Revaluing Renaissance Art

Gabriele Neher, Rupert Shepherd

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138734241
• eBook ISBN: 9781351739726
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This title was first published in 2000: Michelangelo gave his painting of "Leda and the Swan" to an apprentice rather than hand it over to the emissary of the Duke of Ferrar, who had commissioned it. He was apparently disgusted by the failure of the emissary - who was probably more used to buying pigs than discussing art - to accord the picture and the artist the value they deserved. Any discussion of works of art and material culture implicitly assigns them a set of values. Whether these values be monetary, cultural or religious, they tend to constrict the ways in which such works can be discussed. The variety of potential forms of valuation becomes particularly apparent during the Italian Renaissance, when relations between the visual arts and humanistic studies were undergoing rapid changes against an equally fluid social, economic and political background. In this volume, 13 scholars explicitly examine some of the complex ways in which a variety of values might be associated with Italian Renaissance material culture. Papers range from a consideration of the basic values of the materials employed by artists, to the manifestation of cultural values in attitudes to dress and domestic devotion. By illuminating some of the ways in which values were constructed, they provide a broader context within which to evaluate Renaissance material culture.

1

Introduction: revaluing Renaissance art

Gabriele Neher and Rupert Shepherd

On 25 March 1470, the Bolognese painter Francesco del Cossa wrote to the Duke of Modena and Reggio and Marquis of Ferrara, Borso d’Este, to request a higher fee for the paintings he had done in a hall in the Palazzo Schifanoia at Ferrara.¹ His description makes it clear that he was referring to the east wall of the Salone dei Mesi, where he had painted the zodiacal decans, tutelary deities and terrestrial activities associated with Aries, Taurus (Fig. 1.1) and Gemini.² The Duke declined his request.

While Cossa’s request for more money suggests that we consider the paintings’ value in terms of cost, his letter also indicates that this may not be the only way in which we might ‘Value’ such a work of art. By enumerating those aspects of his work which he felt should have led to its being valued more highly than that of his colleagues, Cossa raises a number of questions about how his art should best be valued. In emphasizing that he had used the best materials, ‘gold and good colours’, was Cossa proposing that the quality (and presumably the cost) of the materials which he had used was paramount? Was he more concerned with the durability which such materials would lend his work? Or was the richer visual effect produced by gold and high-quality blues and reds more important? His emphasis upon his use of ‘fresco, which is a complex and good type of work’ again raises the issue of durability; but might Cossa also have been stressing his ability to over come the technical difficulties of painting accurately and without errors into wet plaster?

We might also ask whether Cossa was evoking more subtle values in his letter. By taking account of his continual self-improvement, referring to his ‘having studied, and I still study continuously’, did he feel that a degree of artistic quality, the result of such study, could be discerned in his works, which should therefore be valued by the viewer? Or was he referring to other forms of study? The cycle in the Salone is, after all, a highly complex one, drawing upon antique and medieval astrological sources as well as artistic traditions such as calendar illustrations. Whatever he meant, Cossa certainly felt that he should be paid more than ‘those who avoid such study’. Or, when he mentioned that he had already ‘begun to have a little of a name’, was Cossa calling on the judgements of others to indicate his value to the patron? And who might those others be, who had given him ‘something of a name’: other artists, or patrons, or merely interested observers of the arts?

We might also ask how Cossa valued himself in comparison to other artists. Was he happy to be seen as part of the team working in the Salone? We know from his letter that he had already petitioned Borso together with his colleagues. Or was he equally happy to try his luck separately, considering that, as someone who used the best materials and techniques and who continued to study his art, he was a cut above the artists with whom he was working? If this is the case, then his suggestion that Borso pretend that independent assessors had awarded Cossa a higher rate of pay should lead us to ask whether Cossa might have felt that he was betraying his colleagues in some way. Should we draw any conclusions from the fact that Cossa seems to have felt able to approach the Duke directly, bypassing the individuals appointed to supervise the project (‘Pellegrino Prisciani and others’)? Or should we see his request as yet another of the traditionally abject petitions which fifteenth-century rulers were so accustomed to receiving?³

But Cossa’s letter also raises questions about how his patron valued his art. Did Borso simply value his commissions by the area they covered, paying them by the foot (in this case, at the rate of 10 bolognini per foot?⁴ Does the flat fee mentioned by Cossa mean that Borso took no account of the differences in talent between the various artists working on the project? Was he oblivious to the issues of material quality and technique raised by Cossa? Or does the addendum appended at Borso’s request, that the fee that was set ‘was set for those chosen for the individual fields’ suggest otherwise: that the fee was set field-by-field, and so presumably artist-by-artist (or at least workshop-by-workshop)?⁵

Earlier, we stated that Cossa’s letter indicated ways of valuing Renaissance art which used criteria other than straightforward cost. Without wishing to deny the importance of price in assessing value, in this volume we are more concerned with more elusive, less clearly defined ‘values’ of the kind indicated by Cossa’s letter. But, faced with such a variety of ways in which the art of the Renaissance might have been valued when it was produced, what are we to do? How can we reach any general conclusions about what may or may not have been considered of value by those who produced and those who ‘consumed’ (for want of a better word) the art and material culture of the Renaissance? Indeed, faced with such a plethora of options, might we be justified in asking whether such a question has any real significance?

One way of answering the last question is to consider, briefly, previous discussions of Cossa’s letter. Until the early 1970s, it was primarily used to answer three questions.⁶ First, of attribution: who was responsible for painting which parts of the Salone? Second, of condition: why was the east wall in such good condition, compared with the damaged north wall, and almost entirely destroyed west and south walls? And third, of iconography: who was responsible for the programme followed by the artists?⁷ The year 1972, however, saw the publication of Baxandall’s Painting and Experience; and for Baxandall, Cossa’s letter provided one means by which to assess ways in which art and artists might have been valued in fifteenth-century Italy. To Baxandall, it suggested a less mercantile attitude to the commissioning of works of art:

A client like Borso d’Este, the Duke of Ferrara, who makes a point of paying for his paintings by the square foot… will tend to get a different sort of painting from a commercially more refined man like the Florentine merchant Giovanni de’ Bardi who pays the painter for his materials and time.⁸

He later described Borso as a ‘princely primitive out of touch with the decent commercial practice of Florence and Sansepolcro’.⁹

But Rosenberg, in a more thorough analysis of the letter, demonstrated that such a method of payment for figurative scenes was unusual in Ferrara at the time: such pictures were usually paid for per figure.¹⁰ He suggested instead that the letter might indicate something of the way this particular project was managed, with all the artists being provided with sketches to work up into full-scale paintings. This would have minimized any intellectual role on the part of the artists, and so they would have been paid in a manner usually reserved for decorative work.¹¹ Rosenberg described a canny Cossa, appealing both to a developing respect for artistic reputation, and to the more traditional valuing of good materials and technique.¹² More recently, discussion of the letter has found its way into standard textbooks, with an increasing acknowledgment of the multiple interpretations to which it is susceptible.¹³ Welch, for example, suggests that the Bolognese Cossa, more used to working for an urban patriciate, was trying to set himself apart from his Ferrarese colleagues, who habitually worked for a fairly absolute ruler.¹⁴

For Baxandall, the ways in which art was valued would, in turn, influence the kind of art that was produced within those values. But, as his description of Borso as a ‘princely primitive’ suggests, in discussing the values used to assess works of art and material culture in the Renaissance, we in turn value the works and their creators – artists and patrons alike. Our perceptions of these values will therefore impose our values upon our view of the Renaissance; we effectively revalue the Renaissance as we discuss it. So, Baxandall’s dismissal of Borso d’Este in favour of Tuscan patrons reflects a view of fifteenth-century Italy (ultimately dependent upon Vasari) which valued the art of republican Florence and Venice at the expense of the art produced in the Italian courts. Conversely, the reappraisal by Rosenberg, a dedicated student of the art of Ferrara, reflects recent developments in the study of Italian Renaissance art which have placed a greater emphasis upon the sophistication and artistic advancement of the courts.

So, we come to the consideration of norms, and of their valuation. In fact, establishment of norms against which to measure different forms of art has been one of the main preocccupations of art historians in the twentieth century.¹⁵ Much of the vocabulary we now use was established through the discourse of such scholars as Aby Warburg, Hermann Voss, Erwin Panofsky and Ernst Gombrich. Through their theoretical discourse, a value system for the Renaissance was built up which is still largely in place. Some of the more recent literature has been re-engaging with these norms in order to widen the discourse: Paul Hills’s investigation of the values attached to the colour and the textures of paintings, architecture and everyday objects in Renaissance Venice is one such example.¹⁶ A more direct rethinking of norms and definitions of style has been undertaken by Hellmut Wohl, who examines the respective values of decorative and classically inspired styles in fifteenth and sixteenth-century Italy.¹⁷ Both of these authors query the language with which values are assigned, and refer to the rhetorical origins of much of the vocabulary in use by art historians today.¹⁸ The value associated with the use of particular words is a healthy reminder of the operation of several systems of valuation at one and the same moment: language in itself is loaded with value, and is used to communicate evaluations.¹⁹

It is also important to remember the status attached to the individual artist; Cossa’s letter, as discussed above, directly engages with this particular issue. In this context it is important to remember that the Renaissance canon was different from the preferences shown today. For example, Francisco de Hollanda’s list of twenty-one famous Italian painters was compiled in 1548.²⁰ As we would anticipate, he includes Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo. Less expected is the inclusion of Perino del Vaga and Polidoro da Caravaggio. Even less expected is Lomazzo’s inclusion of Gaudenzio Ferrari as one of the prime practitioners of colour in his Tempio della Pittura (1591). Lomazzo also praises an artist called Maturino for his assimilations of classical models.²¹ Today, Maturino is only of interest to the specialist, but for Lomazzo he was of enough value as an example of a particular tendency of painting to be included. Here, we find variety and difference being valued. The preferences shown by much Renaissance literature on the arts indicate that the artist’s ability to imitate and assimilate classical subject-matter was valued above all else. These were values of particular concern to humanist and political élites. Classical art was most valued for its propaganda values and its connotations of power, as well as for its connotations of legitimacy and continuity. The humanists, who wrote about this art most frequently, also tended to be patronized by the patrons who commissioned it. The survival of such literary forms of evaluation here has had a direct impact on art history’s perceptions of the value of the artist.

Art history’s complicity in the valuing and revaluing of the Renaissance is made particularly clear if we consider the fortunes of a little-known, provincial artist such as the Brescian Gerolamo Romano, called Il Romanino (1484/7–1559). While the outline of artistic developments in larger centres such as Rome, Florence and Venice is a familiar one, scholarly attention has now begun to turn to a study of the numerous regional courts and centres of Italy.²² However, the dependence of provincial painters on imported models, whether via the medium of print, or through first-hand experience of works from one of the larger and artistically ‘superior’ centres is still insufficiently understood.²³ In particular, the motivations behind the adoption of one particular model in place of others needs further investigation. One suggestion for the revaluation of such provincial styles is that we consider how political dependency and sympathies might have influenced the choice of a fashionable style. In such a case, particularities of style would be of importance to patrons who sought to project a specific message. Such a patron would then value the work of a painter who responded to this need for distinctiveness.²⁴ Romanino is a suitable case. The very strangeness and eccentricity which had previously led to his exclusion from the ranks of ‘fashionable’ artists, is now making Romanino and others like him more popular subjects for study.²⁵ Revaluation, in Romanino’s case, has led to a rediscovery of his works. Nova has argued that

Far from being the product of ‘provincial’ artists unable to maintain the pace of [his] more distinguished colleagues,… Romanino’s works were conscious statements made during a crucial and extremely ambiguous period in Italian cultural history,²⁶

Romanino cannot be ranked among the canonical painters of sixteenth – century Italy, but does this imply that his work is without ‘value’? Nova clearly disagrees and states that Romanino’s value as an artist lies in his challenging values which might have been current at the time. Some of Romanino’s most challenging works were executed in Trent. In 1531 the artist had taken the bold step of abandoning his independence as master of a workshop to enter the employment of Cardinal Bernardo Clesio at Trent. Clesio welcomed him as ‘quello excellente pittore bressano che si ha offerto venire’²⁷. Why he thought him so excellent remains open to interpretation: once in Trent, Romanino worked in a team of artists under the direction of Dosso Dossi.²⁸ For the most part, he remained less respected than the more experienced Dossi. In fact, some of Romanino’s most stunning images, most notably the magnificent Carriage of Phaeton (Fig. 1.2) for the loggia of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• List of figures
• Preface
• 1 Introduction: revaluing Renaissance art
• 2 The price of quality: factors influencing the cost of pigments during the Renaissance
• 3 ‘‘Artefici’ and ‘huomini intendenti’: questions of artistic value in sixteenth-century Italy
• 4 ‘Danthe Alighieri Poeta Fiorentina’: cultural values in the 1481 Divine Comedy
• 5 Mantegna’s Parnassus: reading, collecting and the studiolo
• 6 Alfonso I d’Este, Michelangelo and the man who bought pigs
• 7 New, old and second-hand culture: the case of the Renaissance sleeve
• 8 Evaluating textiles in Renaissance Venice
• 10 The Madonna and Child, a host of saints, and domestic devotion in Renaissance Florence
• 11 Images of St Catherine: a re-evaluation of Cosimo Rosselli and the influence of his art on the woodcut and metal engraving images of the Dominican Third Order
• 12 Voting with their feet: art, pilgrimage and ratings in the Renaissance
• 13 Madness, reason, vision and the cosmos: evaluating the drawings of Opicinus de Canistris (1296-C.1351)
• Bibliography
• Index