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Youth and Old Age

Pietro della Vecchia

  • Youth and Old Age 2
  • Youth and Old Age 3
  • Youth and Old Age 4
  • Youth and Old Age 5
  • Youth and Old Age 6
  • Youth and Old Age 7
Basic information
ID
Ж-823
Author
Pietro della Vecchia
Name
Youth and Old Age
Date of creation
c.1640s – 1670s
Technique
oil painting
Material
canvas oil
Dimensions (height x width, cm)
75 x 59
Additionally
Type
painting
Genre
genre art symbolic art
Plot
Youth and old age
Provenance
Collection of Wiktor Baworowski
Exposition
Potocki Palace
Information about author
Author
Pietro della Vecchia
Artist's lifetime
1602/1603–1678
Country
Italy
Biography
Pietro della Vecchia (Muttoni) (1602/1603–1678) was an Italian artist of the Venetian school. Compositions painted by the master after 1635 were inspired by Caravaggio and Alessandro Varotari, the Venetian artist and representative of the Mannerist style. Scientific studies devoted to the painter's creative work contain references to his belonging to the group of artists who worked in the tenebroso technique, combining Caravaggio's tenebrism with the imitation of the masters of the past (Titian, Giorgione, and others). Moreover, until the 1650s, as noted by the researchers, the artist's painting style was influenced by Claude Vignon, a French Baroque painter and court artist of Louis XIII, whose creative formation took place in the mainstream of Caravaggism. Despite the absolute plot diversity, compositional skills, and colour harmony, some of Pietro della Vecchia's works are distinguished by excessive narration, dry painting technique, and airlessness of the intra-painting space. In the 1660s, the artist was one of the most sought-after Venetian masters. As a result, he established a home-based academy where art theory and practice, perspective, and plastic anatomy were taught. Pietro della Vecchia was an art connoisseur and intellectual, advising famous collectors of his time in the acquisition of works.
Object description
The "Youth and Old Age" painting came to the Gallery's collection from the collection of Count Wiktor Baworowski. Despite the numerous copies of the work, the Lviv composition was likely created by Pietro della Vecchia himself as part of the "The Philosopher and His Disciples" series, one of the paintings of which belongs to the Bavarian art collection. The work is distinguished by plastic integrity. The influences of Caravaggism are indicated by the use of chiaroscuro and tenebroso techniques, as well as an "open" artistic vision that gives an everyday motif a semantic and artistic value. The symbolic interpretation of the work is interesting: the compositional closure ensured by the intersection of the older man's gaze directed at the book and the young man's gaze directed at him is perceived as an expression of the student and teacher's spiritual closeness. The image of the book "unlocks" the composition's chronotope into the infinite of the world's meanings. The viewer's involvement in the circle of "initiates" is provided by the approach of the figures to the border of the intra-picture space and their location at the level of the perceivers. The image of a young man in a Renaissance beret indicates the "historicizing" tendencies in Pietro della Vecchia's work. The timelessness of the older man's clothes lends symbolism and symbolic depth to his figure. The canvas colouring is unique as it accentuates and "manifests" the darkness of shadows, brown-red colours, and golden-white flashes of light among prevailing red.
Legal regulation
Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

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