page_title: Bernardo Strozzi
section_title: Stylistic development
hierarchical_section_title: Bernardo Strozzi / Work / Stylistic development
context_page_description: Bernardo Strozzi, named il Cappuccino and il Prete Genovese was an Italian Baroque painter and engraver. A canvas and fresco artist, his wide subject range included history, allegorical, genre and portrait paintings as well as still lifes. Born and initially mainly active in Genoa, he worked in Venice in the latter part of his career. His work exercised considerable influence on artistic developments in both cities. He is considered a principal founder of the Venetian Baroque style. His powerful art stands out by its rich and glowing colour and broad, energetic brushstrokes.
context_section_description: Strozzi continued to develop his style throughout his career. His art drew its early inspiration from the rich variety of styles flourishing in Genoa around the turn of the 17th century. Starting in a style which borrowed from the artificial elegance of Cambiaso's late Mannerist style he gradually developed toward a greater naturalism.
  Strozzi had early on absorbed the Tuscan Mannerist style through his teacher Sorri as well as the style of Milanese Mannerist painting. As a result, the influence of local Mannerism is sometimes difficult to separate from that of Lombard Mannerists. The Mannerism is expressed in the works of this early period in the elongated and curved figures, the tapering fingers, the inclined heads and the abstract patterns of draperies. In the 1620s Strozzi gradually abandoned his early Mannerist style in favor of a more personal style characterized by a new naturalism derived from the work of Caravaggio and his followers.  The Caravaggist style of painting had been brought to Genoa both by Domenico Fiasella, after his return from Rome in 1617–18, and by followers of Caravaggio who spent time working in the city, including Orazio Gentileschi, Orazio Borgianni, Angelo Caroselli and Bartolomeo Cavarozzi.  Strozzi's Calling of St Matthew (c. 1620, Worcester Art Museum) is particularly close to Caravaggio in style and treatment of this subject, while still retaining certain Mannerist characteristics.
  His exposure to the work of Anthony van Dyck, Peter Paul Rubens and other Flemish artists resident or passing through Genoa contributed to a growing naturalism and a definitive rejection of the Mannerist tendencies in his work. Warmer colors started to dominate while he developed a bolder and more painterly technique. In his composition St. Lawrence Distributing the Riches of the Church (c. 1625, Saint Louis Art Museum) the artist achieved a clear and lucid treatment of space and an accurate definition of form by the use of light and shade. The impasto in this work had become even thicker than before.
  By the end of the 1620s, Strozzi had started to synthesize a personal style which fused painterly influences of the North (including Rubens and Veronese) with a monumental, realistic starkness.  Venice infused his painting with a gentler edge, a style more acceptable to the local patronage, and one derived from his precursors in Venice, Jan Lys and Domenico Fetti, who had also fused the influence of Caravaggio into Venetian art. Veronese's art inspired him to adopt a bolder and more luminous palette. An example of this style can be found in his Parable of the Wedding Guests (1636, Accademia ligustica di belle arti).  His style continued at the same time to reveal the strong influence of Rubens as is shown in Allegorical figure (Minerva?) (mid-1630s, Cleveland Museum of Art), which unites the robust forms and brilliant colours of Rubens with the warm atmosphere of Venetian art.
  His latest works are luminous and sketchy, as can be seen in the David with the Head of Goliath (after 1640, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam) and the Rebecca and Eliezer at the Well (after 1630, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden). His Lute Player (after 1640; Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna) exudes a poetic mood likely derived from his study of the work of Giorgione.
caption: Portrait of a Maltese Knight
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