The Italian Renaissance

by Peter Burke

  When an artist kept a shop, on the other hand, he had less economic security and a lower social status, but it was easier for him to evade a commission that he did not want, as Giovanni Bellini seems to have done in the case of a request from Isabella d’Este (above, p. 114). Clients too might offer artists a variety of odd jobs, but some workshops were so organized that different members could specialize. It is hard to say how important this freedom of working was to artists, but it may be significant that when Mantegna was appointed court painter in Mantua, in 1459, he lingered in Padua, as if the decision to leave had been a difficult one.57 Whether individual artists cared about their freedom or not, the difference in working conditions seems to be reflected in what was produced. The major innovations of the period took place in Florence and Venice, republics of shop-keepers, and not in courts.

  These examples of conflict are some of the most celebrated and best-documented ones. They are not a sufficient basis for generalization. The range of variation between patrons was considerable, while even a single patron, such as Isabella d’Este, might grant some artists more freedom than others.58 However, there is other evidence to suggest that the balance of power between patron and artist was changing in this period in the artist’s favour, allowing a greater individualism of style. As the status of artists rose, patrons made fewer demands. To Leonardo, Isabella made concessions from the start: ‘We shall leave the subject and the time to you.’59 Again, a famous letter to Vasari from the poet Annibale Caro acknowledges the freedom of the artist by comparing the two roles: ‘For the subject matter (invenzione) I place myself in your hands, remembering … that both the poet and the painter carry out their own ideas and their own schemes with more love and with more diligence than they do the schemes of others.’ It is unfortunate that he was to follow this compliment with fairly precise instructions for an Adonis on a purple garment, embraced by Venus.

  Caro also drew up a detailed programme for the decoration of the palace for the Farnese family at Caprarola.60 He was, in other words, a humanist adviser, an intellectual middleman between patron and client. The hypothesis of the humanist adviser – Poliziano in this case – was put forward by Aby Warburg when discussing the mythological paintings of Botticelli.61 Since artists, as we have seen, generally lacked a classical education, they must have needed advice when required to paint scenes from ancient history or mythology. There is, in fact, evidence of such advice being given on a few occasions.

  In the earliest known case the subject was not classical but biblical: in 1424, the Calimala guild of Florence asked the humanist Leonardo Bruni to draw up a programme for the ‘Gates of Paradise’, the third pair of doors for the Baptistery in Florence. Bruni chose twenty stories from the Old Testament. However, the sculptor, Ghiberti, claimed in his memoirs to have been given a free hand, and the Bruni programme was not followed, for the doors illustrate only ten stories.62

  In Ferrara in the mid-fifteenth century, the humanist Guarino of Verona suggested a possible programme for a painting of the Muses for the marquis, Leonello d’Este.63 Later in the century, the court librarian, Pellegrino Prisciani, was concerned with the programme of the famous astrological frescoes in the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara, painted by Francesco del Cossa.64 In the Medici circle in the later fifteenth century, there is more indirect evidence for the advice of two humanists, the poet– philologist Angelo Poliziano and the philosopher Marsilio Ficino, on the programme of Botticelli’s Primavera, the meaning of which still divides scholars. According to his pupil Condivi, the young Michelangelo made his relief of The Battle of the Centaurs at the suggestion of Poliziano, ‘who explained the whole myth to him from beginning to end’ (dichiarandogli a parse per parse tutta la favola).65

  Another milieu in which there is firm evidence of humanist advisers is the court of Mantua in the early sixteenth century. When Isabella d’Este planned a series of pagan ‘fantasies’ for her study and grotto, it was to the humanists Pietro Bembo and Paride da Ceresara that she turned for advice. It was Paride who provided the programme for the Battle of Love and Chastity which Isabella, as we have seen, commissioned from Perugino (Plate 4.6).66

  It would not be difficult to add to these examples, particularly for the sixteenth century. One thinks of the humanist bishop Paolo Giovio planning the decoration of the Medici villa at Poggio a Caiano, or the poet Annibale Caro doing the same, as noted above, for the Farnese at Caprarola.67 Whether they were called in by artists or patrons, and whether their advice was taken seriously or not, classical scholars, and more rarely theologians, were involved in the planning of pictorial and sculptural programmes. They helped artists to cope with the sudden demand for classical mythology and ancient history which workshop traditions had not trained artists to provide.68

  ARCHITECTURE, MUSIC AND LITERATURE

  Architecture needs to be considered separately because architects did not work with their hands. They provided nothing but the programme, so that, in cases where patrons took an active interest, their role was diminished. Filarete’s treatise presents a picture, no doubt a wish-fulfilment, of a prince who accepts the plans of his architect with enthusiasm. In practice, however, patrons often wanted to interfere, or at least to intervene, in the building process. They had political and social reasons for choosing particular designs, from the desire to display their status to the obligation of hospitality and the need to meet with their followers and dependants.69 Some of them studied treatises on architecture. Alfonso of Aragon, for example (Plate 5.2), asked for a copy of Vitruvius when the plans for a triumphal arch at Naples were being discussed. Federigo of Urbino owned a copy of Francesco di Giorgio’s treatise on architecture, presented by the author.70 Ercole d’Este borrowed Alberti’s treatise on architecture from Lorenzo de’Medici before deciding how to rebuild his palace. A panegyric on Cosimo de’Medici describes him as wanting to build a church and a house in his own way (more suo).71 As for Cosimo’s grandson Lorenzo, he went so far as an amateur architect as to submit a design for the competition for the façade of Florence Cathedral in 1491. The judges were unable to choose either the design of the effective ruler of Florence or that of any other competitor, so the façade was left unbuilt.

  In the case of music, it was the performers who were the recipients of patronage, and on a permanent basis, precisely because their performances were ephemeral. There were three main types of patron: Church, city and court.72

  The Church was a great patron of singers, although not a particularly generous one. Singers were needed for masses and other parts of the liturgy, and they were needed all the time, as were organists. Choirmasters included men we now remember as composers, such as Giovanni Spataro, choirmaster at the church of San Petronio at Bologna from 1512 to 1541.

  Cities also took musicians into their permanent service. Trumpeters, for example, were in demand for civic events such as state visits or major religious festivals. The best civic posts were in Venice. The church of San Marco was the doge’s chapel, and so its choirmaster was a civic (in other words, a political) appointment. The post was created in 1491 for a Frenchman, Pierre de Fossis. When he died, Doge Andrea Gritti, who was used to getting his own way, forced through the appointment of an outsider, the Netherlander Adriaan Willaert, against considerable opposition. The musical importance of sixteenth-century Venice may owe something to the relative munificence of its civic patronage.

  Court patronage was the least secure of the three main types, but it offered the possibility of the greatest rewards. Some princes took a great interest in their chapels: Galeazzo Maria Sforza of Milan, for example, Ercole d’Este of Ferrara or Pope Leo X. When the duke of Milan decided, in 1472, to found a choir, he spared no effort to make it a good one. He wrote to his ambassador in Naples with instructions to persuade some of the singers there to move to Milan. He was to talk to them and to make promises of ‘good benefices and good salaries’, but in his own name, not that of the duke: ‘Above all, take good care that neither his royal majesty nor ot
hers should imagine that we are the cause of those singers being taken away.’ Presumably a diplomatic incident might have followed this discovery. By 1474 the duke had acquired a certain ‘Josquino’, perhaps Josquin des Près. He continued to take a great interest in his chapel choir, which had to follow him to Pavia, Vigevano and even outside the duchy. As for Alfonso of Aragon, he even took his choir with him when he went hunting!73

  Isabella d’Este was interested in music as well as painting, and two major composers of frottole (songs for several voices), Marchetto Cara and Bartolommeo Tromboncino, were active at her court.74 A still greater interest in music was taken by Pope Leo X. He played and composed himself (a canon written by him still survives). His enthusiasm was well known and, when news arrived that Leo had been elected pope, many of the marquis of Mantua’s singers left for Rome. The most distinguished composers in Leo’s service were Elzéar Genet, who was in charge of the music for the papal chapel; Costanzo Festa, who was famous for his madrigals; and the organist Marco Antonio Cavazzoni. The contemporary anecdotes of Leo’s generosity to musicians have been confirmed from the papal accounts. He had more than fifteen musicians in his private service in 1520. He paid the famous lutenist Gian Maria Giudeo 23 ducats a month and made him a count into the bargain.

  A fourth kind of patronage should not be forgotten. It was possible for musicians to make careers in the service of private individuals. Willaert, for example, organized concerts for a Venetian lady, Pollissena Pecorina, and a nobleman, Marco Trivisano.75 The organist Cavazzoni was at one time in the service of the humanist Pietro Bembo.

  In all these cases, it is difficult to say whether musicians were hired because they could sing or play well or because they could compose or invent. There is a little evidence of interest in the activity of invention. Some compositions were dedicated to individuals or written in their honour. For example, a certain Cristoforo da Feltre wrote a motet on the election of Francesco Foscari as doge of Venice in 1423. Heinrich Isaac, who spent the decade 1484–94 in Florence, wrote an instrumental piece, ‘Palle, palle’, presumably for the Medici, since it refers to their rallying-cry and their device, and he also set to music Poliziano’s lament for the death of Lorenzo the Magnificent. New compositions were required for court festivals; Costanzo Festa, for example, wrote the music for the wedding, in 1539, of Cosimo de’Medici, duke of Tuscany, and Eleonora of Toledo.

  What patrons wanted from musicians emerges most vividly from a letter to Ercole d’Este, duke of Ferrara, written by one of his agents about 1500. The duke was trying to make up his mind which of two candidates to hire, Heinrich Isaac or Josquin des Près.

  Isaac the singer … is extremely rapid in the art of composition, and besides this he is a man … who can be managed as one wants … and he seems to me extremely suitable to serve your lordship, more than Josquin, because he gets on better with his colleagues, and would make new things more often; it is true that Josquin composes better, but he does it when he feels like it, not when he is asked; and he is demanding 200 ducats, and Isaak will be satisfied with 120.76

  In other words, the fact that Josquin ‘composes better’ is recognized, but it is not the most important consideration. The social historian could hardly ask for a more revealing document about the workings of patronage.

  PLATE 4.7 RAPHAEL: LEO X

  In the case of literature and learning, patronage was less necessary because so many writers were amateurs with private means and so many scholars were academics. Patronage was most necessary when it was least likely, when a writer was poor, young and unknown and wanted to study. In some cases, aid was forthcoming. Lorenzo de’Medici, for example, made it possible for Poliziano to study, while Landino was financed by a notary and Guarino by a Venetian nobleman. The Greek cardinal Bessarion, who was a generous and discerning patron of scholars such as Flavio Biondo, Poggio Bracciolini and Bartolommeo Platina, also financed the studies of his compatriot Janos Lascaris. If Alfonso I of Aragon knew of boys who were poor but able (so his official biographer, the humanist Antonio Panormita, informs us), he paid for their education. At Ferrara, Duke Borso d’Este paid for the food and clothes of poor students at the university. However, these examples are not many, and one wonders how many promising careers came to nothing for lack of patronage of this kind.

  For humanists, it was possible to make a career in the service of the Church or the state. This was in part because particular popes (Nicholas V, for example, or Leo X) and princes (such as Alfonso I) appreciated their achievements, and in part because their skills, notably the art of writing an elegant and persuasive Latin letter, were needed in administration. The chanceries of Rome and Florence in particular were staffed by humanists, among them Flavio Biondo, Poggio Bracciolini and Lorenzo Valla in the first case and Coluccio Salutati and Leonardo Bruni in the second.77

  For writers who were already established, court patronage was often forthcoming because princes were interested in fame and believed that poets had it in their gift. It might, however, take a gift for intrigue as well as for literature to defeat rival candidates for a particular post. Augustus, as Horace and Virgil had known, could only be approached through Maecenas, and, on occasion in Renaissance Italy, Maecenas could only be approached through intermediaries – ‘Mecenatuli’, as Panormita contemptuously called them. His own search for patronage led him up several blind alleys before eventual success.78 He tried Florence, dedicating a poem to Cosimo de’Medici as early as 1425; he tried Mantua, only to discover that, having Vittorino da Feltre, they needed no more humanists; he tried Verona, via Guarino, with similar results. Finally, thanks to the help of the archbishop, he obtained the post of court poet at Milan. Another ploy was to attract the attention of what has been called a ‘threshold patron’, often a woman (Isabella d’Este, for example, in the case of Ariosto), who facilitated the approach to her husband or other male relative.79

  For an actual or aspiring court poet, an obvious move – following Virgil’s precedent – was to write an epic about the prince. Thus the humanist Francesco Filelfo wrote a Sforziad to celebrate the ruling house of Milan. Federigo of Urbino had his Feltria and Borso d’Este his Borsias, the first of a series of epics for a ruling house which became the patrons of Boiardo, Ariosto and Tasso. Ariosto made his hero and heroine Ruggiero and Bradamante ancestors of the house of Este. In the third canto, modelled on the sixth book of Virgil’s Aeneid, Merlino prophesies that the golden age will return in the reign of Ariosto’s patron Alfonso I.

  Court historians were also in request in the fifteenth century, especially on the part of new princes. Alfonso of Aragon commissioned works of history from the rival humanists Lorenzo Valla and Bartolommeo Fazio. Ludovico Sforza commissioned a history of Milan from a nobleman, Bernardino Corio.80 Machiavelli’s History of Florence was commissioned by the Medici pope Clement VII, and dedicated to the pope by his ‘humble slave’. Republics too were aware of the value of official history. The Venetian government, for example, commissioned histories from the humanist Marcantonio Sabellico and the patricians Andrea Navagero and Pietro Bembo.81

  Rulers might also act as patrons of natural science for practical reasons. Leonardo da Vinci went to the court of Milan, as we have seen, as a military engineer rather than an artist. Pandolfo Petrucci, lord of Siena, was the patron of the engineer Vannoccio Biringuccio. Fra Luca Pacioli, who wrote on mathematics, attracted the patronage of the dukes of Milan and Urbino.82 As a friar, however, he did not depend on patrons. Since most ‘scientists’ made their living through university teaching or the practice of medicine, they did not depend on patrons either.

  Less directly useful works might also be commissioned by patrons who had a taste for literature or a liking for particular authors. Cosimo de’Medici gave the philosopher Marsilio Ficino a farm in the Tuscan countryside at Careggi and encouraged him to translate Plato and other ancient authors. Poliziano wrote a poem to celebrate a famous joust in which Giuliano de’Medici, the brother of Lorenzo the Magnificent, ha
d taken part. Like painters and musicians, poets might have to help provide the entertainment at festivals. When Poliziano was in Mantuan service, he wrote his famous drama Orfeo to order for a wedding. He also wrote begging poems to Lorenzo de’Medici describing how his clothes had worn out. The verse request was a conventional literary genre, but its existence is a reminder of the importance of patronage for the culture of the time and also in the life of the individual writer.

  As in the case of painters, court patronage offered writers status. It also offered protection, which might well be necessary. The poet Serafino of Aquila, for example, left the service of Cardinal Ascanio Sforza to live in Rome without a patron. However, his satirical verses provoked an attempt to assassinate him. When he recovered, ‘considering that to be without a protector was dangerous and shameful’, Serafino went back to the cardinal.83

  Despite the examples of official historians of Venice, there was virtually no civic patronage for writers. Their choice was limited to the Church, the court or the occasional private individual, such as the patrician Alvise Cornaro of Padua, who encouraged the dramatist Angelo Beolco ‘il Ruzzante’ to write his plays, and had them collected and published.84 Some Venetian patricians, such as Francesco Barbaro and Bernardo Bembo (the father of Pietro Bembo, and himself a writer of distinction) regarded the patronage of scholars as a duty.85 The Church offered the greatest security, and so we find such writers as Alberti, Poliziano and Ariosto, who are difficult to see as career clergymen, trying to get benefices.86 Castiglione, the complete courtier, ended his life as a bishop, and his friend Pietro Bembo as a cardinal.

  The difficulty of depending on patronage for a living can be illustrated from the career of Aretino (Plate 4.8), who began life as the son of a shoemaker. He attracted the attention first of the rich and cultivated banker Agostino Chigi, then of Cardinal Giulio de’Medici, and later of Federico Gonzaga, marquis of Mantua, and of the condottiere Giovanni de’Medici. Multiplying patrons increased Aretino’s freedom but increased the risk of loss of favour, so he changed his strategy. In 1527 he moved to Venice, where, despite accepting protection from Doge Andrea Gritti and gifts from a number of noblemen, he was more or less his own master.87 That he was able to do this depended not only on his own remarkable talents for writing and self-advertisement but also on the rise of the market.