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Talking Colors: Ercole Sarti and the Verses That Gave Voice to His Paintings

2022; University of Chicago Press; Volume: 41; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1086/722322

2328-207X

Angelo Lo Conte,

Renaissance and Early Modern Studies

Previous articleNext article FreeTalking Colors: Ercole Sarti and the Verses That Gave Voice to His Paintings*Angelo Lo ConteAngelo Lo ConteAcademy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University. University Grants Committee HKBU 22607320 Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreI was mute, the heavens did not wish that I should speak, and took words away from my tongue, so that with dedication, magisterial application of the hand and drawing, I could give life to figures and grant them life with my unique brush which spoke on my behalf.It is with these words that Giovan Battista Marino introduces Ercole Sarti (1593–1636) in the Galeria, an anthology of poems dedicated to works of art. Sarti was a deaf painter from Ficarolo, a small village near Rovigo.1 Born on 23 December 1593 to Giovanni Sarti and Fulvia Nigrisoli, he was one of the most accomplished artists active in the Estense territories in the first half of the seventeenth century; he was a pupil of Ippolito Scarsella and a portrait painter for the local aristocracy.2 A member of a wealthy family, Ercole was the grandson of Bartolomeo Sarti, doctor iuris, and owner of properties in Ficarolo and Ferrara. In their estate, the Sarti family housed a collection of 92 paintings, a selection of geographic maps, and a library including 430 volumes.3 Cesare Barotti notes that Ercole’s affluent background favored the development of his career since he selected his profession “by his nature alone and for his delight.”4Because of the high costs of instruction and the lack of qualified instructors, deaf education in sixteenth and seventeenth-century societies remained a prerogative of the wealthy classes.5 Since the duty of care often fell to parents, a crucial variable was the ability of the family to provide practical and financial support. While deaf children born to poor families had menial jobs, wealthy deaf children would have been more likely to enjoy the benefits of a specialized education. Those who revealed a vocation for drawing were often trained in the visual arts, where the practice of copying was considered an essential step in the training of young artists. Sarti’s artistic talent was evident from a young age when he began drawing from nature and copying pictures and prints from his family’s collection.6 His upbringing draws comparison with that of Juan Fernandez de Navarrete and Giuseppe Badaracco, two coeval painters with hearing impairment who, thanks to their families, were provided with the means to pursue careers in the visual arts. Navarrete received a classic education in the monastery of La Estrella in his native Logroño, traveled to Italy from 1558 to 1565, and eventually became Philip II’s favorite artist among those engaged in the decoration of the Escorial.7 Badaracco studied letters in Genoa before training with Bernardo Strozzi and Giovanni Andrea Ansaldo.8 After a period in Florence, he returned to Liguria and opened a successful shop that he left to his son Giovanni Raffaele.Ercole Sarti is first mentioned in the Relazione della processione solenne fatta nella traslazione della immagine miracolosa della Beata Vergine, an account by Marcantonio Guarini detailing the procession organized in Ficarolo on 3 October 1610, on the occasion of the transportation of a miraculous painting of the Adoration of the Magi from the house of the Cavicchioli family to the church of Sant’Antonino Martire.9 The image had attracted considerable attention since 2 June 1602, when the figure of the Virgin wept visibly. The miracle repeated itself eleven days later, on June 13. The sensation of this extraordinary phenomenon elicited visits from cardinals and princes, prompting Giovanni Fontana, the bishop of Ferrara, to inform Pope Paul V. The pope not only recognized the miracle, but also conceded plenary indulgence to those willing to visit the picture upon its relocation into a newly built chapel in the church of Sant’Antonino Martire. The chapel was erected thanks to the munificence of Bartolomeo Sarti, Ercole’s grandfather, remembered by Guarini as “a man of extreme generosity and devotion to the miraculous image.”10 On 3 October 1610, more than five thousand people, comprising delegations from Padua, Rovigo, and Modena, paraded through the streets of Ficarolo, carrying the picture to its new location. The procession moved from the Cavicchioli house and turned left into a large avenue decorated by Flemish tapestries and by a triumphal arch on which a painted replica of the Adoration of the Magi was on display. Guarini reports that the image had been executed “with art and precision by Ercole Sarti, a sixteen-year-old boy, mute, of great intelligence and potential.”11 It is possible that the role played by Bartolomeo Sarti in sponsoring the chapel inspired Ercole to pay homage to the miraculous image. This event marks the start of his artistic career.The public recognition of his talent prompted Sarti to relocate to Ferrara, where his family owned a two-story house in the central parish of San Francesco.12 There, he entered the workshop of Ippolito Scarsella, also known as Scarsellino.13 The son of the Ferrarese architect and painter Sigismondo Scarsella, Ippolito trained in Bologna and Venice, working in the bottega (shop) of Paolo Veronese. When he returned to Ferrara, he inherited his father’s workshop, becoming increasingly involved in the city’s most relevant public and private commissions.14 In 1606, Scarsellino set up a studio in the Estense Castle, using two rooms previously dedicated to the entourage of the Duchess of Urbino.15 In these spaces, he trained his pupils: Camillo Ricci, Costanzo Cataneo, Ludovico Lana, and, of course, Ercole Sarti, whose apprenticeship is attested by an autographed small portrait of Scarsellino recorded in the Cesare Cittadella collection.16 Following a well-established practice in Ferrarese workshops, Scarsellino’s pupils learned through copying and drawing. To this end, an inventory of Scarsellino’s possessions dated 27 October 1620 includes over one hundred drawings, most of which were used for teaching purposes, and almost three hundred models in wax, plaster, and wood representing animals, heads, limbs, and figures in different postures. These items were used for compositional studies following a practice he possibly learned in Venice, where Tintoretto famously employed wax and clay models to study perspectives and shadows for his paintings.17 Luigi Lanzi notes that Sarti was instructed through gestures, a teaching method that corresponds to the one employed by Camillo Procaccini to train Luca Riva, a deaf painter active in early seventeenth-century Milan.18 Being deaf was obviously no hindrance to Sarti’s training, as practical tasks were communicated through signs in European workshops since the mid-thirteenth century, when Gauchier, a smith from Orgelet near Lake Geneva, trained an eight-year-old deaf boy, who was eventually miraculously cured by King Louis IX of France.19Although it is not possible to determine with precision when Sarti entered Scarsellino’s workshop, a signed Holy Family copied after Raphael and listed in the inventory of the Costabili collection indicates that by 1612 he had already started his formal training.20 Sarti continued to collaborate with the bottega until Scarsellino’s death in 1620. Afterward, he started his own practice, completing public and private commissions in Ferrara and in peripheral areas of the nearby provinces of Mantua and Rovigo. In Ferrara, he painted a large canvas representing Pope Sylvester (Pinacoteca Nazionale, Ferrara) for the local church of San Silvestro (fig. 1). Featuring warm colors and chiaroscuro reflecting the influence of Venetian art in Scarsellino’s workshop, the canvas was executed between 1620 and 1625 and was originally accommodated in the sacristy. In the early nineteenth century, it entered the Costabili collection, where it was described by Camillo Laderchi as “a picture that measures up with the best works by Scarsellino.”21 Sarti also completed two altarpieces dated to the early 1630s for the church of Sant’Antonino Martire in his hometown of Ficarolo: The Virgin with Sts. Antonino and Carlo Borromeo and The Virgin Angels with Sts. Rocco and Sebastian (or Virgin of the Plague) (fig. 2), the latter an ex-voto for the plague that struck Ferrara between 1629 and 1631. Sarti’s catalogue is completed by a Crucifixion with St. Valentine executed for the church of San Valentino in Salara, which is accompanied by a sketch registered in 1783 by Cesare Cittadella in the house of Giuseppe Ghedini.22 These works are characterized by vivid coloring and skillful representation of the physiognomies, which bear witness to Sarti’s ability as a portrait painter, a feature recognized by Lanzi, who notes that his portraits were highly regarded by the Ferrarese nobility.23Figure 1. Ercole Sarti, Pope Sylvester I, 1620–25. Oil on canvas, 149.8 × 97.7 cm. Pinacoteca Nazionale, Ferrara. Credit: Alinari Archives, Florence. Collection: Finsiel/Alinari Archives.Figure 2. Ercole Sarti, The Virgin Angels with Sts. Rocco and Sebastian (or Virgin of the Plague), church of Sant’Antonino Martire, Ficarolo, ca. 1630. Oil on canvas. Photo: Luciano Pigaiani.Sarti’s career as a portraitist was facilitated by the cult for the courtly persona that had characterized Ferrara since the beginning of the Estense period. The principal source on his work is the verses penned by the local poet Francesco Berni to celebrate the picture he executed on the wedding between Beatrice Estense Tassoni and Giovanni Francesco Sacchetti, celebrated in Ferrara on 19 February 1631 (fig. 3).24 Berni writes:Figure 3. Berni Francesco, Il torneo a piedi: E l’invenzione, ed allegoria, colla quale il Signor Benso Bonaccorsi comparì a mantenerlo (Ferrara: Gironi & Gherardi, 1631), 99. Galleria Estense, Modena, Libri Antichi e Rari, inv. 070.I.19.06.Mute painter spreads talking colours, the like of which not even Egypt ever saw. He carries the name and virtue of that brave one, whence the Lernaean monster was laid down in defeat … Like a happy thief he stole Beatrice’s face … but he didn’t give her voice, because he didn’t have it himself … blessed Eridano, on whose banks such a learned brush exists … in you, yet more purely do the beauty of Venus and the painting of Apelles triumph.In describing Sarti’s portrait, Berni adopts the antithesis muto pittor color loquace, following a basic premise of Renaissance art theory that identified silence as an attribute of painting. Exemplified by Salvator Rosa’s Philosophy (National Gallery, London), the trope of painting as silent poetry or mute eloquence was justified through Horace’s ut pictura poesis and had been already recognized by Leonardo da Vinci, who observed: “Painting is a mute poem, poetry is blind painting.”25 Although the canvases representing Scarsellino and Beatrice Estense Tassoni are so far the only documented portraits by Sarti, the inventory of the pictures conserved in the Sarti family estate provides further insights. To this end, in the Ferrarese house are listed twenty-eight “ritrattini piccoli ovali,” “cinque retrati, quatro grandi e uno piccolo,” “un retrato di donna,” and “un retrato del cardinal Francesco Barberini,” which might easily be works by Sarti.26 As noted in a 1632 letter sent by the ducal agent Guido Coccapani to Duke Francesco I, Sarti’s portraits were sold in the price range of 12 to 14 scudi. They were highly coveted, even though Guido Coccapani considered them ordinary.27 Sarti died in August 1636. He was buried in the church of Santo Spirito in Ferrara.28A question that remains to be answered concerns the circumstances that led Sarti to be mentioned in the Galeria since Marino’s anthology was written in the 1610s, when the artist was completing his apprenticeship in Scarsellino’s workshop. Marino was a friend of the Ferrarese poet Battista Guarini, whose son, Guarino, had written three of the poems accompanying the Relatione detailing the procession organized for the translation of the Adoration of the Magi.29 It might be possible that Battista, who died in 1612, sent this small publication to Marino, who, impressed by Sarti’s story, included him in his collection.Notes*Throughout this article I use deaf with a lowercase d to refer to people with hearing loss. Traditionally deaf refers to a medical model of hearing loss, while Deaf indicates those people who are culturally Deaf, part of a community with a shared language who do not see themselves as disabled. Following seventeenth-century vocabulary, I use the words deaf and mute to reflect early modern debate and understanding.1. Giovanni Battista Marino, La galeria del cavalier Marino (Venice: Ciotti, 1620), 232. Sporadically mentioned in eighteenth-century histories of Ferrarese art, Sarti’s career was rediscovered in the early twentieth century by Filippo de Pisis, in his Ercole Sarti detto il muto da Ficarolo (Ferrara: Bresciani, 1915).2. The baptism certificate is conserved in the Archivio Parrocchiale di Ficarolo, Libro dei Battesimi, 1590/1610.3. Inventory of Bartolomeo Sarti’s possessions, Archivio di Stato di Ferrara (ASF), Archivio Notarile Antico, Scutellari Francesco, n. 926, 21 October 1641.4. “Diedesi egli, per puro genio, e divertimento a coltivare l’arte della pittura.” Cesare Barotti, Pitture e scolture che si trovano nelle chiese, luoghi pubblici e sobborghi della città di Ferrara (Ferrara: G. Rinaldi, 1770), 22.5. For an overview, see Bethsaida Nieves, “Deaf Education History: Pre-1880,” in The Sage Deaf Studies Encyclopaedia, ed. Genie Gertz and Patrick Boudreault (Los Angeles: SAGE Reference, 2016), 182–86.6. Cesare Cittadella, Catalogo istorico de pittori e scultori ferraresi e delle opere loro (Ferrara: Pomatelli, 1783), 3:117.7. See Rosamarie Mulcahy, Juan Fernández de Navarrete el Mudo, pintor de Felipe II (Madrid: Sociedad Estatal para la Conmemoración de los Centenarios de Felipe II, 1999).8. Raffaele Soprani, Le vite dei pittori scoltori e architetti genovesi (Genoa: Bottaro, 1674), 205–6.9. Marcantonio Guarini, Relatione della processione solenne fatta nella translazione della immagine della Beata Vergine posta nella chiesa collegiata della terra di Figaruolo, descritta da Marc’Antonio Guarini (Ferrara: Vittorio Baldini, 1611).10. “Con participazione e autorità dell’Illustrissimo Mons. Vescovo e con l’aiuto e diligenza di M. Bartolomeo de’ Sarti; persona di singolar bontà, ed a questa Sacratissima immagine divotissimo ridusse a perfezione quanto aveva determinato ed in particolare una Cappella nobilissima nella quale il di 3 Ottobre dell’anno 1610 fu fatta la traslazione di questa Santissima Immagine con grandissimo concorso di gente.” Guarini, Relatione della processione solenne, 6.11. “E sopra di essa posava l’immagine della Vergine con Magi dipinta con molta diligenza, e arte da Ercole de’ Sarti, giovine di 16 anni, e muto, in vero di molto ingegno e aspettazione.” Guarini, Relatione della processione solenne, 11.12. “Casa murata, cupata e solarata posta in Ferrara nella contrà di San Francesco.” Inventory of Bartolomeo Sarti’s possessions, ASF, 21 October 1641.13. “Questa prima sua impresa gli servisse di sprone ad allogarsi in Ferrara nella scuola dello Scarsellino.” Cittadella, Catalogo istorico, 3:118. Camillo Laderchi speculates that Sarti might have also worked with Carlo Bononi (La pittura ferrarese, memorie del conte Camillo Laderchi [Ferrara: Servadio, 1856], 157–58).14. On Scarsellino, see Maria Angela Novelli, Scarsellino (Milan: Skira, 2008).15. “Una camera con un repostiglio dove la già duchessa d’Urbino haveva la sua cucina.” Archivio di Stato di Modena (ASMO), Archivio per Materie, Arti Belle, Pittori, b. 16/4, fasc. Scarsella Ippolito.16. Cittadella, Catalogo istorico, 4:315. The portrait is lost.17. ASF, Archivio Notarile Antico, Carrara Paolo, no. 924, P7 (1620–2647), 1, published in Cecilia Vicentini, “L’inventario dei beni di Ippolito Scarsella da Ferrara ‘Paolo de’ Ferraresi,’” Rivista d’arte 2 (2012): 289–324.18. Luigi Lanzi, Storia pittorica dell’Italia (Venice: Remondini, 1795), 2:246. On Luca Riva, see Angelo Lo Conte, “A Visual Testament by Luca Riva, a Deaf and Mute Pupil of the Procaccini,” Renaissance Studies 36 (2022): 222–56.19. The episode, narrated as part of the miracles of St. Louis, is described in Irina Metzler, A Social History of Disability in the Middle Ages (New York: Routledge, 2013), 199–203.20. Inventory number 315. The canvas, now lost, was signed “Hercole Sarti Mutto anno XVIII. Di Ferrara 1612.” Camillo Laderchi, Descrizione della quadreria Costabili (Ferrara: Negri, 1841), 3:17.21. Inventory number 314. “Può sostenere il confronto con qualunque migliore opera dello Scarsellino.” Laderchi, Descrizione, 3:17.22. Cittadella, Catalogo istorico, 4:314–15. Girolamo Baruffaldi also mentions a Crucifixion with St. Lawrence painted in the village of Quatrelle, near Mantua, which is lost; in Vite de’ pittori e scultori ferraresi (Ferrara: Domenico Taddei, 1846), 2:572.23. Lanzi, Storia pittorica, 2:246.24. Francesco Berni, Il torneo a piedi: E l’invenzione, ed allegoria, colla quale il Signor Benso Bonaccorsi comparì a mantenerlo (Ferrara: Gironi & Gherardi, 1631), 99–107.25. “La pittura è una poesia mutta, la poesia è una pittura cicchia.” Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Urbinas, Vatican Library, Urb. lat. 1270, fol. 10r.26. Inventory of Bartolomeo Sarti’s possessions, ASF, 21 October 1641. Cittadella mentions the presence of Ercole’s paintings in the Sarti family house (Catalogo istorico, 4:315).27. “Questo Muto che qui fa ritratti è stimato buono nel fargli dal naturale, ma non hanno poi requisiti dell’arte, se non ordinari, e d’un mezzo ritratto egli si fa pagare dodici e quattordici scudi; così io sono informato da persona, che ciò sa benissimo.” Guido Coccapani to Francesco I, 21 May 1632, ASMO, Particolari, b. 392 Guido Coccapani; published in Barbara Ghelfi, Pittura a Ferrara nel primo seicento: Arte, committenza e spiritualità (Ferrara: Cartografica, 2011), 228.28. Ghelfi, Pittura a Ferrara, 228.29. Maria Angela Novelli, “Un pittore ferrarese nella galeria di Giambattista Marino,” in L’aquila bianca: Studi di storia estense per Luciano Chiappini, ed. Antonio Samaritani and Ranieri Varese (Ferrara: Corbo, 2000), 507. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Source Volume 41, Number 4Summer 2022 Sponsored by the Bard Graduate Center, New York Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/722322 © 2022 Bard Graduate Center. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.