The Codex Rustici and the fifteenth-century Florentine artisan (original) (raw)
Related papers
Artisans and Religious Reading in Late Medieval Italy and Northern France (ca. 1400-ca. 1520)
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 2013
This essay investigates how a specific group of laypeople, individuals and groups of literate artisans in late medieval French and Italian towns, participated in distinctive ways in contemporary devotional reading culture. Through an analysis of colophons and ownership marks in manuscripts and a study of wills and book inventories, a distinct artisanal devotional culture can be reconstructed, as it becomes visible in the ways that artisans combined their social, vocational, and religious identities. This is also testified by the artisans’ appropriation of religious texts and their scribal and reading activities as expressions of devotion. Exposed to biblical translations and new vernacular spiritual guides, artisans were stimulated to combine the vita activa with religious activities and to find religious significance in their public and private lives.
Renaissance Studies, 2019
Although the systematic study of Venetian drawing of the late sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth century was initiated about ninety years ago, it remains incomplete. Certainly, much more is to be accomplished compared with the available research on Florence, Roman or Bolognese drawing of the same period. This shortfall accounts for a great deal given the widely held opinion-advocated in 1568 by the Florentine biographer Giorgio Vasari-that Venetian artists were born rather as painters and fine colourists than as draughtsmen, and so they scarcely worked on paper but from the outset used the canvas as their artistic medium. Fundamental research on Venetian drawing from the early Renaissance to later periods by Detlev von Halden, Hans and Erica Tietze-Conrat, Michelangelo Muraro, Nicola Ivanoff and Terisio Pignatti has refuted this viewpoint. Finally, recent exhibitions of the three giants of Venetian painting-Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese-their workshops and wider artistic context have accompanied or kick-started new studies of draughtsmanship conducted, for example, by scholars like
Women Artists and Artisans in Venice and the Veneto, 1400–1750 Uncovering the Female Presence, 2024
The detailed account books of Doge Marino Grimani (1595-1605) reveal a wide network of contacts with artists and craftsmen, both men and women. The analysis of two of the volumes indicates continuous relationships based on mutual trust and on the doge's refined material expertise. This essay will focus on the purchases of this wealthy Venetian patrician, before and after his dogeship (1589-1605), highlighting his prominent position as a client of the city's most renowned artists and artisans. A significant difference in the numbers between male and female professionals is indicated, as well as gender placement by professional category. Marino Grimani demonstrated particular preferences for the work of certain female artisans and luxury crafts, including needlework.
Renaissance Quarterly, 2019
of the Meadow he used both egg and oil for the transparencies, in the Pala di San Giobbe he achieves the corpose areas by adding oil and white lead to pigments, while the velature are tempera. This reveals how difficult it is to assess the transition from a "double technique" to oil. Painters seem to adapt techniques according to the implementation of artworks, the pictorial effects sought, and material and economic constraints. In the next chapter, inventories and cross-sectional data shed light not only on the nature and use of pigments but also on the role of painters, such as Titian or Tintoretto, in the commerce and the international network of Venetian vendicolori. Aiming at understanding pittura tonale and unione, the final chapters consider how colorito implemented intense or blended colors, shadows, glazes, and impastos. If unione depends on the relation between colors and volumes, Giorgione and Titian resolved the problem through shadows, but without resorting to cangiantismo. Indeed, La Serenissima's painters created shadows suitable to local colors, mastering transparent glazes. From the 1530s onward, they also started using unusual blends, often darkening their colors. In unione, a key role is played by the brushwork: if in Giorgione, the young Titian, or Sebastiano del Piombo it defines forms, textures, and lights, Tintoretto gives an original turn to the technique, making the work quicker, as in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco's Brazen Serpent. Also, since Titian adopted visible brushwork as soon as the 1540s, Hochmann revives discussions on the (alleged) unfinished state of some his paintings. In the closing chapter, unione is taken into consideration as a function of colors' gradation, shadows' quality, and colored preparations: for Titian, Tintoretto, or Bassano, chiaroscuro and a darkened palette never meant a renouncement of color intensity, and Veronese's brilliant colorito did not lead to accepting chromatic dissonances. Finally, the specificity of the Venetian technique results more from the exaltation of materiality itself than from specific materials and mediums. Among the book's many virtues, three must be emphasized: First, thanks to the author's perfect knowledge of Italian art history, the Venetian technique is placed in the wider perspective of artistic practices in Italy. Second, each chapter opens with a relevant overview of literature on the topic at hand. Last, but not least, the book is a wonderful, ceaseless mine of information!