M atteo R osselli
Florence 1578 - 1650
2. Pope Alexander IV, inspired by the Virgin, approving the rule of the Order of the Friar
Servants of Mary in 1255, granting it the power to found convents and places of worship
wherever it chose
Trimmed preparatory model in the shape of a lunette
oil on paper laid down on canvas
335 x 458 mm
Inscribed: on the back of the frame, in handwritten script of the period: Alessandro IV approva la Regola dei Servi
di Maria / Bozzetto di Matteo Rosselli d’una delle Lunette del Chiostro della SS. Annunziata / fatto l’anno 1616.
Provenance:
Florence, Francesco da Sommaia, 1616-1618; after 1618 Florence, Cavaliere Francesco di Giovanni Campani and his
heirs, Florence private collection.
It is hugely satisfying when one is lucky enough, as in this case, to come across a hitherto unknown work by
Matteo Rosselli – and a work both of excellent quality and in an excellent state of conservation, at that – because
every new addition to the painter’s opus, be it a canvas, a preparatory model or a graphic work, marks a step
forward in piecing together a much-needed and more up-to-date reconstruction of his artistic career based on
the solid foundation work done by Fiammetta Faini Guazzelli some years ago (see 1965-1966; in Il Seicento
fiorentino. Biografie 1986, 158-160).
In his Life of the artist, Filippo Baldinucci paints a comprehensive portrait of Matteo Rosselli, providing a clearly
defined yet richly nuanced picture of the artist’s personality, focusing not only on his professional career and
on the work he produced for two Medici grand dukes (Cosimo II and Ferdinando II) as well as for a series of
illustrious Florentine patrons, but also analysing his work from a moral standpoint both in his capacity as the
mentor and teacher of two generations of artists – his school was attended by Giovanni da San Giovanni, Vignali,
Furini, Volterrano and many others – and in his capacity as a man of moral rectitude, unimpeachable both in
his ethics and in his conduct. Thanks to these two requisites, together with his innate ability to reconcile a
pleasing artistic style with the stern dictates of the Counter-Reformation in the field of religious painting, Rosselli
managed to build himself a reputation as the ideal interpreter of the tenets of the Council of Trent, earning the
favour of the leading ecclesiastical institutions in Florence. Those institutions included the Order of the Friar
Servants of Mary, or Servite Order, in their convent of the Santissima Annunziata with which we can link this
very fine and hitherto unknown work examined here.
The work in question is an oil-on-paper preparatory model for one of the four lunettes which Matteo Rosselli
frescoed in the great cloister of the Servite convent between 1614 and 1618, completing the painted cycle of twenty-
four stories – twenty of which had already been painted by then, by Bernardino Poccetti, Ventura Salimbeni and
Arsenio Mascagni – for which Brother Arcangelo Giani had developed the iconographical programme. Giani
had devised the programme in 1604 in an attempt to illustrate in a clear and simple style (almost as though they
were the pages of a book, a biblia pauperum or poor man’s Bible) the main events leading up to the foundation