Concerning Borrowings

The Resurrection, by Giorgio Vasari and Raffaellino del Colle, c.1545, oil on panel

Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Naples (Photo: the author)

In the previous article, I pointed out the (supposed) origin of the Christ figure in a painting made by Giorgio Vasari and Raffaellino del Colle, the Resurrection (c.1545, above), now in the museum of Capodimonte in Naples. Since the publication of that article I have, by chance, come across another 'borrowing' in the same work, this discussed in a very interesting article published in 2021 1. Although the author, Allison Kim, is developing a particular theory concerning Vasari's (stated) aim of keeping alive the memory of artists who had gone before him, as well as those of his own time - himself included -  she points out as an example - precisely in the painting I had discussed - Vasari's adaptation of two of the principal figures in a picture by Rosso Fiorentino, his Moses Defending the Daughters of Jethro (1523? or later?), now in the Uffizi. The two foreground figures in Rosso's picture (below) have provided the authors of the Naples Resurrection with two of their main actors; the poses of those latter figures, although substantially the same as Rosso's, have nevertheless been modified, but not to such a point that their origin is obscured: that is, they are openly based on Rosso Fiorentino's painting.

Moses Defending the Daughters of Jethro, c.1523, by Rosso Fiorentino, oil on canvas

Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence. (Image: WikiArt, Public Domain)

The Resurrection by Raffaellino del Colle,  c.1525, oil? on panel

The Cathedral of Sansepolcro. (Image: by Sailko, Wikipedia Public Domain)

So far as the observations made in my article are concerned, it is clear that the figure of the soldier in the right foreground of Raffaellino del Colle's own Resurrection of c.1525 (above), in the cathedral of Sansepolcro, was modelled on Raphael's very similar figure of Heliodorus (below), in the fresco entitled The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple, in the Vatican Stanze. That figure, the one apparently composed by Raphael and utilised by Raffaellino, seems to have had an influence on someone of greater stature than Raffaellino and that is on Michelangelo himself; a difficult thesis given the fact that Michelangelo made so many drawings of male figures, in numberless different poses, and one wonders why he might have felt the need to adapt such a figure by Raphael. Between the years 1542 and 1550, Michelangelo was engaged in the painting of two frescos in the Cappella Paolina (the Pauline Chapel) and it is there that I detect this possible influence of Raphael; this is especially intriguing, if true, since he and Raphael are generally considered to have been rivals. However, given the time lapsed between the death of the latter (1520) and the painting of the Paoline Chapel, perhaps Michelangelo had wished to do him some honour - as in fact Raphael had done by incorporating the figure of Michelangelo himself (in the guise of Heraclitus the philosopher) into the Vatican Stanze fresco known as the The School of Athens.

Detail of The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple, c.1511, by Raphael, fresco

Le Stanze di Raffaelo, The Vatican (Image: Public Domain)

There, in the Pope's private chapel, Michelangelo painted two large frescos, one the Conversion of Saul (later, Saint Paul) and the other, the Crucifixion of Saint Peter. In the former work (detail below), Saul is shown knocked off his horse and with his arm raised to shield him from the divine light coming from above; this pose seems to me to be based on Raphael's Heliodorus - reversed and with some modification (of the arms in particular): note the position of the legs and the angle or view of the chest.

Detail of The Conversion of Saul (showing the figure of Saul) c.1542, by Michelangelo, fresco

Cappella Paolina, The Vatican (Image: Public Domain)

Also of interest in this same fresco is the figure on the right, in the pink trousers in the detail above; as I understand it, this fresco was the first of the two to be painted and, from what I can see, this particular figure, clearly ascending a kind of rough stairway, is used again - but reversed - in the second fresco, that is, The Crucifixion of Saint Peter. My attention was drawn to this figure because, in Naples, again in the museum of Capodimonte, there is one of Michelangelo's cartoons (an extremely rare object) made for the Crucifixion fresco. In it we see three men ascending some steps, a group that was used in the lower left corner of that fresco; one of the figures, the one on the lower left of the group, would seem to be very similar to the figure in the pink trousers in the Saul fresco - but reversed. There are however differences in the musculature of the two figures, not to mention that the angles of their heads are quite different; it may simply have been that Michelangelo liked the first example and decided to reuse the basic pose in the second fresco, making changes as needed.

Group of Men-at-arms, 1546 -1550, by Michelangelo, cartoon: charcoal on 19 sheets of paper glued together. 

Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Naples (Photo: the author)

Unfortunately, I have, as yet, never seen these two frescos and therefore cannot say whether or not the figures being discussed here are of the same size. If they are not, then obviously Michelangelo did not use the same cartoon 2 but he may have used the same original drawing! Many of Michelangelo's drawings - as opposed to cartoons - are quite small, no larger than an A4 sheet of paper; cartoons however were made to be the actual size required in a given fresco and were often, like the one above, very large. The artist would use a process known as 'squaring' whereby an original small drawing would have a grid of equal sized squares drawn over it; these squares, proportionally enlarged on a much bigger sheet (or sheets) of heavy paper - if not directly onto a panel painting - would then serve as a guide for the artist to copy whatever was drawn in each original square into the corresponding larger one. Then, in the case of fresco, as in this case, the cartoon drawing would have small holes put in it along all the major lines; these holes were then 'pounced' - that is, tapped - with a small bag full of charcoal dust. The dust would pass through the myriad holes and the artist would then have an 'enlarged' version of his or her original small drawing, now transferred onto the wall to be painted: an early form of 'join-the-dots'! In fact, in the cartoon shown in the photo, the 'pouncing' holes are clearly visible!

'Borrowing' or quoting from - not to say copying - the work of other painters and sculptors at this time was not regarded in the same way in which similar actions can be viewed today. In many cases this was seen as an indicator of an artist's visual culture or sophistication, and as a sign of respect towards earlier or even contemporary artists, as in the pictures presently under discussion. Vasari also saw 'borrowing' as a method of diffusion of 'advances' 3 in art and, not least, as an assertion of the pride which various Italian city-states had in their artists. Vasari, originally from Arezzo but a champion of Florentine artists, painted his 1545 Resurrection in Naples (he painted others elsewhere), a city he apparently regarded as an artistic backwater. By including 'borrowings' from Rosso Fiorentino ('Fiorentino' means 'the Florentine') and perhaps other Florentine artists (such as Michelangelo), he saw himself as spreading the 'good word' of the latest 'advances' in art; indeed, he actually says in his Descrizione dell'opere di Giorgio Vasari (Description of the works of Giorgio Vasari) 4 that he hoped his work would act as a spur to local Neapolitan artists to begin to 'modernise' the art of their city.

In another article on this blog entitled Domes: the inside story, I briefly discussed a dome which was designed and erected by Giorgio, quite late in his life, over Santa Maria dell'Umiltà in the Tuscan city of Pistoia. In that article I showed a photo of the dome over the vestibule but below is an image of the inside of the principal dome, the external aspect of which is visible for miles around.

Detail of the interior of the main dome of the church of Santa Maria dell'Umiltà, by Giorgio Vasari, completed 1569 

 Pistoia in Tuscany (Image: Wikimedia Commons Public Domain)

The exterior of this dome is noteworthy because it openly copies Brunelleschi's dome on the cathedral at Florence; the interior of Vasari's dome also honours Brunelleschi in another way and that is, in the decoration of the interior drums: there he has used what is known as pietra serena, a type of grey stone, much favoured by Brunelleschi in nearly all his Florentine buildings. This pietra serena is emphasised by a contrast with white walls, that is, plain white with no other decoration; in other words, a sort of 'abstract' minimalism! Vasari has used this approach in the interior of the drum and, it seems, added his own 'abstraction' in the cupola proper; in the context of this article however, this decoration is an example of Vasari quoting himself, or at least, 'evolving' himself. Some time earlier, in 1546, Vasari had been called upon to decorate with frescos an enormous room in a palazzo in Rome, at that time controlled by the Cardinal Alessandro Farnese; Vasari had been instructed to get the work done as quickly as possible and this he did! It took his assistants and himself, working feverishly, about 100 days to complete and hence the name of the now-famous room, La Sala dei Cento Giorni! Although containing all the usual qualities and attributes of Vasari-style decoration, it does also feature an innovation: Giorgio decided that instead of having the lower metre or so of the wall (lo zoccolo) as a flat pattern, or perhaps a faux-curtain, as was customary, he would contrive an illusion of fictive staircases leading up to each of the 'istorie' or historical episodes concerning the life of Pope Paul III Farnese.

One of the frescos in La Sala dei Cento Giorni by Giorgio Vasari and Assistants, 1546, fresco

Palazzo della Cancelleria, Rome

(Image: by Gradiva from Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

In the image shown here we can see the painted semi-circular staircase which serves not only to make use of a 'wasted' part of the wall, but also to lead the viewer into the depicted scene, a psychological device aided by the presence of reclining figures on the 'staircases', further directing our attention into the story. But what I would like us to observe is the flat geometrical designs around the staircase: although not the same design as in the cupola at Pistoia, the style, the concept is the same, is already there! In Santa Maria dell'Umiltà, Vasari develops this design idea and adapts it to a real circular architecture; in Pistoia, the design is inserted into each of the eight sections of the cupola, starting with a rectangle (or square?) near the drum, then passing to an oval - a shape which became extremely popular in Baroque decoration - and finishing, near the oculus, with a small triangle; three geometric shapes joined by a line one to the other, and each to the larger triangle enclosing them. Thus, although not exactly 'borrowing', Vasari is taking a motif used previously by him, in a different place, and adapting it to a new purpose.

Just to conclude, in reference to La Sala dei Cento Giorni, it was not a great success, even when it was first unveiled. Vasari, admitting this, lamented the fact of having made so much use of assistants and promised himself not to rely so heavily on them in the future 5. In spite of this however, that work is an example of one of Giorgio's most prized qualities in an artist and that is 'prestezza': in essence, speed! Vasari regarded getting the work done in a reasonable time as a highly valued quality, and this may stem from a tendency in some artists to drag out the execution of their commissions, Michelangelo and Piero della Francesca being two important examples of this. In reading Vasari's own biography it is, to the modern reader, literally amazing just how much work he got done in his not-overlong life (he died at 63): even in his final decade, he was overwhelmed with commissions, not only for pictures, but also for large-scale fresco campaigns (the fresco decoration of the walls of the Salone dei Cinquecento [1567-71]) and large-scale architecture (the restructuring of apartments in Palazzo Vecchio and the Salone itself, as well as the 'Vasari Corridor' 6); to say he was a prolific artist would be a wild understatement! In addition, in that same period, he was putting the finishing touches to the second - enlarged and corrected - edition of his Lives (1568)!

1 Today as history: Vasari's Naples Resurrection and visual memory, by Allison Kim in the Journal of Art Historiography, Number 25, December 2021 (available on-line).

2 Cartoon is the English version of the Italian cartone; the Italian word for 'paper' is carta and the suffix -one added to Italian nouns means 'big' or 'heavy': so, cartone means 'heavy paper'. In the same way that the Italian sala means 'room', salone - from where English gets saloon - means 'big room'. Cartone refers not only to the heavy paper, but as well to the drawing itself, used in the way described. We might note that sometimes, and especially with Michelangelo, instead of 'pouncing', artists would incise with a sharp tool the main lines (of a cartoon drawing) directly into the wet plaster of a fresco, thereby, in the process, destroying the cartoon itself; such incised lines are visible in the Sistine Ceiling frescos.

3 I use the word 'advances' only to indicate Vasari's own evolutionary attitude in what he described in the Lives as the constant development of Italian art, from the dark days of Byzantine influence ("la maniera goffa greca" [Proemio, Parte Seconda]) to the 'divine' levels, the apex, the 'perfection' reached by Michelangelo. Vasari used this phrase, or versions of it, ('the clumsy Greek [Byzantine] manner'), on several occasions, not only to distinguish Byzantine art from the greatness of ancient Greek art, but also from the 'modern manner' which had been initiated by Giotto. Vasari uses words such as 'perfect', 'perfection' and 'progress' often and saw art as aiming for, or, progressing towards, perfection. This perfection was related to, but not necessarily the same as, the art of the ancients: Greeks, Etruscans and Romans. Michelangelo - whom Vasari thought of as superior to them - and Vasari himself, went beyond the ancients, moving from the Renaissance, influenced by classical art, to Mannerism.

4 In Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori by Giorgio Vasari (Giuntina edition of 1568), Edizioni dell'Orso, 2021, p 427:

 

"Ma è gran cosa che, dopo Giotto, non era stato insino allora in sì nobile e gran città maestri che in pittura avessino fatto alcuna cosa d'importanza, ...; per lo che m'ingegnai fare di maniera, per quanto si estendeva il mio poco sapere, che si avessero a svegliare gl'ingegni di quel paese a cose grandi e onorevoli operare."

 

('But it's a remarkable thing that, after Giotto [who had worked in Naples], there had not been until then [1544-45] in such a noble and big city [any] masters that in painting had done anything of importance, ...; for which reason I busied myself in such a way, in so far as my meagre knowledge permitted, that they might have something which would stir the clever minds [of artists] of that area to [doing] important and honourable things.')

5 Le Vite (Lives), idem, p 431. Incidentally, mention might be made here of two other texts written by Vasari: one, a kind of account book, known as the Ricordanze, in which he records all his various commissions and how much he was paid for them; and the other, an imagined dialogue between himself and a Medici prince, the Ragionamenti (published posthumously by his son in 1588), in which, while acting as a guide to the prince, he explains all the work he did in the Palazzo Vecchio.

6 The Vasari Corridor (il Corridoio vasariano), begun in 1565, was designed to link, through the Uffizi, the 'old palace' (Palazzo Vecchio) with Palazzo Pitti (by then, a Medici palace), constructed by an 'opposition' banking family, the Pitti. The corridor had to span the Arno river, from the north side to the south side, and Vasari did this by constructing it on top of the existing shops on the Ponte Vecchio and passing it in front of the church of Santa Felicita, on the south side. Today, the Vasari Corridor is the Uffizi's portrait gallery.