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 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).
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