Roma 1572: la "fiammata mistica" di Anthonie Blocklandt, El Greco e Giovanni de' Vecchi

In Pittura e Controriforma: l’arte senza tempo di Scipione da Gaeta, edited in 1957, Federico Zeri is among the first in Italy to discuss the question of images in the religious crisis caused by the Reformation in the XVI century. Above the process of formal simplification and touching pietism, another trend appears made of dramatic and trembling mystic traits of some artists, symptom of more complex spirituality. Zeri highlights how this tendency born with Giovanni de’ Vecchi (1543-1615), El Greco (1541-1614) and the Dutch Anthonie Blocklandt van Montfoort (1533 ca-1583). The “fiamma suprema del misticismo pittorico del cinquecento”, the mystic blaze, was lit up in 1572 by the encounter of three painters in Rome at the court of cardinal Alessandro Farnese. These artists unexpectedly show stylistic assonances, despite their different background and training. The elder and mature Blocklandt might have helped the visionary language of El Greco’s Spanish period. This complex hypothesis has never been thoroughly verified, even though, along the years, the studies about three artists have given many contributions. But, they were made separately from each other, where the question of the relationship among the three was only touched lightly. The research has gone through studies on the three different artists with updates over the last sixty years, jointly with a deepening of the historical and religious context around 1572, and an analysis of paintings around 1570-1575 made by Blockland, El Greco and de’Vecchi.