Pietro da Cortona

One of the leading Italian Baroque Architects and Painters, Pietro Berrettini, but is primarily known by the name of his native town of Cortona, Tuscany. I worked on restoration of one of the three churches he designed for the city of Rome, Santa Maria in Via Lata (my own drawing of the main elevation at the center of the collage).

Pietro da Cortona had a great respect for classical architecture in fact his design for the Santa Maria in Via Lata that was built on a crypt of a Roman building and the house of Saint Paul reflects that, but the use of an arch interrupting a tympanum was unusual for a classical design and it was critiqued by historians later.

Santi Luca e Martina is another church in Rome, Italy, designed by Cortona situated between the Roman Forum and the Forum of Caesar and close to the Arch of Septimus Severus (the dome at the right side of the collage is from this church). This church is also known as protector of Architects!

Cortona worked mainly in Rome and Florence. He is best known for his frescoed ceilings such as the vault of the salone or main salon of the Palazzo Barberini in Rome and carried out extensive painting and decorative schemes for the Medici family in Florence and for the Oratorian fathers at the church of Santa Maria in Vallicella in Rome. He also painted numerous canvases. Only a limited number of his architectural projects were built but nonetheless they are as distinctive and as inventive as those of his rivals. The “Allegory of Divine Providence and Barberini Power” is a fresco by Italian painter Pietro da Cortona, filling the large ceiling of the grand salon of the Palazzo Barberini in Rome, Italy (background picture of the collage).

Cortona studied the human anatomy and produced hundreds of detailed drawing from man and woman body (the illustration on the right side of the collage). As any other painters he was sketching his scenes as a base drawing for the fresco creation on the walls or ceilings (the sketch on the left side of the collage)