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Bartolomeo Bettini's Cycle of Paintings by Michelangelo, Pontormo, and Bronzino for His Florentine Camera

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Bartolomeo Bettini's Cycle of Paintings by Michelangelo, Pontormo, and Bronzino for His Florentine Camera City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 9-2015 A Merchant-Banker's Ascent by Design: Bartolomeo Bettini's Cycle of Paintings by Michelangelo, Pontormo, and Bronzino for His Florentine Camera Richard Aste Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/841 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] A Merchant-Banker’s Ascent by Design: Bartolomeo Bettini’s Cycle of Paintings by Michelangelo, Pontormo, and Bronzino for His Florentine Camera By Richard Aste A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Art History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, the City University of New York 2015 i © 2015 Richard Aste All Rights Reserved ii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Art History in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. James M. Saslow ____________________ _______________________________________ Date Chair of Examining Committee Claire Bishop ____________________ _______________________________________ Date Executive Officer Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank Amanda Wunder Deborah Krohn Supervisory Committee The City University of New York iii Abstract A Merchant-Banker’s Ascent by Design: Bartolomeo Bettini’s Cycle of Paintings by Michelangelo, Pontormo, and Bronzino for His Florentine Camera By Richard Aste Advisor: James M. Saslow This project examines the early art patronage of a sixteenth-century Florentine merchant-banker, Bartolomeo Bettini, an ambitious anti-Medici Republican with aristocratic pretensions. Bettini was a nobleman, but he aspired to join the city’s elite patrician class, and about 1532 he commissioned Florence’s leading painters to decorate a camera, or private chamber, in his family palazzo. Through his first major commission, a cycle of paintings by Michelangelo, Pontormo, and Bronzino, he began his ascent through the city’s slippery social order. Florence’s hierarchy was then being redefined by the newly reinstalled Medici in the wake of the siege of Florence and collapse of its two-hundred-and-fifty year Republic. This study takes Bettini’s decorative program as a starting point for a comprehensive view of conspicuous consumption and domestic display as social strategies for securing status in early ducal Florence. Chapter 1 addresses Bettini, his life, his social network of friends and neighbors, and his politics; chapter 2 his celebrated painters, their careers, their politics, and their interest in love and language (major themes of Bettini’s program); chapter 3 Bettini’s program, the extant paintings and preparatory drawings, and the program’s iconography; and chapter 4 the social role of a private interior—here, either a bedroom or a private study, both of which will be discussed—in elevating the owner’s status in Renaissance Florence. iv Current scholarship on Bettini’s cycle of paintings has focused on decoding the program’s complex inconography, particularly the meaning of the Michelangelo-Pontormo Venus and Cupid panel painting, within the rich context of Florentine artistic and literary circles in the mid-sixteenth century. Indeed, debates about the city’s official language (Tuscan versus Latin) and theories of love are at the very heart of Bettini’s program. Yet few scholars have successfully addressed the cycle as a whole, including the poet portraits painted by Bronzino to fill the camera’s lunettes. Designing an erudite program was essential for this ambitious merchant- banker and his social ascent, but Bettini’s patronage also reveals his desire to align himself through the arts with the city’s rulers and leading tastemakers, the Medici, regardless of diverging politics. Bettini serves as a case study in understanding how even at home wealthy Florentine Republicans asserted their power and made their identity in a new ducal society. v Acknowledgements I owe the completion of this dissertation to my advisor, Professor James M. Saslow. He has been an unfailing source of strength and encouragement at the Graduate Center from course work and oral examinations through the thesis defense. I thank him profoundly for supporting my professional development, and I am honored to call him a colleague and friend. At the Graduate Center I am also indebted to Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank and Amanda Wunder, and at the Bard Graduate Center to Deborah Krohn, for their time, their expertise, and their belief in this study. Special thanks are due to Graduate Center Art History Distinguished Professor Janet Cox- Rearick, whose book Bronzino’s Chapel of Eleonora in the Palazzo Vecchio inspired me to discover the world of Cinquecento Florence at CUNY; to Executive Officer Claire Bishop; and to Andrea Appel for her patience in fielding questions answered in the handbook. I am equally indebted to numerous friends and family members who saw the completion of this project when I did not. For their good humor and support, I thank Edward and Katherine Aste, Stephen Bodden, Monica Eulitz, Meredith Hale, Elsa Homberg-Pinassi, Andrew Magnes, Ana and Carmen Pelaez, Jorge Rivas, Edward Sullivan, and Dominique Surh. My colleagues at the Brooklyn Museum supported me during the final stages of writing and editing, and they kindly allowed me to take much needed time away from my position there as Curator of European Art to realize this project. For their generosity I thank Brian Bentley, Teresa Carbone, Barry Harwood, Arnold Lehman, Ken Moser, and Kevin Stayton. Finally, I dedicate this study on love and art in Renaissance Italy to my parents— Rosemarie Aste, Wenceslao Aste, and Richard Interiano—who introduced me to Italy at a very young age and supported my devotion to bringing the power of images to others in adulthood. vi Table of Contents Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................... vi List of Illustrations .................................................................................................................... ix Introduction .................................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: The Life of Bartolomeo Bettini ...............................................................................24 Bettini’s Family and Neighborhood.......................................................................24 Bettini’s Politics .....................................................................................................29 Bettini as Banker in Florence and Rome ...............................................................38 Bettini and Merchant-Banker Patronage During Political Crisis ...........................41 “Mercante e Mecenate dei Letterati”: Bettini, the Accademia Fiorentina, and the questione della lingua ...................................................................45 Chapter 2: Bettini’s Camera Painters ........................................................................................56 Michelangelo..........................................................................................................56 Michelangelo and Representations of Love and Ideal Beauty ...............................61 Pontormo ................................................................................................................77 Michelangelo and Pontormo: Collaborators par excellence ..................................81 Bronzino .................................................................................................................92 Chapter 3: Reconstructing Bettini’s Camera Decoration ........................................................100 Phase 1: Bronzino’s Poet Portraits .......................................................................103 Bettini’s Choice of Poets .............................................................115 Dante ............................................................................................119 vii Petrarch ........................................................................................126 Boccaccio .....................................................................................131 Phase 2: The Michelangelo-Pontormo Venus and Cupid ....................................134 The Venus and Cupid: A Formal and Iconographical Analysis ..147 The Venus and Cupid: Neoplatonism Behind Closed Doors .......162 Chapter 4: Bettini’s splendore: The Camera’s Physical and Social Functions .......................175 Bettini’s Camera as Bedroom ..............................................................................179 Bettini’s Camera as Study ....................................................................................194 Conclusion ...............................................................................................................................209 Epilogue...................................................................................................................................214 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................221
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