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DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

The Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate

School of The Ohio State University

Dorothy J. Bokelman, B.F.A, M.A, M.A.

The Ohio State University

2002

Dissertation Committee: Approved by Dr. Francis Richardson, Advisor

Dr. Barbara Haeger Advisor ) Dr. Arline Meyer Department of History of Art

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 3048997

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ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT

During the first decade of the sixteenth century Giorgione

painted himself as the biblical hero in his David with the Head of

Goliath. With that image he introduced the allegorical self-portrait

into Venetian Renaissance art and produced the first of twelve images

in which Renaissance and early Baroque artists working in Italy

portrayed themselves as protagonists in biblical scenes of beheading

or its aftermath. In the ensuing 125 years, Pordenone, Titian, Palma

Vecchio, Veronese, Lavinia Fontana, Caravaggio, Cristofano Allori,

Artemisia Gentileschi, Bernini, and Vouet, all working in Italy,

participated in this bizarre self-portrait sub-genre by presenting

themselves as either David, Goliath, John the Baptist, Judith, or

Holofernes. In this dissertation, cultural context, contemporary

artistic theories, and individual circumstances are investigated in

order to provide a multi-faceted answer to the question: why would

these eleven individual artists, working separately, choose to present

themselves in such a peculiar way?

Chapter One is a chronological introduction of the twelve

decapitation self-portraits, and Chapter Two is an examination of the

larger historical context in which these works were produced. During

this period, biographers recorded the life histories, attributions to,

and professional activities of artists, while patrons increasingly

displayed artists' self-portraits in their personal collections.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Painters, responding to this new demand for their likenesses, began to

create self-portraits that they deemed worthy of display in prominent

collections and among images of their peers. Chapter Three

investigates various self-portraiture categories to gain a more

thorough understanding of how artists fashioned images of themselves

and the messages conveyed through those paintings, in Chapter Four,

the six decapitation self-portraits produced by artists in the Veneto

during the cinquecento are analyzed, while Chapter Five is devoted to

the six images painted in Italian centers outside of Venice during the

early Baroque period. For each decapitation self-portrait, the

artist's responses to contemporary artistic theories regarding

imitation, emulation, and invention will be taken into account as will

the relevant personal circumstances and artistic stimuli that may have

influenced his/her choice of guise. Additionally, ideas and

associations prompted by these iconographically unusual images will be

considered.

iii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Dedicated to Christopher

My beloved angel in the guise of a human

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My interest in the decapitation self-portraits stems from a

project in one of Dr. Francis L. Richardson's seminars at Ohio State.

I am infinitely grateful to him for so generously reading and editing

numerous versions of this manuscript and for his continuing interest

and support of my research. His guidance, patience, and intellectual

criticism throughout the years that 1 have been associated with him

have been invaluable to me. I thank Dr. Barbara Haeger for her warm

encouragement, keen insight, and numerous suggestions, which have

vastly improved the content of this work in particular and my

scholarly abilities in general. I am also grateful to Dr. Arline

Meyer for her support and assistance in writing this paper.

My research and travel in Italy were greatly facilitated by a

grant from the History of Art Department, for which I am thankful. I

wish to personally thank Dr. Timothy McNiven for his advice prior to

my Italian sojourn and for his assistance, translations, and

encouragement on numerous occasions.

I am indebted to Dawn Cunningham for her critical reading

talents, moral support, companionship, and willingness to take frantic

phone calls, day or night. I feel truly honored and blessed to have

you as a friend. I am also immensely grateful to Sue Hoyt for her

friendship, editing skills, and knowledge of rules regarding comma

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. usage. Special thanks are reserved for Becky Metz for help in the

later stages of this project and for Art and Libby Christensen who

took time from their own Florentine vacation to return my lost

dissertation journal. I am, as always, thankful for the love and

encouragement of my family, and I extend a special thanks to my

parents, Gary and Peggy Burgoyne, for the tickets to Italy (and a

dream of a lifetime) and to my mother, who so graciously accompanied

me on the trip. I could not have done it without you.

Finally, and most importantly, I thank Christopher for his

unwavering patience, support, and encouragement. I am, as always,

awed and humbled by your love and friendship.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. VITA

July 27, 1962 ...... Born — Monongahela, PA

1984 ...... B.F.A. Printmaking, Pennsylvania State University

1986 ...... M.A., Drawing and Painting, Purdue University

1995 ...... M.A., History of Art, The Ohio State University

1993-Present...... Graduate Teaching and Administrative Associate, The Ohio State University

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: History of Art

Italian Renaissance Art and Architecture Northern and Southern Baroque Art and Architecture Northern Renaissance Art

vii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page Abstract...... ii

Dedication...... iv

Acknowledgments...... v

Vita...... vii

List of Figures...... ix

Chapters:

1. Introduction...... 1

2. The Cult of Celebrity: A Thriving Market for Works by and about visual Artists...... 31

3. Renaissance and Early Baroque Artists Crafting Public Images: Flexibility in Autobiography and Self-Portraiture...... 60

4. Decapitation Self-portraits from 1500-1585: A Venetian Tradition...... 117

5. Decapitation Self-portraits in the Early Baroque Period, 1600-1625: Bologna, Rome, Florence,and Genoa...... 167

6. Conclusion...... 203

Appendix A: Questionable Decapitation Guise "Self-portraits" 208

Appendix B: Figures...... 226

Bibliography...... 279

viii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURES PAGE

1. Wenzel Hollar, engraving after Giorgione, Self-portrait as David meditating over the Bead of Goliath [Jaynie Anderson, Giorgione: the Painter of 'Poetic Brevity' (Paris and New York: Flammarion, 1997), 201 figure 125]... 226

2. Drawing after Giorgione, Self-portrait as David with Head of Goliath, accompanied by King Saul and Jonathan (London, British Library) (Jaynie Anderson, Giorgione: The Painter of ‘Poetic Brevity' (Paris and New York: Flammarion, 1997), 71 figure 35]...... 227

3. After Giorgione, David meditating on the head of Goliath (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum) [Jaynie Anderson, Giorgione: the Painter of 'Poetic Brevity, ' (Paris and New York: Flammarion, 1997), 313 figure 128]... 228

4. Engraving after Pordenone, Self-portrait in the guise of David [Catherina Furlan, II Pordenone (Milan: Electa, 1988), 324]...... 229

5. Caravaggio, David with the Head of Goliath (Rome, Galleria Borghese) [Postcard, Edizioni de Luca s.r.l su concessione M.B.C.A]...... 230

6. Cristofano Allori, Judith and Holofernes (Florence, Palazzo Pitti) [Catherine Puglisi, Caravaggio (London: Phaidon Press, 1998), 362 figure 181]...... 231

7. Titian, Salome (Rome, Galleria Doria Pamphilj)[Postcard].. 232

8. Palma Vecchio, Judith with the Head of Holofernes (Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi) [Philip Rylands, Palma Vecchio (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 220 figure 77]...... 233

9. Veronese, Judith and Holofernes (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum) [W. R. Rearick, The Art of Paolo Veronese 1528- 1588 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 149 figure 77]...... 234

10. Lavinia Fontana, Judith and Holofernes (Bologna, Museo Davia Bargellini) [Maria Teresa Cantaro, Lavinia Fontana Bolognese *pittora singolare" 1552-1614 (Rome: Jandi Sapi Editori, 1989), 197 figure 4a. 90]...... 235

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 11. Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith and her Maidservant (Florence, Pazallo Pitti) [Mary o. Garrard, Artemesia Gentileschi. The Image of a Female Hero in Italian Baroque Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), figure 278]...... 236

12. Simon Vouet, David with the Head of Goliath (Geona, Palazzo Bianco) [Jacques Thuillier, Vouet (Paris: Editions de la Reunion des musdes nationaux, 1990), 204 figure 11]...... 237

13. Gian Lornezo Bernini, Self-portrait as David with the Head of Goliath (Rome, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Palazzo Barbarini) [Maria Grazia Bernardini and Maurizio Fagiolo Dell'Arco, eds., Gian Lorenzo Bernini Regista del Barocco (Milan: Skira Editore, 1999), 271 figure 206]...... 238

14. Giorgione, Self-portrait as David (Brunswick, Herzog Anton-Ulrich Museum) [Jaynie Anderson, Giorgione: the Painter of 'Poetic Brevity' (Paris and New York: Flammarion, 1997), 67 figure 34] ...... 239

15. Engraved portrait of Pordenone (Frontispiece of his vita in Ridolfi's Maraviglie) [Carlo Ridolfi, Le Maraviglie dell'arte, ouvero. Le vite degli illustri pittori veneti, e dello Stato, ed. Giuseppe Vedova (Padova: Tipografia e Fanderia Cartallier, 1835-37)]...... 240

16. Titian, Self-portrait (Madrid, Prado) [Joanna Woods- Marsden, Renaissance Self-Portraiture: The Visual Construction of Identity and the Social Status of the Artist (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998), 166 figure 106]...... 241

17. Titian, Self-portrait (Berlin, Gemaldegalerie, Staatliche Museen) [Joanna Woods-Marsden, Renaissance Self-Portraiture The Visual Construction of Identity and the Social Status of the Artist (New Haven and London: Yale University Press 1998), 161 figure 103]...... 242

18. Engraved portrait of Titian (Frontispiece of his his Vita in Ridolfi's Maraviglie) [Carlo Ridolfi, Le Maraviglie dell'arte, ouvero. Le vite degli illustri pittori veneti, e dello Stato, ed. Giuseppe] Vedova (Padova: Tipografia e Fanderia Cartallier, 1835-37)]...... 243

19. Woodcut portrait of Palma Vecchio (Frontispiece of his Vita in Vasari's Vite) [Philip Rylands, Palma Vecchio (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 2]...... 244

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 20. Engraved portrait of Palma Vecchio (Frontispiece of his Vita in Ridolfi's Maraviglie) [Carlo Ridolfi, Le Maraviglie dell'arte, ouvero. Le vite degli illustri pittori veneti, e dello Stato, ed. Giuseppe Vedova (Padova: Tipografia e Fanderia Cartallier, 1835-37)]...... 245

21. Palma Giovio, Portraits of Jacopo Bassano, Paolo Veronese, and Pietre Malombra (Devonshire, Chatsworth) [James Byam Shaw, Old Master Drawings from Chatsworth (Meriden, Conn: Meridien Gravure Co. and Stinehour Press, 1969), cat. 46]...... 246

22. Engraved portrait of Veronese (Frontispiece of his his Vita in Ridolfi's Maraviglie) [Carlo Ridolfi, Le Maraviglie dell'arte, ouvero. Le vite degli illustri pittori veneti, e dello Stato, ed. Giuseppe Vedova (Padova: Tipografia e Fanderia Cartallier, 1835-37)J...... 247

23. Veronese, Marriage Feast a Cana (Paris, Musde du Louvre) [W. R. Rearick The Art of Paolo Veronese 1528-1588 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 12 figure 7]...... 248

24. Lavinia Fontana, Self-portrait at a Keyboard with a Servant (Rome, Galleria dell'Accademia di S. Luca) [Maria Teresa Cantaro, Lavinia Fontana bolognese “pittora singolare“ 1552-1614 (Rome: Jandi Sapi Editori, 1989), 72, 4a. 12]...... 249

25. Lavinia Fontana, Self-portrait in a Studio (Florence, Uffizi) [Maria Teresa Cantaro, Lavinia Fontana bolognese “pittora singolare" 1552-1614 (Rome: Jandi Sapi Editori, 1989), 86 figure 4a. 18]...... 250

26. Engraved portrait of Caravaggio (Frontispiece of his Vita in Bellori's Vite) [Walter Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955), 237]...... 251

27. Ottavio Leoni, Detail of portrait of Caravaggio (Florence, Biblioteca Marucelliana) [Catherine Puglisi, Caravaggio (London: Phaidon Press, 1998), frontispiece]... 252

28. Cristofano Allori, Self-portrait (Florence, Galleria degli uffizi) [Miles L. Chappell, Cristofano Allori 1577-1621 (Florence: Centro di, 1984), 75 figure 23]..... 253

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 29. Anonymous medalist, Portrait medallion of Artemisia Gentileschi (Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Munzkabinett) [R. Hard Bissell, Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), figure 99)...... 254

30. Vouet, Self-portrait (Lyon, Musde des Beaux-Arts) [Jacques Thuillier, Vouet (Paris: Editions de la Reunion des musdes nationaux, 1990), 227 figure 20]..... 255

31. Bernini, Self-portrait as a Youth (Rome, Galleria Borghese) [Maria G. Bernardini and Maurizio Fagiolo dell'Arco, eds., Gian Lorenzo Bernini: Regista del Barocco (Milan: Skira, 1999), 48 figure 3]...... 256

32. Vouet, Self-portrait (?) (Arles, Musde R6attu) [Jacques Thuillier, Vouet (Paris: Editions de la Reunion des musdes nationaux, 1990), 202 figure 10]..... 257

33. Bernini, Self-portrait, circa 1635 (Rome, Galleria Borghese) [Maria G. Bernardini and Maurizio Fagiolo dell'Arco, eds., Gian Lorenzo Bernini: Regista del Barocco (Milan: Skira, 1999), 51 figure 6]...... 258

34. Artemisia Gentileschi, Self-portrait (?) (Rome, Galleria Nazionale, Palazzo Barberini) [R. Ward Bissell, Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), figure 119]...... 259

35. Titian, Adoration of the Holy Trinity (Madrid, Museo del Prado) [Katherine T. Brown, The Painter's Reflection: Self-portraiture in Renaissance Venice 1458-1625 (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2000), figure 23]... 260

36. Titian, Madonna and Child with Saints Titian and Andrew (Piveve di Cadore, Chiesa Arcidiaconale) [Katherine T. Brown, The Painter's Reflection: Self-portraiture in Renaissance Venice 1458-1625 (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2000), figure 43]...... 261

37. Caravaggio, Martyrdom of Saint Matthew (Rome, S. Luigi dei Francesi) [Catherine Puglisi, Caravaggio (London: Phaidon Press, 1998), 155 figure 76]...... 1'62

38. Titian, Allegory of Time Governed by Prudence (London, National Gallery) [Katherine T. Brown, The Painter's Reflection: Self-portraiture in Renaissance Venice 1458- 1625 (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2000), figure 46]...... 263

39. Titian, Pieti (Venice, Accademia) [Peter Humfrey, Paintings in Venice (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), 213 figure 156]...... 264 xii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 40. Caravaggio, Self-portrait as Bacchus (Rome, Galleria Borghese) [Catherine Puglisi, Caravaggio (London: Phaidon Press, 1998), 54 figure 23]...... 265

41. Lavinia Fontana, The Apparition of the Madonna and Child to Saints (Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale) [Vera Fortunati, ed., Lavinia Fontana of Bologna 1552- 1614 (Milan: Electa, 1998), 103 figure 27]...... 266

42. Artemisia Gentileschi, Self-portrait as the Allegory of Painting (London, Kensington Palace) [Mary D. Garrard, Artemesia Gentileschi. The Image of a Female Hero in Italian Baroque Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), color plate 14] ...... 267

43. Bernini, David (Rome, Galleria Borghese) [Rudolf Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy 1600 to 1750, (New York: Penguin Books, 1982), 145 figure 72]...... 268

44. Jacapo Ligozzi, Judith (Florence, Palazzo Pitti) [John Shearman, "Cristofano Allori's Judith." Burlington Magazine CXXI/910 (Jan. 1979), 8 figure 8]...... 269

45. Donatello, detail of David and Goliath (Florence, Museo Nazionale del Bargello) [Author's Photo]...... 270

46. Giorgione, detail of Judith with the Head of Holofernes (St. Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum) [Jaynie Anderson, Giorgione: the Painter of ‘Poetic Brevity (Paris and New York: Flammarion, 1997), 199 figure 12]...... 271

47. Michelangelo, detail of Judith and Holofernes spandrel, (Vatican, Sistine Chapel ceiling) [Michael Hirst et. al., The Sistine Chapel: A Glorious Restoration (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1992), 36-37]...... 272

48. Lucas Cranach the Elder, Judith with the Head of Holofernes (Berlin, Staatliche Schloosser und Garten, Jadgschloss Grunewald) [Pascal Bonafoux, Portraits of the Artist: The Self-portrait in Painting (New York: Rizzoli, 1985), 56 figure 4]...... 273

49. Lavinia Fontana, Judith and Holofernes (London, Walpole Art Gallery) [Vera Fortunati, ed., Lavinia Fontana of Bologna, 1552-1550 (Milan: Electa, 1998), 25 figure 14]...... 274

50. Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Decapitating Holofernes (Naples, Museo di Capodimonte) [R. Ward Bissell, Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art (University Park: The Pennsylvania state University, 1999), Color Plate II]...... 275

xiii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 51. Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Decapitating Holofernes (Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi) [R. Ward Bissell, Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University, 1999), Color Plate XII]...... 276

52. Attributed to Nicolas Regnier, David with the Head of Goliath (Rome, Galleria Spada) [Roberto CannatA, La Galleria di Palazzo Spada, Roma (Rome: Instituto Poligraficoe Zecca dello Stato, Libreria dello State, 1995), 124 figure 66]...... 277

53. Benvenuto Garofalo, Self-Portrait as David (London, Private Collection) [Katherine A. Mclver, "Maniera, Music, and Vasari," Sixteenth Century Journal XXVlli/l (1997), 49 figure 1]...... 278

xiv

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

During the first decade of the sixteenth century Giorgione's

David with the Head of Goliath introduced the allegorical self-

portrait into Venetian Renaissance art.1- Vasari and early inventory

records indicate that Giorgione used his own features for the biblical

hero in the painting.2 In creating a guise self-portrait (an image in

which the artist presents him or herself as a mythological, biblical

or historical figure) as David, Giorgione produced the first of twelve

images in which Renaissance and early Baroque artists portrayed

themselves as protagonists in biblical scenes of beheading or its

1Jaynie Anderson, "The Giorgionesque Portrait: from Likeness to Allegory," in Giorgione; atti del Covegno internazionale di studio per il 5 ~o centenario della nascita, 29-31 maggio 1978 (Venice: Banca Popolare di Asolo e Montebelluna, 1979), 153-158.

2The work is generally identified as the now cut-down painting of Giorgione in Brunswick, while its original composition is believed to be preserved in Wenzel Hollar's engraving of 1650. The first mention of the self-portrait aspect of this painting was the 1528 Marino Grimani inventory. See Terisio Pignatti, Giorgione, trans. Clovis Whitfield (London: Phaidon Press, 1971), 145, citing P. Paschini, Le Collezioni archeologiche dei Grimani, in Atti della Pontificia Accademia, Rendiconti, V. (1926-27). In 1568 Giorgio Vasari, Le Vite dei piu eccellenti pittori, scultori e architetti, ed. Carlo L. Ragghianti (Milan and Rome: Rizzoli and C., Editori, 1942), 2: 38, noted that the painting, which contains a self-portrait of the artist, was in the Grimani collection.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. aftermath. Subsequent to Giorgione's invention, ten artists working

in Italy between 1505 and 1630 also produced decapitation self-

portraits, in which they presented themselves as either the victim

(Holofernes, John the Baptist, or Goliath) or the decapitator (Judith

or David). As a group, these images have been virtually neglected by

scholars.3 Although some scholars have analyzed the images in which

Giorgione appears as David,4 Caravaggio as Goliath,5 and Cristofano

Allori as Holofernes,6 the decapitation self-portraits by Pordenone,

Titian, Palma Vecchio, Veronese, Lavinia Fontana, Artemisia

Gentileschi, Bernini, and Vouet have not received such attention. In

^Joanna Woods-Marsden, Renaissance Self-portraiture: The Visual Construction of Identity and the Social Status of the Artist (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998), 117-119, Chapter 11: "Venice: An Isolated Experiment," considers Giorgione's work to be unique until Caravaggio painted his David. Anton W. A. Boschloo, "Perceptions of the Status of Painting: The Self-portrait in the art of the Italian Renaissance," in Modelling the Individual - Biography and Portrait in the Renaissance, ed. Karl Enenkel, et al. (Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1998), 51-73, also notes that Caravaggio was the first to follow Giorgione.

4Among the scholars discussing Giorgione's guise as David are Wendy Stedman Sheard, "Giorgione's Portrait Inventions c. 1500: Transfixing the Viewer," in Reconsidering the Renaissance, Mario. A. Dicesare, ed. (Binghamton NY: State University of New York at Binghamton, 1992), 150-153; Woods-Marsden, 117-119, and Katherine Brown, The Painter's Reflection: Self-portraiture in Renaissance Venice 1458-1625 (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 2000), 146-149.

^Numerous scholars have discussed Caravaggio's work including: Avigdor w. G. Pos&q, "Caravaggio's Self-portrait as the Beheaded Goliath," Kunsthistorisk Tidskrift 59 (1990), 169-182; Laurie Schneider, "Donatello and Caravaggio: The Iconography of Decapitation," American Imago 33 (1976), 76-97; E. Lucie-Smith, "The Self-portrait - a background," in Sean Kelly, A Self-portrait: a modern view, (London: Sarema Press, 1987), 11, and Howard Hibbard, Caravaggio (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1983), 262.

6See Miles Chappell, Cristofano Allori, 1577-1621 (Florence: Centro di della Edifimi srl, 1984), and John Shearman, "Cristofano Allori's Judith," Burlington Magazine CXXI/910 (1979), 3-9.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. contrast to these previous studies, this dissertation is the first

analysis of an unstudied but art-historically curious sub-genre of

self-portraiture.

Since self-portraits are lasting and personal statements about

their makers, the artist must have contemplated not only the immediate

reception of the image but also his own enduring legacy as

encapsulated in the painting. In these decapitation self-portraits

the makers' aims extend beyond providing us with a record of their

features because they have created artificial personas for themselves.

By assuming the role of a specific historical personage in these self-

portraits, the artists have quite literally merged their own

identities with those of biblical figures.

During the Renaissance and Early Baroque periods, the adoption

of a guise in art was not unusual. Vasari, and other biographers,

noted the occurrence of guise self-portraits in works of the period.

In general, artists portrayed themselves as apostles and saints.7

However, the presentation of oneself either as a murderer who displays

a decapitated head as a trophy, or as a severed head is truly a

bizarre phenomenon. So the central question becomes: Why would these

individual artists, working separately, choose to represent themselves

in such a peculiar way? In order to discover possible answers for

this question, we must consider not only the various stimuli

(individual, cultural, theoretical, artistic, etc.) that may have

7The particular guises that Vasari mentions are listed in Chapter Two. Vasari, in particular, placed unprecedented emphasis on listing self- portraits as they appeared in the collections of prominent citizens.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. prompted artists to produce these iconographically unusual images, but

also the diversity of messages conveyed by them.

The appearance of this type of portrait corresponds with other

developments associated with the fabrication of artists' identity and

with the growing interest in artists as subjects in art and

literature. We can therefore gain a fuller understanding of this

group of images by investigating them as part of the larger

Renaissance and early Baroque development of what is currently called

"self-fashioning".8 This term, self-fashioning, will be used to

designate the presentation of the sitter's identity as a self

consciously constructed and manipulated one. At this time the

individual, his physical description, accomplishments, and deeds,

emerged as an important subject in biographical history.

Consequently, this study will examine the paintings in relation to

artists' biographies and autobiographies, to art collections, and to

the burgeoning self-portrait tradition.

Since all of the decapitation self-portraits we shall study here

were produced in Italy between 1505-1630,® chapter two of this study

8According to Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-fashioning from More to Shakespeare (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1980), 3, in England the verb to fashion, the process of creating a distinct personal style or pattern, took on special connotations in the sixteenth-century when individuals had the power to impose a shape on their own identity and to represent their own nature or intentions, thereby designating the forming of a self.

®Later artists sporadically continued this tradition. Cesar Boetius van Everdinger. working in Alkmaar painted a self-portrait as David in 1650. See Cesar Boetius van Everdingen, "Selbstportrat des Kiinstiers als David, um 1650," in Das Kunstkabinett des Johann Caspar Lavater (Vienna: Genda Mraz and uwe Schogl, 1999), 256 figure 30. Johan Zoffany represented himself as David in 1756 (Melbourne, National

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. is an examination of the larger historical context in which the works

were produced. During this period, a market developed for works by

and about artists, who had achieved a certain celebrity and who had

become objects of interest.

Artists had begun to appear among lists of important community

members who brought fame to their cities as early as the mid

fourteenth century. About a century later, they became the subjects

of individual biographies, beginning with Ghiberti's Second

Commentary. Artists' biographies recorded the life histories of works

ascribed to, and professional activities of numerous architects,

painters and sculptors. Vasari's Vite was an important milestone in

this genre, which disseminated information about artists' lives to a

very broad audience.

In addition, Vasari also showed an unprecedented interest in

self-portraiture by noting the location of numerous self-portraits in

important collections, and the presence of self-portraits in larger

historical paintings. The widespread interest in Vasari's Vite,

coupled with a review of inventory records from important collections

of this period, indicates that there was a thriving market for works

of, by, and about artists. All of these factors helped to create an

increased demand for self-portraits as private patrons and art

academies began to incorporate painters' likenesses into their art and

portrait collections. In response, artists created representations of

Gallery of Victoria). Although he was German by birth, he worked in Rome where he could have encountered Caravaggio's David and Goliath. For more on this painting, see William L. Pressly, "Johan Zoffany as David the Anointed One," Apollo 141 (March 1995), 49-55.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. themselves, including guise self-portraits, that they deemed worthy of

being displayed in prominent collections and among images of their

peers. By exploring the complex relationship between artists'

biographies, collection practices, and self-portraiture, this chapter

will provide a background for an analysis of the decapitation self-

portraits .

In this early modern period, some artists wrote autobiographies

while a number of them produced self-portraits so that they would be

remembered in a manner dictated by themselves long after their deaths.

Chapter three examines examples of artists' autobiographies and self-

portraits in an effort to gain a more thorough understanding of how,

and why, they fashioned images of themselves. The end of the chapter

will be devoted to guise self-portraits: those in which the sitter

wears the garments and presents the attributes of a noteworthy person

from the past, and in which the sitter is given the opportunity to

project qualities that are traditionally associated with the

historical personage. The study of the impulses underlying these

self-referential works of art and the ideas associated with them will

provide a foundation for an investigation into the more unusual

decapitation gui3e self-portraits, twelve images that form a sub-genre

of the guise self-portrait category.

The material in chapters four and five moves from the more

general survey of self-fashioning to an examination of the twelve

decapitation self-portraits introduced at the end of the current

chapter. A chronological analysis of these images will focus on some

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. of the cultural, professional, and individual factors that might have

had an impact on their creation, as well as on the possible messages

and associations of each of the paintings. Consideration of

contemporary artistic philosophies and concerns regarding artistic

emulation, competition, imitation, and innovation will provide a

theoretical underpinning for this discussion and may illuminate the

motivation that led these artists to produce original portrayals of

religious themes, which had long-established iconographic traditions.

Since the early history of most of the paintings in this study is

unknown, it will be impossible to trace direct lines of influence

among these artists with certainty. However, by studying the

paintings in chronological order, by noting relationships among the

artists, and by considering other related artistic influences, it will

be possible to suggest some ways in which each artist could have

become aware of or even come in contact with earlier examples of this

unusual self-portrait type.

When I began this project, I compiled a list of twenty images in

which an artist had seemingly chosen to represent himself as a

protagonist in a decapitation scene. Early biographers and/or

inventory records indicated that six of these works included a self-

portrait: Giorgione as David in three versions (figures 1, 2 and 3),10

10See note 2 supra for information on the first version of Giorgione as David from the Grimani collection. In his Le maraviglie dell'arte, ouvero published in 1648, Carlo Ridolfi identified a second version of Giorgione as David in the Andrea Vendramin collection. The work is known today from a 1627 inventory drawing made after the painting that is currently housed in London's British Library. Figure 3, a David Meditating over the Head of Goliath, today in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum, was once in the collection of James, 3rd

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. II Pordenone as David (figure 4),11 Caravaggio as Goliath (figure

5),12 and Cristofano Allori as Holofernes (figure 6).13 various

twentieth-century scholars have identified figures in the remaining

fourteen works as self-portraits, but generally the identification is

noted with only a reference to a known self-portrait, without further

elaboration. I have examined the scholars' claims by comparing the

alleged self-portraits to known representations of the artists to

determine physiognomic similarities. I have eliminated nine works

because the visual and/or historical evidence does not seem to support

the identification of the figure as a self-portrait. I4

However, in twelve instances the visual evidence that an artist

painted him/herself in one of these historical identities seems very

compelling. In addition to the five images: one (or two) by Giorgione

Marquis of Hamilton. In the 1638 inventory of his collection, the work is described as Giorgione's self-portrait, “his picture made by himself." See Jaynie Anderson, Giorgione: the Painter of •Poetic Brevity' (Paris and New York: Flammarion, 1997), 313, citing K. Garas, "Die Entstehung der Galerie des Erzherzogs Leopold Wilhelm," Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sanmlungen in Wien LXIII (1967), 68.

11Caterina Furlan, II Pordenone (Milan: Electa, 1988), 324. Between 1786 and 1808, the Duke of Orleans' collection was catalogued and a Ritrattro del Pordenone in veste di David was listed. The original painting is now lost, but its format was recorded in an engraving made for the catalogue.

12Giovan Pietro Bellori, Vite de'Pittori, Scultori et Architetti moderni, published his identification of Caravaggio in 1672. The painting is now in Rome's Borghese Gallery.

13Filippo Baldinucci, Notizie del profeasori del disegno da Cimabue in qua published his identification of Allori in 1681. Allori made several versions of this painting including one in Florence's Pitti Gallery and one in the Queen's collection at Hampton Court, London.

14These works will be discussed in Appendix A.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. (figures 1 and 2), and one each by II Pordenone, Caravaggio, and

Allori, the core works for this study will include Titian as John the

Baptist (in his Salome, Rome, Doria-Pamphili Collection, figure 7);

Palma Vecchio as Holofernes (in Judith with the Head of Holofernes,

Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi, figure 8); Veronese as Holofernes (in

Judith and Bolofernes, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, figure 9);

Lavinia Fontana as Judith (in Judith with the Head of Holofernes,

Bologna, Bargellini Collection, figure 10); Artemisia Gentileschi as

Judith (in Judith and her Maidservant, Florence, Pitti, figure 11);

Simon Vouet as David (in David with the Head of Goliath, Genoa,

Galleria del Palazzo Bianco, figure 12), and Gian Lorenzo Bernini as

David (in David with the Head of Goliath, Rome, Galleria Nazionale,

figure 13).

The identifications of self-portraits in these twelve works are

somewhat problematic. First, not all of the paintings are extant.

For some, evidence of the original work survives only in written

descriptions and/or drawings or prints presumably based on the self-

portraits, making a visual comparison with known portraits difficult,

but not impossible. There is also some question about the accuracy of

the early written sources, since it might have merely been wishful

thinking on the owner's part that he in fact possessed an original

self-portrait by the prestigious artist. When possible, a comparison

with other images of the artist will strengthen these early

identifications. Still, there may be uncertainty about some of the

comparative portraits and self-portraits, since a number are found

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. only in either Ridolfi's Haraviglie or Vasari's Vite, and their visual

sources were not always confirmed or reliable, while we may presume

that these authors had sound evidence for choosing the portraits that

accompanied their biographies of artists, additional likenesses of

each artist will be considered to bolster the early biographers'

claims when available. Finally, many of the assumed guise self-

portraits are not documented, which means that there could be dispute

about their authorship. For each of the paintings in this study,

there is a general consensus among current scholars that the paintings

are autograph works unless otherwise noted.

Giorgione as David (version 1)

According to his first and only sixteenth-century biographer,

Vasari, and a sixteenth-century inventory report, Giorgione included

his own features in an image of David with the head of Goliath,

probably created between 1506 and 1510 (figures I).2-5 The first

mention of the painting is the 1528 Marino Grimani inventory where it

is described as «ritrato di Zorzon di sua mano fatto per David e

G o l i a » (the portrait of Zorzon (big George] painted by his own hand

15Woods-Marsden (1998), 119, notes that there is no way to securely date this painting within Giorgione's oeuvre, but that hypothetically it is a mature work and therefore belongs in the second half of the first decade of the sixteenth century. See also Ludwig Baldass: notes on the plates by Gunther Heinz, Giorgione, trans. J. Maxwell Brownjohn (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1965), 156-157.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. through [the subject of] David and Goliath).1® Vasari (1568) later

mentioned the work as being in the Venetian study of Giovanni Grimani:

"... tre bellissime teste a olio di sua mano nello studio del reverendissimo Grimani patriarca d'Aquileia, una fatta per David (e per quel che si dice, d il suo ritratto) con una zazzera come si costumava in que'tempi infino alle spalle, vivace e colorita che par di carne: ha un braccio ed il petto armato, col quale tiene la testa mozza di G o l i a (... three beautiful heads in oil by his hand in the study of the very Reverend Grimani, Patriarch of Aquileia, one he made of David (and from what they say, it is his own portrait) with long hair reaching to his shoulders, as was customary in that time; it is lively and colored so that it appears like flesh, and he has armor on his breast and on the arm, with which he holds the severed head of Goliath).17

The entire painting no longer survives; however, a self-portrait

of the artist in Brunswick (figure 14) is generally identified as the

now cut-down portrait that Vasari viewed in Grimani's house.1® The

engraver Coriolano may also have used the Brunswick painting as the

model for his portrait of Giorgione for the 1568 edition of Vasari's

L i v e s . Further, it is generally held that Wenzel Hollar preserved

the painting's original format in his engraving of 1650 (figure 1)

16P. Paschini, Le Collezioni archeologiche dei Grimani, in Atti della Pontificia Accademia, Rendiconti, V. (1926-27) quoted in Terisio Pignatti, Giorgione, trans. C. Whitfield (London: Phaidon Press, 1971), 145.

17Giorgio Vasari, Le Vite dei piu eccellenti pittori, scultori e architetti, ed. Carlo L. Ragghianti (Milan and Rome: Rizzoli and C., Editori, 1942), 2: 38. Vasari wrote after the artist's death with information presumably provided by two of the artist's pupils: Titian and Sebastiano del Piombo.

18The Brunswick painting shows the artist in armor, but the head of Goliath is missing.

^Pignatti (1971), 145.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. when he copied the canvas which was then in the van Verle collection

in Antwerp, presumably before it was cut. The print bears the

inscription

VERO RITRATTO DE GIORGONE DE CASTEL FRANCO da luy fat to come lo celebra il libro del VASARI. W. Hollar fecit ex collectione Johannis et Jocabi van Verle, 1650. F. van de Wyngarde excudit. (The True Portrait of Giorgione [sic] de Castel Franco painted by himself as Vasari's book describes. — Drawn by W. Hollar [from the picture] in the collection of Johann and Jacob van Verle, 1650. Engraved by F. van de Wyngarde).20

Giorgione as David (version two)

Giorgione was, by the seventeenth century, reputed to have made

a second self-portrait in the guise of David that was reproduced in a

1627 inventory drawing from the Vendramin collection (figure 2).21

The seventeenth-century Venetian biographer Carlo Ridolfi described

only one painting in the Vendramin collection, the self-portrait of

Giorgione as David. According to him:

"... si ritrasse [Giorgione] in forma di Davide con braccia ignude e corsaletto in dosso, che teneva il testone di Golia, haveva da una parte un Cavaliere con giuppa e baretta all 'antica

20As translated in Pignatti (1971), 145.

21Jaynie Anderson, Giorgione: the Painter of Poetic Brevity (Paris and New York: Flammarion, 1997), 319. Sloane Ms 4004 British Library, London. During his life, Andrea Vendramin (c. 1565-1629) had amassed a collection of statues, medals, vases and paintings that he housed in his palace at San Gregorio. In 1627, in an effort to catalogue his collection of approximately 140 paintings, he had drawings produced that illustrated his inventory and thirteen of them were based on paintings attributed to Giorgione. Today, the Vendramin collection has been dispersed and survives only in the manuscript drawings. See, Tancred Borenius, The Picture Gallery of Andrea Vendramin (London: Medici Society limited, 1923). Unfortunately, none of the paintings ascribed to Giorgione in the original collection can be located.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. e dall'altra un Soldato, qual Pittura cadi dopo molto giri in mano del Signor Andrea Vendramino."22 (... he portrayed himself [Giorgione] in the form of David with bare arms and a corslet [a piece of armor for the top part of the body] on his back, who held the head of Goliath, had to one side a gentleman with a jerkin and antique hat and to the other side a soldier; that painting fell after many turns in to the hands of Andrea Vendramin).

Il Pordenone as David

II Pordenone, an artist greatly influenced by Giorgione, is

reported to have also made his portrait in the guise of David. A

painting referred to as Ritratto del Pordenone in veste di David was

recorded in the collection of the Duke of Orleans, Paris.23 Around

the turn of the nineteenth-century, Maviez, who cataloged the Duke's

collection, recorded the original painting (now lost) in an engraving,

(figure 4).24 In it a half-length figure of David has a broad, oval

head, a high forehead, thin eyebrows, large eyes, a long straight nose

and thin lips that curl upward at their outer edges. Pordenone's

features sure known today from the engraving that serves as the

frontispiece to his biography in Ridolfi's Maraviglie (figure 15). In

this engraving the artist is shown with a thinner face but with the

22Carlo Ridolfi, Le Maraviglie dell'arte, owero, 1: 83 cited by Borenius, 22 and Anderson (1997), 319.

23Furlan (1988), 324. When the Duke's collection was catalogued between 1786 and 1808, Maviez produced engravings after the paintings, including Pordenone's painting.

24Caterina Furlan, "Tra Giorgione e il Pordenone: a proposito di alcuni dipinti gii nella collezione del duca d'Orleans," in Giovanni Antonio Pordenone: Giornata di studio per il Pordenone, ed. P. Ceschi Lavagetto (Piacenza: Artegrafica Silva, 1981 [1982]), 17.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. same high forehead, thin eyebrows, large wide-set eyes and straight

nose that David has in the engraving of the painting from the duke's

collection. In the Ridolfi portrait, a moustache masks Pordenone's

mouth, yet his other facial characteristics do resemble those of the

engraved David.

Based on the youthful, unlined face of the sitter, it can be

surmised that Pordenone painted the image when he was in his twenties,

which would correspond to a date in the first or early second decade

of the sixteenth c e n t u r y . 25 it is probable that the painting was

created around 1508, when the art of Pordenone reflected a strong

influence of Giorgione.2®

Titian as John the Baptist

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, scholars have

proposed that Titian painted his own features in the decapitated head

of John the Baptist in a painting currently in the Doria-Pamphili

25The exact date of Pordenone's birth is unknown, but most scholars agree that he was born circa 1483-1484. See S. J. Freedberg, Fainting in Italy 1500-1600, 3rd ed. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993), 291; Peter Humfrey, Painting in Renaissance Venice (New Haven and London: Yale University Press 1996), 288; and Jane Turner, ed., Dictionary of Art, 1996 ed., s.v. "Pordenone (Sacchis, de] (Giovanni Antonio)," by Paolo Casadio, 249-251. The painting's probable date of 1508 is supported by a letter addressed to Cosimo III de'Medici of 1682 in which Matteo del Teglio mentions a portrait of the Fruli native that was "... fat to de se stesso all’eth di 24 anni" (made by the artist when he was 24 years old) and that it was "...in forma di David a guisa di Giorgione" (in the form of Giorgione in the guise of David).

2®Casadio, 249, and Freedberg, 291.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Collection, Rome (figure 7).27 Titian's Salome (or Herodias; see p.

144, below) is generally dated around 1515 when the artist was about

thirty years old, an age that corresponds to that of John the Baptist

in the painting.28 Titian's known self-portraits are from about a

half century later, yet the features in these mature works seem

compatible with those of the much younger John the Baptist.

In the Prado Self-portrait (figure 16) as well as in the Berlin

Self-portrait (figure 17), Titian has a distinct curve to his forehead

with a receding hairline, somewhat sunken cheeks and high cheekbones,

a thin aquiline nose with an indentation at the root and a slight bump

in the middle, and a full lower lip. Moreover, in the Berlin Self-

portrait, Titian has an irregularly shaped ear with a particularly

heavy earlobe, a feature that is very distinct in the engraving based

on the Berlin Self-portrait in Carlo Ridolfi's Le Maraviglie dell'Arte

(figure 18).29 All of these features appear in the head of John the

Baptist. The visual evidence strongly supports the theory that John

the Baptist is a self-portrait of Titian.

27Louis Hourticq, La Jeunesse de Titien (Paris: Hachette, 1919), 138 and 276, quoted and accepted by Erwin Panofsky, Problems in Titian, mostly iconographic, (New York: New York University Press, 1969), 43. The conjuncture was also accepted by Lodovico Foscari, Iconografia di Tiziano (Venice: Edizioni Sormani, 1935) 32, and Shearman (1979), 9.

28For dating, see Paul Joannides, "Titian's Judith and its context: The iconography of decapitation," Apollo 135 (march 1992), 164 figure I, and Harold E. Wethey, The Paintings of Titian — complete Edition (New York: Phaidon Press, 1969-71), 1: 157 figure 137.

28Carlo Ridolfi, Le Maraviglie dell'Arte, ed. Giuseppe Vedova (Padova: Cartallier, 1835-37), 1: 194.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Palma Vecchio as Holofernes

Palma Vecchio may have depicted himself as the beheaded general

in his Judith (Florence, Uffizi, figure 8). Palma's features are

known today through the woodcut in Vasari's vite (figure 19) and the

engraved portrait in Ridolfi's Maraviglie (figure 20). In the

painting, Judith holds the severed head almost parallel to the picture

plane, which allows a critical comparison to be made with the engraved

portraits. The Vite woodcut is of poor quality and it does not give

much information about Palma's appearance.30 In the print, Palma's

most striking feature is a long nose with an extremely broad bridge

that begins at the root and continues for two-thirds of the nose' s

length. This distinctive feature also appears in the engraved

portrait of Palma in the Maraviglie.31 In this portrait, other

prominent features also appear, such as a very thin, long face, large

eyes with arcing eyebrows, sunken cheekbones, broad forehead, large,

wide nostrils, full lips and circles under the eyes.32 All of these

30According to Charles Hope, "Historical Portraits in the Lives and in the Frescoes of Giorgio Vasari,” in Giorgio Vasari, tra decorazione ambientale e storiografia artistica, ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1985), 321-338, many of the woodcuts for the second edition of his Lives were based on portraits and self-portraits of artists identified by Vasari, who could have recognized many sixteenth-century artists represented in paintings, or who could have asked the artist responsible for the work or his pupils about the identification of individuals appearing in paintings. Among Vasari's cited Venetian sources of information were the painters Titian and Paris Bordone, both of whom would certainly have known Palma personally.

31Ridolfi (1835-37), 176.

32An anonymous painting of Palma Vecchio is currently in Vasari's Corridor in the Uffizi and it has all of these distinctive features.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. characteristics appear in the head of Holofernes, indicating that the

artist probably did indeed use his own features when portraying the

general.

Scholars generally date the painting to 1525-1528, which would

place the work relatively late in the artist's c a r e e r . 33 if, as

Vasari reported, Palma died at age forty-eight in July of 1528, then

he would have been in his mid- to late-forties when he painted this

image, an age that seems compatible with that of Holofernes in the

painting.34

Paolo Veronese as Holofernes

Paolo Veronese may have also used his self-portrait for the

figure of Holofernes in his Judith, now in the Kunsthistorisches

Museum, Vienna (figure 9).35 Judith holds the severed head of the

general at a foreshortened angle to the spectator, and the lower

portion of his face is obscured by a beard and mustache. As John

Shearman has shown, Holofernes' features are compatible with the

inscribed drawing at Chatsworth by Palma Giovane of Paolo Veronese in

33Philip Rylands, Palma Vecchio (Cambridge, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, Sydney: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 220 no. 77, lists previous scholars and their dating of the work.

34Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, trans. Gaston du C. de Vere (New York and Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), 1: 947, records that Palma died in Venice at the age of forty- eight. Rylands (1992), 220, notes that the work was first recorded in 1631 when the Medici acquired the painting from the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino.

35Shearman (1979), 9.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. old age (figure 21) and with the engraved portrait in Ridolfi's

Maraviglie (figure 22).36 Also, Veronese included a self-portrait in

his Marriage Feast at Cana (figure 23, Louvre, Paris) and made a self-

portrait now in the Library of the Ecole des Beaux-arts, Paris. In

these three portraits of Veronese, the artist appears to have very

distinctive features including: large, deep-set eyes underscored by

heavy circles, a broad forehead with receding hair, thin, arching

eyebrows with conspicuous bumps between them, and small pursed lips

that are partially concealed by a full mustache and beard. His most

striking feature is an extraordinarily long, thick arched nose with an

indented root, a prominent bump on the bridge, and a hooked end.

The painting may have been part of a suite of four large

paintings commissioned by Duke Carlo Emanuele I of Savoy (1562-

1630),37 and its date oscillates between 1575 and 1583, a period in

36Ibid.

37W. R. Rearick, The Art of Paolo Veronese: 1528-1588 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 148-150, and Howard Coutts, "Veronese's paintings for Carlo Emanuele I of Savoy," Burlington Magazine 127 (May 1985), 300-302. The series included a Solomon and Sheba, Finding of Moses (both in the Galleria Sabauda, Turin), David and Goliath (now lost) as well as a Judith and Holofernes. Sketches of Judith and Holofernes, David and Goliath, and the Finding of Moses, that may be related to the project, appear on the back of a letter addressed to Veronese and dated September 18, 1582, formerly in the collection of Robert von Hirsch. Further, modelli that exist for a Judith and a David (See Rearick, figures 48 and 49), are believed to be related to the four painting commission. The modello and sketch for Judith and Holofernes have the same format, however the figures were reversed in the Vienna version perhaps to accommodate the setting and placement of canvases on the wall. Also, as Rearick has observed, the modello and Vienna canvas sure strikingly similar in costume, in Judith's coiffure, in the servant's turban, in the position of Holofernes, and in the placement of the tent flaps. These characteristics suggest to Rearick and Coutts that the picture is a surviving fragment of King Carlo Emanuele's mural-size canvases that

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. which the artist would have been in his late forties to mid-fifties.38

If, as the visual evidence indicates, this is a self-portrait of the

artist, then he may have altered one of his own traitss, or the other

portraits may have been taken when he was older, as Holofernes has a

slightly lower hairline and more hair than Veronese has in the other

portraits.

Lavinia Fontana as Judith

Lavinia Fontana appears to have represented herself as Judith in

her Judith with the Bead of Holofernes (Bologna, Bargellini

Collection, figure 10). Using gold paint, she signed and dated the

work in the lower left of the canvas « LAVINIA / FONTANA / DE ZAPPIS /

FECE / 1600».39 On the basis of a comparison with a small self-

portrait, John Shearman was the first to propose that Judith's

features are remarkably similar to Lavinia's own.40 Judith/Lavinia

were cut down in 1605 when they were moved to a new location in the palace.

38Rearick, 148-150.

3^Eleanor Tufts, "Lavinia Fontana, Bolognese Humanist," in Le Arti a Bologna e in Emilia dal XVI al XVII Secole, ed. Andrea Emiliani (Bologna: CLUEB, 1982), 133, who asserts that Lavinia made 135 documented works. According to Maria Teresa Cantaro, Lavinia Fontana bolognese, "pittora singolare" 1552-1614 (Milan: Jandi Sapi Editori, 1989), 198, the painting first appeared in the Bargellini inventory of 1924. See also Vera Fortunati, ed., Lavinia Fontana (Milan: Electa, 1994), 205 figure 71.

40Shearman (1979), 9, believes the Judith cam be compared with the small copper tondo self-portrait in the Uffizi. Fortunati, 35, claims that "as a model of a virtuous woman, Judith's look is in between that of a noble-woman's portrait and an ideal self-portrait of the artist." Angela Ghirardi, "Women Artists of Bologna: The Self-portrait and the Legend from Caterina Vigri to Anna Morandi Manzolini (1413-1774)," in

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. gazes directly at the viewer with a proud and serious expression on

her full, round face with its fleshy cheeks and high forehead with a

softened, but explicit, widow's peak. She has large, heavy-lidded

blue eyes, a long nose with a round, somewhat bulbous end, thin lips

and a receding rounded chin

Fontana preserved her own features in two painted self-portraits

produced in the artist's mid-twenties (Rome, Galleria Accademia di San

Luca, figure 24, and Florence, Uffizi, figure 2 5 ) . Like the Judith,

the self-portraits are in three-quarter profile view, and they share

the oval shape of the head, the relative proportions of the facial

features, the size and shape of the nose and mouth as well as the

heavy lidded-eyes with the Bargellini Judith. Nevertheless, if

Lavinia did base Judith's appearance on her own features, then she

slightly modified them. Judith's hair recedes further at the temple

than Lavinia's own hairline, and Judith's eyes appear to be blue while

Lavinia's are brown in the painted self-portraits. Also, Judith is

dated 1600 when the artist would have been forty-eight years old, yet

Judith's unlined and wrinkle-free face resembles Lavinia's when she

was twenty years younger.

Lavinia of Bologna 1552-1614, trans. Isella F. O'Rourke (Milan: Electa 1998), 35, alleges that Fontana's image is perhaps hidden in the countenance of Judith in the Bargellini painting.

41Lavinia also drew herself at an unknown but clearly later date (New York, The Pierpont Morgan Library).

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Caravaggio as Goliath

The earliest reference to Caravaggio's David with Goliath's Bead

(Rome, Galleria Borghese, figure 5)42 is a 1613 payment for a frame

"for the painting of David with the head of the giant Goliath," when

it was in Scipione Borghese's collection.43 Manilli, who inventoried

the contents of the Villa Borghese in 1650, was the first author to

refer to the Goliath as a self-portrait of Caravaggio. He wrote that

Caravaggio "in quella testa voile ritrarre se stesso, e nel David

ritrasse il suo Caravaggino" (in that head [of Goliath] wanted to

portray himself and in the David he portrayed "il suo Caravaggino”).44

Bellori, in 1672, also referred to Caravaggio's self-portrait as

David, writing:

"Per lo medesimo Cardinale dipinse ... l'altra mezza figura di Davide, il quale tiene per li capelli la testa di Golia che d il suo proprio ritratto, impugnando la spada, lo figuro da un Giovine discoperto con una spalla fuori della camicia" (For the same Cardinal [Scipione Borghese] he painted ... the other half- length figure of David, who holds by the hair the head of Goliath, which is his own portrait, he [David] grasps the sword, and is shown as a bareheaded youth with one shoulder outside of his shirt).45

42Inscribed (indistinctly, on the blade of the sword): H [or M] AC [or S] 0 [or G].

43Paola Della Pergola, Galleria Borghese - I dipinti (Rome: Libreria dello stato, 1959), 79 no. 114, quoted by Mina Gregori, "David with the Head of Goliath," in The Age of Caravaggio (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1985), 340-341 figure 97.

44Walter Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955), 202.

43My translation of Giovanni Pietro Bellori, Le Vite de'Pittori, Scultori et Architetti moderni. a Facsimile of the first edition, Rome, 1672 (New York: Broude International Editions, 1980), 208.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. As noted by Friedlaender, Goliath's facial type does seem to

correspond to Gigli's description of Caravaggio: a pallid face, a mass

of curly hair, and deep-set eyes.46 Moreover, Goliath's features are

close to Caravaggio's own in the engraved frontispiece for Bellori's

Vite (figure 26, published 1672) and in Ottavio Leoni's Portrait of

Caravaggio (ca. 1621-25, figure 27, Florence, Uffizi). in all three

works, Caravaggio is shown with a broad face, strong cheekbones, a

broad nose with flaring nostrils, thick lips, and significant circles

under his large, deep-set eyes with heavy upper lids and dense

eyebrows.

Because Bellori claimed that Caravaggio painted the image for

Scipione Borghese, it has traditionally been dated between May 16,

1605, when Scipione arrived in Rome, and the end of May 1606, when

Caravaggio left the city.47 More recently, scholars, using stylistic

criteria, have placed the work in Caravaggio's late Neapolitan phase

around 1610.4®

46Giulio Cesare Gigli, La Pittura trionfante, 1615 quoted in Friedlaender, 203. Friedlaender, 253, also notes that according to Bellori, Caravaggio's way of working corresponded to his physiognomy with its dark complexion and eyes, black hair and eyebrows. These same features are evident in his Self-portrait as Bacchus and his self-portrait in the Meurtyrdom of St. Matthew. Caravaggio is cited as the author of the David and Goliath in the Borghese collection inventory of 1693 and in subsequent inventories and guides to the collection.

47Bellori reports that Caravaggio also painted a Supper at Emmaus and a Saint Jerome for the Cardinal.

48Avigdor W. G. Pos&q, "Caravaggio's Self-Portrait as the Beheaded Goliath," Kunsthistorisk Tidskrift 59 (1990), note 1, for scholars who

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Cristofano Allori as Holofernes

Cristofano Allori made several versions of Judith and

Holofernes: Cardinal Alessandro Orsini's version of circa 1612 to

circa 1616/18 which remains unidentified;49 the Hampton Court version

dated 1613, and the Palazzo Pitti painting on canvas of circa 1616-20

(figure 6 ) . without noting to which version he was specifically

referring, Baldinucci documented the fact that Holofernes is a self-

portrait of Allori. Baldinucci noted:

"... fin che invaghitosi tenacissimamente di certa bellissima donna detta la Mazzafirra ... Ma giacchS abbiamo fatta menzione di costei, e da sapersi, che uno de'piu singulari quadri, che uscissero dalle sue mani fu quel tanto nominato della Juditta. Ritrasse egli al vivo nella faccia di lei 1 'effigie della Mazzafirra; tiene questa colla destra mano una spada sguainata, e dall'altra sostiene per li capelli la testa d'Oloferne." (... he fell deeply in love with a very beautiful woman called La Mazzafirra ... Since we have mentioned la Mazzafirra, we should also tell that he made use of her face, portrayed from the life, to represent Judith in one of the oddest pictures which ever

adhere to the traditional dating, and note 2 for scholars who favor the later date.

49Shearman (1979), 4-5, has reconstructed the history of this painting based on contemporary letters, inventory records, and Baldinucci's writings. According to Shearman, Francesco Scannelli's 1657 inventory of the Orsini collection lists Allori's Judith. He further notes that the last listing for the work was in an anonymous guide of 1664.

50Other replicas of this version exist in the Collezione Liechtenstein, Vaduz; in a Florentine private collection, and in a Newport News Virginia collection. See Miles Chappell, Cristofano Allori, 1577-1621 (Florence: Centro di della Edifimi srl, 1984), 81, for illustrations of these images. Shearman (1979), 4, observed that the painting is mentioned in a letter of April 22, 1620 to the Grand Duke listing all pictures that Allori had begun for him including ”un quadro in tela dentrovi una Giuditta.” In 1626 the not quite finished work was given to Cardinal Carlo de'Medici. In 1666, upon the death of the Cardinal, the painting was inventoried and on June 3, 1967 it was returned to the Palazzo Pitti. Shearman (1979), 4 note 17, determined that in the 1654 Uffizi inventory, another Judith, this one painted on copper, was attributed to Cristofano Allori.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. came from his hand, she holds an unsheathed sword with her right hand, and with the other holds the hair of the head of Holofernes.)51

According to Baldinucci, Allori "dipinse se stesso in quel quadro per

Oloferae" (painted himself in the image of Holofernes) and "la faccia

d'una vecchia, che si vede dietro alia persona della Juditta adorna

con un bel panno bianco, dicesi, che fusse tolta al vivo dalla madre

della medesima Mazzafirra." (the face of an old woman, who is behind

Judith wearing a beautiful white cloth, it is reported, has been taken

from life from the mother of the same Mazzafirra.)52

Allori seems to have depicted himself as the beheaded Holofernes

in both the Hampton Court and Pitti paintings.53 Allori's features

are known today from a self-portrait in Florence (Galleria degli

Uffizi, figure 28),54 a bust-length image that shows the artist with a

51Filippo Baldinucci, Notizie dei professori del disegno da Cimabue in Qua, ed. F. Ranalli (Florence: V. Bat&lli e Compagni, 1845-1847), 3: 726. Baldinucci was first published in 1681. Rudolf and Margot Wittkower, Born Under Saturn (New York: Random House, 1963), 160-161, translated part of this passage. See Shearman (1979), 4 note 9, for speculation about the true identity of La Mazzafirra.

52Baldinucci (1845-1847), 727. Shearman (1979), 3 and notes 4 and 5, claims that Baldinucci would seem to be a reliable source for this information since he owned the painted modello for the head of the old woman-servant and one of the preparatory drawings for the picture, and he copied other sketches for the work.

53Mary D. Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi. The image of a Female Hero in Italian Baroque Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 299, asserts that Allori also changed the features of the Holofernes to show the generic concept of Mem as victim of Woman.

54Chappell (1977), 21, also sees a self-portrait in the youth of Allori' s The Blessed Giovanni Manetto dell 'Antella Healing a Crippled, Deaf and Mute Youth (1602, Florence, SS Annuziata, Cappella dell’Antella).

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. long, thin face, large, close-set eyes, a furrowed brow, and well-

groomed, undulating eyebrows with a heavy wrinkle between them. He

also has a long nose, broad at its base with a crease at the root and

with a sizable bump on the dorsum, which gives the appearance of

having been broken at some point. His large, full lips are partially

hidden by shadow created by the mustache and beard. Both the Pitti

and the Hampton Court Holofernes have these basic features, although

the face and its component parts seem slightly compressed in the Pitti

image.

Artemisia Gentileschi as Judith

There has been some speculation that Artemisia Gentileschi,

whose features are known today from two undisputed portraits, may have

assumed the guise of Judith in the Judith and Her Maidservant in the

Pitti Palace (Florence, figure 11) and/or in other paintings.55

Scholars are divided about the date of this painting, some surmise

that Artemisia painted Judith early in her career before leaving Rome

towards the end 1612 and others believing that she created the work

early in her Florentine period circa 1614.56

55Boschloo, 59; Pascal Bonafoux, Portraits of the Artist: The Self- portrait in Painting (New York: Rizzoli, 1985), and 57. Shearman (1979), 9, sees Artemesia's features in the Naples Judith, and Garrard (1989), 313, notes that the Judith in both the Naples and the Uffizi versions of Judith are not unquestionably self-portraits, but Abra's features seem closer to the artist's. For a discussion of these identifications please see Appendix A.

56See R. Ward Bissell, Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1999), 198, for scholars1 opinions about the date. The painting has been in the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Today, two portraits of Artemisia, a bronze portrait medallion

by an anonymous medalist (figure 29, Berlin, Staatliche Museen,

Miinzkabinett) and Jerome David's engraved Portrait of Artemisia

Gentileschi (Paris, Biblioth&que National, Cabinet des Estampes),57

preserve her visage. The medal is particularly helpful in this

investigation since on its face the artist appears in strict profile,

as Judith is shown in the painting. In all three works she has a

full, round face with a high, sloping forehead and a ridge at the

brow, slightly arched eyebrows, and a marked fleshiness between the

brow and the heavy lids of her large, round eyes. She has a long,

straight nose with a very slight indentation about two-thirds of the

way down its profile and a small bulbous tip. There is a relatively

small area of flesh between her pursed but full lips and the sprouting

of her rounded, double chin. Also, she has wavy, loose, chin-length

hair parted in the center with short bangs, while the hair in the back

of her head has been pinned back. Because the Pitti Judith's features

Palazzo Pitti since it was first recorded there in 1638 as a work by the hand of Artemisia.

57The figure is surrounded by an oval band inscribed "ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI ROMANA FAMOSISSIMA PITTRICE, ACCAD. Ne'Desiosi". Flanking either side of the oval inscription are the words "Artem. Pinx." and "H. David F." There are also two scrolls beneath the image. The top one is inscribed "EN PICTVRAE MIRACVLVM / INVIDENDVM FACILIVS QVAM IMITANDVM." Further, according to Bissell (1999), 227 the bottom one reads "A1 molto lll.re et Ecc.®® Sign.re Gioseppe Marini = H. David sculpt. DD.” while Gerrard maintains that the work is not necessarily based on a self-portrait, Bissell insists that the engraving is based on a now lost self-portrait that was delineated by David (H. David Sculpt. DD) before he engraved it.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. so strongly mimic those of Artemisia, it is likely that the artist

assumed the guise of the biblical heroine in this painting.

Simon Vouet as David

Simon Vouet seems to have portrayed himself as the biblical hero

in David with the Head of Goliath (Genoa, Galleria del Palazzo Bianco,

figure 12).58 Judging by the style, Vouet's David was probably

painted around 1621 when the French artist, who was living and working

in Italy, was about thirty years old.59

David's distinguishing features include curly, somewhat unruly

hair, a full, oval face and round chin, large dark bulging eyes with

prominent upper and lower lids, thin arching eye brows, a long

straight nose with flaring nostrils, and full fleshy lips. Vouet's

58Bonafoux, 56, questions if David could be a self-portrait. Jacques Thuiller, Vouet (Paris: Editions de la Reunion des musdes nationaux, 1990), 204 figure 11, indicates that there is a possible reference to this painting in a letter from Vouet to Dal Pozzo of May 20, 1621. Vouet stated that he was retained in Genoa, where he took a sojourn from May until October 1621, and where he had to execute some paintings that include a Saint Catherine, a Judith and a David, three paintings that remain in Genoa even today. Robert de Cotte (Journal of the architect's trip through Italy in 1689-90, Bib. Nat., Ms. Fr. 14663-64), mentioned a painting of David by Vouet in the palace of Gaetano Cambiaso. The painting was also mentioned by G. Ratti, Istruzione di quanto puo' vedersi di piu bello in Genova (Genoa, 1780), 268. Both works are quoted by William R. Crelly, The Paintings of Simon Vouet (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1962), 163 no. 36. Crelly, 163 no. 36, notes that the painting is not signed and that there is no documentary support for the traditional attribution, but it is generally considered to be an autograph painting by Vouet.

59The exact date of Vouet's birth is unknown, but he was baptized in Paris on January 9, 1590 at the church of Saint-Jeane-en-Greve. Vouet's baptismal certificate was published by A. Jal, Dictionnaire critique de biographie et d'histoire (Paris, 1867), 1288, and quoted by Crelly, 276 - Appendix, II.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. own facial characteristics are extraordinarily close to those of the

Genoa David, so much so as to leave little for doubt that it is a

self-portrait. They can be seen in his self-portrait in Lyon (figure

30, Mus£e des Beaux-Arts) and portraits of him later in life by other

painters and engravers.60

Gian Lorenzo Bernini as David

In Gian Lorenzo Bernini's David with the Head of Goliath (Rome,

Galleria Nazionale, figure 13), generally dated between 1625 and 1635,

the figure of David seems also to be a self-portrait.61 Bernini's

60Portraits of Vouet were made by artists including: Frangois Tortebat, Versailles, chateau - painting; engravings by Esme de Boulonois, Frangois Perrier, and Van Vorst after Van Dyck, and a drawing by Ottavio Leoni (Karlsruhe, staatliche Kunsthalle, Kupferstich-Kabinett).

61For those who identify this work as a self-portrait, see william L. Pressly, "Johan Zoffany as David the Anointed One," Apollo 141 (March 1995): 53 note 19; Charles Scribner III, Gianlorenzo Bernini (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991), 76; Poseq (1990), 181 note 56; Lorenza Mochi Onori and Rossella Vodret Adamo, La Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica: Regesto delle didascalie (Rome: Palombi, 1989), 101; and Maurizio e Marcello Fagiolo dell'Arco, Bernini: un introduzione al gran teatro del barocco (Rome: Mario Bulzoni, 1967), figure 37. Filippo Baldinucci, The Life of Bernini, trans. Catherine Engass (University Park and London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1966), 15. As Baldinucci reported, Pope Urban VIII, who was determined that during his pontificate Rome would produce "another Michelangelo," encouraged Bernini, a sculptor, to learn the additional arts of architecture and painting. For two years Bernini studied painting. Baldinucci reported that Bernini painted over 150 images during his career, but only a handful are recognized today, including this David, first documented in the Chigi inventory of 1658. See Jane Turner, ed., Dictionary of Art, 1996 ed., s.v. "Bernini: Painting and Drawing," by Rudolf Preimesberger with Michael P. Mezzatesta, 833-834. They list Bernini's surviving paintings as comprising two self- portraits, a few portraits, the Galleria Nazionale David, and an image of Saints Andrew and Thomas. There are in fact several other self- portraits of Bernini.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. features are recorded in early and late portraits, and they share many

characteristics with the youthful David. In the early painted Self-

portrait (Rome, Galleria Borghese, figure 31) of 1623, the artist is

shown with a long, narrow face ending in a square chin with a slight

indentation in the center, wavy hair, a strong brow, deep-set, dark

eyes, a long, thick nose with a discernible bump at the bridge, as

well as full, thick lips under a heavy mustache. The mustache is the

only feature not shared with David. The same features also appear in

his Self-portrait drawing in Windsor Castle of 1665 and in an engraved

portrait by A. van Westerhout after G. B. Gaulli, of 1680, both of

which show Bernini at an advanced age. David appears youthful, and if

this is a self-portrait dating to the 1620's or 30's, then it would

have been painted when the artist was in his mid-twenties to mid

thirties.62

Bernini's is the last of the twelve surviving, verifiable

decapitation self-portraits produced in Italy between 1505 and 1635.

By challenging the assumption that these decapitation self-portraits

(and other forms of self-portraiture) were produced mainly as

documents of social status, or as purely commemorative works,6^ this

62Scribner, 76, affirms that the painting's date has oscillated between 1625 and 1650, but he believes that the style suggests a date between 1630-35. Preimesberger, 833, writes that the painting dates sometime between the mid-1620's and mid-30's; while Onori and Adamo, 101; and Fagiolo dell'Arco, figure 37, place the date at circa 1625 because David's features correspond to those of the artist recorded in his self-portraits from about the same time.

6-^Gunter Schewikhart, "Das Selbstbildnis im 15 Jahrhundert," in Italieische Friihrenaissance und Nordeuropaisches Mittelaeter, ed. J. Poeschke (Munich: Hirmer Verlag Miinchen, 1993), 11-39, and Woods- Marsden (1998) contend that the artists wished to raise their social

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. study will demonstrate the versatility of this sub-genre of guise

self-portraiture, which had the potential to convey a broad range of

ideas. This examination will show that these eleven artists, working

in an artistic culture that valued creative invention, the imitation

of nature, and emulation of others, created their decapitation self-

images to make individual and permanent statements about themselves,

their artistic practices, and their place within the Italian art

world.

status with self-portraiture. John-Pope Hennessy, The Portrait in the Renaissance (Princeton University Press, 1963), 293, suggests that the underlying aim of self-portraiture is to record the features for posterity.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 2

THE CULT OF THE CELEBRITY: A THRIVING MARKET FOR WORKS BY AND ABOUT

VISUAL ARTISTS

During the Renaissance and Early Baroque periods, certain

Italian artists achieved the status of celebrity. Their personal

circumstances and professional output became subjects for widely-read

books that comprised biographies of numerous artists, and at the same

time their likenesses were being collected by patrons. In this

environment artists fashioned images of themselves that they deemed

acceptable for display in important private or public collections. By

examining the complex relationship between artists' biographies,

collection practices, artists' likenesses, and self-portraiture, this

chapter seeks to provide a context in which decapitation self-

portraits can be situated.

It was during the early Renaissance that the individual, and

most importantly his physical description, accomplishments, and deeds,

emerged as an important subject in art and literature.1 In Italy the

^•Petrarch wrote his autobiographical Letter to Posterity in 1368. See Karl Enenkel, "Modelling the Humanist: Petrarch's Letter to Posterity and Boccaccio's Biography of the Poet Laureate," in Modelling the Individual: Biography and Portraiture in the Renaissance, ed. Kauri Enekel et. al. (Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1998), 13. Giorgio Vasauri, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, trans. Gaston 31

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. rise in the importance of the individual as a topic for written and

visual presentation was largely promoted by humanism introduced during

the twelfth century.2 Humanists were first and foremost men of

letters and they fostered a new and intensified interest in the

classical literary forms of the biography and autobiography, written

works celebrating the achievements of outstanding human beings.2 In

addition to reading and writing about eminent individuals whose deeds

and virtues had left an indelible mark on human history, some

humanists also commissioned galleries of famous men so that they would

be surrounded visually by those they deemed worthy of their emulation

du C. de Vere (New York and Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), 2: 187, recorded an early self-portrait of Orcagna at Orsanmichele of 1359. Orcagna sculpted the twelve Apostles gazing at the Virgin in an Assumption of the virgin. According to Vasari: "In one of these Apostles he portrayed himself in marble, old, as he was, with the beard shaven, with the cap wound round the head, and with the face flat and around, as it is seen above in his portrait, drawn from that one."

2The rise of the individual during the renaissance has been the subject of numerous books and articles. For some examples, see Rudolf Wittkower, "Individualism in Art and Artists: A Renaissance Problem," Journal of the History of Ideas XXII/3 (July-Sept. 1961), 291-302; Peter Burke, "The Renaissance, Individualism and the Portrait," History of European Ideas 21/3 (1995), 393-400, and N. Nelson, "Individualism as a Criterion of the Renaissance," Journal of English and Germanic Philology (1933), 312-34.

2Jane Turner, ed., Dictionary of Art, 1996 ed., s.v. "Humanism," by James O. Duke. See Joanna Woods-Marsden, Renaissance Self- Portraiture: The Visual Construction of Identity and the Social Status of the Artist (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998), 13- 15, and Katherine T. Brown, The Painter's Reflection: Self-Portraiture in Renaissance Venice 1458-1625 (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 2000), 32-45.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. or contemplation.4 It was against this cultural backdrop that the

artist began to emerge as an individual meriting attention. Painters and sculptors first appeared among the important

community members in Italian city chronicles in 1351-52 when Filippo

Villani included Cimabue, Giotto, Stefano, Taddeo Gaddi, and Maso in

his Liber de origine civitatis Florentiae et ejusdem famosis civibus,

a book celebrating the famous men who brought glory to Florence.^

Artists continued to appear sporadically in Quattrocento texts on the

lives of illustrious men, ® but their lives, oeuvres, and contributions

did not became the primary subject of a manuscript until the middle of

the fifteenth century when Lorenzo Ghiberti crafted his Commentaries.

4For ritratti di uomini famosi, a patron could construct a program by choosing from an array of historic or contemporary figures including military leaders, scientists, princes, philosophers, artists and poets who would serve as exemplars of behavior to be emulated or avoided. For some early humanist collections of images of famous men, see Mark L. Evans, "Uno maestro solenne Joos van Hassenhove in Italy," Nederlands Kunsthistorish laarboek 44 (1993), 75-110; Robert L. Mode, "Masolino, Uccello and the Orsini Uomini famosi," Burlington Magazine CXIV (1972), 369-378, and Theodor E. Mommsen, "Petrarch and the Decoration of the Sala Virorum Illustrium in Padua," Art Bulletin 34 (1952), 94-116.

^Lionello Venturi, Bistory of Art Criticism, trans. Charles Marriott (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., Inc., 1964), 72-74. Stefano is identified as a pupil of Giotto, expert in anatomy, while Maso (di Banco?), also a pupil of Giotto, was admired by Villani for his style.

^Bartolomeo Fazio wrote De Viris illustribus liber in 1456, which included contemporary artists. Cristoforo Landino made a tribute to deceased Florentine artists in the Apologia di Dante, of 1481. Ugolino Verino included artists in the Second Book of the De Illustratione Urbis Florentiae, while the Codex Magliabechiano mentions eight contemporary painters and sculptors. See L. M. Sleptzoff, "The Artist," in Men or Supermen? The Italian Portrait in the Fifteenth Century (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1978), 102-104 and note 32. He also cites E. Zilsel, Die Entstehung des Geniebegriffes (Tubingen, 1926), 176, to show that artists' biographical texts were relatively scarce in the Quattrocento and the first half of the Cinquecento. Of all biographies written: 4.5% artists, 49% writers, 30% politicians and soldiers, 10% churchmen, 6.5% doctors.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. His work was a compilation of remarks about art and art theory that he

divided into three divisions or books.7

A section of Ghiberti's work, the Second Commentary, was an

anthology of information about the production of past artists whose

work he admired, and whose work he had seen.8 Like Villani’s book,

Ghiberti's Second Commentary contained a series of brief discussions

of individuals. But by focusing on fourteen named sculptors and

painters Ghiberti produced an abbreviated history of art, beginning

with Cimabue and ending with himself. With this Commentary he

commemorated his own art and that of admired artists of earlier times,

and he brought the memory of these men to the living.

In this early series of biographies, Ghiberti mentions the

locations of likenesses for three of his fourteen artists: a portrait

of Giotto, and self-portraits of Taddeo Gaddi and Orcagna. These

notations might reflect ideas about the role of portraits, objects

that announce the virtues and deeds of the sitter and therefore attest

to his character, as later noted by Giovanni Battista Armenini. In

his On the True Precepts of the Art of Painting Armenini wrote that:

"The subject [of a portrait] is in itself desirable to almost everyone; a true likeness, fashioned from material that will last some time, ensures in great part the preservation of their name for posterity since it will proclaim their virtues for many

7Chirstie Knapp Fengler, "Lorenzo Ghiberti's Second Commentary: The Translation and Interpretation of a Fundamental Renaissance Treatise on Art," (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1974).

8Fengler, 290. Borrowing heavily from the views of antique writers, Ghiberti's First Commentary was a compilation of comments on ancient art, and his Third Commentary comprised a discussion of theoretical aspects of art necessary for sculptors, especially optics, anatomy and proportion.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. centuries. Thus portrayed, not only is the true image of the person represented, but it commemorates all his virtues and brave deeds which are spread through the world, just as sepulchers give notice to posterity of past things."9

Ghiberti's acknowledgement of artists' likenesses may also indicate

that (self-) portraits of artists were relatively common even at this

early date, and that Ghiberti thought his readers might appreciate

seeing an image of the deceased person whose art he was discussing.

Curiously, in an extended discussion of his own sculpture,

Ghiberti failed to mention his two self-portraits in the borders of

the north and east doors of the Duomo Baptistery in Florence.10 Since

he included references to the self-portraits of others in his

discussion of admired artists, he must have felt that this type of

information was interesting for the reader. Perhaps he did not

believe his likenesses noteworthy because they appeared in the borders

rather than in the main scene, because he viewed them as signatures as

opposed to integral parts of the compositions,11 or because his

9Giovanni Battista Armenini, On the True Precepts of the Art of Painting, ed. and trans. Edward J. Olszewski (New York: Burt Franklin, 1977), 256-261. Armenini trained for six years in Rome, between 1550 and 1556, and his work, Dei Veri Precetti della Pittura, was first published in Ravenna in 1586. See also Anthony Blunt, Artistic Theory in Italy, 1450-1600 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1963), 138-139.

10Fengler, 202 and 221-222.

^Ghiberti's self-portraits appear near his signatures in the doors of the Baptistry. The north door signature reads "OPVS LUVEREN/TII FLORENTINI" and that of the east door reads "LAVRENTII CIONIS DE GHIBERTIS/MIRA ARTE FABRICAM." The portraits of Taddeo Gaddi and Giotto appear in Gaddi's Miracle of St. Francis, in Santa Croce and Orcagna's appears in a marble tabernacle of Orsanmichele.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. readers would know what he looked like.12 Since printing was not yet

a possibility, Ghiberti's handwritten manuscript was probably read

only by a few acquaintances. His work was not published during the

Renaissance, and the only existing copy to come down to us was owned

by Giorgio Vasari's friend Cosimo Bartoli.13

Approximately one hundred years later in 1550, Giorgio Vasari's

first edition of the Vite contained 142 biographies covering

approximately 300 years of artistic activity.14 It was the most

comprehensive and informative text on Italian visual artists published

in the 125 years during which the decapitation guise self-portraits

were being produced.15 For his Vite, Vasari seems to have drawn

conceptually on Ghiberti's work, as both began their chronological

series of artists with Cimabue, both wrote in the vernacular, and both

12There are no records to indicate if Ghiberti wished to have his manuscript made public or reproduced, and he did not specify in the text whether or not he wrote the manuscript for posterity. See Fengler, 2-3.

13Fengler 1 and 285, notes that it is not known how the Bartoli family acquired the manuscript.

14Single artists could also be subjects for Renaissance biographies. See Antonio di Tuccio Manetti, The Life of Brunelleschi, trans. Catherine Bnggass and ed. Howard Saalman (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University, 1970), and Ascanio Condivi, The Life of Michelangelo, trans. Alice Wohl and ed. Hellmut Wohl (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997).

15Van Mander's comparable series of biographies of northern artists was published in Haarlem in 1604 and Amsterdam in 1616-1618. See Karel van Mander, The Lives of the illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters from Het Schilder-boeck (1603-1604), ed. H. Miedema (Doornspijk: Davaco, 1994). In his nearly 100 biographies, he notes 37 (self-) portraits of various artists. This number includes multiple likeness of a single artist for example he mentioned 6 separate likenesses of Diirer.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. emphasized past artists.16 However, from its inception, Vasari's

treatise was to be published so that it could be distributed to a

large audience. His version of the history of art was widely read,17

and in the following centuries authors from northern and southern

Europe modeled their versions of art history on his example.18

Vasari's revised and enlarged version of the Vite, containing

woodcut portraits of most of the artists who were covered in the text

in addition to some thirty new biographies, was published in 1568.^

16T. S. R. Boase, Giorgio Vasari: the Man and the Book (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 51, states that the phrase "according to Lorenzo Ghiberti" is a common one in the earlier edition of Lives. According to him, "Vasari knew, used and sometimes simply paraphrased Ghiberti's Commentaries." Ghiberti did not include any of his contemporaries, while Vasari included a few in his first edition, and many more in his second.

17According to Boase, 48: “Unfortunately we do not know how many copies were printed, and the size of the editions of the time has not been fully explored. When in 1563 an inventory was taken of the Torrentino printing office, the stock is only described as 'A good number of printed books'.“

!®There are many examples of the phenomenon, a few of which are noted here. Jane Turner, ed., Dictionary of Art, 1996 ed., s.v. "Vasari, Giorgio," by Julian Kliemann lists Karel van Hander's Schilder-boeck of 1604, Francisco Pacheco's Arte de la Pintura of 1649 and Joachim von Sandrart’s Teutsche Academie of 1675. Patricia L. Rubin, Giorgio Vasari: Art and History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), 4, states that in Italy, Ridolfi wrote about Venetian art in 1648, Giovanni Baglione updated Vasari's work with his contemporaries in 1642, and Carlo Cesare Malvasia wrote about Bologna in 1678. Further, Baldinucci's Notizie dei professori del disegno was published in 1681.

Francesco Petrarch's 1368 Letter to Posterity (Epistola posteritati), is considered the first Renaissance autobiography. In his opening lines, Petrarch states his reasons for composing the work, noting that the future reader “perhaps will wish to know what kind of man I was [guid hominis fuerim] or which works I wrote [guis operum exitus jneorum]" (Ep. Post. 1). He then provided the reader with a written self-portrait: a comprehensive view of himself, his habits and character, a chronological narrative of his life, and a description of his physical appearance. Indeed, his example was the impetus for the description of a subject's physical appearance and aspects of 37

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In book three Vasari noted the nature of the corrections and additions

that he had made to his original work, and specified his reasons for

wanting to include an image of an artist for each Vita: "Nor, the

better to revive the memory of those whom I so greatly honor, have I

grudged the great labor, pains and expense of seeking out their

portraits, which I have placed at the head of their Lives."2® To

support this claim, throughout his text he indicates the difficulties

he encountered in acquiring the needed portraits, as well as his

reasons for not being able to include others.21

personality found in many subsequent humanist autobiographies and biographies. By the mid-sixteenth century it had even become customary to provide a visual printed portrait of the subject at the beginning of biographies, an idea ultimately inspired by Petrarch's model. See Karl Enenkel, "Modelling the Humanist: Petrarch's Letter to Posterity and Boccaccio's Biography of the Poet Laureate,” in Modelling the Individual: Biography and Portraiture in the Renaissance, ed. Karl Enenkel et. al. (Amsterdam and Atlanta, 6A: Rodopi, 1998), 13.

20Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, trans. Gaston du C. de Vere (New York and Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), 2: 187. This seems to be the same rationale that prompted Ghiberti to write his Second Commentary.

21For example, in his life of Antonio da Correggio, Vasari (1996), 1: 649 states: "I have used all possible diligence in order to obtain his portrait; but, since he himself did not make it, and he was never portrayed by others, for he always lived in retirement, I have not been able to find one." And, in his life of Daniello Ricciarelli, Vasari (1996), 2: 598 writes: "A request for his portrait was made to those disciples of his, who had taken it in gesso, and when I was in Rome last year they promised it to me; but, for all the messages and letters that I have sent to them, they have refused to give it, thus showing little affection for their dead master. However, I have been unwilling to be hindered by that ingratitude on their part, seeing that Daniello was my friend, and I have included the portrait given above, which, although it is little like him, must serve as a proof of my diligence and of the little care and lovingness of Michele degli Alberti and Feliciano da San Vito."

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In this second edition, Vasari mentioned at least one hundred

and eleven previously unrecorded self-portraits or portraits of

artists which appeared in large public commissions (frescoes and

altarpieces) and in private collections.22 In all, he recognized the

faces of nearly two hundred artists in various works, although in some

instances his identifications seem less than accurate.22 Among his

numerous sightings were artists who presented themselves masquerading

as biblical figures. Apostles were a favorite guise: Vasari reported

that Andrea di Cione Orcagna,24 Masaccio,22 and Andrea del Sarto22

appeared as unnamed Apostles, while Andrea Castagno assumed the guise

of Judas Iscariot.27 other self-portraits "in the guise of" included

22This number reflects many artists for whom Vasari noted more than one portrait and/or self-portrait.

23Francis Ames-Lewis, The Intellectual Life of the Early Renaissance Artist (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), 212 note 7, lists the self-portrait of Simone Martini in Spanish Chapel of S. Maria Novella, painted more than twenty years after Simone's death, as one example of Vasari's misidentifications. See Boase, 222-234, Chapter IX: "Errors and Omissions," for other inaccuracies in Vasari's research.

24Vasari (1996), 2: 186. At Orsanmichele in 1359 Orcagna sculpted the twelve Apostles gazing at the Virgin. "In one of these Apostles he portrayed himself in marble, old, as he was, with the beard shaven, with the cap wound round the head, and with the face flat and around, as it is seen above in his portrait, drawn from that one."

23Ibid., 2: 322. The self-portrait of Masaccio is in a fresco in the Church of the Carmine in Florence, in the scene where St. Peter takes the money from the belly of the fish.

22Ibid., 2:.839. A self-portrait of Andrea is among the Apostles in an Assuxoption.

27Ibid., 1: 452. His self-portrait was in a medallion at the left of a painting of the Death of the Virgin, in the Chapel of Santa Maria Nuova, Florence.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Bastianello Florigerio as St. George,28 Franciabigio as John the

Baptist,29 Baccio Bandinelli as Nicodemus,30 and Giorgione as David.31

Further, Vasari reports that artists were also depicted in guises by

their contemporaries: Andrea Pisano as St. Peter,32 Dello Delli as

Ham,33 Nanni di Banco as S. Cosimo,34 and Michelozzo as Nicodemus.3®

Additionally, artists' relatives and patrons, as well as important

community members, were shown in guises which include The Virgin,38

28Ibid., 1: 873. Bastianello Florigerio made his own portrait in the head of St. George for S. Giorgio in Udine.

29Ibid., 1: 919. This portrait was in the high altarpiece for S. Giobbe, "behind the Servite Convent in Florence."

30Ibid., 2: 301-304. The sculpture is of a Dead Christ supported by Nicodemus.

31Ibid., 1: 641.

32Ibid., 1: 141. in Pisa in a frame for an image of the Madonna, the head of St. Peter is "a portrait of Andrea from the life" by his son Nino.

33Ibid., 1: 270 and 285. Paolo Uccello painted the portrait in a chiaroscuro image of the drunkenness of Noah in Santa Maria Novella.

34Ibid., 1: 404. Fra Angelico had painted a "S. Mark the Evangelist beside the Mother of the Son of God, who has swooned at the sight of the Saviour of the world Crucified, while round her are the Maries, all grieving and supporting her, with S. Cosimo and S. Damiano".

35Ibid., 1: 389. The image was painted by Fra Angelico in the sacristy of Sta. Trinita.

36Ibid., 1: 439, Fra Filippo Lippi painted the novice Lucrezia as the Virgin in a high-altarpiece for the Nuns of S. Margherita in Florence because he was enamoured with the young woman. Vasari (1996), 1: 510, Maestro Lappoli also gave the Virgin the features of Messer Pietro Aretino's mother in a scene of the Annunciation in S. Agostino. Vasari (1996), 1: 574, Bernardino Pinturicchio painted the Signora Giulia Farnese in the countenance of a Madonna. Vasari (1996), 1: 833, writes that Andrea del Sarto's wife served as the model for the Madonna in a shrine without the Porta a Pinti. 40

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. St. Paul,37 St. James,38 St. Sebastian,39 St. Sylvester,40 The

Magdalene,41 Simeon,42 one of the magi,43 a pope,44 a priest,45 an

angel,4® a soldier,47 and an executioner.48 If we trust Vasari's

37Ibid., 1: 321. The portrait of Bartolo di Angiolino Angiolini as St. Paul is by Masaccio, and it is in the Church of the Carmine in Florence, "near the bell ropes."

38Ibid., 2: 23. II Moro (Francesco Torbido) made a portrait of Messer Jacopo Fontani in the figure of St. James.

39Ibid., 1: 532. The Pollaiuolo brothers painted Gino di Lodovico Capponi as St. Sebastian in the altarpiece for the Chapel of the Pucci, in St. Sebastiano de'Servi.

40Ibid., 2: 123. In the Vatican's Hall of Constantine, Giulio Romano represented Pope Clement VII as St. Sylvester.

41Ibid., 1: 833. Andrea del Sarto depicted his wife as the Magdalene. Vasari (1996), 2: 359 Jacapo Pontormo made a painting of Our Lady for the chamber of Lodovico di Gino Capponi, whose daughter was portrayed as the Magdalene.

42Ibid., 2: 852. In miniatures for an Office of Our Lady, Don Giulio Clovio depicted Pope Paul III as Simeon in a Circumcision of Christ, for Sext.

43Ibid., 1: 537. Sandro Botticelli showed Cosimo, Giovanni and Giuliano de'Medici as the magi in an Adoration of the Magi, for Santa Maria Novella.

44Ibid., 1: 720.

45Ibid., 1: 234. Taddeo Bartoli represented the Warden of Works for Pisa's Chapel of the Nunziata in the Duomo as the priest in a Presentation of the Virgin. Bartoli was depicted standing next to the priest in the work.

46Ibid., 1: 510. The portrait of Giuliano Bacci as an angel appears in S. Agostino in Maestro Lappoli's Nativity fresco in which "the Madonna receives the Annunciation from the Angel."

47Ibid., 1: 688, Niccola Capponi was shown as a soldier in a Resurrection of Christ by Raffaellino del Garbo in the Capponi Chapel.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. identifications, the number and variety of these portraits indicate

that guise portraiture was relatively popular in Italy by the middle

of the sixteenth century.49

Vasari's identifications of artists as biblical protagonists

seem to have had an impact on self-portraiture practices. Perhaps

some artists who might not have otherwise done so, may have been

inspired by these "sightings" to include their own likenesses as

particular protagonists or among the bystanders in historiated scenes.

For example, after Giorgione painted himself as David but before

Vasari published his Vite, only sixteenth-century artists practicing

in Venice produced decapitation guise self-portraits. However, after

the 1568 publication of Vasari’s Vite in which he mentioned

Giorgione's self-portrait as David, six more artists in various

regions of Italy apparently took up the idea. Half of these artists

assumed the role of either David or Goliath, while the two female

artists gave their features to Judith, David's feminine counterpart.

Vasari, who noted many more artists * portraits in his second

edition of the Vite, actually had professional motives for verifying

artists' likenesses in existing works.58 As was noted, he needed

48Ibid., 1: 560. Mantegna portrayed Marsilio Pazzo as the executioner of St. James in the Chapel of S. Cristofano in the Church of Ermitani of S. Agostino in Padua.

49By comparison, Van Mander, dealing with Northern artists, only mentions 7 guises: the prodigal son, The Virgin Mary, The Christ Child, St. Luke, St. Paul, the 12 apostles, and Democratius.

50Sleptzoff, 112-114; Boase, 68, and Charles Hope, "Historical Portraits in the Lives and in the Frescoes of Giorgio Vasari," in Giorgio Vasari: Tra Decorazione Ambientale e Storiografia Artistica, ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1985), 42

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. visual prototypes for the woodcut illustrations that were to serve as

frontispieces for each biography in the second edition of his Vite.51

He also sought them for his numerous painting projects in Florence

which were meant to showcase famous Florentine architects, sculptors

and painters.52 Vasari's insistence on identifying and personally

verifying authentic "portraits from the life" to serve as prototypes

for the likenesses in his own projects52 is probably a direct result

330. Hope, 324-325, also notes that while most of the new identifications were of artists, other famous historical figures were also identified including sixteen popes and one anti-pope.

51For the Vite, Vasari needed likenesses for 144 artists. Hope (1985), 336, contends that the forty new identifications in books one and two of the second edition were used as direct sources for the woodcuts in all but two instances. In his Preface for Cosimo de'Medici in the second edition, Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, trans. Gaston du C. de Vere (New York and Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), xvii-xviii, notes, "And as for the likenesses and portraits of so many men of worth which I have placed in this work ... if they are sometimes not very true to life, and if they all have not that character and resemblance which the vivacity of colours is wont to give them, that is not because the drawing and the lineaments have not been taken from life and are not characteristic and natural; not to mention that a great part of them have been sent me by the friends that I have in various places, and they have not all been drawn by a good hand."

52Hope (1985), 330-331. The Palazzo Vecchio was decorated towards the end of the 1550's and the Porta al Prato, where he and Vincenzo Borghini were in charge of preparations of the temporary decorations for Joanna of Austria's entry which included a monumental painting comprising numerous Florentine painters, sculptors and architects, decorations were completed in 1565. Hope (1985), 330-331, further indicates that with regard to the other historical figures identified by Vasari in his second edition, his frescoes in the Sala di Cosimo il Vecchio and the Sala di Lorenzo il Magnifico in the Palazzo Vecchio were full of fifteenth-century Florentines for whom he had to specify prototypes.

53Boase, 68, states that of the 144 effigies, it has been calculated that 95 have some claims to being considered true likenesses. Vasari (1996), 1: 462, claims that "throughout this whole work there are scattered innumerable portraits from the life; but since we have not knowledge of them all, I will mention only those that I have 43

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. of his close professional association with Paolo Giovio (1483-1552),

an important biographer and art collector, who had amassed a

collection of portraits of famous men. Moreover, Giovio, who was

largely responsible for Vasari's writing of the Vite, insisted that

Vasari include woodcuts of the artists in the second publication.54

According to Vasari's autobiographical account, one evening

while he was dining with men of learning and distinction at Cardinal

Farnese's, Giovio claimed that he wanted to add to his own book of

Elogia a treatise on art from Cimabue to the present day.55 Because

Giovio was not part of the art culture he would need to be assisted by

someone knowledgeable in that field. Vasari, after receiving many

compliments and much encouragement from those in attendance, agreed to

assist in Giovio's endeavor and Vasari's Vite are the result of his

efforts.55 Subsequent letters exchanged by the two men attest to

Giovio's personal involvement with the project until his death in

1552, and the importance Vasari placed on finding legitimate

recognized as important, and those that I know by means of some record."

54T. c. Price Zimmerman, Paolo Giovio, The Historian and the Crisis of Sixteenth-Century Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 215 and note 95, according to whom, Vasari would complain about this "chatterbox of a Giovio" and chafe under Giovio's insistent demands for portraits.

55Vasari does not give a specific date for this meeting, but Boase, 43-44, believes that it occurred in the year 1543, prior to July. For information on the 20 year relationship between the two biographers, see Susan Linda Klinger, "The Portrait Collection of Paolo Giovio," (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1991), 37-38.

56Vasari (1996), 2: 1042-1044.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. likenesses for his Vite effigies would appear to have its roots in

Giovio's own collecting and publishing practices.57

By 1521, Giovio had begun collecting portraits of famous men,

and by the time of his death he had amassed some 360 images that were

housed in his villa at Como which was opened for public enjoyment.

His collection was unique and influential for many reasons. It was a

collection of individual pieces that Giovio gathered over a thirty-

year period, a practice that was in contrast to the more usual custom

of acquiring a portrait collection in which the core works were

completed as one commission.58 Giovio's portraits included notable

historic and contemporary European and non-European men from antiquity

to the sixteenth century. When displayed in Como, each portrait was

paired with a cartello, a piece of parchment inscribed with a short

biographical description of the sitter's character and deeds, which in

conjunction with the portrait, created a total vision of the person

represented - internal and external.

Giovio had insisted that all of his portraits, which he

sometimes referred to as verae effigies (true likenesses) bear a close

or exact resemblance to the subject.59 Previously, collections had

57According to Klinger, 38, Giovio was the originator of the idea and title. He was also the editor and the author of the dedicatory inscription. Further, Giovio arranged for the Florentine publication of the first edition.

58In general, the core images in traditional portrait collections were produced as a single commission and updated with new portraits if necessary.

59Rudolf E. O. Ekkart, "Collections of portraits in Western Europe," in The Royal College of Physicians of London: Portraits, ed. Gordon 45

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. included fictitious or fantasy portraits of individuals of older

generations whose portraits were first made centuries after their

deaths without visual prototypes.**0 For Giovio's collection each

portrait was to be made from life, or if that was not possible, the

likeness was to be a replica based on coins, medallions, portrait

busts or genuine portraits.61 It was this authenticating aspect of

his collecting practice that seemed to have a substantial impact on

Vasari's insistence on true portraits as prototypes for his likenesses

and on subsequent Western European collection procedures.62

Giovio's portrait collection was not the first. According to

literary descriptions, portrait busts and images of great men and

ancestors filled ancient libraries and gardens, a practice that may

have partially inspired Medieval and Renaissance portrait

collections.63 Portrait collections, whether ancestral or ritratti di

Wolstenholme and John F. Kerslake (Amsterdam, Oxford and New York: Elsevier, Excerpta Medica, 1977), 3-4.

60Ekkart, 2.

61See Klinger, 158-183: Chapter 4, "Verae imagines and Historical Likenesses."

62For example, Van Mander, 250, informs us that when Hubert Goltz (d. 1583?), painter, engraver and history-writer from Venlo, created a series of emperor prints from Julius Caesar to Charles V and Emperor Ferdinand if he could not find a coin or medal with a likeness cf his subject then he left an empty circle.

63There are two distinct types of portrait collections that emerged in the thirteenth century and retained popularity through the sixteenth century in Western-European countries: dynastic galleries and series of famous men. Dynastic galleries, which emphasize genealogical and/or political ties, were created with an agenda of reinforcing and glorifying the owner's ancestral pedigree, in dynastic galleries, there was no real choice about who was to be included. See Ekkart, 1- 23, and Mode, 369-78. See also Linda Klinger Aleci, "Images of Identity: Italian Portrait Collections of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth 46

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. uomini famosi, served as an indication of prestige for their owners,

being possessions associated with wealthy and educated gentlemen.®4

Since the portraits were generally of great men who transcend the

human norm and whose deeds therefore serve as models for the owners to

emulate or contemplate,®® inclusion in an uomini famosi collection

would attest to the elevated esteem in which the owners would hold the

subjects or sitters. For Giovio three artists: Leonardo,

Michelangelo, and Raphael, met this high standard.

At the time of his death, Giovio's collection had gained

international fame as the largest and most prominent portrait

collection in Italy,®® while publication of the sitters’ biographical

information and painted or engraved copies of its contents helped

further disseminate its fame throughout Europe.®7 Whereas the first

edition of his Elogia, a publication containing the biographical

information of some of the men whose portraits he had collected.

Centuries," in The Image of the Individual, Portraits in the Renaisseuice, ed. Nicholas Mann et. al. (London: British Museum Press, 1998), 74; and Dagmar Eichberger and Lisa Beaven, "Family Members and Political Allies: The Portrait Collection of Margaret of Austria," Art Bulletin 77 (1995): 225-246.

®4Mommsen, 94-116, and Ekkart, 3.

®5Aleci, 71, and Ekkart, 3.

®®See Caterina Caneva, "The History of a Collection," in Painters by Painters (New York: National Academy of Design, 1988), 9, and Aleci, 68-69.

®7The text was first published in 1546. See Aleci, 69 and Klinger, 78. Caneva, 9, notes that within approximately fifty years, seven sets of copies were made of the collection, the first or which was made for Cosimo I de Medici, who arranged for the painter, Cristofano dell’Altissimo, to travel to Como on several occasions to copy Giovio’s portraits.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. contained only a few woodcuts based on the portraits from his

collection, the 1575-1577 edition contained approximately 200 woodcuts

by the German artist Tobias Stimmer.68 Giovio, who believed that his

audience wanted a complete image of an individual — internal and

external, insisted that Vasari include woodcuts of the artists in the

Vite.69

Along with being included in large publications, artists'

printed likenesses were also circulated as single sheets. In this

relatively cheap, reproducible medium the portraits could reach a

broad audience. The effigies of artists including Israel van

Meckenem, Titian, Michelangelo, Lavinia Fontana, Diirer, Raphael,

Bandinelli, and Artemisia Gentileschi were published and distributed

in printed form.70

In addition to reading artists' biographies and studying their

printed portraits, patrons were also interested in acquiring medals

featuring artists. This reproducible art form that drew its

68Ekkart, 4. The artist copied the collection's contents in 1570-71.

69See note 54 supra.

70Generally the engraved likenesses were based on portraits or self- portraits of the artist, but it is unclear how much input the artist had in the creation and distribution of the image. See Lorne Campbell, Renaissance Portraits (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990), 217; Catherine King, "Looking at Sight: Sixteenth- Century Portraits of Women Artists," Zeitschrift fiir Kunstgeschichte 58/3 (1995), 400-401; Mary Gerrard, Artemisia Gentileschi. The Image of a Female Hero in Italian Baroque Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 64; Luba Freedman, "Britto's Print after Titian's earliest Self-portrait," in Autobiographic and Selbstportrait in der Renaissance, ed. Gunter Schweikhart (Koln: Verlag der Buchhandlung, 1998), 123-144; Adam von Bartsch, The Italian Bartsch: Italian Artists of the Sixteenth Century, ed. S. Buff a (New York: Abaris Books, 1982), 245, and Woods-Marsden (1998), 145.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. inspiration from classical coins was far more durable and prestigious

than its printed paper counterpart. Medals were small, portable and

intimate objects, which were designed to be held in the hand and

studied at close range. Generally only a small number of medals would

be cast from a single mould for distribution among a few elite. As

collectable objects that could be personalized with inscriptions and

allegorical references, medals reflected the sitter's desire for fame

and immortality.71- Michelangelo, Lavinia Fontana, Titian, Diirer,

Bernini, and Artemisia Gentileschi were among the artists whose

likenesses were circulated and collected through this medium.72

From the early fourteenth century painted portraits of artists

had also been incorporated into patron's collections. But, it was the

Accademia del Disegno in Florence that was the first "collector" to

amass a group of painted portraits solely dedicated to artists. In

1562 Vasari founded the Accademia del Disegno in Florence and wanted

to build a comprehensive collection of members' (self-) portraits

which was also to include exemplary artists' of the past.73 Among the

articles in the Academy's first statutes was a call for a frieze of

71Stephen K. Scher, ed., The Currency of Fame: Portrait Medals of the Renaissance (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1994), 13-14. See also Sir George Francis Hill, Portrait Medals of Italian Artists of the Renaissance (London: P. L. Warner, 1912).

72Early documents concerning the commission of artists' portrait medals are scarce; therefore the level of an artist's participation in the conception and final appearance of his or her medal, for the most part, is unknown. They were generally circulated while the artist was still alive. Self-portrait medals will be discussed in the following chapter.

73See Hope (1985), 330, and Boschloo, 72 note 47.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. portraits of the most excellent Italian artists, beginning with

Cimabue and including the best artists of the Academy, who were to be

included upon their deaths.74 This collection that was to celebrate

artists who were examples for the Florentine school eventually

comprised about thirty works.75

The Accademia's uomini famosi collection comprised artists'

likenesses, but it was certainly not the first to involve self-

portraits. Giotto may have been the earliest Renaissance painter to

have his likeness included in an uomini famosi collection. According

to Vasari, Giotto made a number of portraits “of many famous men" for

a hall in the King of Naples' Castle dell'Uovo. Among these portraits

was one of Giotto himself.75

By the mid-sixteenth century artists ’ self-portraits were

regularly being incorporated into major Western European portrait

74As cited by Carl Goldstein, "Vasari and the Florentine Accademia del Disegno," Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte 38 (1975), 150. There was also to be a separate art collection comprised of young artists' reception pieces and works made for special celebrations including the feasts of St. Luke and the Trinity. There is no mention of a location for either the art collection or the frieze of portraits. See also Nikolaus Pevsner, Academies of Art Past and Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940), 48.

75Silvia Meloni, "The Collection of Painters' Self-portraits," in Paintings in the uffizi and Pitti Galleries, trans. Murphy and Fernandez (Boston: Little Brown, 1994), 596. Meloni states that of the portraits many were produced by the young painters "as a sort of calling card." However, she does not clarify this intriguing statement. Lavinia Fontana's Self-portrait at a Keyboard of 1577 eventually found its way into the collection, and in 1564 Bernardo Castello was commissioned to make a copy of Sofonisba Anguissola's Self-portrait currently in Chantilly's Mus6e Cond6. For further reading, see also Woods-Marsden (1998), 211 note 35.

76Vasari (1996), 2: 107.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. collections, whose numbers had increased dramatically during the

sixteenth century.77 Additionally, patrons were incorporating images

of artists into their personal art collections, a practice that may

have been fostered by Vasari who placed unprecedented emphasis on

citing works, including self-portraits, from private collections in

his second edition of the Vite. While the demand for their likenesses

increased, artists were generally silent about the reasons that they

produced self-portraits.78 However, some written evidence mostly in

the form of letters, inventory records, and biographical anecdotes

survives to indicate a particular patron's motivation to possess a

specific artist’s likeness and also to record where and how these

works were displayed.

While residing in Rome, the Spanish Dominican humanist Alfonso

Chacdn expressed a desire to expand his existing portrait collection

with a self-portrait of Lavinia Fontana.79 In his letter of 1578 to

Lavinia, Chacdn requested a small self-portrait of her to pair with a

portrait of Sofonisba Anguissola already in his collection. He

attempted to entice Lavinia to send the likeness by intimating that he

77Aleci, 74.

78This phenomenon will be addressed in Chapter Three.

79A little over half a century later on October 24, 1637, Artemisia Gentileschi who was working in Naples, sent a letter to Cassiano dal Pozzo in Rome. In this letter, Artemisia wrote of "my portrait ... in conformity with that which you once requested, to be numbered among [your other portraits of ] illustrious painters* (mio ritratto ... conforms ella una volta mi comandd, per annoverarlo fra’pittori illustri). Cited and translated by R. Ward Bissell, Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art (University Park: The Pennsylvania state University, 1999), 236.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. could extend the range of her personal fame because her likeness would

be seen, contemplated and recognized by everyone and would be included

in an engraved series of 500 illustrious men and women.80 Lavinia

responded to Chacdn's request with a self-portrait and an accompanying

letter. In her written statement Lavinia demurely and eloquently

claimed that she did not deserve such an honor, but that she sent her

self-portrait so that the portraits of the other excellent persons,

especially Sofonisba Anguissola, would shine next to the imperfection

and darkness of her likeness.81

80"... un retrati.no suo piccolo ... per poter far un quadro suo al natural et acompagneure a quello di sophonisba che ho cosi perche sia visto et guardato et cognosciuto di ogni uno come anco per poterlo metere in atampa infra 500 huomini et donne illustri che saranno intagliati in Rame la spesa delle quali la fa il serenissimo arciduca di Austria Ferdinando.... io penso celebrarla et propagarla per seculi et un genero de eternitk." (... send me a tiny little portrait ... to enable a panel from life to be made, to accompany that which I have from Sofonisba, so that you can be seen, and contemplated, and recognized by everyone, and I will also put it among the 500 illustrious men and women which will be engraved, at the expense of the most serene Archduke Ferdinand.... I think of celebrating and propagating you for centuries.) Published by Romeo Galli, Lavinia Fontana Pittrice (Imola: Tip. P. Galeati, 1940), 115 document n. 5, and Maria Teresa Cantaro, Lavinia Fontana bolognese “pittora singolare" 1552-1614 (Rome: Jandi Sapi Editori, 1989), 305-306 n.5a.5.

81Lavinia's full response to Chacdn of May 3, 1979 was also published by Cantaro, 306, n. 5b.5. “Ma non restaro gia di dirle ch'ella mi fa troppo honore si con le sue sovrabbondanti lodi, si con la intentione di dare al mio retratto cosi honorato luoco, 1 'uno attribuisco all'ecesso dell'amorevolezza sua, l'altro mi fa pensare ch'ella giudiziosamente vuole che tanto piu risplenda la virtu, et il valore della sig. Sofonisba, et d'altre simili persone eccell. alle quale so ch'io sono indegna di servire, non che d'agguaglieumi, ma si come i buoni musici mettono alle volte note dissonnti per formar consonanti tanto piu dolci, et si come alcuna nube fa che gli ornamenti del Cielo si mostrano tanto pik risplendenti, cosi V. S. ha pensato con la imperfettione, et con le tenebre del mio ritratto illustratre tanto maggiormente il suo nobilissimo Museuo."

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Although the majority of Venetian collectors possessed the odd

self-portrait, Gabriele Vendramin acquired numerous self-portraits

including those of Titian, Sansovino, Vittoria, Tintoretto, Orazio

Vecellio, Raphael, Diirer and Valerio Belli.82 The Venetian sculptor

Alessandro Vittoria also owned self-portraits by Tintoretto, Palma

Giovane, Maganza, and Parmigianino (the one painted as if it were a

convex mirror), as well as five portraits of himself, and one of

Veronese and of Titian.83

In Florence, the Medici gathered self-portraits and by the first

half of the seventeenth century they had accumulated approximately

fifteen of them.84 Later in the century, Leopoldo de Medici decided

to build a portrait collection devoted entirely to artists, in 1664,

he begem asking artists already known to the Medici family including

Pietro da Cortona, Guercino, Ciro Ferri and Volterrano to give or to

make available for acquisition their self-portraits.85 In eleven

years he had amassed eighty portraits of past and contemporary artists

82Jennifer Fletcher, "Fatto al Specchio: Venetian Renaissance Attitudes to Self-Portraiture," Fenway Court 1 (1990-91), 54, citing the inventory records compiled shortly after Vendermin's death as published by Aldo RavA, "II camerino delle antigaglie di Gabriele Vendramin," Nuovo archivo veneto 39 (1920), 155-181, and Jacopo Morelli, Notizla d'opere di disegno, G. Frizzoni, ed. (Bologna, 1884), 214-223. See also, Jaynie Anderson, "A Further Inventory of Gabriel Vendramin's Collection," Burlington Magazine 121 (1979), 644.

83Riccardo Predelli, "Le memorie e le carte di Alessandro Vittoria," Archivio trentino, fasc. 1/2 (1908), 233ff, cited by Fletcher, 55-57.

84Caneva, 11.

85Meloni, 596. Next the Medici had their agents and friends in other states, European rulers and travelers approach contemporary artists for their self-portraits.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. including two artists who also painted decapitation self-portraits,

Lavina Fontana and Bernini.86

Royal families outside of Italy were also incorporating Italian

masters' self-portraits in to their collections. In the sixteenth

century at the Emperor's request, Titian included his own likeness

with those of illustrious figures at the Hapsburg court in Austria,87

while King Philip II of Spain displayed Titian's self-portrait, along

with that of Antonis Mor, in his El Pardo palace's "royal room of

portraits."88 A century later, Charles I of England's art collection

in the palace at Whitehall included at least a dozen self-portraits,

with Giorgione's and Titian's among them.88

Not all self-portraits were being displayed as part of large

portrait collections. For example, Pope Julius III kept Sofonisba

Anguissola's self-portrait, which was sent as an unsolicited gift to

him, in a wardrobe in his villa along with other ancient and modern

88Caneva, 11.

87John Pope-Hennessy, The Portrait in the Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), 293.

88L. Roblot-Delondre, "Argote de Molina et les tableaux du Pardo," Revue archdologique 4e s6r., XVI (1910), 58-59, cited by Campbell, 217. "Antonio Moro, Natural de Utrec civdad en Olanda, Pintor famosissimo, retratado de su propria mano"; "Ticiano Pintor, el mas excelente de su tiempo, natural de Venecia, cuyo retrato se ve, teniendo en sus manos otro con la Ymagen del Rey don Phelippe nuestro sehor." Philip the II took the throne in 1556.

890ther artists included Bronzino, Pordenone, Giulio Romano, Rubens, van Dyck, Daniel Mytens, Rembrandt, and Diirer. See Oliver Millar, ed., "Abraham van der Doort's Catalogue of the Collection of Charles I,” Walpole Society 37 (1958-60), entire publication. The inventory was taken in 1639. This publication was cited by H. Perry Chapman, Rembrandt's Self-portraits: a study in Seventeenth-century Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 46-47.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. curiosities, such as the anamorphic portrait of Henri II of France.90

Also viewed as a curiosity, Parmigianino's Self-portrait in a Convex

Mirror was eventually kept in Emperor Rudolph II 's collection of

bizzarri.91 In the library where she would entertain scholars and

artists, Archduchess Margaret of Austria exhibited a portrait bust of

the sculptor Conrad Meit along with manuscripts, charts, maps,

paintings and sculpture, and a large collection of ethnographic

material from the new world.92 Others chose to house self-portraits

in a still more private setting. Borghini in his Riposo published in

1584, reported that Tintoretto's daughter Marietta sent a portrait of

herself to the Emperor Maximilian II, who valued it as "a rare thing"

and thus kept it in his own room.93

Some collectors recognized that a self-portrait not only

captured the artist's features, but also exemplified his/her

particular artistic temperament and mode of expression. In a 1558

letter to Amilcare Anguissola, Annibale Caro requested a self-portrait

of Sofonisba. He expressed his pleasure at the thought of owning "the

90Vasari (1996), 2: 641.

91Woods-Marsden (1998), 137. The work was first given to Giulio de'Medici, Clement VII but when Vasari saw it Pietro Aretino was its owner.

92Eichberger and Beaven, 238-239 and note 111, do not specify that this was a self-portrait.

93Raffaello Borghini, II Riposo, ed. Mario Rosci (Milan: Edizioni Labor, 1967), 558-559. "Ha il Tintoretto una figliuola, chiamata Marietta ... e fra l'altre fece il ritratto di lacopo strada Antiquario dell 'Imperador Massimiliano secondo, & il ritratto di lei stessa, i quali, come cosa rara, sua Maestk gli tenne in camera sua rr

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. effigy of she her-self, because at the same time one is able to find

two marvels together: the one being of the work, and the other of the

mistress."94 This statement indicates that Caro would be delighted to

possess not only an image of Sofonisba but also a document of her

personal style, which would mark the work as individual and valuable.

It was during the Renaissance that artists developed rich

personal artistic skills,95 and collectors began to value works by a

particular artist because they embodied the maker's style or maniera,

taken from the Latin manus for hand.95 Claudio Tolomei wanted

Sebastiano del Piombo to paint his portrait, and in his letter of

request he suggested that in this work he would have a "divine mirror"

in which he would see Sebastiano and himself together. Sebastiano's

presence would be felt, "because I will perceive in my image your

singular ability and your marvelous skill."97

94King (1995), 387, citing F. Baldinucci, Notizie dei professori del disegno da CimeUaue in qua, ed. F. Ranalli (Florence, 1846-7), 2: 625. "... effigie di lei medesima, per potere in un tempo mostrare due meraviglie insieme, l'una dell'opera, l ’altra della maestra..."

95In his Craftsman's Handbook, Cennino Cennini encouraged young artists to develop personal styles during their apprenticeships. See Ames-Lewis, 274.

9®Paul Barolsky, "The Artist's Hand," in The Craft of Art: Originality and Industry in the Italian Renaissance and Baroque Workshop, ed. Andrew Landis and Carolyn Hood (Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 1995), 6. Hendrick Goltzius drew his own hand in a manner that resembled the careful lines of his engravings. In 1625, Pierre Dumonstier le Jeune drew the hand of Artemisia Gentileschi holding a brush. See Joseph Leo Koerner, The Moment of Self- Portraiture in German Renaissance Art (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1993), 139-159, on Diirer's hand in his 1500 Self-portrait and the related discussion of Italian art theory.

97Campbell, 195-196 and note 20.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Artists also collected other artists' self-portraits because,

one may presume, they appreciated the makers' singular skills. For

example, Rubens owned Tintoretto's and Titian's self-portraits and, as

previously noted, the sculptor Alessandro Vittoria owned self-

portraits by Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, Palma Giovane and

Parmigianino.98 Vasari and Van Mander both report that Raphael owned

Diirer's self-portrait.

In order to show his esteem for the Italian painter, Diirer sent

his self-portrait to Raphael, who kept it among his possessions and

who later bequeathed it to his favorite pupil, Giulio Romano. In his

Vita of Raphael, Vasari states:

"Now, the fame of this most noble craftsman [Raphael]„having passed into France and Flanders, Albrecht Diirer, a most marvelous German painter, and an engraver of very beautiful copperplates, rendered tribute to [Raphael] out of his own works, and sent to him a portrait of himself, a head, executed by him in gouache on a cloth of fine linen, which showed the same on either side, the lights being transparent... This work seemed to [Raphael] to be marvelous, and he sent him, therefore, many drawings executed by his own hand, which were received very gladly by Albrecht. That head was among the possessions of Giulio Romano, the heir of [Raphael], in Mantua." "

The biographer supplements this information in his Vita of Giulio

Romano by noting that this self-portrait was very dear to Giulio who

showed it to Vasari "as a miracle."100 Raphael had bequeathed a

9 8 See Fletcher, 55-56, and Woods-Mar sden (1998), 137.

"vasari (1996), 2: 731. Van Mander, 93, supports (or merely reiterates) Vasari's recollection of the account in his own life of Albrecht Diirer.

100Vasari (1996), 2: 137.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. treasured gift to his follower, who in turn admired it and shared it

with others.1®1

In a similar exchange Levina Teerling, a Netherlandish

miniaturist to the Queen of England, sent her self-portrait as a gift

to Giulio Clovio, a miniaturist to the Farnese family. In his thank

you of about 1561, Clovio stated: "as indeed artists are accustomed to

enjoy seeing diverse styles of those who work in their field, I judged

that it would not displease you to be able to consider the style of

those of us working in Italy," and to this end he would be sending his

own self-portrait to her.1®2

Unfortunately the aforementioned self-portraits of Diirer (for

Raphael), Clovio and Teerling are now lost, so that we do not know how

they portrayed themselves when they knew their self-image would be in

the possession of a fellow artist. In Diirer's case we do have a

partial indication in Vasari's account. However, numerous examples of

Renaissance and early Baroque self-portraiture, whether for fellow

artists or others, exist and some of them will be analyzed in the next

chapter. But before turning to that examination, I will briefly

summarize the main points of this discussion.

101Ibid., 2: 866-867, records that M. Domenicus Lampsonius of Liege wanted to send his self-portrait to Vasari as an expression of his appreciation for the first edition of the Vite from which he learned Italian and the art of painting. He did not send the portrait because he did not know whether to send it to Florence or Arezzo.

102King (1995), 395 note 70 and 71. "Pure perchd gli artefici sogliono haver caro veder diverse maniere di quelli che operano, ho giudicato che non sia per dispiacervi di poter consider are quella di noi altri d'ltalia ..."

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. From the middle of the fifteenth century Italian artists became

the subjects for biographies dedicated to their profession, which

included notices about the location of their self-portraits. Rich and

powerful patrons, reading about and accumulating works by their

favorite artists, increasingly incorporated painters' likenesses - in

medal or stone, or on wood, paper or canvas - into their collections.

Depending on the predilections of the owner, the works could be

displayed publicly or privately and with other portraits, with other

objects of art, or with curiosities. But, as the examples in this

essay imply, most self-portraits were owned by prominent citizens who

kept them in their personal art collections. This fact is reinforced

by the numerous listings of self-portraits and their holders in

Vasari's Vite and is supported by the earliest records of sale for

many self-portraits, including the decapitation guise images. In some

instances an individual would make a request for a particular artist's

self-portrait, but painters were also known to have sent unsolicited

self-portraits to important patrons. With this discussion of

patronage and demand for artists' likenesses as a backdrop, I will now

examine the ways in which Renaissance and Early Baroque artists chose

to present themselves as subjects for display.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 3

RENAISSANCE AND EARLY BAROQUE ARTISTS CRAFTING PUBLIC IMAGES:

VERSATILITY IN AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND SELF-PORTRAITURE

Prior to the first decade of the sixteenth century, when

Giorgione introduced decapitation guise self-portraits into the

Italian art world, autobiography and self-portraiture were seldom-

practiced genres. During the 125 years following his innovation,

artists explored a variety of ways of fashioning their own identities

as a means of commemorating themselves. They wrote autobiographies,

produced self-portraits, and designed their own tombs so that they

would be remembered as they wished to be long after they had died.

Titian, Veronese, Lavinia Fontana, Caravaggio, Artemisia, Cristofano

Allori, Vouet, and Bernini, artists who also created decapitation

self-portraits, each fashioned images of themselves that fell into one

of five traditional self-portrait types: autonomous,

craftsman/professional, witness/participant, alliance, and guise. The

types, or categories, were traditional, although the terms, which will

be defined hereafter, are not. By focusing on two traditional forms

of self-definition (autobiography and self-portrait), and by exploring

other self-images made by artists who also created decapitation guise

self-portraits, this chapter creates a more thorough understanding of

how and why artists crafted images of themselves, and of the messages

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. which were conveyed via their self-creations. Further, the

information in this chapter will provide the basis for comprehending

the ideas associated with the decapitation guise self-portraits to be

discussed in the subsequent chapters.

Italian Renaissance artists worked in a culture shaped by

humanists, who, as part of their interest in self-fashioning,

developed and extended the form of the autobiography. This written

monument both by and about an individual was an antique literary genus

which promoted self-aggrandizement and which emphasized the virtues

and the deeds of those authors who, at least in their own view, had

made a mark on human history. Francesco Petrarch's 1368 Letter to

Posterity (Epistola posteritati), is considered the first Renaissance

autobiography;1 in its present state, the work is divided into two

parts: a discussion of his mind, character and physical appearance

(Ep. Post 2-11), and a chronological narrative of his life (Ep. Post.

12-30).2 m his opening lines, Petrarch states his reasons for

composing the work, noting that the future reader "perhaps will wish

to know what kind of man I was [guid hominis fuerim] or which works I

wrote [guis operum exitus meorum]" (Ep. Post. I).3 He then provided

the reader with a written self-portrait: a comprehensive view of

^Karl Enenkel, "Modelling the Humanist: Petrarch's Letter to Posterity and Boccaccio's Biography of the Poet Laureate,” in Modelling the Individual: Biography and Portraiture in the Renaissance, ed. Karl Enenkel et. al. (Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1998), 13.

2Ibid., 13.

3As translated by Enenkel, 13. For Enenkel, Petrarch's text appears unfinished because he did not end the composition with a list of his works, an element contained in ancient writers' biographies.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. himself, his habits and character, a chronological narrative of his

life, and a description of his physical appearance.4 Petrarch began

the Letter with his own verbal portrait, thus deviating from the

medieval autobiographic tradition in which authors did not provide an

account of their physical appearance.5 Petrarch believed that this

type of information was suitable for, and of interest to, his

contemporary and future audiences. Indeed, his example was the

impetus for the description of a subject's physical appearance and

aspects of personality found in many subsequent humanist

autobiographies and biographies.6 By the mid-sixteenth century it had

even become customary to provide a visual portrait of the subject at

the beginning of biographies, an idea ultimately inspired by

Petrarch’s model.7 In terms of function, the Renaissance portrait and

written biography were closely related. According to Giovanni

4For a translation of the autobiography, see Karl Enenkel, "Critical Edition of Epistola Posteritati," in Modelling the Individual: Biography and Portraiture in the Renaissance, ed. Karl Enenkel et. al. (Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1998), 256-281.

5For a discussion of medieval autobiographies see Karl J. Weintraub, The Value of the Individual: Self and Circumstance in Autobiography (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1978), 19-48.

6Enenkel "Modelling the Humanist," 33. B. Cellini, The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, trans. and ed. John C. Nelson (New York: Washington Square Press, 1963), xi. See also Anne C. E. van Galen, "Body and Self-image in the autobiography of Gerolamo Cardano," in Modelling the Individual: Biography and Portraiture in the Renaissemce, ed. Karl Enenkel et. al. (Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1998), 133-152.

7Enenkel "Modelling the Humanist," 33, who further notes that from the middle of the sixteenth century onward, authors also produced illustrated series of biographies. In addition to Enenkel's findings, it is possible that Renaissance authors were also inspired to include likenesses by the example of ancient and medieval writers' author portraits.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Battista Armen ini, On the True Precepts of the Art of Painting,

writing about portraiture in the mid-sixteenth century:

"...The subject is in itself desirable to almost everyone; a true likeness, fashioned from material that will last some time, ensures in great part the preservation of their name for posterity since it will proclaim their virtues for many centuries. Thus portrayed, not only is the true image of the person represented, but it commemorates all his virtues and brave deeds which are spread through the world, just as sepulchers give notice to posterity of past things."8

Thus, written and visual descriptions, separately and together,

advertise the subject's merits. For Petrarch and those biographers

that he inspired, the inclusion of a person's physical description was

as important for the reader's overall view of an individual as was a

discussion of his deeds and character.

Nonetheless, all artistic autobiographies did not adhere to

Petrarch's archetype. in the middle of the fifteenth century Lorenzo

Ghiberti became the first Renaissance visual artist to produce a true

autobiography as part of his Commentaries. The sculptor's Second

Commentary included a brief history of art from Cimabue to his own

time, and he closed this section with his autobiography.8 In this

essay, Ghiberti downplayed biographical information and anecdotal

detail, and eliminated a physical description of himself, choosing

instead to focus on a chronological discussion of his own works and

8Giovanni Battista Armenini, On the True Precepts of the Art of Painting, ed. and trans. Edward J. Olszewski (New York: Burt Franklin, 1977), 256-261. See also Anthony Blunt, Artistic Theory in Italy, 1450-1600 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1963), 138-139.

^Christie Knapp Fengler, "Lorenzo Ghiberti's Second Commentary: The Translation and Interpretation of a Fundamental Renaissance Treatise on Art," (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1974), 1.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. commissions. He presented himself as a highly educated sculptor

within an established artistic tradition who approached his craft with

diligence and love, and whose goal was to approximate nature.

By writing an autobiography, he ensured that his stature among

contemporaries would not be forgotten, nor his works wrongly

attributed to other artists in the future. Further, by chronicling

his mature artistic life and works, Ghiberti demonstrated that he

deemed his profession and accomplishments to be comparable with those

of rulers, worthies, and humanists whose deeds had been previously

recorded.11 Ghiberti's Commentaries were not printed during his

lifetime; consequently, they would have been available only to his

close associates. However, some later artists' autobiographies,

including Benvenuto Cellini's, were written with the belief that they

would be printed to reach a wide audience.12

10Ibid., 75. Based on the contents of his text, Ghiberti's identity was closely tied to his artistic production, an idea reinforced by the fusion of his likeness with the actual doors of the Florentine Baptistry. He showed pride in his accomplishments noting that few things of importance were made in Florence which were not designed or arranged by his hand. By feu: his longest discussion was a description of his second set of bronze doors for the Baptistry of San Giovanni. He noted that the commission was "carried out with very great study and discipline, it is the most singular of all the works that I have produced, and it was finished with every skill and correct proportion and ingenuity."

11Ibid., 296.

12Jane Turner, ed., Dictionary of Art, 1996 ed., s.v. "Cellini, Benvenuto," by Alessandro Nova, 27, states that Cellini wrote his autobiography with the belief that it would be published before his death. However, as the relationship between Cosimo I and Cellini grew increasingly worse, it became clear that Cellini's vita would not be accepted for publication in his lifetime. On the number of copies and possible readers of Ghiberti's Commentaries, see Fengler, 2-3 and 280- 285.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Around the year 1558, Cellini, a goldsmith and sculptor, penned

his autobiography not as part of a larger study of art history and

theory as Ghiberti's had been, but as an independent text.13 At the

beginning of his Vita, Cellini notes that those who are truthful and

honest, who have done excellent things in their life, and who are over

forty years old should describe their life with their own hand.14 In

a recent essay, Victoria Coates convincingly analyzed the

circumstances that could have spurred Cellini to write an

autobiography.15 First, he was working in Florence where his artistic

rival for Medici patronage, Vasari, was writing the second version of

his Vite. Cellini, who knew the first edition of the Vite, probably

knew that Vasari was working on the second, and that there was no

guarantee that Vasari would celebrate Cellini's character or artistic

production fairly.1® No one thought more highly of Cellini and his

13The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, trans. John A. Symonds (New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1995), 3. The work was started when the artist was "travelling beyond the term of fifty-eight years". He may have begun the work in 1557.

14For a more concise version of Cellini's life and works see Nova, 139-150.

^Victoria C. Gardner Coates, "'Ut vita scultura': Cellini's Perseus and the Self-fashioning of Artistic Identity," in Fashioning Identities in Renaissance Art, ed. Mary Rogers (Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 2000), 149-162. Nova, 148, notes that "one of the objectives of the Vita was to win back the trust of the court in order to gain further commissions from the Medici". As was stated, this distrust sprung from the fact that Cellini had been accused of appropriating bronze from the Medici Perseus project.

^ I n a similar vein, Michelangelo is reported to have dictated his own autobiography to Ascanio Condivi to correct errors about his life and work that were contained in Vasari's first edition of the Vite. See Ascanio Condivi, The Life of Michelangelo, trans. Alice Sedgwick Wohl and ed. Hellmut Wohl (University Park: The Pennsylvania State

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. work than did Cellini, so he drafted his own version of events as a

calculated campaign of self-presentation.

Certainly throughout the text he extols his artistic genius and

his personal virtues, even though he had many brushes with the law and

had written the manuscript while under house arrest after being

sentenced to four years imprisonment for sodomy.^ But it is his

artistic superiority in the Florentine sculptural tradition that he

trumpets most loudly in his writing, even claiming at one point that

he was "the greatest man of his profession ever born."1® In addition

to elaborating upon his many escapades, commissions, and important

patrons, he used about one-fifth of the manuscript to describe the

circumstances leading up to the creation of the Perseus, the only

monumental bronze sculpture that he produced in Italy.19 Coates views

Unviersity, 1997). Moreover, from 1552-1560 Bandinelli composed his diary Memoriale probably because Vasari omitted his biography from the first edition of the Vite. See Katherine T. Brown, The Painter's Reflection: Self-portraiture in Renaissance Venice, 1458-1625 (Florence: Leo s. Olschiki Editore, 2000), 30.

17Nova, 146. At this time, Cellini was also under suspicion of appropriating a large quantity of bronze from the Perseus project, and so deemed untrustworthy by the ducal family in Florence. This was not the first time he was accused of appropriating materials; in October of 1538 he was charged with stealing jewels from the papal treasury and imprisoned in the Castel Sant'Angelo. Moreover, Cellini committed murder in 1531 to avenge the death of his brother Cecchino, and again in 1534 when he killed the goldsmith Pompeo de'Capitaneis for speaking ill of him at the papal court. He also claimed responsibility for murdering at least two other people.

18As cited by Joanna Woods-Marsden, Renaissance Self-Portraiture: The Visual Construction of Identity and the Social Status of the Artist (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998), 157, "... maggiore umo che nascessi mai della sua professione."

19According to Coates, 150, eighty pages of the work were given over to a discussion of the Perseus. Cellini had created at least one over-life-size bronze statue of Diana while he was in Fontainbleau,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. his literary version of the Perseus not only as the centerpiece of his

Vita, but as the culmination of the fundamental theme stressed

throughout the text: that he is the greatest artist in the Florentine

tradition, anointed not only by his predecessors but by God.20

He began the Perseus in 1545 for Cosimo I de'Medici with the

knowledge that it would eventually be set up in the very public Loggia

dei Lanzi on the Piazza della Signoria. There the Perseus was to be

displayed between two celebrated works by his most esteemed Tuscan

predecessors, Donatello's Judith and Bolofernes and Michelangelo's

David. Cellini would use this positioning to confirm his artistic

supremacy over his fellow artists both in the physical placement of

the sculpture and in writing.

In the Vita, Cellini touted his superiority over Donatello by

emphasizing that he had succeeded effortlessly in creating a wax model

for the Perseus, while Donatello had struggled with that part of the

casting process when making his Judith and Holofernes.2^ He then

positioned himself as Michelangelo's equal by overcoming hardships

similar to those that the older master endured while creating the

David. The marble Michelangelo wanted for the David had been partly

worked by prior artists, and Vasari had referred to Michelangelo's

France. By casting the Perseus monumental bronze figural group, he secured his reputation in Italy as a sculptor on a par with other liberal artists and humanists, rather than as a goldsmith, who typically produced small works and was thus considered a craftsman.

20Coates, 150 and 155. Throughout his text, Cellini reinforces the idea that his talent, which comes directly from God, whom he sees as his personal protector, is the foundation for his alleged superiority over other artists.

21Ibid., 152-153, who notes that Vasari reported Donatello's difficulties with the process in his first edition of the Vite.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. rescue of this block from the incompetence of earlier sculptors as a

resurrection of a corpse.22 Similarly, Cellini described rescuing his

Perseus from the problems of casting by referring to the feat as

"bringing a dead man back to life in the face of his assistants'

ignorant despair."23 Cellini, like Michelangelo, was responsible for

resurrecting his work in a miraculous manner — bringing it back from

the dead — an event that was indicative of his god-like abilities.

According to his Vita, Cellini later acknowledged to Cosimo I that

Michelangelo's advanced age would prohibit him from undertaking such a

great project as Cellini's Perseus; thus Cellini was able, at least in

writing, to surpass his highly esteemed rival.24 Cellini used his

carefully scripted version of the production of Perseus to fashion

himself into the preeminent Florentine sculptor who, with the help of

God, was able to prevail over his venerable predecessors.

In the mid-sixteenth century, Vasari penned his second edition

of the Vite, a written account of the lives and works of artists of

the previous 300 years, ending it with an autobiography, the first by

an early modern painter. In this, simply titled "Description of the

works of Giorgio Vasari, Painter and Architect of Arezzo," Vasari

declared that his aim was to gather together and make known the works

22Ibid., 153, citing G. Vasari, Le Vite de'piu eccellenti architetti, pittore et scultori Italiani, ed. L. B. and A. Rossi (Turin: Binaudi, 1986), 887.

23Ibid., 153, citing B. Cellini, The Life of Benvenuto Cellini, trans. J. A. Symonds (London: Nimmo, 1889), 424.

24Ibid., 153.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. that he executed.25 He introduced his Vita by noting that he need not

reiterate the facts of his family history and his own early biography

since he had already provided this information in previous Vite.

Indeed, Vasari peppered many of the biographies with self-references.

In this way, he made himself an integral part not only of the

reporting of art history but also of the production of its monuments.

Unlike Cellini who considered his own art to be superior to that

of his predecessors and contemporaries, Vasari believed that

Michelangelo alone had attained the highest degree of perfection in

art, while admitting that his own creations could contain

imperfections and deficiencies.26 Vasari's goal was not to make

perfect or superior art, although he emphasized that he approached his

work with study, diligence and loving labor. Rather from his earliest

years, Vasari was aware that he could acquire grandeur, honor and

elevated rank as well as profit through his artistic abilities.27

Moreover, Vasari displayed his pride in the wealth and social status

that he had attained when he recorded an episode with a fellow artist,

Jacone (d. 1553) in his Vite. Jacone had provocatively inquired about

Vasari, who replied:

"[I am fine], my dear Jacone. Once I was poor like all of you, and now I find myself with three thousand crowns or more. You thought me a fool, and now the priests and friars think me an able master. I used to be your servant, and here is a servant

25Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, trans. Gaston du C. de Vere (New York and Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), 2: 1019.

26Ibid., 2: 1019-1022.

27Ibid., 2: 1020-1022

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. of my own, who serves me and looks after my horse. I used to dress in the clothes that beggarly painters wear, and here I am dressed in velvet. Once I went on foot and now I go on horseback. So you see, my Jacone, it goes really well with me. May God be with you."28

It was this craving for fame and riches that brought Vasari criticism

from his contemporaries.28

Paolo Giovio, Vasari's close professional associate who helped

inspire Vasari to pen the Vite, must have been aware of Vasari's

aspirations, because he sent a letter of encouragement to Vasari when

he was in the process of writing the first edition of the Vite.

Giovio's letter stated: "Write, brother mine, write ... you will be

more joyful, more famous and more rich by this fine work, than if you

had painted the chapel of Michelangelo, which is perishing with

saltpeter and cracks."3® The popularity of the first edition of the

Vite helped to establish a definitive connection between celebrity and

the arts while bringing personal fame to its author.3*

In addition to his autobiography, Vasari included his physical

features in printed form for the second edition in which his self

28Vasari (1996), 2: 443-444. This passage was cited by Kliemann, 22.

29Including Ottaviano de'Medici and Borghini. See Jane Turner, ed., Dictionary of Art, 1996 ed., s.v. "Vasari, Giorgio," by Julian Kliemann, 22.

30Letter cited by T. S. R. Boase, Giorgio Vasari: The Man and the Book (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 45.

31Kliemann, 18, stated that Vasari' s fame rests principally on this book. Patricia L. Ruben, Giorgio Vasari: Art and History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), 21, noting that all of Vasari's activities, the Vite, the paintings for the Palazzo Vecchio, and his co-founding of the Florentine Art Academy helped establish this link between celebrity and the arts.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. portrait: appeared in two locations, before his autobiography and after

the frontispiece. The title page was embellished with a print that

underscored Vasari's role in preserving the esteem and imperishability

of artists. In the work, Fame blows her trumpet and awakens the dead

from their graves while the muses of painting, sculpture and

architecture watch with approval. The image and accompanying

inscription HAC SOSPITE NUNQUAM BOS PERIISSE VIROS VICTOS AUT MORTE

FATEBOR (I shall claim that with this breath these men have never

perished, nor been conquered by death),32 are testaments to the

biographer's power of stifling mortality while bringing honor and

acclaim to his subjects. By including his own likenesses in, and an

autobiography as the climax of, this second edition, Vasari claimed

his own artistic celebrity and renown.

With their autobiographies, Ghiberti, Cellini, and Vasari

created written portraits of themselves in which they celebrated their

virtues and artistic accomplishments. In each instance, the artist

situated himself as an important, if not indispensable, factor within

a developing tradition of exceptional visual arts. Hoping for some

measure of immortality, each man fashioned a written image of himself

that would outlive the author, and that would preserve the memory of

him as an individual whose achievements were commendable.

The author of a self-portrait, like that of an autobiography,

presents the audience with a constructed image of himself in which the

information disseminated is carefully controlled by the maker.

Although self-portraits did not develop into a well-established art

32Boase, 66, observed that the print was repeated at the end of the work.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. form until the sixteenth century, they had appeared sporadically in

Western art from antiquity33 through the fifteenth century. Among

Renaissance and early Baroque artists, the self-portrait became the

most popular method for self-fashioning.

In the Middle Ages, illuminators sometimes included their images

in the manuscripts they produced, and generally, these images alluded

to some aspect of the makers' profession.34 Medieval monks emphasized

their roles as scribes and artists by including the tools of their

trade or written references to their occupation in the

illuminations.33 These medieval self-portraits, which were frequently

33No self-portraits have survived from Greek artists, but ancient authors mention two sculpted examples: one by Phidias and one by Theodore of Samos. For Phidias' self-portrait as an older, bald warrior lifting a stone in the Amazonomachy on the interior of Athena Parthenos' shield, see Plutarch, Life of Pericles, XXXI.2-5 cited in J. J. Pollitt, The Art of Greece 1400-31 BC: Sources and Documents, second edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 53-54. According to Pliny, Theodore of Samos made a bronze self-portrait that was celebrated for its likeness and great subtlety of detail. See Pliny, Natural History, XXXIV.83 for Theodoros in J. J. Pollitt, The Art of Greece 1400-31 BC: Sources and Documents, second edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 27-28.

34Frequently, as in Self-portrait of Abbot Otbert of St. Bertin adoring Christ at the Nativity (New York, Pierpont Morgan library, M. 333, folio 51.), monks who were illuminators, such as Otbert, depicted themselves before a religious figure either kneeling or in supplication, postures used to underscore the artist's monastic humility. For further reading on medieval self-portraits of illuminators, see Jonathan J. G. Alexander, Medieval Illuminators and Their Methods of Work (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992), 8-25. Alexander, 10, provides the dates, ca. 968-1007, for Otbert of St. Bertin.

35In the late eleventh century, Hugo, a Norman monk, represented himself in a colophon portrait at the end of a manuscript of St. Jerome's Commentary on Isaiah (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Bodley 717, folio 287v.). The full-length, tonsured monk sits before a lectern holding a knife with one hand and dipping a pen into an inkwell with the other.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. accompanied by inscribed names, served as a signature for the artist,

but their creators were not necessarily concerned with verisimilitude.

Almost without exception, the artists' appearance conforms to an

idealized youthful type, with an oval head, broad forehead, large

eyes, a long, straight nose and a small mouth.36

Unlike the medieval artist, whose self-images generally graced

the pages of manuscripts,37 Renaissance and early Baroque artists

produced self-portraits in numerous media, including fresco, pen and

ink, stone, metal, oil paint, and print. They represented themselves

in several ways: alone, in the garb of a noble, with tools of their

trade, witnessing or participating in a narrative, with other

individuals and as actors in historical and religious dramas.

Andrea Orcagna's self-portrait in the Death of the Virgin on the

Orsanmichele tabernacle of 1359 is the first extant example of a

Renaissance self-portrait that is attested by early textual

evidence.38 From that time forward, artists produced self-portraits

in ever-increasing numbers. Although both self-portraiture and

3«A change seems to have occurred towards the end of the fourteenth century when illuminators began to emphasize their individual features. Frater Petrus de Pavia illuminated a copy of Pliny the Elder's Natural History, in 1389. Still interested in documenting his profession, Petrus depicted himself working on a manuscript while seated at a writing desk (figure 15, Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, E .24 inf., folio 332, Pliny the Elder, National History. Initial M). In this profile portrait, he has a long, sloping nose, deep-set eyes, thin lips, and a bulbous chin. See Alexander, 30 figure 46.

37Medieval examples of self-portraiture also exist in stained glass and in the sculpted fagade decoration of buildings.

38As identified by Ghiberti, Commentaries, trans. and ed. Fengler, 32- 33. See p. 34, above.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. portraiture thrived from the late-fifteenth through the early-

seventeenth centuries (and thereafter), curiously, they are scarcely

mentioned in contemporary treatises.

In their discourses on art Alberti and Diirer have provided us

with their views pertaining to the primary function of portraiture.

In his theoretical treatise On Painting (1435), Alberti stated that

"painting possesses a truly divine power in that not only does it make

the absent present (as they say of friendship), but it represents the

dead to the living many centuries later,” and that "through painting,

the faces of the dead go on living for a very long time."39 Similarly

Diirer (ca. 1525) commented in his Lehrbuch that "painting preserves

the image of men after their deaths."40 Giovanni Battista Armenini

used a full chapter in Book Three of his On the True Precepts of the

Art of Painting to discuss portraiture: its functions and the skills

needed to master the art form. According to Armenini:

"Truly, there are many men who are awed and hold that painter to be of supreme excellence who, in making a portrait from life, approaches the real so much that the portrait appears an exact likeness. I believe their opinion derives not so much from their ignorance as from the conditions of the subject. The subject is in itself desirable to almost everyone; a true likeness, fashioned from material that will last some time, ensures in great part the preservation of their name for posterity since it will proclaim their virtues for many centuries. Thus portrayed, not only is the true image of the person represented, but it commemorates all his virtues and brave deeds which are spread through the world, just as

39Leon B. Alberti, De Pictura, trans. and ed. Cecil Grayson (London: Phaidon Press, 1972), 61.

40As cited by Alistair Smith, "Diirer as a Portraitist," in Essays on Diirer (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1973), 68. Smith observed that Diirer was probably drawing upon the ancient text of Pliny who stated "... it [painting] ennobled others whom it deigned to transmit to posterity".

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. sepulchers give notice to posterity of past things ...But let it be known with certainty that on the subject of portraits ... even an artist of mediocre talent can master this art sufficiently as long as he is experienced in colors."4I

Unquestionably, Armenini felt that a low level of artistic skill was

sufficient to master the art of portraiture, which had a very low

status in the sixteenth-century hierarchy of genres because it

required only that am artist be able to replicate or copy the features

of a person, while istoria required the artist to be able to invent

and compose a pleasing narrative.42 For Leonardo da Vinci the two

genres were not separated by status as much as they were separated by

the need for a different set of skills. He made the observation that

"among all of those who make a profession of portraying faces from

life, he who gives the best resemblances is the worst composer of

histories," or simply stated, the best portrait painters were the

worst history painters.4^ These few comments that are scattered in

4^-Giovanni Battista Armenini, On the True Precepts of the Art of Painting, ed. and trans. Edward J. Olszewski (New York: Burt Franklin, 1977), 256-261. Armenini trained for six years in Rome, between 1550 and 1556, and his work, Dei Veri Precetti della Pittura, was first published in Ravenna in 1586. See also Anthony Blunt, Artistic Theory in Italy, 1450-1600 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1963), 138-139.

42Joanna woods-Marsden, Renaissance Self-portraiture: The Visual Construction of Identity and the Social Status of the Artist (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998), 9.

43Leonardo da Vinci, Treatise on Painting ed. A. P. McMahon (Princeton: Princeton Unversity Press, 1956), 58, translated the passage as follows: "that among all those who profess to portray faces from life, he who gives the best resemblance is the worst composer of action paintings." According to McMahon's introduction, "The notes on painting in the Codex Urbinas 1270 were copied directly from Leonardo's original manuscripts when those manuscripts were still complete as their author had bequeathed them to his pupil, Francesco Melzi.”

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. larger theoretical texts about painting are the primary contemporary

written sources for our understanding of the Renaissance perception of

portraiture, and by extension self-portraiture, for this period.

Since artists were generally silent about the functions of and

reasons for self-imaging, we are left with the task of inferring their

intentions from the self-portraits themselves.44 The artist's desire

to record his features, thus preserving them and in some sense himself

for posterity, has been cited as an underlying aim of self

portraiture,45 but recent studies have contended that Renaissance

self-portraiture may have been produced primarily to affirm an

artist's social and intellectual standing.45 Of course, self-

portraits could have other functions and meanings. An examination of

a variety of portrait types (autonomous, professional/craftsman,

44Anton W. A. Boschloo, "Perceptions of the Status of Painting: the Self-portrait in the Art of the Italian Renaissance," in Modelling the Individual — Biography and Portrait in the Renaissance, ed. Karl Enenkel et. al. (Amsterdam and Atlanta GA: Rodopi, 1998), 51-73, provides a short discussion and examples of some painted types of self-portraits. Gunter Schweikhart, "Das Selbstbildnis im 15 Jahrhundert," in Italienische Friihrenaissance und nordeuropaisches Mittelalter, ed. J. Poeschke (Munich: Hirmer Verlag Miinchen, 1993), 11-39, distinguished eight types of sixteenth-century self-portraits. K. Brown discussed only Venetian self-portraiture.

45John Pope-Hennessy, The Portrait in the Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 293. K. Brown, 20, states that the primary function of self-portraiture is to commemorate so that the artist achieves some level of immortality.

46Schweikhart contends that the artists wished to raise their social status with self-portraiture. In the most in-depth study, Joanna Woods-Marsden argues in her book that although self-portraiture emerged at the same time as other forms of portraiture whose primary function was to record the sitter's appearance, self-portraiture served a further purpose of forwarding the aspirations of the creators who wished to raise the status of art and the social standing of the artist.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. alliance, witness/participant, and guise) by those artists who

presented themselves as actors in scenes of decapitation, will

contribute greater insight into the manifold messages that these

artists conveyed with their more usual self-images, and provide a

backdrop for a closer examination of the decapitation images in the

following two chapters.

Based on extant examples, the autonomous self-portrait, an image

in which the artist is shown alone without the tools of his

profession, was the most popular type of painted self-image during the

Renaissance and Early Baroque periods.47 For a self-portrait the

artist would have had a readily available model as a subject and could

use the work as a means of self-examination. Further, it is possible

that he could have used the image as a self-promotional piece, showing

it, and himself, to potential patrons as a testament of his abilities

to capture a likeness and to reproduce the effects of optical

reality.4** Ridolfi comments that in the Merceria, the main shopping

47According to Enenkel "Modelling the Humanist," 47, self-portrait medals are the first type of autonomous self-portrait in Italy. The earliest preserved painted autonomous self-portrait may be Jan van Eyck's Man in a Red Turban (London, National Gallery), although this painting is not indisputably a self-portrait. See Elisabeth Dhanens, Hubert and Jan van Eyck (New York: Alpine Fine Arts Collection, 1980), 188-92. Although it has been described as a self-portrait in the past, Antonello da Messina's Portrait of a Man (London, National Gallery) of ca. 1475 is no longer generally accepted as a self-image. See Christopher Baker and Tom Henry, The National Gallery: The Complete Illustrated Catalogue (London: National Gallery Publications, 1995), 8; Caterina Zappia, "Ritratto d'uomo," in Antonello da Messina (Rome: de Luca Editore, 1981), 120 figure 19; Joanne Wright, "Antonello da Messina. The Origins of his Style and Technique," Art History 3 (1980), 41-60, and Martin Davies, National Gallery Catalogues: The Earlier Italian Schools (London: National Gallery Publications, 1961), 39.

48Lorne Campbell, Renaissance Portraits (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990), 215, uses Joris Hoefnagel as an example of

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. street in Venice, Tintoretto displayed a self-portrait of himself in

which he held a relief and a portrait of his musician brother, in

order to advertise and to attract attention to his art.49 Moreover,

Vasari informs us that, at his uncles' suggestion, Parmigianino

painted his own likeness, so that when he traveled to Rome it could be

presented to prospective patrons with the hope of securing future

commissions.50

Artists also made autonomous self-portraits that were meant as

gifts for family members or that commemorated special honors bestowed

by notable patrons. In addition to making a now lost self-portrait

"in order to leave that memory of himself to his children,"®1 around

1550 Titian painted an image of himself seated at a table and gazing

this practice. Upon meeting the Duke of Bavaria, who asked the artist to show him an example of his work, Hoefnagel showed the duke a portrait of himself and his first wife. See also Francis Ames-Lewis, The Intellectual Life of the Early Renaissance Artist (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), 222, who also supports the idea that an artist could use his own self-portrait as a self-promotional work to be shown to patrons as a sample of artistic and technical skill.

49Carlo Ridolfi, Le Maraviglie dell’arte, owero, D. von Hadeln, ed. (Berlin, 1914), 2: 16, as discussed by Jennifer Fletcher, "Fatto al Specchiot Venetian Renaissance Attitudes to Self-portraiture," Fenway Court 1 (1990-91), 54. Some of Ridolfi's information on Tintoretto came to him, by his own account, directly from the artist's son Domenico.

®°Vasari. (1996), 1: 934-935. By offering a gift to a person of higher rank, one could hope or expect to receive favors in return, including patronage. After arriving in Rome, Parmigianino presented his Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror (Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum) to Pope Clement VII who immediately recognized the artist's special merits and who bestowed gifts, marks of favor, and promises of future work to him. For further reading on the gift-giving culture of sixteenth century Italian courts, see Woods-Marsden (1998), 195.

51Vasari (1996), 2: 791.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. intently at something outside of and to the left of the painting

(Berlin, Staatlich Museen, Gemaldegalerie, figure 17).52 Titian wears

fur, a material not suitable for the activities of a painter but one

that implies prosperity and a high social status. Further, he wears a

thick golden chain, an insignia of his rank as a Knight of the Golden

Spur which he received in 1533 from Charles V, who wished to show his

admiration for Titian's portrait of Charles himself.53 Although

Titian is dressed in nobleman's garb and wearing a chain of honor, an

attribute of a painter whose extraordinary abilities had been

recognized by a powerful ruler, there is no paraphernalia of the

profession that brought him this status. Titian created the self-

portrait in the loose and painterly style that became a hallmark of

his late work,54 though he generally reserved this rougher technique

for his istorie, preferring to use tighter brushwork for commissioned

52Woods-Marsden (1998), 160-163; K. Brown, 175-176 figure 50; Harold Wethey, The Paintings of Titian — Complete Edition (New York: Phaidon Press, 1969-71), 2: 143-144, cat. 104. Luba Freedman, Titian's Independent Self-portraits (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1990), 73-77, believes the painting represents the artist as the divino artista, the divinely inspired man, taking impetus from the tradition of isolated Evangelists at a table with the head averted and the eyes gazing into the distance. However, this is not an uncommon presentation of a sitter in Venetian portraiture generally. She also hypothesizes that the imperfections and incompleteness of the work are burdens that the divino artista, who is unable to reconcile the conception of his mind's image with the finished work, has to bear.

55Wethey, 2: 21. In the accompanying document, Charles V compared Titian to Apelles.

54Without acknowledging that the sleeves and perhaps the beard are also unfinished, Freedman, 37, speculates that Titian's hands are to be understood as the tool of the artist. According to her theory, the hands were left unfinished as an indirect reference to the profession of the sitter. She supports this argument by stating that at the end of his career, Titian painted more with his fingers than his brush. Woods-Marsden (1998), 163, also proposed this interpretation.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. portraits. Luba Freedman speculates, that in using this technique

Titian may have been trying to equate this self-portrait with the

higher status iatorie rather than with the lower category of

portraiture.The more usual assumption is simply that the painting

is unfinished.

Artists produced numerous examples of and variations on the

autonomous self-portrait type. Mantegna cast a bronze self-portrait

bust in which he wears a laurel crown, and this bust was eventually

incorporated into his tomb monument (Mantua, Cappella S. Giovanni

Battista, S. Andrea).56 While sculpted examples exist, many artists

made painted autonomous self-portraits. For example, Cristofano

Allori presented himself wearing a jauntily angled hat while haughtily

glancing over his shoulder and beyond the viewer in his self-portrait

(Florence, Uffizi, figure 28)57. In a youthful self-portrait (Arles,

55Freedman (1990), 79. According to Fletcher, 52, Titian kept the painting in his own house where other artists could view it. However, she does not cite contemporary documents to support her view.

56In antiquity, the laurel wreath was sometimes used as an attribute of triumphant achievement and eternal fame, and he may have adopted the motif in reference to his own artistic accomplishments that he hoped would ensure his immortality. Ronald Lightbown, Mantegna (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), 132, declares that in the early Renaissance, the wreath was not an element usually embraced by artists, thus it may also represent Mantegna's desire to be on a par with the laureate poet. Beneath the bust carved into a rectangular white marble slab is an inscription comparing Mantegna to the greatest antique painter, Apelles. ESSE PAREM / HVNC NORIS / SI NON PREPO / NIS APPELLI / AENEA MANTINIAE / QVI SIMVLCRA / VIDES (You see the bronze likeness of Aeneas Mantegna know him to be equal, if not superior, to Apelles). Woods-Marsden (1998), 93, maintains that while the author of the inscription is not known, it can be presumed that Mantegna would have endorsed the epitaph.

57Miles L. Chappell, Cristofano Allori 1577-1621 (Florence: Centro di, 1984), 75 figure 23.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Musde Rdattu, figure 32) Vouet strikes a somewhat similar pose, but

his direct gaze and partially opened mouth gives the impression that

he is about to engage us in a verbal exchange, rather than overlook us

as Allori does.58 Later in his nearly frontal self-portrait (Lyon,

Musde des Beaux-Arts, figure 30), Vouet once again engages us with his

pointed gaze and parted lips. In his many self-portraits (e.g., Rome,

Galleria Borghese, figures 31 and 33),59 Bernini also directly

confronts the viewer with his piercing glance, however his tightly

compressed lips and serious demeanor do not invited the same level of

psychological interaction as Vouet's self-images do.60

The autonomous self-portrait, the most popular category for

Renaissance and early Baroque artists, is one in which the artist is

shown alone and has no implements to suggest his trade. A second

category, the craftsman/professional self-portrait was a type that was

practiced by illuminators in the Middle Ages, as noted in the examples

above. In these works the artist is shown with tools of the trade,

often engaged in the act of painting or drawing. In the early

Renaissance, however, only a few artists, such as Cola Petrucciolo,

58This painting has been widely accepted as a self-portrait of the artist since the 1960's. See Jacques Thuillier, Vouet (Paris: Editions de la Reunion des musdes nationaux, 1990), 202 figure 10.

59Maria G. Bernardini and Maurizio Fagiolo dell'Arco, eds., Gian Lorenzo Bernini: Regista del Barocco (Milan: Skira, 1999), 48 figure 3, and 51 figure 6.

®°By far, the most spontaneous form of self-portrait is a drawn one, which is generally produced very quickly and often serves as a study for a larger work. Bernini, Lavinia Fontana, and Diirer were among the artists who drew their own likenesses.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. continued this tradition,61 but, by the second half of the sixteenth

century, the craftsman self-portrait again became a popular mode of

representation.6 2

In his profile self-portrait of about 1565-1570 (Madrid, Prado

Museum, figure 16), Titian shows himself as an artist by holding a

painter's brush in his right hand.**3 He is dressed in the costly

garments of a nobleman: a fur-trimmed cape, a black skull-cap, and a

gold chain, similar to those worn in his earlier Berlin self-portrait.

The paintbrush, in the lower left corner, is a reminder of the reason

for his prosperity, reputation, and high social standing. He also

disregards our gaze because he is presented in profile.64 For

61For example, Cola Petrucciolo presented himself with a brush and paint pot in the border of the choir frescoes for S. Domenico in Perugia. See Schweikhart, 13, and Ames-Lewis, 213. Also, in the border of a Gradual, illuminated as late as 1532 (Genoa, Biblioteca Civica Berio, Cf. 3. 2, folio 1) II Riccio (Bartolomeo Neroni of Siena) a painter, architect, and illuminator, depicted himself using a pen to create a decorative letter. See Alexander, 34.

62Boschloo, 52, claims that: "we do not come across self-portraits of artists with artists' materials in Italian painting before the middle of the sixteenth century, and even then such portraits are relatively rare". Boschloo does not give examples of pre-mid-sixteenth century craftsman self-portraits, but he does mention the Flemish and German tradition of artists showing themselves as St. Luke (again without specific examples or even a timetable) as the forerunner of the craftsman self-portrait.

63Wethey, 2: 144, cat. 105; K. Brown, 176-178 figure 51; Woods-Marsden (1998), 165-167; Boschloo, 61; Freedman (1990), 87-103; and Jodi Cranston, The Poetics of Portraiture in the Italian Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 98-115.

64Cranston, 98, discusses the profile pose as rare for self- portraiture, and Freedman (1990), 87-103, asserts that this is an anachronistic pose that in the sixteenth century was generally reserved for rulers. While it is unusual it is not an unprecedented pose for Italian self-portraits. For example, Gentile Bellini, in his Procession of the Relic of the True Cross in Piazza San Marco (Venice,

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Boschloo, the increased internalization of the motionless pose and the

gaze, turned away from the outside world, lends Titian new authority

and forces the viewer into a more reflective form of participation

with the image.65

Vasari and Cellini, among other author-artists, mentioned

artistic rivalry and competition as a means to prove an artist' s own

worth and to improve his/her art.66 We can postulate that Lavinia

Fontana must have felt some sense of artistic competition when the

Spanish theologian and scholar Alfonso Chacdn requested a self-

portrait from Lavinia for his collection. Chacdn, in a letter of

October 17, 1578 that he wrote while residing in Rome, requested that

Lavinia

"... an retratiao suo piccolo ... per porter far an quadro suo al natural et acompagnare a quello di sophonisba cbe bo cosi percbe sia visto et guardato et cognosciuto di ogni uno come anco per poterlo metere in stampa infra 500 huomini et donne

Gallerie dell'Accademia), painted his and his brother Giovanni's profile portraits. See K. Brown, figure 17, 142-143.

65Boschloo, 61. Woods-Marsden (1998), 167, views the earlier self- portrait as the embodiment of Titian's active life, while this work symbolizes his contemplative life.

66For example, in his life of Domenico Puligo, Vasari (1996), 2: 767, records that "Ridolfo, son of Domenico Ghirlandajo, followed his father's habit of always keeping many young men painting in his workshop; which was the reason that not a few of them, through competing one with another, became very good masters". Further, Cellini (1995), 395, states that "I then proceeded to remark that their ancestors [the Medici] had brought the magnificent school of Florence to such a pitch of excellence only by stimulating competition among artists in their several branches". He later notes "Reflect upon it, my lady; if your most illustrious Excellencies think fit to open the model for a Neptune to competition, although you are resolved to give it to Bandinello, this will urge Bandinello for his own credit to display greater art and science than if he knew he had no rivals'. For further reading, see James Clifton, "Vasari on Competition," Sixteenth Century Journal 27 (1996): 23-41.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. illustri che saranno intagliati in Rame la spesa delle quali la fa il serenissimo arciduca di Austria Ferdineuido.... io penso celebrarla et propagarla per seculi et un genero de eternith." (... send me a tiny little portrait ... to enable a panel from life to be made, to accompany that which I have from Sofonisba, so that you cam be seen, and contemplated, and recognized by everyone, and I will also put it among the 500 illustrious men and women which will be engraved, at the expense of the most serene Archduke Ferdinand.... I think of celebrating and propagating you for centuries.)67

Although he did not specify how she was to present herself,

Chacdn did write that it was his intention to display her self-

portrait, not only with one by Sofonisba, but with images of other

worthies, and that he intended to disseminate his 500 images by

engraving and publishing them. Certainly, knowledge that her work

would be displayed for and distributed among Europe's elite must have

influenced her conception of herself in the small copper tondo Self-

portrait in a Studio (Florence, Uffizi, figure 25), signed and dated

1579, which she made in response to Chacdn's request of a year

earlier.68 For this prestigious occasion on which her artistic

celebrity was being acknowledged Lavinia, elegantly dressed and

bejeweled, presents herself in a study surrounded by classical

statuettes and fragments. We seem to have interrupted her work since,

67My translation of excerpts from the letter reprinted in the appendices of Romeo Galli, Lavinia Fontana Pittrice (Imola: Tip. P. Galeati, 1940), 107-110 documents 2 and 3, and Cantaro, 302-303, documents 5a.2 and 5a.3. Lavinia responded to Chacdn in a letter of May 3, 1979 also published by Cantaro, 306 n. 5b.5.

6B«..AVINIA FONTANA / TAPII FACIEB. / (M) D X X V I I I I » . See Maria Teresa Cantaro, Lavinia Fontana bolognese “pittora singolare* 1552-1614 (Rome: Jandi Sapi Editori, 1989), 86; Angela Ghirardi, "Lavinia Fontana, Autoritratto alia spinetta con la fantesca" in Lavinia Fontana 1552-1614 (Milan: Electa, 1994), 181-82, and Lucia Marro, "Lavinia Fontana," in Lavinia Fontana of Bologna, 1552-1614, trans. I. F. O'Rourke et al. (Milan: Electa, 1998), 58-59.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. seated at a table, she turns her head to acknowledge us while her

right hand, still holding the pen, is posed near a blank sheet of

paper resting on top of her desk.

Caroline Murphy has suggested that the classical male nude

statuette standing on the desk underscores the fact that Lavinia "has

approached her artistic training in the best traditions of the

Renaissance, by learning from the ancient world." Moreover, since

drawing male nudes from life would not have been part of Lavinia's

artistic training as it would have been for her male counterparts, the

statuette and other antique casts represent her access to the study of

anatomy.Her display of archeological fragments situated on the

shelves to her right also alludes to the larger cultural interest in

collecting initiated and therefore marks her as a collector, a

humanist, and an intellectual.70 Her costly damask garments, pearls

and gold jewelry attest to her social standing as the wife of a

noble,71 while the large cross dangling from a golden chain speaks to

her religious affiliation. This cross may also have been a concession

to her patron, the Dominican theologian Chacdn, who was a confessor to

Pope Gregory XIII.72 in this work that she believed would spread her

6^Caroline P. Murphy, "Lavinia Fontana: The making of a woman artist," in Women of the Golden Age, ed. Els Kloek, Nicole Teeuwen, Marijke Huisman (Hilvers urn: uitgeverij Verloven, 1994), 178.

70Ghirardi (1994), 181.

71Zappi was a mediocre painter and a member of a minor branch of an Imolan noble family according to Woods-Marsden (1998), 215, and 193, and Caroline P. Murphy, "Lavinia Fontana and Le Dame della CittA: understanding female artistic patronage in late sixteenth-century Bologna," Renaissance Studies 10/2 (1996), 193.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. reputation among the European elite, who would be able purchase a copy

in printed form, Lavinia shows that she is a serious student of art, a

noble, a humanist, a collector, an intellectual, an able craftsman,

and equal to a man in her artistic training.

About fifty years later, Artemisia Gentileschi portrayed herself

wearing a laurel crown while painting a portrait of an unknown male in

her Self-portrait (Rome, Galleria Nazionale, Palazzo Barberini, figure

34).7-* In antiquity, the laurel wreath was sometimes used as an

attribute of triumphant achievement and eternal fame, and she may have

adopted the motif in reference to her own artistic accomplishments

that she hoped would ensure her immortality. R. Ward Bissell believes

that the wreath may also refer to the honored concept of ut pictura

72According to Angela Ghirardi, "Women Artists of Bologna: The Self- portrait and the Legend from Caterina Vigri to Anna Morandi Manzolini (1413-1774)," in Lavinia of Bologna 1552-1614, trans. Isella F. O'Rourke (Milan: Electa 1998), 35, Lavinia wanted "to emphasize those experiences which were most useful in bringing her closer to the Dominican scholar". She is shown about to draw, since it is the most intellectual of her activities and the one most comparable to Chacdn's own writing. He was engrossed in the study of early Christian antiquities thus she shows her own archeological collection. He was a theologian, so she shows herself full of contrition (although Ghirardi does not give evidence to the source of or need for Lavinia's contrition) and of devotion, with the large cross.

73r. Ward Bissell, Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University, 1999), 234-237 figure 25, for those who support the attribution and for those who believe that this is a portrait of Artemisia by another's hand. Sofonisba Anguissola painted an image of her teacher painting a portrait of her in Bernardino Campi Painting a Portrait of Sofonisba Anguissola (figure 51, c. 1559, Siena, Pinacoteca Nazionale), an act that would show her debt and affiliation to her mentor. K. Brown, figure 84. Based on the style of this image, Sofonisba is the likely author. While the vast majority of scholars agree that this is a self-portrait of Sofonisba, a few believe that it could be a self- portrait of Campi. For this alternative reading, see Catherine King, "Looking a Sight: Sixteenth-Century Portraits of Women Artists," Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte 58/3 (1995), 390-391.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. poesis, in which the role of the visual artist is equated to that of

the poet. Further, for Bissell, by presenting herself painting a

portrait, the artist underscores her ability to capture a likeness,

and it is possible that the individual depicted in her canvas had

special meaning to the painter.74

By showing herself with smother individual, albeit a painted and

currently unidentified man, Artemisia has created not only a

craftsman/professional self-portrait in which she celebrates her

artistic abilities, but also an alliance self-portrait.7® The sitter

in an alliance self-portrait is accompanied by at least one other

individual, and this type was practiced far less frequently than

either the autonomous or craftsmen/professional self-portraits.

Alliance self-portraits are personal statements about the relationship

between an artist and other people, and in them the artist sought to

74Bissell, 234. Some artists portrayed themselves with brushes as they actively worked on canvases which often featured the type of painting for which they were best known, in her 1548 Self-portrait (figure 41, Basel, offentliche Kunstsammlung, Kunstmuseum), Caterina van Hemessen uses brushes, a palette, and a mahl stick to create a self-portrait. Sophonisba Anguissola paints a small devotional image of the Virgin and Child in her Self-portrait (formerly Collection of William Stirling, Kier, Sotheby's, 3.7.1963), an act that could emphasize the devout nature of the artist. Another version of this painting in the Zeri collection at Mentana carries the additional inscription: "Musas Appellem aequavi Sophonisba puella coloribus fungens carminibusque meis" (I, the maiden Sophonisba, equaled the Muses and Apelles in performing my songs and handling my colours).

75Recently, Boschloo, 56, designated this type in which the artist is part of a group as the ''kinship'' self-portrait. Although the term implies a relationship based on common ancestry, the persons represented in the images are often unrelated. Therefore, I will call this type of self-portrait the alliance self-portrait.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. present himself in a context of family,76 friends,77 other artists,78

or patrons.

Titian is reported to have painted a now-lost self-portrait for

Philip II which was eventually displayed in Philip's "royal room of

portraits" in his palace at El Pardo.79 In the work, probably painted

about 1552/3, Titian held a small image of the future monarch Philip

II, who did not take the throne until his father Charles V abdicated

in 1556.80 By 1552 Titian had already created some paintings for

76See Ames-Lewis, 222 and note 20, for early double portraits of artists and their wives including Israhel van Meckenem's print of ca. 1480 and a painting by the Master of Frankfurt, 1496.

77Raphael's so-called Self-portrait with his Fencing Master (Paris, Louvre) is an early friendship portrait from ca. 1519. Although the identity of the figure in the foreground and his relationship to Raphael have not yet been satisfactorily explained, the painting commemorates the special bond between the two men. See Woods-Mar sden (1990), 124-125; Oskar Fischel, Raphael, trans. Bernard Rackham (London: Kegan Paul, 1948), 1: 119-120, and Konrad Oeberhuber, Raphael: The Paintings (Munich, London, New York: Prestel Verlag, 1999), 202-203.

78Vasari (1996), 2: 288, mentions that Uccello painted a long panel with five distinguished men and that the artist kept it in his house in order to preserve for posterity a memory of his fellow-craftsmen. According to Vasari, in this now-lost panel Giotto represented the light and origin of art, Brunelleschi represented architecture, Donatello represented sculpture, Uccello represented perspective and animals, and Giovanni Manetti represented mathematics. Clearly, Uccello was associating himself with those people whom he considered the best in their respective fields.

79L. Roblot-Delondre, "Argote de Molina et les tableaux du Pardo," Revue archSologique, 4e s6r., XVI (1910), 58-59. "Ticiano Pintor, el mas excelente de su tiempo, natural de Venecia, cuyo retrato se ve, teniendo en sus manos otro con la Ymagen del Rey don Phelippe nuestro sehor." Cited by Campbell, 217.

80Woods-Marsden (1998), 164, and Ames-Lewis, 162. See Hugh Trevor- Roper, Princes and Artists: Patronage and ideology at Four Ratosburg Courts 1517-1633 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976), and Henry Kamen, Philip of Spain (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997), for further reading about Philip's patronage of Titian.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Philip, so the master may have sent the work as a gesture of thanks

for past patronage.®* However, the painting could also serve to

remind Philip that Titian would be willing and able to serve him in

the future.®2

Lavinia Fontana might have used her alliance self-portrait to

attract a spouse. In 1577, then twenty-five year old Lavinia created

an image in which she is richly dressed, bejeweled, and seated at a

clavichord (Rome, Accademia Nazionale di San Luca, figure 24).83

Lavinia's scene is set in a domestic interior. The servant, bearing

music and standing behind the artist, suggests the wealth of the

Fontana family that is able to employ a maid for Lavinia's personal

use. An easel is a visual reminder of her profession and her ability

81Francesco di Giorgio Martini included his likeness with that of his patron Federigo da Montefeltro in an illumination on the inside cover of a manuscript of Cristoforo Landino's Disputationes camaldulenses currently housed in Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana.

®2Sofonisba Anguissola, a sixteenth century Cremonese artist who worked at the Spanish court of King Philip II, may have created self- portraits to obtain court patronage. She is credited with twelve known self-portraits, some of which were used by her father to create a demand for her work and to publicize her talents. Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin, Women Artists: 1550-1950 (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Fine Arts, 1977), 107, note that the artist painted herself in miniature and full size, holding a book, a palette, a monogram of her father's name, at work on a picture of the Virgin, playing musical instruments and being painted by her teacher, Bernardino Campi. They also write that her father sent one of Sofonisba's self-portraits to Pope Julius III and one to the Este court in Ferrara. See also King, (1995), 387 and note 25, who claims that he also sent one to the Gonzaga in Mantua.

®®See Cantaro (1989), 72-74, Ghirardi (1994), 181 figure 33; and Marro, 52, who speculates, without supporting evidence, that the musical instrument is a metaphor for a chaste woman.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. to earn an income.8^ The Latin inscription: LAVINIA VIRGO PROSPERI

FONTANAE / FILIA EX SPECULO IMAGINEM / ORIS SUI EXPRESIT ANNO /

MDLXXVII (Lavinia, virgin daughter of Prospero Fontana, expressed the

image of the face using a mirror) is a testament to her humanist

education. As Woods -Mar s den has observed, by mentioning a mirror, the

indispensable implement for pictorial self-portraiture, Lavinia may

have wished to emphasize the "truth" of her self-likeness.85

As the inscription indicates, Lavinia painted this image in

1577, and Galli has linked the portrait with a letter sent by her

future father-in-law, Severo Zappi, to his wife and son. In the

letter of Feb 13, 1577, Zappi describes his son Gian Paolo's

prospective new bride, and states that "O presso di me dui soi

ritratti fati di sua mano quali mi piaciono asai come vedrete a mia

venuta." (I have with me two portraits made by her hand that are very

pleasing to me, as you will see when I come).88 Galli, believing the

self-portrait was one of the two mentioned in her future father-in-

law's letter, postulated that Lavinia used the image as a declaration

of her identity to send to her future spouse.87 Whether she painted

8^Lavinia did not have a dowry, which was extremely unusual for this time period. Instead, she had her talent as a painter, and prior to the marriage, Severo Zappi was assured by the Bolognese painter, Orazio Sammachini, that if she lived long enough, Lavinia would make a great profit from her paintings (... se ella vive qualche Anni avere a fare gran profito nella pitura)." See Ghirardi (1994), 181.

85Woods-Marsden (1998), 203 and note 8.

86The correspondence is reprinted in the appendices of Romeo Galli, Lavinia Fontana Pittrice (Imola: Tip. P. Galeati, 1940), 107-110 documents 2 and 3, and Cantaro, 302-303, documents 5a.2 and 5a.3.

87Galli, 17-23, 78, and 107-110.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the work for a private family audience or for the public, Lavinia

presented herself as an elegantly dressed virtuoso, devoted to the

arts of music and painting, and educated in the humanist tradition of

reading and writing Latin.

Lavinia's Self-portrait can, on one level, be read as a

statement of affirmation for a well-bred young woman as stipulated in

Baldassare Castiglione's II Cortegiano, in which an entire chapter is

dedicated to the proper education and training for the ideal

aristocratic woman.8® Appropriate accomplishments for a woman

included a high level of educational attainment, the ability to paint,

and to play music.®9 Castiglione's book, first published in 1528, may

indirectly have had great influence on sixteenth-century female self-

portraits, and in her Self-portrait Lavinia demonstrates that she has

the proper education and qualifications to become the spouse of a

minor noble.

The half-length presentation of a female artist at a keyboard

attended by a maidservant recalls Sofonisba Anguissola's earlier

Althorp Self-portrait (Northampton, Collection Earl Spencer).9® It

"Harris and Nochlin, 108, discussing Sofanisba's Althorp Self- portrait. Baldasarre Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, trans. Charles S. Singleton (New York: Anchor Books, 1959), 199-282.

"According to Harris and Nochlin, 108, the success of The Courtier meant that by the mid-sixteenth century, women of good birth were expected to be able to read and translate classical literature, to write poetry, to dance, to play musical instruments and sing, to draw and paint, and to make witty conversation.

90As noted by Cantaro, 74, citing Vera Fortunati Pietrantonio, "Lavinia Fontana" in Pittura bolognese del Cinquecento (Bologna: Grafis, 1986), 727-775. Jacopo Tintoretto's daughter. Marietta, also included a keyboard in her Self-portrait in the Uffizi.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. seems probable that Lavinia had seen or read about Sofonisba

Anguissola's Althorp Self-portrait, since the two images are so close

in composition, inscription, and detail. Still, there are enough

differences between the two images to indicate that Lavinia did not

simply produce a slavish copy the earlier work; rather Lavinia seems

to have taken up an artistic challenge with the work of the elder

artist whom Lavinia both knew and admired.91 She paraphrased and

reworked her earlier source of inspiration to ultimately produce a

more fully developed representation in terms of composition and

personal declaration. Aemulatio is a term from rhetoric that

describes a competitive form of imitation whereby an artist seeks not

just to imitate an admired model but ultimately to surpass it.92

Lavinia could have emulated Sofonisba, an established woman painter

who was working at a prestigious court and who had earned a reputation

as an international celebrity, in am effort to be judged as am artist

with abilities equal to or better thaui those of her predecessor.

91Vera Fortunati Pietrantonio, "Lavinia Fontama," in The Age of Correggio and the Carracci, trams. Robert Erich Wolf, et. al. (Washington D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1986), 132, citing the letter from Lavinia to Chacdn of Hay 3, 1579 that was published in Galli 1940, 80. Lavinia is known to have engaged in an aurtistic emulation with Sofonisba on at least one other occasion, when asked to submit a self-portrait to Chacdn for his collection. Please see my discussion of Chac6n's request and Lavinia's response in the previous chapter.

92In the Renaissance, legends of famous classical aurtistic rivalries such as Zeuxis and Parrhasius or Apelles and Protogenes, were a provocation for painters' practice of emulation. For am in-depth discussion of imitation, see G. W. Pigman III, "Versions of Imitation in the Renaissance," Renaissance Quarterly 33/1 (Spring 1980), 1-32. For Rembramdt's self-portrait produced in emulation of Raphael see Ed. De Jongh, "The Spur of Wit: Rembramdt's Response to am Italiam Challenge," Delta 12 (1969), 49-67. See also Perry Chapmam, Rembrandt's Self-portraits: A Study in Seventeenth-Century Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In the alliance self-portrait, the artist was able to celebrate

his/her relationship with other individuals, while remaining the focal

point of the composition. In the next category, the

witness/participant self-portrait, the artist generally plays a minor,

supporting while standing among mostly anonymous masses, usually at

the edge of the biblical or historical narrative.93 This popular

self-portrait type could function as a signature, as an indication of

the artist's satisfaction in being chosen for, and completing, a major

commission, and as an indication of his pride in the work itself, it

could also have been a means to gain public recognition for a major

work, as well as a method of attracting future commissions. Clearly,

the artist is implying that he regards himself as an integral part of

the opus, and reminds the viewer that he is responsible for its

invention and execution.9* Additionally, if the artist has placed

himself among other identifiable worthies, he might gain public

recognition of his association with other individuals such as royal

patrons or artistic peers.

For some artists, such as Titian, the witness self-portrait also

provided the opportunity to express or affirm their piety. Titian

begem painting the Gloria (also known as The Holy Trinity, or The Last

Judgment, Madrid, Prado, figure 35) for Charles V's personal devotion

93An early example is Andrea Orcagna's 1355 marble tabernacle with The Deathbed of Mary, in the Or San Michele, Florence. In that work, the artist is located at the right edge of the narrative. See John W. Pope-Hennessy, Italian Gothic Sculpture (London: Phaidon Press 1955), 27-28 and 196-98. For a further discussion of this phenomenon in the Renaissance, see Ada Taiber, The Artist as a Character in Narrative Paintings (Tel Aviv: Ot-Paz, 1992), and Boschloo, 53-55.

94Freedman (1990), 50.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. around 1551.95 In a heavenly paradise, angels, Old Testament figures,

saints, martyrs and mortals gather to worship a vision of the Holy

Trinity. A half-length profile self-portrait of Titian appears

beneath the Emperor's family at the edge of the composition.9®

Wearing a simple garment tied at one shoulder, the master gazes

intently toward the vision with his out-flung arms underscoring his

awe. In his humble dress and reverent attitude, he is comparable to

the saints who are adjacent to him.9^

Titian also appears in his Madonna and Child with Saints Titian

and Andrew in the Chiesa Arcidiaconale at Pieve di Cadore (figure 36)

circa 1560.9® Titian created this altarpiece for his family chapel in

the town of his birth. In the painting the artist kneels next to the

9®Wethey, 1: 165-167, cat. 149. On the iconography of this work see Craig S. Harbison, "Counter-Reformation iconography in Titian's Gloria," Art Bulletin XLIX (1967), 244-246. The Emperor and his family, including his wife Isabella, his son Philip II, and his sister Mary of Hungary are located in the upper right.

96Erwin Panofsky, Problems in Titian: Mostly iconographic (New York: New York University Press, 1969), 66, was the first to identify Titian as the figure next to Vargas. Most scholars accept this identification. See Freedman (1990), 46, and Wethey, 1: 165-167 cat. 149.

97In 1566, under Titian's supervision, Cornelius Cort made an engraving based on the painting. See Adam von Bartsch, Netherlandish Artists: Cornelius Cort, eds. W. L. Strauss and T. Shimura, (New York: Abaris Books, 1986), 132, B117, and Manfred Sellink, Cornelis Cort, accomplished plate-cutter from Hoorn in Holland, trans. Beverly Jackson (Rotterdam: Museum Boymans-van Beunigen, 1994), 170. For a discussion of the numerous discrepancies between the print and original painting, see J. C. J. Bierens de Haan, L'Oeuvre grav6 de Cornelis Cort (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1948), 118-119.

9®K. Brown, 169-171, for scholars who do and do not accept the work as autograph. No one disputes however that its conception is his.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Bishop saint whose name he bore, and seems temporarily to have been

entrusted with the saint's crozier."

In 1562-1563 Paolo Veronese expanded the bystander self-portrait

in his Marriage Feast at Cana for the refectory in San Giorgio

Maggiore (Paris, Louvre, figure 23). In this work Veronese did not

represent himself standing or praying with other onlookers. Instead,

he is part of a group of musicians who provide the entertainment for

the hundreds of guests that are in attendance. In the center of the

foreground, just beneath the figure of Christ, Veronese plays the

viola da braccio, Titian plays the viola da gamba, Tintoretto plays

the viol, and Jacopo Bassano plays the cornetto muto.100 The artist

has become an active and contributing participant in the scene rather

than a solemn or pious observer, in addition to being present for a

miraculous event, Veronese also makes a claim for his professional

position among the most celebrated living Venetian painters.

^According to K. Brown, 170, the painting was mentioned by Vasari, Ridolfi, and Anonimo del Tizianello.

10®I have followed W. R. Rearick, The Art of Paolo Veronese, 1528-1588 (Washington D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1988), 12. Richard Cocke, Veronese (London: Jupiter Books Publisher, 1980), 64, states that the portraits of the artists were first noted by Marco Boschini, Le ricche minere della Pittura (Venice, 1674), but that more recent comparisons between Boschini's identified figures and known portraits of the artists indicate that some of his identifications were incorrect. Cocke, 64, also states that Jacopo Bassano may be playing the cornetto muto, but because of the lack of known portraits of Bassano there is no way to check that identification. However, there are several portraits of Bassano, and K. Brown has recently published two of them, one in Florence, Uffizi and the other in Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, her figures 57 and 58.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In the early Baroque period,101 Caravaggio painted The Martyrdom

of Saint Matthew (S. Luigi dei Francesi, Rome, 1599-1600, figure 37),

and he has been identified as the fleeing figure in the back of the

painting. Caravaggio, who runs from the scene while turning his head

to view the grisly massacre, presents himself as someone moved to

action by the events unfolding around him. Here he is showing and

enhancing an emotional response to the scene attesting to the

painting's power to move the viewer. Catherine Puglisi believes that

Caravaggio's intentions are different than those of his Renaissance

predecessors who appeared as spectators in religious events, as he

seems "to emphasize his witnessing of the event as if to authenticate

the truth to nature of his painted version."102 While her point, that

an artist's presence in a religious scene would underscore the

authenticity of his depiction, seems valid, it does not appear to be a

sentiment that is necessarily exclusive to Caravaggio's painting and

may have also been implicit in the earlier artists' works in this

category.

The witness/participant self-portrait, in which the artist is a

spectator or anonymous actor in a historical or religious drama, paves

the way for the guise self-portrait in which the artist take the role

of a protagonist in a narrative scene. A guise self-portrait, a form

101Miles Chappell, "Portraits and Pedagogy in a Painting by Cristofano Allori," Antichita Vita XVI/5 (1977): 20-34, unconvincingly argues that Cristofano has depicted himself and his teachers among the bystanders in his Blessed Giovanni Manetto dell ’Antella Healing a Crippled, Deaf, and Mute Youth painted in 1602 for the Dell'Antella Chapel in Santissima Annunziata.

102Catherine Puglisi, Caravaggio (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1998), 159.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. of the historicized portrait, (or the portrait historic), is one in

which the sitter assumes the attributes of an historical,

mythological, or biblical figure.103 Decapitation self-portraits are

a sub-category of the guise genre, so a study of the other roles that

these artists assumed in their artwork should be beneficial to the

discussion of decapitation self-portraits in the subsequent chapters.

In the portrait historic, being neither masked nor disguised,

the sitter is recognizable. As a result, this type unites traditional

portraiture, in which the likeness represents the sitter,104 with

history painting. Because the sitter wears the garments and displays

the attributes of the historical character, the subject in a guise

portrait presumably also partakes of the qualities and abilities

conventionally connected with the historic personality whom the sitter

emulates.105 By creating a guise portrait in which they were

103See Rose Wishnevsky, "Studien zum portrait historic in den Niederlanden," (Ph.D. diss., Munich, 1967). The tradition of historicized portraiture has its roots in art of the ancient world. Alexander Severus identified with the great rulers of the past and "had himself represented in the guise of Alexander [the Great] on many of his coins". Bistoria Augusta, Alexander Severus XXV, 8-10 translated by J. J. Pollitt, The Art of Rome c. 753 B.C. - 337 A.D.: Sources and Documents (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966), 200. Commodus considered himself a gladiator and identified with the hero Hercules, "... he cut off the head of the colossus and replaced it with another, which bore his own features. He also gave it a club and put some kind of bronze lion beneath it so that it would resemble Hercules...". Dio Cassius LXXII, 22, 3 in Pollitt, 185. Bistoria Augusta, Commodus Antoninus IX, 2: Again referring to Commodus "He accepted a statue in his honor representing him with the attributes of Hercules, and offerings were made to him as to the god."

104Cranston, 1.

105According to Vasari's account, historicized portraits were quite popular in Italy by 1568 when the second edition of the Vite was published, and extant examples support this notion. Please refer to the discussion of examples from Vasari's Vite in Chapter Two.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. fashioned as another, artists chose the easiest method of transforming

or reinventing themselves and of "becoming'’ esteemed individuals.

For the sitters of these guise portraits, the legendary figure,

whether religious,106 mythological,1®7 or historical,1®8 was a model

worthy of admiration, and this was a culture in which the

impersonation of others seems to have been an accepted practice. As

Jodi Cranston has noted, in the early sixteenth century Castiglione

wrote his popular II Cortegiano, a work that can be viewed as a

108David Alan Brown, "Andrea Solario," in The Legacy of Leonardo: Painters in Lombeurdy 1490-1530, trans. Ivor Coward, Aaron Curtiss and Andrew Ellis (Milan: Skira Editore, 1998), 243, reports that at the beginning of the sixteenth century, Andrea Solario painted his major patron, the Cardinal Georges d'Amboise, Archbishop of Rouen and Chief Minister of King Louis XII, in the guise of St. George, his namesake and patron saint (Detroit, Institute of Arts).

107Bronzino painted the Portrait of Andrea Doria as Neptune, god of the sea (Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera). Luisa Arrigoni, Emanuela Daffra and Pietro C. Marani, eds., The Brera Gallery: the Official Guide, trans. David Stanton (Milan: Touring Club Italiano: Sporintendenza per i Beni Artistici et Stroici, 1998), 228 figure 5; Campbell, 3 figure 8; and Arthur McComb, Agnolo Bronzino: his life and works (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1928), 72 figure 565. Around 1540, Bronzino also depicted Cosimo de'Medici as Orpheus (Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art). See Robert Simon, "Bronzino's Cosimo de'Medici as Orpheus," Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin, 81 (1985): 17-27, and Janet Cox-Rearick, Bronzino's Chapel of Eleonora in the Palazzo Vecchio (Berkley, Los Angeles, Oxford: The University of California Press, 1993), 32-33.

1®8Lorenzo Lotto painted a Portrait of a Lady as Lucretia (London, National Gallery, ca. 1533), and Savoldo made a Portrait of a Lady as St. Margaret (Rome, Museo Capitolino, ca. 1535). These ladies probably believed that by impersonating upstanding women of the past they would also be, as if by osmosis, absorbing (or at least receiving credit for) their virtues. For these portraits, see Peter Humfrey, "Portrait of a Lady as Lucretia," in Lorenzo Lotto: Rediscovered Master of the Renaissance (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997), 185-187, and Cranston, 94-95 figure 56, and Cranston, 87 figure 51. Similarly, around 1544-1545 Francesco Primaticcio painted Jean de Dinteville as Saint George (The Barbara Piasecka Johnson Collection Foundation).

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. handbook for anyone with social aspirations on the means to adopting

the mannerisms of and behaving as courtiers.1(1 ® This was also an era

in which portraits of exemplary individuals whose lives and deeds

merited emulation lined the walls of numerous humanist scholars'

studies, libraries and exterior palace walls.11(1 Some Christians,

wishing to express their faith and piety, patterned their lives and

behaviors after the practices of saints, of Christ or of the

Virgin.11-1 During the Italian Renaissance, a parallel emulatory

practice existed among writers, who continued the antique custom of

penning letters in nome di or in veste di smother person.112 There

are a number of examples of this literary tradition, including a

letter Marsilio Ficino wrote to himself but as if it had come from

Cosimo de Medici, and fictional verses penned by Bernardo Bellincioni,

composed as if they were exchanges between his patrons.113 During a

109Cranston, 5, views the work as "a treatise on fashioning oneself into a courtier."

110See Rudolf E. 0. Ekkart, "Collections of Portraits in Western Europe," in The Royal College of Physcians of London. Portraits, Catalogue II, ed. Gordon Wolstenholme and John F. Kerslake (Amsterdam, Oxford and Mew York: Elsevier, 1977), 1-23, Mark L. Evans, “Uno maestro solenne Joos van Wassenhove in Italy," Nederlands Kunsthistorish Jaarboek 44 (1993), 75-110, and Robert L. Mode, "Masolino, Uccello and the Orsini Uomini Famosi," Burlington Magazine CXIV (1972), 369-378.

111Cranston, 92. For example, in his De Imitatione Christi, the late medieval writer Thomas A Kempis required followers who wished to emulate Christ to practice modesty, austerity, and humility. See Schneider, 104, citing Thomas von Kempen: Das Buch von der Nachfolge Christi (Stuttgart, 1976), 10-20.

112John Shearman, "Castiglione's Portrait of Raphael," Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorisches Instituts in Florenz 38 (1994), 79.

113Ibid.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. period of separation from his wife, Baidassare Castiglione

participated in this practice by writing an elegy to himself that

impersonated one from his spouse.114 It is not surprising that

historicized portraits flourished in this atmosphere of imitation and

emulation.

During this period, artists began to cloak themselves in the

guise of someone else. For viewers who recognized the artist's

features and thus the assumed identity, these portrayals have the

power to impress and delight.115 For the artist, the self-image as

protagonist would act as a testament to the maker's artistic

virtuosity and representational skills, with his ability to capture

his own likeness as well as the qualities of the other. As with other

forms of self-portraiture, the work would stand as a testament to the

artist's inventiveness and personal style. In addition, the visage

would act as a signature, underscoring the artist's identification

with the image he produced. Moreover, by portraying himself as a

specific person from the past the artist could suggest his own

114Cranston, 87.

115Possibly the best known example is Michelangelo's guise as St. Bartholomew. At the end of his career, Michelangelo frescoed the Last Judgment on the wall of the Sistine Chapel where he seems to have included his self-portrait in the face of the dangling, flayed skin held by St. Bartholomew, who sits at Christ's feet. See Charles de Tolnay, Michelangelo: The Final Period (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), 118 note 62, citing Francesco La Cava, II volto di Michelangelo scoperto nel Giudizio Finale (Bologna: N. Zanichelli, 1925) as the first modern art historian to see a self- portrait in the flayed skin.

100

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. affinity with aspects of the personality or deeds of the historical

figure.116

Although Giorgione has been cited as the originator of this type

of self-portraiture in early cinquecento Venice,117 he was not the

first Italian artist to represent himself as a specific historical

actor in an event.11® In all probability Taddeo di Bartolo appears as

116In the 1580's Barbara Longhi seemed to have felt a strong affinity with St. Catherine of Alexandria with whom she appears to have identified herself in at least three canvases (Ravenna, Pinacoteca Civica, Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale and Bucarest, National Museum of Art). See Jane Turner, ed. Dictionary of Art, 1996 ed., s.v. "Barbara Longhi," by John Varriano, 631, and Angela Ghirardi, "Lavinia Fontana alio specchio. Pittrici e autoritratto nel secondo Cinquecento," in Lavinia Fontana, 1552-1614, ed. Vera Fortunati (Milan: Electa, 1994), 47-49. Angela Ghirardi (1994), 47-49, published all three versions and proposed that like St. Catherine, who astonished scholars with her own knowledge, Barbara amazed the cultured elite of her era with her skillful artistry.

117In fifteenth-century northern Europe, artists are credited with developing a tradition of representing themselves as Saint Luke, who according to legend painted a portrait of the Virgin Mary and later became the patron saint of artists. However, most examples of this self-portrait type cannot be confirmed, one rare exception being Engelhard de Pee's 1601 Self-portrait as St. Luke (figure 73, Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemaldesammlungen). See Zygmunt Wazbginski, "St. Luke of Bavaria by Engelhard de Pee," Journal of Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 52 (1989), 240-245. H. Perry Chapman, Rembrandt's Self- Portraits: A Study in Seventeenth-Century Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 122 note 72, claims that Rogier van der Weyden, Dirk Bouts and Maerten van Heemskerck all painted themselves in the role of Saint Luke. See also Jean Owens Schaefer, "Saint Luke as painter: from saint to artisan to artist," in Artistes, Artisans et Production Artistique au Moyen Age, ed. Xavier Barral Altet (Paris; Picard, 1986), 413-427, and Clifton Olds, "Jem Gossaert's St. Luke Painting the Virgin: A Renaissance Artist's Cultural Literacy," Journal of Aesthetic Education 42/1 (Apr. 1990), 89-96.

11®According to Jaynie Anderson, "The Giorgionesque Portrait: from Likeness to Allegory, in Giorgione: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studio per il 5 centenario della nascita (Venice: Banca Popolare di Asolo e Montebelluna, 1979), 153, allegorical self-portraiture was unknown in Venetian art until Giorgione's self-portrait. In another essay, Giorgione: the Painter of Poetic Brevity (Paris and New York:

101

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. his namesake St. Thaddaeus, one of the apostles who attends Mary's

grave and witnesses her assent to heaven in his Assumption of the

Virgin altarpiece (1403-1404 Duomo, Montepulciano).119

Titian assumed the allegorical role of Old Age in his Allegory

of Prudence (Titian's Self-portrait with Orazio and Marco Vecellio,

London, National Gallery, figure 38), generally dated around 1565-

1570.120 xhe painting includes three inscriptions, three human heads,

and three animal heads. On the feu: left, the inscription EX

PRAETERITO ("From the past”) appears over the shadowed and elderly

Titian, who in turn is above a wolf. In the center, PRAESEMS

PRUDEMTER AGXT ("The present acts prudently") is above Titian's

middle-aged son Orazio Vecellio, who appears above a lion. Finally on

the right, MI FUTURA ACTIONE d e TURPET ("Lest it spoil future action")

Flammarion, 1997), 19, 286 and 317, Anderson writes that in addition to representing himself as David, Giorgione also adopted the guise of Orpheus. She maintains that the original was described in the 1649 Hamilton collection inventory as "un orphSe," and later in the archduke's collection as: “Ein Stuckh von dhlfarb auf Leinwath, war in Orphaeus in einerm griinen Klaidt und Krancz umb den Kopf, mit seiner Geigen in der linckhen Bandt, und auff der Seithen die brennende Holl ...Man halt es von Giorgione Original". These documents do not identify the work as a self-portrait of Giorgione. For Anderson, since David Teniers the Younger copied the painting (New York, Suida- Manning collection) with his own portrait as Orpheus, Giorgione's painting may have also contained a self-portrait.

119For those who propose the identification as a self-portrait see C. Wolters, "Ein selbstbildnis des Taddeo di Bartolo," Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 7 (1953-56), 70-72, and G. Solberg, "Taddeo di Bartolo: his life and work," (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1991), 519. See also Woods-Marsden (1998), 44-48. The apostle in the painting, who stares out at the viewer while grasping a finger on his proper left hand, is identified as Thaddeus by an inscription on his halo.

120wethey, 2: 145-156, cat. 107, and Erwin Panofsky, Problems in Titian Mostly Iconographic (New York: New York University Press, 1969), 102-108.

102

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. is the visage of young Marco Vecellio, Titian's distant relative who

lived with the artist, and who appears above a dog.

According to Panofsky, the emblematic painting "glorifies

Prudence as a wise employer of the Three Forms of time: the present

learns from the past and acts with due regard to the future. "121

These three forms of time are symbolized by the animals and are

equated with the three ages of man: old age, prime of life, and youth.

Panofsky also concludes that the painting celebrates "the proudly

resigned abdication of a great king in favor of a beloved heir-

apparent and an equally beloved heir-presumptive."122

If Panofsky's identification are correct, then we can infer from

the painting, that as an old man facing his own mortality, Titian

wished to visually and emblematically establish his own artistic

dynasty. He placed himself at the helm, roughly painted as if he,

like the past, is beginning to fade. Orazio, the son that he taught,

represents the present, and is fully modeled. Marco, whose face, like

121Panofsky (1969), 103.

122Panofsky (1969), 103-108, maintains that the three human heads are in keeping with traditional Western iconography of Prudence, a Cardinal Virtue in Christian theology often portrayed wielding three mirrors, three flames, three books or as a three-headed human. The animals refer to an Hellenistic Egyptian god named Serapis, a quadruped encircled by a serpent and having the heads of a wolf, lion and dog, which was a special manifestation of the sun god representing Time. However, the Roman Serapis was portrayed as a human. Citing Macrobius, an early fifth century writer, Panofsky notes that the lion's head stands for "the present, whose position between past and future is strong and fervent; the wolf's head for the past, because the memory of things belonging to the past is devoured and carried away. The image of the dog, trying to please, denotes the future of which hope always paints a pleasant picture." According to Panofsky, Titian could have been familiar with Serapis through Giovanni Pierio Valeriano's Hieroglyphica published in 1556. See also K. Brown, 172- 175.

103

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the morrow has not yet come into clear focus, denotes the future.

Near the end of his remarkable career, Titian seems to have created

this image to help establish his self-chosen artistic legacy and his

belief in the well-established philosophic notion of Prudence in which

the present learns from the past and acts with due regard to the

future.

In another late work, Titian portrayed himself as St. Jerome in

a monumental Piet A (Venice, Accademia, figure 39)123 that he reputedly

wished to have hung over his own tomb in the Capella del Crocefisso of

Santa Maria dei Frari.124 The painting was left unfinished at his

death in 1576,125 and although the artist was buried in front of the

122See Peter Humfrey, Painting in Renaissance Venice (New Haven and London: Yale University Press), 1995), 211-212; Wethey, 1: 122-123, cat. 86; Bruce Cole, Titian and Venetian Painting, 1450-1590 (Boulder: Hestview Press, 1999), 208-214; David Rosand, Paintings in Cinquecento Venice: Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982), 75-84; Philipp P. Fehl, Decorum and Wit: the Poetry of Venetian Painting (Vienna: IRSA, 1992), 306-29, and J. Bruyn, "Notes on Titian's Pieth,” in Album Amicorum J. G. van Gelder, ed. J. Bruyn (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1973), 66-75.

i24No contemporary documents exist to support the long-standing tradition that Titian painted this image for his tomb, an idea that was first published in Carlo Ridolfi's Maraviglie in 1648. According to Ridolfi's Life of Titian by Carlo Ridolfi, ed. J and P. Bondanella, et al. (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 133-134: "He [Titian] had also begun a panel painting of the dead Savior resting upon the breast of His sorrowful Mother for whom Saint Jerome serves as a support and the Magdalene weeping with open arms; Titian designed this for the Chapel of Christ in the Church of the Frari, a commission obtained from those fathers [the Franciscans] with the agreement to place the painting there, but drawing out the work, or, as some people declare, because the fathers did not wish to lose the ancient devotion to the Crucifix that can be seen there in that chapel, Titian did not complete the work, and after his death it came into the hands of Palma, who finished it, with the addition of several angels and this humble inscription: What Titian left unfinished, Palma reverently completed and dedicated the work to God".

104

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. altar, a dispute with the friars about the endowment of the altar

meant that Titian's wishes for his PietA and tomb went unfulfilled.126

Nevertheless, Titian apparently designed and painted the devotional

image with the belief that it would serve as his tomb-marker.127 What

possible message did he wish to convey with this final statement?

In the painting, the Virgin with the dead Christ in her lap

occupy a niche with a half-dome covered in golden-mosaic of a pelican

feeding her young with its own blood, a symbol of Christ's

crucifixion, charity, and sacrifice.128 On the left the kneeling St.

!25As reflected in the painting's Latin inscription in large letters on the base of the pedestal supporting Christ and Mary, Jacopo Palma il Giovane completed the work. (QVOD TITIANVS INCHOATVH RELIQVIT / PALMA REVERENTER ABSOLVIT / DEOQ. DICAVIT OPVS). This inscription has led to scholarly debate about the extent of Palma's intervention in the painting. For example Humfrey (1995), 211, and Rosand, 77, believe that Palma may have painted the flying angel while Hethey, 123, thinks it is more likely that Palma painted the angel in the lower left corner.

126Titian made arrangements to be entombed in the Capella del Crocefisso (also called the Capella del Christo) in the Frari church and in return he was to paint this altarpiece. According to the so- called Anonimo del Tizianello, Breve compendio by the time of his death, Titian no longer desired to be buried in the Frari, but rather he wished to be interred in the Vecellio family chapel in Pieve di Cadore. See Rosand, 75 and note 66, for the relevant passage. Probably because of the plague and the need to bury bodies quickly, Titian was interred at the Frari, since his body would not have to be transported overland. Eventually, the painting was located in the now destroyed church of St'Angelo, rather than with Titian's body in the Capella del Crocefisso.

127Effigies were often incorporated into Renaissance artists' tombs, but only a few seem to have designed funerary monuments that incorporated self-portraits including: Hans Stethaimer, Andrea Mantegna, and Michelangelo. For a discussion of various Renaissance artists' burial monuments, see Ames-Lewis, 90-108, Chapter 4: "Commemoration of the Early Renaissance Artist."

128Wethey, 1: 122-123. Flanking the niche are standing statues of Moses, who prophesized the redemption of man through Christ's death, and the Hellespontic sibyl, who is also believed to have foretold the

105

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Jerome bears the features of Titian.129 in the lower right corner is

a small painted votive tablet propped against the Vecellio family

coat-of-arms in which two kneeling men, usually identified as Titian

and his son Orazio, pray before a vision of the PietA.130 certainly

the PietA is an appropriate subject for sepulchral decoration since it

includes an image of the dead Christ, which implies His resurrection,

and therefore, the salvation of man. Titian is presented as the

penitent Saint Jerome rather than as a cardinal or the author of the

Vulgate. As a humble and sorrowful sinner on his knees before Christ,

the elderly Titian documents his hope for salvation.131

death of Christ.The statues are identifiable because of the inscriptions on their bases. The Sibyl's attributes are the cross and crown of thorns.

129Since Lodovico Foscari, Iconografia di Tizietno (Venice: Edizioni Sormani, 1935), 25, it has been frequently suggested that Titian portrayed himself as St. Jerome. Recently, J. Bruyn, 72 note 49, questioned the identification of Titian as the saint. For him "neither the deviations from the current St. Jerome type nor the similarities to Titian's physiognomy are sufficiently marked to corroborate this idea." Cole, 211, sees no reason to assume this figure is St. Jerome, rather he is a supplicant, a witness, or a donor with whom Titian has identified.

130The painting on the votive tablet is poorly preserved and its inscription is not legible. As Fehl, 318, points out, J. A. Crowe and 6. B. Cavalcaselle, Titian: His Life and Times (New York: Garland Publishers, 1977), 2: 412, were the first to propose the identification of the two kneeling figures as Titian and his son. For Fehl, neither figure has Titian's features, and the younger man is no older than forty, while Titian's son would have been sixty when the image was made. He believes that the younger man is Palma il Giovane and that the older man may be the painter Francesco Palma. Thus, the votive tablet would be the signature of the man who finished the work. In this case, their actions, that mimic Titian's as St. Jerome, are additionally significant.

131Humfrey (1995), 211, and Cole, 208.

106

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Further, in this late work, Titian seems to pay homage to some

of the diverse influences that shaped his career through the

incorporation of a wealth of artistic references.132 The mosaic-

covered dome evokes the paintings of Giovanni Bellini (The San Giobbe

Altarpiece, San Zaccaria Altarpiece and Frari Sacristy triptych), and

Byzantine tradition in general, art that influenced Titian's early

oeuvre.133 panofsky believed that the posture of the Sibyl recalls

Michelangelo's Risen Christ, while the central Piet A group recalls the

older master's work of the same subject in St. Peter's.134 For

Panofsky, "A lifelong rivalry, compounded of mutual respect as well as

opposition, ended in a tribute paid by the survivor to his defunct

antagonist — and doing honor to both."135 Moreover, Rosand suggests

that by successfully imitating sculpture and architecture in his

132According to Rosand, 81: "The Pieta has justly been acclaimed as his own very personal artistic testament." Panofsky (1969), 25, notes that the painting epitomizes those influences which the aged master still recognized as determining forces.

133Fritz Saxl, Lectures (London: Warburg Institute, 1957), 173, and pi. 114a, b. claims that the Magdalene's pose closely resembles that of a mourning Aphrodite from an antique Adonis sarcophagus in Mantua. Cole, 212, claims that the niche's architecture reflects the contemporary designs of Serlio and Palladio; and Wethey, 1: 211-212, also cites the architecture of Or Sanmicheli.

134According to Panofsky (1969), 26, Titian had a plaster copy of Michelangelo's Risen Christ from Santa Maria Sopra Minerva in his personal possession. He notes that the Moses recalls not only Michelangelo's great namesake in San Pietro in Vincoli, but also Donatello's Abraham from the Campanile in Florence.

135Ibid.

107

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. painting, Titian may have wanted this painting to be read as a

monumental paragoae of the visual arts.13®

Even if Panofsky and other scholars are correct in assuming that

Titian, in part, painted his Pietk as an homage to his artistic

sources and as a paragoae of the visual arts, it does not seem that

these were his only intentions. Instead, Titian used color and

composition to focus attention on the most important aspects of the

painting. The overall brownish-gray tonality of his centrally planned

composition with the Virgin holding the dead Christ as the focal point

is broken only by the pink of Titian's/Jerome's garment. Thus, color

and composition are combined to bring the viewer's gaze to the

interaction between the three main actors: the Virgin, Christ, and

Titian, while gently holding the hand of Christ, Titian gazes at the

face of the Virgin, who looks back at him over the dead body of

Christ. As the aged artist neared death, he designed a sepulchral

monument with a self-portrait that expressed his devout reverence to

Christ and his devotion to the worship of God. 137 As a penitent

sinner on his knees before Christ, who offers redemption, and the

Virgin, who serves as intercessor, Titian makes a personal

declaration, one that is more than likely addressed to the Creator

rather them to his contemporaries or successors, of his faith and his

belief in everlasting life. For Titian the role of St. Jerome allowed

him to declare himself a penitent sinner and humble servant of God,

13®Rosand, 83.

137In a similar vein, Palma il Giovane portrayed his reverent devotion to God in his Self-portrait as a Monk (Venice, Private Collection) around 1606. See K. Brown, 91 and 157 figure 55.

108

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. and a believer in Christ the Redeemer. With this painting Titian

makes reference both to his religious and artistic beliefs and may be

making two claims for his own immortality, one through devotion and

the other through artistic fame.

Titian made his guise self-portraits as Old Age and St. Jerome

late in life, but Caravaggio is recorded to have made a guise self-

image early in his life. Giovanni Baglione tells us that, early in

his Roman career, Caravaggio painted small pictures including a

Bacchus (Rome, Galleria Borghese, figure 40),138 which were drawn from

his own reflection.139 in the painting, Bacchus seated at a humble

138ciovanni Baglione, Le Vite de'Pittori, Scultori et Architetti (Rome, 1642), 136, translated by Walter Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955), 234. When Cardinal Scipione Borghese confiscated the painting from Cavaliere d'Arpino in 1607 the painting was described as a “youth with a wreath of ivy around his head and a bunch of grapes in his hand.” See Friedlaender, 146, citing de Rinaldis Boll. d'Arte 29 (1935-36), 597. For some of the numerous interpretations of this image see Friedlaender, 146-147; Howard Hibbard, Caravaggio (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1983), 19-23; Catherine Puglisi, Caravaggio (London: Phaidon Press, 1998), 52-61; Alfred Moir, Caravaggio (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1982), 66, and Sandro Santolini, "Bacchino Malato," in L'anima e il Volto: ritratto e fisiognomica da Leonardo a Bacon, ed. Flavio Caroli (Milan: Electa, 1998), 180-181.

139por M. Kitson, The Complete Paintings of Caravaggio (1969), 90, many of Caravaggio's early paintings contain self-portraits. He describes the Medusa as the last but one of the "adopted youthful self-portraits." Laurie Schneider, "Donatello and Caravaggio: The Iconography of Decapitation," American Imago 33 (1976), 85, also considers the work to be a self-portrait. Other scholars such as Puglisi, 109, and Avigdor W. G. Pos&q, "Caravaggio's Medusa Shield," Gazette des Beaux-arts 113 (1989), 172, believe that Caravaggio probably studied his face in a mirror to get the correct expression for Medusa, so it has the character of a self-portrait. For an extensive bibliography and discussion of the work see Alessandra Scappini, "Testa di Medusa," in L'anima e il Volto: ritratto e fisiognomica da Leonardo a Bacon, ed. Flavio Caroli (Milan: Electa, 1998), 180-181. Accepted portraits and self-portraits of Caravaggio feature a broad face, strong cheekbones, broad nose, thick lips, deep-set eyes with heavy upper lids, and dense eyebrows. Because of the distortion

109

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. table clutching a bunch of grapes wears a toga and a grape-leaf crown.

Although he has represented himself as a classical god, Caravaggio, as

Bacchus, has a hunched posture and a sickly green complexion, a

feature apparently brought on by the artist's own bout with

malaria.140 Perhaps Caravaggio felt that his own sickly complexion

was reminiscent of someone who had indulged in too much wine, an

activity not foreign to the Roman wine god.

Just before her departure for Rome from Bologna in 1601, Lavinia

Fontana identified herself with St. Barbara in The Apparition of the

Madonna and Child to Five Saints (Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale,

figure 4l).141 Apparently Lavinia felt some affinity with the

martyred virgin saint, because Maivasia informs us that she painted

her self-portrait in the visage of the saint and her signature at the

saint's feet.142 The account of Saint Barbara from the Golden Legend

of Medusa's features it is impossible to discern many of these traits except the thick eyebrows and heavy eyelids. Although Caravaggio may have used a mirror to capture the correct expression for the figure, because of the lack of specific identifying features, I do not feel that this work can be characterized as a self-portrait.

14®This pallor prompted Roberto Longhi, Saggi e ricerche 1925-28 (Florence: Sansoni, 1967), 305, to nickname the work the Bacchino Malato, cited by Hibbard (1983), 19.

141Angela Ghirardi, "Women Artists of Bologna: The Self-Portrait and the Legend from Caterina Vigri to Anna Morandi Manzolini (1413-1774)," 35, and Lucia Marro, "Apparition of the Madonna and Child to Five Saints," both essays in Lavinia Fontana of Bologna 1552-1614, trans. I. F. O'Rourke, et. al. (Milan, Electa, 1998), 102, indicate that St. Barbara has Lavinia's features. See also, C. Spada, "Apparizione della Madonna col Bambino a cinque sante," in Lavinia Fontana 1552- 1614, ed. Vera Fortunati (Milan: Electa, 1994), 201-202 figure 66.

142C. Spada, 201-202, citing C. C. Malvasia, Felsina pittrice (Bologna 1678, ed. Bologna 1841), 221: "le graziossime cinque Saintine [...] in una delle quaili, che a noi ha servito per ricavarlo, e qui anteporlo

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. emphasizes, among other things, the young woman's beauty and piety.

These are likely qualities that Lavinia wished to epitomize in the

self-portrait since nothing in her biography would suggest an interest

in Barbara as the patroness of architects, cannon-founders,

carpenters, construction workers, miners, tilers, prisoners, bell-

ringers, hatters, chefs, bricklayers, butchers, stonemasons, and grave

diggers.143 It is also possible that Lavinia, like Barbara, felt

"imprisoned” by her father, who was also her teacher.

Artemisia Gentileschi, who was also trained by her father, was a

well-established artist by 1630 when she painted the Allegory of

Painting (London, Kensington Palace, Collection of Her Majesty the

Queen, figure 42), in which La Pittura has been identified as a self-

portrait.144 In his 1603 Iconologia, Cesare Ripa prescribed that La

Pittura, the personification of painting, be portrayed as a female.

Further, Pittura should have untidy hair to demonstrate divine frenzy

come si e veduto, fece il suo ritratto, ponendovi presso a'piedi il proprio nome”.

143It is noteworthy that while several scholars have recognized Lavinia's features in Saint Barbara, none has discussed the possible implications or associations of the guise. So the conceit does seem a bit baffling. For further reading on St. Barbara see Clemens Jockle, Encyclopedia of Saints (London: Alpine Fine Arts Collection, 1995), 49-51, and One Hundred Saints (Boston, New York, Toronto and London: Bulfinch Press, 1993), 85-86, with excerpts from Caxton's version of the Golden Legend.

144This painting is not universally accepted as a self-portrait by Artemisia. See R. Hard Bissell, Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 272-275, for those who accept and reject the identification as a self-portrait. Bissell, image 42 and color plate XVII, contends that this painting was actually made to accompany a self-portrait of the artist, and the woman depicted is much younger than the 45 year-old Artemisia who painted it. This, however would not necessarily be surprising in a self-image.

Ill

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. of artistic inspiration, a gold chain with a pendant mask to emphasize

imitation, and a garment with shot-through color (drappo cangiante) to

demonstrate the painter's virtuoso skill.146 Artemisia is seemingly

unaware of the viewer while she is about to apply pigment to a large

primed canvas. She wears a dark green blouse with blue-violet

highlights that adhere to the drappo cangieuite recommendations, as

well as a gold chain with a mask medallion. As Garrard has observed,

her unruly hair, which is an attribute of La Pittura, also serves to

emphasize a guileless indifference to her personal appearance while

she is thoroughly absorbed in her work.146 Even though Ripa also

recommended that La Pittura have a bound mouth and long gown,

Artemisia was selective in the way she presented this allegorical

figure in order to emphasize those qualities that she wished to

present, and also, perhaps to make it plausible as a portrait.147

Artemisia identified closely with the personification of

painting in this Allegory, but she was not the first female painter to

be allied with an image of Pittura. In 1611 Felice Antonio Casoni

cast a medal of Lavinia Fontana which featured a profile portrait of

146Cesare Ripa, Iconologia (Rome, 1603), 404-405, cited by Bissell (1999), 327-329.

146Garrard (1989), 354.

147Ripa made many other suggestions about how the Art of Painting was to be depicted. For example, La Pittura is also to have a bound mouth to suggest mute poetry and a long gown in order to establish a symbolic relationship between the covered female body and the ideal proportions of painting that are captured in the underdrawing but covered by paint in the final image. See Mary D. Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi. The Image of a Female Hero in Italian Baroque Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 355, on Artemisia's likely access to this book.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Lavinia on the obverse and an allegorical image of La Pittura in the

act of painting on the reverse.1-4** Although Lavinia was not in the

guise of La Pittura in her medal, it may have inspired Artemisia to

create her symbolic self-portrait that emphasizes the critical instant

in the process of artistic creation:149 the embodiment of the Art of

Painting, Artemisia is caught at the moment of transformation, when

her concept (disegno interno) is about to be realized as a visual

expression on the canvas. *-50

Heretofore this discussion of guise self-portraits has been

limited to paintings, but Bernini made at least two sculpted images in

which the protagonist's features were based on his own countenance.15*•

148Refer to Woods-Marsden (1998), 206, Lucia Marro "Lavinia Fontana, 1552-1614," in Lavinia Fontana of Bologna 1552-1614, trans. I. F. O'Rourke, et al. (Milan: Electa, 1998), 114 figure 33, and Sir George Francis Hill, Portrait Medals of Italian Artists of the Renaissance (London: P. L. Warner, 1912), 81.

149Marro ("Lavinia Fontana 1552-1614"), 114, suggests that Lavinia's medal signifies public recognition of her professional and personal achievements.

150Garrard (1989), 367.

151Recently, scholars have proposed that Bernini's Damned Soul may also be a self-portrait. Howard Hibbard, Bernini (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1966), 31, says that Bernini's Damned Soul is "quite clearly nothing more than the grimacing face of Bernini himself, heightened and stylized." Rudolf Preimesberger, "Themes from Art History in the Early Works," in Gianlorenzo Bernini: Mew Aspects of His Art and Thought, ed. I. Lavin, (University Park and London: The Pennsylvania State University, 1985), 1-24, claims that the self-portrait represents an enigmatic damnation of himself. Rudolf Wittkower, Bernini: the Sculptor of the Roman Baroque, 4ch ed. (London: Phaidon Press, 1997), 233 figure 7, notes that it "may possibly have been worked before the mirror." Charles Scribner, Gianlorenzo Bernini (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991), 12-13, claims that the statue has Bernini's own mirrored features. Charles Avery, Bernini: Genius of the Baroque (Boston, New York, Toronto, London: Bulfinch Press, 1997), 66, avers that one account had Bernini holding his left hand over a lighted candle to appropriate the torture of hell-fire as he created

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Contemporary authors detailed Bernini's working method. It involved

using himself as a model and acting out situations in order to witness

in his mirror the correct or most natural expressions for central male

characters. Filippo Baldinucci wrote that Bernini used his own

features for his David (Rome, Galleria Borghese, figure 43)152

commissioned by Cardinal Borghese, and that on occasion, "while

working on the figure in his own likeness", Cardinal Maffeo Barberini

reputedly came to his studio to hold the mirror for the artist.153

David's expression of powerful concentration and focus on his target

is a testament to Bernini's working method of acting out the scene in

front of a mirror in order to understand and then to illustrate the

natural and expressive body postures and facial features of his

figures.*54

Bernini's son Domenico also chronicled that his father had

placed his foot in a fire and then studied his face in a mirror to get

the Damned Soul. Unfortunately, Avery did not provide further clarification or specific documentation for this "one account", which is not mentioned by any of the other scholars. Because of the extreme distortion of the features, it is heard to say with certainty if the Damned Soul is a self-portrait. However, given Bernini's documented working process, it is likely that he studied his own tortured features in a mirror to approximate the physiognomic reactions to hell-fire.

152Hibbard (1966), 54-64, Avery, 66, and Scribner, 66.

153piiipp0 Baldinucci, The Life of Bernini, trans. Catherine Enggass (University Park and London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1966), 13.

154This work and its possible messages will be more fully analyzed with regard to his painted David in Chapter Five.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the appropriate anguished expression for his early St. Lawrence

(Florence, Contini-Bonacossi Collection).155 For Bernini,

experiencing some of the physical pain that his subject endured during

martyrdom allowed him to create a naturalistic stone version of the

saint in terms of the presenting the probable physical and emotional

responses. Moreover, giving the saint his own features allowed

Bernini to emphasize the alliance with his name saint.

For Bernini and other artists, the guise self-portrait type

enabled the maker transform himself by donning the clothes and

accoutrements of figures from the past. Thus he is able to present

his own visage while projecting characteristics typically associated

with an established historical, mythological, or religious person. So

by adopting a guise in a work of art, the artist expanded and enriched

the potential meaning(s) of both the self-portrait and the work that

contained it.

As this chapter has shown, artists made self-reflective

monuments in a variety of media, in numerous contexts, and for many

different reasons between 1500 and the first quarter of the

seventeenth century, an era when the decapitation self-portraits

developed. Crafting self-portraits, like writing autobiographies,

allowed artists to fashion or construct images of themselves that

would serve as commemorative and lasting statements, and that would

make them present to their audience. Titian, Veronese, Lavinia

155Domenico Bernini, Vita del Cavalier Gio. Lorenzo Bernino: Descritta da Domenico Bernino suo figlio, ed. Leonilde Dominici (Perugia: Ediart, 1999), 15. The publication is a facsimile reprint of Domenico Bernini's book published in Rome by Rocco Bernabd in 1713. This quote was also cited by Hibbard (1966), 29.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Fontana, Caravaggio, Artemisia, Cristofano Allori, Vouet and Bernini,

artists who also created decapitation sel£-portraits, each fashioned

images of themselves that fell into one of the five traditional self-

portrait types: autonomous, craftsman / professional, witness /

participant, alliance, and guise. The range and complexity of ideas

associated with these usual types of self-portraits indicate that

artists very often produced such images for reasons other than merely

preserving their likeness1®6 or as documents that help to establish

the social or artistic status of the maker, as has been previously

suggested.157 Self-portraits can transmit themes and associations on

subjects ranging through a sitter's training, occupation, name,

artistic legacy, familial and professional relationships, and

character traits.

As the previous examples attest, there were a variety of issues

and ideas that artists were capable of transmitting through the usual

self-portrait types. So what would prompt eleven artists to present

themselves as decapitators, or severed heads, when they had so many

other options? What additional or alternative messages were they able

to convey with decapitation self-portraits that they were unable to

suggest with more traditional self-images? The following chapters

will be devoted to finding plausible answers to these questions.

156Pope-Hennessy (1963), 293.

157As discussed by Woods-Marsden Schweikhart. In her book, Woods- Marsden examined a series of Renaissance self-portraits and their relation to the social status of art and artists.

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DECAPITATION SELF-PORTRAITS FROM 1500-1585: A VENETIAN TRADITION

Giorgione's self-portrait in the role of David is

chronologically the first of twelve images in which Renaissance and

early-Baroque artists working in Italy seemingly portrayed themselves

as actors in biblical scenes of decapitation. In these images by

Giorgione (possibly in 2 versions), Pordenone, Titian, Palma Vecchio,

and Veronese, these artists all show the aftermath of beheading, yet

their artistic choices vary considerably in terms of the story

depicted, the use of an iconic or narrative format, and the guise they

assumed. This chapter will investigate some of the motives behind and

the messages conveyed through the first six decapitation self-

portraits that are grouped by geography and time: those painted in

Venice between 1500 and 1585.

Within this group the artists portrayed themselves as

participants in one of three biblical stories: David and Goliath,

Judith and Holofernes, or Salome and John the Baptist. As each of

these iconographic themes arise during my chronological discussion of

the paintings, a short account of the biblical event and a brief

summary of the each rendition in art will reveal the artists'

adherence to or deviation from the iconographic and pictorial

traditions. This emphasis on tradition and innovation mirrors the

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Renaissance attitudes toward the roles that creation, invention,

imitation, and emulation played in the production of works of art. In

addition I will speculate upon individual interests and the larger

cultural concerns reflected in the images. By discussing the

paintings in chronological order, noting relationships among the

artists, and considering relevant artistic influences, I will suggest

the means by which this unusual sub-genre of self-portraiture may have

been transferred from one artist to another.

Giorgione, the apparent progenitor of this form of self-

portraiture, represented himself as David during the first decade of

the sixteenth century. The story of the young shepherd David who

defeated the giant Goliath was a popular subject in art from the Early

Christian era through the Renaissance. In the first chapter of Samuel

(I Samuel 17: 39-58), the unarmed youthful David, small and carrying

only a staff, five stones, a sling, and a shepherd's pouch does battle

against the heavily armored and armed Goliath, a Philistine giant.

After mocking Goliath and nimbly fending off his physical attacks,

David hurls a stone at the giant's forehead, killing him. Then, using

the Philistine's own sword, David decapitates Goliath and takes his

head to show Saul.

One of the earliest representations of David killing Goliath is

a wall painting in Dura-Europos painted in ca. 250.1 In addition,

David's fight against Goliath was depicted in the catacomb of

1See Ann Perkins, The Art of Dura-Europos (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 52-55, who notes that part of a house in block M8 was converted to a baptistery. On the south wall between two doors is a badly preserved scene of David and Goliath, a scene that was apparently unprecedented in Rome.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Domitilla in Rome,2 and David's triumph over the giant is the subject

of a fresco in s. Maria Antique, Rome of around 705-707, which shows

the youthful shepherd standing atop his decapitated foe.3

In the Middle Ages, manuscript illuminations generally featured

the moments of combat as in the Bible of Charles V dated 1371, in

which David hurls the stone at Goliath,4 or the preparation for the

beheading as illustrated in a miniature for the Breviary of Renaud IV

of Guelders.3 Occasionally a medieval artist showed the aftermath of

the decapitation as in a thirteenth-century statuette with David

presenting Goliath's head to Saul on the fagade of Reims Cathedral.6

Early Renaissance painters and sculptors also preferred to show

either the battle (e.g. Ghiberti's scene in his "Gates of Paradise"

2New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1967 ed., s.v. "David," by F. Buck, 657- 658.

3Pietro Romanelli, Santa Maria Antiqua [di] Pietro Romanelli [e] Per Jonas Nordhagen (Rome: Instituto Poligrafico della Stato, 1964), Plate III figure B.

4The Hague, Museum Meermanno-Westreenianum: Ms. 10 B 23. See Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1971), figure 21.

5See Panofsky (1971), figure 122. The painting of 1366 shows David about to behead Goliath (New York, Morgan Library: Ms 87 fol. 260 v). For another example, see James Snyder, Medieval art: painting, sculpture and architecture (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1989), 440 figure 562, which is an illustration from Master Honord's 1296 Breviary of King Philip le Bel, Paris, Biblioth&que Nationale: Ms. Lat. 8504. Saul anoints David, then David stuns Goliath with the stone and prepares to decapitate the giant.

6Emile Male, The Gothic Image: Religious Art in France of the Thirteenth Century, trans. Dora Nussey (New York, Evanston and London: Harper and Row, 1958), 341. Male notes that the scene is meant to represent the virtue of courage.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. for the Florence Baptistry, ca.1435)7 or the triumphant David with his

trophies, including Goliath's head (e.g. Andrea del Castagno's David

in Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, ca. 1448).8

In contrast to this pictorial tradition, Giorgione painted

himself as David in half-length, thereby initiating an unprecedented

pictorial type that became very popular in northern Italy during the

first decades of the cinquecento. On the evidence of Hollar' s

engraving (figure l)9 and the remaining painted self-portrait fragment

in Brunswick (figure 14),10 in the original, Giorgione portrayed

7See Lorenzo Ghiberti, "materia e ragionamenti" (Florence: Centro Di, 1978), 330-344.

8Other examples include Donatello's marble David of 1408 for one of the buttresses of the Cathedral of Florence, his later bronze David, Ghirlandaio's fresco of a David with Head of Goliath on the outer wall of the Sassetti chapel in Santa Trlnita, Florence, the Davids of Verocchio and Pollaiuolo, etc. See Irving Lavin, Past-Present: Essays on Historicism in Art from Donatello to Picasso (Berkeley, Los Angles, Oxford: University of California Press, 1993), 51 figure 63.

9The inscription on the print: VERO RITRATTO DE GIORGONE DE CASTEL FRANCO da luy fatto come lo celebra il libro del VASARI, w. Hollar fecit ex collectione Johannis et Jocabi van Verle, 1650. F. van de Wyngarde excudit. (The True Portrait of Giorgione [sic] de Castel Franco painted by himself as Vasari's book describes. — Drawn by W. Hollar [from the picture] in the collection of Johann and Jacob van Verle, 1650. Engraved by F. van de Wyngarde), as translated in Terisio Pignatti, Giorgione, trans. C. Whitfield (London: Phaidon Press, 1971), 145.

10The Brunswick painting shows the artist in armor, but the head of Goliath is missing. Giorgio Vasari, Le Vite dei piu eccellenti pittori, scultori e architetti, ed. Carlo L. Ragghianti (Milan and Rome: Rizzoli and C., Editori, 1942), 2: 38, later mentioned the work as being in the Venetian study of Giovanni Grimani: "... tre bellissime teste a olio di sua mano nello studio del reverendissimo Grimani patrieurca d'Aquileia, una fatta per David (e per quel che si dice, 6 il suo ritratto) con una zazzera come si costumava in que'tempi infino alle spalle, vivace e colorita che par di carne: ha un braccio ed il petto armato, col quale tiene la testa mozza di Golia." (... three beautiful heads in oil by his hand in the study of the very Reverend Grimani, Patriarch of Aquileia, one he made of David

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. himself as David in bust length behind a parapet on which Goliath's

head rested. David, wearing a metal gorget, a piece of armor

protecting the throat, under a cloak had shoulder-length curly hair

and a deeply furrowed brow. His right hand rested on the head of

Goliath, which was shown with his eyes closed, and whose neck oozed

blood onto the parapet.

Giorgione's composition is not based on prior representations of

the theme of David and Goliath. ^ Rather he presents us with a

variant on a traditional portrait format that was first popularized in

Northern Europe by artists such as Jem van Eyck, but also utilized by

Italian, especially Venetian, painters. In this format the sitter is

isolated against a dark background, presented in bust length and

turned to a three-quarter profile view. A parapet at the edge of the

painted surface serves as a barrier between the painted and viewer's

actual space. Giorgione used this parapet as a surface on which to

display the head of Goliath. By using this northern, and adopted

Venetian portrait format, Giorgione underscored his adherence to the

pictorial traditions associated with portraiture; however, by

employing this composition for a self-portrait in which he assumes a

(and from what they say, it is his own portrait) with long hair reaching to his shoulders, as was customary in that time; it is lively and colored so that it appears like flesh, and he has armor on his breast and on the arm, with which he holds the severed head of Goliath).

11Nor did he strictly adhere to the Biblical account. Giorgione represented himself as a young adult (20 to 25 years of age), not as an adolescent boy. Further, he does not wear shepherd's garb, but the armor of a warrior. According to the Bible, it was not until after David proved himself against the giant that he accepted the clothes and weapons from Saul's son Jonathan (I Samuel 18, 4).

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. biblical guise, Giorgione has created an apparently unprecedented

image.12

Although it does not seem to have been his overriding objective,

by representing himself as a protagonist from a biblical narrative,

Giorgione helped to elevate the less-revered genre of portrait

painting by melding it with the artistic category most celebrated in

western European art, history p a i n t i n g .13 At that time, portraiture

was not a highly-esteemed artistic category. In the sixteenth-century

hierarchy of genres portraiture had a very low status because it

required only that an artist be able to replicate or copy the features

of a person; therefore, portraiture was considered a form of imitation

rather than invention. Giovanni Battista Armenini used a full chapter

in Book Three of his On the True Precepts of the Art of Painting to

discuss portraiture: its functions and the skills needed to master the

art form. According to Armenini: "But let it be known with certainty

12Jan van Eyck may have been the first to use this formula (though minus the parapet) for a self-portrait, if his Man with a Red Turban is, in fact, a portrait of Van Eyck himself.

11wendy Stedman Sheard, "Giorgione's Portrait Inventions c. 1500: Transfixing the Viewer," in Reconsidering the Renaissance, Mario. A. DiCesare, ed. (Binghamton NY: State University of New York at Binghamton, 1992), 150-153, argues that Giorgione painted his David as a manifesto declaring a new relationship between the artist and society. For her, by assuming a guise, Giorgione rejects the traditional self-portrait type of artist as gentleman that would bring to mind associations of "a respectable citizen, dignified, sagacious and responsible", and worthy of a patron's respect and patronage. Although she views Giorgione's David as a repudiation of the typical artist/patron association, curiously she does not offer a theory about the nature of this new relationship between artist and patron as set up by this "manifesto". Sheard's interpretation of the painting is especially puzzling because there was no established type of self portraiture at this time, unless Antonello da Messina's Portrait of a Mem (London: National Gallery) is in fact a self-portrait. As Woods- Marsden (1998), 117 noted, Giorgione's David is the "earliest recognizable painting of the Venetian artistic self."

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. that on the subject of portraits ... even an artist of mediocre talent

can master this art sufficiently as long as he is experienced in

colors".14 unquestionably, Armenini felt that a low level of artistic

skill was sufficient to master the art of portraiture.

In contrast, istoria, which ranked as the highest artistic

genre, required that artists invent and compose a pleasing narrative,

thus they had to employ creativity and innovation rather than just

skills of imitation.15 Leonardo da Vinci wrote that "...among all of

those who make a profession of portraying faces from life, he who

gives the best resemblances is the worst composer of histories” , or,

simply stated, the best portrait painters were the worst history

painters.16 Leonardo was in Venice in 1500, and as Vasari noted,

14Giovanni Battista Armenini, On the True Precepts of the Art of Painting, ed. and trans. Edward J. Olszewski (New York: Burt Franklin, 1977), 256-261. Armenini trained for six years in Rome, between 1550 and 1556, and his work, Dei Veri Precetti della Pittura, was first published in Ravenna in 1586. See also Anthony Blunt, Artistic Theory in Italy, 1450-1600 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1963), 138-139.

15Alberti stressed throughout his text that the main objective of a serious painter was the painting of "history”, or a significant human action. See Rensselaer W. Lee, Ut Pictura Poesis. The Humanistic Theory of Painting (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967), 7-8 for Renaissance references to the aims and goals of the visual artist. For further discussion about the hierarchy of genres in the Renaissance, see Joanna Woods-Marsden, Renaissance Self-portraiture: The Visual Construction of Identity and the Social Status of the Artist (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998), 9.

16Leonardo, da Vinci, Treatise on Painting ed. A. P. McMahon (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), 58, translated the passage as follows: "that among all those who profess to portray faces from life, he who gives the best resemblance is the worst composer of action paintings”. According to McMahon's introduction, "The notes on painting in the Codex Urbinas 1270 were copied directly from Leonardo's original manuscripts when those manuscripts were still complete as their author had bequeathed them to his pupil, Francesco Melzi”.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Giorgione studied Leonardo's manner and imitated it.17 Although there

is no documentary evidence that the two artists met on the basis of

stylistic and motival affinities, it is likely that Leonardo's ideas

may have stimulated the younger man. Giorgione demonstrated with his

self-portrait as David that he, at least, was eminently capable of

proving Leonardo wrong by combining a striking likeness with a

satisfactory history painting.1®

On a more personal note, in refashioning himself as David

Giorgione may have wished to announce his own valor. In the biblical

story David is rewarded for his personal bravery in a duel that all

others were afraid to accept. The maverick artist may have felt that

it took no small measure of courage to create a rare self-portrait

using his innovative style while introducing an unusual iconography.

Moreover, Giorgione may have felt some affinity with David as a

musician or virtuoso. Giorgione was himself a celebrated musician

employed (according to Vasari) to entertain at musical assemblies and

17Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, trans. Gaston du C. de Vere (New York and Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), 2: 641.

1®Jaynie Anderson, "The Giorgionesque Portrait: from Likeness to Allegory," in Giorgione; atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studio per il 5 -o centenario della nascita, 29-31 maggio 1978 (Venice: Banca Popolare di Asolo e Montebelluna, 1979), 153, suggests that "It was perhaps in response to Leonardo's criticism that the portrait-painter is generally unskilled in portraying action, that Giorgione introduced movement and allegory into Venetian painting". While his predecessors as portraitists had concentrated on representing a faithful likeness, Giorgione and his followers might in addition represent their subjects in situations that were allegorical.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. gatherings of noble persons,1® so he may have felt a kinship with

David the psalmist. 20 Further, David was a virtuoso in many different

areas of high culture (music and poetry), as was Giorgione (music and

painting).

After adolescence, David became the most celebrated biblical

poet. By assuming this guise Giorgione may have visually trans formed

himself into a poet and thus made a statement about his artistic aims

and status. In the Renaissance, Italian art theorists discussed

poetry and painting as sister arts with similar goals, because in each

art form the practitioner utilized his inventive imagination and

imitated nature (more specifically human nature) in order to

communicate expressive meaning effectively.2* This theory had it

roots in classical writing, primarily in Horace's discussion in Ars

Poetica that was summarized in the phrase "ut pictura poesis", as is

poetry so is painting.22 As David, Giorgione may have been making a

claim for the painter, like the poet, to be considered a liberal

artist.2-* Such a claim would elevate his own social, professional,

19Vasari (1996), 1:641 and 645, records that the artist enjoyed life, love, and making music.

2°As suggested by Woods-Marsden (1998), 119.

21See Lee, 23-26 and also Francis Ames-Lewis, The Intellectual Life of the Early Renaissance Artist (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), 164.

22Aristotle's Poetics also insisted that humans in action should be the object of imitation for both painters and poets. See Lee, 5.

23Even though he here portrays himself as David the youthful warrior rather than David the musician/poet. The latter guise, which makes such a claim more explicitly, is in fact adopted by another musician poet who seems as a youth (ca. 1508) to have been a student of

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. and intellectual status from the considerably less esteemed craftsman

or manual artist status.24

One of the shared goals between the poet and the painter is the

imitation of nature. In this particular presentation, Giorgione's

David is dressed in armor, although in the biblical account David

opted not to wear it, while Goliath's head rests on the parapet. By

deviating from the biblical text to present David in this manner,

Giorgione afforded himself great potential to demonstrate his

imitative abilities. The range of objects that Giorgione recreated in

paint: reflective metal, hard stone, live pliable flesh, dead bleeding

flesh, soft hair and cloth, confirm his aptitude to capture the subtle

differences between numerous surfaces and to create a perfect illusion

of the three-dimensional world on a two-dimensional surface.25 in

Giorgione. This was Benvenuto Garofalo, whom Giorgio Vasari, Le Vite dei piu eccellenti pittori, scultori e architetti, ed. Carlo L. Ragghianti (Milan and Rome: Rizzoli, 1942), 3: 170, describes as a lute player and whose Self-portrait as David (ca. 1540's, London, Private Collection, figure 53) is inscribed in the lower right of the parapet: Istius ipse formae est Garofalus auctor (Garofalo himself is the author of that form). This painting shows the painter wearing costly, bejeweled garments and a fantastic hat with a carnation, a punning reference to his name. In one hand he grasps a viol and draws attention to a scroll bearing music with his other hand. For further reading on this painting, see Katherine A. Mclver, "Maniera, Music and Vasari," Sixteenth Century Journal 28 (1997), 48-49.

24As Ames-Lewis, 168 notes, in the early Renaissance poets were more highly regarded than artists in intellectual circles. By this time, Leonardo had been amassing his notes for his Treatise on Painting in which he made claims for paintings superiority over poetry. For him painting appeals to the nobler sense of sight verses poetry's appeal to hearing, since painting's pleasure is instantaneous whereas poetry takes time to read. See Martin Kemp and Margaret Walker, eds., Leonardo on Painting (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989), 20-24.

25At this time there were conflicting notions about what the imitation of nature actually meant. in treaties of the period theorists urge artists to replicate the visible world in the works. At the same

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. this image, he has not only captured his own likeness but also made a

claim for his artistic virtuosity.

In addition to the imitation of nature, Renaissance artists and

poets shared the goal of invention or fantasia (imagination). Cennino

Cennini wrote in his Craftsman's Handbook (c. 1400), the "occupation

known as painting... calls for imagination [fantasia], skill of hand,

and in order to discover things not seen, hiding themselves under the

shadow of natural objects, and to fix them with the hand, presenting

to plain sight what does not actually exist". Further, Cennini notes,

"the poet...is free to compose ..according to his inclination. In the

same way, the painter is given freedom to compose a figure...as he

pleases, according to his imagination".2** In his later Dialogue on

Painting (1548), Paolo Pino professed "painting is poetry itself, that

is to say invention, which makes that which is not, appear to be".27

Throughout his short career Giorgione embraced artistic invention, and

thus his self-portrait as David, like many of his works, is in one or

another aspect unprecedented. For example, his is among the earliest

time, artists are urged to idealize nature, that is to show the human figure as an ideal and universal one without the imperfections and flaws that mark it as individual. See Lee, 9-15.

26C. Cennini, Il libro dell’arte. The Craftsman' Handbook, ed. and trans. D. V. Thompson (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1933), I cited by Ames-Lewis, 177.

27Paolo Pino, "Dialogo della Pittura," in Trattati d'arte del Cinquecento, ed. Paola Barocchi (Bari, 1960), 1: 115 cited and translated by Jodi Cranston, The Poetics of Portraiture in the Italian Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 3.

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as David.28

In one aspect Giorgione aligns his presentation of himself with

a formal pictorial tradition.29 Typically self-portraits are in

three-quarter view with the sitter gazing toward the viewer (or, as

the artist worked, toward the mirror), so that the artist can see the

mirror and work on the canvas without drastically changing positions.

A reflective surface is an indispensable device in creating a self-

portrait, even though in most self-portraits the mirror is implied

rather than shown; Giorgione practiced his art in the city renowned

for its mirror production, Venice.30 Contemporary theorists

28Because of its focus on a single figure in a portrait format, because the artist assumed the guise of a figure from religious history, and because the image transcends the limiting particularity of traditional portraiture, Giorgione's David is conceptually close to Diirer's Self-portrait as Christ of 1500. Diirer, who was in Venice in the 1490's and again in 1505, and who worked for the German merchants who were also patrons of Giorgione, was a great pioneer in the self- portrait genre making numerous autonomous self-portraits as well as participant self-portraits. He reportedly made a self-portrait in the guise of Hercules, and indisputably based a self-portrait on the Vera Icon format. According to Woods-Marsden (1998), 118, citing K. Herrmann-Fiore, "Il Tema 'Labor' nella creazione artistica del Rinascimento, '* in Der Kiinstler Ober Sich in Seinem tierk, ed. Matthias Winner (Weinheim: VCH, Acta Humaniora, 1992), 261, Diirer made a self- portrait in the guise of Hercules. It seems likely that two major artists working in Venice in the same year would have come into personal contact, and that Diirer's unprecedented self-portraiture practices influenced Giorgione.

29Although at this time, self-portraits were rather rare. Please see my discussion of self-portraits in Chapter Three.

30Interestingly the center for mirror production prior to Venice was Diirer's home town, Nuremberg. For more reading on mirrors in art, see Katherine Brown, The Painter's Reflection: Self-Portraiture in Renaisseuice Venice (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 2000), 45-55, Woods-Marsden (1998), 30-34, Jennifer Fletcher “Fatto al Specchio: Venetian Renaissance Attitudes to Self-Portraiture," Fenway Court

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According to Alberti, when Narcissus saw his likeness in the

reflective surface of water the art of painting was born;31 however,

Narcissus eventually died as the result of excessive self-love or

vanity, a vice traditionally associated with mirrors.32 But they also

have positive connotations of self-knowledge, purity, and truth;33

both Leonardo and Alberti urged artists to use mirrors to check the

accuracy or truth of their representations.34 Yet the reflections are

(1990-91), 45-60, and Heinrich Schwarz, "The Mirror in Art," Art Quarterly 15 (Spring 1952), 97-118.

3^-Leon Battista Alberti, De Pictura. English and Latin, ed., and trams., Cecil Grayson (London: Phaidon Press, 1972), 26, writing "... I used to tell my friends that the inventor of painting, according to the poets, was Narcissus, who was turned into a flower; for, as painting is the flower of all the arts, so the tale of Narcissus fits our purpose perfectly. What is painting but the act of embracing by means of art the surface of the pool?"

32K. Brown, 52, citing works such as Pietro Lorenzetti's Allegory of Bad Government fresco in the Palazzo Pubblico, Siena in which the mirror is an attribute of vanity in his personification of Vainglory. Mirrors could also be used in personifications of Voluptas, Superbia and Luxuria. See also Woods-Marsden (1998), 33.

33K. Brown, 51, and Woods-Marsden (1998), 33. In the Middle Ages, the mirror was also associated with the Virgin, the speculum immaculatum (spotless mirror) which symbolized her purity. Prudentia could be shown contemplating her image in a mirror — an act that connoted a spiritual search for self-knowledge.

34Alberti, 89 section 46, "A mirror will be an excellent guide to knowing this. I do not know how it is that paintings that are without fault look beautiful in a mirror; and it is remarkable how every defect in a picture appears more unsightly in a mirror. So the things that are taken from Nature should be emended with the advice of the mirror." Leonardo, 202: "When you wish to see whether your whole picture accords with what you have portrayed from nature take a mirror and reflect the actual object in it. Compare what is reflected with your painting and carefully consider whether both likenesses of the subject correspond, particularly with regard to the mirror. You should take the mirror as your master..."

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. fleeting and ephemeral, serving as reminders of the transitory nature

of life and the inevitability of death.35 The David is a tribute to

Giorgione's ability to transcend the mirror's limited capacity to

represent only those things that are visible and before it by

permanently recording the image in paint.

This idea of the ephemeral made enduring may provide the key to

interpreting Giorgione's painting.35 within this work, the idea of a

35Similarly, Titian's portrait as St. John's severed head (and by extension Palma Vecchio's, Veronese's, Caravaggio's, and Allori's self-portraits as dead men) could be regarded as vanitas or memento mori imagery, which could serve as a prompt to meditation on human transience and mortality. However, none of these pictures seems to have transience or even mortality in general as a primary or explicit theme. There sure Renaissance portraits that emphasize the vanity of human existence, for example in Lucas Furtenagel's panel of The Painter Hans Burgkmair and Bis Wife Anna (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum) of 1529, the couple appears in their mirror as two skulls and the inscription reads: ERKEN DICH SELBS, "Know thyself." See Woods- Marsden (1998), 33, K. Brown, 52, and Joseph Leo Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1993), 267-270. Concerning portraits and memento mori, see James H. Marrow, “In desen speigell: A New Form of Memento Mori in Fifteenth Century-Netherlandish Art," in Essays in Northern European Art presented to Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann on his sixtieth birthday (Doornspijk: Davaco Publishers, 1983), 154-163.

35There is a lack of scholarly agreement about the painting's possible meanings. Woods-Marsden (1998), 117-119, maintains that the viewer assumes the role of Saul, the envious, spiteful, and persecuting King who is on the receiving end of Giorgione/David's defiant and challenging glare. Anderson (1979), 154, feels that Giorgione's choice of David's dress, particularly the iron gorget, indicates a specific moment in time, the period after David's victory over the Philistine (although the inclusion of Goliath's head would indicate soon after the victory) when he was perturbed by Saul's envious persecution. For Anderson, the identification implies that the artist, like David, is subject to his own melancholy and self- questioning even at the time of his greatest triumph. However, Anderson provides no evidence to support this interpretation, and there is nothing in Giorgione's biographies to indicate that Giorgione was either melancholic or self-questioning. Indeed, Vasari (1996), 1:641 and 645, records that the artist enjoyed life, love, and making music.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. young man's victory is being celebrated.37 Giorgione is the clear

vanquisher, but what or whom did he defeat?-*® Based on the painting,

the most obvious answer would be mortality, since Giorgione presides

over a decapitated head, which can be interpreted as a personification

of death itself. In the painting, Giorgione as David reigns

triumphant over death, and in life Giorgione became immortal by

creating a durable likeness of himself that will outlast its maker.

Therefore his painting reflects Hippocrates' dictum Ars longa vita

brevis (art is long and life is short or life is short but art lasts

forever), with this permanent image Giorgione has assured himself

some measure of immortality. He has also frozen time since his

recorded likeness will never age; and in this has, at least

temporarily, arrested the processes of nature. If a shared goal of

37K. Brown, 72-74, speculates that Giorgione has not depicted himself as a melancholic or as a jubilant conqueror, but rather as a pensive and contemplative personality after a hard-won victory that is not wholly satisfying since new challenges will be forthcoming that will demand their own tolls. Or perhaps Giorgione is brooding over his position among the contemporary Venetian painters, having succeeded the giant, Giovanni Bellini, he is still unsure about his future position within the group. Bellini, it might be noted, was not dead, was still the official painter for the Venetian state, and bore no facial resemblance to Giorgione's Goliath.

38The nickname, Zorzon [big George], was first recorded in an inventory record. In the 1528 Marino Grimani inventory, it is described as «ritrato di Zorzon di sua mano fatto per David e Golia» (the portrait of Zorzon [big George] painted by his own hand through [the subject of] David and Goliath). See P. Paschini, Le Collezioni archeologiche dei Grimani, in Atti della Pontificia Accademia, Rendiconti, V. (1926-27) quoted in Pignatti (1971), 145. Jaynie Anderson, Giorgione: the Painter of 'Poetic Brevity' (Paris and New York: Flammarion, 1997), 307, believes that Zorzon may have been used in recognition of the fact that "Giorgione's face and his intellectual stature are as large as the giant whom he vanquished". For Woods- Marsden (1998), 117-119, the size of Giorgione's head, which is about equal to that of the giant, is indicative of the artist's stature among contemporary creative men, especially Giovanni Bellini and Michelangelo.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the poets and painters is the imitation of nature, then Giorgione

surpassed this aim by physically and symbolically conquering death,

and by implication nature, in his painting.

Giorgione's choice of guise indicates that he felt a connection

with the biblical hero, perhaps for the reasons mentioned above, and

it seems possible that he created a second version of himself as

David. This second David self-portrait is no longer extant but it is

known today through a drawing that was produced when the original

painting was in the Andrea Vendramin collection (figure 2 ).39 The

seventeenth-century Venetian biographer Carlo Ridolfi described the

Vendramin painting. According to him:

"...he portrayed himself [Giorgione] in the form of David with bare arms and a corselet [a piece of armor for the top part of the body] on his back, who held the head of Goliath, had to one side a gentleman with a jerkin and antique hat and to the other side a soldier..." 40

This description coupled with the drawing from the inventory

catalogue suggests that the artist used a more narrative mode of

representation for this version of David than Giorgione had used for

3®I am assuming here, for the moment, that the Vendramin attribution was correct, which in fact is unlikely. See notes 41 and 43 below. See Anderson (1997), 319. Sloane Ms 4004 British Library, London. Today, the Vendramin collection has been dispersed and survives only in the manuscript drawings. See Tancred Borenius, The Picture Gallery of Andrea Vendramin (London: Medici Society limited, 1923). Unfortunately, none of the paintings ascribed to Giorgione in the original collection can be located.

40Carlo Ridolfi, Le Maraviglie dell'arte, owero, 1: 83 cited by Borenius, 22, and Anderson (1997), 319.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. his Grimani picture.41- The three main figures, that are depicted in

half-length, are still positioned behind a parapet, but the background

is detailed and seems to be comprised of columns, perhaps indicating

Saul's palace.42 At the center of the composition, David, who gazes

at something unknown to us outside of the pictorial surface, holds a

large stone in his left hand, the enormous head of Goliath in his

right.43

In both versions of the subject attributed to Giorgione, David

wears armor and is shown with the head of Goliath. We might assume,

if indeed the Vendramin drawing and/or the Vienna picture do reflect a

Giorgione idea, that Giorgione wished to establish similar

connotations with the second depiction as he had with the first.

Scholars who write about Giorgione's self-portrait as David tend to

focus on the first version known through Hollar's print of the Grimani

David, which seems to be the earliest example of the decapitation

self-portrait, and which appears to have been a fountainhead for

41It should be noted that neither the attribution nor the identification goes back to a fully reliable source. Both Ridolfi's list of Giorgione's works and the Vendramin inventory contain a high proportion of misattributions.

42Jaynie Andersen (1997), 319, has identified the youthful figure to the left side of David as Jonathan, the youth who grew to love David as much as his own soul, and the older man holding a partially concealed weapon as King Saul, who was jealous of David's success and therefore attempted to kill him.

43David in the Vendramin drawing has generic features (large eyes, straight nose and full lips) rather than a distinct physiognomy. Other them the mass of curly hair, this David does not resemble the David either in Holleur's print or the Brunswick painting.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. artistic emulation by his followers and admirers.44 Although scholars

may not agree on interpretations of Giorgione's David, most concur

that the painting calls to mind ideas associated with artistic

greatness, inventiveness, rivalry, and challenge.45 In identifying

himself with the most famous biblical poet, Giorgione may have also

wished to manifest his belief in and adherence to contemporary issues

regarding creative imagination and the imitation of nature, artistic

goals that painters share with poets. He may have also used this

guise to avow his artistic virtuosity and to reinforce the theory that

a visual artist's professional status should be equal to that of the

liberal artist poet. Moreover, the juxtaposition of Giorgione's self-

portrait, described by Vasari as "colored so that it appear like

flesh",45 and the dead head of Goliath calls to mind issues of

44Documents indicate that Giorgione may have made a third version of a self-portrait in the guise of David. A David Meditating over the Head of Goliath (figure 3), today in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum, was once in the collection of James 3cd Marquis of Hamilton. In the 1638 inventory of his collection, the work is described as Giorgione's self-portrait, "his picture made by himself". See Jaynie Anderson, Giorgione: the Painter of 'Poetic Brevity' (Paris and New York: Flammarion, 1997), 313, citing K. Garas, "Die Entstehung der Galerie des Erzherzogs Leopold Wilhelm," Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sanmlungen in Wien LXIII (1967), 68. According to Anderson, (1997), 313: "Despite the impeccable provenance, and despite the fact that it is a Giorgione self-portrait composition, this portrait has always been considered a copy by a follower of Giorgione rather than an original". Nor can it certainly be considered a copy, rather than a derivation. Since scholars do not consider the work to be autograph, it will not be considered in the larger study, but is discussed in Appendix A.

45Scholars, such as Woods-Marsden and Anderson, also note the expression of strong (but not wholly identifiable) emotion.

45Vasari (1942), 2: 38. "...colorita che par di carne".

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. artistic immortality based on the ancient dictum that life is short,

but art lasts forever.

There is no doubt that Giorgione inspired Pordenone to present

himself as the victorious David around 1508, since he was an artist

greatly influenced by the older master.47 So that the viewer would

recognize the origin of his conceit, Pordenone inscribed verses on his

canvas. Pordenone's Ritratto del Pordenone in veste di David,

recorded in the collection of the Duke of Orleans, Paris,48 bore a

cartiglio of verses describing it as a self-portrait of Pordenone made

in the manner of Giorgione.4®

47It is probable that the painting was created around 1508, when the art of Pordenone reflected a strong influence of Giorgione. Most scholars including S. J. Freedberg, Painting in Italy 1500-1600, 3rd ed. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993), 291; Peter Humfrey, Painting in Renaissance Venice (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996), 288, and Jane Turner, ed., Dictionary of Art, 1996 ed., s.v. "Pordenone [Sacchis, de] (Giovanni Antonio)," by Paolo Casadio, 249-251, agree that Pordenone was born circa 1483-1484. This dating for the work is confirmed by a letter addressed to Cosimo III de'Medici of 1682 in which Matteo del Teglio mentions a portrait of the Fruli native that was "... fatto de se stesso all'etk di 24 anni" (made by the artist when he was 24 years old). Further Del Teglio stipulates that the portrait was made "... in forma di David a guisa di Giorgione" (in the form of David in the guise of Giorgione). Caterina Furlan, "Tra Giorgione e il Pordenoe: a proposito di alcuni dipinti gi& nella collezione del duca d'Orleans," in Giovanni Antonio Pordenone: Giornata di studio per il Pordenone, ed. P. Ceschi Lavagetto (Piacenza: Artegrafica Silva, 1981), 17, citing H. Prinz, De Sammlung der Selbstbildnisse in den Uffizie (Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1971), 92-93 and 104-105.

48Caterina Furlan, II Pordenone (Milan: Electa, 1988), 324. When the Duke's collection was catalogued between 1786 and 1808, Maviez produced engravings after the paintings, including Pordenone's painting.

4®Ibid., 324: "La Scritta esplicativa cbe accompagna 1 ’incisione del Maviez (insertia nel catalogo della collezione, redatto dal CouchS tra il 1786 e il 1808) precisa che si trattava di un dipinto su tela recante in un cartiglio dei versi, che lo qualificavano come un autoritratto del Pordenone, fatto alia maniera di Giorgione."

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. En David se ritrasse il gran Giorgione Per servire il suo bene in Castel Franco Emulo di valor non fece manco Se pingendo l'insigne Pordenone5°

(The great Giorgione portrayed himself as David To serve his good in Castel Franco Emulating his valor, the illustrious Pordenone did no less Painting himself)

The original painting is now lost, but it was recorded in an

engraving (figure 4): a half-length figure of David, dressed in armor

and wearing a laurel wreath, holding the sword with his right hand and

the hair of Goliath in his left. The victor's body is turned to the

right, his head slightly to the left as he gazes intensely at

something outside of the pictorial field.

Pordenone's work is an iconic representation in half-length of

David with the head of Goliath;51 so compositionally his work is close

to Giorgione's painting as it then existed and as later engraved by

Hollar. But Pordenone's work is not a slavish copy of his esteemed

forerunner's image because he made formal changes that resulted in a

more immediate and dramatic depiction of the theme.52 Pordenone's

50Caterina Furlan, "Tra Giorgione e il Pordenone: a proposito di alcuni dipinti giA nella collezione del duca d'Or leans," in Gioveinni Antonio Pordenone: Giornata di studio per il Pordenone, ed. P. Ceschi Lavagetto (Piacenza: Artegrafica Silva, 1981 [1982]), 17.

51A pared-down image in which the figures have been removed from a larger narrative context to appear as isolated figures against an unspecified background.

52His emulation of Giorgione would probably have also extended to stylistic treatment, with Pordenone perhaps attempting to mimic some of Giorgione's personal artistic traits. But since this comparison comprises prints and drawings after paintings as well as a cut-down

136

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. David actively presents his attributes, the head and the sword, to the

viewer. Further, by eliminating the parapet that marks the

delineation between our space and the pictorial one, Pordenone allows

us a more immediate encounter with the actors. By taking the idea of

this particular guise from his great forerunner, adapting it to his

own personal idiom and including a textual reference to his source,

Pordenone was most certainly engaging in artistic competition with his

admired predecessor.

One of the most noteworthy iconographic differences between

Giorgione's self-portrait as David and Pordenone's image is that

Pordenone's David wears a laurel crown. Because it is an evergreen

plant that retains its fresh color longer than other species, the

laurel wreath was used in antiquity as an attribute of triumphant

achievement and eternal f a m e . 53 Thus, it would be an appropriate

accoutrement for the victorious David. However, since it is not part

of the typical iconography for the Old Testament shepherd, Pordenone

more than likely included the object as a symbol of his own personal

or professional aspirations and succ es s.54

and somewhat abraded work, it is impossible to compare paint handling in the images.

53See Jennifer Craven, “Ut pictura poesis: a new reading of Raphael's portrait of La Fornarina as a Petrarchan allegory of painting, fame and desire," Word and Image 10/4 (Oct. — Dec. 1994), 387, for a discussion of the laurel plant and its associations in Renaissance portraiture.

54Although it was not standard practice to show the youthful shepherd David with a laurel crown, a few artists - among them Donatello {David, Florence, Museo Nazionale del Bargello) - included the attribute in their portrayals of the Old Testament hero. However, in Donatello's work, David does not wear the crown, rather a laurel wreath encircles the base of the statue. Other artists (David composing the Psalms, folio 1 verso of the Paris Psalter, ca. 950-970.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The laurel wreath was not an element frequently used in self-

portraits. Pordenone may have been inspired by its use in Mantegna's

bronze self-portrait that had been incorporated into the earlier

artist's funerary monument in Sant'Andrea, Mantua.55 Works produced

early in Pordenone's career reveal that he gathered inspiration from a

variety of artists including Mantegna, whose influence is evident, for

example, in Pordenone's 1506-1510 Risen Christ fresco on the ceiling

of the apse in S. Lorenzo in Vacile, Spilimbergo.55 If Mantegna's

work served as the stimulus for including the laurel on his own brow

in a self-portrait, Pordenone would seem to be paying a tribute to two

of the highly regarded artists who influenced his early artistic

development. He may have adopted the motif in reference to his own

artistic achievements that he hoped would assure his enduring fame

just as their art had led to undying acclaim for Giorgione and

Mantegna.

In showing himself as the triumphantly crowned biblical poet,

Pordenone's conceit may represent his desire to be ranked on a par

with the laureate poet. The tradition of bestowing laurel crowns to

honor poets in antiquity was revived in the Middle Ages in Italy;

Petrarch's coronation with laurel on the Campidoglio in Rome in 1341

Paris, Biblioth6que Nationale) included the laurel crown as an attribute of David as the psalmist.

55See p. 30, above. Ronald Lightbown, Mantegna (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), 132, declares that in the early Renaissance, the wreath was not an element usually embraced by artists, thus in Mantegna's case it may also represent the artist's desire to be on a par with the laureate poet.

56Casadio, 249. The influence of Vittore Carpaccio and the late works of Giovanni Bellini are also apparent to Casadio in this work.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. is an example.57 The notion that Pordenone may be equating himself

with a poet is furthered by his inclusion of a Petrarchan quatrain in

an "a b b a" rhyming pattern painted on the original canvas:

Bn David se ritrasse il gran Giorgione Per servire il suo bene in Castel Franco Emulo di valor no fece manco Se pingendo 1'insigne Pordenone 55

This connection between poetry and painting may be Pordenone's attempt

to illustrate the phrase "ut pictura poesis" by showing the painter as

warrior-cum-poet. He may also be asserting that painters, like poets,

should be regarded as liberal artists, an idea, as was previously

mentioned, that Giorgione might have also been putting forth with his

own self-portrait as David.

Pordenone, as his cartiglio specifies, created the work in

emulation of Giorgione's valor, his value or worthiness. Perhaps

Pordenone found a bravery or valor in Giorgione choosing to portray

himself as David and introducing a new style, a new iconography, and a

rare self-portrait form into the Venetian art world. Emulation,

aemulatio, is a term from rhetoric that describes the competitive form

of imitation whereby an artist seeks not just to copy an admired

model, but ultimately to surpass it.59 As a result emulation

57Lightbown (1986), 132, clarified that in the early Renaissance, the wreath was not an element usually embraced by artists. In antiquity they were used to honor heroes, victorious generals, athletes, and poets.

58I would like to thank Dr. Francis Richardson for bringing this poetic tradition to my attention and for his translation of the poem.

59In the Renaissance, legends of famous classical artistic rivalries such as Zeuxis and Parrhasius or Apelles and Protogenes were a

139

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. generally refers to a competition between two individuals; both Vasari

and Cellini,60 among other author-artists, mentioned artistic rivalry

and competition as a means of proving an artist's own worth and

improving his/her art.61

By artistically emulating Giorgione in representing himself as

David after the battle, Pordenone placed himself within the tradition

initiated by the great master, engaged in competition with him, and

situated himself to surpass his esteemed predecessor. Moreover,

Pordenone seems to be stressing the everlasting fame that will be the

result of equaling or surpassing such a worth model. In antiquity,

provocation for painters' practice of emulation. See my discussion of emulation in the previous chapter. For an in-depth discussion of imitation, see G. H. Pigman III, “Versions of Imitation in the Renaissance,“ Renaissance Quarterly 33/1 (Spring 1980), 1-32. For Rembrandt's self-portrait produced in emulation of Raphael, see Ed. De Jongh, "The Spur of Wit: Rembrandt's Response to an Italian Challenge," Delta 12 (1969), 49-67. See also Christopher White and Quentin Buvelot, eds, Rembrandt by himself (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999) and H. Perry Chapman, Rembrandt's Self- portraits: A Study in Seventeenth-Century Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).

60For example, in his life of Domenico Puligo, Vasari (1996), 2: 767, records that "Ridolfo, son of Domenico Ghirlandaijo, followed his father's habit of always keeping many young men painting in his workshop; which was the reason that not a few of them, through competing one with another, became very good masters". Further, Cellini (1995), 395, states that "I then proceeded to remark that their ancestors [the Medici] had brought the magnificent school of Florence to such a pitch of excellence only by stimulating competition among artists in their several branches". He later notes “Reflect upon it, my lady; if your most illustrious Excellencies think fit to open the model for a Neptune to competition, although you are resolved to give it to Bandinello, this will urge Bandinello for his own credit to display greater art and science than if he knew he had no rivals". For further reading, see James Clifton, "Vasari on Competition," Sixteenth Century Journal 27 (1996): 23-41.

61See Ed. De Jongh (1969), 54-58, who discusses the theory of artistic competition as discussed by Leon Battista Alberti, Van Mander, and other northern art theorists.

140

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the laurel wreath was sometimes used as an attribute of triumphant

achievement and eternal fame, and he may have adopted the motif in

reference to his own artistic accomplishments that he hoped would

ensure his immortality. Pordenone painted an image in which he, as

David, prevails physically over death represented in Goliath's head,

and symbolically over mortality with his painting and crown. Thus he,

like Giorgione, was able in some respects to conquer the normal

progress of nature.62

In this work, then, Pordenone not only pays tribute to artists

who influenced his early artistic style, certainly Giorgione and

perhaps Mantegna, but also presents himself as an accomplished

poet/liberal artist, and makes a claim for his own artistic abilities

and immortality. Moreover, with his poem, Pordenone professes that by

creating this image he has equaled Giorgione.

Pordenone was not the only artist working in Venice to be

greatly influenced by Giorgione, Titian also came under the great

master's sway. However, Titian did not portray himself as David, or

even the victor, rather he rendered his own features in the

decapitated head of John the Baptist in a painting currently in the

62Moretto (Alessandro Buonvicino), another northern Italian artist, seems to have also painted a portrait in which he makes use of Giorgione's innovative David. In his Portrait of a Maui (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art), Moretto, utilizing the David's format, presents the sitter, who gazes toward the viewer, behind a parapet. Moretto has replaced Goliath's severed head that rested on Giorgione's parapet with a more palatable hourglass, which serves as a momento mori. The message conveyed by the painting is that time will pass, the sitter will die, but the image will survive to offer the man some exemption from death.

141

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Doria-Pamphili Collection, Rome (figure 7).6 3 According to the

gospels of Matthew and Mark (Matthew 14: 3-11 and Mark 6: 17-28), St.

John the Baptist was beheaded because of a scheme devised by the

duplicitous Herodias, who had married her first husband's brother,

Herod Antipas. The virtuous prophet John objected to the incestuous

relationship and spoke out against it. In order to please his wife,

who did not like being censured by John, Herod had the prophet

imprisoned. Not satisfied with the mere incarceration of the Baptist,

Herodias entreated her daughter Salome to dance for Herod at his

birthday banquet, knowing that he would be pleased by her performance

and would promise to give the young girl anything she wished.

Instructed by her mother, Salome asked for John's head on a platter.

So the Baptist was decapitated in prison and his head was given to

Salome, who presented it to Herodias.

Around the beginning of the second century John the Baptist

began to appear in art, and one of the earliest depictions shows him

baptizing Christ (Catacombs of St. Callistus, Rome). He seems to have

been shown only in christological scenes until about the fifth

century. At that time various episodes of John's life that were not

necessarily theologically associated with Christ were illustrated.®4

A miniature in the book of Matthew from the Codex Sinopensis,

63Louis Hourticq, La Jeunesse de Titien (Paris: Hachette, 1919), 138 and 276; Erwin Panofsky, Problems in Titian, mostly iconographic, (New York: New York University Press, 1969), 43; Lodovico Foscari, Iconografia di Tiziano (Venice: Edizioni Sormani, 1935) 32; Shearman (1979), 9; and Harold E. Wethey, The Paintings of Titian: I - The Religious Paintings (New York: Phaidon Press, 1969), 157.

®4New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1967-79 ed., s.v. "John the Baptist, St., iconography of," by S. Tsuji, 1032.

142

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. (Bibliothdque nationale, Paris)65 which was produced in Greece in the

sixth century, may be the oldest known representation of Herod's

banquet and John's decollation.66 In this early illustration, which

closely follows the text, a soldier presents the head of the Baptist

to Salome during the feast.

During the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, episodes from

the life of the Baptist became popular subjects for narrative cycles.

These series frequently included scenes of the feast of Herod, the

dance of Salome, and the presentation of the Baptist's head. Usually,

these representations were of full-length figures; Andrea Pisano's

bronze relief of Salome presenting John's head to the enthroned

Herodias of 1330-1336 (south doors of the Florence Baptistry) is a

sculpted example of this type. From the fourteenth through the

sixteenth centuries artists were also frequently required to depict

these episodes in fresco cycles in Italian churches.67

By the beginning of the sixteenth century, artists in northern

Italy developed a different way of representing the story, more akin

65The miniature is reproduced by Nanette B. Rodney, "Salome,'' The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 11 (March 1953), 190, who notes that manuscript was written in gold letters on purple dyed parchment.

66Alexandre Masseron, Saint Jean Baptiste dans l'art (Paris: Arthaud, 1957), 111-112. See also Emile Male, "Le Type de Saint Jean-Baptiste dans L'art et ses divers aspects," La Revue des deux mondes (March- April 1951), 53-62.

67At Prato Cathedral, e.g., Fra Filippo Lippi painted the Feast of Herod fresco in 1452-1466. In his large narrative work numerous people who have gathered for the feast watch with a curious mix of indifference, horror, and fascination as Salome presents her mother with the decapitated head. In Northern Europe, Cranach, Quentin Metsys, Hans Memling, and others also produced paintings of this popular subject.

143

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. to portraiture: a half-length figure of either Salome or Herodias

holds a platter with John's head. Sebastiano del Piombo's Salome

(London, National Gallery) of 1510 is an example of a single, isolated

figure holding the head. The woman could also be accompanied by the

executioner, as in Andrea Solario's Salome Receiving the head of the

Baptist (New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art) of circa 1507, a

painting in which we only see the right arm of the guard. In others

we see Salome half- (Giampietrino's Salome, London, private

collection) or full-length (Cesare da Sesto's Salome, Vienna,

Kunsthistorisches Museum). The figures are generally large, filling

the entire pictorial field, and located in the foreground space very

close to the viewer. Whereas in the past the head was presented to

either Salome or Herodias, in these works the female protagonist seems

to be presenting the viewer with the head, and the Baptist's face is

oriented toward us, rather than toward her.68

In his Salome (figure 6), Titian seems to be adhering to the

iconographic formula recently developed in Northern Italy. Although

the painting is generally identified as "Salome" holding the head, it

is likely that Titian has portrayed Herodias, receiving the Baptist's

head from Salome, who adoringly gazes at her mother. Early

documents68 and copies of the painting support this theory.70 If

68It is possible that the severed-heads in these images are also self- portraits, however, we have no portraits or descriptions of the makers to give an indication of their distinct features.

69The first probable written reference to this painting is the d'Este inventory where it is listed as ”Uno di una Herodiade." The painting continued to be referred to as a Herodias until the nineteenth century, when it was dubbed a Salome. See George Martin Richter, Giorgio da Castelfranco called Giorgione (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1937), plates 38 and 40, no. 49. See also Pignatti

144

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Titian has represented Herodias, then his painting is not based on

established pictorial conventions, but rather closely correspond to

the gospels. The obedient, adolescent girl is placed in the

subsidiary role as the inadvertent tool of her vicious mother.71

Herodias, whose hatred drove her to devise the plan for John's murder,

takes center stage as the key figure who is forced to contemplate the

prize she has exacted. This interpretation would also argue for

Titian'8 inventiveness, since his painting seems to be the first half-

length representation of Herodias, accompanied by Salome, with the

Baptist's head.72

In crafting a self-portrait in a biblical scene of decapitation,

Titian may have been aware of Pordenone's self-portrait as David, and

most likely knew Giorgione's self-portrait (s) as David, since in 1508

the two artists worked together on the frescoes for the German

(1971), 151 no. V. 21. He determined that other versions of this canvas exist in the Museum at Nimes, in the Norton Simon Museum at Fullerton, and in other private collections.

70Visual evidence, in the form of paintings based on Titian's original composition, also reinforces the identification of the main protagonist as Herodias. A close copy of the painting that was formerly in London's Sabine collection was first recorded in Count Konigsmark's inventory of Rudolf II's picture gallery of 1648 as a "Herodias mit Sanct Johannes." See Richter (1937), 227-228, for another close variation of the composition that has also been ascribed to Titian, and also referred to as a Herodias in early documents.

71Paul Joannides, "Titian's Judith and its context: The iconography of decapitation," Apollo 135 (March 1992), 164, describes the leading lady as "neither an adolescent [Salome] nor the mother of one [Herodias], but of an age appropriate to the beautiful young widow [i.e., Judith] of the Bible".

72Further, the image painting documents his role as an artistic leader since several copies of the image exist attesting to its popularity among contemporary artists.

145

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. merchants' quarters, the Fondaco de' Tedeschi.73 Moreover, according

to Vasari (who knew Titian personally), Titian's early works were so

similar in style to those of Giorgione that their works were

indistinguishable, and he describes Titian as Giorgione's creato

(creation).74 Accordingly, Panofsky began his discussion of the

Salome as an early work of Titian1 s first phase, "when he had not as

yet entirely disengaged himself from the influence of Giorgione and

Leonardo but had already developed a style of his own".73

Although Panofsky did not elaborate on this point, Giorgione's

influence is evident in the decapitation self-portrait theme and in

the half-length presentation of the scene. Titian and Giorgione knew

each other and worked on commissions together, so it is likely that

Titian knew of, and possibly had seen, Giorgione's image as David.

73For further discussion on the artistic relationship between Titian and Giorgione, see Terisio Pignatti and Filippo Pedrocco, Giorgione, trans. Marguerite Shore (New York: Rizzoli, 1999), 20-21, 78, and 82- 83.

74Vasari (1996), 2: 782.

75Erwin Panofsky, Problems in Titian Mostly Iconographic (New York: New York University Press, 1969), 42. Leonardo's influence might be present here via a second-hand source, a Leonardesco, Andrea Solario, who helped to popularize images of Salome with the Head of the Baptist (often with an executioner) as well as images of John the Baptist's severed head on a platter. In Solario's best-known depiction of the theme, the Head of St. John the Baptist of 1507 (Paris, Louvre), the artist included the reflection of his patron Cardinal Georges d'Amboise in the metallic dish holding the saint's head. Since Solario was practicing in Northern Italy where he made his painting in the decade before Titian made his Salome and since his painting unites the Baptist's head with a portrait, there is a possibility that Solario's Head of St. John the Baptist influenced Titian's conception of the theme. Another possible northern Italian precedent for Titian's image is A Head of St. John the Baptist (Pesaro, Musei Civici) that was traditionally attributed to Marco Zoppo, but has also been given to Giovanni Bellini.

146

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. But, in the true spirit of artistic emulation, Titian did not merely

imitate or copy Giorgione's earlier work; rather, he created an image

that he must have felt could be considered to surpass his

predecessor's.7 ®

Like Giorgione, Titian associates himself with the spiritually

good protagonist in the image. Still, Titian met the artistic

challenge to produce something new and transformed Giorgione's idea by

representing himself as St. John, becoming the victim of decapitation

rather than the decapitator. St. John was a transitional figure who

was similar to Oavid in that he was an Old Testament prophet and yet

as the first New Testament saint to die for his religion his example

would be followed by all of the Christian martyrs who came after him.

Titian transfigured himself into this virtuous paragon perhaps

believing that by impersonating this upstanding person from the past

he would also, as if by osmosis, absorb (or at least receive credit

for) his virtues.77

76Moreover, it would seem that Titian was also directly responding to Sebastiano del Piombo's Salome (also called Judith, London, National Gallery). Sebastiano was a fellow pupil, with Titian, of Giorgione and he created his well-known painting in Venice around 1510. It is likely that Titian knew Sebastiano's image since his later composition and motifs are so similar. However, Titian expanded the idea of a biblical female holding a platter with a severed head giving it a different emphasis by including a self-portrait and putto. Of course, Sebastiano may have also presented himself as the severed head, but we do not have a portrait of him on which to base a comparison.

77Catherine King, “Italian Self-Portraits and the Rewards of Virtue," in Autobiographic und Se lbs tpor trait in der Renaissance (Cologne: Walther Konig, 1998): 69-91, discusses the idea of virtuous artists and the reward is Perfect Fame. Antonio Averlino described an ideal city in which he discussed a House of Virtue and explained “There are two ways of acquiring renown [...} but the route which allows you to achieve Perfect Fame is unique, for this is the Hay of Virtue, and it is what makes men happy..." This discussion was part of a 1460's treatise that Antonio wrote describing an ideal city for his patrons

147

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In this painting, Titian seems to have idealized the

presentation of himself as St. John. Although the saint has recently

undergone a brutal murder, there is no blood or gore to allude to that

fact. Further, Titian with his unmarred and unlined face appears to

be peacefully sleeping rather than dead as the result of vicious

beheading, and Herodias appears as a physically flawless, youthful

beauty. During this period, the idea that art is the exact imitation

of visible nature coincided with the conflicting notion that nature,

or more specifically human nature, should be "raised" and universal,

so man was to be portrayed as an ideal being without defects or

imperfections. As Lee has noted, Cinquecento literary theorists

frequently remarked that poetry was similar to painting in that both

had the power to idealize nature.78 By idealizing nature, that is

"correcting her imperfections",79 Titian, and by implication the other

artists who also practiced this perfecting mode of representation, has

actually surpassed nature.80 Ludovico Dolce, who in 1557 published

the first edition of his Dialogo della pittura initolate 1 'Aretino in

the Sforza, in Milan. It is unclear if the idea that a virtuous artist could achieve Perfect Fame was current in Venice a half century later.

78Refer to Lee, 9-15 and especially note 31, for a discussion of artistic imitation.

79Lee, 11.

80Because Giorgione's and Pordenone's decapitation self-portraits are preserved in the form of damaged paintings, and reproductive prints and drawings, it is difficult, if not impossible, to say if the figures have been idealized. Although it was the accepted and preferred Italian practice, Giorgione in particular more often than not broke with the traditional way of doing things, thus we cannot assume that he idealized his appearance.

148

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Venice, claimed that the "painter must labor hard not only to imitate

but also to surpass nature".**1' Although his book was published after

Titian created his image, the idea that the painter's goal was to

actually transcend nature may have been current in Venice a decade or

so before the book was written.

With his self-portrait as St. John, Titian is apparently the

first artist to present himself as a severed head, a positively

bizarre concept in portraiture. This iconographic twist seems to defy

one important function of portraiture pinpointed in Alberti and

Durer's writings. In On Painting, Alberti stated that "painting

possesses a truly divine power in that not only does it make the

absent present (as they say of friendship), but it represents the dead

to the living many centuries later", and that "through painting, the

faces of the dead go on living for a very long time".®2 Similarly, in

his Lehrbuch Dtirer commented that "painting preserves the image of men

after their deaths."®2 Titian inverts this accepted idea of making

dead men present by showing a living man as if he were dead, a

conception that surely emphasizes the artist's quasi-divine power to

conquer death in the quest for immortality. Further, this visual hoax

stresses his ability to invent, manipulate, and deceive.®4

81Ludovico Dolce, Dialogo della pittura initolate l'Aretino (Florence, 1735), cited by Lee, 10.

82Alberti, 61.

®3as cited by Smith, 68.

®4For further reading on artistic invention in the Renaissance, see Ames-Lewis, 176-187, Chapter 8: "Artistic License, Invention and Fantasia.*

149

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Renaissance authors frequently mention artistic deception,

invention, and illusion as desirable capabilities for a painter.

Before 1435 Cennino Cennini specified in his Libro dell 'arte that

painters were able to make visible those things that were hidden and

to make things appear that did not exist.88 Castiglione talked about

paintings that could deceive the eye (ingannano gli occbi), while

Vasari claimed that painting was most pleasurable deception

(piacevolissimo inganno).86 Paolo Pino's pronouncement that "painting

is poetry itself, that is to say invention, which makes that which is

not, appear to be", has already been noted.87 With his Salome, Titian

demonstrates his power to invent, to create an illusion, and to

deceive the viewer. He depicts things which cannot be real (showing

his own head severed from his body), vanquishes time (rendering the

biblical past as present), and triumphs over death (presenting himself

as dead while still very much alive).88

85Cennino Cennini, Il libro dell'arte, ed. F. Bruneilo (Vicenza, 1971), 3-4, cited by Cranston, 3. "And this is an art called painting, for which one ought to have fantasy and skill of hand, to find things not seen, hidden in the shadow of natural ones, and retrace them with the hand, thus demonstrating that that which is not is."

86Paul Barolsky, The Faun in the Garden: Michelangelo and the Poetic Origins of Italian Renaissance Art, (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), 108.

87Paolo Pino, "Dialogo della Pittura," in Trattati d'arte del Cinquecento, ed. Paola Barocchi (Bari, 1960), 1: 115 cited and translated by Cranston, 3.

88For a discussion of deception and Italian artists, see Cranston, 61, and of northern artists, see Celeste Brusati, Artifice and Illusion: the Art and Writing of Samuel van Hoogstraten (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 158-166.

150

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Titian, like Giorgione before him, has mimicked a variety of

objects and textures in this work including: stone, metal, linen,

silk, flesh, and hair. The descriptive quality of these surfaces, in

addition to the striking self-portrait, would be a testament to

Titian's representational skills and thus his artistic virtuosity. A

painter's imitative ability was a quality that differentiated him from

the more lowly sculptors. This point may be explicitly referenced by

the sculpted winged putto at the apex of the arch behind the figures

is neither called for in the biblical account, nor is it part of the

traditional iconography for the subject. This cold-gray broken figure

may show that painting can imitate nature better than sculpture which

is colorless and therefore less life-like, and moreover can simulate

sculpture itself.®9 Titian may have engaged in a similar paragone

with sculpture in his late Pietik,90 and Vasari records that Giorgione

specifically created a work to demonstrate the preeminence of painting

over sculpture, an act that attests to the currency of this concept in

Venice.91

®9Eric Jan Sluijter, "The Painter's Pride: The art of Capturing Transience in Self-portraits from Isaac van Swanenburgh to David Bailly," in Modelling the Individual: Biography and Portrait in the Renaissance, ed. Kauri Enenkel, et al (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1998), 186-188, discusses this pewagone in northern self-portraiture.

^Please refer to the discussion of Titian's Pieth and his paragone with sculpture in Chapter Three.

91Vasari (1996), 2: 644, recounts that Giorgione had argued with sculptors about which art form was superior - painting or sculpture. The sculptors claimed their art was greater because they were able to show an object, specifically a horse, from all sides, the viewer had only to walk around it. To refute this claim of superiority, Giorgione painted an image in which a naked man could been seen from all sides at one glance since he was reflected in water, in armor and in a mirror, with this image he proved the painter's ability to show

151

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Giles Robertson argues that the sculpted putto also emphasizes

the official nature of the Baptist's imprisonment and execution.92

According to him, winged putti were often used as decorative motifs on

arches of official buildings in fifteenth-century Venice such as the

Arco Foscari, the Arsenal gateway, and the main door of the Scuola

Grande di San Marco. Seeing the putto the contemporary Venetian

viewer would immediately identify the sanctioned nature of the

building and scene.

In addition, Robertson concedes that the thematically

incongruous cupid also alludes to an erotic theme within the

p a i n t i n g . 93 This idea was first discussed by Panofsky who speculated

that Titian's Salome could be the earliest example of those self-

portraits en d.6capit€ in which a love-stricken painter lent his own

features to the victim of a decapitation, as in Cristofano Allori’s

Judith.94 That there is an amorous undertone in Titian's Salome seems

plausible and I believe that Titian created the image in the spirit of

the Petrarchan poetry revival then in vogue in Venice.

This poetic mode, that had its roots in verses written by

Petrarch in the fourteenth century, employs an established system of

all views of a living thing in a single image, and therefore paintings preeminence. This paragone was also the apparent impetus for Savoldo's Self-portrait (Paris, Louvre) which involves several mirrors and other reflective surfaces.

92Giles Robertson, "Salome," in The Genius of Venice, 1500-1600, ed. Jane Martineau and Charles Hope, (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1983), 219-220.

93Ibid.

94Panofsky (1969), 43, who also views Caravaggio's self-portrait as Goliath as part of this trend.

152

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. gender relationships which involves an association between love and

metaphorical death. The woman, who is praised for her beauty, is a

cold-hearted charmer who is unreachable and has the power to wound her

male foe. Meanwhile the man, driven by love, becomes her victim, or a

martyr, since death is the only way he can escape his torment and the

melancholy brought on by her behavior.95 In Petrarchan poetry the

death is metaphorical, and is caused by the woman's unresponsiveness

to the writer's constant love.

Titian, in the guise of the beheaded Baptist lying on a platter,

seems to be implying that he suffered a metaphorical death at the

hands of woman, perhaps one that he knew and loved. If Herodias is an

idealized beauty, Titian may be claiming that he is a victim of women

in general; if however, Herodias is a portrait of a specific woman,

then Titian may have represented himself as a casualty of unrequited

love for that woman. In keeping with the Petrarchan underpinnings,

Titian may have been expressing his admiration for the sitter's beauty

whether the sitter was one with whom he had a personal attachment or

was a patroness who commissioned the painting.

In Titian's painting the woman is ultimately responsible for the

death of the male as in the poetic trope. Certainly, Herodias who

used trickery to end the life of the Baptist, Salome, who implemented

her mother's scheme, and Judith, an enchantress (albeit a virtuous

one) whose actions ended Holofernes' life, fit this mold. In Titian's

Salome, (as well as Palma Vecchio's Judith and Veronese's Judith to be

95Alison McNeil Kettering, "ter Borch's Ladies in Satin," Art History 16/1 (March 1993), 101.

153

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. discussed below), the male artist identified himself with the victim

who suffered a brutal death because of a female's deeds, thus their

paintings can be viewed as reflections of the prevailing fashion of

Petreurchismo.^G with his Salome, Titian seems to be the pioneer in

establishing a link between Petrarchismo and images of decapitation.

In the Salome Titian interlaced personal and professional themes

to compose a complex pictorial invention which seems to celebrate his

artistic challenge, inventiveness, quasi-divine powers, imitative

abilities, and capacity to manipulate and deceive. Further, his

cultural adeptness is shown through his interest in the contemporary

Petrarchan poetry mode and perhaps through his creation of a

Petrarchan visual poem.

The aforementioned artists chose to represent themselves as

either the victorious David or the decapitated Baptist, but Palma

Vecchio portrayed himself as Holofernes who had been beheaded by

Judith (Judith with the Head of Holofernes, Florence, Uffizi, figure

8). As the feminine counterpart to David, the humble and devout

Judith was divinely assisted in overcoming a formidable enemy whom she

decapitated. According to the book of Judith (12:10-20, and 13:1-9),

an apocryphal text, during the Assyrian siege of Bethulia, the devout

widow Judith put on all of her feminine finery, took her maid, and

went to the enemy camp. After four days there, she was invited to

banquet with the Assyrian General Holofernes, who overindulged in wine

96Judith has the features of Titian•s favorite "type" of model for this early period of his career (ca. 1515). For example, this type is recognizable in Titian's Sacred and Profane Love (Rome, Galleria Borghese) and Flora (Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi). It could be that this "favorite type" was in fact based on a particular model — and even one of whom Titian was enamoured.

154

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. and fell into a drunken stupor. Judith, who had avoided the general's

attempts at seduction and thereby preserved her virtue, used the

opportunity to decapitate Holofernes. She then placed his severed

head in her maid's food-bag and returned to Bethulia where she

displayed it in triumph. The Assyrians, now leaderless, abandoned the

siege and thus Judith single-handedly saved her people.

Early representations of Judith beheading Holofernes sure found

principally in medieval manuscript illuminations.97 Medieval artists

depicted the scene in both iconic9® and narrative forms.99 Further,

in the Middle Ages narrative cycles with additional episodes from the

life of Judith also appear in manuscripts100 and in sculpture.101

97See Robert Knotts, "Judith in Florentine Renaissance Art, 1425- 1512," Ph.D. Diss. (The Ohio State University, 1995), especially Chapter Two: "Judith in early Christian and Medieval Literature and Art"; Mira Friedman, "The Metamorphoses of Judith,” Jewish Art 12-13 (86-87), 225-46, and Mary D. Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi: Image of the Female Hero in Italian Baroque Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), Chapter Five: “Judith".

98Judith holding a sword and the head of Holofernes,in Humilitas between Judith and Jael, Speculum virginum, twelfth century, London, British Library, MS Arundel 44, fol. 34v. See Friedman, 234 figure 12. See Adolf Katzenellenbogen, Allegories of the Virtues and Vices in Medieval Art (Toronto: University of Toronto Press in association with the Medieval Academy of America, 1989), 16 and 57 figure 15.

"Judith and her maidservant in the field tent with Judith about to decapitate Holofernes from an Italian Bible, Rome, Vat. Lat. 12958, early twelfth century. See Knotts, 83-84 and Plate LII.

100There are six episodes from Judith's life depicted in the Arsenal Bible, Paris, Bibl. de l'Arsenal 5211, c. 1250-1275. Knotts Plate XLV. Knotts 61, documents that the illustration is from a Crusader manuscript made in Palastine, but derived from earlier French sources. See Hugo Buchthal, Miniature painting in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 55.

101Judith appears with other biblical figures on the facades of some cathedrals as in the archivolts of the North transept, right portal at

155

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Although monumental depictions of Judith were rare in the Middle

Ages, Renaissance painters and sculptors portrayed the climatic

episodes associated with the beheading in a variety of media and in

large-scale representations.102 One example, created for public

display in Florence's Piazza Signoria is Donatello's bronze statue in

which Judith surmounts Holofernes whom she is in the process of

decapitating.103 Botticelli painted a diptych with one side showing

Holofernes' body discovered by his troops while the other shows Judith

and her maid returning to Bethulia (ca. 1469-72, Florence, Uffizi),104

and Andrea Mantegna showed Judith standing outside of the field tent

placing the severed head of Holofernes into her maid's sack (ca. 1495,

Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art).105 During the first decade

of the cinquecento, Michelangelo frescoed a scene of Judith and her

Chartres Cathedral, c. 1210. Adolf Katzenellenbogen, The Sculptural Programs of Chartres Cathedral (New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1959), 71-73. According to Knotts, 475 Plate LIX, Judith also appears in the south transept portal of Amiens Cathedral, c. 1230-40.

102Knotts, 136, lists Guariento's Judith fresco from the Palazzo del Captano del Popolo in Padua as one of the monumental depictions of Judith from the Middle Ages.

103John Pope-Hennessey, Donatello; sculptor (New York: Abbeville Press, 1993), 277-288.

104Around 1470 Botticelli also painted another panel showing Judith's return to Bethulia now in the Cincinnati Art Museum. See Ronald Lightbown, Sandro Botticelli: Life and Work (New York: Abbeville Press, 1989), 32-37; and Herbert P. Horne, Botticelli: Painter of Florence, 1“ ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1908), and Herbert P. Horne, Botticelli: Painter of Florence, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 24-26.

105Mantegna made numerous depictions of Judith in a variety of media, and prints after his images helped disseminate his ideas. Andrea Mantegna, ed. Jane Martineau (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Arts and London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1992), 403-405, 411-413, 435-444.

156

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. maid leaving Holofernes' tent with his decapitated head (1509-1511,

Rome, Vatican, Sistine Ceiling),106 and Giorgione painted Judith

contemplating her deed as she stands with one foot on the general's

severed head (ca. 1500-1504, Leningrad, Hermitage).107

In the Middle Ages, Judith's righteousness was never in question

because in the biblical account she did not give herself to Holofernes

in order to achieve her final goal.108 However, beginning in the

fifteenth century and continuing through the seventeenth, the virtuous

Judith was also depicted as a seductress who used her looks and

feminine wiles to entice Holofernes before destroying him.109 Hans

Baldung Grien (1525, Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum),110 and

106Charles de Tolnay, Michelangelo: II - the Sistine Ceiling (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1945), 95-96.

107Terisio Pignatti, "La Giuditta diversa di Giorgione," in Giorgione; atti del Covnegno internazionale di studio per il 5 -o centenario della nascita, 29-31 maggio 1978 (Venice: Banca Popolare di Asolo e Montebelluna, 1979), 269-271.

108Knotts, 3, enumerates the various ideas that images of Judith's victory over Holofernes came to represent in Christian art from the Carolingian Period through the seventeenth century, an era when artists frequently represented the subject. For example, Judith represented the virtues of humility, chastity, justice, and fortitude. By saving her people, she was seen to prefigure Christ who saved humanity, and thus she became a symbol of good over evil. See also Garrard (1989), 278-305.

109For further discussion of Judith as a seductress in Renaissance and Baroque art and literature, see Garrard (1989), 258-30, and Friedman, 241. See also Dennis Hollier, "A l'en-tete d 'Holopherne: Notes sur Judith," Littdrature 79 (Oct. 1990), 16-28 and Elena Ciletti, "Patiarchal Ideology in the Renaissance Iconography of Judith," in Refiguring Woman: Perspectives on Gender and the Italian Renaissance, eds. Marilyn Migiel and Juliana Schiesari (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1991), 35-70.

110Garrard (1989), 296 figure 258.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Lucas Cranach (after 1537, Dresden, Gemaldegalerie)111 each depicted a

completely nude full-length Judith wielding a knife and the head of

the general, and Giovanni Cariani showed the heroine as a provocative

seductress with a bared nipple in his Judith (ca. 1516, Private

Collection).112 In the visual arts, Judith also became associated

with other biblical femmes fatales such as Salome when Lucas Cranach

the Elder used the same female type and compositional format for his

depictions of Judith (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rodgers

Fund) and Salome (Budapest, Museum of Fine Arts).11*1

In the first two decades of the sixteenth century, artists such

as Lorenzo Lotto (1512, Judith with the Head of Holofernes, Rome:

Banca Nazionale del Lavoro),11^ Giovanni Cariani (ca. 1516, Judith,

Private Collection), Giorgione (now-lost Judith recorded in a Lucas

iiipriedman, 243 figure 25, citing Max J. Friedlander and J. Rosenberg, Les peintures de Lucas Cranach (Paris: Flaminarion, 1978; revised ed. of 1932), figure 359.

112Paul Joannides, "Titian's Judith and its context: The iconography of decapitation," Apollo 135 (March 1992), 169 figure 7, citing R. Pallucchini and F. Rossi, Giovanni Cariani (Milan: Cinisello, 1983), figures 36 and 57.

113Friedman, 241 figures 23 and 24, citing Friedlander and Rosenberg,, figures 230, 231, 233, 234, 360 for Judith and figure 232 for Salome. Cranach showed Judith holding a sword and fingering the curls on Holofernes' head that rests on a parapet, while a sword-less Salome holds a platter containing the Baptist's head.

114peter Humfrey, Lorenzo Lotto (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997), 38 and David Alan Brown, "Judith with the Head of Holofernes," in Lorenzo Lotto: Rediscovered Master of the Renaisseuice, ed. David Alan Brown, Peter Humfrey and Mauro Lucco (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997), 97-99 figure 9.

158

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Vorsterman engraving),115 and Vincenzo Catena (Judith with the Head of

Holofernes, Venice, Pinacoteca Querini-Stampalia)116 helped to

popularize in Northern Italy close-up, half-length depictions of the

beautiful Old Testament widow with the head of Holofernes. Palma

Vecchio adhered to this developing trend when he painted his Judith

with the Head of Holofernes, currently in the Galleria degli Uffizi,

Florence (figure 8).117

While the previous artists painted themselves as the good

protagonist in the biblical story, in his Judith Palma Vecchio took on

115Anderson (1997), 318, discussed the engravings after Giorgione from the Theatrum Pictorium, 1658.

115Anderson (1997), 319, states that the painting is "after Giorgione". Anderson, 318, also reports that in Ridolfi's life of Vincenzo Catena, the author records that he viewed a painting by Catena with a representation of a "mezza figura di Giuditta lavorata su la via di Giorgione con spade in mano e'l capo d'Oloferne” in the collection of Bartolomeo della Nave. See also Joannides 167 note 17, citing G. Robertson, Vincenzo Catena (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1954), figure 77.

117John Shearman, "Cristofano Allori's Judith," Burlington Magazine CXXI/910 (January 1979), 9, was the first scholar to suggest that Holofernes may be a self-portrait of the artist. Philip Rylands, Palma Vecchio (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 89-96, found Palma's picture enigmatic since the blond protagonist is in contemporary dress, wields a sword, and holds a severed head, but is without any other historical details such as the servant, sack, or tent. According to Rylands, the painting belongs to a group of approximately twenty female portraits painted by Palma in the 1520's whose original purpose is unclear. Were they intended as portraits of individuals, or were they generalized images of ideal beauty? Rylands noted that many of these women, including the Judith, tend to share the same facial features and body types. Rylands felt that these portrayals of beautiful women, of which Titian's Flora (Florence, Uffizi) and Palma's Flora (London, National Gallery) are early examples, were inspired by courtesans. For Rylands, 92, the Judith in the Uffizi Judith and Holofernes is a portrait, but the work does not make an historical or narrative reference to the Old Testament heroine; instead, the reference alludes to the name of the sitter, her courage, or her virtue.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the role of Holofernes, the evil Assyrian widow-seducing general who

traditionally embodied the satanic vices of Lust and Pride.118

Palma's less-than-flattering guise as Holofernes, no less than

Titian's self-portrayal as John the Baptist, is likely associated with

this fashionable poetic mode, Petrarchismo. Palma could be presenting

himself as a casualty of an idealized type of beautiful woman, which

might be understood as contemporary beautiful women in general or as a

victim of a specific and individualized woman. If Judith really is a

portrait and he (the head) really is Palma, the artist may be paying a

tribute to the woman who commissioned the work, or to a woman with

whom he had some personal attachment.

It is unclear whether it was the historicized self-portrait of

Titian, of Giorgione, or of both artists that may have motivated Palma

Vecchio to create his self-portrait as Holofernes. Palma's work

reflects the influence of both predecessors whose ideas set off a

certain vogue for half-length images of Judith and Holofernes in

Northern Italy.118 Palma's oeuvre includes numerous half-length

118Friedman, 233-4, illustrates the idea that for some medieval authors the story of Judith and Holofernes was associated with the greater contest of Virtue over Vice with an illumination of Humilitas between Judith and Jael from the Speculum virginum, twelfth century, London, British Library, MS Arundel 44, vol. 34v. Since Judith was the embodiment of the Christian virtues of Humility, Chastity, and Temperance, Holofernes represented the corresponding vices of Lust and Pride. This idea is further supported by the pedestal inscription for Donatello's Judith and Holofernes installed before the Palazzo della Signoria, "Kingdoms fall through Luxury, cities rise through virtues; behold the neck of Pride severed by the hand of Humility". See Friedman, 236 note 48, for the now-lost original Latin quote recorded in a fifteenth century codex.

118For example: Giovanni Cariani (Judith with the Head of Holofernes, Private Collection), Lorenzo Lotto (Judith with the Head of Holofernes, Rome, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro), Vincenzo Catena (Judith with the Head of Holofernes, Venice, Pinacoteca Querini-Stampalia),

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. images of anonymous beauties, an idea first developed by Giorgione.120

Moreover, the early works of Titian paralleled and seemingly in part

inspired Palma's style. For example the younger artist's robust

Judith is related to Titian's frescoed version of the same character

for the Fondaco dei Tedeschi.121 Therefore both artists were

significant in the development of Palma's personal idiom.122

Although inspired by these two artistic powerhouses and in the

true spirit of emulation, Palma sought to surpass his mentors by

developing with his Judith a fresh and autonomous creation.12^

Keeping the decapitation self-portrait theme, he depicted a different

story from those portrayed by his two predecessors, and even though he

presented himself as a victim of a woman as was Titian as John the

Baptist, he showed himself as the "evil" protagonist. As Holofernes,

Palma participated in this newly emerging Venetian self-portrait genre

while still expressing his own uniqueness by bringing a novel

narrative to the tradition. Engaging in an artistic dialogue with the

and Correggio (Judith, Strasbourg, Musde des Beaux-Arts). Some of these images may include possible, but unverifiable self-portraits.

120Giorgione introduced this format with paintings such as his Portrait of a Woman (Laura) of 1506, although the subject here appears decidedly an individual rather than a conventionalized beauty.

121Titian's fresco of Judith was engraved by A. M. Zanetti and is reproduced in Stefano Coltellacci, et. al., "Problemi di iconologia nelle immagini sacre — Venezia c. 1490-1510," in Giorgione e la cultura Veneta tra ‘400 e ‘520 (Rome: De Luca Editore, 1981), 106 figure 14.

122Still, there is no definitive proof of Palma's knowledge of Giorgione's and Titian's decapitation self-portraits.

123Because he was beheaded at the hands of a woman, thematically Palma's guise is closer to Titian's than to Giorgione's.

161

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. most influential regional painters of his age, and using his

inventiveness to go beyond them (in terms of subject), Palma placed

himself at the forefront of the Venetian artistic elite.

Towards the end of the sixteenth century, Veronese also cast

himself in the role of Holofernes in the only decapitation self-

portrait for which we have a fairly secure patron and original

setting. In the Judith and Holofernes (Kunsthistorisches Museum,

Vienna, figure 9)124 Judith lifts the general's head to place it her

maid-servant's sack. In the nocturnal arena, an unseen torch casts

the half-length figures of Judith and Abra in a reddish glow and

creates deep shadows. Holofernes' tent, indicated by the scalloped

edge and tassel of the tent flap hanging above Abra's head, is the

setting for this remarkably bloodless and peaceful scene. The

pyramidal composition contributes to the sense of stability and calm

that is heightened by Judith's unruffled and elegant appearance.

Coutts has convincingly argued that Veronese's Judith was part

of a suite of four large paintings commissioned by Prince Carlo

Emanuele I of Savoy for his Royal Palace in Turin.125 This commission

124Shearman (1979), 9.

125Howard Coutts, "Veronese's paintings for Carlo Emanuele I of Savoy," Burlington Magazine (May 1985), 300-302. See also W. R. Rearick, The Art of Paolo Veronese 1528-1588 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 148-150. R. Borghini mentioned some of the paintings in II Riposo (Florence, 1584), 562-563: “Ha poi fatto molti quadri a Principi, et a persone particoleuri, come al Serenissimo Carlo Duca di Savoia quattro quadri bellissimi, nel primo e la Reina Saba, che presenta Salamone, nel secondo l'adoratione d e ’Magi, nel terzo Davit con la testa di Golia, e nel quarto Giuditta con la testa d ’Oloferne". (He has made many paintings for princes, and for one in particular, Duke Carlo of Savoy he made four beautiful paintings, in the first Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, in the second is an Adoration of the Magi, in the third a David with the head of Goliath and in the fourth Judith with the Head of Holofernes). Borghini did

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. involved biblical heroes and heroines, including Solomon and Sheba,

Moses, and David, as well as Judith, and may have had specific moral

overtones associated with Carlo Emanuele. According to Coutts,

Solomon was shown as a youth, which helped associate the wisdom of the

biblical king with the youthful prince. The finding of Moses is a

story that establishes the male heir as a protector of his people,

another role Carlo assumed. David, who is also an exemplar of

youthful bravery, and Judith represents the triumph of virtue over

vice. In Coutts' view, this series of paintings was created to

compliment the young king, and to put him on par with biblical heroes

who allude to the required royal qualities of wisdom, legitimacy,

valor, and vigilance.126

Curiously within this edifying and moralistic series Veronese

presents himself as the embodiment of vice rather than a paradigm of

virtue. In addition to the Petrarchan overtones already noted,

perhaps there was some private witticism on Veronese's part in acting

as the antithesis to those who would inspire the young monarch.

Representing the same story as Palma Vecchio, Veronese adhered

to the established Northern Italian tradition of depicting half-length

figures that are placed close to the picture plane. He, however,

expressed his innovation by creating a narrative rather than iconic

not call this group of images a series. Carlo listed the Finding of Moses as one of his favorite paintings by Veronese in a letter of 1605: "X gran quadri del Veronese, Regina Saba, et Figlia di Faraone, David, et Judit con le teste di Golia et O l o f e r n e See Coutts, 300 note 5, citing Catalogo della Regia Pinacoteca di Torino (Turin 1909), 157. Again, he does not call the group a series.

126COutts, 301. If Coutts is wrong and the Adoration of the Magi were part of this series instead of the Finding of Moses, then it could stand as an exemplar of piety for the king.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. scene and by presenting his event as a nocturnal one in accordance

with the scriptural account. Further, the painting reflects his

personal idiom; his elaborate golden-edged tent flap along with the

characters' refined costumes are in keeping with his well-documented

taste for the ornamental that distinguished himself from the

others.1-27 Moreover, the youthful blond Judith is an idealized

beautiful type commonly found in Veronese's oeuvre.

During his long and productive career, Veronese gathered

artistic inspiration from an eclectic assortment of sources and he was

certainly aware of the most highly regarded artists working in and

around Venice, four of whom (including himself) he portrayed as

musicians in his Marriage Feast of Cana (Paris, Louvre).12** Perhaps

in his Judith and Holofernes, as with the Marriage Feast, he is

placing himself within a thoroughly Venetian artistic tradition. But

rather than physically presenting himself among his illustrious peers,

127There are at least three other paintings of Judith and Holofernes by Veronese, and in them, Holofernes, who has dark curly hair and a receding hairline, resembles Veronese in a general way. In the three paintings, the head is at a foreshortened angle to the viewer. In the London, Koester Gallery Judith and Holofernes, the nose of the general is long and thin with flaring nostrils and is not like Veronese's own. The London painting is likely a modello for the Genoa, Palazzo Rosso Judith and Holofernes, in which the general's facial features are largely hidden by shadow. In the Caen, Musde des Beaux Arts painting, Holofernes is old and weathered and his features are unrefined, unlike those of the artist who painted him.

128In 1562-1563 Paolo Veronese painted his Marriage Feast at Cana for the refectory in San Giorgio Maggiore (figure 23, Paris, Louvre). In the center of the foreground, just beneath the figure of Christ, Veronese plays the viola da braccio, Titian plays the viola da gamba, Tintoretto plays the viol, and Jacopo Bassano plays the cornetto muto. See w. R. Rearick, The Art of Paolo Veronese, 1528-1588 (Washington D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1988), 12, and Richard Cocke, Veronese (London: Jupiter Books Publisher, 1980), 64. Please refer to my discussion of this painting in Chapter Three.

164

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. he inserts himself through this work into an established visual

tradition that had been developed by his esteemed predecessors.

Although he continues the customs of imitative artistry and of

reference to artistic immortality, with his unusual choice of guise

for this royal commission and with his typical sumptuous presentation

of the scene, Veronese interjected a new blend of wit and artifice to

the decapitation self-portrait tradition.

Veronese is the last of the six artists working in the Veneto

during the sixteenth century to create a decapitation self-portrait.

Because they were painting in the same region, these artists were

likely to have first-hand knowledge of the decapitation self-portraits

created by their predecessors. As a result, we can infer that the

idea of artistic competition and emulation, as Pordenone specifically

proclaimed in his inscription, played an important role in the

production of the images. Each painting stands as a unique and

independent statement within the developing tradition of decapitation

self-portraits since the artists made individual choices concerning

the assumed guise, compositional format, and mode of representation

(iconic or narrative). These artists have seamlessly interwoven

personal and professional stimuli to create images with complex

associations ranging from individual interests and pastimes to

artistic imitation, innovation, aims, rivalry, virtuosity and status.

Further, they have captured their likenesses in permanent materials,

so the works have the potential to outlast their makers, thus

affording these artists some measure of artistic immortality. Based

on this understanding of the origins of decapitation self-portraiture,

165

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. we will now examine the six images that were produced in areas of

Italy outside of the Veneto during the first thirty-five years of the

seventeenth century.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 5

DECAPITATION SELF-PORTRAITS IN THE EARLY BAROQUE PERIOD, 1600-1625:

BOLOGNA, ROME, FLORENCE, AND GENOA

From its inception in Venice, the decapitation self-portrait

became a means of transmitting a variety of complex ideas expanded

upon or given a different twist by each succeeding artist. This seed

of emulation finally disseminated into other Italian art centers at

the beginning of the seventeenth century, when artists outside of

Venice would begin to build upon this now established tradition. Six

artists early Baroque artists re-interpreted this sub-genre of self

representation: Lavinia Fontana, Caravaggio, Cristofano Allori,

Artemisia Gentileschi, Simon Vouet and Gian Lorenzo Bernini. They,

like their Venetian predecessors, presented themselves as protagonists

in scenes of decapitation involving David and Goliath or Judith and

Holofernes.1 Because seventeenth-century artists continued to be

influenced by the humanistic theories of painting developed in Italy

during the earlier centuries, artistic imagination and the imitation

of nature were still principles that dominated art production.2 Yet

^■Titian appears to be unique in choosing to present himself as St. John the Baptist.

2Rensselaer W. Lee, Ut Pictura Poesis. The Humanistic Theory of Painting (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967), 8.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. while they preserved the biblical subjects, the emphasis on fantasia

and duplicating or even surpassing nature, these early Baroque artists

also manipulated and updated the form or self-representation by

infusing it with fresh innovations.

Lavinia Fontana, a Bolognese artist, was the first woman to

produce a decapitation self-portrait in her Judith with the Head of

Holofernes (Bologna, Bargellini Collection, 1600, figure 10).3

Further, she was also the first known artist working outside the

Veneto to create a decapitation self-portrait. Since she is not known

to have traveled to Venice, she most likely did not know any of the

earlier versions of this genre first hand.4 So presumably, Lavinia

had learned about the most publicized example of this type,

Giorgione's self-portrait as David, through Vasari's 1568 Vite.5 She

then emulated her predecessor by depicting herself as David's feminine

^Using gold paint, she signed and dated her painting in the lower left of the canvas «LAVINIA / FONTANA / DE ZAPPIS / FECE / 1600». See Eleanor Tufts, "Lavinia Fontana, Bolognese Humanist," in Le Arti a Bologna e in Emilia dal XVI al XVII Secole, ed. Andrea Emiliani (Bologna: CLUEB, 1982), 133.

4Her father, Prospero Fontana (1512-1597) worked in his native Bologna, Florence, and Rome. Prior to Lavinia's trip to Rome in 1603 she is only known to have traveled to the Boncompagni family (one of her strong supporters) in Sora and Vignola.

5Vasari's Vite was widely distributed by this time. Agostino Carracci (1557 - 1602), a Bolognese artist, traveled to Venice and also made a Judith and Holofernes. Fede Galizia (ca. 1578-ca.1630) signed and dated her 1596 Judith (Sarasota, The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art), if either of these two artists inserted their self-portraits into their Judith scenes, they could have then transferred the idea to Bologna where Lavinia was working. Or, she could have received an oral description of Giorgione's famous picture from one of the Carracci, who went to Venice expressly to see paintings by the great Venetian artists.

168

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. counterpart, Judith, a virtuous, patriotic and triumphant biblical

figure who was often considered the female correlate to David.6

Compositionally, Lavinia adhered to the traditional northern

Italian depiction of the theme by placing her figures close to the

picture plane. Like those of all her predecessors' in this sub-genre

except Giorgione, Lavinia's scene is a bloodless and sanitized one.

In her presentation of rich translucent garments shot-through with

gold, velvet, gems, pearls, and metals, Lavinia flaunts her mimetic

skills. Her aptitude in capturing a likeness is demonstrated not only

by her own idealized countenance as Judith, but also in the depiction

of the maid Abra.7

In contrast to traditional female artists who tended to work

almost solely either for courts (Sofonisba Anguissola, Levina

Teerlink, Katerina van Hemessen) or for convents (Caterina Vigri,

Plautilla Nelli),8 Lavinia painted a considerable range of subjects

6Mira Friedman, "The Metamorphoses of Judith," Jewish Art 12-13 (1986- 87), 231, and Mary D. Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi. The Image of a Female aero in Italian Baroque Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 284-285.

7Abra shares physiognomic similarities with the maidservant in Lavinia's Self-portrait at a Keyboard with a Servant (Rome, Galleria dell'Accademia di San Luca, figure 24), an observation that was first recorded by Vera Fortunati Pietrantonio, Pittura Bolognese del'500 (Bologna: Grafis, 1986), 728 and 743 as cited by Maria Teresa Cantaro, Lavinia Fontana bolognese “pittora singolare" 1552-1614 (Rome: Jandi Sapi Editori, 1989), 198,

8See Caroline Murphy, "Lavinia Fontana: the making of a woman artist," in Women of the Golden Age, eds. Els Kloek, Nicole Teeuwen and Marijke Huisman (Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloven, 1994), 171, who lists the Bolognese sculptor, Properzia de'Rossi as one notable exception to this trend. Murphy also discusses the ways in which Lavinia's career compared to those of earlier female artists. See also Joanna Woods- Marsden, Renaissance Self-Portraiture: The Visual Construction of Indentity and the Social Status of the Artist (New Haven and London:

169

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. and carried out many public commissions. As a result her career was

more comparable to those of her male counterparts.9 Hers is the

largest surviving body of work by any woman artist practicing prior to

1700,1® and although many of the extant works are portraits, she also

painted large-scale religious and mythological subjects.1-1 She

achieved artistic recognition outside of her native Bologna, and on

February 19, 1600 Lavinia's first major Roman commission, the Vision

of St. Hyacinth, was installed in Sta. Sabina.12 About the same time

that her work was being introduced to the Roman art world Lavinia

painted the Judith and Holofernes, dated 1600.

Fortunati theorized that Lavinia identified with Judith as a

strong woman of the Bible to whom Fortunati attributed "decorum,

Yale University Press, 1998), 215, and Ann Southerland Harris and Linda Nochlin, Women Artists: 1550-1950 (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art and New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977), 111-114.

9However, it does not seem that she was schooled in the art of fresco, the ultimate medium for a skilled Italian artist of this period. It should also be noted here that although Sofonisba worked for a court, she is best known for her images produced prior to that appointment.

^■Ojane Turner, ed., Dictionary of Art, 1996 ed., s.v. "Lavinia Fontana," by Maria Cristina Chiusa, 269.

11Early biographers include C. C. Malvasia, Felsina pittrice. Vite de'Pittore Bolognese (Bologna, 1678), 1:215-217, and Giovanni Baglione, Le vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti (Rome, 1642), 144.

12See Vera Fortunati, "Lavinia Fontana: a woman artist," in Lavinia Fontana of Bologna 1552-1614, trans. Isella Fiale O'Rourke, Lucia Gunella and T. Barton Thurber (Milan: Electa, 1998), 29. Harris and Nochlin, 111 note 10, suggest that it may have been the success of this painting as well as the prospect of important new patrons that prompted Lavinia's move to Rome in 1603/04

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. strength, gracefulness and responsibility for [her] own actions."13

Although these traits may correspond with Lavinia's own character, I

believe that she may have also felt a situational affinity with

Judith, who overcame great odds to conquer her male foe.1-4 Lavinia

created the painting when she was at the height of her artistic

career, both working for the Bolognese elite and making her first mark

on the Roman market. Since she knew and admired the pieces of her

famous predecessor Sofonisba Anguissola, whose reputation was based on

portraits and small works, Lavinia must have recognized that her own

pioneering artistic career extended further them that of any previous

female artist.15 In the guise of the victorious Judith holding the

decapitated head, she could be celebrating a professional career that

went beyond portraiture to include the more esteemed historia, as well

as alluding to her own triumph over the established male-dominated

artistic system.16 Furthermore, if Giorgione's self-portrait as David

13Fortunati (1998), 27.

14According to Chiusa, 269, Lavinia's husband, Giovanni Paolo Zappi, died in Imola in 1615. Therefore, Lavinia, who painted the image over a decade before her husband's death, was probably not identifying with Judith as a widow in this image.

15Vera Fortunati Pietrantonio, "Lavinia Fontana, " in The Age of Correggio and the Carracci, trans. Robert Eirch Holf et al, (Washington D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1986), 132. Lavinia wrote a letter to Chacdn, 3 May 1579, reproduced in Maria Teresa Cantaro, Lavinia Fontana bolognese “pittora singolare" 1552-1614 (Rome: Jandi Sapi Editori, 1989), 306 5a. 6, noting her admiration for and acquaintance with Anguissola.

16In 1579 she had already made her Self-portrait in a Studio (Florence, Uffizi) in which she is believed to have demonstrated that her training was equal to that of her male counterparts. Please see my discussion of this work in Chapter 3. She would not have been the first artist to create a self-portrait to celebrate a specific and

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. was the source of inspiration for her self-embodiment as a triumphant

biblical figure, Lavinia would be establishing her level of

achievement comparable to that of one of the most highly regarded

Renaissance artistic practitioners. The carefully crafted self-

portrait as Judith confirms Lavinia's representational talent and

creative imagination, at the same time marking her artistic ascendancy

in a primarily male profession and asserting her place in Italian art

world.

Within a decade of Lavinia's self-portrait as Judith, Caravaggio

included himself in a scene of David and Goliath (Rome, Galleria

Borghese, ca. 1610, figure 5). His male predecessors Giorgione and

Pordenone identified themselves with the youthful, virtuous, multi

talented David, but Caravaggio must have felt some affinity with the

slain warrior Goliath for it was to him he gave his own features.

This painting has all of the hallmarks of Caravaggio's mature

religious works. He presents us with unidealized figures placed close

to the picture plane so that we are forced into a direct confrontation

with them. They are also shown in a strong raking light against a

dark, opaque ground.17 This powerful chiaroscuro of brightly

significant event in her life. Leone Leoni forged a self-portrait medal to memorialize his liberation from captivity. See Philip Attwood, "Leone Leoni, Andrea Doria," in The Currency of Fame: Portrait Medals of the Renaissance, ed. Stepnen K. Scher (New York: harry N. Abrams, inc., 1994), 152.

17Caravaggio's presentation is in keeping with the sixteenth-century northern Italian tradition of half-length scenes featuring Salome with the head of John the Baptist. Caravaggio could have seen some examples of this type (such as Andrea Solario's Salome Receiving the head of the Baptist, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art of circa 1507) in Milan where he spent part of his youth. In the paintings from this tradition, the figures are generally large, filling the entire pictorial field, and located in the foreground space very close

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. highlighted areas of flesh juxtaposed with the deep shadows begins to

erode the edges of Caravaggio's figures. In the wake of the refined

beauty of High Renaissance art and the artificial style of the

mannerists, Caravaggio's style, with its lucid compositions and

humble, everyday figures, was boldly innovative when it was introduced

to the Roman art world.18

Manilli, who inventoried the contents of the Villa Borghese in

1650, was the first author to refer to the Goliath as a self-portrait

of Caravaggio. He wrote that Caravaggio "in quella testa voile

ritrarre se stesso, e nel David ritrasse il suo Caravaggino" (in that

head [of Goliath] wanted to portray himself and in the David he

portrayed “il suo Caravaggino").18 If one accepts this statement

Caravaggio would have been the first documented artist to have given

all of the actors in the beheading scene a portrait likeness.

With his startling realism, Caravaaggio portrayed a macabre

Goliath's head, with exposed teeth and blood dripping from the neck.

This morbid and disturbing picture is neither the first example of a

severed head in Caravaggio’s oeuvre, nor is it the first in which he

appears as a character in a religious scene involving death by the

to the viewer. Moreover, in these works the female protagonist seems to be presenting the viewer with the head, and the Baptist's face is oriented toward us, rather than toward her.

18Rudolf Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy 1600-1750 (New York: Penguin Books, 1982), 45.

19 Friedlaender, 202.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. sword.20 He also had created a shocking image with the gorgon

Medusa's disembodied head (Florence, Uffizi), which was commissioned

by Cardinal del Monte as a wedding gift for the Grand Duke Ferdinand

of Tuscany.21 Other astonishingly disturbing and violent images by

Caravaggio include the Galleria Nazionale Judith Decapitating

Holofernes22 and the large Beheading of St. John the Baptist of 1610

in Malta Cathedral, where he used the saint's blood to form his only

known signature. Caravaggio is also credited with painting a David

and Goliath (Madrid, Prado), in which the young victor nonchalantly

ties a rope to the hair of Goliath's decapitated head.22 While these

troubling images reflect the violent and unpredictable nature of the

artist the popularity of the gruesome scenes also raises the issues of

taste and patronage.24 All of Caravaggio's biographers note his

20Caravaggio appears as a fleeing witness in The Martyrdom of St. Matthew, Rome, Contarelli Chapel, San Luigi dei Francesi. Please refer to my discussion of this painting in Chapter Three.

21As reported by Baglione, see Walter Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955), 234. It is likely that Caravaggio produced the image in emulation of Leonardo, who was reported to have made an image of Medusa a century earlier. Issues associated with the depiction of the Medusa's head, the shield and mirroring are beyond the scope of this dissertation. For further reading see Jeffrey M. Muller, " The Perseus and Andromeda on Rubens's house, Simiolus 12 no. 2/3 (1981), 131-146 and Michael Cole, "Cellini's Blood," Art Bulletin (June 1999), 215-235.

22To my knowledge, nobody has identified this decapitee as a Caravaggio self-portrait.

^Catherine Puglisi, Caravaggio (London: Phaidon Press, 1998), 399 figure 21 and Mina Gregori "David and Goliath," in The Age of Caravaggio (Hew York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1985), 268-270 figure 77.

24Avigdor W. G. Poseq, "Caravaggio's Self-portrait as the Beheaded Goliath,” Kunsthistorisk Tidskrift 59 (1990), 174, states that among

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as well as for copies after his works, including the Borghese David

and Goliath.

The propensity for violence in Caravaggio's personality may

actually help explain one aspect of his identification with the

rebellious and fierce Goliath.25 Caravaggio's penchant for trouble is

not only noted by his biographers, but certified by Roman police

records between 1600-1605 when the artist was cited for several

disturbances.26 Also, Caravaggio spent time in the company of people

who, like himself, were by nature quarrelsome. Baglione stated that,

"because of the excessive ardor of his spirit, Michelangelo [da

Merisi] was a little dissolute and sometimes he seemed to look for the

the 100 or so images believed to have been painted by Caravaggio there are 9 decapitations, 12 scenes of martyrdom (by means other than beheading), 4 burials of mutilated cadavers and several saints that contemplate death in the form of skulls. Caravaggio's very personal and down-to-earth interpretations of religious scenes caused more than one work to be rejected by the original patron, yet these same images were quickly acquired by private collectors. Cardinal Borghese, the church dignitary and nephew of the pope who helped Caravaggio obtain an official Papal commission, must have approved of the grisly presentation as well as (if he was aware of it) the autobiographical content of the Goliath since he acquired the work for his own collection.

25See Sandro Santolini, "David con la testa di Golia," in Anima e il Volto: ritratto e fisognomaca da Leonardo a Bacon, ed. Flavio Caroli (Milan, Electa, 1998), 188-190, for various scholars' interpretations of the painting. Edward Lucie-Smith, "The Self-portrait — a background." In Sean Kelly, A Self-portrait: a modern view, (London: Sarema Press, 1987), 11, believes that Caravaggio seems to be presenting himself as a man who is almost certainly damned. He sees a theological but highly pessimistic message in the image, based on St. Augustine's interpretation of the theme: "As David overcame Goliath, this is Christ who kills the devil.” See also Gregori (1985), 338.

2^The incidents include Caravaggio's slashing a retired member of the civic guard across the face and striking a victim from behind with a naked sword.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. occasion to break his neck or even to risk the lives of others."

Sandrart wrote that Caravaggio was quarrelsome, strange, and loved to

look for a fight.27 Bellori contends that at night Caravaggio would

appear in various parts of the city with his sword at his side as

though he were a professional swordsman.2** Finally, in Van Mander we

read that Caravaggio was ever ready to engage in a fight or an

argument. He also held company with young companions mostly

"swaggering, hearty fellows" - painters and swordsmen who lived by the

proverb "without hope; without fear".2** Perhaps by presenting himself

in this gruesome effigy, Caravaggio was also reflecting his and his

friends' philosophy: without hope, without fear. He is shown as an

evil victim without hope of redemption (in relation to David as the

prefiguration of Christ who overcomes the Devil), and simultaneously

as the Philistine warrior who was without fear of his enemies.

Caravaggio's dangerous, unpredictable and violent behavior eventually

resulted in the murder of his friend Ranuccio Tomassoni, who was

killed by Caravaggio in a duel of swords after an a r g u m e n t . 30

27Joachim von Sandrart, Academie der Bau-, Bild- uad Mahlerey-Kiiast von 1675 (ed. A. R. Peltzer, Munich, 1925), 275, as translated by Howard Hibbard, Caravaggio (New York: Harper and Row, 1983), 376.

2®Giovanni Pietro Bellori, Le vite de'pittori, scultori e architetti moderni (Rome, 1672), 208, as translated by Hibbard (1983), 367-368. See also Desmond Macrae, "Observations on the Sword in Caravaggio," Burlington Magazine 106 (Sept. 1964): 412-416.

2®Sandrart, 276, nec ape, nec metu- translated by Hibbard (1983), 379. Karl van Mander, T'Leven van noch ander Italiaenache Schilderrs de Teghenwoordigh te room zijn. Part III of Het Schilder-Boeck ... (Haarlem, 1604) translated by Friedlaender, 260.

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David with the Head of Goliath, Caravaggio's life-style suggests a

propensity toward violence and an affinity for the sword. Therefore,

we should not find his choice to identify with the weapon-wielding

menace Goliath unusual.

In his depiction of Oavid and Goliath, Caravaggio may owe an

inspirational debt to Michelangelo's unconventional self-portrait in

the Sistine Chapel Last Judgment. The Apostle Bartholomew holds his

flayed skin whose face is the artist's distorted likeness.31 In both

Caravaggio's and Michelangelo's images, the artist portrays himself as

the victim of a brutal death.32 Perhaps in this instance, Caravaggio

30Giovanni Baglione, Le vite de’pittori, scultori, et architetti ... (Rome, 1642), 138, translated by Hibbard (1983), 355. Sandrart, 276, translated by Hibbard (1983), 377. Hibbard (1983), 262, explained the image as a self-inflicted punishment that Caravaggio enforced on himself after the murder of Ranuccio Tommasoni. However, Caravaggio fled the Roman authorities rather than stand trial for the deed, so it seems doubtful that Caravaggio would have seen his self-portrait in the guise of a victim as fitting punishment for murder. The interpretation is also somewhat problematic because the date of this image is not fixed, and thus, could have been completed before the murder ever took place. Most scholars, though, date it thereafter.

3 ^Biographers note that Caravaggio cared little for the work of other masters, past or contemporary, regardless of how distinguished they were. Nevertheless, various compositions, figural groups and poses reflect his debt to masters like Michelangelo, Titian, Raphael and others showing that he was not as indifferent to the traditions of art as he would have others believe. See Hibbard (1983) for various artistic compositions and artists that inspired Caravaggio.

32Pos6q (1990), 173. Michelangelo's portrait may have prompted Caravaggio to study an ancient sculptural group in which Apollo holds the flayed body and head of Marsyas in his outstretched left arm. In his David and Goliath, Caravaggio seems to have adopted the posture and severed head of the Apollo Tortor, a work he could have known since it was owned by Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani who was an admirer and patron of Caravaggio.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. was paying tribute to his great predecessor with whom he shared a

name.

Caravaggio probably produced his work in part as a response to

Giorgione's earlier invention, especially since both artists included

a self-portrait in paintings with a shared theme. Moreover, some of

Caravaggio's artistic practices, such as using models from life and

employing bold shadows to portray his forms in relief, are close to

those of Giorgione. Perhaps Federico Zuccari, Caravaggio's

contemporary, best summarized the artistic similarities between the

two maverick artists. When he examined the newly installed Calling of

St. Matthew and Crucifixion of St. Peter in the Contarelli Chapel at

S. Luigi dei Francesi, Zuccari spoke to Baglione about the Calling of

Saint Matthew: "What is all the fuss about? I don't see anything

here but the thought (pensiero) of Giorgione in the picture of the

saint called to the Apostolate by Christ.”33 Although this statement,

made by a practicing mannerist, was probably meant as a criticism of

the painting for its naturalism and its use of dark shadows, it

nonetheless underscores the shared artistic practices of the two

artists.34

Bellori wrote that, early in his artistic training Caravaggio

had traveled to Venice where he had seen and had been greatly

influenced by Giorgione's work. This trip would establish a direct

link between Caravaggio and Giorgione's art, and it seems plausible,

33Baglione, Le vite de'pittori scultori et eurchitetti (Rome, 1642), 137, as translated by Friedlaender, 234-235.

34Keith Christiansen, "Caravaggio and L'esempio davanti del naturale," Art Bulletin, 68/3, 1986, 421 fn.3.

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documents. If he had visited that city, Caravaggio could have had a

first-hand look at Giorgione's David or perhaps even seen one or more

of the other decapitation self-portraits in that r e g i o n . ^5 while

Giorgione initiated the vogue for this type of portrait, Caravaggio

could have come in contact with one or more of these works on his trip

from Lombardy to Rome. Despite the fact that the idea of a

decapitation self-portrait harks back to Giorgione and his followers,

Caravaggio thoroughly modified the tradition into a wholly new

representation by showing himself as Goliath.

Because of the subject, the insistence on naturalism, his use of

chiaroscuro and documented interest in the earlier master's oeuvre,

Caravaggio seems to respond specifically to Giorgione's earlier work.

He enhanced the latter's conception by representing both David and

Goliath as identifiable individuals and by bringing a new and striking

realism to the scene. Caravaggio has replaced the peacefully sleeping

severed head found in Giorgione's work with his own tortured

countenance. Moreover, the excess of blood and large bruise on the

forehead in addition to the open but unfocused eyes and gaping mouth

help to accentuate the brutal nature of Goliath's death. With these

changes, Caravaggio updates Giorgione's prototype and underscores his

own abilities to approximate nature unequivocally in relation to

Giorgione's celebrated aptitude in that endeavor. We can speculate

35Titian actually originated the idea of painting a self-portrait as a severed head. Certainly others, namely Veronese and Palma Vecchio, followed Titian's lead in representing themselves as the decapitated victim of a woman.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. that Caravaggio, in part, made the work a century later not only as a

tribute to Giorgione and his groundbreaking creativity, but also as a

declaration about his own equally maverick innovations and new

naturalistic style.

The painting is thematically and stylistically related to

Giorgione's David, yet by showing himself as a victim of decapitation,

Caravaggio's guise is actually closer to Titian's self-portrait as

John the Baptist. But unlike Titian's image in which the beheading

was instigated by a woman, Caravaggio presents himself as the victim

of a male decapitator, thereby introducing another twist to the

decapitation self-portrait sub-genre.36 David, who glances with care

and a bit of sorrow towards the head of Goliath, has been identified

as Caravaggio's "il suo Caravaggino".37 If Caravaggio actually knew

this young man, then perhaps the artist felt somehow enslaved by or

forced to suffer because of him, since David presents Caravaggio's

tormented and severed head to the viewer. This relationship would

recall the Petrarchan lover (Caravaggio) who was doomed by his beloved

36Freudians, such as Laurie Schneider, "Donatello and Caravaggio: The iconography of decapitation," American Imago 33 (1976), 76-97, see this and other images of decapitation as being related to fears of impotence or castration, ultimately connected with the artist's homosexuality. Poseq (1990), 172, notes that in Jewish legend (midrash) Goliath was punished for his impure desire for the handsome David.

37Scholars have not been able to identify "il suo Caravaggino" or "little Caravaggio" with certainty. According to Alfred Moir, Caravaggio (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1982), 144, the model for David is "an apparently mythical protdgd of the painter". Pos&q (1990), 171, notes that that "Caravaggino" is usually understood "as the nickname of an adolescent friend". Mina Gregori, "David with the Head of Goliath," in The Age of Caravaggio (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1985), 338, discusses most of the other possibilities as well as the reasons that the identifications are not convincing.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. (il suo Caravaggino) scenario that was also a feature of Titian's

painting.

Artemisia Gentileschi was probably aware of Caravaggio's

influential self-portrait as Goliath, and may have been inspired by

that work to create her own self-portrait as Judith (Florence, Pitti

Palace, figure 11) by his work.38 Artemisia was trained in Rome by

her father Orazio, who was personally acquainted with Caravaggio,38

whose David was housed in a Roman collection. Moreover, Lavinia

Fontana was also in Rome in the first decade of the sixteenth century,

and Artemisia, a young aspiring painter trying to make her way in a

completely male dominated profession, more than likely would have been

cognizant of another female painter working in her native city. She

may also have been aware of the older female artist's self-portrait as

Judith.40

While Caravaggio, Lavinia, or Giorgione via Vasari may have

provided the impetus for Artemisia to present herself as an actor in a

scene of decapitation, compos it ionally her representation is closest

to Orazio Gentileschi' s depiction of the same subject (Judith and Her

Maidservant, Oslo, Nasjonalgaleriet). Though Artemisia has reworked

38The painting has been in the Palazzo Pitti since it was first recorded there in 1638 as a work by the hand of Artemisia. See Bissell (1999), 198, for scholars' opinions about the date.

39As contemporary court documents attest. See Erich Schleier, "Orazio Gentileschi," in The Age of Caravaggio (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1985), 148.

40It seems unlikely that Artemisia would have known Lavinia's self- portrait of Judith, painted in Bologna, firsthand. The early history of the painting is unknown.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. her father's horizontal presentation into a more compressed, vertical

one.41

With her version, Artemisia brings a new, heightened, emotional

component to the emerging self-portrait tradition by showing Judith

and Abra standing close together while looking warily into the

distance for possible intruders. Like Caravaggio, Artemisia

underscores the brutal nature of the subject by showing blood dripping

from the basket that contains Holofernes' severed head, and produced a

very believable and naturalistic depiction of the subject. With its

emotionally explicit figures and extraordinary naturalistic technique

this painting could help establish Artemisia as an artistic force in

either Rome or Florence.42 Further, she may have been claiming that,

as a mature painter who was trained with other male artists in her

father's workshop and who was capable of creating an artistic tour de

force in the more appreciated istorie genre, she was able to confront

surpass and defeat her male colleagues.

Judith seemed to have fascinated Artemisia, who painted at least

four versions of the episodes surrounding Holofernes' beheading.43 in

the same way, Artemisia's Judiths have enthralled twentieth century

scholars who have recognized her in the heroine and/or the maidservant

41Bissell (1968), 155, claims that the compositions are so similar as to “leave no doubt that one was derived from the other".

42See Bissell (1999), 198, for those scholars who date the work to her Roman period (1611) and for those who date it to her early Florentine years (1613-14).

43They are currently housed in Florence, Pitti; Florence, Uffizi; Naples, Museo di Capodimonte, and the Detroit Museum of Art.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. in three of these paintings.44 Bissell has also identified her as a

female martyr in a painting of the same title (c. 1615 New York,

Newhouse Galleries),45 and others, including Garrard, have recognized

her features in the figure of Pittura (see discussion above, p.

111).46 Although all of the figures are probably not self-portraits,

Artemisia had a definite penchant for portraying females that shared

her own physical characteristics.4 ^ It is my opinion that among her

44John Shearman, "Cristofano Allori's Judith," Burlington Magazine CXXI/910 (Jem. 1979), 9, sees Artemisia's features in the Naples Judith, and Gerrard (1989), 313, notes that the Judith in both the Naples and the Uffizi Judith are not unquestionably self-portraits, but Abra's features seem closer to the artist's. Pascal Bonafoux, Portraits of the Artist: The self-portrait in Painting (New York: Rizzoli, 1985), 57 and Anton W. A. Boschloo, "Perceptions of the Status of Painting: The Self-portrait in the Art of the Italian Renaissance,” in Modelling the Individual — Biography and Portrait in the Renaissance, ed. Karl Enenkel, et. al., (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1998), 59, both speculate that Artemisia, whose features are known from her self-portrait as Pittura in Kensington, could have used her features for the Judith in her Pitti Judith and Holof ernes. These paintings are considered in Appendix A.

45R. Ward Bissell, Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 204- 205.

46Although no other scholars note the similarity, Artemisia's Judith (Detroit Art Museum) has features that resemble those of Pittura.

47This seems to have been a recurring inclination of Renaissance artists, for many theorists of the time mentioned it. Leonardo wrote: "...You might deceive yourself and choose faces which conform to your own, for often, it seems, such conformities please us...." Martin Kemp and Margaret Walker, eds., Leonardo on Painting (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989), 204. Durer wrote: "Doraws Kumt, das vill moler machen, daz jnen geleich ist." (Thus it is that a painter will make [them] like he himself is). H. Rupprich, ed., Durer, Schriftlicher Nachlass (Berlin: Deutscher Verein fur kunstwissen schaft, 1956-69), 2: 121, cited by Lorne Campbell, Renaissance Portraits (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990), 14. Michelangelo wrote: "...one working hard stone will liken the image of every other model to himself" and "one paints himself

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Judiths, Artemisia's own features are closest to those of the Old

Testament heroine in the Pitti version.48

In addition to the artistic tradition Artemisia's penchant for

Judith may stem from her own personal circumstances. in 1612,

Artemisia was involved in a very public trial in which Agostino Tassi,

one of her teachers, was accused of raping her.49 Garrard cites

Artemisia's rape and the subsequent trial as the emotional raw

material behind her numerous depictions of Judith, especially those

where Judith is in the act of decapitating Holofernes. Garrard notes

that in these images the idea of violent punishment for a violent

action is given full rein.58

The Pitti Judith is usually dated to 1611, the same year that

Tassi was accused of raping her. Bissell speculates that this

painting may have been intended as a gift which Orazio promised to the

Dowager Grand Duchess of Tuscany in a letter of July 3, 1612, in an

attempt to elicit her sympathy and help in his situation with Agostino

when painting another." See Posdq (Jul-Aug, 1994), 2 note 10, citing R. J. Clements, The Poetry of Michelangelo (New York, 1975), 178.

48Artemisia does seem to have been captivated by Judith, and the images of Judith do resemble her in at least a general way.

49Garrard (1989), Appendix B, has translated the transcripts of the trial records from the Archivio di stato, Rome: Archivio del Tribunale Crimnale del Governatore di Roma, processo 7 ("Stupri et Lenocinij — Pro Curia et fisco Con Augustinum Tassum Pictorem'), busta 104, anno 1612, ms. pp. 1-340.

S^Mary D. Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi (1593 — ca. 1652) (New York: Rizzoli International Publishers, Inc., 1993), n.p. Jane Turner, ed., Dictionary of Art, 1996 ed., s.v. "Artemisia Gentileschi," by Ann Sutherland Harris, 307, claims that paintings such as the Uffizi Judith Beheading Holofernes would seem to be a form of visual revenge for her humiliation during the rape and subsequent trial

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Tassi.51 If we accept Bissell's assumption about the intended

recipient for the painting, Artemisia appropriately chose to represent

herself as Judith, the heroine who did not give herself to Holofernes

and who eventually vanquished her enemy. Thus she embodies the themes

of selflessness, devotion to God, and the triumph of good over evil.

In this situation, the painting could serve as a visual claim of

innocence to her supporter.

While Artemisia presented herself as the triumphant heroine,

Cristofano Allori assumed the guise of Holofernes in several versions

of Judith.52 Allori, like Artemisia, may have known Caravaggio’s

recent self-portrait as the decapitated Goliath, and that painting may

have been Allori’s initial inspiration to paint himself as Holofernes.

Baldinucci tells us that Allori not only painted himself as

Holofernes, but in that image also showed his mistress as Judith and

51R. Ward Bissell, "Artemisia Gentileschi — A New Documented Chronology," Art Bulletin L (1968), 155 and Bissell (1999), 198-203. Court documents indicate that Tassi had inappropriately obtained a Judith, by either Orazio or his daughter (the records are ambiguous and contradictory on this point). Further, Cosmio Quorli forged documents to wrest the painting from Agostino's hands. This possibility is also supported by Papi and Contini.

52Allori made several versions of Judith and Holofernes: Cardinal Alessandro Orsini's version of circa 1612-1618 which remains unidentified; the Hampton Court version dated 1613, and the Palazzo Pitti painting of circa 1616-20. See Miles Chappell, Cristofano Allori, 1577-1621 (Florence: Centro di della Edifimi srl, 1984), 81, for illustrations of these and other versions of Allori's Judith theme. Shearman (1979), 6, credits Christel Thiem, Florentiner Zeichner des Fruhbarock (Munich: Bruckmann, 1977), 16, as the first scholar to cite Caravaggio1s work as inspiration for Allori's work. While Allori altered the features of his model for Judith between the Hampton Court and Pitti paintings, he seems to have depicted himself as the beheaded Holofernes in both representations. Garrard (1989), 299, asserts that Allori also changed the features of the Holofernes to show the generic concept of Man as victim of Woman.

185

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. her mother as Abra.53 In casting identifiable models as the

protagonists, Allori's representation can be equated with Caravaggio's

David. Allori, a Florentine painter, made a trip to Rome in 1610, at

which time he might have seen or at least heard about Caravaggio's

David in Cardinal Borghese's collection.54

In contrast to Caravaggio's humble figures and earth-tone

palette, with his Hampton Court Judith Allori presents us with

beautiful figures in a visually dazzling image painted in vibrant

color. A remorseless half-length Judith, dressed in a yellow outer

garment with a white underdress and red cloak, nonchalantly thrusts

Holofernes' severed head towards the viewer with her left hand. Abra,

Judith's maid, emerging from the dark shadows behind Judith, glances

with slight apprehension at something outside the picture.

Unlike Caravaggio, who as Goliath became the victim of a

youthful male, Allori chose to paint himself as the victim of a woman,

and further, one with the features of his own mistress. Given the

subject, Artemisia's self-portrait as Judith possibly served as

Allori's inspiration. Artemisia was living in Florence by 1613 and

her visually splendid artistic style made an impact on native

Florentine painters such as Allori.55

53Filippo Baldinucci, Notizie dei professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua (Florence: V. Bat&lli e Compagni, 1845-47), 3: 726-727.

54Charles McCorquodale, Painting in Florence 1600-1700 (London: P. and D. Colnaghi and Co., Ltd, 1979), 17, and Shearman (1979), 12, both mention Allori's trip to Rome without citing their sources for this information.

55Richard E. Spear, Caravaggio and His Followers (Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1971), 96.

186

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. If Allori was unaware of Artemisia's or Caravaggio's paintings,

Jaynie Anderson and John Shearman have suggested that he might have

known one of two versions of Jacopo Ligozzi's Judith (Florence,

Palazzo Pitti, figure 44). Ligozzi (1547-1627), a painter,

draughtsman, miniaturist and print maker from Verona, who worked for

the Medici court and was among the most productive seventeenth-century

painters working in Florence.56 Some of Ligozzi's paintings,

including a Deposition (1591, San Gimignano, Santo Spirito), reveal

his debt to Paolo Veronese,57 and perhaps he was inspired by

Veronese's self-portrait as Holofernes to represent Raphael as the

general. In Ligozzi's paintings he is about to be decapitated by

Judith who is shown as Raphael's mistress La Fornarina.58 When

Ligozzi painted the two images in 1602 he had "given out" that they

were copied after a painting by Raphael himself.59 Whether

counterfeit Raphaels or not the paintings are testament to the

popularity of the decapitation self-portrait theme since Ligozzi

wished to insert Raphael into that tradition.

In presenting himself as the victim of a specific woman, La

Mazzafirra, Allori may have been making a statement about a love

56Around 1576, Ligozzi traveled to Florence where he began to work for Grand Duke Francesco I, and in 1587 he became a court painter for the Medici. See Jane Turner, ed. Dictionary of Art, 1996 ed., s.v. "Ligozzi, Jacopo," by Miles L. Chappell, 373-375.

57Ibid.

58Shearman (1979), 9, and Anderson (1996), 202-204, note several versions of Judith by Jacopo Ligozzi.

59Shearman (1979), 9.

187

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. affair that he felt went awry,*0 or may have been merely proclaiming

his total subjugation by her charms. In the painting, his

metaphorical death was brought about by his lady-love with the help of

her mother. A Petrarchan reading of Allori's painting, in which the

man expires because of an attractive woman's actions, is reinforced by

Giovanni Battista Marino's 1619 poem written in celebration of

Allori's Judith. Marino contends that the beautiful widow killed

Holofernes twice: first with Cupid's darts and then with a sword.

"Di Betel la bella / Vedovetta feroce / Non ha lingua, nS voce, e pur favella. / E par seco si glorij, e voglia dire, / Vedi s'io so ferire, / e di strale, e di spada. / Di due morti, Fellon, vd che tu cada, / Da me pria col bel viso, / Poi con la forte man due volte ucciso." (The beauty from Bethulia / little ferocious widow / has neither tongue nor voice but tells a story / And by itself glories and means (wishes to say) / see if I know how to wound / with darts and with sword./ Of two deaths felon I wish that you fall / by me first with my beautiful face, / then with a strong hand twice (two times) killed).61

This poem invokes a Petrarchan juxtaposition of Love (or insidious

beauty) and Death, a popular theme among sixteenth and seventeenth-

century poets and artists.62 This poetic form has already been noted

60Ibid, 3.

61Giovanni B. Marino, "Giudit con la testa d'Oloferne di Christoforo Bronzino,” in Marino, La Galeria (Venice: Ciotti, 1619), 59, cited by Claudio Pizzorusso, Ricerche su Cristofano Allori (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1982), 71-72. I would like to thank Dr. Francis Richardson for translating this poem.

62Garrard (1989), 299-300. Friedman, 240, views this idea as the triumph of love. For further reading on the close link between Petrarchismo and Renaissance artists, see Elizabeth Cropper, "On Beautiful Women, Parmigianino, Petrarchismo, and the Vernacular Style,” Art Bulletin 58 (1976), 374-394; Elise L. Goodman, "Petrarchism in Titian's The Lady and the Musician,* Storia dell'arte 49 (Sept.-Dec., 1983), 179-186; Gotz Pochat, “Two Allegories by

188

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. as an influence on some of the Venetian examples of this sub-genre of

portraiture, and it seems also to have influenced Allori's Judith. By

depicting himself as a casualty of the stunning La Mazzaffira, Allori,

like Titian before him, may have been trying to create a painted

equivalent of a Petrarchan poem.

Even though he portrayed himself as the vanquished general,

Allori also used the painting to proclaim himself the champion in an

artistic struggle. The Hampton Court painting includes the following

inscription and date: "Hoc Cristofori Allorii Bronzinii opere natura

hactenus invicta pene vincitur Anno 1613" (Nature hardly ever

conquered before, was defeated by this artist's labor in this work of

Cristofano Allori Bronzino, in the year 1613).63 Allori's claim to

conquer nature was a goal of Italian artists already in the previous

century.64 By professing to be among the few to actually defeat

Lorenzo Lotto and Petrarchism in Venice Around 1500," Word and Image 1 (1985), 3-15; Carol Plazzotta, "Bronzino's Laura," Burlington Magazine 140 (Jan.- Apr. 1998), 251-263, and Craven, 371-394.

63In 1979 John Shearman published the inscription: Hoc Cristofori Allorii Bronzinii opere pictura hactenus invicta pene vincitur Anno 1613 and translated it: "This (work is) of Cristoforo Allori Bronzino; hitherto unvanquished, (she) has almost been defeated by the labour (of) painting, in the year 1613." In his The Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen: the Early Italiaun Pictures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 6, Shearman republished the inscription with one change he replaced the word pictura with natura noting that the first two letters of natura were worn and therefore not strictly legible. However, in the later publication he did not offer a new translation or interpretation of this phrase. According to Shearman (1983), 6, 1613 was the year in which Allori was elected Academician of the Accademia del Oisegno. Perhaps he was celebrating that honor with this painting and his inscription.

64As discussed in the previous chapter, numerous sixteenth and seventeenth century Italian art theorists stressed that the goal of the artist, like the poet, was the imitation of nature. By 1557 Ludovico Dolce in his Dialogo della pittura initolate 1 'Aretino,

189

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. nature, he by implication declares his superiority over the vast

majority of artists, living and dead.

Allori reinforced his inscribed pronouncement with a visually

astonishing and refined image that reproduced nature with great

vividness and meticulously captured the qualities of different

materials. With this work, Allori created a sumptuous display piece

that attests to his mimetic adeptness, aesthetic penchant, and

artistic virtuosity. Stylistically, his decapitation self-portrait,

even without its inscription, stands as a testament to Allori's

artistic identity as a naturalistic painter in the tradition of

Giorgione and Caravaggio, two painters renowned for their propensity

for naturalism, but one who dispenses more visual razzle-dazzle than

either.

Around 1630, Simon Vouet painted himself as David in his David

with the Head of Goliath (figure 10, Genoa, Galleria del Palazzo

Bianco).65 Vouet, an artist trained in his native France, traveled to

England and then to Constantinople to paint portraits before going to

Venice in 1612. After spending some time in the Veneto he had moved

to Rome by 1614, where his art promptly reflected the influence of the

Caravaggesque movement.66 As a foreigner painting in a competitive

averred that the painter must not only imitate nature but also surpass it. Cited by Lee, 10.

65William R. Crelly, The paintings of Simon Vouet (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1962), 163 no. 36, and Jacques Thuillier, Vouet (Paris: Editions de la Reunion des musses nationaux, 1990), 204.

66Very little is known about Vouet's early artistic career. According to F€libien, at the age of fourteen Vouet traveled from his native France to England to paint a portrait of a Lady. In 1611, he left

190

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Roman art market, Vouet adopted a popular local style (which was

quickly becoming an international sensation) and began acquiring

significant commissions from ecclesiastical and aristocratic patrons.

By painting himself as a protagonist in the David and Goliath saga,

the Frenchman inserted himself into a distinctly Italian art tradition

that had been practiced by two of the most renowned native painters,

Caravaggio and Giorgione.

In Rome, Vouet might have had access to Caravaggio's David and

Goliath. However, Vouet chose to embody the hero rather than the

miscreant which suggests his knowledge of Giorgione's self-portrait as

David which he could have encountered in Venice. Further, Vouet

traveled to Genoa in 1621, and in his letters from that city he

expressed a desire to explore Piacenza, Parma, Bologna and Florence,

which he probably visited on his way back to Rome.67 In his travels

he would have had the opportunity to see the decapitation self-

portraits by Lavinia, Artemisia, and Cristofano Allori, as well as

depictions of David and Goliath in the Caravaggist idiom such as those

by Orazio Borgianni,68 Orazio Gentileschi, Guido Reni69 and Nicolas

Regnier.78

England for Constantonople, and from there he traveled to Venice before settling in Rome in 1614.

67Jane Turner, ed., Dictionary of Art, 1996 ed., s.v. "Vouet, Simon," by Barbara Brejon, 716.

680razio Borgianni's David and Goliath (Madrid, Real Academia de San Fernando). Friedrich Polleross, "Between Typology and Psychology: The Role of the Identification Portrait in Updating Old Testament Representation," Artibus et Historiae 12/24 (1991), 109 and note 183, cites F. Birr and J. Diez, Autoportraits (Paris, 1981), 91, who claim that a painting by Orazio Borgianni in Rome's Galleria Borghese shows the artist as Goliath. Unfortunately, this publication was not

191

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Vouet had access to many different painting styles in his

travels in France, England, Constantinople, and Italy. His

presentation of a realistic, non-idealized half-length David against a

neutral ground with a dramatic contrast of dark and light recalls

Caravaggio's Borghese David, but the latter's David glances down at

the severed head with an enigmatic expression. Vouet shows the victor

glancing anxiously over his shoulder as if anticipating an intruder, a

psychological moment that is reminiscent more of Artemisia's Pitti

Judith than of Caravaggio.71

available for further scrutiny of the image, if reproduced, or, if any were cited, of the portraits of the artist used to bolster the identification.

®®Orazio Gentileschi' s David in Contemplation after the Defeat of Goliath (Rome, Galleria Spada), and Guido Reni's David with the Head of Goliath (Paris, Musde du Louvre) seem to be closer in depiction to the full-length representation of the scene in Caravaggio's David and Goliath (Madrid, Prado), rather than to his half-length depiction of the theme in the Galleria Borghese, Rome.

70Nicolas Regnier's David and Goliath (Rome, Galleria di Palazzo Spada) is closer in composition to Caravaggio's Galleria Borghese David. Regnier's David has been identified as a self-portrait of its artist, however, Bonafoux, 56, thought that the painting was by Poussin rather than Regnier. I have included a discussion of this work in Appendix A. Friedrich Polleross, "Between Typology and Psychology: The Role of the Identification Portrait in Updating Old Testament Representations," Artibus et historiae 12/24 (1991), 107 and note 168, cites S. Bottari, "Aggiunte al Manfredi, al Renier e alio Stomer," Arte Antica e Moderna XXIX (1965), 58 figure 24A, who suggests that Regnier's David (Rome, A. Busiri Vici Collection) shows the artist as David and Caravaggio as Goliath. These identifications seem dubious at best. The long aquiline nose of Goliath is unlike Caravaggio's own — broad bridge, bulbous tip and flaring nostrils — as represented in portraits and self-portraits of the artist. Moreover, the author failed to provide or even cite a comparative portrait for the likeness of Regnier, instead he wrote only: "...come in posa, e non e da escludersi abbia ragione il Busiri Vici, nel supporre che la figura del David sia un autoritratto, fatto alio specchio. "

71According to Richard E. Spear, Caravaggio and his Followers (Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1971), 96, Artemisia's influence

192

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. By assuming the role of the young hero, Vouet may be declaring

that he is capable of conquering a prevailing Italian ait style, and

thus he deserves to be ranked with his Italian counterparts. He may

also be making a claim for his ability to defeat contemporary

indigenous artistic "giants” with whom he would have competed for

important Roman commissions. With his David, the French painter

successfully interjects himself into a particularly Italian art style

and self-portrait phenomenon.

Vouet and Artemisia were not the only artists under the

influence of Caravaggio. Bernini's paintings, including his David

(ca. 1625-1635, Rome, Galleria Nazionale, figure ll),72 also reflect

the realistic penchant of Caravaggio's style. Like Vouet and

Artemisia, Bernini would have had access to Caravaggio's David in Rome

since he worked extensively for the David's owner, Cardinal Scipione

Borghese, and it was likely the source of inspiration for his own

guise as David. Again his choice of David may indicate an awareness

of Giorgione's identification with the biblical hero. Further, like

Vouet, Bernini chose to portray David turning and looking aside, which

in spreading Caravaggio's realism in Rome, and especially her impact on the art of Vouet, remains to be fully clarified. Vouet's David turns away from the head to focus on something beyond the picture plane that has caught his attention; in this respect he is like Giorgione's David.

72Filippo Baldinucci, The Life of Bernini, trams. Catherine Engass (University Park and London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1966), 15. See Jane Turner, ed., Dictionary of Art, 1996 ed., s.v. "Bernini: Painting and Drawing," by Rudolf Preimesberger with Michael P. Mezzatesta, 833-834. They list Bernini's surviving paintings as comprising two self-portraits, a few portraits, the Galleria Nazionale David, and an image of Saints Andrew and Thomas. There are in fact several other self-portraits of Bernini.

193

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. may suggest his knowledge of either Artemisia's Pitti Judith or

Vouet's David.73

Bernini's presentation of himself as a biblical protagonist is

not unusual considering his approach to art. Contemporary authors

documented that Bernini's working method focused on capturing his

protagonists' feelings and emotions. Before a mirror and using

himself as a model, he acted out situations in order to witness the

correct or most natural expressions for central male characters.

Filippo Baldinucci wrote that the artist used his own features for his

sculpted David (Rome, Galleria Borghese, figure 83)74 commissioned by

Cardinal Borghese, and that on occasion, "while working on the figure

in his own likeness", Cardinal Maffeo Barberini reputedly came to

Bernini's studio to hold the mirror for the a r t i s t . 75 Bernini's son

Domenico also chronicled that his father had placed his foot in a fire

and then studied his face in a mirror to get the appropriate anguished

expression for his name saint, St. Lawrence in his Martyrdom of St.

73While the half-length presentation of the figure against a dark, atmospheric background is in keeping with Caravaggio's compositional predilections, in Bernini's painting David's form emerges from dark shadows, seemingly lit by a flickering yet dull light source reminiscent of Guercino’s works.

74Howard Hibbard, Bernini (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1966), 54-64, Charles Avery, Bernini: Genius of the Baroque (Boston: Little Brown, 1997), 66, and Charles Scribner, Gianlorenzo Bernini (New York: H. N. Abrams, 1991), 66.

75Baldinucci (1966), 13. It could be that this event never occurred but rather that the story was a trope for indicating the importance of an artist who was aided by a great patron willing to attend to his needs.

194

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Lawrence (1615, Florence, Contini-Bonacossi Collection).76 These

claims are further supported by Chantelou's diary entry for July 14th,

1665:

"The Cavaliere worked at the bust... He discussed various things connected with the subject of expression, the soul of painting. The Cavaliere said he had discovered a method that had helped him; this was to put himself in the attitude that he intended to give to the figure he was representing, and then to have himself dr a m by a capable artist."77

According to Chantelou, Bernini discovered a system whereby the

artist used physical dramatization to understand and then illustrate

the natural and expressive body postures, gestures, and facial

features of his figures, a technique practiced by artists in the

Carracci circle.76 For example, Bellori quoted Annibale Carracci's

pupil Domenichino, who stated, "for the actions of man in painting,

one needed not only to contemplate, and to recognize the affetti, but

76Hibbard (1966), 29, quoting Bernini's son Domenico Bernini, Vita del cav. Gio Lorenzo Bernino (Rome, 1713), who wrote that his father had placed his foot in a fire and then studied his face to get the appropriate expression for St. Lawrence. See Vita del Cavalier Gio. Lorenzo Bernino: Descritta da Domenico Bernino suo figlio, ed. Leonilde Dominici (Perugia: Ediart, 1999), 15. The publication is a facsimile reprint of Domenico Bernini's book published in Rome by Rocco Bernabd in 1713.

77Paul Fr6art de Chantelou, Diary of the Cavaliere Bernini's Visit to France, ed. Anthony Blunt and trans. Margery Corbett (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 60.

78Rembrandt may have also employed this technique. See Svetlana Alpers, Rembrandt's Enterprise: The Studio and the Market (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 38, citing Arnold Houbraken, 109- 110. In his life of Samuel van Hoogstraten, who was a pupil of Rembrandt's, Houbraken relates a story about theatrical practices, in which students acted out roles so that other pupils might observe the proper movements and gestures in figures in Hoogstraten's workshop, which may reflect Rembrandt's own studio practices.

195

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. even to feel them oneself, to act out and experience the affetti

expressed."79 In all likelihood, Domenichino learned this technique

in the Carracci Academy where student artists made a practice of

posing as models for one another.8® Maivasia relates that

".. .Agostino prided himself on being able to adopt the exact poses and

attitudes desired by Ludovico, for he believed that anyone who did not

understand these poses would not know how to represent them well and

that this was why the poses of the professional models were artificial

and lifeless".81 This process, through which passions and attitudes

are derived from experience, ultimately reflects the writings of

Horace, Quintilian and other ancient authors, who influenced the

doctrine of ut pictura poesis in Italy, which urged artists, like

poets, to feel the emotions they sought to convey.82

79Richard E. Spear, Domenichino (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982), 37, translating Giovanni Pietro Bellori, Le Vite de'Pittori, Scultori et Architetti Hoderni. A facsimile of the first edition, Rome 1672 (New York: Broude international Editions, 1980), 347. See also George C. Bauer who annotated Chantelou's Diary of the Cavaliere Bernini's Visit to France, ed. Anthony Blunt and trans. Margery Corbett (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 60 note 49.

80In the first decades of the seventeenth century, Bernini and Domenichino were working in Rome, where Bernini's early works were inspired by Annibale's (and by extension Domenichino's) classicism. Domenichino's Hunt of Diana, was acquired by Scipione Borghese, one of Bernini's early patrons. Bernini's late baroque style was closer to that of another pupil from the Caracci Academy, Giovanni Lanfranco.

81 Anne Summerscale, Halvasia’s Life of the Carracci: Commentary and Translation (University Park: The Pennsylvania state University Press, 2000), 120.

82See Lee, 23-26. As Francis Ames-Lewis, The Intellectual Life of the Early Renaisseuice Artist (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), 187, has noted, Renaissance artists tended to work from a mental image of the ideal rather than acting out scenes in the studio.

196

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The Spiritual Exercises of the Jesuit Ignatius of Loyola also

may have influenced Bernini's artistic p r a c t i c e s . 83 individuals who

sought to cleanse their souls and to enter a mystical communion with

the divine by reading the book and participating in the meditation and

contemplation exercises. Practitioners were encouraged to imagine the

sensory experiences of the religious scene being contemplated. For

example, in the first exercise, in which one was to contemplate sin,

readers were instructed to see Hell's flames, to smell the sulphur and

foul odors, to hear the cries of sufferers, to taste their bitter

tears, and to feel their contrition.84 The idea of employing the

He cited Raphael's letter to Baldassare Castiglione of 1514 in which Raphael described how he had based his Galatea in the Villa Farnesina, Rome on an idea of a beautiful woman, rather than on a model. Vasari also peppered his lives with stories about studio practices, which involved clay and wooden models, drawings and casts after spolia, and drawing the nude model. In one instance, Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, trans. Gaston du C. de Vere (New York and Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), 2:29, relates that Francesco Bonsignori (called Monsignori by Vasari) had a model bound and posed as St. Sebastian about to be shot through with arrows. The patron, a Marquis, was less than pleased with the model's efforts and wanted the emotions of the model to seem more real. So he asked that if on the following day the artist would bind the model as usual and then secretly call him. The next day, after the model was properly bound, the Marquis came charging into the room with a loaded cross-bow threatening to kill the model, who was truly convinced he was about to die and thus struggled furiously to break free. Pleased with his efforts, the Marquis informed the artist that he had only to capture these emotions in his painting.

B^The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, trans. W. H. Longridge (London: A. R. Mowbray, 1950). Spiritual Exercises was first published in 1548, but attained broader popularity in 1599 when Ignatius published the Directory (Directorium in Exercitia), a guide to the exercises.

84The first of the Spiritual Exercises as interpreted by Rudolf Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy 1600-1750, 3d ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 1982), 24. For discussions about St. Ignatius' book and its influence on seventeenth century artistic practices see

197

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. senses while envisioning a religious event, and thereby experiencing

the emotions of the protagonist must have appealed to Bernini, who was

closely associated with the Jesuits85 and practiced the spiritual

exercises promulgated by Thomas & Kempis in The Imitation of Christ.85

Bernini's working method of envisioning himself as the

protagonist in a drama allowed him to identify with the emotional and

physical reactions to a given situation, and to produce a work of art

that correctly imitated human nature. With this technique, he made

the passions of the soul immediate and accessible to his audience. By

including himself as an emotionally invested actor and participating

in the episode that he was painting or sculpting, Bernini emphasizes

his belief that the visual artist had the ability and obligation to

move and persuade the viewer. On a few occasions the outcome of this

process was the inclusion of his self-portrait in the work presumably

because Bernini held a particular attachment to the subject.

Wittkower, 24-25, and John Rupert Martin, Baroque (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1977), 54-59.

85Jane Turner, ed., Dictionaury of Art, 1996 ed., s.v. "Gianlorenzo Bernini," by Rudolf Preimesberger with Michael P. Mezzatesta, 838. According to Preimesberger and Mezzatesta, Bernini was very devout, attending mass every morning, taking communion twice a week, and praying at II Gesu every evening for forty years of his life. They note that he also talked about theological matters with Jesuits.

85Ibid. Bernini practiced the spiritual exercises most likely formulated by the German monk Thomas A Kempis (c. 1380-1471) in The Imitation of Christ (c. 1427). According to W. Jappe Alberts, "Imitation of Christ," New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1967 ed., 375, although there is a question of authorship, Thomas is inseparably linked to the Imitation of Christ, "one of the best-known classics of devotional literature" and "among the most widely read books in the whole of world literature".

198

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Since he depicted himself as David on two occasions, once in

painting and once in sculpture, Bernini may have felt some special

affinity for the biblical shepherd who was a youthful prodigy like

Bernini himself. By representing himself as David, he placed himself

within the tradition established and popularized by Giorgione and

Caravaggio. At the same time, Bernini, an artist celebrated for his

ability to reproduce the appearance of nature in his sculpted works,

placed himself on a par with these two great predecessors who were

also noted for their naturalistic depictions. Additionally, having

been asked by his patron Pope Urban VIII to emulate the highly

esteemed Michelangelo, a sculptor, architect, and painter. To achieve

this goal, around 1624, Pope Urban VIII encouraged the sculptor to

take up the additional arts of painting and architecture. Bernini may

have felt that his task was equivalent to the adolescent engaging in

combat with the menacing giant.87 In his painted version of the

subject (generally dated to 1630-1635) Bernini may well be trumpeting

his success in this endeavor by showing himself as victor over his

formidable opponent.88

87Baldinucci reports that Pope Urban VIII was determined that during his pontificate Rome would produce another Michelangelo and thus encouraged Bernini, who was a sculptor, to study painting and architecture. For two years Bernini studied painting. Baldinucci reported that Bernini painted over 150 images during his career, but only a handful are recognized today, including this David. See Filippo Baldinucci, The Life of Bernini, trans. Catherine Engass (University Park and London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1966), 15.

88See also Polleross, 107, and R. Preimesberger, "Eine grimassierende Selbstdarstellung Berninis,” in World Art. Themes of Unity in Diversity, ed. I. Lavin, Acts of the XXVIth international Congress of the History of Art, II (University Park and London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989), 418.

199

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Bernini's David is the last in a series of six decapitation

self-portraits produced by artists who worked in Italy between 1600

and 1635.89 Of these six artists, Lavinia Fontana, Caravaggio,

Cristofano Allori, Artemisia Gentileschi, Simon Vouet and Bernini,

only Caravaggio and Vouet are reported to have made trips to Venice

before making their own decapitation self-portraits. In Venice they

would have had the opportunity to view a number of earlier examples of

this self-portrait type. But actually seeing the earlier works was

not the only means by which these artists could have become aware of

the genre. Giorgione initiated this tradition in his incarnation as

David and Vasari described that original portrait in his 1568 edition

of the Vite, a renowned book whose contents could have been known by

one to some or all of these artists and/or their patrons. Further, as

Vasari reported, the print that serves as the frontispiece to

Giorgione's Vita was based on his Self-portrait as David then in the

Grimani collection in Venice; even if Goliath's severed head was not

included in that representation.

These six early Baroque artists continued the Venetian tradition

of depicting themselves as biblical heroes/victims in scenes of

decapitation. We can hypothesize that artistic emulation of Giorgione

89Later artists sporadically continued this tradition. Cesar Boetius van Everdingen working in Alkmaar painted a self-portrait as David in 1650. See Cesar Boetius van Everdingen, "Selbstportrat des Kiinstlers als David, um 1650,” in Das Kunstkabinett des Johann Caspar Lavater (Vienna: Genda Mraz and uwe Schogl, 1999), 256 figure 30. Johann Zoffany represented himself as David in 1756 (Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria). Although he was German by birth, he worked in Rome where he could have encountered Caravaggio's David and Goliath. For more on this painting, see William L. Pressly, "Johan Zoffany as David the Anointed One," Apollo 141 (March 1995), 49-55.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. or his followers was a significant factor in the production of their

works. Moreover, artists who painted decapitation self-portraits

after Caravaggio had transformed himself into Goliath, tended to mimic

that great master's stylistic and formal innovations, so that they can

be perceived to have been in an artistic relationship, that of

aemulatio, not only with Giorgione but also with Caravaggio.90

These early Baroque artists worked in an environment in which

ideas about the goals and aims of artists centered around the issues

of creative imaginativeness and the feigning of nature, yet their

approach to nature differed from that of their Venetian predecessors.

In his inscription Allori declared himself the winner in his battle

with nature, whom he defeated with his vibrant and sumptuously colored

painting with its meticulously crafted surface. Although Allori

appears to continue the idealizing trend in art with his Judith,

Caravaggio and Artemisia nearly eliminated this tendency by infusing

an extraordinary realism into their works, and for the first time

since Giorgione, the decapitated heads in their paintings actually

appear to ooze blood. Further, seventeenth-century sources assert

that in Caravaggio's and Allori's paintings, the characters were

portrait likenesses. In Caravaggio's, Artemisia's, Bernini's and

Vouet's works, the biblical characters were portrayed with intense,

appropriate, and believable emotions, while Lavinia and Artemisia

brought a female perspective to the tradition. Each artist,

responding to individual circumstances and painting in their own

personal idiom, had an impact on the self-portrait tradition.

90This artistic relationship is even more unmistakable for Artemisia because her Uffizi and Naples Judiths are very close in conception to

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Collectively, these early seventeenth-century artists did not simply

continue and maintain an inherited Venetian tradition, they enriched

it.

Caravaggio's Judith Beheading Holofernes (Rome, Galleria Nazionale).

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 6

CONCLUSION

Giorgione, working in Venice in the first decade of the

sixteenth century, painted himself as the Old Testament hero David

displaying his trophy, the head of Goliath, to the viewer. With this

image he initiated an unusual self-portrait tradition in which the

artist portrayed him/her self either as a decapitator or a victim in

scenes of biblical beheading or its aftermath. In the 125 years after

his invention, ten other artists living and working in Italy also

produced decapitation self-portraits presenting themselves as actors

in scenes of David and Goliath, Judith and Holofernes, or Herodias and

St. John the Baptist.

When Giorgione introduced this curious form of self

representation into the Italian art world the self-portrait was a

seldom-practiced artistic genre. In the ensuing century and a

quarter, patrons increasingly requested images of painters to exhibit

in their art collections. Artists responded to this demand by

creating paintings of themselves that they believed worthy of display.

They produced conventional self-portraits, in which the creator

captures his/her countenance in his/her own personal idiom and in

durable materials. Further, Vasari and other artists' biographers,

recorded the existence of numerous guise self-portraits, in which the

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. maker depicts him/herself with the accoutrements of a figure from the

past. Guise self-portraiture gives the sitter an opportunity to

appropriate and project qualities that are traditionally associated

with an historical, mythological or biblical personage, and also to

enhance the potential for multiple readings and interpretations of his

self-likeness.

Although Vasari and others mentioned various guise self-

portraits, presenting oneself as a murderer (David or Judith) or a

severed head (St. John the Baptist, Holofernes, or Goliath) was not a

usual practice. After Giorgione introduced this bizarre self-portrait

type during the early cinquecento, artists working in Italy continued

to develop and manipulate the iconography to form a new tradition that

lasted for at least 100 years. During this time art theorists were

stressing the importance of artistic emulation, a competitive form of

imitation whereby an artist seeks to ultimately surpass an admired

model, as methods of improving one's skills. As we have seen in this

atmosphere of rivalry the ten artists who followed Giorgione's lead

were to some degree interested in emulating his distinguished

archetype and/or others in its wake. The inscription on Pordenone's

self-portrait supports this theory for it specified that artistic

emulation of Giorgione was a principal factor in the production of his

painting. By participating in this sub-genre, each sought to surpass

an esteemed model and to visually establish his or her important

professional position within the Italian art world in relation to

his/her forerunners.

At the same time portraiture was not a highly esteemed artistic

category since theorists deemed that a practitioner needed only a low

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. level of skill to copy or replicate the features of the sitter. In

comparison, the artist had to have great ability in order to invent

and compose a pleasing narrative to produce an image of the higher-

esteemed class of painting, istoria. By representing themselves as

protagonists from biblical narratives, the eleven painters in this

study helped to elevate the less-revered genre of portraiture by

melding it with the category most celebrated in Western European art,

istoria, or history painting. The latter enjoyed a lofty status due

in part to Horace's famous authoritative pronouncement: ut pictura

poesis, which led Renaissance and early Baroque theorists to equate

the aims of poets and painters. For these theorists the object of

imitation in both art forms was understood as humans in action, thus

history painting, in which important people engage in significant

activities, enjoyed a high rank.

In some of the decapitation self-portraits there is a direct

link between the poet and the painter since Giorgione, Pordenone,

Bernini, and Vouet, each presented himself as the most famous biblical

poet, David. Further, Pordenone included a poem in his image while

Titian and Allori seem to have made painted versions of the Petrarchan

trope. Perhaps on some level these artists may have been attempting

to visually parallel themselves with poets, who were honored as

liberal artists rather them considered manual craftsmen.

According to some contemporary theorists who used ut pictura

poesis as a starting point, artists, like poets, were to use their

creative imagination and to imitate nature when producing works of

art. To ensure that his/her painting would be a singular creation as

well as a testament to his/her own inventiveness, each artist who

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. followed Giorgione in participating in the sub-genre made new and

individual choices concerning subject, guise, and narrative or iconic

mode of presentation. They also responded to the second half of the

humanist theorists' equation the imitation of nature. At this time,

theorists wrote about two somewhat conflicting goals for the imitator

of nature, and each painter must have struggled with these opposing

notions, leading to varying degrees and kinds of idealism and realism

in their self-portraits. On the one hand, they were expected to

directly and to faithfully reproduce objects and materials as they

appeared in the natural world. Creating an illusion of visible nature

and capturing his own likeness in paint would help confirm the

artist's virtuosity. On the other hand, they were also encouraged to

raise or elevate nature by divesting her of flaws and imperfections.

By improving the natural universe, the artist was in essence asserting

his quasi-divine power to create an ideal or perfect world. Moreover,

in terms of creative powers, the artist is engaged in a second

competition (emulation of Giorgione and/or his successors being the

first) — with nature, and Allori used an inscription to proclaim

himself the victorious contestant in this match.

In sum, the eleven artists who were working in Italy between

1505 and 1635 created decapitation self-portraits that reflect

contemporary artistic theories regarding imitation, emulation, and

invention. Additionally, diverse and unpredictable factors such as

artistic training, sources and stimuli, professional conditions,

personal circumstances and/or larger cultural ideologies had an impact

on these self-images. Thus many of the paintings may have additional

references or raisons d'etre including: paragone with other arts,

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Petrarchismo, wit, personal tribulations, and amorous dalliances.

Using this versatile sub-genre of self-portraiture, each painter made

a personal, unique, and lasting statement about him/herself that

evokes associations connected with his/her current standing in the

Italian art world, his/her artistic abilities, and his/her creative

fantasia.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. APPENDIX A

QUESTIONABLE DECAPITATION GUISE "SELF-PORTRAITS"

This appendix considers nine Renaissance or Early Baroque

decapitation paintings in which one or more of the protagonists has

been identified as a self-portrait. Each entry comprises a brief

description of the work and if necessary a comparison between the

supposed self-portrait and known portraits of the artist. At the end

of each entry is an explanation of the specific reason for the

exclusion of the work from the larger study.

Donatello as Goliath

According to Avigdor Poseq, the bearded Goliath in Donatello's

famous bronze David and Goliath (figure 85, Florence, Museo Nazionale

del Bargello) somewhat resembles the woodcut of Donatello published in

the second edition of Vasari' s Vite.1 This print is presumably based

1Avigdor W. G. Poseq, "Caravaggio's Self-portrait as the Beheaded Goliath," Kunsthistorisk Tidskrift 59 (1990), 172 and note 22. The woodcut is reproduced in Alfred Gotthold Meyer, Donatello (Bielefeld und Leipzig: Velhagen & Klasing; New York: Lemcke and Buechner, 1904), frontispiece, and "Uccello's" Donatello is reproduced in John Pope- Hennessy, Donatello: sculptor (New York: Abbeville Press, 1993), frontispiece. Pos&q also claims that Vasari used the same bust as a model for a Donatello portrait in the Palazzo Vecchio reproduced in L. Goldscheider, Donatello (London: Phaidon, 1944), 8 figures 132 and 134.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. on the portrait of Donatello included in the Louvre's Famous

Florentine Artists (Paris, Louvre), a painting of three artists that

was once attributed to Paolo Uccello.

Donatello's David is a long-haired youth in a contrappasto

stance wearing only a hat and boots and holding Goliath's long sword

in his right hand and a stone in his left. The head of Goliath still

encased in its helmet is between his feet, resting on a large laurel

wreath.

Goliath has a heavy mustache and beard that covers the lower

half of his face, while the helmet masks the upper third of his head,

leaving only his closed eyes and nose visible. He has a long, narrow,

very pointed nose with a slight bump on the bridge, and marked circles

under his eyes, which also have conspicuous crow's feet at their outer

edges. His proper right eye, which is approximately one-half inch

higher than his left, is his most distinguishing characteristic.

In the Louvre painting and the woodcut supposedly based on that

image, Donatello has large, heavy-lidded eyes that are placed at an

equal height on the head and that have only slight circles under them.

He also has furrowed brows with deep creases between them, prominent

cheek bones, and a long, broad, straight nose that is rounded at the

tip.

Since Donatello's features in the known portraits are not

consistent with those of the bronze Goliath, I do not believe that

Pos&q's identification is plausible.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Giorgione as David

Documents indicate that Giorgione may have made a third version

of a self-portrait in the guise of David. A David Meditating over the

Head of Goliath (figure 3), today in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches

Museum, was once in the collection of James 3rd Marquis of Hamilton.

In the 1638 inventory of his collection the work is described as

Giorgione's self-portrait, "his picture made by himself."2

When compared to the better authenticated Grimini David (Figure

60, Braunschweig, Herzog Anton-Ulrich Museum, and Figure 1, Wenceslaus

Hollar's engraving after Giorgione's Self-portrait as David Meditating

over the Head of Goliath), the Vienna David does not seem to be a

portrait of the same individual. The Vienna David has an oval fleshy

head, small wide-set eyes, a soft brow line, a bulbous rounded nose,

narrow but full lips with turned-up edges, and a receding rounded

chin. In contrast the Grimini David has a square head, large deep-set

eyes, a heavy brow, a strong pointed nose, wide full lips with down-

turned edges, and a heavy chin.

According to Jaynie Anderson, "Despite the impeccable

provenance, and despite the fact that it is a Giorgione self-portrait

2Jaynie Anderson, Giorgione: the Painter of 'Poetic Brevity' (Paris and New York: Flammarion, 1997), 313, citing K. Garas, "Die Entstehung der Galerie des Erzherzogs Leopold Wilhelm," Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien LXIII (1967), 68. The painting was then in the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, where it was listed as Bordenone. Anderson suggests that this may be a bowdlerization of the name of Giorgione. It seems more likely to denote Pordenone, or Bordone.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. composition, this portrait has always been considered a copy by a

follower of Giorgione rather than am original."3 Nor cam it certainly

be considered a copy, rather than a derivation. Since scholars do not

consider the work to be autograph, it will not be considered in the

larger study.

Giorgione as Holofernes

Did Giorgione include a self-portrait as Holofernes in the

Leningrad Judith (figure 86, Hermitage)? John Shearman maintains that

Holofernes might have Giorgione's features. For him, there is

uncertainty about which figure is the self-portrait of Giorgione in

the artist's painting of David and Goliath in the Grimani collection

by 1528.4 In his vita, Vasari chose David as the portrait of

Giorgione, but Shearman questions Vasari's identification since it was

made fifty-eight years after the artist's death, shearman also states

that the earliest record in the Grimani inventory of the David and

Goliath is not helpful because it only describes the painting as "the

portrait of Zorzon painted by his own hand through [the subject of]

David and Goliath."5 if Vasari was wrong in naming David as the

3Anderson (1997), 313.

4John Shearman, "Cristofano Allori's Judith," Burlington Magazine CXXI/910 (January 1979), 9. Terisio Pignatti, "La Giuditta diversa di Giorgione," in Giorgione; atti del Covegno internazionale di studio per il 5 ~o centenario della nascita, 29-31 maggio 1978 (Venice: Banca Popolare di Asolo e Montebelluna, 1979), 269-271, also sees a self- portrait in the smiling face of Holofernes.

5p. Paschini, Le Collezioni archeologiche dei Grimani, in Atti della Pontificia Accademia, Rendiconti, V. (1926-27) quoted by Terisio

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. figure with Giorgione's features, then Goliath would be a self-

portrait. Shearman also feels that, if Henceslas Hollar's print of

the whole painting is trustworthy, then the head of Goliath seems more

likely to be of a man in his thirties, the probable age of the artist

when he created the painting.6 Shearman also believes that it is

possible that Giorgione used his features for the beardless Holofernes

in the Leningrad Judith.

A careful visual comparison between the Leningrad Holofernes

(figure ) and Hollar's Goliath (figure ) reveals that the same model

was not used. The Leningrad Holofernes has a heavy brow, furrows

between the eyebrows, sunken eyes and cheeks, thin lips and a long,

narrow nose with a bump on the bridge. In Hollar's print, Goliath has

a broad, smooth brow, sunken eyes and cheeks, a heavy, long, straight

nose and a thin upper lip with a fuller lower one. Because of the

visual inconsistencies, I have eliminated this work from my study.

Michelangelo as Holofernes

Charles de Tolnay believes that Michelangelo used his features

for the decapitated head of Holofernes in one of the spandrel

paintings over the entrance wall in the Sistine Chapel (figure 87,

Pignatti, Giorgione, trans. Clovis Whitfield (London: Phaidon Press Ltd., 1971), 145.

6Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, trans. Gaston du C. de Vere (New York and Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), 2: 641, records that Giorgione was born in 1478. Vasari's factual information on the artist is however not very reliable.

212

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Vatican City).7 On May 10, 1508, thirty-three year old Michelangelo

began work on the ceiling's fresco decoration, and a little over four

years later on October 31, 1512, Michelangelo unveiled the finished

cycle at a ceremony for the Vigil of All Saints Day.8

Michelangelo's narrative scene occurs in a landscape where

Judith raises a piece of material to cover (or unveil) the head of

Holofernes, which is resting on a platter balanced atop Abra's head.

Curiously, Michelangelo presents us with an unobstructed view of

Holofernes' strongly lit profile, while obscuring the other faces in

this work. Judith averts her face from the viewer as she turns to

gaze at Holofernes' body, Abra's profile is in shadow, and the

sleeping sentinel's features are hidden by his helmet. Holofernes

appears to be a man in his forties or fifties, with receding and

graying hair, a high, wrinkled forehead, a very heavy brow-bone, deep-

set eyes with prominent creases around them, sunken cheeks, and a

thick mustache and beard. He has a very distinct, long curved nose

that has a slight indentation before curving under at the tip.

We do not have an autonomous self-portrait by Michelangelo, but

he may have portrayed his features in the flayed skin of St.

Bartholomew in the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, Vatican, but

7Charles de Tolnay, Michelangelo: II - the Sistine Ceiling (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1945), 95-96 and 180 note 10. Mira Friedman, "The Metamorphoses of Judith," Jewish Art 12-13 (1986-1987), 239, and John T. Paoletti, "Michelangelo Masks," Art Bulletin 74 (1992), 428, support this identification.

8See de Tolnay (1945), 2: 4, 109-112, and Appendix no. 3, for documentation of payments, contracts, notices and letters pertaining to the dating of the ceiling.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. his features are greatly distorted in that figure.9 Nevertheless,

several portraits of the artist do exist. Jacopino del Conte painted

a portrait (Metropolitan Museum of Art, ca. 1535),10 Giulio Bonasone

in 1545 created a profile engraving,11 Giorgio Ghisi engraved one for

the title page of Vasari's Libro dei disegni, Daniele da Volterra drew

his portrait,12 and Leone Leoni made a portrait medal dated 1561. ^

In these images, Michelangelo is shown with a long thin face and

sunken cheeks, bushy hair, a heavily wrinkled brow, a strong brow-bone

9See Charles de Tolnay, Michelangelo, V: The Final Period (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 44-45 and 114-115.

^Another version of this portrait attributed to Jacapino del Conte is currently housed at the Uffizi.

11 Inscribed with the date 1545, at which time Michelangelo would have been 71 years of age.

12Volterra was a loyal friend and follower of Michelangelo. According to Chris Fischer, Fra Bartolommeo, Master Draughtsman of the High Renaissance (Rotterdam: Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, 1990), 295, Volterra used the cartoon, pricked for transfer and currently in the Teyler Museum of Haarlem, for his fresco of the Assumption in the church of Trinita dei Monte, Rome. He documents that the fresco was almost certainly commissioned after 1548 and was near completion by 1553; therefore, the drawing was likely made when the artist was between seventy-three and seventy-eight years of age. According to Fischer, 295, the Louvre bronze portrait bust of Michelangelo was made for Leonardo Buonarroti, Michelangelo's nephew immediately after the artist's death in 1564 and it was based on the aforementioned drawing from life. Ascanio Condivi's The Life of Michelangelo, trans. Alice Sedgwick Hohl and ed. Hellmut Hohl (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University, 1999), 108 note 130, records that seven bronze busts, cast by different artists were ultimately based on a model by Volterra.

1 ^According to Paul Barolsky, Michelangelo's Nose, a Myth and Its Maker (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990), 44, around 1660, approximately four years prior to Michelangelo's death, Michelangelo asked Leone Leoni to strike a medal which was delivered in March of 1561. Vasari mentioned the medal that exists in several versions.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. with thin eyebrows, deep-set, small eyes with obvious circles under

them and with deep crows-feet at their outer edges, a flattened nose

and thin pursed lips. We also have a verbal description of the artist

by Ascanio Condivi, a personal acquaintance who wrote Michelangelo's

approved biography, vita di Michelangelo Buonarroti, published in

1553.14 Condivi wrote that Michelangelo had thin lips, but the bottom

lip was slightly thicker, so that it would project a little when seen

from the side. His forehead protruded almost beyond the nose, and

when viewed in profile, was barely curved and had a little lump in the

middle. His eyebrows were scanty, while the eyes were rather small,

and his nose was a bit flattened as a result of an attack by the

Florentine sculptor Pietro Torrigiani in the Brancacci Chapel.15

If Michelangelo modeled Holofernes on his own appearance, then

he altered his features greatly by advancing his age some ten to

twenty years, by curving the forehead while eliminating the little

lump in the middle, by elongating the nose while giving it a curved

profile with a hooked tip, and by de-emphasizing the flatness of the

lower third of his nose. Given the visual dissimilarities between

14Barolsky (1990), 61, suggests that Michelangelo dictated his life to Condivi to correct errors and to embellish stories told by Vasari in his version of Michelangelo's life.

15Condivi, 108. The story is also recounted in Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography. Barolsky has written a book about the importance of this event in Michelangelo's life and art. According to Barolsky, 8, the attack occurred with both men were in the household of Lorenzo il Magnifico de'Medici. Michelangelo lived in Lorenzo's household between 1490-92 when the artist was fifteen to seventeen years old according to Howard Hibbard, Michelangelo (New York: Harper and Row, 1985), 19-22.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. known images and descriptions of Michelangelo and the head of

Holofernes, it does not seem likely that Michelangelo lent his

features to the general.

Lucas Cranach the Elder as Holofernes

Pascal Bonafoux questions: "Could it be Cranach himself who is

this Holofernes, his eyelids still open in death, a severed head that

Judith, gloved and smiling, holds on to by the hairs at the temple?"16

Bonafoux was referring to Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553) and the

severed head in his signed and dated Judith with the Head of

Holofernes of 1530 (figure 88, Berlin, Staatliche Schlosser und

Garten, Jagdschloss Grunewald).17

Cranach the Elder's features are known today from two, single

figure portraits: one in the Stolzenfels Castle near Koblenz, and a

second in the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.18 The Stolzenfels

portrait has been dated circa 1530 (the date of the Judith) when

Cranach would have been about 58 years old, while the Uffizi portrait

16Pascal Bonafoux, Portraits of the Artist: The Self-portrait in Painting (New York: Rizzoli, 1985), 56.

17Oil on panel, 29 1/4 x 27 7/8 inches.

18Werner Schade, Cranach: A Family of Master Painters, trams. Helen Sebba (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1980), 57, believes that the portrait in Florence is by Cranach the Younger. Max J. Friedlander and Jakob Rosenberg, The Paintings of Lucas Cranach, trans. Heinz Norden and Ronald Taylor (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978), 25, believe that the uffizi image is a self-portrait, but that the Stolzenfels Castle portrait is a seventeenth-century copy.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. is dated 1550.19 In both of these portraits, Cranach has a broad face

with sunken cheeks. A mustache and beard frame his thin, pursed lips.

He has distinct circles beneath his small, deep-set eyes with their

heavy upper lids. His full, slightly-arching eyebrows are furrowed,

forming wrinkles at their inner edges, while a noticeable protuberance

separates them. There is also a distinct indent at the root of his

long, prominent nose as well as a slight bump on the bridge and

elongated, thin nostrils. Although bangs cover the forehead in the

Stolzenfels portrait, Cranach's broad forehead and receding hair-line

are visible in the Uffizi portrait. All of these features also appear

in the self-portrait on the left edge of the Vienna, Academy of Fine

Arts Holy Kinship from about 1510-12 in which the artist appears with

his family.20

At first glance, the decapitated head in West Berlin Judith

shares basic similarities with the known portraits of Cranach.

Holofernes has a wide head, a large nose, and a mustache and beard.

Upon closer inspection, however, Holofernes's features are quite

different from Cranach's. Holofernes has full cheeks, large eyes,

thin straight eyebrows, and fleshy lips. He does not appear to have

bags under his eyes and there are no wrinkles between the brows, no

fleshiness at the springing of the nose, and no bump at the bridge.

^ S e e Werner Schade, "Das unbekannte Selbstbildnis Cranachs," Dezennium II (1972), 369, for the date of the Stolzenfels self- portrait.

20See Schade (1972), 137, and Ruhmer, color plate I.

217

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. There is a significant amount of space between the brows and the eyes,

while the heavy lids so prominent in the portraits of Cranach are not

evident in the Holofernes. Further, Holofernes' nostrils are short

and wide, while Cranach's appear longer and narrower.

In fact, the Holofernes in the Berlin Judith appears to be a

favorite "type" which Cranach used with little variation in numerous

decapitated heads. This typical head is included in Cranach's Judith

in Stuttgart, staatsgalerie, Judith (Auction of Mme B. de B.

collection, Paris {Palais Galliera}, April 10, 1962, lot 1), Judith in

Berlin-Grunewald, hunting lodge, Judith in Vienna, Kunsthistorisches

Museum, The Feast of Herod in Hartford, Wadsworth Atheneum, Salome in

Budapest, Szgpmiivdszeti Muzdum, Esterhdzy Collection, and the Salome

in Lisbon, Museum of Fine Arts.

In response to Bonafoux's question about the Berlin Judith, I

believe that Holofernes' features are not of an individual, but are

those of a recurring type, and I do not believe that they are

consistent with known representations of Lucas Cranach the Elder. For

these reasons, the image will not be given further consideration here.

Lavinia Fontana as Judith

Vera Fortunati suggests that the Judith in Lavinia's Judith and

Holofernes (figure 89, London, Walpole Art Gallery) may be a self-

portrait of the artist.21 Judith has a very fleshy face, full cheeks,

21 Vera Fortunati, "Lavinia Fontana: A Woman Artist in the Age of the Counter-Reformation,* in Lavinia Fontana of Bologna, 1552-1614, trans. I. Fiale O'Rourke, et. al. (Milan: Electa, 1998), 24.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. a high forehead, wide-set, large eyes, a long nose, thin lips and a

receding chin. Like the Bargellini Judith (figure 10) that I do

accept as a self-portrait of Lavinia, the Walpole Judith has a high

forehead. However, the Bargellini Judith has a much softer hairline,

a stronger brow line, a thinner face, larger eyes, a more bulbous

nose, and a more prominent chin than the Walpole Judith.

While the high forehead and large wide-set eyes are very close

to Lavinia's own, the Walpole Judith's features are much less

individualized than Lavinia's as presented in her self-portraits,

including the Bargellini Judith. In fact, The Walpole Judith's soft,

full face and generic features are much closer to a generalized type

of dark-haired female figure favored by Lavinia and exhibited in works

such as Venus and Cupid (Rouen, Musde des Beaux Arts) and Christ in

the House of Mary and Martha (Bologna, Conservatoreo di S. Marta

Proprieta dell'Opera Pia dei Poveri Vergognosi). Therefore, I am of

the opinion that Judith's features in the Walpole picture are not

those of Lavinia, but of a recurring type favored by the artist

Artemisia Gentileschi as Judith or Abra

John Shearman sees Artemisia's features in Judith in her Naples

Judith Decapitating Holofernes (figure 90, Capodimonte),22 while Mary

Garrard considers that the Judith in the (very similar) Naples and

22Shearman (1979), 9.

219

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Uffizi (figure 91, Florence) versions are not unquestionable self-

portraits; for her, Abra's features seem closer to the artist's.23

In both paintings, the action takes place near the picture

plane, where the general's bedding seems to encroach into our space.

Judith, at the far right side, stands with her left foot on the floor

and her right knee resting on the bed.24 She grasps Holofernes' hair

with her left hand and cuts through his neck with the sword held in

her right. Abra kneels on the bed beside Judith and appears to use

both arms to apply pressure to the general's chest. Her specific

activity is hidden by Judith's right hand and by the sword hilt, but

she seems to help restrain Holofernes while Judith completes her task.

Holofernes has grasped Abra's dress with his upraised right hand and

is apparently in his last death throes as blood spurts from the gash

in his severed neck. While the compositions of the two works are

almost identical, Artemisia has varied the color of the garments and

bed linens as well as the features of Judith.

23Mary Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi. The Image of a Female Hero in Italian Baroque Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 312-313.

24The compositions of the two works are strikingly similar, but according to Garrard 1989, 305 and 307, the Naples version with its numerous pentimenti and changes to the composition revealed through x- radiophotography "represents Artemisia's first independent conception of the Judith theme." According to R. Ward Bissell, Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 214, the Uffizi Judith is "leaps ahead" of the Naples work in sophistication and technical virtuosity, therefore the Uffizi Judith is probably a later variant of the Naples format. However, in his earlier discussion of Artemisia's oeuvre, Bissell, "Artemisia Gentileschi — A New Documented Chronology," Art Bulletin (1968), 158, claimed that the Naples version "is a less fussy replica of the example in the Uffizi..."

220

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In the Naples version, Judith has a distinct dimple in the

center of her chin, a straight nose without an indentation at the

root, but with a bulbous tip and prominent nostrils, as well as lush,

full lips. The Uffizi Judith has a smaller mouth, and a straight nose

that is indented at the root. She also has a low forehead, and

although she is looking down, she appears to have almond-shaped eyes.

Neither of these women seem to have features consistent with

Artemisia's full, round face and high sloping forehead with marked

fleshiness above the eyes. Moreover, Artemisia's portraits (see

Chapter Two) show the artist with a long straight nose with a slight

indentation two-thirds of the way down and a small bulbous tip.

Because of this, both the Uffizi Judith and the Naples Judith have

been discarded from this study.

Abra's features do not seem to change significantly from one

version to the next, however it is more difficult to compare her

features to those of Artemisia since the maidservant leans over

Holofernes, and therefore we view her features strongly foreshortened,

forehead first. She seems to have a heart-shaped face, broad, full

lips and a visible bump on the bridge of her nose. Because Artemisia

is not known to have had these specific characteristics, and because a

closer visual analysis is not possible, the identification of Abra

with Artemisia cannot be sustained for the purposes of this study.

In Artemisia's work, it is particularly difficult to separate

self-portraits from heroines who simply resemble her because she had a

penchant for creating female protagonists who were robust, dark-haired

women with features very similar to her own. Nevertheless, the visual

221

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. evidence for the two Judiths does not seem compelling enough to

consider the works self-portraits.

Nicolas Poussin as David

Based on style and early inventory records, David with the Head

of Goliath (figure 92, Rome, Galleria Spada) was traditionally

attributed to Bartolomeo Manfredi (1582-1622), though more recently it

has been given to Nicolas R6gnier (1591-1667).25 Nevertheless, Pascal

Bonafoux questioned if David could be a self-portrait of Poussin

(1594-1665).26

In the very dark and muted painting, David appears as a strongly

lit, three-quarter length figure who is placed against a non-descript

dark ground and pushed close to the picture plane. The individualized

figure, with a long, flat nose, heavy-lidded, eyes, and a thick neck,

holds a sword in his left hand and the giant' s greenish-yellow head in

his proper right.

Poussin painted two self-portraits (Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu

Berlin-PreuBischer Kulturbesitz, Gemaldegalerie, and Paris, Louvre) in

which he is shown with a square head with a rounded, double chin and

with very heavy features. He has a high, deeply furrowed forehead

with pronounced wrinkles between the brows, from which the root of the

large, long thick nose emerges. He has thin, tightly compressed lips

250il on canvas, 52 x 39 inches. See Roberto Cannat^, Galleria di Palazzo Spada, Roma (Rome: Instituto poligraficoe Zecca dello Stato, Libreria dello Stato, 1995), 124 figure 66, for attribution and provenance.

2®Bonafoux, 56.

222

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. and deep circles under deep-set eyes. These features are also evident

in Poussin's red chalk Self-portrait (figure , London, British

Museum). In contrast, the Spada David has an oval head with a rounded

chin and very well-defined jaw line, thick full lips, and a low

forehead with no strong delineation between the brow and the root of

the nose.

It seems unlikely that the Spada David is a self-portrait of

Poussin. First, as his written and spoken words indicate, Poussin

strongly disliked creating portraits, especially self-portraits. His

two known painted self-portraits were created, under duress, for his

French patrons Pointel and Chantelou. At first, Poussin was willing

to have a Roman artist paint his likeness, but none was judged

competent for the task, in a 1648 letter to Chantelou, Poussin wrote

that "... I cannot bring myself to spend a dozen pistoles to have my

head coldly pummelled and painted up by the likes of Mr. Mignard, who

- although he is the best practitioner I know - is as untalented as he

is undisciplined.1,27 Poussin decided that he was the best person for

the job, but after beginning the work, he wrote to Chantelou

indicating that the portrait was not finished and that he was not

enjoying making it.2® Further, Poussin told Chantelou that "he took

27Alain Mdrot, Nicolas Poussin (New York: Abbeville Press, 1990), 146, translating Poussin's letter to Chantelou of August 2, 1648.

26Correspondance de Nicolas Poussin, ed. Ch. Jouanny (Paris, 1911), Bibl.3a, 414 quoted by Halter Friedlaender, Nicolas Poussin: A New Approach (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1966), 172.

223

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. no pleasure in painting portraits and had not made one in twenty-eight

years."2®

Also, it seems unlikely that Poussin even painted the Spada

David, since it is a work strongly influenced by Caravaggio, an artist

whose style Poussin disliked intensly. According to Fdlibien, Poussin

could not "abide Caravaggio who had come into the world to destroy

painting."3° For this reason, it seems very unlikely that he would

engage in any type of artistic competition with, or emulation of,that

artist. Further, Caravaggio had painted himself as Goliath in the

Borghese David with the Head of Goliath, and it seems unlikely that

Poussin would have emulated Caravaggio's style as well as adopted and

adapted Caravaggio's theme, since he had no respect for the earlier

artist's work. The use of a three-quarter length figure with non

idealized features, pushed close to the picture plane and brightly lit

while emerging from a dark ground, is not common in Poussin's oeuvre,

but these characteristics are the hallmarks of Caravaggio's early

works in Rome.

Poussin's theoretical and artistic interests were in telling a

story in a clear and intelligible manner while using gestures and

facial expressions to convey the passions of the soul. Portraiture,

being non-narrative, played a very minor role in his art. Given the

29paul Frdart de Chantelou, Diary of the Cavalier Bernini's visit to France, ed. A. Blunt and trans. M. Corbett (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 77 n. 118, quoted by David Carrier, Poussin's Paintings: A Study in Art-Historical Methodology (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993), 3.

30As translated by Mdrot, 299.

224

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. physiognomic inconsistencies between the Spada David and Poussin's

known self-portraits, and the feu: more plausible attribution of the

work to other artists (notably Rdgnier), it seems very improbable that

the Spada David could be a self-portrait of Poussin.

225

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. NOTE TO USERS

Copyrighted materials in this document have not been filmed at the request of the author. They are available for consultation at the author’s university library.

226-278

This reproduction is the best copy available.

UMI’

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