WRITING ABOUT EARLY RENAISSANCE WORKS of ART in VENICE and FLORENCE (1550-1800) Laura-Maria
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BETWEEN TASTE AND HISTORIOGRAPHY: WRITING ABOUT EARLY RENAISSANCE WORKS OF ART IN VENICE AND FLORENCE (1550-1800) Laura-Maria Popoviciu A dissertation submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Combined Historical Studies The Warburg Institute University of London 2014 1 I declare that the work presented in this thesis is my own _______________________________ Laura-Maria Popoviciu 2 ABSTRACT My dissertation is an investigation of how early Renaissance paintings from Venice and Florence were discussed and appraised by authors and collectors writing in these cities between 1550 and 1800. The variety of source material I have consulted has enabled me to assess and to compare the different paths pursued by Venetian and Florentine writers, the type of question they addressed in their analyses of early works of art and, most importantly, their approaches to the re-evaluation of the art of the past. Among the types of writing on art I explore are guidebooks, biographies of artists, didactic poems, artistic dialogues, dictionaries and letters, paying particular attention in these different genres to passages about artists from Guariento to Giorgione in Venice and from Cimabue to Raphael in Florence. By focusing, within this framework, on primary sources and documents, as well as on the influence of art historical literature on the activity of collecting illustrated by the cases of the Venetian Giovanni Maria Sasso and the Florentine Francesco Maria Niccolò Gabburri, I show that two principal approaches to writing about the past emerged during this period: the first, adopted by many Venetian authors, involved the aesthetic evaluation of early Renaissance works of art, often in comparison to later developments; the second, more frequent among Florentine writers, tended to document these works and place them in their historical context, without necessarily making artistic judgements about them. A parallel analysis of these two approaches offers a twofold perspective on how writers and collectors engaged with early Renaissance art from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS VOLUME I: Dissertation Abstract 3 Acknowledgements 8 Editorial Principles 10 List of Abbreviations 11 General Introduction 12 PART ONE: VENETIAN ART WRITINGS Introduction 22 Chapter 1. The Reception of Early Venetian Works of Art in the Writings of Francesco Sansovino 23 Dialogo di tutte le cose notabili che sono in Venezia (1556) 25 Venetia città nobilissima (1581) 26 Works of Art in Churches 27 Works of Art in the Scuole 33 The Palazzo Ducale 34 The Second Edition of Venetia città nobilissima (1604) by Giovanni Stringa 36 The Third Edition of Venetia città nobilissima (1663) by Giustiniano Martinioni 39 Chapter 2. Could Early Renaissance Paintings be considered Marvels of Art? Carlo Ridolfi and the Biographies of Early Italian Artists 44 Chapter 3. Marco Boschini’s Writings and Contemporary Texts on Painting 57 La carta del navegar pittoresco (1660) 57 4 Le minere della pittura veneziana (1664) 60 Looking at Art through Marco Boschini’s Glass Panel: Le ricche minere della pittura veneziana (1674) 65 New Additions to Le minere 71 Chapter 4. ‘Taste and Scholarship’ in Eighteenth-Century Venice: Antonio Maria Zanetti the Younger 74 Descrizione della pittura veneziana (1733) 76 Artists and Works of Art Not Mentioned by Zanetti 80 Works of Art Mentioned Only by Zanetti 81 Della pittura veneziana e delle opere pubbliche de veneziani maestri (1771) 82 Chapter 5. Collecting and Connoisseurship 93 Giovanni Maria Sasso and His Network 93 The Correspondence with Abraham Hume 98 Sasso’s Venezia pittrice and Its Context 101 Notizie de’ pittori moderni or the ‘Silence’ of the Works of Art 113 Preliminary Conclusions 116 PART TWO: FLORENTINE ART WRITINGS Introduction 123 Chapter 6. Florentine Guidebooks 128 Francesco Albertini’s Memoriale 128 Francesco Bocchi’s Le bellezze della città di Fiorenza (1591) 129 Giovanni Cinelli’s Le bellezze della città di Fiorenza (1677) 143 Paolo Mini’s Discorso della nobiltà di Firenze e de’ Fiorentini (1593) 145 Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Guidebooks on Art 147 Chapter 7. Florentine Biographies of Artists 150 5 Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of Early Italian Artists 150 Vasari’s Editors (1647-1794) 157 Carlo Manolessi’s Edition (1647) 158 Giovanni Bottari’s Edition (1759-1760) 160 Tommaso Gentili’s Edition (1767-1772) 166 Guglielmo della Valle’s Edition (1791-1794) 169 Illustrating the Artistic Past in Eighteenth-Century Florence 178 Chapter 8. Views on Early Renaissance Art in Eighteenth-Century Florence: Francesco Maria Niccolò Gabburri’s Le Vite 182 Pellegrino Orlandi’s Abecedario pittorico as a Source of Inspiration for Gabburri’s Le vite 185 Gabburri’s Le vite 188 The Biographies of Early Painters 192 General Conclusion 198 Bibliography 202 VOLUME II: Documentary Appendices and Illustrations Appendix 1 224 Appendix 2 240 Appendix 3 243 Appendix 4 247 Appendix 5 251 Appendix 6 253 Appendix 7 256 Appendix 8 261 6 Appendix 9 271 Appendix 10 276 List of Illustrations 279 Illustrations 285 7 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my two supervisors and mentors, Professor Jill Kraye and Professor Charles Hope. I am also grateful to Professor Elizabeth McGrath for supervising my work during the first year of my research. I would like to thank all of them for the many lessons, both scholarly and personal that I have learnt under their guidance. The time and rigour they have invested in overseeing this dissertation is immeasurable. I thank Charles for his immense generosity and attention with which he supervised my work since I began my studies at the Warburg Institute in 2008. I feel privileged to have worked under his guidance. I am hugely indebted to him for helping me choose the topic of this dissertation and for discussing its progress in the meetings that we had. Charles showed me how to work with primary sources and to interpret them with clarity and accuracy. He taught me what type of questions to ask in pursuing my research and offered encouragement and constant help. This dissertation benefitted greatly from his expertise. I thank Jill for her great dedication and competence with which she supervised my work in the past three years. I am extremely grateful for all the discussions and inspirational meetings that we had, the attention with which she read my work and the comments and advice which he kindly offered me. All these have immensely enriched my work and my knowledge on the Renaissance. I am particularly obliged to them and to Jonathan Rolls for their help with the editorial work involved in all stages of my dissertation. Financial assistance was provided by Mr David Kowitz, the AHRC, the British Museum, the Warburg Charitable Trust and the Student Travel Grant Fund. I am also grateful for all the help and advice offered by staff at the Warburg Institute, the British Library, the Courtauld Institute Library, Biblioteca del Museo Correr, Biblioteca del Seminario Patriarcale, Biblioteca Marciana and Biblioteca Nazionale di Padua. Many scholars and colleagues have offered advice and encouragement. These include Antony Griffiths (British Museum), Hugo Chapman (British Museum), the print room staff at the British Museum who assisted in giving access to the collection, Joachim Jacoby (Städel Museum, Frankfurt) and Carmen Bambach (National Gallery of Art, Washington). I am particularly grateful to Mark McDonald (British Museum) for his constant support, constructive advice and close supervision during my internship at the British Museum. I would also like to express my gratitude to Caroline Campbell (National Gallery) for her generosity and support during my internship at the Courtauld Gallery. I have benefitted immensely from their knowledge. 8 Finally, I am grateful to have had the support of great friends, many of whom are art historians. These include Barbara Tramelli, Micol Flocchini, Niall Hodson, Lucian Lechintan and Dragos Nastasoiu. I wish to extend my appreciation to Bishop Virgil Bercea, Vlad Petruş, Father Gabriel Buboi, Father Cristian Crisan, Alexander Baumgarten, Carmen Pistea, Flaviu Turbui and the friends and staff at the International Lutheran Student Centre. I dedicate this thesis to my parents Marius and Liliana Popoviciu and my grandmother Veronica Popoviciu. I thank them for everything. 9 EDITORIAL PRINCIPLES All translations, unless otherwise indicated, are my own. When quotations are taken directly from manuscript or printed sources, the original spellings have been retained without the addition of modern accents or punctuation. I have given full bibliographical references on the first occasion a work is cited; for subsequent citations, I have given only the author and the short title. Full bibliographical references for all works can also be found in the Bibliography. 10 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS DBI Dizionario biografico degli italiani NGA National Gallery Archive Bocchi, Le bellezze (1591) Francesco Bocchi, Le bellezze della città di Firenze (Florence 1591), ed. J. Shearman, Farnborough 1971. Bocchi/Cinelli, Le bellezze Francesco Bocchi, Le bellezze della città di Firenze, ed. Giovanni Cinelli, Florence 1677. Sansovino, Venetia Francesco Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima, Venice 1581. Sansovino/Martinioni, Venetia Francesco Sansovino, Venetia, ed. Giustiniano Martinioni, Venice 1663. Sansovino/Stringa, Venetia Francesco Sansovino, Venetia, ed. Giovanni Stringa, Venice 1604. Vasari, Le vite (1550) Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori (Florence 1550), ed. G. Einaudi, Turin 1986. Vasari, Le vite (1568) Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori (Florence 1568), ed. G. Milanesi, 9 vols, Florence 1998. Vasari/Manolessi, Le vite Giorgio Vasari, Le vite, ed. Carlo Manolessi, 4 vols, Bologna 1647. Vasari/Bottari, Le vite Giorgio Vasari, Le vite, ed. Bottari, 3 vols, Rome 1759-1760. Vasari/Gentili, Le vite Giorgio Vasari, Le vite, ed. Tommaso Gentili, 7 vols, Livorno, 1767-1772 . Vasari/della Valle, Le vite Giorgio Vasari, Le vite, ed. Guglielmo della Valle, 11 vols, Siena 1791-1794.