by Peter Burke
33 Logan, Culture and Society, p. 157.
34 Baxandall, ‘Guarino, Pisanello and Manuel Chrysoloras’.
35 Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici, pp. 5, 331–2.
36 Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Life and Times of Titian, p. 181.
37 Kemp, Behind the Picture, pp. 33–46; Welch, Art and Society, pp. 103–14; Gilbert, ‘What did the Renaissance patron buy?’, pp. 393–8; O’Malley, Business of Art.
38 Shearman, Andrea del Sarto, doc. 30.
39 Chambers, Patrons and Artists, nos. 123–7.
40 Malaguzzi-Valeri, Pittori Lombardi; Chambers, Patrons and Artsts, nos. 96–100.
41 Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Life and Times of Titian, pp. 183–4. I have modified the translation.
42 Bodart, Tiziano e Federico II Gonzaga.
43 Hartt, Giulio Romano, vol. 1, pp. 74–5; original text in D’Arco, Giulio Pippi Romano, appendix.
44 O’Malley, Business of Art, pp. 90–6.
45 Ruda, Fra Filippo Lippi, pp. 525–6.
46 Chambers, Patrons and Artists, no. 107.
47 Ibid., nos. 5, 68, 86, 101, 113, 137, etc.
48 Ibid., no.99.
49 ffoulkes and Maiocchi, Vincenzo Foppa.
50 Chambers, Patrons and Artists, no. 76.
51 O’Malley, Business of Art, p. 180.
52 Tolnay, Michelangelo.
53 Shearman, Andrea del Sarto, doc. 30 and pp. 47–51.
54 Poggi, Duomo di Firenze; Gaye, Carteggio inedito d’artisti, vol. 1, p. 191; Chambers, Patrons and Artists, no. 49.
55 Chambers, Patrons and Artists, nos. 64–72; Braghirolli, ‘Carteggio di Isabella d’Este’; Fletcher, ‘Isabella d’Este’; Ames-Lewis, Isabella and Leonardo, pp. viii, 34.
56 Kemp, Leonardo da Vinci, pp. 78ff.
57 Chambers, Patrons and Artists, nos. 59–60.
58 Gilbert, ‘What did the Renaissance patron buy?’, pp. 416–23.
59 Chambers, Patrons and Artists, nos. 85–90.
60 Gombrich, Symbolic Images, pp. 9–11, 23–5; cf. Robertson, ‘Annibal Caro’.
61 Warburg, Renewal of Pagan Antiquity.
62 Krautheimer and Krautheimer-Hess, Lorenzo Ghiberti, pp. 169ff.; Chambers, Patrons and Artists, no. 24.
63 Baxandall, ‘Guarino, Pisanello and Manuel Chrysoloras’.
64 Warburg, Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, pp. 249–69. Cf. Gombrich, Symbolic Images; Dempsey, Portrayal of Love; Snow-Smith, Primavera of Sandro Botticelli.
65 Condivi, Vita di Michelangelo Buonarroti, pp. 28–9.
66 Chambers, Patrons and Artists, nos. 76, 80.
67 Zimmermann, Paolo Giovio.
68 A more sceptical view of the importance of the humanist adviser is to be found in Hope, ‘Artists, patrons and advisers’; Robertson, ‘Annibal Caro’; Hope and McGrath, ‘Artists and humanists’.
69 Kent, ‘Palaces, politics and society’; Frommel, Architettura e committenza.
70 Hersey, Alfonso II; Serra-Desfilis, ‘Classical language’; Heydenreich, ‘Federico da Montefeltre’; Clough, ‘Federigo da Montefeltre’s patronage of the arts’.
71 Brown, ‘Humanist portrait’; cf. Gombrich, Norm and Form, pp. 35–57; Jenkins, ‘Cosimo de’Medici’s patronage’; Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici.
72 Bridgman, Vie musicale, ch. 2.
73 Motta, ‘Musici alla corte degli Sforza’.
74 Fenlon, Music and Patronage, pp. 15ff.
75 Einstein, Essays on Music, pp. 39–49.
76 Straeten, Musique aux Pays-Bas, p. 87.
77 On Rome, D’Amico, Renaissance Humanism, pp. 29ff.; on Florence, see Garin, ‘Cancellieri umanisti’.
78 Sabbadini, ‘Come il Panormita diventò poeta aulico’; cf. Ryder, ‘Antonio Beccadelli’.
79 Regan, ‘Ariosto’s threshold patron’.
80 Soria, Humanistas de la corte; Ianziti, Humanistic Historiography, p. 53; Burke, ‘L’art de la propagande’.
81 Cozzi, ‘Cultura, politica e religione’; Gilbert, ‘Biondo, Sabellico and the beginings of Venetian official historiography’.
82 Rose, Italian Renaissance.
83 V. Calmeta’s life of the author prefixed to Serafino dell’Aquila’s Opere.
84 Mortier, Etudes italiennes, pp. 5–19.
85 King, Venetian Humanism, pp. 54ff.
86 Dionisotti, Geografia e storia, pp. 47–73.
87 Larivaille, Pietro Aretino.
88 Quondam, ‘Mercanzia d’honore’; Tenenti, ‘Giunti’.
89 Mosher, ‘Fourth catalogue’.
90 Venezian, Olimpo da Sassoferrato, p. 121.
91 Quondam, ‘Mercanzia d’honore’; Bareggi, Mestiere di scrivere; Richardson, Print Culture in Renaissance Italy and Printing, Writers and Readers.
92 Lerner-Lehmkul, Zur Struktur und Geschichte; Fantoni et al., Art Market; Neher and Shepherd, Revaluing Renaissance Art.
93 Wright, ‘Between the patron and the market’.
94 See Origo, Merchant of Prato, pp. 41ff.
95 Corti and Hartt, ‘New documents’.
96 Emison, ‘Replicated image in Florence’.
97 Oberhuber, ‘Raffaello e l’incisione’; Landau and Parshall, Renaissance Print.
98 Flaten, ‘Portrait medals’; cf. Comanducci, ‘Produzione seriale’.
99 Syson and Thornton, Objects of Virtue, pp. 128–9.
100 Goldthwaite, Building of Renaissance Florence, p. 402; Ajmar, ‘Talking pots’, p. 58.
101 Chambers, Patrons and Artists, nos. 149–50.
102 Ibid., no. 63.
103 Wackernagel, World of the Florentine Renaissance Artist, p. 283.
104 La-Coste-Messelière, ‘Giovanni Battista della Palla’; Elam, ‘Battista della Palla’.
105 A general discussion in Koch, Kunstaustellung.
106 Francastel, ‘De Giorgione à Titien’.
107 Matthew, ‘Were there open markets’.
108 Benjamin, ‘Work of art’; Hind, Early Italian Engraving; Alberici, Leonardo e l’incisione.
109 Hall, Cities in Civilization.
110 Shearman, ‘Mecenatismo di Giulio II e Leone X’. Leo’s patronage, often exaggerated, was cut down to size by Gnoli, Roma di Leon X.
111 Clough, ‘Federigo da Montefeltre’s patronage of the arts’; Ciammitti et al., Dosso’s Fate.
112 Rosenberg, Court Cities.
113 Serra Desfilis, ‘Classical language’.
114 Bentley, Politics and Culture, pp. 63, 95.
115 Roscoe, Life of Lorenzo de’Medici; Chastel, Art et humanisme; Elam, ‘Lorenzo de’Medici’; Alsop, Rare Art Traditions, ch. 12; Kent, Lorenzo de’ Medici.
5
THE USES OF WORKS OF ART
Chi volessi per diletto
Qualche gentil figuretta,
Per tenerla sopra letto
O in su qualche basetta?
Ogni camera s’asetta
Ben con le nostre figure.
(Who wants some elegant statuette for their delight?
You can put it above your bed or on a stand.
Our figures make any room look well).
Carnival song of the sculptors of Florence,
in Singleton, Canti carnascialeschi
The idea of a ‘work of art’ is a modern one, although art galleries and museums encourage us to project it into the past. Before 1500 it is more exact to speak of ‘images’.1 Even the idea of ‘literature’ is a modern one. This chapter, however, is concerned with the different uses, for contemporary owners, viewers or listeners, of paintings, statues, poems, plays, and so on. They did not regard these objects in the same ways as we do. For one thing, paintings might be regarded as expendable. A Florentine patrician, Filippo Strozzi the younger, asked in his will of 1537 for a monument in the family chapel in Santa Maria Novella, which contained a fresco by Filippino Lippi. ‘Do not worry about the painting which is there now, which it is necessary to destroy’, Strozzi ordered, ‘since of its nature it is not very durable’ (di sua natura non è molto durabile).2 If we want to understand what the
art of the period meant to contemporaries, we have to look first at its uses.
MAGIC AND RELIGION
The most obvious use of paintings and statues in Renaissance Italy was religious. In a secular culture like ours, we may well have to remind ourselves that what we see as a ‘work of art’ was viewed by contemporaries primarily as a sacred image. The idea of a ‘religious’ use is not very precise, so it is probably helpful to distinguish magical, devotional and didactic functions, although these divisions blur into one another, while ‘magic’ does not have quite the same meaning for us as it did for a sixteenth-century theologian. It is more precise and so more useful to refer to the thaumaturgic and other miraculous powers attributed to particular images, as in the case of certain famous Byzantine icons.
Some gonfalons or processional banners – for example, those painted by Benedetto Bonfigli in Perugia – seem to have been considered a defence against plague. The Madonna is shown protecting her people with her mantle against the arrows of the plague, and the inscription on one gonfalon begs her ‘to ask and help thy son to take the fury away’.3 The popularity in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries of images of St Sebastian, who was also associated with defence against plague (below, p. 000), suggests that the thaumaturgic function was still an important one. When he was working in Italy in the 1420s and 1430s, the Netherlander Guillaume Dufay wrote two motets to St Sebastian as a defence against plague. Music was generally believed to have therapeutic power; stories were current about cures effected by playing to the patient.4
A celebrated Italian example of another kind of miraculous power is the image of the Virgin Mary in the church of Impruneta, near Florence, which was carried in procession to produce rain in times of drought or to stop the rain when there was too much, as well as to solve the political problems of the Florentines. For example, the Florentine apothecary Luca Landucci records in his journal that in 1483 the image was brought to Florence ‘for the sake of obtaining fine weather, as it had rained for more than a month. And it immediately became fine.’5
Some Renaissance paintings appear to belong to a magical system outside the Christian framework (below, p. 000). The frescoes by Francesco del Cossa in the Palazzo Schifanoia at Ferrara are concerned with astrological themes, as Aby Warburg pointed out, and they may well have been painted to ensure the good fortune of the duke.6 It has also been argued (following a suggestion of Warburg’s), that Botticelli’s famous Primavera may have been a talisman – in other words, an image made in order to draw down favourable ‘influences’ from the planet Venus.7 We know that the philosopher Ficino made use of such images, just as he played ‘martial’ music to attract influences from Mars: a Renaissance Planets suite.8 Again, when Leonardo (as Vasari tells us) painted the thousand-eyed Argus guarding the treasury of the duke of Milan, it is difficult to tell whether he intended simply to make an appropriate classical allusion or whether he was also attempting a piece of protective magic. It is similarly difficult to tell how serious Vasari is being when he works a variant of the Byzantine icon legends into his life of Raphael. He tells us that a painting of Raphael’s was on the way to Palermo when a storm arose and the ship was wrecked. The painting, however, ‘remained unharmed … because even the fury of the winds and the waves of the sea had respect for the beauty of such a work.’ In a similar way, we need at least to entertain the possibility that the images of traitors and rebels painted on the walls of public buildings in Florence and elsewhere were a form of magical destruction of fugitives who were beyond the reach of conventional punishment – the equivalent of sticking pins in wax images of one’s enemies.
Many images were made and bought for sacred settings and religious purposes.9 The term ‘devotional pictures’ (quadri di devotione) was current in this period, when images and religious fervour seem to have been more closely associated than usual, whether the images were crucifixes (recommended by leading preachers such as Bernardino of Siena and Savonarola), the new medium of the woodcut, or a new type of religious painting, small and intimate, suitable for a private house, not so much an icon as a narrative, which would act as a stimulus to meditation on the Bible or the lives of the saints.10
A vivid illustration of the devotional uses of the image comes from Rome, from the fraternity of St John Beheaded (San Giovanni Decollato), which comforted condemned criminals in their last moments by means of tavolette – small pictures of the martyrdom of saints which were employed, in the words of their recent historian, ‘as a kind of visual narcotic to numb the fear and pain of the condemned criminal during his terrible journey to the scaffold’.11 The wear and tear visible today on some sacred images of the period offers vivid evidence of what one scholar calls the ‘tactile devotion’ of the owners.12
The increasing importance of devotional images seems to have been linked to the increasing lay initiatives in religious matters characteristic of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, from the foundation of religious fraternities to the singing of hymns or the reading of pious books at home. Surviving inventories of the houses of the wealthy, in Venice for instance, reveal images of Our Lady in almost every room, from the reception room or portego to the bedrooms. In the castle of the Uzzano family, Florentine patricians, there were two paintings of the ‘sudary’ (Christ’s face imprinted on Veronica’s towel), and immediately before one of them a predella or prie-Dieu is listed, as if the inhabitants of the castle commonly knelt before the sacred image.13
As the fifteenth-century friar Giovanni Dominici put it, parents should keep sacred images in the house because of their moral effect on the children. The infant Jesus with St John would be good for boys, and also pictures of the Massacre of the Innocents, ‘in order to make them afraid of arms and armed men’. Girls, on the other hand, should fix their gaze on Saints Agnes, Cecilia, Elizabeth, Catherine and Ursula (with her legendary eleven thousand virgins) to give them ‘a love of virginity, a desire for Christ, a hatred for sins, a contempt for vanities’.14 In a similar way, Florentine girls, whether young nuns or young brides, would be given images, or more exactly dolls, of the Christ-child to encourage identification with his mother.15
An interesting example of the devotional use of certain images, and a material sign of spectator response, is what one might call pious vandalism – the defacing of the painted devils in a painting by Uccello, for instance, or the scratching out of the eyes of the executioner of St James in a fresco by Mantegna16 – the equivalent, one might say, of the audience hissing the villain in a melodrama. In fact, the religious plays of the period had similar aims. These rappresentazioni sacre, as they were called, which were written and acted in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, were rather like the miracle and mystery plays of late medieval England (a reminder of the difficulty of distinguishing between ‘Renaissance’ and ‘Middle Ages’, particularly in the case of popular culture). They usually end with angels exhorting the audience to take to heart what they have just seen. At the end of a play about Abraham and Isaac, for example, the angel points out the importance of ‘holy obedience’ (santa ubidienzia).17
Ex votos are a kind of devotional image of which Italian examples remain from the fifteenth century onwards, recording a vow made to a saint in a time of danger, whether illness or accident. Those that have survived, in the sanctuary of the Madonna of the Mountain at Cesena, for example, which contains 246 examples earlier than 1600, are probably only a tiny proportion of those that once existed.18 It may well have been this kind of occasion that most often persuaded ordinary people to commission paintings. The artistic level of the majority of ex votos is not high, but the category does include a few well-known Renaissance paintings, notably Mantegna’s Madonna della Vittoria, commissioned by Gianfrancesco II, marquis of Mantua, after the battle of Fornovo, in which he had, at least in his own eyes, defeated the French army. It was the Jews of Mantua who actually paid for the painting, though not out of choice. Again, Carpaccio’s Martyrdom of 10,000 Christians and Titian’s St Mark E
nthroned were both commissioned to fulfil vows in time of plague, while Raphael’s Madonna of Foligno was painted for the historian Sigismondo de’Conti, apparently to express his gratitude for his escape when a meteor fell on his house.
Another use of religious paintings was didactic. As Pope Gregory the Great had already pointed out in the sixth century, ‘Paintings are placed in churches so that the illiterate can read on the walls what they cannot read in books’, a sentence much quoted in the Renaissance.19 A good deal of Christian doctrine was illustrated in Italian church frescoes of the fourteenth centuries: the life of Christ, the relation between the Old and New Testaments, the Last Judgment and its consequences, and so on. The religious plays of the period consider many of the same themes, so that each medium reinforced the message of the others and made it more intelligible. It does not seem useful to argue which came first, art or theatre.20
A special case of the didactic is the presentation of controversial topics from a one-sided point of view – in other words, propaganda. Like rhetoric, painting was a means of persuasion. Paintings commissioned by Renaissance popes, for example, present arguments for the primacy of popes over general councils of the Church, sometimes by drawing historical parallels. For Pope Sixtus IV, for example, Botticelli painted the Punishment of Korah, illustrating a scene from the Old Testament in which the earth opened and swallowed up Korah and his men after they had dared to challenge Moses and Aaron (Plate 5.1). An earlier fifteenth-century pope, Eugenius IV, had made reference to Korah when condemning the Council of Basel.21 In a similar manner, Raphael painted for Pope Julius II, who was in conflict with the Bentivoglio family of Bologna, the story of Heliodorus, who tried to plunder the Temple of Jerusalem but was expelled by angels.22 Again, after the Reformation, paintings in Catholic churches in Italy and elsewhere tended to illustrate points of doctrine which the Protestants had challenged.23