A Contribution to Andrea Camassei Studies

Abstract

This article was originally undertaken in order to attribute some new works to Andrea Camassei and to publish a number of documents concerning him, but the necessary research expanded it to a study of monograph proportions. A book on Camassei already exists. Published in 1880, it contains much useful information, especially that based on archives and sources in the artist's home town, Bevagna, but it is rare,1 has neither index nor plates, and is now out of date. Scattered later references in guidebooks for Bevagna and in studies of Roman seventeenth-century painting add little to Presenzini's monograph.2 Reluctant to write a book on the artist at this time, I think it useful nevertheless to publish the essential information on Camassei in the form of a short chronological survey of his career and a brief critical catalogue of his work, together with a number of new attributions. Both survey, and catalogue incorporate information from the documents, the most important of which are transcribed in an appendix. The result is not a balanced introduction to Camassei's career. In particular the works in Bevagna could not be adequately treated since I have visited the town only once briefly and since decent photographs exist of only some of his works there.3 The condition of much of Camassei's work in Bevagna and Rome also precludes serious discussion of his development and achievements at this time.4 An exhibition devoted to Barberini patronage, or to Camassei, Giacinto Gimignani, and other classicizing artists of the mid-seventeenth century in Rome, would be the ideal next stage in the study of Camassei's work, for it would enable scholars interested in these problems to study Camassei in relation to his contemporaries and to learn more about the character of this classicizing phase of Roman painting. If the attributions made here are correct, Camassei is a better artist and his contribution to this phase a more important one than would have been supposed previously.5

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