ABSTRACT
The complicated relationship of the Florentine Seicento with "Baroque art" and "Counter-Reformation art"—labels most frequently employed to designate the art of the seventeenth century—has been part of the historical development of the scuola fiorentina since Luigi Lanzi's Storia Pittorica dell'Italia. Lanzi went so far as to suggest that the Carracci Reform—the currently accepted starting point of Baroque painting—may have received essential stimuli from Florentine artists, who had already discovered Correggio's style as the matrix for a stylistic innovation. However, both accounts of the Florentine Baroque projected a gloomy outlook regarding the future and international impact of the Florentine school. Lorenzo Lippi treated the invasion of the Roman Baroque into his artistic micro-context by using the strategy that had proven useful in countering Mannerism: purifying art by basing it on the resilience of Florentine disegno coupled with an attentive study of nature.
