16. Benvenuto Cellini, Head of Medusa (sketch model for a statue of Perseus). Bronze, 13.8 cm high. Florence, c.1545–50. V&A: A.14–1964 lord, in the Piazza are works by Donatello and the great Michelangelo, both of them men that in the 17. After Donatello, Virgin and Child (frame probably painted by glory of their works have beaten the ancients; as for me I have the courage to execute this work to Paolo di Stefano). the size of five cubits, and in so doing make it ever so much better than the model.’115 Painted stucco in a wooden frame, 36.5 20.2 cm. Florence, c.1435–40. Yet for all that, it was only in the sixteenth century that the intellectual and individual qualities of V&A: A.45–1926 an artist came to be of significant concern to the patron, purchaser or owner. Prior to that, it seems that an artist’s mastery of a particularly sought-after technique or their extraordinary skill were defining criteria. Thus, to emphasize the extent to which Cistercian patrons were prepared to honour God, it became something of a topos in twelfth- and thirteenth-century accounts of monastic patronage that artists had been brought ‘from foreign parts’ to work on Church building projects because the particular skills they possessed were unavailable locally.116 Aubert Audoin, cardinal and former bishop of Paris, sent for potters from Valencia to produce lustred tiles for his Avignon palace in the late 1350s, because at that date the technique of producing such a golden glaze was known only in the Islamic world.117 The function of an object also continued to outweigh considerations of the identity of its maker. An image of the Virgin and Child, for example, was primarily a work to inspire devotion in the viewer rather than admiration for the artist who had carried it out (pl.17[A.45-1926]). Until the end of the fifteenth century, palace, church and household inventories rarely name the artist or workshop responsible for objects.118 In the sixteenth century, however, the increasingly competitive nature of patronage, coupled 68 MEDIEV AL A ND RENAI SSAN CE A R T 25. Workshop of Nicola Pisano, The Angels Michael and Gabriel. Marble, heights 97 cm and 96 cm. Pisa, 1260–70. V&A: 5798 and 5800–1859 26. The Piccolomini Master (images), An ironworker’s forge, from the Natural History by Pliny the Elder (detail). Ink on parchment with watercolour and gold, 43.2 65 cm (when open). Rome, c.1460. V&A: MSL/1896/1504 including his son Giovanni, Arnolfo di Cambio and an artist called Lapo. Nevertheless, we can only hypothesize how they divided up the work. For example, two angels produced in the shop, palpably from the same monument (a pulpit or shrine), have been finished very differently (pl.25[5709 and 5800-1859]). Saint Michael has been decorated with a characteristic use of the drill, notably in the corners of the eyes, and dotted around the hair. Gabriel’s eyes, on the other hand, have not been drilled, and where the drill has been employed on the hair and lower drapery, it has been used to produce a row of holes from which the interstices have been removed – the technique known as a 27. Designed by Jan van der get some idea of what such shops looked like from an illustration of an ironworking forge in a Straet (Stradanus), Book ‘running drill’. The effect is of tubular excavations in the surface, very different in character from printing, from Nova Reperta. fifteenth-century manuscript of Pliny’s Natural History (pl.26[MSL/1896/1504]). the more ‘perforated’ finish on Saint Michael. This indicates that two different hands worked up Engraving, 26 31.4 cm. Other commercial enterprises were of their nature more complex and cooperative – Jan van Netherlands, 1584. these pieces in the shop, but this observation gives us only a superficial understanding of the role V&A: E.1232–1904 der Straet’s sixteenth-century image of a printing house illustrates the variety of tasks involved in played by workshop assistants.67 Painters in fourteenth-century Siena not only employed full-time the production of a book (pl.27[E.1232-1904]). An ambitious printer like Aldus Manutius, founder apprentices but also made use of part-time workers, who could be active for months or just a few of the Aldine Press in Venice, employed a substantial staff in the preparation, printing and sale of days. These artists were required to produce work that matched the dominant style of the his books, particularly for his famous editions of works in Greek. Manuscripts needed to be collated workshop.68 Sculptors would at times have taken trusted assistants with them when they moved to and edited, proofs needed to be read, woodcut decorations created, the type set, proofs printed and a different town, but they would also use local workers, who were often already schooled in local checked, the printing carried out. Books in Venice were not sold from the printing workshop traditions and practices.69 This partly explains the variations in appearance between works produced because space was limited, but printers displayed unbound books for sale in the commercial area, by the same named sculptor in different locations.70 the Mercerie. Effective dissemination of the volumes was crucial if they were to avoid the fate Stone sculpture needed ample space to be worked, and trade between these artists and their described by the Florentine firm of Giunti in 1563, that of books ‘standing guard over the warehouses customers could not always have taken place through a shop window. Other trades that required and after a while being used to wrap groceries’. Manutius’ competitor, the Venetian printer Nicholas furnaces and kilns, such as glass- or pottery-making, would have needed an outside yard. We can Jensen, retained another shop in Pavia, and had agents as far afield as France.71 100 MEDIEV AL A ND RENAI SSAN CE A R T MEDIEV A L AND RENAIS SANCE A R T 101 pertinently, however, not only is its handle made of a ‘noble’ (and by implication, costly) material, 7. Knife with the arms of the Renier family of Venice. it is also decorated with unspecified ornament (pl.7[109-1901]). This not only enhances its Steel, the handle partially gilded, monetary value but also proclaims its owner a person intellectually capable of appreciating the 22 cm long. Italy, c.1550. V&A: 109–1901 carver, painter or engraver’s art. The horn-handled knife that belongs to the base man (sordidus) is not only made of an inexpensive material, it also lacks ornament.34 Pontano himself had identified two different types of people who were sordidus a few pages before this passage (they were mean rather than poor),35 but his reference to sweat suggests that here he is recalling Cicero’s definition of the term. In his De officiis, Cicero lists a series of professions which he regards as sordidi. These include all the mechanical professions – trades which required no intellectual engagement and were practised by the low-born or enslaved.36 In Ciceronian terms, Pontano’s sordidus would not have the intelligence to appreciate the ornament on a knife handle; his sweat is a sign of his brutish, unintellectual nature. Such possessions arguably characterized rather than transformed, and the presence or absence of ornament was a factor in the social messages they conveyed. Pontano’s theorizing aside, this is also suggested by the material evidence of surviving objects, where ornament may be said to reflect an owner’s fashionable intellectual interests. The initials in a compilation on the art of geomancy guide the reader by drawing the eye to the start of a new section in the text (pl.8 [MSL/1950/2464, ff.20v–21r]). Their particular style of ornamentation, though, updates the look of a twelfth-century text for a fifteenth-century reader. The white vine- stem decoration that surrounds the initials originated in learned Florentine circles and represented fifteenth-century ideas of the ornament used in Antique Roman texts. Added here to an Arabic work that had been translated by a scholar in Toledo some three centuries previously, it suggests that the book’s owner was someone anxious to give a non-classical text the appearance of being one, and in so doing perhaps associate himself with the fashion for Ancient scholarship. 9. Jacob Marquart, tableclock own interests and aspirations.He begins by explaining that the inkstand itself is ‘an instrument that and sundial. Scientific instruments, too, were embellished with ornament. Designs which resembled the Brass and iron, damascened and serves gentle spirits in the writing of things important and worthy of memory, through which… intricate interlace and knot-patterns of Near Eastern and Turkish metalwork engraving filled the partially gilded, 10.4 cm high. one can gain perpetual glory and immortal fame, dedicating one’s name to the temple of Divinity’. Augsburg, 1567 (dial replaced covers and spaces between dials and numbers on late sixteenth-century scientific instruments such c.1700). V&A: 9035–1863 Familiar elements of sixteenth-century ornament derived from classical iconography include the as a diptych dial made for the Fugger family of bankers (pl.9[9035-1863 side view]), and, far from bucrania (ox skulls) that ‘signify the hardship on which glory depends’, while the festoons or swags diminishing their status as functioning objects, emphasized their value and rarity, and by extension that hang from them ‘stand for no less than the triumph of virtue and the honour of glory’.38 their owner’s discernment.37 8.