Baroque Gone Bad

The Italian Baroque was indeed an exotic fruit, but like most exotic fruits it was sure to go off if not handled carefully. Bolognese art in the late 16th and 17th centuries, as seen in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, does often have a certain aroma to it.

The Counter-Reformation and Italy’s loss of political liberty created a quietly traumatized world, one in which a very sophisticated people was reduced to mouthing pious platitudes, with the police and the Inquisition constantly peeking over their shoulders. As long as they were careful, Italians could enjoy their last few decades of prosperity. They were impressed by the lavish, solemn spectacles provided by Church and state, and the new art, sanctioned by Rome and commissioned in vast quantities for churches and palaces, seemed an Olympian peak of beauty and elegance.

Something was missing. The Bolognese masters of the new official style, the Carracci and Guido Reni, may have dazzled with their technical perfection, but their innumerable imitators found them a hard act to follow. Bologna in this era has a lot to answer for, and the last rooms of the Pinacoteca will amuse you with a flood of some of the most uninspired painting ever made. Lifeless virtuosity alternates with rare flashes of witless virtuosity, including perhaps the silliest high-fashion Annunciation ever painted, by Bologna’s own Pietro Faccini.