The Italian Renaissance

by Peter Burke

  In other words, the production of literature was not yet an industry in fifteenth-century Italy, although it was becoming one in the mid-sixteenth century, as it was to be in eighteenth-century France and England. The reproduction of literature, on the other hand, was certainly industrialized. Of course, some people who needed particular books simply copied them by hand, while others asked someone else to do the copying for them (as Coluccio Salutati, the chancellor of Florence, asked the young humanist Poggio Bracciolini), and in these cases no formal organization of production was needed. However, in fifteenth-century Italy the production of manuscripts had become commercialized and standardized. It was in the hands of stationarii – a word from which the modern English ‘stationer’ is derived, and a term which referred in those days both to booksellers and to organizers of scriptoria, workshops for producing manuscripts. The term stationarius had two meanings because the same man tended to perform the two functions, publishing and retail distribution.

  The most famous stationarius of the Renaissance is the Florentine Vespasiano da Bisticci, who immortalized himself by writing biographies of his customers. These biographies give the impression of a highly organized system for the copying of manuscripts, reminiscent of the Rome of Cicero and his friend the ‘publisher’ Atticus. For example, Vespasiano explains how he built up a library for Cosimo de’Medici by engaging forty-five scribes who were able to complete two hundred volumes in twenty-two months. What is impressive in this case is not the speed of the individual copyist (since five months per volume seems rather slow, unless the volumes were large ones or the quality was unusually high), but the fact that a man (or at any rate Cosimo, the uncrowned ruler of Florence) could go to a bookseller and place an order for two hundred volumes which would be delivered within two years. One wonders how the actual writing was organized: whether works which were much in demand were ever copied by ten or twenty scribes writing from dictation, or whether the whole industry was organized on a ‘putting-out’ basis, with each scribe turning up at the bookseller’s every few months to collect supplies of vellum and the volume to be copied and returning to his house to write. The latter method seems likely in view of the fact that scribe was often a part-time occupation, paid at piece-work rates (by the ‘quintern’, a set of five sheets). Although one or two illuminators worked in Vespasiano’s shop, it was too small to be a proper scriptorium. Vespasiano’s letters to scribes show that manuscripts were copied for him elsewhere, often by notaries or priests.73

  From the mid-fifteenth century onwards, this copying system had to compete with the mass production of books which were ‘written’ mechanically (as early printed books sometimes describe themselves). In 1465, two German clerics called Sweynheym and Pannartz arrived at the Benedictine monastery of Subiaco, a few miles east of Rome, and set up a press there, the first in Italy. Two years later they moved to Rome itself. It has been estimated that in five years they produced 12,000 volumes, a number for which Vespasiano would have had to find 1,000 scribes to equal in the time. It is clear that the new machine was a formidable competitor. By the end of the century, some 150 presses had been founded in Italy. It is hardly surprising that Vespasiano, who had for the new method something of the contempt a skilled wheelwright may have felt for the horseless carriage, gave up bookselling in disgust and retired to his country estate to relive the past.

  Other scribes were rather more adaptable. Some became printers themselves, such as Domenico de’Lapi and Taddeo Crivelli, who produced the famous Bologna Ptolemy in 1477. Early printed books often look rather like manuscripts, down to the illuminated initials. Similarly the printers, a new occupation, stepped into the shoes of the stationarii. Like their predecessors, the printers tended to unite roles which in the twenty-first century we tend to distinguish, those of producing books and selling them. They soon added a third, that of ‘publisher’ – that is, an individual who issues under his imprint and takes responsibility for books which were in fact printed by someone else. For example, the colophon of the illustrated edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses produced in Venice in 1497 declares that it was printed by Zoare Rosso (otherwise known as Giovanni Rubeo) ‘at the instance of’ Lucantonio Giunti. Printers sometimes exercised a fourth role as well, that of merchants in commodities other than books. After all, who could be sure that the new product was not going to go out of fashion? This was still a worry in the late sixteenth century.74

  The effects of the invention of printing on the organization of literature were as diverse as they were shattering. In the first place, it was a disaster to scribes and stationarii who were not prepared to adapt themselves and begin a new career. In the second place, the expansion of book production led to the creation of new occupations which helped support creative writers. As libraries became bigger, there was a greater need for librarians. Several members of the creative elite were in fact occupied in this way. The grammarian Giovanni Tortelli was the first Vatican librarian (to the so-called humanist pope, Nicholas V), a post that was later held by the humanist Bartolommeo Platina. The poet–scholar Angelo Poliziano was librarian to the Medici. The Venetian poet–historian Andrea Navagero was librarian of the Marciana, while the philosopher Agostino Steuco was librarian to the Venetian cardinals Marino and Domenico Grimani.75

  Another new occupation dependent on the rise of printing was that of corrector for the press, a useful part-time occupation for a writer or scholar.76 Platina worked as corrector for Sweynheym and Pannartz in Rome, while the humanist Giorgio Merula was corrector to the first press to be established in Venice, that of Johan and Windelin Speyer.

  By the sixteenth century, printers and publishers had begun to ask writers to edit books, to translate them and even to write them, a new form of literary patronage which led to the rise of poligrafo, or professional writer, in Venice towards the middle of the sixteenth century. The most famous of this group of professionals was Pietro Aretino, who made even his ‘private’ letters saleable. Around Aretino’s sun circulated lesser planets (not to say Grub Street hacks) such as his secretary Niccolò Franco, his sometime friend and later enemy Anton Francesco Doni, Giuseppe Betussi, Lodovico Dolce, Ludovico Domenichi, Girolamo Ruscelli, and Francesco Sansovino, son of the artist Jacopo.77

  The firm of Giolito at Venice, which concentrated on books that were popular rather than scholarly at a time when this was still unusual, seems to have been a pioneer in its use of professional writers. Betussi and Dolce were both in Giolito service, editing, translating, writing and (as hostile critics pointed out) plagiarizing.78 Even at the end of our period, however, the professional writer was only just beginning to emerge.

  Music resembled literature in that reproduction was organized but production was not. Churches had their choirs, towns had their drummers and pipers, and courts had both, but the role of composer was scarcely recognized. Although the word compositore sometimes occurs, the more common term is the more vague musico, which makes no disinction between someone who invents a tune and someone who plays it.79 In their own day, all the forty-nine composers in the creative elite were viewed as writers on the theory of music, or as singers, or as players of instruments, as some of their names, for example Alfonso della Viola and Antonio degli Organi, remind us.

  An important feature of the organization of the arts in different places and times is the relative opportunity (or need) for mobility. About 25 per cent of the creative elite are known to have done a great deal of travelling. Some moved about because they were successful enough to receive invitations from abroad, like the painter Jacopo de’Barbari, who worked in Nuremberg, Naumburg, Wittenberg, Weimar, Frankfurt-on-Oder and , seem to have travelled because they had little success in any one place, like Lorenzo Lotto, who worked in Venice, Treviso, Bergamo, Rome, Ancona and Loreto. Architects were hardly ever sedentary. Humanists and composers tended to be more mobile than painters and sculptors, presumably because their services were required in person, while painters and sculptors could always dispatch their work abr
oad while remaining at home themselves. One good example of a mobile humanist is Pomponio Leto, whose career took him not only to Salerno, Rome and Venice, but also to Germany and even to Muscovy. However, he is easily surpassed by Francesco Filelfo, who visited Germany, Hungary, Poland and Constantinople and, when in Italy, worked in Padua, Venice, Vicenza, Bologna, Siena, Milan, Pavia, Florence and Rome.The theme of the wandering scholar, often emphasized, has provoked a sceptical reaction. ‘It can probably be shown’, writes one historian, ‘that every itinerant humanist like Aurispa, Panormita, or the youthful Valla had his stay-at-home counterpart in humanists like Andrea Giuliano, Francesco Barbaro and Carlo Marsuppini.’80 So far as the creative elite is concerned, however, the balance tips in favour of the wanderers: fifty-eight compared to forty-three.81

  Printers also travelled widely, like Simon Bevilacqua, who worked in Venice, Saluzzo, Cuneo, Novi Ligure, Savona and Lyons during the decade 1506–15. If humanists and printers were often on the road from year to year, actors, singers of tales and pedlars of books (not to mention students in vacation) travelled from day to day. There may also have been some artists in this class, for the fifteenth-century painter Dario da Udine is described in a document as pictor vagabundus.

  Another important aspect of the organization of the arts is the extent to which they were full-time or part-time, amateur or professional occupations. It has already been suggested that painting, sculpture and music were usually professional and full-time occupations, and the importance of the ‘rise of the professional artist in Renaissance Italy’ has been emphasized in both older and newer studies.82 Writing, on the other hand, was usually amateur and part-time, while architects usually practised another art besides architecture. What is here described as a ‘scientist’ was a man whose professional description would usually have been ‘teacher’ or ‘physician’ (twenty-two out of the fifty-three, including Giovanni Marliani, actually more distinguished in physics than in physic). Scholars were usually professional teachers, and at least forty-five out of the 178 writers and humanists in the elite taught in universities or schools or were engaged as private tutors (Poliziano to Piero de’Medici, Matteo Bandello to the Gonzagas). However, it is possible to point to amateurs (or at any rate to non-academics) such as the civil servant Leonardo Bruni, the merchant Cyriac of Ancona, the printer Aldo Manuzio, the statesman Lorenzo de’Medici, and the noblemen Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Pietro Bembo. These exceptions are numerous and important enough to make one a little uncomfortable with Paul Kristeller’s famous definition of the humanist as a teacher of the humanities.83 It should be added that if some humanists, notably Vittorino da Feltre and Guarino of Verona, treated teaching as a vocation, others considered it a fate to be cursed. ‘I, who have until recently enjoyed the friendship of princes’, wrote one of them sadly in 1480, ‘have now, because of my evil star, opened a school.’84

  The Church remained an important source of part-time employment for writers (twenty-two members of the elite), humanists (twenty-two more) and composers (twenty), not to mention seven scientists (such as Paul of Venice), six painters (of whom the most famous are Fra Angelico and Fra Bartolommeo), and one architect (Fra Giovanni Giocondo of Verona).85

  Another common employment for writers and humanists was that of secretary; their rhetorical skills were in high demand. Leonardo Bruni, Poggio Bracciolini and Bartolommeo della Scala were made chancellors of Florence for their skill in writing persuasive letters; the humanists Antonio Loschi and Pier Candido Decembrio performed similar services for the Visconti of Milan; while the poets Benedetto Chariteo and Giovanni Pontano were secretaries of state in Naples. Other writers were more like private secretaries: Masuccio Salernitano, best known for his prose fiction, was secretary to Prince Roberto Sanseverino, while the poet Annibale Caro served various members of the Farnese family.86

  In a few cases, artists and writers pursued occupations that had little or nothing to do with art or literature. The painter Mariotto Albertinelli was at one time an innkeeper (as was another painter, Jan Steen, in seventeenth-century Leiden). The artist Niccolò dell’Abbate, like the humanists Platina and Calcagnini, was at one time a soldier. Another painter, Giorgio Schiavone, sold salt and cheese. Giorgione’s partner Catena seems to have sold drugs and spices, while Giovanni Caroto of Verona kept an apothecary’s shop; this combination of art and drugs may be explained by the fact that some apothecaries sold artists’ materials. The Fogolino brothers combined their work as painters with that of spying for the Venetians in Trento. Antonio Squarcialupi kept a butcher’s shop as well as playing the organ and composing. Domenico Burchiello was a barber as well as a comic poet. Mariano Taccola was a notary as well as a sculptor and an engineer. The dramatists Giovanni Maria Cecchi and Anton Francesco Grazzini were respectively a wool merchant and an apothecary.87 These occupations warn us not to attribute too high a status to artists and writers at this time.

  THE STATUS OF THE ARTS

  The status associated with the roles of artist and writer was problematic. The problem was a special case of the more general difficulty of accommodating in the social structure, as the division of labour progressed, all roles other than those of priest, knight and peasant – those who prayed, fought and worked – the ‘three orders’ officially recognized in the Middle Ages.88 If the status of an artist was ambiguous, so was that of a merchant. And just as Italians, in some regions at least, had gone further towards the social acceptance of the merchant than had most other Europeans, so it was in Italy that the status of the artist seems to have been at its peak. In the discussion that follows, the evidence of high status comes first, then the evidence of contempt and, finally, an attempt to reach a balanced conclusion.

  Artists regularly declared that they had or ought to have a high status. Cennini at the beginning of the period and Leonardo towards the end both compared the painter with the poet, on the grounds that painter and poet alike use their imagination, their fantasia. Another point in favour of the high status of painting, and one which reveals something of Renaissance assumptions or mentalities, was that the painter could wear fine clothes while he was at work. As Cennini put it: ‘Know that painting on panel is a gentleman’s job, for you can do what you want with velvet on your back.’ And Leonardo: ‘The painter sits at his ease in front of his work, dressed as he pleases, and moves his light brush with the beautiful colours … often accompanied by musicians or readers of various beautiful works.’89 In his treatise on painting, Alberti offered several more arguments which recur during the period, such as the argument that painters need to study liberal arts such as rhetoric and mathematics and the argument from antiquity – that in Roman times works of art fetched high prices, while distinguished Roman citizens had their sons taught to paint, and Alexander the Great admired the painter Apelles.

  Some people who were not artists seem to have accepted the claim that painters were not ordinary craftsmen. The humanist Guarino of Verona wrote a poem in praise of Pisanello, while the court poet of Ferrara dedicated a Latin elegy to Cosimo Tura and Ariosto praised Titian in his Orlando Furioso (more exactly, he inserted the praise of Titian into the 1532 edition of his poem). St Antonino, archbishop of Florence, noted that, whereas in most occupations the just price for a piece of work depends essentially on the time and materials employed, ‘Painters claim, more or less reasonably, to be paid the salary of their art not only by the amount of work, but more in proportion to their application and greater expertness in their trade.’90 When the ruler of Mantua gave Giulio Romano a house, the deed of gift opened with a firm statement of the honour due to painting: ‘Among the famous arts of mortal men it has always seemed to us that painting is the most glorious (praeclarissimus) … we have noticed that Alexander of Macedon thought it of no small dignity, since he wished to be painted by a certain Apelles.’91

  A few painters achieved high status according to the criteria of the time, notably by being knighted or ennobled by their patrons. Gentile Bellini was made a
count by the emperor Frederick III, Mantegna by Pope Innocent VIII, and Titian by the emperor Charles V. The Venetian painter Carlo Crivelli was knighted by Prince Ferdinand of Capua; Sodoma by Pope Leo X; Giovanni da Pordenone by the king of Hungary. For the patron it was a cheap way of rewarding service, but for the artist the honour was real enough. Some painters held offices which conferred status as well as income. Giulio Romano held an office at the court of Mantua, while the painters Giovanni da Udine and Sebastiano del Piombo held office in the Church. (Sebastiano’s nickname, ‘the lead’, was a reference to his office as Keeper of the Seal.) Other painters held high civic office. Luca Signorelli was one of the priors (aldermen) of Cortona; Perugino, one of the priors of Perugia; Jacopo Bassano, consul of Bassano; Piero della Francesca, a town councillor of Borgo San Sepolcro.

  Again, a few painters are known to have become rich. Pisanello inherited wealth, but Mantegna, Perugino, Cosimo Tura, Raphael, Titian, Vincenzo Catena of Venice and Bernardino Zenale of Treviso all seem to have become rich by their painting. Wealth gave them status, and the prices they commanded show that painting was not held cheap.

  The testimony of Albrecht Dürer carries considerable weight. On his visit to Venice he was impressed by the fact that the status of artists was higher than in his native Nuremberg, and he wrote home to his friend the humanist patrician Willibald Pirckheimer, ‘Here I am a gentleman, at home a sponger’ (Hie bin ich ein Herr, doheim ein Schmarotzer).92 In Castiglione’s famous dialogue, one of the speakers, Count Lodovico da Canossa, declares that the ideal courtier should know how to draw and paint. A few sixteenth-century Venetian patricians, notably Palladio’s patron Daniele Barbaro, actually did do this.93