Mikocca, Giovanni

Giovanni Mikocca was born in Rome in 1763 in the family of Domenico and Gertrude Angelini, baptized on March 8 in the church of Santo Crisogono ^[1] . He was the third of four children in the family. Mikokka was officially registered in 1769. Together with him, in the house “along Vinaroli Street” in the parish church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, there are parents, sisters Rosa and Maria Clementina and brother Daniele Maria, born in 1750, who later became a monk of the Order of St. John of God, and also worked as a craftsman in Rome at Pope Pius VI .

From 1813 until the end of his life, Mikokka with his wife Anna Lombardi and the children of Gaetano, Agnese, Balbina and Carolina lived in Rome on Piazza Barberini in the house of Prince Preneste Maffeo.

Giovanni Mikocca died in Rome on March 28, 1825 and was buried in the monastery cemetery of San Bernardo alle Terme ^[2] .

Giovanni Mikocca was the most famous student and permanent assistant of Antonio Cavalucci. His first works mentioned in the sources are two reduced sizes of copies of the works of Cavalucci, depicting Integrity and Repentance. These copies were made by Mikokka for the monk Anton Maria Griffey from the monastery of St. Bartholomew in Rovigo , whom Cavalucci met in 1787 during his trip to the north of Italy. Also for Griffey, Mikocca performed other works, it was a small copy of the “Mystical Betrothal of St. Catherine” by Antonio Allegri, nicknamed Correggio , and a copy of one of Raphael's Madonnas ^[2] .

Throughout the 1790s, Mikokka worked with his teacher, and mainly in Rome. During this period, he took part in the creation of the painting “Religious procession” for the church of San Francesco di Paola in Rome and performed the scenes “Jesus condemned by the Sanhedrin” and “Jesus rejected by Peter”. In 1795, Mikokka completed the frescoes in the Carmelite church of San Martino ai Monti . The painting of this basilica was the last creation of Antonio Cavalucci, who died in the same 1795. The work was commissioned by Cardinal Francesco Saverio de Zelada . For the same church, Mikokka created a small canvas of the circular shape “Ce Man” (“Ecce Homo”), which is located in the center of wooden choirs ^[2] .

Mikokka was accepted into the papal Academy of Virtuosi at the Pantheon. Since 1811, he was a member of the board of the Academy. In 1812, he received a large order for the design of the hall in the new imperial palace di Montecavallo ( Quirinal Palace ) ^[3] .

My contemporaries recognized Mikokka mainly as a restorer and copyist. We have come up with a significant number of copies made by him, and a relatively small number of his original works. His formation as a restorer was largely influenced by the long practice of copying paintings by old masters, which Mikokka was mainly occupied in the workshop of his teacher Antonio Cavalucci. According to De Rossi , Cavalllucci had few students, and among them - Mikokka, who "studied with him from the very beginning" and "to which the maestro was especially favorable" ^[4] . Loyalty and consistency to his teacher could not but affect the work of Giovanni Mikocchi, who had so mastered the style of his teacher that he practically imitated him. During the period of design work in the church of San Martino ai Monti in 1795, Antonio Cavalucci passed away. These works were completed by Giovanni Mikocca, who was one of the assistants of Cavalucci in the painting of this church. Professor of the University of Rome Liliana Barroero explains the role of Mikokki in the painting of this church. Based on the detailed testimonies of De Rossi, Barroero was able to attribute to Cavalucci the design and execution of sketches of the figures of saints Carlo Borromeo , Silvestro, Martin and Francis Xaverio and the final figure of St. Carlo. The rest of the preparatory materials and the finished images associated with them - the Eternal Father, Virgin Mary with the baby, Saints Peter , Paul , Teresa of Avila , Andrea Corsini, Mary Magdalene de Pazzi , Peter Toma - all of them, for the most part, belong to the brush of Mikokki, who designed by himself or executed by watercolor sketches left by Cavalucci. According to Barroero, the end result is high quality. The composition of this scenery, which Mikokka would have realized himself, actually reveals the “desire of the assistant [...] not to violate the integrity and connectedness of the composition”, begun by Cavalllucci ^[2] .

Giovanni Mikocca was included by Enrico Keller in 1824 in the list of historically significant artists ^[5] .

• Beatrice Cirulli. Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani . - 2010. - No. Volume 74 .
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• E. Keller. Elenco di tutti gli pittori scultori architetti ... esistenti in Roma l'anno 1824 .... - Roma, 1824.
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• Chracas. Diario ordinario, n. 2084, 20 dic. 1794;

• Chracas. Diario ordinario, n. 2388, 18 nov. 1797;

• G. Guattani, Catalogo degli artisti stabiliti, o attualmente dimoranti in Roma ..., in Memorie enciclopediche romane sulle belle arti, antichità, IV (1808);

• F. Sickler - JC Reinhart, Almanach aus Rom für Künstler und Freunde der bildenden Kunst, Leipzig 1810;

• L. Pungileoni, Antonio Cavallucci, in E. de Tipaldo, Biografia degli italiani illustri, I, Venezia 1834;

• Statuto della insigne artistica Congregazione dei Virtuosi del Pantheon, Roma 1861;

• D. Taccone-Gallucci, Monografia della patriarcale basilica di S. Maria Maggiore, Roma 1911;

• D. Angeli, I Bonaparte a Roma, Milano 1937;

• JB Hartmann, Il Trionfo di Alessandro e l'appartamento napoleonico al Quirinale, in Palatino, IX (1965), 4-7;

• W. Buchowiecki, Handbuch der Kirchen Roms, I, Wien 1967, p. 268; III, ibid. 1970;

• V. Golzio, Seicento e Settecento, II, Torino 1968;

• D. Ternois, Napoléone et la décoration du palais impérial de Montecavallo en 1811-1813, in Revue de l'art, 1970;

• S. Röttgen , Antonio Cavallucci, un pittore romano fra tradizione e innovazione, in Bollettino d'arte, s. 5, LXI (1976); [one]

• L. Barroero, Guide rionali di Roma. Rione I Monti, parte I, Roma 1978;

• S. Röttgen , Cavallucci, Antonio, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, XXIII, Roma 1979;

• L. Barroero, Guide rionali di Roma. Rione I Monti, parte III, Roma 1982;

• O. Michel, Deux portraits de Pie VI. Vicissitudes d'une image officielle, in Carlo Marchionni. Architettura, decorazione e scenografia contemporanea, in Studi sul Settecento romano, a cura di E. Debenedetti, IV, Roma 1988;

• Il palazzo del Quirinale. Il mondo artistico a Roma nel periodo napoleonico, a cura di M. Natoli - MA Scarpati, Roma 1989, I;

• II, p. 64; S. Susinno, La pittura a Roma nella prima metà dell'Ottocento, in La pittura in Italia. L'Ottocento, Milano 1991, I, p. 410; G. Sica, ibid., II;

• O. Michel, Vivre et peindre à Rome au XVIIIe siècle, Rome 1996;

• Il Seicento e il Settecento romano nella collezione Lemme (catal.), A cura di P. Rosenberg - S. Loire, Roma 1998;

• L. Barroero, ibid .;

• Galleria nazionale d'arte antica. Palazzo Barberini. I dipinti, catalogo sistematico, a cura di L. Mochi Onori - R. Vodret, Roma 2008;

• Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon (Saur), VII, 2000.

• Institute of the Italian Encyclopedia J. Treccani MICOCCA, Giovanni