Fra Filippo Lippi: The Wordly Renaissance Artist.

February 18, 2013, 9:16 am

≫ Next: An Overlooked and Maligned Artist: Andrea dal Castagno.

Fra Fillippo Lippi, Confirmation of the Carmelite Rule, c. 1432, Fresco, Museo di Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence.

A painter who developed alongside Uccello in Florence was Fra Fillippo Lippi. As his name suggests, he was a monk, a young Carmelite friar. An unwanted child, Lippi was raised in the Carmelite friary of the Carmine, where he took his vows in 1421. Unlike the Dominican Fra Angelico, Lippi was not cut out for the religious life, and infamously scandalized his brethren by running off with a nun, Lucrezia Buti, who had been persuaded to pose as a model. She bore his son Filippino and a daughter Alessandra. Despite the couple being released from their vows and marrying, Lippi insisted on signing himself "Frater Philippus". Never one to miss an opportunity to embellish a biography, Vasari really pulled out all the stops, throwing in capture by Barbary pirates and portrayed a headstrong, wordly artist at odds with the strictures of the renaissance church. Where art was concerned Lippi took the best model available, Masaccio, whose frescoes where available to see in the Carmine. According to Vasari, Lippi’s first painting was done in 1432, in the Carmine, a fresco showing the Confirmation of the Carmelite rule. Vasari was proved right when Lippi’s fresco was discovered in 1860 beneath a layer of plaster in the convent. It took Lippi some time to get into his stride as a painter; his early Madonna of Humility is a curious blend of Masaccio and bizarre experimentation. Of interest here is Lippi’s treatment of angels, who as Antal notes do not conform to the antique model, but have the faces of Florentine urchins, and pretty ugly ones at that.[1]However, Fra Fillippo introduced a new standard of beauty to Florentine art with his later Madonnas, his portraits, such as the first double portrait with a landscape (New York) and his fresco cycle at Prato, especially Herod’s Banquet. Botticelli became Fra Fillippo’s pupil and the swirling rhythms and effortless grace of this picture would re-appear in the younger artist’s work.

Fra Filippo Lippi Herod's Banquet, 1452-65, Fresco, Duomo, Prato.

[1]Antal, Florentine Painting, 344-5.

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An Overlooked and Maligned Artist: Andrea dal Castagno.

February 18, 2013, 9:25 am

≫ Next: The Reconstruction of Pesellino.

≪ Previous: Fra Filippo Lippi: The Wordly Renaissance Artist.

Andrea dal Castagno, Last Supper and Stories of Christ's Passion, 1447, Fresco, 453 x 975 cm (each fresco), Sant'Apollonia, Florence.

Andrea dal Castagno’s origins have always been shrouded in mystery. On the one hand he said to be the son of a poor labourer in Castagno, just outside Florence; on the other he’s supposed to have held land in that district. Much worse than this, due to Vasari, Andrea’s character was besmirched for over four hundred years because his biographer alleged that Castagno had “murdered” another famous painter, Domenico Veneziano, a distortion that was retold by every Florentine commentator after Vasari.[1]The assassination theory has subsequently been disproved as it is known that Veneziano survived Andrea by four years. Andrea’s future became brighter when he came under the protection of the Florentine nobleman, Bernadetto de’ Medici, and eventually gained the nickname “Andrea degli Impiccati” (“Little Andrea of the Hanged Men”) because he painted the faces of the traitors in the Pazzi conspiracy on the walls of the Senate House. In 1442 he worked with Francesco di Faenza on frescoes in S. Zaccaria in Venice before returning to Florence in 1444. His first great work was a Last Supper and Scenes from the Life of Christ for the Convent of St Apollonia in Florence, which now serves as a museum for the painter. Other notable works include a Crucifixion (NG, London), a panel of the Young David (NG, Washington), and a Trinitywith a foreshortened, airborne Christ. A sinopia drawing for the Trinity could hardly be more different from the fresco: the figures do not have their backs to the viewer; instead of a rugged, toothless old man, we have a more agile younger man. The spectacular trinity is barely indicated in the sinopia drawing; and as Millard Meiss points out, the foreshortening caused Andrea much trouble. After painting the lower part of Christ’s body in awkward foreshortening, he decided to conceal this with a group of angels. This addition was painted a secco, so the paint peeled, and so we can see Andrea’s heroic efforts to capture this effect.[2]

Andrea dal Castagno the Holy Trinity, St Jerome and Two Saints, c. 1453, Fresco, Santissima Annunziata, Florence.

Andrea dal Castagno, Sinopia drawing for Holy Trinity, Santissima Annunziata, Florence.

[1]Herbert P. Horne, “Andrea dal Castagno” His Early Life, Part One” ,Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Vol. 7, No. 25 (Apr., 1905), pp. 66-69.

[2]Millard Meiss, Nos, 42,43, Frescoes from Florence

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The Reconstruction of Pesellino.

February 18, 2013, 9:34 am

≫ Next: Filippino Lippi.

≪ Previous: An Overlooked and Maligned Artist: Andrea dal Castagno.

Pesellino, Santa Trinità Altarpiece, 1455-60, Tempera and oil on wood, National Gallery, London.

Att. to Filippino Lippi and Workshop, St Mamas in Prison thrown to the lions, 1455-60, National Gallery, London.

History has not been kind to Francesco di Stefano, more commonly called Pesellino. Vasari confused him with his grandfather, Pesello, stating that this individual was the pupil of Andrea dal Castagno, whilist leaving Francesco in art history oblivion.[1]Those zealous Victorian connoisseurs Crowe and Cavalcaselle put Pesellino on the road to re-discovery, though they found it hard to extricate him from the confusion Vasari had spread. Mary Logan (Mrs Berenson) attempted to isolate a group of pictures[2]; though as Hendy points out, her invention of a fictitious name, “Compagno di Pesellino” muddied the waters further. Logan’s group included the Trinity, whose central panel was bought by the National Gallery, London in 1863. The Trinity was commissioned by the company of Pistoia, thirty km from Florence, and in the words of Hendy “must be the foundation for every attribution to the painter.”[3]The completion of the altarpiece was slowed by the death of Pesellino in 1457, but it was eventually finished by the workshop of Filippino Lippi. Though the situation is complicated, there is extensive documentation which aided greatly in reconstructing the structure.[4]The main tier of the altarpiece was sawn into five fragments, likely in the eighteenth-century, of which four entered the NG between 1863 and 1929, and one- the fragment with Sts Mamas and James on loan to the NG from the Royal Collection. The five fragments were re-united in 1929, and put in a modern frame with four predella panels in 1937.[5]As Gordon points out, the involvement of Lippi and Domenico Veneziano to assess the painting after Pesellino’s death has led to debates about the attribution of the main tier, although its seems likely that the Lippi workshop were responsible for the predella. It has now been established that a fifth panel (Hermitage) was the central one of the Trinity altarpiece, an omission hidden by the modern frame.

According to Vasari, Pesellino painted an altarpiece for Santa Croce, which is now dispersed and divided between the Uffizi, Louvre and Bergamo. Many panels and drawings are to be found in the museums of the world. The Met own a fine panel showing a Madonna and Six Saints; the Louvre have a Sacra Conversazione, as well as drawings by the artist; and the Uffizi possess panels and drawings. Some of these drawings have been connected with Pesellino’s late altarpieces.[6]

Pesellino, Madonna, Christ, Sts Zenobius and John the Baptist, 1455-7, Museé du Louvre, Paris.

Att. to Pesellino, Head of a Man, c. 1455, black chalk and charcoal on paper, partially prepared with pink wash or pigment, Uffizi, Florence, recto.

[1]Philip Hendy, “Pesellino”, Burlington Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 305, (Aug., 1928), pp. 66-69+72-74.

[2] Mary Logan. "Compagno di Pesellino et quelques peintures de l'école (1er article)." Gazette des beaux-arts, 3rd ser., 26 (July 1901), 23.

[3] Hendy, “Pesellino”, 68.

[4] A brief summary is provided by Dillian Gordon, “The' missing predella panel of Pesellino’s Trinity altarpiece”, Burlington Magazine, Vol. 138, No. 1115 (Feb., 1996), pp. 87-88.

[5] Gordon, “The' missing predella panel”, 87.

[6]Jean K. Cadogan, “Notes on a Drawing by Pesellino”, Burlington Magazine, Vol. 149, No. 1256, Italian Art (Nov., 2007), pp. 767-77.

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Filippino Lippi.

February 18, 2013, 9:41 am

≫ Next: List of Slides for Week 6

≪ Previous: The Reconstruction of Pesellino.

Fillipino Lippi, Allegory of Music, c. 1500, Tempera on panel, 61 × 51 cm. Gemaldegalerie, Berlin, Germany.

As mentioned previously, Lippi was the illegitimate son of Fra Fillippo and Lucrezia Buti. Like his father he rose to become an important Florentine artist, His early pictures resemble Botticelli’s who was trained by his father. Botticelli threatened to blot out Lippi’s achievements; Filippino’s early works were attributed by Berenson to a made-up painter, “Amico di Sandro.” Perhaps Berenson could be forgiven for casting Lippi in the role of a Botticelli clone; such pictures as his Allegory of Music (Berlin) possess the fluttering drapery and graceful movement that are Botticelli’s trademarks. Lippi eventually forged an artistic identity of his own as can be seen in his set of frescoes for the family chapel of Filippo Strozzi in Santa Maria Novella (1487). Lippi creates an antique looking world that is not only more scholarly in mood than Botticelli, but whose realism is more expressive. Additionally, the clashing colours, cluttered detail and general incoherence are not typical of quattrocento art- and suggest a break with it. The weight of antiquarian elements is worthy of comment, and recalls painters like Mantegna, albeit seen through a “surrealistic” prism. Were it not for the echoes of Botticelli, one might be forgiven for thinking that the great Venetian archaeological painter had brought his style to Florence.

Filipino Lippi and Workshop, View of the Strozzi Chapel, 1487-1502, Fresco, Santa Maria Novella, Florence.

St Philip Driving the Dragon from the Temple of Hieropolis, 1487-1502, Fresco, Strozzi Chapel, Santa Maria Novella, Florence.

Fillipino Lippi St John the Evangelist Resuscitating Drusiana, 1487-1502, Fresco, Strozzi Chapel, Santa Maria Novella, Florence.

Perhaps Filippino’s most celebrated work is not a Florentine commission at all- but the fresco painted for Cardinal Carafa (Santa Maria sopra Minerva, in Rome, 1489-91), and therefore outside the purview of this course.

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List of Slides for Week 6

February 21, 2013, 2:37 pm

≫ Next: Origins of Verrocchio’s Studio in Florence

≪ Previous: Filippino Lippi.

1)      Fra Filippo Lippi Madonna of Humility (Trivulzio Madonna), c. 1430, Panel, Castello Sforzesco, Milan.
2)      Exterior of Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence.
3)      Fra Fillippo Lippi, Confirmation of the Carmelite Rule, c. 1432, Fresco, Museo di Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence.
4)      Detail.
5)      Fra Filippo Lippi, Portrait of a Man and a Woman, c. 1440, Tempera on wood, 64 x 42 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
6)      Fra Filippo Lippi Annunciation with two Kneeling Donors, c. 1440, Oil on panel, 155 x 144 cm, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome.
7)      Detail: Donors, Andrea and Lorenzo d'Ilarione de' Bardi/Folco Portinari and Folgonaccio.
8)      Detail: Angel.
9)      Detail: sculptural figures.
10)   Fra Filippo Lippi, Madonna with the Child and Scenes from the Life of St Anne, 1452, Oil on panel, diameter 135 cm, Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence.
11)   Fra Fillippo Lippi and Workshop, view of the fresco cycle, 1452-65, Fresco, Duomo, Prato.
12)   Fra Fillippo Lippi and Workshop View of the left (north) wall of the main chapel, 1452-65, Fresco, Duomo, Prato.
13)   Fra Filippo Lippi Herod's Banquet, 1452-65, Fresco, Duomo, Prato.
14)   Detail: Salome Dances.
15)   Detail: Salome before Herod.
16)   Andrea dal Castagno, Last Supper and Stories of Christ's Passion, 1447, Fresco, 453 x 975 cm (each fresco), Sant'Apollonia, Florence.
17)   Andrea dal Castagno, Scenes of Christ’s passion.
18)   Andrea dal Castagno, Sinopia drawing for scenes of Christ’s passion.
19)   Andrea dal Castagno Crucifixion, c. 1450, Panel, 29 x 35 cm, National Gallery, London.
20)   Andrea dal Castagno The Youthful David, c. 1450, Tempera on leather on wood, width at bottom 115,6 x 41 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington.
21)   Andrea dal Castagno the Holy Trinity, St Jerome and Two Saints, c. 1453, Fresco, Santissima Annunziata, Florence.
22)   Andrea dal Castagno, Sinopia drawing for Holy Trinity, Santissima Annunziata, Florence.
23)   Pesellino, Madonna and Child with Six Saints (Anthony Abbot, Jerome, Cecilia, Catherine of Alexandria, Augustine, and George), c. 1444, 8 7/8 x 8 in. (22.5 x 20.3 cm), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
24)   Pesellino Episode from the Story of Griselda, 1445-50, Tempera on panel, 44 x 110 cm, Accademia Carrara, Bergamo.
25)   Pesellino, Madonna, Christ, Sts Zenobius and John the Baptist, 1455-7, Museé du Louvre, Paris.
26)   Att. to Pesellino, Head of a Man, c. 1455, black chalk and charcoal on paper, partially prepared with pink wash or pigment, Uffizi, Florence, recto.
27)   Pesellino, Santa Trinità Altarpiece, 1455-60, Tempera and oil on wood, National Gallery, London.
28)   Detail: God and Holy Spirit.
29)   Detail: Sts Mamas and James.
30)   Att. to Filippino Lippi and Workshop, St Mamas in Prison thrown to the lions, 1455-60, National Gallery, London.
31)   Att to Fillipino Lippi and Workshop, Beheading of John the Baptist, c. 1455-60, National Gallery, London.
32)   Fillipino Lippi, Allegory of Music, c. 1500, Tempera on panel, 61 × 51 cm. Gemaldegalerie, Berlin, Germany.
33)   Filipino Lippi and Workshop, View of the Strozzi Chapel, 1487-1502, Fresco, Santa Maria Novella, Florence.
34)   St Philip Driving the Dragon from the Temple of Hieropolis, 1487-1502, Fresco, Strozzi Chapel, Santa Maria Novella, Florence.
35)   Detail: Temple of Mars.
36)   Detail: Priest.
37)   Detail: Bystander.
38)   Fillipino Lippi St John the Evangelist Resuscitating Drusiana, 1487-1502, Fresco, Strozzi Chapel, Santa Maria Novella, Florence.

Skydrive images here.

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Origins of Verrocchio’s Studio in Florence

February 22, 2013, 5:31 am

≫ Next: Verrocchio’s Early Style and an Obscure Panel in the Courtauld.

≪ Previous: List of Slides for Week 6

Andrea del Verrocchio, David, Florence, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, 1473-5, bronze, height, 125 cm.

Andrea was the son of Michele di Francesco di Cione, a tax official. The artist’s first apprenticeship was with the goldsmith Andrea Dei from 1453 to 1456. In 1457, he became affiliated with Francesco di Luca Verrocchio, thus inheriting his patronymic. Verrocchio’s birth date is the subject of discussion, but he was probably born in 1435 and lived until the age of 53- he was only 17 years older than Leonardo. An unfortunate accident had determined the course of his life. As a result of a tragic stone-throwing game with his Florentine compatriots, Verrocchio killed Antonio di Domenico, a woodworker aged 14. The taxman’s son was Imprisoned and tried for involuntary manslaughter, but Verrocchio was released soon afterward, the judges being used to stone-throwing cases, not unusual in in Florence. Verrocchio was guilt-stricken for the rest of his life, and it’s thought the accidental death was the reason he didn’t put a stone in the hand of his celebrated David, thought by some to have been modelled by the young Leonardo. To add to Verrocchio’s troubles, his father died shortly afterwards, leaving a widow, Nannina, 6 children, and a multitude of debts. Andrea inherited the task of supporting his family, but on the positive side, his financial misfortune drove his artistic career. When Leonardo started in Verrocchio’s workshop- after Abbacus School, reckoning school- Andrea was still supporting his family.

What made Verrocchio’s name was a commission for the tombstone of the “father of the state”, Cosimo de’ Medici. Most of Verrocchio’s identified works were completed in the last 25 years of his life, and more mainly connected to Medici commissions- his career thus owed a great deal to the Medici. Verrocchio’s workshop would also have been under the protection of the Medici. As Serge Bramley says, we shouldn’t picture Verrocchio’s workshop in the Via de Agnolo as a 19th century painter’s studio. It was a bottega, and hence more likely resembled a shop like a shoemaker’s, a butchers or tailor’s. It was probably a set of ground floor premises opening onto the street, where children played and animals wandered. It would have been able to handle all commissions since Verrocchio advertised himself as a painter, decorator, sculptor and goldsmith.[1] Vasari’s reading of Verrocchio is incorrect. Bramley sees him as a “pioneer” whose dogged determination fascinated his pupils. The accidents of history have not helped either since only a few works by Verrocchio have survived; thirty have been listed of which are uncertain.[2]

Leonardo would have entered Verrocchio’s studio in 1466 or 1467 as apprentice or discepolo, where he would have learnt how to make paintbrushes, prepare glazes, stretch canvas onto panels, recognize and prepare pigments, freshly ground and mixed every day. Once he had mastered this basic training, Leonardo would have progressed to taking an active hand in the “firm’s” activities, especially when he became a journeyman (garzone). During this stage the master might entrust him with decoration or backgrounds; he might have let him handle architectural sections, plants, or garments and background figures, depending on the garzone’s skill or aptitude for the task. As a trained goldsmith Verrocchio would have drawn in pen and ink, though many of his pupils like Lorenzo di Credi and Leonardo used silverpoint in their figure studies.

Lorenzo di Credi, Bust of a Boy Wearing a Cap, c. 1480, Metalpoint with white highlights on pale brownish pink prepared paper, 245 x 188 mm, Musée du Louvre, Paris

Maso Finguerra, Ragozzo intent al disegno, (Boy busy drawing) Florence, Uffizi, pen and ink.

Leonardo da Vinci, Profile of Man in Armour, London, British Museum, 1475-80, silverpoint, 211.000 mm.

[1]Serge Bramley, Leonardo: The Artist and the Man, (1988), 65.

[2]See James Fenton’s “Verrocchio: The New Cicerone” in Leonardo’s Nephew: Essays on Art and Artists, 1998, 50-68.

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Verrocchio’s Early Style and an Obscure Panel in the Courtauld.

February 22, 2013, 5:38 am

≫ Next: Verrocchio, Painting and Sculpture.

≪ Previous: Origins of Verrocchio’s Studio in Florence

Att. to Andrea del Verrocchio, Madonna and Child, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, possibly 1460s (Shearman).

Rogier van der Weyden, Madonna, Virgin and Child, c. 1433, Oil on panel, 14 x 10 cm, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.

Though Verrocchio is first and foremost a Florentine painter, and clearly an example of that school’s art, there are indications that he absorbed influences from outside the city. John Shearman has argued that some of Verrocchio’s Madonnas, and those that have been attributed to him, betray stylistic influences from Northern Europe. An intriguing Madonna in the Courtauld Institute prompted an article from Shearman where he said that details such as the painting, physical characteristics- low, drooping eyelids- long rippling hair-, landscape view through an aperture suggested the influence of Rogier van der Weyden.[1]Previous attributions to Northern Italian painters like Foppa can be safely ruled out, but it is significant that painters in the vicinity of Verrocchio’s studio have been connected with this neglected panel. Shearman particularly focuses on Bernard Berenson’s attribution of this panel to a “Florentine unknown…between Pollaiuolo and Leonardo.” Despite the unspecific of this attribution, Shearman argues that it makes perfect sense since its style encompasses both Verrocchio’s style and that of his famous pupils like Lorenzo di Credi, Ghirlandaio, and of course Leonardo da Vinci. Altarpieces like the Madonna and Saints (Pistoia) show touches of Verrocchio, although there is also a strong possibility that the master was helped by pupils such as Lorenzo di Credi and Ghirlandaio.

Att to Verrocchio, but probably done with the assistance of Lorenzo di Credi, Madonna with Sts John the Baptist and Donatus, 1475-83, Wood, 189 x 191 cm, Duomo, Pistoia.

[1]John Shearman, “ A Suggestion for the Early Style of Verrocchio” Burlington Magazine, Vol. 109, No. 768, The Gambier-Parry Bequest to The University of London (Mar., 1967), pp. 110-127.

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Verrocchio, Painting and Sculpture.

February 22, 2013, 5:52 am

≫ Next: Lorenzo di Credi, Verrocchio’s Favourite Pupil.

≪ Previous: Verrocchio’s Early Style and an Obscure Panel in the Courtauld.

Andrea del Verrocchio and Leonardo da Vinci, Baptism of Christ, Florence, Uffizi, 1472-5, oil on wood, 177 x 151 cm.

Looking at post-renaissance representations of Leonardo and Verrocchio’s relationship- such as Gigoux’s take on the master-pupil bond- we might assume that the elder master was so distraught at his pupil’s precocity that he abandoned his palette and paintbrush in despair. This impinges on the topic of Verrocchio’s ability as a painter, which has been the subject of some discussion.[1] A glance at a painted Head of St Jerome seems to confirm that Verrocchio had talent as a painter early in his career, and that he painted studies of “character heads” which undoubtedly influenced the young Leonardo. According to David Alan Brown, Verrocchio only began to learn to paint after the Baptism of Christ, and when he was simultaneously working on the sculpture group, the Incredulity of St Thomas for Orsanmichele. According to this theory Verrocchio only began painting after he was a confirmed sculptor; his interest in sculpture probably dates from about 1461 when he competed with Desiderio and Giuliano da Maiano for a commission at Orvieto. Verrocchio also felt the need to surround himself with pupils who would help him with the demands of the painting, leaving him more time for sculptural projects.

Andrea del Verrocchio, Head of St Donatus, Private Collection, New York, probably 1470s.

Verrocchio, Putto with a Dolphin, c. 1470, Florence, Palazzo Vecchio, marble, 125 cm.

While many of Verrocchio’s pupils were adept painters, it was only Leonardo who was the pupil who could work in both painting and sculpture. It may well be the case that Leonardo conceived his ideas about the paragone, the comparison between the arts, in his formative years in his master’s studio. As for Verrocchio, he gained greater recognition as a sculptor; he characterised himself as a “chiseler” in the land office registers of 1470 and 1480, and in his will he is remembered as a “sculptor”. However, in the documents for his admission to another society in 1570, Verrocchio is described as a “painter.” Verrocchio’s painting ability can be seen in the wonderful Head of St Donato (Private Coll., New York) which was probably a study for a marble bust, typical of the sort of works that Verrocchio and his pupils did in the workshop- both sculptural and pictorial. Indeed, Verrocchio was ahead of his time in rejecting the traditional view that a sculpture should have a main point from which it could be viewed; he was an advocate of the multiple viewpoint. An example of Verrocchio putting his multi-view approach into operation can be seen in the Putto with a Dolphin, which describes a twisting, swerving motion. This encourages the spectator to move around the sculpture instead of viewing the marble stationary from a single location. Verrocchio’s use of space in his paintings of Madonnas, e.g. the Berlin Madonna and Child, which with its use of multi-viewpoints, suggests the knowledge of the sculptor too. Leonardo’s first sculptural projects, made in his youth in Florence, show this multi-view method.

Verrocchio, Madonna and Child, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, 1470, oil on poplar, 76 x 55 cm.

[1] See Liletta Fornasari, “Andrea del Verrocchio and the Tuscan Workshops: the Renaissance atelier” in Leonardo and Surroundings. Also, Jill Dunkerton and Luke Syson, National Gallery Technical Bulletin, 31, “In Search of Verrocchio the Painter: The Cleaning and Examination of The Virgin with Two Angels.”

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Lorenzo di Credi, Verrocchio’s Favourite Pupil.

February 22, 2013, 6:01 am

≫ Next: List of Slides for Week 7.

≪ Previous: Verrocchio, Painting and Sculpture.

Pietro Perugino, Portrait of Lorenzo di Credi, 1488, oil on panel transferred to canvas, original panel: 44 x 30.5 cm (17 5/16 x 12 in.) overall (with added border): 46 x 32.5 cm (18 1/8 x 12 13/16 in.) framed: 63.8 x 50.8 x 5.7 cm (25 1/8 x 20 x 2 1/4 in.), National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Biagio d’Antonio, Portrait of a Young Man, probably 1470, tempera on wood, 54.3 x 39.4 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Lorenzo was a fellow pupil of Leonardo in Verrocchio's workshop and he seems to have stayed there until Verrocchio's death in 1488, managing the painting side of his master's multifaceted business. Credi was a very fine craftsman, but he lacked a distinctive style. A panel in Washington, by Perugino, another of Verrocchio’s charges, is thought to be a portrait of the artist; though its inscription “Lorenzo di Credi, most excellent painter, 1488, age 32 years, 8 months" is a sixteenth-century addition. Washington NGA speculates that the sad mood of this portrait may suggest it was done just after Verrocchio’s death in 1488, the date on the panel.[1] Verrocchio certainly influenced this portrait, and his influence was felt by other painter’s such as Biagio d’ Antonio- linked with Botticelli- with his Portrait of a Young Man (Washington); though Credi’s Portrait of a Young Woman (New York) seems to show knowledge of Leonardo’s Ginevra di Benci portrait- it may even be Ginevra in the Met portrait.[2]

Lorenzo di Credi, Portrait of a Young Woman, c. 1490-1500, oil on wood, 58.7 x 40 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Leonardo da Vinci, Portrait of Ginevra de' Benci, 1474-78, Oil on wood, 38,8 x 36,7 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Credi was said to be Verrocchio’s favourite pupil, perhaps because he was more amenable than the tempestuous Leonardo who must have been more a force of nature than a student. Lorenzo’s early work betrays the influence of Leonardo's youthful style. Later he absorbed some of the ideas of the High Renaissance (Communion of Mary Magdalen, Esztergom), and some of his work recalls Fra Bartolommeo. Credi had several pupils and seems to have had a fairly successful career with his art, which is unfairly dismissed as mediocre. Though not an artistic genius like Leonardo, Credi was capable of producing memorable work , and he was a fine draughtsman. Towards the end of the quattrocento, Credi got swept up in the whirlwind of Savonarola’s teachings, and it thought that in 1497 he destroyed all his pictures with profane subjects, although some of this group survived like the so-called “Venus” in the Uffizi, which was discovered in the 19^th century inside a Medici villa.

Lorenzo di Credi, Venus, 1493-94, Oil on canvas, 151 x 69 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

[1]http://www.nga.gov/fcgi-bin/tinfo_f?acc=1942.9.38

[2]http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/110001354#fullscreen

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List of Slides for Week 7.

March 3, 2013, 12:15 pm

≫ Next: The Dark Side of Botticelli.

≪ Previous: Lorenzo di Credi, Verrocchio’s Favourite Pupil.

1) Andrea del Verrocchio, David, Florence, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, 1473-5, bronze, height, 125 cm.

2) Detail.

3) Andrea del Verrocchio, Equestrian Statue of Bartolommeo Colleoni, 1481-95, Campo di Santi Giovanni e Paolo Gilded bronze, height: 395 cm (without base), Venice.

4) Detail.

5) Lucca della Robbia, Madonna of the Apple, 1455-60, Glazed terracotta, 70 x 52 cm, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence.

6) Andrea del Verrocchio and Leonardo da Vinci, Baptism of Christ, Florence, Uffizi, 1472-5, oil on wood, 177 x 151 cm.

7) Detail: Angel from Baptism of Christ, (Leonardo).

8) Detail: Angel from Baptism of Christ, (Verrocchio).

9) Att to Verrocchio, but probably done with the assistance of Lorenzo di Credi, Madonna with Sts John the Baptist and Donatus, 1475-83, Wood, 189 x 191 cm, Duomo, Pistoia.

10) Maso Finguerra, Ragozzo intent al disegno, (Boy busy drawing) Florence, Uffizi, pen and ink.

11) Lorenzo di Credi, Studies for draperies, Paris, Fondation Custodia, Fritz Lugt Coll., brown ink and wash.

12) Lorenzo di Credi, Bust of a Boy Wearing a Cap, c. 1480, Metalpoint with white highlights on pale brownish pink prepared paper, 245 x 188 mm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

13) Leonardo da Vinci, Profile of Man in Armour, London, British Museum, 1475-80, silverpoint, 211.000 mm.

14) Att. to Andrea del Verrocchio, Madonna and Child, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, possibly 1460s (Shearman).

15) Rogier van der Weyden, Madonna, Virgin and Child, c. 1433, Oil on panel, 14 x 10 cm, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.

16) Antonio da Pollaiuolo, Portrait of a Young Woman, 1460-65, Oil and tempera on poplar panel, 53 x 37 cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin.

17) Verrocchio, Madonna and Child, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, 1470, oil on poplar, 76 x 55 cm.

18) Verrocchio, Putto with a Dolphin, c. 1470, Florence, Palazzo Vecchio, marble, 125 cm.

19) Verrocchio and assistant, probably Lorenzo di Credi, Madonna and Child with Angels, London, National Gallery, 1476-8, tempera on wood, 96.5 x 70.5 cm.

20) Domenico Ghirlandaio, Madonna and Child, 1470-5, tempera on panel, 71 x 49 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington.

21) Pietro Perugino, Portrait of Lorenzo di Credi, 1488, oil on panel transferred to canvas, original panel: 44 x 30.5 cm (17 5/16 x 12 in.) overall (with added border): 46 x 32.5 cm (18 1/8 x 12 13/16 in.) framed: 63.8 x 50.8 x 5.7 cm (25 1/8 x 20 x 2 1/4 in.), National Gallery of Art, Washington.

22) Biagio d’Antonio, Portrait of a Young Man, probably 1470, tempera on wood, 54.3 x 39.4 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

23) Lorenzo di Credi, Portrait of a Young Woman, c. 1490-1500, oil on wood, 58.7 x 40 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

24) Leonardo da Vinci, Portrait of Ginevra de' Benci, 1474-78, Oil on wood, 38,8 x 36,7 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington.

25) Previously attributed to Leonardo, now given to Lorenzo di Credi, Madonna of the Pomegranate, (The Dreyfuss Madonna), Washington, National Gallery, Kress Coll., c. 1469, oil on panel, overall: 16.5 x 13.4 cm (6 1/2 x 5 1/4 in.) framed: 44.1 x 24.5 x 3.8 cm (17 3/8 x 9 5/8 x 1 1/2 in).

26) Lorenzo di Credi, Venus, 1493-94, Oil on canvas, 151 x 69 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

27) Lorenzo di Credi, An Angel Brings the Holy Communion to Mary Magdalen, about 1510, Tempera on wood, 51 x 38 cm, Christian Museum, Esztergom.

Skydrive images here.

↧

The Dark Side of Botticelli.

March 3, 2013, 12:26 pm

≫ Next: Botticelli's Bad Dream Art.

≪ Previous: List of Slides for Week 7.

Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, c. 1485, Tempera on canvas, 172.5 x 278.5 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

For many people Botticelli was responsible for producing the most well-known renaissance painting: the Birth of Venus. This masterpiece which is notable for its velvety grace and idealised beauty fixes in the minds of many the essence of Botticelli’s art: painting sympathetic to mythological classicism, yet responsive to the current innovations of design, stylistic elegance, all culminating in beauty of form. Whilist that is certainly a fair view of Botticelli’s art, there is a side of him that the public is less aware of: the artist who painted disturbing, proto-surrealistic panels, as well as disturbing religious allegories whilist under the spell of the Dominican monk Girolamo Savonarola.

Domenico Ghirlandaio, Birth of Mary, 1486-90, Fresco, width 450 cm, Cappella Tornabuoni, Santa Maria Novella, Florence.

Botticelli’s late religious art is especially notable for its unsettling atmosphere and strained emotion, which is a far cry from the sedate rhythms of the Birth of Venus and Primaveracompleted in the middle years. The dark side of Florentine art did not escape the attention of seminal art historians like Aby Warburg who glimpsed a shadow peeping out from the sweetness and light of bodies in works by Botticelli and Ghirlandaio;[1]the draperies and forms derived from classical antiquity could suggest liberation from the bourgeoisie life shown in domestic scenes; but classism without distance and control could intoxicate the painter resulting in a form of sterile mannerism and psychological disquiet, which characterises Botticelli’s late art. The dark side of the antique was also present in its scenes of violence which could unwittingly lead artists to a celebration of cruelty and decadence, a spirit alive in Botticelli’s highly unsettling Nastagio degli Onesti scenes, and even in early Medician commissions like the early Judithpanels.[2]Later scholars have shared Warburg’s ambivalence towards the classical revival in the renaissance; some have observed a different body of Venus, not the perfect, idealized one that art history has worshipped: instead, a darker, disregarded body that belonged to the anatomists and obstetricians; not the body of composers of romantic poetry nor the frequenters of renaissance pageant.[3]

Sandro Botticelli, The Return of Judith to Bethulia, c. 1472, Oil on panel, 31 x 24 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

Sandro Botticelli, The Discovery of the Murder of Holofernes, c. 1472, Tempera on wood, 31 x 25 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

[1] Aby Warburg, The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity: Contributions to the Cultural History of the European Renaissance (Getty, 1999).

[2]Ernst Gombrich, “Warburg Centenary Lecture” in Art History as Cultural History: Warburg’s Projects, (Amsterdam, 2002), 33-54, 44

[3]Georges Didi-Hubermann, Ouvrir Venus, (Paris, 1999).

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Botticelli's Bad Dream Art.

March 3, 2013, 12:39 pm

≫ Next: A Related Nightmare.

≪ Previous: The Dark Side of Botticelli.

Biagio d’ Antonio, The Triumph of Camillus, 1470-75, Tempera on panel, 60 x 154 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington.

In the 1480s Botticelli gained commissions from families in high society. Increasingly they chose classical themes for the luxurious decoration of their town houses, like in the case of Biagio d’ Antonio’s Camilluspanel. Biago was a pupil of Botticelli who in addition to being taught by a great Florentine master had to endure his endless practical jokes, if Vasari is to be believed. In addition to classical subject matter, domestic commissions included episodes from contemporary literature. In order to be able to carry out his multiple commissions, Botticelli had to work together with other painters as well as members of his own workshop. The four-part Nastagio degli Onesti cycle was produced with the aid of Bartolomeo di Giovanni, an artist who had also worked for Ghirlandaio. Bartolomeo was commissioned to paint the predella of Ghirlandaio's Adoration of the Magi in the Spedale degli Innocenti (Foundling Hospital) in Florence, in 1488, and was probably the most skilled of all the artists in Ghirlandaio's workshop. Warburg was influenced by Carl Jung and believed in a psychological dimension to art. He characterised Botticelli’s art as “dreamlike”, a result of his conviction that art recorded the inner life, as well as the outward, material aspects of existence. If Warburg did not see Botticelli as a “painter of dreams”, he saw his art evoking a dreamlike state. The fluttering hair of Venus and gently blowing draperies of the Graces in The Birth of Venus created the impression of a dream, and a dream of beauty, which is precisely what his later admirers like Burne-Jones attempted to pursue.

Sandro Botticelli, The Story of Nastagio degli Onesti (first episode), c. 1483, Tempera on panel, 83 x 138 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Second Episode.

More recently French art historians like Damisch and Did-Hubermann have pursued the idea of dreams as implied, if not represented, in renaissance art.[1]Didi-Hubermann connected the body in Botticelli’s art with the operations of dreams, and, more importantly, the social context in which dreams occurred. Building on Warburg’s formation of Botticelli as a dream-like painter, Didi-Hubermann has examined the Nastagio panels, and according to him, these panels should be seen as occupying the “space of a bad dream.”

Third Episode.

These panels were designed to honour the marriage of Gianozzo Pucci to Lucrezia Bini; they may well have adorned the couple’s bridal chamber. Botticelli’s panels seem to show both chivalry and its darker side. The group of a knight chasing a nude woman seems to be a perversion of the well-known chivalric convention, St George and the Dragon. The world of chivalry seems upside down here with the phantasm of the nude woman breaking into the scene of a banquet, a very odd juxtaposition. Wether Did-Hubermann is right to read Botticelli’s Nastagio degli Onesti’s panels in terms of a dream narrative, or even an enactment of the operations of dreams is debatable; but Botticelli’s panels seems a very strange subject to be chosen to celebrate the wedding of a Florentine couple.

Fourth Episode.

[1] David Packwood, “Dream Perspectives: Hubert Damisch, Psychoanalysis, and Early Modern Art History”, in Modern French Visual Theory: A Critical Reader (MUP, 2013).

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A Related Nightmare.

March 3, 2013, 12:43 pm

≫ Next: The Angelic Visions of Botticini and Botticelli

≪ Previous: Botticelli's Bad Dream Art.

Sandro Botticelli, Venus and Mars, 1483, Tempera on wood, 69 x 173,5 cm, National Gallery, London.

Piero di Cosimo, Venus, Mars, and Cupid, 1490, Poplar panel, 72 x 182 cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin.

This is not the only time that a scholar has placed Botticelli’s art in the context of dreams. Charles Dempsey wrote an analysis of Botticelli’s Venus and Mars. He argued that the painting’s content dealt with dreams; the little frolicking children that play with Mars’s armour while he slumbers were seen by Dempsey as “phantasms” and aerial spirits to be contrasted with the physical bodies in the picture.[1]Dempsey located the invention of the Venus and Mars within late-medieval and renaissance literary dream visions. As Dempsey says, dream visions provide the structure for literary examples; one also wonders if dream visions might also have provided the structure for some renaissance paintings. As a control it is worth comparing Piero di Cosimo’s Venus and Mars with Botticelli’s version. Piero has always been thought a strange or bizarre painter whose fantasia, or inventive imagination is rooted in renaissance ideas about artistic creation. Whilist Botticelli’s Venus and Mars undoubtedly depends upon fantasia, it is, like Piero’s, a moral allegory. Dream morality in the renaissance could be connected with fantasia that was not only about image creation, but the distinction between virtue and vice. Certain stoic and Christian writers used the notion of fantasia in relation to artistic invention: an aspect of faculty psychology that was used to guard against the encroachment of vile thoughts which might unseat virtuous ones, the former represented by the mischievous satyr children in Botticelli’s painting.[2]

[1] Charles Dempsey, Inventing the Renaissance Putto, (North Carolina, 2001), 107-146.

[2]Packwood, “Dream Perspectives.” See also Sharon Fermor, Piero di Cosimo: Fiction, invention and fantasia, (Reaktion, 1993), 41-8.

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The Angelic Visions of Botticini and Botticelli

March 3, 2013, 12:50 pm

≫ Next: List of Slides for Week 8.

≪ Previous: A Related Nightmare.

Francesco Botticini, 1475-6, Assumption of the Virgin, Tempera on wood, 228.6 x 377.2 cm, London, National Gallery.

Botticini’s Assumption was used as the altarpiece in the burial chapel in S. Pier Maggiore, Florence. It shows Matteo Palmieri, a civil servant, depicted kneeling on the left; on the other side is his widow, Niccolosa, clothed in the garments of the Benedictine order, who owned the church. The wide vista view behind Matteo shows both Florence and Fiesole, as well as a farm that was his property. At the rear of his widow are hamlets of Val d'Elsa, a portion of her dowry. According to Rolf Bagemihl, all the versions of Matteo’s will reflect the complete trust that he placed in his wife, and she was involved in the only agreement about the chapel made in 1476. The painting took Botticini two years or more to finish, and its iconography was closely guided by Palmieri’s theological ideas. [1]Palmieri was a noted Humanist who had progressive ideas, not always accommodated by the Church. His La città di vita ("The City of Life”) of 1465 was pronounced heretical, and after his death his body was removed from the Church of San Pier Maggiore and an effigy of the humanist burnt at Cortona. Palmieri’s heresy “was that was that the souls of all incarnate humanity derive from the angels, in particular that third part of the angelic host which took neutral ground during the Fall of the Rebel Angels”.[2]Angels are ranged in nine choirs, divided into three hierarchies. The highest of these represent Councillors (Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones), the middle represent Governors (Dominions, Virtues and Powers); then follow the Ministers (Principalities, Archangels and Angels). Unusually, saints have been incorporated into the ranks of angels, an addition probably reflecting Palmieri's theological speculations. Interestingly, given the similarity of their names, Vasari assigned the picture to Botticelli, not Botticini, and he said that the more famous painter and Palmieri were condemned.

Sandro Botticelli, The Mystical Nativity, c. 1500, Tempera on canvas, National Gallery, London.

It is instructive to compare Botticini’s altarpiece with Botticelli’s Mystic Nativity, a painting from his late period, about 1500 executed during a time of great religious ferment in Florence. The religious trouble was caused by the activities of Girolamo Savonarola who led a popular uprising in the city. Note that this painting is entitled a Mystical Nativity, and is not a conventional representation of the birth of Christ. What is also strange about this scene is the size of Mary, who almost towers up into the roof of the manger; the extraordinary size of Mary probably refers to Ecclesia, or the Church itself. Botticelli’s altarpiece is also apocalyptic because it refers to the last days of humankind before the second coming of Christ and the Last Judgement. In fact, it might be taken to refer to that subject since the inscription in Greek on the painting talks about the Book of Revelation as written of by St John the Evangelist. The inscription at the top reads: “I Alessandro made this picture at the conclusion of the year 1500 in the troubles of Italy in the half time after the time according to the 11th [chapter] of Saint John in the second woe of the Apocalypse during the loosing of the devil for three and a half years then he will be chained in the 12th [chapter] and we shall see him burying himself as in this picture.” The theme of this altarpiece is mystical, hence its name. It is a very good example of complex theology expressed in a symbolic language, and Botticelli could not even have begun to conceive it without the influence of the preacher who believed that Florence should be scourged and cleansed in order to be saved. This apocalyptic mood is also captured in one of Botticelli’s last pictures- the Crucifixionat Harvard.

Sandro Botticelli, Crucifixion, c. 1497, Tempera on canvas, 73,5 x 50,8 cm, Harvard Art Galleries, Cambridge, Mass..

[1] Rolf Bagemihl, “Francesco Botticini’s Palmieri Altarpiece”, Burlington Magazine, Vol. 138, No. 1118 (May, 1996), pp. 308-314, 309.

[2] Ibid. 131.

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List of Slides for Week 8.

March 11, 2013, 2:54 pm

≫ Next: Fra Bartolommeo and Spiritual Unity at the end of the Quattrocento.

≪ Previous: The Angelic Visions of Botticini and Botticelli

1)      Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, c. 1485, Tempera on canvas, 172.5 x 278.5 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

2)      Sandro Botticelli, The Calumny of Apelles, 1494-95, Tempera on panel, 62 x 91 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

3)      Giuliano da Sangallo, Tomb of Francesco Sassetti, 1485-90, Marble, Santa Trinità, Florence.

4)      Domenico Ghirlandaio, Birth of Mary, 1486-90, Fresco, width 450 cm, Cappella Tornabuoni, Santa Maria Novella, Florence.

5)      Domenico Ghirlandaio, Study, c. 1486, Pen and ink on white paper, 219 x 168 mm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

6)      Domenico Ghirlandaio Bust-Length Woman Wearing a Coif, 1489-90, Black chalk on cream-coloured paper, 366 x 221 mm, Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth

7)      Sandro Botticelli, The Return of Judith to Bethulia, c. 1472, Oil on panel, 31 x 24 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

8)      Sandro Botticelli, The Discovery of the Murder of Holofernes, c. 1472, Tempera on wood, 31 x 25 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

9)      Ghirlandaio, Adoration of the Magi, 1488, Tempera on wood, 285 x 240 cm, Spedale degli Innocenti, Florence.

10)   Bartolomeo di Giovanni, The Adoration of the Magi, c. 1490, Oil on panel, diameter: 97,2 cm, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco.

11)   Biagio d’ Antonio, The Triumph of Camillus, 1470-75, Tempera on panel, 60 x 154 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington.

12)   Sandro Botticelli, The Story of Nastagio degli Onesti (first episode), c. 1483, Tempera on panel, 83 x 138 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.

13)   Sandro Botticelli The Story of Nastagio degli Onesti (second episode), c. 1483, Tempera on panel, 82 x 138 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.

14)   Sandro Botticelli The Story of Nastagio degli Onesti (third episode), c. 1483, Tempera on panel, 83 x 142 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.

15)   Sandro Botticelli, Venus and Mars, 1483, Tempera on wood, 69 x 173,5 cm, National Gallery, London.

16)   Piero di Cosimo, Venus, Mars, and Cupid, 1490, Poplar panel, 72 x 182 cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin.

17)   Sandro Botticelli, Calumny of Apelles, 1494-95, Tempera on panel, 62 x 91 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

18)   Francesco Botticini, 1475-6, Assumption of the Virgin, Tempera on wood, 228.6 x 377.2 cm, London, National Gallery.

19)   Unknown artist, San Pier Maggiore, 1865.

20)   Cristofano dell' Altissimo, Portrait of Matteo Palmieri, late 16^th century, Florence, Uffizi, oil on canvas, dimensions unknown.

21)   Nardo di Cione, Paradise, c. 1355, Fresco, Cappella Strozzi, Santa Maria Novella, Florence.

22)   Sandro Botticelli, The Mystical Nativity, c. 1500, Tempera on canvas, National Gallery, London.

23)   Domenico Ghirlandaio, Birth of St John the Baptist, 1486-90, Fresco, width 450 cm, Cappella Tornabuoni, Santa Maria Novella, Florence.

24)   Sandro Botticelli, Crucifixion, c. 1497, Tempera on canvas, 73,5 x 50,8 cm, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge.

Images on skydrive here.

↧

Fra Bartolommeo and Spiritual Unity at the end of the Quattrocento.

March 14, 2013, 1:06 pm

≫ Next: Fra Bartolomeo and Raphael.

≪ Previous: List of Slides for Week 8.

Fra Bartolommeo, Madonna, Child and Infant Baptist, 1497, oil and gold on wood, 58.4 x 43.8 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Leonardo da Vinci, Madonna with a Flower (Madonna Benois), c. 1478, Oil on canvas transferred from wood, 50 x 32 cm, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.

One of the main problems Florentine painters faced at the end of the quattrocento was struggling out of the Leonardoesque straitjacket they found themselves in. And worse still was the fact that Leonardo’s influence had been transmitted through artists like Lorenzo di Credi who, in the words of Sydney Freedberg, practiced a “conditioned Leonardism.”[1]Some of this standardized Leonardism is visible in Fra Bartommeo’s Madonna and Child (New York), which seems to be modelled after Credi’s translations of Leonardo’s Benois Madonna. To complicate matters further, the Met panel seems to betray knowledge of the realism used in the workshops of Ghirlandaio and Piero di Cosimo. For Freedberg, this realism was “tempered” by Baccio della Porta (Fra Bart’s real name) in order to create an art that was infused with “spiritual life”, a spiritual unity that could be aligned with the harmony of Leonardo’s designs. Freedberg also claimed that Baccio took what he needed from Leonardo in order to adapt it to the style in which he had been educated, namely the mixture of classicism and realism in Florentine painters like Ghirlandaio and Botticelli examined last week.

Fra Bartolommeo Portrait of Girolamo Savonarola, c. 1498, Oil on wood, 47 x 31 cm, Museo di San Marco, Florence.

Sandro Botticelli, Lamentation over the Dead Christ with Saints, c. 1490, Tempera on panel, 140 x 207 cm, Alte Pinakothek, Munich.

Baccio’s stylistic development gained momentum in the climate of Savonarola's Florence, although we must be careful lest we mistakenly honour the preacher with instigating a reform in quattrocento art. The word “reform” used to describe stylistic change really is only legitimate later in the 16^th century when the Counter-Reformation is in full swing. Admittedly, Baccio knew Savonarola, whose portrait he painted, but the Dominican was manifestly opposed to quattrocento art which he saw as idolatrous with its bright colours and eye-catching devices, a criticism of St Augustine whose readings spurred Savonarola to the religious life. If we are looking for a painter whose art was influenced by the theological ideas of Savonarola, we need look no further than Botticelli.

Fra Bartolommeo, God the Father with Sts Catherine of Siena and Mary Magdalen, 1509, Panel (transferred), 361 x 236 cm, Museo Nazionale di Palazzo Mansi, Lucca.

Fra Bartolommeo was exposed to the colouristic side of renaissance art when he visited Venice (April-November 1508) and as Edgar Wind noted it is shocking for those seeking to see Fra Bart’s star rising under Savanorola, to see the impact of Venetian artists like Bellini on altarpieces like God the Father with Two Saints (Lucca). Wind demonstrated in detail how these altarpieces were linked with Savanorola’s protégé, Sante Pagnini at San Marco who had some connection with Michelangelo’s programme for the Sistine ceiling.[2]However, though Pagnini was aware of his mentor’s ideas, he favoured a softer theological line and even encouraged Fra Bart to pick up his brushes after his three year hiatus caused by becoming a monk in 1500.

[1] S. J. Freedberg, Painting in Italy 1500-1600, (Pelican History of Art New Haven and London, 1993), 84.

[2]Edgar Wind, “Sante Pagnini and Michelangelo” in The Religious Symbolism of Michelangelo: The Sistine Ceiling, (ed Elizabeth Sears), OUP,) 1-22, 15.

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Fra Bartolomeo and Raphael.

March 14, 2013, 1:11 pm

≫ Next: Andrea del Sarto.

≪ Previous: Fra Bartolommeo and Spiritual Unity at the end of the Quattrocento.

Raphael, Madonna del Baldacchino, 1507-08, Oil on canvas, 276 x 224 cm, Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence.

In his analysis of the Lucca altarpiece, Wind identified a fusion of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael. The Lucca altarpiece has rightly been connected with Raphael’s development, especially the symbolic cluster of religion and meteorology which influenced Raphael’s own altarpieces of his Roman years.[1] Yet, before that, Fra Bart had taken note of Raphael’s Florentine works, and it seems right for Freedberg to see Raphael’s Madonna del Baldacchino as the origin of Fra Bart’s classical cinquecento style.[2]After completing this altarpiece Raphael left town for Rome, and Fra Bart- now head of his own workshop- was established in the style he had formed from both Leonardo and Raphael, a formula he used to successfully produce unspectacular devotional altarpieces for Florentine clients. After Fra Bart visited Rome in 1514, on his return his conversation with Raphael continued, with the production of the Madonna della Misericordia which tries to match the language of Raphael’s Roman frescoes to altarpieces with awkward results. Highly dramatic, even rhetorical, it cannot carry the burden of its own ambitions and falls short of its aims. Instead of Roman painting improving Fra Bart’s art, it had shown its shortcomings. Raphael was now speaking a language that Fra Bart struggled to understand yet alone translate.

Fra Bartolommeo, Madonna della Misericordia, 1515, Oil on canvas, Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi, Lucca.

[1] Christian K. Kleinbub, Vision and the Visionary in Raphael, Pennsylvania University Press, 2011. See my review of it at http://artintheblood.typepad.com/art_history_today/2011/08/seen-and-not-seen-raphael-book-review.html

[2]Freedberg, Painting in Italy, 85.

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Andrea del Sarto.

March 14, 2013, 2:03 pm

≫ Next: Piero di Cosimo.

≪ Previous: Fra Bartolomeo and Raphael.

Andrea del Sarto, Miraculous Cure by Relics of Filippo Benizzi, 1510, Fresco, Santissima Annunziata, Florence.

View of the Atrium, Santissima Annunziata, Florence.

According to Vasari, Andrea trained with Piero di Cosimo and the much less well-known artist, Raffaellino del Garbo (Cardi). Though he was aware of Raphael’s art, Andrea used that master’s ideas sparingly and dug deeper into his own resources to produce a sober classical style with a hint of restrained emotion under the rational design. This is evident in his first main commission- the lunette of Filippo Benizzi- where Andrea arranges his figures almost architecturally as a human counterpart to the buildings themselves- a series of geometrical forms is encountered until we reach the final triangle of the priest and mothers. One of Andrea’s co-workers, Francesco Franciabiagio tried to emulate the language of this fresco in his Betrothal of the Virgin, but he was clearly out of his depth.

Andrea del Sarto, Birth of the Virgin, 1514, Fresco, 413 x 345 cm, Santissima Annunziata, Florence.

Domenico Ghirlandaio, Birth of Mary, 1486-90, Fresco, width 450 cm, Cappella Tornabuoni, Santa Maria Novella, Florence.

Although such paintings as the Hermitage Madonna and St Catherine imply awareness of Leonardo’s ideas, in the Birth of the Virgin, the model is Ghirlandaio though modified by Andrea’s distilled classicism and elimination of Ghirlandaio’s stylistic idiosyncrasies. Freedberg calls this fresco “mundane” and this seems an accurate description; the figures may seem stately, but they have none of the aristocratic deportment of Ghirlandaio’s figures; a sense of the informal ripples through the scene. Something of this naturalized classicism is caught in a cartoon of the Baptism of the People; knowledge of the classical canon is tempered by the ease with which the antique is used. And a drawing of the Baptist shows how thoroughly Andrea worked out anatomy, expression which he used to vivify his classical sources.

Andrea del Sarto, Baptism of the People, 1515-17, Fresco, Chiostro dello Scalzo, Florence.

Andrea del Sarto, Study for the Baptism of the People, c. 1515, Red chalk, 314 x 186 mm, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

Andrea del Sarto, Madonna del Sacco (Madonna with the Sack), 1525, Fresco, 191 x 403 cm, Santissima Annunziata, Florence.

Nicolas Poussin, Holy Family on the Steps, 1648, oil on canvas, 73 x 106 cm, Cleveland Museum of Art.

It might be said that Andrea del Sarto represents the last gasp of classicism in Florence; his later work after 1520 struggles to hold the standard of antiquity aloft amidst a rising army of mannerist artists like Rosso, Pontormo and Bronzino who sought to trample it underfoot. Perhaps Andrea’s last great statement uniting Florentine naturalism and lucid rational design is his Madonna del Saccoof 1525. Over two centuries later another devotee of naturalised antiquity would turn to a 16^th century copy of this painting for inspiration. Poussin’s Holy Family on the Steps in Cleveland is conceived in the spirit of Andrea’s classicism and Raphael’s Holy Families, but it raises theology and painting to the sublime.[1]

[1]For a discussion of similarities between Poussin and Andrea del Sarto, see Carolyn C. Wilson, St Joseph in Italian Renaissance Society and Art(Philadelphia, 2001), 63-4.

↧

Piero di Cosimo.

March 14, 2013, 2:12 pm

≫ Next: List of Slides for Week 9

≪ Previous: Andrea del Sarto.

Piero di Cosimo, The Immaculate Conception with SS Francis, Jerome, Bonaventure, Bernard, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, 1510s, Panel, 184 x 178 cm, San Francesco, Fiesole.

Of this group of Florentine painters Piero di Cosimo is the eldest having spent most of his career in the quattrocento. Piero was a pupil of Cosimo Rosselli, whose first name he took as a patronym. Reconstructing his oeuvre depends on Vasari in the absence of no signed, documented, or dated works by him. Contemporary with Leonardo, Piero formed his style after that influential master, and like his illustrious contemporary he was interested in the process of artistic creation. Piero seems to have been ill equipped to cope with the new dramatic altarpieces by Raphael, Andrea del Sarto and Fra Bartolommeo; he was out of step with these innovations because “the altarpiece was changing in ways that were foreign to his talents.”[1]Piero did try painting altarpieces but where religious art was concerned, it was the small devotional panels that he was most comfortable with. The small size of these implies that his patrons recognized that he struggled with painting large scale altarpieces.

Piero di Cosimo, The Adoration of the Christ Child, 1505, Oil on wood, diameter 140 cm, Galleria Borghese, Rome.

Another reason for Piero’s lack of success on the larger scale was despite responsiveness to the modernizing currents in Florentine art, Piero was unable to take a step forward without a related increase in what Freedberg calls his singularity, his strangeness which put him outside the mainstream of cinquecento Florentine art.[2]Something of this bizarre quality is seen in his Adoration in the Borghese which contains perplexing iconography such as Joseph relegated to the background. Piero’s odd iconography may never be convincingly elucidated, and seems to be related to his psychological personality. Yet another reason for Piero’s lack of fit amongst the new painting in cinquecento painting was his difficulty in handling composition: he seems to have had problems with reconciling figures and backgrounds; he compensated for this deficiency by avoiding complicated poses, keeping figures in simple planes, and rejecting any bold foreshortenings.[3]

Where he does have affinities with the new generation of Florentine artists is his assimilation of the language of Leonardo’s Florentine compositions into his small religious commissions For example, Fermor sees the twisted form of the music-making angel in Piero’s Virgin and Child with Two Angelsresembling Leonardo’s Leda drawings. The influence of Leonardo’s Virgin and St Anne in these religious compositions which contain overlapping figures and inter-locking forms seems to be a point of reference too.[4]Finally, some of Piero’s works from his final decade return us to the altarpieces of Fra Bartolommeo, such as his Lucca altarpiece which Piero appears to have known.

Piero di Cosimo, Virgin and Child with Two Angels, 1505-10, Panel, 116 x 85 cm, Collezione Vittorio Cini, Venice.

Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin and Child with St Anne, c. 1510, Oil on wood, 168 x 130 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

[1] Sharon Fermor, Piero di Cosimo: Fiction, invention and fantasia (London: 1991), 146.

[2] Freedberg, Painting in Italy, 98.

[3] Fermor, Piero di Cosimo, 126-134.

[4] Fermor, Piero di Cosimo, 145.

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List of Slides for Week 9

March 14, 2013, 2:30 pm

≫ Next: Mannerism

≪ Previous: Piero di Cosimo.

1)      Fra Bartolommeo, Madonna, Child and Infant Baptist, 1497, oil and gold on wood, 58.4 x 43.8 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

2)      Leonardo da Vinci, Madonna with a Flower (Madonna Benois), c. 1478, Oil on canvas transferred from wood, 50 x 32 cm, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.

3)      Fra Bartolommeo Portrait of Girolamo Savonarola, c. 1498, Oil on wood, 47 x 31 cm, Museo di San Marco, Florence.

4)      Sandro Botticelli, Lamentation over the Dead Christ with Saints, c. 1490, Tempera on panel, 140 x 207 cm, Alte Pinakothek, Munich.

5)      Fra Bartolommeo, Last Judgment, 1499, Detached fresco, Museo di San Marco, Florence.

6)      Fra Bartolommeo, Vision of St Bernard with Sts Benedict and John the Evangelist, 1504, Panel, 213 x 220 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

7)      Fra Bartolommeo, God the Father with Sts Catherine of Siena and Mary Magdalen, 1509, Panel (transferred), 361 x 236 cm, Museo Nazionale di Palazzo Mansi, Lucca.

8)      Fra Bartolommeo Madonna della Misericordia, 1515, Oil on canvas, Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi, Lucca.

9)      Raphael, Madonna del Baldacchino, 1507-08, Oil on canvas, 276 x 224 cm, Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence.

10)   Andrea del Sarto, Self-portrait, Oil on wood, 47 x 34 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

11)   Andrea del Sarto, Miraculous Cure by Relics of Filippo Benizzi, 1510, Fresco, Santissima Annunziata, Florence.

12)   View of the Atrium, Santissima Annunziata, Florence.

13)   Andrea del Sarto, Journey of the Magi, 1511, Fresco, 360 x 305 cm, Santissima Annunziata, Florence.

14)   Andrea del Sarto, Madonna and Child with Sts Catherine, Elisabeth and John the Baptist, 1519, Oil on canvas transferred from wood, 102 x 80 cm, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.

15)   Andrea del Sarto, Birth of the Virgin, 1514, Fresco, 413 x 345 cm, Santissima Annunziata, Florence.

16)   Domenico Ghirlandaio, Birth of Mary, 1486-90, Fresco, width 450 cm, Cappella Tornabuoni, Santa Maria Novella, Florence.

17)   Francesco Franciabiagio, Betrothal of the Virgin, 1513, Fresco, 395 x 321 cm, Santissima Annunziata, Florence.

18)   Andrea del Sarto, Baptism of the People, 1515-17, Fresco, Chiostro dello Scalzo, Florence.

19)   Andrea del Sarto, Study for the Baptism of the People, c. 1515, Red chalk, 314 x 186 mm, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

20)   Andrea del Sarto, Madonna del Sacco (Madonna with the Sack), 1525, Fresco, 191 x 403 cm, Santissima Annunziata, Florence.

21)   Nicolas Poussin, Holy Family on the Steps, 1648, oil on canvas, 73 x 106 cm, Cleveland Museum of Art.

22)   Piero di Cosimo, The Adoration of the Christ Child, 1505, Oil on wood, diameter 140 cm, Galleria Borghese, Rome.

23)   Piero di Cosimo, The Immaculate Conception with SS Francis, Jerome, Bonaventure, Bernard, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, 1510s, Panel, 184 x 178 cm, San Francesco, Fiesole.

24)   Piero di Cosimo, Virgin and Child with Two Angels, 1505-10, Panel, 116 x 85 cm, Collezione Vittorio Cini, Venice.

25)   Piero di Cosimo,Holy Family with the Young St John the Baptist, c. 1520, Panel, 119 x 87 cm, Collezione Vittorio Cini, Venice.

26)   Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin and Child with St Anne, c. 1510, Oil on wood, 168 x 130 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

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Mannerism

March 23, 2013, 1:14 pm

≫ Next: Pontormo and Rosso: The Dioscuri of Mannerism.

≪ Previous: List of Slides for Week 9

Pontormo, Joseph in Egypt, 1515-18, Oil on wood, 96 x 109 cm, National Gallery, London.

Mannerism is a style of art that was out of favour for centuries; but with the appearance of movements like German Expression and the avant-garde of the early twentieth-century, mannerism was deemed to be relevant, with its rehabilitation following. The Italian word “maniera” means style in English, though it is difficult to tie it down to a specific definition.[1]Though mannerism was a movement that spread across Europe, its origins can be found in Florence, especially in the art of Pontormo and Rosso. In his indispensable survey of sixteenth-century Italian painting, Sydney Freedberg divided Florentine mannerism into a number of component parts. Firstly he identified a radical style practiced by Pontormo and Rosso, who though thoroughly aware of the classical tradition, sought to subvert it for their own artistic ends. This is the “first maniera” or “post- classical experiment” that follows on from Michelangelo, thought by some to be the instigator of mannerism. According to Freedberg, Pontormo and Rosso “inverted the accepted sense of classical form or warped it to their new ends, and made new inventions of aesthetic devices or borrowed them from sources that were geographically or chronologically outside the sphere of reference of classicism.”[2]Later in the century, Freedberg argued for a formation of what he called the “high maniera”, the blossoming of the early phase in the work of such artists as Bronzino, Salviati, and Vasari, in the time of Cosimo di Medici who founded the Florentine Academy. The end game of Florentine mannerism is played out in a time of religious reform, and Freedberg includes “Florentine reformers” such as Santi di Tito who rejected the mannerist style of Bronzino in favour of naturalism and what Freedberg called “Late Counter-Maniera”

[1]The best introduction is John Shearman’s Mannerism, (Penguin, 1967).

[2]S.J. Freedberg, Painting in Italy 1500-1600, Pelican History of Art ( Yale, 1993), 175-6.

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Pontormo and Rosso: The Dioscuri of Mannerism.

March 26, 2013, 12:35 pm

≫ Next: Bronzino and Late Mannerism.

≪ Previous: Mannerism

Pontormo and Rosso provide good case studies in mannerism because they were both born in 1494 amidst the political and social turmoil in renaissance Florence which is often seen as a cause of the mannerist mind-set.[1]In 1492 Lorenzo the Magnificent had died which resulted in Savanorola growing politically powerful. The two painters made their artistic debut whilist both working for Andrea del Sarto on the fresco cycles at Santissima Annuziata between the end of 1512 and the start of 1513. Just a glance at Pontormo’s Visitationis enough to register his debt to main stream classicists like Andrea and Fra Bartolommeo. As Heinrich Wöfflin enthused about this altarpiece, it raised the “centralised scheme” of Andrea del Sarto “to the level of an architectonic effect.”[2] Yet already we see Pontormo introducing his own singular language; the book-ending figures (saint and amphora-bearing woman) are too stiffly posed and seem to be demonstration pieces rather than elements unifying the composition. Secondly, Pontormo ruffles the calm grandeur with his network of glances across the painting, e.g. the woman on the steps, who looks directly out at the viewer in contrast to the introspective central group. In this altarpiece we also detect the influence of Fra Bartolommeo, though the Visitationalso contains signs of how Pontormo would divert from the Frate.

If we turn away from Pontormo and look at Rosso’s Assumption of the Virgin in the same church, we’ll see the echoes of Fra Bartolommeo’s Last Judgement in this fresco. However, like Pontormo, Rosso has his own stylistic idiosyncrasies: the drapery of the apostles falls over the ledge; there is a strange “closed circle” in the rectangular block of the earthbound apostles.

We could continue to chart the careers of the “Dioscuri” (Horsetamers) of Florentine mannerism (Letta), but eventually their paths would divide. Rosso moved further afield, Venice, France- but Pontormo rarely strayed outside Florence where he painted and kept a journal of his digestive maladies. In the words of Freedberg, Pontormo makes Fra Bartolommeo “nervously complex” imposing a psychological immediacy on the viewer in such works as S. Michele Visdomini altarpiece which fills the spectator with excitement, but not necessarily spirituality. Comparing the site of Pontormo’s stylistic rebellion with that of Rosso, the Uffizi Madonna and Saints of 1518, we can see that despite his classical models, Rosso is even more opposed to the classical ideal. Apart from the grotesque faces, the colour, prismatic in effect, dissolves plasticity of form in favour of a more optical than sculptural effect.

Pontormo’s “formal research” (Letta) continues with the London Joseph panels which gleefully warp space and perspective with interesting though disorientating results. However, formal research is not conducted as a means of intensifying the bizarre, but as a means of introducing refinement and even a precious quality linked to sensibility (Freedberg). Paradoxically, the mannerist experiments culminate in a work in which intense expression conveyed through striking colour and swirling shapes are married with a lucidity of line which mirrors Pontormo’s clear thinking- the Deposition, his unqualified masterpiece and coda to his career.

As for Rosso, the latter stages of his career are marked by fervid admiration of Michelangelo culminating in the Moses and the Daughters of Jethro- abstract formalism via the Cascina cartoon- and the Dead Christ, the latter one of the most successful amalgamations of aestheticism with religiosity. With the Sack of Rome in 1627, all Rosso’s paranoia and misery were unleashed; he fled northwards, leading an increasingly nomadic existence. His last years were spent in France, where he played a large role in founding the classical style there.

[1]Their twin trajectories are well traced by Elisabetta Marchetti Letta, Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino, (Scala, 1994).

[2]Heinrich Wöfflin, Classic Art, (Oxford, ), 159.

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Bronzino and Late Mannerism.

March 26, 2013, 12:44 pm

≫ Next: The Florentine Reformers.

≪ Previous: Pontormo and Rosso: The Dioscuri of Mannerism.

It is known that Bronzino was a pupil of Pontormo, and in his formative years he was content to base his style on his master’s art; this derivative tendency can be seen in the Washington Holy Family, significantly attributed to Pontormo in earlier times.

Then there are Bronzino’s portraits where his artistic personality begins to emerge. Though these famous portraits of haughty aristocrats contain something of the Pontormo blueprint, there are signs that the pupil has begun to evolve his own style in response to his researches into Pontormo and the mannerist godfather- Michelangelo. The Ugolino Martelli (Berlin) and Portrait of a Young Man (New York) rely upon cursive draughtsmanship associated with Pontormo; but the contrapposto suggests Michelangelo’s figures. As Freedberg points out, Bronzino’s art depends upon a recipe that unites sharp delineation, an eye for the objective reality of details and a pervasive aesthetic sense. His art is sophisticated, but knowingly refined as if the artist is sharing a secret with those in the know.

Bronzino’s researches into the “high maniera” culminate in his Pietà where Michelangelo’s earlier version is re-invented as a cold, frozen mask of beauty that inspires aesthetic contemplation rather than religious devotion. And in the canonical Allegory in the National Gallery, Bronzino seems to have petrified art as if to keep it away from human experience and emotions.

Unsurprisingly Bronzino had many acolytes who though originating in non-maniera spaces eventually succumbed to its style, perhaps envisaging it as the new Florentine mode par excellence. Bronzino’s closest pupil, Allesandro Allori, faithfully adhered to his master’s stylized use of Michelangelo, as can be seen in his Pearl Fishers. This painting extracts motifs from various Michelangelo-esque sources like the The Deluge and Cascina Cartoon, not to mention the canon of classical sculpture.

Another one of Bronzino’s heirs, Giovanni Battista Naldini, had an ambivalent attitude towards maniera; initially he embraced it through Bronzino and Vasari; but subsequently reached back towards Sarto through Pontormo (his first master) and the initial phase of the maniera. Strong sfumato with a painterly brush shows a lack of sympathy with the pronounced graphic tendency of mannerism; moreover sfumato suffuses Naldini’s paintings with emotion, which, for Freedberg, places him halfway between Andrea del Sarto and Barocci, subject of a current exhibition in London.

Some might argue that the endgame of mannerism is all about a struggle between naturalism and the intense artifice that characterised the style. Well before the Florentine reformers –see below- the obscure Mirabella Cavalori was using light in a realistic way in his genre scenes. If it were not for the strange Pontormo-esque forms and abrupt spatial shifts, his Wool Factory could remind us of the realist painters of the next century, like the Carracci and Velasquez.

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The Florentine Reformers.

March 26, 2013, 12:51 pm

≫ Next: Slides for Week 10

≪ Previous: Bronzino and Late Mannerism.

This is the name that Freedberg gave to the group of painters trained and/or influenced by Bronzino, but who rejected his ideas in favour of a more naturalistic painting. The main one was Santi di Tito, an artist from San Sepolcro who trained with Cellini in Rome. On his return to Florence in 1564, Santi wrestled with the implausible project of bringing mannerism and naturalism together. Eventually he wearied of mannerism altogether and returned to the classical high renaissance. His beautiful Holy Familyrecently purchased by the Met still shows the residue of Bronzino, but its grace and easiness suggest an artist who has returned to the principles of classicism, notably Sarto and Raphael.

As his career progressed, Santi’s art became more realistic and in tune with some of ideals of the Counter-Reformation. Freedberg is right to say that his late altarpieces are not separate stylistically from those of the seventeenth-century. What could be called Santi’s masterpiece, the Vision of St Thomas Aquinas could be aligned comfortably with art produced by the likes of post- Caravaggio artists such as Orazio Gentileschi who modified Caravaggio’s realism and blended it with his refined classicism. Also noticeable is matter-of-factness in the St Thomascountering, but paradoxically aiding the appearance of a divine vision. This treatment of religious art which eliminates the aesthetic qualities of maniera in favour of more direct piety is commensurate with the demand for clarity in art called for by the Council of Trent.

Other reformers like the Venetian Jacopo Ligozzi who came to Florence not only strayed from the style of mannerism but also its sources. Instead of drawing sculpture or avidly assimilating Michelangelo’s art, Ligozzi painted watercolours of birds and animals for clients of a scientific bent. Naturalism found its way into such devotional images as Agony in the Garden, though its strident colours sit oddly with his naturalistic observation of the landscape.

With most of its major pieces taken, and time running out Florentine mannerism found itself facing checkmate. In the next century Florentine artists like Francesco Furini would take their cue from Caravaggio and the heirs of Leonardo, not the school of Pontormo. His "Judith and Holofernes" betrays his debt to Caravaggio.

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Slides for Week 10

March 26, 2013, 12:59 pm

≪ Previous: The Florentine Reformers.

1.       Andrea del Sarto, The Annunciation, 1512-13, Oil on wood, 183 x 184 cm, Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence.

2.       Pontormo, Visitation, 1514-16, Fresco, 392 x 337 cm, Santissima Annunziata, Florence.

3.       Fra Bartolommeo, Mystic Marriage of St Catherine, 1512, Panel, 356 x 270 cm, Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti).

4.       Pontormo, Sacra Conversazione, 1514, Fresco, 223 x 196 cm, Santissima Annunziata, Florence.

5.       Rosso Fiorentino, Assumption of the Virgin, 1517, Fresco, 385 x 395 cm, Santissima Annunziata, Florence.

6.       Rosso Fiorentino, Madonna Enthroned with Four Saints, 1518, Oil on wood, 172 x 141 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

7.       Pontormo, Madonna and Child with Saints, 1518, Oil on wood, 214 x 185 cm, San Michele Visdomini, Florence.

8.       Pontormo, Joseph in Egypt, 1515-18, Oil on wood, 96 x 109 cm, National Gallery, London.

9.       Rosso Fiorentino, Marriage of the Virgin, 1523, Oil on wood, 325 x 250 cm, San Lorenzo, Florence.

10.   Pontormo, Deposition, c. 1528, Oil on wood, 313 x 192 cm, Cappella Capponi, Santa Felicità, Florence.

11.   Il Rosso, Moses Defending the Daughters of Jethro, 1523-24, Oil on canvas, 160 x 117 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

12.   Il Rosso, The Dead Christ supported by Angels, c. 1525-6, Boston Museum of Fine Arts,

13.   Bronzino (prev. att to Pontormo), The Holy Family, c. 1527-28, overall: 101.3 x 78.7 cm (39 7/8 x 31 in.) framed: 147.3 x 123.2 x 8.9 cm (58 x 48 1/2 x 3 1/2 in.), oil on panel, Washington National Gallery of Art.

14.   Bronzino, Ugolino Martelli, c. 1535, Oil on wood, 102 x 85 cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin.

15.   Bronzino, A Portrait of a Young Man, (Agnolo di Cosimo di Mariano), 1530s, 37 5/8 x 29 1/2 in. (95.6 x 74.9 cm), oil on wood, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

16.   Bronzino, Deposition of Christ, 1545, Oil on wood, 268 x 173 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'Archéologie, Besançon.

17.   Bronzino, Venus, Cupid and Time (Allegory of Lust), 1540-45, Oil on wood, 147 x 117 cm, National Gallery, London

18.   Allesandro Allori, Pearl Fishers, 1570-72, Oil on slate, 116 x 86 cm, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.

19.   Giovan Battista Naldini, Bathsheba, 1570s, Oil on canvas, 182 x 150 cm, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.

20.   Barocci, Madonna del Popolo, 1575-79, Oil on panel, 360 x 250 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

21.   Mirabella Cavalori, Wool Factory, 1570-72, Oil on slate, 117 x 85 cm, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.

22.   Santi di Tito, Madonna, Christ Child and Infant John the Baptist, early 1570s, oil on wood, 40 7/8 x 33 3/4 in. (103.8 x 85.7 cm), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

23.   Jacopo Ligozzi, Agony in the Garden, c. 1587, Oil on panel, 165 x 130 cm, Private collection.

24.   Jacopo Ligozzi, Psittacus Ararauna, 1580-1600, Drawing, 670 x 456 mm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

25.   Santi di Tito, Vision of St Thomas Aquinas, 1593, Oil on panel, 362 x 233 cm, San Marco, Florence.

26.   Francesco Furini, Judith and Holofernes, 1636, Oil on canvas, 116 x 151 cm, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome.

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