maniera - Hugendubel

EDITED BY BASTIAN ECLERCY
WITH CONTRIBUTIONS BY HANS AURENHAMMER, NICHOLAS SCOTT BAKER, KATHARINA BEDENBENDER, ANNE BLOEMACHER,
GERD BLUM, RALF BORMANN, MATTEO BURIONI, HEIKO DAMM, BASTIAN ECLERCY, CHRIS FISCHER, DAVID FRANKLIN,
DENNIS GERONIMUS, SEFY HENDLER, THERESA HOLLER, HEIDI J. HORNIK, FABIAN JONIETZ, ADELA KUTSCHKE,
JOHANNES MYSSOK, SUSANNE POLLACK, SUSANNE THÜRIGEN AND LINDA WOLK-SIMON
PRESTEL
MUNICH · LONDON · NEW YORK
CONTENTS
8Greetings
10Foreword
MAX HOLLEIN
ESSAYS
Manner, Mannerism, maniera
14
ON THE HISTORY OF A CONTROVERSIAL TERM
HANS AURENHAMMER
24
“Uno avulso non deficit alter”
FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI, 1512 –1574
NICHOLAS SCOTT BAKER
32
Examples of maniera
BASTIAN ECLERCY
PERINO, PONTORMO, BRONZINO AND
THE MARTYRDOM OF THE TEN THOUSAND
CATALOGUE
K
ATHARINA BEDENBENDER, ANNE BLOEMACHER, GERD BLUM, RALF BORMANN,
MATTEO BURIONI, HEIKO DAMM, BASTIAN ECLERCY, CHRIS FISCHER,
DAVID FRANKLIN, DENNIS GERONIMUS, SEFY HENDLER, THERESA HOLLER,
HEIDI J. HORNIK, FABIAN JONIETZ, ADELA KUTSCHKE, JOHANNES MYSSOK,
SUSANNE POLLACK, SUSANNE THÜRIGEN AND LINDA WOLK-SIMON
42 A LABORATORY OF MANIERA
The ‘Wild Youth’ of Florence
82
ANTI-CLASSICISM AND EXPERIMENTATION
Pontormo and Rosso Explore New Avenues
114 A SIDE GLANCE AT ROME
Art under Clement VII before the Sack of Rome
134 POLITICAL TURMOIL AND ARTISTIC FLORESCENCE
Florentine Painting of the Last Republic
158 YEARS OF TRANSITION
Bronzino’s Ascendency and the First Duke of Florence
182PARAGONE
The Rivalry of the Arts
218 IMAGE OF A COURT
Bronzino as the Medici Court Painter
252VASARI
Court Artist to Cosimo I and the Father of Art History
APPENDIX
288Bibliography
302Colophon
304 Photographic Credits
SUPPORTED BY
MEDIA PARTNERS
MOBILITY PARTNER
CULTURAL PARTNER
Lenders
Baltimore, The Walters Art Gallery
Berlin, Deutsches Historisches Museum
Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie
Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Kupferstichkabinett
Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Skulpturensammlung
und Museum für Byzantinische Kunst
Brunswick, Bowdoin College Museum of Art
Budapest, Szépművészeti Múzeum
Chatsworth, The Duke of Devonshire
and the Trustees of the Chatsworth Settlement
Chicago, The Art Institute
Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud
Darmstadt, Hessisches Landesmuseum
Dijon, Musée des Beaux-Arts
Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Kupferstich-Kabinett
Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Skulpturensammlung
Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery
Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale
Florence, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi
Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi
Florence, Galleria dell’Accademia
Florence, Museo Nazionale del Bargello
Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Galleria del Costume
Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina
Hamburg, Kunsthalle
Hannover, Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum
Lewisburg, Bucknell University, Samek Art Gallery
Lille, Musée des Beaux-Arts
Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery
London, National Gallery
London, The British Museum
London, Victoria & Albert Museum
Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum
Lyon, Musées des Tissus et des Arts décoratifs
Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado
Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
Männedorf-Zürich, Collection Bruno Bischofberger
Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera
Minneapolis, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Montpellier, Musée Fabre
Munich, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York, The Morgan Library & Museum
Newark (Delaware), The Alana Collection
Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada
Oxford, The Ashmolean Museum
Paris, Chancellerie des Universités de Paris
Paris, Musée Jacquemart-André
Paris, Musée du Louvre
Prague, Národní galerie
Rome, Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica
Saint Louis, Saint Louis Art Museum
Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie
Turin, Palazzo Madama, Museo Civico d’Arte Antica
Venice, Fondazione Giorgio Cini
Vienna, Albertina
Washington, National Gallery of Art
Windsor, Windsor Castle (Royal Collection Trust / HM Queen Elizabeth II)
Mr and Mrs David Brownstein
as well as several private collections that prefer to remain anonymous
We would like to extend our heartfelt thanks
to the following colleagues for their support:
Sébastien Allard, László Baán, Jean-Pierre Babelon,
Luca Massimo Barbero, Jean-Luc Baroni, Andrea Bayer,
Sabine Beneke, Brent R. Benjamin, Bruno Bischofberger,
Christopher Brown, David Alan Brown, Caroline Campbell,
Thomas Campbell, Matteo Ceriana, Hugo Chapman,
Julien Chapuis, Caterina Chiarelli, Keith Christiansen,
Ilaria Ciseri, Michael Clarke, Roberto Contini,
Dominique Cordellier, Emmanuela Daffra, Marcus Dekiert,
Vincent Delieuvin, Douglas Druick, Maximilien Durand,
Marzia Faietti, Jiří Fajt, Carlo Falciani, Miguel Falomir,
­Kaywin Feldman, Gabriele Finaldi, Benoît Foret,
David Franklin, Maria Antonella Fusco, Davide Gasparotto,
Hubertus Gaßner, Matthieu Gilles, Stefania Girometti,
Achim Gnann, William M. Griswold, Emmanuel Guigon,
Mechthild Haas, Florian Härb, Babette Hartwieg, Michel
Hilaire, Matthew Hirst, Annette Hojer, Thomas Ketelsen,
Kordelia Knoll, Alexander Koch, Antje-Fee Köllermann,
Dagmar Korbacher, Christiane Lange, Katja Lembke,
Bernd W. Lindemann, Eckart Lingenauber, Neil MacGregor,
Julia Marciari-Alexander, Giorgio Marini, Marc Mayer,
­Gudula Metze, Fabrizio Moretti, Antonio Natali,
Stephen Ongpin, Carlo Orsi, Enrica Pagella, Beatrice Paolozzi
Strozzi, Sandra Penketh, Timothy Potts, Earl A. Powell III,
Richard Rinehart, Martin Roth, Nicolas Sainte Fare Garnot,
Eike D. Schmidt, Klaus Albrecht Schröder, Maria Letizia
Sebastiani, Desmond Shawe-Taylor, Guillermo Solana,
Joaneath Spicer, Ute Stehr, Andreas Stolzenburg,
Carl Brandon Strehlke, Vera Szolnoki, Angelo Tartuferi,
Clovis Whitfield, Matthias Wivel, Kurt Zeitler and
Miguel Zugaza.
Greetings
This exhibition is an event: the Städel Museum in Frankfurt is presenting
a large exposition on Florentine Mannerism of a kind that has yet to be seen
in Europe outside Florence. About 120 superlative loans from all over the
world await the visitor here, including major works that have never before
left their holding institution. The title, Maniera, contains everything that
made up this art in sixteenth-century Florence: refinement, elegance, virtuosity, extravagance.
The word maniera is derived from the Italian word mano, which means
‘hand’, and indeed the artist’s individual hand was more universally appreciated in that period than ever before. Some of the greatest names in the
­history of Italian art stand for it: Pontormo, Bronzino, Rosso Fiorentino,
Vasari and many others. Their work is inseparably connected with the
eventful history of Florence, whose fortunes were determined by the Medici
family of bankers during this period. The Medici were raised to the rank
of dukes, and as patrons of the arts they offered the artists they favoured
a rich field of activity. The portraits of their court painter Bronzino, in
particular, continue to shape our sense of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici and
his wife, Eleonora di Toledo, even today. Thus the paintings, drawings and
sculptures assembled here in Frankfurt not only testify to a fascinating
era in art but also take visitors on a journey to one of the most remarkable
heydays of the city of Florence.
The Savings Banks Finance Group has for many years been supporting
the Städel Museum in the area of outstanding exhibitions of old masters.
8
With its especially refined selection of exhibition themes, the Städel
Museum always indicates surprising new directions, continually reaffirming
its outstanding position as one of the most renowned museums in Germany.
The conception of the Maniera exhibition has impressively proved this
once again.
The long-term patronage and imparting of art and culture in all their
facets and in all regions has been a special concern of the Savings Banks
Finance Group in general. As a group of companies under public law,
we operate with an ambition to make a meaningful and responsible contribution to the future and life quality of our society, and for many years
we have been the largest non-governmental supporter of culture in
­Germany.
This commitment to the Maniera has been shared jointly with the Sparkassen-Kulturfonds of the German Savings Banks Association, Deutsche
Leasing and the Frankfurter Sparkasse.
We hope that visitors will experience stimulating and exciting moments
as they dive into this fascinating phenomenon of Italy’s art and that they
will discover much that is new in these ‘old masters’.
GEORG FAHRENSCHON
President of the German Savings Banks Association / Deutscher Sparkassen- und Giroverband
Greetings
Already the exhibition title Maniera. Pontormo, Bronzino and Medici Florence
offers a glimpse of an entire art-historical cosmos: notable artists of the
­sixteenth century shaped a style characterised by their individual signatures.
Not only Jacopo Pontormo and Agnolo Bronzino, but also Andrea del Sarto,
Rosso Fiorentino, Francesco Salviati and Giorgio Vasari were among the
outstanding exponents of this extremely productive artistic phase following
close on the heels of the High Renaissance and its greats, such as Leonardo,
Raphael and Michelangelo. With its elegant, sophisticated and sometimes
even bizarre-seeming mode of expression, the new generation of artists
­rendered the city of Florence the centre of European Mannerism. Yet the
Medici family, as their foremost client, also played a crucial role. In the
­exhibition, the Städel Museum has united its own unique works by Bron­
zino and Rosso Fiorentino with a large number of loans from the renowned
museums of the world. In eight sections spread out over two floors, the
­various aspects of Mannerist art are vividly presented in close relation to
the eventful history of sixteenth-century Italy, and particularly that of the
city of Florence. In terms of media, the spectrum ranges from drawings
and prints to paintings, sculptures and a spectacular, monumental architectural model of Michelangelo’s stairway in the Biblioteca Laurenziana in
Florence.
As one of the Städel Museum’s most important sponsors, the Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain most recently had the pleasure of assisting
in the realisation of the successful show Masterworks in Dialogue: Eminent
Guests for the Anniversary. We are delighted that the Florentine Mannerism
project has now provided us with an opportunity to continue our dedicated
involvement. By supporting this exhibition, we can make a decisive contribution to the scholarly study of Italian painting in Germany and beyond –
to the benefit of the Frankfurt / RheinMain cultural region as a whole. We
wish visitors an insightful and stimulating exploration of this survey of
an important epoch of early modern art.
DR HELMUT MÜLLER
Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain gGmbH
9
Foreword
Andrea del Sarto, Pontormo, Rosso, Bronzino, Vasari – in 2016, the prom­
inent painters of Florentine Mannerism are making their first major appearance in Germany in a high-calibre exhibition at the Städel Museum featuring
loans from museums in Germany and abroad. An important chapter in
the history of Italian art with consequences for all of Europe – and one
which has received remarkably little attention in scholarship and exhibition
programmes in the German-speaking world over the past decades – is
here being comprehensively presented to the public.
Owing in great part to the heroic triumvirate made up of Leonardo,
Michelangelo and Raphael, the High Renaissance of the early sixteenth
­century is generally considered a zenith in the development of art in Italy
and beyond its borders. A number of the most fascinating artistic accomplishments, however, can be attributed to the following two generations,
which built on the achievements of the High Renaissance while at the
same time venturing explorations of their own on new terrain.
The chronicler of the era, the art historiographer Giorgio Vasari, coined
the colourful term maniera for that phenomenon, initially as a way of referring to a particular artist’s personal style, ‘handwriting’, or ‘manner’. After all,
the Florentine art patrons of the sixteenth century attached greater importance to the master’s own hand (mano in Italian) than ever before. Yet mani­
era can also stand for the style of an epoch, and especially that of ­Vasari’s
own time, today referred to as ‘Mannerism’. Vasari specifies it as maniera
­moderna or bella maniera, which he considers a direct continuation of the
painting of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael. Maniera art has many facets:
elegant, cultivated and sophisticated, but also capricious, extravagant and
sometimes even bizarre. John Shearman, in his trailblazing book of 1967,
came up with a catchy way of putting it: the “stylish style”. We will depart
from the outlook of that English-American art historian, however, by broadening the concept to include not only the refined elegance characteristic
of such artists as Bronzino, Vasari or Francesco Salviati but also the bold
experimental phases in the early work of Pontormo and Rosso – two variants
we regard as two sides of the same coin. Our aim is to spread an understanding of maniera not as a uniform style, but as a multifarious and constantly
evolving principle: an art that is particularly aware of its artistic character and
its artificiality, and that assigns decisive value to individual style.
The exhibition – which is being presented exclusively at the Städel
Museum – is dedicated to Florence as the first centre of European Manner-
ism. It covers the period from the return of the Medici to that city in 1512
and the early artistic forays by the new generation (Pontormo, Rosso)
to the codification of the maniera in the second edition of Vasari’s Lives of
the Artists published in 1568. This date is well suited as a symbolic terminus
in view of the momentous upheavals occurring shortly before and after it:
in 1564 Cosimo I de’ Medici passed the regency on to his son Francesco;
in 1574 he died. Vasari died the same year; Bronzino had already passed away
in 1572. Between 1570 and 1572, a number of young painters appeared on
the scene to decorate the studiolo of Francesco I de’ Medici – still in collab­
oration with the elderly Vasari – and usher in a change of generations.
Chronologically and topographically, the Frankfurt show thus takes
up the thread of the successful exhibition Botticelli: Likeness, Myth, Devotion
­presented at the Städel in 2009/10. In terms of scholarship, it is also based
on the preparatory work carried out by curator Bastian Eclercy for the
­studio exhibition Pontormo: Masterworks of Mannerism in Florence mounted
by the Landesmuseum Hannover in 2013. The exhibition emphasises
the close relationship between developments in art during the decades
in ­question and key aspects of Florentine city history: the restoration of
­Medici rule after the family’s exile from the town, the intermezzo of the last
Florentine Republic, the Medici’s newly attained ducal status and courtly
representation under Cosimo I. The primary focus is on painting and drawing, but sculpture and architecture are also highlighted in certain cases.
A masterwork of the Städel collection forms the show’s highlight and
point of departure – Bronzino’s famous Portrait of a Lady in Red (cat. no. 69),
which demonstrates how elegant young Florentine ladies saw themselves
and wished to be seen by others: proud, self-assured, always a bit aloof –
and with a lapdog as an ‘it-piece’. And indeed, to an extent these paintings
often mirror the self-fashioning practices of our own time and thus offer
the viewer a familiar means of access to a period in which style meant
everything. Purchased for the Städelsches Kunstinstitut way back in 1882,
Bronzino’s painting is among the museum’s most precious works and would
already be justification enough for a show of this kind. After Botticelli’s
Simonetta it can be considered ‘the’ pièce de résistance of the Frankfurt Italian
holdings. The Städel is also contributing Rosso Fiorentino’s Madonna and
Child with the Infant St John (cat. no. 5) dating from the beginning of that
­fascinating eccentric’s development, as well as a number of drawings from
its Department of Prints and Drawings. The latter include one of the few
11
surviving sheets – as rare as they are exquisite – from the hand of Bron­
zino: his design for the ceiling fresco in the Chapel of Eleonora di Toledo in
­Palazzo Vecchio, one of the most important commissions granted by
Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici (cat. no. 105).
The show’s narrative is developed in eight sections with differing temporal and thematic emphases, which are elucidated by the concise introductions in this catalogue. Building on the trailblazing Florentine exhibitions
L’officina della maniera (1996/97), Bronzino: Pittore e poeta alla corte dei Medici
(2010/11) and Pontormo e Rosso Fiorentino: Divergenti vie della “maniera”
(2014), the Städel Museum project ventures a survey of Mannerist painting
in Florence within the context of various genres and the city’s history. In
the process, it also forges a link to the Städel exhibition Realms of Imagin­
ation: Albrecht Altdorfer and the Expressivity of Art around 1500 (2014/15),
curated by Jochen Sander and Stefan Roller, which focused on a counterpart
to Italian Mannerism occurring north of the Alps. Maniera aims to acquaint
the German and international public with a key chapter in the history
of European art which otherwise defies exploration in this degree of abundance and concentration outside Florence.
The precious paintings, drawings and sculptures that, thanks to the
exceptional generosity of various lenders, have been assembled in Frankfurt testify to this circumstance. We are deeply indebted to all the many
museums – more than fifty in number – and private collections that
made it possible for us to bring these gems together temporarily at the
Städel. I would like to express my especially heartfelt thanks to our colleagues at the museums of Florence, who shared our enthusiasm for
the subject and placed a truly extraordinary group of more than twenty
outstanding works at our disposal as loans. Among them are two largescale masterpieces by ­Pontormo, the Adoration of the Magi from the
Galleria Palatina and Venus and Cupid from the Galleria dell’Accademia
(cat. nos. 31, 79), which have travelled beyond Florence city limits for the
very first time for this occasion. Yet the wealth of superb loans does
not stop there, but also includes Raphael’s famous Esterházy Madonna from
Budapest representing the Florentine High Renaissance as a prelude to
the presentation, the Sacrifice of Isaac by Andrea del Sarto from the Prado
in Madrid and Bronzino’s Portrait of Andrea Doria as Neptune from the
Brera in Milan (cat. nos. 3, 53, 86) – to name just a few of the wonderful
examples.
Maniera moreover unites certain works in fascinating unprecedented
constellations that are highly significant from the scholarly perspective
as well, for instance the four versions of the Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand
by Pontormo, Bronzino and Perino del Vaga (cat. nos. 60 – 63), which –
on ­display together for the first time ever – can now be admired and compared at the Städel. The Frankfurt Lady in Red by Bronzino, for her part,
is being juxtaposed with her closest kin from a genre ‘genealogy’ that
pays homage to her likeness as a key work of Florentine portraiture of the
cinquecento.
In addition to the masterworks of painting and drawing, I would also
like to point out Pontormo’s Diary from the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale
in Florence (cat. no. 131). As one of the earliest extant artists’ diaries, it
­provides what today would be called ‘authentic’ insight into the master’s
working process and everyday life. The monumental model of Michel­
angelo’s famous staircase in the Biblioteca Laurenziana (cat. no. 94), constructed on a scale of 1:3, is also likely to attract attention. A scenographic
element of a kind never before featured at the Städel, it conveys a vivid
impression of the elegance and playful wit of this incunabulum of early
Mannerist architecture. The stage designer Christian Piwellek applied great
12
s­ ensibility and fine craftsmanship to building the model especially for this
show in keeping with the curator’s wishes, for which I thank him most
warmly.
What unites these works is a sophisticated aesthetic that will surely
cast a spell over our visitors. Every object tells a story in which it has its own
role to play. We are grateful and proud that it has proven possible to unite
such a superb selection of objects in Frankfurt, enabling us to make the
art of the maniera perceivable in all its creative eccentricity as one of the
most fascinating phenomena of Italian art.
This splendid catalogue contributes substantially to that effort, offering
an abundance of new insights to convey a fundamental understanding of
Florentine Mannerism. Three introductory essays discuss the relationship
between the terms maniera and ‘Mannerism’, the history of the city of
­Florence in the period in question, and a central work complex exemplifying the unique artistic character of the epoch. In this volume, particular
emphasis has been attached to the in-depth study of all of the works on
­display in detailed catalogue entries that themselves recount the story of
the Florentine maniera on the basis of the exhibits. The accompanying
research has brought numerous new aspects to light with regard to individual works and workgroups alike. Bronzino’s Lady in Red from the Städel
­collection, for example – the show’s starting point – can now be assigned
its rightful place in the hitherto little-researched development of its genre:
that of the monumental, stately portrait of the Florentine lady. Beyond its
function as an exhibition catalogue, this publication is thus intended to
serve as a ­fundamental reference work on Florentine Mannerism and provide new impulses to research in the field.
The realisation of this ambitious exhibition project would never have
been possible without the support of dedicated partners and sponsors.
We would like to express our thanks to the Savings Banks Finance Group
with the Sparkassen-Kulturfonds of the German Savings Banks Association, Deutsche Leasing and the Frankfurter Sparkasse. We are particularly
­grateful to Georg Fahrenschon, president of the German Savings Banks
Association, for his personal commitment to and interest in our work.
Heike Kramer, head of Gesellschaftliches Engagement, is likewise deserving
of our appreciation for her confidence in our institution and many years
of support. The Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain gGmbH has once again
come to our aid in the preparations for this exhibition. My thanks go to
­Helmut Müller and Julia Cloot of the executive board as well as the Kulturfonds committees, whose dedication and lively interest have accompanied
us from the time of the show’s inception.
We thank the Süddeutsche Zeitung and the Verkehrsgesellschaft Frankfurt am Main for once again making it possible to cooperate with them in
the area of media. And we are also indebted to our mobility partner, the
Deutsche Bahn AG, and our cultural partner, hr2-kultur, thanks to which the
exhibition will receive media support.
For the exhibition architecture, which is characterised by all the art­
fulness and elegance called for by the theme, we have Bach Dolder Architekten of Darmstadt to thank. The Prestel publishing company gave us its
­reliable and professional support in the realisation of the catalogue. I am
extremely grateful to a large number of colleagues and experts in the field
for their contributions to this important volume: Hans Aurenhammer,
­Nicholas Scott Baker, Katharina Bedenbender, Anne Bloemacher, Gerd
Blum, Ralf Bormann, Matteo Burioni, Heiko Damm, Bastian Eclercy,
Chris Fischer, David Franklin, Dennis Geronimus, Sefy Hendler, Theresa
Holler, Heidi J. Hornik, Fabian Jonietz, Adela Kutschke, Johannes Myssok,
Susanne Pollack, Susanne Thürigen and Linda Wolk-Simon. Already just
the list of the authors’ names indicates the international nature of the theme
now finally being introduced to the German public at the Städel Museum.
Even seasoned travellers to Florence may well make a number of new
­discoveries here – and a Tuscan spring is in store for Frankfurt.
This show was realised in close cooperation with all of the museum’s
departments. I am indebted to the staffs of the exhibition service, the
­conservation workshops, the library, the in-house technical services, the
departments of graphic design, finances, external partners, museum education, marketing, press, sponsoring, the fund-raising and event management, and the offices of the director and catalogue management for their
outstanding dedication. I would like to extend my very special thanks to
Susanne Pollack and Adela Kutschke, representatives of this staff who – with
the exemplary support of Ann Kathrin Kubitz as a student assistant – aided
in the preparations for both the exhibition and the catalogue with the
utmost dedication, passion and profound knowledge in their capacity as
assistant curators in the department.
Finally, however, my wholehearted gratitude goes to Bastian Eclercy,
the head of the Städel collection of Italian, French and Spanish Paintings
before 1800 and a qualified expert in the Italian art of the Renaissance,
who developed this exceptional exhibition and the accompanying catalogue.
It was above all on account of his untiring work and research efforts and
the countless discussions and negotiations he conducted that we have
­succeeded in assembling such a superb selection of exhibits here in Frankfurt. With them he has formed an impressive and many-faceted excursion
through the history of Florentine Mannerism and thus granted us the
opportunity of a unique experience.
MAX HOLLEIN
Director
Städel Museum
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Manner, Mannerism, maniera
ON THE HISTORY OF A CONTROVERSIAL TERM
HANS AURENHAMMER
Among the terms that have been introduced for the chief epochs in the history of European art, ‘Mannerism’ is the most recent and, unlike ‘Gothic’
or ‘Baroque’, for example, has remained controversial to this day. That
is true of both the contours and the character of its subject, but also of the
name itself. Already in its title, this exhibition associates it with another
expression, the Italian word maniera. The following sketch of the modern
history of the term ‘Mannerism’ focuses on two decisive turning points,
one occurring in 1920, the other in 1961. They will serve as the bases
for two historical cross-sections. In ‘flashbacks’, the pre-history of the
term will also be recalled, first in the period from the seventeenth to the
nineteenth century, and only then in the Mannerist period itself, that is,
the ­sixteenth century. This simultaneous forwards and backwards movement in the endeavour to zero in on the term is necessary in order to
­understand the complex process that led to the ambiguous semantics
of ‘Mannerism’.1
period of upheaval following World War I: “An apparent chaos, similar to
that with which we are confronted today.” The elective affinity between
the anti-­naturalistic expressionism of Mannerism described by Dvořák
and contemporary Expressionism is obvious.5 Oskar Kokoschka, who was
present in the auditorium (and to whose Variations on a Theme, a series of
prints, Dvořák wrote a foreword at around the same time6), will undoubtedly have understood the ­connection, having taken inspiration from El
Greco himself in such paintings as Wind’s Bride (1913).7 Dvořák concluded
his lecture by prophesying that, in the “eternal struggle between matter and
spirit, the scales are inclining towards a victory of the spirit.” He considered El Greco (and with him Mannerism) the harbinger of a “new, spiritual,
anti-materialistic age.”8
THE REHABILITATION OF MANNERISM
AS A “SPIRITUAL REBIRTH” (1920)
Dvořák’s expressive-spiritualist perspective on Mannerism was the first
to rehabilitate an epoch that had previously always been dismissed as unori­
ginal and formulaic. This verdict ultimately had its origins in the classicist-­
oriented art literature of the seventeenth century. Giovanni Pietro Bellori
(1672), for example, saw the entire period from Raphael’s death in 1520
to the end of the sixteenth century under the fatal dominion of maniera:
“Artists, abandoning the study of nature, corrupted art with the maniera,
that is to say, with the fantastic idea based on practice [pratica] and not on
imitation.”9 Following this corruption, it was not until Annibale Carracci
that Italian art was restored to its onetime heights by once again linking
the study of antiquity and the great masters with that of nature. In Luigi
Lanzi’s Storia pittorica dell’Italia (1795/96) the “rather unfortunate” Mannerist period was then confined to the interval from 1540 to 1580 –1600. It
is here that the word manierismo first appears, referring to the meanwhile
mechanical routine of the imitators of Michelangelo and Raphael in Rome
and ­Florence.10
Lanzi’s rejection lived on in the nineteenth century, still under the
in­­fluence of the classicist outlook. In The Cicerone (1855), Jacob Burckhardt
condemns the Mannerists’ “fantastic arbitrariness”, “ignoble barbarisation”,
indeed, their “degeneracy” (Entartung).11 In Heinrich Wölfflin’s Classic
The day of 28 October 1920, on which Max Dvořák gave his lecture “Über
Greco und den Manierismus” (“On Greco and Mannerism”) to an audience
of allegedly eight hundred2 at the Österreichisches Museum für Kunst
und Industrie in Vienna (the present MAK), can be referred to as the
‘natal hour’ of Mannerism as a modern term. On that evening, Dvořák dramatically evoked the “feverish visions” of Domenikos Theotokopoulos,3
a circumstance not surprising in and of itself – after all, the scholar was
merely ­catching up on the El Greco passion with which artists of his time
had already long been smitten.4 Yet the lecture also contained something
new: the speaker’s definition of the Cretan painter’s historical position.
Along with Tintoretto and the late Michelangelo, El Greco (fig. 1) became
the protagonist of Mannerism as an independent epoch between the
High Renaissance and the Early Baroque. Pointing out its emancipation
from ­classical principles of imitating nature and the objective standard
of beauty in favour of exclusive adherence to subjective fantasy, Dvořák
emphatically interpreted their style as the expression of a “spiritual rebirth”
taking hold around 1560. It was a style in which he saw a mirror of the
FLASHBACK I: MANNERISM AS THE DECLINE OF ART
­(SEVENTEENTH TO NINETEENTH CENTURY)
15
1 El Greco, The Opening of the Fifth Seal, c. 1609 –14,
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Art (1899) the culmination of the High Renaissance was followed by Mannerism and with it “decline”.12 In the early twentieth century, Dvořák’s
teacher Alois Riegl referred to Mannerism as one of the “emptiest and most
superficial concepts of art.”13 Even as late as 1910, Dvořák described the
paintings of Giorgio Vasari – already identified by Lanzi as one of the “main
reasons for the decline” – purely and simply as “unbearable”.14
C. 1920: THE MANNERISM OF MODERNISM
In his El Greco lecture, Dvořák subjected the negatively connoted term
Mannerism to a radical reversal of meaning. Precisely that aspect previously assessed as a shortcoming – the formulaic repetition of a manner, the
neglect of nature’s imitation – was now seen as a positive characteristic
of future-oriented modernity: emancipation from nature provides new
­latitude for subjective artistic invention. The “fantastic idea” Bellori con­
sidered mere artistic routine was now regarded as the source of spiritual,
supernatural contents. A ‘revaluation of values’ is not unusual in the
­context of art-historical terms denoting periods or styles (another example
being the ­supposedly barbarian Gothic). In the case of Mannerism, however, ­matters are aggravated by the fact that the term not only defines
a historical era but, ideal-typically, can also mean an artistic approach
­possible in all epochs; what is more, it triggers negative associations with
characteristics such as ‘mannered’, ‘contrived’ or ‘affected’. This tension
between history and supra-temporal typology, between neutrality and
value judgement, can be observed again and again in the research on
­Mannerism.
16
The rehabilitation of supposed epochs of degeneration or decline as
a necessity from an evolutionary point of view (as carried out by Alois Riegl
and Franz Wickhoff in the case of late antiquity, for instance) was part of
the programme of the anti-normative ‘Viennese school of art history’ to
which Dvořák felt beholden. Yet Dvořák’s positive connotation of Mannerism was, moreover, a consequence of his own very personal thought process,
which can be retraced from year to year in his lecture manuscripts: the latter
have survived in their entirety. As that aspect cannot be further ­elaborated
in the present context,15 we will confine ourselves to two observations.
On the one hand, the revision of Mannerism was the consequence of
research into the Baroque, a style likewise previously rejected as a phenomenon of decadence but newly assessed from around 1890. This led to its
beginnings being pushed back further and further into the sixteenth century, to the time immediately following the High Renaissance. In a Baroque
­overextended to that degree, the historical localisation of Mannerist tendencies proved problematic. On the other hand, the changing perspective on
the art of the sixteenth century cannot be regarded separately from
the experiences of contemporary art. For the young Dvořák, the Baroque was
a historically necessary stage on the journey to Impressionism, in which he
saw the fulfilment of modernity. Through the anti-naturalistic reorientation
of contemporary art, however, this teleological model plunged into a crisis
by around 1912/13 at the latest. Dvořák initially reacted by emphasising
the idealism of the High Renaissance, which he distinguished sharply from
the ‘materialistic’ naturalism of the quattrocento. Later – evidently in
response to Expressionism – he differentiated between this ‘formal idealism’
of the High Renaissance, which continued to take nature as its orientation,
and subjective idealism drawing solely “from the artist’s inner life.”16 Naturally, the reference here was to the art of El Greco and Tintoretto, which
Dvořák had already described in 1917, four years before his El Greco lecture,
as the “anti-naturalistic direction of Mannerist ­expressionism.”17
From the present-day viewpoint, not only is Dvořák’s spiritualistic
exuberance disconcerting, but also the capricious ‘historical geography’ of
his Mannerism. An exceptional – and both chronologically and culturally
peripheral – figure of the ilk of El Greco was now the centre of attention.
As such he was joined by Michelangelo, an artist defying all stylistic classification, and Tintoretto, that is, a protagonist of Venetian painting usually
not associated with the Mannerist movement. On the other hand, Dvořák
made no mention whatsoever of the Mannerists criticised since Bellori,
including the Florentine painters who are the subject of this exhibition.
It should not be forgotten, however, that, in a paper dating from 1920/21 –
the same period as “On Greco and Mannerism” – Dvořák painted a much
more nuanced picture of Mannerism.18 Here he also discussed artists such
as Pontormo, Rosso Fiorentino and Parmigianino.19 What is more, in an
essay on Pieter Bruegel he proposed the pluralistic image of a pan-European
­Mannerism whose artists were free “to choose the degree of reality subjectively.”20 In addition to the abstract-expressive tendency absolutised by
the El Greco lecture, Dvořák’s Mannerism thus also encompassed the
­theoretical reflection carried out in the academies21 and Pieter Bruegel’s
“utmost realism”.22 The 1920/21 paper on Mannerism, however, was not
published until 1928. The El Greco lecture of October 1920 was by far
the most widely received – the lecture that, having been written just a few
months before Dvořák’s death in February 1921, took on the character
of a spiritual legacy23 and seemed to utter the final word on the affinity
between Mannerism and (Expressionist) modernism.
Yet the reassessment of Mannerism around 1920 was by no means
­confined to Dvořák, and it varied in emphasis from one author to the next.
In his standard work Painting of the Late Renaissance in Rome and Florence
(1920), Hermann Voss devoted himself in depth to all the Raphael and
Michelangelo successors Dvořák had left aside.24 Here Voss opposed the
antedating of the Baroque in the Wölfflinian sense. Unlike Dvořák, however,
he did not isolate the sixteenth century as an independent period and thus
referred instead merely to the Late Renaissance – a neutral designation
still popularly used by scholars today as a means of dissociating themselves
from exaggerated conceptions of Mannerism. In keeping with Lanzi, Voss
reserved the term Mannerism for the period following Vasari. He also
made regular use of such negative verdicts as “degeneration” and “decline”.25
Thus, despite his many style-critical and philological conclusions on the
level of detail, Voss’s concern was not with Mannerism’s fundamental re­­
habilitation.
In an essay published as early as 1918/19, Werner Weisbach did not
characterise Mannerism positivistically, like Voss, but speculatively, reading
its form as the physiognomy of a wearily aloof lifestyle and oscillating in
his analysis between a modernist sensibility towards “intrinsic abstract aesthetic value” and traditional biases.26 A fictitious dialogue with a contempor­
ary artist, entitled “Manierismus und Expressionismus”, brings his text
to a close.27 The horizon of the author’s own time could hardly have been
more clearly delineated. On closer inspection, however, the historical review
of Mannerism did not serve Weisbach as a justification of Expressionism,
but on the contrary was intended as a means of denouncing the latter –
using the same old connotations – as a spurious manner. By way of contrast,
he cited the naively vibrant Baroque, on which he was writing a monograph
at the time28 – and among whose forerunners he, interestingly, counted
El Greco (on account of the latter’s authentic “expressive power”).29
­Weisbach emphasised “the ornamental and arabesque-like” aspects, the
exaggerated formalism of Mannerism, for example in the works of Bronzino
and Parmigianino.30 Dvořák’s Mannerism-affirming interpretation must
have seemed to contemporaries to be the pure antithesis to Weisbach’s.31
Yet even Dvořák’s approach cannot be reduced to a mere apologia of
Expressionism, which at the time no longer represented the cutting edge
of the avant-garde anyway. In his paper of 1920, he characteristically
regarded Mannerism as a mere transition, calling its “boundless subjectivism” a “danger” that (and in this point he resembled Weisbach) had to
be combatted by the Baroque. For the art of his own time, Dvořák anticipated a comparable development.32
Lili Fröhlich-Bum, one of the first female art historians ever, has all
but fallen into oblivion. Having earned her doctorate under Dvořák in
Vienna in 1910,33 she went on to write a monograph on Parmigianino und
der ­Manie­rismus (completed in 1918 but not published until 1921) in which
she proposed an outlook independent of her teacher’s.34 She regarded
­Mannerism as a virtuoso, elegant, epoch-spanning style that – as an alternative to the Baroque, a style emerging from Michelangelo – continued to
have an impact in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and ultimately
led to Neoclassicism. Her hypothesis concerning the leading role of Parmigianino in the ­creation of this style of “grace and beauty”35 is by no means
tenable. Yet it is remarkable that, as early as c. 1920, Fröhlich-Bum introduced
an aestheticist Mannerism that anticipated the later anti-expressive shift in
the construal of Mannerism brought about by John Shearman. ­FröhlichBum consistently denied any affinity between Mannerism and Expressionism
and excluded ‘eccentrics’ such as Pontormo and Rosso from a canon that,
on the other hand, unquestioningly admitted Vasari and ­Salviati.36
Walter Friedlaender’s Die Entstehung des antiklassischen Stils in der ita­lie­nischen Malerei um 1520 was based on his inaugural lecture of 1914.
In other words, he had already identified Mannerism as an independent
style before Dvořák. The essay, however, was not published until 1925.37
In contrast to his Viennese colleague, Friedlaender focused on the first generation of Florentine Mannerists. Whereas according to Voss, Pontormo
and Rosso marked the transition from the High Renaissance to Mannerism,38 in Friedlaender’s view they accomplished a radical break with the
equilibrium of classicism. His proposition of an “anti-classical revolution”39
was unprecedented in 1914.40 His (negative) reference to the work Classic
Art of his teacher Wölfflin41 – whose ideal of harmony is called into question
by the anti-classicists of around 1520 – is clear. Friedlaender likewise
­analysed Mannerist form with modernist parameters. Unlike Dvořák, however, he did not take the expression of the soul as his point of departure,
but the autonomy of the abstract “subjective rhythmic figuration”42 (an
approach that links him with Weisbach). Friedlaender defined anti-classicism vaguely as a spiritual movement, but viewed explanations from the
­perspective of the history of thought – the kind postulated by Dvořák –
sceptically.43 For scholarship, Friedlaender’s anti-classical model has hardly
been less important than Dvořák’s Mannerism of crisis and expression,
even if the idea of a dramatic secession from the High Renaissance has long
been obsolete.
“Today is a similar age,” Friedlaender wrote in a review in 1919, a comparison with his own time that can be considered the common denominator
of all studies on Mannerism mentioned thus far.44 The symptoms, however,
were assessed differently: the critique of modernism and its apologia
were intricately intertwined.45 In the 1919 review, Friedlaender painted a
picture that deviates conspicuously from his anti-classicism concept.
Now Mannerism was a “finely intellectual and witty, formal-artistic style”
that remained empty, however, both artistically and with regard to content,
and led to a dead end. Much like Weisbach the same year, Friedlaender
held Mannerism’s “bloodless abstractions”, its “superficial striving for mysticism”, its “art gibberish” up to contemporary art as a mirror.46 The contradiction resolves itself when we remember that, in a later essay (1928/29),
Friedlaender distinguished between the revolutionary phase of Mannerism
around 1520 and a second “mannered” period beginning in 1550. Using
Burckhardt’s and Wölfflin’s pejorative terms, he explicitly described the
­latter as the “decline” and “degeneration” of the original anti-classicism,
and as the current leading to the emergence of a new “anti-Mannerist” style
from 1580 onwards as a means of overcoming this evil.47 The art-historical
rehabilitation of Mannerism thus fell right back into the cycle of decadence
and reform already represented by Bellori’s Mannerism-critical model
of history.
The new designation ‘Mannerism’ caught on surprisingly quickly.48
The first comprehensive survey was submitted as early as 1928 by Nikolaus
Pevsner in the corresponding section of the Handbuch für Kunstwissen­
schaft.49 Here he cleverly combined Friedlaender’s anti-classicism, localised
around 1520, with Dvořák’s “spiritual rebirth” commencing in 1560, while
also taking regions such as Emilia and Lombardy into account and interpreting Mannerism as the style of the Counter-Reformation.50 Pevsner’s formal
analyses were obviously indebted to his teacher Wilhelm Pinder, who
used similar vitalistic metaphors to differentiate between Mannerist and
Baroque tendencies in German Late Gothic sculpture.51 The ‘manneristic’
tendency was thus generalised as a supra-historical type and appears as a
recurrence of the Middle Ages, as ‘latent Gothicism’, a figure of thought also
familiar to Dvořák and Friedlaender. Pinder, who in principle sympathised
with the Expressionists, interpreted the “physiognomy of Mannerism” in
1932 as not expressive in the least, but rather as a mask as hard as armour,
17
whose “hard-won iciness” – for example in Bronzino’s Portrait of Eleonora di
Toledo with Her Son Giovanni (fig. 2) – conceals a “secret fear of life”.
This cold, sick Mannerism, he continued, was international and intellectualist; it lacked the “natural strength” of the nation.52 The Fascist bias of
this implicit critique of modernism is obvious. Yet we would be making
things too easy for ourselves if we ascribed the pathologisation of the term
­Mannerism solely to the political inclinations of a man who would soon be
one of Nazi Germany’s leading art historians. Not only the texts on Mannerism by national conservatives such as Pinder and Voss, but also those
by Weisbach and Friedlaender, who were compelled to emigrate in 1933
because they were Jews, were ultimately based on a semantic opposition
that juxtaposes the unhealthy, overbred Mannerism with the counter-image
of the primordial, pure and folk-like. In a word: the German and Austrian
art historians discovered Mannerism around 1920 from within the modern
spirit, and even constructed an epoch for it. They hoped to heal the
crisis of modernity, however, with a “health-recovering life”,53 which, like
Pinder, they thought could be found in the anti-Mannerist Baroque.
AFTER 1961: THE MANNERISM OF THE RENAISSANCE
Le Triomphe du Maniérisme européen was the title of the second European
council exhibition (1955) in Amsterdam celebrating the art from Michel­
angelo to El Greco as a historical symbol of the unity of European culture.54
At first sight, the years following World War II indeed seem to signify a
­‘triumph’ of the interpretation of Mannerism developed in the 1920s.
It was spread internationally, not least of all by banished German-Jewish
scholars like Walter Friedlaender, whose studies on the subject had been
reprinted in English in 1957,55 but also by various books appearing in several
languages, for example Gustav René Hocke’s Welt als Labyrinth (1957)56
and Arnold Hauser’s Der Ursprung der modernen Kunst und Literatur (1964).57
In terms of methodology, Hocke’s conception of Mannerism as a suprahistorical constant58 differs fundamentally from Hauser’s Marxist historical
­dialectic. Ultimately, however, both authors upheld Dvořák’s concept and
regarded Mannerism as a crypto-image of modernity and the expression of
a spiritual crisis. Now, however, it was subjected to two very contrary
­interpretations: an existentialist, depth-psychological reading on the one
hand and, under capitalism, socio-economic explanation according to
the alienation theory. What is more, Mannerism was now compared less
with Expressionist than with Surrealist and experimental tendencies in the
art of the time.59
At the same time, however, the discomfort with the overextension of
the term as well as its modernist connotation increased. Significantly, just
one decade after the show in Amsterdam, an exhibition of similar conception with regard to scope abandoned the term Mannerism entirely and
bore the evasive title Between Renaissance and Baroque.60 At the international
art history conference held in New York in 1961, an entire section – “Recent
Concepts of Mannerism” – was devoted to discussing the dubiousness of
the designation.61 This event marked the second decisive turning point
in the history of research on Mannerism that is our topic here – and one still
­effective today. Forty years after Dvořák’s El Greco lecture, Ernst H. Gombrich came to a provocative conclusion in his introduction to the New
York section: scholarship on Mannerism until that time had only self-referentially confirmed the scholars’ own ideologies but hardly stood the test
of the analysis of specific artworks.62 Ironically, Gombrich made no mention
of the fact that, in his brilliant Viennese dissertation on Giulio Romano
18
(1933), he himself had participated in this Mannerism discourse. At the time
he had understood the dualism of form disruption and mask-like chilliness
(reminiscent of Pinder) as a symptom of fear and sexual neurosis, but
also as the result of the artistic freedom of choice made possible by the
courtly ­context (which on the other hand seems to echo Dvořák).63
The “radical revision” of Mannerism called for by Gombrich at the New
York conference was carried out primarily by two scholars from England
and the US: Craig Hugh Smyth and John Shearman. The two agreed on
four key points: 1. They rejected the specifically ‘German’ interpretation of
Mannerism from Dvořák to Hocke. 2. Their Mannerism is not expressiveabstract in quality, but distinguished by artificial virtuosity and elegant
beauty. The focus therefore now shifted to the mature Mannerist style (represented by Salviati, Bronzino, Vasari and so on), to which little attention
had been paid until then – Friedlaender, for example, having pegged it
as “mannered”. Shearman emphasised above all its Roman prerequisites
from 1520 onwards. 3. Mannerism was not to be equated with ‘anti-classicism’, but bore a relationship to the High Renaissance characterised by
continuity rather than disconnection. 4. This revised concept of Mannerism
was in keeping with the contemporary understanding of the word maniera
(to be discussed in greater detail below).
Smyth gave a lecture in which he developed the hypothesis that it
was the monotone repetition of motifs, of all things – a characteristic
the Mannerists had been accused of since the seventeenth century – that
­pursued a positive aesthetic: a uniform figural idea modelled on late Roman
reliefs.64 Here the restorative tendency of the new interpretation is immediately obvious: in the spirit of Expressionism, the art historians of the
1920s had still understood Mannerism’s stereotyped character as subjective
abstraction. Smyth considered this a misunderstanding. He saw nothing
more than a conventional style all’antica, a facet of the reception of antiquity
that defined the entire Renaissance – in other words, a Mannerism of the
Renaissance, and no longer one of modernism.
Shearman’s New York paper “Maniera as an Aesthetic Ideal” had a
much broader impact.65 It was later – in 1967 – expanded for the paperback
Mannerism,66 the work that was by far the most influential for the Mannerism scholarship of the second half of the twentieth century and the
one this overview will concentrate on below. Mannerism was a volume in a
series entitled Style and Civilization, and in it Mannerism was accordingly
presented not merely as an art-historical phenomenon but also as a general
­cultural-historical one. For Shearman, however, ‘style’ and ‘civilisation’
were linked in Mannerism in a special way – they were virtually interchangeable, to be precise – because Mannerism, to his mind, was a style concerned
­primarily with the display of maniera. Yet maniera means ‘style’ not only
in the artistic sense, but also as a civilised-courtly mode of behaviour.
According to Shearman’s famous pleonastic formula, Mannerism was
­therefore nothing other than the “stylish style”.67 It was characterised by
aristocratic nonchalance and elaborate ornamentation – as opposed to
the modernist elements of suspense, shock or expressiveness with which
previous Mannerism scholarship had been so obsessed. It should be recalled
here, however, that alternative concepts had already been developed around
1920 by Weisbach, but above all by Fröhlich-Bum, that to an extent anticipated Shearman’s Mannerism of self-confident artificiality.
Maniera became the key word in the revision of the 1960s. Shearman
stuck to the traditional term Mannerism, as did Smyth (and both sympathised with ‘Late Renaissance’ in the Vossian sense as a way of emphasising
the continuity with classicism). However, maniera increasingly came to
­prevail as the new stylistic designation: first – with polemic dissociation
2 Agnolo Bronzino, Portrait of Eleonora di Toledo with Her Son Giovanni, 1545, Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi
from German terminological abstractions – in Italy (1961, for example,
the year of the New York convention, saw the publication of Giuliano
­Briganti’s La Maniera italiana68), and then in the English-speaking world.
In keeping with the new trend, Sydney Freedberg replaced ‘Mannerism’ with
‘maniera’ in the respective volume of the Pelican History of Art (1971), and
subdivided the epoch using terms such as “First Maniera”, “High ­Maniera”
and “Counter-Maniera”.69
Shearman undoubtedly owed the success of Mannerism to the facility
of the solutions it offered – the book itself is characterised by the ideal of elegant nonchalance described in Baldassare Castiglione’s The Courtier (1528),
the sprezzatura that, according to Shearman, distinguishes the Mannerist
culture. The argument that every Mannerist artwork exhibits nothing other
than maniera seems virtually self-explanatory. And who would not agree with
Shearman when he criticises the projection of modern experiences of crises
onto the cinquecento as anachronistic? Here as well, his counter-proposal
seems plausible at first sight: we should simply let ­Mannerism’s contempor­
aries have a say. The assessment criteria “can be drawn out of the material,
and not imposed upon it.”70 Shearman’s key argument holds that, in the
sixteenth century, maniera was a unanimously positively connoted term for
“aesthetic ideal”. It was only in the seventeenth century that the monoton­
ically repeated ‘manner’ took on the negative associations that would cling to
it until well into the first half of the twentieth century.
FLASHBACK II: THE MEANINGS OF MANIERA
IN GIORGIO VASARI’S LIVES (1550/1568)
Is John Shearman’s conviction really corroborated by the contemporary
texts? This question will now be considered in a historical retrospect focusing above all on Giorgio Vasari’s Lives. The richest source for the discourse
on the arts in the sixteenth century, Vasari’s work was – astonishingly – all
but ignored in the first phase of modern research on Mannerism. The indepth research of the past decades, however, has revealed the complexity of
its use of theoretical terms.71
19
At altogether 1,304 mentions, maniera – which originally meant ‘manner’
– is the single most frequently used art-theoretical term in the Lives, and
it is anything but straightforward in meaning. On the one hand, maniera
denotes the personal style or mode of expression and working manner of
the individual artist, a meaning with origins in workshop jargon, as is already
attested in Cennino Cennini’s Libro dell’arte (c. 1400).72 Yet maniera also
designates the collective style of a region or culture (maniera greca, maniera
tedesca) or a period (maniera antica), and can moreover be qualified by a
great number of adjectives (maniera delicata e dolce, maniera bruttissima and
so on). A particularly illuminating use of the word with regard to the selfconception of sixteenth-century artists is the historical specification mani­
era moderna, which refers to Vasari’s division of the periods of post-medieval
art history into a prima età commencing with Cimabue and Giotto, a seconda
età corresponding to the Early Renaissance, and finally a terza età in the
cinquecento, which saw the consummation of artistic progress. Vasari sometimes used maniera moderna to denote the entire ‘modern’ art of his day,
and sometimes just for the period since Masaccio; predominantly, however, it refers to the style of his own century. He conceived of the terza età
founded by Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo as a seamless unity in
which he himself and his contemporaries continued and refined what the
great masters had initiated.73
Vasari thus unquestionably confirms Shearman’s assertion of a fundamental continuity from the High Renaissance to Mannerism. Shearman’s
concern, however, is not with the relative, adjective-enhanced use of
­maniera – the type of use that vastly prevails in Vasari – but with maniera
as an absolute term, as a value in and of itself. In rulebooks on courtly
­behaviour manière turns up as an isolated word as early as the thirteenth
century (in the sense of our expression “he / she’s got style”);74 in the art context we do not encounter it until Raphael’s letter to Pope Leo X (c. 1519/20)
in which Gothic architecture is attested a lack of grazia and maniera.75
Vasari discusses this absolute maniera primarily in the “Proemio alla
Parte Terza”, the preface to the artists’ lives of the sixteenth century, where
he describes five chief artistic categories. After “rule, order, proportion”
(regola, ordine, misura), which represent measurable norms, and after disegno,
comprising drawing and design, the final (and supreme?) term is maniera,
“style”. “Manner then attained to the greatest beauty [la maniera (…) la
più bella] from the practice which arose of constantly copying the most
beautiful objects, and joining together these most beautiful things, hands,
heads, bodies, and legs, so as to make a figure of the greatest possible beauty.
This practice was carried out in every work for all figures, and for that reason it is called the beautiful manner [bella maniera].”76 Vasari thus relates
maniera closely to the issue of ideal beauty, which is combined from selected
individual beauties observed in nature.77 In the painterly decoration of his
own house in Florence he illustrated this concept with the classical topos
of the selection theory going back to Cicero’s De inventione:78 Zeuxis was
shown painting a picture of the very beautiful Helen, taking as his models
the five most beautiful virgins of Croton (fig. 3). The definitions of the
five categories are phrased in the past tense; that is, refer to the standard
already attained in the Early Renaissance. Naturally, they continued to apply
in the cinquecento. Now, however, they were perfected by a number of
“additions” (aggiunte) and transcended in the sense of “a certain freedom”
(licenza) within the boundaries of the rule.79 The maniera of the artists
of the quattrocento had still been harsh, he explains; it had lacked a “delicacy [leggiadria] that comes from making all figures light and graceful [svelte
e graziose], particularly those of women and children, with the limbs true
to nature, as in the case of men, but veiled with a plumpness and fleshiness
20
that should not be awkward, as they are in nature, but refined by draughtsmanship [disegno] and judgement [giudizio].”80 Thus liberated from the
­rigidity of rules and supported by the artist’s subjective judgement, the
idealising ­maniera of the terza età appears closely related to qualities such
as ­leggiadria and facility (facilità), but above all – as in Raphael’s aforementioned letter – grazia, the grace that is experienced as a gift of divine mercy.
Significantly, in Vasari’s characterisation of the art of Leonardo as the
first exponent of the terza età, the category maniera is replaced with grazia
divina.81
Shearman’s absolute conception of maniera is thus undoubtedly supported by Vasari’s remarks on bella maniera. Yet caution is nevertheless
called for when it comes to ascribing the status of the “aesthetic ideal” of
the sixteenth century to maniera, not only because of the general ambiguity
of the term as used by Vasari, but also on account of the interdependence
between it and other artistic categories (above all disegno), whose close
intertwinement cannot be discussed in depth in the present context.
What is more, the semantics of maniera is far more equivocal in Vasari’s
Lives: it even contains a negative connotation as ‘manner’ of the kind we
would not expect to encounter until the seventeenth century. Vasari’s
‘arch-Mannerist’ is Perugino, who was compelled to work so much that he
monotonically repeated the same manner again and again in his paintings.82
A mere seven years after the first edition of the Lives, Lodovico Dolce
reported in L’Aretino (1557) on a “bad practice [cattiva pratica]”, which “is
called by painters ‘manner’ in the bad sense of the word … in which you constantly see forms and faces resembling one another.”83
How can these opposing valencies of the term be reconciled? For Vasari,
maniera, as artistic configuration, bears a precarious relationship to the
­imitation of nature. He favours the aspect of maniera as the subjective manifestation of the respective artist, but does not relinquish the imperative
of the study of nature – at least not in theory. Long before undergoing any
aesthetic idealisation, maniera possesses, as it were, a solid working basis
in the artists’ practised depiction techniques, their pratica. According to
Vasari, sculptors are not in a position to reproduce “compact, wavy strands
of hair” as naturally with the chisel as painters, but only with the aid of mani­
era – in other words, the mimetic deficit of the sculptural medium can only
be compensated by an acquired formula.84 Perugino’s fault, on the other
hand, lies in his exclusive limitation to the routine of manner, without the
slightest contact with nature and its diversity. Vasari observes that Giorgione, on the other hand, “aimed at being faithful to nature, without imitation of any manner.”85 What might appear to us at first sight as unconditional
praise of the Venetian painter also contains the critique of excessive fidelity
to nature, which can never realise the full idealising potential of maniera.
UNRESOLVED QUESTIONS
Hessel Miedema and Jeroen Stumpel undoubtedly go too far when, dissociating themselves from Shearman, they deny an “absolute critical sense of
the term” in the cinquecento and seek to confine maniera entirely to the
­artist’s individual working method.86 Yet the polyvalence of Vasari’s use of
the word does not permit us to go along with Shearman in claiming a
consistent conception of maniera as “accomplishment and cultured refinement.”87 Nor can maniera be verified as a blanket term for art after 1520.
Already Henri Zerner criticised the fact that the methodological maxim of
allowing contemporaries to speak for themselves represents a confidence
in the authenticity of literary sources unclouded by ideological criticism
3 Giorgio Vasari, Zeuxis and the Most Beautiful Maidens of Croton, c. 1570, Florence, Casa Vasari
and discourse theory; after all, he pointed out, such sources are themselves
always in need of interpretation.88 In Zerner’s view, Shearman had succumbed to the illusory desire of historicism to recognise “how it really was.”
The ostentatious dispensation with interpretation, however, is naturally
also a rhetorical gesture against the distorted projections of the earlier interpretations of Mannerism. The advancement of knowledge achieved here
by Shearman is beyond dispute – to whatever extent certain aspects of it are
worthy of criticism. Under the banner of the bella maniera, so to speak,
he initiated a form of empirical research that addresses the specific artworks
in their respective contexts and takes the contemporary discourse and its
terminology seriously.
There are two objections of a graver nature, however, targeting the
“splendid isolation” of Shearman’s exclusive Mannerism, and new
approaches must be developed precisely for what he omitted. The “stylish
style” is anti-expressive and therefore also blocks out the first generation
of Florentine Mannerists. Interestingly, Shearman thus repeats the dissociation already practised by Vasari in his biased biography of Pontormo (1568)
(a case which, incidentally, confirms the dangers of affirmative faith in
the sources). Pontormo’s eccentric outsider persona is staged as a countermodel to Vasari’s ideal of the worldly court artist.89 No longer truly Mannerist in style, the fascinating art of Pontormo and the early Rosso seems
to have persisted in the indeterminacy of a “historiographical limbo” since
the 1960s.90 Whereas Smyth and Freedberg (in opposition to Friedlaender’s
anti-classicism) speak of “post-classical artists”,91 Antonio Pinelli endeav-
ours to rescue the radicalness as “sperimentalismo anticlassico”.92 Marcia
B. Hall refers to the historical position of the early Mannerists as “transitional”.93 David Franklin, who likewise goes without the term Mannerism,
sees a special local development: he considers Pontormo the “last painter
of the Florentine Renaissance” before Vasari and Salviati carried out a
­“cosmopolitan” synthesis with influences from Rome.94 This exhibition provides an opportunity to reflect once again on the differences, but also
the continuities between the first generation, with its eagerness to experiment, and the mature phase of Florentine Mannerism.
Shearman’s Mannerism – and this is the second objection – is a self-­
referential art catering solely to the entertainment of a hedonist courtly
­culture and isolated from contemporary reality. In objection to this
­apolitical conception of Mannerism it has rightly been pointed out that
the “art sphere’s assumption of a separate existence” also possesses a
­political dimension.95 Escape into an auto-referential aesthetic game can
also be interpreted as a means of repressing a critical contemporary situation.96 Above all, however – considering, for example, the patronage of
the Medici, one of the themes of this exhibition –, there is no question as to
the explicit political function of aesthetics in the cinquecento. Daniel Arasse
accordingly speaks of the “power art” of Mannerism,97 and Christine Tauber,
in her work on the “art of politics” under the French king Francis I, interprets Mannerism as a “form of refined exercise of power in the medium of
art.”98 Here the artificial sophistication so strongly emphasised by Shearman
is used deliberately as an instrument of sovereign representation.
21
What is the meaning of the term Mannerism today, a hundred years
after its rehabilitation by Friedlaender and Dvořák? A look at current
­surveys shows that the scepticism towards period terms already pointed out
by Gombrich in New York as early as 196199 has prevailed. Marcia B. Hall’s
book on central Italian painting of the cinquecento, for example, bears
the terse title After Raphael, which means, however, that it thus adheres to
Bellori’s dating of the commencement of art’s decline to the year 1520.100
In their New History of Italian Renaissance Art, Stephen Campbell and
Michael Cole virtually warn us of the term Mannerism: “If we use this label
today, we must do so with extreme caution.”101 They consider Mannerist
tendencies only one of many currents of the Renaissance, just as already
Daniel Arasse spoke of “la Renaissance maniériste”.102
The two phases of the story recounted here – the ‘Mannerism of
­modernism’ from 1920 onwards and the ‘Mannerism of the Renaissance’
since 1961 – are guided by different orientations, but nevertheless determined by the same fundamental opposition. Notwithstanding the valencies
of maniera, ‘Mannerism’ is not an absolute term but a relational one, always
defined in contrast to the preceding ‘Classicism’. Friedlaender’s “anti-­
classical style” calls the antagonism of this relationship by its name. Yet
Shearman – even if he sees the continuity between the High Renaissance
and the ­“stylish style” – likewise feels compelled to contrast the latter
with the former in order to constitute it as a style in its own right.103 It
is astonishing that, throughout all the many metamorphoses of the term
­Mannerism, the counter-image of the High Renaissance has remained constant and has retained its basis in Wölfflin’s Classic Art; even Arasse still
speaks of the Renaissance as a place of harmony and utopian hope that was
shattered after 1520.104 Elizabeth Cropper is therefore of the opinion that
it is actually not the term Mannerism that should be questioned, but the
terms classicism and Renaissance in general.105 Her conclusion, submitted in
1992, is to my mind still valid today. The history of Mannerism is an excellent lesson in how firmly established terms and classifications can dissolve
– for example when unclassical traits are discovered in canonical works
such as the Sistine ceiling frescoes or the Vatican Stanze, or when we
detect a dialectical relationship between rule and artistic freedom even
in the ­harmonious balance of the High Renaissance. We certainly sense a
greater affinity to Shearman’s specific approach of integrating the cultural
horizon than with the 1920s confessional approach in the tradition of
Geistesgeschichte. Yet we can still profit from the anti-normative impetus
with which Dvořák rehabilitated Mannerism in 1920, thus setting the period
constructs of early modern art in new motion.
22
1 On the history of the term ‘Mannerism’ and scholarship on the subject in general see Treves
1941; Briganti 1945, pp. 39 – 49; Weise 1950; Nicco Fasola 1956; Becherucci 1964; Dumont 1966;
Mirollo 1984; Wilmes 1985, pp. 13 – 62; Link-Heer 1986; Lachnit 1987; Cropper 1992; Bredekamp
2000; Link-Heer 2001; Bredekamp 2002; Thimann 2008/09; Pfisterer 2009; Van den Akker 2010;
Scavizzi 2011.
2 See the letter of 29 October 1920 written by Johannes Wilde, who attended the lecture,
in: Kókai 2010, pp. 226 – 228.
3 Dvořák 1924a, p. 263; already published in Dvořák 1921/22.
4 See Schroeder 1998; exh. cat. Düsseldorf 2012.
5 Dvořák 1924a, pp. 264, 269, 274.
6 Dvořák 1921.
7 See Schroeder 1998, p. 136; Schroeder 2012, pp. 237 – 241.
8 Dvořák 1924a, p. 276.
9 Bellori – Enggass 1968, pp. 5f. The term maniériste is first encountered in Fréart de Chambray
1662, p. 210; from a classicist perspective he refers to Mannerists such as the Cavaliere d’Arpino,
but also to Baroque masters of the visible working process such as Giovanni Lanfranco. In 1620 – 30
Vincenzo Giustiniani, on the other hand, cites the historical example of the late Mannerists to illustrate the dipingere di maniera, but still sees in it a generally legitimate ‘stage’ of painting that consummate artists also cannot do without (naturally only in association with the study of nature); see
­Bottari / Ticozzi 1822, VI, p. 125.
10 Lanzi 1795/96, for example pp. 169, 172.
11 Burckhardt 1924, pp. 884, 886, 940, 942.
12 Wölfflin 1899, pp. 187 –190.
13 Riegl 2010, p. 210.
14 Dvořák 1909/10, p. 1007 (unpublished lecture manuscript). See Lanzi 1795/96, p. 172.
15 On the development of Dvořák’s concept of Mannerism see the in-depth discussions in Aurenhammer 1996, 2012 and 2014.
16 Dvořák 1917, pp. 78 – 91.
17 This statement is found in an undated manuscript fragment, “Greco, Velazquez, Murillo” (p. 205),
which must have been written around 1917/18 (Universität Wien, Institut für Kunstgeschichte,
Archiv).
18 Dvořák 1928, II, pp. 118 –199.
19 Ibid., p. 169.
20 Dvořák 1924b, p. 222.
21 Julius von Schlosser’s passage on Mannerism later published in his Die Kunstliteratur (1924)
had come out as a pre-print the previous year; Schlosser 1919.
22 Dvořák 1928, II, p. 198.
23 The lecture first published in Dvořák 1921/22 also appeared in “Max Dvořák zum Gedächtnis”.
24 Voss 1920. Dvořák, who consulted the book, praised the author’s interpretation of the material,
but also lamented the lack of a “higher”, that is, an evolutionary, perspective; Dvořák 1928, II, p. 118.
25 Voss 1920, I, pp. 4f., II, p. 299.
26 Weisbach 1918/19, the quoted passage on p. 165.
27 Ibid., pp. 182f.
28 Weisbach 1921.
29 Weisbach 1918/19, p. 180.
30 Ibid., pp. 173 –177.
31 See the later reaction to Dvořák in Weisbach 1924, 1928 and 1934.
32 Dvořák 1928, II, p. 199. See Aurenhammer 2014, pp. 199f.
33 See Fröhlich-Bum 1913 (on the Venetian ‘Mannerist’ Andrea Schiavone).
34 Fröhlich-Bum 1921. Frey 1921/22, p. 21, note 18, relates that Dvořák supposedly rejected this
concept.
35 Fröhlich-Bum 1921, p. 118.
36Ibid.
37 Friedlaender 1957. According to the inventory, the Friedlaender estate, which is in the holdings of the Leo Baeck Institute (Center for Jewish History), New York, contains no sources on the
­development of the lecture and the essay; see http: / / findingaids.cjh.org / ?pID=163100 (accessed
30 September 2015).
38 Voss 1920, I, pp. 164 – 231. Weisbach 1920, col. 628, on the other hand, in his critique of Voss’s
book, has the “shift from the High Renaissance to Mannerism” begin as early as Pontormo.
39 Friedlaender 1957, p. 12.
40 This is confirmed by Goldschmidt 1911, a dissertation on spatial depiction in Pontormo, Rosso
and Bronzino whose assessments ultimately still adhere to Vasari’s Lives (the term Mannerism is
not even mentioned). Only Busse 1911, in his dissertation on Lodovico Cigoli likewise written in
­Leipzig under Schmarsow, distinguished clearly between Mannerism’s “plastic style” on the one hand,
and the Renaissance and Baroque on the other, an outlook based primarily, however, on an aprioristic
“system of the arts” borrowed from Schmarsow.
41 Wölfflin 1952.
42 Friedlaender 1957, p. 41.
43 Friedlaender 1928 even considered it anachronistic to apply to the anti-classical painters those
Neoplatonic art theories of the late sixteenth century assigned to Mannerism by Panofsky 1924,
pp. 39 – 56 (in an exchange of views with Friedlaender himself see Panofsky 1924, p. 100, note 170).
44 Friedlaender 1919, p. 297 (the text discusses writings by Fritz Burger on modern art).
45 This is also pointed out by Bredekamp 2000, from whom the heading for this section was
adopted.
46 Friedlaender 1919, pp. 296f.
47 Friedlaender 1928/29, p. 216.
48 Even in the 1924 edition of Wölfflin 1899, the (otherwise unchanged) chapter “Der Verfall”
(“The Decline”) was renamed “Der Manierismus” (p. 199).
49 Pevsner 1928, pp. 1 –104. Friedlaender was initially designated to be the author: see Panofsky
1924, p. 100, note 170. In the present context it is not possible to discuss two further important
matters concerning Mannerism research around 1930: the pan-European dimension of the artistic
current and the question as to whether there was also Mannerist architecture (on the latter subject
see Hipp 2000).
50 Weisbach 1921, on the other hand, associated the Counter-Reformation with the Baroque.
Already Pevsner 1925 responded to this; reactions to Pevsner in turn in Weisbach 1928, 1934.
51 Pinder 1929, see especially pp. 252 – 262, 451 f., 475f. Pevsner 1928, pp. 2 and 211, makes reference to Pinder’s 1924 lectures, which he found stimulating.
52 Pinder 1932, pp. 152 –154. For a more in-depth discussion of this matter see Kanz 2008 and
­Aurenhammer (forthcoming).
53 Pinder 1932, p. 156.
54 Exh. cat. Amsterdam 1955.
55 Friedlaender 1957.
56 Hocke 1957.
57 Hauser 1964; already Hauser 1953, pp. 377 – 387, discussed this matter.
58 Here Hocke adheres to Curtius 1948, pp. 277 – 305.
59 Hofmann 1966, pp. 139 –152, also regards Mannerism as a “reverse reflection” of modernism.
However, Werner Hofmann invokes Dvořák’s Mannerist freedom of choice in order to gain an open,
more playful means of access that goes without crisis rhetoric. In exh. cat. Vienna 1987 he brings
this concept up to date against the background of postmodernism. See also Hofmann 1998, pp. 94 –
114; a critical response in Prange 2006, pp. 300 – 315.
60 Exh. cat. Manchester 1965. See the positive commentary in Nicholson 1965.
61 Meiss 1963, pp. 183 – 255.
62 Gombrich 1963.
63 Gombrich 1934/35; on this subject see Aurenhammer (forthcoming).
64 Smyth 1963a. The extensive notes only in Smyth 1963b and Smyth 1992.
65 Shearman 1963b.
66 Shearman 1967.
67 Ibid., p. 23.
68 Briganti 1961.
69 Freedberg 1971. See as far back as Freedberg 1965.
70 Shearman 1963b, pp. 200f.
71 On Vasari’s Lives see the contribution by Gerd Blum in this catalogue (cat. no. 128; with further
lit.). On Vasari’s use of maniera see Smyth 1963a, pp. 179 –181; Shearman 1963b, pp. 205f.; LeMollé
1988, pp. 99 –154; Pinelli 1993, pp. 94 –116; Sohm 2001, pp. 86 –114; Lorini 2004; Brückle 2005,
pp. 115 –121.
72 Cennini – Frezzato 2009, p. 80 (chap. XXVII).
73 On considerations of a quarta età, according to which an absolute apex is reached with Michel­
angelo, see Gerd Blum in this catalogue (cat. no. 128).
74 Shearman 1963, p. 202, here refers to, among others, Weise 1950.
75 Shearman 2003, I, p. 520. This passage is found, however in the version of the letter in Munich,
which may not have been written until after Raphael’s death (BSB Ms. Ital. 37b [1035/2]).
76 Vasari – De Vere 1912 –15, IV, p. 80.
77 Smyth 1963a relates this passage exclusively to an idealising, antique-style figural typology
­developed by himself, insufficiently taking into account the fact that it refers first and foremost to
the fifteenth century.
78Cicero, De inventione, II, 1– 3.
79 Vasari – De Vere 1912 –15, IV, pp. 79 – 80.
80 Ibid., pp. 80 – 81.
81 Ibid., p. 82.
82 Ibid., p. 43.
83 Quoted in Townsend 2001, p. 56. Here the Venetian author polemically targets the supposed
monotony of the works of Michelangelo, whose cult had been founded in part by Vasari’s Lives.
Smyth 1963a sees in this a negative reflection of the positive ideal (described by himself) of a uniform Mannerist figural canon.
84 Vasari – Burioni / Lorini 2006, p. 76.
85 Vasari – De Vere 1912 –15, IV, p. 112.
86 Miedema 1978/79; Stumpel 1988.
87 Shearman 1963b, p. 205.
88 Zerner 1972b. See also Pinelli 1993, pp. 43 – 46.
89 Vasari – De Vere 1912 –15, VII. On this subject see Pinelli 1993, pp. 5 – 32; Franklin 2001,
pp. 197 – 202; Gregory 2008; Bormann 2013.
90 Franklin 2001, p. 202. On the history of research on Pontormo and Rosso see Wilmes 1985,
pp. 63 – 86; Cropper 2014.
91 Smyth 1963a, pp. 174 –176; also already in Freedberg 1961, I, pp. 423 – 550.
92 Pinelli 1993, pp. 42 – 50.
93 Hall 1999, p. xiii.
94 Franklin 2001, pp. 191– 211.
95 Arasse / Tönnesmann 1997, p. 12.
96 See Zerner 1972b; Pinelli 1993.
97 Arasse / Tönnesmann 1997, p. 10.
98 Tauber 2009, p. 54.
99 Gombrich 1963, pp. 163f.
100 Hall 1999; but see here pp. xii–xv for the in-depth discussion of problems with the classification
of art-historical epochs.
101 Campbell / Cole 2012, p. 212.
102 Arasse / Tönnesmann1997. The only exception is Norbert Schneider’s Die antiklassische Kunst,
which refers to the entire art of sixteenth-century Italy, including Venice, as Mannerist and – if with
acknowledged irony – links it with Friedlaender’s anti-classicism concept, which had seemed obsolete
since the 1960s (Schneider 2012).
103 Regn 2014, p. 26, notes 35, 29, stresses that this concept always runs the risk of relinquishing
one’s own distinction criteria.
104 Arasse / Tönnesmann 1997, p. 17.
105 Cropper 1992, pp. 20f.
23
“Uno avulso non deficit alter”
FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI, 1512 –1574
NICHOLAS SCOTT BAKER
RESTORATION
In 1519, the artist Pontormo painted the multilayered Portrait of Cosimo the
Elder (fig. 4), who had died in 1464.1 The painting depicts its subject seated,
in contrapposto profile. The headrest of the seat on which Cosimo sits
bears a carved inscription, identifying him as “COSM MEDICES P[ATER]
P[ATRIAE] P[UBLICE]” (Cosimo de’ Medici, official father of the fatherland).2 To the left and behind emerges a laurel tree, one branch severed, the
other flourishing. This represents a very literal imagining of the broncone
device: a badge used by the Medici depicting a severed yet living bough to
refer to their survival and endurance. A scroll entwined in the latter reads
“UNO AVULSO NON DEFIC[IT] ALTER” (If one is torn away, another
takes its place), a ­paraphrase from Virgil’s Aeneid.3 The image, at first glance
triumphant and celebratory, actually captures the tensions and conflicting
expectations associated with the Medici family’s dominance in Florence
at the end of the second decade of the sixteenth century.
On 1 September 1512, Giuliano de’ Medici, the youngest son of Lorenzo
the Magnificent, entered Florence for the first time since November 1494,
when he and his brothers had ignominiously fled the city that their father,
grandfather and great-grandfather – the Cosimo the Elder celebrated in
Pontormo’s portrait – had dominated. No great fanfare or festivity greeted
his return. Indeed, beyond a small band of committed supporters who
had seized Palazzo della Signoria the previous day, little approval endorsed
the restoration of Medici rule in the city. The statesman and historian,
Francesco Guicciardini, still a relatively young man at the time, captured
the ambiguous reception that awaited Giuliano and his elder brother,
­Cardinal Giovanni, when he observed, “These Medici … need to demonstrate
to everyone that they are the sons of their father.”4 By which Guicciardini
meant that the heirs of Lorenzo the Magnificent had to live up to their
father’s legacy, politically and culturally. By the second decade of the sixteenth century, the period in which Lorenzo had dominated Florence’s civic
life – 1469–1492 – had already begun to acquire the patina of a lost golden
age in which the city on the Arno had flourished as a wealthy, ­peaceful
and apparently important player on the stage of European events. In the
­Storie fiorentine (“Florentine Histories”) written in 1509, in fact, ­Guicciardini
had described the era as “the summit of tranquillity and quiet.”5 The
­Lau­rentian age was to become the standard against which the office-
holding class in Florence would measure the Medici during the sixteenth
century as regards not only political stability but also cultural and political
prosperity.
The Medici family had dominated Florentine politics and society for
sixty years and four generations between 1434 and 1494. They had done
so, however, not as hereditary overlords but through a faction of supporters, the maintenance of the communal structures of government and
the careful use of political offices and taxation to reward allies as well as
punish enemies. The success of this system depended on the Medici judiciously ­balancing their own interests with those of their supporters and the
office-holding class in general. They had to ensure sufficient access to
the most important and prestigious posts in the communal government,
especially those that carried salaries, while maintaining their own grip on
power. In addition to the rewards that accrued to their supporters, the
family also relied on its ability to defend and promote Florence’s political
and economic interests on the wider stage of fifteenth-century Italian
­politics.6 As the ambassador of Ferrara observed in 1482 about Lorenzo the
Magnificent: “The reputation of the aforesaid Magnificent Lorenzo relies
on the esteem offered him by the princes of Italy.”7 This carefully created
system collapsed in 1494 in the face of simultaneous pressure from various
quarters: the rising resentment felt by even the family’s closest supporters
at their increasingly imperious behaviour; the direct threat posed by the
approaching army of Charles VIII, king of France, who had invaded the Italian peninsula to press a claim to the throne of Naples; and the millenarianist
tensions associated with the end of the century, inflamed by the dramatic
preaching of the Dominican friar and prophet, Fra Girolamo Savonarola.
The office-holding class turned on the Medici and the sons of Lorenzo
the Magnificent were forced into exile only two years after their father’s
death.
The arrival of the French army led by Charles VIII deflated the aspir­
ations not only of the Medici in Florence but also of the entire Italian
­city-state system. It heralded the beginning of half a century of turmoil
on the peninsula as the Valois monarchs of France fought first the Trastámara and then the Habsburg monarchs of Spain for control over the strategically ­significant territories of Milan and Naples. This dynastic struggle
defined the framework within which the various Italian polities could
operate in the sixteenth century, limiting their autonomy and defining
25
their actions.8 As such, it formed the backdrop to the return of the Medici
to ­Florence in 1512 and to the relationship between the family and the
office-holding class of the city during the following decades.
The civic republican regime that replaced the system established by
the Medici in 1494 had maintained the traditional Florentine alliance with
the French crown. As a result, by the summer of 1512, the city had become
isolated as the only significant Italian power refusing to join Pope Julius II’s
Holy League against King Louis XII. With papal endorsement, an army
led by Ramon de Cardona, the Spanish viceroy of Naples, advanced on
­Florence. The brutal sack of Prato, only ten miles north-west of the city,
precipitated a bloodless coup d’état and the return of Giuliano de’ Medici, his
older brother Cardinal Giovanni and their nephew Lorenzo, grandson
and namesake of Lorenzo the Magnificent.
The physical return of the Medici to Florence was achieved more
smoothly, however, than the restoration of the Laurentian golden age that
Francesco Guicciardini had invoked. The majority of the office-holding
class of the city remained uncommitted to the family. They remained
profoundly tied to the civic republican legacy and culture of Florence and
would only tolerate the imposition of Medici predominance as long as
the city’s independence and their own social, political and economic
pre-eminence remained untroubled. The Medici appealed to this group
in particular through the festivities for Carnival in February 1513, the first
significant public celebrations to occur following the family’s restoration.
Giuliano and Lorenzo sponsored two torch-lit triumphs at the very end
of the season. These pageants presented a carefully crafted message of
the Medici as sound governors, as protectors of the peace and liberty of
­Florence and as restorers of a golden age of prosperity and tranquillity following the violence and turmoil of the previous two decades.9
THE MEDICI BETWEEN FLORENCE AND ROME
The ability of the family to fulfil this ambitious programme, however, faced
an almost immediate challenge in the election of Giovanni de’ Medici as
Pope Leo X in March 1513. Rome offered far greater possibilities, political
and financial, than Florence. So while possession of the papal throne did
offer a new stream of lucrative patronage from which the Medici could
reward friends and allies, the allure of the Eternal City cast Florence into
shadow. “I think of nothing else,” Lorenzo wrote in October 1513, with
­reference to his uncle’s new role, “nor do I have any other desire except
to begin tasting some of the fruits of Our Lord’s happiness.”10 The Medici
would control the papacy almost continuously for two decades as Leo’s
pontificate was followed – after the brief reign of Adrian VI – by that of his
cousin Giulio, who was elected Pope Clement VII in 1523. During the
1510s and 1520s, therefore, control over the government of Florence
shifted from the city itself to Rome and the papal court. Far from ensuring
its ­independence, the Medici pontiffs made Florence an appendage of the
papacy.
Moreover, possession of the papacy cast the Medici as players on a much
larger, European stage. Both Leo and Clement had to navigate the ongoing
struggle between the Valois and the Habsburgs on the Italian peninsula,
attempting to prevent either dynasty from gaining hegemony. Like popes
before and after them, the two Medici pontiffs also attempted to use the
throne of St Peter to advance their family’s prestige and position. Under
Leo, both Giuliano and Lorenzo made marital alliances with the French
crown and received titles and possessions: the former as Duke of Nemours
26
and the latter as Duke of Urbino. Although both men died young, the Medici
would receive some longer-term advantage from Lorenzo’s marriage: his
daughter, Caterina, would become the queen consort of Henri II of France
and the powerful mother of the last three Valois kings. Florence bore
the expenses of this dynastic adventurism as well as of the broader financial
and military strategies of both popes, as papal policy brought the threat
of reprisals upon the city, especially during the war to conquer Urbino for
Lorenzo. Throughout the second and third decades of the sixteenth ­century,
the Medici became increasingly estranged from the city on the Arno and
their own interests became progressively divergent from those of the
broader office-holding class.
The tensions of this period received a clear expression in Pontormo’s
Portrait of Cosimo the Elder (fig. 4). The painting possesses obvious dynastic
significance, presenting as it does the founder and architect of the fam­
ily’s fortunes. The laurel tree with its Virgilian motto also underlines the
­continuing renewal of the Medici name despite setbacks. This had particular
resonance in 1519, the year that Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, died, leaving
the family without an obvious, legitimate male heir to the line of direct
descent from Cosimo the Elder: the only survivors were clerics (Pope Leo
and his cousin Cardinal Giulio, the future Pope Clement) and two young
bastard boys, Ippolito and Alessandro, the sons of Giuliano and Lorenzo
respectively. The infant Caterina, the future queen of France, did not enter
into these calculations. The painting might have acknowledged, however, the
recent birth of another potential successor: another Cosimo, son of Maria
Salviati, a granddaughter of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and ­Giovanni de’
­Medici, the famous condottiere and a scion of the cadet branch of the family.
However, the portrait also had a civic republican message that appealed
to some of the same sentiments as the Carnival celebrations of 1513. Cosimo
the Elder appears clad in a red, fur-lined cioppa, a full-length over-garment
favoured by the patrician elite of Florence. This garment carried a weight
of cultural undertones and political significance. In particular, it bore
­associations with holding office, presenting both a serious, modest appearance, suitable to a civilian magistrate dedicated to the public good as well as
uniformity in dress for the men of the office-holding class, promoting
the image of an egalitarian fraternity.11 Moreover, the Virgilian motto
also possessed an additional significance beyond the immediate dynastic
boast. The phrase refers to the episode in the sixth book of the Aeneid
when Aeneas enters the Underworld to speak with the shade of his dead
father, Anchises. Many of those who viewed Pontormo’s portrait would
have recalled that at their meeting the latter prophesied the coming of the
­Augustan Golden Age. Like the Carnival celebrations of 1513, then, the
painting also appealed to the image of a more recent Laurentian golden age
and its restoration under the Medici.
The family and their partisans maintained control over Florence
through most of the 1520s despite growing resentment at the costs of papal
policies and the distant government from Rome. Until his election as
Pope Clement VII, Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici provided the necessary
­Medici presence in the city. Once he ascended to the throne of St Peter, the
new pope dispatched his young cousins Ippolito and Alessandro, under
the ­tutelage of Cardinal Silvio Passerini, to represent the family. This government by a distant pope, a foreigner born in a city subject to Florentine
rule (Passerini was a native of Cortona), and two bastard boys were
like thorns in the flesh to the pride of the Florentine elite. In his Dialogo del
reggimento di Firenze (“Dialogue on the Government of Florence”), written between 1521 and 1524, Francesco Guicciardini put into the mouth of
Paolantonio Soderini the judgement that since the late fifteenth century
the Medici had become “degenerated by alien customs and all too insolent
and haughty towards our way of life.”12 The Medici dominance hurt more
than the Florentine sense of dignity. The city continued to bear the costs of
papal policy as Filippo Strozzi, a close ally and relative by marriage of the
family, used his personal bank and financial acumen to channel funds
from the communal government to Rome. In April 1525, Strozzi’s agent
in Florence reported, with some hyperbole: “I have emptied this city
of gold … in order to satisfy His Holiness, Our Lord.”13
Nonetheless, the Florentine office-holding class endured the expense
and the political manipulations of the Medici system while the family’s
­prestige and connections appeared to promise security and independence
for the city. When the tide of the Italian wars left Clement VII exposed
to the wrath of the Habsburg emperor Charles V, however, the papal connection became a liability. In 1526, the pope had signed an alliance against
the threat of imperial hegemony in Italy with Francis I of France; Venice;
and Fran­cesco II Sforza of Milan. In response, the Habsburg forces converged on Rome from Milan and Naples. As the Milanese army, led by
Charles de ­Bourbon, marched past Florence in April 1527, the Medici regime
survived a brief uprising. When the Holy Roman Emperor’s force violently
stormed Rome on 6 May (the so-called ‘Sack of Rome’ that left a profound
mark on Italian history), however, a successful coup followed in the ­Tuscan
city. Cardinal Passerini fled together with Ippolito and Alessandro de’
Medici. With the promise of a restored golden age of Medici rule in tatters,
the Florentine office-holding class again sought to establish a secure civic
republican government without the dominant family, as they had previously
done in 1494.
THE REPUBLIC UNDER SIEGE
4 Jacopo Pontormo, Portrait of Cosimo the Elder, c. 1519,
Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi
The new government pursued an increasingly radical anti-Medici policy
within Florence.14 The family’s most loyal supporters and friends – men like
Francesco Guicciardini and Filippo Strozzi who had advanced the interests
of both Leo X and Clement VII over those of Florence – faced bans from
public life, punitive taxation and eventually exile. This purge occurred
despite the support that both Guicciardini and Strozzi had offered to the
initial uprising in May 1527, inevitably driving them back into the Medici
camp. The new regime found justification and moral encouragement for its
policies in the reinvigoration of many of the prophecies and ideas promoted
by Savonarola in the 1490s, which served as talismans to opponents of
the Medici.15 It oversaw the reinstitution of the Great Council, first created in December 1494 with the backing of Savonarola, as the institutional
embodiment of the idea of the office-holding class as an egalitarian fraternity of civilian magistrates. Then on 9 February 1528, the Council elected
Christ as king of Florence – an idea promoted by the Dominican friar but
never enacted in his lifetime – symbolically rejecting any earthly prince and
placing the city under divine protection.
Beyond the city’s walls, the new government pursued an anti-Habsburg
agenda, favouring the traditional French alliance. This policy converged
with its vehement opposition to the Medici in the summer of 1529 when
Clement VII and Charles V became reconciled and signed an alliance.
In the treaty, the emperor promised to restore the pope’s family to its former position of political dominance in Florence and offered to marry
his illegitimate daughter, Margaret of Austria, to Alessandro de’ Medici.
When Charles concluded a treaty with Francis I two months later, Florence
found itself isolated as it had been in 1512. On this occasion, however, more
than military threats were required to return the Medici.
In October 1529, the same imperial army that had sacked Rome two
years earlier, now commanded by Philibert de Châlon, Prince of Orange,
laid siege to Florence.16 Initially the mood in the city remained defiant and
buoyant, as incessant rain and lack of money troubled the besieging forces.
Pontormo captured the spirit of the defenders in his Portrait of a Halberdier
(fig. 5), painted most probably in the later months of 1529.17 The painting
depicts a young man, possibly Francesco Guardi, standing contrapposto
with self-assurance and determination. His right hand holds the shaft
of the eponymous halberd while his left rests on his hip, the elbow jutting
aggressively towards the viewer. The bastion of San Miniato, one of the
city’s ­principal southern defensive bulwarks, looms behind him. The youth
may appear as a member of the civic militia, created in 1528 and charged
with defending the city walls during the siege. The badge adorning his cap
underlines Guardi’s role as protector of Florence and its civic republican
government. It depicts Hercules wrestling with Antaeus. The figure of
­Hercules had adorned the seal of Florence since the thirteenth century
and had a ­special place in the city’s political iconography, representing the
triumph of republican virtus – the specifically Roman trait of physical
and moral courage – over apparently insurmountable odds.18
The initial ebullience of the defenders – which saw football games
played on Piazza Santa Croce within sight of the besiegers and within
range of their artillery – ground down into dour determination as the city
became surrounded, its supply lines severed. Pontormo’s Martyrdom of the
Ten ­Thousand (cat. no. 62), painted during this period, might present a dark
reflection of the suffering endured.19 While millenarianist prophecies of
27
“UNO AVULSO…”
5 Jacopo Pontormo, Portrait of a Halberdier, c. 1529/30 (or c. 1537?),
Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum
Florence’s eventual triumph fuelled the most fervent supporters of
the regime, doubts and fears gnawed at less ardent inhabitants as the
siege dragged into the summer of 1530. When a dramatic attempt to relieve
the city failed in early August, the professional soldiers hired by the Florentines, together with a detachment of the civic militia, mutinied and overthrew the government. On 12 August a formal surrender was signed and
the Medici were restored to their position as informal heads of state.
A handful of the family’s most ardent opponents received death sentences,
while almost two hundred other men were exiled.
Clement VII, however, wanted more than the restoration of the
Medicean republican system of the fifteenth century. After a period of
­consultation with several of the family’s leading allies, in April 1532 the
­government appointed an extraordinary committee charged with changing
the city’s constitution. The resulting legislation abolished almost all the
republican governing institutions and established in their place a hereditary
Medici principality. As Ippolito de’ Medici had become a cardinal in 1529
in order to maintain the family’s position in Rome, the new constitution
­proclaimed Alessandro de’ Medici Duke of the Florentine Republic.20 This
rather cumbersome title reflected the ambitions of the patricians who
wrote the legislation to create an aristocratic republic with a nominal prince
­possessed of limited powers, similar to the contemporary government of
Venice but with a hereditary rather than an elected duke. The ­Medici supporters hoped to provide security and stability both to their position and to
the city’s government. They did not aim to create an absolute principality.
28
Contemporary histories, mostly penned by republicans, condemned the
young duke as a violent, cruel tyrant. His government certainly showed itself
unforgiving of opposition: in 1533 it renewed the sentences of exile imposed
in 1530 and ten members of the office-holding class were executed for
­political crimes between 1533 and 1536, a notable increase in the use of such
punishment.21 The Franciscan chronicler Fra Giuliano Ughi, however,
wrote that Alessandro “ruled wisely … used many virtues in his government,
and demonstrated himself most favourable to justice.”22 Whether positive
or negative, all accounts agreed that the duke devoted himself more to
­sensual pleasures than good governance. Despite the warnings of Machia­
velli that lust and greed more quickly made a prince hated than anything
else, Alessandro probably provoked more significant resentment by his
clearly signalled intentions to rule beyond the presumed limitations of the
1532 constitution. In particular, once the death of Clement VII left him as
the head of the family, the young duke clashed with the still wealthy and
influential Filippo Strozzi. Together with some other prominent, older men
related to the Medici by blood or marriage, Strozzi apparently felt insulted
by ­Alessandro and abandoned his previous support for the family.23 The
banker and his sons left Florence and joined the republican exiles. Significantly, however, the majority of the office-holding class remained acquiescent to the new princely government, in exchange for the political stability,
social prestige and financial rewards it promised.
An allegorical portrait painted by Giorgio Vasari in 1534 (cat. no. 114)
captured the young duke’s ambitions. In an awkward composition, Ales­
sandro appears seated contrapposto in armour, a baton of command across
his knees: quoting both Pontormo’s Portrait of Cosimo the Elder (fig. 4)
and also Michelangelo’s Il Bastoniere adorning the tomb of Giuliano de’
Medici (fig. 6). Behind his right elbow, the broncone device appears as a
verdant branch rising from a dead tree stump. In the right-hand rear of the
frame, behind the contrived rocky landscape, the unmistakeable cityscape of
­Florence is visible, resting apparently secure and tranquil under the gaze
of Alessandro. The duke’s bare head indicates his peaceful intent, but the
presence of his helmet on the floor suggests a readiness to take action.
Overall the painting gives an uneasy impression of Alessandro as both
guardian and gaoler of Florence.
By 1536, Alessandro de’ Medici appeared to have triumphed and transformed Vasari’s image into reality. In January that year, Emperor Charles
V ruled against a petition by the Florentine exiles to overturn the princely
­government in favour of a more republican constitution. The following
month, in accordance with the papal-imperial treaty of 1529, Alessandro
wed Margaret of Austria, the emperor’s natural daughter. Only one year
later, however, Alessandro was assassinated on the night of 6 –7 January
1537 by his close companion and distant cousin, Lorenzino de’ Medici.24 The
Florentine senate reacted swiftly, electing Cosimo di Giovanni de’ Medici,
whose birth in 1519 might have been reflected in Pontormo’s Portrait of
Cosimo the Elder, as the new head of state. In one last attempt to preserve
their hopes, the senators did not give Cosimo any title, instead recognising
him only as “head and principal of the government of the city of Florence
and its dominion.”25 The Florentine senate, however, had little influence on
the effective outcome. Cosimo’s survival depended instead on Charles V,
who endorsed the succession in June.
Despite this imperial support, the Florentine exiles attempted to use
the instability of the moment to return to the city. Filippo Strozzi, to whom
Lorenzino had fled following the assassination, led a military expedition
Although free of any immediate threat from the Florentine exiles following
the victory at Montemurlo, Cosimo appeared perilously dependent on
the emperor. In September, Charles V issued an imperial privilege recognising the Medici ruler’s election and permitting him to use the title of Duke of
the Florentine Republic. However, the settlement also insisted on the gar­
risoning of Spanish troops in the fortresses of Florence and Livorno on
the Tuscan coast. Cosimo would devote several years to working his way
free of this imposition while also making himself a key ally of the Habsburgs
on the Italian peninsula. Eventually, with a combination of implied threats
to turn to the French and financial inducement, the Medici duke reclaimed
the fortresses and the Spanish garrisons withdrew in July 1543. Later
that year, Cosimo embarked on a programme of internal government reform
which progressively stripped real power from the remaining citizen councils, such as the senate, and granted it to appointed ministers, secretaries
and bureaucrats. As the Medici duke had achieved independence from
­imperial oversight, he also succeeded in shaking off any controls imposed
by the office-holding class. Around the same time, Cosimo began symbol­
ically to sign himself “Duke of Florence”, dropping any reference to the
now defunct republic and signalling his independence from Charles V, who
never granted the Medici prince an imperial ducal title.26
Cosimo seems to have commemorated this double triumph by commissioning a portrait of himself in armour by Bronzino (fig. 8).27 It would
become the duke’s most recognisable and most copied image, still existing
today in twenty-five versions. The painting bears obvious debts to Pon­
tormo’s Portrait of Cosimo the Elder and Vasari’s Portrait of Alessandro de’
Medici and depicts Cosimo standing contrapposto in highly polished
armour, gazing to the left beyond the frame of the image. The duke is bareheaded and his right hand rests on the helmet he has removed. In threequarter length versions of the portrait, this helmet is revealed in turn to be
resting on a laurel stump, from which a leafy, new bough emerges: the
now familiar broncone device of Medici dynastic success and continuity. Far
more successfully than Vasari’s portrait of Alessandro, the image presents
Cosimo as the defender of Florence. The new duke, the portrait suggested,
6 Michelangelo, Tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici, detail, c. 1521– 34,
Florence, San Lorenzo, New ­Sacristy
7 Giorgio Vasari and Giovanni Stradano, The Triumph of Cosimo I at Montemurlo,
1556 – 59, ­Florence, Palazzo Vecchio
against the new Medici ruler. The poorly prepared rebels, however, were
routed at the small town of Montemurlo, north of Florence, on 2 August by
imperial troops. Several leading exiles were captured and swiftly executed
(fig. 7). Strozzi, taken into custody by the imperial commander, survived
in imprisonment until December 1538, when he apparently killed himself,
leaving a suicide note invoking the Roman civil wars that had led to the triumph of Augustus.
“…NON DEFICIT ALTER”
29
would finally fulfil the promise of a restored golden age hinted at in Pon­
tormo’s 1519 painting.
Cosimo, indeed, proved himself a capable and shrewd governor.28
He maintained Florentine independence through the last decades of
the Italian wars, seeing off the continued threat from the French crown
and its allies, including the remnants of the Florentine exiles. In 1557 he
expanded his realm by adding the city of Siena and its territories, which he
had ­conquered in the name of Charles V two years earlier.29 Cosimo also
actively sought to restore Florence’s cultural prestige. His court became a
hub of artistic production, frequented by several of the leading artists of
the mid-century, including Bronzino, Benvenuto Cellini, Francesco Salviati, ­Baccio Bandinelli and Giorgio Vasari. Cosimo co-opted the originally
­private, literary Accademia degli Umidi in 1541, transforming it into the public
Accademia fiorentina, as well as reviving the moribund university at Pisa.
In 1563, Cosimo sponsored the creation of the Accademia del disegno, handpicking its original seventy-five members.30 This policy aimed not only at
renovating Florence’s cultural heritage but also at binding the city and the
Medici more closely together, promoting Cosimo as the custodian of the
city’s past and the patron of a renewed golden age. In a similar manner, the
duke left a dramatic imprint on the urban landscape of Florence: commissioning the building of the Uffizi, to house his growing bureaucracy, expanding the Pitti Palace, and developing the adjoining Boboli Gardens.
Medici rule in Florence did not go unopposed. Cosimo survived an
assassination attempt in 1543 and two conspiracies aimed at restoring
republican government to the city. His son Francesco confronted another
conspiracy in 1575, almost immediately after his accession. A thread of
republican sentiment would continue to endure in Florence into the
eighteenth century. But in 1569, Cosimo achieved the culmination of his
ambitions to preserve his own power and ensure the continuing rule of the
­Medici in an independent Florence when Pope Pius V bestowed upon
him the title of Grand Duke of Tuscany. This papal coronation was initially
opposed by the Habsburgs as well as most of the other Italian powers.
In 1574, however, Philip II of Spain finally recognised the new title, while
in 1576 Emperor Maximilian II granted Cosimo’s successor, Francesco,
the right to use the grand ducal title.
Pontormo’s 1519 Portrait of Cosimo the Elder captured the relationship
between Florence and the Medici in a fraught moment, poised between
the memory of a fifteenth-century golden age and the bitter realities of the
day. Its Virgilian allusion was more aspirational than confident. However,
the birth of Cosimo I de’ Medici, that same year, would ultimately succeed
in lending immediacy to its conceit, creating a new golden age of stability
and cultural prosperity in Florence. When he died on 21 April 1574, Co­­
simo I left a dynasty that would endure for almost two centuries, ensuring
that until 1737, when his last direct heir died, if one was torn away, another
would take its place.
30
8 Agnolo Bronzino, Portrait of Cosimo I de’ Medici, c. 1545,
Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales
1 On the portrait see Cox-Rearick 1984, pp. 41– 59; Costamagna 1994, pp. 150–152, cat. no. 33;
Baker 2013, pp. 87f.; exh. cat. Florence 2014a, pp. 130f., cat. no. IV.1.2 (Antonio Geremicca).
2 See exh. cat. Florence 2014a, pp. 130f., cat. no. IV.1.2 (Antonio Geremicca).
3Virgil, Aeneid, VI, 185.
4 Francesco Guicciardini, in Valladolid, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Florence, 9 January 1513, printed
in Guicciardini – Jodogne 1986, p. 331. All translations are the author’s unless otherwise indicated.
5 Guicciardini – Greco 1970, p. 115. On the development of the idea of the Laurentian golden age
see Gombrich 1961; Puttfarken 1980.
6 On the Medici system see Kent 1978; Rubinstein 1997; Najemy 2006, pp. 250 – 306, 341– 374;
Brown 2011, pp. 139–176.
7 Antonio Montecatino, in Florence, to Ercole d’Este, in Ferrara, 17 December 1482, printed in
Cappelli 1863, p. 265.
8 On the Italian wars see Galasso 1997; Mallett / Shaw 2012. For more detail than is provided in
what follows on the specifics of the situation in Florence see Anzilotti 1969; Von Albertini 1970;
­Stephens 1983; Butters 1985; Cooper 2002; Baker 2013.
9 See Baker 2011.
10 Archivio di Stato, Firenze (ASF), Carte Strozziane (CS) Serie 1, 3: 13r: Lorenzo de’ Medici,
in Florence, to Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, 29 October 1513.
11 See Cotton 1966; Baker 2013, pp. 37– 40.
12 Guicciardini – Palmarocchi 1932, p. 33.
13 ASF, CS Serie 1, 156: doc. 70: Francesco del Nero, in Florence, to Cardinal Giovanni Salviati,
in Parma, 8 April 1525. On Strozzi’s financial dealings see Bullard 1980, especially pp. 129 –147; and
more generally Stephens 1983, pp. 128 –135.
14 On the regime of 1527– 30, Roth 1925 remains unsurpassed.
15 On Savonarola’s political influence in Florence in the 1490s see Weinstein 1970; Garfagnini 1997;
Jurdjevic 2008, pp. 19 – 45. On the afterlife of the Dominican’s ideas in the sixteenth century see Polizzotto 1994; Dall’Aglio 2005.
16 On the siege, in addition to Roth 1925, see also Monti 2007.
17 On this portrait, in particular the debate over its subject, see Costamagna 1994, pp. 233 – 236,
cat. no. 76; Cropper 1997; exh. cat. Philadelphia 2004/05, pp. 92 – 95, cat. no. 18 (Carl Brandon
­Strehlke). See also cat. nos. 56/57 in the Catalogue section here (with a differing opinion).
18 On Hercules in Florentine iconography see Bush 1980; Donato 1991.
19 See exh. cat. Florence 2014a, pp. 290f., cat. no. VIII.4 (Sefy Hendler).
20 ASF, Senato dei 48, Provvisioni 1, 1v-4v. The text is also printed in Pansini 1991.
21 See Baker 2009. The accounts of Alessandro’s rule as tyrannical include Segni 1805; Varchi –
Arbib 1843/44; Nardi 1858.
22 Ughi – Frediani 1849, pp. 180f.
23 This was the judgement of the contemporary historian Segni 1805, II, p. 60.
24 On Lorenzino and the assassination of Alessandro see, most recently, Dall’Aglio 2011.
25 ASF, 48, Provvisioni 1, 119r.
26 On the early years of Cosimo’s reign see Spini 1980. On the issue of the ducal title see Marrara
1965, pp. 20 – 22; Baker 2013, pp. 192f.
27 On this portrait see Simon 1983; Simon 1987; exh. cat. Florence 2010/11, pp. 114f., cat. no. II.1
(Antonio Geremicca).
28 On Cosimo I see Ferrai 1882; Booth 1921; Spini 1980; Eisenbichler 2001; van Veen 2006; Murry
2014.
29 See Cantagalli 1962.
30 On the Accademia, see Hughes 1986a; Hughes 1986b; Barzman 2000.
31
UNVERKÄUFLICHE LESEPROBE
Bastian Eclercy
MANIERA
Pontormo, Bronzino and Medici Florence
Gebundenes Buch, Pappband, 304 Seiten, 23,0 x 28,0 cm
285 farbige Abbildungen
ISBN: 978-3-7913-5506-1
Prestel
Erscheinungstermin: Februar 2016
Zu Beginn des 16. Jahrhunderts entwickelten Künstler der auf die Hochrenaissance folgenden
Generation wie Andrea del Sarto, Pontormo, Rosso Fiorentino, Agnolo Bronzino und Giorgio
Vasari – im Wettstreit mit Michelangelo, Leonardo und Raffael – einen neuen Stil, die bella
maniera. Der Manierismus, wie dieser Stil heute genannt wird, hat viele Facetten: elegant,
kultiviert, raffiniert, artifiziell, aber auch kapriziös und extravagant, bisweilen bizarr. Das Buch
behandelt die Zeit von der Rückkehr der Medici an die Macht 1512 und der ersten Generation
der Manieristen bis zur Definition des Begriffs maniera in Vasaris Künstlerviten 1568 und
präsentiert in qualitativ hochwertigen Abbildungen über 120 Gemälde, Zeichnungen und
Skulpturen aus den weltweit bedeutendsten Sammlungen. Ein besonderer Schwerpunkt liegt
dabei auf dem Werk der beiden Hauptvertreter des Florentiner Manierismus, Pontormo und
Bronzino. Der Katalog mit Beiträgen von führenden Experten behandelt die künstlerische
Entwicklung in enger Verbindung mit der Geschichte der Stadt Florenz und macht den Leser mit
einem der faszinierendsten Kapitel der italienischen Kunstgeschichte vertraut, das außerhalb
von Florenz sonst nirgends in dieser Fülle und Dichte zu erleben ist.