Baglione on Flemish diligenza and the Italian maniera pittoresca in landscape and still life

It is widely accepted that the term pittoresco, meaning ‘painterly brushwork’ following Philip Sohm’s definition, first emerges in Italian art literature in a letter by Salvator Rosa, dated 20 July 1652. Yet ten years earlier, in his Vite de’ pittori, scultori e architetti, Giovanni Baglione spoke of pittoresco, with the same meaning that Sohm attributes to it, and with no less critical significance than the occurrence in Rosa’s letter. Pittoresco must have entered the common usage of artists and collectors, at least in Rome, in the second decade of the 1600s, at its root, to distinguish Italian, from Flemish, still life and landscape painting.