Bernardino Mei (23 October 1612 – 1676) was an Italian painter and Engraving, who worked in a Baroque painting in his native Siena and in Rome, finding patronage above all in the Chigi family.[Bernardino's Faith and Hope and later works Bathsheba and The Judgement of Solomon are among his works that remain in Palazzo Chigi-Saracini, via della Città, Siena (Gloria Fossi, Siena segreta. La collezione Chigi Saracini e i musei nascosti 1988:xix.]
Biography
Early life and education
Briefly a pupil of the Sienese
cartographer and draughtsman Giuliano Periccioli, where he learned the art of engraving, Bernardino passed to the studio of the painter
Rutilio Manetti and probably also served in the workshop of Francesco Rustici.
[Giovanni Rosini, Storia della pittura italiana; Luigi Lanzi was unwilling to hasard a guess as to Bernardino's early master (Lanzi, Storia pittorica dell'Italia dal risorgimento delle belle arti fin presso al fine del XVIII secolo, p. 363).]
He painted in and around Siena, where he came under the influences of Mattia Preti,[Enzo Carli ( Sienese Painting, 1983:78) points out, in connection with Bernardino's "echoes of Mattia Preti", the fact that Preti executed some commissions in Siena.] Andrea Sacchi and Pier Francesco Mola, and of Guercino, to the extent that until the 20th century Bernardino's fresco of Aurora in Palazzo Bianchi Bandinelli was attributed to Guercino himself.
Maturity
Mei reached maturity in the 1650s, when, rejecting Preti’s influence, he created a series of outstanding works, distinguished by complex rhythms and forms and great expressive power, inspired by Roman painting and the sculpture of Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Through the fast friendship that bonded him to Bernini, whose studio he frequented, he applied that sculptor's sense of theatrical action to his own mythological and allegorical subjects.
Most of Mei's mature works portray allegorical subjects or scenes from Classical history and include
Love Healed by Time with Water from the River Lethe (1653) and its companion
Fortune between Virtue and Necessity (1654);
Orestes Killing Aegisthus and Clytemnestra (1654) and its companion
Artemisia Drinking the Ashes of King Mausolus Mixed with her own Tears;
The Charlatan (1656; all Siena, Monte Paschi); and
Faith (1656) and
Hope (both Siena, Palazzo Chigi-Saracini).
Also mainly from the same period are a group of drawings (Siena, Col. Chigi–Saraceni; Florence, Uffizi) and a group of signed and dated engravings (e.g. Atlas and Hercules Supporting the Universe, 1656; Siena, Bib. Com. Intronati). The subject of the painting of Alexander the Great and the Fates (Cincinnati Art Museum) alludes to Pope Alexander VII, suggesting a date after his election in 1655. In 1657 Mei was summoned by Alexander VII to Rome, where in the same year he was elected to the Accademia di San Luca.
In Rome
In Rome he executed a number of paintings for the Pope, including a
Rest on the Flight into Egypt (1659; Rome, Santa Maria del Popolo) and two scenes from the
Life of St. John the Baptist (both 1659; Rome, Santa Maria della Pace). In its lighter palette and more monumental and sculptural forms, the former shows Mei’s response to the new classicism of
Carlo Maratta. The latter two paintings, however, return to the naturalism of Preti, as does Mei’s
Winter (
Ariccia, Palazzo Chigi), painted for Cardinal Flavio Chigi in collaboration with
Mario Nuzzi. Mei executed many works for this patron for his palazzo in Ariccia and for that in the Piazza Santi Apostoli, Rome. Among those that have been identified are
St. Augustine Meditating on the Trinity (1665), completed for the collegiate church at Ariccia, and
Fortune Donated by Virtue (Rome, Min. Grazia & Giustizia). These late works are less sculptural, while such pictures as the
Mary Magdalene (Siena, Monte Paschi) attain a new psychological depth. Mei died in Rome in 1676.
Legacy
In the 19th century, Bernardino was dismissed as a tame follower of greater lights,
["Non ebbe stile proprio ma prendeva, secondo il suo capriccio a imitare or Paolo Veronese, ora i Carracci, ora il Guercino" (Rosini)] but his painting was re-evalued in the later 20th century,
[He is still "a second-rate Sienese painter" in Francis Haskell, Patrons and Painters, 1980: 154.] expressed in the exhibition
Bernardino Mei e la pittura barocca a Siena, Siena, 1987.
Bernardino Mei (Italian (Sienese) - Christ Cleansing the Temple - Google Art Project.jpg| Christ Cleansing the Temple, (J. Paul Getty Museum)
Bernardino Mei - The Vision of St Jerome - WGA14736.jpg| The Vision of St Jerome, 1657–1660, priv. col.
Bernardino Mei - Allegory of Justice.jpg| Allegory of Justice, 1656, priv. col.
Antiochius et Stratonice by Bernardino Mei (c. 1650, coll. Monte dei Paschi).jpg| Antiochius et Stratonice, , col. Monte dei Paschi
Ghismunda - Bernardino Mei.jpg| Ghismunda, 1650–1659, Palazzo Chigi–Piccolomini, Siena
Notes
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