Procaccini, Giulio Cesare

Procaccini, Giulio Cesare the best artist of the family, was born in 1548. He renounced sculpture, in which he had made considerable progress, for painting, which he studied in the school of the Caracci. 'The works of Correggio were the principal object of his studies, and many judges are of opinion that no painter ever approached nearer to the style of that great artist. In some of his easel pictures and works of confined composition he has been mistaken for Correggio. A Madonna of his at San Luigi de' Francesi has been engraved as the work of that master; and some paintings still more closely approximating to this style are in the palace of Sanvitali at Rome and in that of Carrega at Genoa. Of his altar-pieces, that in the church of Santa Afra in Brescia is perhaps most like the style of Correggio: it represents the Virgin and Child amid a smiling group of saints and angels, in which dignity seems as much sacrificed to grace as in the mutual smile of the Virgin and the Angel in the Nunziata at San Antonio of Milan. He is sometimes blamable for extravagance of attitude, as in the Executioner of San Nazario, which is otherwise a picture full of beauties. Notwithstanding the number and extent of his works, his design is correct, his forms and draperies select, his invention varied, and the whole together has a certain grandeur and breadth which he either acquired from the Caracci, or, like them, derived from Correggio. He died in 1626. There are many of his works in Milan.