Giuseppe Cesari

called Cavaliere d’Arpino, 1568 Arpino – 1640 Rome

Giuseppe Cesari’s career was extraordinarily successful right from the outset and brought him great prestige, yet towards the end of his life it was also characterized by a certain hardening of the arteries and the effects of changing tastes in art (see Herwarth Röttgen, Il Cavalier Giuseppe Cesare d’Arpino, Rome 2002). Röttgen’s characterization: “Un grande pittore nello splendore della fama e nell’inconstanza della fortuna” neatly sums up this contradiction. Cesari was one of the most influential artists in Rome in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, although an authoritative theoretician of art, Giovanni Pietro Bellori, later criticized the extravagance and the “maniera fantasticheggiante” of his art.