‘The “Gallic Crowd” at the “Aragonese Doors”: Donato Acciaiuoli’s Vita Caroli Magni and the Workshop of Vespasiano da Bisticci’, I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 17 (2014), pp. 241-82. (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Compagnia della Cazzuola as Locus of Opposition to Medici Rule--REVISED 1/27/15
In his life of Jacopo Rustici, Vasari gives us a poignant, though veiled, description of his position vis-à-vis the Medici rulers of Florence by whom he was employed, constrained, for reasons of family obligations, to play the role of courtier/painter at the court of Cosimo deí Medici, to the detriment of his own artistic ambitions: ! Giovan Francesco, besides being of a noble family, had the means to live hon ourably, and therefore practiced art more for his own delight and from desire of glory than for gain. And, to tell the truth of the matter, those craftsmen who have as their ultimate and principal end gain and profit, and not honour and glory, rarely become very excellent, even although they may have good and beautiful genius; besides which, labouring for a livelihood, as very many do who are weighed down by poverty and their families, and working not by inclination, when the mind and the will are drawn to it, but by necessity from morning till night, is a life not for men who have honour and glory as their aim, but for hacks, as they are called, and manual labourers, for the reason that good works do not get done without first having been well considered for a long time. 1 ! Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, trans. by 1 Gaston de Vere (London: Macmillan, 1912-1915), vol. 8, 109-129. ! ! 2 covering his eyes, in order that, in entering by that gate, he might not see the sub urb and his own houses all pulled down. Wherefore the guards at the gate, seeing him thus muffled up, asked him what that meant, and, having heard from him why he had so covered his face, they laughed at him. Lorenzo, after being a few months in Florence, returned to France, taking his mother with him; and there he still lives and labours.
In this paper, I intend to show that the interdisciplinary study of chronicles can tell us much not just about the texts themselves, but also about their possible purpose, intended audience, and reception. In order to do this, I use the chronicle written by the civic notary Giovanni Codagnello of Piacenza (d.1235) as case study. In particular, I focus on the annals and on some of the myths and fabulous histories there included, as these have not received much attention. Through a philological analysis of these myths, I argue that Codagnello consciously re-elaborated works by authors such as Isidore of Seville, Paul the Deacon, Dares Phrygius, and others, fitting them to his own purpose: to convince his fellow citizens that the civil war which broke out in his city in the 1220s and 30s was not only disruptive, but also went against a tradition of civic unity and alliance with the city of Milan which originated in times unmemorable. Indeed, a consequence of the civil war was the interruption of the century-long alliance with ‘anti-imperial’ Milan and the passage to the enemy front, led by the ‘pro-imperial’ Cremona, a former arch-enemy of Piacenza. Thus, together with re-assessing these myths (which with few exceptions, have been largely overlooked or misunderstood by historians of communal-age literature and history) and placing them within a precise historical context, I argue that in communal-age Italy chronicles and fabulous histories could have a high political importance. Indeed, through the analysis of contemporary literature, archival documents, and meta-textual mentions to orality present in the chronicle, I argue that historical texts such as these could be read in civic assemblies – the core of political life in contemporary communes – or anyway incorporated into political orations, thus playing an important role when it came to take decisions of political nature. Finally, I analyse the manuscript itself, arguing that this was commissioned by the civic government of Piacenza in around 1250, and that therefore, even after the death of its author, this chronicle was intended to continue to serve important public political functions.
The Compagnia della Cazzuola as Locus of Opposition to Medici Rule--UPDATED VERSION 8/27/14
In his life of Jacopo Rustici, Vasari gives us a poignant, though veiled, description of his position vis-à-vis the Medici rulers of Florence by whom he was employed, constrained, for reasons of family obligations, to play the role of courtier/painter at the court of Cosimo deí Medici, to the detriment of his own artistic ambitions: " Giovan Francesco, besides being of a noble family, had the means to live hon ourably, and therefore practiced art more for his own delight and from desire of glory than for gain. And, to tell the truth of the matter, those craftsmen who have as their ultimate and principal end gain and profit, and not honour and glory, rarely become very excellent, even although they may have good and beautiful genius; besides which, labouring for a livelihood, as very many do who are weighed down by poverty and their families, and working not by inclination, when the mind and the will are drawn to it, but by necessity from morning till night, is a life not for men who have honour and glory as their aim, but for hacks, as they are called, and manual labourers, for the reason that good works do not get done without first having been well considered for a long time. 1 " He has become, in service to his Medici masters, a mere coverer of walls, a decorator.
The Compagnia della Cazzuola as Locus of Opposition to Medici Rule
In his life of Jacopo Rustici, Vasari gives us a poignant, though veiled, description of his position vis-à-vis the Medici rulers of Florence by whom he was employed, constrained, for reasons of family obligations, to play the role of courtier/painter at the court of Cosimo deí Medici, to the detriment of his own artistic ambitions: ! Giovan Francesco, besides being of a noble family, had the means to live hon ourably, and therefore practiced art more for his own delight and from desire of glory than for gain. And, to tell the truth of the matter, those craftsmen who have as their ultimate and principal end gain and profit, and not honour and glory, rarely become very excellent, even although they may have good and beautiful genius; besides which, labouring for a livelihood, as very many do who are weighed down by poverty and their families, and working not by inclination, when the mind and the will are drawn to it, but by necessity from morning till night, is a life not for men who have honour and glory as their aim, but for hacks, as they are called, and manual labourers, for the reason that good works do not get done without first having been well considered for a long time. 1 ! He has become, in service to his Medici masters, a mere coverer of walls, a decorator.
2020
During the last years of his life, Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459), former Apostolic Secretary and Chancellor of Florence, was working on a long text that he characterized, in a letter written in 1458, as lacking a well-defined structure. This was most probably his history of the people of Florence (Historiae Florentini populi, the title given in Jacopo’s dedication copy to Frederick of Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino), revised and published posthumously by Poggio’s son, Jacopo Bracciolini (1442-1478). Contrary to what is often assumed, Poggio’s treatise was not a continuation, nor even a complement, to Leonardo Bruni’s (1370-1444) official history of Florence. It concentrates on the most recent history of Florence from the fourteenth-century conflicts between Florence and Milan through Florentine expansion in Tuscany and finally reaching the mid-fifteenth century. This article will study the genesis and fortune of the work in the context of Poggio’s literary output and the manuscript ev...
In the previous chapter, we examined Vasari's vivid and detailed description of a festive organization, the Compagnia della Cazzuola, founded in Florence together with two other festive companies--the Compagnie of the Broncone and Diamante-in the fall of 1512. As we noted in that chapter, unlike the latter two organizations, which were intended to consolidate Medici rule in the city after eighteen years of republican rule, the Compagnia della Cazzuola served a rather different function. We described in detail how the nighttime activities of this festive organization, while presenting on the surface the appearance of merely bizarre and eccentric divertissements, actually managed to convey, in a highly symbolic and recondite way, criticism of the Medici regime, newly reestablished in the city.