• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

2 The Three Graces, Siena, Duomo, Libreria Piccolomini 1 Maarten van Heemskerck, “The Lateran,” Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, inv. 79.D.2, vol. 1, fol. 71v, c. 1532–7 ticular through studying “great deeds” of the ancient Republican past. In the 1330s, Pe- trarch began to write about these deeds in his On Illustrious Men. He conceived of the work as a homage to virtuous Romans from antiquity but later broadened the scope to include biographies of men and women of Biblical times, classical history, and “all ages.”4 In his approach to history, he followed the model of the ancient author Valerius tory. In antiquity and in Petrarch’s day, history itself could be defined as an account of Maximus and his Nine Books of Memorable Deeds and Sayings, a collection of anec- deeds that had taken place in the past (res gestae) and a collection of exempla drawn dotes meant to teach lessons about virtue and vice. Like the Memorable Deeds, Pe- from the real-life experiences of others. History was valuable because it contained pre- trarch’s Illustrious Men do not dwell on the causes and effects of historical change but cious nuggets of human wisdom that had withstood the test of time, because they had offer short biographical tales which aim to teach their readers by example. As Petrarch been passed down by generations of people who had learned something useful from wrote in the preface to the work, “this, unless I am mistaken, is the productive goal of them. historians, to lay out those things that readers should follow or avoid,” by putting at During the Trecento the exemplary lives of the ancients, especially the lives of Roman hand a copious number of positive and negative examples.5 Republican heroes, gained authority and began to appear more frequently in literature, Petrarch would have understood exempla to be useful lessons that seemed to provide oratory, and the visual arts. When mendicant preachers employed exemplary moral tales models and precedents for everyday moral decisions. In Petrarch’s day, the canonical in their sermons, they sometimes drew their subject matter directly from ancient his- definition of exempla could be found in the Rhetorica ad Herennium, an ancient trea- tory. New works of devotional literature appeared, such as the Fior di virtù or the Am- tise on rhetoric then attributed to Cicero. According to the Rhetorica, an exemplum is maestramenti degli antichi, which taught about virtue and vice with exemplary stories “something that was done or said in the past, with the explicit naming of the deed’s borrowed from the antique writers.7 Frescoed cycles of illustrious men in private palaces actor or author.” When “put before the eyes,” the exemplum brings an idea to life, ren- and town halls put the exemplary images of ancient Roman heroes (especially Republi- dering it so lucidly that it “can almost be touched by the hand.”6 Exempla were the can ones) before the eyes of their modern-day counterparts. In the Quattrocento, the vivid life lessons that ancient and medieval writers had considered the very essence of his- 2 3 4 Papal tiara, Vatican Museums, 16th century 3 Hunt of the Calydonian Boar, antique sarcophagus in the Porcari collection, Woburn Abbey, England can ones) before the eyes of their modern-day counterparts. In the Quattrocento, the exemplary value of ancient history became an even more pervasive cultural phenome- non. It was an important impetus behind the “civic humanist” movement in Florence, when Coluccio Salutati and his pupil Leonardo Bruni prodded their fellow Florentines to look to ancient history, especially of their Republican ancestors, as a source of moral exempla.8 It became one of the cornerstones of humanist education, with the premise that those who read ancient texts at school and at home would collect many useful ex- amples along the way. Despite the popularity of exempla in the Trecento and Quattrocento, the idea of dis- covering coherent messages from the distant past and applying them to one’s daily life was, of course, a problematic notion. Its simplicity would set up the “crisis” of exem- plarity that Timothy Hampton discovered in the writings of Machiavelli and Guicciar- more re-surfaced, with important consequences for the reception of antiquities in Rome. dini: with an awareness of the contingency of human experience, these authors cast At the same time, the memory of antiquity began to take on a larger role in the con- doubt on the idea that the examples of the ancients could ever solve the moral dilemmas templative lives of laymen, who acquired collections of antique objects for their libraries of their own times.9 The question to be addressed here, however, is not whether exem- and studies and purported to use these as aids in the acquisition of lessons pla actually offered anything like a real moral education to viewers of the Tre and Quat- for life. trocento but how the rhetoric of exemplarity affected the early reception of antique The concept of exemplarity had particularly significant and long-lasting effects in the remains. My premise is that notions of exemplarity allowed the visual remains of an- history of collecting and antiquarianism in Rome. One finds a consistent interest in rep- tiquity to acquire positive, practical value in both civic and private life, allowing col- resenting historical figures from Rome’s past as exemplary heroes or even as the ances- lecting to become a permissible and even necessary aspect of elite Italian culture. In the tors of noble families living in the present. The literal way in which Romans identified Trecento, when the Roman comune looked back to the ancient Republic as a model for themselves with the illustri of ancient history, the desire to interpret antiquities as ex- their own government, an antique discussion about the exemplary value of statues once 4 5 5 Maarten van Heemskerck, “View from the Palazzo dei Conservatori,” Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, inv. 6 Roman stele, Trier, Rheinisches Landesmusuem 79.D.2, vol. 1, fol. 61, c. 1532–7 emplary images of ancient virtue, and the need to conform to curial decorum gave the ino’s portrait, yet the image is also an attempt to resolve the sort of real-life confusion memory of the exemplum virtutis its particular relevance in Rome. Frequent compar- that inevitably arose when collectors shifted between these realms. Collecting became a isons were made between the antiquities shown in Roman palazzi and the display of an- difficult balancing act, requiring patrons to find a suitable place for the varied remains cestral portraits in ancient atria and, as if to associate their collections with the examples of ancient material culture while at the same time living up to the expectations of their of ancient res gestae, Roman collectors often decorated their palaces with cycles of il- own society. The question to be addressed here is how the sorts of divisions reflected in lustrious men and women or exemplary Roman histories, either on the facades of their Parmigianino’s portrait have their origins in the era of Petrarch. One sort of catego- palaces (*Buzi) or on the walls inside (*della Rovere, Giuliano; *Mellini).10 The rheto- rization seen in the portrait is the separation between life-sized, figural sculptures from ric of exemplarity continued to guide the way that collectors displayed their antique ob- other varieties of antique objects – small-scale gems and jewels, coins, or smaller mar- jects, as patrons often chose to distinguish between un-exemplary types of images (such ble objects kept in the inner chambers of the house – and it is worthwhile considering as life-sized nudes or erotic mythologies) and more obviously historical works.11 the reception of these types in turn. This distinction helped give shape to the ancestral collections centered on the mem- ory of ancient heroes, discussed in Chapter 4. It also affected the development of statue gardens, which were set in opposition to the more regimented spaces of collecting inside the statue as exemplary monument the house. While the inner sanctum of the studiolo defined itself as a realm of morality, self-discipline, and intellectual labor in solitude, the garden developed as a more socia- In ancient Rome, the idea that images could be exemplary had its roots in the practice ble domain of poetry and pleasure. Such a scheme can be discerned, for example, in of displaying ancestral portraits in the home. As Sallust wrote, even heroes such as Parmigianino’s Portrait of a Man (Fig. 2), which puts the ideal collector in between the Fabius Maximus or Scipio would never have gone on to great achievements without study, filled with books and small antiquities, and the garden, occupied by larger, mar- first being inspired by the wax portraits of their ancestors in the courtyards of their ble sculptures of erotic subject matter. Although the collector has access to the poetic houses. When they saw these images, Sallust wrote, it was not the wax image or its form landscape behind him, he turns his pensive look toward the morally superior domain of but the memory of the deeds of the person portrayed that “kindled a flame in the breasts solitude and contemplation inside the house. The world seems in balance in Parmigian- of those great men, which could not be put out until their own virtue had equaled the 6 7 18. galli (map 1) The Galli seem to have come to Rome from elsewhere, gaining prominence in the city only in the mid-Quattrocento. For their success they could thank Giuliano Galli (d. 1488), a wealthy banker and merchant who held offices in the municipal government and the confraternity of SS.

Load more

  5

Copy Link