The Vatican Library Alphabets, Luca Orfei, and Graphic Media in Sistine Rome

chapter 26 The Vatican Library Alphabets, Luca Orfei, and Graphic Media in Sistine Rome

Paul Nelles*

Upon completion in 1590, the new quarters for the Vatican Library in the Cortile del Belvedere were among the largest and most lavishly decorated library rooms in Europe. Intended to serve as a bulwark of Catholic orthodoxy, the new library was part of the vast cultural program of Pope Sixtus v. Executed under the oversight of the artists Cesare Nebbia and Giovanni Guerra, four pic- torial cycles meet the gaze of readers in the massive central room, now known as the salone sistino: the great libraries of antiquity are depicted on the south wall; scenes from the ecumenical councils of the church run opposite; portraits of the “inventors of letters” are located on the pillars in the middle of the room; and Sixtus’s campaign of urban and architectural renewal in Rome is cele- brated on the ceiling in a cycle depicting the opere of the ambitious Counter- Reformation pope. In addition to these scenes in the salone sistino, the cycle of frescoes continues in the adjacent sala dei scrittori with depictions of the book arts (papermaking, printing, and so on) and in the nearby bibliotheca secreta with portraits of the Church Fathers and other ecclesiastical writers.1 The frescoes are busy and full of movement. Books are present everywhere. Pamphilus is portrayed copying codices in the library at Caesarea while Eusebius studiously prepares his Ecclesiastical History. The censure of Arius at the First Council of Nicaea is accompanied by a burning pyre of condemned writings. We witness texts being dictated, copied, and read. Books are carried off ships, carted in baskets, poised on lecterns, stacked high in cupboards. The

* I gratefully acknowledge the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada in researching this essay. I also thank Ann Blair and Johannes Wolfart for discus- sion and comments, and Antonio Ricci for assistance with materials at the Newberry Library, Chicago. 1 On the artistic production of the frescoes, see Alessandro Zuccari, I pittori di Sisto v (Rome: Palombi, 1992), 47–101; Zuccari, “Il cantiere pittorico della biblioteca sistina: i cicli di affresche e alcuni progetti grafici,” in Storia della Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (3 vols.), vol. 2, La Biblioteca Vaticana tra riforma cattolica, crescita delle collezioni e nuovo edificio (1535–1590), ed. Massimo Ceresa (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2012), 379–417; Zuccari, “Una Babele pit- torica ben composta. Gli affreschi sistini della Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana,” in La Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, ed. Ambrogio M. Piazzoni et al. (Milan: Jaca Book, 2012), 266–307.

442 Nelles iconography of the library frescoes was based on a preliminary sketch drawn up by the longtime custos of the library, Federico Ranaldi, in late 1587 or early 1588. The selection and disposition of the final decorative program was the work of Silvio Antoniano, with input from other members of the circle of cultural advisers around Sixtus v such as Pietro Galesini and Angelo Rocca. It was a well-researched, erudite program firmly rooted in textual sources. The learn- ing behind the frescoes was no secret. It was documented at length by Rocca in his description of the library, De Bibliotheca Vaticana, published in 1591. Of all the fresco cycles, that featuring the inventors of letters offers the most resistance to interpretation. It is certainly the most static. On each face of the six square pillars that span the center of the salone sistino is a full-length portrait of a biblical, mythical, or historical figure to whom the invention or dis- covery of letters is attributed (Table. 26.1). The images on the pillars are anchored by portraits of Adam on the east wall and Christ (“alpha et omega”) on the west wall. Beneath each portrait a Latin inscription explains the signifi- cance of the subject, as with the other fresco cycles. Above, either a complete alphabet or a grouping of letters is depicted within a cartouche. The cartouches have alternating red and blue backgrounds, while the letters are rendered in brilliant gold. The overall impression of the lettering is that of the gold-leaf capitals set against richly colored backgrounds found in some illuminated manuscripts. There are a number of contexts in which to locate the alphabet cycle.2 The “inventors-of-letters” topos has deep roots in the Western encyclo- pedic tradition. It appears in the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville and in the Renaissance was taken up by Polydore Vergil in his popular De inventoribus rerum (1499). Half of the figures depicted in the frescoes were mentioned by Vergil.3 Classical and patristic sources furnished additional subjects bearing on letters in the ancient world, while the cycle is rounded out with a series of later Christian “inventors.” The result is a veritable Babel of languages: Samaritan, Hebrew, Syriac, “Egyptian,” “Phoenician,” Greek, Etruscan, Latin,

2 The most comprehensive studies of the iconography of the frescoes are now Dalma Frascarelli, “Immagini e parole. Il programma iconografico degli affreschi sistini della Vaticana,” in Storia della Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2:333–77; and Frascarelli, “Gli affreschi sistini: il programma iconografico,” in Piazzoni et al., Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 178–265 (see esp. 206–9 for the topographical plan of the frescoes). See also Angela Böck, “Gli affreschi sistini della sala di lettura della Biblioteca Vaticana,” in Sisto v, ed. Marcello Fagiolo and Maria Luisa Madonna, 2 vols. (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 1992), 2:693–716; Alphonse Dupront, “Art et contre-réforme: les fresques de la bibliothèque de Sixte-Quint,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome 48 (1931): 282–307; Angelo Rocca, De Bibliotheca Vaticana (Rome: Typographia Vaticana, 1591). 3 Isidore, Etymologiae 1.3–6. On Polydore Vergil, see Bock, “Gli affreschi sistini,” 703.