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Towards an Italian Renaissance Theory of Landscape Karen Hope

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Towards an Italian Renaissance Theory of Landscape Karen Hope Towards an Italian Renaissance Theory of Landscape Karen Hope Goodchild Atlanta, Georgia B.A. University of Georgia, 1990 M.A. University of Virginia, 1993 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of the History of Art University of Virginia August, 1998 Pr-r-t- 1'1'0?? ii © Copyright by Karen Hope Goodchild All rights reserved August, 1998 iii Abstract Towards an Italian Renaissance Theory of Landscape This dissertation reconstructs the sixteenth-century view of landscape painting by allowing authors of the period to describe for themselves what the genre signified. Ultimately, the thesis proposed is that there was always an "unspoken" theory of the genre that understood landscape as a feminine, non-rational subject to be both rendered and discussed as a lower mode of colorful details designed to engage only the senses. The dissertation is composed of four interconnected essays which progress from more general historical analyses of the literary and material factors that contributed to the rise of landscape painting and Academic landscape theory to an in-depth examination of Renaissance descriptions of landscape. Landscape differed from earlier genres in that it had no suasive content. This distinction set it at odds with the prevailing Horatian justification for art, that beauty and ornament existed to direct the soul towards a moral message. Thus, in Chapter One, "The Sensual Justification for Landscape," the concrete physical and psychological benefits thought to accrue from visual delight are explored in order to show that sensual pleasure had a vindication prior to the development of an autotelic aesthetic philosophy. Chapter Two, "The Feminine Language of Landscape," analyzes how landscape depictions were characterized as colorful, irrational embellishments the only end of which was pleasure. As a result, landscape's seductive charms were often addressed in the vocabulary of feminine beauty, a terminology gleaned from Petrarchan poetry and sixteenth-century treatises on beauty. Chapter Three, "Parerga and the Renaissance Theory of Landscape," furthers this investigation of detail and content versus form with a historical analysis of the word parerga. In the sixteenth century, parerga, a Greek word that can be literally translated as "beside the work," came to be used as a term for landscape, and this chapter traces the antique uses of the word, especially its link to mimesis, that conditioned the Renaissance definition of landscape. Finally, Chapter Four, "Vasari's Theory of iv Landscape," carefully glosses the most important and fully realized contemporary exegesis of Renaissance art, Vasari's Lives of the Artists. Vasari's attitudes towards landscape are assessed through a close reading of both his descriptions of landscapes and his more general statements of artistic theory. v Table of Contents Abstract. .............................................................................................................................. iii Acknowledgements ................................................................... ;....................................... viii List of Illustrations .............................................................................................................. .ix Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter I: The Sensual Justification for Landscape ............................................................ 19 The Western Attitude Towards Nature ....................................................... 20 The Renaissance Justification for Pleasure in Art. ...................................... 23 The Delights of Mimesis ............................................................................ 25 Enjoyment in the Decorative Versus the Fine Arts .................................... 28 Part I. The Medical Justification: The Indissoluble Link between Spirit and Flesh ................................................................................................. 29 The Healthful Climate ................................................................................. 32 The Rhetorical Origins of the Pleasance ..................................................... 35 The Hygienic Principle and the "Re-Creative" Value of Pleasure .............. 36 Melancholy ................................................................................................. 39 Erotomania ................................................................................................. 43 Insanity ....................................................................................................... 48 Insomnia..................................................................................................... 49 Senescence .................................................................................................. 52 Part IT. Recreation and Sensual Pleasure ........................................................... 57 Nature's Pleasures as an Aid to the Creative Process ................................. 57 "To Play in Order to Work" ....................................................................... 58 Necessary Recreation for "Busy Men of Affairs" ...................................... 59 The Scholar's Need for Sensual Pleasure ................................................... 62 Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 69 vi Chapter II: The Feminine Language of Landscape ............................................................. 68 Part One. The Material and Textual History of Landscape ............................... 71 Oil Paint and the Rise of the Landscape Genre ........................................... 71 The Feminine Language of Color............................................................... 74 The Academy's Ranking of Landscape ...................................................... 76 Women and Irrational Sensuality ............................................................... 78 Michelangelo's Theory of Landscape .......................................................... 80 The Champions of questa altra via ........................................................... 86 The Anxiety of Detail. ................................................................................ 91 Part II. The Feminine Language of Landscape ................................................. 92 Vaghezza .................................................................................................... 97 Capricci .................................................................................................... 101 Leggiadria ................................................................................................ 104 Diletto ...................................................................................................... 106 Conclusion ................................................................................................ 108 Chapter III: Parerga and the Renaissance Theory of Landscape ....................................... 111 Part I: The Textual History of Parerga............................................................ 113 Ancient Uses ofthe Term Parerga............................................................ 113 Late Antique and Early Christian Uses of the Term Parerga .................... 119 Renaissance Uses of the Term Parerga ..................................................... 121 The Renaissance Connection of Parerga with Antique Landscape ............ 125 Descriptions .............................................................................................. 125 Para gone Lists and the Ornaments of Painting ........................................ 130 Mimesis, Landscape, and Parerga in Antiquity and the Renaissance ........ 135 Part II. Parerga and the Actuality of Renaissance Landscape .......................... 139 The Relationship between Northern and Southern Landscapes ................ 139 vii The Placement of Mural Landscapes ........................................................ 141 The Renaissance Connection of Grotteschi with Landscape ..................... 145 Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 148 Chapter IV: Vasari's Theory of Landscape ...................................................................... 151 Vasari's Love of Nature ........................................................................... 151 Landscape and Vasari's "Three Manners" ............................................... 158 Part I. The Landscape Painters in the Lives .................................................... 162 Some Early Attempts at Landscape .......................................................... 163 The Masters of Oil Paint. .......................................................................... 167 The Ornamenters and "Impresarios" ...................................................... 178 The Naturalists .......................................................................................... 184 The "Oltramontani" Artists and their Italian Followers ............................ 189 Part II. Vasari's Landscape Descriptions ........................................................ 193 The Topographical Landscape .................................................................. 193
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