The Italian Renaissance

by Peter Burke

  35 The artists to be studied were drawn from the region-by-region account of the Italian Renaissance in the Encyclopaedia of World Art.

  Part II

  THE ARTS IN THEIR MILIEU

  3

  ARTISTS AND WRITERS

  RECRUITMENT

  Let us begin by assuming that artistic and other creative abilities are randomly distributed among the population. In conditions of perfect opportunity, a cultural elite – that is, the people whose creative abilities are recognized in that society – would be in all other respects a random sample of the population. In practice this never happens. Every society erects obstacles to the expression of the creativity of some groups, and Renaissance Italy was no exception. Six hundred painters, sculptors, architects, humanists, writers, ‘composers’ and ‘scientists’ will be studied in this chapter (and described for simplicity’s sake as ‘artists’ and ‘writers’ or ‘the creative elite’). Conclusions will be drawn from their collective biographies or ‘prosopography’.1 The choice of the six hundred is necessarily somewhat arbitrary, though no more arbitrary than the choice of named individuals in other studies of the Renaissance.2

  In this context the terms ‘architect’, ‘composer’ and ‘scientist’ are convenient but problematic. The emergence of the architect, as opposed to the master mason, was taking place in this very period.3 Although the word compositore existed in this period, men whom we call ‘composers’ were more commonly described as ‘musicians’. The term ‘scientist’ is a convenient anachronism to avoid the circumlocution ‘writer in physics, medicine, etc.’ As for artista, although Michelangelo uses the term in the modern sense, in the early fifteenth century it meant a university student of the seven liberal arts (below, p. 60).

  The artists and writers examined here were in many ways untypical of the Italian population of the time. To begin with the most spectacular example of bias, one ‘variable’ in the survey of artists and writers appears to have been almost invariable: their sex. Only three out of the six hundred are women: Vittoria Colonna, Veronica Gambara and Tullia d’Aragona. All three are poets, and all come at the end of the period. This bias is not, of course, uniquely Italian or confined to this period, whether it is to be explained psychologically, as male creativity as a substitute for inability to bear children, or sociologically, as a result of the suppression of women’s abilities in a male-dominated society. There were few ‘old mistresses’ in an age of ‘old masters’ because female artists were engaged in an ‘obstacle race’.4

  It is surely significant that, when the social obstacles were a little less massive than usual, women artists and writers made their appearance. For example, the daughters of artists sometimes painted. Tintoretto’s daughter Marietta is known to have painted portraits, though nothing that is certainly by her hand has survived.5 Vasari tells us that Uccello had a daughter, Antonia, who ‘knew how to draw’ and became a Carmelite nun. Nuns sometimes worked as miniaturists, among them Caterina da Bologna, better known as a saint. There was a sculptress active in Bologna, Properzia de’Rossi, whose life was written by Vasari, with appropriate references to such gifted women of antiquity as Camilla and Sappho. Only in the later sixteenth century did female painters, notably Sofonisba Anguissciola and Lavinia Fontana, become more visible as they became more independent.6

  In the case of writers, it has been noted that, although ‘a striking confluence of female literary talent’ is already discernible in the 1480s and 1490s, ‘the first literary works by living secular women began to be published in any numbers’ only in the 1530s and 1540s.7 To the names of Vittoria Colonna, Veronica Gambara and Tullia d’Aragona one might add those of the poets Gaspara Stampa, Laura Terracina and Laura Battiferri, all six women writing towards the end of our period. Their emergence may well be a result of the increasing importance of Italian (as opposed to Latin) literature and to the opening up of literary society.

  Recent research has also uncovered a small group of women who were interested in humanism. The most important of these learned ladies were Laura Cereta, Cassandra Fedele, Isotta Nogarola and Alessandra della Scala. They attracted some attention at the time, but they also had to face male ridicule and, whether they married or became nuns, their studies generally came to a premature end.8 Nuns deserve a special mention because the ‘convent culture’ of cities such as Florence, Rome and Venice offered opportunities for writing chronicles, performing in plays, making music and delivering Latin orations as well as needlework and copying manuscripts.9

  Even among adult males, however, the creative elite is far from a random sample. It is, for example, geographically biased. If we divide Italy into seven regions, we find that about 26 per cent of the elite came from Tuscany, 23 per cent from the Veneto, 18 per cent from the States of the Church, 11 per cent from Lombardy, 7 per cent from south Italy, 1.5 per cent from Piedmont and 1 per cent from Liguria. Another 7 per cent came from outside Italy altogether (leaving 5.5 per cent unknown). If we compare these figures with those for the populations of these seven regions, we find that four regions (Tuscany, the Veneto, the States of the Church and Lombardy, in that order) produced more than their share of artists and writers, while the other three, from Piedmont to Sicily, were culturally underdeveloped.10 It is also clear that, on these criteria, Tuscany is well ahead of the others.

  Another striking regional variation concerns the proportion of the elite practising the visual arts. In Tuscany, the Veneto and Lombardy the visual arts are dominant, while in Genoa and southern Italy the writers are more important. In other words, the region in which he (or occasionally she) was born appears to have affected not only the chances of an individual’s entering the creative elite but also the part of it he entered.11

  Chances of becoming a successful artist or writer (or at least of entering the select six hundred) were also affected by the size of the community in which an individual was born. Some 13 per cent of Italians, living in towns of 10,000 or more people, formed the reservoir from which at least 60 per cent of the elite were drawn.

  Rome’s poor contribution deserves emphasis. Only four of our artists and writers were born in the city: the humanist Lorenzo Valla, the architect–painter Giulio Pippi (‘Giulio Romano’, Plate 3.7), the sculptor Gian Cristoforo Romano and the painter Antoniazzo Romano. It is true that Rome was no more than the eighth city in Italy at this period, but Ferrara, which was smaller, produced fifteen members of the elite, and even tiny Urbino produced seven.12 The importance of Rome in the Renaissance, as we shall see, was as a centre of patronage, a magnet that attracted creative individuals from other parts of Italy.13

  It is only to be expected that sculptors and architects tended to come from regions where stone was plentiful and suitable for carving and building. In Tuscany, Isaia da Pisa did indeed come from Pisa, near the white marble of the west coast, while four major sculptors (Desiderio da Settignano, Antonio and Bernardo Rossellino, and Bartolomeo Ammannati) were all born in Settignano, a village near Florence with important stone quarries. Michelangelo was put out to nurse there with a stonecutter’s wife, and later joked about sucking in his love of sculpture with his nurse’s milk. Lombardy, with 10 per cent of the elite, had 22 per cent of the sculptors and 25 per cent of the architects, as well as much of the best stone. Domenico Gaggini and Pietro Lombardo, founders of whole dynasties of sculptors and architects, both came from the area around Lake Lugano. A third region rich in sculptors and architects as well as in stone was Dalmatia, beyond the frontiers of Italy but not far away and with economic links to Venice in particular. Luciano Laurana the architect and Francesco Laurana the sculptor both came, in all probability, from the Dalmatian town of La Vrana, while the famous sculptor Ivan Duknovic came from Trogir and the architect–sculptor Juraj Dalmatinac came from Šibenik.

  These Dalmatians are a reminder of the importance of the foreign artists and writers who worked in Italy, forty-one of them altogether. There were twenty-one musicians, mostly Flemings such as Guillaume Dufay, Jos
quin des Près, Heinrich Isaac and Adriaan Willaert,14 some Greek humanists, notably Janos Argyropoulos, Georgios Gemistos Plethon, and Cardinal Bessarion, and a few Spaniards, including the poet Benedetto Gareth from Barcelona, the painter Jacomart Baço from Valencia, and the composer Ramos de Pareja.

  Some of the most distinguished Italian artists and writers in Italy were ‘foreign’ in another sense – that is, born outside the city in which they did most of their work. The humanist Leonardo Bruni, famous for his eulogy of the city of Florence, came from Arezzo; the philosopher Ficino from Figline in the Valdarno; Leonardo da Vinci from Vinci, a village in Tuscany; the humanist Poliziano from Montepulciano. Giorgio Merula, Giorgio Valla and Marcantonio Sabellico were three non-Venetian humanists who spent considerable time in Venice. The most famous Venetian painters were not in fact from Venice itself; Giorgione was born in the small town of Castelfranco, Titian in Pieve di Cadore. It is possible that as outsiders they were freer from the pressures of local cultural traditions and so found it easier to innovate.

  The creative elite appears to have been biased socially as well as geographically. A note of caution has to be sounded because the father’s occupation in 57 per cent of the group is unknown. All the same, the remaining 43 per cent do tend to come from a fairly restricted social milieu. The majority of the Italian population at this time was made up of peasants or agricultural labourers, but only seven members of the elite are known to have had fathers from this class: two humanists, Bartolommeo della Scala and Giovanni Campano; one engineer–sculptor, Mariano Taccola; and four painters, Fra Angelico, Andrea del Castagno, Andrea Sansovino and Domenico Beccafumi. Of the remaining artists and writers, 114 were children of artisans and shopkeepers, 84 were noble and 48 the children of merchants and professional men. In fact, the artists tended to be the children of artisans and shopkeepers, while the writers tended to be the children of nobles and professional men; the contrast is a dramatic one.15

  Since at least 96 artists came from artisan or shopkeeper families, it may be worth attempting to subdivide this group. It turns out that, the nearer a craft is to painting or sculpture, the higher the chance of the craftsman’s son becoming an artist. In 26 cases there was no connection with the arts; the father was a tailor, for example, or a poultry-seller. In 34 cases there was an indirect connection with the arts; the father was a carpenter, a mason, a stonecutter, and so on. In 36 cases, the artist was the son of an artist, as Raphael was, for example. It is clear that the arts ran in families. The Bellini family of Venice included the father, Jacopo; his more famous sons, Gentile and Giovanni; and his son-in-law, Mantegna. The Lombardo dynasty has already been mentioned – the founder, Pietro, his sons Tullio I and Antonio I, and their descendants. In the case of the Solaris, sculptors in Milan and elsewhere, there were at least five generations of artists, among them four members of the creative elite.

  The sheer number of these artist families deserves emphasis. Think of an artist of the Italian Renaissance; the odds are roughly fifty–fifty that he had relatives practising the arts (48 per cent of the artists in the creative elite are known to have artist relatives). Masaccio, for example: his brother Giovanni was a painter, and Giovanni had two sons, a grandson and a great-grandson who were also painters. Titian had a brother and a son who were artists.16 Tintoretto had two artist sons as well as his daughter Marietta.

  What is the significance of these artist dynasties? The Victorian scientist Francis Galton quoted some of these examples to support his views on the importance of ‘hereditary genius’.17 However, a sociological explanation is at least as plausible as a biological one. In Renaissance Italy painting and sculpture were family businesses, like grocery or weaving. There is evidence to suggest that some artist fathers hoped that their sons would follow them into the craft; two of them at least named their children after famous artists of antiquity. The painter Sodoma called his son Apelles; the boy died young. The architect Vincenzo Seregni, equally hopeful, named his son Vitruvio; the boy survived to become an architect like his father. Guild regulations encouraged family businesses by reducing entry fees for the relatives of masters. The statutes of the painters’ guild at Padua, for example, laid down that an apprentice should pay 2 lire to enter the guild unless he was the son, brother, nephew or grandson of a master, in which cases the price was halved. A master was also allowed to take a relative as an apprentice without charge.18 The contrast between the visual arts on one side and literature and learning on the other supports the sociological against the biological explanation of artist dynasties. Nearly half the artists in the creative elite are known to have had artist relatives. In the case of literature and learning, however, which was not organized on family lines, the proportion sinks to just over a quarter (the exact figures are 48 per cent and 27 per cent, respectively). The difference between the two groups indicates the strength of social forces.

  The significance of this information about the geographical and social origins of artists and writers is that it helps to explain why the arts flourished in Italy. It is unlikely that social forces can produce great artists, but it is plausible to suggest that social obstacles can thwart them. If that is the case, it follows that art and literature flourish in those places and periods in which able men and women are least frustrated. In early modern Europe, including Italy, talented males faced two major obstacles, placed at the opposite ends of the social scale and discriminating respectively against the able sons of nobles and of peasants.

  In the first place, a talented but well-born child might be unable to become a painter or a sculptor because his parents considered these manual or ‘mechanical’ occupations beneath him. In his lives of artists, Vasari tells several stories about parental opposition. For example, he says that, when the father of Filippo Brunelleschi (Plate 3.1) found that young Filippo had artistic inclinations, he was ‘greatly displeased’ because he had wanted the boy to become either a notary like himself or a physician like his great-grandfather.19 Again, we learn that Baldovinetti’s family had long been merchants and that young Alesso became interested in art ‘more or less against the will of his father, who would have liked him to have gone into business’. In the case of Michelangelo, the son of a patrician, Vasari comments that his father ‘probably’ thought Michelangelo’s interest in art unworthy of their old family; but another pupil of Michelangelo claimed that the latter’s father and uncles hated art and thought it shameful that their boy should practise it.20

  At the other end of the social scale, it was difficult for the sons of peasants to become artists and writers because they could not easily acquire the necessary training, if indeed they knew that such occupations even existed. Scala the humanist was a miller’s son, but millers were relatively well off. The painter Fra Angelico and the humanist Giovanni Antonio Campano climbed the traditional ladder for poor men’s sons; they entered the Church.21

  Of four sons of peasants who became artists, stories were told which sound like folktales. Of the great fourteenth-century painter Giotto we learn that he was set to mind the sheep but was discovered by the artist Cimabue – who just happened to be passing – drawing on a rock with a piece of stone.22 In the case of Andrea del Castagno, we are told that ‘he was taken from keeping animals by a Florentine citizen who found him drawing a sheep on a rock, and brought him to Florence.’23 Vasari adds, perhaps to flatter his own Medici patron, that this citizen was a member of the Medici family. He tells a similar story about Domenico Beccafumi, who was observed by a landowner ‘drawing with a pointed stick in the sand of a little stream as he was keeping his sheep’, and taken to Siena, and another about Andrea Sansovino, who ‘kept cattle like Giotto, drawing in the sand and on the ground the beasts which he was watching’, before he too was discovered and taken to Florence for training. These reworkings of the old myth of the birth and childhood of the hero do not have to be taken too literally. What they illustrate are contemporary perceptions of the poor boy with talent.24 Yet something almost as dramatic m
ust have happened for these boys to have become artists, and, in the case of the architect Palladio, life seems to have imitated art. There is documentary evidence that his father, a poor man, apprenticed his son to a stone-carver at Padua. The boy ran away to Vicenza, where his gifts were noticed by the humanist nobleman Gian Giorgio Trissino, on whose house he was working.25

  Unlike the sons of nobles and peasants, the sons of artisans did not run such a high risk of discouragement and frustration, and many of them would have been used to thinking in a plastic manner from childhood, having watched their fathers at work. The conclusion seems inescapable that, for the visual arts to flourish in this period, a concentration of artisans was necessary – in other words, an urban environment. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the most highly urbanized regions in Europe were in Italy and the Netherlands, and these were indeed the regions from which most of the major artists came (on the Netherlands, see chapter 10).

  The most favourable environment for artists to grow up in seems to have been a city which was orientated towards craft–industrial production, such as Florence, rather than towards trade or services, such as Naples or Rome. It was only when Venice turned from trade to industry, at the end of the fifteenth century, that Venetian art caught up with that of Florence.

  The predominance of the sons of nobles and professional men in literature, humanism and science is not difficult to explain. A university education was much more expensive than an apprenticeship. It seems to have been as difficult for the son of an artisan to become a writer, humanist or scientist as for a peasant’s son to become an artist. There are five known cases. The humanist Guarino of Verona was the son of a smith; the physician Michele Savonarola (father of the more famous friar) was the son of a weaver; the poet Burchiello, the son of a carpenter; while the professional writers Pietro Aretino and Antonfrancesco Doni were the sons of a shoemaker and a scissors-maker respectively. In other words, from the social point of view the creative elite was not one group but two, a visual group recruited in the main from artisans and a literary group recruited from the upper classes (the composers, whose social origins are rarely known, were in any case mostly foreigners).