Pietà Rovaiweber Design, Firenze
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MITTEILUNGEN DES KUNSTHISTORISCHEN INSTITUTES LVII. BAND — 2015 IN FLORENZ HEFT 3 LVII. BAND — 2015 MITTEILUNGEN DES KUNSTHISTORISCHEN HEFT 3 INSTITUTES IN FLORENZ Inhalt | Contenuto Redaktionskomitee | Comitato di redazione Aufsätze Saggi Alessandro Nova, Gerhard Wolf, Samuel Vitali _ _ Redakteur | Redattore Samuel Vitali _ 255 _ Dorothy F. Glass Editing und Herstellung | Editing e impaginazione The Sculpture of the Baptistery of Parma: Context and Meaning Ortensia Martinez Fucini Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz Max-Planck-Institut Via G. Giusti 44, I-50121 Firenze _ 293 _ Cyril Gerbron Tel. 055.2491147, Fax 055.2491155 The Story of Fra Angelico: Reflections in Mirrors [email protected] – [email protected] www.khi.fi.it/publikationen/mitteilungen Die Redaktion dankt den Peer Reviewers dieses Heftes _ 321 _ Christopher J. Nygren für ihre Unterstützung | La redazione ringrazia i peer Titian’s Miracles: Artistry and Efficacy Between the San Rocco and reviewers per la loro collaborazione a questo numero. Christ the Accademia Graphik | Progetto grafico Pietà RovaiWeber design, Firenze Produktion | Produzione Miszellen Appunti Centro Di edizioni, Firenze _ _ Die erscheinen jährlich in drei Heften und könnenMitteilungen im Abonnement oder in Einzelheften bezogen _ 351 _ Donatella Fratini werden durch | Le escono con cadenza Due disegni di Giorgio Vasari provenienti dall’eredità del cavalier quadrimestrale e possonoMitteilungen essere ordinate in abbonamento o singolarmente presso: Francesco Maria Vasari per il Salone dei Cinquecento in Palazzo Vecchio Centro Di edizioni, Lungarno Serristori 35 I-50125 Firenze, Tel. 055.2342666, Fax 055.2342667, [email protected]; www.centrodi.it. _ 361 _ Stefano Pierguidi Preis | Prezzo Il Costantino di Bernini in San Pietro. Lo scontro con Domenico Guidi e Einzelheft | Fascicolo singolo: € 30 (plus Porto | più costi di spedizione) la questione del rilievo Jahresabonnement | Abbonamento annuale: € 90 (Italia); € 120 (Ausland | estero) Die Mitglieder des Vereins zur Förderung des Kunsthistorischen Instituts in Florenz (Max-Planck- Institut) e. V. erhalten die Zeitschrift kostenlos. I membri del Verein zur Förderung des Kunsthistorischen Instituts in Florenz (Max-Planck-Institut) e. V. ricevono la rivista gratuitamente. Adresse des Vereins | Indirizzo del Verein: c/o Sal. Oppenheim jr. & Cie. AG & Co. KGaA z. H. Frau Cornelia Schurek Odeonsplatz 12, D-80539 München [email protected]; www.associazione.de Die alten Jahrgänge der sind für Subskribenten online abrufbar über JSTORMitteilungen (www.jstor.org ). Le precedenti annate delle sono accessibili online su JSTOR (www.jstor.org)Mitteilungen per gli abbonati al servizio. ____ 1 Titian, Pietà, 1575/76. Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia TITIAN’S MIRACLES ARTISTRY AND EFFICACY BETWEEN THE SAN ROCCO AND THE ACCADEMIACHRIST PIETÀ Christopher J. Nygren Titian’s final painting, the now in the Gal- wax or terra-cotta votive offerings that filled mirac- lerie dell’Accademia (Fig. 1), isPietà haunted by a phan- ulous shrines in the pre-modern period.1 Just below tasmagoric presence: a severed human arm stands the arm is a painted votive tablet also leaning against disconcertingly at the right edge of the picture, the Sybil’s base. Behind this rests Titian’s coat- propped against a sculpture of the Hellespontine of-arms. The votive tablet tavolettaliterally overshadows the Sybil (Fig. 2). The penumbral arm seems to emerge most prominent public recognition of Titian’s artistic directly from the statue’s plinth; it is not connected to achievement and sets his artistic persona against a dif- any body. In this arm, Titian’s skittish brush-strokes ferent order of artistry, one that produces miraculous do not describe a living being, nor do they represent a images. protagonist within the structure of the picture. Rath- The was to adorn the artist’s own tomb, thus er, they evoke an intense belief in the thaumaturgical the picturePietà is often read autobiographically as a sort of power of art and demarcate a quadrant of the picture “painted prayer” for protection from the plague that where the fictive capacity of painting is brought into eventually took Titian’s life.2 Along these lines, the el- contact with the miraculous power of objects and im- derly figure kneeling in front of the Virgin, generally ages. The arm is made to look like one of the myriad identified as St. Jerome, is often read as a “self-portrait 1 The arm was confirmed to be a votive object following its restoration in 2 See, for example, , ed. by Susanna Biadene/Mary Titian: Prince of Painters the 1980s. Giovanna Nepi Scirè, “Tiziano, ‘La Pietà’ ”, in: Yakush, Munich/New York 1990, p. 374; Restauri alle Gallerie Masterpieces Restored: The Gallerie dell’Ac- , Venice 1987 ( , ed. by Giulio Manieri Elia, Venice 2010, p. 225; Tom dell’Accademia Quaderni della Soprintendenza ai Beni Artistici e Storici di cademia and Save Venice Inc. , XIII [1987]), pp. 31–42. Nichols, , London 2013, pp. 7–12. Venezia Titian and the End of the Venetian Renaissance | 321 in disguise”.3 The physiognomic resemblance between and his arm is in the pronated position that Titian this figure and Titian’s known self-portraits suggests often used in images of death.4 As has been recognized that there is some warrant for this identification. But since at least the nineteenth century, the miraculous while elements like this reflect Titian’s artistic identity, apparition in the votive tablet repeats the central fig- the painting also attests to the complexity and instabil- ural group of the altarpiece itself.5 According to the ity of that identity in relation to the larger question of structural logic of early modern cult practice, the inset how images and image-makers mediated the dispersal image is evidence of grace already received. The repeti- of divine grace. Titian’s painting enfolds two types of tion of this iconographic motif suggests that the votive objects that were both connected to actual cult represented in the center of the canvas has Pietàop- practice. Within the fictive world of the painting, these erated as a conduit of grace.6 Scholarly narrativesalready that votives appear as the products of other artistic agents: focus on the painting’s autobiographical significance votive limbs were made by sculptors through a process have largely overlooked the audacity of the gesture by of physical impression, while votive tablets were typi- which Titian inserts his own painting into the circuit- cally produced by painters decidedly less skilled than ry of divine grace as an implied source of miraculous Titian. Titian’s conscious presentation of these votive agency. This article seeks to remedy this oversight. offerings alerts the beholder to the transaction of mi- In order to provide a more inclusive account of how raculous grace that gives rise to this pictorial ensem- the picture operated in relation to general ideas about ble. Yet, the beholder is left to ask: whence derives this cult images and miraculous agency in sixteenth-centu- grace? ry Venice, this article will consider the votive objects The beginning of an answer may be found in the included in the in light of the painting’s intended votive tablet pictured in the lower right of the painting. placement withinPietà the church of Santa Maria Glorio- Like an actual votive tablet, the in Titian’s sa dei Frari and the altarpiece’s position within the points toward the source of miraculoustavoletta agency: thePietà ef- trajectory of Titian’s career, a trajectory that includes ficacious image is clearly visible in the upper left-hand a commitment to cult images. The argument will em- corner of the inset painting, where the Virgin, cloaked phasize how Titian wove his painting into a network in a crimson garment, blue mantle, and pale headdress, of images, objects, and practices associated with mi- clutches the lifeless body of her son on her lap. Christ’s raculous images. While this account shifts attention body is oriented along a diagonal that runs from his away from the question of Titian’s painterly style, feet, at the lower left, to his head, at the upper right. which has rightly been discussed in much recent liter- His visage turns outward to confront the beholder, ature, it does so for a specific purpose.7 Allowing the 3 Luba Freedman, , Florence 1990, pp. 49– 6 On the function of votive tablets, see Fredrika H. Jacobs, Titian’s Independent Self-Portraits Votive Panels and 57. While some scholars contest the identification of this figure as St. Je- , Cambridge 2013. Popular Piety in Early Modern Italy rome, I follow Carlo Ridolfi ( 7 Recent literature, especially in German, has forced a reconsideration of Le maraviglie dell’arte: ovvero le vite degli illustri pittori , ed. by Detlev von Hadeln, I, Berlin the self-conscious aspect of Titian’s late style. I see the account presented veneti e dello Stato descritte da Carlo Ridolfi 1914, p. 206) in reading it as such. For the various identities ascribed to this here as being complementary to that line of inquiry. In this respect see the character, see Daniela Bohde, contributions of Paula Carabell, “ and in Titian’s Last Pain- Haut, Fleisch und Farbe: Körperlichkeit und Materialität Finito non-finito , Emsdetten 2002, p. 74. tings”, in: , XXVIII (1995), pp. 79–93; Irene Tobben, in den Gemälden Tizians Res Die Schindung des 4 David Rosand, “Titian and the ”, in: , Berlin Bed of Polyclitus The Burlington Maga- Marsyas: Nachdenken über Tizian und die Gefährlichkeit der Künste. Ein Essay , CXVII (1975), pp. 242–245. 1997; Valeska von Rosen, zine Mimesis und Selbstbezüglichkeit in Werken Tizians: Studi- 5 Joseph A. Crowe/Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, , Emsdetten 2001; Bohde (note 3); Nicola Titian: His Life and Times. en zum venezianischen Malereidiskurs , London Suthor, , With Some Account of His Family, Chiefly From New and Unpublished Records Augenlust bei Tizian: Zur Konzeption sensueller Malerei in den frühen Neuzeit 1881, II, p.