Il dibattito Cortona-Sacchi all’Accademia di San Luca. Pittura, letteratura, teatro e musica al tempo dei Barberini (e in particolare nell’opera di Domenichino e Poussin)

Melchiorre Missirini, in his Memorie on the Academy of Saint Luke in Rome (1823), gave a brief account of three debates on art that were held at that institution during the directorship of Pietro da Cortona (1634-1636), the last of which would have had Cortona himself and Andrea Sacchi as its main discussants. The documents Missirini drew on have never been found in the institution’s archives and must now be considered lost. The importance of the debate, however, has been widely recognized in 20th-century studies on Seicento painting; more recently, however, it has been suggested that Missirini may have committed forgery. What was reported in 1823 must in fact be analysed in the context of the contem porary debate on theatre, and more generally in the context of the broad discussion about artistic genres, both figurative and literary, which was then on the agenda and which involved not only Giovanni Battista Marino, but also Francesco Bracciolini. The debate bears witness to the liveliness of the culture promoted by Urban VIII and his court, at a time when the exchange between writers and artists, but also singers and musicians, must have been extraordinarily fertile. It is likely that Sacchi, but perhaps also Cortona, had some rudimentary knowledge of music theory, and in any case, the activity of musical theatre supported by the Barberini could not fail to have been an important stimulus for that debate. And all this would be echoed in the most famous of Poussin’s theoretical writings, who was Domenichino’s heir also in this sense.