Confraternities and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Italy. Ritual, Spectacle and Image (original) (raw)
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Quaderni D Italianistica, 1999
Recensioni ing array of motifs and situations. Yet, despite its heterogeneity, the poem holds together well and works. Under Parker's scrutiny^1 1 piato' serves as an illustration of Bronzino's fecund allegorical imagination, pointing the way to how the artist handles symbolic representation, manipulating the traditional sources and moving far beyond them. An extraordinary work in its own right, the poem epitomizes the profound sense of equivocation that, by the time we reach the final pages of the book, has clearly become the hallmark of Parker's own view of Bronzino's aesthetics.
Bronzino : artist and poet at the court of the Medici
2010
This catalogue traces the career of Agnolo di Cosimo known as Bronzino, a protagonist of sixteenth-century Florentine culture. It charts his life from his apprenticeship in the workshop of Jacopo da Pontormo and sojourn in the Marche region to his career as official artist (and portraitist) of the Medici court and painter of sacred works. Many works by Bronzino and his contemporaries (Benvenuto Cellini, Niccolo Tribolo, Baccio Bandinelli, Pierino da Vinci, Alessandro Allori) reveal the close link between the arts: painting and sculpture, but also poetry, demonstrating the multifaceted personality of the artist, author of lofty sonnets in the style of Petrarch and of burlesque poems. Published to accompany an exhibition at the Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, 24th September 2010 - 23rd January 2011.
"Re-viewing the Image of Confraternities in Renaissance Visual Culture"
Confraternitas, 2004
Central to current art historical studies of Renaissance visual culture is group patronage-government, family, church, the religious orders. Confraternal patronage is by far the newest among them. For decades, historians of confraternities have investigated a wide range of social and religious issues and created new paradigms of research. By contrast, art historians have only recently begun to probe the crucial significance of confraternities as lay corporate patrons within the religious, civic, and cultural matrix of urban centres. Pioneering works, of course, exist. Marilyn Lavin's still exemplary analysis (1967) of the monumental altarpiece by Joos van Ghent and predella panels by Paolo Uccello for the Compagnia di Corpus Domini of Urbino demonstrated how a confraternal devotional image could have broad civic implications. Rab Hatfield's groundbreaking study (1970) of the Compagnia de' Magi in Florence led to consideration of the influences of confraternal membership on subject matter in the private sphere. In the 1980s, Jean Weisz related the comforting rituals of the confratelli of S. Giovanni Decollato of Rome to their oratory decoration. David Rosand's studies of Titian and Tintoretto set the stage for rich scholarship on the intricacies of patronage by the Venetian scuole. Art historian Peter Humphrey and social historian Richard MacKenney integrated diverse disciplinary methodologies to expand knowledge of Venetian confraternal patronage and experience. Influenced by sociological and anthropological models of ritual and theater, Patricia Fortini Brown's magisterial work on the "eyewitness style" contributed new dynamic approaches to the visual culture of Venetian confraternities. Historian James Banker brought his consummate knowledge of confraternities in Sansepolcro to bear on interpreting Piero della Francesca's famous polyptych for the Misericordia. This is to mention only a few earlier, groundbreaking contextual studies. The study of confraternal patronage of the arts has a far longer tradition in Italy. Among important Italian contributions are the archival documentation and registering of confraternal furnishings and devotional objects under the auspices of Ludovica Sebregondi in Florence. The multi-volume works edited by Liana 13 1 This presentation was delivered at the Special Trends Panel on "Recent Trends in Confraternity Studies" at the Renaissance Society of America meetings held in Toronto on 29 March 2003. A more extensive and fully annotated version of this talk will be published in a forthcoming volume to be edited by Christopher Black.
Li pittori parlano con l'opere: Visualizing Poetry in Practice in Early Modern Italian Art
Athens Journal of Humanities and Arts, 2021
The relative sophistication of artists in the early modern era is contested, especially with regards to their educational backgrounds. On one hand, Dempsey-esque intellectual history is vested in touting the structured, literary curricula in art-educational institutions; while on the other, a complete rejection of the "artist-philosopher" as historical fiction seeks to undermine this hegemonic construct. This study argues that the lack of early formal education in the cases of artist like Annibale Carracci and Nicolas Poussin, who, unlike Peter Paul Rubens, did not have a firm foundation in the classics and languages that would allow them to engage directly with source material, would later be supplemented through their relationships with literary figures in the circles of Torquato Tasso, Giambattista Marino, and the Accademia dei Gelati. In addition to such relationships, informal exchanges, gatherings, and supplemental materials like Giovanni Paolo Gallucci's Della Simmetria could be called upon when treating poetic subjects. With intimate knowledge of vernacular poetry, literati themselves participating in lectures and studio visits, and, finally, quick reference guides for subject matter, these artists were able to produce works that spoke to both poetic and artistic theory of the day, as one naturally informed the other.
‘Walking in the Way of Metaphors and Enigmatic Images’: Piero Della Francesca's PerugiaAnnunication
Australian Journal of Art, 1987
G iven the abundance of studies devoted to the iconography and perspectival organisation of the Renaissance Annunciation, it is surprising that the rather prominent example of Piero della Francesca from the Polyptych of St. Anthony in Perugia has not been given much attention (Figs. l, 2). While Domenico Veneziano's Annunciation from the predella of the St. Lucy altarpiece (Fig. 3) is favoured as a paradigmatic Quattrocento composition in which the harmony of spatial construction matches the harmony of its theme, the closely connected Annuniciation by Veneziano's pupil, Piero della Francesca, is criticised for a fanatical and unnecessary preoccupation with geometry. Over the years, scholars have been unanimous about the awkwardness of the work, some, like Roberto Longhi, attributing its characteristics to an over-refined ludic manner, others, such as Creighton Gilbert, to an 'absurd obsession with perspective and architecture'. 2 At the same time, however, its formal architectural theme is that aspect of the work which marks it as one whose antecedent is Masaccio's. lost Annunciation panel from San Niccolo sopr'Arno. 3 Veneziano's Annunciation is of the same lineage; all Annunciations of this type show the Virgin and the Archan positioned within a portico, or outside, before a deep spatial recession leading to a door or gate. As the fifteenth century progressed, the architectural enclosure of Annunciations assumed a more and more complex and elaborate form, at times reflecting, as Andre Chaste! has observed, fantastic sets from theatrical sacre rappresentazionU Piero della Francesca's Annunciation is from the later part of this' development, between the exemplum ofMasaccio and thejantasia ofCarlo Crivelli. 5 Importantly, it is at least twenty years later than Veneziano's St. Lucy altarpiece Annunciation and therefore cannot be expected to exhibit the clear, relatively uncomplicated rhythms of that work.
The poetry of patronage: Bronzino and the Medici
Renaissance Studies, 2003
This study examines the poems which Bronzino wrote on the Medici, the "Canzoni Sorelle," which celebrate Medicean power and return, written o gain readmission to the Accademia Fiorentina, and the sonnets written on the death of Eleonora da Toledo and two of her sons. The article addresses how Bronzino's poems and portraits of the Medici differ from one another.