The Italian Renaissance

by Peter Burke

  That modest collection of books needs to be set in time. In 1498, printing had been established in Italy for a generation. It is unlikely that an artist could have amassed twenty manuscripts early in the fifteenth century. On the other hand, in the next century larger libraries are not uncommon. Leonardo da Vinci, sneered at in his own day as a ‘man without learning’ (omo sanza lettere), turns out to have had 116 books in his possession at one point, including three Latin grammars, some of the Fathers of the Church (Augustine, Ambrose), some modern Italian literature (the comic poems of Burchiello and Luigi Pulci, the short stories of Masuccio Salernitano), and treatises on anatomy, astrology, cosmography and mathematics.47

  It would be unwise to take Leonardo as typical of anything, but there is a fair amount of evidence about the literary culture of sixteenth-century artists. The study of their handwriting offers some clues. In the fifteenth century, they tended to write in the manner of merchants, a style which was probably taught at abacus school. In the sixteenth century, however, Raphael, Michelangelo and others wrote in the new italic style.48 Some artists, among them Michelangelo, Pontormo and Paris Bordone, are known to have gone to grammar school. The painter Giulio Campagnola and the architect Fra Giovanni Giocondo both knew Greek as well as Latin.49 A few artists acquired a second reputation as writers. Michelangelo’s poems are famous, while Bramante, Bronzino and Raphael all tried their hands at verse. Cennini, Ghiberti, Filarete, Palladio and the Bolognese architect Sebastiano Serlio all wrote treatises on the arts. Cellini and Bandinelli wrote autobiographies, while Vasari is better known for his lives of artists than for his own painting, sculpture and architecture. It is worth adding that Vasari was able to bridge the two cultures by the happy accident of powerful patronage which gave him a double education – a training in the humanities from Pierio Valeriano as well as an artistic training in the circle of Andrea del Sarto.50

  These examples are impressive, but it is worth underlining the fact that they do not include all distinguished artists. Titian, for example, is absent from the list: it is unlikely that he knew Latin. In any case, the examples do not add up to the ‘universal man’ of the Renaissance. Was he fact or fiction? The ideal of universality was indeed a contemporary one. One character in the dialogue On Civil Life by the fifteenth-century Florentine humanist Matteo Palmieri remarks that ‘A man is able to learn many things and make himself universal in many excellent arts’ (farsi universale di piu arti excellenti).51 Another Florentine humanist, Angelo Poliziano, wrote a short treatise on the whole of knowledge, the Panepistemon, in which painting, sculpture, architecture and music have their place.52 The most famous exposition of the idea comes in count Baldassare Castiglione’s famous Courtier (1528), in which the speakers expect the perfect courtier to be able to fight and dance, paint and sing, write poems and advise his prince. Did this theory have any relation to practice? The careers of Alberti (humanist, architect, mathematician and even athlete), Leonardo and Michelangelo are dazzling testimony to the existence of a few universal men, and another fifteen members of the elite practised three arts or more, among them Brunelleschi, Ghiberti and Vasari.53 The humanist Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli (a friend of Alberti and Brunelleschi) also deserves a place in this company since his interests included mathematics, geography and astronomy.54

  About half of these eighteen universal men were Tuscans; about half had fathers who were nobles, professional men or merchants; and no fewer than fifteen of them were, among other things, architects. Either architecture attracted universal men or it encouraged them. Neither possibility is surprising, because architecture was a bridge between science (since the architect needed to know the laws of mechanics), sculpture (since he worked with stone) and humanism (since he needed to know the classical vocabulary of architecture). Apart from Alberti, however, these many-sided men belong to the tradition of the non-specialist craftsman rather than that of the gifted amateur. The theory and the practice of the universal man seem to have coexisted without much contact. The greatest of all, Michelangelo, did not believe in universality. At the time he was painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he wrote to his father complaining that painting was not his job (non esser mia professione). He created masterpieces of painting, architecture and poetry while continuing to protest that he was just a sculptor.

  THE ORGANIZATION OF THE ARTS

  For painters and sculptors, the fundamental unit was the workshop, the bottega – a small group of men producing a wide variety of objects in collaboration and a great contrast to the specialist, individualist artist of modern times.55 Although distinctions were sometimes drawn between painters of panels and frescoes, on the one hand, and painters of furniture, on the other, one still finds Botticelli painting cassoni (wedding chests) and banners; Cosimo Tura of Ferrara painting horse trappings and furniture; and the Venetian Vincenzo Catena painting cabinets and bedsteads. Even in the sixteenth century, Bronzino painted a harpsichord cover for the duke of Urbino. To deal with this wide variety of commissions, masters often employed assistants as well as apprentices, particularly if they worked on a large scale or were much in demand, as were Ghirlandaio, Perugino or Raphael. It is reasonably certain that Giovanni Bellini employed at least sixteen assistants in the course of his long working life (c. 1460–1516), and he may have used many more. Some of these ‘boys’ (garzoni) – as they were called irrespective of age – were hired to help with a particular commission, and the patron might guarantee to pay their keep, as the duke of Ferrara promised Tura in 1460 in contracting for the painting of a chapel.56 Others worked for their master on a permanent basis, and they might specialize. In Raphael’s workshop, for example, which might be better described as ‘Raphael Enterprises’, Giovanni da Udine (Plate 3.5) concentrated on animals and grotesques.57

  The workshop was often a family affair. A father, for example, Jacopo Bellini, would train his sons in the craft. When Jacopo died he bequeathed his sketchbooks and unfinished commissions to his eldest son, Gentile, who took over the shop. Giovanni Bellini succeeded his brother Gentile, and was succeeded in turn by his nephew Vittore Belliniano. Again, Titian’s workshop included his brother Francesco, his son Orazio, his nephew Marco and his cousin Cesare.58 The garzoni were generally treated as members of the family, and might marry their master’s daughter, as Mantegna and others did.

  The signing of paintings used to be taken to be a mark of ‘Renaissance individualism’. However, it has been argued that when a painting is signed by the head of a workshop it does not mean that he painted it with his own hand. It may even mean the reverse; the point is to declare that the work meets the standards of the shop.59

  Not all master painters could afford to set up shop on their own. Like other small masters (dyers, for example), painters sometimes shared expenses for rent and equipment. Usually, though not always, they acted as a trading company and pooled expenses and receipts.60 Giorgione, for instance, was in partnership with Vincenzo Catena. An association of this kind had the advantage of offering a kind of insurance against illness and defaulting clients. There may also have been a division of labour inside the shop.

  PLATE 3.5 GIOVANNI DE UDINE: STUCCO RELIEF SHOWING RAPHAEL’S WORKSHOP (DETAIL), IN THE VATICAN LOGGIA

  These habits of collaboration make it easier to understand how well-known artists could work on the same paintings, together or consecutively. In the Ovetari Chapel at Padua, for example, four artists worked on the frescoes in pairs: Pizzolo with Mantegna, and Antonio da Murano with Giovanni d’Allemagna. Pisanello finished a picture of St John the Baptist begun by Gentile da Fabriano. This practice continued into the sixteenth century. Pontormo made two paintings from cartoons by Michelangelo, while Michelangelo agreed to finish a statue of St Francis by Pietro Torrigiani. This system of collaboration obviously militated against deliberate individualism of style and helps explain why this individualism emerged only slowly.

  Sculptors’ workshops were organized in a similar way to those of painters. Donatello was in pa
rtnership with Michelozzo, while the Gaggini and Solari dynasties furnish obvious examples of family businesses. Assistants were all the more necessary, since statues take longer to make and because the head of the shop might have to arrange for marble to be quarried in order to carry out a particular commission, with the problem that, if it turned out badly, as Michelangelo complains in his letters, hundreds of ducats might be wasted, and it might be difficult to prove to the client that the expenditure had been necessary or even that it had taken place at all. The workshop of Bernardo Rossellino was one in which there was considerable division of labour, on ‘apparently arbitrary’ lines.61

  PLATE 3.6 THE ARCHITECT FILARETE LEADING HIS APPRENTICES, FROM THE DOORS OF ST PETER’S, ROME

  Architecture was, of course, organized on a larger scale with a more elaborate division of labour. Even a relatively small palace like the Ca D’Oro, still to be seen on the Grand Canal in Venice, had twenty-seven craftsmen working on it in 1427. There were carpenters; two main kinds of mason, concerned respectively with hewing and laying stone; unskilled workmen, to carry materials; and perhaps foremen. Coordination was therefore a problem. As Filarete put it, a building project is like a dance; everyone must work together in time (Plate 3.6). The man who ensured coordination was sometimes called the architetto, sometimes the protomaestro or chief of the master masons. It is likely that the two names reflect two different conceptions of the role, the old idea of the senior craftsman and the new idea of the designer. In any case, considerable administrative work was involved. Besides designing the building, someone had to appoint and pay the workmen and arrange for the supply of lime, sand, brick, stone, wood, ropes, and so on. All this work could be organized in a number of different ways. In Venice, building firms were small because master masons were not allowed to take more than three apprentices each. When a large building was needed, it was common for an entrepreneur (padrone) to contract for the whole work and then subcontract pieces of it to different workshops.62 At the other extreme, at St Peter’s in the 1520s and 1530s, there was only one workshop, with a large staff including an accountant (computista), two surveyors (mensuratori) and a head clerk (segretario), as well as masons and other workmen. Filarete recommends an agent (commissario) as middleman between the architect and the craftsmen. Alberti seems to have followed this system and employed at least three artists in this way: Matteo de’Pasti as his agent in Rimini, Bernardo Rossellino as his agent in Rome, and Luca Fancelli as his agent in Mantua and Florence.

  This division of labour has created problems for art historians as it doubtless did for the agents. It is difficult enough to assess individual responsibility for particular paintings and statues, and still harder, in the case of a building, to know whether patron, architect, agent, master mason or mason was responsible for a given detail. The difficulty is increased by the fact that it was not yet customary for the architect to give his men measured drawings to work from. Many of the instructions were given a bocca, by word of mouth.63

  If we know something about Alberti’s intentions, it is because he did not stay in Rimini while the church of San Francesco was being built, but designed it by correspondence, some of which has survived. On one occasion the agent, Matteo de’Pasti, was apparently thinking of altering the proportions of some pilasters, but Alberti wrote to stop him. A letter from Matteo to the client, Sigismondo Malatesta, explains that a drawing of the façade and of a capital had arrived from Alberti, and that it had been shown to ‘all the masters and engineers’. The problem was that the drawing was not completely consistent with a wooden model of the building which Alberti had previously provided. ‘I hope to God that your lordship will come in time, and see the thing with your own eyes.’ Later on, another craftsman working on the church wrote to Sigismondo for permission to go to Rome and talk to Alberti about the vaulting.64

  The fact that architecture was such a cooperative enterprise must have acted as a brake on innovation. Since craftsmen were trained by other craftsmen, they learned fidelity to tradition as well as to techniques. When executing a design which broke with tradition, they would be likely, if they were not supervised very closely, to ‘normalize’ it – in other words, to assimilate it to the tradition from which the designer was deliberately diverging. Michelozzo’s design for the Medici Bank at Milan was executed by Lombard craftsmen in a local style (a fragment of this building may still be seen in the museum of the Castello Sforzesco). A small detail, but a significant one, is the difference in proportions between capitals made by Florentine craftsmen for Brunelleschi when he was on the spot and one made in 1430 while he was away.65

  There seems to be a relationship between the development of a new architectural style and the rise of a new kind of designer – the architect who, like Alberti, had not been trained as a mason. A parallel with shipbuilding may be illuminating. In fifteenth-century Venice, ships were designed by senior ship carpenters, the nautical equivalent of master masons. In the sixteenth century, they were challenged by an amateur. The role of Alberti was played by the humanist Vettor Fausto, who designed a ship (which was launched in 1529) on the model of the ancient quinquereme.66

  The larger unit of organization for painters, sculptors and masons, but not architects, was the guild. Guilds had several functions. They regulated both standards of quality and relations between clients, masters, journeymen and apprentices. They collected money from subscriptions and bequests and lent or gave some of it to members who were in need. They organized festivals in honour of the patron of the guild, with religious services and processions. In some cities, such as Milan, painters had a guild of their own, often under the patronage of St Luke, who was supposed to have painted a portrait of the Virgin. Elsewhere they formed part of a larger guild, such as that of the papermakers in Bologna or that of the physicians and apothecaries in Florence (though Florentine painters did have a social guild of their own, the Company of St Luke).67

  For a more vivid impression of the activities of a guild, we may look at the fifteenth-century statutes of one of them, the ‘brotherhood’ or fraglia of the painters of Padua.68 The officers of the guild were a bursar, two stewards, a notary and a dean. There were several social and religious activities in which participation was compulsory. On certain days in the year the guild marched in procession with ‘our gonfalon’, and absentees were fined. There was a rota for visiting sick members and for encouraging them to confess and communicate, and fines for non-attendance at funerals. Alms were given to the poor and to lepers. There were also arrangements for the relief of needy members. A poor master had the right to sell a piece of work to the guild, which the bursar would try to sell ‘as best he could’ (ut melius poterit). Other guilds lent money; Botticelli, for example, received a loan from the Company of St Luke in Florence. The Paduan statutes also required masters to keep apprentices for three years at least, and forbade them to make overtures to the apprentices of other masters ‘with gifts or blandishments’ (donis vel blandimentis). There were regulations for the maintenance of standards; candidates aspiring to be masters were examined in the usual way, and houses were inspected to see if work was being ‘falsified’ (si falsificetur aliquod laborerium nostre artis). Standards and fair prices were also maintained by the new but common practice of calling in artists to evaluate the work of others – artistic judgment by one’s peers – in cases of dispute with the client.69 Finally, there was the restrictive side of the guild’s activities. The Padua statutes forbade members to give or sell to non-members anything pertaining to the craft. They laid down that no work was to be brought from another district to sell in Padua, and three days only were allowed for the transit of such ‘alien’ work through the territory of the guild.

  In Venice too the guild or arte seems to have had a strong territorial imperative. When Albrecht Dürer visited Venice in 1506, he commented on the suspicion or sensitivity to competition of the painters there: ‘They have summoned me before the magistrates three times, and I have had to pay four florins to
their guild.’70 It has been suggested that, when he was working in Venice in the middle of the fifteenth century, the Tuscan painter Andrea del Castagno had to be supervised by a less gifted artist, Giambono, simply because the latter was a Venetian.71

  In Florence, however, guilds did not have so much power. The Florentine government would not allow them to force all craftsmen to join. Some artists, such as Botticelli, entered a guild only at the end of their career. As a result ‘foreigners’ could come and work in Florence. This more liberal policy, which exposed local tradition to stimuli from outside, may help to explain Florence’s cultural lead.

  Writers, humanists, scientists and musicians had no guilds and no workshops. The nearest analogy to the guild in their world was the university (a term which simply meant ‘association’ and was sometimes used in the period to refer to guilds of painters). However, the analogy between students and apprentices, tempting as it is in some respects, is also misleading. Most of the students did not go to university to learn how to be professors but looked forward to careers in Church and state. The students had more power in Italian universities than apprentices had in guilds. It was thanks to a petition from the students from the University of Pisa, for example, that one of their teachers, the scientist Bernardo Torni, had his salary raised. The university was not geared to the production of books by the dons. Their job was lecturing, and their books were something of a sideline.

  If humanists and scientists had their universities, writers had no form of organization at all. With the exception of a few professionals, known as poligrafi, writing was something a man did in his spare time, whereas his occupation was soldier, diplomat or bishop. Hence it was a little easier for women to become writers than for them to practise as painters or sculptors. There were, however, some full-time poets who made a living from this occupation. I hesitate to use such a modern term as ‘professional’, however, because these singers of tales or cantastorie, improvisers of epic poetry, such as Cristoforo Altissimo (who died about 1515) or Bernardo Accolti (1458–1535), who wandered from one court to another, represented survivals in Renaissance Italy of an oral culture that we tend to associate with heroic ages like Homeric Greece.72