Giovanni Lanfranco

Lanfranco, Giovanni di Stefano

Italian, 1582 - 1647

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Italian painter (1582-1647)

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A young woman plays a small pipe organ while a winged angel holds up a piece of sheet music in this horizontal painting. A strong light source illuminates the scene from our right, creating deep shadows in the dark background. Both the woman and angel have pale skin, flushed cheeks, and light brown hair. Shown from the knees up and taking up the left half of the painting, the woman’s body is angled to our right as she sits at the organ, which is near the right edge of the composition. Her hair is pulled back into a braid, and wisps fall on her forehead. Her skin is smooth, and her head tilts down toward the organ. Her cherry-red dress has a squared neckline and olive-green sleeves over a white shirt. The voluminous sleeves are pushed back over her forearms as she rests her fingertips on the keys of the organ. Gazing toward the woman, the angel has short, curly hair, silvery gray wings, and wears a topaz-blue garment. Two lines of music on the paper the angel holds have notes written in and one staff is empty. The small organ is angled away from us so we see one narrow end and the row of low pipes along its back. The dark brown background lightens behind the young woman’s head.
Orazio Gentileschi, Giovanni Lanfranco, Saint Cecilia and an Angel, c. 1617/1618 and c. 1621/1627, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.73

Saint Cecilia and an Angel

Orazio Gentileschi, Giovanni Lanfranco · c. 1617/1618 and c. 1621/1627 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1961.9.73

Bibliography

1934

  • Passeri, Giovanni Battista. Die Künstlerbiographien von Giovanni Battista Passeri. Edited by Jacob Hess. Leipzig and Vienna, 1934: 138-163.

1976

  • Bellori, Giovan Pietro. Le vite de' pittori scultori e architetti moderni. (Rome, 1672) Reprint edited by Evelina Borea. Turin, 1976: 377-396.

1982

  • Bernini, Giovanni-Pietro. Giovanni Lanfranco (1582-1647). Parma, 1982; revised edition, 1985.

1986

  • Schleier, Erich. "Giovanni Lanfranco." In The Age of Correggio and the Carracci. Exh. cat. Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Washington, 1986: 483-494.

1989

  • Schleier, Erich. "Lanfranco, Giovanni." In La pittura in Italia: Il seicento. 2 vols. Milan, 1989: 2:780-781.

1996

  • De Grazia, Diane, and Eric Garberson, with Edgar Peters Bowron, Peter M. Lukehart, and Mitchell Merling. Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1996: 101-102.