Vasari Als Paradigma the Paradigm of Vasari
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Vasari als Paradigma Rezeption, Kritik, Perspektiven The Paradigm of Vasari Reception, Criticism, Perspectives hrsg. von / edited by Fabian Jonietz Alessandro Nova Marsilio - Author's Copy - vasari als paradigma rezeption, kritik, perspektiven the paradigm of vasari reception, criticism, perspectives Kongreßakten, 14.-16. Februar 2014 Florenz, Kunsthistorisches Institut, Max-Planck-Institut Conference Proceedings, February 14-16, 2014 Florence, Kunsthistorisches Institut, Max-Planck-Institut Redaktionelle Koordination Editorial coordination Fabian Jonietz Redaktion, Lektorat und Namensindex Editing, copyediting and index of names Fabian Jonietz, Linda Olenburg, Mandy Richter unter Mitarbeit von / in collaboration with Maria Aresin, Eugenia Beller, Lorenz Orendi, Linus Rapp, Ferdinand Schachinger Entsprechend einer freien Entscheidung der Autoren folgen die deutschsprachigen Beiträge den Regeln der etablierten oder der reformierten deutschen Rechtschreibung. According to the authors’ free decision, contributions in the German language follow either established or reformed spelling and orthography. Lektorat der italienischen Texte Copyediting of Italian texts Manuela Bonura Lektorat der englischen Texte Copyediting of English texts Rebecca Milner Umschlagabbildung / Cover Livio Mehus, Die Personifikation der Malerei diktiert Giorgio Vasari die Lebensbeschreibungen der Künstler, München, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Inv.-Nr. Z 2397 Graphische Gestaltung / Graphic Design Tapiro, Venezia © 2016 by Marsilio Editori® s.p.a. in Venezia ISBN 978-88-317-2661-0 - Author's Copy - THE CONTROVERSY OVER VASARI AND THE BEGINNING OF THE ART HISTORICAL DISCIPLINE IN SPAIN. 1775–1829 David García López Giorgio Vasari’s writing on the lives of artists was widely end of the century various authors had begun to assert read in Golden Age Spain and was extremely influential that Spanish painters were equally sophisticated, if not in the perception of art, and even artists’ self perception. superior to their foreign counterparts. For example, in The first edition of Vasari’s work, published in 1550, his description of El Escorial published in 1605, José de quickly became well known in Spain. The work was Sigüenza suggests that some artists, like Fernández de translated into Spanish in the 1560s by Alvar Gómez de Navarrete, “el Mudo”, were of a higher caliber than Ital- Castro, a humanist who formed part of a group of schol- ian artists such as Federico Zuccari, whose work on the ars in Toledo interested in art and antiquity collections1. El Escorial monastery was disappointing5. It was thought The late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were that Spanish artists lacked only the support of literature marked by profound changes in Spanish art and the study in order to match the caliber of foreign artists. At that of artistic activity. Painting was increasingly defended as time, it was widely believed within artistic circles that the a liberal art and the first art academies in Spain were cre- Spanish fine art world was plagued by a dearth of authors ated, modeled after the Italian academies. As was aptly capable of tackling theoretical discussions: «a lack of articulated by Gaspar Gutiérrez de los Ríos, one of the people curious about writing», as Juan de Arfe put it, one most important writers to defend painting as a liberal art, of the most important Hispanic theorists of the sixteenth El Escorial was the Trojan horse of Spanish art’s renova- century6. This scarcity was particularly evident in the tion. This renewal as due not only to the arrival of new ar- case of artists’ biographies, reinforced by Gutiérrez de tistic forms, thanks to the numerous foreigners working los Ríos’ comment on Spanish artists: «as soon as they’re there, but also because of a new and more sophisticated dead we forget about them»7. Francisco Pacheco, Ve- consideration of the art imported from Italy2. lázquez’s father-in-law, insisted on this idea in his Arte de By the final decades of the sixteenth century Vasari’s la pintura, published posthumously in 1649. He claimed book had made its way into the hands of artists in Spain, that Spanish artists were in dire need of a written record primarily by way of Italians working in El Escorial and of their lives, just as had been done in Italy with Italian at the court of Felipe II in Madrid. These artists includ- artists, declaring Spain to be the only nation lacking this ed Pompeo Leoni, Jacome da Trezzo, Patrizio Caxesi, kind of biographical documentation8. Yet, when such an and Federico Zuccari. In addition, the book was likely attempt was made at the end of the seventeenth century in the libraries of Spanish artists linked to El Escorial, by Valencian Vicente Victoria, a scholar and longtime such as Juan Bautista Monegro, or the architect who de- court painter for the Duke of Florence, he described the signed the monastery at El Escorial, Juan de Herrera3. available information on Spanish painters as «so limited It is telling that the early circulation of Vasari’s text in [that] we barely known their names»9. Spain took place among this nucleus of artists, given The author the Spanish art world had been awaiting ap- that, as the theorist Antonio Palomino wrote, Spanish peared in the form of Lázaro Díaz del Valle, a musician artists who read Vasari’s work were encouraged to fol- for the Royal Chapel and a friend of many highly regard- low the example of the artists’ biographies they read. ed artists of the seventeenth century, including Alonso One of the artists who arrived from Italy with a copy Cano and Diego Velázquez. He wrote the first biography of Vasari’s book was Federico Zuccari, who gifted the of Spanish artists between 1656 and 1659, although his copy to Doménikos Theotokópoulos, better known as manuscript remained unpublished. Díaz del Valle cited El Greco, during a visit to Toledo in 1586. El Greco Vasari with great admiration and followed his historical annotated the copy extensively, leaving us with an ex- model, applying it to Spanish artists and representing Ve- traordinary historical document which, in this case, also lázquez as the zenith of Spanish art, just as Vasari had serves as a powerful critique of Vasari’s book, in that El done with Michelangelo Buonarroti in Italy10. Greco’s annotations reveal him to be a faithful follower Lázaro Díaz del Valle’s manuscript was cherished by of Titian and in disagreement with Vasari’s assessments4. Antonio Palomino, who finally wrote the first pub- If for a large part of the sixteenth century Spanish artists lished biography of Spanish artists, El Parnaso español had been considered inferior to the Italians peers, by the pintoresco, in the second volume of El Museo Pictórico 285 - Author's Copy - david garcía lópez 1. Antonio Palomino, Museo Pictórico y Escala óptica, Madrid 1724, Vol. II, Allegorical Depiction of Painting, Madrid, Private Collection 2. Antonio Ponz, Viage de España, Madrid 21786, Vol. IX, Frontispiece, Madrid, Private Collection (fig. 1), although it was printed much later in 1724, number of so-called “aficionados” who became involved more than 150 years after Vasari’s book. In the author’s in the fine art world and, without being artists themselves, words, his mission was to «carry on the memory» of were able to write about and theorize it. Numerous con- Spanish artists11. Their biographies appeared in the fi- troversies of the era demonstrate how, in contrast to nal volume of the text and served as a conclusion to his previous centuries, the artists themselves were no longer verbose artistic treatise, El Museo Pictórico, quite pos- the theoretical authorities. Vicente Carducho, Francisco sibly the work that best condenses and recapitulates the Pacheco and Antonio Palomino, the most noteworthy Spanish Baroque12. theorists of the Spanish Baroque, had been great artists Throughout the eighteenth century Palomino’s work themselves, and even court painters. In many cases the was greatly admired as a foundational text for the study new authors were “aficionados”. And while many of them of Spanish artists and fine art. Furthermore, it was con- were amateur painters, painting was certainly not their sidered an example of patriotic writing in that it safe- primary occupation15. These controversial polemics are guarded the stories of a great number of Spanish artists eloquently evident in the writing of Antonio Marcos de who would have been lost to history without Palomino’s Orellana, a lawyer who, at the end of the eighteenth cen- zealous effort13. In fact, during the second half of the tury, qualified the publication of hismagnum opus on the eighteenth century, there was an attempt to republish lives of Valencian painters by stating, the volume and, even more interestingly, to expand it to include artists working after 1724. Consequently, the [...] having undertaken a subject outside my area of ex- pertise, [...] I realize that this enterprise would certainly Vasarian biographical method remained relevant and in be executed with greater precision, ownership and sound effect in 1775, when editor Antonio Sanz contacted the judgment by any experienced professor of the noble arts. Real Academia de San Fernando to seek assistance in There is no doubt16. order to obtain the biographies of Spanish artists that had flourished during the eighteenth century and, at the Nonetheless, the eighteenth century was also marked by same time, to correct any errors or omissions made by new hypotheses formed by positivism, in which the critique Antonio Palomino