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Recognizing Vasari's legacy on the study of self-portraiture

2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 25; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/02666280802691997

1943-2178

Azar Rejaie,

Renaissance and Early Modern Studies

Abstract ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This essay is based upon a chapter in the author's PhD thesis, Defining Artistic Identity in the Florentine Renaissance: Vasari, Embedded Self-Portraits, and the Patron's Role, University of Pittsburgh, 2006. Her research was generously funded by an Andrew Mellon Pre-Dissertation award and the author gratefully acknowledges the kindness of the staff of the Kunsthistorisches Insititut in Florenz for their aid in that research. Special thanks go to David Wilkins and Mark Zucker for their helpful advice and persistent encouragement. Notes 1 – Vasari notes in the second edition that copies of the first were no longer available. References in this essay are made to the edition edited by Rosanna Bettarini and Paola Barocchi (Giorgio Vasari and Paola Barocchi, Le vite de' piú eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori: nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568: concordanze, eds Paola Barocchi and Rosanna Bettarini [Florence: Sansoni Editore, 1966–]) whose volumes feature the 1550 and 1568 editions placed together on the page allowing for a direct comparison. English translations of the Italian text come from Giorgio Vasari and Gaston du C. De Vere, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects. Translation by Gaston du C. De Vere with an Introduction and Notes by David Ekserdjian, Everyman's Library (London: David Campbell Publishers, 1996), unless otherwise noted. 2 – See Deborah Cibelli, ‘Images of fame and changing fortune in the first and second editions of Vasari's Vite’, Explorations in Renaissance Culture 25 (1999), pp. 113–37, and Joan Stack, Artists into Heroes: the Commemoration of Artists in the Art of Giorgio Vasari (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI, 2001). 3 – Translation from Giorgio Vasari and De Vere, vol. I, p. 495. Vasari and Barocchi, Le vite, Testo III, p. 439: ‘E chi non sente infinito piacere e contento, oltre l'orrevolezza et ornamento che fanno, in vedere l'imagini de' suoi maggiori? E massimamente se per i governi delle republiche, per opere egregi fatte in guerra et in pace, se per lettere o per altra notabile e segnalata virtù, sono stati chiari et illustri?’ 4 – For discussion of the more imaginative elements of Vasari's autobiography and his biography of Lazzaro, see Paul Barolsky, Giotto's Father and the Family of Vasari's Lives (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991), pp. 47–50, and Stack, Artists into Heroes, pp. 25–30. 5 – Vasari and De Vere, Lives, vol. I, p. 419. Vasari and Barocchi, Le vite, Testo III, p. 294: ‘Grande è veramente il piacere di coloro che truovano qualcuno de’ suoi maggiori e della propria famiglia esser stato in una qualche professione, o d'arme o di lettere o di pittura, o qualsivoglia altro nobile esercizio, singolare e famoso. E quegi’ uomini che nell'fistorie trovano esser fatta onorata menzione d'alcuno de’ suoi passati, hanno pure, se non altro, uno stimolo alla virtù et un freno che gli ratiene dal non fare cosa indegna di quella famiglia che ha avuto uomini illustri e chiarissim’. 6 – Although Vasari states his interest in finding portraits of artists in the first edition (see Vasari and Barocchi, Le vite, Testo II, p. 32), he says far more on the subject in the second edition. Charles Hope, ‘Historical portraits in the “Lives” and in the frescoes of Giorgio Vasari’, in Giorgio Vasari tra decorazione ambientale e storiografia artistica. Instituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascemento: Convegno di Studi, Arezzo, 8–10 Ottobre (Florence: Leo S. Olshki, 1981), pp. 321–8, however, argues (p. 326) that Vasari was not terribly interested in portraiture generally while writing the second part of the 1550 edition and asserts that Vasari mentioned them only ‘when they occurred in the course of the narrative, but not in any comprehensive or consistent way’. I think it is fairer to say that while Vasari's interest had not yet become honed by the experience of decorating the interior of the Palazzo Vecchio with all of the portraits it required, his was still more than an idle interest. It would not have been necessary to mention them at all, much less to continue mentioning them throughout the text, had he been truly disinterested in the subject. 7 – Ibid., p. 322. 8 – My translation. Vasari and Barocchi, Le vite, Testo II, p. 32: ‘Senza descrivere però altrimenti le forme e fattezze degli artefici, giudicando tempo perduto il circunscrivere con le parole quello che manifestamente si può vedere negli stessi ritratti loro, citati et assegnati da me, dovunque é truovano.’ 9 – My translation. Ibid.: ‘E nel descrivere le forme e la fatezze degli artefici sarò breve, perché i ritratti loro, i quali sono da me stati messi insieme con non minore spesa e fatica che diligenza, meglio dimonstreranno quali essi artefici fussero quanto all'effigie, che il raccontarlo non farebbe già mai; e se d'alcuno mancasse il ritratto, ciò non è per colpa mia, ma per non si essere in alcuno luogo trovato.’ 10 – Wolfram Prinz, ‘Vasaris sammlung von künstlerbildnissen: mit einem kritischen verzeichnis der 144 vitenbildnisse in der zweiten ausgabe der lebensbeschreibungen von 1568’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 12 (Suppl.) (Florence: 1966). Herein all statistics given are from my own investigations of the Vite unless otherwise noted. 11 – Vasari and De Vere, Lives, vol. I, p. xx. 12 – Francis Ames-Lewis, The Intellectual Life of the Early Renaissance Artist (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 212. 13 – Ann Sutherland Harris, Seventeenth-Century Art and Architecture (London: Laurence King Publishing, 2005), p. 341. 14 – Hope, ‘Historical portraits’, p. 336. 15 – J.L. Draper and Giorgio Vasari, Vasari's Decoration in the Palazzo Vecchio: the Ragionamenti Translated with Introduction and Notes (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1973), p. 237. 16 – For discussion, see Stack, Artists into Heroes, p. 176. As Stack observed, Paolo Giovio invited anyone who wanted to verify the portraits to ‘go to see them for himself’. 17 – Of these empty frames, eight are identified with their intended occupant, while seven appear without any identification. Ibid., p. 204, noted that only the eight identified frames were also included in the Giunti publication of 1586 of the Ritratti de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori et architetti contenuti nelle vite di M. Giorgio Vasari Pittore & Architetto Aretino, which published the portraits without text. 18 – Stack (ibid., pp. 188–9) reaches a similar conclusion. It seems quite likely that in doing so, Vasari was influenced by Vincenzo Borghini, who told the artist he would prefer to see Vasari leave some of his frames empty in hopes that reliable portraits might be later found to put inside the frames. See Borghini's letter to Vasari of 14 August 1564, published in Giorgio Vasari, Der literarische Nachlass Giorgio Vasaris, ed. Karl Frey (Munich: Georg Müller Verlag, 1923 and 1930), vol. II, p. 101. 19 – Occasionally Vasari will refer to the specific portrait illustration used within the course of the artist's biography. On the majority of occasions, however, while he might mention an artist's image, we can only infer that this is the image used to precede the Vita. One such allusion to an illustration is made in the Vita of Vittore Carpaccio. Vasari remarks that he begins the group life with a discussion of Vittore because he is the only one of the group of whom he has a portrait. See Vasari and Barocchi, Le vite, Testo III, p. 617. 20 – For report of Giotto's self-portraits, see Vasari and Barocchi, Le vite, Testo II, pp. 101, 109, and Testo III p. 70; for those of Taddeo Gaddi see Testo III, pp. 205 and 206. Sodoma's three reported self-images are mentioned in Testo III, pp. 383, 385, and 388; for mention of Andrea del Sarto's self-portraits, see Testo IV, pp. 353, 371, and 387. Donatello's portraits are discussed in Testo III pp. 70, 130, and 224, and Testo VI, p. 135. Michelangelo's portraits by Bugiardini, Jacopo del Conte, Daniello Ricciarelli and Leone are also mentioned in Testo VI on p. 101. 21 – Vasari and Barocchi, Le vite, Testo III, p. 360 give the location of Andrea del Castagno's self-portrait as a tondo the artist painted ‘before’ (one presumes to the left of) a cycle of the Life of Mary in Sant'Egidio. Jacopo Palma is reported (Testo IV, p. 551) to have painted an autonomous self-portrait: ‘Ma senza dubbio, comeché molto siano e molto stimate tutto l'opere di costui, quella di tutte l'altre è migliore e certo stupendissima dove ritrasse, guardandosi in una spera, se stesso di naturale con alcune pelli di camello intorno e certi ciuffi di capegli, tanto vivamente che non si può immaginare. . ..’ Vasari and De Vere, Lives, vol. I, p. 946: ‘But without doubt, although the works of this master were many, and all much esteemed, that one is better than all the others and truly extraordinary in which he made his own portrait from life by looking at himself in a mirror, with some camel-skins about him, and certain tufts of hair, and all so lifelike that nothing better could be imagined.’ 22 – Vasari and Barocchi, Le vite, Testo II, p. 65. 23 – Vasari and Barocchi, Le vite, Testo III, p. 506, locate the sculpted portraits of the Pollaiuolo brothers in S. Pietro in Vincoli in Rome, the church where they were buried. Similarly, Vasari (ibid., p. 555) mentions Mantegna's bronze portrait at the site of the artist's burial, along with his epitaph. 24 – Ibid., pp. 484–5. 25 – Concerning Vasari's portrait of Properzia, see Vasari and Barocchi, Le vite, Testo IV, p. 403. Vasari concludes Danielle's biography stating that while some ungracious pupils had created a portrait of their master in gesso, they had refused to honor their promise to give it or a copy to Vasari, resulting in Vasari's creation of an inferior likeness of the painter/sculptor from memory. See Testo V, p. 550. 26 – Vasari and Barocchi, Le vite, Testo IV, p. 54. See also Barolsky, Giotto's Father, pp. 69–70, for a discussion of the artist's ‘rather sad story’, as given by Vasari. 27 – Patricia Lee Rubin, Giorgio Vasari: Art and History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), p. 227. Rubin notes that Mantegna's Vita became a convenient location for Vasari to discuss education and antiquity, while a discussion of history painting found its way into the biographies of Bellini and Pintoricchio, and Medici patronage and architecture found space in the biography of Michelozzo. 28 – Hope, ‘Historical portraits’, pp. 334–5, implies a similar argument, asserting that Vasari selected ‘suitable’ figures from frescoes and altarpieces ‘without seeking for any kind of comparative evidence for his proposed identifications’. See Sharon Gregory, ‘“The outer man tends to be a guide to the inner”: the woodcut portraits in Vasari's Lives as parallel texts’, in The Rise of the Image: Essays on the History of the Illustrated Art Book, eds Rodney Palmer and Thomas Frangenberg (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 51–86. 29 – Ibid., p. 55. 30 – This account was most recently investigated and interpreted by Andrew Ladis, Victims and Villains in Vasari's Lives (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2008). See especially pp. 51–2 and pp. 62–4. 31 – Vasari and Barocchi, Le vite, Testo III, pp. 350–63. For the earlier published accounts of Andrea's murder of Domenico, see Carl Frey, Il libro di Antonio Billi (Berlin: 1892), p. 22, and the Anonimo Magliabechiano [Annamaria Ficarra, L'Anonimo Magliabechiano (Naples: Fiorentino Editore, 1968), p. 106]. It is now known that Domenico outlived Andrea by four years and was buried in San Pier Gattolini on 15 May 1461. Nevertheless, although both earlier sources reported the story, Vasari must be credited with the interpretation and discussion of Andrea's supposed character. See also Barolsky, Giotto's Father, pp. 53–4, who discusses the pair and compares Vasari's account of the artists to the biblical story of Cain's murder of Abel. 32 – Vasari and De Vere, Lives, vol. I, p. 452. Vasari and Barocchi, Le vite, Testo III, p. 360: ‘Intanto aveva Andrea nella sua facciata fatta a olio la morte di Nostra Donna, nella quale, per la detta concorrenza di Domenico e per essere tenuto quello che egli era veramente, si vede fatto con incredibile diligenza in iscorto un cataletto dentrovi la Vergine morta, il quale, ancora che non sia più che un braccio e mezzo di lunghezza, para tre. Intorno le sono gl'Apostoli fatti in una maniera che, se bene si conosce ne’ visi loro l'allegrezza di veder esser portrata la loro Madonna in cielo da Gesù Cristo, vi si conosce ancora l'amaritudine del rimanere in terra senz'essa. Tra essi apostoli sono alcuni angeli che tengono lumi accesi, con bell'aria di teste e sì ben condotti, che si conosce che egli così bene seppe maneggiare i colori a olio, come Domenico suo concorrente. Ritrasse Andrea in queste pitture, di naturale, Messer Rinaldo degli'Albizi, Puccio Pucci, il Falgavaccio che fu cagione della liberazione di Cosimo de’ Medici, insieme con Federigo Malevolti, che teneva le chiavi dell'Alberghetto; parimente vi ritrasse Messer Bernardo di Domenico della Volta, spedalingo di quel luogo, inginocchioni, che par vivo; et in un tondo nel principio dell'opere se stesso, con viso di Giuda Scariotto, come egl'era nella presenza e ne’ fatti.’ 33 – The cycle of the Life of the Virgin was painted between 1439 and 1461 by Domenico Veneziano, Piero della Francesca, Andrea del Castagno and Alesso Baldovinetti. It was destroyed in the course of the church's amplification by a design of Bernardo Buontalenti on the order of Francesco I de’ Medici at the end of the sixteenth century. For discussion of the hospital's church, see Walter Paatz and Elisabeth Paatz, Die Kirchen von Florenz, ein kunstgeschichtliches Handbuch, 6 vols, Frankfurter Wissenschaftliche Beiträge (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann), vol. 4, pp. 1–64. 34 – The figure identified as Messer Bernardo di Domenico della Volta was likely a donor, since he is described as kneeling in a pose traditionally associated with the act. Since Vasari says that the others named were depicted ‘in a like manner’ or ‘similarly’ (parimenti), it is unlikely that the contemporary portraits were painted as holy figures. 35 – Vasari was aware of a precedent of artists creating their features in those of another, and claimed to have found portraits of the artist Dello as Ham in Paolo Uccello's The Drunkenness of Noah from Santa Maria Novella's Chiostro Verde (see Vasari and Barocchi, Le vite, Testo III, p. 41) and Giorgione in a David and Goliath (see Testo IV, p. 43). He also mentions a few portraits done of famous contemporaries in a similar manner by Raphael in the School of Athens (see ibid., pp. 166–7). By equivocating — that is, by not asserting that Andrea portrayed himself as Judas — Vasari seems to cast doubt on the identification he puts forth of both artist and religious figure. 36 – Translation from Vasari and De Vere, Lives, vol. I, p. 450. Vasari and Barocchi, Le vite, Testo III, p. 375: ‘E perché era Andrea non meno sagace simulatore che egregio pittore, allegro quando voleva nel volto, della lingua spedito e d'animo fiero et in ogni azzione del corpo, cosi come era della mente. . ..’ 37 – Giotto provided one of the most famous renditions of Judas in the Arena Chapel, in which the small eyes and heavy features are juxtaposed against Christ's refined face. Andrea himself painted a saturnine, almost devilish Judas in the Last Supper he painted for the Sant'Apollonia refectory. 38 – The other five are Mariotto Albertinelli, Bastiano detto Aristotile, Simone Mosca, Giulio Romano, and Frangia Bigio. 39 – Gregory, ‘“The outer man”’, pp. 63–5. 40 – My translation. Vasari and Barocchi, Le vite, Testo I, p. 10: ‘seconda morte e mantenergli più lungamente che sia possibile nelle memorie de’ vivi. . ..’ 41 – For the most recent investigation of Michelangelo's signature and its implications, see Aileen June Wang, ‘Michelangelo's signature’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 35/2 (2004), pp. 447–73. 42 – Vasari and Barocchi, Le vite, Testo VI, pp. 16–17: ‘lasciò il suo nome scritto a traverse una cintola che il petto della Nostra Donna soccigne, come di cosa nella quale e sodisfatto e compiacito s'era per sé medesimo. . ..’ As Rona Goffen, ‘Signatures: inscribing identity in Italian Renaissance art’, Viator, 32 (2001), pp. 322–3, pointed out, Vasari deletes the line regarding the sculptor's satisfaction with his work from the second edition's account of the artist's life, arguing that it may have been considered an unflattering allusion to excessive pride. Instead, Vasari paraphrases the story from what he describes as an anonymous letter written a month after the sculptor's death, which states that the young sculptor added his signature to the piece in the dead of night after overhearing a false attribution. 43 – Draper and Vasari, The Ragionamenti, pp. 37–56, discuss Vasari's various advisors and sources for the decoration of the palace. 44 – Hope, ‘“Historical portraits”’, pp. 337–8. 45 – Draper and Vasari, The Ragionamenti, p. 204. 46 – Rubin, Giorgio Vasari, p. 197. As Rubin notes, Vasari offered increasingly definitive opinions in his assessments of controversial incidents and works and wrote, for example, at the end of one such episode involving the commission for the choir of San Lorenzo that ‘although I might well have kept silent on these matters, I have not wanted to do so because to proceed as I have done seems to me the duty of a faithful and true writer’. See p. 196, for this translation. Its source is the Vita of Pontormo: Vasari and Barocchi, Le vite, Testo V, p. 331. 47 – See Vasari's prefatory letter to the artists, Vasari and Barocchi, Le vite, Testo II, p. 175: ‘avendo avuto spazio poi d'intendere molte cose meglio e rivederne molte altre’. Translation from Rubin, Giorgio Vasari, p. 199. 48 – Vasari and Barocchi, Le vite, Testo III, p. 3: ‘ritrovare il numero et i nomi e le patrie loro,et insegniare in che città et in che luogo appunto di esse si trovassino all presente le loro pitture o sculture o fabriche. . .Ma vedendo che gli scrittori delle istorie, quegli che per comune consenso hanno nome di avere scritto con miglior giudizio, non solo non si sono contentati di narrare semplicemente i casi seguenti, ma con ogni diligenze e con maggior curiosità che hanno potuto. . .non per narrare asciuttamente i occorsi. . ..’ Translation from Philip Sohm, ‘Ordering history with style: Giorgio Vasari on the art of history’, in Antiquity and its Interpreters, eds Alina Payne, Ann Kuttner and Rebekah Smick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 44. 49 – Vasari and De Vere, Lives, vol. I, p. 246. Vasari and Barocchi, Le vite, Testo III, p. 4: ‘e mi sono ingegnato non solo di dire quel che hanno fatto, ma di scegliere ancora discorrendo il meglio dal buono e l'ottimo dal migliore, e notare un poco diligentemente i modi, le arie, le maniere, i tratti e le fantasie de’ pittori e degli scultori; investigando, quanto più diligentemente ho saputo, di far conoscere a quegli che questo per se stessi non sanno fare, le cause e le radici delle maniere e del miglioramento e peggiaramento delle arti accaduto in diversi tempi e in diverse persone.’ 50 – Stack, Artists into Heroes, p. 9. 51 – Vasari did not arrive at his theory of art unaided. For further discussion, see for example Ernst Gombrich, ‘The Renaissance conception of artistic progress and its consequences’, in Norm and Form: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance (London: Phaidon Press, 1966). 52 – David Cast, ‘Reading Vasari again: history, philosophy’, Word & Image, 9/1 (1993), p. 34. 53 – See Rubin, Giorgio Vasari, pp. 201–4, for a discussion of how the Medici became instrumental factors in the perfection of the arts through the Quattro- and Cinquecento in Vasari's account. Also see Ernst Gombrich, ‘The early Medici as patrons of art’, in Norm and Form: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance (London: Phaidon Press, 1966), for a classic study on the subject. 54 – Draper and Vasari, The Ragionamenti, pp. 47 and 396. 55 – Vasari and Barocchi, Le vite, Testo II, p. 173. 56 – Vasari and De Vere, Lives, vol. I, p. 154. Vasari and Barocchi, Le vite, Testo II, p. 173: ‘all'antica et altre somiglianti cose di quell'età…’. 57 – Cast, ‘Reading Vasari again’, p. 30. 58 – Joanna Woods-Marsden, Renaissance Self-Portraiture: the Visual Construction of Identity and the Social Status of the Artist (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).