Pietro da Cortona | |
|---|---|
 Self-Portrait | |
| Born | Pietro Berrettini 1 November 1596 or 1597 |
| Died | 16 May 1669 (aged 72) Rome, Papal States |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Known for | Painting and architecture |
| Movement | Baroque |
Pietro da Cortona (Italian: [ˈpjɛːtro da (k)korˈtoːna]; 1 November 1596 or 1597[1] – 16 May 1669[2]) was an Italian Baroque painter and architect. Along with his contemporaries and rivals Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini, he was one of the key figures in the emergence of Roman Baroque architecture. He was also an important designer of interior decorations.
He was born Pietro Berrettini, but is primarily known by the name of his native town of Cortona in Tuscany.[3] He 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.
- ^ His traditional year of birth is 1596, but as he was baptised on 27 November 1597, some more recent books on Cortona give his year of birth as 1597 as for example Pietro da Cortona 1597–1669, Lo Bianco A. (ed.), Electa, 1997.
- ^ Gamba, Carlo (1935). "PIETRO da Cortona". Enciclopedia Italiana (in Italian).
- ^ Connors 1982, p. 455.