V incenzo C amuccini
Rome 1771 - 1844
Vincenzo Camuccini is one of the most important figures in the history of Neoclassical figurative culture in Europe.
In Rome, an extraordinary crucible of the artistic avant-garde at the time, from the 1790s on he was to become a
bastion of the unchanging values of Classicist orthodoxy and the guardian of the lofty tradition of the Roman High
Renaissance, and indeed he was to remain so for the next fifty years. At the turn of the century he became the
beacon of figurative culture in Rome and one of the most authoritative painters in the entire panorama of Italian art.
Camuccini was all of this and more. At the start of his remarkable career in the 1790s, with an inclination for the
so-called “heroic-quiritarian” trend in Neoclassicism, which had been developed in Rome in the previous decade,
and for the stern spatial geometry recently embraced by Jacques-Louis David in his Oath of the Horatii, Camuccini
experimented, primarily in drawing, with the schematisation of concept and linear synthesis shared by the boldest
and most original experiments taking place in Roman figurative art. The lively artistic crucible that was Rome at the
time provided an unparalleled humus for exploring new stylistic vocabulary. And drawing, thanks to the conceptual
strength and visual primacy of line, was the visual medium used in that exploration. An emblematic example of this
figurative climate is the superb drawing of the Rape of the Sabine Women published here, which I believe can be dated
to the first decade of the 19th century. The drawing uses the furore of this ancient theme set in the time of Rome’s
earliest history, to explore those aesthetic coordinates of Neoclassical orthodoxy most closely bound to the concepts
of the sublime and the “terrible”. Here Camuccini multiplies his lines with theatrical verve, imparting geometrical
form to them and producing a scene brimming with pathos and excited agitation – a different matter altogether
from the studied monumentality of David’s depiction of the same subject in 1799 (Musée du Louvre). He harks
back to the heated ardour of Homer’s epic poem and even transfigures the models from which he had unashamedly
drawn his inspiration through his study of copper prints, namely Poussin (famous for his two versions of this theme,
now in the Metropolitan Museum and the Musée du Louvre respectively) and Rubens (in an autograph list of his
works, dated 1824 and published by Gianna Piantoni in 1978, Camuccini includes among his youthful “studies
from Old Masters” a “Rape of the Sabine Women, after Rubens”, in all probability a reference to the famous
painting now in the National Gallery in London).
An exemplary testimony to this heroic and sublime interpretation of figurative art, which originated in the decade
between 1770 and 1780 in the artistic and intellectual circles of the English and so-called Nordic residents of
Rome that formed around the figure of Johann Heinrich Füssli (who was in Rome from 1770 to 1778), and which
subsequently came to maturity in the circle of that eloquent genius Felice Giani and of the Accademia de’ Pensieri,
can be found, where Camuccini is concerned, in the controversial history of the execution of the first version of the
Death of Caesar, which the painter himself then destroyed. Commissioned by Lord Bristol in 1793 and completed
in 1799, the picture attracted bitter criticism for the apparent lifelessness of its use of colour. In actual fact, the
muted, wan tones mentioned by the sources as characterising the first version – thus modulated to underscore the
expressive force of the painting, which relied deliberately on its draughtsmanship rather than on its colour – sought
to conjure up a sublime setting befitting the theme, where the expansive gestures of Caesar and of the conspirators
were intended to acquire greater force through their being distributed in a schematic fashion constructed by the
geometrical intersection of straight lines.
In any event, from the very start of his artistic career, Camuccini was able to tackle a variety of different styles of
painting, moving from the heroic and from sublime themes to pastoral subjects and to subjects imbued with grace.
His drawing of The Infant Bacchus Delivered to the Nymphs by Mercury, published in this catalogue, provides evidence
of his skill – with the Restoration he was even to become the leading acolyte of the most serene and orthodox neo-
Raphaelite classicism – in polishing his style to suit the bucolic theme and the serene climate of the Arcardian world,
imparting a more classical, elongated and sinuous plasticity to the anatomy of his figures. In compositional terms
– and in chronological terms, even if the theme depicted is different – the drawing is very close to a picture showing
The Young Paris Being Delivered to Hecuba and Archelaus on Mount Ida, painted in around 1795 for a side panel of
the ceiling in the Room of Helen and Paris in the Casino Nobile in Rome’s Villa Borghese.
His youthful and perturbing sanguine studies of Michelangelo’s Last Judgement testify in this catalogue to the
eccentricity and plurality of Camuccini’s artistic career. Here the painter, displaying truly exceptional talent as a
draughtsman, explores the faces of the monstrous and infernal beings pressing around Charon’s boat in an attempt
to practice rendering even the most horrific and deformed physiognomies and portraying a variety of facial features.
This last was a crucial theme in the Neoclassical aesthetic as a whole, particularly after the publication of the French
edition (published in The Hague in 1783) of an extremely popular essay by Johann Kaspar Lavater devoted to the
study of human physiognomy (Physiognomische Fragmente, Winterthur 1776). In this pamphlet Lavater mooted the
theory, in the context of the false science of physiognomics, that an individual’s facial features in some way mirrored
his complex inner life.
Camuccini assigned immense importance to these heads after Michelangelo, each one of which was the expression
of a given human temperament or sentiment, even if occasionally depicted in an exaggerated style and at times with
downright caricatural intent. In the original portfolio of these heads the painter had initially included an autograph
list of the curious but, in this context, enlightening titles which he himself had assigned to each head – for which
he had set a price of 15 louis each – along with a very interesting note commenting on the state of conservation
of Michelangelo’s fresco, which was considered to be in poor condition precisely in the area around Charon’s boat: