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Baccio Del Bianco and the Cultural Politics of The Abstract: Baccio del Bianco’s career, an artist with a polyvalent education and multiple talents, is examined in the light of the artistic politics dominant in Florence in BACCIO DEL BIANCO the late sixteenth and early seventeenth AND THE CULTURAL POLITICS * centuries, as a result of a cultural OF THE MEDICI COURT programme carefully coordinated by the Medici court: a clear emphasis on the manual, productive aspect of the arts, and on the “applied arts,” and a close connection between the artistic domain and the scientific one. For both of these fields the concept and practice of disegno is central; the almost exclusive use of the graphic medium by Baccio del Bianco and the circle of artists around Giulio Parigi is Ioana Măgureanu considered in relation to the role of the artist in this courtly milieu. Baccio del Bianco’s work and career is also apt to show another crucial aspect of Baccio del Bianco belonged to a group the Medici cultural politics: the patronage of artists working in close relation to one of science. In the discussion of Medici another at the Florentine court in the first hegemonic attempts to control the arts and half of the seventeenth century. Their of the role of the artistic instruction in careers covered a wide range of artistic Granducal Florence, the concept of activities but also, and most importantly, disegno, essential in sixteenth-century art scenographic, architectural and engineering theory, will prove to be crucial, the meeting (civil and military) works, in relation to the point of the interest in crafts and that in patronage of the Medici court. Besides their science. Baccio’s international career multiple talents, the most striking feature of speaks of the Medici cultural identity that their work is their almost exclusive use of the Grand Dukes were trying to promote to the graphic medium (drawing and the other courts of Europe. engraving). This group of artists has been Baccio del Bianco was born in 1604 relatively little studied, even though their and, at the age of eight, entered the formation and their role in Florence raise workshop of Giovanni Bilivert, a pupil of interesting questions about the status of the Cigoli. He then studied perspective and arts in this courtly milieu, the cultural architecture with another pupil of Cigoli, politics of the Medici court and the Vincenzo Bocacci, painter and architect of concepts related to art that dominated the fortifications. He also had some lessons in artistic scene in late sixteenth- and early the school of Giulio Parigi, one of the seventeenth-century Florence. private academies prolifically producing * The starting point of this article is my MA Dissertation at th e Courtauld Institute of Art in London, where I studied during the 2004/2005 academic year, owing to the generous scholarship offered to me by the Courtauld Institute and a grant from the Ratiu Foundation, which I gratefully acknowledge. I should like to thank my supervisor Dr. Sheila McTighe for encouraging me to investigate Baccio del Bianco’s drawing practices and for her constructive criticism. Part of this article was presented at the Renaissance Society of America Conference in Los Angeles in 2009. I am also indebted to Prof. Anca Oroveanu from the National University of Art in Bucharest for reading this paper and offering her comments and suggestions. My thanks are also due to the Gabinetto di Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi (GDSI) and the Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica, Rome, for kind permission to reproduce the photographs shown in the plates. REV. ROUM. HIST. ART, Série BEAUX-ARTS, TOME XLVIII, P. 13–26, BUCAREST, 2011 13 architects and engineers. At the age of 17, During the second half of the sixteenth Baccio followed the military architect century and throughout the seventeenth Giovanni Pieroni, called Galliano, to Vienna century the most sumptuous celebrations and Prague. He returned in 1624 to Florence, were held for family events of the Medici.7 where he opened a school in which he taught These were opportunities for Cosimo I, and perspective and architecture and served the later his successors, to reinforce their Medici court for the following two and a position by stressing their kinship with all half decades until 1650, when he was sent to the important ruling houses of Europe, and serve the king of Spain, Philip IV, in to express their domination through the Madrid; he died there in 1656.1 lavish celebrations that required the work Most of his Florentine career evolved of many artists – painters, sculptors, around the Medici court. He was involved architects and engineers – for periods up to in the staging of the many spectacles and as long as a few years, encouraging thus the festivities related to the court, both theatre growth of a large number of crafts. plays put on for important dynastic events,2 In the fashioning of these political and public spectacles on the streets of propagandistic tools that arts and artists were Florence (Fig. 1). He undertook many to become, a new conception of art came to architectural works, especially in the port of dominate in Florence in the last decades of Livorno (1626-27) and fortifications the sixteenth century, articulated through a throughout the territory of the Grand Duchy clear emphasis on the manual dimension of of Tuscany during the Barberini war (1642- the arts. In a period when throughout Europe, 44).3 He also delivered designs for many and in Italy especially, crafts were devalued types of decorative objects realised in the more and more as part of a general trend to workshops of the Ducal court, such as downgrade manual labour and assert art’s tapestries or table decorations (trionfi da nobility through its association with the tavola).4 Although, as the primary sources liberal arts, this might come as a surprise, but suggest, his paintings were not must be understood as a conscious position quantitatively unimportant in his work,5 I adopted by the Medici rulers as part of their consider painting to be peripheral to his very carefully staged-managed process of activity; moreover, very few of his painted taking control over the arts and submitting 6 works can still be identified nowadays. them to their authority. Fig. 1 – Baccio del Bianco, Costume study, pen and ink over black chalk 14 and coloured washes on paper, GDSI, inv. 1329 A. A large body of literature has cycles, public statuary and architecture to acknowledged that the Accademia del collecting products of the so-called “applied Disegno played a central role in this process. I arts,” and to a taste for precious materials. am not concerned here with the academic Cosimo I had already established a tapestry phenomenon, so I will only address the manufacture industry and a workshop for the problem with respect to other artistic issues, production of crystal glass.12 But this interest such as the position of crafts, or the formation in crafts intensified during the reign of of Baccio del Bianco and the other artists Francesco I, the principe dello Studiolo, as working for the Medici court. In this sense, he was called, due to his interests in one should keep in mind the potential experiments in alchemy and natural distinction pointed out by Anthony Hughes sciences,13 the results of which were used in between the intentions of the artists and those the activities of the crafts’ workshops that he of the founders of the Academy.8 It is established.14 In 1583 Francesco transferred unquestionable that the artists’ interests in the workshops to the Uffizi, which was the founding the Academy included that of first step towards the foundation of the achieving social recognition, but that does not Galleria dei Lavori in 1588, the first State imply, as Charles Dempsey suggested, a clear manufactory. It comprised workshops of all break with the guild conception,9 and most kinds of applied arts, most importantly the importantly, it does not imply the same semiprecious stonecutters working for the interests behind the Grand Duke’s support of Medici Cappella dei Principi,15 but also the Academy. On the contrary, an analysis of painters and sculptors. In 1617 Cosimo II the artistic scene of the period will prove that established in the Boboli gardens a fornace these were not the Grand Duke’s interests. per far bichieri di figure scherzose In the last decades of the century, during importing glass masters from Venice. the reigns of Francesco I and Ferdinando I, Baccio del Bianco and Stefano della Bella the tight relation between the arts and the were to provide drawings for these glass Medici family, which had by now become objects.16 an essential element of the constructed These, along with his other many image of the Medici rulers, was to change projects for the court, make of Baccio one of drastically. As Michael Levey has shown,10 the artists most involved in the new it was the era of the courtier-artist, emphasis on craft, as well as an example of employed to serve the needs of the ruling the multi-skilled type of artist promoted by family with his multiple talents, and the the Medici court. He also produced cartoons “traffic” of artists, asked, sent, received by for tapestries, as well as drawings for funeral the rulers confirms this,11 as do the two monuments, silver table centre-pieces or trips of Baccio del Bianco to the courts of reliquaries. In 1637 he collaborated in the the Emperor Ferdinand II and the Spanish production of a table in semi-precious king Philip IV. stones.17 One of his drawings for table The intention behind the creation of the decorations, representing a craftsman Accademia del Disegno by Cosimo I was engaged in his activity, speaks, with specifically to ensure a supply of artists to Baccio’s typical wittiness, of the place of the serve the dynasty and to set up a workshop artisan at the Medici court: an element in a where the Medici iconography would be well-thought mechanism (Fig.
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