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Renaissance Weddings and the Antique, Italian Domestic Paintings from the Lanckoroński Collection

2023; Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America; Volume: 68; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5406/23300841.68.3.18

2330-0841

Danuta Batorska,

Renaissance Literature and Culture

The monograph by Jerzy Miziołek, professor of art history at Warsaw University, was occasioned by an unprecedented gift to the Republic of Poland by Professor Karolina Lanckorońska (1898–2002), the last surviving member of an old Polish noble family. In a letter of September 8, 1994, she wrote: “I submit this gift to you, Mr. President, in homage to the Republic, Free and Independent.”1 Some 500 art objects arrived in Poland in October 1994, and over 80 Italian paintings—in June 2000. The entire gift came from an art collection assembled by Lanckorońska's father, Count Karol Lanckoroński (1848–1933). It was housed and displayed in the family residence in Vienna that was known as Palais Lanckoroński at Jacquingasse 18. In the monograph, Miziołek refers to the residence as either Palais or Palace.The monograph consists of two parts. In the first part, Miziołek presents Karol Lanckoroński as a collector and a statesman and provides his thorough biography, stressing his expertise in art. In an appendix, he includes Count Lanckoroński's essay, “Some Remarks on Italian Painted Chests,” translated from German into English (pp. 387–397). In the second part of the monograph, Miziołek engages the reader in an in-depth analysis of Italian domestic paintings, which Professor Lanckorońska designated to be housed at the Royal Wawel Castle in Kraków. Miziołek proceeds to define the nature of Italian domestic painting which decorated the bride's marriage chest, cassone, or the backs of the day beds, lettucci, or benches, spalliere, and finally cornici, or paintings just below the ceilings. All these paintings were didactic, and certain subjects enjoyed popularity at a given time or location, to be displaced by a change in customs or taste. In style they were specific to a particular region of Italy; most are typical of the Renaissance art which evolved in Florence, and some of the north of Italy, especially of Venice. Neither the names of the patrons who commissioned them, nor of the scholars and humanists who devised the programme, are known.Miziołek clarifies that the discussion of domestic paintings is not a catalogue of those housed at the Royal Wawel Castle, but “Above all, it is an explorative study of the subject matter of the paintings, although stylistic analysis is also discussed” (p. 10). Thus, he selects a group of paintings and discusses them in chronological order. In addition, he points out that the paintings reflect in either their style or subjects, the personal taste of Karol Lanckoroński.In the lead chapter on domestic paintings, Miziołek analyzes the earliest panels displayed in the Study Gallery, also known as “Studiolo,” in the Jordan Tower of the Royal Wawel Castle. Two (figs. 68a-68b) are on the eastern wall, and two (figs. 79–80) are on the southern wall. Miziołek proposes that the former, each portraying a pair of lovers, may be fragments of a desco da parto, a birth salver, which depicted Love Garden. He dates them c.1400 and attributes them to an anonymous painter, known as Florentine Painter. The latter two, one of which represents the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, and the other—the story of Narcissus, were, in Miziołek's opinion, side panels decorating a single chest. He attributes them to Maestro di San Miniato who painted them at the end of the first half of the fifteenth century. All four are tempera on wood. Even though the four panels represent different aspects of love and desire, as in the two pairs of lovers, and of great passion with a tragic conclusion in Pyramus and Thisbe, and the hopeless self-love of Narcissus, in Miziołek's view they form a thematic unit and should be displayed together (p. 98). The study of the iconography is meticulous, and Miziołek does not omit a single source, be it medieval, Roman, or contemporary, either in literature or in art.Of special interest to Miziołek are two long panels that originally decorated the fronts of two chests (figs. 124, 125) with the Adventures of Ulysses. Both are tempera, and are attributed to Apollonio di Giovanni (c.1415–1465), a Florentine active in the mid-fifteenth century. Miziołek remarks that Count Lanckoroński had a special love of Homer whose works, the Iliad and the Odyssey, he would recount to his young children (p. 181). In his analysis, Miziołek points out that the panels are the earliest narrative illustrations of Adventures of Ulysses since antiquity, and he notes that Apollonio did not adhere to the sequence of the events in Homer, but rather to his own perception or experience of the adventures. Miziołek views the panels as the most complete illustrations of Ulysses’ wanderings until their mural representations in the sixteenth century. He further relates the style of the panels to the contemporary artistic developments in Florence.By the mid-fifteenth century there is a marked change of subject in the domestic painting, from ideal eternal love and fidelity to martial scenes. Miziołek observes that the preference for martial subjects may reflect the groom's taste as he now, and not the father of the bride, orders the marriage chests. Although numerous panels with battle scenes from the Lanckoroński collection are at the Royal Wawel Castle, the most outstanding is a battle between the Romans and Gauls (fig. 216). On the basis of the description by Polybius (c.200–118 B.C.), a Greek historian, in book two of his Histories, of Gallic invasion in 225 B.C., and a subsequent battle in which the Gauls were defeated by the Romans, Miziołek identified it as the Defeat of the Gauls at Telamon. Miziołek also identified some of the participants, the two Roman consuls, Gaius Atilius and Lucius Aemilius Paullus, as well as two Gallic kings. In his opinion the anonymous Florentine painter who executed the panel in tempera, oil, and gold, rendered faithfully Polybius’ description of the battle, including elements of the landscape where it took place. On the basis of stylistic elements, and introduction of various motifs from contemporary Florentine painters, especially Paolo Uccello (1397–1475) and Antonio del Pollaiulo (1431/2–98), Miziołek dates the panel c.1475.In the final two chapters, 9 and 10, Miziołek discusses several panels painted by northern artists, either of the Venetian school, or from around Milan, whose style differs from the Florentine. Contrasting with the martial subjects of previous chapter, the subsequent chapter focuses on moralizing images. Three panels, The Judgement of Solomon (fig. 253), Shooting at the Father's Corpse, or The Legend of the Dead King (fig. 258), and The Vindication of the Vestal Tuccia (fig. 272), are attributed to Alvise Ludovico Donati who from c.1495 had an atelier in Milan. The three panels are tempera on walnut and date from c.1510. In analyzing the three panels in terms of iconography and stylistic elements, Miziołek came to the conclusion that they adorned a single chest as he proves in his virtual reconstruction (fig. 279). He further points out that in the north a single chest may be decorated by three different scenes forming a thematic unit.In the first part of chapter 10, Miziołek discusses the portrayals of Virgil and Aristotle in the Lanckoroński collection. The image of Virgil with Panpipes (fig. 284), tempera on poplar wood, receives the most attention. Miziolek attributes it to an unknown follower of Giulio Romano (1499–1546). The former probably painted it before 1532, possibly after Giulio Romano's image of Virgil of 1524 in the Camerino dei Cesari in Palazzo del Te in Mantua. In discussing it Miziołek traces the evolution of Virgil's images to the Roman period, and include Renaissance and later images, as well as present-day Italian tradition of wearing a laurel wreath upon receipt of a master's degree (p. 345). As usual, Miziołek presents the reader with a meticulous iconographical study but does not include a stylistic discussion of any of the images.In the second part of chapter 10, Miziołek presents popular and humorous, in reality derisive, portrayals of Aristotle and Virgil as old fools. Both, Mounted Aristotle or Phyllis and Aristotle (fig. 296), and Virgil in a Basket or Virgil and Febila (fig. 297), are oil on canvas and probably, as proposed by Count Lanckoroński, decorated a day bed, or lettuccio. The virtual reconstruction of the latter (fig. 320) supports Lanckoroński's identification of their function. The two had been attributed to Giovanni di Buonconsiglio (1465–1535/37), active in Venice, and Miziołek dates them c.1515. In his iconographical study of the images, Miziołek traces their origin to the Middle Ages, and stresses their continuation into the Renaissance period and beyond.The monograph is an outstanding example of scholarship and represents the definitive study of domestic painting formerly in the Lanckoroński collection, housed today at the Royal Wawel Castle in Kraków. Its strength is the iconographical study of the collection, supported by the rich, mostly color, illustrations. It is weak on stylistic analysis which would support the attributions to diverse Italian art centers during, before, and beyond the Renaissance. The thorough discussion of the nuptials and of the accompanying traditional objects enlarges the viewer's understanding of the collection, and the accessible and easy-to-follow writing style and language heighten the pleasure of studying the monograph.