Personal Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Bartolomeo Manfredi
Italian; 17th-century
New York, NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art
90%
Saints Peter and Paul. c1625. Oil on canvas
Out from Manfredi's small double-portrait, the apostles' mirrored gazes imply a horizontal V, whose tips project infinitely out around their viewer and whose punctum lies in space, centered, just behind their heads. Their attributes, diagonally held, point towards this point too, while their shoulders slope each way away from it. The painting is a system of these Vs, shadow-soft diamonds refracting in depth. That a painting so ordered could also have so little weight — look at Peter's neck-crook or Paul's limp right hand — is Manfredi's brilliance. (2023)
Chicago, IL: Art Institute of Chicago
71%
Cupid Chastised. 1613. Oil on canvas
The way these Caravaggisti did bodies — all full and dark and light — is unimpeachable. But a picture like this that's so clearly in the Roman master's thrall suffers some for, well, not quite muscling the way a full-blown Caravaggio does. (There are less derivative works by various Caravaggisti, which tend also to be more successful than this piece. What comes to mind are the cardsharp pictures and tavern scenes of Valentin and Tournier and Manfredi himself.) The action here is set just a bit too cleanly behind the painting's surface. The scene, therefore, doesn't seem to seam-burst quite as it should; one would like to see that shooting knee of Mars's threatening not just to pummel cupid, but to pop the picture plane, too. Furthermore, there's an otherworldly quality to the contrasts between figures and grounds: the bird in the top right corner, especially, looks like a sticker slapped on. This goes on in many works by the followers of Caravaggio, and it often has an aesthetically positive effect. Here, however, Cupid's butt and Venus' cartoony shoulder are like reminders of where this painting might have been — but isn't — more conscious of itself as a painting. (2025)