Antonio Tempesta 1555 - 1630 Universal Deluge

Antonio Tempesta (Florence, 1555 - Rome, 1630)
Universal Flood
Oil on canvas, 55 x 66 cm - with frame 85 x 97 cm

The work in question shows significant analogies of form and style with the paintings of the artist Antonio Tempesta, Tuscan painter lived in the context of Mannerism first and then Baroque. The examples to cite therefore are the Red Sea Landscape in the Gavotti Veruspi collection, the Battle between Christians and Turks and the Battle of the Amazons always in private collections and finally the Angel with the image of Veronica on alabaster, present on the market, together Annunciation. The main feature of Tempesta's painting lies in simulating a translucent material painting, almost as if it were painted on a stone support and not on canvas, also reflected in the Veronese pictorial school between the 16th and 17th centuries, which is observed in further examples by Antonio Tempesta preserved in the Borghese Gallery (see La Caccia), the Doria Pamphilj collection (The Red Sea), the Savoy Gallery (Arrival of Maria Cristina of France in Turin) and the Louvre. Tempesta was a painter and engraver, trained in Florence in the workshop of Santi di Tito and subsequently continued his collaboration with Giovanni Stradano in the decoration of Palazzo Vecchio, under the direction of Giorgio Vasari, who played a decisive role in the development of the painting of Tempesta. He continued his career in Rome, arriving in the Eternal City around 1575 thanks to the intercession of Pope Gregory XIII Boncompagni, who called him to fresco some rooms in the Vatican (Hall of geographical maps), specializing in the creation of decorative frescoes in buildings religious (San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, Santo Stefano Rotondo) and in private residences (Pallavicini Rospigliosi Palace, Villa d'Este in Tivoli, Palazzo Farnese in Caprarola). Although he had a well-established career with high clients in Rome, he alternated his presence in the city with stays in Florence, where he collaborated with Alessandro Allori, Ludovico Buti and Ludovico Cigoli to decorate the ceilings of the Uffizi Gallery executed with grotesque decorations. He combined the practice of painting with the activity of engraver thanks to his propensity for a naturalistic and calligraphic taste together, performing numerous series of etchings, which had ample luck throughout Europe, focused on restless and engaging scenes, favoring themes such as hunts and battles ; famous are the illustrations accompanying the Old Testament known as the "Bible of the Storm". The scene presented here is a representation of it: the Universal Flood. Over time, men became wicked, disrespectful of divinity, abandoned the path of good and chose the path of evil. The divinity, in anger, punished them by sending a terrifying flood to earth. Only a few were saved, the good, just, pious, chosen by the divinity to give rise to a new human race. The oldest testimony on the subject is that narrated in the Gilgamesh Epic, which represents the highest example of the literary production of the Mesopotamian environment and is the result of the fusion of multiple independent short stories, long transmitted in oral form and translated into written form in the Bible and in the myth of Deucalione and Pirra.