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Chapter 5— Giambologna's Narrative Method

1. Hayden White, 1-23. [BACK]

2. Walter Friedlaender, Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism in Italian Painting, introduction by Donald Posner (New York, 1973), originally published as two separate essays in Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft 46 (1925) and in Vorträge der Bibliotek Warburg 9 (1928-29). [BACK]

4. Brilliant, Visual Narratives, 21-52. [BACK]

5. Dehejia, especially 386-88. [BACK]

6. Jack Greenstein, "Alberti on Historia: A Renaissance View of the Structure of Significance in Narrative Painting," Viator 21 (1990): 273-99. [BACK]

7. For Giambologna's shop, see Katherine Watson, "Giambologna and His Workshop: The Later Years," in Avery and Radcliffe, eds., Giambologna, Sculptor to the Medici, 33-42. [BACK]

8. For Margaret Carroll's analysis of the Sabine statue as political allegory see Chapter 1, n. 3. break [BACK]

9. My thanks to Leatrice Mendelsohn for discussing this concept with me and providing references. See her Paragoni, 47-52, on virtù and the sixteenth-century understanding of it. Federico Zuccaro, in his lectures on disegno to the Roman Academy in 1593-94 (Federico Zuccaro, "Idea de' pittori, scultori et architetti," Turin, 1607, in Paola Barocchi, ed. Scritti d'arte del cinquecento, vol. 8 [Turin, 1979], 2072), connects virtù and art when he says that the artist becomes virtuous through the ability to conceive the idea that produces the work of art. Virtuosity, according to sixteenth-century theorists, resulted from the ability of artists to overcome difficulty, an ability that in turn derived from virtù . Francesco de' Medici, in his letter of 10 June 1579 to the Signoria of Genoa (see Appendix 1B), relates Giambologna's promise that the Genoese will be satisfied with his work and his virtù . Michael Baxandall ( Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy [London, 1972], 141) points out that Lorenzo de' Medici, in praising the sonnet form, stresses its difficulty--the difficulty, according to the ancients, constituting virtù . [BACK]

10. John David Summers, " Maniera and Movement," and "Contrapposto: Style and Meaning in Renaissance Art," AB 59 (1977): 336-61, discusses parallels between Renaissance rhetoric, which was based on ancient rhetoric, and art, especially the sixteenth-century figura serpentinata, of which the Sabine statue is a prime example. [BACK]

11. The general directive from Trent concerning art seems to have stimulated other, more specific, instructions from theologians such as Gabriele Paleotti, Giovanni Andrea Gilio, Carlo Borromeo, and Johannes Molanus. See Schroeder, ed., Canons and Decrees, 215; for Paleotti, Discorso, see Barocchi, ed., Trattati, vol. 2, 117-509; for Gilio, "Dialogo nel quale si ragiona degli errori e degli abusi de' pittori circa l'istorie," see Barocchi, ed., Trattati, vol. 2, 1-115; for Borromeo, see Prodi, "Ricerche sulla teorica"; for Molanus, see his De Picturis et Imaginibus Sacris (Louvain, 1570). [BACK]

12. Greenstein, 283.

13. Ibid., 297. [BACK]

12. Greenstein, 283.

13. Ibid., 297. [BACK]

14. Santi di Tito, Supper at Emmaus, Santa Croce, 1574; Jacopo da Empoli, Madonna in Glory with Saint Luke and Saint Ives, Paris, Louvre, 1579. See Sydney Freedberg, Painting in Italy, 1500-1600 (Harmondsworth, 1975), 620-25, 630-31, and fig. 280. [BACK]

15. Pamela Askew first suggested to me a number of years ago the possible parallel between Andrea's Scalzo frescoes and the Grimaldi reliefs. For Andrea del Sarto, see Sydney Freedberg, Andrea del Sarto (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), 28-34; and John Shearman, Andrea del Sarto (Oxford, 1965): 52-77. [BACK]

16. Eva Borsook, The Mural Painters of Tuscany, from Cimabue to Andrea del Sarto (Oxford, 1980), 127-31; Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, The Place of Narrative (Chicago, 1990), 244-49, 365 n. 27. Lavin suggests that the choice of the grisaille technique derives from Pliny, who says that the first painting was monochromatic. Sydney Freedberg ( Painting of the High Renaissance in Rome and Flor- soft

ence [New York, 1972], vol. 1, 443-44), attributes the choice of grisaille to the penitential nature of the Scalzo confraternity. [BACK]

17. See Marco Dezzi Bardeschi, Lo Stanzino del Principe in Palazzo Vecchio (Florence, 1980); Luciano Berti, Il Principe de lo Studiolo (Florence, 1967). [BACK]

18. Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, trans. John R. Spencer (New Haven, 1956), 78. [BACK]

19. On the question of views, see Vita di Benvenuto Cellini: Testo critico con introduzione e note storiche, ed. O. Bacci (Florence, 1901), 408, line 25, and Cellini, Trattati, ed. Gaetano Milanesi (Florence, 1857), 231, 273, 321, etc.; Benedetto Varchi, "Lezzione della maggioranza delle arti," in Barocchi, ed., Trattati, vol. 1, 3-83; Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed archittetori, ed. Gaetano Milanesi (Florence, 1906), vol. 1, 101, and vol. 4, 98; Borghini, 25-53; Rudolf Wittkower, "Le Bernin et le baroque romain," Gazette des Beaux-Arts 11 (1934): 327-41; Joy Kenseth, "Bernini's Borghese Sculptures: Another View," AB 63 (1981): 191-210, challenges Wittkower's analysis, presenting a convincing one of her own. The concept of multiple views is really part of the whole paragone debate that surfaced in the 1540s. See also Mendelsohn. [BACK]

20. The documents Holderbaum discovered and his masterful analysis of the multiple-view aspects of this statuette place it firmly in the same years as the Grimaldi Chapel bronzes ("A Bronze by Giovanni Bologna and a Painting by Bronzino," Burlington Magazine 97 [1956]: 439-45). Giambologna's accomplishment in creating statues with multiple views is attested by the statuette Apollo (Fig. 43), made for Prince Francesco's Studiolo in 1573-75. Of the eight made for that place only the Apollo was mounted on a revolving pedestal (Avery and Radcliffe, 88). [BACK]

21. As mentioned in Chapter 1, in freestanding sculpture the issue of multiple viewing is closely related to the figura serpentinata, which in turn relates to contrapposto . See Summers (" Maniera and Movement," 269-91, and Michelangelo and the Language of Art [Princeton, 1981], 77-96), for a discussion of the relationship of contrapposto to figura serpentinata . [BACK]

22. Mendelsohn, 39. [BACK]

23. Leatrice Mendelsohn has communicated to me her disagreement with Holderbaum's contention. She points out that the format of Bronzino's painting suggests the idea of two views of the figure of Morgante but in different "guises," representing different personae. Had Bronzino set out to "supersede" sculpture in this painting, he could have done so in a far more sophisticated way on one side of the canvas, as he did in other works. Bronzino was apparently on good terms with Cellini, and in his Morgante painting may instead be demonstrating the limitations of painting with regard to three-dimensionality. According to Mendelsohn, the work is more of a joke or tour de force--carnival style--than a didactic demonstration piece. [BACK]

24. I thank Leatrice Mendelsohn for pointing this out to me. break [BACK]

25. Two recent studies of narrative, Janetta Rebold Benton, "Perspective and the Spectator's Pattern of Circulation in Assisi and Padua," Artibus et historiae 19 (1989): 37-52; and William E. Wallace, "Narrative and Religious Expression in Michelangelo's Pauline Chapel," Artibus et historiae 19 (1989): 107-21, focus on the spectator's position and point of view in relation to the images. [BACK]

26. Pope-Hennessy ( Italian High Renaissance and Baroque Sculpture, 70) points to two Flemish sources for Giambologna's Grimaldi narratives: his work with Du Broeuq on the rood screen at Mons in the 1540s and his presumed knowledge of Cornelis Floris's rood screen for the cathedral of Tournai (1570-73). Floris's rood screen (Robert Hedicke, Cornelis Floris und die Florisdekoration, 2 vols. [Berlin, 1913]) juxtaposes reliefs of Old Testament and Passion scenes; these reliefs, like Giambologna's, place figures in elaborate architectural settings. Relationships between figures and architecture and between figures and spatial caesuras, however, are not dramatically integrated in the Floris as they are in the Giambologna. Avery ( Giambologna, 179-81) finds the origins of the Grimaldi relief style in Flemish wooden retables, which Giambologna certainly would have known as a young man. The steeply sloping ground, the figures arranged in compact groups, and the spectator involved as part of the multitude are all signs, for Avery, of this connection. Although Giambologna's early experience undoubtedly laid the foundation for his subsequent development, he found the major sources for his relief style in Italy. [BACK]

27. Reproduced by Margarete Bieber, The Sculpture of the Hellenistic Age (New York, 1961), fig. 18. [BACK]

28. I am indebted to Derek Pearsall for observations he made when we discussed the narrative aspects of these reliefs. [BACK]

29. For evidence of Giambologna's trips to Rome in 1553, 1564, 1572, 1579, 1584, and 1588, see Dhanens, 33-40. [BACK]

30. Borghini, Il riposo, 585. Presumably many of these models were copies of ancient as well as modern works. [BACK]

31. Richard Brilliant, Roman Art (London, 1974), 247. Craig Hugh Smyth, Mannerism and Maniera (New York, 1962), presents an illuminating discussion of the influence of antique art, especially relief, on sixteenth-century maniera artists. As he points out, specific quotations are usually impossible to find because sixteenth-century artists transformed antique motifs and sometimes even adopted them secondhand from a contemporary. Thus the pose of the Magdalen figure in Giambologna's Way to Calvary resembles that of Vasari's Magdalen in his Camaldoli Deposition as much as it does that of any antique work. Furthermore, the Greek and Roman worlds in Giambologna's time were not distinct but part of one ancient past. See also the invaluable handbook of ancient sources, Phyllis Pray Bober and Ruth Olitsky Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture (Oxford, 1986). [BACK]

32. See Summers (" Maniera and Movement," and Michelangelo and the Language of Art, 75-96) for a discussion of contrapposto in the sixteenth century. break [BACK]

33. I have profited from discussions with Lewis Andrews about perspective and vanishing areas and from reading his dissertation, "A Space of Time: Continuous Narrative and Perspective in Quattrocento Tuscan Art," Columbia University, 1988. See also John White, The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space (New York, 1972), especially chapters 11 and 13, for an analysis of the manipulation of viewpoints in Donatello and Ghiberti. Samuel Edgerton, The Renaissance Rediscovery of Linear Perspective (New York, 1975), discusses the discovery of the vanishing point and its use in the fifteenth century. Bernini urged stage designers not to create vistas to be seen from only one viewpoint and praised Annibale Carracci for avoiding them in the Farnese Gallery. See Irving Lavin, Bernini and the Unity of the Visual Arts (New York, 1980), vol. 1, 45. [BACK]

34. See Smyth, Maniera and Mannerism; John Shearman, "Maniera as an Aesthetic Ideal," in Studies in Western Art, Acts of the Twentieth International Congress of the History of Art , vol. 2 (Princeton, 1963), and Mannerism . [BACK]

35. John Pope-Hennessy, Cellini , 163-213, discusses the conception and the making of the Perseus . [BACK]

36. Pope-Hennessy, Italian High Renaissance and Baroque Sculpture , 68, 360-61. [BACK]

37. John David Summers, "The Sculpture of Vincenzo Danti: A Study in the Influence of Michelangelo and the Ideals of the Maniera," Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1969, 68-88, 106-18. [BACK]

38. It is well known that Andrea del Sarto and Pontormo also looked to Dürer and Lucas van Leyden for inspiration: Freedberg, Andrea del Sarto , 33; Shearman, Andrea del Sarto , 66. [BACK]

39. See Chapter 4, n. 30, for references to documents concerning this casket. The excerpt referring to Cambiaso, I reproduce here from ASCG, 50 (cartulario 1565), unnumbered folios:

Die XXVI Junii [1565]
Capsa argentea. Pro Baldasarre Martines, pro manifattura sei mercede faciendi quadrum argenti cum istoria quando Dominus Noster Yesu Christus conductus fuit ad Pilatum, iuxta extinuationem magnifici affiti proces L. VII

Die 22 dicti [= Decembris 1565]
Capsa argentea. Pro Johanne Baptista de Franchis solutis Luce Cambiaxio pictori. pro sua mercede diversarum immaginum factorum pro dicta capsa, statis eius filio et deliberatis per offitium---soldos quadraginta L. II

40. The commission for the Last Supper is recorded by Giscardi, "Notizia," Ms C. 54, 43. [BACK]

41. Lauro Magnani, "Luca Cambiaso tra due 'riforme,'" Arte Lombarda 50 (1978): 87-94. [BACK]

42. Ultimately, this Flagellation design probably goes back to Sebastiano del Piombo's painting in San Pietro Montorio. break [BACK]

43. Those who have ascribed The Entombment to Giambologna include Soprani ( Le vite , 291); Ratti ( Le Vite , 423); Varni ( Ricordi , 32-33); Holderbaum ( The Sculptor Giovanni Bologna , 272-76); Avraham Ronen, "Portigiani's Bronze 'Ornamento' in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem," MKIF 14 (1970): 415-42; and Avery, Giambologna . Federico Alizeri, Notizie dei professori del disegno in Liguria delle origine al secolo XVI , vol. 2, (Genoa, 1873), 113; and Dhanens (247) suggest Adriaen de Vries as the artist; Bury ("The Grimaldi Chapel," 98, 121 n. 64) favors Francavilla. What little is known of Francavilla's work in relief may be deduced from four panels ( The Raising of the Cross, The Crucifixion, The Deposition , and The Resurrection , all c. 1590), generally attributed to him, made for the "Ornamento" of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem and the four he did for the doors of the cathedral of Pisa ( The Visitation, The Baptism of Christ, The Capture of Christ, The Way to Calvary , all c. 1596). Since the Jerusalem panels are closer in date to the Grimaldi Entombment and the Pisa panels rely heavily on the six original Grimaldi reliefs, the former seem more relevant for discussion. A comparison of the Jerusalem Raising of the Cross with the Grimaldi Entombment reveals a stylistic disparity that can be accounted for only by two different artistic hands. The horror vacui, adherence of figures to the picture plane, lack of space, intrusion of detail, and consequent absence of dramatic unity are characteristics of the Jerusalem panel that The Entombment does not display. Holderbaum, basing his attribution to Giambologna on casting records, believes The Entombment was cast either in February 1586 or in July 1587. [BACK]

44. On della Porta's workshop in Genoa and his move to Rome, see A. Roth and Hanno-Walter Kruft, "The della Porta Workshop in Genoa," Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa , vol. 3, pt. 3 (1973), 893-954; Vasari ( Le vite , vol. 7, 225, 545) says that della Porta moved to Rome in 1537. [BACK]

45. Werner Gramberg, Die Düsseldorfer Skizzenbücher des Guglielmo della Porta (Berlin, 1964), vol. 1, 119, is the best source of information about della Porta's activities. A summary of the artist's life (11-19) provides information about the Roman workshop. [BACK]

46. See Chapter 1 for this story. [BACK]

47. In 1574, in a letter to Giovanni Antonio Dosio in Florence, della Porta mentions sending a sketch "fatto per servizio dell'altare principale di S. Pietro in Roma, dove si possono locare li 14 misteri della passione de Jesu Christo" (made to serve the main altar of St. Peter's in Rome, where the fourteen mysteries of the Passion of Jesus Christ can be placed); Gramberg, Die Düsseldorfer Skizzenbücher , 103. Still another sketch--of a "molino" (mill)--he wished to sell to Niccolò Gaddi, Dosio's patron. At the very end of this letter della Porta writes: "Salutate M. Gio: di Bologna et adoperatelo in questo negotio se bisognarà" (Give my greetings to Giovanni Bologna and enlist his help in this negotiation if needed); Gramberg, 104. From this exchange we can assume continue

that Guglielmo della Porta and Giambologna knew each other reasonably well and that, consequently, the younger artist must also have known della Porta's works at first hand. [BACK]

48. See Gramberg, Die Düsseldorfer Skizzenbücher , 54-56, 118-20, for valuable information about this aborted project.

49. Ibid., 119. [BACK]

48. See Gramberg, Die Düsseldorfer Skizzenbücher , 54-56, 118-20, for valuable information about this aborted project.

49. Ibid., 119. [BACK]

50. Egon Verheyen, "A Deposition by Guglielmo della Porta," Museum of Art Bulletin (University of Michigan) 4 (1969): 1-9, discusses the bronze Deposition now in the museum of the University of Michigan. Others include a marble relief in the Museo d'Arte Antica, Milan; a bronze and a cartapesta in Berlin-Dahlem (formerly Figdor Collection, Leo Planiscig, Venezianische Bildhauer der Renaissance [Vienna, 1921], 631-39, figs. 704, 705, 710). [BACK]

51. Jack Spalding, Santi di Tito (New York, 1982). [BACK]

52. Pope-Hennessy, Italian High Renaissance and Baroque Sculpture , 90, 421-22. Valsoldo was the principal sculptor of these tombs. [BACK]


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