Grasping at Shadows: Ancient Paintings in Renaissance and Baroque Rome

Abstract

Though ancient paintings discovered in Rome and south Italy greatly influenced Renaissance artists, interest in ancient painting was limited to a small circle of antiquarians and collectors, dominated by Cassiano dal Pozzo and the Barberini court, in the first half of the seventeenth century, and by G. P. Bellori and Camillo Massimi in the second. It is, therefore, only with the greatest caution that the imagery or iconography of a seventeenth-century painting should be attributed to the influence of either a lost or a known ancient work.

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Hetty Joyce

Hetty Joyce is a classical art historian with a special interest in Roman decorative art and its influence on art and art theory from the Renaissance on. Her articles on this subject have appeared in The Art Bulletin, Gazette des beaux-arts, and Römische Mitteilungen [40 Sutton Place, New York, N.Y. 10022].