AGUCCHI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA

(1570-1632)

Giovanni Battista Agucchi was the secretary to CardinalPietro Aldobrandini, Clement VIII'S nephew. In 1621, he also became secretary to PopeGregory XV, who was, like Agucchi, a native ofBologna. In c. 1607-1615, Agucchi wrote a treatise on painting, perhaps jointly withDomenichino. In it, he expressed that art that idealizes nature, like that ofRaphaelandAnnibale Carracci, is meant for a sophisticated, erudite audience, while the naturalist mode that dwells on the imperfect, represented byCaravaggio, caters to the common, uninformed viewer. For him, Caravaggio and theMannerists, whose art he qualified as barbaric, had deserted the idea of beauty that artists must formulate in their minds to render a more perfect scene than nature. Agucchi's work proved to be greatly influential inGiovan Pietro Bellori's theoretical writings on art. Bellori's adulation of Annibale Carracci as the one who restored art to its former Renaissance glory and hisNeoplatonicconcept that artists must improve upon an imperfect nature by rendering it not as it is but as it ought to be are concepts he borrowed from Agucchi.