Chapter: 21 Sixteenth-Century Art in Italy
Leonardo da Vinci THE VIRGIN OF THE ROCKS 21-2
c. 1485. Oil on wood panel (now transferred to canvas), 6'6" x 4' (1.9 x 1.2 m). Leonardo spent much of his time in Milan on military and civil engineering projects, including both urban-renewal and fortification plans for the city, but he also created a few key monuments of Renaissance painting. In April 1483, Leonardo contracted with the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception to paint an altarpiece for their chapel in the church of San Francesco Grande in Milan, a painting now known as THE VIRGIN OF THE ROCKS (FIG. 21-2). The contract stipulated a painting of the Virgin and Child with angels, but Leonardo added a figure of the young John the Baptist, who balances the composition at the left, pulled into dialogue with his younger cousin Jesus by the long, protective arm of the Virgin. She draws attention to her child by extending her other hand over his head, while the enigmatic figure of the angel—who looks out without actually making eye contact with the viewer—points to the center of interaction. The stable, balanced, pyramidal figural group—a compositional formula that will become a standard feature of High Renaissance Classicism—is set against an exquisitely detailed landscape that dissolves mysteriously into the misty distance. To assure their dominance in the picture, Leonardo picks out the four figures with spotlights, creating a strong chiaroscuro (from the Italian words chiaro, meaning "light," and oscuro, meaning "dark") that enhances their modeling as three-dimensional forms. This painting is an excellent early example of a specific variant of this technique, called sfumato ("smoky"), in which there are subtle, almost imperceptible, transitions between light and dark in shading. Sfumato became a hallmark of Leonardo's style, although the effect is artificially enhanced in this painting by the yellowing of its thick varnish, which masks the original vibrancy of its color.
Leonardo da Vinci VITRUVIAN MAN 21-3
c. 1490. Ink, 13½ x 9⅝" (34.3 x 24.5 cm). Galleria dell'Accademia, Venice. Vitruvius, in his ten-volume De Architectura (On Architecture), wrote: "For if a man be placed flat on his back, with his hands and feet extended, and a pair of compasses centered at his navel, the fingers and toes of his two hands and feet will touch the circumference of a circle described therefrom. And just as the human body yields a circular outline, so too a square figure may be found from it. For if we measure the distance from the soles of the feet to the top of the head, and then apply that measure to the outstretched arms, the breadth will be found to be the same as the height" (Book III, Chapter 1, Section 3). Vitruvius determined that the ideal body should be eight heads high. Leonardo added his own observations in the reversed writing he always used in his notebooks when he created his well-known diagram for the ideal male figure, called the VITRUVIAN MAN (FIG. 21-3).
Leonardo da Vinci MONA LISA 21-1
c. 1503-1506. Oil on wood panel, 30¼ x 21" (77 x 53 cm). Actually the MONA LISA (FIG. 21-1) is not especially mysterious. No secret code needs to be cracked. Leonardo da Vinci, one of the most famous painters and most fertile minds of the Italian Renaissance, painted this portrait between 1503 and 1506, while he was living in Florence. Although there is lingering uncertainty, most art historians agree with the sixteenth-century Italian biographer Giorgio Vasari, who claimed that the Mona Lisa portrays Lisa di Antonio Maria Gherardini, the wife of Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo. ("Mona" is a term of respect, a contraction of "Madonna," meaning "my lady"). Lisa married Francesco in 1495, when she was 16, so Leonardo painted her during her mid-twenties. But he never delivered the painting. He kept it with him for the rest of his life, continuing to tinker with it, probably working on it while he was in Rome after 1513 and taking it with him in 1516 when he moved to France at the invitation of Francis I. After Leonardo's death in 1519, the king purchased the Mona Lisa for Fontainebleau. Louis XIV moved it to Versailles, and Napoleon hung it in his bedroom in the Tuileries Palace. It now hangs at the Louvre. It is one of the most popular destinations for tourists visiting Paris. This was an unusual portrait for its time. Leonardo abandoned the long-standing Italian tradition of painting wealthy wives in profile view, wearing the sumptuous clothing and jewelry that signified their status and their husbands' wealth (SEE Figure 20-26, Figure 20-39). Mona Lisa seems to be the likeness of a specific woman who turns with calm assurance to engage viewers, hands relaxed in her lap. Her expression has been called enigmatic. It hides rather than reveals her thoughts and personality, and it lacks the warmth one expects to see in her eyes, which have shifted to the side to look straight out at us. The psychological complexity Leonardo has given to this face may explain the spell it has cast over viewers. One thing is clear. This portrait embodies many of the hallmarks of the High Renaissance style that will solidify in Rome during the first two decades of the sixteenth century—the blend of naturalistic descript
Michelangelo ST. PETER'S BASILICA, VATICAN 21-47
c. 1546-1564; dome completed 1590 by Giacomo della Porta; lantern 1590-1593. View from the west. Although seventeenth-century additions and renovations dramatically changed the original plan of the church and the appearance of its interior, Michelangelo's ST. PETER'S (FIG. 21-47) still can be seen in the contrasting forms of the flat and angled exterior walls and the three surviving hemicycles (semicircular structures). Colossal pilasters, blind windows (frames without openings), and niches surround the sanctuary of the church. The current dome, erected by Giacomo della Porta in 1588-1590, retains Michelangelo's basic design: segmented with regularly spaced ribs, seated on a high drum with pedimented windows between paired columns, and topped with a tall lantern. The aging Michelangelo, often described by his contemporaries as difficult and even arrogant, alternated between periods of depression and frenzied activity. Yet he was devoted to his friends and helpful to young artists. He believed that his art was divinely inspired and became increasingly devoted to religious works—many left unfinished—that subverted Renaissance ideals of human perfectibility and denied the idealism of youth. In the process he pioneered new stylistic directions that would inspire succeeding generations of artists.
Vignola and Giacomo della Porta FAÇADE OF THE CHURCH OF IL GESÙ, ROME 21-48A
c. 1568-1584. Catholicism's new emphasis on individual, emotional participation brought a focus on sermons and music, requiring churches with wide naves and unobstructed views of the altar, instead of the complex interiors of medieval and earlier Renaissance churches. Ignatius of Loyola was determined to build IL GESÙ, the Jesuit headquarters church in Rome, according to these precepts, although he did not live to see it finished (FIG. 21-48). The cornerstone was laid in 1540, but construction did not begin until 1568, after a period of fund-raising. Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (Paul III's namesake and grandson) donated to the project in 1561 and selected Vignola as architect. After Vignola died in 1573, Giacomo della Porta finished the dome and façade to his own designs. Il Gesù was admirably suited for congregational worship. Vignola designed a wide, barrel-vaulted nave with shallow, connected side chapels. There are no aisles and only truncated transepts contained within the line of the outer walls—enabling all worshipers to gather in the central space. A single, huge apse and dome over the crossing directed attention to the altar. The design also allows the building to fit compactly into a city block—a requirement that now often overrode the desire to orient a church along an east-west axis. The symmetrical façade, in Vignola's original design as well as della Porta's variation on it, emphasized the central portal with Classical pilasters, engaged columns and pediments, and volutes scrolling out laterally to hide the buttresses of the central vault and link the tall central section with the lower sides. As finally built by Giacomo della Porta, the façade design had significant influence well into the next century. The early Renaissance grid of Classical pilasters and entablatures was abandoned for a two-story design that coordinates paired columns or pilasters, aligned vertically to tie together the two stories of the central block, which corresponds with the nave elevation. The main entrance, with its central portal aligned with a tall upper-story window, became the focus of the composition. Centrally aligned pediments break into the level above, leading the eye upward to the cartouches with coats of a
High Renaissance
the artistic style of early 16th century painting in Florence and Rome. Italian art between mid 1480s and the 1520s. Italy is plagued by political turmoil and religious descent.
Michelangelo PIETÀ 21-14
1500. Marble, height 5'8½" (1.74 m). St. Peter's, Vatican, Rome. Michelangelo's major early work at the turn of the century was a marble sculpture of the PIETÀ commissioned by a French cardinal and installed as a tomb monument in Old St. Peter's (FIG. 21-14). The theme of the pietà (in which the Virgin supports and mourns the dead Jesus in her lap), long popular in northern Europe (SEE Figure 18-24), was an unusual theme in Italy at the time. Michelangelo traveled to the marble quarries at Carrara in central Italy to select the block from which to make this large work, a practice he was to continue for nearly all his sculpture. The choice of stone was important to him because he envisioned his sculpture as already existing within the marble, needing only his tools to set it free. Michelangelo was a poet as well as an artist and later wrote in his Sonnet 15: "The greatest artist has no conception which a single block of marble does not potentially contain within its mass, but only a hand obedient to the mind can penetrate to this image." Michelangelo's Virgin is a young woman of heroic stature holding the unnaturally smaller, lifeless body of her grown son. Inconsistencies of scale and age are forgotten, however, when contemplating the sweetness of expression, technical virtuosity of the carving, and smooth interplay of the forms. Michelangelo's compelling vision of beauty was meant to be seen up close so that the viewer can look directly into Jesus's face. The 25-year-old artist is said to have slipped into the church at night to sign the statue on a strap across the Virgin's breast after it was finished, answering directly questions that had come up about the identity of its creator.
Michelangelo DAVID
1501-1504. Marble, height 17′ (5.18 m) without pedestal. Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence. Michelangelo's most famous sculpture was cut from an 18-foot-tall marble block. The sculptor began with a small model in wax, then sketched the contours of the figure as they would appear from the front on one face of the marble. According to his friend and biographer Vasari, Michelangelo then chiseled in from the drawn-on surface, as if making a figure in very high relief. The completed statue took four days to move on tree-trunk rollers down the narrow streets of Florence from the cathedral workshop to its location outside the Palazzo della Signoria (SEE FIG. 18-2). In 1504, the Florentines gilded the tree stump and added a gilded wreath to the head and a belt of 28 gilt-bronze leaves, since removed. In 1873, the statue was replaced by a copy, and the original was moved into the museum of the Florence Academy. In 1501, Michelangelo accepted a Florentine commission for a statue of the biblical hero DAVID (FIG. 21-15) to be placed high atop a buttress of the cathedral. But when it was finished in 1504, the David was so admired that the city council instead placed it in the principal city square, next to the Palazzo della Signoria (SEE Figure 18-2), the seat of Florence's government. There it stood as a reminder of Florence's republican status, which was briefly reinstated after the expulsion of the powerful Medici oligarchy in 1494. Although in its muscular nudity Michelangelo's David embodies the antique ideal of the athletic male nude, the emotional power of its expression and its concentrated gaze are entirely new. Unlike Donatello's bronze David (SEE FIG. 20-14), this is not a triumphant hero with the trophy head of the giant Goliath already under his feet. Slingshot over his shoulder and a rock in his right hand, Michelangelo's David knits his brow and stares into space, seemingly preparing himself psychologically for the danger ahead, a mere youth confronting a gigantic experienced warrior. This David stands for the supremacy of right over might—a perfect emblem for the Florentines, who had recently fought the forces of Milan, Siena, and Pisa and still faced political and military pressure.
Raphael THE SMALL COWPER MADONNA 21-6
1505. Oil on wood panel, 23⅜ x 17⅜" (59.5 x 44.1 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Widener Collection (1942.9.57). In the distance on a hilltop, Raphael has painted a scene he knew well from his childhood, the domed church of San Bernardino, 2 miles outside Urbino. The church contains the tombs of dukes of Urbino, Federico and Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, along with their wives (see fig. 20-39). Donato Bramante, whose architecture was key in establishing the High Renaissance style, may have designed the church. In about 1505—while Leonardo was working on the Mona Lisa—Raphael (Raffaello Santi or Sanzio, 1483-1520) arrived in Florence from his native Urbino after studying in Perugia with the city's leading artist, Perugino (SEE FIG. 20-20A). Raphael quickly became successful in Florence, especially with small, polished paintings of the Virgin and Child, such as THE SMALL COWPER MADONNA (named for a modern owner) of about 1505 (FIG. 21-6). Already a superb painter technically, the youthful Raphael shows his indebtedness to his teacher in the delicate tilt of the figures' heads, the brilliant tonalities, and the pervasive sense of serenity. But Leonardo's impact is also evident here in the simple grandeur of the monumental shapes, the pyramidal composition activated by the spiraling movement of the child, and the draperies that cling to the Virgin's substantial form.
Giorgione THE TEMPEST 21-26
1506. Oil on canvas, 32 x 28¾" (82 x 73 cm). Galleria dell'Accademia, Venice. One of Giorgione's most compelling works, called today THE TEMPEST (FIG. 21-26), was painted shortly before his death, potentially in response to personal, private impulses—as with many modern artists—rather than to fulfill an external commission. Simply trying to understand what is happening in this enigmatic picture piques our interest. At the right, a woman is seated on the ground, nude except for the end of a long white cloth thrown over her shoulders. Her nudity seems maternal, her sensuality generative rather than erotic, as she nurses the baby protectively and lovingly embraced at her side. Across the dark, rocky edge of her elevated perch stands a mysterious man, variously interpreted as a German mercenary soldier and as an urban dandy wandering in the country. His shadowed head turns in the direction of the woman, but he only appears to have paused for a moment before turning back toward the viewer or resuming his journey along the path. X-rays of the painting show that Giorgione altered the composition while he was still working on the painting—the man replaced a second nude woman who was bathing. Between the figures, a spring gushes to feed a lake surrounded by substantial houses, and in the far distance a bolt of lightning splits the darkening sky. Indeed, the artist's attention seems focused as much on the landscape and the unruly elements of nature as on the figures posed within it. Some interpreters have seen references to the Classical elements of water, earth, air, and fire in the lake, the verdant ground, the billowing clouds, and the lightning bolt.
Raphael MADONNA OF THE GOLDFINCH (MADONNA DEL CARDELLINO) 21-7
1506. Oil on panel, 42 x 29½" (106.7 x 74.9 cm). Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. The vibrant colors of this important work were revealed in the course of a careful, ten-year restoration completed in 2008. Raphael included the young John the Baptist in other Madonnas from this period. VIDEO:
Raphael AGNELO DONI AND MADDALENA STROZZI 21.8
1506. Oil on wood panel, each 24½ x 17¼" (63 x 45 cm). Palazzo Pitti, Florence. These portraits were not the only paintings commissioned by Agnelo Doni to commemorate his upwardly mobile marriage alliance with Maddalena Strozzi. He ordered a tondo portraying the Holy Family from rival artist Michelangelo (see "Closer Look"). Vasari reports that although the original price for that painting was set at 70 ducats, Doni only sent Michelangelo 40. In order to obtain his painting, the patron eventually had to pay the artist double the original price—140 ducats. At the same time as he was producing engaging images of elegant Madonnas, Raphael was also painting flawlessly executed portraits of prosperous Florentine patrons like the 30-year-old cloth merchant Agnelo Doni, who commissioned pendant portraits (FIG. 21-8) to commemorate his marriage in 1504 to Maddalena Strozzi, the 15-year-old daughter of a powerful banking family. As Piero della Francesca had done in his portraits of Battista Sforza and Federico da Montefeltro (SEE FIG. 20-39), Raphael silhouettes Maddalena and Agnelo against a meticulously described panoramic landscape. But unlike his predecessors, Raphael turned his subjects to address the viewer. Agnelo is commanding but casual, leaning his arm on a balustrade to add three-dimensionality to his posture. Maddalena's pose imitates Leonardo's innovative presentation of his subject in the Mona Lisa (SEE FIG. 21-1), which Raphael had obviously seen in progress. But with Maddalena there is no sense of mystery, indeed little psychological presence, and Raphael follows tradition in emphasizing the sumptuousness of her clothing and making ostentatious display of her jewelry. The wisps of hair that escape from her sculpted coiffure are the only hint of human vulnerability.
Michelangelo SISTINE CHAPEL CEILING WITH DIAGRAM IDENTIFYING SCENES 21-17
1508-1512. Fresco. In Michelangelo's design, an illusionistic marble architecture establishes a framework for the figures and narrative scenes on the vault of the chapel (FIG. 21-17). Running completely around the ceiling is a painted cornice with projections supported by pilasters decorated with "sculptured" putti. Between the pilasters are figures of prophets and sibyls (female seers from the Classical world) who were believed to have foretold Jesus's birth. Seated on the fictive cornice are heroic figures of nude young men called ignudi (singular, ignudo), holding sashes attached to large gold medallions. Rising behind the ignudi, shallow bands of fictive stone span the center of the ceiling and divide it into nine compartments containing successive scenes from Genesis—recounting the Creation, the Fall, and the Flood—beginning over the altar and ending near the chapel entrance. God's earliest acts of creation are therefore closest to the altar, the Creation of Eve at the center of the ceiling, followed by the imperfect actions of humanity: Temptation, Fall, Expulsion from Paradise, and God's eventual destruction of all people except Noah and his family by the Flood. The eight triangular spandrels over the windows, as well as the lunettes crowning them, contain paintings of the ancestors of Jesus.
Giorgione or Titian THE PASTORAL CONCERT OR ALLEGORY ON THE INVENTION OF PASTORAL POETRY 21-27
1510. Oil on canvas, 41¼ x 54¾" (105 x 136.5 cm). Musée du Louvre, Paris. For a few years before Giorgione's untimely death in 1510, he was associated with Tiziano Vecellio, a painter better known today as Titian (c. 1488-1576). The painting known as THE PASTORAL CONCERT (FIG. 21-27) has been attributed to both of them, although scholarly opinion today favors Titian. As in Giorgione's The Tempest, the idyllic landscape, here bathed in golden, hazy, late-afternoon sunlight, seems to be one of the main subjects of the painting. In this mythic world, two men—an aristocratic musician in rich red silks and a barefoot, singing peasant in homespun cloth—turn toward each other, seemingly unaware of the two naked women in front of them. One woman plays a pipe and the other pours water into a well; the white drapery sliding to the ground enhances rather than hides their nudity. Perhaps they are the musicians' muses. Behind the figures, the sunlight illuminates another shepherd and his animals near lush woodland. The painting evokes a golden age of love and innocence recalled in ancient Roman and Italian Renaissance pastoral poetry. In fact, the painting is now interpreted as an allegory on the invention of poetry. Both artists were renowned for painting sensuous female nudes whose bodies seem to glow with an incandescent light, inspired by flesh and blood as much as any source from poetry or art.
Michelangelo CREATION OF ADAM, SISTINE CHAPEL CEILING
1511-1512. Fresco, 9'2" x 18'8" (2.8 x 5.7 m). Perhaps the most familiar scene on the ceiling is the CREATION OF ADAM (FIG. 21-18), where Michelangelo captures the moment when God charges the languorous Adam—in a pose adapted from the Roman river-god type—with the spark of life. As if to echo the biblical text, Adam's heroic body, outstretched arm, and profile almost mirror those of God, in whose image he has been created. Emerging under God's other arm and looking across him in the direction of her future mate is the robust and energetic figure of Eve before her creation.
Raphael and assistants CARTOON FOR TAPESTRY PORTRAYING CHRIST'S CHARGE TO PETER 21-12
1515-1516. Distemper on paper (now transferred to canvas), 11'1" x 17'4" (3.4 x 5.3 m). Lent by Her Majesty the Queen to the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. In the final cartoon (FIG. 21-12), Raphael changes Christ's gesture so that he addresses the kneeling Peter specifically rather than the whole apostolic group; for the patron, this would be an important detail since papal power rested in the belief that Christ had transferred authority to Peter, who was considered the first pope, with subsequent popes inheriting this authority in unbroken succession. Comparison of drawing and cartoon also reveals an important aspect of the design process. The cartoon reverses the figural arrangement of the drawing because in the production process the tapestry would be woven from the back—so the weavers would need to follow a reversed version of the original drawing in order to come out with the intended orientation for the resulting tapestry (FIG. 21-13). Comparison of cartoon and tapestry also indicates that the weavers were not required to follow their models slavishly. They embellished the costume of Christ, perhaps in an attempt to ensure that the viewer's attention would be immediately drawn to this most important figure in the scene.
Raphael STUDY FOR CHRIST'S CHARGE TO PETER 21-11
1515. Red chalk. Royal Library, Windsor Castle, England. The process of creation, from design through production, can be charted by examining the tapestry portraying Christ's Charge to Peter (John 21:15-17; Matthew 16:17-19) at three stages in its development. We have Raphael's preliminary drawing (FIG. 21-11), where models—it is tempting to see these as Raphael's assistants, stripped to their underwear to help the master work out his composition—are posed to enact the moment when Jesus addresses his apostles. This is a preliminary idea for the pose of Christ.
Titian PESARO MADONNA 21-28
1519-1526. Oil on canvas, 16' x 8'10" (4.9 x 2.7 m). Side-aisle altarpiece, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice. In 1519, Jacopo Pesaro, commander of the papal fleet that had defeated the Turks in 1502, commissioned Titian to commemorate the victory in a votive altarpiece for a side-aisle chapel in the Franciscan church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice. Titian worked on the painting for seven years and changed the concept three times before he finally came up with a revolutionary composition—one that complemented the viewer's approach from the left. He created an asymmetrical setting of huge columns on high bases soaring right out of the frame (FIG. 21-28). Into this architectural setting, he placed the Virgin and Child on a high throne at one side and arranged saints and the Pesaro family below on a diagonal axis, crossing at the central figure of St. Peter (a reminder of Jacopo's role as head of the papal forces in 1502). The red of Francesco Pesaro's brocade garment and of the banner diagonally across sets up a contrast of primary colors against St. Peter's blue tunic and yellow mantle and the red and blue draperies of the Virgin. St. Maurice (behind the kneeling Jacopo at the left) holds the banner with the papal arms, and a cowering Turkish captive reminds the viewer of the Christian victory. A youth turning to meet our gaze at lower right guarantees our engagement, and light floods in from above, illuminating not only this and other faces, but also the great columns, where putti in the clouds carry a cross. Titian was famous for his mastery of light and color, but this altarpiece demonstrates that he also could draw and model as solidly as any Florentine. The perfectly balanced composition, built on color and diagonals instead of a vertical and horizontal grid, looks forward to the art of the seventeenth century.
Giulio Romano COURTYARD FAÇADE, PALAZZO DEL TÈ, MANTUA 21-22
1527-1534. In Mantua, Federigo II Gonzaga (ruled 1519-1540) continued the family tradition of patronage when, in 1524, he lured a Roman follower of Raphael, Giulio Romano (c. 1499-1546), to build him a pleasure palace. Indeed, the PALAZZO DEL TE (FIG. 21-22) devoted more space to gardens, pools, and stables than to rooms for residential living. Since Federigo and his well-educated friends would have known Classical orders and proportions, they could appreciate the playfulness with which they are used here. The building is full of visual jokes, such as lintels masquerading as arches and triglyphs that slip sloppily out of place. Like the similar, if more sober, subversions of Classical architectural decorum in Michelangelo's contemporary Laurentian Library (SEE Figure 21-20), the Palazzo del Te's sophisticated humor and exquisite craft have been seen as a precursor to Mannerism or as a manifestation of Mannerism itself.
Titian ISABELLA D'ESTE 21-29
1534-1536. Oil on canvas, 40⅛ x 253⁄16 (102 x 64.1 cm). Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. In 1529, Titian, who was well known outside Venice, began a long professional relationship with Emperor Charles V, who vowed to let no one else paint his portrait and ennobled Titian in 1533. The next year Titian was commissioned to paint a portrait of the marchesa of Mantua, Isabella d'Este (1474-1539; FIG. 21-29), a patron of painters, musicians, composers, writers, and literary scholars. Married to Francesco II Gonzaga at age 15, she had great wealth and a brilliant mind that made her a successful diplomat and administrator. A true Renaissance woman, she was an avid collector of manuscripts and books and sponsored the publication of an edition of Virgil while still in her twenties. She also collected ancient art and objects, as well as works by contemporary Italian artists such as Mantegna, Leonardo, Perugino, Correggio, and Titian. Her study in her Mantuan palace was a veritable museum. The walls above the storage and display cabinets were painted with frescos by Mantegna, and the carved wood ceiling was covered with mottoes and visual references to Isabella's literary interests. Isabella was past 60 when Titian portrayed her in 1534-1536, but she asked to appear as she had in her twenties. Titian was able to satisfy her wish by referring to an early portrait by another artist, but he also conveyed the mature Isabella's strength, self-confidence, and energy. No photograph can convey the vibrancy of Titian's paint surfaces, which he built up in layers of pure colors, chiefly red, white, yellow, and black, on his canvases. A recent scientific study of Titian's paintings revealed that he ground his pigments much finer than had earlier, wood-panel painters. The complicated process by which he produced many of his works began with a charcoal drawing on the prime coat of lead white that was used to seal the pores and smooth the surface of the rather coarse Venetian canvas. The artist then built up the forms with fine glazes of different colors, sometimes in as many as 15 layers. Titian had the advantage of working in Venice, the first place to have professional retail "color sellers." These merchants produced a wide ra
Parmigianino MADONNA OF THE LONG NECK 21-39
1534-1540. Oil on wood panel, 7'1" x 4'4" (2.16 x 1.32 m). Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Art historian Elizabeth Cropper has noted the visual relationship between the shape of the swelling, tapering-necked, ovoid vessel held by the figure at far left and the form of the figure of the Virgin herself, and has proposed that this visual analogy references a sixteenth-century literary conceit that related ideal beauty in women to the slender necks and swelling shapes of antique vessels. Left unfinished at the time of his early death is a disconcerting painting known as the MADONNA OF THE LONG NECK (FIG. 21-39). The unnaturally proportioned figure of Mary, whose massive legs and lower torso contrast with her narrow shoulders and long neck and fingers, is presumably seated on a throne, but there is no seat in sight. The languid expanse of the sleeping child recalls the pose of the ashen Christ in a pietà; indeed, there is more than a passing resemblance here to Michelangelo's famous sculpture in the Vatican, even to the inclusion of a diagonal band across the Virgin's chest (SEE Figure 21-14). The plunge into a deep background to the right reveals a startlingly small St. Jerome, who unrolls a scroll in front of huge, white columns from what was to be a temple in the unfinished background, whereas at the left a crowded mass of blushing boys blocks any view into the background. Like Pontormo, Parmigianino presents a well-known image in a challenging manner calculated to intrigue viewers.
Michelangelo LAST JUDGMENT, SISTINE CHAPEL 21-46
1536-1541. Fresco, 48 x 44' (14.6 x 13.4 m). Dark, rectangular patches intentionally left by recent restorers (visible, for example, in the upper left and right corners) contrast with the vibrant colors of the chapel's frescos. These dark areas show just how dirty the walls had become over the centuries before their cleaning. In his early sixties, Michelangelo complained bitterly of feeling old, but he nonetheless undertook the important and demanding task of painting the LAST JUDGMENT on the 48-foot-high end wall above the Sistine Chapel altar between 1536 and 1541 (FIG. 21-46). Abandoning the clearly organized medieval conception of the Last Judgment, in which the saved are neatly separated from the damned, Michelangelo painted a writhing swarm of resurrected humanity. At left, the dead are dragged from their graves and pushed up into a vortex of figures around Christ, who wields his arm like a sword of justice. The shrinking Virgin under Christ's raised right arm represents a change from Gothic tradition, where she had sat enthroned beside, and equal in size to, her son. To the right of Christ's feet is St. Bartholomew, who was martyred by being skinned alive. He holds his flayed skin, and Michelangelo seems to have painted his own distorted features on the skin's face. Despite the efforts of several saints to save them, the damned are plunged toward hell on the right, leaving the elect and still-unjudged in a dazed state. On the lowest level of the mural, right above the altar, is the gaping, fiery entrance to hell, toward which Charon, the ferryman of the dead to the underworld, propels his craft. The painting was long interpreted as a grim and constant reminder to celebrants of the Mass—the pope and his cardinals—that ultimately they too would face stern judgment at the end of time. Conservative clergy criticized it for its nudity, and after Michelangelo's death they ordered bits of drapery to be added by artist Daniele da Volterra to conceal the offending areas, earning Daniele the unfortunate nickname "Il Braghettone" ("breeches painter").
Titian "VENUS" OF URBINO 21-30
1538. Oil on canvas, 3'11" x 5'5" (1.19 x 1.65 m). Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Paintings of nude, reclining women became especially popular in court circles, where men could appreciate the "Venuses" under the cloak of respectable Classical mythology. Seemingly typical of such paintings is the "VENUS" Titian delivered to Guidobaldo della Rovere, duke of Urbino, in spring 1538 (FIG. 21-30). Here, we seem to see a beautiful Venetian courtesan with deliberately provocative gestures, stretching languidly on her couch in a spacious palace, her glowing flesh and golden hair set off by white sheets and pillows. But for its original audience, art historian Rona Goffen has argued, the painting was more about marriage than mythology or seductiveness. The multiple matrimonial references in this work include the pair of cassoni (SEE FIG. 20-30) where servants are removing or storing the woman's clothing in the background, the bridal symbolism of the myrtle and roses she holds in her hand, and even the spaniel snoozing at her feet—a traditional symbol of fidelity and domesticity, especially when sleeping so peacefully. Titian's picture might be associated with Duke Guidobaldo's marriage in 1534 to the 10-year-old Giulia Verano. Four years later, when this painting arrived, she would have been considered an adult rather than a child bride. It seems to represent neither a Roman goddess nor a Venetian courtesan, but a bride welcoming her husband into their lavish bedroom.
Benvenuto Cellini SALTCELLAR OF KING FRANCIS I OF FRANCE 21-44
1540-1543. Gold and enamel, 10½ x 13⅛" (26.67 x 33.34 cm). Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. The Florentine goldsmith and sculptor Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571), who wrote a dramatic—and scandalous—autobiography and a practical handbook for artists, worked in the French court at Fontainebleau. There he made the famous SALTCELLAR OF KING FRANCIS I (FIG. 21-44), a table accessory transformed into an elegant sculptural ornament by fanciful imagery and superb execution. In gold and enamel, the Roman sea god Neptune, representing the source of salt, sits next to a tiny, boat-shaped container for the seasoning, while a personification of Earth guards the plant-derived pepper contained in the triumphal arch to her right. Representations of the seasons and the times of day on the base refer to both daily meal schedules and festive seasonal celebrations. The two main figures lean away from each other at impossible angles yet are connected and visually balanced by glance, gestures, and coordinated poses—mirroring each other with one bent and one straight leg. Their supple, elongated bodies and small heads reflect the Mannerist conventions of artists like Parmigianino (SEE Figure 21-39). Cellini wrote, "I represented the Sea and the Land, both seated, with their legs intertwined just as some branches of the sea run into the land and the land juts into the sea..." (Cellini, Autobiography, translated by G. Bull, p. 291).
Bronzino PORTRAIT OF ELEONORA OF TOLEDO AND HER SON GIOVANNI DE' MEDICI 21-40
1545. Oil on wood panel, 45¼ x 37¾" (115 x 96 cm). Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Typical is an elegantly restrained state portrait of 1545 portraying Cosimo's wife, ELEONORA OF TOLEDO (1522-1562), and their second son, Giovanni de' Medici (FIG. 21-40). Bronzino characteristically portrays this mother and son as aloof and self-assured, their class and connection much more prominent than any sense of individual likeness or personality. This double portrait is an iconic embodiment of dynastic power and an assurance of Medici succession. Giovanni, however, did not succeed his father as duke—that path was taken by his elder brother Francesco. Instead he pursued a fast-tracked career in the Church. Already archbishop of Pisa as a teenager, he became a cardinal in 1560 at age 17, only two years before both he and his mother died of malaria.
Sofonisba Anguissola SELF-PORTRAIT 21-42
1556. Varnished watercolor on parchment, 3¼ x 2½" (8.3 x 6.4 cm). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Emma F. Munroe Fund 60.155. Northern Italy, more than any other part of the peninsula, produced a number of gifted women artists. In the latter half of the sixteenth century, Bologna, for example, boasted some two dozen women painters and sculptors, as well as a number of learned women who lectured at the university. Sofonisba Anguissola (c. 1532-1625), born into a noble family in Cremona (between Bologna and Milan), was unusual in that she was not the daughter of an artist. Her father gave all his children a humanistic education and encouraged them to pursue careers in literature, music, and especially painting. He consulted Michelangelo about his daughter's artistic talents in 1557, asking for a drawing that she might copy and return to be critiqued. Michelangelo evidently obliged, because her father wrote an enthusiastic letter of thanks. Anguissola was a gifted portrait painter who also created miniatures, an important aspect of portraiture in the sixteenth century, when people had few means of recording the features of a lover, friend, or family member. Anguissola painted a miniature SELF-PORTRAIT holding a medallion, the border of which spells out her name and hometown, Cremona (FIG. 21-42). The interlaced letters at the center of the medallion pose a riddle; they seem to form a monogram with the first letters of her sisters' names: Minerva, Europa, Elena. Such names are further evidence of the Anguissola family's enthusiasm for the Classics. In 1560, Anguissola accepted the invitation of the queen of Spain to become a lady-in-waiting and court painter, a post she held for 20 years. Unfortunately, most of her Spanish works were lost in a seventeenth-century palace fire, but a 1582 Spanish inventory described her as the best portrait painter of the age—extraordinary praise in a court that patronized Titian. After her years at court, she retired to Spanish-controlled Sicily, where she died in her nineties. Anthony van Dyck met her in Palermo in 1624, where he sketched her and claimed that she was then 96 years old. He wrote that she advised him on positioning the light for her portrait, asking that it not be
Giambologna THE CAPTURE OF A SABINE WOMAN 21-45
1581-1582. Marble, height 13′6″ (4.1 m). Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence. In the second half of the sixteenth century, the most influential sculptor in Italy was probably Jean Boulogne, better known by his Italian names, Giovanni Bologna or Giambologna (1529-1608). Born in Flanders, he settled during the 1550s in Florence, where he worked at the court of Duke Cosimo I de' Medici. He not only influenced and trained a later generation of Italian sculptors, he also spread the Mannerist style to the north through artists who came to study his work. 684 Although Giambologna's prodigious artistic output included elaborate fountains and many works in bronze—both imposing public monuments and exquisitely rendered statuettes—his most famous sculpture is a monumental marble carving now known as THE CAPTURE OF A SABINE WOMAN (FIG. 21-45), a title given to it by a member of the Florentine Academy of Design after it was finished. VIDEO:
Lavinia Fontana NOLI ME TANGERE 21-43
1581. Oil on canvas, 47⅜ x 36⅝" (120.3 x 93 cm). Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Bolognese artist Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614) learned to paint from her father. By the 1570s her success was so well rewarded that her husband, the painter Gian Paolo Zappi, gave up his own painting career to care for their large family and help his wife with the technical aspects of her work, such as framing. In 1603, Fontana moved to Rome as an official painter to the papal court. She also soon came to the attention of the Habsburgs, who became major patrons. While still in her twenties, Fontana painted a NOLI ME TANGERE (FIG. 21-43), where Christ reveals himself for the first time to Mary Magdalen following his Resurrection, warning her not to touch him (John 20:17). Christ's broad-brimmed hat and spade refer to the passage in John's Gospel claiming that Mary Magdalen at first thought Christ was the gardener. In the middle distance Fontana portrays a second version of the Resurrection, where women followers of Christ discover an angel in his empty tomb. This secondary scene's dizzying diagonal plunge into depth is a typical feature of late Mannerist painting in Italy, as are the affected pose of the foreground Christ and the elongated proportions of Mary Magdalen.
Palladio EXTERIOR VIEW OF VILLA ROTONDA, VICENZA 21-36
After its purchase in 1591 by the Capra family, the Villa Rotonda became known as the Villa Capra. Palladio's versatility was already apparent in numerous villas built early in his career. In the 1560s, he started his most famous and influential villa just outside Vicenza (FIGS. 21-35, 21-36). Although villas were working farms, Palladio designed this one in part as a retreat—literally a party house. To maximize vistas of the countryside, he placed a porch elevated at the top of a wide staircase on each face of the building. The main living quarters are on this second level, and the lower level is reserved for the kitchen, storage, and other utility rooms. Upon its completion in 1569, the building was dubbed the VILLA ROTONDA because it had been inspired by another round building, the Roman Pantheon. The plan shows the geometric clarity of Palladio's conception: a circle inscribed in a small square inside a larger square, with symmetrical rectangular compartments and identical rectangular projections from each of its faces. The use of a central dome on a domestic building was a daring innovation that effectively secularized the dome and initiated what was to become a long tradition of domed country houses, particularly in England and the United States.
Pontormo DEPOSITION 21-38
Altarpiece in the Capponi Chapel, church of Santa Felicità, Florence. 1525-1528. Oil and tempera on wood panel, 10'3" x 6'4" (3.1 x 1.9 m). The dreamy-eyed male figure in the background shadows at upper right is a self-portrait by the artist. Pontormo's ambiguous composition in the DEPOSITION (FIG. 21-38) enhances the visionary quality of the altarpiece. The shadowy ground and cloudy sky give no sense of a specific location and little sense of grounding for the figures. Some press forward into the viewer's space, while others seem to levitate or stand precariously on tiptoe. Pontormo chose a moment just after Jesus's removal from the cross, when the youths who have lowered him pause to regain their hold on the corpse, which recalls Michelangelo's Vatican Pietà (SEE Figure 21-14). Odd poses and drastic shifts in scale charge the scene emotionally, but perhaps most striking is the use of strange colors in unusual combinations—baby blue and pink with accents of olive green, yellow, and scarlet. The overall tone of the picture is set by the unstable youth crouching in the foreground, whose skintight bright pink shirt is shaded in iridescent, pale gray-blue, and whose anxious expression projects out of the painting, directly at the viewer.
NAVE, CHURCH OF SAN GIORGIO MAGGIORE, VENICE 21-34
Begun 1566. Tintoretto's Last Supper (not visible) hangs to the left of the altar. The interior of San Giorgio (FIG. 21-34) is a fine example of Palladio's harmoniously balanced geometry, expressed here in strong verticals and powerfully opened arches. The tall engaged columns and shorter pilasters of the nave arcade piers echo the two levels of orders on the façade, helping to unify the building's exterior and interior. VIDEO:
Properzia de' Rossi JOSEPH AND POTIPHAR'S WIFE 21-25
Cathedral of San Petronio, Bologna. 1525-1526. Marble, 1'9" x 1'11" (54 x 58 cm). Museo de San Petronio, Bologna. Very few women had the opportunity to become sculptors. Properzia de' Rossi (c. 1490-1529/1530), who lived in Bologna, was an exception. She mastered many arts, including engraving, and was famous for her miniature sculptures, including an entire Last Supper carved on a peach pit. She carved several pieces in marble—two sibyls, two angels, and this relief of JOSEPH AND POTIPHAR'S WIFE—for the Cathedral of San Petronio in Bologna (FIG. 21-25). According to Vasari, it was inspired by Properzia's own love for a young man, which she got over by carving this panel. Joseph escapes, running, as the partially clad seductress snatches at his cloak. Properzia is the only woman Vasari included in the 1550 edition of Lives of the Artists; he wrote that a rival male sculptor prevented her from being paid fairly for this piece and from securing additional commissions.
CAPPONI CHAPEL, CHURCH OF SANTA FELICITÀ, FLORENCE 21-37
Chapel by Filippo Brunelleschi for the Barbadori family, 1419-1423; acquired by the Capponi family, who ordered paintings by Pontormo, 1525-1528. The frescos and altarpiece painted between 1525 and 1528 by Jacopo Carucci da Pontormo (1494-1557) for the 100-year-old CAPPONI CHAPEL in the church of Santa Felicità in Florence (FIG. 21-37) bear the hallmarks of early Mannerist painting. Open on two sides, Brunelleschi's chapel forms an interior loggia in which frescos on the right-hand wall depict the Annunciation, and tondi (circular paintings) on the pendentives under the cupola represent the four evangelists. In the Annunciation the Virgin accepts the angel's message but also seems moved by the adjacent vision of her future sorrow, as she turns to see her son's body lowered from the cross in the altarpiece on the adjoining wall.
Tintoretto THE LAST SUPPER 21-32
Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice. 1592-1594. Oil on canvas, 12' x 18'8" (3.7 x 5.7 m). Tintoretto, who had a large workshop, often developed a composition by creating a small-scale model like a miniature stage set, which he populated with wax figures. He then adjusted the positions of the figures and the lighting until he was satisfied with the entire scene. Using a grid of horizontal and vertical threads placed in front of this model, he could easily sketch the composition onto squared paper for his assistants to copy onto a large canvas. His assistants also primed the canvas, blocking in the areas of dark and light, before the artist himself, free to concentrate on the most difficult passages, finished the painting. This efficient working method allowed Tintoretto to produce a large number of paintings in all sizes. Jacopo Robusti (1518-1594), called Tintoretto ("Little Dyer," because his father was a dyer), carried Venetian painting in another direction. Tintoretto's goal, declared on a sign in his studio, was to combine Titian's coloring with the drawing of Michelangelo. His large painting of THE LAST SUPPER (FIG. 21-32) for the choir of Palladio's church of San Giorgio Maggiore (SEE Figure 21-33) is quite different from Leonardo da Vinci's painting of the same subject almost a century earlier (SEE Figure 21-4). Instead of Leonardo's frontal view of a closed and logical space with massive figures reacting in individual ways to Jesus's statement, Tintoretto views the scene from a corner, with the vanishing point on a high horizon line at far right. The table, coffered ceiling, and inlaid floor all seem to plunge dramatically into the distance. The figures, although still large bodies modeled by flowing draperies, turn and move in a continuous serpentine line that unites apostles, servants, and angels. Tintoretto used two internal light sources: one real, the other supernatural. Over the near end of the table, light streams from the oil lamp flaring exuberantly, with angels swirling out from the flame and smoke. A second light emanates from Jesus himself and is repeated in the glow of the apostles' haloes. The intensely spiritual, otherworldly mood is enhanced by deep colors flashed with dazzling hi
Michelangelo VESTIBULE OF THE LAURENTIAN LIBRARY 21-20
Church of San Lorenzo, Florence. Begun 1524; stairway designed 1550s. Concurrent with work on the Medici tombs was the construction of a new library at San Lorenzo. The idea for the library belongs to Cardinal Giulio de' Medici and dates to 1519, but it was only after he was elected Pope Clement VII in 1523 that the money became available to realize it. Michelangelo was commissioned to design and also supervise construction of the new VESTIBULE (FIG. 21-20) and reading room and to spare no expense in making them both grand and ambitious. The pope paid keen attention to the library's progress—not, he said, to verify the quality of the design, but because the project had a special interest for him. using stylized architectural elements carved in dark gray pietra serena, set against and within a contrasting white wall. However, Michelangelo plays with the Classical architectural etiquette that Brunelleschi had used to create such clarity, harmony, and balance in the nave. In Michelangelo's vestibule, chunky columns are recessed into rectangular wall niches that can barely contain them. They are crowded and overlapped by the aggressive lateral extension of the pediment over the door. The door itself is broken into parts, sides jutting forward as fluted pilasters that are then partially obscured by the frame around the opening. The three flights of stairs leading up to the reading room almost fill the vestibule, and the central stairs cascade forward forcefully toward visitors, who are hardly encouraged to go against the flow and step up. Through their playfulness, these creative combinations of architectural forms draw attention to themselves and their design rather than the function of the building itself or the comfortable accommodation of its users, prime characteristics of the Mannerist architecture then coming into fashion. Fearing for his life when ongoing political struggles flared up in Florence, Michelango returned to Rome in 1534 and settled permanently. He had left both the Medici Chapel and the library unfinished. In 1557, he sent a plaster model of the library staircase to Florence to ensure that its completion conformed to his design. In 1545, his students had assembled the tomb sculptures, inclu
Raphael THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS
Fresco in the Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican, Rome. c. 1510-1511. 19 x 27' (5.79 x 8.24 m). Raphael's most influential achievement in the papal rooms was The School of Athens, painted about 1510-1511 (see "Closer Look"). Here, the painter summarizes the ideals of the Renaissance papacy in a grand conception of harmoniously arranged forms in a rational space, as well as in the calm dignity of the figures that occupy it. VIDEO:
Veronese FEAST IN THE HOUSE OF LEVI 21-31
From the refectory of the monastery of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, Venice. 1573. Oil on canvas, 18'3" x 42' (5.56 x 12.8 m). Galleria dell'Accademia, Venice. Later sixteenth-century Venetian oil painters expanded upon the color, light, and expressively loose brushwork initiated by Giorgione and Titian. Paolo Caliari (1528-1588) took his nickname, "Veronese," from his hometown, Verona, but he worked mainly in Venice. His paintings are nearly synonymous today with the popular image of Venice as a splendid city of pleasure and pageantry sustained by a nominally republican government and great mercantile wealth. Veronese's elaborate architectural settings and costumes, still lifes, anecdotal vignettes, and other everyday details—often unconnected with the main subject—proved immensely appealing to Venetian patrons. One of Veronese's most famous works is a Last Supper that he renamed FEAST IN THE HOUSE OF LEVI (FIG. 21-31), painted in 1573 for the Dominican monastery of SS. Giovanni e Paolo. At first glance, the subject of the painting seems to be primarily its architectural setting and only secondarily Christ seated at the table. Symmetrically disposed, balustraded stairways lead to an enormous loggia framed by colossal arches, beyond which sits an imaginary city of white marble. Within this grand setting, lifelike figures in lavish costumes strike theatrical poses, surrounded by the sort of anecdotal details loved by the Venetians—such as parrots, monkeys, a man picking his teeth, and foreign soldiers—but the painting's monastic patrons were shocked. They saw these as profane distractions, especially in a representation of the Last Supper. As a result of the furor, Veronese was called before the Inquisition, a papal office that prosecuted heretics, to explain his painting. There he justified himself first by asserting that the picture actually depicted not the Last Supper, but rather the feast in the house of Simon, a small dinner held shortly before Jesus's final entry into Jerusalem. He also noted that artists customarily invent details in their pictures and that he had received a commission to paint the piece in his own way. His argument fell on unsympathetic ears, and he was ordered to change the painting. Later
Palladio PLAN OF VILLA ROTONDA, VICENZA 21-35
Italy. Begun 1560s. Palladio's versatility was already apparent in numerous villas built early in his career. In the 1560s, he started his most famous and influential villa just outside Vicenza (FIGS. 21-35, 21-36). Although villas were working farms, Palladio designed this one in part as a retreat—literally a party house. To maximize vistas of the countryside, he placed a porch elevated at the top of a wide staircase on each face of the building. The main living quarters are on this second level, and the lower level is reserved for the kitchen, storage, and other utility rooms. Upon its completion in 1569, the building was dubbed the VILLA ROTONDA because it had been inspired by another round building, the Roman Pantheon. The plan shows the geometric clarity of Palladio's conception: a circle inscribed in a small square inside a larger square, with symmetrical rectangular compartments and identical rectangular projections from each of its faces. The use of a central dome on a domestic building was a daring innovation that effectively secularized the dome and initiated what was to become a long tradition of domed country houses, particularly in England and the United States.
Correggio ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN 21-24
Main dome, interior, Parma Cathedral, Italy. c. 1526-1530. Fresco, diameter of base of dome approx. 36′ (11 m). At about the same time that Giulio Romano was building and decorating the Palazzo del Tè, in nearby Parma an equally skillful master, Correggio (Antonio Allegri da Correggio, c. 1489-1534), was creating similarly theatrical effects with dramatic foreshortening in Parma Cathedral. Correggio's great work, the ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN (FIG. 21-24), a fresco painted between about 1526 and 1530 in the cathedral's dome, distantly recalls the illusionism of Mantegna's ceiling in the Gonzaga Palace, but Correggio has also assimilated Leonardo da Vinci's use of sfumato and Raphael's idealism into his own style. Correggio's Assumption is a dazzling illusion—the architecture of the dome seems to dissolve and the forms seem to explode through the building, drawing viewers into the swirling vortex of saints and angels who rush upward amid billowing clouds to accompany the Virgin as she soars into heaven. Correggio's sensual rendering of the figures' flesh and clinging draperies contrasts with the spirituality of the theme (the miraculous transporting of the Virgin to heaven at the moment of her death). The viewer's strongest impression is of a powerful, upward-spiraling motion of alternating cool clouds and warm, alluring figures.
Bronzino ALLEGORY WITH VENUS AND CUPID 21-41
Mid-1540s. Oil on panel, 57½ x 46" (1.46 x 1.16 m). Bronzino's ALLEGORY WITH VENUS AND CUPID is one of the strangest paintings of the sixteenth century (FIG. 21-41). It contains all the formal, iconographical, and psychological characteristics of Mannerist art and could almost stand alone as a summary of the movement. Seven figures, three masks, and a dove interweave in an intricate, formal composition pressed claustrophobically into the foreground plane. Taken as individual images, the figures display the exaggerated poses, graceful forms, polished surfaces, and delicate colors that characterize Mannerist art. But a closer look into this composition uncovers disturbing erotic attachments and bizarre irregularities. The painting's complex allegory and relentless ambiguity probably delighted mid-sixteenth-century courtiers who enjoyed equally sophisticated wordplay and esoteric Classical references, but for us it defies easy explanation. Nothing is quite what it seems. Venus and her son Cupid engage in an unsettlingly lascivious dalliance, encouraged by a putto striding in from the right—representing Folly, Jest, or Playfulness—who is about to throw pink roses at them while stepping on a thorny branch that draws blood from his foot. Cupid gently kisses his mother and pinches her erect nipple while she snatches an arrow from his quiver, leading some scholars to suggest that the painting's title should be Venus Disarming Cupid. Venus holds the golden apple of discord given to her by Paris; her dove conforms to the shape of Cupid's foot without actually touching it, while a pair of masks lying at her feet reiterates the theme of duplicity. An old man, Time or Chronos, assisted by an outraged Truth or Night, pulls back a curtain to expose the couple. Lurking just behind Venus, a monstrous serpent—which has the upper body and head of a beautiful young girl and the legs and claws of a lion—crosses her hands to hold a honeycomb and the stinger at the end of her tail. This strange hybrid has been interpreted both as Fraud and Pleasure. In the shadows to the left, a pale and screaming man tearing at his hair has recently been identified as a victim of syphilis, which raged as an epidemic during this period. The pai
REFECTORY OF THE MONASTERY OF SANTA MARIA DELLE GRAZIE, SHOWING LEONARDO'S LAST SUPPER 21-5
Milan. Instead of painting in fresco, Leonardo devised an experimental technique for this mural. Hoping to achieve the freedom and flexibility of painting on wood panel, he worked directly on dry intonaco—a thin layer of smooth plaster—with an oil-and-tempera paint for which the formula is unknown. The result was disastrous. Within a short time, the painting began to deteriorate, and by the middle of the sixteenth century its figures could be seen only with difficulty. In the seventeenth century, the monks saw no harm in cutting a doorway through the lower center of the composition. The work has barely survived the intervening period, despite many attempts to halt its deterioration and restore its original appearance. It narrowly escaped complete destruction in World War II, when the refectory was bombed to rubble. The coats of arms at the top are those of patron Ludovico Sforza, duke of Milan (ruled 1494-1499), and his wife, Beatrice. On one level, Leonardo has painted a scene from a story—one that captures the individual reactions of the apostles to Jesus's announcement that one of them will betray him. Leonardo was an acute observer of human behavior, and his art captures human emotions with compelling immediacy. On another level, The Last Supper is a symbolic evocation of Jesus's coming sacrifice for the salvation of humankind, the foundation of the institution of the Mass. Breaking with traditional representations of the subject (SEE Figure 20-25) to create compositional clarity, balance, and cohesion, Leonardo placed the traitor Judas—clutching his money bags in the shadows—within the first triad to Jesus's right, along with the young John the Evangelist and the elderly Peter, rather than isolating Judas on the opposite side of the table. Judas, Peter, and John were each to play an essential role in Jesus's mission: Judas set in motion the events leading to Jesus's sacrifice; Peter led the Church after Jesus's death; and John, the visionary, foretold the Second Coming and the Last Judgment in the book of Revelation. The painting's careful geometry, the convergence of its perspective lines, the stability of its pyramidal forms, and Jesus's calm demeanor at the mathematical center of all the commotion,
Michelangelo TOMB OF GIULIANO DE' MEDICI WITH ALLEGORICAL FIGURES OF NIGHT AND DAY 21-19
New Sacristy (Medici Chapel), church of San Lorenzo, Florence. 1519-1534. Marble, height of seated figure approx. 5′10″ (1.8 m). After the Medici regained power in Florence in 1512 and Leo X (Giovanni de' Medici) succeeded Julius in 1513, Michelangelo became chief architect for Medici family projects at the church of San Lorenzo in Florence—including a new chapel for the tombs of Lorenzo the Magnificent, his brother Giuliano, and two younger dukes, also named Lorenzo and Giuliano, ordered in 1519 for the so-called New Sacristy (SEE Figure 20-8B). The older men's tombs were never built to Michelangelo's designs, but the unfinished tombs for the younger relatives were placed on opposite side walls (FIG. 21-19). Each of the two monuments consists of an idealized portrait of the deceased, who turns to face the family's unfinished ancestral tomb. The men are dressed in a sixteenth-century interpretation of Classical armor and seated in wall niches above pseudo-Classical sarcophagi. Balanced precariously atop the sarcophagi are male and female figures representing the times of day. Their positions would not seem so unsettling had reclining figures of river gods been installed below them, as originally planned, but even so there is a conspicuous tension here between the substantiality of the figures and the limitations imposed on them by their architectural surrounds. In the tomb illustrated here, Michelangelo represents Giuliano as the Active Life, and his sarcophagus figures are allegories of Night and Day. Night at left is accompanied by her symbols: a star and crescent moon on her tiara; poppies, which induce sleep; and an owl under the arch of her leg. The huge mask at her back may allude to Death, since Sleep and Death were said to be the children of Night. Some have seen in this mask that glares out at viewers in the chapel a self-portrait of the artist, serving both as signature and as a way of proclaiming his right to be here because of his long relationship with the family. On the other tomb, Lorenzo, representing the Contemplative Life, is supported by Dawn and Evening.
Palladio CHURCH OF SAN GIORGIO MAGGIORE, VENICE 21-33
Plan 1565; construction 1565-1580; façade 1597-1610; campanile 1791. Finished by Vincenzo Scamozzi following Palladio's design. By 1559, when he settled in Venice, Palladio was one of the foremost architects in Italy. In 1565, he undertook a major architectural commission: the monastery CHURCH OF SAN GIORGIO MAGGIORE (FIG. 21-33). His variation on the traditional Renaissance façade for a basilica—a wide lower level fronting the nave and side aisles, surmounted by a narrower front for the nave clerestory—creates the illusion of two temple fronts of different heights and widths, one set inside the other. At the center, colossal columns on high pedestals support an entablature and pediment; these columns correspond to the width of the nave within. Behind the taller temple front, a second front consists of pilasters supporting another entablature and pediment; this wider front spans the entire width of the church, aisles as well as nave. Although the façade was not built until after the architect's death, his original design was followed.
Leonardo da Vinci THE LAST SUPPER 21-4
Refectory of the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan. 1495-1498. Tempera and oil on plaster, 15'2" x 28'10" (4.6 x 8.8 m). At Duke Ludovico Sforza's request, Leonardo painted THE LAST SUPPER (FIGS. 21-4, 21-5) in the refectory, or dining hall, of the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan between 1495 and 1498. In fictive space defined by a coffered ceiling and four pairs of tapestries that seem to extend the refectory into another room, Jesus and his disciples are seated at a long table placed parallel to the picture plane and to the monastic diners who would have been seated in the hall below. In a sense, Jesus's meal with his disciples prefigures the daily gathering of this local monastic community at mealtimes. The stagelike space recedes from the table to three windows on the back wall, where the vanishing point of the one-point linear perspective lies behind Jesus's head. A stable, pyramidal Jesus at the center is flanked by his 12 disciples, grouped in four interlocking sets of three.
Donato Bramante IL TEMPIETTO, CHURCH OF SAN PIETRO IN MONTORIO 21-21
Rome. 1502-1510; dome and lantern were restored in the 17th century. Donato Bramante (1444-1514) was born near Urbino and trained as a painter, but turned to architectural design early in his career. About 1481, he became attached to the Sforza court in Milan, where he would have known Leonardo da Vinci. In 1499, Bramante settled in Rome, but work came slowly. The architect was nearing 60 when Julius II asked him to redesign St. Peter's (see Architectural Animation) and the Spanish rulers Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand commissioned a small shrine over the spot in Rome where the apostle Peter was believed to have been crucified (FIG. 21-21). In this tiny building, known as Il Tempietto ("Little Temple"), Bramante combined his interpretation of the principles of Vitruvius and Alberti, from the stepped base to the Tuscan columns and Doric frieze (Vitruvius had advised that the Doric order be used for temples to gods of particularly forceful character) to the elegant balustrade. The centralized plan and the tall drum supporting a hemispheric dome recall Early Christian shrines built over martyrs' relics, as well as ancient Roman circular temples. Especially notable is the sculptural effect of the building's exterior, with its deep wall niches and sharp contrasts of light and shadow. Bramante's design called for a circular cloister around the church, but the cloister was never built.
Giulio Romano FALL OF THE GIANTS 21-23
Sala dei Giganti, Palazzo del Te. 1530-1532. Fresco. Giulio Romano continued his witty play in the decoration of the two principal rooms. One, dedicated to the loves of the gods, depicted the marriage of Cupid and Psyche. The other room is a remarkable feat of trompe l'oeil painting in which the entire building seems to be collapsing around the viewer as the gods defeat the giants (FIG. 21-23). Here, Giulio Romano accepted the challenge Andrea Mantegna had laid down in the Camera Picta of the Gonzaga Palace (SEE Figure 20-40), painted for Federigo's grandfather: to dissolve architectural barriers and fantasize a world of playful delight beyond the walls and ceilings. But the Palazzo del Te was not just fun and games. The unifying themes were love and politics, the former focused on the separate apartments built to house Federigo's mistress, Isabella Boschetti. The palace was constructed in part as a place where they could meet beyond the watchful gaze of her husband, but the decoration also seems to reflect Federigo's dicey alliance with Charles V, who stayed in the palace in 1530 and again in 1532, when the scaffolding was removed from the Sala dei Giganti so the emperor could see the paintings in progress. He must have been impressed with his host's lavish new residence, and doubtless he saw a connection between these reeling paintings and his own military successes.
INTERIOR, SISTINE CHAPEL
Vatican, Rome. Built 1475-1481; ceiling painted 1508-1512; end wall, 1536-1541. The ceiling measures 45 x 128' (13.75 x 39 m). Despite Michelangelo's contractual commitment to Florence Cathedral for additional statues, Pope Julius II, who saw Michelangelo as an ideal collaborator in the artistic aggrandizement of the papacy, arranged in 1505 for him to come to Rome to work on the spectacular tomb Julius planned for himself. Michelangelo began the tomb project, but two years later the pope ordered him to begin painting the ceiling of the SISTINE CHAPEL instead (FIG. 21-16). Michelangelo considered himself a sculptor, but the strong-minded pope wanted paintings; work began in 1508. Michelangelo complained bitterly in a sonnet to a friend: "This miserable job has given me a goiter....The force of it has jammed my belly up beneath my chin. Beard to the sky....Brush splatterings make a pavement of my face.... I'm not a painter." Despite his physical misery as he stood on a scaffold, painting the ceiling just above him, the results were extraordinary, and Michelangelo established a new and remarkably powerful style in Renaissance painting. Julius's initial order for the ceiling was simple: trompe l'oeil coffers to replace the original star-spangled blue decoration. Later he wanted the 12 apostles seated on thrones on the triangular spandrels between the lunettes framing the windows. According to Michelangelo, when he objected to the limitations of Julius's plan, the pope told him to paint whatever he liked. This Michelangelo presumably did, although he was certainly guided by a theological advisor and his plan no doubt required the pope's approval.
Raphael STANZA DELLA SEGNATURA-- 21-9
Vatican, Rome. Fresco in the left lunette, Parnassus; in the right lunette, The School of Athens. 1510-1511. Raphael left Florence about 1508 for Rome, where Pope Julius II put him to work almost immediately decorating rooms (stanze, singular stanza) in the papal apartments. In the Stanza della Segnatura (FIG. 21-9)—the pope's private library and study—Raphael painted the four branches of knowledge as conceived in the sixteenth century: Religion (the Disputà, depicting discussions concerning the true presence of Christ in the Eucharistic Host), Philosophy (The School of Athens, to the right in FIG. 21-9), Poetry (Parnassus, home of the Muses, to the left in FIG. 21-9), and Law (the Cardinal Virtues under a figure of Justice).
Shop of Pieter van Aelst, Brussels, after cartoons by Raphael and assistants CHRIST'S CHARGE TO PETER 21-13
Woven 1517, installed 1519 in the Sistine Chapel. Wool and silk with silver-gilt-wrapped threads. Musei Vaticani, Pinacoteca, Rome. The cartoon reverses the figural arrangement of the drawing because in the production process the tapestry would be woven from the back—so the weavers would need to follow a reversed version of the original drawing in order to come out with the intended orientation for the resulting tapestry (FIG. 21-13). Comparison of cartoon and tapestry also indicates that the weavers were not required to follow their models slavishly. They embellished the costume of Christ, perhaps in an attempt to ensure that the viewer's attention would be immediately drawn to this most important figure in the scene. After they had been used to create the tapestries hung in the Sistine Chapel, Raphael's cartoons remained in Brussels, where several additional sets of tapestries were made from them—one for Henry VIII of England, another for Francis I of France—before seven surviving cartoons were acquired in 1623 by the future Charles I of England. They remain in the British Royal Collection. The tapestries themselves, although still in the Vatican, are displayed in the museum rather than on the walls of the chapel for which they were originally conceived, as one of the most prestigious artistic projects from the peak of the Roman High Renaissance.
