Two Pictures in the NGV

 Today I have decided to write about two pictures which are to be found in the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), which is in Melbourne, the capital of the state of Australia where I live. The first is a large painting which I have loved since I was a child, when I first saw it.

I

It is called The Banquet of Cleopatra and was painted in Venice by Giambattista Tiepolo in 1744, at which time it was purchased directly from his studio and sent to Dresden. In 1764, it was bought by Catherine the Great of Russia, in which country it remained, in various palaces and museums, until its ultimate sale in 1932 and subsequent purchase (in London) in 1933 by the NGV. Apparently, in the late 1920s the USSR was in need of foreign currency and had put a number of its pictures and other treasures up for sale. The painting is a large oil on canvas (250 x 370cm) and this is interesting because Tiepolo painted several versions of this subject, at least one of which is in fresco (Palazzo Labia in Venice); several other versions, both large and small, are known and are kept in various European collections, as well as in Russia.

The Banquet of Cleopatra, 1744, oil on canvas by Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770) in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

Image:Public Domain Wikipedia

The Banquet of Cleopatra (NGV) is a typically large Venetian bravura piece, that is, a suitably serious subject from history, mythology or the Bible, usually crowded with all sorts of figures, including dwarfs and African servants, all wearing beautiful clothes, and set, where appropriate, in grand pseudo-classical loggias or palaces. Our painting is set in a loggia of a type reflecting classical Roman influence, even though the legendary event of the wager between Marc Antony and Cleopatra may have occurred in Egypt!1 In niches set into the pale wall which substantially separates the loggia area from the arched wall in the background, are two very Romano-Greek looking 'Egyptian' statues, both however very half-hearted attempts at setting an Egyptian scene. Further disinterest in historical 'fact' is demonstrated by those same beautiful clothes which are at the height of contemporary Venetian fashion, amongst the aristocracy at least, despite the historical period of the event, that is, the latter part of the 1st century BC. The only concession to historical accuracy, apart from elements of the architecture derived from Greco-Roman models (not Egyptian), is the very elaborate helmet worn by Marc Antony, the figure wearing the red cloak, with his back to us.

Naturally, the patrons of such images were the aristocracy and the rich of Venice - which was very rich at that time - which traded with the Levant in all sorts of commodities, from spices and cloth to coffee! This wealth is here on display as it was even in religious images of the period: the servants, the dogs of various breeds, the fine stuffs such as the damask table cloth (possibly, as the name suggests, from Damascus), the beautiful scenographic settings, the elegantly-dressed courtiers in the background. But the most expensive thing in the whole image is the legendary priceless pearl which, holding between her fingers, Cleopatra is about to drop into a glass of vinegar - which she drinks - thereby winning her bet with Marc Antony about who could host the most expensive banquet. 

Without going into detailed analysis of the numerous formal elements of this master-work, I would like to concentrate on one particular curiosity, namely, the ubiquitousness of decorative heads: be they human, animal or fantastical! In this case, I am not referring to the brilliant heads of the human actors - nor those of the numerous pet dogs - but instead, to the small heads and figures adorning many objects within the image, from Marc Antony's helmet, to the handles of pitchers.

This photo, a detail of The Banquet by Tiepolo (NGV) shows the silver bowl of fruit which is sitting in the middle of the banqueting table, in the centre of the composition; to note are the winged mermaid-like figures and the vaguely Egyptian face directing its gaze out of the painting. (Photo: the author)

This photo shows the two pitchers situated on the floor in front of the table: note here the scene containing two figures engraved on or set into the larger pitcher; on the side of the smaller pitcher is a laughing satyr's head, a sort of human face with a beard and goat's horns, possible a symbol of lust. (Photo: the author)

A close-up detail of the smaller pitcher (Photo:the author)

This detail is of a decorative element on Cleopatra's chair and can be seen to the left of her right wrist; it appears to be a kind of Egyptian-like head, perhaps attached to a snake's body. (Photo: the author)

Of similar heads and figures there are many placed throughout the painting, including on a suspended pitcher on the extreme right and the harpy figure of the small fountain in the extreme lower left corner; but perhaps the most elaborate example is in fact that helmet worn by Marc Antony. This helmet, a parade helmet rather than one to be worn in battle, has a winged dragon supporting its beautiful magenta-plumed crest, as well as what appears to be a lion above the ear and, below that, an old man's bearded face with its moustache hanging over Marc Antony's cheek. Indeed, the helmet is one of the most striking features in the whole painting, a painting containing many beautiful and elaborate details. 

The reason these small decorative heads attracted my attention was their similarity to those used ubiquitously by Michelangelo in his sculpture and architecture. They appear for instance on the armour worn by one of his figures of the dukes in the New Sacristy (Sagrestia Nuova) of San Lorenzo in Florence: on both the back and the front of the cuirass worn by the figure of Giuliano de' Medici; similar motifs are the lion skin headdress worn by the figure of Lorenzo de' Medici, as well as a kind of bat-like head on the arm of his chair. Likewise, the figure of Night on the tomb of Giuliano is adorned, apart from the realistic owl, with a very odd mask. Bat-like and anthropomorphic heads reappear time and time again, both in the New Sacristy - for example on the candlesticks on the altar and on the friezes along the walls -  and in the Laurentian Library; there still exist some of his original sketches for these strange faces (and figures), all of an astounding variety.2

This small detail of Michelangelo's enormous output was taken-up by both his contemporaries and by many artists who came later as, in the present example, we see in Tiepolo. While Michelangelo may not have actually invented these grotesque 'masks' as the Italians call them, he certainly developed and 'popularised' them among artists.

Before moving on to discuss another picture in the NGV, I would like to comment on one more thing in Tiepolo's great painting and that is a particular element of its structure, and this because it is similarly used in that next picture. From the point of view of its colour, Tiepolo has 'constructed' The Banquet of Cleopatra on this basis: in general, the brightest and purist colours are closest to the viewer, the less strong are in the middle-ground and the weakest or most dilute are in the backgound. The visual effect is that we experience the figures 'in front' as closest to us (they are also the largest), the less brightly-coloured as somewhere in the middle distance, and the least strong as further back (for instance, on the background parapet); a simple comparison of the central table and its diners with the arched wall in the background should make the difference in colour brightness and purity clear. Tiepolo was by no means the first to utilise colour in this formal, constructive way but he does use it! As mentioned earlier, this is not an exhaustive analysis of this painting but I hope it will stimulate a closer look next time.3

II

 The second painting is by the very important French artist, Nicolas Poussin, who painted it in Rome for an Italian art collector in Turin. The Crossing of the Red Sea is in oil on canvas and measures 156 x 215 cm; it dates from 1632-34. Poussin was deeply affected by the strong contemporary interest in classical art and so went to Rome to study, a common pilgrimage for artists from all over Europe at the time; he died there in 1665. As we can see, both the subject and its handling are very different from Tiepolo's somewhat later, and in theme more aristocratic, picture.

The Crossing of the Red Sea, 1632-34, oil on canvas by Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

Image: Public Domain Wikipedia

To begin with, the three principal actors in the immediate foreground are possibly derived from some ancient Roman sculptural example; although Roman statuary was not generally coloured, the basically nude figures are clothed in loin cloths which happen to be in the three primary colours, namely red, yellow and blue. This is no accidental or casual decision: the three primaries are so called because they cannot be made any stronger or brighter (by the admixture of other colours) than they already are. This means from a formal point of view, that they stand out more strongly than any other colour, whether it be a pure colour - straight from the tube so to speak4 - or a mixture. In fact, mixing any colour with any other colour will reduce the individual power or strength of all of the colours in the new mixture.

Painters use both 'straight from the tube' colours and mixtures of them to produce different effects; as we saw with the Tiepolo painting, painters can 'construct' space or depth with the relative strength of their colours. In Tiepolo's picture and in this one by Poussin, depth in space has been created, that is the illusion of depth, through the manipulation of the colours, some stronger, others less so. Of course, there are other means with which to create space, such as receding perspective lines (as in the floor of Tiepolo's painting) and making things and people smaller as they are fictively 'further away' from the viewer. In Poussin's painting, the major figures are both larger and more strongly coloured than are the other figures; this can be seen for example, in the red worn by the foreground figure, a 'pure' red in his case but, as it is used on the clothes of other figures further back, it becomes gradually weaker and weaker, eventually being a kind of 'grey' version of its original pure, unadulterated condition. The fictive light source, very important in this painting, also adds to the sense of depth as well as to the drama: the main 'natural' light is falling more or less only on the lower left quarter or so of the image, thereby drawing our attention particularly to those parts, and especially so to the three main foreground figures.

Detail of The Crossing of the Red Sea by Poussin showing the principal foreground figures in their red, blue and yellow clothing. Note the beautiful 'academic' drawing, the strong shadows, the general 'curved arch' shape created by the movement of these men as they gather up the shields of the now-submerged Egyptians. (Photo: the author)

Poussin's painting is to my eyes now somewhat rhetorical; many of the figures have a 'wooden' quality and the whole thing has a sort of overblown feeling, albeit that it represents a quite dramatic event. From a personal point of view, the lower foreground 'strip' containing the three major figures, with its beautiful drawing and colour, is the only part of this painting that appeals to me in any way; I have no objection to pictures about Old or New Testament stories, about religious matters generally, but, given Poussin's acknowledged love of Classical art, the lower strip of this picture could just as easily - and more successfully - be a painting of or from an ancient Roman relief sculpture.

A detail of the man in blue demonstrating Poussin's drawing and colouring skills. In this kind of 'academic' painting, the figures would be first modelled in a monochrome reddish brown onto which the lights and darks would be added; in essence, the 'in shadow' areas of this figure have hardly been touched, whereas the lighter areas have been modulated to indicate the shapes of the muscles and the fall of light - here clearly from the left. (Photo: the author) 

When the NGV is open and you feel like spending a little time with just a couple of works (actually the best way to visit a museum), I hope these comments may add something to your experience.

1 Egypt by this time had been a Hellenistic culture for about two hundred and seventy years, a culture set in train by the conquests of Alexander the Great; the lover of both Julius Caesar and Marc Antony, Cleopatra VII belonged to the Ptolemaic Dynasty (305-30 BC) and was the last of several historical queens with this name. Also, by this time Egypt had declined enormously from the days of the powerful Pharaohs and, from 30 BC, was no more than a client state of the Romans. It is therefore reasonable to expect that there would have been some Greco-Roman buildings in different parts of Egypt, especially one supposes near the coast. In one of the sources of the Cleopatra story, Plutarch's Life of Antony, it seems that the first meeting between the two occurred in Cilicia (today, southern Turkey), but that they then retired to Alexandria in Egypt; it is unclear exactly where the famous banquet actually took place. In any case, the architecture in Tiepolo's painting is an amalgam of Renaissance elaboration of classical models, some archeological knowledge and fantasy. 

Two further comments concerning the setting: Tiepolo was enamoured of the very large and wonderful paintings of his 16th century Venetian predecessor, Paolo Veronese (1528-1588), many of whose pictures also relied on fantastic classically-inspired architectural settings. An even earlier predecessor was the famous and influential architect, Palladio, whose neo-classical villas and palaces could be seen all over the Veneto and whose compositions may have had some influence on the architectural themes of Tiepolo. Incidentally, it is known that Tiepolo was often assisted by a colleague who specialised in the painting of architectural settings, Girolamo Mengozzi Colonna, although it is not established as far as I know that Mengozzi Colonna had a hand in our Banquet.

2 Such bat-like faces and other dragon-like inventions of Michelangelo's can be seen in Florence in the Laurentian Library (Biblioteca Laurenziana), again at San Lorenzo, both in the floor designs and on the ends of the study benches. They can be seen in Rome on the Porta Pia, on the Tomb of Julius II in San Pietro in Vincoli, on capitals at the Campidoglio and on the Palazzo Farnese, the so-called 'fregio con maschere' or, frieze with masks. It would seem that Michelangelo amused himself with this endless invention, no doubt occasionally taking some inspiration from the faces of the real people around him! Similar bizarre and fantastic creations however, which had a wide diffusion in the Middle Ages as well, go back at least to ancient Rome where contemporary fresco examples can be seen in the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme. Mannerists too made use of such devices, for instance in Bronzino's Portrait of a Young Man with a Book (c. 1530), in the Met, NY. 

3 One other curiosity in Tiepolo's Banquet is the positioning of the tall figure wearing a blue cape and hat, situated in the foreground to the left: a casual glance at this figure would lead us to assume that it was he who was carrying the large platter of food with his left arm. On closer inspection however, it becomes clearer that behind him is a smaller figure, the back of whose head is only just visible, who in fact is carrying the charger - although he appears to have no feet! The tall man in blue does have a left arm which, again on closer inspection, we can see he has brought around behind his back. And finally, what seems to be a small head growing out of his right shoulder in fact belongs to another attendant actually placed behind Cleopatra. Why is this interesting? Because, normally, figures are placed in paintings so that they are clearly seen, sometimes partly obscured by buildings, trees or other figures but, nevertheless, their 'action' or role is clear. In this instance, although the figure in blue is apparently clear enough, in fact his position and that of the figures he obscures is to say the least, ambiguous.

4 Tube colours did not come into use until the mid-nineteenth century; prior to that, artists bought the coloured powders or pigments from their artists' colour-man and mixed them with a binder (oil or egg or other) at their studios. Oil colours could be kept for some time, before they started to dry and become hard, in small pig's bladder pouches or bags as is sometimes seen in self-portraits. The advent of commercially-prepared colours in metal tubes revolutionised the ability of artists to keep their paints workable, almost indefinitely, and to go out into the landscape, that is, to work away from the studio. This invention was acknowledged as such by some of the Impressionists. Neither Tiepolo nor Poussin, nor Veronese or Michelangelo had tube colours!

Timeline: Michelangelo, Florentine sculptor, painter, architect and poet: 1475-1564 

                Palladio, (from Padua) Venetian Republic architect: 1508-1580

                Veronese, (from Verona) Venetian painter: 1528-1588

                Poussin, French painter: 1594-1665

                Tiepolo, Venetian painter: 1696-1770

Regarding Two Pictures by Giorgio Vasari

  In this article, I would like to discuss a couple of paintings by Giorgio Vasari. Vasari is known principally as the author of The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects (1568 re-edition)1 as well as being the architect of the Uffizi Galleries. He was also however a painter and I believe, judging from a remark he makes in 'The Lives'2, that he thought of himself first and foremost as such. His general thesis was that Italian art and specifically Tuscan, once detached from the awkward and silly influence of Byzantine painting (his opinions!), got on its way to its maximum evolutionary expression in the person of Michelangelo. Without dwelling on that, a quite separate topic, Michelangelo was for Vasari not only the high point of Italian art, but also a friend, a mentor, an exemplar; given that, it is perhaps reasonable to then find many references to the work of Michelangelo in the painted works of Vasari himself.

The Meeting of Christ and Veronica on the Way to Calvary, 1572, oil on panel by Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574), in Santa Croce, Florence. The people in front of the painting are press photographers present at the inauguration in 2018 of the restored panel: it is interesting how they seem almost to have spilled out of the picture! (Photo: the author)

The first work is a large oil on wooden panel completed in 1572, known as The Meeting of Christ and Veronica on the Way to Calvary (herein shortened to Veronica or Christ and Veronica). This picture was painted by Vasari as a memorial to Michelangelo who had died in 1564 and is situated in Michelangelo's family chapel in the huge church of Santa Croce in Florence. This chapel itself is located to the left of the tomb of Michelangelo, also designed by Vasari; both tomb and painting were recently restored and the cleaned painting was rehung and shown to the press in late 2018.

Vasari's wonderful picture may be categorized as Mannerist in style and characterised as typically Vasari as well as typically Mannerist. As said, it is a large image, several metres high, crowded with a swirling, spiralling horde of people. The movement of this horde begins in the top left of the painting, proceeding down that side to eventually form a frieze of the main actors along the bottom of the panel; it then continues up the right side and into the distant hill of Calvary, thereby forming a rough 'U' shape as the basic structure. Rational space is suggested by increase and diminution in the size of the figures: they are smaller as they 'enter' from the left and as they 'leave' on the right; they are largest and more or less consistent along the bottom of the scene.

Two points may be made here; first, that the 'U' structure is completely at odds with the preceding triangular or pyramidal one common in the Renaissance and secondly, that the space in the painting is confounded in a typically Mannerist fashion. That is to say, the space is a somewhat unreal one, not completely coherent; it must be said however, that in this picture the space is more 'normal' than in many other Mannerist images. The fact that Vasari has made distant figures rationally smaller than close ones is a concession to 'reality' not often found in the works of earlier masters of this period, such as Pontormo or Rosso Fiorentino3. But the crowded scene, basically composed of figures in various expressive attitudes - sometimes exaggeratedly so - is a typical Mannerist device.

One thing which struck me as unusual and perhaps not typically Mannerist was the beautiful landscape in the top right corner of this picture; I had previously never thought of Vasari as a landscape painter but it is abundantly clear from this painting that he was in fact quite sensitive to landscape; it is possible of course that he was influenced here by his contact with Venetian painting (according to Vasari himself, he was in Venice about 1542). I was also struck by the power of this image in which, as can be seen from my photo (which unfortunately missed the figures in the bottom left corner), the main figures are larger than life. But it is not only the size which is impressive, something which often borders on being overblown in Vasari; perhaps more than one might like, his paintings can be highly rhetorical and, as such, in spite of their frequently massive dimensions, curiously fail to impress. In this instance however, it is the force of the artist's expression and the overall impact which are also impressive.

Let's now consider some of the details. Despite my earlier remark about the structure of this image, about its not having a Renaissance structure, there is ironically a triangle - an inverted one - right in the centre foreground, formed by the shoulder of the soldier on the right and travelling down towards Christ's head and shoulder where it then takes an upward direction along the heads of Veronica (holding the veil), the woman behind her clasping her hands, and continuing to the shoulder of the Saint John (?) figure in pale pink; this last segment leads incidentally, to two supposed portraits: the bearded man in the pink cap, holding the notice to be put on the Cross - Rosso Fiorentino - and his companion with the flattened nose -  Michelangelo. 

This inverted triangle (or, 'V' shape) is reinforced by the Michelangelesque figure (another portrait of Michelangelo, or of Vasari himself?) holding the Cross, the wooden arm of which strengthens the triangular shape in that part of the painting, while at the same time, together with the Pietà-inspired human arm4, drawing our attention to the focal point of the image, the meeting of the two principal characters, Veronica and Christ. This triangle or, perhaps better, since we are discussing a Mannerist work, this wedge, interrupting as it does the general movement of the crowd, cuts down and into that same crowd, sharpening the drama and heightening the expressiveness of this terrible event. The downward push from the left side of the painting and the upward drag on the right, have their inverted apex here, at the face of Christ. An inescapable 'intrusion' however, between the heads of the two main protagonists, is the hand of that man holding the Cross; could this be a kind of statement by Vasari - the champion of the rightful place of artists, people who in fact work with their hands - to remind us that the image exists thanks to the work of an artist?

To a certain extent, Vasari's large panel painting in Santa Croce may be compared to a wonderful, similarly large panel by Rosso Fiorentino in the Florentine church of San Lorenzo, his Sposalizio della Vergine (Marriage of the Virgin) of 1523: it too is crowded with figures but there forming a St James' cross ('X') as the structural framework. The main actors are more conventionally placed in the centre of the image but the sensation of multi-levelled, crowded action is reminiscent of Vasari's Christ and Saint Veronica 5.

Concezione di Nostra Donna (The Conception of Our Lady), 350 x 231cm, 1540, by Giorgio Vasari, in the church of the SS Apostoli in Florence (Photo: the author)

The Conception of Our Lady is also a large painting, situated above an altar in the small church of the SS Apostoli (Holy Apostles) in Florence. Its form however is different from the Veronica picture in Santa Croce in that it is a rectangle topped with a semi-circle. Our Lady (apparently pregnant) appears in that semi-circle supported by angels, some bearing Latin quotations; under her right foot there is the Moon as seen by St John in his visions while on Patmos, as well as the serpent whose head she is pressing down on.

The serpent in turn has wound its way up a tree, a reference to the Tree of Life (described by Vasari in The Lives thus: "... figurato l'albero del peccato originale ..." ["I represented the tree of original sin"]), the same tree which the reclining nude figures at the bottom of the painting, Adam and Eve, were told not to eat from. The other figures, apart from John the Baptist - tied to the tree on the left, just below the serpent - are identified by Vasari himself as important kings and prophets from the Old Testament. These personages, together with the centrally-placed tree, and the fact that the figures are bound to the tree, hint at this picture's heavily symbolic content; Vasari in fact, admitting that the symbolism was difficult, tells how he consulted his erudite literary friends about how to manage it 6.

I am concerned with the way in which Vasari has structured this image, particularly in relation to the one discussed first. The Veronica picture was dependent as we saw on a 'U' shaped structure which gave the image a sense of movement, from the left, down across the lower part of the picture, and up along the right side. This painting on the other hand, has a central axis - the tree - from which the Biblical figures more or less radiate towards both the right and the left, and which, with the disturbed and yet hopeful figures of Adam and Eve almost as its base, carries the movement up to the summit: the Virgin Mary who will relieve Man of his sins - by giving birth to the Christ - and in so doing, fulfil the prophesies of the Old and New Testaments. In this radiating movement, the figures at the same time form a rough circle around the tree, anticipating thereby the circle formed also by Our Lady and her angels. The broadly symmetrical scaffolding upon which the picture depends also marks it as different from the Veronica in Santa Croce - a much later painting however (1572)7.

And where in the Veronica picture we saw Vasari paying homage to principally Michelangelo but also to Rosso Fiorentino, again in this painting he indirectly recognises the Mannerist master, as well as again Michelangelo, in his adaptation for the figures of Adam and Eve of similar figures drawn and painted by Rosso (Adam, somewhat changed but adapted from the Christ in Rosso's Volterra Deposition)8. Apart from these references per se, this painting is interesting for the way in which the, we could almost say 'normal' borrowing from Michelangelo contrasts so markedly with the borrowings from Rosso: this is particularly obvious in the supposed Moses figure, the bearded man to the right of the tree, extending his orange-sleeved arm, an obviously Michelangelesque derivation, and the almost languid figure of Adam just below. While Moses may have a kind of melodramatic quality about him, Adam on the other hand, has an odd romantic wistfulness which contrasts strongly with the robustness of Moses for instance. 

The really curious thing is that, whereas many (but not all) of Michelangelo's figures are nude, when adapted by Vasari he tends to clothe them, as here in the Conception of Our Lady; Rosso (and Pontormo) also made many nude figures but, for some reason - perhaps indicating their primitive state - Vasari has kept these ones nude. The 'clothing' of Michelangelo, if I may put it like that, by Vasari, while still revealing his indebtedness to his 'hero', is a puzzle. In this painting, the clothes of certain of the actors of course, help to identify whom they are meant to represent and, likewise, the nakedness of Adam and Eve in this context clearly identifies them. Nonetheless, 'clothed' Michelangelo-derived figures is an interesting phenomenon, allowing of course for the numerous clothed figures on the Sistine ceiling. The changes introduced in the Counter Reformation period had significant influence on the way artists represented human and divine figures, although Vasari's picture was painted before the Council of Trent (1545-63) which brought about those changes. The mood however, had begun to alter quite a bit before then.

For those not completely familiar with the differences between a Renaissance picture and a Mannerist one, I will include to finish a Renaissance painting, one which may be found in the beautiful church of Santo Spirito in Florence. It is not regarded as a major picture but it does typify the sought-after clarity of expression, and clarity of space, due of course to the use of perspective drawing; this last element was one more or less disregarded if not actually despised by the later Mannerists. And, although not immediately apparent, there is an implied triangle in this painting: an implied line begins in the lower left corner and, meeting the angel's right knee, passes to his left elbow and is then picked-up by the (perspective) lines of the floor decoration and moves into the deep distance; on the right, beginning in that lower corner, it passes through the Virgin's left knee, passes her right elbow and proceeds into the distance to meet the left line at the apex of the (implied) triangle: this point would seem to be the apparition of the Holy Spirit situated in the sky below the distant arch.

The Annunciation, late 15th century (?), Anonymous artist, in Santo Spirito in Florence. (Photo: the author)

This picture, whose author I have not been able to discover, is a lovely example of the order and clarity which are typical of Renaissance painting; although the figures to a certain extent hark back to earlier types, the rational and 'real' distribution of the various spaces, receding as they do to a kind of infinite ideal landscape, represent very well the formal aim of the use of perspective to create the illusion of actual, 3D space. This aim, this 'intellectual' space, quite at odds with what existed previously, was almost totally rejected by Michelangelo (in his paintings) and the Mannerists. Remarkable also is the (very) small number of actors here! Probably painted in tempera on wood, this panel is not very large but has a tranquil beauty very different from the tumultuous compositions of Vasari, Michelangelo and other Mannerists. 

1 Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori by Giorgio Vasari, 1568, the so-called Giuntina version (published earlier in 1550 in the so-called Torrentiniana version). In The Lives, Vasari asks his readers to consider his biographies/history as the opinions of a painter and not to criticise them because they weren't written in the manner of a professional writer; at the end of a section called L'autore agl'artefici del disegno (The author to artists) he says: " ... io ho scritto come pittore ... e per essere inteso da voi artefici, ...", etc. With these words, Vasari makes plain that he is writing from the point of view of an artist (specifically, a painter) and further, that he wants his writings to be understood by (you) artists. 

Incidentally, the Uffizi were originally designed as administrative offices - hence the contemporary name 'Uffizi' - but later became a palace and eventually the famous galleries they are today. Begun in 1560 and completed after Vasari's death, the first floor (second floor in Italy) became a gallery in 1581 and remained private until opened to the public in 1789. Interestingly, as we all know, the Uffizi are also in the shape of a 'U', just like the structure of the first painting under discussion.

2 'The Lives' or Le Vite in Italian, is the common abbreviated title used when referring to Vasari's written magnum opus.

3 Il Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino (both born in 1494) were two of the first protagonists of the style which became known as Mannerism - this partly due to the frequent use of the term by Vasari in The Lives. This style seems to have originated in Florence with artists such as Pontormo taking their cue from the mature, especially painted, works of Michelangelo, whose Sistine Chapel frescos had a profound influence on younger painters. The dissolution of space, indeed its almost total irrelevance in terms of natural depth, may be seen there particularly in Michelangelo's Last Judgement fresco. Pontormo's most beautiful so-called Deposition in Florence is an example of Michelangelo's influence, both in its colour and in the way the image is filled-up almost entirely with figures; his Visitation at Carmignano does incidentally contain some distant figures within an ante litteram De Chirico-like space. Similarly, in Rosso Fiorentino's startling and saddening Depostion at Volterra there are tiny background figures, again in a profoundly deep recession (basically, a backdrop for the frieze of main characters in the foreground).

4 Michelangelo made several Pietàs probably the most famous of which is the earliest, the one in St Peter's basilica in Rome; two others (called del Duomo and, at one time di Palestrina respectively) are in Florence; the last one, called the Rondanini, is in Milan. All four have one of the arms hanging limply, a motif common to others of his sculptures, such as the unfinished St Matthew in Florence, as well as to several figures, although not limp, in the Sistine frescos: for example, the so-called 'angel' lifting the blessed souls with a rosary in the Last Judgement. Another possibly more direct inspiration for the head and arm of the man carrying the Cross in the Veronica could be the figure of Christ ("... con Gesù Cristo in aria ..." Vasari) in the Conversion of St Paul (1542-?), in the Cappella Paolina, at The Vatican. In any case, it has been rightly observed that the Veronica by Vasari is full of references to or borrowings from Michelangelo, his friend and mentor.

5 Although some Italian pictures may seem to visitors from English-speaking countries to be unnaturally busy and crowded, it would appear that in fact, all that those artists were doing was representing the way Italians then, as now, behave. My observation is that in almost all formal situations involving Italians, a kind of liberality of movement, uncommon in English-speaking nations, is absolutely the norm! Rosso Fiorentino was much admired by the younger Vasari and hence the inclusion of his portrait in the Veronica panel.

6 In The Lives, towards the end, Vasari discusses his own life and the circumstances of various of his own works: Descrizione dell'opere di Giorgio Vasari, Pittore et Architetto Aretino. To note here how Vasari again describes himself as a painter (pittore) and as coming from Arezzo (Aretino), that is, not Florence! As indicated above, Vasari republished an enlarged and 'corrected' version of The Lives in 1568: this being the case, he was able to give details about The Conception of Our Lady (1540) but, since The Meeting of Christ and Veronica on the Way to Calvary was painted or completed in 1572, that is, post the publication of The Lives in 1568, there is no comment about or mention of this work.

7 Michelangelo's Last Judgement, painted on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, was finished and unveiled in October 1541. This would suggest that Vasari had not seen it when he painted the Conception of Our Lady in 1540; the Meeting of Christ and Veronica in Santa Croce was completed in 1572, some thirty years after the Last Judgement (and only two years before Vasari himself died). This is significant because the Last Judgement was a major Mannerist work, by Vasari's own 'hero' and it may therefore be assumed that he, Vasari, took many lessons from that most important example.

8 In the catalogue of the 2014 exhibition Pontormo e Rosso Fiorentino, Divergenti Vie della "Maniera", ( Mandragora) at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, Massimiliano Rossi in his essay goes into a lot of detail concerning Vasari and Rosso (pp 329-339).