Filippo Tarchiani Castello (1576–1645)

Filippo Tarchiani Castello (Florence 1576 – Florence 1645) pair of oil on canvas "Elizabeth of Hungary" and "Louis IX". 115×91 cm Authentication by Professor Giancarlo Sestieri. These two evocative and austere images (oil paintings on canvas, cm. 115 X 91) of "Elizabeth of Hungary" and "Louis IX", King of France, of majestic elegance in the accurate and refined definition of the royal garments, but tempered by any encomiastic rhetoric that suited well the rank of those portrayed, lead back to the Florentine school between the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century. Whose major exponents - from J. Ligozzi, A. Allori, A. Boscoli, L. Cardi, to L. Cardi, J. Chimenti, M. Rosselli, G. Pagani and F. Tarchiani - in fact preferred the meticulous and historically accurate description of the characters, of particularly sumptuous garments, from the sacred to the royal ones, as can be admired in the two present paintings, in which the author lingers on the damask fabrics, on their ermine linings, on the collar and steel bodice, up to the royal attributes. Precisely the examination of the suffused pictorial fabric, with which this analytical descriptivism is rendered, in contrast with the more summary one used for the rendering of the poor clothes of the beggars, together with the typology and the calm gestures of the four characters, allows us to trace back to the name of Filippo Tarchiani (Castello, Florence 1576 - 1645), as the author of the two present portraits. Which are not to be understood as such in the strict sense of the term, being the two characters chosen evidently by the client as symbols of Christian charity, which was humbly explained by them despite their aristocratic rank, and therefore with a more authoritative explanatory ascendant in this regard. Louis IX has gone down in history as Louis the Saint, not only for having led two crusades in 1258-60 and in 1267-70 (in the first he was taken prisoner and during the second he died due to an epidemic), for his numerous acts of charity and beneficence, from serving food in person daily to one hundred and twenty beggars, to washing and kissing the feet every Saturday to three blind men. Elizabeth, daughter of the Hungarian King Andrew II, is also called of Thuringia for having married the local Landgrave Louis IV, upon whose death she opened a hospital in Marburg to treat the poor and sick as a Franciscan. Already dedicated to a life of penance, under the influence of her confessor Conrad, she imposed very harsh mortifications on herself which led to her death. in 1231. Both have been depicted in their royal garments, bearing Louis as attributes only the lilies of France, having removed the crown, placed nearby, and Elizabeth only the crown; united however by the act of almsgiving, given with a feeling of sincere inner gratification, well expressed by the painter on their faces. As convincing support for the aforementioned authorship of Tarchiani for these two relevant idealized "Portraits", some of his works can be examined, among the most representative of his catalog, in which pertinent comparisons can be analyzed both on the pictorial and on the stylistic and interpretative level. For this purpose, we mention the fresco with "Saint Barbara Overthrowing the Idols" in the Villa of Poggio Imperiale, the "David and Goliath" of the Bardini Museum in Florence, the "Madonna with Child Jesus handing the monastic veil to a novice" of the Palatine Gallery in Florence and the "Pietà" of the Capitular Museum in Pistoia. Paintings published by S. Bellesi in the Catalog of Florentine Painters of the '600 and '700 (Edizione Polistampa, Florence 2009, III, figs. 1562-1579). Tarchiani, after an initial apprenticeship with Agostino Ciampelli, moved to Rome around 1590, where he continued his studies under the guidance of Durante Alberti. Returning to Florence in 1596, he collaborated with his last master Gregorio Pagani: an emerging figure of the Florentine school of the late century and open to the novelties of the "Lombard manner". From 1601 to 1607 he stayed in Rome again, approaching the Florentines Comodi and Fontebassi. In the subsequent Florentine activity Filippo conformed above all to a neo-sixteenth-century stylistic language with a strong Empolese imprint, to then open up to a type of naturalistic painting, borrowed from Caravaggio's examples. The 'our' two present paintings are to be ascribed to the aforementioned phase influenced by Chimenti. Giancarlo Sestieri