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1 Persistence and Fashion in Art Italian Renaissance from Vasari To Persistence and Fashion in Art Italian Renaissance from Vasari to Berenson and Beyond* Victor Ginsburgh ECARES, Université Libre de Bruxelles and CORE, Université catholique de Louvain and Sheila Weyers Université catholique de Louvain January 2005 Abstract We are interested in the survival of artists over time. Painters from the Italian Renaissance are a good case, since they were discussed in a systematic way by Vasari in the second edition of his Vite (1568), considered as one of the founding texts in art history. This makes it possible to study whether artists praised by Vasari 400 years ago remain so later and are still those whom we consider as "the greatest" nowadays, or whether many changes occurred through history. This is probably the longest possible time period that can be analyzed in a quantitative way. We show that, though some artists appear, disappear or reappear, there is a large degree of consensus over time. * We are grateful to Peter Burke, Christophe Croux, Catherine Dehon, Philippe Junod, Thierry Lenain, François Mairesse, Didier Martens and the late Ignace Vandevivere for preliminary discussions, references and suggestions. Two anonymous referees as well as the editor of the journal made the paper much tighter than it was. They should also be very gratefully thanked. 1 [David Sylvester] could silence the cheerful gossip at any dinner table by posing with urgent solemnity a question like "But who do you think is greater, Giotto or Matisse?" [Even] as he lay dying, he insisted on having his guests play his favorite game of quantification, listing who are the greatest of the great. Robert Rosenblum.1 1. Introduction Some art philosophers suggest that beauty lies in the artwork itself, while others believe that "[b]eauty is no quality in things themselves: it exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty."2 "Generalist" philosophers claim that there are general standards, or criteria, which make a work good. According to Beardsley (1982), for example, there exist three general properties, unity, intensity and complexity, such that if one of them is present in an artwork, the artwork is better. There may be other characteristics, which are "secondary," and which may make a work better in a certain context, or worse in another. "Singularists" on the other hand sustain that there exist no such general standards, and that every property, or characteristic is contextual. The idea of objective aesthetic criteria was found interesting by scientists from other fields than art theory. Birkhoff (1933), a mathematician, devotes a book on aesthetic value and feeling, where he assumes aesthetic experience as compounded of three successive phases: A preliminary effort of attention, which increases in proportion to the complexity (C) of the object; the feeling of value (M) which rewards this effort; and finally a realization that the object is characterized by a certain harmony, symmetry or order (O), which seems necessary to obtain the aesthetic effect. The various chapters of his 200 pages book investigate how O and C can be measured not only for polygonal forms, ornaments, tilings or vases but also for melody and musical quality in poetry.3 The 20th century famous mathematician Weyl (1952) devotes a large part of his book on symmetry and the feeling of beauty that it generates. But the view that there exist objective criteria is also disputed by art critics who "locate the ground of judgments of taste, not in some object which is the target of 1 In his introduction to Sotheby's Catalogue, David Sylvester: The Private Collection, London, 26 February 2002. 2 Hume (1757, p. 6). 3 A similar idea is taken up by Simonton (1980, 1998) for whom the properties of musical compositions that form the classical repertoire "can be predicted using variables derived from a computerized content analysis of melodic structure." 2 the judgment, but in the maker of the judgment."4 According to them, there are no criteria that allow determining the intrinsic quality of a work, but only professional judges who "possess the socially accepted authority to ascribe specific properties to a work...and how it should be ranked," and that "what is decisive in valorization and in its being awarded more or less quality is the number of critical discourses and not as is currently assumed, its allegedly intrinsic properties."5 Van Rees (1987) convincingly shows that the consensus that was built around the work of Faverey, a Dutch poet whose fame he analyzes, was reached by critics on the basis of extra- textual factors. Time is also very much invoked, not so much as a criterion, but as a test of value. Do some artworks or artists become classics and are the object of enduring aesthetic admiration. Should we agree with the idea that history is a proving ground for value, and follow most art philosophers for whom the works of a real genius will endure, while "authority or prejudice may give a temporary vogue to a bad poet or orator, but this reputation will never be durable or general."6 The question is whether the test of time is a necessary or only a sufficient condition for value. According to Levinson (2002, p. 235), passing the test of time is only sufficient, since many valuable works have failed the test. But passing it "is almost always to a work's credit." Moreover, one may assume that agents will be ready to incur costs to have valuable works surviving in good condition. This is pointed out by Coetzee (2002, p. 18), in his essay "What is a classic?" He writes that "the criterion of testing and survival is not just a minimal, pragmatic ... standard. It is a criterion that expresses a certain confidence in the tradition of testing, and a confidence that professionals will not devote labour and attention, generation after generation, to sustaining [artworks] whose life-functions have terminated." Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno, on the contrary, oppose the idea that some works and artists are able to transcend the style of a period. According to them, every artist has a finite and possibly short life span and "aesthetic survival would itself be a suspect idea."7 If beauty is fully subjective and transitory tastes dominate, the investigation should be reduced to a debate over changes of tastes, which is what Haskell (1976) and his "rediscoveries" suggests, though, following Savile (1982), one can argue that rediscoveries may be due to a lack of understanding the work at the time it was produced, and not to the work itself. 4 Shiner (1996, p. 237). 5 See Van Rees, 1983, p. 398 and Van Rees, 1987, p. 280. Note that Van Rees discusses literary works, but his views can easily be extended to other artworks. 6 Hume (1965, p. 9). 7 Savile (1982, p. 289). 3 The various possibilities are cast in a statistical framework by Simonton (1998), who offers the following useful classification: (a) Transhistorical stability. Successive generations may disagree over time, but not in a systematic way, suggesting that they apply largely the same set of criteria in evaluating works. (b) Exponential decay. Judgments by a generation take into account judgments of the immediately preceding generation, suggesting that they are governed by a first-order autoregressive process, implying decreasing correlations of evaluations over time. 8 (c) Gradual attrition or steady decline, in which case correlations between contemporary and subsequent judgments would decline in a linear way. (d) Cyclical fashion, with periodic or quasi-periodic fluctuations in assessments. (e) Complete transhistorical instability, if judgments lack any consistency over time. This leads to zero correlations of assessments over time. We are interested in the survival of artists over time. Painters from the Italian Renaissance, including precursors such as Cimabue, Duccio, Giotto, or Simone Martini, are a good case to explore the way fame unfolds, since they were first discussed in a systematic way some 400 years ago by Vasari (1568) in the second edition of his Vite,9 considered as one of the founding texts in art history. One can therefore try to study whether artists singled out by Vasari remained so afterwards and are still those whom we consider as the most important, or how much our views of the Renaissance have changed over time. This is probably the longest possible time period that can be analyzed in a quantitative way. We count, and follow over time, the number of pages or citations devoted to some 250 artists from the Italian Quattrocento (including some forerunners), thus doing exactly what Thuillier (1989, p. xxvi)--and many other art historians, in particular von Schlosser (1996)--criticizes in his description of "contemporary art dictionaries which set to three pages, half a page, fifteen or five lines the length devoted to each artist, and which make it to a perhaps necessary but nevertheless unpleasant exercise." Other art historians are less critical of this approach. Teyssèdre (1964, p. 187), the expert of the French art critic de Piles (1635-1709), suggests rating artists and producing a "map of tastes" over time. He writes that "even if ratings are difficult to assess, one could just look at whether artists are quoted or not." Burke (1986) uses the curricula (where born, profession, social status of parents, etc.) of 8 Note that this needs the coefficient of the autoregressive process to be smaller than 1. If this coefficient is equal to one, the correlations over time are all equal to 1. 9 Vasari published two versions of his Vite, the first in 1550, the second, more complete, in 1568. This is the version that we use. Vasari himself used various sources.
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