Giuseppe Pirovani

Giuseppe Perovani Rústica
Giuseppe Perovani
Bornc. 1765
Brescia, Italy
Died1835 (1836)
Mexico City, Mexico
NationalityItalian
Known forPaintings, Murals, Frescos,

Giuseppe Perovani Rústica (c.1765, Brescia - 1835, Mexico City) was an Italian painter of the Neoclassic period. He trained in Rome, and was active in Brescia as a young man.[1] He came to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1795, at about age 30, where he lived and worked for several years.[2] He spent about 14 years living and working in Havana, Cuba.[3] He then spent a decade teaching in Mexico City, where he retired, and ultimately died.[3]

Perovani was born in Pavia to a Brescian family. His father was a merchant, who noticed his son's affinity and ability for drawing. He sent young Giuseppe to study in Rome under Pompeo Battoni.

Perovani painted altarpieces in Brescia.[4]

In the Americas

Philadelphia

Perovani and a fellow Italian painter arrived in the United States in early July 1795.[2] Philadelphia served as the temporary national capital, 1790-1800, while Washington, D.C. was under construction. Perovani painted a ceiling mural for the residence (embassy?) of the Spanish Minister to the United States, José de Jáudenes y Nebot.[2] Perovani mentioned this in a September 19, 1795 advertisement in Philadelphia's Federal Gazette:[5]

PEROVANI, JOSEPH AND JACINT COCCHI, of the republic of Venice, Painters, have the honour to inform the public, that they arrived in this respectable city about two months ago. During a residence of several years in the city of Rome, they have given specimens of their art and talents in that city, as well as in several other cities in Italy, having been employed by Princes as well as private persons. Having understood that taste for the fine arts is rapidly increasing in these happy States, they resolved to quit Italy, and to try to satisfy the respectable citizens of America, by their productions. The kind of paintings they excel in, are as follows, viz. The first (Mr. Perovani) paints all kinds of Historical Pieces, Pourtraits of all sizes, and Landscapes, as well as in oil color as in fresco; the other Mr. Cocchi, all kinds of Perspective, Paintings and Ornaments; and both are able to paint any Theatre, Chambers, Departments, with Platforms in figures, and ornamented in the Italian taste: a small specimen whereof they have given in one of the saloons of the house of the Spanish minister here. The one of them likewise is a compleat architect, not only able to furnish the draft in the most compleat stile, but likewise to superintend the execution thereof. They may be found by enquiring at No. 87, Second street North.[5]

The federal government relocated to the District of Columbia over the summer and fall of 1800. President John Adams first occupied the not-yet-finished White House in November, and the House of Representatives and Senate convened in the U.S. Capitol in December.

Perovani spent some time in New York City, before he and his wife relocated to Havana, Cuba in 1801.[6]

Cuba

Monseñor Juan José Díaz de Espada built the Espada Cemetery (opened 1806, demolished 1908), about a mile outside the Havana city walls. He commissioned Perovani to paint a fresco of The Resurrection for the cemetery's chapel, along with murals of The Ascension and The Final Judgement.[7] None of these works survive.

Monseñor Espada commissioned Perovani to create a fresco for Havana's Church of the Holy Spirit, along with two works in oil; and to create works for the Hospital de San Francisco de Paula.[7]

In 1806, Monseñor Espada placed Perovani in charge of the interior decoration for Havana's Cathedral of San Cristóbal.[3] Perovani's appointment was published in the Havana newspaper El Aviso Papel: Tuesday, February 4, 1806.[8] Perovani did trompe l'oeil painting on the high altar, making the carved-wood altar appear to have been carved from white marble and jasper.[9] He painted a life-size, full-length, oil-on-canvas portrait of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, standing on a crescent moon.[10] In 1810, Perovani began work on three lunette frescos high above and on either side of the altar: The Last Supper, The Ascension, and The Delivery of the Keys.[3]

"Perovani established a painting academy at Havana and his wife (an American) taught foreign languages: English, French and Italian."[11]

Perovani left Cuba in 1815, with interior work on the cathedral unfinished.[3] Work continued under Perovani's assistant, French painter Jean Baptiste Vermay.[12]

Mexico City

In 1815, Perovani was elected to the Academia de Belles Artes de San Carlos in Mexico City,[13] and he taught in the Academia school for the next decade.[3]

He designed and executed interior decorative painting for a theater in the city.

At age 69, Perovani returned to teaching in the Academia school in 1834, but died the following year in a cholera epidemic.[3]

Works by Perovani

A possible work by Perovani:

“On Washington’s birthday, Feb. 22, 1796, there was an exhibition of ‘The Temple of Minerva,’ with a statue of the goddess contemplating a bust of Washington, all of which was the work of Joseph Peruani, an Italian painter and architect.” (underline added)[14]

This account was published in 1884. Although Perovani was not known as a sculptor, the description and spelling of his name are so close that Scharf & Westcott, writing 88 years after the event, may have mis-read Perovani's surname.

Washington portrait

Spanish Minister Jáudenes sought to purchase a copy of the Lansdowne portrait from Gilbert Stuart, but turned to Perovani after difficulties arose.[2]

Perovani's Washington portrait contains a number of the elements from Stuart's portrait— the highly-carved gold-leafed table leg, the thick volumes standing on the floor,[15] the sun shining through the draperies. The positions of Washington's head and right arm are close to identical. But Perovani adds details personal to Jáudenes.

Like Edward Savage's group portrait The Washington Family (1789-96), Perovani features an image of Andrew Ellicott's 1792 engraving of Pierre Charles L'Enfant's plan for the District of Columbia. But Perovani also inserts an image of the 1796 Treaty of San Lorenzo between Spain and the United States, for which Jáudenes had been one of the two Spanish negotiators.[2] Spain's Prime Minister Manuel Godoy had been the other negotiator, and Jáudenes commissioned the portrait to be a gift to Godoy, his friend and mentor.[16]

The fanciful sculpture group upon which Washington rests his left wrist features seated allegorical figures of España and America embracing. Under the table are piled a shield, sword, and a muscular breastplate, set aside in peacetime. The pedestal of the sculpture group features an American eagle escutcheon and a flying dove carrying an olive branch. Perovani signed the portrait at the very base of the sculpture group, as if it had been etched in marble: "JOSEPH PEROVANI ITALUS / IN PHILADELPHIA FECIT / MDCCXCVI [1796]".[2]

Other works

Perovani apparently submitted architectural designs for a public hall in Philadelphia.[17]

Personal

Giuseppe Perovani married Juana Gordon Balduari in Philadelphia. The couple had 2 children while living in Cuba.[18] Señora Perovani supplemented the family income by giving private lessons in English, Italian and French.[19]

Their son: Josè Eduardo Perovani Gordon, was born December 12, 1802, and baptized at the Cathedral de Havana, January 16, 1803. He married Rosa della Torre Armenteros, and the couple had 4 daughters and 2 sons.[18]

Their daughter: Elvira Perovani y Gordon (d. 1881), married Andrés de La Torre y Armenteros (d. 1864), and the couple had at least 6 children.[18]

Critical assessment

The Cuban poet Manuel de Zequeira (1764-1846) dedicated a short ode to Perovani in the February 4, 1806 issue of Havana's El Papel Periódico:[20]

Quién pudiera tu nombre con la lira llevar,
Perovani, a la futura gente?
Y en todo cuanto viva y cuanto siente
Tanta vida inspirar como la inspirar
Tu diestra diligente

Who could sing out your name with the lyre,
Perovani, to the people of the future?
And inspire in all who live and all who feel
As much life as your diligent right hand inspires.


A biographical sketch of Perovani was published in 1878:

PEROVANI (JOSE)—We also see the name "Perouani" written, and in [John Sidney] Thrasher’s work it appears as “Peruani,” which is undoubtedly incorrect. He was born in Brescia, Italy, educated in Rome, married in Philadelphia with Juana Gordon, and moved to Havana [in 1801], where he gave painting lessons in the spring, while his wife opened an academy for girls, where for the first time they were taught French, English, and Italian. In Havana, Perovani painted his famous oil paintings “The Ascension” and “The Final Judgment” for the chapel of the new cemetery. He also painted several public and private buildings. The paintings that Zequiera most praised in a brilliant ode published under the pseudonym “Arnestio Garaique” in the Papel Periodico on February 4, 1806, are still preserved in the cathedral. Perovani accompanied the principal Frenchmen on their excursions around the island, and Count Beaujolois, who was fond of art, [had Perovani] paint his portrait. [Perovani] then left for Mexico, but was overtaken by the [Mexican] Revolution, and there, on the eve of returning to Havana, where he planned to establish an academy, he died at the age of 70 in 1835.[21]


A sour appraisal of Perovani from a 20th century critic:

“Already by 1805, Monseñor Espada had required for the decoration of our cathedral and some other churches and some chapels the services of that pathetic wandering Italian—José Perovani—whose dearest ideal in life had been that of founding an academy of art: something that he had not accomplished in the United States or in Cuba or in Mexico, where he at length left his septuagenarian bones. His stay among us was productive perhaps of not a little success and influence.”[7]

  • The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception (c.1810), Havana Cathedral
  • The Ascension fresco (1810-15), Havana Cathedral
  • The Bringing of the Keys fresco (1810-15), Havana Cathedral (far left)
  • Portrait of Félix María Calleja del Rey (1815), Museum of National History, Mexico City

References

  1. ^ Federico Nicoli Cristiani (1807). Della Vita delle pitture di Lattanzio Gambara; Memorie Storiche aggiuntevi brevi notizie intorno a' più celebri ed eccelenti pittori Bresciani. Spinelli e Valgiti, Brescia. pp. 175–176. Federico Nicoli Cristiani.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Mercedes González de Amezúa, “Catalogue 147: Giuseppe Perovani,” Real Academia de San Fernando, Madrid: Guía del Museo (Madrid: Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando), pp. 231-32.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Sigfrido Vazquez Cienfuegos, "Omnia Vanitas: Festejos en Honor de Godoy en La Habana en 1807", 2008, Ibero-Americana Pragensia Supplementum 25 (2009), pp. 119-26.
  4. ^ Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker, editors: Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart (Leipzig, Germany: 37 vols, 1907-50), vol. 27 (1933), p. 89. (English: Thieme-Becker, General Dictionary of Artists from Antiquity to the Present.)
  5. ^ a b Alfred Coxe Prime, The Arts and Crafts in Philadelphia, Maryland, and South Carolina 1786-1800 (Topsfield, MA: The Walpole Society, 1932), p. 26.
  6. ^ Richard N. Juliani, Building Little Italy: Philadelphia’s Italians Before Mass Migration (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), pp. 10-11.
  7. ^ a b c Jorge Mañach, “Painting in Cuba”, Inter-America [Magazine], (New York: Inter-America Press) vol. 9, no. 2 (December, 1925), p. 169.
  8. ^ Cuba Contemporanea, September 1924, p. 12.
  9. ^ Domingo Rosain, Necropolis de La Habana: Historia de los Cemeterios de Esta Ciudad (Habana, Cuba: Imprenta el Trabajo, Amistad 100, 1875), p. 248.
  10. ^ Willie McCarney, Travel with a Gavel (London, New York & Sharjah: Austin Macauley Publishers, 2022), Cuba, p. 3.
  11. ^ Ramiro Guerra, ed. A History of the Cuban Nation: Illustration, freedom of commerce (from 1790 up to 1857), (Habana, Cuba: Editorial Historia de la Nacion Cubana, S.A., 1958), p. 380.
  12. ^ Emma Harris Otero, “Cuba”, in Earl Parker Hanson, The New World Guides to the Latin American Republics, Volume 1 (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, Inc., 1945), p. 13.
  13. ^ Ignacio Miguel Galbis, The Art of Colonial Cuba, MS thesis, (University of California, Riverside, 1985), p. 21.
  14. ^ J. Thomas Scharf and Thompson Westcott, History of Philadelphia, 1609–1884, Volume 2, (Philadelphia: L. H. Everts & Co., 1884), p. 1045.
  15. ^ The same volume, Constitution and Laws of the United States, appears in both portraits.
  16. ^ Byron Hamann, "The Invention of Colonial America: Data, Architecture, and the Archive of the Indies (1781-1884)", Early Modern Cosmopolitanisms Lecture, January 25, 2018, UCLA Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies.
  17. ^ This may have been the 1832 architectural competition to design Girard College. See: Bruce Laverty, Michael J. Lewis, and Michelle Taillon Taylor, Monument to Philanthropy: The Design and Building of Girard College, 1832-1848 (Philadelphia: Girard College, 1998).
  18. ^ a b c Giuseppe Perovani family, from Wikimedia Commons.<
  19. ^ Mario Guiral Moreno, Anales de la Academia Nacional de Artes y Letras, (La Habana, Cuba: Altos de la Estacion de Villanueva), vol. 1, no. 1 (January 1924), p. 75.
  20. ^ Leonardo Depestre Catony, “Giuseppe Pervaroni,” Habana Radio, October 11, 2021.
  21. ^ Francisco Calcagno, Diccionario Biografico Cubano, (New-York: Imprenta Y Libreria De N. Ponce De Leon, 1878), "Cuba", p. 3. (via Google Translate).
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