting subjects on entering the priesthood. Furini was rediscovered in the early 20th century by . His scantily documented career was sketched by Elena Toesca (''Furini'', 1950) and brought into focus with an exhibition of his drawings at the Uffizi, 1972.The exhibition catalogue by Giuseppe Cantelli , ''Disegni di Francesco Furini e del suo ambiente'' (Florence: Oschki) 1972. Cantelli attributed seventy-two drawings in the Uffizi to his hand. Documents published by Gino Corti in ''Antichità Viva'' (Match-April 1971) appeared too late to be assimilated in the exhibition. Soon after, A. Barsanti recovered more biographical detail to flesh out the modest armature of dates in "Una vita inedita del Furini", ''Paragone'' 289, (1974), pp. 67–86.

References

Sources

*Campbell, Malcolm (1972). "Francesco Furini Drawings at the Uffizi". ''The Burlington Magazine'', 114 (833), 571–570. *Cantelli, G., & Furini, F. (1972). ''Disegni di Francesco Furini: e del suo ambiente''. Firenze: Olschki. *Cappelletti, Francesca. "Furini, Francesco." ''Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online''. Oxford University Press, * *Langmuir, Erika (2008). "Francesco Furini. Florence". ''The Burlington Magazine'', 150 (1263), 431–433.
Web Gallery of Art entry.
*

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Furini, Francesco 1600s births 1646 deaths 17th-century Italian painters Italian male painters Painters from Florence Italian Baroque painters