The Lives without the Medici?
2017; University of Chicago Press; Volume: 20; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1086/691331
ISSN2037-6731
Autores Tópico(s)Renaissance and Early Modern Studies
ResumoPrevious articleNext article FreeThe Lives without the Medici?Marco RuffiniMarco RuffiniSapienza, University of Rome Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreVasari’s Vite is well known for its laudatory treatment of the Medici. However, a newly discovered document, titled “Quadernuccio di Memorie di vari Pittori, Scultori, e Architetti illustri che hanno fatto molte loro opere in Firenze,” casts some doubt on the notion of the Vite as a pro-Medicean project (figs. 1 and 2). As I have discussed elsewhere, this twenty-eight-page booklet contains a list of information possibly extracted from the earliest and now lost manuscript of the Vite, which Vasari completed by summer 1547.1 The document—if indeed it bears traces of this earlier lost version of the Vite—suggests that when Vasari was in the initial stages of redacting the Vite, he gave little or no importance to the Medici or to works they had commissioned or works in their possession. This is consistent with the fact that the Vite, first printed in 1550 in Florence and dedicated to Cosimo I de’ Medici, was actually conceived in Rome at least four years earlier, as Vasari himself says, in an intellectual milieu that was markedly anti-Medicean.Figure 1. Quaderno, cover. (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, Spinelli Family Papers, Gen Mss 109, box 282, folder 5069, fol. I.)Figure 2. Quaderno, 2–3. (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, Spinelli Family Papers, Gen Mss 109, box 282, folder 5069.)The recently discovered document, contained in the Vasari papers at the Beinecke Library, presents a striking peculiarity. Although it was written at the beginning of the seventeenth century (it can be dated between 1602 and 1612), it repeats, with minor changes, information contained only in the Lives’ first edition (1550).2 There is no reference to the significantly richer and more accurate second edition of the book or to other works on Florentine art available at that time, such as Il Riposo by Raffaello Borghini (1584) and Le bellezze della città di Fiorenza by Francesco Bocchi (1591).One wonders about the nature and purpose of the quaderno document, written when more accurate, more complete information on Florentine art was easily accessible. The inadequacy of the quaderno as a source of information and as a guide—a uselessness amplified by the precision and discipline of its writing—suggests that it represents the rewriting of an older document produced before the publication of the second edition of the Lives. The overall quality of the writing appears to confirm this possibility. Furthermore, the only detectable correction in the quaderno text is typical of a revision: in the section on Perugino, the author crossed out a list of works by Andrea del Castagno, which he had already recorded nineteen pages earlier (fig. 3).3Figure 3. Quaderno, 24–25. (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, Spinelli Family Papers, Gen Mss 109, box 282, folder 5069.)The quaderno is peculiar in another way. While the entirety of its contents can be found in the Vite, not every work or artist mentioned in the Torrentiniana (the 1550 edition of the Lives) can be found in the quaderno. There are about 125 works in the Torrentiniana not recorded in it. These omissions are not accidental, since they form coherent thematic groups and subgroups. For example, there is a scarcity of information on architecture and sculpture and an almost complete absence of references to funerary monuments. Also evident is the absence of architects and sculptors featured in the Lives, such as Leon Battista Alberti and Benedetto da Rovezzano.But by far the most glaring omission is works commissioned by the Medici or in their possession. These represent about forty of the 125 lacunae of the document (almost 30 percent). There is no trace of the Medicean works to be found in the Florentine Baptistery, in the Guardaroba, and in Palazzo Medici. The quaderno does not record, for example, the Pallade that Botticelli executed for Giuliano de’ Medici, the frescoes of Benozzo Gozzoli in the chapel of Palazzo Medici in Via Larga, or Michelozzo as the architect of the Palazzo. Also noticeable is the lack of information on artists who had a privileged relationship with the Medici, such as Bronzino, who is not even mentioned in the quaderno. Most importantly, one notes the absence of reference to works by Donatello commissioned by the Medici and strongly associated with them, such as the marble David in Palazzo Vecchio, the decoration of the courtyard of Palazzo Medici, and Judith and Holofernes (a work that was impossible to ignore, in the Vite as well as in Florence, as it had been displayed in the Loggia de’ Signori since 1495).How can we interpret these omissions? I suggest the possibility that these lacunae are due to the fact that the quaderno derives from the earliest known manuscript of the Lives completed by summer 1547, which Vasari would have significantly revised before its publication in 1550. In fact, either the author of the quaderno deliberately selected information from the Torrentiniana or, alternatively, he extracted information from a version of the Lives in which this specific information was not included. Of these two possibilities, only the latter can explain another odd feature of the quaderno: the almost palpable perception that its lacunae correspond to passages of the Torrentiniana that, from a formal and narrative point of view, appear to be later additions or integrations to a preexisting text.A case in point is the mosaic decoration of the Chapel of San Zanobi in Santa Maria del Fiore. The quaderno records the decoration of the facade of the Church of Sant’Egidio at Santa Maria Nuova and the shrine at the corner of Via Larga and San Marco but bears no traces of the mosaic decoration, although it is hard to miss in the Torrentiniana. Vasari briefly recalls it in the biography of Domenico Ghirlandaio and more extensively at the beginning of the short biography of Gherardo di Giovanni di Miniato (“Gherardo miniator fiorentino”), who collaborated with Ghirlandaio in the early phase of the decoration from 1491 to 1492.4 The passage in the biography of Gherardo also contains emphatic praise of Lorenzo de’ Medici, the patron of the mosaic decoration, for having restored the glory of this ancient technique.Vasari recalls that the decoration remained unfinished. Originally involving the whole tribuna of the Duomo, the project was downsized to the vault of the Chapel of St. Zanobi. Since the quaderno consistently records only works visible at the time of its compilation, the lack of reference to the decoration may be related to its unfinished status. More likely, however, the omission is due to the fact that information on the mosaic, including the praise of Lorenzo de’ Medici as the patron of the decoration, was not present in the 1547 manuscript of the Lives. Several clues suggest that the incipit of the biography of Gherardo, which contains this information, is a later addition.The biography of Gherardo is one of the shortest of the Lives, at only one and a half pages (figs. 4 and 5). The incipit, dedicated to the mosaic decoration, takes up almost half of the entire biography. It reads:Veramente che di tutte le cose perpetue che si fanno con colori nessuna più resta alle percosse de’ venti e dell’acque che il musaico. E bene lo conobbe in Fiorenza ne’ tempi suoi Lorenzo Vecchio de’ Medici, il quale, come persona di spirito e speculatore delle memorie antiche, cercò di rimettere in uso quel che molti anni s’era tenuto ascoso; e perché grandemente si dilettava delle pitture e delle sculture, non potette non dilettarsi ancora del musaico. Laonde veggendo che Gherardo miniatore, allora cervello sofistico, cercava le difficultà di tal magistero, come persona che sempre aiutò chi ne aveva bisogno lo favorì grandemente; e messolo in compagnia di Domenico del Ghirlandaio, gli fece fare dagli Operai di Santa Maria del Fiore allogazione de le cappelle delle crociere, onde per la prima gli fece allogare quella del Sacramento dove è il corpo di S. Zanobi. Per il ché Gherardo, assottigliando l’ingegno, arebbe fatto con Domenico mirabilissime cose, se la morte non vi si fusse interposta.Figure 4. Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani, da Cimabue insino a’ tempi nostri, descritte in lingua toscana, da Giorgio Vasari pittore aretino: Con una sua utile e necessaria introduzzione a le arti loro (Florence, 1550), 1:489.Figure 5. Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani, da Cimabue insino a’ tempi nostri, descritte in lingua toscana, da Giorgio Vasari pittore aretino: Con una sua utile e necessaria introduzzione a le arti loro (Florence, 1550), 1:490.[It is certain that among all the enduring works that are made in color, there is none that resists the assaults of wind and water better than mosaics. And this was well known in his day to the elder Lorenzo de’ Medici of Florence, a man of spirit given to investigating the memorials of the ancients who sought to bring back into use what had been hidden for many years, and since he took great delight in paintings and sculpture, he could not fail to take delight in mosaics as well. Wherefore, seeing that Gherardo the illuminator, a man with an inquiring mind, was already investigating the difficulties of this calling, he showered upon him great favors, since he was one who always assisted those in need. Situating Gherardo, therefore, in the company of Domenico del Ghirlandaio, he obtained for him from the Wardens of Works of Santa Maria del Fiore a commission for decorating the chapels of the transepts, beginning with that of the Sacrament, wherein lies the body of San Zanobi. So that Gherardo, whose keen intelligence became sharper day by day, would have executed most marvellous works in the company of Domenico had death not intervened.]5The impression that the incipit of the biography of Gherardo could be a later addition is suggested by the sentence immediately after it, which not only sounds like a second beginning but also repeats the fact stated by the author just a few lines before that Gherardo was also an illuminator: “Era Gherardo gentilissimo miniatore, e fece ancora figure grandi in muro, e fuor della Porta alla Croce un tabernacolo in fresco; fece ancora un altro tabernacolo in Fiorenza a sommo della via Larga molto lodato, e nella facciata della chiesa di San Gilio a Santa Maria Nuova dipinse la consagrazione di quella chiesa per il Papa” (Gherardo was a most delicate illuminator, and he also made large figures on walls; and outside Porta alla Croce he made a shrine in fresco, and another in Florence, much extolled, at the head of Via Larga. He also painted on the facade of the Church of San Gilio at S. Maria Nuova the consecration of that church by the pope).6The same impression is confirmed at the end of the biography by another more glaring repetition: that Gherardo was also a master in the mosaic technique and that he worked with Domenico Ghirlandaio: “Nel musaico [Gherardo] fu concorrente e compagno di Domenico Ghirlandai, e quello molto ben lavorò” (In mosaics he [Gherardo] was companion of and competitor with Domenico Ghirlandaio, and he excelled in that technique).7 No doubt, Gherardo’s biography is one of the most puzzling of the Torrentiniana, in terms of structure and form.8 Unsurprisingly, it is also one of the most revised in the second edition (1568), where these repetitions and contradictions were eliminated (the simplest case being the insertion of the clause, “as written above,” after the second reference to Gherardo as an illuminator).9 Thus, if information on the mosaic decoration of the Chapel of San Zanobi is a later addition, as the biography of Gherardo suggests, it follows that the quaderno, which does not record the mosaic decoration (neither among the works of Gherardo nor among those of Ghirlandaio), likely refers to an early version of the Vite in which this information was not included.Another example of lacunae in the quaderno corresponding to passages of the Torrentiniana that appear to be later additions regards Raphael’s Portrait of Leo X with Cardinals Luigi de’ Rossi and Giulio de’ Medici (fig. 6), one of the most discussed paintings in the book, and a painting that Vasari knew very well, for he had made a copy of it for Ottaviano de’ Medici between 1536 and 1538. Vasari discusses the painting in the biography of Andrea del Sarto, where he recalls it in the Medici Guardaroba and narrates the story (one he partially fabricated) of Ottaviano de’ Medici commissioning Andrea for a copy of the painting in order to trick Federico II Gonzaga, who had asked for the original.10 More predictably, the painting also appears in the biography of Raphael, where Vasari, after a detailed description of it, recalls its being located in the Guardaroba.11 Like the incipit of Gherardo’s biography, this description of the portrait may also be a later addition. This possibility seems even more likely when considering the larger segment of prose containing it.Figure 6. Raffaello Sanzio, Ritratto di Leone X con i Cardinali Luigi de’ Rossi e Giulio de’ Medici, 1518–19. Oil on panel; 154 × 119 cm. (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.)The description of the portrait is located between a list of Raphael’s works and a digression on the art of printing, which ends with a reference to Ugo da Carpi and the invention of the chiaroscuro technique:Per che Ugo da Carpi, che d’invenzione aveva il cervello in cose ingegnose e fantastiche, trovò le stampe di legno, che con tre stampe si possa il mez[z]o, il lume e l’ombra contrafare le carte di chiaro oscuro: la quale certo fu cosa di bella e capricciosa invenzione, e di questa ancora è poi venuta abbondanza.[Thus Ugo da Carpi, who was inclined to producing ingenious and fanciful things, as well as discovering inventive new ways to display such beauty, discovered a method for wood-engraving. Using three blocks, giving the middle values, the lights, and the shadows, it was possible to imitate drawings in chiaroscuro, which was certainly a thing of beautiful and fanciful invention; and from this, also, there afterwards came an abundance of prints.]12After this digression, the following paragraph begins with “Egli fece per il monasterio di Palermo, detto Santa Maria dello Spasmo, de’ frati di Monte Oliveto, una tavola d’un Cristo che porta la croce, la quale è tenuta cosa maravigliosa” (He painted for the Monastery of Palermo, called Santa Maria dello Spasmo, for the monks of Monte Oliveto, a panel picture of Christ bearing the Cross, which is held to be a marvelous work).13 The pronoun he would have suited the list of Raphael’s works one page earlier (where we find an abundant use of the same pronoun), but at this point of the text, right after the digression on printing, it could also refer to Ugo da Carpi. Vasari amended the text in the Giuntina (the 1568 edition) by replacing the pronoun with Raphael.14This confusing use of the pronoun in the Torrentiniana suggests that the passage containing the reference to the Portrait of Leo X was inserted between the list of Raphael’s works and this last passage concerning the Madonna dello Spasmo. Yet it is significant that the same passage contains the highest number of works by Raphael not recorded in the quaderno (four out of eight) and that among these, we find two other Medici portraits: those of dukes Lorenzo and Giuliano, then in the personal collection of Ottaviano de’ Medici.15If we accept the possibility that the quaderno reflects the content of an early version of the Lives, surely this may well be the manuscript Vasari announced having completed to his Florentine friend in Rome, Simone Botti, early in the summer of 1547.16 Nothing remains of this manuscript, but we know that Don Miniato Pitti, a patron and close friend of Vasari at the time, considered this first version of the book still in need of substantial work—a reception at odds with Vasari’s own enthusiasm for it. Vasari’s correspondence and the same Torrentiniana, which refers to several facts dating after 1547, confirm that the text was substantially enriched from this moment until the beginning of its printing in fall 1549.The function of the document from which the quaderno derives is open to speculation. It could have been instrumental to the composition of a guide, never completed, to Florentine artists. More likely, it is related to the compilation of the table of contents for the 1547 manuscript, a table of contents Vasari actually sent to Annibal Caro along with a portion of the manuscript in December of the same year.17 Yet, independent of its genesis, the importance of the quaderno lies in the possibility it offers for reconstructing the content of the Lives before summer 1547, and thus before the book openly became a pro-Medicean project in Florence.Until recently, readers of the Lives have believed Vasari’s proclaimed fidelity to the Medici on his first arrival in Florence in 1525 or 1524, when he studied as a young boy with Ippolito and Alessandro. Recently, however, Enrico Mattioda has shown convincingly that in contradiction to this long-standing interpretation of Vasari as a faithful courtier, Vasari had actually cut his ties with the Medici for a long period, from 1537 to 1549.18 Soon after the assassination of Alessandro de’ Medici (on January 6, 1537), Vasari selected Rome as his permanent and definitive residence.19In the tense political climate after the duke’s death, Vasari’s desire to move to Rome could hardly have been interpreted as neutral. For this and other reasons, not least the well-known danger of writing letters about political matters (due to their frequent interception and confiscation), Vasari is often elusive when describing his future plans to friends and potential patrons. Vasari repeatedly stated his intention to dedicate himself entirely to the study of art, as well as to retire from the world to lead a religious life: two different ways to justify his departure from Florence.20 In a letter to Vasari, Don Ippolito pointed out the contradiction between Vasari’s spiritual and worldly aspirations: “Voi continuamente dite poco ben de preti et de cortegiani; et pur non vene siete isbrigato di quella vostra Roma, nella quale se non vi fusse qualche cosa che assai vi delettasse, senz’alcun dubbio non vi fermereste tanto” (You often speak poorly of priests and courtiers, and yet you have not cut off ties to that Rome of yours, which must possess something very pleasing to you, and without which you would not stay there for so long).21Another letter, from Vasari to the bishop of Volterra, Niccolò Serguidi, dated July 1537, connects Vasari’s aspirations to his dissatisfaction with his recent service for the Medici.22 In the letter, Vasari goes so far as to describe the duke’s death as an unexpected liberation.23 It is likely that Vasari is trying to purge himself from a political affiliation that had almost cost him his life in Florence a few months before.24 It is significant, however, that Serguidi, the letter’s recipient, is one of the few correspondents to whom Vasari could write at this time with a good dose of sincerity.25While this letter to Serguidi seems genuine, Vasari had written one more representative of his prudence only a few months before, when he was unable to leave Florence. Vasari wrote to his uncle Antonio in Arezzo that he would have left the city only after completing a painting of the Last Supper for Ottaviano de’ Medici.26 Vasari claims that the painting would have been symbolic of his definitive departure from the Medici (as Jesus’s departure from his apostles after the Last Supper). But it is clear that Ottaviano must have interpreted Vasari’s gesture in the opposite way, as proof of his fidelity even in a moment of despair.27 A similar ambiguity characterizes Vasari’s relationship with the Medici from this moment onward. While repeatedly refusing invitations to enter the service of Cosimo I, Vasari kept accepting commissions from Ottaviano, as in the case of the copy of Raphael’s Portrait of Leo X.28 Eventually, Ottaviano’s casual reference to Vasari’s confused mental status as the cause of his refusal to enter the service of Cosimo led Vasari to reply that indeed he feared for his mental health: “Sopra la resolutione della pazzia” (on curing madness) is the title of the last letter in which Vasari discussed with the Medici the nature of his decision to leave Florence.29Vasari’s relationship with the Medici was further compromised when he entered the service of Alessandro Farnese in October 1545.30 Art historians tend not to consider fully what historians never neglect to emphasize: that the circle of Cardinal Farnese, where the idea of the Lives took shape during the famous dinner at the Palazzo della Cancelleria in summer 1546, was the center of the anti-Medicean faction in the Italian peninsula.31 Karl Frey, for example, noted that one should have expected a book such as the Lives, born under the aegida of Cardinal Farnese, to be dedicated to Farnese and not to Cosimo I.32 Nonetheless, instead of tying this sensible observation to Vasari’s biography and the evolving contemporary historical context, which he knew well, Frey used it to undermine the historical veracity of Vasari’s account: he claimed that for this and other reasons, the dinner at Casa Farnese was likely a fiction.It was Paolo Giovio who suggested dedicating the book to Cosimo I in two letters to Vasari: first in 1547, after Vasari completed the manuscript, and again in 1548.33 Eventually Vasari followed Giovio’s advice. Certainly this decision must have also implied a series of revisions and additions to the existing text. The praise of Ottaviano de’ Medici (a crucial passage that allows Vasari to claim his continued service for the Medici) and the mention of nine paintings of his collection (none of which is listed in the quaderno) were likely added after this moment.Giovio’s advice turned out to be prophetic when, after the death of Paul III in 1549, it became evident to Vasari that Cosimo I was the best available patron. Yet the election of Julius III, who was originally from the aretino region, tempted Vasari again. He left Florence for Rome while the Lives was in press in order to welcome him. Julius III, however, soon revealed himself to be another disappointment. As Vasari wrote in the Lives, “finally I saw that there was little to be expected from him, and that it was useless to labour in his service.”34 Once again Vasari turned back to Florence. Yet his proven lack of fidelity made his last return difficult. In October 1553, the least that Cosimo I could say about him to those who were militating for his return in Florence, was “e’ non ha fermezza” (he is not firm in his decisions).35 Still, in 1554 Vasari succeeded in gaining Cosimo’s trust. Certainly the prominent role the Medici play in the Lives must have been beneficial. Yet, as Mattioda underlines, it is significant that Vasari was officially reintegrated as a Medici artist only after the definitive defeat of the Florentine fuoriusciti in the Battle of Marciano, in August 1554. This was the battle that marked the end of the republican faction as a real political force and at the same time signaled the flowering of a new age in the political relationship between Florence and Rome. After this date, Cosimo I was able to turn a long-standing hostility into a solid political alliance. This altered political scenario allowed Vasari, fourteen years later in the second edition of the Lives, to be candid about the Roman origins of his book, as well as about his uneasy relationship with Ottaviano de’ Medici thirty years earlier. As Vasari recalls in the Vite, “Durai delle fatiche a far sì che [Ottaviano] non mi rimettesse al servizio delle corti, come aveva in animo; pure io vinsi la pugna con buone ragioni, e risolveimi d’andar per ogni modo, avanti che altro facessi, a Roma” (I had much ado to prevent myself from reentering at the service of the court, as I minded not to do. However, by advancing good reasons I won the battle, and I resolved that by hook or by crook, before doing anything else, I would go to Rome).36Clearly, the interpretation of the quaderno proposed here remains speculative. Surely there are other possible ways to explain the absence of the Medici in the manuscript, especially considering interpolations and rewritings as part of its complicated history and transmission.37 Yet, the question it prompts remains, although rephrased as such: considering that the origin and early writing of the Lives coincide with the most anti-Medicean moment of Vasari’s career, whereas the last phases of the book’s composition coincide with Vasari’s increasing desire to return to Florence in the service of Cosimo I, is it really possible that this radical change of perspective, which would not have been easy to manage even for a prudent and skilled courtier such as Vasari, would have had no impact whatsoever on the writing of the Vite? Notes Contact Marco Ruffini at Sapienza, University of Rome ([email protected]).1. “Quadernuccio di Memorie di vari Pittori, Scultori, e Architetti illustri che hanno fatto molte loro opere in Firenze” (henceforth, quaderno), Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, Spinelli Family Papers, Gen Mss 109, box 282, folder 5069. On the document, including the bibliographical references, see Marco Ruffini, “Per la genesi delle Vite: Il quaderno di Yale,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 58, no. 3 (2016): 377–401.2. A few exceptions are crucial for the dating of the quaderno; see ibid. The terminus post quem is 1602, the year the Villa of Rusciano was acquired by the Usimbardi Family, while 1612, the year Giovanni de’ Bardi died, is the terminus ante quem. The quaderno records, in fact, the Villa of Rusciano and Palazzo Busini as owned by the Usimbardi family and by Giovanni de’ Bardi, respectively.3. Quaderno, 24.4. Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori scultori e architettori nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568, ed. Rosanna Bettarini and Paola Barocchi, 6 vols. (Florence, 1966–87), 3:471–73. On Gherardo, see Ebe Antetomaso, “Gherardo di Giovanni di Miniato,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani (Rome, 1999), 53:635–39; Nicoletta Pons, “Bartolomeo, Gherardo e Monte di Giovanni,” in Maestri e botteghe: Pittura a Firenze alla fine del Quattrocento, ed. Mina Gregori, Antonio Paolucci, and Cristina Acidini Luchinat, exhibition catalog (Cinisello Balsamo, 1992), 106–8.5. Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, trans. Gaston du C. de Vere, 2 vols. (New York, 1996), 1:513–14 (with revisions), and Le vite, 3:471. On the mosaic decoration, see the still fundamental work of Gaetano Milanesi, “Commentario alla Vita di Gherardo miniatore,” in Le opere di Giorgio Vasari, ed. Gaetano Milanesi (Florence, 1878–85), 3:247–52, 251–52. See also Margaret Haines, “Il principio di ‘mirabilissime cose’: I mosaici per la volta della Cappella di San Zanobi in Santa Maria del Fiore,” in La difficile eredità: Architettura a Firenze dalla Repubblica all’assedio, ed. Marzia Dezzi Bardeschi and Lucia Bardeschi Ciulich (Florence, 1994), 38–55—a study based on a reexamination of the original records of the Opera del Duomo, discussed in Milanesi, Le opere, and published in Giovanni Poggi, Il Duomo di Firenze: Documenti sulla decorazione della chiesa e del campanile tratti dall’Archivio dell’Opera (Berlin, 1909). Haines argues that at the end of 1492, eight months after the death of Lorenzo de’ Medici, when the commission was revoked, only the decoration of a small portion of the vault was completed (twenty-one square braccia by the Ghirlandaio brothers and eighteen by Gherardo, out of a total of 120 ca.). Work resumed in 1493, but only briefly and, according to Haines, with limited results. Of the whole project, only the ribs’ decoration with floral motifs survives today.6. My translation. Vasari, Le vite, 3:472.7. My translation. Ibid., 3:473. The biography also mistakenly records a “Head of St Lawrence” Gherardo executed in competition with Domenico Ghirlandaio: “Fece una testa di S. Lorenzo a concorrenza di Domenico, e così cominciò il musaico, nel quale molto tempo spese a ritrovare i segreti; perciò Lorenzo fece loro ordinare continua provisione, acciò in quel luogo si lavorasse sempre. Ma tale impedimento a quella opra diede la morte di Lorenzo, che il lavoro si rimase imperfetto” (ibid.). As we know from the records of the Opera del Duomo (see n. 5), the saint’s Head, now at the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, is not Lawrence’s but Zanobi’s, and the two competing artists were not Gherardo and Domenico but their younger brothers, Monte and Davide, respectively. In the second edition, Vasari correctly identified the figure as San Zanobi but maintained its mistaken attribution to Gherardo. According to the records of the Opera del Duomo, Monte executed the panel toward the end of 1504, seven years after Gherardo’s death. Since the same records refer to the Head as “semifactam” (Poggi, Il Duomo di Firenze, no. 979), Haines suggests that the panel may have been initiated by Gherardo. More plausibly, however, the record refers to the fact that Monte began the Head shortly before the competition with Davide Ghirlandaio became official (and therefore documented). The Head of St. Zanobi granted Monte the commission of the decoration of the chapel, which, mainly because of the unappealing conditi
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