Green worlds in early modern Italy: art and the verdant earth 9789462984950, 9462984956

Table of contents :
Half title page......Page 2
Series information......Page 3
Title page......Page 4
Copyright information......Page 5
Table of Contents......Page 6
List of Plates and Figures......Page 8
Introduction: A Fresh Vision of the Natural World in Renaissance Italy......Page 18
Earlier Green Voices......Page 20
Part One: Devotional Viridescence......Page 23
Part Two: Green Building......Page 25
Part Three: Sylvan Exchange......Page 26
Conclusions......Page 28
Part I. Devotional Viridescence......Page 30
Introduction......Page 32
Sensorial Medicine......Page 34
Verdant Materials......Page 36
Fra Filippo Lippi’s Technique......Page 42
Sandro Botticelli’s Technique......Page 45
Conclusion......Page 48
About the author......Page 49
2. Anthropomorphic Trees and Animated Nature in Lorenzo Lotto’s 1509 St. Jerome......Page 50
About the author......Page 67
3. ‘Honesta voluptas’: the Renaissance Justification for Enjoyment of the Natural World......Page 70
About the author......Page 87
Part II. Building Green......Page 88
4. “The Sala delle Asse as Locus amoenus: Revisiting Leonardo da Vinci’s Arboreal Imagery in Milan’s Castello Sforzesco”......Page 90
The Sala delle Asse and the Poetics of Vegetation at the Sforza Court......Page 93
Recent Technical Findings and the Sala delle Asse as Locus Amoenus......Page 96
The Sala delle Asse and the Gardens of the Castello Sforzesco......Page 105
About the author......Page 109
Ephemeral Courtly Verzure......Page 110
Vasari’s use of Verzure in the Lives of the Artists......Page 112
Verzure Masters: Giulio Romano and Rosso Fiorentino......Page 115
The Northern Roots of Verzure......Page 119
Giovanni da Udine: in alcune cose […] riuscire eccellentissimo......Page 123
Conclusion......Page 130
About the author......Page 131
6. Verdant Architecture and Tripartite Chorography: Toeput and the Italian Villa Tradition......Page 132
Verdant Architecture......Page 136
Tripartite Chorography......Page 139
Conclusion......Page 152
About the author......Page 153
Part III. The Sylvan Exchange......Page 154
A Corner of the Woods......Page 156
Woodblock Prints and Woodland Imagery......Page 161
Sylvan Poetics......Page 195
‘[U]ne belle étude d’arbres’......Page 198
Silva......Page 199
Bacchanals......Page 200
Ecopoesis......Page 204
About the author......Page 207
8. From Venice to Tivoli: Girolamo Muziano and the ‘Invention’ of the Tiburtine Landscape......Page 208
About the author......Page 228
9. Of Oak and Elder, Cloud-like Angels, and a Bird’s Nest: The Graphic Interpretations of Titian’s The Death of St. Peter Martyr by Martino Rota, Giovanni Battista Fontana, Valentin Lefebre, John Baptist Jackson, and their Successors......Page 230
About the author......Page 249
10. The Verdant as Violence: The Storm Landscapes of Herman van Swanevelt and Gaspard Dughet......Page 250
The artists......Page 251
The debut of landscapes with stormy weather......Page 253
Precedents and origins of the land-storm in seventeenth-century landscape painting......Page 260
Landscape as metaphor......Page 261
Bad weather and climate change......Page 262
The literary traditions......Page 264
‘We must sing of storms and flashing lightnings…’......Page 266
Synchronicity between Swanevelt and Dughet......Page 270
Implications for the future......Page 272
About the author......Page 273
Afterword: A Brief Journey through the Green World of Renaissance Italy......Page 274
About the author......Page 286
Works Cited......Page 288
Secondary Sources......Page 291
Index......Page 310

Citation preview

V I S U A L A N D M AT E R I A L C U LT U R E , 13 0 0 -17 0 0

Edited by Karen Hope Goodchild, April Oettinger and Leopoldine Prosperetti

Green Worlds in Early Modern Italy Art and the Verdant Earth

Green Worlds in Early Modern Italy

Visual and Material Culture, 1300–1700 A forum for innovative research on the role of images and objects in the late medieval and early modern periods, Visual and Material Culture, 1300–1700 publishes monographs and essay collections that combine rigorous investigation with critical inquiry to present new narratives on a wide range of topics, from traditional arts to seemingly ordinary things. Recognizing the fluidity of images, objects, and ideas, this series fosters cross-cultural as well as multi-disciplinary exploration. We consider proposals from across the spectrum of analytic approaches and methodologies. Series Editor Dr. Allison Levy, an art historian, has written and/or edited three scholarly books, and she has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Association of University Women, the Getty Research Institute, the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library of Harvard University, the Whiting Foundation and the Bogliasco Foundation, among others. www.allisonlevy.com.

Green Worlds in Early Modern Italy Art and the Verdant Earth

Edited by Karen Hope Goodchild, April Oettinger and Leopoldine Prosperetti

Amsterdam University Press

Cover illustration: Giovanni Bellini and Titian, The Feast of the Gods, c.1514–29. Oil on canvas. National Art Gallery, Washington. Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Newgen/Konvertus isbn 978 94 6298 495 0 e-isbn 978 90 4853 586 6 doi 10.5117/9789462984950 nur 685 © K.H. Goodchild, A. Oettinger, L. Prosperetti/ Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2019 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.

Table of Contents List of Plates and Figures

7

Introduction: A Fresh Vision of the Natural World in Renaissance Italy Karen Goodchild, April Oettinger, Leopoldine Prosperetti

17

Part I. Devotional Viridescence 1.

The Green Places of Fra Filippo Lippi and Sandro Botticelli Rebekah Compton

2. Anthropomorphic Trees and Animated Nature in Lorenzo Lotto’s 1509  St. Jerome April Oettinger 3. ‘Honesta voluptas’: The Renaissance Justification for Enjoyment of the Natural World Paul Holberton

31 49

69

Part II. Building Green 4. “The Sala delle Asse as Locus Amoenus: Revisiting Leonardo da Vinci’s Arboreal Imagery in Milan’s Castello Sforzesco”89 Jill Pederson 5. Naturalism and Antiquity, Redefined, in Vasari’s Verzure109 Karen Hope Goodchild 6. Verdant Architecture and Tripartite Chorography: Toeput and the Italian Villa Tradition Natsumi Nonaka

131

Part III. The Sylvan Exchange 7. Titian: Sylvan Poet Leopoldine Prosperetti 8. From Venice to Tivoli: Girolamo Muziano and the ‘Invention’ of the Tiburtine Landscape Patrizia Tosini

155

175

6

GREEN WORLDS IN EARLY MODERN ITALY

9. Of Oak and Elder, Cloud-like Angels, and a Bird’s Nest: The Graphic Interpretations of Titian’s The Death of St. Peter Martyr by Martino Rota, Giovanni Battista Fontana, Valentin Lefebre, John Baptist Jackson, and their Successors Sabine Peinelt-Schmidt

197

10. The Verdant as Violence: The Storm Landscapes of Herman van Swanevelt and Gaspard Dughet Susan Russell

217

Afterword: A Brief Journey Through the Green World of Renaissance Venice Paul Barolsky

241

Works Cited

255

Index277

List of Plates and Figures Plate 1 Plate 2 Plate 3 Plate 4 Plate 5

Plate 6 Plate 7 Plate 8 Plate 9 Plate 10

Plate 11

Plate 12

Fra Filippo Lippi, Adoration of the Child with Saints John the Baptist and Bernard (Camaldoli Altarpiece), after 1463. Tempera on panel. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Source: Art Resource. Sandro Botticelli, Madonna Adoring the Child with St. John the Baptist (Piacenza Tondo), c.1475–85. Tempera on panel. Musei civici di Palazzo Farnese, Piacenza. Source: Musei civici di Palazzo Farnese Piacenza. Samples of (a) green earth, (b) verdigris, and (c) malachite pigments. Source: Photograph by Mark Ledford, College of Charleston Photography. Lorenzo Lotto, St. Jerome in the Wilderness, c.1508–09. Oil on panel. Castel Sant’Angelo, Rome. Source: Art Resource. Lorenzo Lotto, The Virgin and Child with Saint Jerome, Peter, Francis, and an Unidentified Female Saint, c.1505. Oil on Canvas. Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh. Source: Scottish National Gallery. Purchased by Private Treaty with the aid of the National Heritage Memorial Fund 1984. Lorenzo Lotto, Asolo Altarpiece, 1506. Oil on panel. Asolo Duomo. Source: Yorck Project. Lorenzo Lotto, Christ and Scenes from the Golden Legend, 1523–1524. Fresco. Oratorio Suardi, Trescore Balneario. Source: Pro Loco Trescore Balneario. Lorenzo Lotto, Nativity, 1523. Oil on panel. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Source: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Giorgione and Sebastiano Veneziano, The Three Philosophers, c.1506–08, Oil on canvas. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Source: Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Gemäldegalerie. David Teniers the Younger, Giorgione’s Three Philosophers, detail from Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his Gallery in Brussels, c.1651. Oil on canvas. Kunsthistorisches Museum, no. 739, Vienna. Source: Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Gemäldegalerie. Leonardo da Vinci, Sala delle Asse (northeast corner with BBPR’s design for room still in place), c.1498. Fresco. Castello Sforzesco, Milan. Source: Castello Sforzesco, Milan. Copyright Comune di Milano, All rights reserved (Photo: Saporetti, c.1990). Leonardo da Vinci, Sala delle Asse, c.1498. Fresco. Castello Sforzesco, Milan. Source: Castello Sforzesco, Milan. Copyright Comune di Milano, All rights reserved (Photo: Mauro Ranzani).

8

Plate 13

GREEN WORLDS IN EARLY MODERN ITALY

Leonardo da Vinci, Sala delle Asse (detail of golden cords), c.1498. Fresco. Castello Sforzesco, Milan. Castello Sforzesco, Milan. Copyright Comune di Milano, All rights reserved (Photo: Mauro Ranzani). Plate 14 Giulio Romano,  View of the south wall of the Sala di Psiche, 1526–28. Fresco, stuccowork, gilded wood, oil paint. Palazzo del Tè, Mantua. Source: Art Resource, NY. Plate 15 Camillo Mantovano, Verdure Barrel Vault, Stanza degli Amorini, 1534– 37. Fresco. Villa Imperiale, Pesaro. Source: Courtesy Villa Imperiale Pesaro. Plate 16 Camillo Mantovano,  Pergola of Botanically-identifiable Vines and Plants, detail, ceiling, Room of the Caryatids, 1534–37. Fresco. Villa Imperiale, Pesaro. Source: Courtesy Villa Imperiale Pesaro. Giovanni da Udine, Study of a Flying Sparrow, c.1515–20. Red chalk and Plate 17 gouache (partially-oxidized pigment). Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. Source: Wikimedia Commons, with permission of Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden. Lodewijk Toeput, Pleasure Garden with Maze, 1579–84. Oil on canvas. Plate 18 Royal Collection Trust, Hampton Court Palace, London. Source: Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018. Lodewijk Toeput, Miniatures 16 & 17, Les Voyages de Charles Magius, Plate 19 1578. Gouache on vellum. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France. Lodewijk Toeput, Summer Landscape (detail), 1580s. Fresco. Villa Plate 20 Chiericati, Longa di Schiavon. Source: author. Plate 21 Giovanni Bellini and Titian, The Feast of the Gods, 1514–1529. Oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Source: National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Plate 22 Titian, Bacchus and Ariadne, 1520–1523. Oil on canvas. London: The National Gallery of Art. Source: ©National Gallery, London/Art Resource, NY. Plate 23 Titian, The Worship of Venus, 1518–19. Oil on canvas. Prado, Madrid. Source: ©Museo Nacional del Prado/Art Resource, NY. Plate 24 Titian, Noli Me Tangere, 1511–12. Oil on canvas. The National Gallery of Art, London. Source: ©National Gallery, London/Art Resource, NY. Plate 25 Aniene Falls, Villa Gregoriana, Tivoli. Photograph. Source: author. Plate 26 Girolamo Muziano, Rural Landscape, 1552–53. Detached fresco (from the Cesarini Castle, Rocca Sinibalda, Rieti). Art market, Rome. Source: author. Plate 27 Girolamo Muziano and Cornelis Loots, Landscape with Ruins, Room of Noah, 1563–65. Fresco. Villa d’Este, Tivoli. Source: Photo Mauro Coen – Ugo Bozzi Editore.

List of Plates and Figures

9

Plate 28

John Baptist Jackson after Titian, The Death of St. Peter Martyr, 1739. Colour woodcut in Titiani Vecelii Pauli Caliarii Jacobi Robusti et Jacobi de Ponte Opera selectiora a Joanne Baptista Jackson, Anglo ligno coalata et coloribus adumbrata, Venice. Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Dresden. Source: SKD ‒ Andreas Diesend. Plate 29 Gaspard Dughet, Windy Day with Lone Traveller, c.1633–35(?). Oil on canvas. Fondazione Longhi, Florence. Source: Fondazione Longhi, Florence. Plate 30 Gaspard Dughet, The Good Samaritan, c.1635–37 (?). Oil on canvas. Musèe Fabre, Montpellier. Source: Musèe Fabre, Montpellier. Herman van Swanevelt, Thunderstorm, 1649. Oil on canvas. National Plate 31 Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Source: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Plate 32 Giorgione, Castelfranco Altarpiece (Madonna and Child between St. Francis and St. Nicasius), 1503–04. Tempera on wood. Duomo di Castelfranco Veneto, Castelfranco. Source: Yorck Project /Wikimedia Commons image. Plate 33 Giorgione, The Tempest, c.1505. Oil on canvas. Accademia, Venice. Source: Art Resource, NY. Fig. 1.1 Fig. 1.2 Fig. 1.3 Fig. 1.4 Fig. 1.5 Fig. 1.6 Fig. 2.1 Fig. 2.2

Masaccio (Tommaso di Giovanni di Simone Guidi), Madonna and Child, c.1426. Tempera on panel. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Source: akg-images. Fra Filippo Lippi, Adoration of the Child, c.1457–60. Tempera on panel. Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin. Source: akg-images. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Birth of St. John the Baptist, 1485–90. Fresco. Tornabuoni Chapel, Santa Maria Novella, Florence. Source: akg-images. Alessio Baldovinetti, Madonna with Child, c.1464–70. Tempera on panel. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Source: akg-images. Pseudo Pier Francesco Fiorentino, Adoration of the Child with the young St. John the Baptist, c.1475. Tempera on panel. Museo e Galleria Mozzi Bardini, Florence. Source: Bridgeman Images. Bartolomeo di Fruosino, verso of the Montauri Birth Tray, 1428. Tempera, gilt and silver on panel. Private Collection. Source: Alamy Images. Albrecht Dürer, Martyrdom of the 10,000, c.1496–97. Woodcut. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Source: National Gallery of Art. Albrecht Dürer, St. Jerome, c.1496. Engraving. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Source: National Gallery of Art.

10 

Fig. 2.3 Fig. 2.4 Fig. 2.5 Fig. 2. 6 Fig. 2.7 Fig. 2.8 Fig. 2.9 Fig. 2.10 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 3.3 Fig. 3.4

Fig. 4.1

Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3

GREEN WORLDS IN EARLY MODERN ITALY

Jacopo Bellini, St. Jerome in the Wilderness, c.1440. Jacopo Bellini Album, Folio 22 verso. Drawing. Paris, Louvre, Cabinet des dessins et miniatures, Réserve des grands albums. Source: Art Resource. Taddeo Gaddi, Crucifixion, 14th c. Fresco. Santa Croce, Florence. Source: Scala/Art Resource. Jacopo Bellini, Nativity, c.1440. Jacopo Bellini Album, Folio 33 recto. Drawing. Paris, Louvre, Cabinet des dessins et miniatures, Réserve des grands albums. Source: Art Resource. Cima da Conegliano, St. Jerome, 1493/5. Oil on panel. Inv.324, Brera Museum, Milan. Source: Milan, Brera. Albrecht Dürer, St. Jerome, 1495. Oil on panel. National Gallery, London. Source: London, National Gallery. Albrecht Dürer, Comet? (Reverse of St. Jerome panel) c.1495. Oil on panel. National Gallery. London. Source: London, National Gallery. Michelangelo, Temptation and Expulsion, 1512. Fresco. Capella Sistina, Vatican. Source: Sistine Chapel, Vatican Palace, Vatican State. Michelangelo, Creation of Adam, 1512. Fresco. Capella Sistina, Vatican. Source: Sistine Chapel, Vatican Palace, Vatican State. Giovanni Maria Pomedelli, Quies, 1510. Engraving. Source: British Museum, London, Inv. 1873,0809.728. Master of the Sola-Busca Tarocchi or circle, Pupila Augusta, 1491. Engraving. Source: Presumed unique print, whereabouts unknown. Albrecht Dürer, Pupilla Augusta, c.1496–98. Pen and black and brown ink over black chalk, British Royal Collection. Source: Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018. Anonymous, Nymph set upon by satyrs, c.1500. Pen and brown ink, coloured wash, over traces of black chalk, 286 x 429 mm. New York, The Morgan Library & Museum, acc. no. IV, 56. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913) in 1909. Source: The Pierpont Morgan Library and Museum. Leonardo da Vinci, Sala delle Asse (detail of rocky base monochrome), c.1498. Fresco. Castello Sforzesco, Milan. Source: Castello Sforzesco, Milan. Copyright Comune di Milano, All rights reserved (Photo: Mauro Ranzani). Leonardo da Vinci, Sala delle Asse (window on eastern wall), c.1498. Fresco. Castello Sforzesco, Milan. Source: Copyright Comune di Milano, All rights reserved (Photo: Mauro Ranzani). Leonardo da Vinci, Sala delle Asse (detail of traces trunk on eastern wall), c.1498. Fresco. Castello Sforzesco, Milan. Source: Castello Sforzesco, Milan. Copyright Comune di Milano, All rights reserved (Photo: Michela Palazzo).

List of Plates and Figures

Fig. 4.4

Fig. 4.5

Fig. 4.6

Fig. 4.7

Fig. 4.8

Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2

Fig. 5.3 Fig. 5.4 Fig. 5.5 Fig. 6.1

11

Leonardo da Vinci, Sala delle Asse (detail of room with wooden paneling removed), c.1498. Fresco. Castello Sforzesco, Milan. Source: Castello Sforzesco, Milan. Copyright Comune di Milano, All rights reserved (Photo: Mauro Ranzani). Leonardo da Vinci, Sala delle Asse (detail of underdrawing of village on western wall), c.1498. Fresco. Castello Sforzesco, Milan. Source: Castello Sforzesco, Milan. Copyright Comune di Milano, All rights reserved (Photo: Mauro Ranzani). Leonardo da Vinci, Sala delle Asse (detail of flowers in monochrome), c.1498. Fresco. Castello Sforzesco, Milan. Source: Castello Sforzesco, Milan. Copyright Comune di Milano, All rights reserved (Photo: Mauro Ranzani). Leonardo da Vinci, Sala delle Asse (detail of bridge on northern wall), c.1498. Fresco. Castello Sforzesco, Milan. Source: Castello Sforzesco, Milan. Copyright Comune di Milano, All rights reserved (Photo: Mauro Ranzani). Leonardo da Vinci, Drawing including pavilion of the Duchess of Milan; pavilion located in the labyrinth of the Duke of Milan, elevation of a fortress; plan of a dome of a church, Ms. 2173, fol. 12r (Manuscript B), 1485–1488. Chalk and ink. Bibliotheque de l’Institut de France, Paris. Source: Art Resource, NY. Sandro Botticelli,  Outdoor Feast,  from  Nastagio degli Onesti  series, c.1483.  Tempera on panel. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Source: Art Resource, NY. Reconstruction photomontage published by Sylvie Béguin combining Rosso’s  Bacchus  (now in the Musée National d’Histoire et d’Art, Luxembourg) with a 1682 drawing of the gallery at Fontainebleau by Françoise d’Orbay. Source:  Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon, Portugal, with additional permission from the Musée National d’Histoire et d’Art, Luxembourg. Titian,  Flight into Egypt, c.1508. Oil on canvas. Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. Source: Photograph © The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. (Photo by Vladimir Terebenin). Camillo Mantovano,  Verdure  Quadripartite Vaults,  Sala delle Fatiche d’Ercole, 1534–37. Fresco. Villa Imperiale, Pesaro. Source: Courtesy Villa Imperiale Pesaro. Giovanni da Udine, Verdure Support, Sala di Psiche, 1518. Fresco and oil. Villa Farnesina, Rome. Source: Art Resource, NY. Lodewijk Toeput, Allegory of Charity; Landscape with the Good Samaritan; Allegory of Hope, c.1585. Fresco. Abbot’s apartments, Praglia Abbey, Teolo, Padua. Source: Abbazia di Praglia.

12 

Fig. 6.2 Fig. 6.3 Fig. 6.4 Fig. 6.5

Fig. 6.6 Fig. 6.7 Fig. 6.8 Fig. 6.9

Fig. 7.1

Fig. 7.2

Fig. 7.3 Fig. 7.4

Fig. 7.5

GREEN WORLDS IN EARLY MODERN ITALY

Lodewijk Toeput, Outdoor Concert, 1580s. Oil on canvas. Museo Civico Santa Caterina, Treviso. Source: author. Lodewijk Toeput, Banquet in the Open Air, 1590. Oil on canvas. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gemäldegalerie, Vienna, inv.2263. Source: Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Francesco da Sangallo, Project for the Garden of the Villa Madama, c.1525. Drawing. Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe 789A, Uffizi, Florence. Source: Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe, Gallerie degli Uffizi. Abbé de Vallemont, Curiositéz de la nature et de l’art, Paris, 1705. Frontispiece. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Rare Book Library, Washington D.C. Source: © Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Rare Book Collection, Washington D.C. Lucas van Valckenborch, Spring Landscape, 1587. Oil on canvas. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gemäldegalerie, Vienna, inv.1065. Source: Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Lodewijk Toeput, Villa Garden with Fountain, date unknown. Drawing, brown ink and wash. Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna, inv.23717. Source: Graphische Sammlung Albertina. View of the wall with the Spring and Summer Landscapes, Room of the Landscapes, Villa Chiericati, Longa di Schiavon. Source: author. After Pirro Ligorio, Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae: Ornithon sive Aviarium, 1558. Etching. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, Transferred from the Library, 1941, 41.72(1.92). Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art. Titian, Group of Trees, c.1514. Pen and brown ink, traces of gray printer’s ink at lower right, on beige paper. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase 1908, Rogers Fund, 08.227.38, New York. Source: ©Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource, NY. Martino Rota, after Titian, The Martyrdom of St. Peter Martyr, c.1560. Engraving. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 1917, 17.50.16-155. New York. Source: ©Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource, NY. Titian, Group of Trees, before 1525. Pen and ink. Current Location Unknown. Source: David Rosand and Michelangelo Muraro, Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1976. Ugo da Carpi, after Titian, The Sacrifice of Abraham (second state), c.1514–15. Four block woodcut. Museum of Fine Arts, Gift of the Class in the History of Engraving, Boston. Source: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Attributed to Nicolo Boldrini or Giovanni Britto, after Titian, St. Jerome in the Wilderness, c.1515–30. Woodcut. Metropolitan Museum of

List of Plates and Figures

Fig. 8.1

Fig. 8.2 Fig. 8.3

Fig. 8.4 Fig. 8.5

Fig. 8.6

Fig. 8.7

Fig. 8.8 Fig. 8.9

Fig. 8.10

13

Art, Rogers Fund 1922, 22.73.3-119, New York. Source: ©Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource, NY. Girolamo Muziano, River Landscape with a Mill, c.1550–52. Pen and brown ink on paper. Chatsworth House, Collection of the Duke of Devonshire, Chatsworth. Source: Patrizia Tosini, “Some Newly Identified Drawings by Girolamo Muziano”, Master Drawings, 52, 2 (2014): 182, fig. 2. Girolamo Muziano, River Landscape with a Viola Player, c.1550–52. Pen and brown ink on paper. Biblioteca Marucelliana, Florence. Source: Ministero dei beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo. Girolamo Muziano, Holy Family with Saint Elizabeth and John the Baptist, c.1550–55. Pen and brown ink on paper. Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence. Source: Ministero dei beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo. Girolamo Muziano, River Landscape, c.1550–55. Pen and brown ink on paper. Louvre, Département des Arts Graphiques, Paris. Source: RMNGrand Palais-Musée du Louvre. Titian (?), Two Arcadian Musicians, c.1508–10. Pen and brown ink over black chalk on paper. British Museum, London. Source: K. Oberhuber, “Le message de Giorgione et du jeune Titien dessinateurs”, in Le siècle de Titien. L’âge d’or de la peinture á Venise, ed. M. Laclotte, G. Nepi Scirè (Paris: 1993): cat. 94. Hieronymus Cock (from a drawing by Lambert Lombard), Christ Washing the Feet of the Apostles, c.1557–64. Engraving. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Source: The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1949. 49-95-15. Louis Desplaces (from a lost painting by Girolamo Muziano for the Cardinal Ippolito d’Este), Christ Washing the Feet of the Apostles, c.1729–39. Etching. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum. Source: Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum. Girolamo Muziano, Rural Landscape with Mills, c.1550–55. Pen and brown ink on paper. Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence. Source: Ministero dei beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo. Girolamo Muziano, Rural Landscape with a River, 1555–60. Pen and brown ink on paper. Louvre, Département des Arts Graphiques, Paris. Source: Patrizia Tosini, “Some Newly Identified Drawings by Girolamo Muziano”, Master Drawings, 52, 2 (2014): 185, fig. 6. Girolamo Muziano, Landscape with a River, c.1563–65. Pen and brown ink on paper. Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence. Source: Ministero dei beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo.

14 

Fig. 8.11 Fig. 8.12 Fig. 8.13 Fig. 9.1 Fig. 9.2 Fig. 9.3

Fig. 9.4 Fig. 9.5

Fig. 9.6

Fig. 10.1 Fig. 10.2 Fig. 10.3

GREEN WORLDS IN EARLY MODERN ITALY

Girolamo Muziano, Landscape with a Fall, c.1563–65. Pen and brown ink on paper. Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence. Source: Ministero dei beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo. Cornelis Cort (from a drawing by Girolamo Muziano), Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata, 1567. Engraving. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Source: Rogers Fund, 1962. Cornelis Loots, Rural Landscape with a Fortified Town, 1568. Fresco. Loggia of Saint Nilo Abbey, Grottaferrata. Source: Photo Mauro Coen – Ugo Bozzi Editore. Martino Rota after Titian, The Death of St. Peter Martyr, 1568/9. Engraving. The Metropolitain Museum of Art, New York. Source: Open Access / Artstor. Giovanni Battista Fontana after Titian, The Death of St. Peter Martyr, 1569. Etching. Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Dresden. Source: SKD ‒ Andreas Diesend. Valentin Lefebre after Titian, The Death of St. Peter Martyr, 1682. Etching in Opera selectiora qvæ Titianus Vecellius Cadubriensis et Paulus Calliari Veronensis inventarvnt, ac Pinxervnt, Venice. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Source: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Enlarged detail from fig. 9.3: Upper part of the print by Lefebre with bird’s nest and translucent pair of cherubs. Source: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Henri Laurent from a preparatory drawing by Pierre Bouillon after Titian, The Death of St. Peter Martyr, 1803. Etching and engraving in Le Musée Français, 1803–9, Vol. 1. Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Dresden. Source: SKD ‒ Andreas Diesend. Valentin Lefebre and Joseph Wagner after Titian, The Death of St. Peter Martyr, 1682–1749. Etching and engraving (originally by Lefebre, reworked plate by Wagner) in Le opere scelte dipinte da Tiziano Vecelli di Cadore, e da Paolo Caligari di Verona, Venice. KupferstichKabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Dresden. Source: SKD ‒ Andreas Diesend. Gaspard Dughet, Mountainous Landscape with Approaching Storm (The Squall), c.1638–39. Oil on canvas. Dulwich Picture Gallery, London. Source: Dulwich Picture Gallery, London. Gaspard Dughet, The Storm, c.1649–50. Oil on canvas. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Chartres. Source: Musée des Beaux-Arts, Chartres. Herman van Swanevelt, Stormy Weather, 1646. Oil on canvas. Finarte 1973, Rome. Source: RKD, The Hague, reproduced in Steland, Herman van Swanevelt (2010), 1: cat. G1 42; 2: fig. G 122.

List of Plates and Figures

Fig. 10.4

Fig. 10.5 Fig. 10.6 Fig. 10.7 Fig. 10.8 Fig. 11.1 Fig. 11.2 Fig. 11.3 Fig. 11.4

15

Herman van Swanevelt, River landscape, 1649. Oil on canvas. Private collection, USA. Source: Rafael Valls and Toby Campbell, London 2008, reproduced in Steland, Herman van Swanevelt 2010, 1: cat. G 1, 48; 2: fig. G 151. Herman van Swanevelt Windy Weather, c.1650. Oil on canvas. Sotheby’s 1985, New York. Source: RKD, The Hague, reproduced in Steland 2010, 1: cat. G 1, 38; 2: fig. G 155. Herman van Swanevelt, Stormy Weather, c.1650. Oil on canvas. Private collection, Berlin. Source: Gift of the collector, reproduced in Steland 2010, 1: cat. G 2, 21; 2: fig. G 154. Herman van Swanevelt, Rest on the Flight into Egypt, c.1644–1650. Etching. The British Museum, London. Source: The British Museum, London. Gaspard Dughet, The Flight into Egypt, c.1649–50. Oil on canvas. Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome. Source: Istituto per il Catalogo e la Documentazione, Rome. Giorgione, Sleeping Venus, c.1508–10. Oil on canvas. Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden. Source: Art Resource, NY. Titian, Allegory of Sacred and Profane Love, c.1514. Oil on canvas. Galleria Borghese, Rome. Source: Art Resource, NY. Giorgione and/or Titian, Pastoral Concert (The Fête Champêtre), c.1510. Oil on canvas. Louvre Museum, Paris. Source: Art Resource, NY. Titian, The Three Ages of Man, c.1512. Oil on canvas. Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh. Source: Art Resource, NY.



Introduction: A Fresh Vision of the Natural World in Renaissance Italy Karen Goodchild, April Oettinger, Leopoldine Prosperetti

The verdant earth! Since 1982, National Public Radio listeners have heard this phrase each time the station invokes the John T. and Catherine D. MacArthur Foundation’s commitment ‘to build a more just, verdant and peaceful world’. Taking its position between justice and peace, verdancy is presented as desirable, even essential, for the well-being of humankind. The globe’s verdancy is often cast as ‘the green mantle of the earth’, an age-old metaphor given a new life by Rachel Carson, the much admired environmentalist. Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) opened the nation’s eyes to the fragility of our world.1 The notion of a ‘green mantle’, Carson’s title for her Chapter Six, is operative throughout Silent Spring as the author offers a gripping vision of the threads and filaments by which nature weaves the fabric of the earth. Aware of the power of natural imagery, she prefaced her scientific work with the elegiac A Fable for Tomorrow, a poetic rendering of a nameless town in the ‘heart of America’, where oaks, maples, and birches, as well as laurel, viburnum, and alder, delight a visitor’s eyes before a ‘grim specter’ creeps upon the scene and a layer of white dust dulls nature’s verdant garb. The publication of Carson’s book was an explosive event, and, ever since, to be ‘green’ is to be aware of both earth’s glorious garment and its perilous state. Forty years later, in 2002, E.O. Wilson characterized the biosphere as a ‘unique, shimmering physical disequilibrium’, preserving in this image the idea of nature’s appearance as a rippling fabric that gathers gleaming lights in its restless folds.2 This book will show that these sentiments are not uniquely the concerns of modern ecologists and environmentalists. They form part of a rich legacy bequeathed by countless poets and artists who, from the ancient lyricists to the neo-pastoralists of today, were devoted to bodying forth the earth in all her flowering and verdant manifestations.3 In echoing the theme of nature fashioning her green coat, Carson and Wilson are tied to writers of the past: classical poets, like Theocritus and Vergil, who gave us the topic of shaded repose in the countryside; and scriptural writers, like Saints Basil and 1 Rachel Carson, ‘Earth’s Green Mantle’, Silent Spring. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002), 63–85. Chapter 6 is widely available as a PDF. 2 E.O. Wilson, The Future of Life. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), 39. 3 For ‘florida and frondosa’, see Leon-Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. by Joseph Rykwert, et al. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988), IX:4. K.H. Goodchild, A. Oettinger and L. Prosperetti (eds.), Green Worlds in Early Modern Italy. Art and the Verdant Earth, Amsterdam University Press doi: 10.5117/9789462984950_intro

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Ambrose, who took it as their task to praise, in prose and poetry, the wondrous nature of the Creation. Both traditions, bucolic poetry and sacred eloquence, compiled a trove of words, epithets, and metaphors for the description of the natural world and especially of ‘pleasant places’ in the countryside. In Italy, in the Renaissance, this tradition was enriched by humanist poets, both in Latin and the vernacular, Petrarch, Poliziano, and Sannazaro among them. Eventually these literary treasuries constituted a resource for the ‘creative magic’ of natural description, a kind of lyrical naturalism, which flourished as a culturally authoritative exercise, until, with the dominance of scientific botany and its Linnean nomenclature, the study of nature became a science, and greenery became the ‘mere’ ornament of landscape. Green was the obsession of the Renaissance. Bruce Smith, in a masterful study, shows ‘green stuff’ to be a ‘key’ to understanding many aspects of the material and spiritual culture of Renaissance England, and, by extension, of the European continent, where verdure tapestries and ‘cabinets verts’ in formal gardens were the required backdrop of a genteel decorum.4 Green, it was observed, was of all colors also ‘the most gratefull and moste plesante to the Eyes’.5 The verdant, as the sine qua non of restful pleasure, became deeply associated with recreatio as spiritual therapy, and thus was a sanctioned, healthy aspect of the management of one’s life. All that green, in the end, was seen as a necessary antidote to the glare of marble halls in political life or the heat of battle that is the lot of the soldier. The visualization of green worlds, imagined and real, created a demand for technologies of green, which included the search for pigments with enough bite and power to rival in art the verdant splendors of nature.6 The difficulty of finding pigments that do not fade or harm other pigments was only partially successful and explains the ruinous state of the color green in paintings by the Old Masters. No other color has suffered so much deterioration. For instance, it was noted in a recent catalogue on the art of Sandro Botticelli that the now dark and murky myrtles in Primavera (1483–84) and the The Birth of Venus (1483) would originally have been dazzling in their verdant brightness.7 It is only recently that conservators are having success in reversing certain of the disastrous effects of the copper resins and bringing back the visual impact of greenery in renaissance art.8 Thanks to restorations, Titian’s mixed grove in his fabulous Bacchus and Ariadne can now be admired for something like the symphony of green that the painter intended it to be. 4 Bruce Smith, The Key of Green, Passion and Perception in Renaissance Culture. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). 5 Edward Norgate, Miniatura, or the Art of Limning, ed. Martin Hardie (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1919). 6 Green is hard to conquer. Vegetable dyes fade, copper resins (verdigris) are hostile; some are even poisonous. 7 Andreas Schumacher, ed. Botticelli: Likeness. Myth. Devotion (Frankfurt-am-Main: Städel Museum, 2010), 86. 8 For the technologies of green, see Noelle Streeton, Perspectives on the Painting Technique of Jan Van Eyck. (London: Archetype Books, 2013); Margriet Van Eikema-Hommes, Changing Pictures: Discolouration in 15th to 17th Century Oil Painting. (London: Archetype Books, 2006).

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The contributors to this volume elaborate a fresh, multifaceted vision of the verdant earth as they address the Renaissance passion for greenery broadly in visual culture: in devotional imagery; in the verzura of festival culture; in the villa retreats of princes; in the marriage of literature and art; in the search for a greater naturalism in the depiction of gardens, woodlands, and remote forests; in the exploration of stormy weather; in the charms of Tivoli; and in all the various green coverts where poetry originates and the spirit reconnects with the Creator. What the essays reveal is that verdant imagery in the Renaissance was seen as a new enchantment that gave a bright gloss and a fresh, sensual liveliness to visual culture, a liveliness perhaps longed for after the Medieval insistence on intellectual and moralizing abstractions.

Earlier Green Voices It is important to note that the topic of the volume is the ‘verdancy’ which emerges as a specific theme in the visual culture of the Italian Renaissance. It is emphatically not a book about landscape, even if the greenery of views is, of course, part of the picture. The idea of a ‘green turn’ in cultural production is still relatively new. Inspired by Spenser’s groves and Shakespeare’s Arden in Tudor England, and the hexaemeral imagination of John Milton and the metaphysical poets who followed him in the seventeenth century, verdancy as a topic has been most actively pursued in English literary studies. Thus, from scholars of ‘green thoughts in green shades’, we find the color beginning to appear in titles. For example Robert N. Watson, in his Back to Nature: The Green and the Real in the Late Renaissance (2006), uncovers green as a cultural poetics among cosmopolitan Protestants who, terrorized by the uncertainties that befell the cosmologies of Christendom, turned to Nature in hopes of finding ‘natural icons’ to compensate for the loss of devotional imagery.9 Diane K. McColley’s chapter ‘Hylozoic Poetry: The Lives of Plants’, in Poetry and Ecology in the Age of Milton and Marvell (2007) is a powerful example of the green environment as hule or silva, the unsorted matter that is to be shaped into imagery by poetry.10 Bruce Smith’s aforementioned The Key of Green: Passion and Perception in Renaissance Culture (2009) turns green into a key that unlocks overlooked aspects of Renaissance culture, while Leah Knight, in her book Reading Green in Early Modern England (2014), uncovers the often literal connection between reading texts and the color green.11 Moving to the continent, Louisa MacKenzie, in The Poetry of Place: Lyrical, Landscape, and 9 Robert N. Watson, Back to Nature: The Green and the Real in the Late Renaissance. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005). 10 Diane McColley, Poetry and Ecology in the Age of Milton and Marvel. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). McColley’s ecopoetical approach reminds us that in modern times, the word ‘green’ has become synonymous with environmentalism and the various offshoots of ecological thinking that it promotes. 11 For Smith, see n.4 above. Leah Knight, Reading Green in Early Modern England. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2014).

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Ideology in Renaissance France (2011), reveals the cultural poetics of the great poets of the French Renaissance, Ronsard and DuBellay, who were inspired by a love of their respective native provinces to write a ‘poetry of place’ which offered restorative images of locales ravaged during the wars of religion.12 What comes across in all these studies is both the cultural significance of green as a color or a facet of the natural world, and the many ways in which this importance is made manifest in Early Modern literary and visual culture. In Italy, interpretations of greenery in art were, for a long time, understood as subordinate to two concerns: first, to a classicizing, literary vision of the natural environment, and second, to the idea, among art historians, that ‘pure’ landscape is the goal of green art and the logical result of artistic evolution. But cultural historians and humanist geographers have broadened our perspective. In 1988, in The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environment, Denis Cosgrove, the pioneer of what is known as cultural geography, offered a different way of looking at the realities of the Italian landscape, regarding them as terrains that were socially constructed, shaped as much by a human hand as by Nature herself.13 In this vision of the natural environment, trees are often seen as timber, shrubs promise pliant branches for hurdles and baskets, foliage is fodder for livestock and running water sets mills into motion.14 Similarly, Simon Schama, in Landscape and Memory (1995), took a more rugged look at the pleasant places of the pastoral tradition, offering a brutal account of humans and nature in a perpetual tug of war. Verdancy in Schama’s account is no longer pleasant and poetic, but becomes a vision of the earth where vegetation is dominant. Before Schama, Robert Pogue Harrison, in Forests: The Shadow of Civilization (1992), had already speculated on the role that the forests – he called them ‘the sylvan fringe of darkness’ – played in the cultural imagination. Here, too, verdancy takes on a somber hue. Turning to studies more narrowly focused on art, Michel Pastoureau, an expert on pigments and colors, recently delighted the world with a book of illustrated essays on the color green, delving into its changing historical meanings.15 In general, however, art historians have been slow to join the green chorus. Promisingly, books by Christopher Wood on Albrecht Altdorfer, Joseph Koerner on Caspar David Friedrich, and 12 Louisa MacKenzie, The Poetry of Place: Lyrical, Landscape, and Ideology in Renaissance France. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011). 13 Dennis Cosgrove, The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design, and Use of Past Environments. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989). 14 Cosgrove’s ‘re-vision’ of landscape should be compared to a very different account of the representation of green worlds that was presented in the same year in an exhibition entitled Places of Delight: The Pastoral Landscape at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. This exhibition celebrated a long tradition of imagining the green retreats of would-be poets, a tradition that found an early and highly successful expression in the art of Giorgione and Titian. See Robert Cafritz, Lawrence Gowing, and David Rosand, eds., Places of Delight: The Pastoral Landscape (Washington, D.C: Phillips Collection in association with the National Gallery of Art, 1988). 15 Michel Pastoureau, Green: The History of a Color (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014).

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Michel Weemans on Herri met de Bles do draw attention to the green contents of these masters’ landscapes in studies that subject the depiction of greenery to visual and cultural analysis.16 As suggested above, for scholars of Early Modern Italian art, a limited idea of the pastoral has been the principal lens through which to view Early Modern verdancy. This volume hopes to expand the valences of that connection. Students of Northern Italian landscapes have rightly insisted that the ‘fresh look at nature’ in Renaissance art coincided with the appearance upon the cultural scene of a new and revolutionary book, Jacopo Sannazaro’s L’Arcadia.17 Written in the 1480s and published in 1504, Sannazaro’s verse spread rapidly across Europe, being printed in 60 different editions and multiple languages in the sixteenth century alone. Clearly popular, it fundamentally changed the European perception of nature. It also created, in one fell swoop, the idea of Arcadia as a poetical, and even a spiritual landscape. As with many Renaissance artifacts, Sannazaro’s Arcadia was an invention forged in part from an incomplete ancient record. Sannazaro created the Renaissance Arcadia from scattered references by Vergil, who, however, never meant for it to be any other place than the cold and hostile dwelling place of the god Pan. That later generations came to think of Arcadia as a Vergilian idea re-activated by a Renaissance poet is one of those ‘antiquarian mistakes’ not resolved until modern scholarship. Arcadia, it is now agreed, was Sannazaro’s invention, and his vision became the fountainhead of a pastoral tradition that was multiform, pervasive and enduring. Arcadia is an Early Modern romance written alternatively in prose and verse; it is a work that draws inspiration from the Middle Ages and classical antiquity, from various literary modes and tropes. Its compendious form offers many treasures, and for well over a hundred and fifty years it stood as a capacious model for verdant imagery in madrigals and canzoni, and in the theater, and provided artists with subject matter for their paintings, which include shepherds and nymphs living their lives in some of the most beautiful landscapes in the Old Master tradition. Early in the sixteenth century, these paintings reflected the natural beauty of the Veneto. When production shifted to Rome, it was the sparkling verdancy of Tivoli that inspired the great pastoral paintings of the Roman school. Arcadia’s influence on the visual arts was direct and specific. In Arcadia, the names and properties of a large variety of trees and shrubs are celebrated, their characteristics captured in memorable epithets. This figuring came in part from Vergil’s apt images. Thus, in Sannazaro, Vergil’s spreading beech, becomes a faggio ombroso, the tremulous 16 Christopher Wood, Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). Joseph Leo Koerner, Caspar David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape. (London: Reaktion Books, 1990); Michel Weemans, Herri Met De Bles. Gli stratagemmi del paesaggio nel tempo di Bruegel e di Erasmo. (Rome: Jaca Books, 2013). 17 A phrase borrowed from Antonio Mazzotta, Titian: A Fresh Look at Nature. (London: The National Gallery of Art, 2012).

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poplar is forever an image of the shivering Heliads, and trees whisper as they answer the wind. Indelible images of sylvan treasures were translated from Vergil’s Latin to Sannazaro’s Italian, and then, across Europe, adapted to local dictions by the translators of Arcadia. This incarnation of trees at once naturalistic and meaningful is just one example of the way Arcadia spurred a green revolution in European art, mobilizing new codes for the representation of verdancy. It is these varying modalities for showing the phenomena of the green world, from the metaphoric and the metaphysical to material and botanical, that are of interest in this volume as they apply to the visual arts. Green’s complexity is apparent, for instance, in the writings of Giorgio Vasari, who understood paesi to be both individual details of nature and distant outdoor spaces. Perhaps surprisingly, Vasari frequently describes a single painting as having multiple landscapes, or paesi. His use of a plural term shows that for him ‘landscapes’ could refer to several ornamental vignettes within one work, from trees to verdure to buildings to natural light to dramatic, even cataclysmic, weather effects.18 A green mantle is nature’s ornament, her raiment, and her chief artifice, but it is not empty frippery. Similarly, paesi in Vasari’s understanding – as natural vistas, storms, clumps of trees, or garden elements – are artistic embellishments that can supplement the meaning of larger compositions in both their artistry and their content. Understanding green as the significant embellishments of the earth bodied forth in art will teach us how to be better readers of the Early Modern green world, and this conception of verdancy brings the present volume into the orbit of a growing scholarship on ornament. Following Sannazaro and Vasari, we acknowledge that green had multiple valences, from spiritual, to material, to political, to economic, and beyond, and thus the following essays are organized into three sections. The first, ‘Devotional Viridescence’, explores the divine poetics and sacred therapeutics of greenery in Early Modern Italian art. The second, ‘Green Building’, looks at the verdant structures built and painted in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, interpreting these complex, growing arches, labyrinths, pavilions, and bowers as works of ‘natural artifice’ that tell us as much about artistic theory as about the significance of green in courtly settings. The third, ‘Sylvan Exchange’, analyzes the give-and-take of green imagery across regional traditions within and beyond Early Modern Italy, often through Northern European artists finding employ in Northern Italy and Rome.

Part One: Devotional Viridescence ‘O marvelous handiwork of almighty God!’ Thus exclaims the shepherd Sincero in Sannazaro’s Arcadia as he marvels at a riverine landscape. Here, the patristic language is surely evoking the Christian God, and, in Arcadia, nature’s beauty sometimes 18 See Karen Goodchild, ‘“A Hand More Practiced and Sure”: The History of Landscape Painting in Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists’, Artibus et Historiae 32, no. 64 (2011): 25–40.

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underscores the powers of a divine, Christian, creator.19 The ability of natural imagery to bring humans closer to God is explored in Part One: ‘Devotional Viridescence’. Encountering the Christian divine in green nature is a type of epiphany akin to the hearing of oracles in the groves of Ancient Greece. It allies with the doctrine that nature can be read as a book of divine instruction, conveyed by the creatures and phenomena that can be observed in Nature. In these scenarios, Nature becomes a sort of green temple for both physical and spiritual health.20 Expanding on the notion of verdant experience as a path to spiritual illumination, artists in the Renaissance elaborated on the poetic language of verdure, invoking the variable moods of trees and greenery to heighten the devotional appeal and dramatic impact of their works through the sensual details of nature. Rebekah Compton’s essay ‘The Green Spaces of Fra Lippi and Botticelli’ treats the ‘value, availability, and virtues’ of the color green through a close study of the titled artists’ innovative experiments with a variety of pigments; describes the eager reception wealthy viewers gave these newly-available, vivid, greens; and discusses the contemporary understanding of green’s power to soothe and delight the eyes and hearts of the faithful in culturally-specific ways. Florentine painters struggled to find methods for using verdigris and malachite that would faithfully reproduce nature’s greens in their tempera paintings, desiring to please a client base eager to encounter artistic verdancy. In this quest, the titular artists were pioneers of a new type of devotional imagery, one quickly embraced by their patrons and followers, showing Mary and the infant Christ paired with vibrantly-colored grass, trees and flowers. April Oettinger, in ‘Anthropomorphic Trees and Animated Nature in Lorenzo Lotto’s 1509 St. Jerome’, offers another example of green’s power to amplify spiritual imagery. In her essay the focus is on the ways Lorenzo Lotto created a spiritual landscape through the device of anthropomorphic trees which, by virtue of their crooked forms, seem to comment on the twists and turns of Jerome’s struggle to find God in the desert. Thus, Lotto’s work is an early example of the hermitage landscape, a type that flourished as a branch of landscape painting, persisting into the nineteenth century in the art of Caspar David Friedrich and others. Turning away from the arid solitudes of the Desert Fathers, in such works, a hermit’s habitat would be full of vegetation and indeed alive with the rustle of ancient forest trees. Lotto’s imagery heralds an expanding interest in the lyrical, and sometimes haunting, potential of arboreal imagery to reinforce the meaning of the principal subject. Paul Holberton’s essay ‘“Honesta voluptas”: the Renaissance Justification for Enjoyment of the Natural World’ closes this section on the power of verdancy to affect mind, soul and body with a close reading of Erasmus’ Convivium religiosum. In this 19 Marsha S. Collins, Imagining Arcadia in Renaissance Romance. (London: Routledge: 2016), 76–77. 20 In lay society, the doctrine of nature as a book of divine knowledge may have fostered a love of nature in people who otherwise felt excluded from the mysteries of the Church. Sarah Ritchey, ‘Spiritual Arborescence: Trees in the Medieval Christian Imagination’, Spiritus 8, (2008): 64–82.

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colloquy, the Dutch humanist proposed the enjoyment of the natural environment as ‘honest pleasure’: an occasion for Epicurean delectation. Erasmus’s recommendation of natural scenery as a source for a soul’s delight may, Holberton suggests, have helped legitimate a retreat into the garden as a spiritual refreshment. The author tests his reading of this Erasmian dialogue with an analysis of the Christian-Epicurean dimensions of Giorgione’s Three Philosophers.

Part Two: Green Building The third prose section of Sannazaro’s complicated work evokes the green world turned by artifice into human ornament. As dawn breaks, pastoral structures are draped with rami verdissimi di querce e di corbezzoli – ‘the greenest branches of oak and arbutus’ – and doorways are ornamented with corona di frondi a di fiori di ginestre e altri ‒ ‘cornices made of fronds and flowers and Spanish broom and other verdure’.21 These images of plant matter artistically and architecturally arrayed presides over the essays in Part II, ‘Building Green’. Each contribution in this section explores the fruitful tension between nature’s viridescent matter and its artful transformation by the hands of humans into the highly contrived green structures painted illusionistically in palaces as well as trained to grow in courtly gardens. Jill Pederson’s essay ‘The Sala delle Asse as Locus amoenus: Revisiting Leonardo da Vinci’s Arboreal Imagery in Milan’s Castello Sforzesco’, provides an important study of Leonardo’s botanical imagination as bodied forth in his creation of a room-sized bower woven from the branches of ‘living’ mulberry trees. Pederson discloses the complexities, literal and contextual, of Leonardo’s verdant architecture, integrating recent findings on the original appearance of the Sala with investigations into the poetic and theatric presentations of nature in the Sforza’s courtly ambit, and exploring both in relation to the elaborate spatial hierarchies of the ducal villa, garden, and grounds. Complex, multi-valent, naturalistic spaces such as the Sala delle Asse occasioned a new theory and terminology of verdure by the mid-sixteenth century, the age of Giorgio Vasari. ‘Naturalism and Antiquity, Redefined, in Vasari’s Verzure’, by Karen Goodchild, closely examines the ways in which the greatest of all Renaissance art theorists deploys the term verzure, a word entirely absent from his 1550 edition of The Lives of the Artists, but one that emerges significantly in the 1568 edition. Tracing Vasari’s very particular use of the word verzure, a term Vasari uses only in reference to trained plant structures, either painted or real, the essay shows what Vasari thought was the best way to deploy fictive green architecture in interiors and also which artists he believed had the appropriate skills for this task. Vasari’s verzure is revealed to be meaningful garden ornament that shows both a patron’s sophistication and an artist’s talent through dazzling multi-media 21 Jacopo Sannazaro, Arcadia, 3.2. letteraturaitaliana.net (February 28 2018). Trans. K. Goodchild.

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displays of perfected naturalism and ancient reference. Ultimately, the essay locates the origins of this elevated green form with artists working in Raphael’s workshop, who then moved princely verzure across Italy and beyond. Continuing to address the meanings of verzure in Italian gardens and paintings, Natsumi Nonaka’s essay ‘Verdant Architecture and Tripartite Chorography: Toeput and the Italian Villa Tradition’ investigates the Flemish artist Lodewijk Toeput’s adjustments of Northern landscape pleasures to suit Italian humanist concerns. By analyzing works such as Pleasure Garden with Maze (c.1579–84), Nonaka shows how Toeput merged the Northern European tradition of the world landscape with Italian villa and garden vedute, creating images in which green architectural elements add ancient cachet in a spatially meaningful way. The spaces thus demarcated, Nonaka argues, express a new humanist adaptation of ancient Roman spatial categories, expanding the otium/country vs. negotium/city dyad of antiquity to encompass a third, and most artful, category, the verzure-arrayed garden.

Part Three: Sylvan Exchange Philip Sidney was determined to export Sannazaro’s greenery to England. He adapted Arcadia for his homeland, and in Book 1, Chapter 19 we read: It was indeed a place of delight; for thorow the middest of it, there ran a sweete brooke, … the field itself being set in some places with roses, & in al the rest constantly preserving a florishing greene; the Roses added such a ruddy shew vnto it, as though the field were bashfull at his owne beautie: about it (as if it had bene to inclose a Theater) grew such a sort of trees, as eyther excellency of fruit, statelines of grouth, continuall greennes, or poeticall fancies haue made at any time famous. In most part of which there had bene framed by art such pleasant arbors, that (one tree to tree, answering another) they became a gallery aloft from almost round about, which below gaue a perfect shadow, a pleasant refuge….22 

Here, Philip Sidney transplants Sannazaro’s locus amoenus and his mixed grove, his vision of an eternally-green nature responsive to every human need, to England. Here is proof that the Italian poet’s artistry very quickly inspired the writers of other countries to create their own home-visions of nature. Such transference also occurred in the visual arts, and is the subject of the essays in Part III: ‘Sylvan Exchange’. Leopoldine Prosperetti sets the stage for this transnational exchange of green visions with her essay ‘Titian: Sylvan Poet’, arguing that Titian’s unique, lyricallynatural, and meaningful depictions of trees – alone and in groups – are not only a 22 Philip Sidney, The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, ed. Katharine Duncan-Jones (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008). 1.19.

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defining aspect of his art, but also were of great importance in shaping the sylvan visions of the great landscape painters who came after him. She shows how the print medium helped him to spread this imagery to a Europe hungry for better ways to body forth the green world; traces several key motifs he developed, ones with long resonance in European scenery; and concludes by asking us to reevaluate our human drive to call forth the green beauties of nature, insisting we understand it as an ecopoetic urge of particular note in our current ecological crisis. A further development of landscape imagery, and one that also had an immediate impact on European art, is revealed in Patrizia Tosini’s ‘From Venice to Tivoli: Girolamo Muziano and Invention of the Tiburtine landscape’. Muziano (c.1532–92) first painted in Padua and Venice, was taught by the Italian Domenico Campagnola and the Dutch Lambert Sustris, and then moved South to work in Rome and nearby Tivoli. Tosini’s essay traces the influences that allowed Muziano to invent the transformational, complex, verdant imagery that emerged in his Tivoli works, especially those at Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este’s villa. She explores the impact of Venetian draftsmen, particularly Titian and Campagnola, on his early style, and shows how his Roman manner changes, in part because of the wild verdancy of Tivoli, to become one that influenced generations of artists to come. Continuing this section’s investigation of the spread of green imagery within Italy and from Italy outward, and also its exploration of the connection between artistic virtuosity and natural imagery, Sabine Peinelt-Schmidt’s essay ‘Of Oak and Elder, Cloud-Like Angels, and a Bird’s Nest: The Graphic Interpretation of Titian’s The Death of St. Peter Martyr by Martino Rota, John Battista Fontana, Valentin Lefebre, John Baptist Jackson, and their Successors’ provides a close assessment of reproductive engravings after Titian’s sylvan tour de force, his Death of St. Peter Martyr altarpiece (1529, destroyed 1867). The titular printmakers, working in Venice, Rome and other places on the continent, subtly reworked Titian’s original vision, minimizing the religious narrative and emphasizing the visual presence of the forest trees and accompanying natural details. Peinelt-Schmidt contrasts written descriptions of the work with copies made from it, showing how, in part, the lack of detailed verbal exegesis of its much-admired landscape allowed printmakers the creative freedom to shift the work in their own ‘green’ directions. These free translations of Titian’s magisterial vision of greenery, from painting to print, she argues, did much to shape the portrayal of verdure in Western art. Finally, in ‘The Verdant as Violence: The Storm Landscapes of Herman van Swanevelt and Gaspard Dughet’, Susan Russell moves between the Netherlands, Rome and France, seeking to settle the question of who invented the genre of the ‘land storm’ by looking very closely at the works of these artists. A good part of her essay is devoted to tracing the origins of a new landscape genre, but Russell also addresses larger cultural trends in Italy that might have raised interest in the ‘land storm’ in general. Natural philosophy flourished in Rome, especially in the circles at

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the Barberini court. Along with contemporary analyses of ancient texts on storms, Roman scholars produced scientific investigations into atmospheric conditions and their effects on the earth, studies that may well have triggered a response by landscape artists working in Rome, creating works with immediate impact in France and beyond.

Conclusions Russell’s essay, moving from country to country, from visual to textual analysis, from humanist inquiries into ancient texts to then-contemporary scientific musings on weather and climate, is a fitting end to our three sections, bringing together many of the methods used in other essays and showing how artistic visions of the green world continued to be innovated into the seventeenth century and beyond, in part through inspiration by multiple past practices, from ancient writings to early sixteenth century art theory. But this is not the end of the volume. ‘Green Worlds’ closes with a coda by Paul Barolsky entitled ‘A Brief Journey Through the Green World of Renaissance Venice’, a text enjoining the reader to look once again at a number of justifiablyfamous images of verdancy. Just as this essay collection does, Barolsky’s journey begins with some fifteenth century Florentine landscape revelations, but his main goal is to linger in sixteenth-century Venice, a century and locale renowned for its green poetic vision. Barolsky asks us to consider the ways certain revolutionary Venetian works blur distinctions between nature and art, between painting and poetry, between spirituality and play, insisting that certain paintings can never be fully understood. His essay closes our book with a suggestive meditation on the scholarly paradox of the verdant world’s sensual delights, insisting that ‘there is never an exact equivalence between word and image.’ No …there are only infinite shades of green.

Part I Devotional Viridescence

1. The Green Places of Fra Filippo Lippi and Sandro Botticelli Rebekah Compton

Abstract In the later fifteenth century, the backgrounds of Florentine altarpieces and devotional paintings changed from glittering gold to vivid green. In numerous paintings by Fra Filippo Lippi and his students, including Sandro Botticelli, the Virgin adores the Christ Child in mystical evergreen forests and lush meadows hedged by rose bushes. This gold-to-green trend reflects developments in naturalism and growing appreciation for artistic skill; however, this essay argues that it was also contingent on the pharmacological, sensorial, and material merits of the color green. Green ‘things’ could restore and stimulate vision, and promote fertility and successful childbirth. This essay explores the artistic and economic value of pigments like green earth, verdigris, and malachite and the new techniques that Florentine artists developed for painting paradise on earth. Key Words: Malachite, Verdigris, Lippi, Botticelli, Verdure, Adoration

Introduction In the 1450s Florentine artists changed the backgrounds of their altarpieces and devotional paintings from glittering gold leaf (Fig. 1.1) to vivid green pigments (Plate 1). An early example is Fra Filippo Lippi (1406–69) who depicted mystical green forests in several of his Adoration of the Child paintings (Plate 1 & Fig. 1.2), which he completed for the Medici family between the late 1450s and mid-1460s. This same gold-to-green trend can be observed in the art of Lippi’s student, Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510), who in his Piacenza Tondo (Plate 2) situated a Madonna Adoring the Child with St. John the Baptist in a verdant meadow partially enclosed by a hedge of roses. This artistic shift from heaven’s abstract flatness to a tangible green world signals the beginning of naturalism in fifteenth-century Florentine painting. It also marks a shift in the taste of patrons, for whom the artist’s skill outweighed the material value of his gold pigment, a point famously argued by Michael Baxandall in his Goodchild, K.H., A. Oettinger and L. Prosperetti (eds.), Green Worlds in Early Modern Italy. Art and the Verdant Earth, Amsterdam University Press doi: 10.5117/9789462984950_ch01

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Figure 1.1: Masaccio (Tommaso di Giovanni di Simone Guidi), Madonna and Child, c.1426. Tempera on panel. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy.1 While naturalism and artistic skill remain the leading factors cited for the gold-to-green transition, this essay argues that the pharmacological, sensorial, and material merits of green played an equal if not greater role in this development. 1 Through an analysis of fifteenth-century contracts, Baxandall illustrates the ways in which patrons diverted ‘funds from material to skill’. See Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 1–27.

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Figure 1.2: Fra Filippo Lippi, Adoration of the Child, c.1457–60. Tempera on panel. Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin.

Sensorial Medicine Green is a positive color symbolizing youth, fertility, hope, and rebirth. The earth, for example, transitions from winter to spring by changing from brown to green. In Roman Catholic icononography, the cardinal virtue of Hope typically wears green.2 Besides these favorable connotations, green also possesses pharmacological properties, specifically related to vision. According to several ancient authors, this pleasant color soothes and refreshes the eyes. Aristotle (384-22 BCE), for instance, writes that malachite ‘fetches a price comparable to gold; for it is a drug used for the eyes’.3 In his Natural History, Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE) explains that verdigris, another green 2 For a summary of the positive attributes of green throughout history, see Michel Pastoureau, Green: The History of a Color, trans. Jody Gladding (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 14–85. 3 Aristotle, Minor Works (On Marvellous Things Heard), trans. W. S. Hett, Loeb Classical Library 307 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1938), 160–161.

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pigment, works in the form of a salve or pill to counteract ‘glaucoma and cataract, and also against films on the eyes or roughness and white ulcerations in the eye and affections of the eyelids’.4 Emeralds could also improve eyesight. Pliny recounts how gem-engravers, after straining their eyes with tedious work, replenished their sense of sight by gazing upon emeralds.5 Verdant places possessed similar curative powers. In her twelfth-century medical treatise, Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179) instructs the reader, who suffers from weak eyes, ‘to go to a green meadow and look at it long enough until the eyes become moist as from weeping, because the greenness of this meadow removes what is turbid in the eyes and makes them bright and clear’.6 Discussions of green’s therapeutic properties continued into the fifteenth century. The Florentine philosopher Marsilio Ficino (1433–99) writes about the color in his Three Books on Life, a compendium of astrology, pharmacology, and natural science. He begins by claiming that green things, so long as they stay green, possess a lively, youthful, and salubrious humor that ‘flows to us through the odor, sight, use, and frequent habitation of and in them’.7 Green affects vision most directly; however, through the eyes, it replenishes the spirit itself. Why does green have this salutary effect? First of all, Ficino explains, green is a temperate color. While bright colors, such as white and gold, dilate the eyes and delight them too much, dark colors, including black and purple, contract the eyes and offer them no pleasure. By taking 4 Pliny the Elder, Natural History, trans. H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library 394 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952), 9.34, pp. 208–213. 5 Pliny writes: ‘[S]o soothing to their feeling of fatigue is the mellow green color of the stone’. Pliny the Elder, Natural History, trans. D. E. Eicholz, Loeb Classical Library 419 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), 10.37, pp. 212–213. For a discussion of ancient sources on green’s positive effects on vision, see Pastoureau, 2014, 54–57; Bruce R. Smith, The Key of Green: Passion and Perception in Renaissance Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 71–72; J. W. Meadows, “Pliny on the Smaragdus,” The Classical Review 59 (1945): 50–51; Leopoldine Prosperetti, Landscape and Philosophy in the Art of Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568–1625) (Burlington: Ashgate, 2009), 157–162. 6 Hildegard of Bingen, On Natural Philosophy and Medicine: Selections from Cause et cure, trans. Margret Berger (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1999), 107. Margret Berger discusses a manuscript found in Florence at the Biblioteca Laurenziana (MS.laur.Ashburnham 1323, fols. 1–14; c.1300) that seems to be copied from the single, original text Physica. Liber subtilitatum diversarum naturarum creaturarum, written by Hildegard of Bingen between 1151 and 1158; see Ibid, ix-xi. For a discussion of Hildegard of Bingen’s influence on medieval and early Renaissance English ideas regarding the therapeutic value of landscapes, see Carole Rawcliffe, “‘Delectable Sightes and Fragrant Smelles’: Gardens and Health in Late Medieval and Early Modern England,” Garden History 36 (2008): 3–21. 7 ‘Post oraculum nobis cogitandum mandat rerum viridium naturam, quatenus virent, non solum esse vivam, sed etiam iuvenilem, humoremque prorsus salubri et vivido quodam spiritu redundantem. Quapropter odore, visu, usu, habitatione frequenti iuvenilem inde spiritum nobis influere.’ Marsilio Ficino, Three Books on Life, trans. Carol V. Kaske and John R. Clark (Binghamton: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1989), 204–205. For a discussion of the therapeutic virtues of colors and landscapes in healing certain ailments, see Sheila Barker, “The Making of a Plague Saint: Saint Sebastian’s Imagery and Cult before the Counter Reformation,” in Piety and Plague: From Byzantium to the Baroque, eds. Franco Mormando and Thomas Worcester (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2006), 90–131, especially 123–127; Frances Gage, “Exercise for Mind and Body: Giulio Mancini, Collecting, and the Beholding of Landscape Painting in the Seventeenth Century,” Renaissance Quarterly 61 (2008): 1167–1207.

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part in both black and white, green ‘equally delights and conserves sight’.8 Secondly, Ficino writes that green things are soft and tender, a texture that calms the eyes’ rays rather than ‘destroying’ and ‘breaking’ them as hard and rough surfaces do.9 Thirdly, green is a moist color aligned with the element of water. It therefore aids bodily functions dependent on water, including vision, fertility, and childbirth. Because of its moisture, Ficino claims that the color is ‘quite proper for newborns, accommodated also to mothers’.10 In conclusion then, green’s temperate, tender, and moist virtues offered benefits to the mind and the body through the sense of sight, while also improving vision itself.

Verdant Materials In fifteenth-century Florence, citizens experienced the salutary effects of green by traveling beyond the city walls to the grassy plains of the Tuscan countryside or to the moss-covered forests of the Apennine Mountains. Inside the city, open-air gardens in townhouses, convents, and monasteries also served as natural green places. Many citizens, however, desired greenery inside of their homes and commissioned artists to design verdant works of art for them. Several different mediums with paired materials fulfilled this demand. This section examines three of them: textiles made of yarns dyed in mixtures of vegetal matter, frescoes painted with green earth (terra verde), and panel paintings aglow with precious malachite and verdigris. Wealthy citizens purchased two types of verdure textiles for their domestic interiors, either solid green silks woven in Florence or tapestries of wool and silk imported from Northern European cities, such as Antwerp or Bruges. Both types of textiles were luxury items. In the inventory taken at the death of Lorenzo de’ Medici (1449–92) in 1492, these items included ‘two bench-back tapestries of foliage and landscape lined in green cloth’ and ‘a set of tapestry bed curtains adorned with foliage’.11 The family also owned a painted green bedcover, a green velvet duvet embroidered in gold, and 8 ‘Inter virentia vero deambulantes interim causam perquiremus, ob quam color viridis visum prae ceteris foveat salubriterque delectet. Inveniemus tandem naturam visus esse lucidam ac lucis amicam, volatilem tamen ac facile dissipabilem. Idcirco dum per lucem se dilatat, velut amicam, interdum nimio lucis excessu rapi prorsus, et vehementi dilatatione dissolvi; tenebras autem naturaliter velut inimicas fugere, ideoque radios in angustum inde retrahere. […] Quamobrem color viridis maxime omnium nigrum cum candido temperans, praestat utrunque, delectans pariter atque conservans.’ Ficino, 204–205. 9 ‘Et molli insuper et adhuc tenera qualitate, sicut et aqua, radiis oculorum absque offensione resistit, ne abeuntes longius disperdantur. Quae enim dura sunt simul et aspera, frangunt quodammodo radios; quae vero rarissima sunt, dissolutioni aditum patefaciunt. […] Quae denique praeter haec beneficia tenera quoque sunt et mollia, sicut aqua resque virides, liquidis oculorum radiis mollitia blandiuntur.’ Ibid, 204–205. 10 ‘Viridis quidem Veneri simul atque Lunae: humidus videlicet humidis atque nascentium proprius, accommodatus et matribus.’ Ibid, 344–345. 11 Richard Stapleford, Lorenzo de’ Medici at Home: The Inventory of the Palazzo Medici in 1492 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013), 67, 136.

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Figure 1.3: Domenico Ghirlandaio, Birth of St. John the Baptist, 1485–90. Fresco. Tornabuoni Chapel, Santa Maria Novella, Florence.

a dog’s bed, covered with green taffeta.12 Domenico Ghirlandaio’s (1449–94) fresco of the Birth of St. John the Baptist (Fig. 1.3) from 1485–90 depicts a well-appointed bedchamber, similar to one that may have existed in the Medici palazzo. The room includes two types of verdant textiles: a sizable, solid green cloth hangs on the wall, while a smaller, floral tapestry drapes across the doorway. The deployment of green within this birthing chamber suggests that there may have been a belief that the color could benefit the health of the mother and her newborn child at a precarious moment in their lives. Verdant textiles were expensive, in part because of the cost and labor involved in dyeing silk or wool thread green. Although scholarship tends to focus on the history of kermes red, the most expensive dye in fifteenth-century Florence, price comparisons reveal that green dyes cost as much, or almost as much, as crimson.13 According to the Florentine Trattato della seta (Treatise on Silk), composed during the 1450s by 12 For examples of bedding and wall hangings fashioned from green textiles or tapestries of foliage, see Ibid, 66, 67, 77, 79, 88, 132, 136, 140, 144, 157, 159, 162, 165, 171, 187, and 188. In the inventory, there are more green textiles than red or blue. The inventory lists a number of blue bedspreads with ‘Venetian embroidery’; however, there is only one blue bed curtain and no wall tapestries in blue. There are about half as many red bedcovers as green or blue, though the majority of pillows and cushions are covered with red textiles. For blue textiles, see Ibid, 69, 76, 78, 83, 88, 121, 158, 159, 162, 165, 179, 180, 188. For red textiles, see Ibid, 66, 72, 79, 82, 94, 119, 130, 132, 139, 144, 145, 174, 188. 13 Examples of scholarship on kermes red include Michel Pastoureau, Red: The History of a Color, trans. Jody Gladding (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 40–43, 90–93; Spike Bucklow, Red: The Art and Science of a Colour (London: Reaktion, 2016), 21–34; Amy Butler Greenfield, A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage,

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the Arte della seta (silk weavers guild), dyers paid a tariff of 30 soldi to dip a pound of silk thread once in kermes red and 40 soldi to dip the same amount twice. They paid a tariff of 20 soldi to tint a pound of silk thread green and 40 soldi to dye it greenbrown (verde bruno). While kermes red dye could be manufactured from a single animal body (the kermes insect), green had to be carefully mixed from different blue and yellow materials, such as woad, indigo, sumac, and the Neapolitan plant known as guadarella or ‘dyer’s rocket’.14 Green’s high price tag depended on a dyer’s ability to mix a consistent, colorfast dye from this variety of organic materials. Weaving several shades of green threads into foliate patterns also cost money, which increased the price of verdure tapestries. The bench back tapestries in the Medici inventory, for example, were valued at 70 florins while a gilt bronze panel of the Madonna and Child by Donatello (1386–1466) was appraised at only 25 florins.15 Wall frescos were a cheaper alternative for introducing verdancy into the interior, particularly if they were painted with green earth or terra verde. Quarried in Verona and Cyprus, green earth (Plate 3a) derives from the minerals glauconite and celadonite. In 1471, a pound (libbra) of terra verde cost 4 soldi.16 Because of this low cost, green earth could be purchased in bulk and used to fresco entire rooms. In his Handbook of Art, written at the end of the fourteenth century, Cennino Cennini (c.1370-c.1440) offers directions for painting frescos in green earth on already-plastered walls. Working a secco, or without fresh plaster, the artist should cover the walls with two or three layers of green earth and then draw designs in charcoal, ink, or black paint. Next, he should dab the fresco with a sponge dipped in water and honey, a technique that added texture and variety to the green base, making it appear more naturalistic. Finally, the artist should apply shadows with black wash and build up figures in lead white.17 The a secco technique of fresco painting that Cennini describes was faster and easier than the buon fresco method, primarily because artists did not have and the Quest for the Color of Desire (New York: Harper Perennial, 2006), 5–33; Luca Molà, The Silk Industry in Renaissance Venice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 107–137. 14 Florence Edler de Roover, L’arte della seta a Firenze nei secoli XIV e XV, ed. Sergio Tognetti (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1999), 44–47. 15 Stapleford, 67, 93. 16 The speziali Tomasso di Giovanni lists 4 soldi as the price for green earth in his inventory (Archivio dell’Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence, Estranei 880, 55v). For this price, see Susanne Kubersky-Piredda, “The Market for Painters’ Materials in Renaissance Florence,” in Trade in Artists’ Materials: Markets and Commerce in Europe to 1700, eds. Jo Kirby, Susie Nash, and Joanna Cannon (London: Archetype, 2010), 232. In her study of pigment prices, Kubersky-Piredda converts this price into 0.2 ‘working days of a skilled laborer in the building industry (WDSL)’. For a chart of comparative prices for green earth, see Ibid, 232. 17 ‘Alcuna volta si lavora in camera o sotto loggie, o pogiuoli che tutte / le volte non si lavora in fresco pero chel trovi per altro tempo smaltato / e vuoi lavorare, in verde per tanto togli verde terra ben macinata / e temperata con colla da ingessare non troppo forte, e danne con pennello di / setole grosso per tutto il campo due, o tre volte.’ The directions for drawing, dabbing with a sponge, and adding figures are included in the rest of the chapter. For Italian and English text, see Cennino Cennini, Il libro dell’arte, trans. Lara Broecke (London: Archetype, 2015), 245. In her footnotes, Lara Broecke describes several extant monochrome green rooms and notes that this type of décor was in fashion in the first half of the fifteenth century, see Ibid, 246.

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to apply and paint on fresh plaster daily. Due to the low cost of green earth and its application a secco, this technique offered patrons a quick and affordable green place within their homes. Green earth’s flat hues, however, were not suitable for painting the rich verdant landscapes that Florentine patrons desired in devotional art after the middle of the fifteenth century. For verdant landscapes in tempera (pigment mixed with egg yolk), Florentine artists used either malachite (verdazzurro) or verdigris (verderame) or a combination of the two. Both pigments derive from copper and produce elegant greens; however, they differ greatly with regard to procurement, cost, technical manipulation, and efficacy. Verdigris (Plate 3b) is a copper acetate, manufactured by exposing copper plates to vinegar, urine, or wine.18 The colored rust that forms on the metal sheets is blue-green in hue, similar to our modern teal. In the 1471 inventory of the Florentine apothecary Tommaso di Giovanni, a pound of verdigris cost 18–20 soldi, which is four to five times as much as a pound of green earth.19 In contrast to the opacity and loaminess of green earth, verdigris is translucent and brilliant; however, it is also volatile and fleeting. Cennini writes that ‘if you want to make an absolutely perfect green for grass, it [verdigris] is lovely to the eye but does not last’.20 As a pigment, verdigris poses difficulties in the fresco and tempera mediums but works well in oil. It is hostile to lead white, and when improperly bound and exposed to sunlight or moisture, it darkens to a chestnut brown and may even turn a deep black. Between 1450 and 1470 a number of Florentine artists experimented with verdigris bound in egg, resin, and/ or oil; however, the lush green places that they skillfully painted are now dull brown landscapes.21 In Alessio Baldovinetti’s (1425–99) Madonna with Child (Fig. 1.4) from c.1464–70, the landscape behind Mary and Jesus looks more like a muddy swamp in Lazio than the verdant Valdarno of Tuscany. Of all the green pigments available to Florentine artists, malachite (Plate 3c) was the most expensive and probably the most popular. It was also the green closest to the color of fresh grass and new leaves. Found alongside azurite in copper 18 Albertus Magnus (c.1200–80) describes the manufacturing of verdigris: ‘If copper sprinkled with salt is placed over vinegar or the urine of a pure young boy, the power of the urine or vinegar will penetrate into the substance of the copper and change it to a green color. Or, again, if copper alone is placed over pressed out [grapes from the vintage], the mere vapor of wine will change it to a fine brilliant green color.’ Albertus Magnus, Book of Minerals, trans. Dorothy Wyckoff (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 225. 19 A pound of verdigris at 18 soldi in Tomasso di Giovanni’s inventory equals, in Kubersky-Piredda’s estimates, 0.9–1.0 ‘working days of a skilled laborer in the building industry (WDSL)’. See Kubersky-Piredda, 234. 20 ‘E sse vuoi fare un verde inn erba perfettissimo ebello all occhio / manon dura ede buono.’ Cennini, 2015, 82. 21 For a discussion of verdigris’s problems, see Renate Woudhuysen-Keller and Paul Woudhuysen, “Thoughts on the Use of the Green Glaze called ‘Copper Resinate’ and its Colour-Changes,” in Looking Through Paintings: The Study of Painting Techniques and Materials in Support of Art Historical Research, ed. Erma Hermens (London: Archetype, 1998), 133–146; Hermann Kühn, “Verdigris and Copper Resinate,” in Artists’ Pigments: A Handbook of Their History and Characteristics, ed. Ashok Roy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), v. 2, 131– 147; Daniel V. Thompson, The Materials and Techniques of Medieval Painting (New York: Dover Publications, 1956),163–168.

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Figure 1.4: Alessio Baldovinetti, Madonna with Child, c.1464–70. Tempera on panel. Musée du Louvre, Paris.

mines, malachite is a bright green, opaque stone with blue tones. When ground, it forms a coarse pigment of individual particles, similar to fine sand. Cennini instructs the painter to ‘mull it just a little with a light hand for the sake of the blue because if you ground it too much it would turn a dull color and ashen’.22 Although malachite works best in tempera, it does not dissolve in either egg or oil. Artists often suspended the tiny particles in lead white or lead-tin yellow and then applied this mixture over a black or yellow imprimatur.23 In fifteenth-century 22 ‘Per amor dell azurro trialo pocho pocho cholla man leggiera pero / chesse troppo il macinasse verrebbe in colore stinto e cce / nderaccio.’ Cennini, 2015, 78. 23 For a discussion of malachite’s properties, see Rutherford J. Gettens and Elisabeth West Fitzhugh, “Malachite and Green Verditer,” in Artists’ Pigments: A Handbook of Their History and Characteristics, ed. Ashok Roy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), v. 2, 183–202; Rutherford J. Gettens and Elisabeth West Fitzhugh, “Malachite and Green Verditer,” Studies in Conservation 19 (1974): 2–23; Thompson, 160–162.

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Florence, malachite was cheaper than gold or ultramarine; however, it was significantly more expensive than green earth or verdigris, costing about the same as red lake (manufactured from silk dyed kermes) and azurite blue (malachite’s natural twin). The 1471 inventories of the Florentine artists Neri di Bicci (1419–92) and Alessio Baldovinetti list malachite (verdazzzuro) as 144–168 soldi per pound, which is nine times more expensive than verdigris and forty-two times more costly than green earth.24 While Bicci and Baldovinetti’s inventories provide a price range for malachite, there are several questions surrounding how the mineral was sold. In the inventories of speziali, verdazzurro is rarely, if ever, mentioned. For example, in the Arte di medici e speziali section of the gabelle of 1442 (a list of tarrifs on goods sold by the Florentine guilds), there is an entry each for green earth, verdigris, and two for azurite; however, verdazzurro is not listed.25 Similarly, the pigment is absent from the 1471 inventory of the Florentine apothecary Tomasso di Giovanni.26 In Venice too, verdazzurro does not appear in the records of the vendecolori or color sellers, including one inventory from 1534 that lists 102 materials. In contrast, verdazzurro does appear in the Venetian artist Lorenzo Lotto’s (c.1480–1556/7) inventory of his own painting supplies, just as it had in the inventories of Bicci and Baldovinetti.27 Malachite’s conjunction with azurite, its natural twin, likely explains this conflicting evidence.28 Vannoccio Biringuccio (1480–1539), who wrote a sixteenth-century treatise on mining, explains that verdazzurro ‘is more or less green or blue according to the quantity of the mixture […] It is gathered with care from the colored stones and is cleansed and made fine by washing and grinding’.29 Biringuccio’s entry suggests that verdazzurro was both green and blue and that the greener parts could be 24 Neri di Bicci, Le ricordanze (1453–1475), ed. Bruno Santi (Pisa: Marlin, 1976), 366; Alessio Baldovinetti, I ricordi (1470–73), ed. Giovanni Poggi (Florence: Liberia, 1909), 14. In these same inventories, azurite costs 25–34 soldi per ounce; see Bicci, 366, 382; Baldovinetti, 14–15; red lake costs 14 soldi per ounce; see Bicci, 366; and ultramarine costs 216–342 soldi per ounce, see Bicci, 328, 366. The inventories are also discussed by Jo Kirby, “The Price of Quality: Factors Influencing the Cost of Pigments During the Renaissance,” in Revaluing Renaissance Art, eds. Gabriele Neher and Rupert Shepherd (Burlington: Ashgate, 2000), 19–42. In KuberskyPiredda’s estimates, a pound of malachite cost 144–168 soldi, which equals 7.2 to 8.4 ‘working days of a skilled laborer in the building industry (WDSL)’. See Kubersky-Piredda, 235–238. 25 For a list of goods sold by the Arte di medici e speziali, see the gabelle of Giovanni da Uzzano (1359–1431) in Giovanni Francesco Pagnini, ed., Della decima e di varie altre gravezze imposte dal comune di Firenze (Lisbon and Lucca, 1765–66; reprint, Bologna: Forni, 1967), v. 2, bk. 4: 17–26. For azzurro grosso di golfo and azzuro vivo (‘azurite’), see Ibid, 17; for verde terra (‘green earth’), see Ibid, 25; for verderame (‘verdigris’), see Ibid, 26. 26 Kubersky-Piredda, 232–242. 27 Louisa C. Matthew, “‘Vendecolori a Venezia’: The Reconstruction of a Profession,” Burlington Magazine 144 (2002): 680–686. 28 In his Handbook of Art, Cennini states that verdazzurro is ‘manufactured’ from azurite. (‘Verde e un colore el quale e mezo naturale et questo sifa arti / fitialmente che ssi fa dazurro dellamangnia e questo si chiama / verde azurro.’) For Italian and English text, see Cennini, 2015, 78. 29 Vannoccio Biringuccio, Pirotechnia, trans. Cyril Stanley Smith and Martha Teach Gnudi (New York: American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, 1942), 118.

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separated out from the bluer ones.30 Following this line of argument, it would seem that the speziali, who sold the raw materials, classified malachite under the general category of azurite, from which it was derived, while artists like Bicci, Baldovinetti, and Lotto separated the green (verdazzurro) and blue (azzuro grosso) pigments in their inventories.

Fra Filippo Lippi’s Technique Malachite is ubiquitous within the oeuvre of Fra Filippo Lippi, who painted gardens, forests, and even architecture with this pale green pigment. For the Medici family, he completed two Adoration of the Christ Child paintings with verdant settings (Fig. 1.2 & Plate 1), and it is likely that his wealthy patrons supplied him with high-quality malachite.31 The first Adoration of the Child (Fig. 1.2) was created between c.1457– 60 and served as the altarpiece for the family’s private chapel, nestled within their magnificent new palazzo. Benozzo Gozzoli (c.1421–97) frescoed the chapel’s walls with scenes of the three Magi and their entourages, processing through landscapes carpeted with thick grass and leafy trees; their goal is the baby Jesus in Lippi’s Adoration. The artist painted a second version of the scene, the Adoration of the Child with Saints John the Baptist and Bernard (Camaldoli Altarpiece) (Plate 1), after 1463 for Piero de’ Medici’s (1416–69) wife, Lucrezia Tornabuoni (1427–82), who placed it within her private devotional cell at the Camaldoli Hermitage, a prestigious religious retreat located in the heart of the Tuscan Apennines and founded by St. Romuald (951–1027) in 1012.32 Lippi’s use of a green landscape instead of a gold ground in these two Medici paintings marks a turning point in Florentine religious art. Between 1460 and 1500 artists painted numerous variations of Lippi’s Adoration of the Child, making it one of the most reproduced compositions of the fifteenth century. One Florentine workshop, studied by Megan Holmes and identified with Pseudo Pier Francesco Fiorentino, who she refers to as the Lippi and Pesellino Imitator, manufactured at 30 Lara Broeke offers another theory regarding this pigment in her commentary to Cennini’s Handbook of Art. She suggests that verdazzurro was manufactured by dying or tingeing azurite with saffron or yellow lake, a process that would produce a green-blue or verdazzurro pigment. Cennini, 2015, 79. 31 A study of Lippi’s Medici Chapel Adoration was completed by the Hamilton Kerr Institute, a branch of the Fitzwilliam Museum, for their reconstruction of the painting for BBC’s Private Life of a Masterpiece. For a discussion of Lippi’s techniques observed during this process, see Rose Miller and Christine Patrick, “Four Weeks of Work for Four Seconds of Fame: Reconstructions for Television,” in In Artists’ Footsteps: The Reconstruction of Pigments and Paintings: Studies in honor of Renate Woudhuysen-Keller, eds. Lucy Wrapson, Jenny Rose, Rose Miller, and Spike Bucklow (London: Archetype, 2012), 165–176. 32 For a discussion of the patronage of Lippi’s Adoration paintings and their relationship with female patronage, penitence, and cultivating the ‘garden of the soul’, see Jeffrey Ruda, Fra Filippo Lippi: Life and Work (London: Phaidon, 1999), 218–235; Megan Holmes, Fra Filippo Lippi, The Carmelite Painter (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 172–182; Stefanie Solum, Women, Patronage, and Salvation in Renaissance Florence: Lucrezia Tornabuoni and the Chapel of the Medici Palace (Burlington: Ashgate, 2015), 169–212.

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Figure 1.5: Pseudo Pier Francesco Fiorentino, Adoration of the Child with the young St. John the Baptist, c.1475. Tempera on panel. Museo e Galleria Mozzi Bardini, Florence.

least forty-four panels (Fig. 1.5).33 A high percentage of these reproductions placed the Madonna and Child in a natural green place rather than against a glorious gold space. 33 Megan Holmes, “Copying Practices and Marketing Strategies in a Fifteenth-Century Florentine Painter’s Workshop,” in Italian Renaissance Cities: Artistic Exchange and Cultural Translation, eds. Stephen J. Campbell and Stephen J. Milner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 52–74.

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In each of his Adoration paintings (Figs. 1.2 and Plate 1), Lippi depicts a fine-featured Madonna kneeling and adoring her newborn child in a grassy meadow bespeckled with flowers. Behind the holy pair, a steep path weaves through a Tuscan forest. Darkness has fallen, and gold rays of light emanate from God the Father and the Holy Spirit, bathing Christ in the ineffable splendor described by St. Bridget of Sweden (c.1303–73) in her vision of the Nativity.34 To understand Lippi’s technical approach to painting the sylvan landscape surrounding this miracle, it is best to analyze the Camaldoli Adoration of the Child (Plate 1), which has recently been cleaned. The Medici Chapel Adoration (Fig. 1.2) has not been restored, and the landscape is dark, either through flaws in the application of the green pigments or from the inherent instability of the pigments themselves, as described above. For the bower in the foreground of the Camaldoli Adoration, Lippi employs the traditional Florentine technique for painting greenery as described in Cennini’s Handbook of Art. Following Cennini’s instructions, an artist would begin with a black imprimatur, then lay in foliage with thick strokes of malachite (verdazzurro), add highlights with green mixed with lead-tin yellow (giallorino) or with lead-tin yellow alone, and finally ‘throw’ fruit, flowers, and birds onto the greenery.35 In adherence with this method, Lippi begins with a black imprimatur and then paints his grass and foliage with malachite (verdazzurro). On top of the dark ground, Lippi delineates a variety of naturalistic foliage, including single blades of grass, flat round leaves, and shoots of wispy ferns. To differentiate between the plants, Lippi uses lighter shades of green, formed by mixing malachite with lead-tin yellow (giallorino) or yellow ocher. Lippi then adds final highlights in yellow and white. While Lippi’s bower is traditional, his vertiginous mountain path, which alternates between steep rocky crags and small flat plateaus, is innovative. Lippi builds up the stratified terrain freely with earth pigments, with veins of brown umber, red and yellow ocher streaking across the jagged edges of the crags. Lippi then paints the plateaus of grass and moss with a vibrant malachite. In certain areas of the landscape, he adds saturation and depth by applying a verdigris glaze, formed by mixing the transparent pigment with oil and/or resin. His application of verdigris can be seen, for example, along the ridgeline to the right of John the Baptist. In other areas, Lippi appears to add a yellow lake glaze (another translucent pigment) to suggest a third shade of green and to create the illusion of velvety moss. In accordance with 34 For St. Bridget of Sweden’s revelation of the nativity, see The Revelations of St. Birgitta of Sweden, trans. Denis Searby (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), v. 3, 250–252. 35 Cennini titles the chapter: ‘The Way to Paint Trees and Grasses and Greenery in Fresco and in Secco.’ He writes: ‘Se vuoi adornare le dette montangnie diboschi darbori o / derbe metti prime il corpo dell albero di nero puro tenperato / che in frescho mal si posson fare epoi fa un grado di foglie di verde / schuro pur di verde azurro che di verde terra nonn e buono / effa che lle lavori bene spesse poi fa un verde con giallorino / che ssia piu chiaretto effa delle foglie meno cominciando arri / durti a trovare delle cime poi toccha i chiarori delle cime pur / di giallorino e vedrai i rilievi delli arbbori e delle verdure ma / prima quando ai canpeggiati gli albori di negro in pie e alch / uni rami degli albori e buttavi su le foglie epoi i frutti e / sopra le verdure butta alchuni fiori e uselletti.’ For Italian and English text, see Cennini, 2015, 122–123.

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Marsilio Ficino’s theories of vision, Lippi’s soft green plateaus soothe the rays of the eyes, while his sharp, steep crags disrupt them. Iconographically this alternation between arduous climbing and peaceful rest marks a form of spiritual progress that is supported by the image and exemplified by the penitent St. John the Baptist and St. Romuald, the founder of the Camaldolese order. Understood in terms of Ficino’s praise of the salubrious effects of green, the rich verdancy of the entire composition would have therefore transferred a vital spirit to both Lucrezia and Piero de’ Medici. As mentioned above, artists painted numerous variations of Lippi’s Adoration of the Child. Using reproductive drawings, the workshop of Pseudo Pier Francesco Fiorentino, whom Holmes refers to as the Lippi and Pesellino Imitator, replicated the scene (Fig. 1.5) over and over again. Patrons could choose between a full- or half-figure composition and substitute the subsidiary saints with saints of their own choice. The workshop also offered several background options: a green landscape, a hedge of roses, a solid azurite blue ground, or a gold ground. Of these options, Holmes argues that the landscape backgrounds may have been the most expensive.36 In addition to this massive marketing by Pseudo Pier Francesco Fiorentino’s workshop, other prominent artists, including Luca della Robbia, Alessio Baldovinetti, Cosimo Roselli, Filippino Lippi, and Sandro Botticelli, sculpted and painted adaptations of Lippi’s Adoration to fulfill the high demands of patrons for this exciting new devotional imagery.

Sandro Botticelli’s Technique Sandro Botticelli, who studied under Lippi, created several variations of the Adoration theme that are remarkable for their rich viridity. His Piacenza Tondo (Plate 2) of 1475–85 exemplifies the gold-to-green trend in the increasingly popular genre of tondo paintings, many of which included a scene of Mary venerating her child.37 Botticelli depicts Mary and a young John the Baptist adoring Jesus in a lush garden enclosed by a stone balustrade and hedge of roses. Mary is a young woman with long flaxen hair visible beneath her transparent silk veil. Her wide arching eyebrows, long 36 Holmes, 2004, 52–74; for discussion of backgrounds, see Ibid, 57–58. 37 There are various hypotheses as to the original commission of this tondo. One line of argument traces the provenance through the Appiani and Landi families and suggests that the tondo once belonged to Semiramide Appiani, the wife of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici and the likely owner of Botticelli’s Primavera and Minerva with Centaur; see Davide Gasparotto and Antonella Gigli, eds., Il tondo di Botticelli a Piacenza (Milan: Federico Motta, 2006), 53–63. Another hypothesis is that the tondo was commissioned by Benedetto di Antonio Salutati to be given to Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga in 1477, see Dario Covi, “A Documented Tondo by Botticelli,” in Scritti di storia dell’arte in onore di Ugo Procacci (Milan: Electa, 1977), v. 1, 270–272. For a general discussion of the tondo genre, see Roberta Olson, The Florentine Tondo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 83–105.

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Figure 1.6: Bartolomeo di Fruosino, verso of the Montauri Birth Tray, 1428. Tempera, gilt and silver on panel. Private Collection.

straight nose, broad cheeks, and full lips resemble a humanized Byzantine prototype; however, instead of being enthroned before heaven’s golden light, she kneels upon the earth’s green grass to adore the fruit of her womb. This tender encounter between mother and child correlates with the painting’s function as a tondo, a round panel presented to a couple as a wedding or birth gift and intended for the adornment of their bedchamber. The format recalls that of birth trays or deschi da parto, which were produced for similar occasions during the first half of the fifteenth century.38 While some birth trays illustrated religious subjects, many depicted secular scenes from history, mythology, or contemporary life. Some included gardens of love and on the verso of several, nude toddlers sit and play in verdant settings, as seen on the verso of Bartolomeo di Fruosino’s (1366/69–1441) Montauri Birth Tray of 1428 (Fig. 1.6). Like the coral amulet that hangs from the neck of Fruosino’s child, the green pigment used for the landscape may have possessed 38 For links between tondi and deschi da parto, see Ibid, 22–31.

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talismanic powers that aided both the mother and her child.39 In his Natural History, Pliny the Elder writes that malachite ‘protects children, and has a natural property that is a prophylactic against danger’.40 Likewise, Ficino emphasizes green’s nurturing effect on mothers and newborns.41 In the Piacenza Tondo (Plate 2), Botticelli’s grassy meadow provides a temperate and tender resting place for the Madonna and her child. The lush landscape, with its cool stream and sweet-smelling roses, refreshes not only the sense of sight, but also the spirit itself, through its sensuality. Botticelli painted the foreground lawn using the traditional Florentine technique described by Cennini, although his application of green paint is much thicker than that of Fra Filippo Lippi. Botticelli began with a black imprimatur. He then applied malachite with thin diagonal strokes and clusters of vertical ones to imitate blades of grass that vary in width and height. Botticelli layered the individual strokes, covering the whole foreground with a dense carpet of grass; a few tiny blades even brush the edges of Mary’s ultramarine mantle. Botticelli then painted the distant landscape, which stretches beyond the flowing river, with thin, horizontal strokes of the pigment on top of a yellow rather than a black imprimatur. The green diminishes in color, becoming more yellow as it reaches the horizon line, which creates the illusion of distance. Through this technique, Botticelli establishes a contrast between the lush Edenic garden, where divine union is possible, and the sparse landscape of the fallen world, where vegetation struggles to survive. When Botticelli’s Piacenza Tondo was restored in 2003, scientific analysis revealed an anomaly with the green pigment, which exhibits spherical particles rather than the jagged ones characteristic of crushed malachite.42 This same form of spherulitic malachite has been discovered in paintings by Sassetta, Giovanni Bellini, Paolo Uccello, Filippino Lippi, and Domenico Ghirlandaio.43 Originally, scientists believed that the pigment was artificially precipitated from copper salts until Gunnar Heydenreich proved that it was naturally produced from the water run off of copper 39 For a discussion of coral charms, see Jacqueline Marie Musacchio, Art, Marriage, & Family in the Florentine Renaissance Palace (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 203–206. The inscription on the verso of the Montauri Birth Tray further underlines the talismanic power of such an object with a prayer that reads: FACCIA IDDIO SANA OGNI DONNA CHFFIGLIA EPADRI LORO… RO… ERNATO SIA SANZA NOIA ORICHDIA ISONO UNBANBOLIN CHESULI… A DIMORO FO LAPISCIA DARIENTO EDORO (May God give health to every woman who gives birth and to the child’s father… may [the child] be born without fatigue or danger. I am a baby who lives on a [rock]… and I make urine of silver and gold.) For inscription, see Musacchio’s catalogue entry (no. 69) in Art and Love in Renaissance Italy, ed. Andrea Bayer (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008), 152. 40 Pliny, 1962, 10.37, pp. 256–257. 41 Ficino, 344–345. 42 Gasparotto and Gigli, 150–156. 43 Gettens and Fitzhugh, “Malachite and Green Verditer,” 1993, 193–197; Jill Dunkerton and Ashok Roy, “The Materials of a Group of Late Fifteenth-century Florentine Panel Paintings,” National Gallery Technical Bulletin 17 (1996): 20–31; Ashok Roy and Dillian Gordon, “Uccello’s Battle of San Romano,” National Gallery Technical Bulletin 22 (2001): 4–17.

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mines. Diverted into gullies and troughs, this ‘green’ water contains a mineral deposit with a spherical shape. After it settles, the deposit can be collected, dried, and sold as a pigment.44 In his 1546 treatise De natura fossilium, Georgius Agricola (1494–1555) describes the gathering and selling of a fine powder from ‘green mine water’ that flows in the Carpathian Mountains.45 The most notable occurrences of spherulitic malachite have been found in paintings created between 1460 and 1490, though further research may prove this data to be false. It is possible that the use of spherical malachite during these years, the very years when green landscapes become widespread in art, indicates a shortage of mined malachite. As verdant landscapes became more popular, new sources had to be found to keep up with the increasing demand for green pigments.

Conclusion The shift from gold leaf to copper greens in the religious paintings of Fra Filippo Lippi, Sandro Botticelli, and their followers initiated the blossoming of naturalism in fifteenth-century Florentine painting, while also pointing to the new value placed on artistic skill. However, as this essay has illustrated, the material merits of green, from its natural origins to its pharmacological benefits, also played a role in the expanding poetics of verdancy. Green stones and verdant meadows could improve eyesight and transfer a vital, youthful spirit to individuals through the senses. Green pigments were essential for creating the contemplative forests and delightful gardens that gradually replaced heaven’s golden light. The materials and techniques employed by Fra Filippo Lippi and Sandro Botticelli in their generation of green places draw attention to both the merits and problems of green pigments in the late fifteenth century. Malachite produced a fresh green and worked well in tempera; however, it was expensive, difficult to bind, and lacked good covering power. Verdigris was cheap and generated a vivid green glaze in oil, but it could darken to a deep brown or black, especially if exposed to sunlight or moisture. Eventually, Florentine artists would learn how to successfully use verdigris in oil, but until they converted fully to this more versatile medium, they struggled to use both malachite and verdigris in the tempera medium. After the ascendancy of oil in panel paintings, artists and patrons still debated whether the charm of the painter derived more from his expensive and beautiful paints or from his display of grace, proportion, and decorum. In his Treatise 44 Gunnar Heydenreich, “A Note on Schifergrün,” Studies in Conservation 48 (2003): 227–236. 45 ‘When water removes the mineral from veins it settles out in a fine powder. A green mine water of this kind flows from an ancient underground working at Neusohl in the Carpathian Mountains. A volume sufficient to fill thirty castles is impounded and the mineral permitted to settle out. This is collected each year and sold in lots.’ Georgius Agricola, De natura fossilium (Textbook of mineralogy), trans. Mark Chance Bandy and Jean A. Bandy (New York: Geological Society of America, 1955), 52; see also Heydenreich, 229–230.

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on Painting of 1548, Paolo Pino (1534–65) addresses this topic in a fictional dialogue between Fabio, who represents the art of painting in Florence, and Lauro, who speaks for the interests of Venetian painters. In one passage, Fabio declares: that charm is the relish of our works. I do not, however, mean by charm the ultramarine blue at sixty scudi an ounce or fine lacquer, because paints are also beautiful by themselves in their boxes, and a painter cannot be praised as charming for giving pink cheeks and blond hair to all his figures, for making serene expressions or for coating the earth with beautiful green…46

Lauro responds by saying: ‘How badly off I would be, if they did not sell those beautiful paints, which bring me both credit and profit’.47 Lauro’s comment is a reminder that even during the sixteenth century, when the skill of the artist far surpassed the cost of his gold or ultramarine, pigments were still valuable to both the reputation and purse of the painter. As Florentine artists developed new materials and techniques for painting green landscapes, they continued to reveal their talents for replicating nature’s verdancy, while simultaneously offering therapeutic healing to the eyes and the spirit.

About the author Rebekah Compton is an Assistant Professor of Renaissance and Baroque Art History at the College of Charleston. She received her Ph.D. in the History of Art from the University of California, Berkeley and completed a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Columbia University. Her research focuses on the interplay between vision, materials, desire, and the body in Italian Renaissance art. Rebekah’s current book project, titled Venus and the Arts of Love in Renaissance Florence, surveys the goddess’s appearance in Florentine art, created between 1400–1600. Presenting new perspectives on Venus’s iconography in the context of gender and sexuality, each chapter looks closely at the materials and techniques used by Florentine artists to attract the viewer and to stimulate desire, desire that often threatened to cross the line from reverence and appreciation to something less chaste. Rebekah has published on Michelangelo’s Venus and Cupid, Botticelli’s garlands, and erotic art in the patrician palace. 46 Fabio: ‘Mi piace sommamente, e dicovi che la vaghezza è il condimento dell’opere nostre. Non però intendo vaghezza l’azzurro oltramarino da sessanta scudi l’onzia o la bella laca, perch’i colori sono anco belli nelle scatole da sé stessi, né è lodabil il pittor come vago per far a tutte le figure le guancie rosate e’ capegli biondi, l’aria serena, la terra tutta vestita d’un bel verde; ma la vera vaghezza non è altro che venustà o grazia, la qual si genera da una conzione over giusta proporzione delle cose, talc he, come le pitture hanno del proprio, hanno anco del vago et onorano il maestro.’ Paolo Pino, “Dialogo di Pittura,” in Trattati d’Arte del Cinquecento fra Manierismo e Controriforma, ed. Paola Barocchi (Bari: G. Laterza, 1960), 118. 47 Lauro: ‘Come serei a mal partito, se non si vendessero belli color, il che mi dà credito e utile!’ Ibid, 118.

2. Anthropomorphic Trees and Animated Nature in Lorenzo Lotto’s 1509 St. Jerome April Oettinger

Abstract Saint Jerome in a Landscape is one of Lorenzo Lotto’s most remarkable works, created when Lotto painted in Rome alongside Raphael. Discussions of the panel focus on Lotto’s affinity for Raphael, yet overlook the most unusual features of the painting: the vigorous ‒ and un-Raphaelesque ‒ trees scattered in the middle ground and in the foreground, and the stump of a felled tree that mirrors the muscular torso of Jerome. This essay explores sources ‒ ranging from Dürer’s woodcuts and the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili to Michelangelo’s frescos in the Sistine Chapel ‒ that informed Lotto’s anthropomorphic lens. More generally, it looks at how Lotto’s arboreal protagonists comment on inspiration, transformation, and the relationship between painting and sculpture, nature and art, and humans and nature. Keywords: Anthropomorphism, Trees, Landscape, Michelangelo, Art Theory, St. Jerome Hieronymus is of gerar, that is holy, and of nemus, that is to say a wood. And so Jerome is as much to say as a holy wood. Or it is said of noma, that is to say law, whereof is said in his legend that Jerome is interpreted a holy law. – Jacopo de Voragine, ‘The Life of St. Jerome’, The Golden Legend (13th c.)1

Of the green worlds that Lorenzo Lotto explored in the early decades of his long and peripatetic career, none is as rich in animated trees as the 1509 St. Jerome.2 (Plate 4) The panel, which the Venetian painter likely produced during his sojourn in Rome between 1508 and 1509, pictures the Church Father in a rocky outcropping far from 1 Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, or Lives of the Saints, Englished by William Caxton, First Edition 1483, ed. F.S. Ellis (London: Temple Classics, 1900), V, 94. See also http://legacy.fordham.edu/Halsall/basis/ goldenlegend/GoldenLegend-Volume5.asp#Jerome (August 1, 2017). 2 For the most recent, comprehensive bibliography on Lotto’s 1509 St. Jerome, see Lorenzo Lotto, ed. Giovanni Carlo Federico Villa (Milano: Silvana Editoriale, 2011), 160. See also Bruno Contardi, “Il San Girolamo di Lotto a Castel Sant’Angelo: storia di un oggetto”, and Pietro Zampetti, “Consuntivo breve delle celebrazioni lottesche”, in Il San Girolamo di Lorenzo Lotto a Castel S. Angelo, ed. Pietro Zampetti (Roma: Romana Società Editrice, 1983): 21–32; 11–20. Goodchild, K.H., A. Oettinger and L. Prosperetti (eds.), Green Worlds in Early Modern Italy. Art and the Verdant Earth, Amsterdam University Press doi: 10.5117/9789462984950_ch02

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civilization, ‘that great desert and waste wilderness […] burnt by the sun’, as the saint described his hermitage to the Roman noblewoman Eustochium, whose letters purportedly informed Jacopo de Voragine’s thirteenth-century Golden Legend, as well as a multitude of other hagiographies and spiritual manuals that expanded on the penitential and scholarly deeds of Jerome.3 Just as Early Modern accounts of Jerome variously embellished the widely popular story of the Church Father, Renaissance painters elaborated on the theme of Jerome, taking particular delight in the wild character of Jerome’s wilderness.4 In Lotto’s version, we find Jerome half sitting and half reclining beside the remains of a monumental tree trunk, whose rippling contours are no less vigorous than the saint’s muscular torso, his tronco. The tree’s finger-like roots cling to the saint’s rustic lectern with a tenacity that mirrors the Church Father’s outstretched digits, which clutch a large book. Just as trees draw sustenance from the Earth, so Lotto’s Jerome derives nourishment from the wisdom of the written word. The saint directs his gaze past the open volume in his hand and the other books scattered about him, toward another open book at his feet and, extending his muscular left arm, he at once touches, gestures toward, and turns its pages. This constellation of books, the tools of Jerome’s scholarship, recalls the Church Father’s greatest accomplishment, the translation and transformation of many texts into the one Vulgate Bible, reminding us that Jerome was a scholar ‘who knew the languages of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew’, as Jacopo de Voragine put it.5 Jerome’s spiritual journey unfolds in the background, where a steep path ascends through the distant cliffs. High on the ridge, the barely discernable figure of the Church Father, stone in hand, strikes his flesh ‘for Christ’s sake’, as the hagiography tells us, an act of penitence that marks the apex of a triad of flesh and 3 Jerome, Selected Letters, tr. F. A. Wright, Loeb Classical Library 262 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1933). Hereafter ‘LCL’. A vast scholarship has traced the rise of the cult of St. Jerome in Italy, from the earliest accounts of the Saint’s life and miracles in the late-eighth century to Jacopo de Voragine’s widely popular thirteenth-century hagiography found in Legenda Aurea Sanctorum. The Golden Legend was readily available in numerous manuscript copies and printed editions, along with other writings and other spiritual manuals that touched on Jerome’s life, including eight editions of La Vita, el Transito, et gli Miracoli del Beatissimo Hieronimo and four editions of Jerome’s Epistole, produced at Venetian presses before 1500. Two Venetian scuole piccole claimed Jerome as their patron saint – most famously San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, with its widely known cycle of Jerome’s life and deeds by Carpaccio. For an account of the cult of St. Jerome in the Renaissance, see Eugene F. Rice, Jr., St. Jerome in the Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985). See also Barbara Lynn Davis’ excellent summary of the cult of Jerome in the Venetian Renaissance in “Landscapes Beyond Civilization: St. Jerome in the Wilderness”, in Landscapes of the Imagination in Renaissance Venice (Princeton University, Ph.D. Dissertation, 1987), 183–228. 4 Jerome’s wilderness hermitage belongs to a vast tradition of solitary contemplation in nature – a topos best known through Petrarch’s de Vita Solitaria – and as such, devotional panels of Jerome in his Wilderness hermitage especially appealed to patrons who aspired to both the piety and erudition of Jerome. See Millard Meiss, “Scholarship and Penitence in the Early Renaissance: The Image of St. Jerome”, in The Painter’s Choice: Problems in the Interpretation of Renaissance Art (New York: Icon, 1976), 189–202. 5 Jacobus de Voragine, V, 94.

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wood. Two more trees dwell on the ridge below Jerome: one insistently clings to the cliff, while the other perishes under the repeated blows of a woodcutter’s ax, a detail that recalls Jerome’s description of himself as ‘a barren tree […] the axe is laid to my roots’.6 The ridge spills downward in the direction of a second act of violence in the plane below, where a contadino spurs a beast of burden with his staff. The violence abruptly dissipates in the distance to the right. There, beside a tufted copse, two shepherds linger in the company of nibbling sheep near the banks of gently flowing waters and an ancient city resembling Rome. It is an Arcadian idyll far removed from Jerome’s arduous wilderness. Two arboreal interventions in the form of a Pythagorean Y – a primitive railing behind Jerome that intersects with the bifurcated trunk of another dead tree perched on the diagonal slope of the hill – pose a choice between the two worlds: one a place of vigorous contemplation, and the other, a dream of the past.7 Lorenzo Lotto explored the language of trees throughout his career. Though he rarely rendered greenery with botanical precision, Lotto experimented time and again with the expressive, lyrical, and sometimes haunting aspect of the Green World, invoking the diverse textures, forms, groupings, and coloring of trees and verdure to amplify the expression of his sacred, portrait, and allegorical subjects. In the 1509 panel, as in many examples from Lotto’s oeuvre, trees function as dramatic participants in the narrative, serving as places of memory; formulae (little forms) that frame the ‘chief matter’ of the images, thereby prompting, exciting, and directing the devotional imagination, while also serving to guide (ductus) the beholder’s contemplative journey through the narrative.8 The following considers the imaginative interplay between wood and the Word in the 1509 Jerome in the Wilderness; specifically, the ways in which Lotto’s language of trees illuminates the mysteries of Creation and Human Salvation recounted in the Vulgate Bible. I will conclude with some broader observations about trees and transformation in Lotto’s Book of Nature, and the artist’s very personal association with wood and devotion.9 6 Jerome, LCL, 262, XIV, 43–44. 7 The classic study on the theme of the Pythagorean Y is found in Erwin Panofsky, “ Herkules am Scheidewege”, Studien der Bibliothek Warburg (Leipzig: G. Teubner, 1930). For Lotto’s explorations of the theme, see Margaret Binotto, “‘Lotto al bivio’: la dialettica di virtus e voluptas nella pittura profana”, Lorenzo Lotto, ed. G.C.F. Villa (Milano: Silvana Editore, 2010): 249–259, cat. 50–54. 8 On the function of formulae and the ductus in Medieval rhetoric and mnemonics, see Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 116–17; M. Carruthers, “The Concept of ductus, or Journeying Through a Work of Art”, Rhetoric Beyond Words: Delight and Persuasion in the Arts of the Middle Ages, ed. M. Carruthers, Cambridge Studies of Medieval Literature 78 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 190–213. 9 The Book of Nature was an important cultural concept. It was advertised by theologians as a second Scripture created by God as a source for the unlettered to learn of God’s work as the Almighty Creator and Divine Providence, which underlies Creation. On the topos of the Book of Nature, see E.L. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1948), 319–321.

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Past scholarship on the 1509 panel – and on Lotto’s oeuvre in general – has focused on identifying the artist’s stylistic borrowings from the various regions where he lived and worked.10 Lotto resided outside of his native Venice for much of his life, painting in various towns of the Veneto (notably Treviso and Bergamo), the Marche, and, during the first decade of his career, in Rome. It was Bernard Berenson who first suggested in his 1895 monograph that Lotto’s extensive travels directly related to his life-long experiments with a variety of regional styles. Lotto’s geographic mobility played a major role in his stylistic experiments over the course of his career, or, as Berenson playfully put it, Lotto, who ‘had hitherto remained shut up like a bud’ slowly ‘blossomed and ripened’ into the Lotto of the Bergamasque period, for ‘a man has a much larger number of moves than a plant’.11 Lotto most likely produced the Castel Sant’Angelo Jerome, the second of at least six versions of Jerome in the Wilderness that the artist painted in his lifetime, during his year-long sojourn in Rome between 1508 and 1509, an early moment in his career when he worked alongside Raphael and Raphael’s many acolytes in the stanze of Julius II, as we know from a letter documenting Lotto’s payment for the work.12 On the basis of Lotto’s presence in the Vatican stanze that year, scholarly commentary has focused on identifying the Raphaeleque aspects of the 1509 panel and, in turn, Lotto’s precise contributions to the Vatican stanze.13 Scholarship on Lotto’s nature imagery in the 1509 panel and elsewhere in his oeuvre has similarly focused on identifying the regional styles that informed his settings. For instance, the distant background to the right, with its feathery verdure, gently rolling hills, crenellated buildings, and classicizing bridge, has been likened to the Umbrian vistas of Raphael and Perugino.14 However, the more robust – and distinctly un-Raphaelesque – trees that populate the ridge to the left instead owe their dynamic textures, contours, and rippling forms to the trees found in Dürer’s widely circulating 10 A series of exhibitions on Lotto in 2011 are a case in point. See Lotto nelle Marche, ed. Vittoria Garibaldi and Giovanni C.F. Villa (Milano: Silvana Editoriale, 2011), Lotto in Veneto, ed. Gianluca Poldi and Giovanni C.F. Villa (Milano: Silvana Editoriale, 2011). 11 Berenson’s vegetal analogy is in keeping with his broader interest in Lotto’s lyrical landscapes, which he frequently commented upon throughout his 1895 monograph. Berenson observed that Crowe and Cavalcaselle were more disparaging of Lotto’s proclivity to experiment, finding in him little more than ‘a mush of concession’. Bernard Berenson, Lorenzo Lotto: An Essay in Constructive Art Criticism. (New York: The Knickerbocker Press, 1895), 127. For Berenson’s reference to Crowe and Cavalcaselle, see p. 24. David Kim explored the matter of artistic mobility and style more generally, touching on Lotto, in his recent book, The Traveling Artist in the Italian Renaissance: Geography, Mobility, and Style (London: Yale University Press, 2014). 12 For the documentation of Lotto’s presence in Rome, see Carlo Volpe, “Lotto a Roma e Raffaello”, Lorenzo Lotto: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi Per il V Centenario della Nascita, ed. Pietro Zampetti and Vittorio Sgarbi (Treviso: Comitato per le celebrazioni lottesche, 1980), 127–145. 13 Peter Humfrey, for instance, likened the reclining Church father to Raphael’s Diogenes in the School of Athens, to the figure of Jerome himself in the Disputa, and the antique statues of river gods that frequented Roman sculpture gardens and fountains in Raphael’s age; Peter Humfrey, Lorenzo Lotto (London: Yale University Press, 1997), 32–34. 14 Ibid., 33.

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prints, as in the 1496 Martyrdom of the 10,000, a woodcut picturing trees that cling onto the side of cliffs with snake-like, tenacious roots. (Fig. 2.1, Fig. 2.2)

Figure 2.1: Albrecht Dürer, Martyrdom of the 10,000, c.1496–97. Woodcut. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

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Figure 2.2: Albrecht Dürer, St. Jerome, c.1496. Engraving. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

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The large, twisted stump alongside Lotto’s Jerome recalls the carefully rendered tree stump before Dürer’s Penitent Jerome of 1496, an engraving produced during the same years.15 Scholarship has similarly traced the stylistic origins of Lotto’s more famous 1506 Louvre Jerome, whose lyrical atmosphere recalls the rose-tinged skies of Giorgione, but whose dense verdure and vigorous rock formations more closely resemble the dynamic landscape settings of Dürer’s geological studies rendered in print, watercolor, and gouache.16 Although recent discussions of Lotto’s oeuvre have elucidated the artist’s stylistic experiments, the poetics of Lotto’s borrowings, and, in particular, his proclivity for ornament, have not been fully appreciated. Furthermore, writers since the days of Berenson have long noted Lotto’s lyrical approach to the natural world in his art, yet have overlooked the cultural dimensions of Lotto’s vision of Nature, relegating his lyrical verdure to the background. Lotto’s trees play a major role in Jerome’s hagiography, to the point that the trees themselves, particularly the monumental stump alongside Jerome, emerge as principal actors in Lotto’s account of Jerome. Indeed, the thirteenth-century life of the Desert Father begins with an arboreal image. In the fabricated etymology that prefaces the story of Jerome, Jacopo de Voragine tells us that Hieronymous means ‘sacred grove’ (gerar, holy and nemus, grove) and ‘sacred law’ (gerar noma).17 The association of Jerome with a leafy grove belongs to a vast tradition that extolled nature, especially forests, as an ideal space for solitary contemplation, a topos celebrated in patristic writings, the verse of Medieval dream poetry, and most notably, the writings of Petrarch, where the green world not only sets the stage for solitary dreaming, but also functions both as a powerful metaphor for the fertile mind and the raw matter that the poet transforms into verse.18 Although the desert described in the thirteenth-century hagiography is bereft of greenery, the idea of the Vita Solitaria, a concept portrayed through the green world, played a vital and increasingly important role in devotional images that pictured Jerome’s 15 Scholars frequently associate the 1496 engraving of St. Jerome with Lotto’s greenery. While Lotto may well have drawn inspiration from the varied conifers pictured in the forested hermitage of Dürer’s Jerome, the vigorous trees pictured in the Martyrdom of the 10,000 more closely approximate those of Lotto. Daniel Arasse has interpreted the anthropomorphic forms of the trees and tree stumps as feminine bodies that are tempting S. Jerome. See Daniel Arasse, “Lorenzo Lotto dans ses bizarreries: Le peintre et l’iconographie”, Lorenzo Lotto: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi per il V Centenario della Nascita. Ed. Pietro Zampetti and Vittorio Sgarbi (Asolo, 18–21 1980): 365–382; 377. 16 On Dürer and Lotto, see Terisio Pignatti, “Dürer e Lotto”, Lorenzo Lotto: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi per il V Centenario della Nascita, ed. Pietro Zampetti and Vittorio Sgarbi (Asolo, 18–21 1980): 93–98. 17 Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, V, 94. 18 The topos of the Vita Solitaria is vast. For a general study on the iconography of the Solitary Life, see Ursula Hoff, “Meditation in Solitude”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes I, (1937–1938): 292–294; for Petrarch and the concept of the Vita Solitaria, see J.C. Bondanella, “Petrarch’s Reading of Otium in de Vita Solitaria”, Comparative Literature 60, n. 1 (2008): 14–28. See also Maria Ruvoldt, The Italian Renaissance Imagery of Inspiration: Metaphors of Sex, Sleep, and Dreams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

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hagiography from the early fifteenth-century and after.19 When Lotto painted this, the second of at least six versions of Jerome ‘on the fringes of human activity’, the subject was already widely popular among Early Modern intellectuals who identified with Jerome’s piety, his scholarly intellect, and, more generally, the ideal of solitary meditation in a remote green world.20 For painters, the subject afforded an opportunity to explore the nature of Jerome’s habitation of the mind; specifically, the various ways that landscape vignettes (paesi, as vignettes depicting Nature were then called) might embellish the mysteries of the Creation and human Salvation, subjects at the heart of Jerome’s scholarship. The five versions of Jerome in the Wilderness in Jacopo Bellini’s albums, now housed at the Louvre and the British Museum, are a case in point.21 (Fig. 2.3) In a drawing from the Louvre album, we find the penitent Jerome and his affectionate lion in a rocky outcropping surrounded by dragons, serpents, scorpions, and tree stumps. Along with the menacing beasts, the remains of felled trees, taken by force at various stages of their growth, not only emphasize the ardor of Jerome’s eremitical life, but also allude to the wide-spread topos of Christ as a tree, a theme that can be traced in a multitude of Biblical writings, as in the first epistle of Peter, chapter 2, verse 24: ‘[H]e bore our sins on his body on the tree’.22 The tree was a powerful mnemonic and contemplative tool in devotional images and texts in the Middle Ages.23 We recall the tenth-century Anglo-Saxon poem, the Dream of the Rood, where the ‘Saviour’s Tree’, bedecked in gold and bleeding from its side, recounts to the dreaming protagonist how it suffered when it was ‘cut down at the copse’s end’.24 In Taddeo Gaddi’s fourteenth-century fresco from the refectory of Santa Croce, the ‘tree of Crucifixion’ at once functions as an emblematic image that recalls the birth, life, and death of Christ, and as the scaffolding – a sort of tree of Jesse – that supports the fellowship of evangelists and prophets who propagate the Word.25 (Fig. 2.4) 19 In De Vita Solitaria, Petrarch draws a comparison between a busy man, Occupatus, who after breakfast hurries to the forum, and Solitarius, who happily walks to a nearby woods (vicinam silvam). It is the necessity of such a silva, in nature or in art, that inspired the green worlds of the Renaissance. 20 Although the identity of the patron who commissioned Lotto’s 1509 Jerome is unknown, we know that Lotto worked for a variety of sophisticated male and female patrons who predominantly hailed from the Cittadino class. On Lotto’s clientele in Bergamo, see, for instance, Bergamo: L’Altra Venezia. Il Rinascimento negli anni di Lorenzo Lotto, 1510–1530, ed. Francesco Rossi (Milan: Skira, 2001). 21 Colin Eisler, Jacopo Bellini (New York: Henry Abrams, 1989). 22 The binary opposition between the dry and the verdant tree is already present in the Garden of Eden, with its Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The patterns of growth and decay and the mystery of the living wood of the cross are the leading themes of arboreal imagery. Gerhard Ladner, “Vegetation Symbolism and the Concept of the Renaissance”, in De artibus opuscula XI: Essays in Honor of Erwin Panofsky, ed. Millard Meiss (New York: New York University Press, 1961). 23 Sara Ritchey, “Spiritual Arborescence: Trees in the Medieval Spiritual Imagination”, Spiritus 8, (2008): 64–82. 24 Dream of the Rood (tenth c.), quoted in Ibid., 72. 25 For Taddeo Gaddi’s Crucifixion in the Refectory of Santa Croce, see Anna C. Esmeijer, L’albero della vita di Taddeo Gaddi: L’esegesi “geometrica” di un “immagine didattica” (Firenze: Istituto Universitario Olandese di Storia Dell’Arte, 1985).

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Figure 2.3: Jacopo Bellini, St. Jerome in the Wilderness, c.1440. Jacopo Bellini Album, Folio 22 verso. Drawing. Paris, Louvre, Cabinet des dessins et miniatures, Réserve des grands albums.

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Figure 2.4: Taddeo Gaddi, Crucifixion, 14th c. Fresco. Santa Croce, Florence.

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The theme of Christ as a tree was widely disseminated in printed spiritual manuals, as in the Zardino de Oration, printed in Venice in 1494. One passage clearly explains the meaning of the sacred tree, describing: […] a very tall, large, and strong Tree in the middle of the earth, so tall it touched the sky. In its aspect, the tree spanned the width of the earth, and its leaves were most beautiful, and it bore much fruit that could be eaten by all. Beneath the tree lived all of the animals and beasts of the earth, and the birds of the sky flocked in its branches. […] This tree is the cross of Christ on which Jesus Christ was crucified, and it signifies His death and Passion.26

In the drawing from the Louvre album, Jacopo Bellini expanded on the mysteries of Christ’s sacrifice and Human Salvation through an arboreal commentary that effectively linked a principal event in Jerome’s hagiography – the mortification of his flesh – with Christ’s suffering. The varied textures of the splintered heartwood and the wood grain offer a material meditation on Christ’s body and Jerome’s corporeal suffering, while the young shoots growing out of the dead wood promise rebirth (and in the case of the stump opposite Jerome, the three shoots that emerge allude to the Trinity). The Elder Bellini explored the theological connection between Christ and wood elsewhere in his albums, as in The Nativity, where another ravaged tree, its severed limbs lying forlornly beside its roots, bows its trunk in acknowledgement of the Christ Child, mirroring the adoring pose of Mary. (Fig. 2.5). The stump, one of several dead and felled trees in the drawing, contrasts with the young, verdant growth to the far left, effecting a sacra conversazione, so to speak, between the young trees and the dead wood. Similar metaphors are to be found in the paintings of Giovanni Bellini and his peers. The next generation of Venetian painters drew a more direct link between splintered wood and Christ’s sacrifice, often embedding the Crucifix into the heartwood of a severed tree and placing the sacred trunk in close proximity to Jerome, where it functions as the object of Jerome’s devotion and, arguably, a locus of devotion for the beholder.27 In Cima da Conegliano’s panel of 1494, the Church father meditates before the carefully rendered tree stump. (Fig. 2.6) 26 Nicolò da Osimo (attr.), Zardin de Oration: Fructuoso (Venezia: Bernardo Benali, 1494): Chapter 18, x1r. ‘[…] una Arbore la quale era nel mezzo dela terra, e l’altecia sua era molto, e era una arbore grande e forte, e laltecia sua tochava il cielo. Lo aspecto de essa arbore si stendeva fino ali termini de tutta la terra, e le foglie sue erano bellissime: e il fructo suo era troppo, e in essa era manzare per tutti. Dissotto da essa arbore habitavano li animali e le bestie dela terra, e neli rami sui versavano li uselli del cielo. […] Questa arbore e la croce de Christo sopra la quale Christo Jesu fu crucifixo: e significa la morte e passione sua’. 27 On materiality and devotion, see Ittai Weintryb, “Living Matter: Materiality, Maker, and Ornament in the Middle Ages”, Gesta 52.2, (2013): 113–132; Christina Neilson, “Carving Life: The Meaning of Wood in Early Modern European Sculpture”, The Matter of Art: Materials, Practices, Cultural Logics (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 2014), 223–239.

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Figure 2.5: Jacopo Bellini, Nativity, c.1440. Jacopo Bellini Album, Folio 33 recto. Drawing. Paris, Louvre, Cabinet des dessins et miniatures, Réserve des grands albums.

Figure 2.6: Cima da Conegliano, St. Jerome, 1493/5. Oil on panel. Inv.324, Brera Museum, Milan. Source: Milan, Brera.

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A crucifix and a youthful trunk grow out of the shards crowning the stump, an arboreal retelling of Christ’s bodily suffering and Resurrection. Dürer’s strikingly similar version, likely produced during his first sojourn in Venice, elaborates on the motif of the Verdant Cross by linking it with an abstract burst of light painted on the backside of the panel.28 (Fig. 2.7, Fig. 2.8)

Figure 2.7: Albrecht Dürer, St. Jerome, 1495. Oil on panel. National Gallery, London.

28 On Dürer in Venice, see Andrew Morrall, “Dürer and Venice”, The Essential Dürer, ed. Larry Silver and Jeffrey Chipps Smith (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 99–114; Fritz Koreny, “Venezia e Dürer”, Il Rinascimento a Venezia e la Pittura del Nord ai Tempi di Bellini, Dürer, Tiziano ed. Bernard Aikema and Beverly Louise Brown (Venezia: Bompiani, 1999), 240–331, cat. 39.

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Figure 2.8: Albrecht Dürer, Comet? (Reverse of St. Jerome panel) c.1495. Oil on panel. National Gallery. London.

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Whether or not the image represents an imagined or historical cosmic event, it not only embellishes Jerome’s arboreal vision with a sense of mystery and wonder, but also may suggest the idea of cosmopoesis, or the beginning of the World, thereby linking the flash of light with the promise of new life embodied by the tree.29 Lotto also meditated on Christ’s suffering and resurrection through the language of trees, exploring the tree and the materiality of the wood as an analog of Christ’s body and Jerome’s mortification of his own flesh, an act that closely connected Jerome – and the devotee – with Christ’s corporeal suffering. In an early panel picturing a half-length Virgin and Child with Saints, the chubby legs of the toddling Christ child mirror the two rippling tree trunks in the ‘internal predella’ in the upper region of the painting, a green world that expands beyond a lush green curtain that delineates the space occupied by the saints, who reside somewhere between the world of the beholder and the foreground of the painting. (Plate 5) To the left of the two tree trunks above the Christ child, a young tree springs from the rootstock of its arboreal mother, calling attention to Mary, whose blue mantle, lined in green, hints at her fecundity. To the upper right, two woodcutters hack at a mature tree whose fate is foretold by the felled tree at the upper right, a poignant reference to the Passion and Crucifixion. Lotto pushed the metaphor further by exploring the analogy of hewn wood to Christ’s wounded body through the figure of St. Francis, who touches the wound in his side – revealed through a slit in his brown robe, a tonal reference to cloven tree bark – with a gesture that recalls the probing touch of doubting Thomas. The monumental stump that resides in the copse of trees in the middle ground of the Asolo Assunta, one of Lotto’s first large-scale altarpieces, belongs to the same tradition. (Plate 6) With its carefully rendered bark and exposed heartwood, the stump occupies a prominent position relative to the youthful trees surrounding it, welcoming the eye to caress the multi-textured, splintered wood.30 Let us return to the trees in Lotto’s 1509 Jerome in the Wilderness. Given Lotto’s earliest explorations of the theological dimensions of wood, we can understand the monumental tree stump, with its rippling contours, its peeling bark, and its splintered heartwood, as an arboreal emblem that ignites the spiritual imagination of the beholder through its allusion to the Passion, a tale that unfolds through the violence of the woodcutter in the distant hill. Thus, in the company of Christ’s arboreal body, 29 The flash of light on the reverse of Dürer’s St. Jerome, which might represent a comet, has been linked with a woodcut illustration of a comet pictured in the Nuremberg Chronicle. See Fedja Anzelewsky, Albrecht Dürer. Das malerische Werk, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1991 – rev. ed.), 127–128, no. 14. Whatever specific cosmic event this may represent, comets and other cosmic wonders were associated with transformation and divine messages (usually portending death) in the age of Dürer. See Sara Schechner, Comets, Popular Culture, and the Birth of Modern Cosmology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 27–50. 30 Susan Donahue Kuretsky first explored the iconography of tree stumps in “Rembrandt’s Tree Stump: and Iconographic Attribute of St. Jerome”, The Art Bulletin 56.4, (1974): 571–580. The visual tradition linking tree stumps to the body of Christ can be traced to the fourteenth century, though the association of the stump with Jerome’s wilderness retreat seems to be a late-fifteenth century innovation.

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Figure 2.9: Michelangelo, Temptation and Expulsion, 1512. Fresco. Capella Sistina, Vatican.

Lotto’s Jerome meditates on Christ’s suffering and resurrection as he translates the Word of God into the Latin Vulgate, an act of transformation amplified by the interplay between Jerome’s body and the anthropomorphic tree, as well as his interaction with the Word, signified by the open book at the far right. Although Lotto may well have drawn inspiration for his figures of Jerome from Raphael, as Peter Humfrey has suggested, Lotto’s reflections on trees and Jerome’s transformative act bear a closer affinity with the frescoes in the nearby Sistine chapel, underway in the same years. Michelangelo also experimented with arboreal analogies, as in the dead wood that at once reiterates the form of Eve’s outstretched limb and anticipates the wood of the Cross, redemption from the original sin. (Fig. 2.9). And just as a skillful arborist grafts diverse trees onto rootstock to render a new species, so Lotto artfully invoked the languid hand of Michelangelo’s Adam when he rendered Jerome’s left hand. (Fig. 2.10). Whereas Michelangelo’s God bestows life onto an inert Adam through the power of touch, it is the Word that invigorates and inspires the hand of Jerome, whose scholarship mediated between the Word and the Wood, and whose physical presence affirms the mystery of the Creation: the Word made Flesh.31

31 Lisa Rafanelli and Jeraldine Johnson, “The Art of Touch in Early Modern Italy”, in Art and the Senses, ed. Francesca Bacci and David Melcher, (Oxford UP, 2011), 59–85; Jeffrey Chipps Smith, Sensuous Worship: Jesuits and the Art of the Early Catholic Reformation in Germany (Princeton UP, 2002)

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Figure 2.10: Michelangelo, Creation of Adam, 1512. Fresco. Capella Sistina, Vatican.

Lotto explored the theological dimensions of wood elsewhere in his oeuvre, as in the frescoes of the Oratorio Suardi, where the commanding figure of Christ as a Tree presides over hagiographies from the Golden Legend illustrated on the walls of the villa oratory.32 Dressed in a brown robe, Christ’s fingers sprout into tendrils that encircle the prophets above and transform into illusionistic vines in the vault. (Plate 7) Vintaging putti clamber about on the vines, which intertwine with the real wooden travi that support the roof of the oratory and function as the trellis for the illusionistic vines. Given Lotto’s prior experiments with the devotional aspect of wood, we can also appreciate the significance of the arboreal imagery that abounds in his designs for the intarsia choir stalls of the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore where wood, the raw material used to fashion the choir, envelops the beholder in a devotional green world.33 Here, as in Lotto’s earlier meditations on wood, wood not only functions as a tool for reflecting on the mystery of the True Cross, but as a divine enclosure where the body of Christ, understood as a tree, transforms the choir into a forest of contemplation. 32 Francesca Cortesi Bosco, Gli affreschi dell’Oratorio Suardi: Lorenzo Lotto nella crisi della Riforma (Bergamo: Bolis, 1980). 33 For a general study of Lotto’s designs for the intarsia choir stall backs in the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo, see Francesca Cortesi Bosco, Il coro intarsiato di Lotto e Capoferri per Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo. 2 vols. (Bergamo: Credito Bergamasco, 1987); Mauro Zanchi, La Bibbia Secondo Lorenzo Lotto (Bergamo: Ferrari Editrice, 2003). These recent studies of Lotto’s iconography have elucidated the complexity of his hermetic imagery, but it still remains to consider Lotto’s Book of Nature and the role of natural imagery in the overall program.

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Lotto occasionally commented in a very personal way on wood and his own spiritual salvation. In his 1523 Nativity, an intimate devotional panel housed at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., we find a wooden joint draped in the same white swaddling that softens the willow cradle of the baby Jesus.34 The swaddled piece of wood is aligned diagonally with a Crucifix that emerges from the shadows in the upper left. (Plate 8) Though the precise meaning of the carpentry joint is still debated (it has been interpreted unconvincingly as part of a mousetrap), its deeper significance may lie simply in the fact that carpentry joints function to connect one thing with another. It is therefore significant that Lotto illusionistically inscribed his name into the wood, as an allusion to his own artifice – for God, like the artist, shapes raw matter – and as a poignant prayer for his own salvation.

Conclusion In his seminal discussion of the pastoral landscape, David Rosand observed that, Jerome’s wild ‘desert retreat reads like a deliberate perversion of the pastoral instinct’. 35 We might rather understand the vigorous trees that populate Jerome’s wilderness in Lotto’s 1509 panel, as well as Titian’s more famous animated trees, as an artful variation on the pastoral that points toward a growing interest in the animated aspect of nature and the devotional dimensions of nature’s ever-changing phenomena – in this case, wood. Lotto’s attention toward the expressive character of Jerome’s tree stump also belongs to an expanding vocabulary of landscape ornament in Venetian painting during the first half of the sixteenth century, when Lotto and painters of his generation experimented with the potential of verdure, among the many wonders of the Natural world, to embellish the emotional affect and immediacy of their sacred, mythological, and portrait subjects. Lotto’s vision of Nature and his invocation of the Book of Nature typify an expanding interest in the temporal phenomena of nature, when a convergence of traditions north and south of the Alps shaped an animated green world, anticipating the sublime visions of nature among the next generation of painters.

About the author April Oettinger is Professor of Art History at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland. She completed her Ph.D. thesis, The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: Image and Text in a Renaissance Romance, at the University of Virginia in 2000. Her recent publications, 34 Peter Humfrey, Lorenzo Lotto: Rediscovered Master of the Renaissance (Yale: Yale University Press, 1997), 131–133, cat. 20. 35 Rosand, David, “Giorgione, Venice, and the Pastoral Vision”, in Places of Delight: The Pastoral Landscape, ed. by Robert Cafritz and others (New York: Clarkson Potter, 1988), 65.

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which have appeared in Artibus et Historiae, The Journal of Word and Image, and Source, treat topics including the poetics of Lorenzo Lotto, the 1499 edition of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Aby Warburg’s reading of Poliphilo’s Dream, and Vasari’s tale of Michelangelo’s snowman, among the artist’s most famous ‘lost’ masterpieces. She was the recipient of a Fulbright Foundation Fellowship and the Dame Francis Yates Fellowship at the Warburg Institute. Recent grants from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the Renaissance Society of America, the American Philosophical society, the National Endowment of the Humanities, and the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art have supported research for her current book project, Animating Nature. Lorenzo Lotto and the Sublime Turn in Sixteenth-Century Venetian Landscape Art, 1500–1550.

3. ‘Honesta voluptas’: the Renaissance Justification for Enjoyment of the Natural World Paul Holberton

Abstract The paper sketches the emergence of the oxymoron ‘honesta voluptas’, which was applied especially to gardens in Renaissance Rome. The phrase was picked up by Erasmus in his colloquy ‘Convivium Religiosum’, which, set in an ideal villa, argues one way or other, with classical references, current attitudes towards nature and paintings of nature. The interest of this text for art history is considerable and a commentary, expanding its allusions, is provided. The colloquy moralizes from fauna (like the Adagia) and derives from nature the ontological argument for God. This paper also suggests a new source for Dürer’s Pupilla Augusta and that Giorgione’s Three Philosophers are studying nature as a ‘book’ that leads to God. Keywords: Gardens, Rome, Erasmus, Ekphrasis, Villa, Book of Nature

Pleasure is sinful. Or is it? This question was posed by Lorenzo Valla in his dialogue originally with the title of De voluptate et vero bono – it was later modulated to less incendiary formulations.1 The first draft of this work, which he continued to modify, dated from 1431. The dialogue reprised the ethical debate between the ancient Stoics and Epicureans, which for the Middle Ages had been decided incontrovertibly by Cicero and Seneca for the Stoics. Valla, with irrefutable arguments, destroyed the Stoic position, which opposed virtue, or what was right and good (honestum), to pleasure (voluptas). This was revolutionary because any possible conciliation of honestum and voluptas had been specifically rejected by Cicero in De finibus bonorum et malorum and elsewhere, and subsequently the two terms remained firmly in opposition. Essentially Valla demonstrated the existence of pleasure in every human action – even and not less in the exercise of virtue – an inescapable pleasure because proprioceptive. Valla did not advocate Epicureanism in the place of Stoicism, however, although he enjoyed shockingly pursuing 1 Lorenzo Valla, De vero falsoque bono, ed. Maristella de Panizza Lorch (Bari: Adriatica Editrice, 1972). For a discussion of the treatise see L. Panizza, “Lorenzo Valla’s De vero falsoque bono, Lactantius and Oratorical Scepticism”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xli, (1978): 76–107. For a broader picture of the debate see Giulia Sissa, “Hedonism in European Thought”, at http://science.jrank.org/pages/7745/Hedonismin-European-Thought (30 July 2016). Goodchild, K.H., A. Oettinger and L. Prosperetti (eds.), Green Worlds in Early Modern Italy. Art and the Verdant Earth, Amsterdam University Press doi: 10.5117/9789462984950_ch03

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his argument to some of its logical conclusions. Instead he rejected the antithesis of Stoic and Epicurean as misconceived, and moreover pagan, substituting a proclaimed Christian ethics, conscious of the afterlife. This, however, was, it seems, a resolution insufficiently conclusive for his predominantly clerical readers, and failed to calm the susceptibilities his empiricism had provocatively aroused. Valla prophesized nevertheless that his arguments would prevail, using the analogy of a person immersed in water for a long time, who may then dry himself off, but will find the moisture has entered the body and has permanent effect: the undeniability of the presence of pleasure would not go away. Valla had argued, furthermore – a tenet that would be fundamental to Renaissance Neoplatonism – that nature, as the creation of God, could not be evil, and that an evil intrinsic in nature would be the logical consequence of the opposition honestumvoluptas. If then it was impossible to deny pleasure, then there was no other recourse, morally, but to determine what was good pleasure and what was bad. Thus, following on in the next generation, about 1464, Bartolomeo Sacchi, known as Platina, an associate of Valla’s pupil Pomponio Leto, wrote a treatise entitled De honesta voluptate et valetudine (Of virtuous pleasure and health).2 He refers to the opposition to Valla in his introduction: ‘Valet apud nos, ut video, Ciceronis auctoritas’ (There prevails among us, as I see, Cicero’s authority – opposing voluptas and honestum) ‘sed dicant, quaeso, hi Stoicidae […] quid mali in se habeat considerata voluptas?’ (but let them tell us, I pray, this tribe of Stoics […] what evil does moderated pleasure intrinsically contain?). As he links voluptas with valetudo in his title, so in his text he claims, developing from Valla, that the pleasure that arises from virtuous action leads to happiness just as medicine leads an ailing man to health. It is worth noting where these ethical discussions are said to be taking place: Valla’s dialogue involves a fine dinner at the house of the wealthy Sicilian humanist Panormita, then a renewal of the discussion in his gardens. Platina reports that he wrote what he calls ‘has rusticationes’ in the suburban villa of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga.3 Although his treatise is concerned with the special georgic subject of food, he begins with the wider picture of man’s well being, heading Chapter I ‘Deligendus locus ad habitandum’ (Choosing a place to live), of which he remarks: Deligat itaque homo non incivilis et ingenii particeps, tum in urbe cum in agris, pro anni tempore locum saluberrimum iucundum amoenum venustum ubi aedificet, ubi rei rusticae operam det, ubi musis et genio vacet, ubi postremo quod fieri perfacile a viro castissimo et docto potest cum diis ipsis loquatur. 2 Platina (Bartolommeo Sacchi), Platina, on Right Pleasure and Good Health: A Critical Edition and Translation of De honesta voluptate et valetudine, trans. M.E. Milham (Tempe, AZ: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1997). Note: because in some cases close readings of the texts cited are required, in an exception they have been provided in the original as well as in translation (mine) in the main text. 3 On Francesco Gonzaga’s accommodation see David S. Chambers, “The Housing Problems of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 39 (1976): 21–58. It seems that Platina was staying at his house at Sant’Agata dei Goti on the Quirinal. Though small, it was certainly a place to relax: see Chambers’s footnote 82 quoting a letter of 1463 to that effect.

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Therefore let a man who has any civility and who cultivates the mind choose, whether in the city or in the fields, a place according to the season particularly healthy, and sweet, pleasant and beautiful, where he may build, where he may set about farming, where he may have time for the muses and the spirit, where finally – which can be easy enough for a man who is very chaste and learned – he may converse with the gods.

Those with an interest in landscape may well pick out the term ‘locus amoenus’ in Platina’s longer phrase and think they are on familiar ground. But I do not believe it was so very familiar at that time. The term ‘locus amoenus’ is not of course one taken from classical rhetoric, but was coined by Robert Curtius in an article of 1942 (and subsequently propagated to its current ubiquity in the late 1960s, as far as I know) on the basis of his study of Medieval garden or landscape descriptions.4 It would not be appropriate here to assume that Platina was picking up an old cliché (or rhetorically developing an ecphrasis not on the basis of observation but from stock phrases, notions and associations, which was the phenomenon that Curtius was designating); rather, this is first of all quite an early passage programmatizing what has been called the ‘neo-georgic’.5 Although of course retreat to a countryside palace or plainer building was nothing new; but here Platina sketches the basis for a godly, bookish, active retirement or otium that put a novel complexion on country – or ‘villa’ – living. This was no mere farming or horticulture – or escape from the plague, or a tour of one’s property, or retreat in old age, or relaxing delizia: the cultivation of the mind and spirit was also essential. The notion of honesta voluptas should also, however, be seen in the context of the papacy at the time. Platina’s patron in Rome was Pius II (pope 1458–64), whom in a famous chapter Burckhardt commended for enjoying natural settings and choosing to picnic in them.6 Pius’s successor Paul II (pope 1464–71) turned destructively against this culture, the ‘school’ of Pompenio Leto, and Platina himself, whom he put in prison.7 Thus the phrase honesta voluptas was implicitly a justification of this group’s rival views, whose alleged paganism is also strikingly present in the plural of ‘cum diis ipsis loquatur’. 4 Ernst Robert Curtius, “Rhetorische Naturschilderung im Mittlelalter”, Romanische Forschungen 56 (1942): 219–256; reprinted in Alexander Ritter, ed., Landschaft und Raum in der Erzählkunst (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1975), 69–111; E.R.Curtius, Europäischer Literatur und Lateinisches Mittelalter (Bern: A. Francke, 1948; 4th edition Bern 1963), Ch. 10. 5 On the georgic tradition see P.A.F. van Veen, De soeticheydt des buyten-levens, vergeselschapt met de boucken (The Hague: Van Goor Zonen, 1960; Utrecht 1985), 152–156. This important book traces the conceit of its title (quoted from an early source, meaning ‘The sweetness of the outdoor life, in the society of books’) into the eighteenth century and across Europe. See pp. 140ff for the antique sources drawn upon, pp. 152ff for humanist discussion, pp. 161ff for related Italian vernacular literature. 6 Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S.G.C. Middlemore (New York: Harper Torchback, 1958), 302. 7 For a brief account see Peter Partner, The Pope’s Men: The Papal Civil Service in the Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990), 127–131; Anthony D’Elia, A Sudden Terror: The Plot to Murder the Pope in Renaissance Rome. (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge UP, 2009); for the academy’s activities, see Kathleen Wren Christian, Empire without End (London and New Haven: Yale UP, 2010), 120–149, with further bibliography.

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Not only by Pius II but also in texts by early humanists such as Manuel Chrysoloras and Leonardo Giustinian there is clear enjoyment of verdant and iridescent scenes, these examples absent in fact but made present by art.8 In a well-known passage in the De re aedificatoria Leon Battista Alberti uses the word hilarescimus when speaking of painted landscapes.9 However, landscape was not generally, in literary tradition, passive: hermits in their solitude were subject to various kinds of temptation, St Anthony pre-eminently. A deserted place was potentially erotic also in the secular, as when a wandering horseman might find a native girl in the so-called Natureingang of the troubadour pastourelle.10 The pastourelle may not have flourished in quite the same form in Italy (though Cavalcanti’s ‘In un boschetto trova’ pastorella’ may be cited), but certainly it left its mark on Petrarch’s Canzoniere and its ‘palimpsest’ landscapes as one might call them, ceaselessly evocative of (longing for) his beloved and sought out as such (as in Canzoniere 126, ‘Chiare, fresche e dolci acque’, where he finds her bathing). One finds no exact equivalent to these literary landscapes in fifteenth-century art, but the topic of ‘the nymph of the spring’ comes close:11 Huius nympha loci, sacri custodia fontis, dormio, dum blandae sentio murmur aquae. Parce meum, quisquis tangis cava marmora, somnum rumpere. Sive bibas, sive lavere, tace,

an epigram attributed to Giovanni Antonio Campani, another member of Pomponio Leto’s circle. Alexander Pope would translate it: Nymph of the grot, these springs I keep, And to the murmurs of these waters sleep; Ah, spare my slumbers, gently tread the cave! And drink in silence, or in silence lave!

The notion of waking the nymph seems to derive in the first place from a conceit in Byzantine writing that the figure in a work of art might look so real as to enjoin silence, for a noise or disturbance made by the viewer might rouse it. The association 8 See Michael Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1971), excerpt VI, by Manuel Chrysoloras on a tapestry representing the joys of spring; and XV, by Leonardo Giustinian. 9 Leon Battista Alberti, L’architettura: De re aedificatoria, ed. by Giovanni Orlandi (Milan: Edizioni Il Polifilo, 1966), Book IX, ch. 4. 10 See Michel Zink, La Pastourelle. Poésie et Folklore au Moyen Âge (Paris: Bordas, 1972). 11 For ‘the nymph of the spring’ see Otto Kurz, “Huius nympha loci”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes XVI (1953): 171ff, quoting Pope; Dieter Wuttke, “Zu Huius nympha loci”, Arcadia, Zeitschrift für vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft III (1968): 306ff; Elizabeth B. MacDougall, “The Sleeping Nymph: Origins of a Humanist Fountain Type”, Art Bulletin LVII (1975): 357ff; Christian, 2010, 134–137; widening the topic, see April Oettinger, “Vision,Voluptas, and the Poetics of Water in Lorenzo Lotto’s Venus and Cupid”, in Receptions of Antiquity, Constructions of Gender in European Art, 1300–1600, ed. Marice Rose and Alison C. Poe (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 230–263.

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of sleep with running water seems to be deeply engrained.12 Thirdly, the idea may be present that a nymph is easily frightened, rather like a doe: any kind of intemperance, arising in respect of her implicit nudity, will not be tolerated, she will wake and she will vanish, leaving the intruder splashing in vain in the water, as in the conclusion of the vision in Petrarch’s sonnet 190, ‘quand’io caddi ne l’acqua, ed ella sparve’ (when I fell into the water, and she vanished). At any rate the idea that the beholder will lust after the nymph became predominant as the epigram went its rounds and variations. Cranach and his workshop painted several versions with the shortened version Huius nympha loci: somnum ne rumpe: quiesco (I am the nymph of this place: do not disturb my sleep: [at the moment] I am quiet) that are patently sexual, given the satyr who crouches in torment by the fountain.13 There are also less obvious variations, still shorter in an engraving of 1510, in which the nymph points to the simple word QUIES: the viewer would be wise to have an eye to the hog beside her with an arrow in his backside (Fig. 3.1).14 Another related engraving is entitled Pupila Augusta (pupilla is an orphan, a ward; Fig. 3.2), which the young Dürer knew and copied.15 He also knew the ‘Huius nympha loci’ epigram, and drew a nude to accompany it.16 He incorporated the Pupila Augusta nude into a larger, allegoresque composition of his own (Fig. 3.3), borrowing and placing beside her a figure very closely resembling the toga’d patrician (now naked) that proffers the pipes to the fauns in another composition with a reclining water nymph, known in two closely related drawings (in the Uffizi and in the Morgan Library; Fig. 3.4) and an engraving by Mocetto.17 Do we see here the perpetrator warned by the epigram, daring to wake or touch – dishonestly? It seems almost certain that the epigram was composed to be placed beside a statue of a nude by fountain in a humanist garden with sculpture in Rome.18 12 See Jean Starobinski, Die Geschichte der Melancholiebehandlung von den Anfängen bis 1900 (Basle: Geigy, 1960), 23 (quoting Celsus). 13 See Max J. Friedländer and Jacob Rosenberg, Die Gemälde von Lucas Cranach. (Basle: Kunstmuseum Basel, 1979), no. 119; other versions nos. 120 (Thyssen Collection), 402, 403, 404; Bernard Aikema and Beverly Louise Brown, eds., Renaissance Venice and the North: Crosscurrents in the time of Bellini, Dürer, and Titian (Venice: Palazzo Grassi, 1999–2000), no. 142. 14 For Pomedelli’s engraving see Arthur M. Hind, Early Italian Engraving (London: B. Quaritch, 1938–48), V, p. 225; Augusto Gentili, Da Tiziano a Tiziano: Mito e allegoria nella cultura veneziana del Cinquecento (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1980), 69. 15 See Leo Vitali, “Un disegno di Alberto Dürer e una stampa ferrarese”, Bollettino d’Arte XXXV (1950): 309– 311, no. 663. See further Mark J. Zucker, “The Master of the ‘Sola-Busca Tarocchi’ and the Rediscovery of Some Ferrarese Engravings of the Fifteenth Century”, Artibus et Historiae 18.35 (1997): 188. 16 Friedrich Winkler, Die Zeichnungen Albrecht Dürers (Berlin: Deutscher Verein für Kunstwissenschaft, 1936–39), no. 153. 17 Hind (1938–48), “Mocetto”, no. 13; Serena Romano, Girolamo Mocetto (Modena: Pannini, 1985), 47, Fig. 27. The composition was not Mocetto’s own, and two differing drawings of the composition survive: see Uffizi no. 14589F, Roger R. Rearick, ed., Tiziano el il disegno veneziano (Florence: Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, 1976), no. 10, and Morgan Library, IV, 56, It. 15A, in Giovanni Agosti, ed., Disegni del Rinascimento in Valpadana (Florence: Uffizi, 2001), no. 17; Saverio Lomartire, ed., Andrea Mantegna e l’incisione italiana (Padua: Musei Civici, 2003–04), no. 22 (Vera Segre); Giovanni Agosti and Dominique Thiébaut, eds., Mantegna 1431–1506 (Paris, Musée du Louvre, 2008), no. 340; Stephanie Buck, ed., Michelangelo’s Dream (London: Courtauld Gallery, 2010), under no. 24 (Caroline Campbell); Guido Beltramini, Davide Gasparotto, and Adolfo Tura, eds., Pietro Bembo e l’invenzione del Rinascimento (Padua: Palazzo del Monte di Pietà, 2013), no. 1.13 (Davide Gasparotto and Adolfo Tura). 18 See especially Christian, 2010, 134–137; and p. 47, where she cites Panormita’s earlier epigram on a statue of Parthenope ending ‘[…] quiesco.’

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Figure 3.1: Giovanni Maria Pomedelli, Quies, dated 1510, engraving, 150 x 145 mm.

Once the phenomenon of the Curial garden becomes better documented we find the phrase ‘honesta voluptas’ cropping up once more. An associate of the Borgia Pope Alexander VI, Cardinal Giulio Cesarini, created a garden, to which he appended the following inscription:19 Julianus sancti Angeli diaconus cardinalis caesarinus dietam hanc statuariam studiis suis et gentilium suorum voluptati honestae dicavit suo natali die xxxiiii, xiii Kal. iunii, Alexandri vi pont. max. anno viii salutis mc ab U.C. mmccxxxiii Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini, deacon of Sant’Angelo, has dedicated this gallery of statuary to his own studies and to the honest pleasure of his countrymen, aged 34, on 20 May, in the seventh year of the pontificate of Alexander VI, AD 1500, ab urbe condita 2233. 19 Rudolfo Lanciani, Storia degli scavi di Roma (Rome: E. Loeschler & Co., 1902), II: 133 (his expansions). The inscription is preserved in an eighteenth-century manuscript; see further David Coffin, “The ‘Lex Hortorum’ and Access to Gardens of Latium During the Renaissance”, Journal of Garden History 2 (1982): 201–232; republished in D. Coffin, Magnificent Buildings, Splendid Gardens, ed. V. Bezemer Sellers (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2008), 186 n. 8.

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The recourse to the Greek word dieta leads directly to Pliny the Younger, Epistulae, II, 17, describing, using a number of Greek terms, his villa at Laurentium – not simply the villa, but the numerous views of the land and sea all around that it afforded. One particular dieta in the building, where he took refuge, as it were in a villa within the villa, he described (II, 17, 20) as ‘amores mei, re vera amores’ (my passion, literally passion) as if it were his nympha or puella.20 Cesarini’s own passion was nevertheless an honesta voluptas – today translated as ‘proper’ or ‘seemly’ or ‘decorous’ pleasure, but in its context making a more specific point that his pleasure was not sinful.21 He surely wanted to do that because the garden largely contained statuary that would have been nude. The phrase remained attached to Curial gardens (with sculpture) and recurs prominently in the fullest surviving statement of the so-called lex hortorum adopted by the Curia – the benign practice of allowing public admission to these gardens. This was expounded in an inscription in portentously archaizing Latin in a grotto of the Villa Giulia following its fitting out in the early 1550s:22 Hoc in suburbano omnium si non quot orbis at quot in urbis sunt ambitu pulcherrimo ad honestam potissime voluptatem facto honeste voluptarier cunctis fas honestis esto … In this very beautiful suburban environment created for all in the city [urbis] if not in the world [orbis] for the most honest pleasure let it be right for all honest persons to take honest pleasure …

The public’s virtuous enjoyment was to derive from the freedom to walk about (more a park rather than a garden), pick the fruit, drink the water, watch the fish, listen to the birds and study the statuary. The voluptuary connotation – and the danger that the pleasure could turn sinful – takes recidivist physical form in the reference to the Acqua Vergine, the source for the garden’s water: Aquam hanc quod virgo est ne temeranto, sitimq[ue] fistulis non flumine poculis non osculo aut volis extinguunto This water that is virgin let them not violate, and let them extinguish their thirst from pipes, not from the running water, with cups, not with the mouth or the hollows of the hand;

There is also the further injunction that visitors may gaze at the statuary in the villa ‘dum ne nimio stupore in ea vortantur’ (only so long as they are not thrown into 20 See also Paul Holberton, “The Villa Within the Villa”, in Palladio’s Villas: Life in the Renaissance Countryside (London: Murray, 1990), 173–178. 21 See Coffin, 2008, 164–189; his translation of honesta voluptas in three different passages. 22 For the Villa Giulia inscription see Coffin, 2008, 174, 187 n. 12 and Fig. 4. The ‘urbis’ and ‘orbis’ echo the bulletins urbi et orbi of the Catholic Church.

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Figure 3.2: Master of the Sola-Busca Tarocchi or circle, Pupila Augusta, engraving, 102/107 x 182 mm.

Figure 3.4: Anonymous, Nymph set upon by satyrs, c.1500, pen and brown ink, coloured wash, over traces of black chalk, 286 x 429 mm, New York, Morgan Library.

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Figure 3.3: Albrecht Dürer, Pupilla Augusta, c.1496–98, pen and black and brown ink over black chalk, 254 x 194 mm, The British Royal Collection.

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excessive stupor). One finds the phrase honesta voluptas again in an inscription for the Borghese gardens in the seventeenth century.23 Meanwhile the nymph of the spring continued in life in Pope Julius II’s Belvedere, in epigrams devoted to the antique statue of a Bacchante reclining in a stupor after her revels that contemporaries preferred to interpret as a ‘Cleopatra’.24 Quite how far the notion of ‘honest pleasure’ spread in the Renaissance needs further investigation, but one indicative instance is a letter of 18 November 1480 from his business partner Giovacchino Guasconi in Florence to the merchant and banker Filippo Strozzi in Naples regarding his ‘masseria’ there, where he could grow fruit and enjoy the delights both of the table and of the view, which Guasconi believed would be for him ‘grande passatenpo honesto’ (a great honest dalliance).25 A further important instance where the phrase honesta voluptas recurs is in one of Erasmus’s Colloquies, entitled ‘Convivium religiosum’ – important, because this work is a compendium of ideas about gardens (extending to landscape) and the georgic.26 Extraordinarily, although the villa setting of his Antibarbari has been noted, this much more elaborate and direct discussion of nature, including landscape painting, appears to be unknown to art historians.27 Here also we find what appears to be quite an early statement in a humanist context of the idea that nature reveals the work, or word, of God. This of course would be a perfect riposte to any suggestion of sinfulness in the enjoyment of nature: it would offer an alternative to the erotic potentiality of deserted places; it would provide an unquestionably pious direction for georgic activity. One can see this in action in the preface of the Petrarca Spirituale (published 1536) of Domenico Malipiero, who, in keeping with 23 See Coffin, 2008, 186–187 n. 2 and 8. See also 166–167 and 187 n. 11 for the related inscriptions from the gardens of Cardinal Andrea della Valle, dating to the 1520s and 1530s, including the phrase ‘honesti otii oblectamento’ (for the enjoyment of virtuous leisure). 24 For the Belvedere Cleopatra and verses associated with it see Hans Henrik Brummer, The Statue Court in the Vatican Belvedere (Stockholm: Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, 1970). 25 Strozzi’s villa is discussed, and the quotation given at p. 244 and footnote 38, in Amanda Lillie, “‘Grande passatenpo honesto’: Filippo Strozzi’s Garden at Naples”, in Studies on Florence and the Italian Renaissance in Honour of F.W. Kent, ed. Peter Howard and Cecilia Hewlett (Turnhout: Brepols 2016), 235–256. 26 This dialogue by Erasmus was noted in Van Veen, 1985, 156, but I have not seen it discussed elsewhere, except in Martin Wackernagel, “Der ideale Landsitz eines christlichen Humanisten der Renaissancezeit”, in Festgabe für Aloïs Fuchs zum 70. Geburtstage, ed. Wilhelm Tack (Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 1950), 159–171. The standard modern edition of the text is Erasmus, “Convivium religiosum”: Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami: recognita et adnotatione critica instructa notisque illustrate (Amsterdam (or later Leiden), 1965-), Ordo I, Vol. III: 221–222 and 231–266. Many references are usefully identified in these annotations, but not the more oblique ones. There is an English translation in Erasmus, Collected Works of Erasmus: Colloquies, tr. and ed. C.R. Thomson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 171–243. Here I use my own translation in order to introduce my own emphases. 27 For what he calls an ‘Erasmian’ approach, searching out the implications of a picture, see Reinhart Falkenburg, “Érasme de Rotterdam et la peinture de paysage aux Pays-Bas”, in De la puissance de l’image: les artistes du nord face à la Réforme; cycle de conférences organisé par le Musée du Louvre du 6 février au 27 mars 1997, ed. by R. Recht (Paris: Musée du Louvre, 2002), 135–165. But Falkenburg does not mention this passage; nor does E. Panofsky, “Erasmus and the Visual Arts”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xxxii, (1969): 200–227 (thanks to James Hall for bringing this to my attention).

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his aim of redirecting Petrarch’s Canzoniere to Christological or Mariological sentiment while preserving the universally accepted beauty of his language, deliberately subverted Petrarchan landscape palimpsests towards godliness.28 According to his introduction, when fulfilling his long-held wish of visiting the poet’s house and tomb at Arquà Petrarca, there, in the (also erotically dangerous) heat of the day, his companions having retired to rest, he wandered off alone:29 […] [C]ome Romito, me ne vado in questo prossimo boschetto, per pigliar alcun trastullo alla natura mia convenevole. O che dilettoso diporto mi presta il sì bello e solitario ricetto: dove tanti arbori fronzuti fanno gratissima ombra; et spira soave aura, & gli augelletti dolcemente cantando, m’invitano a lodare il Creatore: onde tutto dentro e di fuori d’ineffabile giocondità ricreare mi sento. […] [L]ike a hermit, I go off into this wood close by, to take some delight agreeable to my nature. O what a pleasurable enjoyment the so lovely and solitary retreat offers me: where so many leafy trees create a very welcome shade; and there breathes a soft breeze, and the birds, singing sweetly, invite me to praise the Creator; whence wholly inside and outside I feel myself refreshed by an ineffable happiness.

Hermits, as the friar suggests, had not always had this disposition towards nature: for them, though a means of escaping people and sin in order to reach God, it was as likely to produce distractions as gratitude or instruction. Erasmus’s ‘Convivium religiosum’ turns immediately to the pleasure – voluptas – of the countryside. How can anyone enjoy smoky cities when the countryside is green and smiling, asks Eusebius. Others might prefer other pleasures, says Timotheus; ah, maybe you mean foeneratores (money-lenders), says Eusebius; not only those, says Timotheus, but the point has been made – the reference is to Alfius, the foenerator who turns out at the end to have narrated Horace’s Epode 2, ‘Beatus ille’. Thus the georgic nature of the pleasure is defined. Also the word aspectu is used and the contrast is made to blind beggars, who like the crush of the city and the opportunity for gain; clearly the pleasure of the countryside being considered is a visual one (in contrast to the sensual and synaesthetic pleasure in nature transmitted in pagan literature). Unlike these we are philosophers, says Eusebius; but this enables Timotheus to recall the opening of Plato’s Phaedrus (230D): Socrates was a philosopher, too, but he preferred the city to the trees. He had declared that the trees were ‘unwilling’ to talk to him. Timotheus glosses this as ‘in agris esse quidem arbores et hortos, fontes et amnes, qui pascerent oculos, caeterum nihil loquerentur ac proinde nihil docerent’ (in the countryside there are trees and orchards, streams and rivers, which feed the eyes, but otherwise say nothing and 28 Domenico Malipiero, Il Petrarca Spirituale (Venice: Domenico Farri, 1536), Prologue. n.p. 29 See Nicholas J. Pirella, Midday in Italian Literature: Variations on an Archetypal Theme (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1971).

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therefore teach nothing). This ‘feeding’ is a leitmotif of the dialogue, which involves a meal which the guests have frequently to be called away from the villa’s delights to eat. Finally at the end, with the discussion of works of religious art, there is feeding of the mind – three levels, pascere ventrem, pascere oculos, pascere mentem. But the reference to the Phaedrus in turn sets up another contrast, for when the guests enter Eusebius’s villa they are invited to make what they see speak: what does it say (‘quid loquitur?’) is the refrain, and so the Christian revision to Socrates’s deafness emerges: nature does speak, it speaks of God, and it can also be moralized. In the first published version of this dialogue (March 1522) Eusebius continues: Est nonnihil quod dixit Socrates, si solus obambules in agris. Quamquam mea sententia non est muta rerum natura, sed undiquaque loquax est et multa docet contemplantem si nacta fuerit hominem attentum ac docilem. Sed Socrates in eo secessu quam multa docet Phaedrum suum et vicissim ab eo discit

What Socrates says has some truth, if you walk off in the fields alone. But in my opinion nature is not mute, but absolutely everywhere speaking, and if you contemplate it it teaches many things once it finds a man who is attentive and receptive. But how many things did Socrates in his retreat teach his friend Phaedrus and in turn learn from him! The point that nature is eloquent actually seems to be occluded by the emphasis on the conversation between Socrates and Phaedrus (which did not need to be under a tree), but evidently the intention was to connect to the neo-georgic tradition of like-minded and learned friends retreating to the countryside to indulge in intellectual and pious delights. In the next edition, however (July-August 1522), Erasmus inserted (after docilem) yet another idea, even though this makes the continuity still worse: ‘[Q]uid aliud clamitat illa tam amoena naturae vernantis facies quam opificis Dei sapientiam bonitati parem?’ (What else does the so very beautiful face of verdant nature cry out than the wisdom equal to the goodness of its artist God?). Notably the phrase facies naturae is one used repeatedly by Pliny for landscape in the above-mentioned Epistle 17, and again stresses the visual. Eusebius accordingly now invites his interlocutors to visit his ‘praediolum suburbanum’, his country estate (the word is Ciceronian and Plinian). There is reference again to Horace, explicitly this time, to his ‘dapes inemptas’ (unbought feasts; Epode 2, 48); here is the ‘farming’ ethic of the georgic. When the invitation has been made and accepted the first version of the colloquy ends; for the July-August 1522 edition the fuller text, evidently not yet completed earlier, was ready. This phrase inserted by Erasmus refers on the one hand to a well known idea, that of the ‘book of nature’, which could be upheld almost as equivalent to the Bible.30 On the other hand this idea does not seem to be so widely disseminated in the fifteenth or 30 See, for example, Paul Taylor, “The Bible of Nature”, in Dutch Flower Painting (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1995), ch. 2, 28–42.

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early sixteenth century as it became in the seventeenth or in the deistic eighteenth century. There is admittedly an instance in Sannazaro’s Arcadia (prosa 9, 21), in which the wise ‘priest’ Enareto, who knows the language of plants and of the birds, can hear them thanking God for their existence when the dawn comes up. Then there is the appearance of the ontological argument for the existence of God (as it is also known, or again as ‘intelligent design’) in the third book of Pietro Bembo’s Asolani, although here it is not landscape that is said to demonstrate the greatness of God but the stars in heaven.31 Possibly Giorgione’s much debated painting The Three Philosophers (Plate 9) may be aligned with the presentation of the idea in Gli Asolani. This would explain why these philosophers should be set in a landscape with their instruments of measurement and a chart (one holds a diagram of an eclipse of the sun) ‘contemplating the rays of the sun’ according to the sources. Several other readings of the picture (and yet not this one) have been advanced in modern times, but there is space here only to note that the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sources on the picture are consistent and clear, starting with Marcantonio Michiel in 1525, who recorded Giorgione’s picture in Taddeo Contarini’s house: ‘3 filosofi nel paese, due ritti e uno sentado che contempla gli raggi solari, cum quel saxo finto così mirabilmente’ (three philosophers in the countryside who contemplate the rays of the sun, with that rock so admirably depicted), and right up to the first inventory of the picture in Vienna.32 Unfortunately the rock Michiel particularly emphasized has been cut down on the left and what remains is severely damaged, permitting many modern observers to presume that his ‘rock’ is a cave. There is no sign of light shining across it, but representations of the painting before it was cut down (Plate 10) show that almost the entire missing part of the rock was illumined; in the painting as it is there is clear evidence in the shadows present particularly around the feet of the first two philosophers that the light was conceived, and painted, as coming from the left, despite the sun rising over the hills in the centre of the picture. Michiel notes that the painting was completed by Sebastiano Veneziano, then Giorgione’s pupil or assistant, and it is probable that Sebastiano added the sun together with the trees to the right of it, these being painted over other layers without reserve, and more boldly painted than anything else in this generally rather delicate and deliberate panel.33 Thus Contarini, though the 31 Pietro Bembo, Prose e rime, ed. Carlo Dionisotti (Turin: U.T.E.T., 1966), III: xv, 488ff. 32 Marcantonio Michiel, Notizia d’opere di disegno, ed. Gustavo Frizzoni (Bologna: N. Zanichelli, 1884), 164; it is similarly described in the Hamilton lists (Ellis K. Waterhouse, “Paintings from Venice for SeventeethCentury England”, Italian Studies VII (1952): 16, no. 42: ‘A picture with 3 Astronomers and Geometricians in a Landskip who contemplat and measure,’ and again in Archduke Leopold Wilhelm’s collection. See A. Berger, “Inventar der Kunstsammlung der Erzherzogs Leopold Wilhelm”, Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses I (1883), xciv. 33 Sylvia Ferino Pagden and Giovanna Nepi Sciré, eds., Giorgione: Myth and Enigma (Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum, 2004), 179–183, no. 5. I am grateful for the considered observations made to me personally about the painting by Elke Oberthaler, Restauratorin-Leiterin, Gemäldegalerie, Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien.

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emphasis here is on the miracle of the heavenly bodies, could anticipate Erasmus in exclaiming ‘what else does the so very beautiful face of verdant nature cry out than the wisdom equal to the goodness of its artist God?’ The notion of nature ‘shouting’ of God was current even much earlier. In 1410 a Florentine writing to a relative in retreat in Fiesole supposed that ‘the place and its air cry out [‘grida’] nothing’ but ‘spiritual talk […] [and] meditation on the Scriptures’.34 It also is possible – although later, in a 1556 inventory, they were not hanging together in the same room – that Giorgione’s picture was originally painted for his patron to complement a picture by Bellini that he had earlier acquired on the market; Giovanni Bellini’s St Francis is of very similar height (124.4 cm; Giorgione’s picture is 123.3 cm).35 St Francis knew God by theophany; in contrast these philosophers were working by their own devices, contemplating the manifestation of God in the physical world. The later, awkward insertion of the ‘quid aliud clamitat […]’ sentence suggests perhaps its comparative novelty, at least in a secular context. When the guests arrive Eusebius invites them to view his gardens while the meal is cooked: the garden is kept open in daylight and anyone may pick what they want (following the Roman lex hortorum). And as if it were heaven Peter is represented at the gate, displacing Mercury or the centaurs or ‘alia portenta’ that some are said to paint at their doors, as is ‘more appropriate to a Christian’ (equally a criticism of the Curial garden). This figure ‘loquitur’ (speaks): there is an inscription. Again, instead of a Priapus or herm in this garden there is a chapel and an image of Christ on the altar. Also the fountain there (from which all may drink) is clean and refreshes with its celestial liquids: tacitly the contrast to the fountain of the nymph of the spring is there, banished now by the Psalmist’s image of the panting hart. The guests are impressed: ‘Papae, Epicureos hortos mihi videre videor’ (Wow, I seem to see the gardens of Epicurus!) and Eusebius partially agrees: ‘Totus hic locus voluptati dicatus est, sed honestae, pascendis oculis, recreandis naribus, reficiendis animis’ (This whole place is devoted to pleasure, but honest pleasure, feeding the eyes, refreshing the nostrils, restoring the spirits) – all part of the neo-georgic template, specifically as drawn up in Rome. Now the moralizing begins: this lovely water flows off to clean the kitchen and be deposited in a drain, and so we find the word of God treated. But this view is corrected: in fact He disposes all for our benefit, including the various uses of water. 34 Quoted in Amanda Lillie, “Fiesole: Locus Amoenus or Penitential Landscape?”, I Tatti Studies 11 (2007), 11–55, at 33 and n. 68, ‘Veramente io credo che il vostro sia pensiero di fare questo per potervi alcun volta dilettare del parlare spirituale, o veramente per essere più idonei e atti alla meditazione delle Scritture: le quali cose il luogo e l’aria altro non grida’ (Antonio di Cristoforo Strozzi to Matteo di Simone Strozzi, in Alessandra Macinghi negli Strozzi, Lettere di una Gentildonna Fiorentina del secolo XVI ai figliuoli esuli, ed. C. Guasti, Florence 1877). 35 Giovanni Bellini, Saint Francis in the Desert, c.1475–78, oil on panel, 124 × 145 cm, The Frick Collection, New York; see Susannah Rutherglen, ed., In a New Light: Bellini’s St. Francis in the Desert (New York: Frick Collection, 2011).

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As Eusebius shows his guests more of the garden, the comments continue in similar fashion, often drawn from Erasmus’s own Adagia, which had already had huge success and to which he was continuing to add. The party enters a cryptoporticus – though it is not called such – where there are columns apparently of marble, but the marble is actually stucco: ‘Non raro fallit species’ (Appearances often deceive); and ‘Quod opibus deest, arte sarcimus’ (What is lacking in resources, we make good with art). And there is literal art as well. Timotheus asks: ‘Will such a garden not be enough for you, one so blooming, so noble, that you have to paint other gardens in addition?’ The reply comes: Non capiebat omnes herbarum species unus hortus. Praeterea bis delectemur, cum pictum florem cum vivo decertantem videmus, et in altero miramur artificum naturae, in altero pictoris ingenium. In utroque benignitatem Dei, qui in usum nostrum largitur haec omnia, nulla in re non mirabilis, pariter et amabilis

One garden would not have included all the species of plants. Besides, we are twice delighted, because we see the painted flower competing with the living one, and in one we admire the work of nature, in the other the ingenuity of the painter; and in both the goodness of God, who provides all these things for our use – in nothing less than wonderful, and equally loveable. Eusebius adds that the living garden is not always flowering, while the painted one pleases in winter. Timotheus objects: ‘Tantum pascit oculos’ (It does no more than feed the eyes) – to which there is no defence raised, except that ‘Verum, sed hoc perpetuo facit’ (True, but it does this for ever). Against which: ‘Habet suum et pictura senium’ (Painting has its own old age). ‘Habet, nobis tamen est vivacior et illi fere gratiam addit aetas, quam nobis detrahit’ (It does, but it lives longer than we do and age commonly adds to it a grace that from us it takes away). ‘Utinam hic vanus esses’ (I wish that here you were wrong). Erasmus responds to the idea that painting was a useless vanity with the plea that it can evocatively record. He would concede the force of Michelangelo’s famous remarks on Netherlandish landscape painting in de Holanda’s dialogues,36 but nevertheless permits this ‘honest’ pleasure.37 Despite this concession to enjoyment of 36 Francisco de Holanda, Vier Gespräche über die Malerie …, ed. Joaquim de Vasconcellos (Vienna: Graeser, 1899), I: 28–29: “In Flanders they paint just to deceive the external sight, such things as may make you happy and which you cannot complain of, as for example saints and prophets. They paint clothes and bricks, the vegetation of the fields, the shade of trees, and rivers and bridges, which they call landscapes, with many figures here and many there”; this is quoted by Kenneth Clark, Landscape into Art (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1949; 1961), 40. 37 One may also cite the remarks of Edward Norgate in the seventeenth century: Edward Norgate, Miniatura, or The Art of Limning, ed. Martin Hardie (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1919), 51: ‘Remenbring ever that Lanscape is nothing but Deceptive visions, a kind of cousning or cheating your owne Eyes, by our owne consent and assistance, and by a plot of your owne contriving’ – but he calls this deception ‘honest and innocent’.

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painting for its own sake, the ‘Vitruvian’ list of landscape items that Michelangelo and other humanists (Alberti, already quoted, and Paolo Giovio, for instance) commonly adopted is here made systematically encyclopaedic, and informative.38 Eusebius stresses that each tree is different (and depicted faithfully as such), and so also for birds, ‘especially if they are comparatively rare or distinguished by some special quality’: ‘Nam anseres, gallinas et anates, quid attinet pingere?’ (For what point is there in painting geese, hens and ducks?). Thus the interest of a painting should reside not in its depiction of ‘genre’ but in presenting the rare and unusual. And again, ‘Mira varietas’ (Wonderful variety), eulogizes Timotheus, ‘Nec quicquam est ociosum. Nihil est, quod non aut agat aut loquatur aliquid’ (And there is nothing otiose. There is nothing that does not act or tell us something). In these paintings, evidently, everything can be made ‘to speak’. For his first example Timotheus asks, ‘Quid nobis narrat noctua, pene lactitans sub frondibus?’ (What does the owl tell us, almost hidden in the foliage?) Might this interest in an owl, the bird so prominent, almost his signature, in the work of Jheronimus Bosch, so often looking out of the picture as a patent messenger of meaning, have been a nod to that then very famous painter (he died in 1516)?39 Erasmus gives an interpretation consistent with the morals of his work: ‘Attice loquitur Attica: σωφρονει, inquit, οὐ πασιν ἱπτηµι. Iubet nos consulto agere, quod non omnibus feliciter cedat inconsulta temeritas’ (The Attic bird [attribute of Athena] speaks Atticly: Be wise, she says, I do not fly for everyone. It tells us to proceed with care, because rash boldness does not turn out happily for everyone). The moralization may stem from the thing and its properties as well as from an action depicted. Eusebius moves on: ‘Here an eagle tears to pieces a hare, while a beetle protests in vain. Near the beetle stands a wren, which is itself a capital enemy of the eagle’. What this ‘says’ was told at length in his own Adagia (III, vii, 1, ‘Scarabeus aquilam quaerit’) and viewers might make analogies as he does there. There follow further observations about the fauna in the painting, but no explicit moralizations: what the party finds is again varietas, which is there for contemplation (‘his contemplandis’). Later, in a second painting, we find scorpions depicted, one of them paralysed by the leaf of a wolfsbane: ‘Etiam loquuntur hic scorpii?’ (Do the scorpions here also speak?). They do, in Greek: ‘Ἑυρε θεος τον ἀλιτρον’ (The god found out the sinner [he got his just deserts; Theocritus X, 17]). Again, a basilisk, ‘Et is loquitur aliquid’ (He also has something to say), which is: ‘Oderint, inquit, dum 38 See Paolo Giovio, Scritti d’arte: lessico ed ecfrasi, ed. Sonia Maffei (Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore, 1999), 260–62; on the passage in “Raphaelis Urbinatis vita”: 272 on landscape ‘parerga’: On p. 279, Maffei comments that enumeration was generally the humanist approach, because it followed classical precedent for the description of painted landscapes (Pliny and Vitruvius). 39 For the themes of Bosch’s paintings see the essays and entries in the exhibition catalogue Maroto, Pilar Silva, ed. Bosch: The 5th Centenary Exhibition (Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2016), passim, and Paul Vandenbroeck, “Bubo significans. Die Eule als Sinnbild von Schlechtigkeit und Torheit, vor allem in der niederländischen und deutschen Bilddarstellung und bei Jheronimus Bosch”, Jaarboek Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (1985): 19–135.

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meteant – Plane regia vox – Imo nihil minus regium, sed tyrannica vox est’ (Let them hate so long as they fear – Clearly the voice of a king – Not so much of kings, rather it is the voice of a tyrant). ‘Oderint … dum meteant’ had come up in the discussion ‘Scarabeus aquilam quaerit’. Then finally come ants, well known for their thrift and communism: ‘Hic videtis politiam totam formicarum, ad quarum imitationem nos vocat Hebraeus ille atque etiam Flaccus noster’ (Here you see the whole constitution of ants, whom the Hebrew writer [Proverbs 6: 6] and our own Horace [Sermones I, 1] urge us to imitate) – and Eusebius might have mentioned Pliny, from whom Erasmus also borrows, or quotes, in the Adagia. Timotheus is induced to exclaim, ‘Deum immortalem, cui possit obrepere taedium in hoc theatro versanti?’ (Almighty God, on whom could tedium creep up while he was in the midst of this exhibition?). But Eusebius wishes to show him a third picture, which shows seas, lakes and rivers and their denizens: there is the Nile, in which a dolphin fights a crocodile, and also a ‘polypus’ caught in a shell (its prey), which ‘speaks’: ‘αἰρων αἰρουµαι’ (Taking I am taken). The water is marvellously transparent, and there is also a ray lying in sand of the same colour, which here you could touch with your hand safely – particular examples of naturalism, the skill of the painter. ‘Sed alio properandum est. Haec pascunt oculos et ventrem non explent: properemus ad reliqua’ (But we must hasten elsewhere. These feed the eyes but do not fill the stomach: let us hurry on to the rest). From all of which one might again deduce that indeed ‘variety’ was the greatest basis of interest and merit in a painting, while individual details could be admired for their naturalism or for their unusual qualities, or made to ‘speak’, that is, either to explain their own situation or to offer metaphors or models for some similar event or situation. Another clear example of the kind of speech that Erasmus envisages for ‘loquitur’ with reference to the paintings is made later, as they sit down to dine: ‘Your house is not so quiet (‘muta’), since not only the walls but even a wine-cup says something. – What does it say to you? – No one is hurt except by himself. – The cup is protective of the wine. For the uneducated tend to attribute to the wine the fever or heaviness of head contracted by drinking, when they themselves have contrived their own ill by drinking immoderately.’ Here the moralization is noticeably banal, suggesting that paintings, too, might be read as having (nothing more than) a very basic message. So, too, after the meal, which is accompanied by discussion of Pauline texts and the like, Eusebius shows his visitors another part of his garden, in which there are more pictures, these showing religious material, but also Antony and Cleopatra, Lapiths fighting and the drunken Alexander the Great transfixing the quarrelsome Cleitus with a spear: ‘Haec exempla nos admonent sobrietatis in convivio et a crapula luxuque deterrent’ (These examples put us in mind of sobriety and deter us from excessive drinking and lust). The guests move on to the library, where a hanging globe provides a map of the world and there are portraits of famous authors on the walls; Christ and the Father and the Holy Spirit above have pride of place. Off this is a ‘musaeon’,

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with jewels, and a chapel. Further on, the paintings are of the Gospel narrative and the Acts, with figures from the Old Testament ranged against them. Here, by contrast, Eusebius urges them, ‘Pascite oculos, pascite animos’ (Feed your eyes, feed your minds); the variety seen earlier for all its marvels and ‘loquacity’ had not provided that level of engagement (as Michelangelo would later insist). Undoubtedly the attitudes to landscape painting expressed here have their echo in the frequently didactic inscriptions that appear on landscape prints in the seventeenth century: ‘disce’ (learn) is commanded in more than one of them.40 Thus it is useful to see in Erasmus’s dialogue a more intelligent and intelligible articulation of this attitude, co-existing with a love of art for its own sake, though superficial in its aesthetic. The idea of pleasure, specifically that associated with gardens or small parks – the gardens of even so wicked a person as Epicurus – could be bound into a significant and positive statement keeping God within its purview, in a Christian georgic. It was evidently not easy in the Renaissance to enjoy the natural world simply for pleasure: it had to be justified as ‘honest’, or again as salutary– the dulce must be accompanied by the utile.41 But it could be enjoyed for itself and for its physical benefit, piously, on the basis of a new morality established in mid-fifteenth-century Rome, stemming from the radicalism of Lorenzo Valla.

About the author Paul Holberton first published on art history in 1982, on Botticelli, in the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes. He completed his doctorate, on “Poetry and Painting in the Time of Giorgione”, at the Warburg Institute, London, in 1989. He wrote a book on Palladio in 1990. Since publishing on topics related to Giorgione in the 1980s and 1990s, he has embarked on a monumental study of Renaissance pastoral in both art and literature across all Europe, a work now nearing completion. He is the publisher of the art history press Paul Holberton Publishing, and in 2017 founded the academic imprint Ad Ilissum. 40 See, for example, Corina Kleinert, “The Prints”, in Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) and his Landscapes: Ideas on Nature and Art (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 61–115, and notes thereto, 146–159; see especially nn. 545, 588, 630; also the album in the Fondation Lugt in Paris (inv. 7620), published by Bert Meijer ed., Omaggio a Tiziano/ Hommage à Titien (Paris: Istituto Universitario Olandese, Florence, and Institut Néerlandais, 1976), nos. 22 and 23; see further more recently Ann H. Sievers ed., Master Drawings from the Smith College Museum of Art (Northampton, Mass.: Smith College Museum of Art, 2000), 40–44, no. 6. In Robert C. Cafritz, Lawrence Gowing, and David Rosand, eds., Places of Delight (Washington, D.C.: Phillips Collection, 1988), Cafritz – most unhelpfully (since others have relied on him) – describes the inscriptions as follows: ‘These prints bear proverbs in Latin of an admonitory and earthy nature, praising the simple virtues of rural life and harmony with nature, in imitation of classical, georgic sources’: this is entirely untrue except for the word ‘admonitory’; they are moralizing in the ‘quid loquitur?’ manner, with no sign of any simple virtues or of harmony or of any imitation of classical sources. 41 See also Sandra Cavallo and Tessa Storey, Healthy Living in Late Renaissance Italy (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013), 194–207, for the promotion of allegrezza (joy) in the villeggiatura as healthy.

Part II Building Green

4. “The Sala delle Asse as Locus amoenus: Revisiting Leonardo da Vinci’s Arboreal Imagery in Milan’s Castello Sforzesco” Jill Pederson

Abstract New findings on Leonardo da Vinci’s painted canopy of trees in the Sala delle Asse raise questions about the artist’s engagement with Early Modern poetic discourses on the verdant world. This essay aims to investigate Leonardo’s understanding of the pastoral ideal and visualizations of the locus amoenus in the context of the Sforza court. It further explores the relationship between the Sala and the Castello Sforzesco’s surrounding formal gardens and more untamed hunting park, or barcho. As these external grounds played a critical role in the conception of the arboreal imagery, this paper argues that the Sala delle Asse existed as an intermediary space between the cultivated and wild and by extension the rational and fantastical. Keywords: Leonardo da Vinci, Sala delle Asse, Sforza, Milan, Castello Sforzesco, Locus amoenus

The premise of this essay is that the production and appearance of the Sala delle Asse, or the ‘Room of the Wooden Planks’, with its bower of intertwined mulberry trees, evolved as part of the sophisticated and multidimensional perception of nature that developed within the context of the Sforza court of Milan at the end of the Quattrocento.1 (Plates 1 This chapter was first delivered as a paper at the RSA annual meeting in Boston 2016. I would especially like to thank Karen Goodchild, April Oettinger, and Leopoldine Prosperetti for their kind invitation to participate, and to Walter Melion for chairing the panel. My gratitude as well goes to Francesca Tasso of the Castello Sforzesco in Milan for long discussions in the Sala delle Asse during my many visits, as well as sharing images and information on the diagnostics and restoration of the room. Thank you also to Andaleeb Badiee Banta, Allie Terry Fritsch, and the editors of this volume for their comments on earlier versions of this chapter. The bibliography on the Sala delle Asse is vast, but for recent sources, see Carlo Catturini, “Leonardo da Vinci nel Castello Sforzesco di Milano: una citazione di Luca Pacioli per la ‘Sala delle Asse’ ovvero la ‘camera dei moroni’”, Prospettiva 147–148 (2012): 159–166; Maria Teresa Fiorio and Anna Lucchini, “Nella Sala delle Asse, sulle tracce di Leonardo”, Raccolta Vinciana 32 (2007): 101–140. Maria Teresa Fiorio, “‘Infra le fessure delle pietre’: la Sala delle Asse al Castello Sforzesco”, in Il codice di Leonardo da Vinci nel Castello Sforzesco, ed. by Pietro C. Marani and Giovanni M. Piazza (Milan: Electa, 2006), 21–29; Maria Teresa Fiorio, “‘Tutto mi piace’: Leonardo e il castello”, in Il Castello Sforzesco di Milano, ed. by Maria Teresa Fiorio, (Milan: Skira, 2005), 163–179; Patrizia Costa Frezza, “The Sala delle Asse in the Sforza Castle” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 2006); Patrizia Costa Frezza, “La Sala delle Asse di Luca Beltrami”, Archivio Storico Lombardo 127 (2001): 195–217. Dawson Kiang, “Gasparo Visconti’s Pasitea and the Sala delle Asse”, Achademia Leonardi Vinci 2 (1989): 101–109. Goodchild, K.H., A. Oettinger and L. Prosperetti (eds.), Green Worlds in Early Modern Italy. Art and the Verdant Earth, Amsterdam University Press doi: 10.5117/9789462984950_ch04

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11 and 12) Typically, scholars have interpreted the room in terms of its intended glorification of the patron Duke Ludovico Sforza (1452–1508). These analyses have emphasized the presence of the prominent coat of arms and four plaques with laudatory inscriptions adorning the room’s central vault.2 The room’s conspicuous mulberry trees also supplied a cunning pun on Ludovico Sforza’s familiar appellation ‘Il Moro’ (the Moor), which likely referred both to his dark complexion and ‘gelsomoro’ (mulberry).3 In other readings of the Sala, scholars have seen the room as related to its designer Leonardo da Vinci’s prolific scientific investigations of the natural world, known mainly through his celebrated botanical studies.4 While these interpretations provide some explanation for the room, the function and significance of the imagery is multivalent. The Sala should also be considered in relation to the visual poetics of greenery that flourished in Northern Italy and in concert with Leonardo’s own literary and theatrical interests, which came together to inform his new approach to naturalism galvanized in part by his dynamic ideas about pictorial inventio. The Sala delle Asse, painted around 1498, is situated in the northeast corner of Milan’s formidable Castello Sforzesco. Although now heavily damaged, the room’s elegant painted arbour extends over the four walls and large central vault, seeming to mask the weighty architectural framework. The arbour is composed of sixteen trees that surround the perimeter of the room, growing up into the vault, expanding into an intertwined latticework of leafy branches laden with crimson mulberry fruit and adorned by a golden cord that coils around the verdant foliage in orderly knots.5 (Plate 13) The room contains two large windows that face the northeast and northwest, overlooking the exterior 2 Luca Beltrami’s formative studies on Leonardo’s Sala delle Asse helped to shape the emphasis on the inscriptions on the plaques, as well as the central coat of arms. See in particular, Luca Beltrami, “La sala delle ‘Asse’ nel Castello di Milano: Decorata da Leonardo da Vinci nel 1498”, Rassegna d’Arte 2/5 (1902): 65–68, 90–93. 3 See for example, Marie G. Aggházy, “‘Locus amoenus’ et ‘vinculum delictorum’ dans l’art de la Renaissance”, Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-Arts 51 (1978): 55–62; Martin Kemp, Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 186; and for the political meaning of the room, see Pietro C. Marani, “Leonardo e le colonne ad tronchonos: tracce di un programma iconologico per Ludovico il Moro”, Raccolta Vinciana 21 (1982): 103–120. On Ludovico Sforza’s nickname, see Elizabeth McGrath, “Ludovico il Moro and His Moors”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 65 (2002): 70–71. See also Constance Moffatt, “Urbanism and Political Discourse: Lodovico Sforza’s Architectural Plans and Emblematic Imagery at Vigevano” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1992), 253–254, and n. 271. 4 Kemp refers to the designs on the painted walls and ceiling of the Sala delle Asse as ‘an imaginative extension of the inventive process which [Leonardo] used in his science for rational demonstration’. See Kemp 1981, 186. Leonardo’s interest in nature has also importantly guided Moffitt’s interpretation that Leonardo designed the Sala delle Asse according to Vitruvius’s ideas on ‘primordial architecture’. These ideas, likely also in connection to Bramante, certainly played an important role in formulating the complicated conceit in the room. See John F. Moffitt, “Leonardo’s ‘Sala delle Asse’ and the Primordial Origin of Architecture”, Arte Lombarda n.s., no. 92–93 (1990): 76–90. 5 For information on the coat of arms and plaques, see Evelyn S. Welch, Art and Authority in Renaissance Milan (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), 233. After much dispute, the trees in the Sala have recently been identified as mulberry. See Catturini, 159–166. Other literature on the identification of the type of trees, includes: Marani, 1982, 103–120; William A. Emboden, Leonardo da Vinci on Plants and Gardens (Portland, OR: Dioscorides Press, in cooperation with the Armand Hammer Center for Leonardo

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Figure 4.1: Leonardo da Vinci, Sala delle Asse (detail of rocky base monochrome), c.1498. Fresco. Castello Sforzesco, Milan.

grounds. Between the windows, extending across the corner of the adjacent northeast and northwest walls, are the remnants of a depiction of a rocky outcropping. Executed in an earthy monochrome, this area displays a rugged base broken by weighty roots that struggle to emerge from its fragmented surface. (Fig. 4.1) While not common, other examples of fictive, painted green canopies on the interior of palace architecture existed in Northern Italy at the time.6 This chapter, however, will demonstrate how the particular poetic perception of nature at the Sforza Studies at UCLA, 1987), 134; Moffatt (1992), 254–258; Constance Moffatt, “Merito et tempore: The Imprese of Lodovico Sforza at Vigevano”, Emblematica 3 (1988): 238; Constantino Baroni, “Tracce pittoriche leonardesche recuperate al Castello Sforzesco di Milano”, Rendiconti dell’Istituto lombardo di Scienze e Lettere 88 (1955), 21–36; Eugène Müntz, “Leonardo de Vinci peintre et Décorateur”, Bulletin de l’art ancien et moderne 7 (1902): 214–215; Diego Sant’Ambrogio, “Sulla flora della Sala delle Asse”, Lega Lombarda (1902): 1–2. 6 Examples of other painted pergolas may have been known to Leonardo, even if he did not see them first hand. In particular, Marin Sanudo (1525) describes the Medieval decorations in a room in the Palazzo Ducale in Venice known as the Sala dei Pregadi, which, like the Sala delle Asse, was symbolically painted with an arbour of trees. Describing the room, Sanudo writes, ‘[…] fu fata al tempo di Missier Piero Gradenigo doze (1289–1311). Vedestu questi arbori grandi, mezani e piccoli…li piccoli impara, poi vien mezani, poi grandi, cussì è le tre età; zoveni, mezani e vecchi, et a questo modo si governa urben institutae republicae’. See Marin Sanudo, I Diarii di Marino Sanuto, ed. by G. Berchet, vol. 24 (Venice: F. Visentini, 1879–1902), 25 luglio 1525. See also Fiorio, 2005, 163–179 (Milan: Skira, 2005), 176. Fiorio draws on Wolters Wolfgang Wolters, Storia e politica nei dipinti di Palazzo Ducale. Aspetti dell’autocelebrazione della Repubblica di Venezia nel Cinquecento (Venice: Arsenale, 1987), 18–19. Another example is the oratory of San Galdino a Zelo Surrigone in Milan. For information, see Saverio Almini, “L’oratorio di San Galdino a Zelo Surrigone: proposte di ricerca”, Rassegna di Studi e di Notizie 36 (2013): 13–44. On the history of ornamental greenery, both in the context of the garden and painted architecture, see the contribution of Karen Goodchild to the present volume.

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court combined with the carefully constructed and mediated space of the Castello Sforzesco, with its surrounding vast gardens, to inform the production of the Sala. Thus, it aims both to answer questions about Leonardo’s engagement with the pastoral ideal and visualizations of the locus amoenus. Further, it will explore the conceptual link between the Sala and the Castello Sforzesco’s surrounding formal gardens and more remote hunting park, or barcho, located at the outlying areas of the ducal property. As both the gardens and the barcho played a critical role in the conception of the arboreal imagery, this chapter argues that the Sala delle Asse may be understood as a sort of intermediary realm between the cultivated and the wild, and by extension the rational and the fantastical. It operated as an ideal place of retreat and isolation, whose controlled access helped identify privilege with its signorial patron, Ludovico il Moro. As with other princely environs, by establishing a boundary, this seemingly secluded area served to identify the rank of the courtly figures who gained access to it. Through a consideration of this mediated space, along with the integration of contemporary poetics and recent technical findings on the Sala, this chapter will shed light on the cultural significance of Leonardo’s painted, leafy canopy at the Sforza castle.

The Sala delle Asse and the Poetics of Vegetation at the Sforza Court Although vegetative imagery was pervasive and the poetics of greenery flourished in late-Quattrocento Italy, the Sala delle Asse has yet to be fully considered in relation to this important cultural current. This is because the room has been perceived as the result of Leonardo’s personal interests in botany and geology, which are thought to have played out in the elaborate foliage-laden vault and accompanying rocky base. The result is that interpretations of the Sala have been limited to discussions of its originality and the product of Leonardo’s unique genius.7 Yet, linking the room to Leonardo’s study of plant life is only part of the story for these interests should be viewed as part of a broader cultural trend that promoted pictorial and literary themes of verdancy. In particular, given its courtly setting, the Sala merits consideration in relation to the vernacular pastoral-mythological plays that were popularized at the courts of Northern Italy, including Milan, at the end of the Quattrocento. Italian Renaissance poets stretching back to Trecento figures such as Petrarch had given form to green spaces in their revival of the pastoral tradition, relying on poetic constructions of verdure. At the North Italian courts these pastoral themes enjoyed a particular 7 See for example, Daniel Arasse, Leonardo da Vinci: The Rhythm of the World, trans. by Rosetta Translations (Old Saybrook, CT: Konecky & Konecky, 1998), 138–143; Kemp, 1981, 167–176; Kenneth Clark, Leonardo da Vinci: An Account of His Development as an Artist (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1939; revised ed. with introduction by M. Kemp, 1988; repr. 1993), 158.

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popularity, developing into a sort of subcategory known as the favole mitologiche. Written in the vernacular, these favole were performed widely as court entertainment. They combined Petrarchan love poetry with classically inspired fictional prose and were set in rural landscapes. Written in Tuscan, scholars often assumed they originated in Florence, rather than at the courts of Northern Italy, like Mantua and Milan. Angelo Poliziano (1454–94) is credited with the first favola, the Orfeo, written around 1480. Although Poliziano was Florentine, he likely composed the work during his time at the court of Francesco Gonzaga in Mantua, a lord with a particular interest in pastoral spectacles.8 This interest in pastoral spectacle carried over to nearby Milan, where the favole mitologiche delighted members of the Sforza court. The Milanese court poet Gaspare Visconti wrote one of the most popular of these favole, the Pasitea (c.1493–97), which essentially follows Ovid’s tale of Pyramus and Thisbe (Metamorphoses IV, 55–166).9 In the story, the star-crossed lovers Dioneo and Pasitea have been kept apart by their families. Dioneo, however, manages to convince Pasitea to meet him in the woods just outside the city walls. Pasitea arrives first at the wooded meeting place, where a wild beast threatens to attack her. She flees to a nearby cave, but not before the beast makes off with her veil. Meanwhile, Dioneo arrives late on the scene and finding the bloodied veil of his beloved Pasitea, he takes his own life. Soon after, Pasitea returns to the meeting point where she overhears two shepherds describing Dioneo’s tragic fate, and in turn, she too commits suicide. Fortunately, Apollo, taking pity on the lovers, restores life to both Dioneo and Pasitea and implores Dioneo’s father to condone their marriage. With his blessing, the couple is joyfully wed.10

8 Cynthia M. Pyle, “The Birth of the Vernacular Comedy: Gaspare Visconti’s Pasithea”, in Milan and Lombardy in the Renaissance: Essays in Cultural History (Rome: La Fenice Edizioni, 1997), 140–141; Nino Pirrotta, “Orpheus, singer of strambotti”, in Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi, trans. by Karen Eales (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 3–36. 9 In their study of North Italian theatre in the Quattrocento, Antonia Tissoni Benvenuti and Maria Pia Mussini Sacchi call the Pasitea ‘the jewel of Milanese theatre’. They also provide a modern publication of the play in their Teatro del Quattrocento: Le corti padane. See Antonia Tissoni Benvenuti and Maria Pia Mussini Sacchi, Teatro del Quattrocento: Le corti padane (Turin: Cane Tipografia Litografia, 1983), 337–396; prior to this, Cynthia Pyle submitted a thorough discussion and a diplomatic reproduction of the Pasitea in her doctoral dissertation, which was followed by a later series of essays. See Pyle, “Politian’s Orfeo and other favole mitologiche in the Context of Late Quattrocento Northern Italy” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1976), and also, Pyle, 1997, 139–150; See also the benchmark study by Paolo Bongrani, Lingua e letteratura a Milano nell’età sforzesca, Una raccolta di studi (Parma: Università degli studi, 1986), 163–241, which was reprinted in Lingua e letteratura a Milano nell’età sforzesca, Una raccolta di studi (1986), 87–158. The original text is contained in Gaspare Visconti’s zibaldone (Cod. Triv. n. 1093), 75v-100. This is an autograph manuscript including Visconti’s sonnets written in dedication to Beatrice d’Este. Visconti may have relied on a secretary or copyist for some parts of the manuscript. Corrections in Visconti’s hand, however, to the sheets of the Pasitea confirm its authenticity. Pyle, 1976, 188–189. 10 See Visconti, Cod. Triv. n. 1093; Pyle, 1976, 191–194.

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Importantly for our purposes, Visconti staged the final acts of his play outside the city in a secluded grouping of mulberry trees, and it is under the protection of these green bowers that love prevails. In Visconti’s final act, Apollo enters the wooded refuge with his beloved Daphne. Here, he declares that he will make the laurel ‘first among trees’, with the exception of the noble ‘Moro’ (mulberry) whose virtue is ‘più singulare’ (most extraordinary).11 Apollo goes on to inquire why the mulberry fruit has been stained red, as opposed to its usual white. One of the shepherds explains that it is because Dioneo and Pasitea had just ended their lives and their blood had stained the fruit. To this, Apollo proclaims that the fruit of the mulberry shall forever remain red, and in a passage laced with double meaning declares that the ‘moro è sempre inamorato’ (mulberry is always in love) because the two lovers have touched ‘in mezzo al cuore’ (the very centre of its heart).12 Visconti’s witty play on the mulberry allowed him to glorify his Milanese patria and supply encomiastic reference to his patron by incorporating a standard pun on his nickname ‘Moro’ – meaning mulberry in the vernacular Lombard tongue.13 Leonardo began his paintings in the Sala delle Asse just slightly after Visconti authored the Pasitea and, as Dawson Kiang has rightfully argued, the room’s arbour of mulberry trees derived from the same poetic motif.14 Indeed, the Pasitea likely inspired Leonardo’s imagery in the room, and given Leonardo’s own involvement with theatrical designs, it is probable that the Sala was intended as a literal backdrop for the production of the play, along with other courtly spectacle that took place at the Castello.15 As such, the room represented a protective sheltering for the gathering of the courtly retinue – a purportedly private place dedicated to the convivial contemplations, debate, and delectations of the Duke’s inner circle. In this context, the Sala, with its arbour of lush mulberries, would have appeared as the perfect, secluded natural setting – a locus amoenus, or ‘pleasant place’, dedicated to the thoughtful contemplation of love and patria. 11 Visconti, Cod. Triv. n. 1093, f. 96. 12 Ibid., f. 97; Pyle, 1976, p. 193. 13 Elizabeth McGrath has suggested that although Ludovico Sforza’s ‘Moro’ nickname eventually became associated with the ‘virtues of the mulberry tree’ and Milan’s thriving silk industry, it originated at a young age due to Ludovico’s dark complexion, eyes, and hair. See McGrath, 2002, 70–71. 14 Kiang, 101–109. 15 See David Rosand, “Giorgione, Venice, and the Pastoral Vision”, in Places of Delight: The Pastoral Landscape, ed. Robert Cafritz, Lawrence Gowing, and David Rosand (Washington: The Phillips Collection, 1988), 20–81. Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture, trans. by Morris Hicky Morgan (New York: Dover Publications, 1960), 150. Regarding Leonardo’s involvement with theatrical designs, we know that Ludovico il Moro honoured the marriage of Isabella of Aragon and Gian Galeazzo Sforza with a production of Bellinicioni’s Paradiso, for which Leonardo designed the elaborate stage sets, including an apparatus that descended to the stage below, carrying with it seven actors in the form of planets, each of whom recited panegyric poetry to the Duke and the young newlyweds. Leonardo also staged Baldassare Taccone’s play Danae for which he created a flaming mandorla that served as a frame for the god Jupiter. His designs for this production are recorded in drawings now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Biblioteca Ambrosiana. The literature on Leonardo’s theatrical designs is lengthy, but see for example: Pyle, 1997, 19–20.

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In the Sala delle Asse, we find this literary motif of the locus amoenus visualized in the leafy natural baldachin extending across the expansive vault.16 In previous interpretations, the room has been linked to the related concept of the Vale of Tempe due to the prominence of the jagged stratum of rock in the northeast corner. Classical sources reported that this narrow valley in northern Thessaly was the site of a forceful earthquake that fractured the land and resulted in a dramatic rugged landscape.17 This interpretation of the Sala as Tempe, based entirely on the presence of the rock cluster, is too restrictive and relies on an idea that garnered relatively few visual representations during Leonardo’s day. The room rather is more convincingly connected to an idealized representation of the locus amoenus, an analogous but broader and more widespread theme at the time.18

Recent Technical Findings and the Sala delle Asse as Locus Amoenus The connection of the room to the motif of the locus amoenus is made evident through recent technical analysis of the Sala delle Asse. New evidence that has come to light confirms the place of the Sala as a space of shady retreat. In 2013, restorers – attempting to remedy the deteriorated state of the paintings – removed the wooden panelling that had obstructed the lower portion of the walls, revealing the continuity between the trees above and the jagged contours of the rocky base on the northeast 16 In 1978, the French art historian Marie Aggházy proposed that the room covered by Leonardo’s verdant arbour represented precisely a locus amoenus, though this argument has now fallen from favor. Aggházy, like other scholars, related the overall meaning of the room to the death of Beatrice d’Este in 1497. Aggházy, 55–62. For Costa Frezza, the liturgical function of the room is also suspect due to the letter written by Gualtiero da Bascapè on 21 April 1498, in which he describes the work in the ‘Saleta negra’ as progressing quickly and adds, ‘Lunedì si desmara la camera grande da le asse, cioè da la tore. Magistro Leonardo promete finirla per tuto Septembre, et che per questo si potrà etiam goldere […]’. If the room was indeed used for the funerary rite of the deceased Beatrice, it would be doubtful that Gualtiero would declare that room would be finished by September, so that the Duke might ‘enjoy’ [‘goldere’ (Costa Frezza’s translation)] it. Costa Frezza, 2006, 164. 17 Volker Hoffmann maintained that the Sala delle Asse represented the literary topos of Tempe, the legendary river valley in Thessaly, Greece, located between Mount Olympus and Mount Ossa. Traditionally, the scenery of Tempe is distinguished by its wooded groves and rugged, rocky outcroppings (Hdt. 7.129; Strab. 9.5.2), which Hoffmann identified with the stratified, craggy rocks painted by Leonardo on the northeast wall of the Sala delle Asse (Fig. 4.1). Because the rock formations were discovered only in 1954, Hoffmann’s interpretation of the room as a sort of allegorical Tempe emerged only at this time. Interestingly, Hoffmann also speculated that Ludovico il Moro may have known Spartianus’s Life of Hadrian, and from that was aware that Hadrian possessed his own locus amoenus (based on Tempe) in his Roman villa, and thus Moro may have wanted his own version. See Volker Hoffmann, “Leonardos Ausmalung der Sala delle Asse im Castello Sforzesco”, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 16 (1972): 51–62. 18 Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. by Willard R. Trask (New York: Harper and Row, 1953), 195.

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wall.19 Below layers of whitewash, on the original layers of intonaco, researchers discovered traces of drawings of tree trunks. There are drawings of at least three tree trunks in the northeast monochrome fragments. Just opposite this area, on the other side of the large window opening on the same wall, we find a previously unknown, symmetrically placed tree trunk with a large knot in its central area. (Figs. 4.2 and 4.3) On the southern and western walls of the Sala, further traces of tree trunks have been found, which indicate that the towering trees overhead likely were intended to extend all the way down on all four walls.20 (Fig. 4.4) Therefore, the room would have originally looked more open and expansive, with space between the slender tree trunks at the sides, and glimpses of blue sky visible through the canopy above.21

Figure 4.2: Leonardo da Vinci, Sala delle Asse (window on eastern wall), c.1498. Fresco. Castello Sforzesco, Milan.

19 I am grateful to Francesca Tasso, Carlo Catturini, Luca Tosi, and Ilaria De Palma for meeting with me at the Castello Sforzesco in September 2014 and again in May 2015, when they shared the preliminary findings of the restoration campaign with me. These preliminary findings were published in 2017: see Michela Palazzo, “Il Monocromo di Leonardo da Vinci nella sala delle Asse. Vicende conservative e interpretazione/Leonardo da Vinci’s Monochrome in the Sala delle Asse. Conservation, History and Interpretation”, in Leonardo da Vinci: La sala delle Asse del Castello Sforzesco, La diagnostica e il restauro del Monocromo/Leonardo da Vinci: The Sala delle Asse of the Sforza Castle, Diagnostic Testing and Restoration of the Monochrome, ed. by Michela Palazzo and Francesca Tasso (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2017b), 96–99. 20 Again, I thank Francesca Tasso, Carlo Catturini, and Luca Tosi for sharing their insights about the restoration project with me. For publication of these findings, see Palazzo, 2017b, 76–109. 21 Palazzo, 2017b, 101, 63n. points out that Pietro C. Marani has made essential comparisons between the compositional structure of the sky and foliage in the Sala delle Asse and Andrea Mantegna’s Camera Picta and the lunettes of Leonardo’s Last Supper. See Pietro C. Marani, “Prospettiva botanica e simbolo nelle ghirlande ‘tonde a l’anticha’ di Leonardo”, in Le lunette di Leonardo nel refettorio delle Grazie, ed. by Pinin Brambilla Barcilon and Pietro C. Marani (Milan: Olivetti, 1990), 1–34.

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Figure 4.3: Leonardo da Vinci, Sala delle Asse (detail of traces trunk on eastern wall), c.1498. Fresco. Castello Sforzesco, Milan.

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Figure 4.4: Leonardo da Vinci, Sala delle Asse (detail of room with wooden paneling removed), c.1498. Fresco. Castello Sforzesco, Milan.

Moreover, the presence of these underdrawings has caused Michela Palazzo, the executive conservator on the 2011–15 restoration campaign, to conclude, ‘in the space between the trunks, Leonardo inserted perspectival trompe l’oeil landscapes that open up in the distance with ruins and villages surrounded by nature’.22 During the recent technical intervention, a charcoal drawing of a small village in perspective was discovered under the many layers of accumulated plaster on the western wall of the room.23 (Fig. 4.5) The schematic drawing includes several buildings, a tree, and a towering steeple. If we accept this previously unknown passage as part of the original design, which its location on the intonaco layer suggests, it also helps confirm the characterization of the room’s imagery as a locus amoenus. Small cityscapes frequently populated these pastoral scenes and are important elements as they set apart the natural setting from the man-made world.24 They render the wooded landscape distinct from the built 22 Palazzo, 2017b, 99. 23 For images of recent evidence of a small cityscape on the western wall, see “Sala delle Asse. The Restoration”, Castello Sforzesco, Comune di Milano, accessed 17 July 2015, http://www.saladelleassecastello. it/follow-the-restoration/?lang=en. The existence of this passage was originally shared with me during a visit to the Sala delle Asse on 22 May 2015. See also, Michela Palazzo, “Cenni sulla tecnica di esecuzione del Monocromo/Notes on the Making of the Monochrome”, in Leonardo da Vinci: La sala delle Asse del Castello Sforzesco, La diagnostica e il restauro del Monocromo/ Leonardo da Vinci: The Sala delle Asse of the Sforza Castle, Diagnostic Testing and Restoration of the Monochrome, ed. by Michela Palazzo and Francesca Tasso (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2017a), 72–73. 24 Rosand, 1988, 48.

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Figure 4.5: Leonardo da Vinci, Sala delle Asse (detail of underdrawing of village on western wall), c.1498. Fresco. Castello Sforzesco, Milan.

environment and confirm its identity as separate and unique.25 This was certainly the case in the Pasitea, where much of the story unfolds in the woodlands between a city and the less accessible forest.26 In terms of the pastoral, we often see examples of this dichotomy of urban and rural not only in theater, but also in the visual arts. It is perhaps most familiar in Venetian paintings from the early sixteenth century, where shepherds, poets, and nymphs occupy a serene grove set before a distant village on the horizon. These types of images have come to define the pastoral in Renaissance painting, and indeed became more elaborate in their structure, composition, and figural representations as we move into the sixteenth century. Recent technical studies of the monochrome area of the Sala also reveal that it included underdrawings of flowers and a more articulated sense of perspective, as well as a bridge and a probable stream on the northern wall. (Figs. 4.6 and 4.7) These motifs further establish the association of the room with the locus amoenus. In the past, the suggestion that the Sala represented this classical idyllic space had always been rejected due to the lack of water source that would correlate to the river described as essential to the locus amoenus.27 Given the persistence of the theme of 25 Ibid., 48. 26 Pyle argues that Gaspare Visconti set the Pasitea in scena molteplice, with references to mostly to scenes taking place in domestic structures, and of course that in the woods beyond the city walls. See Pyle, 1997, 148. 27 See for example John Moffitt, who asserts, ‘In short, Hoffmann’s ingenious and learned argument is ultimately vitiated by the total absence of any overt sign of riverine activities in Leonardo’s fresco’. Moffitt, 79.

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Figure 4.6: Leonardo da Vinci, Sala delle Asse (detail of flowers in monochrome), c.1498. Fresco.Castello Sforzesco, Milan.

Figure 4.7: Leonardo da Vinci, Sala delle Asse (detail of bridge on northern wall), c.1498. Fresco. Castello Sforzesco, Milan.

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water in Leonardo’s work, it does not seem likely that he would overlook this crucial component. The underdrawing of the bridge makes clear that there was an intended water source nestled within the jagged layers of stratified stone. Leslie Geddes has astutely reminded us of the importance of bridges in Leonardo’s depictions of natural landscapes. She points out that Leonardo almost always paired his geological studies with depictions of water, even if sketchy or only suggested, as they supplied a reminder of the vitality and instability of the otherwise seemingly inert rock formations.28 Geddes also explains that often in Leonardo’s studies of hydraulic devices, including bridges, the artist implied the water without actually delineating it. In most cases, this exclusion may have been because his typically more economic studies of water mechanisms were intended for personal use, such as those in the pocket notebook of Codex Forster I.29 Yet, the practice could have been carried over to the walls of the Sala where in the underdrawing the bridge was enough to imply the water that may have been more clearly worked out in the final execution of the wall painting. Although we most commonly associate pastoral imagery with Giorgione and his Venetian milieu, the theme was essentially courtly and was already well established in the late fifteenth century in the favole mitologiche and would have been known to Leonardo. Despite the fact that Giorgione’s landscapes are easel paintings and therefore independent pictures, there was already precedent for this type of landscape in wall painting amongst Leonardo’s contemporaries.30 The genre of independent landscape had gained legitimacy through the Renaissance theorist and architect Leon Battista Alberti (1404–72), who viewed the natural environment as an appropriate subject for the decoration of the walls of villas and palaces. Of course, Alberti had looked to the writings of classical authors such as Pliny and Vitruvius in this area. In establishing the hierarchy of classical theatre, Vitruvius declared that more formal or domestic architectural settings best suited tragedy and comedy, while the more spirited satyr plays were better ‘decorated with trees, caverns, mountains, and other rustic objects delineated in a landscape style’. Therefore, when we examine the transformation of the literary image of the pastoral to a visual one, we find – in addition to wandering shepherds – certain physical requirements, such as intimate landscapes containing a leafy green grove, a meandering river, and a distant village or farmhouse included as contrast to the otherwise natural setting. 28 Leslie Geddes, “Drawing Bridges: Leonardo da Vinci on Mastering Nature”, in Illuminating Leonardo: A Festschrift for Carlo Pedretti, Celebrating His 70 Years of Scholarship (1944–2014), ed. by Constance Moffatt and Sara Taglialagamba (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 272. The literature on Leonardo’s hydraulic studies is vast, but see also in particular, Frank Fehrenbach, Light und Wasser. Zur Dynamic Naturphilosaphischer Leitbilder im Werk Leonardo da Vincis (Tübingen/Berlin: Ernst Wasmuth Verlag, 1997). 29 As Geddes explains, Codex Forster I2 comprises a small compendium of designs for water machines. See Geddes, 2016, 296–297, citing Codex Forster I2, c.1487–90, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. 30 On the early history of the painted, fictive pergola, see “Mediating Spaces: Portico, Loggia, and Pergola”, in Natsumi Nonaka, Renaissance Porticoes and Painted Pergolas: Nature and Culture in Early Modern Italy (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), 10–43.

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New findings allow us to re-evaluate the Sala precisely within this tradition. We should see the room in relation to the water imagery and landscape elements indicated in the wall paintings and underdrawings. In the past, critical interpretations of the room focused almost solely on the forms of the trees, largely due to misconceptions about the original appearance of the space, as well as the consistent desire to relate the arboreal imagery to Leonardo’s role as promoter of rational naturalism, rather than poetic expression. The tendency has been to see Leonardo as a natural scientist, whose idiosyncratic interests kept him quite isolated from any outside influences at the court.31 This perspective has certainly made its mark on the scholarship devoted to the Sala delle Asse, where an emphasis on the artist’s scrutiny of the natural world and his related role as botanical draftsman has obscured a consideration of the imagery as it relates to Leonardo’s involvement with intellectual and philosophical ideas circulating at the court. Yet, Leonardo’s own deep involvement in the verbal arts is now more widely understood due to seminal studies by Jean Paul Richter, Martin Kemp, and Claire Farago.32 Although Leonardo had no formal Latin training, he successfully taught the ancient language to himself while in Milan.33 His own book lists, taken from the Codex Atlanticus and the Madrid Codices, reveal his interest in both classical and vernacular literature. Most often Leonardo has been identified as an admirer of Dante, whose work we see reflected in his own drawings.34 However, Leonardo also took notice of other vernacular authors, such as the aforementioned Gaspare Visconti, as well as the Sforza court poet Bernardo Bellincioni.35 31 In his enlightening 2011 National Gallery exhibition, ‘Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan’, curator Luke Syson helped to restore balance to our understanding of Leonardo by presenting him not only as scientist, but principally as ‘painter-philosopher’. See Luke Syson, “The Rewards of Service: Leonardo’s Painting Technique”, in Luke Syson and Larry Keith, eds. Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan, exh. cat. National Gallery (London: National Gallery Company, 2011), 12–53. 32 Jean Paul Richter, The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939); Claire J. Farago, Leonardo da Vinci’s Paragone: A Critical Interpretation with a New Edition of the Text in the Codex Urbinas, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, vol. 25 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1992); and Kemp, 1985, 196–214. 33 Evidence of Leonardo’s efforts to teach himself Latin appear around 1494 in his H and Trivulzian manuscripts, in which he copies Latin grammar and vocabulary. See Clark, 1993, 110. 34 Martin Kemp has argued that Leonardo was particularly inspired by Dante, and that works such as his Convivio provided Leonardo ‘with regular intellectual nourishment’. Kemp points out that drawings like Leonardo’s Pointing Lady (Windsor, Royal Library, 12581) have been associated with Matelda in Dante’s Divine Comedy. See Kemp, 1985, 196–214, esp. 199–200. 35 Leonardo was known to have mocked the court poet Gaspare Visconti for his passion for chivalric love poetry, even though his own book lists show that Leonardo himself possessed many works in this genre, including copies of sonnets by Petrarch, as well as by Visconti. See Kemp, 1985, 197. Leonardo also had a close connection with Bernardo Bellincioni for whom he staged his play Festa del Paradiso on 13 January 1490 in celebration of the marriage of Gian Galeazzo Sforza and Isabella of Aragon. For an overview of Leonardo’s theatrical designs, see Arasse, 1998, 219–255; as well as Richter, 44–45; and Elvira Garbero Zorzi, “Court Spectacle”, in The Courts of the Italian Renaissance, by Sergio Bertelli, Franco Cardini, and Elvira Garbero Zorzi (New York: Facts on File Publications, 1985), 135.

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While the artist’s studies of the natural world certainly played a role in the designs on the walls of the Sala, the visual imagery of the room should be considered in connection to Leonardo’s broader literary and philosophical explorations of nature. After all, Leonardo was an art theorist and investigator of the natural sciences. In his Paragone on the subject of landscape, he wrote: And if [the painter] wishes to bring forth sites or deserts, cool and shady places in times of heat or warm spots when it is cold, he fashions them. So if he desires valleys or wishes to discover vast tracts of land from mountain peaks and look at the sea on the distant horizon beyond them, it is in his power; and so if he wants to look up to the high mountains from low valleys or from high mountains towards the deep valleys and coastline. In fact, whatever exists in the universe either potentially or actually in the imagination, he has it first in his mind and then in his hands, and these [images] are of such excellence, that they present the same proportioned harmony to a single glance as belongs to the things themselves.36

Thus, Leonardo demonstrated an understanding of the power of the constructed landscape to bring forth a desired or imagined setting. Familiar with classical precedents described by Pliny and Vitruvius, as well as Early Modern writings on landscape and gardens by Pietro de’ Crescenzi, Alberti, and others, Leonardo, at the behest of his patron Ludovico Sforza, created an ideal natural space of retreat. Protected by the dappled shade of the trees, with landscape views in the distance, the occupants escaped from Milan’s urban environs into a cultivated pastoral world of contemplation and pleasure.37 36 This passage was famously quoted by Ernst Gombrich in his formative essay, “The Renaissance Theory of Art and the Rise of the Landscape”, in which he argues that Leonardo developed the ‘first complete aesthetic theory of landscape painting’. See Ernst Gombrich, “The Renaissance Theory of Art and the Rise of the Landscape”, in Norm and Form: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance (New York: Phaidon, 1966), 111–112. See Leonardo da Vinci, Treatise on Painting. Codex Urbinas Latinus 1270, trans. by A.P. McMahon, vol. 2 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1956), f. 5r. 37 Leonardo’s knowledge of the importance of secluded green spaces point to his knowledge of the lateMedieval writings on horticulture and agriculture by the Bolognese scholar Pietro de’ Crescenzi whose “Book of Rural Benefits” (Opus ruralium commodorum) (1304–09) circulated widely in fifteenth-century Italy and appears in Leonardo’s listing of books in his own library. Crescenzi’s treatise (first printed in Latin in 1471, and in the vernacular in 1478) is often considered the first modern text on agriculture, and enjoyed a particular popularity at the court of Milan. See Pietro de’ Crescenzi, De agricultura vulgare (Venice, 1511); Pietro de’ Crescenzi, Trattato della agricoltura di Pietro De’ Crescenzi, Accademico della Crusca, 3 volumes (Milan, 1805). For the importance of Crescenzi to Leonardo see Damiano Iacobone, “La ‘progettazione paesaggistica’ in età visconteo-sforzesca: i casi di Milano e Pavia”, in Ville e parchi storici: Strategie per la conoscenza e per il riuso sostenibile. Atti del convegno internazionale, ed. by Stefano Bertocci, Giovanni Pancani, and Paola Puma (Florence: Edifir-Edizioni, 2006), 61–64; Emboden, 26–29.

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The Sala delle Asse and the Gardens of the Castello Sforzesco New findings from the recent technical intervention also help confirm that the Sala bore a more complicated and layered relationship to the areas surrounding the Castello Sforzesco than previously recognized. With the uncovering of elements of the small cityscape and bridge in the room’s underdrawings, both of which are considered to be integral to the original program, we can now recognize the imagery in the room as part of a larger articulation. These landscape components contributed to a positioning of the Sala in relation to its actual physical surroundings. For instance, the relatively small passage including the bridge in the Sala would have worked in concert with the actual verdant space surrounding the castle, which was revealed to the viewer through the large window just to the immediate left of the scene. Located on the northern wall next to the main monochrome area, the bridge and stream pictured in the receding distance invite the viewer to contemplate the actual gardens and possible water source just beyond the wall and visible through the adjacent window. The bridge would remind privileged visitors of the cultivated greenery and garden maze in the enclosed area situated just beyond the Sala walls. Indeed, the Castello Sforzesco at this time was surrounded by a vast property that extended for approximately 5,161 pertiche to the northwest arriving at the modern Milanese district of San Siro.38 Although the exact configuration of the grounds during the late fifteenth century is a subject worthy of further scholarship, it is known that the Sforza had elaborate gardens, as well as an enormous hunting park or barcho.39 Parts of this enormous tract of land were used for the cultivation of agricultural crops, while still other areas were used as grasslands for raising animals, as well as orchards and vineyards. Because the land was enclosed within defensive walls, it could be used as a breeding ground for deer, hares, goats, and game birds.40 During Ludovico il Moro’s reign, the grounds occupied a prominent place in the leisure and entertainment of the sovereign.41 Hunting was an important pastime for the Sforza, who possessed hunting parks not only at the Castello Sforzesco, but also at Pavia and Vigevano.42 The latter of these had been given up by Ludovico il Moro around 1497, at which time the Duke likely transferred his favour to the grounds around the Milanese castle. Although large parts of this land there were left uncultivated, there were also more formal gardens designated for the pleasure of the duke and his guests. Leonardo’s own knowledge of these grounds is evidenced through a 38 For size of the barcho, see also Francesco Malaguzzi Valeri, La corte di Lodovico il Moro: La vita privata e l’arte a Milano nelle seconda metà del Quattrocento, vol. 1 (Milan: Hoepli, 1929), 281. For a full discussion of the lands surrounding the Castello Sforzesco, see Iacobone, 61–64. 39 Fiorio, 2005, 168. 40 Beltrami, 1902, 65–68; Felice Calvi, Storia del Castello di Milano detto Porta Giovia dalla sua fondazione al dì 22 marzo 1848 (Milan: A. Vallardi, 1892), 37, 63. 41 Fiorio, 2005, 168. 42 See for example, Richard V. Schofield, “Ludovico il Moro and Vigevano”, Arte Lombarda 62(1982): 94–102.

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drawing in Manuscript B (fol. 12r) in which the artist sketches a centralized architectural plan with a dome and cupola; to the right he illustrates a plan consisting of a central octagon containing eight square compartments surrounded by a ring with water running through it – denoted by his inclusion of the word ‘aqua’. (Fig. 4.8) Carlo Pedretti justifiably associated this drawing with a 1480 description by the Florentine humanist Giovanni Ridolfi, who in one of his travel commentaries writes: 1480. Travel from Milan to Venice, and from Venice to Florence […] and besides this, in Milan, a castle where the court is, beautiful and very strong, placed by the ditches on the land between Porta Vercellina and Porta Comasina, which is half a mile or more in size, with three miles of walled garden surrounding it, within which there is a house they call la cascina that has a drawbridge and is enclosed by a wall, where the Duke sometimes goes to dine, and there is a pavilion there on a brick floor with streams all round it and hedges forming a maze.43

The specificity of the description has led to the association between Leonardo’s drawing and the description provided by Ridolfi.44 This assertion is confirmed by Leonardo’s own textual description under the drawing: ‘[F]oundation of the pavilion which is in the middle of the Duke of Milan’s maze.’45 Labyrinths were popular in Italian Renaissance gardens, particularly with the Sforza, who had at least one other maze in the gardens in Vigevano.46 These garden labyrinths of course possessed symbolic value, but were ultimately meant for the delight of the visitor, who could wander their meandering paths and contemplate the marvel of the human ingenuity that created them.47 43 ‘1480. Viaggio da Milano a Vinegia, et da Vinegia a Firenze […] E oltre a di questo, in Milano, uno castello dove sta la corte, bello et fortissimo, posto in su’ fossi della terra fra porta Vercellina et porta Comasina, che gira uno mezzo miglio o più, con un giardino che gira miglia 3, murato intorno, dove è una casa [che] chiamano la cascina che ha il ponte levatoio, et chiuso di mura intorno, dove va il signore alle volte a cena, et evvi uno padiglione che v’è sotto ammattonato et intorno ha l’acque vive, con siepe a mo’ di labirinto.’ Carlo Pedretti, Leonardo, architetto (Milan: Electa, 1978), 66. For English translation, see Carlo Pedretti, Leonardo, Architect, trans. by Sue Brill (New York: Rizzoli, 1981), 64. Original commentary contained in the Codex Magliabechianus, II. IV. 195, f. 223r. On Ridolfi, see also Philip J. Jones, “Travel Notes of an Apprentice Florentine Statesman, Giovanni di Tommaso Ridolfi”, in Florence and Italy: Renaissance Studies in Honour of Nicolai Rubinstein, ed. Peter Denley and Caroline Elam (London: Westfield College, Committee for Medieval Studies, 1988), 263–280. It has also been suggested that Leonardo was referencing a more ephemeral structure made out of wood. See Jean Guillaume, “Leonardo and Architecture”, in Leonardo da Vinci: Engineer and Architect, exh. cat., ed. Paolo Galluzzi (Montreal: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1987), 266–267. 44 Fiorio, 2005, 168. 45 Translation taken from Pedretti, 1981, 64. The original reads, ‘fondamento del padiglione ch’è nel mezzo del laberinto del Duca di Milano’. 46 Schofield, 95. 47 On garden labyrinths in the Renaissance, see Claudia Lazzaro, The Italian Renaissance Garden: From Conventions of Planting, Design, and Ornament to the Grand Gardens of Sixteenth-Century Italy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990), 51–55.

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Figure 4.8: Leonardo da Vinci, Drawing including pavilion of the Duchess of Milan; pavilion located in the labyrinth of the Duke of Milan, elevation of a fortress; plan of a dome of a church, Ms. 2173, fol. 12r (Manuscript B), 1485–1488. Chalk and ink. Bibliotheque de l’Institut de France, Paris.

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The Sala delle Asse, with its own sort of labyrinth found in the intertwined golden cord in the leafy vault and accompanying views through two enormous windows to the verdant park that engulfed the castle, represented a sort of intermediate space that obscured the border between interior and exterior. Paralleling the function of an exterior pergola, the built environment of the Sala blurred the boundary between the more formal castle interior and the lush gardens and woodlands beyond. Thus, in itself the Sala delle Asse embodied the element of dialectic inherent in the motif of the locus amoenus. One trait of the locus amoenus was that it was always on the cusp between the wild and the cultivated, the natural and the man-made. It was an ideal space that provided refuge and safety from the city, or more generally from an outer chaos. In occupying this liminal position, the locus amoenus presented a place where the inhabitants found a harmony of opposites. In the Sala, this dialectic between the organic and architectonic was visually symbolized on the ceiling, where Leonardo’s lush green bowers were carefully juxtaposed with the calculated turns of the golden cords that wrapped around the branches. (Plate 13) The duality of the imagery represented this harmony of opposites that provided the perfect backdrop to the courtly dialectic that took place amongst the varied practitioners of a range of disciplines present in the Sforza ambit. Furthermore, these interconnected spheres of interior and exterior provided access to a rarefied world controlled by the Duke himself. In order to enter physically into this locus amoenus, one had to be granted permission; to go further into the exterior gardens, one had to pass through the ‘Ponticella’, or bridge containing the most private of Ludovico Sforza’s rooms, known as the ‘camerini’. This actual bridge echoed the fictive bridge executed by Leonardo on the wall of the Sala itself. Once in the gardens, the notion of the locus amoenus would be made complete by the presence of a physical water source in the pavilion with ‘streams all around it’.48 Here, the intricate design of cultivated streams, pavilion, and labyrinth were a corollary to the artifice of the painted bower. Thus, the Sala delle Asse made the boundary between the carefully negotiated spaces inside and outside intentionally ambiguous, and as such should be considered in direct relation to the marvellous gardens surrounding the castle. As a space, it reflected the complex interplay between poetics and power, as well as artifice and nature, so prevalent in princely social structures in the Early Modern period, which were built, decorated, and enacted at the behest of the ruler. It existed on the border between the interior and the exterior, self and other, merging symbolic and real spaces in order to convey the magnificence of the Duke and his closest allies. The appearance of seclusion created by these boundaries served to activate a potent system of rule, constructing access by inclusion and exclusion.49 48 Pedretti, 1981, 64. 49 On the structure of courtly palaces and the ‘spatial operations of secrecy’, see for example Timothy McCall, “Secrecy and the Production of Seignorial Space: The Coretto of Torrechiara”, in Visual Cultures of Secrecy in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Timothy McCall, Sean Roberts, and Giancarlo Fiorenza, Early Modern Series, 11 (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2013), 76–104.

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In covering the interior walls of the Sala delle Asse with an artful verdant canopy, Leonardo created a site for intellectual exchange and its imagery derived from the verdant settings vividly illuminated in the favole mitologiche, known through the literary endeavours of the poets at the court. Leonardo presents us with a shady copse, yet unlike in traditional representations of the pastoral, we are actually set within the cluster of trees. To one side, we see the cityscape in the distance, and to the other we are tempted by the lush gardens beyond the walls of the castle. Leonardo – the theorist and theatrical designer – presents us with a vision of the pastoral activated by the room’s own occupants. In this space, Leonardo creates a secluded locus amoenus set within a shady grouping of mulberry trees, whose wild weighty roots below give way to a systematic and cultivated vegetal lattice above, reminding the viewer not only of the powerful control of the ‘Moro’, but also of the fertile imagination of the artist’s own pictorial invention.

About the author Jill Pederson is Associate Professor of Art History at Arcadia University, Pennsylvania. Her research interests include Leonardo da Vinci and his legacy, Early Modern court culture, Renaissance academies, Early Modern constructions of gender, Italian Renaissance gardens, and the history of science. She is the author of Leonardo, Bramante, and the ‘Academia’: Art and Friendship in Fifteenth-Century Milan, which is under contract with Harvey Miller/Brepols and will be published in 2019. She received her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 2008, and her research has been supported by the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at UCLA, the American Philosophical Society, the Renaissance Society of America, the Kress Foundation, and the Fulbright Foundation. She is contributor to the volumes Leonardo Studies (Brill, 2019); Leonardo e gli altri: Leonardo in Dialogue (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, forthcoming 2019); and Renaissance Love: Eros, Passion, and Friendship in Italian Art around 1500 (Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2014).

5. Naturalism and Antiquity, Redefined, in Vasari’s Verzure Karen Hope Goodchild

Abstract Bringing green nature indoors had been an Italian domestic habit since the Middle Ages, but, as the real gardens outside of villas and palaces became more complex, erudite and splendid, so did the painted green architecture gracing palace interiors. This essay offers a careful reading of Lives of the Artists to show how Vasari understood such refined decorative programs. Tracing Vasari’s very particular use of the word verzure, a term Vasari uses only in the second edition of his book and only in reference to trained plant structures, either painted or real, the essay examines Vasari’s thoughts on the best way to deploy fictive green architecture in interiors and also which artists he believed had the appropriate skills for this task. Keywords: green architecture, garlands, Giorgio Vasari, Titian (Tiziano Vecellio), verdure, renaissance gardens, Raphael, Giovanni da Udine, pergola, ornament

Ephemeral Courtly Verzure In a letter to Pietro Aretino, 25 year old Giorgio Vasari records a charming anecdote about verdure. Vasari claims that he worked many days preparing ornaments for Florence’s welcome of Emperor Charles in 1536, proceeding almost unaided because local artists were leery of helping an interloper from Arezzo. Ultimately, on the morning of the entry, Vasari collapsed ‘for very weariness on a bundle of verdure intended for the decorations’. 1 The story has a happy – and self-aggrandizing – ending. Duke Alessandro, taking a last minute tour of the festal ephemera, has Vasari roused from his green pillow and tells him, ‘Giorgio mine, this work of yours is larger, more beautiful, better executed, and more speedily finished than that of anybody else’. 1 Letter to Pietro Aretino, dated May 1535. This letter is not reproduced in Der literarische Nachlass Giorgio Vasaris, but can be found in Giovanni Gaetano Bottari, Raccolta di Lettere sulla Pittura, Scultura e Archittettura Scritte da’ più celebre personaggi dei secoli XV, XVI, e XVII pubblicata da M. Gio. Bottari e continuata fino ai nostri giorni da Stefano Ticozzi, vol. 3, 12 (Milan: Giovanni Silvestri, 1822): 39–56. Cited in part and translated in Robert Carden, The Life of Giorgio Vasari: A Study of the Later Renaissance in Italy (New York: Holt, 1911), 33–34. Goodchild, K.H., A. Oettinger and L. Prosperetti (eds.), Green Worlds in Early Modern Italy. Art and the Verdant Earth, Amsterdam University Press doi: 10.5117/9789462984950_ch05

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Although Vasari writes this story to demonstrate his early promise as an impresario, an organizer of court events, for our purposes it brings to the fore an essential use of verzure in Renaissance arts: festal greenery. Throughout his career, such verdure continued to occupy Vasari. We have a 1565 notation of expenditures for some decorations overseen by Vasari for the Palazzo Vecchio courtyard recorded as ‘terra cotta putti heads interspersed with ram and lion heads made of paper-mache, all hung with festonj di verzura’. As with many such ephemeral decorations, this grouping was partly made of actual plant matter, but included non-organic materials as well, and featured delights like exotic beasts and mythic creatures.2 Greenery was thus frequently taken out of the living garden in order to support a ruler’s name, both literally and symbolically. For instance, for his son’s wedding in 1466, Giovanni Rucellai commissioned an elaborate multi-media ephemeral structure of wood, filled with furniture, tapestries, linens, and adorned with ‘ghirlande coperte di verzura e chon rose nel mezzo delle ghirlande, con festoni di verzura d’attorno’ (wreaths covered in verdure with roses in the middle of the wreaths, and festoons of verdure all around).3 This constructed greenery entwined and elevated the escutcheons of the two sposati. A very similar display with festal verdure accompanying other lavish materials is recorded for the festivities accompanying a marriage in 1487 between the Bentivoglio and the Este, and the tradition can be traced forward into the seventeenth century, where the marriage of Medici Duke Cosimo II to Maria Maddalena of Austria is recorded as being celebrated with delightful variate verzure.4 Quattrocento paintings such as the Outdoor Feast and the Wedding Scene from Sandro Botticelli’s 1483 Nastagio degli Onesti series give us an idea of what this festal verzure might have looked like. In the Outdoor Feast (Fig. 5.1), guests dine near a pine forest.

2 Herman-Walther Frey, ed., Neue Briefe von Giorgio Vasari, vol. 3, 96 (Burg b. M.: Hopfer, 1940), 238. Discussed in Edmund P. Pillsbury, “An Unknown Project for the Palazzo Vecchio Courtyard”, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz / Hrsg.: Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut (1969), 57–66. 3 Giovanni Rucellai, Giovanni Rucellai ed Il Suo Zibaldone, ed. Alessandro Perosa (London: The Warburg Institute, University of London, 1960), I. 28 (translation mine). Discussed in Elizabeth B. Welles, “A New Source for the Architecture of Mantegna’s Camera degli Sposi”, Source: Notes in the History of Art, vol. 2, 2 (1983): 10–15. 4 Carolyn James, “The Palazzo Bentivoglio in 1487”, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, XLI (1997), 189. Outside the Palace, wooden columns supported an arch of box and holly decorated with the family’s arms. On the internal staircase, a large verdure serpent swallowed a Guelph. In the Sala Grande, real and artificial greenery decorated the credenza presenting the wedding plate, a display flanked by sculptures of giants wearing ancient armor. In the 1608 marriage ceremonies of Cosimo II to Maria Maddalena, one theatric interlude portrayed the Garden of Calypso, showing: ‘[A] beautiful garden full of all sorts of delights, trees with golden apples, espaliers of varied verdure [spalliere di variate verzure], walls with vases full of flowers, grotesques of pozzolano, fountains in the middle of meadows, and similar delights that vanquish the senses.’ (Un bel giardino pien d’ogni sorte di delizie, alberi co’ pomi d’oro, spalliere di variate verzure, muri con vasi pieni di fiori, grottesche di spugne stellanti, fonti in mezzo de prati, e simili delizie vincitrici de’ sensi. Cited in Camillo Rinuccini, Descrizione delle feste fatte nelle reali nozze de’ Serenissimi Principi di Toscana), (Firenze: Giunti, 1608), 43 (trans. mine). Note that in this later example, the verzure seems to ‘grow’ in a garden, and is not just separate ornamentation, as in the fifteenth-century examples.

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Figure 5.1: Sandro Botticelli, Outdoor Feast, from Nastagio degli Onesti series, c.1483. Tempera on panel. Museo del Prado, Madrid.

A spalliere has been erected behind them, topped by garlands of pine decorated with gilded cones and golden ribbons. At either end, and at the center, these festoni di verzura entwine the coats of arms of the involved parties. In the culminating Wedding Scene (not illustrated), elaborate classicizing architecture is softened and elevated by more refined and perhaps symbolic verzure – laurel swags enriched with gold. Here, these garlands, again tracing the top edges of the fabric spalliere behind the guests’ shoulders, also encircle escutcheons.5

Vasari’s use of Verzure in the Lives of the Artists As we can see, in various festal uses greenery commonly joined other ornaments to celebrate upper class endeavors and, literally, to elevate and honor patron’s names. Although as a court artist Vasari had to oversee the manufacture of such decorations, this type of verzure is not the sort we find documented in the Lives, Vasari’s curated chronicle of artistic endeavors, a text giving precedence instead to large-scale, permanent painting, sculpture and architecture.6 Another type of verzure is included in 5 For more on this topic, see Charles M. Rosenberg, “Courtly Decorations and the Decorum of Interior Space”, La Corte e Lo Spazio: Ferrara estense, ed. G. Papagno and A. Quondam, vol. 2 (Rome: Bulzoni, 1982), 529–544, and Anne B. Barriault, Spalliera Paintings of Renaissance Tuscany: Fables of Poets for Patrician Homes (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), 22–25. 6 For instance, although admitting he was very inventive and sophisticated, Vasari dismisses the painter Savoldo, by saying: ‘[M]a perché costui si adoperò solamente in simili cose [cabinet paintings] e non fece cose grandi, non si può dire altro di lui.’ Vite, V.430. (Most Vasari texts cited in Italian will come from the 1568 Vite,

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The Lives of the Artists, however, and this chapter proposes to define what this different, more exalted, verzure was. A few words first about his very specific use of the term. Vasari did not invent the term verzure, nor in his time was it a recent coinage. Poets from Dante to Poliziano to Tasso had used the word to mean, generally, the lyric green of nature.7 There were other meanings as well: a number of inventories use the terms verzure and verdure to describe woven or painted leaf-filled cloths or tapestries used as wall-hangings or, more specifically, as spalliere.8 This is a meaning we retain today. Vasari’s profound awareness of art production in Italy in the sixteenth century would seem to point him towards both these uses. Certainly, the common use of oil paint, the influx of fine landscape painters from Northern Europe, and the landscape developments of the Venetian and Lombard school of painting all boosted the production of green scenes in the sixteenth century. Additionally, Italian artists were increasingly creating tapestry designs for foreign manufacture, and tapestry production was being initiated in Italy.9 However, although Vasari shows knowledge in various places of both of these artistic trends, he does not use the term verzure in the Lives to refer either to the generalized background ‘greening’ of paintings or to verdure tapestries, the leafy tapestries popular across Europe. And, as noted, in the text of the Lives, he does not use the word to refer to ephemeral swags of greenery such as those just described, even though, as we have seen, he himself was engaged in their production.10 An analysis of when and where the word occurs within the Lives can help further clarify Vasari’s intentions with the term. The term verzure is absent entirely from the 1550 printing of The Lives of the Artists, not appearing until the expanded edition of 1568. In this second version, which contains many new biographies of artists living far into the sixteenth century as well as expanded coverage of Northern Italian and Northern European artists, Vasari employs the term verzure fifteen times, with fourteen of these uses describing art of the ‘third age’, his ultimate and perfected era. The word’s sudden emergence in the final section of the second edition suggests that Vasari is identifying and can be found at http://vasari.sns.it/consultazione/Vasari/indice.html. Most translations of Vasari will come from Gaston de Vere’s translation of the 1568 Lives of the Artists. These texts will be noted respectively as Vite or de Vere, and exceptions will be noted.) 7 E siccome il vero amor di Dio necessariamente inelude anche l’ amor delle creature, che sono come altrettante verzure, delle quali è adorno il mondo ... Dante, Inferno, XXVI; and Giugnemmo in prato di fresca verdure, Inferno, IV; Ell’era assisa sovra la verdure, Poliziano, Stanze, XLVII; il mover de le frondi e di verzure, che di cirri, d’olmi e di faggi, Tasso, Orlando Furioso, I. XXXIII; Tutta questa laeta regione de viridura copiosamente adornata se offeriva, Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, (Venezia: Aldo Manuzio, 1499), 21. 8 Barriault, 1994, 21–22. 9 As the Este introduced in Ferrara in the 1530s and Duke Cosimo brought to Florence in the 1540s. 10 There is one exception – in an addition to the second edition of the Vite, Vasari describes a triumph showing Saturn’s Golden Age designed in part by Pontormo. Here, twelve mounted shepherds had ‘i freni e redine fatti di diverse verzure e di corde d’argento’ (bridles and reins made with silver cord and various kinds of verdure). Though ephemeral, the inclusion of this verdure is explained by the political importance and ancient grandeur of the event, which promised a new golden age for the city of Florence. The peculiarity of the inclusion is emphasized by the fact that Vasari actually justifies his decision to describe an ephemeral event; Vite, V.311; de Vere, 2.344.

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what he considers a newly-emergent facet of art making. Bolstering this assumption, Vasari reworked his entire book between versions, and made many changes in all the sections, so his continued omission of the term in Parts One and Two indicates that Vasari was not merely employing a newly-adopted term for background ornament, but rather that for him verzure is only worthy of note in works made after 1500. Vasari’s decision to use the term to describe works made after 1500, like his decision not to use it to refer to tapestries or distant views, shows that something very particular is conjured for him by the word.11 For Vasari, elevated verzure – the kind appropriate to mention in a book on important art – is a special category of decorative greenery; it is plant matter bent by artistic will and skill to become highly crafted and rich ornament. Additionally, in the Lives, whether it is displayed in interior decoration or planted and trained in gardens, verzure never stands on its own. Instead, it comes together with many other compositional details, and often with richly varied materials and artistic techniques, in opulent assemblages designed to bring pleasure to viewers and honor to patrons.12 To demonstrate these assertions, this essay proposes to read and comparatively analyze the passages in which Vasari employs the term verzure to refer to painted or sculpted works of art. Vasari’s uses of the term are almost exactly split between living plant matter ornamentally shaped in gardens and painted or sculpted flora. Although Vasari’s intentions with the word are essentially the same whether he is describing real or fictive plant matter, this essay will focus only on images of verdure. I will review Vasari’s uses of the term to describe pieces of art, then address the way these examples intersect with both antiquity and with what might be called a perfected naturalism. The resulting study will illuminate three areas. It will underscore the strong connection of cultivated greenery with the highest levels of artistry in the service of princely opulence and ornament. It will show how compostions of trained garden greens – which had been admired in princely contexts throughout the middle ages – are elevated in the Renaissance through the lens of antiquity. Finally, and most importantly, it will flesh out Vasari’s complex theory of perfected naturalism in art, thus helping us to understand him better as an author, theorist, and artist. 11 The one exception to Vasari’s application of the term verzure only to sixteenth century artists is a passage he adds to the second edition describing an early fifteenth century fresco painting by the artist Stefano da Verona (or da Zevio, c.1379-c.1438), where he says that one sees: ‘[S]eated figures of the four evangelists […] and behind their shoulders, for a background, he made certain espaliers [spalliere] of roses, with a cane trelliswork in a pattern of mandorle, above which are various trees, and other greenery full of birds.’ (in una delle quali è dipinto nella volta di mano di Stefano i Quattro Evangelisti a sedere, e dietro alle spalle loro, per campo, fece alcune spalliere di rosai con uno intessuto di canne a mandorle, e variati alberi sopra et altre verdure piene d’uccelli), De Vere, 1.600; Vite, 3.620. I argue elsewhere that the very specific and unusual words used in this description show that Vasari is responding directly to the verzure structures Stefano is known for including in his works with a vocabulary derived from gardens. 12 In this latter multi-media aspect it shares much with the less-elevated verdure explored in this essay’s first section.

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Painted Verdure: ‘Rich, versatile, and abundant in invention and craftsmanship’ As stated, the word verzure does not appear in the 1550 Lives. In Vasari’s second edition, he uses the term verzure ten times, verzura twice, and verdure three times, every time in relation to ornamental greenery.13 All but one of these uses refer to private, non-religious commissions. Vasari’s idea of what verzure is is balanced between the shaped and living green of princely gardens and the artificial verzure being painted and stuccoed into palaces and villas. Increasingly, as the sixteenth century progressed, and as the decorative visions initiated by Raphael’s erudite workshop extended across Europe, the green world moved indoors. This permanent, interior verzure, like its living garden kin, showcases plants seemingly naturally growing into human-invented forms, and similarly is part of copious arrays of natural and artificial riches.

Verzure Masters: Giulio Romano and Rosso Fiorentino Permanent verzure rendered by artists in fresco, oil paint, gilding, or stucco became an essential part of opulent residential displays. This is seen in Vasari’s description of the Bacchus image Giulio Romano designed for the Palazzo del Te (Plate 14): Bacchus […] has two tigers at his feet, and stands leaning with one arm on the credenza, on one side of which is a camel, and on the other an elephant. [Over] this credenza is a half barrel-shaped [lattice], adorned with festoons of verdure and flowers, and all covered with vines laden with bunches of grapes and leaves, under which are three rows of bizarre vases, basins, drinking-cups, tazze, goblets, and other things of that kind in various forms and fantastic shapes, and so lustrous, that they seem to be of real silver and gold, being counterfeited with a simple yellow and other colors, and that so well, that they bear witness to the extraordinary genius and art of Giulio, who proved in this part of the work that he was rich, versatile, and abundant in invention and craftsmanship.14

One immediately notices that the verzure Vasari identifies in Giulio’s work is very similar both to the trained horticulture in lavish settings that he would have found in the gardens of sixteenth century Maecenases and to the descriptions of festal 13 I will use verzure, his most frequent employment, as the default term. 14 de Vere, 2.128. (translation slightly modified): ‘[M]entre si sta in compagnia di Bacco che ha a’ piedi due tigri e sta con un braccio appoggiato alla credenza: dall’uno de’ lati della quale è un camello e dall’altro un liofante. La qual credenza, che è a mez[z]o tondo in botte, è ricoperta di festoni di verzure e fiori, e tutta piena di viti cariche di grappoli d’uve e di pampani, sotto i quali sono tre ordini di vasi bizarri, bacini, boccali, tazze, coppe et altri così fatti, con diverse forme e modi fantastichi, e tanto lustranti che paiono di vero argento e d’oro, essendo contrafatti con un semplice colore di giallo e d’altro così bene, che mostrano l’ingegno, la virtù e l’arte di Giulio, il quale in questa parte mostrò esser vario, ricco e copioso d’invenzione e d’artifizio’, Vite, 5. 67–68.

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greenery discussed in the introduction, suggesting that painted verzure was intended to resemble ‘real’ green ornaments.15 Behind the plate-heaped credenza, Guilio presents a woven cane structure threaded through with growing grapes, and festooned with rather rigid garlands of leaves, themselves strung at the ends through glorious gilded volutes that mimic the real one protruding from the painted wall just above, strengthening the tension between real and fictive. In the image, artistically-arranged plants, some alive and weaving through lattice, some clipped and bound into refined garlands, exist as part of an astounding, luxurious display, and these effects are executed in a correspondingly-astounding array of techniques: in this room, the walls are largely decorated in fresco, but they have tempera additions. The painted scenes are set into molded, gilded stucco frames, and the wooden vaulting above them is plastered, then painted with oils.16 Bacchus’ realm conjures antiquity, but also extravagance, sensuality, and the opulence of festal culture. It demands myriad figures – animal and human as well as marvelous composite creatures. As the god of license and sylvan adventures, Bacchus is an appropriate habitué of gardens, a companion to a luxurious and sophisticated rather than a simple green world.17 We find him paired again with verzure in Vasari’s descriptions of Rosso Fiorentino’s fantastic constructions at Fontainbleau: Rosso made a […] soffit, of woodwork, partitioned most beautifully into compartments. The side-walls he decorated all over with stucco-work, fantastic and bizarre in its distribution, and with carved cornices of many kinds; and on the piers were life size figures. Everything below the cornices, between one pier and another, he adorned with festoons of stucco, vastly rich, and others painted, and all composed of most beautiful fruits and every sort of foliage (verzure d’ogni sorte). […] At the two ends of this gallery are two panel pictures in oils by his hand, designed and painted with such perfection, that there is little better to be seen in the art of painting. In one of these are a Bacchus and a Venus, executed with marvelous art and judgment. The Bacchus is a naked boy, so tender, soft, and delicate, that he seems to be truly of flesh, yielding to the touch, and rather alive than painted; and about 15 Showing the connection between text and reality, the program of the Palazzo stems in part from the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, and in part from actual courtly nuptial display. The latter included costly plate, crystal, festooni di verdure, and even fantastic creatures. For example, see Botticelli’s Marital Feast from the Nastagio degli Onesti, where a credenza is heaped with gold and silver, and also the previously-cited description of the Bentivoglio wedding (above, n. 4), which showcases a laden credenza as well as dragons and giants. 16 Giulio would have learned this creative and flexible approach to media-mixing from Raphael. On this see Ana Gonzáles Mozo, “Raphael’s Painting Technique in Rome,” in Late Raphael, eds. Tom Henry and Paul Joannides (London: Thames & Hudson, 2013), 319–349. 17 For the strong connection between Bacchus and gardens, see: Heather O’Leary McStay, “‘Viva Bacco e viva Amore’: Bacchic Imagery in the Renaissance”, PhD diss., (Columbia University, 2014), 374–388. See also the recent book by Lagerlöf, the first chapter of which is dedicated to the Fontainebleau Gallery; Margaretha Rossholm Lagerlöf, Fate, Glory, and Love in Early Modern Gallery Decoration: Visualizing Supreme Power (London: Routledge, 2017).

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him are some vases painted in imitation of gold, silver, crystal, and various precious stones, so fantastic, and surrounded by devices so many and so bizarre, that whoever beholds this work, with its vast variety of invention, stands in amazement before it. Among other details, also, is a Satyr raising part of a pavilion, whose head, in its strange, goatlike aspect, is a marvel of beauty […] There is also a little boy riding on a wonderful bear, with many other ornaments full of grace and beauty.18

Rosso’s Bacchus oil is no longer in situ, but a reconstruction photomontage created by Sylvie Béguin combining the extant painting (now in the Musée National d’Histoire et d’Art, Luxembourg) with a 1682 drawing of the gallery by Françoise d’Orbay (Fig.5.2) shows how the work was encircled and embellished by painted and stucco ornaments, including festoons of verdure, just as Vasari described.19 Still-extant areas of decor show that the mixing of molded figures, carved soffits, gilded stucco garlands, frescos and oil paint together presented daring shifts between media and between two- and three-dimensional forms, offering testament to artistic boldness by displaying ‘a vast variety of invention’. The ‘vast inventiveness’ Vasari notes at Rosso’s Fontainebleau echoes his praise for Giulio’s ‘rich, versatile, and abundant […] invention and craftsmanship’, at the Palazzo del Te. Both palaces are evidence of the artistic ability to generate beautiful, abundant, believable, mimetic ornaments. In order to win Vasari’s praise, the artists first needed inventiveness, the ability to think up interesting combinations that delight with their richness and with material juxtapositions. Thus, Giulio and Rosso give us crystal, gold, fur, tender leaves, naked flesh, and more, and present them in two and three dimensions in a variety of media. Second, to be successful, all the different materials and surfaces in these diverse arrangements must convince with 18 de Vere I. 907–908: ‘[N]el quale primieramente diede il Rosso principio a una galleria sopra la bassa corte, facendo di sopra non volta, ma un palco overo soffittato di legname con bellissimo spartimento. Le facciate dalle bande fece tutte lavorare di stucci, con partimenti bizzarri e stravaganti e di più sorti cornici, intagliate con figure ne’ reggimenti, grandi quanto il naturale, adornando ogni cosa sotto le cornici, fra l’un reggimento e l’altro, di festoni di stucco ricchissimi, e d’altri di pittura con frutti bellissimi e verzure d’ogni sorte. E dopo, in un vano grande, fece dipignere col suo disegno, se bene ho inteso il vero, circa ventiquattro storie a fresco, credo dei fatti d’Alessandro Magno, facendo esso, come ho detto, tutti i disegni, che furono d’acquerello e di chiaro scuro. Nelle due testate di questa galleria sono due tavole a olio di sua mano disegnate e dipinte, di tanta perfezzione che di pittura si può vedere poco meglio, nell’una delle quali è un Bacco, et una Venere, fatti con arte maravigliosa e con giudizio. È il Bacco un giovinetto nudo tanto tenero, delicato e dolce, che par di carne veramente e palpabile, e più tosto vivo che dipinto; et intorno a esso sono alcuni vasi, finti d’oro, d’argento, di cristallo e di diverse pietre finissime, tanto stravaganti e con tante biz[z]arrie attorno, che resta pieno di stupore chiunche vede quest’opera con tante invenzioni. Vi è anco fra l’altre cose un Satiro che lieva una parte d’un padiglione, la testa del quale è di maravigliosa bellezza in quella sua strana cera caprina, e massimamente che par che rida e tutto sia festoso in veder così bel giovinetto. Èvvi anco un putto a cavallo sopra un orso bellissimo, e molti altri graziosi e belli ornamenti a torno’, Vite, 4.486–8. 19 The photomontage is discussed in the online essay by Seabra Carvalho, “Bacchus, Venus and Cupid: Rosso Fiorentino”, http://museudearteantiga.pt/content/files/rossofiorentino-folhasala-en-site.pdf?nonce= 6b0bde066887a243169cd87b3b9c5e65, (January 31, 2018).

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Figure 5.2: Reconstruction photomontage published by Sylvie Béguin combining Rosso’s Bacchus (now in the Musée National d’Histoire et d’Art, Luxembourg) with a 1682 drawing of the gallery at Fontainebleau by Françoise d’Orbay.

their verisimilitude, and in the passages cited above we find precious metal cups and twining greens equated for their ability to portray these qualities. These two passages describing Bacchus can justifiably be said to represent the apex of verzure in the Lives. Beyond the shared ancient subject matter, the similarities between the two images is not happenstance and can be traced to innovations pioneered in Raphael’s Roman workshop in the second decade of the sixteenth century. Giulio Romano was Raphael’s right-hand man when the workshop of the latter revolutionized the approach to interior design. Giulio paid attention in particular to the genius of Raphael’s assistant, Giovanni da Udine. Together in venues such as the Vatican Loggie, Palazzo Branconio dell’Aquila, and the Farnesina, Raphael and Giovanni set the stage for other artists, introducing a richness and plasticity of decorative forms that were emulated over and over again in palace décor across Europe. Through Francesco Primaticcio (1504–1576), who learned his trade from Giulio Romano, and who helped with both the painting and stucco works of the Palazzo del Te, Rosso’s verzure work at Fontainebleau also connects back to Raphael’s workshop. Primaticcio went directly from Mantua to France to work with Rosso, and, although Rosso can be credited with the luscious oil paintings there, Primaticcio is recognized

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elsewhere in the Lives as the master who executed, among other things, the fabulous stuccowork festoons.20 The term verdure is tied, generally, to landscape in general and to Northern Italy and Northern Europe in particular, and, because of this, Giulio Romano and Rosso are not the painters one immediately thinks of when considering verdure in the visual arts. Reading Vasari’s record of their successes with greenery, however, helps to pinpoint the birth of a new type of elevated verzure art, one born in Raphael’s workshop through, as we shall see, technical experimentation and investigations into antiquity.21 This new type of green adornment has two essential components: first, it is set into innovative and sumptuous arrays of ornaments of all types, often ornaments with a connection to antiquity, and second, it shows a vivid, ‘modern’, naturalistic style.

The Northern Roots of Verzure Along with the biographies of Rosso Fiorentino and Giulio Romano, the word verzure is found in the vite of Giovanni da Udine (twice), Titian, and Camillo Capelli, better known as Camillo Mantovano. These latter three artists are all Northern Italian, reflecting Vasari’s understanding that the talents in naturalism needed for executing verdure well often came from the North. The Lives show that for Vasari the beginnings of excellent landscape in general and verdure painting in particular (two talents sometimes elided in the Lives) were in Northern Europe, among those artists he refers to as the Tedeschi, Fiamminghi, or oltramontani, and also, closer to home, with North Italian painters.22 As Vasari says of Lombard painter Garofalo, such artists were good at ‘painting naturally and from life every detail, like those who know the correct way of imitating and observing nature’.23 In the biography of Titian, Vasari reveals his belief that Northern Europe might be the best place to find the minor masters of naturalism. When Titian was only 18 or 19, he painted a Flight into Egypt (c.1506–07, Fig. 5.3). 20 de Vere, II. 770–773. 21 Anthony Blunt and Richard Beresford, Art and Architecture in France, 1500–1700 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 33, 62. 22 Karen Hope Goodchild, “‘A Hand More Practiced and Sure’: The History of Landscape Painting in Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists”, Artibus et Historiae 32, no. 64 (2011): 33–37. 23 ‘[R]itrasse dal vivo e naturale ogni minuzia, come quelli che conosceva la diritta essere imitare et osservare il naturale’, Vite, 5.412. Responding to criticism of omissions, Vasari attempted to add more information on Northern Italian artists to his second edition, and also added a chapter called ‘Diverse Flemings’. For a discussion of Vasari’s attitude towards North Italy and especially Lombardy, see Painters of Reality: The Legacy of Leonardo and Caravaggio in Lombardy, ed. Andrea Bayer (New York, Metropolitan Museum: 2004), 4–7; for Vasari’s strategic writing about landscape, and the renaissance theory of landscape in general, see Goodchild, 2011, 25–40.

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Figure 5.3: Titian, Flight into Egypt, c.1508. Oil on canvas. Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.

The work is very large, almost ten feet across, and in it the young painter makes a daring and not entirely successful attempt to create a monumental work wedding almost full-sized figures both with closely-observed naturalistic details borrowed from Northern European art and with a chromatic, atmospheric, Giorgionesque, landscape. Vasari describes it as: [A] large picture with figures of the size of life, which is now in the hall of M. Andrea Loredano. In that picture is painted Our Lady going into Egypt, in the midst of a great forest and certain landscapes that are very well done, because Titian had given his attention for many months to such things, and had kept in his house for that purpose some Germans who were excellent painters of landscapes and verdure. In the wood in that picture, likewise, he painted many animals, which he portrayed from the life; and they are truly natural, and almost alive24

The landscapes and Titan’s adept naturalism, seen in the zoological accuracy of his animals, are praiseworthy elements for Vasari, and he suggests that their lifelikeness stems 24 de Vere, 2.782: ‘Dopo la quale opera fece un quadro grande di figure simili al vivo, che oggi è nella sala di messer Andrea Loredano, che sta da San Marcuola. Nel qual quadro è dipinta la Nostra Donna che va in Egitto, in mezzo a una gran boscaglia e certi paesi molto ben fatti, per avere dato Tiziano molti mesi opera a fare simili cose, e tenuto per ciò in casa alcuni tedeschi, eccellenti pittori di paesi e verzure. Similmente nel bosco di detto quadro fece molti animali, i quali ritrasse dal vivo, e sono veramente naturali e quasi vivi’, Vite, 6.156.

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from specifically German talents.25 But when we look at the work we do not see any of the trained foliage we have come to expect from the term verzure. Vasari’s statement, however, does not specify that there is verdure within this particular painting, but only that the well-done landscapes and notable naturalism of the work are due to Titan’s association with ‘Germans’ who ‘excelled in landscapes and verdure’. For Vasari, both landscapes and verzure are rooted in naturalism, and both are deployed in art in similar ways as ornaments to larger works. Demonstrating this link, Vasari often notes the paesi, or multiple landscapes, within a single painting, seeing landscapes not as unified outdoor settings, but rather as separable and potentially multiple pieces of green ornament, similar to verzure.26 Thus, in the Titian painting, the naturalistic animals and pretty views point Vasari to an artist or a workshop excelling in the skills linked to verzure. Another thing the passage on the Rest on the Flight into Egypt indicates is that, even as a very young man, Titian was in charge of other artists. In Vasari’s Vite, there are impresarios, who plan, and their underlings, who carry out their master’s ideas. These underlings include ornament artists like the nameless ‘Germans’ mentioned above, men who don’t rate much attention in the Lives. In a related example, neither Rosso or Giulio Romano painted or molded their own garlands of verzure, although they are the ones who receive credit for the invention of the opulent displays in which these garlands are included. Occasionally, however, Vasari will mention support staff by name in the biographies of other, more important artists. Such is the case with North Italian verzure painter Camillo Mantovano, about whose work in the Villa Imperiale at Pesaro Vasari writes: ‘That palace was adorned with scenes in painting from the actions of the Duke after the directions and designs of Girolamo [Genga] by Francesco da Forli and Raffaello dal Borgo, painters of good repute, and by Camillo Mantovano, a very rare master in painting landscapes and verdure.’27 While the actions of the Duke are designed by Genga and executed by Francesco da Forli and Raffaello dal Borgo, Vasari claims Camillo created the verzure, the graceful green architecture that supports and aggrandizes the Duke’s brave exploits. 25 Titian, Vasari claims, ‘kept in his house’ some Germans in order to master naturalistic outdoor details, and also ‘for months’ closely studied Northern methods of painting landscape and verdure. These statements show Vasari’s belief in Titian’s efforts to master the Northern manner of depicting natural ornaments. In support of Vasari’s connection of the work to German trends, there is an evident connection between the Flight into Egypt and Albrecht Dürer’s 1506 Feast of the Rosary, painted in Venice. See Paul Hills, “Titian’s Flight into Egypt”, review of exhibition at the National Gallery, Burlington Magazine, CLIV, (2012): 588–589. 26 For more on this, see Goodchild, 2011, 26. 27 de Vere 2.385: ‘Essendo poi ritornato il Duca nello Stato, se ne tornò anco Girolamo, e da esso fu trattenuto e adoperato per architetto e nel restaurare un palazzo vecchio e farli giunta d’altra torre nel monte dell’Imperiale sopra Pesaro: il qual palazzo per ordine e disegno del Genga fu ornato di pittura d’istorie e fatti del Duca da Francesco da Forlì, da Raffael dal Borgo, pittori di buona fama, e da Cammillo Mantovano, in far paesi e verdure rarissimo’, Vite 5.348–9. Vasari mentions Camillo’s trained greenery again, in the ‘Life of Salviati’, saying that at the Palazzo Grimani one finds ‘festoons executed by Camillo Mantovano, an excellent painter in representing landscapes, flowers, leaves fruits, and other such like things’, De Vere 2.564. (Vasari spells this name variously as ‘Cammillo’ or ‘Camillo’).

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In the villa, we can see the literal connection of verzure to landscape. Camillo’s work is evident in aspects of the ensemble such as the fictive arched openings extending out towards distant painted views, the movement between interior and exterior mediated with transitional architecture of outward-projecting green: verzure columns support verzure-constructed quadripartite vaults while verzure barrel vaults have their coffers traced out in grids of regimented leaves (Fig. 5.4 and Plate 15).

Figure 5.4: Camillo Mantovano, Verdure Quadripartite Vaults, Sala delle Fatiche d’Ercole, 1534–37. Fresco. Villa Imperiale, Pesaro.

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In the less-formal pergola of botanically-identifiable vines and plants lofted over the Room of the Caryatids, a green framework is lashed together against a blue sky, and, at its apex, four putti bear a large, garlanded oval showing the Duke’s military prowess (Plate 16). As with the outdoor nuptial feasts painted by Botticelli and the actual wedding garlands discussed in the introduction, Camillo’s painted verzure entwines coats-of-arms and triumphs in order to support and elevate princely unions and actions, or is set against expanses of landscape, views of controlled nature referencing a family’s extensive powers.28

Giovanni da Udine: in alcune cose […] riuscire eccellentissimo In the ‘Life of Titian’, the German painters of verzure are noted by nationality, but not by name. Camillo Mantovano, excellent painter of verzure et paesi, is named in the biographies of Gegna and Salviati, but doesn’t rate his own biography. The most successful verdure artist in the Lives, however, the Northern Italian artist Giovanni da Udine, gets fulsome praise and his own detailed biography in the second edition of the book. Vasari’s discussions of Giovanni’s successes with greenery offer insight into the talents needed to perfect verzure and to move it to the third manner of art. Giovanni’s biography abounds with festoons, pergolas, vines, and fountains – all the natural adjuncts to verzure. Vasari writes a biography showing Giovanni was born to represent natural embellishments well. Additionally, the biography indicates Giovanni was without equal in archaeological and artistic research into certain antique decorative modes. In his biography, naturalism and antiquity provide the twin pillars of his art, assuring his mastery of verzure. As Vasari tells it, Giovanni’s youth was spent in far Northern Udine. He was the son of a sympathetic embroiderer, and he adored nature and animals, especially birds.29 The stage is set for Giovanni’s triumph: coming from a home filled with pattern and detail, one of his first teachers was nature. The biography goes on to quickly sketch out Giovanni’s educational path, and it is here that we find the term verzure occurring twice. Vasari writes: Giovanni, then, having been only a very short time under the discipline of Giorgione in Venice, when he had once seen the sweet, graceful, and beautiful manner of Raffaello, determined, like a young man of fine intelligence, that he would at all costs attach 28 As for instance in the Medici garden decorations at Castello, designed by Tribolo and others, where Montaigne saw ‘the duke’s coat-of-arms here over the gate, formed by the branches of trees, which are so trained by exquisite art as to compose the different parts’; The Complete Works of Michael de Montaigne, Comprising His Essays, Letters, and His Journey through Germany and Italy, trans. William Hazlitt (New York: Worthington Co., 1889), 593. 29 He sometimes signed himself ‘io Zuan ricamador pitor’.

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himself to that manner. And so, his brain and hand being equal to his noble intention, he made so much proficiency, that in a short time he was able to draw very well and to work in colour with facility and grace, insomuch that, to put it in a few words, he succeeded in counterfeiting excellently well every natural object: animals, draperies, instruments, vases, landscapes, buildings, and verzure; in which not one of the young men of that school surpassed him...Living with Raffaello was a Fleming called Giovanni, who was an excellent master in depicting fruits, leaves, and flowers with a very faithful and pleasing likeness to nature, although in a manner a little dry and laboured; and from him Giovanni da Udine learned to make them as beautiful as his master, and, what is more, with a certain soft and pastose manner that enabled him to become, as will be related, supremely excellent in some fields of art. He also learned to execute landscapes with ruined buildings and fragments of antiquities, and likewise to paint landscapes and verzure in colors on cloth, in the manner that has been followed after him not only by the Flemings, but also by all the Italian painters.30

Unlike the passages studied above on Giulio Romano, Rosso, or Camillo Montovano, Vasari is not here describing specific works containing impressive verzure, but instead is revealing the extraordinary history and talents of a profoundly talented ornamenter. Giving an overview of Giovanni’s education, Vasari makes it clear that Giovanni spent very little time studying with Giorgione before deciding to transfer to the school of Raphael where he could learn a manner more dolce, bello e grazioso. Although in current scholarship, Giovanni’s talents are generally credited to his Northern heritage, Vasari says that it was Raphael, not Giorgione, who taught Giovanni to draw well, and also, perhaps more surprisingly, to use color with grace.31 His 30 de Vere, 2.487: ‘Giovanni adunque essendo stato pochissimo in Vinezia sotto la disciplina di Giorgione, veduto l’andar dolce, bello e grazioso di Raffaello, si dispose, come giovane di bell’ingegno, a volere a quella maniera attenersi per ogni modo. Onde, alla buona intenzione corrispondendo l’ingegno e la mano, fece tal frutto, che in brevissimo tempo seppe tanto bene disegnare e colorire con grazia e facilità, che gli riusciva contrafare benissimo, per dirlo in una parola, tutte le cose naturali, d’animali, di drappi, d’instrumenti, vasi, paesi, casamenti e verdure, intantoché niun de’ giovani di quella scuola il superava. Ma soprattutto si dilettò sommamente di fare uccelli di tutte le sorti, di maniera che in poco tempo ne condusse un libro tanto vario e bello, che egli era lo spasso et il trastullo di Raffaello appresso il quale dimorando un fiamingo chiamato Giovanni, il quale era maestro eccell[ente] di far vagamente frutti, foglie e fiori similissimi al naturale, se bene di maniera un poco secca e stentata, da lui imparò Giovanni da Udine a fargli belli come il maestro, e, che è più, con una certa maniera morbida e pastosa, la quale il fece in alcune cose, come si dirà, riuscire eccellentissimo. Imparò anco a far paesi con edifizii rotti, pezzi d’anticaglie, e così a colorire in tele paesi e verzure, nella maniera che si è dopo lui usato non pur dai Fiamminghi, ma ancora da tutti i pittori italiani’, Vite, 5.447–48. 31 The ‘delicate freshness’ of the color in Giovanni’s mural work is said to be due to his mix of tempera with fresco. See Gordon Campbell, The Grove Encyclopedia of Decorative Arts (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 1.426. For attribution of Giovanni’s naturalism to the North, and to Giorgione in particular, see Michael Miller, “Raphael or Giovanni da Udine, Recto: Ornamental Studies”, Old Master Drawings, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON., http://oldmasterdrawings.net/catablog-items/raphael-or-giovanni-daudine-recto-ornamental-studies-agnes-etherington-art-centre-queens-university-kingston-on/#.V6Nr0JODGko, (January 31, 2018). For his working method as evidenced by his drawings, see Nicole Dacos, Caterina Furlan, Elio Bartolini, Giovanni da Udine: 1487–1561, 2 vols. (Udine: Casamassima, 1987), 239–257.

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elegant use of color is expanded on in the anecdote about how Giovanni surpassed a Flemish painter’s ‘dry, labored’ naturalistic style with his own sweet, graceful, ‘soft and pastose’ one, a style, Vasari states, that is the main factor allowing for Giovanni’s ground-breaking successes as an ornamenter. 32 Alongside showing the talents necessary to excel in depictions of verzure, the passage above and, indeed, the rest of the biography stresses that Giovanni is a technical innovator. He outshines even Northern European artists with his paintings of ‘landscapes and verdure in tele’, or on cloth, an artform in which Northern European artists were generally presumed to be superior.33 The passage above ends by noting that Giovanni also surpassed all artists with his images of ruins and fragments of antiquity. This is a hint at a capacity explored more thoroughly later in the vita – Giovanni’s intimate knowledge of antiquity. Vasari says that Giovanni descended again and again into Nero’s Golden House, entranced by the ancient painting he found there (a story corroborated by the artist’s signature scratched in the ancient stucco). The ornament style of the ancients ‘entered so deeply into the heart and mind of Giovanni, that, having devoted himself to the study of them, he was not content to draw and copy them merely once or twice’, and that through his assiduous study, he reached ‘the highest level, as it were, that art can reach in that field’.34 Continuing in this vein, Vasari notes that Giovanni would not rest until he had re-created the snow white, pure-textured stucco of the ancients. He premiered this new medium in the Loggia of the Pope, and, by placing it alongside many painted ‘landscapes and foliage’, Giovanni soon even ‘surpassed the ancients’. Vasari writes of these colorful additions that ‘of all works of this kind, this is the most beautiful, the most rare, and the most excellent painting ever seen by the mortal eye’. His loggia work, with its fresh and varied naturalism, was immediately recognized as revolutionary, and artists moved to ‘fill every province with this new style’.35

32 Paul Joannides says that, for Raphael, Giovanni becomes more of a ‘sub-contractor’ than an assistant, an artist with great abilities to decorate without oversight. Joannides, The Drawings of Raphael: With a Complete Catalogue (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983) 25–27. 33 Vasari is referring here to gouache on linen works, often landscapes, called variously waterverf, tüchlein, or a guazzo, a water-based technique in which pigments are bound with animal glue and applied directly to finely woven, sized textiles with no ground. This technique is discussed in Odilia Bonebakker, “Bruegel’s Transgressions: Watercolor and Oil in Sixteenth-Century Antwerp” (paper presented at the Historians of Netherlandish Art conference, Crossing Boundaries, Amsterdam, Netherlands, May 28, 2010). These fragile images exist in very small numbers today, but poured into Italy from the north during the Renaissance. Importantly, Vasari says that Giovanni improved on this Northern medium. For the ubiquity and ‘northernness’ of waterverf, see Diane Wolfthal, The Beginnings of Netherlandish Canvas Painting, 1400–1530 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). I would suggest that many, many instances of verdure and landscapes are lost to us through fragility, as with waterverf, or invisible to us because they seem mere details in larger decorative contexts. 34 ‘Nelle quali fece lo sforzo quasi di tutto quello che può far l’arte in quel genere’, Vite, v.449. 35 For this quote and the ones cited immediately above, see de Vere, 2.490

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As we have seen, from Mantua to Fontainebleau, Vasari’s assessment of Giovanni’s impact is correct.36 As the passage above suggests, even more important than all Giovanni’s precise naturalism, ancient investigations, and media innovations in waterverf and stucco, however, is the maniera he had, a style that brought all these things together in a vivid and lovely way, allowing him go beyond his North Italian, Northern European, and ancient teachers. Giovanni’s particular style is closely examined in a passage discussing loggia ornaments the artist executed in Florence for the Medici. Vasari writes: Giovanni then executed […] some pictures, which are exquisite; but, although these pleased the painters that were in Florence at that time, being wrought with boldness and marvelous mastery, and filled with spirited and fantastic inventions, yet, since they were accustomed to a laboured manner of their own [loro maniera stentata] and to doing everything that they carried into execution with copies taken from life, they did not praise them without reserve.37 36 Raphael, towards the end of his life, was experimenting with various mural surfaces, bringing together tempera and oil with fresco, innovations suggested in ancient sources and carried forward by Giulio Romano, Giovanni da Udine and Giorgio Vasari himself. For Raphael’s experiments, see Marcia B. Hall, Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 173–4, and Joannides, 1983, 26, the latter detailing how Giovanni helped Raphael prepare the Sala di Constantine for oil application. For experiments with various mural approaches in the sixteenth century, see the editorial note in Giorgio Vasari, Vasari on Technique, ed. G. Baldwin Brown, trans. Lousia Maclehose (Dover, New York: 1960), n.2 233–4. See also Ugo Procacci and Millard Meiss, The Great Age of Fresco: Giotto to Pontormo; an Exhibition of Mural Paintings and Monumental Drawings (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1968), 23–24; and Clare Lapraik Guest, The Understanding of Ornament in the Italian Renaissance (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2015), 531, who says that Giovanni intentionally copied the ancient ‘compendious’ style (what Dacos calls ‘abridged’). This means that in grotteschi and related ornament, he is attempting to render the evanescent appearance of objects in light. Dacos suggests that the brushy tonalism Giovanni learned from Giorgione allowed for this talent; Le logge di Raffaello: maestro e bottega di fronte all’antico (Roma: Istituto poligrafico dello Stato Libreria, 1977), 34–5. However, Giovanni may also have been adapting textual sources to his painting, as Vitruvius writes that Roman painters worked their dark colors into fresh plaster and added delicate and lighter finishes in tempera on top, a practice Giovanni followed allowing his luscious coloristic effects. For the stylistic energy and life of Giovanni’s grotteschi, see Guest, 2015, 534-4. Following Dacos, Guest discusses how Giovanni’s illusionistic pergola at the first Vatican loggia inspired those that came after him. See Guest, 2015, 531 and n. 103. See also Michael Squire, “‘Fantasies so varied and bizarre’: The Domus Aurea, the Renaissance, and the ‘Grotesque’”, in The Blackwell Companion to the Age of Nero, eds. M. Dinter and E. Buckley (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 444–464, which describes Renaissance logge and their departures from or adherence to ancient décor, especially with regard to the tension between fragile grotteschi and the vivid naturalism of certain animal and landscape details. 37 de Vere, II. 493: ‘Dopo fece Giovanni, a canto a questa camera, in una volta piccola a mezza botte, alcune cose di stucco, basse basse, e similmente alcune pitture che sono rarissime; le quali, ancorché piacessero a que’ pittori che allora erano a Fiorenza, come fatte con fierezza e pratica maravigliosa e piene d’invenzioni terribili e capricciose, però che erano avezzi a una loro maniera stentata et a fare ogni cosa che metevano in opera con ritratti tolti dal vivo, come non risoluti, non le lodavano interamente, né si mettevano, non ne bastando per aventura loro l’animo, ad imitarle’, Vite, 5.452.

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Here one sees that Vasari finds naturalism to be necessary to verzure, but not sufficient. If we read the two previously-cited lengthy passages on Giovanni side by side, we see that Vasari thinks too-faithful naturalism limits artists in both invention and execution. A certain type of naturalism, Vasari says, had been mastered in the ‘second age’ of art, the fifteenth century.38 This naturalism was practiced by, among others, Paolo Uccello, Giovanni Bellini, and certain Northern European Artists. It was notable for an unmediated copying of nature, and resulted in images that looked, as Vasari says, ‘dry and laboured’, secca e stentata, over-worked and finicky, with laborious exertion shown in the painstaking reproduction of every detail.39 Like secco, stentata is a word Vasari often uses for over-realistic approaches. It is linked to the verb stentare, ‘to languish or die’, and a stentata manner is one with the life drained out of it. Works made in this manner are impressive in their effort and resultant realism, but lack invention, show no editing or embellishments improving on nature, and manifest an overall too-controlled style. Advances in naturalism came when, according to Vasari’s telling, Giorgione learned to apply Leonardo’s blended manner to direct observation, creating works of great softness, relief, and beauty. For Vasari, the naturalism of Giorgione’s school has admirable aspects in its fresh color and handy manner with paint, but it also ultimately is a limiting manner. These painters, Vasari states, will never develop their invention because, lacking disegno, they too must always have a model before them.40 The Florentines in the passage above are blamed with a similar problem.41 Giovanni perfects these two manners. His hours of drawing have given him a vast repertoire 38 Vasari says of ‘second manner’ painters that ‘their works were for the most part well drawn and free from errors’, de Vere, I. 619–620. 39 See Goodchild, 2011, 27–29. 40 Vasari’s ideas on this are made clear in various places throughout the Lives, including in the ‘Life of Titian’, where one reads that Giorgione’s major fault, his lack of drawing ability, was caused by a slavish devotion to a model, a habit that could have been avoided if he had realized that ‘by drawing on paper, you come to fill the mind with beautiful conceptions, and learn to counterfeit all the objects of nature by memory, without having to keep them always before you or being obliged to conceal beneath the glamour of colouring the painful fruits of your ignorance of design, in the manner that was followed for many years by the Venetian painters, Giorgione, Palma, Pordenone, and others, who never saw Rome or any other works of absolute perfection’, De Vere, II. 781. ‘Disegno was the central means by which to overcome mere naturalism’ writes Thomas Puttfarken, who, in “Thoughts on Vasari and the Canon”, gives a lucid and largely convincing overview of Vasari’s attitude towards naturalism, suggesting that disegno, which allows for an internalized skill allowing invention, plus a personal maniera (for instance grazie or terribilità) equal to Vasari’s perfect manner. He does not however address the important manner of paint handling, and he mistakenly asserts perfect disegno is arrived at for Vasari in Florence; in Renaissance Theory, eds. James Elkins and Robert Williams (New York: Routledge, 2008), 333–341 (336–337). 41 Unlike Giorgione, the Florentines didn’t work directly from nature, but from nature studies. Discussing a work by Giovanni da Udine, Carmen Bambach comments that such drawings by Renaissance artists are often very difficult to attribute because ‘the draughtsmen of nature studies usually aimed to achieve a deliberately objective, detailed observation of the subject, sacrificing the expression of an individual artistic vision’. This suggests an erasure of personal maniera. In Raphael to Renoir: Drawings from the Collection of Jean Bonna, eds. Alsteens, Stijn, et al. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2009), 22.

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Figure 5.5: Giovanni da Udine, Verdure Support, Sala di Psiche, 1518. Fresco and oil. Villa Farnesina, Rome.

of natural detail to pull from while his fresh, prompt execution and vivid brushwork relieves his work of finicky-seeming naturalism. Technical investigations of Giovanni’s work at the Farnesina corroborate Vasari’s assessments. Giovanni, ‘bold and marvelously skilled’, apparently was an extraordinarily facile painter, one who could paint quickly, without mistakes, and without painstaking under drawings.42 Additionally, Vasari’s praise is born out in visual analysis. His famous garlands in the Farnesina have a dimensionality, variety and vivacity that make Cammillo’s Pesaro swags seem repetitive and anemic by comparison (Fig. 5.5). In his gorgeous watercolor study of a sparrow in flight, we find a balance of fidelity to nature, inventive composition, and confident paint handling (Plate 17). Giovanni’s stylistic mastery is specified by Vasari with a very deliberate word, ‘pastose’ [pastosa], a word he only uses twice in the entire Vite. Pastosa refers to the way Giovanni handled his brush, creating a blotchy or painterly impasto; it is a term that implies a suggestive and free manner of applying paint, rather than a 42 ‘Per completare la descrizione tecnica di tale complesso decorative, debbo dire che molta meraviglia destano I festoni di fiori, frutta e verdure di GDU, compiuti con una sola giornata lavorativa e senza un pentimento’, Aldo Angelini, “Sulla tecnica della pittura murale nella villa Farnesina”, RACAR: revue d’art canadienne / Canadian Art Review 12, no. 2 (1985),168. Angelini, then Director of the pictorial restorations inside the Villa Farnesina, writes that he must record Giovanni’s extraordinary painting process, one that generated complex ornamentation very rapidly and with no mistakes. This article also notes, suggestively, that Raphael’s workshop was working with the Venetian Sebastiano del Piombo in this commission, and the artists spurred each other on to new feats of technical and coloristic prowess.

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minutely-detailed one.43 This pastosa manner creates works that look ‘wet’, or fresh and living, and in opposition to the secco, or ‘dry’, manner of lesser naturalists. Additionally, Giovanni’s morbidezza, his soft and blended manner of painting that sensually reveals surfaces, contrasts with their stentata, or hard, manner.44 The fulgent praise for Giovanni in the Lives shows that the artist hit upon a perfect manner – his disegno allowed for invention within naturalism, while his bravura execution moved his art beyond art, to a vivid liveliness. Much of the praise Vasari heaps on Giovanni’s style could be said to apply to ‘perfect manner’ art overall, or at least to ornament in general. But I would argue Vasari is addressing a specific sort of ornament grand painters were called upon to provide, an ornament offered by verzure, and its artistic cousins, landscape and grotteschi. These embellishments required particular talents. Benvenuto Cellini, contrasting Italian foliage designs with Turkish, says that while the Eastern artisans created attractive, ‘very neat’ work (pulitissamamente), their leaf work will not ‘bring lasting pleasure’ to viewers.45 Here, he implies that the Turkish work is all of a piece, and lacks the variety and individual artistry that keeps lookers looking. This potential for boredom was a concern for renaissance decorators: how could one ornament impressively over large surfaces, down the length of a loggia or through many connected hallways, so that the effect was more or less uniform in richness, but still had evidence of personal style and enough originality in its parts to offer long-lasting pleasure?46 A decorator of loggias, façades, or other large spaces had to have painting talents not called upon by other types of commissions. He had to have ingrained training copying natural forms so that the believable surfaces and contours of this natural 43 Also rarely used is the similar term macchiati, a word Vasari uses to describe the style of the landscapes painted by Giovanni’s friend and collaborator, Polidoro da Caravaggio, connoting blotches of paint, or a paint-driven application. Both artists were influenced by the brushy style of wall painting they found in the ancient Roman frescos so important to Raphael’s workshop. Carmen Bambach notes a connection between Giovanni and Polidoro’s drawing styles, see An Italian Journey: Drawings from the Tobey Collection, Correggio to Tiepolo, Linda Wolk-Simon and Carmen C. Bambach (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2010), 16. For a discussion of the unusual tempera and oil mixture with which Polidoro executed his murals in San Silvestro, see A. Richard Turner, “Two Landscapes in Renaissance Rome”, The Art Bulletin, XLIII, 4 (1961), 276. An interesting and very specific, if archaic, discussion of how Raphael’s workshop adapted the coloring of ancient Roman painting practice to their works occurs in John W. Bradley, The Life and Works of Giorgio Giulio Clovio, Miniaturist, 1495–1578 (London: B. Quaritch, 1891), 32. 44 Vasari also made mural pigment experiments, writing that as a young man, in 1540, at the Calmoldoli Monastery, he ‘feci esperimento di unire il colorito a oilo con quello [ fresco] a riuscimmi assai acconciamente’. See Vasari, Vasari on Technique, (1960), 233, n.2. In his Arezzo home, he claims to have painted the interior in ‘distemper’. 45 Benvenuto Cellini, La Vita, ed. Lorenzo Bellotto (Parma: Bembo/Guanda, 1996), 113; The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, trans. Anne Macdonell, intro. by James Fenton (New York: Knopf, 2010), 57. 46 For this, see Giovanni Battista Armenini, On the True Precepts of the Art of Painting, trans. Edward J. Olszewski (New York: B. Franklin, 1977), 266, and, addressing Giovanni’s ornament choices, 248. See also ‘The Placement of Mural Landscapes’ in Karen Goodchild, “Towards an Italian Renaissance Theory of Landscape”, PhD diss., (University of Virginia, 1998), 141–145.

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fodder were part of his repertoire, but also had to be able to paint these in new, inventive and exciting configurations, and to execute them with sensuous surfaces brought into being through painterly application (or bold modeling, for stucco).47 The verzure master, ideally, could bring this talent forth across great expanses of space with no preparatory drawings in rapidly-produced arrays. He needed to be able to deploy these effects within a uniform structure – for instance a fictive pergola or garland – but with a corresponding internal variety so that viewers could get a sense of the order of the whole but could also linger longer, if they desired, over the many interesting and different lush details. These varied decorations, often designed to be viewed from various distances, benefitted from looser brushwork, as Vasari believed that works that were to be viewed from a distance looked better when not overly finished. Finally, green ornaments had to find themselves grouped with other delights – animals, birds, armor, grotteschi – all painted in such a way that the prontezza of the artist breathes life into living and non-living ornament alike.

Conclusion This chapter has answered the question of what verzure is for Vasari: elaborate ornamental greenery, growing or fictive, always displayed in the context of other lavish ornamental arrays. Vasari’s use of the term is in some ways at variance with other Renaissance employments; he takes an extant term and narrows its focus. Vasari’s verzure is not uncultivated green, it is not plant-filled tapestry, it is not run-of-themill festal garland – all these are forms of verzure exist below his horizon of concern. Vasari’s verzure is emphatically secular, and, although green swags graced churches and religious procession on holy days, the verzure worthy of Vasari’s notice in the Lives is an ornament to grand, private commissions. As such, verzure is linked to antiquity and to erudite display, and is meant to impress viewers with a patron’s taste as well as with his resources. Vasari’s use reflects his concern for lofty patronage, but also reflects his mindset: that of an artist/writer determined to exalt craftsman who can impressively and innovatively ornament many square feet of palace or ground. In the garden, the artistry that trains plants into their delightful forms must be hidden, and similarly in painted verzure, ‘effortful’ naturalism must be avoided. For Vasari to find verzure important enough to note, it must be part of grand ensembles of mixed forms, natural and not, supplying visual delights both in skill manifested and variety of content, and assuring the viewer of the patron’s prestige. The second edition of the Lives is Vasari’s argument that even though Northern Europe produced painters capable of 47 For Vasari’s evolving views on this, see, de Vere, I.946, and Thomas Puttfarken, Titian and Tragic Painting: Aristotle’s “Poetics” and the Rise of the Modern Artist (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 198–199.

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great naturalistic detail, it took Italian artists, with their copious invention and mastery of execution, to turn verzure, whether in a garden or a painting, into a princely, living ornament.

About the author Karen Goodchild, who received her PhD from the University of Virginia, is Chair of the Department of Art and Art History at Wofford College, where she is the Chapman Professor of Teaching Excellence. Her work has appeared in such publications as Artibus et Historiae, The Ashgate Research Companion to Giorgio Vasari and Source. Recent articles include: “Masaccio, Andrea del Sarto, Il Lasca, and the Sausage School of Florence” (2017), “Source and Meanings: Bronzino’s Wandering Eye” (2016), and, “Bizarre Painters and Bohemian Poets: Poetic Imitation and Artistic Rivalry in Vasari’s biography of Piero di Cosimo” (2014). Her research interests include medicine and art, and Renaissance theories of landscape art, as well as, in general, intersections between literature and art in the Early Modern period. She is working on two articles: one analyzing theoretical responses to the idea of movement in landscape, and one exploring comic texts describing fictional works of art attributed to real Florentine artists.

6. Verdant Architecture and Tripartite Chorography: Toeput and the Italian Villa Tradition Natsumi Nonaka

Abstract This essay seeks to demonstrate the Flemish painter Lodewijk Toeput’s engagement with the pictorial tradition, the design practice, and the theoretical discourse on gardens and landscapes in sixteenth-century Italy, through the examination of two interrelated facets of Italian villa design observed in his key works: first, the prominent use of verdant architecture; and second, the use of such vegetal structures to denote boundaries, specifically the one between the garden and the broader landscape. It further seeks to establish cultural associations between Toeput’s garden and landscape representations and the system of tripartite chorography prevalent in Italian Renaissance design and theory, the tendency to comprehend the earthly human domain in three concrete categories, formulating a mental map in three divisions. Key words: Garden design, garden theory, Italian villa, landscape painting, depiction of nature, green architecture

Francisco de Holanda’s Da pintura antigua (1548) records a learned conversation in which Michelangelo Buonarroti explains Flemish art to Vittoria Colonna: The painting of Flanders […] will generally satisfy any devout person more than the painting in Italy. […] They paint in Flanders only to deceive the external eye, things that gladden you and of which you cannot speak ill, and saints and prophets. Their painting is of stuffs, bricks and mortar, the grass of the fields, the shadow of trees, and rivers and bridges, which they call landscapes, and little figures here and there; and all this, although it may appear good to some eyes, is in truth done without reasonableness or art, without symmetry or proportion, without care in selecting or rejecting, and finally without any substance or verve. Flemish painting […] tries to do so many things at once (each of which alone would suffice for a great work) so that it does not do anything really well.1 1 Francisco de Holanda, Quatro dialogos da pintura antigua (Porto: Renascença Portugueza, 1896), 11, ll. 3–23, fols. 104r-v: ‘A pintura de Frandes, respondeu devagar o pintor, satisfará, Senhora, geralmente a qualquer devoto, mais que nenhuma de Italia, que lhe nunca fará chorar uma só lagrima, e a de Frandes muitas; isto Goodchild, K.H., A. Oettinger and L. Prosperetti (eds.), Green Worlds in Early Modern Italy. Art and the Verdant Earth, Amsterdam University Press doi: 10.5117/9789462984950_ch06

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Michelangelo’s summary of Flemish art, stemming from his deep engagement in the practice and theory of Italian art, contrasts the paintings of the two regions in a way that illuminates my study on Lodewijk Toeput (Ludovico Pozzoserrato, Antwerp, 1550 – Treviso, 1605). A painter of Flemish origins who was active in Italy, Toeput was aware of and responsive to the differing theoretical models of painting implicit in Michelangelo’s criticism, and pioneered the merging of Flemish and Italian landscape traditions. After training with Marten de Vos in Antwerp, Toeput went to Venice around 1573 and joined Tintoretto’s workshop; he subsequently settled in Treviso around 1582. Among the Northern painters who came to Italy in the sixteenth century and influenced the aesthetics of nature and the taste for landscapes that flowered in the subsequent century, Toeput, along with Paul Bril, was most attuned to the Italian villa culture. Martina Frank defines his works as pictorial documentations of Venetian villas.2 Indeed, among the sixteenth-century Flemish landscapists, Toeput alone integrated into his works Italian ideas about villas and gardens. His synthesis of the Flemish portrayal of nature and the Italian pictorial tradition is most evident in his representations of villa gardens set within broader landscapes. In such works, he applied a secular, theoretical order in structuring the components of the landscape. This essay will analyze three key works by Toeput, Pleasure Garden with Maze (1579–84), Miniatures 16 and 17 of the Codex Maggi (1578), and Summer Landscape at the Villa Chiericati at Longa di Schiavon (1580s), to demonstrate his synthesis of Flemish and Italian approaches. In each of these works, two interrelated components of Italian villa culture are observed:3 first, the prominent use of verdant architecture (architectural forms made partly or entirely of vegetation such as pergolas, não polo vigor e bondade d’aquela pintura, mas pola bondade d’aquele tal devoto. A molheres parecerá bem, principalmente ás muito velhas, ou ás muito moças, e assi mesmo a frades e a freiras, e a alguns fidalgos desmusicos da verdadeira harmonia. Pintam em Frandes propriamente pera enganar a vista exterior, ou cousas que vos alegrem ou de que não possaes dizer mal, assi como santos e profetas. O seu pintar é trapos, maçonerias, verduras de campos, sombras d’arvores, e rios e pontes, a que chamam paisagens, e muitas feguras para ca e muitas para acola; e tudo isto, inda que pareça bem a alguns olhos, na verdade é feito sem razão nem arte, sem symetria, nem proporçao, sem advertencia d’escolher nem despejo, e finalmente sem nenhuma sustancia nem nervo; e comtudo noutra parte se pinta pior que em Frandes. Nem digo tanto mal da framenga pintura porque seja toda má, mas porque quer fazer tanta cousa bem (cada uma das quaes só bastava por mui grande) que não faz nenhuma bem.’ English translation from Sir Charles Holroyd, Michael Angelo Buonarroti (London /New York: Duckworth and Co./Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1903), 279–80. 2 Martina Frank, “Lodewijk Toeput e la tipicità del giardino veneto”, in Le due muse. Scritti d’arte, collezionismo, e letteratura in onore di Ranieri Varese, ed. Francesca Cappelletti (Ancona: Il lavoro editoriale, 2012), 253. Frank describes Toeput as ‘una sorta di cronista della tipicità della cultura della villa veneta (a sort of chronicler of the villa culture in the Veneto)’. 3 On the villa and villa culture in Early Modern Italy, see David Coffin, The Villa in the Life of Renaissance Rome (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1979) and David Coffin, Gardens and Gardening in Papal Rome (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991); James Ackerman, The Villa: Form and Ideology of Country Houses (London: Thames and Hudson, 1990); Mirka Beneš, “Methodological Changes in the Study of Italian Gardens from the 1970s to the 1990s”, in Clio in the Italian Garden: Twenty-First-Century Studies in Historical Methods and Theoretical Perspectives, ed Mirka Beneš (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2011), 17–54.

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arbors, hedges, green pavilions and walkways);4 and second, the use of such green architecture to delineate boundaries and transitional thresholds, specifically the one between the garden and the broader landscape. By incorporating verdant architecture into his compositions and using it meaningfully as a boundary, Toeput invokes a distinctly Italian conception of the world that I call tripartite chorography: the tendency to divide the earthly human domain into three concrete categories, formulating a mental map in three divisions. This tripartite chorography, I will argue, came to be adopted in Toeput’s paintings of villa landscapes as a specifically Italian adaptation. Whether in design or theory, the ternary system in Italy could take several forms: three habitats (garden, country, city); three natures (garden, agricultural landscape, mountains/wilderness); three planting zones within a garden (ecological zones or biomes); or three concentric rings of land around a city (vineyard, farmland, hill town). Admittedly, a tripartite structure can also be discerned in Northern painted landscapes. Works by Joachim Patinir, Herri met de Bles and others divide the composition by depth into three parts, which are differentiated as three chromatic zones arranged in striations: the setting of a saintly or religious scene in the foreground; the inhabited land with architecture and small figures in the middle ground; and uninhabited land or distant mountains in the background. Flemish composition sometimes emulates a triptych, the central and lateral panels each corresponding to heaven, hell, and the wilderness of the saint.5 Thus the Flemish and Italian organizational schemes differ according to the nature of the categorization. The Italian system emphasized the relationship between humans and nature, whereas the Flemish system remained centered on an all-encompassing spiritual or metaphysical vision of the world. This dichotomy may underlie Michelangelo’s perception of the incoherence he perceives in Flemish painting. By preferring the Italian love of order and ‘symmetry and proportion’ (words that echo Vitruvius’ architectural principles, which are also organized in triads or hexads), he lauds his homeland’s classicizing rationality over the Northern desire to encompass everything, sacred and secular, in a landscape shown as though viewed through the eyes of God. Toeput retained certain Northern predispositions. His emphasis on vegetal structures – the green pavilion or the labyrinth constructed around a living tree, or herm-like figures supporting a pergola or circular pavilion – was Flemish. Additionally, from the world landscape style, namely the wide-angle panoramas with shifting viewpoints and a profusion of natural scenery rendered in minute detail, he derived the basic tripartite composition of foreground, middle ground, and background.6 But 4 Verdant architecture is an essentially ambiguous structure. See Natsumi Nonaka, Renaissance Porticoes and Painted Pergolas (New York: Routledge, 2017). 5 Larry Silver, Peasant Scenes and Landscapes (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 32–35. 6 Walter Gibson, Mirror of the Earth: The World Landscape in Sixteenth-Century Flemish Painting (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1989), xx; Leopoldine Prosperetti, Landscape and Philosophy in the Art of Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568–1625) (Farnham, UK & Burlington, VT: Ashgate Press, 2009), 84.

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Figure 6.1: Lodewijk Toeput, Allegory of Charity; Landscape with the Good Samaritan; Allegory of Hope, c.1585. Teolo, Padua, Praglia Abbey.

to these he added the distinctly Italian preference for human earthly domains. By merging the organizational principles of Italian villa design with the chromatic naturalism and spatial scope of Northern landscapes, he differentiated himself from other Flemish painters active in Italy. His ‘Italianization’, however, was selective. Versatile in his command of motifs and spatial organization, he worked in different styles concurrently. The six landscape panels in the Abbot’s apartment at Praglia Abbey (Fig. 6.1), attributed to the artist and dated to around 1585, are roughly contemporaneous with Pleasure Garden with Maze, the Codex Maggi, and the Villa Chiericati frescoes. Yet they adhere to Flemish conventions of landscape representation, especially in composition, elements of the landscape, and inclusion of religious references.7 Toeput’s ability to adopt whichever manner suited the subject matter and the commission reveals his versatility and self-awareness. My essay proceeds in two steps to demonstrate Toeput’s engagement with the pictorial tradition, the design practice, and the theoretical discourse of gardens and landscapes in sixteenth-century Italy. Section One briefly surveys the use of vegetal structures in Italian Renaissance painting, demonstrating that in Early Modern Italy, such forms marked off space in a meaningful way. Section Two discusses the cultural associations that can be made between Toeput’s garden and landscape representations and the system of tripartite chorography prevalent in Italian Renaissance design and theory. In this section, I analyze in depth how his works, Pleasure Garden with Maze and Miniatures 16 and 17 of the Codex Maggi (which combined show a single view of a villa estate set in the broader landscape), share a similar triadic composition of garden, country, and city in the foreground, middle ground, and background respectively, and elucidate how this compositional structure reflects on the ascendancy of verdant architecture in Italy, both in reality and in representation. Uniquely 7 Maria Pietrogiovanna, “‘Emblemata virtutis’. L’universo monastico affrescato nella sala dell’abate”, in Santa Maria Assunta di Praglia: storia, arte, vita di un’abbazia benedettina, ed. Chiara Ceschi/Mauro Maccarinelli/ Paola Vettore Ferraro (Padova: Abbazia di Praglia, 2013), 207–17.

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in his own time, Toeput used such forms as a natural medium for expressing boundaries between chorographical categories. The section concludes with an analysis of Toeput’s Summer Landscape at the Villa Chiericati. This work illustrates how Toeput’s tripartite chorography remains quintessentially Italian in both structure and conception, even as the identified zones beyond the garden might vary. My topic is framed within the broader question of how pictorial representation and its reception intersected more broadly with the design and theory of gardens and landscapes in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy.

Verdant Architecture Toeput painted scenes of outdoor enjoyment set in formal gardens adorned with lush greenery, trellised arbors, and sculptures. His Outdoor Concert (c.1580, Fig. 6.2), the Banquet in the Open Air (c.1590, Fig. 6.3), and the Parable of the Rich Man (1590s, Monte di Pietà, Treviso; Gemäldegalerie, Kassel) show vegetal structures in a garden

Figure 6.2: Lodewijk Toeput, Outdoor Concert, 1580s. Treviso, Museo Civico Santa Caterina.

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Figure 6.3: Lodewijk Toeput, Banquet in the Open Air, 1590. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum.

animated by handsomely attired figures from the affluent class enjoying music, strolling, and dining.8 More than the other artists working in the Veneto in the late sixteenth century (for instance, Venetian Paolo Veronese, or the Netherlandish Lambert Sustris), Toeput emphasized verdant architecture and made it the hallmark of his villa garden compositions. Trained in Tintoretto’s workshop, he no doubt drew particular inspiration from his master’s works, which themselves employ vegetal structures both as space-making devices emphasizing important areas or figures, and as boundaries, delimiting one zone from another. I use the terms ‘space-making device’ and ‘boundary’ in their architectural sense. When architecture ‘makes’ space, it privileges it; it can define or intensify a zone or a void by drawing special attention to its enclosure including the edges of it, namely the interface or ‘boundary’ between the zones within and without the enclosure. For example, in Tintoretto’s Miracle of the Slave (c.1548, Accademia, Venice, inv.42), a pergola is used as a space-maker to frame the focal scene where the narrative is unfolding, as earlier in Mantegna’s Martyrdom of St Christopher (1449–51, Ovetari Chapel, Chiesa degli Eremitani, Padua). The pergola 8 Banquet in the Open Air is attributed to Toeput. See Luigi Menegazzi, “Ludovico Pozzoserrato”, Saggi e memorie di storia dell’arte (1957), 185, Fig. 25; Luciana Crosato, “I piaceri della villa nel Pozzoserrato”, in Toeput a Treviso, ed. Stefania Mason Rinaldi and Domenico Luciani (Treviso: Fondazione Benetton; Comune di Treviso, 1988), 76, Fig. 9. One version is held at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Gemäldegalerie 2263.

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assumes a liminal function in Tintoretto’s Susanna and the Elders (National Gallery Washington, D.C., 1939.1.231; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, inv. 1530) marking the boundary between the foreground where the main episode takes place, and the realm beyond. A close analysis of Toeput’s Pleasure Garden with Maze (Plate 18) reveals the work’s strong emphasis on verdant architecture; it can be described as a catalogue of vegetal structures.9 A circular labyrinth of the conventional unicursal type, set on a grassy islet encircled by an irregular moat, occupies the center of the composition.10 Its entry is marked by a vegetal arch, bowers shade turning points, and a barrel vault of greenery covers a segment of the path. The waist-high latticed fence, made of laths and intertwined with vegetation, forms the concentric circles and radial segments of the labyrinthine path. It limits movement but not comprehensive vision; dense enough to simulate solidity, it is nevertheless diaphanous enough to dispel any oppressive sense of confinement. Light is cast from the left, and the mirroring surface of the water reflects the vegetal structures. The hybrid, semi-transparent vegetation creates an atmosphere of fitting lightness and joviality. The moral tone of the scene is decidedly liberal, linking the pleasures of life to the outdoors. Amorous couples wander randomly along the path. Only those who have reached the center can expect to be seated at the table. The colorful clothing of the figures forms a harmonizing contrast with the background of green vegetation, also rendered in variegated shades intensified with white highlighting. The islet of the labyrinth is accessed by crossing the water on a gondola or a barge. Couples playing a chase game, or sitting on the ground beyond the moat, are probably those waiting to cross over. At the lower left floats a majestic barge with tiered, gilded decks, decorated with vegetation along the arched openings; musicians serenade on the top deck.11 Other vegetal forms complement the labyrinth. A green dining hall at lower right shelters guests enjoying a picnic meal. A vine-covered wall in the middle distance is pierced midway by a stile marked by a pergola. Another pergola at the upper left extends a masonry tunnel that pierces a rock formation. 9 John Shearman, The Early Italian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen (New York & Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983), 248, cat. no. 263. Royal Collection Trust: https://www.royalcollection.org.uk/ collection/402610/pleasure-garden-with-a-maze. The work was purchased in 1615 in Venice by Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset and entered Charles I’s collection later that year. 10 The labyrinth in Pleasure Garden with Maze follows the circular, unicursal type, commonly seen on the floors of medieval cathedrals and in visual representations of the Cretan Labyrinth. On Renaissance labyrinths, see Paolo Santarcangeli, Il libro dei labirinti (Firenze: Frassinelli, 1967), 277, 290–305; Penelope Reed Doob, The Idea of the Labyrinth from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages (Ithaca & London: Cornell UP, 1990), 48–51; Hermann Kern, Through the Labyrinth: Designs and Meaning over 5,000 Years (Munich, London, New York: Prestel, 2000), 228–29; Hervé Brunon, ed., Le jardin comme labyrinthe du monde (Paris: Presses de l’Universite de Paris-Sorbonne, 2008). Brunon does not refer to Toeput’s works. 11 The boat adorned with vegetal ornaments is a familiar motif in Flemish works depicting outdoor entertainment, for example, David Vinckboons’s drawing Venetian Party in a Château Garden (c.1602, National Gallery, Washington D.C., 1986.76.1).

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More than just a decorative feature or a curiosity of topiary in pleasure gardens, verdant architecture in Early Modern Italy was a space-making device as well as a boundary, marking spatial and conceptual divisions. Pictorial forms of vegetal structures as space-makers first emerged in the mid-fifteenth century; they enshrined prestigious persons or provided dignified settings for important scenes. An early example is Giovanni Boccati’s (1420–80) Madonna of the Pergola (c.1446–47), in which the Madonna sits enthroned under a canopy arrayed with vegetation.12 This work is one among several in which Boccati created dignified green settings for the Madonna. Mantegna’s later Madonna della Vittoria (1496, Louvre inv.369) creates an elaborate vegetal arbor as the place of honor for the Virgin. Contemporaneously, Cima da Conegliano’s Madonna of the Orange Tree (c.1496–98, Accademia, Venice, inv.815) shows that a simple, natural tree could serve the same function. Furthermore, the fact that the terms ‘loggia’ and ‘pergola’ once shared lexical definitions, and that loggias first originated as spaces shaded by natural foliage before they evolved into more solid, tectonic architecture, attests to the vegetal origins of architecture and the blurry line between architecture and greenery.13 Greenery was perceived as a space-maker among other things. In contrast, pictorial examples of greenery as boundary are less common. Mantegna employed verdant architecture as a boundary in his Garden of Virtue (1499–1502, Louvre, inv.371), where topiary hedges not only provide a vegetal stage for narrative action, thus operating as a space-making device, but also denote a boundary between the garden and the broader landscape. Tintoretto too used the pergola as a marker between different zones to mark off the realm of the main narrative from the world beyond.

Tripartite Chorography The Italian notion of dividing the natural world into three realms was derived from the humanistic study of classical texts and Renaissance villa design practices. Broadly discernible within the discourse on gardens and landscapes in Early Modern Italy, it appears in various contexts as a manner of structuring nature. It was a flexible model, capable of taking several forms, such as three-tiered hierarchies or dualities

12 Pietro Zampetti, Giovanni Boccati (Milan: Electa, 1971). Works depicting the Madonna in a garden, which started appearing around 1400, including Garden of Paradise (c.1410–20) by the Upper Rhenish Master and Stefano da Verona’s Madonna in the Rose Garden (c.1420–35), belong to the tradition of the hortus conclusus. See Brian E. Daley, “The ‘Closed Garden’ and the ‘Sealed Fountain’: Song of Songs 4:12 in the Late Medieval Iconography of Mary”, in Medieval Gardens, ed. Elisabeth B. MacDougall (Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1983), 253–78. Most likely the topos of the Madonna of the pergola, which emphasizes more the space-making quality of the greenery, diverged from that tradition. 13 Nonaka (2017), 10–12; Kim Sexton, “Loggias and Ethnicity in Early Medieval Italy”, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 68, no. 3, September (2009): 309–337.

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with a third mediating category. It could embrace varying levels of abstraction as well, but the garden with its greenery is a shared feature of all models. Even before it was proposed as written theory, tripartite chorography was a shared notion among intellectuals educated in the humanist tradition. Domenico Luciani, a contemporary architect and theorist, identifies a ternary system in Renaissance Italy in which the garden serves a mediating role between city and country.14 The triad of garden, country, and city, he argues, was derived from Petrarch’s house and garden (1369) at Arquà in the Colli Euganei near Padua, and became a topos in the perception of the Italian landscape.15 Over time the vantage point of the beholder was established as that within or above the verdant garden, surveying as through a green lens the wider world beyond. The Piccolomini palace of Pius II (Enea Silvio Piccolomini, 1405–64, pontificate 1458–64) at Pienza, a century later, is a case in point. His Commentaries contains a detailed description of the garden on the palace’s south side constructed in the 1460s.16 The terraced hanging garden (giardino pensile), created above the stables by heaping earth, was planted and equipped with stone benches. Pius II describes the view from the palace beyond the garden: first, the country – the grassy, fertile fields and vineyards, the green meadows and hills of the Val d’Orcia, terminating in the lofty Mount Amiata with its woody slopes – and in the distance, citadels and towns on precipitous rocky outcrops. The landscape is perceived pictorially, in the tripartite scheme of garden, country, and city. Here it is indeed from the garden that the panorama of the Tuscan hill country could be enjoyed.

14 Domenico Luciani, “Tra città e paesaggio: il giardino come mediazione”, in Pensare il giardino, ed. Paola Capone/Paola Lanzara/Massimo Venturi Ferriolo (Milan: Guerini e Associati, 1992), 41–42. 15 Petrarca, Francesco (a cura di Silvia Rizzo), Res seniles Libri XIII-XVII (Firenze: Casa Editrice Le Lettere, 2017), Book XV, Letter 5 (addressed to his brother Gerardo, Carthusian monk): (Italian translation) ‘[Q]ui fra i colli Euganei, non più lontano che dieci miglia da Padova mi fabbricai una piccola ma graziosa casina, cinta da un oliveto e da una vigna.’ (Petrarca, Francesco, Lettere senili, translated by Giuseppe Fracassetti, 2 vols, Firenze: Le Monnier, 1869–1870, [413].); (English translation): ‘I built a small but decent, delightful house in these Euganeian Hills, not more than ten miles from the city of Padua; I have bought olive groves and some vines.’ (Petrarca, Francesco, Letters of Old Age, translated by Aldo S. Bernardo, Saul Levin, and Reta A. Bernardo. (New York: Italica Press, 2005), vol. II, letter XV.5, 572. 16 Pius II (Enea Silvio Piccolomini), Pii II commentarii rerum memorabilium que temporibus suis contingerunt, ed. Adrianus van Heck (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. 1984), II: 549–50: ‘[T]res porticus meridianum solem excipientes in Amiata, ut diximus, altissimo e nemoroso monte, uisum terminant subiectamque Vrcie uallem et uiridantia prata collesque suo tempore gramineos et frugiferos agros et uineta et in preruptis rupibus arces atque oppida intuentur […]. de super fornices additi et super his terra congesta, que solum equaret et ortum pensilis faceret uitibus et arboribus aptum.’ (Three loggias receiving the midday sun conclude the view on Mount Amiata, a towering, wooded peak, as we said; below we see the Val d’Orcia, green meadows and grassy hills in due season, fertile grain fields and vineyards, as well as citadels and towns on precipitous rocky outcrops; […] [above the stables for the horses and the blacksmithing workshops] additional arches were raised, and above these, earth was heaped to match the ground level and to create a hanging garden suitable for vines and trees.)

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The tripartite scheme received subsequent pictorial acknowledgement in the works of Giovanni Bellini among others. In St Francis in Ecstasy (c.1480, Frick Collection 1915.1.03), a pergola denotes the saint’s garden in the foreground, with farmland in the middle ground and hill town in the background.17 In Bellini’s Madonna of the Meadow (1500, National Gallery, London NG599), cited by Luciani, the tripartite perception of the landscape is shown in the three realms of lush, garden-like floral meadow, rural countryside, and city, which are placed in the foreground, middle ground, and background respectively. The triad of garden/floral meadow, agricultural landscape, and town/city is obvious in both works, and those three realms are clearly represented as separate zones. However, lacking distinct boundaries, their constituent parts are merged into a gradated whole, exhibiting a boundary-free interrelationship. The pergola in St Francis is more vault than wall, having no function as a terrestrial boundary. In late fifteenth century Italy, even if verdant architecture had already assumed the role of boundary in some pictorial works (e.g. Mantegna’s Garden of Virtue), it had not yet been associated with a tripartite landscape. The theorization of tripartite chorography, when it occurred in the mid-sixteenth century, promoted a prevalent tripartite cultural scheme, the so-called three natures. In classical antiquity, the realms of city and country were often associated with the notions of negotium and otium, or work and leisure, respectively.18 In De natura deorum, Cicero bifurcates nature a bit differently, but along the same lines: one is unmediated nature, the territory of the gods; the other, the agricultural landscape, transforms raw nature into cultivated land through human intervention.19 To these categories, a third, the garden, was added in the sixteenth century. According to John Dixon Hunt, as the garden developed into an artistic genre independent from architecture and gained momentum as an instrument of elite patronage and upward social mobility, humanist writers steeped in classical learning defined it as ‘a third nature’ and the most perfect of the three.20 Two sources, which seemingly emerged independently of one another, provide insights on this point. Jacopo Bonfadio, in a letter of 1541 to his friend Plinio Tomacello, describes his country retreat on Lake Garda. Noting that Pliny the Younger’s letters describing his Etruscan and Laurentian 17 John Dixon Hunt, Greater Perfections: The Practice of Garden Theory (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 70–73. 18 Nicholas Purcell, “Town in Country and Country in Town”, in Ancient Roman Villa Gardens, ed. Elisabeth MacDougall (Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1987), 187–203. 19 Cicero, De natura deorum 2.152: ‘Terrenorum item commodorum omnis est in homine dominatus: nos campis nos montibus fruimur, nostri sunt amnes nostri lacus, nos fruges serimus nos arbores, nos aquarum inductionibus terris fecunditatem damus, nos flumina arcemus derigimus avertimus, nostris denique manibus in rerum natura quasi alteram naturam efficere conamur.’ (In man resides all dominion of earthborne commodities. We enjoy the fruits of the plains and hills; rivers and lakes are ours; we sow corn and plant trees; we bestow fertility on the lands by irrigation; we confine, straighten, and divert rivers. In sum, with our hands we try to create a second nature, in effect, within the natural world.) 20 John Dixon Hunt, “Il giardino come territorio delle nature”, in Pensare il giardino, ed. Paola Capone/Paola Lanzara/Massimo Venturi Ferriolo (Milan: Guerini e Associati, 1992), 35–36; Hunt, 2000, 32–34.

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villas were predicated on the classical duality of city and country, Bonfadio proposes a neologism, ‘a third nature’, referring to the garden.21 Bartolomeo Taegio, in his villa treatise published in 1559, after describing a pergola that provides an agreeable shade for strolling, introduces the phrase ‘una terza natura’ to emphasize the synthesis of art and nature in the garden.22 That two authors apparently came up with the concept of a ‘third nature’ quite independently underscores the importance of the tripartite logic in conceptualizing landscape in Renaissance Italy. Although both are probably referencing Cicero by expanding his two categories into three, as Hunt observes, the neologism was born in two different contexts. While Taegio focuses on horticultural details and praises the gardener who can achieve such marvels of nature, Bonfadio presents a wide-angle perspective of the landscape of Lake Garda. He describes the handsome residences of the signori with gardens on the waterfront, the hills with fruit orchards, and the high mountains beyond them to the north. His ekphrasis of the broader landscape derives from the rhetorical tradition of classical antiquity, and is more a catalogue of beautiful nature in the manner of Homer’s garden of Alcinoos, Vergil’s pastoral landscape in his Eclogues and Georgics, or Elysium in the Aeneid; in other words, he gives us the classical locus amoenus rather than a description of an actual landscape.23 However, his broad perspective of the three natures laid out both chronologically and spatially as a ‘history of human development in miniature’, as Hunt puts it, is important. According to Bonfadio, the mountains, perceived as

21 Giacomo Bonfadio, Opere volgari e latine di Jacopo Bonfadio (Brescia: Turlini, 1746), lettera VI, 17.: ‘Per li giardini che quì sono […] la industria de’ paesani ha fatto tanto, che la natura incorporata con l’arte è fatta artefice e connaturale con arte, e d’amendue è fatta una terza natura, a cui non saprei dar nome.’ (For the gardens here […] the industry of the local people is such that nature incorporated with art is made an artifice which is naturally equal with art, and from them both is created a third nature, which I would not know how to name.) 22 Bartolomeo Taegio, La villa (1559), 66: ‘Il camino principale, che parte il luogo in croce, è coperto di pergolati di novelle viti, i cui lati sono quasi tutti chiusi di rosai, & gelsomini, che si fa grande & grato odore rendono per lo giardino, che in vero pare, che vi sieno tutte le specierie dell’Oriente. Et le strade sono si ben difese dal Sole, che d’ogn’hora sotto odorifera et piacevol ombra senza esser tocco da’ raggi di quello vi si puo per tutto andare. Le piante poi sono con meraviglioso ordine poste, & di quelle, che sono tanto lodevoli, che l’aer nostro patiscono quivi n’è grandissima copia; quivi sono senza fine gl’ingeniosi innesti, che con si gran meraviglia al mondo mostrano, quanto sia l’industria d’un accorto giardiniero, che incorporando l’arte con la natura fa, che d’amendue ne riesce una terza natura, la qual causa che i frutti sieno quivi piu saporiti che altrove.’ (The main walkway, which subdivides the place in a cross, is covered by a pergola of new vines, whose sides are nearly covered with roses and jasmine, so that their abundant, agreeable fragrance makes the garden seem truly as though all the spices of the Orient are there. The alleys are well shaded from the sun, so that one can at all times go everywhere under fragrant and pleasant shade without being touched by its rays. The plants are placed with marvelous order, and there is the greatest abundance of those that are praised so much that they grieve the air here. Here are without end the ingenious grafts that show with great wonder to the world the industry of the wise gardener, who by incorporating art with nature brings forth from both a third nature, which causes the fruits to be more flavorful here than elsewhere.) 23 Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2013), 185–200.

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a fearsome and dangerous realm of unmediated nature,24 are the abode of the ‘wild and hard people, made of stone and oak as much as of human flesh, who for most of the year live on chestnuts, that is the acorns of primordial times’.25 The cultivated hills above the lake correspond to the second nature, the agricultural landscape. The aristocratic lakefront residences owned by the civilized gentlemen occupy the near end of the spectrum; their gardens are the third nature. The three realms corresponding to the three natures with varying degrees of human interventions in the landscape are located in the background, middle ground, and foreground and occupy high, intermediate, and low altitude respectively. The broader landscape thus becomes a metaphor of the teleological history of human development, which finds resonance and is exemplified in contemporary Italian garden design, as at the Villa Lante at Bagnaia.26 Consequently, while Taegio’s treatise remains essentially a manual of villa management, Bonfadio’s letter proposes a new theory contextualizing the garden within the broader landscape, establishing a hierarchy among the three natures in an ambitious historical overview of human civilization. Whatever its precise origins, the tripartite model came to be embedded in the practice and theory of landscape design in Renaissance Italy, even if there were variations in the character of the categories themselves. They can be encapsulated within a single garden, for instance, in the form of the three planting zones planned for the Villa Madama: high-canopy plantings such as pine trees at high altitude, medium-height plantings such as fruit trees and citrus shrubs at intermediate altitude, and low plantings such as herbs and flowers at low altitude, as shown in Francesco da Sangallo’s plan (Fig. 6.4).27 Similarly, the garden at the Villa Lante at Bagnaia was also designed in three levels, each corresponding to a stage in the history of civilization.28 The scheme could also apply to the theoretical understanding of entire regions, as in Mirka Beneš’ proposed tripartite chorography of Lazio, comprising three concentric rings of land distinguished by use.29 The first ring of vigne surrounded the city 24 Gibson, 1989, 55. Gibson notes that mountains, especially the Alps, were perceived as dangerous places throughout the Middle Ages, a perception that persisted until the second half of the sixteenth century. 25 Bonfadio, 1746, 19: ‘[G]enti selvagge e dure, le quali tanto tengono di pietra e di quercia, quanto d’uomo, e campano di castagne la maggior parte dell’anno, cioè delle ghiande del secolo antico.’ 26 Claudia Lazzaro, The Italian Renaissance Garden (New Haven & London: Yale UP, 1990), 267. At the Villa Lante at Bagnaia, the barco is conceived as the wilderness where people lived on acorns in the Golden Age. The journey from the topmost terrace of the fountain of the deluge to the lowest terrace of the parterre garden is a metaphoric reenactment of the history of human development in time and space, from mythological to modern, and from the primitive to the most civilized stage, each terrace corresponding to a stage in the history of human development. 27 Lazzaro, 1990, 22–24. Lazzaro cites another tripartite garden layout, one by Lorenzo Donati, Uffizi 1997A. 28 Ibid., 248–66. 29 Mirka Beneš, “Landowning and the Villa in the Social Geography of the Roman Territory”, in Form, Modernism, and History, ed. Alexander von Hoffman (Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard UP, 1996), 187–209; Mirka Beneš, “The Social Significance of Transforming the Landscape of the Villa Borghese, 1606–30”, in Gardens in the Time of the Great Muslim Empires, ed. A. Petruccioli (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 1997), 1–31; Mirka Beneš, “Pastoralism in the Roman Baroque Villa and in Claude Lorrain”, in Villas and Gardens in Early Modern Italy and France, ed. Mirka Beneš and Dianne Harris (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge UP, 2001), 88–113; Beneš, 2011.

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Figure 6.4: Francesco da Sangallo, Project for the Garden of the Villa Madama, c.1525. Florence, Uffizi.

of Rome; the second zone of casali, the grazing land and cattle farms in the Roman Campagna, encircled the vigne; and the outer third ring constituted the hill towns where prominent aristocratic families established villas and gardens. Clearly the character of the tripartite model varies, but the garden is a feature shared by all. The frontispiece to Abbé de Vallemont’s Curiositéz de la nature et de l’art (1705) (Fig. 6.5) provides a belated metaphorical acknowledgement of this tripartite chorography, presenting the three natures model in a somewhat pastoral manner. In the background is the first nature, Parnassus with Apollo and the Muses, a hillside in eternal spring. In the middle ground is the second nature, where a man plows and another sows seed. In the foreground is the third nature, a formal garden with parterres, central fountain, and intersecting paths, presided over by the personifications of Ars and Natura. The inclusion of the illustration as the frontispiece of an early eighteenth-century French treatise on gardens suggests that the idea of tripartite chorography subsequently acquired a Pan-European dimension and became a standard approach of structuring nature. Toeput often used the triad of garden, country, and city, placing the garden in the foreground. Furthermore, he denoted the boundary between the two most proximate chorographical divisions, namely garden and country, with verdant architecture. Pleasure Garden with Maze (Plate 18) can be seen as precisely such a ternary composition.

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Figure 6.5: Abbé de Vallemont, Curiositéz de la nature et de l’art, Paris, 1705. Frontispiece. Washington D.C., Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

The only visible way between the cultivated garden in the foreground and the countryside beyond is by a stile over a wall covered with vegetation, framed by an overarching pergola. The wall (or viaduct) continues as a stone bridge crossing a stream on the right. The middle range beyond the wall, the scene of a hunt, is articulated by arched forms and stairways that signal a multitude of routes, but anchored in the distance by life’s ultimate destination, a tomb. Downstream from the stone bridge, a light

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wooden bridge arches over a gap.30 These two spans emphatically inscribe the rustic domain’s boundaries. Each is impassable by way of the stream beneath: a metal grillage occludes transit under one, and a trussed fence under the other. These features might suggest that the domain is a hunting ground, its boundaries designed to prevent the quarry’s escape. Through the gap in the upper right, we glimpse Venice through the haze, identified by the Piazza San Marco with its campanile, honorific columns, and clock tower, and one of the city-republic’s emblematic mercantile ships. Perhaps the unidentified patron of Pleasure Garden with Maze held an appointment in Venice, and thereby chose the city and its ships as the third component of his landscape, isolated from the middle ground as if from behind a slightly parted curtain. Miniatures 16 and 17 of the Codex Maggi (Plate 19), which together form a single illustration showing a villa garden with verdant architecture against a natural landscape, exhibit the same principles.31 The work’s attribution remains uncertain, but its blending of Italian and Northern elements within a distinctive chorography strengthens Isler-de Jongh’s proposed attribution to Toeput.32 Like Pleasure Garden with Maze, it represents the three realms of garden, country, and city, in that order; and it uses verdant architecture as the boundary between the two proximate zones, garden and country. The foreground displays a typical Italian formal garden with geometric parterres. A strong central axis unifies the multi-storied villa building and the symmetrical garden fronting it. In the garden, a circular pavilion supported by herms with helicoid legs is typically Flemish, with a living tree emerging from its domed roof of greenery. The structure occupies a moated islet of its own, but surrounded with moving water, complete with a rushing weir, diverted from the river in the center right. A circular, unicursal labyrinth is also accented with a central tree. Portico galleries covered with greenery serve as an enclosure and a significant boundary for the garden. The second category, the countryside, is a hilly riverine landscape. Rivers to the left and right, enlivened by bridges and other picturesque motifs, divide it into three parts. To the left, beyond a grassy landscape with trees, is a watermill on the riverbank and a fortified castle on a high cliff. Towards the center, the left-hand river loops through an undulating terrain featuring roads, copses, swamps, and a church. Beyond the right-hand river is a generic riverside landscape with shoals, trees, and a 30 The same motif of two rocky hills connected by a wooden bridge appears in the Abbazia di Praglia frescoes. See Fig. 6.1 and Pietrogiovanna, 2013. 31 The Codex Maggi (Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Département des estampes et de la photographie, RESERVE 4-AD-134) refers to a set of eighteen miniatures in gouache painted recto-verso on vellum in-quarto, with a date of 1578. See facsimile edition of 1992, Ariane Isler-de Jongh and François Fossier, Description historique des voyages et aventures de Charles Magius, noble vénitien (Arcueil: Anthèse, 1992); François Fossier, “Les tribulations d’un espion de la Sérénissime”, in Fossier and Isler-de Jongh, 1992, 6–17; Ariane Isler-de Jongh, “Le Codex Maggi, rapport de mission ou testament initiatique”, in Fossier and Isler-de Jongh, 1992, 68–79. 32 The 1761 commentary by La Vallière mentions Paolo Veronese. Isler-de Jongh tentatively proposes Toeput as the artist, and also suggests that the villa depicted in the background may be the Villa Feltre mentioned in Carlo Maggi’s will. See Fossier and Isler-de Jongh, 1992, 28, 73, 76.

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house. Human figures in this register are generic staffage depicted in a cursory manner. The third category, the city, lies to the right in the distance amidst a rocky landscape with high mountains. Its bluish atmospheric perspective recalls the view of Venice in the Pleasure Garden with Maze. Certainly, the painter of these two landscapes, who aggressively takes the perspective of the landed gentry, had fallen under the dominant influence of Italian villa culture. Now let us consider how differently Flemish paintings of the world landscape style treat their tripartite conceptual structure.33 In Joachim Patinir’s landscapes, for example, Landscape with Saint Jerome (c.1516–17, Prado, Madrid inv. P.001614), three coloristic zones correspond to three different realms. The brown-green foreground is the saint’s realm or the setting of unfolding action; the green middle ground is the inhabited domain, with hamlets, cities, and castles; the blue background of distant mountains constitutes the dangerous, uninhabited third realm.34 Larry Silver argues that the three realms, each with its moral connotation, can be translated into the triad of city, country, and the isolated wilderness of the foreground saint. Yet there are no rationally established conceptual boundaries here; even the concept of ‘threeness’ seems questionable. Except for Jerome’s presence, his domain is little different from the mountainous wilderness in the upper right. Monastery, manor house, and city, each potentially signifying a powerful geopolitical entity, more or less randomly occupy the middle ground. The works of Flemish artists of the same generation as Toeput, even those in which saints no longer appear, do not follow the Italian model. Lucas van Valckenborch’s Spring Landscape (1587, Fig. 6.6), commissioned by Archduke Matthias, includes all three chorographical categories, garden, country, and city, but not in the order seen in the Italian tradition. Here, the country, the main venue of the picnic party, occupies the foreground and the garden with planting beds and fountains the middle ground. Portico galleries covered with vegetation serve as partial enclosures for the gardens, but do not have a distinct function as a chorographical boundary. The garden is disassociated from the palace building, which is adjacent to and merged with the third realm, the city, recognizable as Brussels. An uninhabited landscape of rivers and mountains fades into the background, displaying a vast panorama beyond the confines of the three realms. The structuring of landscape elements follows the typical world landscape style – a wide-angle view arranged in striations of brown, green, and blue, with shifting viewpoints and encyclopedic accumulation of scenic detail. Most oddly, a labyrinth lies in the middle of the river like an island, separated from the garden. This displacement and decontextualization would seem disorienting from an Italian perspective, crossing over boundaries between the chorographical realms. 33 Silver, 2006, 32–35. 34 See n. 24 above.

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Figure 6.6: Lucas van Valckenborch, Spring Landscape, 1587. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum.

The tripartite chorography in Early Modern Italy emerged from the classical tradition; its moral force resided more in its consummation of human control over the land than in religious values. It reflects the mental map shared by both the artists and architects who produced the pictorial works and designed the villas and gardens, and the educated patrons who collected and commissioned them. The structure of this mental map was consciously modeled on classical modes of thought; thus, as with the Roman literary prototypes, villa culture became its organizing principle. Italian tripartite chorography is thus a flexible model in which one component may be substituted for another. For instance, in Summer Landscape at the Villa Chiericati at Longa di Schiavon, we find the triad of garden, agricultural fields, and mountains, the three natures defined by Bonfadio. Although the three realms here differ somewhat from those in Toeput’s works examined above, this fresco can be attributed to the artist not only on grounds of the preparatory drawing (Fig. 6.7), but also because it reveals knowledge of Italian villa culture.35 The work is part of the decorative scheme of the Room of Landscapes (Fig. 6.8),36 painted in the early 1580s, where six landscapes are arranged in pairs on three walls.37 The landscapes, each representing two months of the year as indicated by the zodiac signs occupying roundels in the upper corners, 35 Frank, 2012, 253–54. 36 Thanks are due to Noriko Miyashita, Showa University of Music, Japan, and Arch. Miranda Panero, Villa Chiericati-Showa, Longa di Schiavon, Vicenza, who kindly facilitated access to and photography in the Room of the Landscapes. Currently owned by the Showa University of Music, Japan, the villa is located at Via Peraro, 23, Longa di Schiavon, Vicenza. 37 Filippo Pedrocco/Massimo Favilla/Ruggero Rugolo, Frescoes of the Veneto (New York: The Vendome Press, 2009), 125. A frieze depicting putti at play running along the top is considered to be later work by Benedetto Caliari.

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Figure 6.7: Lodewijk Toeput, Villa Garden with Fountain, date unknown. Vienna, Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna.

follow the traditional cycle of the months; as such, they are commonly attributed to the Flemish tradition.38 Summer Landscape (Plate 20), however, bearing the signs of Gemini and Cancer, conveys the familiar vocabulary of Italian garden design: geometrically patterned parterres, fountains adorned with sculptural figures, fishponds, and verdant architecture. 38 The work is not mentioned in Luigi Menegazzi’s 1957 catalogue of Toeput, but recent studies include it in his œuvre. Pedrocco et al., 2009, 124–25; Frank, 2012.

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Figure 6.8: View of the wall with the Spring and Summer Landscapes, Room of the Landscapes, Villa Chiericati, Longa di Schiavon.

Here too verdant architecture serves as a boundary: the concentric plantings in the foreground and the twin pergolas, beds, and plantings in the middle ground delineate the three sides of the rectangular garden, closed on the fourth side by the villa building, separating it from the broader landscape. In the foreground, the concentric plantings around a statue-fountain of Venus may be inspired by a labyrinth, but without a prescribed path. Like Pleasure Garden with Maze, it is peopled with strolling couples, whose goal, appropriately, may have been to reach the pool of Venus at the center. Bisecting the garden is a strong axis formed by the Venus fountain in the foreground, the Neptune fountain in the middle ground, the stairs flanked by animated statues, and finally the villa building’s façade.39 Animals and birds appear in front of the building, perhaps referring to Italian patrons’ penchant for menageries. The building itself is of eclectic Italian design. The Palladian temple front adorns the upper story of the façade, above the central stairs. The barn adjoining the villa building to the right, the barchessa, is a component of the Venetian villa which often incorporated farming facilities. The twin belvederes terminating the façade characterize villa buildings in Lazio. Behind to the right, cultivated fields gently climb the hillside. 39 Gerszi points out the strong illusion of recessional space in Toeput’s villa and garden representations, and suggests that thereby the artist may have been responding to both the Netherlandish tradition of painters such as Lambert Sustris, Hans Bol, and Pieter Bruegel, as well as the Italian tradition of painters such as Tintoretto. Teréz Gerszi, “The Draughtsmanship of Lodewijk Toeput”, Master Drawings 30, no. 4 (1992): 374.

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The tripartite model used here is garden, agricultural landscape, and mountains, similar to Bonfadio’s landscape around Lake Garda. The first and second realms, the villa garden and the agricultural landscape, conform to Frank’s characterization of the typical Venetian villa, with building and garden designed symmetrically around an axis and set in an agricultural landscape.40 The third realm here is the mountains, not a distant city. The choice of the model including the agricultural, productive landscape was appropriate for the Chiericati, the Venetian landed aristocracy, for whom agriculture would have been a significant source of wealth. Appropriately, the mental map in three divisions characterizes the villa patrons’ perception of the broader landscape in terms of the economic infrastructure that supported them. Favoring one landscape over another reflected the patron’s negotium, which may have engaged more with international trade or with a domestic agronomic model. One more aspect of this work deserves note. The spatial organization of the garden in the Summer Landscape maps closely on one of the most influential views created in sixteenth-century Italy, Pirro Ligorio’s reconstruction of Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro’s (116–27 BC) Aviary.41 An etching after Ligorio (Fig. 6.9) included in the Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae shows a combination of geometrical shapes arranged in a strong axial composition. In the foreground are the twin square aviary pavilions; in the middle ground, twin rectangular fishponds; and in the background, a round pavilion encircled by a concentric portico that opens on the foreground side to facilitate circulation. Summer Landscape shows a strikingly similar spatial organization, except that the order of geometric components is reversed. In the foreground appears the circular quasi-labyrinth, from the center of which the concentric pavilion, now fully verdant, has been displaced to the right; in the middle ground are the twin fishponds, followed by the twin pergolas, now with formal planting beds between them; and in the background, the villa building, which merges Ligorio’s twin pavilions into one. Here, then, we have not just a general awareness of a classicizing, orderly approach to garden design, but one specifically tied to Italy’s antiquarian culture.

40 Frank, 2012, 254. 41 Varro III.v.8–17. On the Renaissance reception of Varro’s Aviary, see Louis Cellauro, “In Search of a Setting for Learning in Roman Antiquity: Renaissance Surveys of Varro’s Garden Musaeum at Casinum”, Renaissance Studies 29 (2015): 2, 204–26. On Pirro Ligorio, see David Coffin, Pirro Ligorio: The Renaissance Artist, Architect, and Antiquarian (University Park, PA: Penn State UP, 2004); Robert W. Gaston, ed., Pirro Ligorio: Artist and Antiquarian (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 1988).

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Figure 6.9: After Pirro Ligorio, Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae: Ornithon sive Aviarium, 1558. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Conclusion What distinguishes Toeput from other Flemish painters who purportedly introduced the Northern style of landscape painting to Italy was his engagement with contemporary villa garden and landscape design. In the three works we have analyzed, Toeput achieved the synthesis of Flemish and Italian landscape traditions by adopting a tripartite composition drawn not from the Flemish world landscape style but from the more classically inspired Italian villa garden. He followed the Italians’ classicizing axial layout and skillfully manipulated the notions of verdant architecture as both content and boundary within a tripartite chorography that favored two models – garden/country/city or garden/agricultural landscape/wilderness – to create quintessentially sixteenth-century Italian landscape perspectives. But in all

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cases, the verdant garden, standing closest to the viewer, represented the cynosure of civilization – the green lens, as it were, through which the rest of the world should be viewed.

About the author Natsumi Nonaka received her Ph.D. in Architectural History from the University of Texas at Austin. Her specialty is Renaissance and Baroque art history. She taught architectural history and landscape design history at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests include the classical tradition and the reception of antiquity; gardens, landscapes, and their pictorial representations; intersection between art and science; the global Renaissance and the cross-fertilization of artistic forms and ideas; and cognitive and perceptual aspects of architecture and designed landscapes. Her book, Renaissance Porticoes and Painted Pergolas, was published by Routledge in 2017; it deals with the intersection of architecture and garden, illusionistic representation of nature, and the culture of collecting and natural history. She is currently considering book-length projects on technology and engineering in papal Rome, and on the hybridity and experience of verdant architecture.

Part III The Sylvan Exchange

7. Titian: Sylvan Poet Leopoldine Prosperetti

Abstract “…that Titian loved wood-lands” is not commonly known. Yet his celebrated St. Peter Martyr altarpiece was hailed as the third perfection of the Renaissance, after Michelangelo’s perfection of human figures, and Raphael’s grace and beauty. Because of Titian’s gift for showing how a fresh vision of nature can be translated into visual poetry that enriches the pictorial subject, he was known as the Sylvan Poet. This essay explores Titian’s contribution to the Green Worlds of the Renaissance, through the analysis of sylvan imagery in his drawings, prints, and in some of his most beautiful paintings, including several of his Bacchanals, the Bacchus and Ariadne and, finally, his vision of a new day in the Noli me tangere. Keywords: Titian, Woodland imagery, sylvan poetics, Bacchanals, ecopoetics Sylvan scenery never palls. – Disraeli

A Corner of the Woods At first sight this drawing in the Metropolitan Museum of Art seems typical of an Old Master nature study (Fig.7.1).1 It begs admiration for its tonality, lyrical naturalism and the deft way in which trees and shrubs are compressed into a corner of the woods. During the seventeenth century – the age of grandiose landscapes filled with trees – visual poets such as Claude Lorrain (1600–82), Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), and the wistful Watteau (1684–1721) left sheet upon sheet filled with studies of woodland imagery which to this day cram the cabinets of museums around the world. Many of them owe much to the precocious study which now resides in New York.2 1 Harold E. Wethey, Titian and His Drawings: With Reference to Giorgione and Some Close Contemporaries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987) cat. no. 52. The author called it Titian’s best drawing in terms of woodlands. 2 Leopoldine Prosperetti, “The Long Shadows of Titian’s Trees”, in The Enduring Legacy of Venetian Renaissance Art, ed. Andaleeb Badiee Banta (London: Routledge, 2016), 139–56 (144–45), fig. 9.2. Goodchild, K.H., A. Oettinger and L. Prosperetti (eds.), Green Worlds in Early Modern Italy. Art and the Verdant Earth, Amsterdam University Press doi: 10.5117/9789462984950_ch07

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Figure 7.1: Titian, Group of Trees, c.1514. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Produced in c.1514, the drawing is in fact a pioneering effort by the Venetian painter Titian (c.1480–1576) to create woodland scenery that is true to nature and leaves behind the Medieval vision of trimmed trees in enclosed gardens.3 It is a prelude to the impressive stand of mixed trees in the altarpiece of Saint Peter Martyr (1529), one of his early masterpieces, which sadly perished in a fire in 1867 (Fig. 7.2).4 ‘That Titian loved woodlands’, wrote Josiah Gilbert, ‘is evident in his drawings’.5 That he was a true landscape painter, however, is more problematic. As Federico Zeri – dean of Italian art history – has pointed out, Titian never created a ‘real’ landscape, but he was admired for woodland imagery, often in the spirit of bucolic poetry, which was rich in sylvan themes.6 In his drawings, prints and vignettes of open air scenery he was the originator of such recurrent woodland motifs 3 For the new preference in the Renaissance for an environment of untrimmed shade trees and luxurious shrubbery in contradistinction to the overly trimmed and ornate gardens of the Middle Ages, see Jacopo Sannazaro, L’Arcadia di Messer Jacopo Sannazaro (Pisa: Sebastiano Nistri, 1820), 2. The transition from tree as an idea to tree as a towering object of shifting appearance in nature took place in Northern Italy and culminated in the art of Titian. 4 For the fate of this altarpiece, see Patricia Meilman, Titian and the Altarpiece in Renaissance Venice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) and Prosperetti, 2016. 5 Josiah Gilbert, Landscape in Art Before Claude and Salvator (London: John Murray, 1885), 341. https:// archive.org/details/landscapeinartb00gilbgoog. The phrase echoes the judgment of a long line of art critics, including Roger de Piles, a great spokesman on behalf of trees, who displayed preference for ‘Titian’s wooden prints, where the trees are well-shaped’. Roger De Piles, The Principles of Painting (London: Osborn, 1743), 144. 6 Federico Zeri, La percezione visiva dell’Italia e degli italiani (Turin: Einaudi, 1976 and 1989), 24.

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Figure 7.2: Martino Rota, after Titian, The Martyrdom of St. Peter Martyr, c.1560. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

as rampant shrubbery, charming ‘bouquets d’arbres’, and aged shade trees that were endlessly varied by the true landscape painters who followed him.7 Zeri lists painters like Dosso Dossi (c.1490–1542) and Girolamo Muziano (c.1532–92), Nicolas Poussin and Pier Francesco Mola (1612–62), to which many others could be 7 Lodovico Dolce in his famous Dialogo della pittura intitolato l’Aretino refers to the trees in the Peter Martyr Altarpiece as a ‘macchia di paese’, implying something on the order of a vignette rather than a ‘pure landscape’. Meilman, 193.

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added including Claude Lorrain and Peter Paul Rubens, and later painters across Europe: Turner (1775–1851) or Constable (1776–1837) in England, Joseph Anton Koch (1768–1839) in Germany, and perhaps the most lyrical of the great painters of trees, Camille Corot (1796–1875) in France.8 The latter was admired for the kind of dreamy landscape with Vergilian overtones that was first explored by Titian in his prints and drawings. All of these painters recognized in Titian the inventor of sylvan imagery and valued his sylvan inheritance, of which the drawing in New York forms a part. This chapter focuses on Titian’s lyrical approach to sylvan material and shows that for his advancement of the representation of woodland imagery he became known as a Sylvan Poet. It is a phrase that does not appear in the fortuna critica of the artist, but emerges in English writings on Titian’s sylvan vision that includes John Ruskin, Josiah Gilbert, Philip Gilbert Hamerton, Ernest Phythian, and, finally, Kenneth Clark and Richard Turner.9 Critical is the assessment of Francesco Algarotti (1712–64), who in a famous line identified Titian ‘as the confidant of nature and the Homer of landscape’.10 It reveals that the painter, on intimate terms with Nature and endowed with Homer-like authority, was nothing less than the inventor of a new visual poetic – a deeply felt naturalism, if you will – that gives the themes of nature their proper due. The chief argument is that Titian bequeathed to the history of art the tradition of woodland imagery rather than the idea of the pure landscape. It begins with Titian’s initiative to disseminate some of his sylvan inventions through the medium of prints. The next section focuses on Titian’s sylvan poetics and the lyrical naturalism that it engendered. This paves the way for an analysis in section three of another key drawing, a ‘bouquet d’arbres’, which codified one of the most popular motifs in the depiction of woodland imagery: a bosket or clump of trees (Fig. 7.3). 8 For a list of the great painters of trees, see “The Painting of Trees Illustrated by a Chronological Series of Pictures’ in Rex Vicat Cole, The Artistic Anatomy of Trees: Their Structure & Treatment in Painting (first published in 1915) (New York: Dover Publications, 1965), 29–46. It does not include any German painters. 9 Josiah Gilbert, Cadore: Titian’s Country (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1869), 304–306;. Philip Gilbert Hamerton, Landscape (London: Seely & Co. 1885), 324: ‘The paintings, and especially the pen-drawings of Titian, are full of evidence that he loved sylvan scenery.’; Ernst Phythian, Trees in Nature, Myth and Art (London: Methuen, 1907), 217ff: ‘It is to Titian we go, “for a forward movement” in the painting of landscape, and particularly of trees.’; Kenneth Clark, Landscape into Art (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), 120: ‘Next to the skies Titian loved trees.’; Richard Turner, The Vision of Landscape in Renaissance Italy (Princeton University Press, 1966), 109; Federico Zeri, La percezione visiva (Turin: Einaudi, 1976), 24. For the lack of attention to sylvan imagery in art history, see Leopoldine Prosperetti, “Trees: An Overlooked Topic in Renaissance Art”, in “Di la dal fiume e tra gli alberi.” Il paesaggio del Rinascimento á Venezia, eds. DeFuccia, Laura and Christophe Brouard (Ravenna: Giorgio Pozzi, 2012), 71–88. 10 Francesco Algarotti, Saggio del Conte Algarotti sull’architettura e sulla pittura (Milan: Classici Italiani, 1762), 87. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Research Library, The Getty Research Institiute: http://archive.org/details/saggiodelcontea00alga/page/86. For an English edition see An Essay on Painting written in Italian by Count Algarotti (London: L. Davis and C. Reymers, 1764), 72

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Figure 7.3: Titian, Group of Trees, c.1514. Location unknown.

Section four explores the semantics of silva, a richly allusive word, which denotes the state of formless matter before the act of poetical transformation. The final section is dedicated to Titian’s experiments with silva in the Bachanals which he created for the Duke of Ferrara. Titian’s gift for a natural lyricism here reached a sublime level. A short conclusion considers the meaning of the word ecopoesis and how it could be useful in framing future studies of the sylvan theme in Western Art.

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Woodblock Prints and Woodland Imagery To what extent the drawing is entirely by the hand of Titian is in dispute (Fig. 7.1). The sheet of paper is shopworn and there are traces of printer’s ink. An almost invisible line, a thin fold, bisects the little woods. These blemishes are evidence of its use in preparing a woodblock for a print of the Sacrifice of Abraham (1515), one of Titian’s grand scale prints which he designed early in his career (Fig. 7.4).11 The four blocks of this print were cut by Ugo da Carpi (c.1480–1520/32) whose name appears in the address of the print. Ugo was an excellent interpreter of Titian’s graphic code and so was Domenico Campagnola (1500–1564), a painter from Padua, who may have been responsible for the transfer of Titian’s design to the block before Carpi cut it.12 In the process of transmission to the woodblock Titian’s tightly unified woodland was dismembered; the densely massed trees ended up in a kind of parade behind Isaac’s pyre while the stump was relocated to a berm in the block below. This

Figure 7.4: Ugo da Carpi after Titian, The Sacrifice of Abraham, c.1514–15. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts

11 David Rosand and Michelangelo Muraro, Titian and the Venetian Woodcut (Washington, D. C. 1976), 58, fig. 1–8; Larry Silver, Grand Scale: Monumental Prints in the Age of Dürer and Titian (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008). 12 Rosand and Muraro, 1976, 55–69, cat. nos. 3A and 3B.

Plate 1: Fra Filippo Lippi, Adoration of the Child with Saints John the Baptist and Bernard (Camaldoli Altarpiece), after 1463. Tempera on panel. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

Plate 2: Sandro Botticelli, Madonna Adoring the Child with St. John the Baptist (Piacenza Tondo), c.1475–85. Tempera on panel. Musei civici di Palazzo Farnese, Piacenza.

Plate 3: Samples of (a) green earth, (b) verdigris, and (c) malachite pigments.

Plate 4: Lorenzo Lotto, St. Jerome in the Wilderness, c.1508–09. Oil on panel. Castel Sant’Angelo, Rome.

Plate 5: Lorenzo Lotto, The Virgin and Child with Saint Jerome, Peter, Francis, and an Unidentified Female Saint, c.1505. Oil on Canvas. Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh.

Plate 6: Lorenzo Lotto, Asolo Altarpiece, 1506. Oil on panel. Asolo Duomo.

Plate 7: Lorenzo Lotto, Christ and Scenes from the Golden Legend, 1523–1524. Fresco. Oratorio Suardi, Trescore Balneario.

Plate 8: Lorenzo Lotto, Nativity, 1523. Oil on panel. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 

Plate 9: Giorgione and Sebastiano Veneziano, The Three Philosophers, c.1506–08, Oil on canvas. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

Plate 10: David Teniers the Younger, Giorgione’s Three Philosophers, detail from Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his Gallery in Brussels, c.1651. Oil on canvas. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

Plate 11: Leonardo da Vinci, Sala delle Asse (northeast corner with BBPR’s design for room still in place), c.1498. Fresco. Castello Sforzesco, Milan.

Plate 12: Leonardo da Vinci, Sala delle Asse, c.1498. Fresco. Castello Sforzesco, Milan.

Plate 13: Leonardo da Vinci, Sala delle Asse (detail of golden cords), c.1498. Fresco. Castello Sforzesco, Milan.

Plate 14: Giulio Romano, View of the south wall of the Sala di Psiche, 1526–28. Fresco, stuccowork, gilded wood, oil paint. Palazzo del Tè, Mantua.

Plate 15: Camillo Mantovano, Verdure Barrel Vault, Stanza degli Amorini, 1534–37. Fresco. Villa Imperiale, Pesaro.

Plate 16: Camillo Mantovano, Pergola of Botanically-identifiable Vines and Plants, detail, ceiling, Room of the Caryatids, 1534–37. Fresco. Villa Imperiale, Pesaro.

Plate 17: Giovanni da Udine, Study of a Flying Sparrow, c.1515–20. Red chalk and gouache (partially-oxidized pigment). Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.

Plate 18: Lodewijk Toeput, Pleasure Garden with Maze, 1579–84. Oil on canvas. Royal Collection Trust, Hampton Court Palace, London.

Plate 19: Lodewijk Toeput, Miniatures 16 & 17, Les Voyages de Charles Magius, 1578. Gouache on vellum. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.

Plate 20: Lodewijk Toeput, Summer Landscape (detail), 1580s. Fresco. Villa Chiericati, Longa di Schiavon.

Plate 21: Giovanni Bellini and Titian, The Feast of the Gods, 1514–1529. Oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Plate 22: Titian, Bacchus and Ariadne, 1520–1523. Oil on canvas. London: The National Gallery of Art.

Plate 23: Titian, The Worship of Venus, 1518–19. Oil on canvas. Prado, Madrid.

Plate 24: Titian, Noli Me Tangere, 1511–12. Oil on canvas. The National Gallery of Art, London.

Plate 25: Aniene Falls, Villa Gregoriana, Tivoli. Photograph.

Plate 26: Girolamo Muziano, Rural Landscape, 1552–53. Detached fresco (from the Cesarini Castle, Rocca Sinibalda, Rieti). Art market, Rome.

Plate 27: Girolamo Muziano and Cornelis Loots, Landscape with Ruins, Room of Noah, 1563–65. Fresco. Villa d’Este, Tivoli.

Plate 28: John Baptist Jackson after Titian, The Death of St. Peter Martyr, 1739. Colour woodcut in Titiani Vecelii Pauli Caliarii Jacobi Robusti et Jacobi de Ponte Opera selectiora a Joanne Baptista Jackson, Anglo ligno coalata et coloribus adumbrata, Venice. Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Dresden.

Plate 29: Gaspard Dughet, Windy Day with Lone Traveller, c.1633–35(?). Oil on canvas. Fondazione Longhi, Florence.

Plate 30: Gaspard Dughet, The Good Samaritan, c.1635–37 (?). Oil on canvas. Musèe Fabre, Montpellier.

Plate 31: Herman van Swanevelt, Thunderstorm, 1649. Oil on canvas. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

Plate 32: Giorgione, Castelfranco Altarpiece (Madonna and Child between St. Francis and St. Nicasius), 1503–4. Tempera on wood. Duomo di Castelfranco Veneto, Castelfranco.

Plate 33: Giorgione, The Tempest, c.1505. Oil on canvas. Accademia, Venice.

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re-shuffling gave the scenery a disjointed look which has troubled art historians. Titian may have had it in mind to use the mural-sized print as an advertisement for his vision of various kinds of scenery at a time in which the idea of distinct categories of landscape was still in its infancy.13 What he offers, in fact, are three different examples of natural scenery distributed over three panels: a pastoral view, a wood-land, and a vista with a winding road. All three would become popular as varieties of landscape in the Renaissance and the Baroque. The pastoral landscape on the upper left shows the double peaks of Parnassus, a shepherd with his flock and a rocky height with a ruinous tower. Its principal landmark, a handsome clump of trees, echoes Dürer’s woodcut of The Visitation in the Life of the Virgin series.14 Note, however, how Titian transformed the stiff arrangement of his Dürerian model into a sprightly grouping, which suddenly appears more naturalistic than anything seen since antiquity. The second setting, a rampant woodland, appears in the scene of the Sacrifice. Once more its parentage is found in trees by Dürer, this time the ones he formulated for his Adam and Eve (1504).15 Titian uses Dürer’s idea of a dense grove, but, as the drawing held in New York shows, he presents the trees as a neglected copse, a silva caedua or coppice, which was a common feature of the woodlands of Old Europe and a beloved motif in woodland imagery.16 The ability to give such groups a lively air would become a hallmark of the painter of woodlands and Titian’s bosco is a precocious example of this skill.17 The sharply delineated stump, so prominent in the drawing, is now relocated to a spot in the block on the bottom right. It serves as an imposing landmark at the curve of the road and perhaps plays part in the theme of woodcutting that yielded the firewood for Isaac’s make-shift altar. More generally the road denotes the theme of the journey of life and the imperative in Christian life to find peace of mind in the countryside. This quest for solitude found its cultural expression in the widespread cult of Saint Jerome whose sojourn in the wilderness was the stimulus for imaginative representations of the places where ‘the athletes of God’ wage their spiritual struggles.18 Initially these places would be rocky wastes of the biblical desert, but as a rich, visual culture began to unfold further north in Europe the scenery became more sylvan in keeping with the realities of forested regions. Titian contributed to this shift of vision through the careful distribution of sylvan material in his colossal print: a neglected corner 13 For the role of Titian in the development of the modern landscape, see Mauro Lucco, Tiziano e la nascità del paesaggio moderno (Firenze: Giunti, 2012), passim. 14 Albrecht Dürer, The Visitation, from the Life of the Virgin, woodcut, 1503–4; http://metmuseum.org/art/ collection/search/347405 (August 2, 2017). 15 Albrecht Dürer, Adam and Eve, engraving, 1504; http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/19.73.1/ (August 2, 2017). 16 Prosperetti, 2016, 145. 17 For the copse as an element of picturesque beauty, see William Gilpin, Remarks on Forest Scenery, and Other Woodland Views (Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty) in Three Books (London, Blamire, 1791), 199–204. 18 See April Oettinger’s essay on the landscapes of St. Jerome in this volume.

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of the woods, a clump of trees, and the strategic positioning of the stumps of felled trees. It is clear that some of that sylvan material was first explored in the drawing now in New York.

Sylvan Poetics These experiments with sylvan elements eventually led to a codification of themes and topics that constitute a repertory of sylvan imagery. In Abraham’s Sacrifice Titian showed his mastery in the distribution of these arboreal motifs throughout the intelligible worlds of his woodlands. In the Peter Martyr altarpiece he once again demands close scrutiny of the stump of a felled tree (Fig. 7.4). Slithering roots bring the stump into view. Rumpled bark denotes a certain age, different in its appearance from the smooth columns of the living trees nearby. Brambles with their thorny branches and dainty leaves threaten to smother the stump. It is not clear how the tree was toppled, but note that it is still joined to a fellow tree which originated in the same planting hole. Its growth is uninterrupted, its stem spindly and slightly curved as it brings its top to the light. In Titian’s mixed grove this tree represents one of the ‘tremoli’, the trembling kind of tree, like a poplar or an aspen.19 The leaves of these tremblers dangle from dainty leaf-stalks (petioles) and fill the air with a rattling sound.20 Very much alive, it forms a poignant counterpoint to the untimely death of its mate. Such arboreal groups, rhetorically rich in the countervailing imagery of growth and decay, would become narrative elements and set pieces in the landscapes of Europe and continued to be featured in the landscape vision of the painters of the Hudson River School in America. First formulated in full vigor in the Peter Martyr altarpiece, these details are the embodiment of Titian’s lyrical naturalism, which is the ability, shared with poets, to turn the objects of nature into living expressions of moods, suffering and spiritual aspirations. Strategically located at the pictorial threshold, these sylvan still-lifes are like memento mori’s that serve as hinges between the place of the viewer and the world of the picture. The two stumps under discussion – bare of any growth in the drawing in New York and overgrown in the altarpiece – show that the painter paid 19 For a list of such ‘tremoli’ see F. Asquino, ‘[…] de’ terreni umidi e bassi, a fare le generose piantaggioni de’ pioppi, de’ salici, degli alni, de’ tremoli’” (poplars, willows, alders and the tremblers) cited in Bruno Vecchio, Il Bosco negli Scrittori Italiani del Settecento (Turin: Einaudi, 1974), 48. 20 The ‘tremolo’ alludes to the mythical origins of the trees, who once were the Heliads, before they were turned into quaking aspen as they mourned the death of their brother Phaeton; see Ovid Met. II, 344–46; also Vergil, Ecl. VI, 61–63. Sylvan material is often arranged to create arboreal conversations, between stern shade trees like aged oaks and the graceful amnicolae, the water-seeking trees on the banks of rivers. Faced with the loss of the original painting art historians depend on Martino Rota’s engraving and the method he used to differentiate between various types of foliage, fronds here, composite leaves closer to the light, etc. For the light-filled top of a trembler he chose little discs, like coins with only loose connections to their branches. The learned viewer in the Renaissance might interpret it as a reference in Vergil’s Aeneid, to foil rustling in the breeze (Aen. VI, 309).

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attention to such details and was fully aware that they play a crucial role in the visual exegesis of woodland imagery.21 Some believe that Titian, as the son and brother of timbermen, came to sylvan settings naturally. The English writer Josiah Gilbert was convinced that Pieve di Cadore, the place in the Dolomite Mountains where Titian was born, was the cradle of his landscapes.22 But the greater impulse for a lyrical approach to the presentation of nature may have arisen from the need, culturally, to imagine the woodlands of bucolic poetry, an age-old literary genre which in the early Italian Renaissance enjoyed a seismic revival. The touchstone for this kind of poetry was Vergil’s Book of Eclogues, ten poems brimming with natural beauty and pastoral sentiment and with its parade of 22 trees, the great arboretum of Western poetry. Here an old and carefree shepherd sits in the shade of a spreading beech (Ecl. I, 1) and young musicians invite each other to a grassy spot where ‘hazels mix with elms’ (Ecl. V, 1–2). 23 These ‘places of delight’ in Vergil’s poetry inspired ambitious painters like Giorgione and the young Titian to create similar places of amenity (loci amoeni) that would match or even exceed the imagination of the poets.24 The word in Latin for woodland imagery is silvae, a term that occurred twenty-two times in Vergil’s Eclogues (always in the plural) and for which modern poets found poetic equivalents in the rapidly developing vernaculars of the Renaissance: boscarecci, bosquet, bosken, underwood, coppice, Unterholz, Dickicht, kreupelhout, are just a few of them. Of all the various books filled with newly-minted eclogues in the vernaculars of Early Modern Europe none was more successful than Jacopo Sannazaro’s Arcadia, officially published in 1504 but already in circulation by c.1498. The book is prosimetric. It alternates sections of prose with poems, which are identified as Ecloga. The first piece of prose summons forth the place where the work unfolds. It envisions a pastoral Arcadia, located on mount Partenio, which is ennobled by the presence of a dozen or more trees: Ove, se io non mi inganno, son forse dodici o quindici alberi, di tanto strana et eccessiva bellezza, che chiunque li vedesse, giudicarebbe che la maestra natura 21 As long as nature was viewed as a book of divine knowledge second only to Scripture it made sense that its contents were designed to convey eloquent messages of divine origin. For this commonly held view of nature, see Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), 316–326. For the theoretical implications of this view for the development of landscape, see Denis Ribouillault and Michel Weemans, “Introduction. Paysage sacré, livre de la nature et exégèse: pour une reception du paysage dans l’Europe de la première modernité,” in Le Paysage sacré: Le paysage comme exégèse dans l’Europe de la première modernité, eds. Denis Ribouillault and Michel Weemans (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2011), IX-XXX. 22 Zeri, 1976, 24 is skeptical about the notion (Romantic in origin) that the mountains of Pieve di Cadore nursed Titian’s lyrical naturalism. 23 For an introduction to Vergil’s trees in the Eclogues, see John Sargeaunt, The Trees, Shrubs and Plants of Vergil (Oxford: Blackwell, 1920). The Eclogues are enjoying a revival in contemporary poetry. Two Nobel-prize winners of literature, Seamus Heaney and Bob Dylan, follow the example of Vergil’s eclogues in their work. 24 Robert Cafritz, Robert, Lawrence Gowing, and David Rosand, Places of Delight: The Pastoral Landscape (Washington, D.C: Phillips Collection in association with the National Gallery of Art, 1988), passim.

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vi si fusse con sommo diletto studiata in formarli. Li quali alquanto distanti, et in ordine non artificioso disposti, con la loro rarità la natural bellezza del luogo oltra misura annobiliscono

Here, if I am not mistaken, are perhaps twelve or fifteen trees, of such extravagant and excessive beauty, that whoever beheld them, would have concluded that Mistress Nature applied herself with utmost diligence shaping them. Located at some distance from each other, and arranged in an order not artfully contrived, these trees in their rare beauty ennoble the natural beauty of the place beyond measure.25 It is clear that without these trees, each different from the other, the place would not be an Arcadia and the songs of shepherds would not be heard. Sannazaro’s vision articulated a new imperative. If painters wished to compete with the pastoral poets, they better become skilled in the imaginative representation of woodlands. It seems therefore not an accident that the sylvan theme in paintings emerged at just about that time and nowhere with greater authority than in the art of Titian. Returning to the drawing held in New York (Fig. 7.1). There is a sense of a slope. Parallel lines fanning out to the left and the right create bulges where earth heaves and trees emerge. The viewpoint of a presumed visitor is slightly from below (sottoin-su). Three trees dominate the scene. Right in front a tree rises from a sandy hillock, long continuous lines bring it beyond the frame of the picture. Curvilinear hatches render the roundedness of the trunk and indicate the girdle marks that plot a tree’s growth; the tree is not healthy; the bark has split in several places beginning at its foot and further up the bole.26 Most conspicuous is the stump mentioned earlier. It is drawn with the kind of clear vision that is reserved for a still-life; a gyrating twist lifts the bole out of the ground; a pronounced knot/gnarl marks the place where a later branch was lost; an axe dealt it a final blow. A gleaming stump is all that is left of its former glory. Once felled light poured into the grove and the remaining trees find themselves in fierce competition with riotous new shrubbery and dancing striplings in the race for the rays of the sun.27

25 Sannazaro, 1820, 15. 26 Roundedness is an important issue in the visual representation of a tree and cannot be achieved without an understanding of chiaroscuro. Bole is a botanical term for the section of trunk between the ground and the place where it branches out. In Italian the word ceppa refers to the part of the trunk that is below ground, whereas ceppo refers to the section of the trunk that is above ground until the point of branching out. These words in English and Italian were used by poets, woodsmen, and husbandmen of all types, but fell out of use in common speech in the later stages of the Industrial Revolution. 27 It is a topos in silviculture that with the felling of mature trees, a rampant underwood resurges in the race for light. The locus classicus for the poetical image for the growth of trees is found in Lucretius, 1910, V, 783–5: ‘[T]he diverse trees were started with loose rein on their great race of growing through the air.’ For the importance of Lucretius, see Stephen Campbell, “Giorgione’s Tempest, Studiolo Culture and Renaissance Lucretius”, Renaissance Quarterly 56 (2003): 299–332.

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‘[U]ne belle étude d’arbres’ One of Titian’s most enchanting tree studies offers a close-up view of a clump of trees growing from common stock (Fig. 7.3).28 Stems, limbs and trunks get into each other’s way as they seek the light. The sagging, twisted and split middle branch underscores the kind of struggle that marks a tree’s survival. Adventitious sprigs of foliage sprout just high enough that goats cannot get to them. A crown of semi-transparent leaves fills the upper quadrant of the sky. Titian used pen and ink to create the heroic form and vary the texture of a mature stand of trees. Parallel hatches suggest the horizontal ridges that are typical of the smooth bark of a beech tree, or, more generally, a tree that has not yet reached the stage of the fissured rind (carapace) of ageing bark.29 There is a marvelous sense of light and dark, and chiaroscuro that casts the parts of the tree that are close to the earth in shadow and bathes its top in the light of the sun. In the mid-eighteenth century the great P.J. Mariette admiringly described the drawing as ‘une belle étude d’arbres.’30 It was last sigthed in Paris before the second World War. Titian’s emphasis in his rendering of long pen strokes, curvilinear marks and a velvety chiaroscuro reveals the graphic code he had developed to facilitate replication in print. And, indeed, the group reappears in an ambitious print of St. Jerome in the Wilderness (c.1525–30) (Fig. 7.5). The saint is minute as he denies himself the shade of trees and suffers in front of a sun-baked cliff. Vegetation is abundant, nourished by the waters of a limpid stream. The true hero of the picture seems to be the Parisian clump of trees surrounded by three lions. The hoariness of the trees is accentuated in the woodcut and the stump of a blasted tree is added to the scenery. Such groups are called a clump in English, in French it is a ‘bouquet d’arbres’, and the Italians call it a cesto d’alberi. According to William Gilpin (1794), an English clergyman who wrote lovingly of sylvan matter, a clump is the simplest of the various combinations of trees one expects to find in a landscape and an object of great charm in a landscape, painted or otherwise.31 28 Leopoldine Prosperetti, “Un albero di guazzo”: Pieter Bruegel, Giulio Clovio and Arboreal Disegno,” in Culture figurative a confronto tra Fiandre e Italia dal XV al XVII secolo, eds. Anna De Floriani and Maria Clelia Galassi (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2008), 147–58 (146), fig. 9.3, n. 34. 29 For the preference in the Venetian tradition for ‘charming grey stems’, see Gilbert, 1885, 10. 30 ‘Voyez la belle étude d’arbres faite par le Titien pour cet admirable paysage, que j’aie vue la vente de Crozat: Je ne crois pas qu’on puisse rien faire de plus parfait.’ (See the beautiful study of trees by Titian made for this admirable landscape, which I saw at the sale of Crozat. I don’t believe that something more perfect could ever be made.), J. P. Mariette, Abecédario de P.J. Mariette et autres notes inédites de cet amateur sur les arts et les artistes: ouvrage publieé d’après les manuscrits autographes, conservés au cabinet des estampes de la Bibliothèque impérial/ et annotée par Ph. De Chennevières et A. de Montaiglon (Paris; J. B. Moulin, 1851–1869) 5: 337. 31 Gilpin, Remarks on Forest Scenery and Other Woodland Views, (Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty by the Scenes of New-Forest in Hampshire) (London: R. Blamire, 1794), 179–189. It would fall largely to British lovers of Italian landscape to rediscover Titian’s sensibility towards trees and shrubs. This reception in Victorian England of Titian’s lyrical naturalism may be due in part to the poetry of the great Romantics, Wordsworth, Byron and Coleridge as well as the cultural phenomenon of a heightened sense of nature as a response to the Industrial Revolution. Of particular significance is the enormous impact of John Ruskin’s writings on nature and art. Ruskin’s thought and literary naturalism is echoed in the writings of Gilbert, Hamerton and even Kenneth Clark. It was rejected wholeheartedly in the art criticism of Roger Fry.

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Figure 7.5: Attributed to Nicolo Boldrini or Giovanni Britto, after Titian, St. Jerome in the Wilderness, c.1525–30. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Silva As discussed earlier, copses, shrubs and clumps of trees are forms of woodlands or silva, a word used by Vergil in his bucolic poetry.32 In the pastoral art of Vergil and his followers silva is both the place where poetry is born and the substance of poetry: it is both scenery and a literary genre. The unruly vegetation created by nature resembles the disordered miscellanies of the poets. The double meaning of silva relates to the concept in natural philosophy that all forms are wrought from inchoate matter. Beauty is achieved when the great artificer shapes chaos (the great heap of things) into cosmos (an ordered unit).33 The poet follows a similar path as he trains him or herself to give beautiful form to the shapeless matter of run-away emotions, hapless words and false ideas. Angelo Poliziano, professor and poet in Renaissance Florence, 32 For example, incipient silvae in the cosmogonic song in Eclogue VI (39) marks the moment when for the first time in the life of the earth the woods begin to rise. In Eclogue III (55) it is the image of ever returning spring, Nunc frondent silvae, that time of the year when the woods turn green. Silvae in pastoral poetry is the basic material for constructing what the Germans so aptly call the ‘Dichterort’: it is both the place where poetry is born and the substance of poetry. 33 For an introduction to the system of cosmopoesis in European poetry, see E. M. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture (New York: Vintage Books, 1960).

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believed that the Latin word silva derived from ΰλή (hule), the Greek word for raw matter.34 This derivation, which is probably false, led nonetheless to the custom to spell silva as sylva, most famously in John Evelyn’s late Renaissance Sylva.35 Poems that have been left unsorted are often considered a silva, a miscellany that exists in an intermediate state of creation but are not the books of a great coherent poem such as the Aeneid or the Metamorphoses, the Divine Comedy, or for that matter Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. Selve, silvae, boscareccio, bosken, or even underwood, served as titles for poems collected in anthologies.36 Silva in the guise of woodlands are the domain of the poet. Petrarch, whose vernacular poetry continues to be read and imitated to this day, called himself silvanus, a man who found in the confusion of natural imagery the material for his poetry.37 It is the task of the painter to compete with the poet in giving shape to the silva of the natural world, indeed, to weave out of disparate vegetal material a beautiful green mantle.38 As the poet grapples with words, the painter struggles with the materiality of paint, the materia indigesta of pigments, to recreate a new nature that is fit to be viewed as a place of delight where poetry is born. Titian understood this indeterminacy between the unsorted images of poetry and the vision of a woodland. It is evident in the drawings in New York and Paris. It became even more manifest in the Bacchanals he painted for the Duke of Est in Ferrara.

Bacchanals Titian’s Bacchanals are now dispersed in London, Washington, and Madrid. But their original location was in the Camerino d’alabastro in the Castle in Ferrara.39 Here in a room, bright with white marble, sylvan matter is unfurled like a green ribbon across 34 For Poliziano’s use of the term ‘inordinatam […] silvam’ in the preface of his Centuria Prima Miscellaneorum, see Eric McPhail, Dancing Around the Well: The Circulation of Commonplaces in Renaissance Humanism (Leiden: Brill, 2014), n.9. Poliziano also used the term as a title for his lectures on the history of poetry. For the bilingual edition of the Silvae in the I Tatti Renaissance Library, see Angelo Poliziano, Silvae, trans. and ed. by C. Fantazzi (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), vii-xii. 35 Evelyn, John, Sylva, or Discourse of Forest Trees and the Propagation of Timber in his Majesties Dominion (London, Printed for Jo. Martyn and Ja. Allestry […],1664). 36 Ben Jonson in seventeenth century England went so far as to organize his miscellany of poetry into books entitled Forrest, Timber, Underwood (1640). Francis Bacon’s in his Sylva sylvarum (1626) nudged the genre into a scientific direction. Botanists in the age of science took pleasure to entitle their works as Flora’s and Sylva’s, i.e. François-André Michaux’a North American Sylva (Paris: D’Hautel, 1819). 37 Francesco Petrarca, De Vita Solitaria. Buch I. Kritische Textausgabe und ideengeschichtlicher Kommentar, with trans. and comments by K. A. E. Enenkel (Leiden: Brill, 1990), i-xlvi. 38 The idea of Earth being dressed in a green garment or a multicolored coat is an enduring commonplace in the literature of cosmopoesis. It is captured succinctly in John Garland’s vestum pingit humus. renovat sua tegmina dumus (When the earth paints its cloak, the thornbush renews its covering). 39 Vincenzo Farinella, Alfonso I D’Este: Le Immagini e Il Potere de Ercole de’Roberti a Michelangelo (Verona: Grafiche Aurora, 2014), 323 and 487–643.

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Figure 7.6: Giovanni Bellini, Feast of the Gods, 1514. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art.

some of the most famous paintings of the Italian Renaissance.40 The first of the five paintings is The Feast of the Gods, painted by Bellini, installed in 1514 and altered twice, first by Dosso Dossi in c.1520, and then by Titian in c.1529 (Plate 21).41 Bellini envisioned his Olympians in front of a screen of dainty trees, laurels perhaps or myrtles, poetical trees that were popular in court environments where skilled gardeners trained the dainty grey-green stems shoulder-high to create arboreal enclosures. Often in Renaissance painting, such a parade of identical trees served as a pale backdrop for the bright colors of the figures as is the case in Botticelli’s curtain of myrtles in the Primavera. The enclosing wood in Bellini’s Feast may have appeared old-fashioned in the early sixteenth century and Dosso was given permission to overpaint the row of trees with the prospect of a more distant hill with buildings. In 1529 it was Titian’s turn to further alter the landscape scenery in the Feast. The year 1529 was a moment of great achievement for Titian. It was the year in which he delivered the Peter Martyr altarpiece to the Dominicans of the church of San Giovanni e Paolo 40 For comments by Roberto Longhi and Eugenio Battista see Farinella, 487. 41 David Brown, Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, Jaynie Anderson, and Barbara H. Berrie, Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and the Renaissance of Venetian Painting (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 2006), cat. nos. 32–34.

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in Venice. For its towering trees – a daring break in the tradition of painted altarpieces – it was called Il Grandissimo Bosco. ‘Here’, the art critic Lomazzo (1538–1600) would write, ‘for the first time it seems that the figures are in an absolutely just relationship to the trees that tower above them’.42 Given this critical success, it would no doubt please the Duke of Ferrara to have this talented painter of trees repaint the botched tree imagery in his highly prized Bacchanal. There is little doubt that Titian was responsible for the lovely glade ascending the sloping rock. In a lively way he allows for lush undergrowth and shrubbery on the lower strata of the slope to approach a stand of mature trees higher up. To offset the shades of green, the painter inserted a slender solitary tree. It seems almost a signature which he drew with a brush dripping rivulets of white paint. Equally Titianesque is the motif of sudden disclosure, the moment when there is a break in the clouds and supernatural light spills from heaven reverberating through nebulous vapors and bouncing off the turned-up leaves of the trees. This effect of sudden illumination is often praised as a supreme example of Venetian colore – the art of letting paint do all the work. At the time of Titian’s intervention, Bellini’s masterpiece was joined on the adjacent wall by Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne (1520–23, Plate 22), and was flanked on a shared wall by two of Titian’s Bacchanals, the Worship of Venus (1518–19, Plate 23) on the right and The Andrians (1523–26) on the left. The scenery in the Bacchanals is superbly sylvan beginning with the Feast of Venus which the painter locates in the Garden of Hesperides. More than a garden, the scenery is composed of rolling pasture and a grove of high-topped trees. His imaginative naturalism in full tilt, the Venetian invents multi-story trees that are much more than apple-trees in an orchard. What is on view here are the immense trees which are the hallmark of Arcadia, where trees raised their tops in multiple stories. The habit of arranging tops in two or three tiers is a trait associated with the Linden (lime-tree), the feminized counter-image to the hardy oak tree. Mistress of the meadow copse and omnipresent on city bulwarks, this tree looks her best in early summer when small heart-shaped leaves paint her an emerald green and flowers emit an intoxicating scent. Titian’s trees are a poetic blend of apple tree and linden, trees of fruit and shade, offering all that Arcadian life requires: food free from toil and free shade. In the London Bacchanal the grove is composed of three distinct types of trees, from left to right, a pair of mast-trees (some variation of a nut-bearing tree like the Vergilian aesculus), the tapered form of some kind of lime-tree in summer green, and the towering top of a small-leaved shade tree, like an elm or a beech. For the mature green of the aesculus, Titian used malachite, a mineral pigment. Its dark tone contrasts with the leek-green of the verdigris in the second tree. The autumnal tints of the shade-tree are probably earth-green (terra verde) tempered with ochre and 42 Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, Scritti sulle arti, ed. by Roberto Ciardi (First published in 1584) (Florence: Centro Di, 1973), 446–47.

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Figure 7.7: Titian, Bacchus and Ariadne, 1520–23. London, The National Gallery of Art.

Figure 7.8: The Worship of Venus, 1518–19. Madrid: Museo del Prado

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umber.43 Titian aimed at the greatest possible luster for the colors in this picture, making it a showcase of what he could achieve with the high-quality pigments that were the pride of Venice. On display in London, is the effect identified by Lomazzo as the art of ‘abbagliar le fronde’, (the dazzling of the foliage) and it is reasonable to assume that a similar effect of superb greens formed part of the sylvan scenery of the Peter Martyr.44 Dionysus tends to the vines, is the god of wine, but he is also identified as the god of vegetation, who in the vision of Hesiod, ‘leaps over the flanks of Parnassus’.45 With great bravura Titian shows both the Parnassian leap and the mysteries of the mixed grove. The latter topic is standard in poetry beginning with Homer’s description of Calypso’s cave and surviving in the obligatory descriptions of pleasant places in literature but such compositions of choice trees are the contrivances of poets and the vision of painters. They are rarely found in the vast realms of nature.

Ecopoesis Titian in his Bacchanals made a statement on the visual poetry of woodlands that is deeply appealing in an age of high ecological alert. His vision of a green earth is a breakthrough in the history of the representation of trees and plants in European art. From now on, as John Ruskin noted, Titian’s trees will loom large whenever the painters of Europe turn trees into the subjects of their art. Titian’s act of ecopoesis, the art of turning a patch of the earth into a dwelling place, was crucial to his mythopoetic imagination. It also illuminated his devotional pictures. This is certainly the case in his picture of Mary Magdalen in London (Plate 24).46 Without a local tradition for the topic and working for a private collector or, perhaps, purely for himself, Titian is free to invent from scratch and create his own vision of the encounter between Christ and the female penitent.47 Rejecting the garden as the customary setting for the story, he imagines an idyllic landscape coming into vision at dawn, as if it were indeed a new earth on a new day. Over the pale brown crust of this new earth, he spreads the various forms of growth, in the distance the pale green sheen 43 For Titian’s ‘top of the line pigments’, see David Bull and Joyce Plesters, “‘The Feast of the Gods’: Conservation, Examination, and Interpretation”, Studies in the History of Art 40 (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1990) and Arthur Steinberg and Jonathan Wylie, “Counterfeiting Nature: Artistic Innovation and Cultural Change in Renaissance Venice”, Comparative Studies in Society and History 32:1 (1990): 54–88. Jill Dunkerton comments on the extraordinary quality of the trees, their brightness restored from beneath coats of amber varnish. Meilman, Titian and the Altarpiece, 126 cites J. M. W. Turner’s comments on the Peter Martyr colors made in 1811 including the opposition ‘between the veiled green of the large trees and the lighter green of the foreground foliage’. 44 Lomazzo, 446. 45 Marcel Detienne, Dionysos at Large, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1989), 2. 46 Lucco, 2012, cat. no. 20. 47 Was he inspired by Aretino’s poem on the Magdalen?

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Figure 7.9: Titian, Noli Me Tangere, 1518–19. London, The National Gallery of Art.

of pastureland, closer to us a patch of meadow, shrubbery and a solitary tree of great nobility. Christ himself treads on a clump of emerald grasses and a dramatic close-up of humble plants. These leafy plants are called simples, the raw material which the dotaries (the forerunners of apothecaries) turned into healing compounds. There are connotations here. The grasses are the first greenery that covered the earth on the third day of the Creation (and Titian would have been aware of the order of the creation of greenery in that chapter in the Book of Genesis). The keyword in the biblical passage, ‘Let the earth bring forth the green herb’, (Gen. I, 11) is the Greek word for grass which is phorbe. It denotes pasturage for livestock. The implication is that all creatures will survive because a Wise Creator is providential and enriches the earth with feed for its grazing animals. Herbs, on the other hand, denote pharmakon, the Greek word for the healing power of plants, and Christ, of course, is often called medicus, the healer of mortal sin in the world.48 The plants include violets, depicted with the exactitude of a naturalist, but the grasses are rendered with greater freedom,

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the blades and stalks wafting in an almost imperceptible breeze. Behind the Magdalen in her sumptuous dress spread the rampant forms of luxuriant shrubbery. Luxuria – a Latin word used for exuberant, even rank growth, and often associated with female sexuality – is transformed into an attribute of the woman whose luxuriant, sensual ways were transformed into divine love. The passion of the Holy Wood has brought a new day, which Titian imagined as the dawn of a spring morning when the earth dons her green mantle. Within the devotional context of the picture, the green vegetation brings to mind the amoena virecta, a term coined by Vergil in his description of the Elysian Fields in his epic poem, the Aeneid.49 It is a visionary image of future bliss which Christian poets adopted for their liturgical hymns to make vivid presentations of the pleasant groves of a New Eden where the Blessed take their seats. A solitary tree towers over Christ, linking the space of the Magdalen with that of the Savior. Firmly rooted in the ground the hoary trunk sways to the left before straightening out into a perpendicular stem that holds a darkly shadowed crown of leafy branches. Just below the crown on the right the pathetic remnant of a broken branch is delineated against a part of the sky where cerulean blue changes to a pearly rose. The original viewer of this devotional image would be attuned to the relationship between Christ and the Holy Cross, which was fashioned from a tree that once stood in Eden. Titian’s tree, its trunk rough with the snags of lobbed branches and tufts of adventitious growth, prefigures the wooden cross as the instrument of his Passion. Its theme is spiritual struggle and its hard-won rewards. The latter is manifest in the careful orchestration of light which turns the outer leaves of the foliate branches into an aureate green. Mixing his green pigments with dabs of white the artist recreates in his art the effects of illumination upon the waxy surfaces of leaves and brings to life the elusive gains of the spiritual life. Titian laid darker green pigments over a transparent layer of verdigris. This resulted in loss of color for the undercoat and darkening of the surface. This loss of color in the foliage of a tree is a common occurrence in the art of the Old Masters. As is so often the case it is necessary to imagine a much brighter green for the foliage of the tree in the original state of the picture. The green used for the grasses survived much better, and gives the sense of the overall magical qualities of verdancy in this charming work. Titian would have aimed at the effect of nitor, a quality associated with the bright hues of freshly created plants that give a new world its sparkle.50 Nitor is in fact a challenge to artists, an invitation to use brush and pigment to emulate nature’s viridescence. The 48 The Magdalen is conceivably a dotary, using plants to make the balm that anointed Christ’s feet when he was still alive and his dead body when was laid into the tomb. 49 Vergil, Aeneid, VI, 640. For the adoption of the phrase in the writing of early Christian poets such as Iuvencus, Sedulius, Arator, and Prudentius, see Michael John Roberts, Poetry and the Cult of the Martyrs: the Liber Peristephanon of Prudentius (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993). 50 Nitor is an important quality in Lucretius, a Latin Poet, whose On the Nature of Things had a great impact on the literary and artistic circles of late fifteenth century Venice and contributed greatly to the lyrical naturalism that is here under discussion. See Campbell, Giorgione’s Tempest.

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picture is a perfect example of how biblical and classical prototypes of a new earth (as envisioned by Vergil, the Evangelists and the patristic writers) and Titian’s own knowledge of the green worlds of the Veneto helped him to envision a perfect setting for the experience of the spiritual life which leads the soul from the darkness of the night to the splendor of a new dawn.

Conclusion Woodlands with their pastures and woodlots appeal to us. As Oliver Rackham has shown in his environmental archaeology, a landscape of islands of woods in rolling pasture was the first environment of an emerging mankind.51 Unlike the forbidding forests, they set the stage for reveries of the earth and the composition of ‘songs of the earth’. Jonathan Bate, in The Song of the Earth, argues that the poetry of old woodlands still matters and that ecopoesis is a literary practice that might restore modern man to the earth. Before the year 2000 ecopoesis was not a common word, but Bate’s Earth Song has sanctioned the term as pertinent to environmental studies, taking its place alongside ecocriticism and ecopoetry. These developments have created new frameworks for thinking about the representation of natural scenery in poetry and art, relying less on formal and cultural analysis, or even an artist’s style, and more on the way in which a woodland and its elements come to life in a poem or a painting. This is the way of Vergil in the Eclogues. It is also the way of Titian, who among the stones of Venice, created a catalogue of sylvan elements that would guide the presentation of woodlands that have the capacity of turning earth into a place of enchantment.

About the author Leopoldine Prosperetti, Instructional Professor at the McGovern College of Art at the University of Houston, was born in Padang, Indonesia and received her primary and secondary education in the Netherlands. She obtained a B.A in Art History from the University of Utrecht, after which she lived in Italy for two years. She worked at the Walters Art Museum (then the Walters Art Gallery) as head registrar from 1972–1995. She obtained her PhD in Art History at Johns Hopkins University in 2003. Prosperetti has published the book Landscape and Philosophy in the Art of Jan Brueghel the Elder (2009), as well as a number of scholarly articles, including, most recently, “The Long Shadows of Titian’s Trees” (in The Enduring Legacy of Venetian Renaissance Art, 2016). Currently, she is working on a book entitled Sylvan Moments: Woodland Imagery in Western Art. 51 Oliver Rackham, Woodlands (London: Collins, 2012), 21–28.

8. From Venice to Tivoli: Girolamo Muziano and the ‘Invention’ of the Tiburtine Landscape Patrizia Tosini

Abstract Girolamo Muziano, one of the key figures for the development of the landscape genre in the 16th century, was celebrated in his own time for his sensitivity and special skill in painting and drawing the green world. This essay explores the influence of Venetian Cinquecento draughtsmanship on Muziano’s landscape drawings, and follows the development of his particular manner of perceiving and drawing nature, from his early arrival to Rome, around 1550, until his stay in Tivoli in 1562–65, when he executed the frescoes at the Villa d’Este. Lured by the picturesque quality of the Tiburtine landscape, rich in ruins and spectacular natural settings, Muziano created an ever more complex, dramatic, and animated vision of the green world that would serve as a model for future generations of painters. Keywords: Girolamo Muziano, Landscape, Tivoli, Drawing, Waterfalls, Ruins

In his 1959 pioneering study on Italian Cinquecento landscape painting, Richard Turner highlighted the importance of Girolamo Muziano (1532–92) for the development of the genre during the sixteenth century and the transmission to Rome of the figurative culture elaborated in Venice at that time.1 After him a few other scholars added further crucial reflections on Muziano as a landscape painter and

1 This chapter, part of an ongoing study on Girolamo Muziano’s landscape drawings, was presented as a paper at the RSA annual conference, Boston, 31 March-2 April 2016, in the panel Drawing the Italian Landscape in the Cinquecento (organizers: Christophe Brouard, Furio Rinaldi, Patrizia Tosini). I wish to express my deep gratitude to the editors of this book, Karen Hope Goodchild, April Oettinger, and Leopoldine Prosperetti, for inviting me to publish this paper. Special thanks to Barbara Wisch, Steven F. Ostrow, and Leopoldine Prosperetti for the revision and the editing of the text, to Giorgio Marini for the precious assistance at the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, and to Huub van der Linden for the translation from Dutch. When I presented this paper, unfortunately I could not consider the ongoing Ph. D. thesis by Tobias Nickel, Die Landschaftszeichnungen des Domenico Campagnola (1500–1564), which was completed at Universität Wien only in September 2017. See A. Richard Turner, Studies in Sixteenth Century Italian Landscape Paintings (Princeton, NJ: Ph. D. Diss., Princeton University, 1959), 116–118; 123–135. Goodchild, K.H., A. Oettinger and L. Prosperetti (eds.), Green Worlds in Early Modern Italy. Art and the Verdant Earth, Amsterdam University Press doi: 10.5117/9789462984950_ch08

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draughtsman, stressing his role as founder of a new visual culture of nature.2 This re-evaluation of the artist culminated with Michel Hochmann, who wrote that Muziano was ‘among those who in the final years of the sixteenth century initiated a tradition that founds its apogee in a vision of nature, so grandiose, spectacular and imaginative that it can be qualified as sublime’.3 Muziano was, in fact, one of the major artists of his time, especially in the field of landscape. Born in Brescia around 1532, he arrived in Rome in 1550, after earlier apprenticeships in Padua and Venice in the workshops of two leading painters, Domenico Campagnola (1500–64) and Lambert Sustris (c.1515-post 1591?). His sophisticated understanding of natural scenery and the innovative interpretation of landscape was unquestionably fundamental for artists active in late sixteenth-century Rome, who, on the strength of his example, radically changed the way in which they conceptualized and portrayed the natural environment. Muziano’s landscapes, both in drawing and painting, were also instrumental for the development in Rome of a new style of landscape painting in fresco, well before the arrival in Rome, in the 1570s, of the renowned Flemish masters Matthijs and Paul Bril, and before the appearance of the pioneering landscape canvases by Annibale Carracci in the 1580s, as Turner also underscored.4 The aim of this chapter is two-fold. First, I want to explore further the impact of Venetian draftsmen, particularly Titian and Domenico Campagnola, on the early style of Muziano in drawing landscapes; second, I want to demonstrate how Muziano’s style, starting from Venetian models, was later transformed and strengthened into a more complex manner of depicting landscapes after his arrival in the 1560s in Tivoli, a new style seen in his works in the Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este’s magnificent villa. 2 On Muziano’s artistic career see Patrizia Tosini, Girolamo Muziano (1532–1592). Dalla Maniera alla Natura (Rome: Ugo Bozzi, 2008). On Muziano as a draughtsman of landscapes, see especially Turner, 1959; Patrizia Tosini, “Girolamo Muziano e il paesaggio tra Roma, Venezia e Fiandre nella seconda metà del Cinquecento”, in Natura morta, pittura di paesaggio e il collezionismo a Roma nella prima metà del Seicento, ed. S. Danesi Squarzina (Roma: Lithos Editrice, 1996), 201–212; Patrizia Tosini, “Girolamo Muziano e la nascitá del paesaggio alla veneta nella villa d’Este a Tivoli”, Rivista dell’Istituto di archeologia e storia dell’arte, LIV (1999): 189–232; John Marciari, Girolamo Muziano and Art in Rome, Circa 1550–1600. (New Haven: Ph. D. Diss., Yale University, 2000), 26–30; Michel Hochmann, Venise et Rome 1500–1600: Deux Écoles de Peinture et Leurs Échanges (Genève: Droz, 2004), 363–383 (Hochmann, 2004a); Michel Hochmann, “Girolamo Muziano et l’evolution du paysage en Italie pendant la deuxième moitié du XVI siècle”, in Pejzaż ‒ narodziny gatunku: 1400–1600, ed. Sebastian Dudzik and Tadeusz Żuchowski (Toruń: Wydawnictwo Uniwersyetetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 2004), 114–143 (Hochmann, 2004b); Bert Meijer, “Ritrarre la natura dal van Mander a Valerio Mariani”, in Pejzaż ‒ narodziny gatunku: 1400– 1600, ed. Sebastian Dudzik and Tadeusz Żuchowski (Toruń: Wydawnictwo Uniwersyetetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 2004), 114–143; Michel Hochmann, “Girolamo Muziano et le paysage hérémitique”, In Le paysage Sacré, ed. Denis Ribouillault (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 2011), 219–232; Patrizia Tosini, “Some Newly Identified Drawings by Girolamo Muziano”, Master Drawings 52 (2014): 2, 181–200. 3 Hochmann, 2011, 232: ‘Muziano se trouve ainsi l’un des initiateurs d’une tradition qui prit son essor à la fin du XVIe siècle, notamment avec Paul Bril, et qui aboutit, beaucoup plus tard, à cette vision grandiose, spectaculaire et fantastique de la nature qu’on qualifiera de sublime’. 4 Turner, 1959, 175–179.

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Among the various sources that underscore Girolamo’s extraordinary skill in portraying landscape, both in painting and drawing, two are particularly trustworthy. These are eyewitness accounts by two contemporaries, the Flemish painter Karel Van Mander (1548–1606), and the Roman painter Giovanni Baglione (c.1566/1568– 1643), the well-known author of the Vite dei pittori, scultori et architetti (1642). Van Mander, who knew the painter personally, mentions Muziano twice in his very influential Schilder-boeck (1604), a collection of biographies of ancient Italian and Northern painters on the model of Giorgio Vasari. Muziano makes his appearance in an appendix entitled ‘On several Italian painters, who in my time were in Rome between 1573 and 1577’:5 Among the painters who had advanced to a reasonable age and were famous for the artistry of their works, there was Ieronimus Muzziano, born in Brescia, in Lombardy. He was the excellent landscape painter, of whom I have spoken elsewhere in the Schilder-gront, who, to tell the truth, was notable in landscape, having a manner so powerful, precise and magnificent, which is different from that of the Flemish artists and something rarely found in other Italian painters. He excelled particularly in making the backgrounds and foregrounds in a brilliant and enchanting manner, which contributes to the loveliness of the landscapes. He was also skillful in representing trees, which he rendered with great art and in a beautiful manner, imaginatively creating trunks and roots, and cladding them with ivy and other plants. He had a splendid knack to depict leaves, always presenting them as if they were those of chestnut trees. He said also that he liked no tree better more than the chestnut, which presented the best examples for linear notation and supplied a great model for rendering the leaves, the most suitable to be drawn, due to the shape of its leaves, perfect to be reproduced. 5 Van Mander’s lengthy account on p. 196v of the Schilder-boeck is available on the website of the Literature of the Dutch Language (DBNL): http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/mand001schi01_01/mand001schi01_01_0179.php. (June 16, 2016). [fol. 192v]: ‘Onder de gene die te Room alree tot redelijcken ouderdom gecomen waren, en vermaert om hun constige wercken, was eenen Ieronimus Muzziano, gheboren van Bressa in Lombardien. Dit is geweest den uytnemenden Landtschap-schilder, daer ick elder in de Schilder-gront van hebbe verhaelt: welcken (om de waerheyt te ghetuyghen) was uytnemende in Landtschap, hebbende een gheweldighe, vaste, en heerlijcke maniere, onghelijck der Nederlanders, het welcke selden by ander Italianen werdt ghevonden. Bysonder was hy uytnemende in gronden en voor- ronden treflijck en heerlijck te maken, wesende een dingen dat den Landtschappen heerlijcken verciert: Oock gantsch uytmuntende in Boomen, die hy seer aerdich, en op een seer schoon maniere handelde, wortelen en stammen seer versierich makende, en becleedende met clijf en anders: hadde oock eenen seer fraeyen slagh van bladeren, maer al op de maniere oft Castagne boomen waren heweest. Hy seyde oock dat gheen boomen hem beter aen stonden, oft beter teyckeninghe hadden als Castagne boomen, en een goede maniere van bladen om nae te volghen.’ (Engl. transl. by Huub van der Linden). Also see Maurice Vaes, “Appunti di Carel van Mander su vari pittori italiani suoi contemporanei”, Roma IX (1931): 193–208; 341–356. On the interpretation of Van Mander’s text about Muziano’s landscape, see Walter S. Melion, Shaping the Netherlandish Canon: Karel van Mander’s Schilder-boeck (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 115–116.

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As he acknowledged himself, he had already mentioned the artist as a champion of landscape in his introductory poem, Grondt der Edel Vry Schilder-Const (VIII, 24), which laid the theoretical groundwork for the noble art of painting: Concerning landscape painters in Italy, among the Italians there are few, but very skillful makers of landscape; they make deeply receding prospects, and construct solid terrains and buildings. [These landscapes are] Few, but artful, almost peerless, and tend to show vast panoramas solidly constructed of fields and cities; indeed what they reveal beyond Tintoretto, is the exceptionally great Titian, whose woodblock-print serve us as a lesson, and by what we see (in the work) of the painter of Brescia [Muziano].6

It is the merit of Giovanni Baglione, to give Muziano, in his biography, a well-deserved epithet or nickname, reporting that the painters of Rome called him ‘the young man of the landscapes’.7 To these contemporary acclamations about Muziano’s landscape paintings, we must add the later, but highly significant, assessment of his landscape drawings in the Cabinet of Pierre Crozat (today in part in the Louvre) by the eighteenth-century connoisseur, collector, and dealer Pierre-Jean Mariette:8 The landscapes of Muziano are worthy of Titian; the foliage is light and done in the great manner. There is no better way to express the trunks and branches of trees. This talent, that has bestowed on Muziano a great reputation, was increased by his high intelligence in all other parts of painting.

As these passages make evident, Muziano’s talent in the genre of landscape, his extraordinary ability to render the forms of nature with assurance and vivacity, was 6 For the original text, see: http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/mand001schi01_01/mand001schi01_01_0010.php. VIII, 14. (January 19, 2018). Van Mander, Principe et fondement, p. 131, VIII, §24 [du Paysage]: ‘Les Italiens qui peignent des Paysages / sont peu nombreux, mai très habiles et presque inégalables. / Ils ne montrent la plupart du temps / qu’ une seule perspective, et construisent très solidement / leurs plans et Villes, oui, tout ce qu’ils représentent. / Au-dessus du Tintoret, je placerai l’immense Titien, dont les gravures peuvent nous servir de leçon, / comme ce que nous voyons du Peintre de Brescia.’ (Engl. transl. by Leopoldine Prosperetti). 7 Giovanni Baglione, Le Vite de’ Pittori, Scultori, et Architetti, dal Pontificato di Gregorio XIII. del 1572. In fino a’ tempi di Papa Urbano Ottavo nel 1642 (Roma: Andrea Fei, 1642), 49: ‘Venne a Roma giovinetto di vent’anni in circa, e si mise a dipingere de’ paesi, li quali faceva egli assai bene, perché era suo proprio genio… e da tutti i Pittori di Roma era chiamato il giovane dei Paesi.’ (‘He came to Rome as a young man of about twenty, and applied himself to painting landscapes, which he did very well, because he had a true talent for it… and all of the painters of Rome called him the Young Man of the Landscapes.’) (Engl. transl. by the author). 8 Pierre-Jean Mariette, Description sommaire des desseins des grand Maistres d’Italie, des Pays Bas, et de France du Cabinet de Feu M. Crozat (Paris: Chez P.-J. Mariette, 1741), 67: ‘Les paysages du Mucian sont dìgnes du Titien; le feuiller en est leger & de grande manière. Il n’est pas possible de mieux exprimer les troncs & le branches d’arbres. Ce talent qui a acquis au Mucian une grande réputation, étoit relevé pour une haute intelligence des toutes les autres parties de la peinture.’

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recognized by both contemporary and later critics. He was, quite simply, considered a ‘giant’ in the field. This long-lasting appreciation throughout the centuries is not surprising, if we look at what seem to be among his first landscape drawings, made under the direct influence of Domenico Campagnola, executed when he was still in Padua or, perhaps, soon after his arrival in the Papal city. Campagnola was in fact, due to his close and earlier bonds with Titian’s atelier, the main landscape draughtsman on the Venetian artistic stage in the Cinquecento, elaborating a very popular genre, the pastoral landscape, which enjoyed long-lasting fortune in Veneto and elsewhere.9 The best examples made by the younger Muziano under the influence of Campagnola are the marvelous sketch, formerly attributed to the Paduan master, in the Duke of Devonshire collection, and the one in the Biblioteca Marucelliana, Florence.

Figure 8.1: Girolamo Muziano, River Landscape with a Mill, c.1550–52, pen and brown ink on paper, Chatsworth House, Collection of the Duke of Devonshire, Chatsworth.

9 On the activity of Domenico Campagnola as a draughtsman see especially: Elisabetta Saccomani, “Domenico Campagnola: gli anni della maturità”, Arte Veneta, 34 (1980): 63–77, and Elisabetta Saccomani, “Campagnola disegnatore di «Paesi»: dagli esordi alla prima maturità”, Arte Veneta, 36 (1982): 81–99; Albert Châtelet, “Domenico Campagnola et la naissance du paysage ordonné”, in Interpretazioni Veneziane. Studi di Storia dell’Arte in Onore di Michelangelo Muraro, ed. David Rosand (Venezia: Arsenale, 1984), 331–342; Christophe Brouard, “‘Venetia Quanta Fuit’: Les paysages des ruines à Venise dans la première moitié du Cinquecento”, in Venise & Paris 1500–1700. La peinture vénitienne de la Renaissance et sa réception en France, Actes des Colloques, ed. Michel Hochmann (Genève: Droz, 2011), 25–54. See also now the Ph. D. Diss. by Tobias Nickel, Die Landschaftszeichnungen des Domenico Campagnola (1500–1564) (Wien: Ph. D. Dissertation, Universität Wien, 2017).

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Figure 8.2: Girolamo Muziano, River Landscape with a Viola Player, c.1550–52, pen and brown ink on paper, Biblioteca Marucelliana, Florence.

Both can be dated c.1550–52, and both clearly bear a strong resemblance to Campagnola’s later production.10 To these early landscape drawings may be added the Landscape with Two Reclining Shepherds in Dijon, which similarly demonstrates his debt to Campagnola.11 The attribution of these drawings to Muziano seems certain if we compare 10 For the Chatsworth drawing, formerly attributed to Campagnola, see Tosini, 1996, 203; Tosini, 1999, 210; Marciari, 2000, 497; Tosini, 2008, 21–22. For the drawing in Florence, Biblioteca Marucelliana, see Tosini, 2014, 181–182. Of the latter, it exists also another version by Muziano and in better conditions, in the Louvre, Département des Arts Graphiques (since now DAG), inv. 5592, under the attribution ‘circle of Titian’. A beautiful sheet on the art market (Christie’s St. James, London, 4 July 2000, lot 82), representing a Landscape with a river, a mill, and a bridge, is also very Campagnolesque, and was attributed correctly to Muziano by Taco Dibbits. It shows close comparisons with the Marucelliana’s and Louvre drawings, and therefore could be referred to the same period, around 1550. 11 Marguerite Guillaume, ed., Catalogue des Dessins Italiens. Collection du Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon (Dijon: Peintures Italiennes, 1980), 143, cat. 250. The entry in the catalogue refers to a hypothetical attribution to Girolamo Muziano by John Gere, but Guillaume prudently attributes the drawing to ‘circle de Girolamo Muziano’. I am inclined to accept Gere’s idea that the sheet is an autograph work by Muziano. There are very close similarities between this drawing in Dijon and the drawing in Darmstadt, Hessisches Landesmuseum (inv. AE 1386), with the old inscription (by Federico Zuccaro, according John Gere): ‘schizzo di mano del m. Girolamo Mozziano’ (cfr. Bergsträsser, Duke Emmerich, p. 34, pl. 30). In the same hand, in my opinion still by Muziano, is the sheet in Vienna, Albertina, inv. 1507, with different old attributions to Campagnola, Tiziano and circle of Tiziano, and now considered to be by an anonymous Italian or Flemish artist.

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Figure 8.3: Girolamo Muziano, Holy Family with Saint Elizabeth and John the Baptist, c.1550–55, pen and brown ink on paper, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence.

them to others surely by him, such as those in the famous album in the Uffizi, which I will discuss further below and, more generally, if we keep as terms for comparison the natural elements in a number of his narrative drawings, such as, to cite two examples, the Holy Family in the Uffizi, or the Saint Jerome in the Desert at Rennes.12 One further comparative work could be represented by a print by Charles Massé with the inscription ‘Mutianus Delin. (eavit)’ – taken from a drawing in the famous collection of the French banker Everhard Jabach – in which the style and composition are very close to the landscape drawings just mentioned, even if the inscription 12 For the Holy Family in Florence, Gabinetto dei Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi (since now GDSU), see Patrizia Tosini, “Un Muziano ritrovato: La Visitazione della Cappella Altoviti a Loreto (e alcune annotazioni in margine al catalogo dell’artista)”, Paragone 12 (1997): 73; for the drawing in Rennes, see Recueil de 283 estampes gravées à l’eauforte... d’aprés les dessins des grands Maistres, que possédoit autrefois Mr. Jabach et qui depuis ont passé au Cabinet du Roi. Paris: Joullaine, 1754, in Disegno, Les dessins Italiens du Musée de Rennes, ed. by Patrick Ramade (Modena-Rennes: Galleria Estense, 1990), cat. 41; 94–95.

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Figure 8.4: Girolamo Muziano, River Landscape, c.1550–55, pen and brown ink on paper, Louvre, Département des Arts Graphiques, Paris.

must be used cautiously, considering that the attributions of Jabach’s album are often wrong or uncertain.13 However, in all these early examples it is clear that Campagnola’s drawings served as the foremost guide for Muziano, who tried to imitate the spacious views of the Paduan artist, with their sinuous rivers, scattered rural buildings and ruins, as well as other elements from the repertoire of traditional Venetian pastoral landscapes.14 On this basis, we can cautiously expand the currently embryonic catalogue of Muziano as a draftsman by ‘fishing’ among drawings until now attributed to Campagnola or to Titian and his workshop.15 Among them, one sheet in the Louvre, attributed to Domenico Campagnola since the beginning of the nineteenth century, but currently given to the ‘circle of Titian’, can be considered a typical example of Muziano’s marvelous skillfulness in drawing landscapes.16 13 Recueil de 283 estampes, pl. 42D. On the Jabach Album see Bernadette Py, Everard Jabach collectioneur (1618–1695): le dessins de l’inventaire de 1695. (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2001); Paolo Bellini, “L’album della raccolta Jabach”, Rassegna di Studi e Notizie, 38 (2011): 13–34. On Carracci’s landscape drawings in the album, see Stephen Michael Bailey, Carracci Landscape Studies: The Drawings Related to the “Recueil de 283 estampes de Jabach”, 3 vols. (Santa Barbara, CA: Ph. D. Diss., Univ. California, 1993). 14 On the catalogue of the Campagnola’s drawings see n. 9. 15 In this regard, we are awaiting the publication of the study by Tobias Nickel on Campagnola’s landscape drawings, which will be crucial to untangling the single attributions. 16 Louvre, DAG, inv. 5590: ‘circle of Titian’, and exhibited in Paris, 1802–1811, with an attribution to Domenico Campagnola. It appears in the Jabach Album at the plate 39A-39B, with an attribution to Titian. On the back of the drawing also Paul Joannides suggested a possible link with Muziano.

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Another small group, constituted by five drawings traditionally attributed to Campagnola (Chatsworth, Duke of Devonshire Collection, inv. 239;17 Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, inv. 694/5;18 Paris, Louvre, inv. 1488, and 4775;19 London, British Museum Ff. 1.69),20 all clearly in the same hand, may also be attributed to Muziano, even if with some reservations, due, primarily, to the way in which the author sketched the rocks, with some very peculiar cavities, which are quite atypical for Muziano’s works.21 The difficulty of reconstructing Muziano’s catalogue of early drawings reveals the extent to which his manner imitated that of Campagnola – not only in terms of the repertoire of motifs, but also in the technique: he employs, with equal ease and skill, medium used commonly by the Paduan master, especially pencil, and brown ink hatched with pen. Furthermore, Muziano in these early drawings absorbs entirely Campagnola’s bucolic taste for pastoral landscape in the charming Venetian interpretation, with some stereotypical elements (shepherds, flocks, sheds, bridges, water, rivers, sunsets, woodlands) built in a standard horizontal setting, and with the same perspective. Such a rich and compelling way of describing nature was, of course, shared by several other Venetian artists – mainly Titian, Veronese and Lambert Sustris – whose works Muziano must have closely observed during his apprenticeship in Venice between 1548 and 1550. Drawings by Titian, for instance, seem particularly crucial for Muziano’s education in the use of the pen: the way the young artist developed outlining trees with curvy trunks, built up with a dense system of crossing lines is unimaginable without a knowledge of the bucolic drawings by Titian, such as Two Arcadian Musicians in the British Museum,22 or The Shepherd Sleeping with his Flock 17 Michael Jaffé, The Devonshire Collection of Drawings: Venetian and Northern Italian Schools (London: Phaidon, 1994), 58, cat. 761. 18 Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, inv. 694/5. 19 Louvre DAG, inv. 1488 and 4775. Drawing 1488, which had a traditional attribution to Giuseppe Porta, was much debated and bears many different attributions: to Domenico Campagnola by Catherine Monbeig Goguel (1967) and, doubtfully, by Catherine Loisel (Le paysage en Europe, cat. 93); to Ercole Procaccini the Elder, or to the circle of Bernardino Campi by Philip Pouncey. It was situated, quite convincingly, to Muziano by Châtelet, 1984, 335, 341 n. 29, in the ‘genre of Muziano’, and by Hochmann, 2004b, 255, to Muziano himself. The other drawing 4775 is currently attributed to ‘circle of Campagnola’. 20 In the database of the British Museum the drawing is catalogued as ‘circle of Campagnola’, but a possible attribution to the young Muziano was suggested by Lea Salvadori, 2003. See http://www.britishmuseum.org/ research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=716524&partId=1&searchText= campagnola,+domenico&page=1. (February 24, 2018). 21 These holes on the rocks are quite characteristic of some of Campagnola’s drawings, but not of the more typical drawings by Muziano. 22 The attribution of this drawing (British Museum 1895,0915.817) still fluctuates between Giorgione, Titian, and Campagnola (cfr. Harold Edwin Wethey, Titian and his Drawings: With Reference to Giorgione and Some Close Contemporaries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), cat. 35, 153–154 (with wrong inventory number); Konrad Oberhuber, “Le message de Giorgione et du jeune Titien dessinateurs”, in Le siècle de Titien. L’âge d’or de la peinture à Venise, ed. Michel Laclotte and Giovanna Nepi Scirè (Paris: Éditions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1993), 431–450, and cat. 94, 455–456.

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Figure 8.5: Titian (?), Two Arcadian Musicians, c.1508–10, Pen and brown ink over black chalk on paper, British Museum, London.

at the Louvre.23 More subtle similarities with Titian are in the hatching of the ground with long, wavy, parallel lines, and in his manner of describing water, with characteristic sinuous shapes. Of course, works by Titian and Campagnola were not the only ones admired by the Brescian artist during his Venetian period. Muziano’s vision of antiquities and monuments also owes much to the sketches and prints of ruins by Giovanni Battista Pittoni the Elder, also called Battista Vicentino (c.1520–83).24 Unfortunately, the artistic personality of Pittoni remains evanescent, and we lack a precise catalogue of his works, particularly the drawings.25 Nonetheless, the few sketches attributed to the 23 Louvre, DAG, inv. 5534. See Whethey, 1987, cat. 45, 160–161; Oberhuber, 1993, 431–450, and cat. 101, 459. See also, for instance, by Titian, the drawing in the Louvre, DAG, inv. 5539. 24 On Giovanni Battista Pittoni the Elder, see Konrad Oberhuber, “Hieronymus Cock, Battista Pittoni, und Paolo Veronese in Villa Maser”, in Munuscula Discipulorum. Kunsthistoriche Studien Hans Kauffmann zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Tilmann Buddensieg and Matthias Winner (Berlin: Bruno Hessling, 1968), 207–224; Mirella Cavalli, “Leonardo Trissino: appunti per la vita di Battista Vicentino (1520 ca.-1583)”, in Calepino di disegni. 1. Disegni dal Veneto fra Cinquecento e Seicento, ed. Anna Forlani Tempesti (Rimini: Galleria Editrice, 2002), 3–20; Enrico Parlato, “Tornei di carta. Osmosi, dialogo e agone nelle Imprese di Lodovico Dolce e Battista Pittoni”, in Per Ludovico Dolce. Miscellanea di Studi. I Passioni e competenze del Letterato, ed. Paolo Marini, and Paolo Procaccioli (Manziana: Vecchiarelli Editore, 2016), 505–568 (with previous bibliography). 25 Four drawings in the Louvre (DAG, inv. 5588; 5589; 5685; 11025) have been recently attributed (with some uncertainties) to Battista Pittoni the Elder in the website of the museum; one possibly by Pittoni is in the Harvard Museums (inv. 1997.204), but all these sheets still need to be investigated in terms of authorship.

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Vicentine artist are comparable to some drawings by Muziano, especially those executed during the 1560s, when he was well established in Rome and he received the first strong impact of ancient monuments ‘from life’. As many scholars have pointed out, Pittoni’s views with ruins, in turn, depend on the book of etchings by Hieronymus Cock, Praecipua aliquot Romanae Antiquitatis Ruinarum Monimenta, published in Antwerp in 1551, and it is highly possible that Muziano knew it as well.26 After all, he was clearly influenced by a Cock print, based on a drawing by Lambert Lombard, for his large canvas of the Foot-Washing, painted for Ippolito II d’Este in 1561, and currently lost.27 Despite the progress of our knowledge of the artist’s career as a painter, the chronology of landscape drawings by Muziano remains problematic. We can hypothetically try to define a logical sequence, but it still needs secure signposts. Undoubtedly, a visible difference exists between his early drawings, like those in Chatsworth or in the Marucelliana (Figs. 8.1–8.2), which still show the rather ‘dry’ technique of

Figure 8.6: Hieronymus Cock (from a drawing by Lambert Lombard), Christ Washing the Feet of the Apostles, c.1557–64, engraving, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

26 For the exchange between Pittoni and Cock see Turner, 1959, 205–212; Oberhuber, 1968, 207–223; Gert van der Sman, “Incisori e incisioni d’Oltralpe a Venezia nella seconda metà del Cinquecento”, in Il Rinascimento a Venezia e la pittura del Nord ai tempi di Bellini, Dürer, Tiziano, ed. Beverly Louise Brown, Bernard Aikema (Venice: Bompiani, 1999), 152. On the etching book Praecipua aliquot Romanae Antiquitatis Ruinarum Monimenta, see Joris Van Grieken, Ger Luijten, and Jan Van der Stock, eds., Hieronymus Cock: The Renaissance in Print (Brussels: Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, 2013), n. 9, 90–95. 27 Hieronymus Cock, 2013, n. 31, 152–153. For the two versions of the Christ washing the feet of the Apostles, see Tosini, 2008, cat. D 35, 468.

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Figure 8.7: Louis Desplaces (from a lost painting by Girolamo Muziano for the Cardinal Ippolito d’Este), Christ Washing the Feet of the Apostles, c.1729–39, etching, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Campagnola’s characteristic autograph works – with their typical manner of describing rocks, water, and mountains – and the later ones, which manifest an evolution in terms of the use of hatching, spatial setting, and vision of the natural environment. This complexity and richness, not only in the construction of space, but also in the technique, clearly reveal a more mature moment in the artist’s production, which I am tempted to ascribe to his direct knowledge of the spectacular and, in a sense, ‘sublime’, Tiburtine landscape. It is impossible here to describe the inextinguishable allure this small town in the surroundings of Rome had for many throughout the centuries, spanning the ages from Roman times to the end of the nineteenth century, and in particular the fascination it had for painters since the Renaissance. In Muziano’s time, Tivoli was surely one of the most visited places, admired by artists and noblemen alike for its unrivaled mix of ruins, natural scenery and the ‘magic’ presence of the Aniene falls.28 28 One of the most meaningful records is the Travel Journal by Michel de Montaigne (1580–81), who describes Tivoli in 1580 (Montaigne’s Travel Journal, 98–101): ‘[…] lying at the roots of the mountains, the town extending along the first rather steep slope, which makes its situation and view very rich, for it commands an immense plain in all directions, and great Rome itself. Its view is toward the sea, and it has mountains behind it. The river Teverone [n.b.a. Aniene] bathes it, and near there takes a marvelous leap coming down from the mountains and disappearing through a hole in the rock five or six hundred paces below, and then coming into the plain, where it meanders along playfully and joins the Tiber a little above the city.’

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Figure 8.8: Girolamo Muziano, Rural Landscape with Mills, c.1550–55, pen and brown ink on paper, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence.

Hence, when Muziano arrived in Tivoli at the beginning of the Sixties to decorate Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este’s villa, he surely derived from the local natural environment not only a fresh source of figurative inventions for his landscapes but also a new and deeper vision of nature and her sylvan spaces, discovering them to be much more involving and touching. Now, let us try to move forward, following a possible sequence of the single sheets, in order to understand the progressive changes in Muziano’s style under the impact of Tivoli’s vision. The drawing P495 in the Uffizi, depicting a rural landscape free of ancient motifs and classical elements, provides another example of Muziano’s early production. The outline of the trees is still very Campagnolesque (close to the Chatsworth sheet) and the organization of space is considerably less organic and more ‘constructed’ than we find in his later works.29 A step forward is observed in one of Muziano’s most characteristic landscape drawings, now in the Louvre,30 a marvelous horizontal sketch in pen and brown ink with a dense wood on the left, a river on the right, and some ruins and country buildings in the background. 29 GDSU, P495, with an old attribution to Campagnola, and later proposed as Muziano’s hand in Marciari, 2000, 29–30, and Tosini, 2008, 21–23, Fig. 14. 30 On the Louvre drawing (inv. 5120), since the nineteenth century attributed to Muziano, see Tosini, 2008, 34, Fig. 23; Tosini, 2014, 183–184, Fig. 6. Another similar drawing could be the one at the Courtauld Galleries (inv. D.1952. RW.3273), formerly attributed to Giuseppe Porta, and rightly considered to be by Muziano by Popham.

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Figure 8.9: Girolamo Muziano, Rural Landscape with a River, 1555–60, pen and brown ink on paper, Louvre, Département des Arts Graphiques, Paris.

It reveals such a vivaciousness and sensitivity in portraying the shady atmosphere of the wood, that we can propose it was executed a few years later than the Chatsworth, Marucelliana, and Uffizi (P495) sheets, even if it still belongs to a quite early period, perhaps c.1550–60, before his encounter with the Tivoli landscape. A good starting point for reconstructing a possible sequence of his landscape drawings is the justly famous ‘Uffizi album’, which provides clues to understanding in greater depth Muziano’s drawing style several years after he had first arrived in Rome in 1550. The eighteen landscapes in large format, marvelously executed in pen, brown ink and black chalk, were probably pages of a sketchbook.31 Considering the style, format and kind of paper, the album was very likely made by binding several pages, singularly used for drawing, but all in the same period of time. Several sheets, in fact, bear a watermark similar to Briquet n° 6684 (Rome, c.1561–62), allowing us to fix a possible post quem for the sketchbook around – or a bit later than – 1562.32 The pages of the sketchbook – visibly cut along the edges at 31 Florence, GDSU, nn° P503-P520. Marciari was the first to propose that they formed part of a sketchbook. See Marciari, 2000, 28. 32 See Tosini, 2008, 139, n. 160. I must correct in part the information about the watermarks provided in my book of 2008: the watermark on the sheets 503P; 504P; 506P; 511P; 516P; 518P; 519P is similar to Briquet n° 6684, but not exactly the same (a bunch of three fleurs-de-lys, but without the circle and star as in the Briquet’s repertoire). The drawings 521P and 522P are not part of the sketchbook, as they are at least 10 cm. taller, and bear different watermarks: two crossed arrows, surmounted by a four points star on the 521P; the Briquet n° 11935 (shield with a trimontio surmounted by a fleur-de-lys; from Rome, 1554) clearly visible on the 522P. Of the 521P exist other versions, with slight differences: one, formerly in Kurt Meissner collection in Zurich and coming from the Jonathan Richardson collection, is now at the J. Paul Getty Museum (sold at Sotheby’s, London, 2 July 1990, lot 20, 480x383 mm); another is at the Harvard Museums of Art (inv. 1918.15); a third was sold in Sotheby’s, London, 9 April 1970, lot 265 (as circle of Girolamo Muziano’’, 480x370 mm, with the old inscription ‘Del Tempesta’).

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Figure 8.10: Girolamo Muziano, Landscape with a River, c.1563–65, pen and brown ink on paper, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence.

a later time – were originally larger and taller, with a blank space around the drawings, which were framed with a thin brown line (still visible) in the same ink as the sketches; on the verso all the sheets bear the old inscription ‘Muziano’ in brown ink.33 The sketchbook reveals an undeniable evolution from Muziano’s first manner, which was still intimately connected with the pastoral imagerie and the style of Campagnola and Titian. The most significant difference is the vertical format adopted for the compositions, quite unusual in Venetian landscape drawings, which are mostly organized horizontally with a wide and low horizon, and generally with spacious 33 Possibly part of the album of the Uffizi, the landscape drawing was sold by Christie’s, New York, 22 January 2004, sale 1340, lot 10, with the same format, sizes and watermark as the Florentine sketchbook (the attribution to Muziano has been confirmed also by Taco Dibbits).

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Figure 8.11: Girolamo Muziano, Landscape with a Fall, c.1563–65, pen and brown ink on paper, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence.

views. In contrast, in the Uffizi album Muziano experimented with various forms of landscapes and natural settings, but always using a vertical format with a very high and deep horizon. In some cases, the dense hatching aims to produce the effect of chiaroscuro in painting, like in the drawings by Campagnola that imitate Titian’s style,34 but the strong shading in Muziano’s sheets is also incredibly close in effect to that in etchings, with a more modern perception of chromatic and light contrasts.35 34 On the imitation of Campagnola from Titian’s style see Saccomani, 1982, 87–88. 35 The relationship with the etching was first noted by Richard A.Turner, The Vision of Landscape in Renaissance Italy (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1966), 117.

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The tree, ever present in the foreground, has become a more dramatic protagonist in the compositions, and greenery completely fills the pages.36 The rocks also create wild and enchanting settings, with shady recesses and caves, and the rivers are impetuous and often surge downward in large and small cascades. The fine pen strokes that generate the water’s movement are abstract, like doodles, with deeply sophisticated hatchings, also similar to those used in engravings. In these extraordinary works the artist evidently aspired to create a new style of landscape, more vivid and captivating, representing nature not truly ‘from life’ (dal vero), but vibrating and moving, with a nuance of what would later be called ‘Romanticism’. This unprecedented development in drawing landscape of course owes something to the work of some Flemish draftsmen, especially Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c.1525/30–69), who Muziano could have met in Rome in the 1550s. But the Brescian artist was surely the first to develop such a new and organic manner of landscape drawing, which was unknown to Italian and Northern painters alike.37 If we consider, for example, the well-known drawings executed by Bruegel in Rome, and dated 1554 (Prague K 4493; Bruxelles, Bibliothèque Royale Albert Ier, S. II. 113 145) – which Muziano may well have seen – we can observe some points in common with Muziano’s graphic oeuvre, but the rendering of the trees, sketched like abstract spirals, with anthropomorphic shapes and branches like arabesques, and the conception of space do not reach in any way the complexity of the Uffizi album sheets in terms of spatial setting and the wealth of architectural, natural, and ancient motifs.38 The unprecedented and innovative landscape scheme found in the drawings of the Uffizi album, with their perfectly balanced mix of ancient ruins, foliage, rivers, and falls, was clearly conceived and developed by the artist in the years spent in Tivoli: this pattern was so successful, that Muziano himself recycled it some years later, for his famous series of Hermit-Saints, engraved by Cornelis Cort in the 1570s.39 Although it would be incorrect to consider the drawings in the Uffizi album to be drawn ‘from life’, in the modern sense of this locution, we can certainly imagine that these views were largely executed in Tivoli and its sylvan surroundings between 1563 and 1565, when Muziano was supervising and painting the frescoes in the villa 36 For the importance of the art of depicting trees and other sylvan matter as a specialized skill see Leopoldine Prosperetti, Landscape and Philosophy in the Art of Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568–1625) (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), 162–172. 37 On the possible link between Muziano and Bruegel, see Tosini, 2008, 62–64. 38 On the drawings executed by Brueghel in Rome, see Hans Mielke, “La question des paysages forestiers dans l’oeuvre de Pieter Brueghel”, in Le Paysage en Europe du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle, ed. Catherine Legrand, Jean François Méjanès (Paris: Musée du Louvre, 1994), 15–23; See also Nadine M. Orenstein, ed., Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Drawings and Prints (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001), nos. 15, 18, 108–110; 112–114. It is interesting to note that some of Brueghel’s drawings are influenced or copied from Domenico Campagnola. 39 On the ‘Eremitical landscape’, see especially Hochmann, 2011. This unprecedented example of an ‘album of hermits’ was surely later followed by the Sadelers (the most famous are by Jan I) in their celebrated albums of eremitical landscapes published between 1585 and 1600. See Isabelle de Ramaix, Les Sadeler: Graveurs et Editeurs (Bruxelles: Bibliothèque Royale Albert I, 1992). See also Prosperetti, 2014, 423–448.

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of Cardinal d’Este. In fact, even if the ruins depicted in the drawings are most likely imaginative re-elaborations of monuments observed in Rome and the Roman campagna, some of them recall clearly ruins still visible in the Tiburtine landscape, such as the Ponte Lucano, the remains of Manlio Vopisco’s villa, and the so-called Tempio della Tosse. Furthermore, there can be little doubt that the Uffizi drawings were strongly inspired by the steep valley that hosted the Aniene cascade in Tivoli, significantly called since antiquity the ‘Valle dell’Inferno’ for its frightening and altogether spectacular aspect. It is truly astonishing how the marvelous park of the recently restored Villa Gregoriana (Plate 25) – created by Gregory XVI in 1835 at the bottom of the Tiburtine acropolis, taking advantage of the picturesque setting of the Aniene waterfall – remains so similar to Muziano’s vision of landscape illustrated in the Uffizi album.40 Within the context of Roman landscape drawing in the second half of the Cinquecento, the innovative qualities of these views inspired by Tivoli need to be underscored. We need only compare them to the print of the Aniene waterfall from a drawing by Pieter Bruegel (c.1554), the drawing with the Vesta Temple and San Rocco bridge by Etienne Dupérac (British Museum, 1568), and several drawings executed by Jan Brueghel the Elder many decades later, around 1593, to gauge how radically different Muziano’s conception of the natural landscape was.41 The Brescian painter kept his distance from a precise depiction of the ‘real’ landscape of Tivoli, which, in contrast, was reproduced by the Northern artists; Muziano’s vision of the same places was always the outcome of a transfiguration and imaginative transformation, rooted in his Campagnolesque education and taste for the antique. The Tiburtine loci also appear in some prints, such as the St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata, engraved by Cornelis Cort in 1567 on the basis of a drawing by Muziano, which shows many of the same features of the Uffizi album sheets, especially a more intense elaboration and a new richness of the greenery and water motifs, largely derived from the Tiburtine landscape.42 Finally, the same evolution also appears in Muziano’s painted landscapes. A detached fresco (Plate 26), recently on the art market, and surely by Muziano, which originally decorated the Cesarini Castle in Rocca Sinibalda (Rieti), shows how in his earlier Roman years, around 1552–53, his interpretation of the landscape as a bucolic 40 The present waterfall was created by pope Gregorio XVI (1831–46), with the deviation of the river Aniene, to avoid the continuous flooding of the city. In the past the Aniene cascade had four jumps, instead of the current two. 41 The drawing by Étienne Dupérac (1568) is at the British Museum (1921.0111.4). On the drawings of Tivoli by Jan Brueghel the Elder, see Stefania Bedoni, Jan Brueghel in Italia e il collezionismo del Seicento (FirenzeMilano: Università degli Studi, 1983), 29–38 and the website: http://janbrueghel.net/ (05/19/2016). 42 On the print, not related to the lost fresco in the church of SS. Apostoli in Rome, as affirmed by Bierens de Haan – and wrongly followed by many scholars – see Tosini, 2008, entry D39, 473. The print was already linked to the Tiburtine landscape by Frits Lugt. See Frits Lugt, “Pieter Brueghel und Italien” in Festschrift für Max J. Friedländer zum 60. Geburstage (Leipzig: Seemann: 1927), 124.

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Figure 8.12: Cornelis Cort (from a drawing by Girolamo Muziano), Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata, 1567, engraving. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

narration was still completely dependent on Sustris and Campagnola’s works.43 Ten years later, in 1563–65, the astonishing frescoed landscapes on the walls of the Villa d’Este (Plate 27) were conceived in an entirely different way, consistent with the developments in the Uffizi album, which was plausibly a fundamental starting point for these paintings. In the Villa d’Este Muziano’s landscapes – arguably with a visual impact less powerful and effective than the drawings – are still linked to the feeling of the sensuous landscapes painted on canvas by Lambert Sustris, as in the marvelous Jupiter and Io at the Hermitage, and The Baptism of Christ in Caen.44 But at the same time, the conception of the views is also deeply influenced by that verdant and stunning landscape, scattered by ruins and ancient Roman monuments, he saw for the first time in Tivoli. 43 The fresco comes from the decoration of the Cesarini Castle, part still in place, and part detached and missing. See ArteRomaAuction, 15–16 June 2016, Rome, lot 25. For the frescoes by Muziano in Rocca Sinibalda and their chronology, see Tosini, 2008, entry A4, 326–331. 44 For these paintings see the entries by B. Meijer in Konrad Oberhuber, 1968, nos. 157–158, 534–537. The painting in Caen was commissioned by the Cardinal Otto von Truchsess von Waldenburg and it has been supposed it was painted in Padua. See Alessandro Ballarin, “Profilo di Lamberto d’Amsterdam (Lambert Sustris)”, Arte Veneta 16 (1962): 61–81.

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It is also interesting to observe that there was a reciprocal relationship between Muziano’s drawings, the frescoes on the Villa’s walls, and the artificial/natural landscape created in the garden of the same residence by Pirro Ligorio: the site of the villa and the architecture of its gardens, arranged on the slope of the ‘Valle Gaudente’ facing Rome, reflect the words of Ligorio and his contemporaries about the astonishing and, at the same time, wild scenery with fountains, ‘grotte’, antiquities, surrounded by greenery and assembled together as ‘artificialis’, in a way not far from the perception of nature in the Uffizi album.45 The landscapes by Muziano, both drawn and painted, must be understood as extraordinary new models for Roman artists, who very soon started to emulate these persuasive and innovative examples. The affirmation by Baglione that Muziano was ‘called the “Young Man of the Landscapes” by all of the painters of Rome’ (‘da tutti i Pittori di Roma chiamato il giovane dei Paesi’) clearly attests to the admiration and imitation by Italian painters active in Rome and Latium, as well as the Flemish specialists in landscape who resided there. If we look at the most popular landscape frescoes (to a great extent still anonymous) painted in Rome in the 1550s – that is, immediately before the Villa d’Este frescoes and those of the destroyed ‘Loggia dei Paesi’ in Montecavallo, also executed by Muziano for Cardinale d’Este around 1561 – we can easily recognize that the small and somewhat lackluster earlier examples in the friezes at Villa Giulia and Palazzo Ricci, framed as elegant cameos, lack the vibrant immediacy in their conception of landscape and natural settings. Compared with Muziano’s work of just a few years later, these paintings must have seemed to the artists active in Rome rather retardataire and insignificant. Therefore, the most receptive painters quickly followed the lead of the Villa d’Este and Montecavallo frescoes. Among them was Cornelis Loots of Mechelen (active 1563–76), one of the earliest and most capable emulators of Muziano’s new art, who had collaborated with him in the Tiburtine villa, probably executing paintings based on the master’s drawings. His beautiful frescoes in the Loggia of Grottaferrata Abbey, of 1568, show their very close origin in the ideas and models of the Brescian master.46 These examples by Muziano and his followers in the 1560s were also fundamental for the Bril brothers in developing a new kind of mural decoration on a very large scale, where the wall is completely painted all the way down to the floor, like a loggia 45 On the descriptions of the villa in the late Cinquecento and Seicento, and their interpretations, see Marcello Fagiolo, “Il progetto della villa tra antichità e natura”, in Villa d’Este, ed. Isabella Barisi, Marcello Fagiolo, and Maria Luisa Madonna (Roma: De Luca Editori d’Arte, 2003), 11–31. 46 On the presence of Cornelis Loots in Grottaferrata see Paolo Giannattasio, “Proposta per Cornelis Loots in Italia”, Prospettiva 93–94 (1999): 44–59; on the possible collaboration of Loots with Muziano at Villa d’Este, see Tosini, 2008, 126, 357–359.

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Figure 8.13: Cornelis Loots, Rural Landscape with a Fortified Town, 1568, fresco. Loggia of Saint Nilo Abbey, Grottaferrata.

opening onto a wide and lively landscape.47 Of course, the setting with a Flemish landscape is vastly different, but the Brils’ invention of an ‘integral open wall’ would not have existed without Muziano and his new conception of landscape learned and elaborated in Venice but inspired and developed between Tivoli and Rome.

About the author Patrizia Tosini is Assistant Professor at the University of Roma Tre (Italy). She received her Ph.D. at Sapienza University of Rome (1999) with a dissertation on the painter Girolamo Muziano. Her research interests cover different fields of Early Modern Italian art: painting and drawing in the Counter-Reformation age, landscape paintings in Cinquecento Italy, and relationships between art and literature in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Tosini is the author of Girolamo Muziano. 1532–1592. Dalla 47 As in the Torre dei Venti in the Vatican Palaces (1580–82) by Matthijs Bril. See Nicola Courtright, The Papacy and the Art of Reform in Sixteenth-Century Rome: Gregory XIII’s Tower of the Winds in the Vatican (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Carla Hendriks, ed., Northern Landscapes on Roman Walls: The Frescoes of Matthijs and Paul Bril (Firenze: Centro Di, 2003), 34–40.

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Maniera alla Natura (2008) and Immagini ritrovate. Decorazione a Villa Peretti Montalto tra Cinque e Seicento (2015). She has also published widely in national and international academic journals and edited several volumes of essays. She was a fellow at CASVA and the Italian Academy (Columbia University), and a Visiting Scholar at NYU and at the Institute of Fine Arts New York City.

9. Of Oak and Elder, Cloud-like Angels, and a Bird’s Nest: The Graphic Interpretations of Titian’s The Death of St. Peter Martyr by Martino Rota, Giovanni Battista Fontana, Valentin Lefebre, John Baptist Jackson, and their Successors1 Sabine Peinelt-Schmidt

Abstract In this paper, I examine the prints made after Titian’s The Death of St. Peter Martyr. Even though the various engravers’ works all differ in design, they share the playful attitude to give life to what was left unsaid or only partially referred to by art critics, and by concentrating on aspects of the painting that had not been elucidated, they fill a lacuna in the sense that they weave in an element to the story that had not been there before. The prints also demonstrate the growing self-confidence of the graphic interpreters. Focussing on the natural world, their works stand out for the excellence of their en detail artistry and craftsmanship on both sides of the threshold between original and interpretative copy. Keywords: reproductive printmaking, Titian, artistic self-confidence, art theory, Vasari, landscape print

On the night of the 15th and 16th August 1867, a fire in the Chapel of Our Lady of the Rosary in the church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice destroyed some of the most famous paintings in the city. The flames not only consumed the ceiling of the Cappella del Rosario, with its panels by Tintoretto, Palma il Giovane and Francesco Bassano, but also – in an even more tragic turn of events – two large altarpieces, Giovanni Bellini’s Madonna and Saints and Titian’s The Death of St. Peter Martyr, which had been temporally stored at the church, awaiting restoration.2 1 I should like to express my thanks to Thomas Schmiedl for his assistance with the translation of this article into English. 2 Angelo Caccin, Die Basilika St. Johannes und Paul in Venedig, tr. Ambrogio Esser (Venice: Edizioni Zanipolo, 1969), 87–90. The chapel reopened in 1959. Goodchild, K.H., A. Oettinger and L. Prosperetti (eds.), Green Worlds in Early Modern Italy. Art and the Verdant Earth, Amsterdam University Press doi: 10.5117/9789462984950_ch09

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Titian’s St. Peter Martyr altarpiece, which was completed for the convent in 1530 and must have measured over five metres in height, is one of the artist’s most reproduced works.3 It was considered a masterpiece from the beginning, praised by both artists and scholars for its groundbreaking treatment of the protagonist’s passions within a setting of great pictorial magnificence. Patricia Meilman, in her book Titian and the Altarpiece in Renaissance Venice, recounts the origins of the work, argues its art-historical significance within the tradition of history painting, and examines it within the context of contemporary art theory. What was so revolutionary about Titian’s painting was its staging of a martyr’s death in a forest with not a building in sight. The Death of St. Peter Martyr was not just a great feat of religious art. It was a great sylvan masterpiece. The key to its success was Titian’s depiction of towering trees, which took the art world by surprise and may have sparked an interest in smaller replicas for the sake of study and connoisseurship.4 It is worth noting that written testimonials precede painted replicas in the history of the reception of Titian’s Martyrdom of St. Peter. In other words, before the appearance of painted replicas, its fame was spread by literary criticism, which presumably articulated some of the criteria that made the work so praiseworthy. Norman Land, in his two landmark articles on ekphrasis, used the case of Titian’s altarpiece as one of the most famous examples of a literary response to a great painting.5 The following chapter will examine the graphic reproductions of Titian’s painting. Its purpose is to provide information and analysis that will expand on the studies by Meilman and Land, concentrating on additional aspects that are significant to the history of the reception and transmission of The Death of St. Peter Martyr. The discussion will also focus on the discrepancy between the expectations of art critics (and connoisseurs) and the elaborate style employed by successive artists, especially the way they dealt with the vegetal details of the picture. To what extent, one wonders, did the engravers take liberties with the painting’s details, and how is Titian’s style 3 Harold Edwin Wethey, The Paintings of Titian (London: Phaidon, 1969–75), I: 153–155, n. 133. 4 Painted replicas, mostly commissioned by art lovers, had a very different function from graphic reproductions. They merely give a good indication about the popularity of the painting among members of the elite, expressing the individual’s taste and need for status and prestige. Graphic reproductions – especially when created in different periods and by a large number of different artists – are far more important to determine an artwork’s place in the history of reception, thus allowing different conclusions to be drawn about the impact of an artwork at the time and the contemporary response to it. How the painting was perceived in the ensuing centuries is traced only summarily in Patricia Meilman, Titian and the Altarpiece in Renaissance Venice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). The author has covered this topic in some detail elsewhere. See P. Meilman, “Out of Oblivion: The Later Fortuna Critica of Titian’s ‘St. Peter Martyr altarpiece’”, in Memory & Oblivion: Proceedings of the XXIXth International Congress of the History of Art held in Amsterdam, 1–7 September 1996, eds. Reinink, Wessel and Jeroen Stumpel (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999), 255–63. In particular, Meilman examined the work’s reception by the English art theorists and landscape painters of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 5 See Norman E. Land, “Titian’s Martyrdom of St Peter Martyr and the ‘limitations’ of ekphrastic art criticism”, Art History 13 (1990): 293–317, and N. Land, The Viewer as Poet: The Renaissance Response to Art (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994).

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expressed in the graphic medium? Are there instances where the graphic representation of the painted original develops a life of its own? Although Titian’s altarpiece has been lost for 150 years, its continued appeal has been sustained by painted copies and the many graphic reproductions executed in a variety of styles. We will never know how faithful those imitations and ‘surrogates’ are, especially when we take into account the fact that the original had already been in a desolate state since the late seventeenth century.6 The work is, first of all, a history painting with a Christian religious subject, depicting the martyr St. Peter of Verona, a Dominican and papal inquisitor, who was brutally murdered in a wooded area near the village of Barlassina on the 6th of April, 1252. Pope Innocent IV canonized him, only one year later, in 1253.7 St. Peter Martyr is usually represented with a knife embedded in his skull, the weapon with which the mortal wound was inflicted. There are also representations of the saint in which he appears writing, with his own blood, the word ‘credo’ in the ground as he dies.8 Titian, in his narrative, does not make use of the two elements. Instead, he captures the murderous action as it is in full swing: St. Peter, lying on the ground and bleeding from the head, is about to be dispatched by the sword of the assassin who is still keeping a tight grip on his cloak. Peter’s companion, raising his arms and shouting out in terror, is fleeing the scene to the left. On the other side of the picture, and shielded by the thicket of branches, one can see two people escaping.9 Taking his cue from the legendary scene of an assassination carried out ruthlessly at the edge of a wood, Titian brings off an innovative landscape painting in which the vegetation and the spatial arrangement coalesce in an ingenuous composition. The drama that ensues from the actions and gestures of the figures is also echoed, in a kind of conceptual continuation, by the design and differentiation of the trees, their suggested movement, their colours, and their varietas. The different cloud formations and the clear azure blue of the sky also serve to underline the overall impression of a landscape that has come alive through the event that is happening in it. The concetto of the picture is the narrative and formal inclusion of the landscape space and the vegetal elements in the actual istoria. It is therefore hardly surprising that the altarpiece early on acquired canonical status as a landscape painting. In this context, it is important to differentiate between the reception of 6 Norberto Gramaccini and Hans Jakob Meier, Die Kunst der Interpretation. Italienische Reproduktionsgrafik 1485–1600 (Berlin and Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2009), 200. The authors accept only three prints, i.e. Rota, Lefebre, and Zuliani, as true representations of Titian’s original. See also Robert Hopkins, “Reproductive Prints as Aesthetic Surrogates”, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 73 (2015): 1, 11–21; Meilman, 2000, 199; Johann Jakob Volkmann, Historisch-kritische Nachrichten von Italien (Leipzig: Fritsch, 1770–71), II: 542. 7 Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, tr. William Granger Ryan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), I: 254–266. 8 Lexicon der Christlichen Ikonographie [= LCI], ed. Engelbert Kirschbaum (Darmstadt: WBG, 2012), VIII: 184–187. 9 Meilman, 2000, 116. Meilman’s interpretation is not without controversy. See Land, 1990, passim.

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the painting as an object of devotion for the inhabitants of the convent and the lay spectators on the one side, and its appreciation as an object of art on the other. The different responses to the aesthetic qualities of The Death of St. Peter Martyr have, in fact, been one of its defining aspects right from its creation.10 The painting is first mentioned in Pietro Aretino’s book of letters, published in 1538, where, in a letter written a year earlier and addressed to the Florentine sculptor and garden designer Niccolò Tribolo, the poet describes the poignant portrayal of the figures before, in a passage that takes up a similar amount of space, he moves on to discussing the landscape in the picture.11 In 1557, one year after Aretino’s death, Lodovico Dolce published his Dialogo della pittura. L’Aretino, the title by which the work is known today, begins with a dialogue between two Venetians, Aretino and Giovan Francesco Fabrini, and their chance meeting in the church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice where, just two weeks earlier, the poet had gone to attend the mass of St. Peter the Martyr. Later in the Dialogo, Dolce has Aretino provide a description of the painting, adapting Aretino’s letter dated 29 October 1537. This version, however, does not contain the historical poet’s appreciative remarks about the composition of the landscape. The short comment simply notes ‘a painterly piece of landscape with some elder trees’.12 The Dialogo della pittura was, of course, intended as a response to Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists, published in 1550 and revised in 1568. The Florentine’s view on art, based on the ideal of a perfected disegno that is coupled with inventiveness (invenzione), is countered by Dolce with the particular skill of Venetian colore, which ensured a perfect rendering of nature. Vasari’s disdain for Venetian artists must have been quite unbearable for Dolce. For a start (and despite several mentions of the artist as a painter of portraits) Vasari did not include a vita of Titian in the first edition. Dolce, in contrast, praises Titian as ‘divine and without equal’, giving him a status that is equal to Michelangelo in Vasari’s Vite.13 There is nothing that indicates that Vasari’s views on art changed in the years between 1550 and 1568, but he could no longer afford to ignore an artist who was then at the height of his European fame. The 1568 edition finally did include a life of Titian, whom Vasari had met two years earlier during his stay in Venice. It contains a lot of praise that is, however, frequently interspersed with criticism. Vasari, at the beginning of his vita of Titian, states that the Venetian painters did not have the means of studying ancient works and that they 10 Land, 1990, 304. 11 Pietro Aretino, Le lettere di M. Pietro Aretino (Venice: Zoppino, 1538), 137: ‘Che mirabil groppo di bambini è ne l’aria, che si dispicca da gli arbori; che la spargono de i tronchi, e de le foglie loro; che paese raccolta ne la semplicita del suo naturale; che sassi herbosi bagne l’acqua, che ivi fa corrente la vena uscita dal pennello del divin Titiano.’ 12 Lodovico Dolce, Dialogo della pittura (Vinegia: Giolito de’Ferrari, 1557), 57v: ‘[E]t una macchia di paese con certi arbori di Sambuco.’ See Mark W. Roskill, Dolce’s ‘Aretino’ and Venetian Art Theory of the Cinquecento (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 191. 13 Dolce, 1557, 59v: ‘[N]ella Pittura divino e senza pari.’; Roskill, 2000, 195.

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neglected the study of drawing on paper, which was the reason that the art practised there could not become equal to that of Rome and Tuscany.14 Despite the criticism, there is, in several places in the vita, praise for the depiction of landscapes in Titian’s work.15 Vasari’s admiring remarks of approval, however, are rather broad and do not provide a set of clear-cut criteria distinguishing a good depiction from a bad one. In the case of The Martyrdom of St. Peter, he speaks of a ‘landscape, which is most beautiful’ and a ‘forest of very great trees’.16 But like Dolce, he too puts the main emphasis on the istoria: the brutal assailant, the pain and terror of the wounded and dying victim, the shrieks of fear from his companion. The painting is also characterised by Titian’s remarkable use of light, drifting through the open sky with two angels descending from heaven ‘which gives light to the landscape, which is most beautiful’.17 The reader may appreciate the subtle play with the different levels of reality that Vasari employs here – the perception of nature as the locus of the action on the one side, and the picture plane, being a plane of reflection, on the other. St. Peter Martyr, Vasari comments in his closing remark, ‘is the most finished, the most celebrated, the greatest, and the best conceived and executed that Tiziano has as yet ever done in all his life’.18 Neither Vasari nor Dolce provide a detailed description of the vegetal details. In contrast to their depiction of the emotional state of the figures in the painting, they are remarkably silent when it comes to discussing aspects of Titian’s landscape. Both authors would have known Aretino’s letter with his brief but very perceptive comments (an example of topographic ekphrasis) which they could have expanded on. Why did they not strive for the clarity of Aretino’s prose? Especially given the fact that a sophisticated vocabulary and highly artificial discursive style had existed since, for example, the publication of Jacopo Sannazaro’s Arcadia – a book that, especially at the beginning, is full of praise for trees, which, beyond measure, ennoble the natural beauty of a given place – encouraging writers like Vasari and Dolce to explore the natural world as a medium that lends itself perfectly to artistic modelling and narrative elaboration.19 One reason for this could have been the distance in time between 14 See Marzia Faietti, “Giorgio Vasari’s ‘Life of Titian’: Critical Misinterpretations and Preconceptions Concerning Venetian Drawing”, in Catherine Whistler, Drawing in Venice: Titian to Canaletto (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2015), 39–49. 15 See Karen Hope Goodchild, “‘A Hand More Practiced and Sure’: The History of Landscape Painting in Giorgio Vasari’s ‘Lives of the Artists’”, Artibus et Historiae 32 (2011): 64, 25–40; K.H. Goodchild, Towards an Italian Renaissance Theory of Landscape (PhD thesis, University of Virginia, 1998). http://search.lib.virginia. edu/catalog/libra-oa:9770 16 Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, tr. Gaston du C. De Vere [10 vols.] (London: Macmillan, 1912–15), IX, 166; G. Vasarie, Le Vite […] da Giorgio Vasari, ed. Gaetano Milanesi [9 vols.] (Firenze: Sansoni, 1878–85),VII, 438f.: ‘[U]na boscaglia d’alberi grandissimi […] paese, che è bellissimo.’ 17 Ibid., 438 f.: ‘[U]n lampo die cielo, il quale dà lume al paese, che è bellissimo, ed a tutta l’opera insieme.’ 18 Vasari, 1915, IX, 166; Vasari ed. Milanesi, 1881, VII, 439: ‘[L]a quale è la più compiuta, la più celebrata, e la maggiore e meglio intesa e condotta che altra, la quale in tutta la sua vita Tiziano abbia fatto ancor mai.’ 19 Jacopo Sannazaro, L’Arcadia: di Messer Jacopo Sannazaro (Pisa: Sebastiano Nistri, 1820), 15. Stephen J. Campbell, “Naturalism and the Venetian Poesia: Grafting, Metaphor and Embodiment in Giorgione, Titian and the Campagnolas”, in Lorenzo Pericolo and Alexander Nagel, Subject as Aporia in Italian Renaissance Art (Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 2009),115–42. Campbell discusses the connection between Titian’s works and Sannazaro’s poetics. Titian’s portrait of Sannazaro is housed in the Gallerie dell’ Accademia in Venice.

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the completion of Titian’s St. Peter Martyr altarpiece and the the impression it later made on the two authors. In Aretino’s letter, one can still sense his being stunned by Titian’s concetto; such a response is hardly discernible in Dolce’s passage. The painting was, at the time, well known in Venice, and one of the outstanding (albeit not one of the latest) attractions of the city. Another reason can perhaps be found in Dolce’s overall concept. Writing his Dialogo some twenty-seven years after the unveiling of the altarpiece, his target was Vasari. And although Dolce certainly did not have the intention to compete with Vasari on a literary level, he seems to have likewise been reluctant to enrich his book with elaborate descriptions. Titian’s famous painting was merely an example in his discussion of Venetian painting and its equivalence in aesthetic status to Florentine disegno. Norman Land’s analysis suggests that a detailed description of vegetation was not seen as necessary for the overall effect of a literary response. However, the reproductive prints that have come down to us seem to lead to different results. They rather suggest that the printmakers reacted to the descriptions and added something new. Even though their works all differ in design, they share the playful inclination to expand upon what was left unsaid or only partially referred to – like the still life quality of the plants in the middle of the foreground – by art critics. By concentrating especially on aspects of the painting that had not been elucidated, the artists filled a lacuna, in the sense that they weaved in an element to the story that had not been there before. The way that the printmakers dealt with the compositional and formal details of the picture, especially where vegetation is concerned, attests to the freedoms they enjoyed where the written word was lacking. The prints also demonstrate the growing self-confidence of these graphic interpreters. Focussing on the natural world, their works stand out for the excellence of their en detail artistry and craftsmanship on both sides of the threshold between original and interpretative copy. In 1568, the year Vasari published the second edition of the Lives, folio-sized prints of Titian’s The Martyrdom of St. Peter were beginning to appear. There is no doubt about their instant appeal to writers and readers, who would otherwise have had to make the effort to see the original. Two works stand out as ground-breaking: Martino Rota’s engraving and Giovanni Battista Fontana’s etching, the former variously dated between around 1560 and 1582/3.20 There are several indicators that suggest a terminus ante quem of 1569, but there is no question that Rota’s engraving predates Fontana’s print.21 It is highly likely that Dolce’s Dialogo had created a certain demand for the reproduction of the painting. And although his words were perhaps not adequate 20 The British Museum dates the print (No. 1874,0808.1941) to 1560–80; the V&A Museum gives it (No. DYCE.1301) a date of 1582–3; while the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York states the print’s date as ‘c.1560’. 21 The only dated print by Rota with Guarinoni’s address is from 1569. From 1568, Rota worked at the court of Rudolph II in Prague. There is a single sheet (B.110), dated 1574, that proves Rota’s work at court and sees him entering a new creative period. The Death of St. Peter Martyr cannot be dated before 1566 because there is no proof of a cooperation between Rota and any publisher.

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to a detailed description, it was his book that told readers, for whom it would have meant a great effort to see the altarpiece, about Titian’s work. Vasari’s visit to Venice in 1566 may also have had the effect of creating an entrepreneurial spirit among the artists and printmakers; and it seems that several publishers felt there were opportunities to make money from Titian’s paintings.22 Martino Rota’s engraving was the first print after Titian’s altarpiece (Fig. 9.1).23 The artist has used the burin with considerable skill and precision. The emotional state of the figures, an aspect that had always been emphasised in the descriptions of the painting, is also reflected in the engraving. The light that is radiating from the angels is prominent but rather stylised in comparison to the original. It is this kind of stylisation that also characterises Rota’s portrayal of the vegetation. The elder trees, the ivy, and the poplars to the right of the picture, but also the trailing dog rose next to the tree stump can be identified as such because of Rota’s strong concentration on the representation of their individual botanical features such as the forms of their leaves.24 With his neatly drawn grass bunches he creates the impression of a soft cushion. Interestingly, Rota leaves the background behind the Martyr’s companion almost shapeless. If Carlo Loth’s copy is faithful to the original that was lost in the fire of 1867, the background of the painting must have depicted a sky shifting in colour with the movement of cloudscapes in grey and white. Rota has the bouffant clouds end where the lowest foliage of the tree that is sloping from the middle towards the left begins. His technique and style are the reasons why the original painting’s airy and translucent appearance does not quite translate in the graphic version. For instance, no distinct location can be assigned to the two angels in the painting; it is difficult to ascertain where exactly they are and where they come from. In Rota’s engraving, they are hovering in front of a very corporeal and relatively dark cloud that has superimposed itself on the tree. In addition, the piece of turf at the bottom rather suggests a Northern influence and almost looks like an herbarium. In this respect, it should be noted that, by allowing themselves a freer interpretation of the greenery at the bottom, all print artists have ensured that their names live on in the interpretation of a part of the painting that is closest to the viewer’s eye. Rota has signed his print by adding a cartellino to a broken branch that also existed in the original painting. It makes reference to the ‘inventor’ Titian and the name of the person who has publicised his work: Martino Rota from Sebenico in Dalmatia. 22 For Vasari’s own use of prints in his writings see Sharon Gregory, Vasari and the Renaissance Print (Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2012), 133–160, esp. 134–137. 23 Some scholars have assumed that the print had been requested by Titian, but I would agree with Gramaccini and Meier. See Gramaccini and Meier, 2009, 200. Michael Bury assumes that Rota worked on his own and made also the preparatory drawing himself. See Michael Bury, The Print in Italy: 1550–1620 (London: British Museum Press, 2001), 191, Cat. 128, 176. 24 For the identification of some of the trees with refence to the painted copy, see Meilman, 2000, 120. One can not say with absolute certainity if an identification of certain plants has been intended or if Rota rather aimed at providing the viewer with an example of a rich representation of the ideal of botanical variety.

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Figure 9.1: Martino Rota after Titian, The Death of St. Peter Martyr, 1568/9. Engraving. The Metropolitain Museum of Art, New York.

On the opposite side and at the bottom of the picture is a stone, bearing the name of the publisher Luca Guarinoni. This rather conventional arrangement has given an even greater prominence to the engraver’s signature.25 Rota gives Titian credit for having invented the scene, but it was Rota who carried out the engraving. The very 25 Not much is known about Guarinoni. Bury has shown that Guarinoni was present in Venice in 1568/9. See Bury, 2001, 227. There is also a print from two plates by Enea Vico after Francesco Salviati bearing his Florentine address in 1545, so Guarinoni could have been active as a publisher in Florence before he came to Venice. See Gramaccini and Meier, 2009, 186, Cat. No. 137.

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first print after Titian’s painting shows the limits of translating its painterly qualities into the language of a graphic art. Martino Rota’s print is not a ‘re-production’ of The Death of St. Peter Martyr but a faithful conversion of the painting by means of motif and composition. In terms of its formal features, it is a representation that displays a masterly proficiency in the language of engraving. The print therefore differs – that is to say, has to differ – significantly from the painting. Giovanni Battista Fontana’s etching, dated 1569, differs markedly from Rota’s engraving and its fine lines, different shades and rich textures (Fig. 9.2). It is only slightly smaller, but Fontana has not bothered to draw the upper arc of the original

Figure 9.2: Giovanni Battista Fontana after Titian, The Death of St. Peter Martyr, 1569. Etching. Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Dresden.

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painting.26 Due to the fact that it would have taken much less time to produce an etched plate, it is very likely that Fontana’s print was a response to the publication of Rota’s engraving but he might also have felt that there was an increasing demand for images of Titian’s altarpiece.27 The difference in technique compared to Rota’s print might account for the differences in style. There is no doubt that, compared to engraving, etching lends itself better as a medium to capture Titian’s painterly style because it allows a freer handling of the needle. Fontana’s print, however, with its visible process of simplification and formal standardisation but also some inaccuracies in the main elements of the picture, gives the impression of a rather hasty production. For instance, the facial expressions of the three main figures are almost the same and do not reveal any intimate knowledge of the dramatic relation among them, appreciated so much by Aretino, Dolce, and Vasari.28 The vegetation is also fairly standardised, and except for the piece of turf at the bottom, all trees and bushes are covered with the same nonspecific foliage. Where Rota spreads out a blanket of soft grass, Fontana has shaded the area through hatching. In addition, Fontana also takes liberties with the design of the trees and the sky. The scene takes place in front of trees that seem to function like a backdrop to a stage. They do not mark the edge of a deep forest the way they do in Titian’s painting and in Rota’s print. In terms of the light from heaven that falls on Peter Martyr, Fontana tends to be less ambiguous. The vertical rays that are visible between the angels and the saint are there to signify the sacredness of the event, an aspect of the print that, compared to the original painting, is especially notable. Seen as a whole, Fontana’s etching is rather a summary of the subject of the painting and does not illustrate its specific qualities for which it was praised by art critics. Regardless of this there must have been reasons for producing it, for example the artist being motivated by monetary considerations. The summary character of the print and the remarkable detail of the rays from the heavens would have appealed to a target group of buyers with a smaller budget. Unlike Rota’s engraving, the print made by Fontana would not have been suitable for travellers interested in retaining Titian’s art in their private collections. He could, however, have been assured of a clientele of pilgrims visiting the church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo and taking part in the celebration of masses held in front of the altarpiece.29 This is suggested not least by the fact that Fontana and his publisher Nicolo Nelli signed the print in a 26 A similar version reappeared in an anonymous print by the publisher Drevet in Paris. 27 The copy in Dresden, for example, must have been printed from an already strained plate that, perhaps because it got damaged, is missing 1 cm on the right-hand side. (Kupferstich-Kabinett Dresden, Inv. No. A88133). 28 See Adam Bartsch, Le peintre graveur [21 vols.] (Vienna: Mechetti, 1818), XVI, 213: ‘Les tètes ont peu de précision, et il leur manque l’expression: souvent elles sont exécutées avec négligence.’ (‘The heads have little precision, and they lack expression: they are often executed with negligence’, tr. S. Peinelt-Schmidt). 29 Nicolo Nelli had a shop on the Rialto near SS Giovanni e Paolo. The idea that Fontana’s print could be of a more devotional character is supported by the text of Nelli’s privilege. See Bury, 2001, 229f.

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more modest manner than Rota and Guarinoni. While the latter have presented the engraving as a work of art, Fontana and Nelli seem to appeal to the buyer with a solid piece of craftsmanship, practical rather than ostentatious, using the term ‘incidebat’ and making no secret of the cooperation between printer and publisher. The two prints discussed above dominated the market for the next hundred years: they were the chief instruments for the dissemination of Titian’s painting. A third interpretation was published as a part of a whole series of prints called Opera selectiora [...]. The collection consists of fifty-three etchings by Valentin Lefebre after Titian, Paolo Veronese, and Jacopo Tintoretto and went through numerous editions. The series was first published in Venice by Jacob van Campen in 1682 and was dedicated Louis XIV, King of France and Navarre.30 There is a mention of a privilege on the titlepage, and the volume’s large format indicates that this was a highly professionalised venture that had both support and stature. Judging from the many reprints (among them an edition of prints from the reworked original plates) by various publishers in the following years, the series was a great success.31 Unlike the prints by Rota and Fontana, Lefebre’s etching of The Death of St. Peter Martyr was made in reverse, indicating a reception of the painting’s subject uncoupled from the original (Fig. 9.3). It is, moreover, the only print in the series that, in addition to the artist’s name, contains an inscription which reads ‘Inuidus hic fremat nec imitabile dicat’ (‘May the envier express discontent and say that this cannot be imitated’).32 These words, freely quoted from Pliny, emphasise the significance of the painting within Titian’s oeuvre as well as the series.33 Lefebre made the preparatory drawing himself, and, like his predecessors, took some liberties in his interpretation of the picture. 34 Most notably, he concentrates on the clothes of the three men in the centre. The fabric seems to be more finely pleated than in Rota’s print or Loth’s painted copy. This makes the figures look more antique and points to the fact that Lefebre was influenced by French classicism. As in Fontana’s print the expressions of the men’s faces reveal nothing. Lefebre has also changed the size and pose of the figures. This can especially be observed in the figure of the fleeing companion. His body is more erect, his head a little too small and his cloak more billowing than in Rota’s print. The landscape has thus gained more significance and a greater expression in Lefebre’s interpretation. Compared to 30 The edition of 1680 has probably never existed. See Ugo Ruggeri, Valentin Lefèvre dipinti, disegni, incisioni (Manerba: Merigo Art Books, 2001), 49f. 31 The series was republished in 1684. Later, and because they had worn off, the plates were retouched by Giuseppe Wagner and Johann Gottfried Saiter. The set was published again in 1749 and in 1763. A new edition, with added plates, was published by Teodoro Viero in 1786, and 1789. 32 Tr. Thomas Schmiedl. 33 See Gaius Secundus Plinius, Natural History, ed. Harris Rackham [10 vols] (London: Heinemann, 1983– 92), 35: 63. See also Carlo Ridolfi, Le Maraviglie dell’Arte, Ouero, Le Vite de gl’Illvstri Pittori Veneti […] (Venetia: Presso Gio. Battista Sgaua, 1648), 151. 34 There exists apparently a ‘quadro d’una copia di San Pietro Martire’. Ruggeri, 2001, 216.

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Figure 9.3: Valentin Lefebre after Titian, The Death of St. Peter Martyr, 1682. Etching in Opera selectiora qvæ Titianus Vecellius Cadubriensis et Paulus Calliari Veronensis inventarvnt, ac Pinxervnt, Venice. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Fontana’s etching, his technical proficiency is characterised by a far wider range of tones. One of the clearest examples of this can be seen in the way Lefebre has treated the light. He is more skilful than Fontana, but also less schematic than Rota, and

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Figure 9.4: Enlarged detail from Fig. 9.3: Upper part of the print by Lefebre with bird’s nest and translucent pair of cherubs.

has captured the light that is coming through the clouds with some soft lines that serve essentially as a means of suggesting its direction. Concentrating more on the reflections of the light than on the vegetation, Lefebre came very close to the original painting. The greenery and the plants on the ground as well as the tree trunks were executed in a masterful manner. Nature has become a playground of light and shade, and the uniformly drawn figures seem to disappear within the landscape. In addition, and apart from these stylistic differences, there are some details that cannot be found in the aforementioned prints (Fig. 9.4). Where does the tiny bird’s nest in the poplar tree at the top left corner of the picture come from? And why should Rota have dispensed with the two translucent and obscured cherubs that look down from a higher cloud at their two companions? He must surely have been able to see them in the original painting. And why did Giuseppe Wagner, in his reworking of Lefebre’s plate, make these angelic beings almost disappear? A comparison with Titian’s other early religious paintings such as the Madonna di Ca’ Pesaro (Wethey 55) or The Aldobrandini Madonna (Wethey 59) suggests that the cloud-like angels may not have existed in the original painting.35 A further comparison of Loth’s copy, Lefebre’s etching, and Titian’s later works, insofar as they include similarly translucent beings, shows that Loth exhibited a remarkable likeness to Lefebre in terms of the obscured cherubs’ lack of plasticity. The bird’s nest and the cloud-like angels may be 35 Wethey, 1969–75, I: 55, 59.

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considered the most remarkable details in Lefebre’s etching and illustrate his artistic self-conception as an interpreter rather than a copyist. After the publication of Carolina Catherina Patin’s Tabellae selectae in 1691, which included a smaller etching of The Death of St. Peter Martyr by Nicolas Cochin, another half century would pass before the next large-size graphic reproduction of the painting was produced.36 In 1739, John Baptist Jackson conceived of a series of woodcuts after paintings by Venetian masters such as Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, and Bassano. Jackson had become proficient in the chiaroscuro woodcut technique printed in several colours, and Titian’s St. Peter Martyr is undoubtedly a fine example of Jackson’s ingenious application of this complex Renaissance printing technique which gives the image both depth and dimension. The vegetal details are especially worth noting.37 Several leaf types in the woodcut can be identified botanically, an aspect shared with the engraving by Rota. There is ivy growing on the oak tree in the middle. The tree behind the assassin seems also to be an oak tree while the poplar at the right-hand side of the picture has roundish leaves. The patch of grass Peter is falling onto has been created with fine, parallel running strokes, serving, it seems, as a pillow to cushion his head. As in the prints discussed earlier, the area in the front is characterised by an (almost still-life like) ensemble of different large-leafed and tendriled plants, amongst them two oak saplings, marking the aesthetic border that encloses foreground space. In the series of woodcuts that was eventually published as a bound large folio volume in 1745 under the title Titiani [...] Opera selectiora, Jackson’s interpretation of The Death of St. Peter Martyr stands out as one that differs in colour from the rest of the prints. In the copy housed in Dresden the artist used a dark brown colour and a lighter brown containing a significant amount of green, but also yellow and a light grey for the print depicting the painting (Plate 28).38 There are other copies, like the one in the British Museum, that combine the colours dark brown, reddish brown, light orange and light grey.39 By printing the colours yellow and light grey over one another, the Dresden copy acquired a greenish tint.40 The remaining prints of the series are all dominated by sepia tones and strong shades of brown.41 Even the monumental prints after Veronese adhere to the monochrome colour scheme. Jackson’s print of The Death of St. Peter Martyr is the result of lengthy experimentation with multiple-plate colour printing. 36 See Laura de Fuccia, “Le ‘Pitture scelte’ di Carla Caterina Patin: un ‘impresa editoriale tra Francia e Italia nel Seicento”, in À l’origine du livre d’art. Les recueils d’estampes comme entreprises éditoriales en Europe (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles), eds. Cordélia Hattori, Estelle Leutrat, and Véronique Meyer (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana, 2010), 81–94. 37 See Jacob Kainen, John Baptist Jackson: 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1962), 31–33 and Evelyn Wöldicke, Die Renaissance einer vergessenen Technik: Clairobscur-Holzschnitte im 18. Jahrhundert (PhD-thesis, FU Berlin 2014). URL: http://www.diss.fuberlin.de/diss/receive/FUDISS_thesis_000000097284 38 KK A 88136, BM 1918,0713.30. 39 BM 1958,0712.94. 40 The set (M2966.-M2982) housed in the Harvard Art Museums in which the leaf depicting The Death of St. Peter Martyr differs in colour from the rest of the prints is another interesting example. 41 With the exception of The Mystic Marriage of St Catherine after Veronese. Cf. KK A95577; BM 1858,0712.95.

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This reflects the painting’s outstanding aesthetic quality. The fact that the Peter Martyr woodcut was different from the remaining prints indicates a shift in the painting’s perception as no longer representing a historical subject but as belonging to the genre of landscape painting. In this respect Jackson followed Lefebre’s lead in placing particular value on the natural world depicted in Titian’s painting. In 1754, Jackson published An Essay on the Invention of Engraving and Printing in Chiaro Oscuro in which the author places himself in the tradition of the woodcutters who worked for Dürer, Titian, and other eminent painters. The book was meant to serve as a publicity venture for his new use of the chiaroscuro technique, printing wallpapers. According to Jacob Kainen, in his 1962 monograph, Jackson certainly thought that ancient ruins and artefacts, ‘many of the famous statues of antiquity’, and landscapes after famous masters, ‘the landscapes of Salvator Rosa, Claude Lorrain, Poussin, Berghem, Wouwerman, the views of Canaletto, Pannini’, would potentially attract buyers, but the wallpaper firm failed a year later. Disappointingly, Jackson seems to have been unable to find a patron for his work. Kainen summed up the situation as follows: ‘Jackson was too early; public taste was not yet ready for picturesque landscape or antique forms in wallpaper.’42 The multiple-plate colour prints that accompany An Essay are, on the one hand, four reproductions of antique sculptures like the bust of Democritus; the statue of the Apollo Belvedere; the statue of the Farnese Hercules; and an unidentified bust. They are printed in an olive-bistre colour, and the grand seriousness of the subject matter is matched by the tonal gradation of the clair-obscur.43 The book also includes, on the other hand, four plates depicting a lion in front of a rock, a domed garden temple, a peacock in front of a garden urn, and an ancient column in front of the ruins of a round temple. Those have been carried out with much greater minuteness and in superimposed natural colours, red, grey and yellow, permitting more variable colours and tones in the depiction of the vegetation. The description of the small garden temple on the facing page explains that Jackson was not only aware of the practical advantages of his technique, but also envisaged considerable possibilities for motives and outlines.44 Jackson’s prints are marked by great contrasts, juxtaposing 42 Kainen, 1962, 45–6. 43 Ibid, 47–8. Kainen describes the prints as ‘hastily done [and that] the oil in the pigments was inferior, and every print in the book has darkened and yellowed badly. The prints and neighboring pages are heavily spotted and stained. This book which should have been his vindication became instead an argument for his lack of merit, especially to those who were not familiar with his other work’. In the copy housed in Dresden (Inv.No. B 458c,1), the colours are indeed slightly blurred; but the present quality of the book’s illustrations is not necessarily an indication of its influence and popularity. 44 John Baptist Jackson, An Essay on the Invention of Engraving and Printing in Chiaro Oscuro, as Practised By Albert Durer, Hugo di Carpi, &c. and The Application of it to the Making Paper Hangings of Taste, Duration, and Elegance (London: s.ed., 1754), 15: ‘This Print gives a faint Idea of what is to be done in Colours, with Respect to Buildings and Vegetables in this Manner: The Ruins of Rome, Athens, Palmyra or Egypt may be printed, and Landscapes of any Kind after the best Masters in any Size, and the Ground of the Paper done of one Colour. This, as has been said in the Essay, will make a lasting and genteel Furniture, as all the Colouring is done in Oil, and not subject to fly off, as in Papers finish’d in Water Colours.’

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antiquity and landscape as well as the chiaroscuro woodcut and the colour print. What becomes clear is that the artist places a higher value on landscapes in colour than he does on ancient ruins and artefacts in clair-obscur. For the artist, whether in his Essay, in his print of The Death of St. Peter Martyr, or indeed in his Heroic Landscapes after gouaches by Marco Ricci, landscape serves as the experimental ground for innovations in new designs and printing techniques. Later still, in 1771, Antonio Maria Zanetti described Titian’s painting in the church of San Giovanni e Paolo as the most important one and ‘uno de’ più bei quadri che sia in Venezia’.45 It is therefore not surprising that, in 1797, the St. Peter Martyr altarpiece arrived in Paris as one of the spoils of the French Empire. The transport did nothing for the already decayed state of the painting, but the French conservators were able to remove the colour or paint layer and thus transfer it to a canvas. In 1802, the painting was exhibited in the Grand Salon of the Louvre.46 A year later, a new graphic reproduction of the work was published in Paris. The inscription, ‘Peint par Titian – Dessiné par Bouillon – Gravé par Henri Laurent’, provides the names of both the draughtsman and the engraver. The print can be found in the first volume of the Musée Français, and can therefore be dated exactly.47 Due to the fact that the painting was one of the many prestigious objects that had been amassed through Napoleon’s military campaigns, it is very likely that this Peter Martyr engraving is a true copy of the cleaned and restored original (Fig. 9.5). This then solves the mystery of the bird’s nest. The conclusion that can be inferred from the print by Bouillon and Laurent is that the nest is likely to have been an addition by Valentin Lefebre. It first appears in the etching contained in the 1682 volume of the Opera selectiora [...], and continues to be found in the reproductions by Cochin, Jackson, and Lefebre’s retouched copy by Wagner. (Fig. 9.6) The nest can also be seen in the etching by Dominique Vivant Denon, which was probably completed during his time in Venice in the early 1790s. All four reproductive prints were produced at a time when Titian’s painting had suffered considerable damage, in particular, darkening of the paint layer as a result of the ageing of the oil. Moreover, the bird’s nest – if it had existed in the original work – would have been located in a very high position, about five metres above the floor. Rota’s engraving had been completed when the painting was not that old and is thus the truest copy of all, even though it is, in terms of the efficient execution of the details, diametrically opposed to the considerable painterly sophistication of the original. The print made by Fontana is missing the upper third of the painting; and it is therefore highly likely that Cochin, Jackson, and Vivant Denon had access to both the altarpiece in 45 Antonio Maria Zanetti, Della Pittura Veneziana (Venice: Albrizzi, 1771), 114. 46 Meilman, 2000, 199. 47 The Musée Français, a publishing project that had been inaugurated with the aim of reproducing in print all the paintings and sculptures in the French royal collection, consisted of four volumes (1803–09) and was edited by Louis Robillard-Péronville and Pierre Laurent.

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Figure 9.5: Henri Laurent from a preparatory drawing by Pierre Bouillon after Titian, The Death of St. Peter Martyr, 1803. Etching and engraving in Le Musée Français, 1803–9, Vol. 1. Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Dresden.

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Figure 9.6: Valentin Lefebre and Joseph Wagner after Titian, The Death of St. Peter Martyr, 1682–1749, Etching and engraving (originally by Lefebre, reworked plate by Wagner) in Le opere scelte dipinte da Tiziano Vecelli di Cadore, e da Paolo Caligari di Verona, Venice. Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Dresden.

the church and Lefebre’s Opera selectiora [...]. This also demonstrates the relations between precursors and the individual artist, highlighting the important role that earlier interpretations would have played in the process of creating a new graphic

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interpretation. It is only consequential that the bird’s nest has disappeared in the versions by Jean Duplessis-Bertaux, Angelo Testa, Felice Zuliani, and Conrad Geyer – all of which are dated after 1803. And the cloud-like angels? They are only abscent in the reproductions by DuplessisBertaux, and Testa. One reason for this could be that the artists had undergone an emancipation from the constraints of Titian’s painting. But the angelic beings can also be seen as a metaphor for the nature of so-called reproductive prints. They essentially served as historic memorials of the original artwork, conveying the composition of a painting and presenting it in the manner the artist intended. This could, however, only happen within the constraints of the then known printing techniques and in line with the descriptions in the corpus of art-historical literature. It is those constraints that also provided opportunities to exercise liberties, for example, in the way the artists treated the piece of turf in the foreground, the manner in which they placed their signatures into the vegetation, the more or less exact depiction of foliage, and the inclusion of additional details like the bird’s nest. The printmakers have, as it were, taken hold of parts of the famous painting and made it their own, and the landscape lent itself perfectly to their undertaking. Each reproductive print was an independent translation into a different medium, a playground for experimenting with different techniques. It has to be said, however, that every adaptation was limited by the individual specificity of the various methods. This became especially apparent when comparing the interpretations of one printmaker with the paintings by artists employing different visual styles.48 The prints would be similar to one another, rather than accurate replicas of the originals. But whatever the limitations of the graphic interpretations, their merit lay in putting an end to the debate over disegno and colore, over whether the value of a painting lay in the artist’s invention, or in the more life-like imitation of nature, achieved through colour. William Gilpin, in his Essay upon Prints, published in 1768, maintained that ‘[a] painting, or picture, was distinguished from a print only by colouring, and the manner of execution’, but three years later, Antonio Maria Zanetti lamented in a footnote to his catalogue of prints, which lists the works by Rota, Fontana, and Lefebre, that none of them came close to the original painting.49 Surely, the same could be said of Jackson’s chiaroscuro woodcut of Titian’s Martyrdom of St. Peter. However, most importantly, while the prints eliminated the distinction between design and colour, they gave rise to a different kind of discourse: one that addresses the question of genre. The early 48 See Charles Hope, “The Early Biographies of Titian”, Studies in the History of Art 45 (1993): 167: ‘In the absence of photographs, comparisons were usually made on the basis of drawings or, more frequently, of prints, such as the famous etchings by Valentin Lefebvre […] and from these it is virtually impossible to tell whether the original was a drawing or a painting, let alone an early work or later one.’ 49 William Gilpin, An Essay Upon Prints (London: Scott, 1768), 1.There is no mention of Jackson in the book, and Lefebre’s work is described as ‘miserable’, ‘bad’, and ‘disgusting’. Zanetti, 1771, 538: ‘Niuna di queste stampe rappresenta bene l’ originale.’

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literature almost exclusively considered the altarpiece as a history painting, but by the end of the eighteenth century, and doubtless because of the printmakers’ concentration on the depiction of the natural world and the abundant vegetation, the painting was regarded as an outstanding piece of landscape on canvas.50 One of the most memorable and beautiful ekphrastic descriptions in the history of the reception of The Death of St. Peter Martyr was penned by Francesco Algarotti, who declared Titian ‘the great confidant of Nature, [and] the Homer of landscape’.51 As I have hoped to show in this chapter, the remarkable critical fortunes the painting has enjoyed over the centuries have always been closely linked with the developments in art-theoretical literature. But the transformation from a history painting to a landscape painting, and its rise to canonical status as a sylvan masterpiece was greatly influenced by the artists and printmakers, whose interpretations contributed decisively to our understanding of Titian’s art and the intrinsic character of aesthetic experience.

About the author Sabine Peinelt-Schmidt works as a scientific assistant at the Porzellansammlung of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. She studied Art History and History in Dresden and Vienna. Her Bachelor Thesis was on Sebald Beham’s “Kunst- und Lehrbüchlein”; her M.A. Thesis concerned the collecting of landscape drawings in the eighteenth century. Her recently finished PhD project is entitled “Die “vornehmsten Meister” der Landschaftsmalerei. Studien zur kunsthistorischen Kanonbildung im 18. Jahrhundert [The “most distinguished masters” of landscape painting. Studies on art historical canon formation in the 18th century]”. Peinelt-Schmidt has received the doctoral scholarship of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, and she conceived and co-organized the international conference “Beyond Reproductive Printmaking – Prints and the Canon of European Painting (1500–1810)”, Dresden 18–19 September 2017. Her publications are listed here: https://skd.academia.edu/ SabinePeineltSchmidt 50 Zanetti, 118; Carl Ludwig Junker, Grundsätze der Mahlerey (Zürich: Orell, Geßner & Füeßli, 1775), 46; John Dougall, The Cabinet of the Arts: Being a New and Universal Drawing Book (London: Ackermann, 1821), I: 16. See Meilman, 1999, for further examples. 51 The famous epithet has been rendered in the English translation of Huse and Wolters as ‘the greatest intimate of nature, the Homer of landscape painters’. See Norbert Huse and Wolfgang Wolters, The Art of Renaissance Venice: Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting, 1460–1590, tr. by E. Jephcott (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1990), 322. See also Francesco Algarotti, Opere del Conte Algarotti (Livorno: Marco Coltellini, 1764), II: 160f.: ‘Tiziano, il più gran confidente della Natura, è tra’ paesisti l’ Omero. Tanto hanno di verità, i suoi siti, di varietà, di freschezza; t’invitano a passeggiarvi dentro: E forse il più bel paese, che fosse mai dipinto, è quello della tavola del S. Pietro martire; dove dalla diversità dei tronchi, delle foglie, dal portamento vario dei rami uno scorge la differenza che è da albero a albero, dove i terreni sono così bene spezzati e camminano con garbo tanto naturale, dove un Botanico andrebbe ad erbolare.’

10. The Verdant as Violence: The Storm Landscapes of Herman van Swanevelt and Gaspard Dughet Susan Russell

Abstract Land storms did not become a significant subject in the history of Italian art until the mid-seventeenth century when they appear as a well-developed sub-genre of landscape painting, notably in the works of two artists, Gaspard Dughet (1615–75) and Herman van Swanevelt (c.1603–55). However, it is unclear from existing literature with which artist the theme originated. This essay will elucidate the problem of assigning credit for the storm scene’s invention. Close examination will clarify Dughet’s and Swanevelt’s roles in the development of the new genre, especially the treatment of phenomenological aspects of stormy weather. The storm scene’s origins in artistic precedent and theory, the literature of classical antiquity and the climatic conditions of seventeenth-century Europe will also be addressed. Keywords: Swanevelt, Dughet, Cassiano dal Pozzo, storm scenes, climatic change

In 1651 Nicolas Poussin (1596–1664) wrote to his friend in Paris, the painter, Jacques Stella (1596–1657), on the fundamental role of the storm in his composition Landscape with Pyramus and Thisbe (1651, Städlisches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am Main), describing at length the exact meteorological effects he aimed at creating in his tale of Ovid’s star-crossed lovers (Met. IV).1 In the painting the distraught Thisbe rushes towards the supine Pyramus while lightning flashes in a dark, threatening sky and a raging storm tosses the leaves and limbs of trees, the whole conveying both nature’s fury and Thisbe’s 1 Poussin describes the essential elements of his composition thus: ‘[J]’ay essayé de représenter une tempeste sur terre, imitant le mieux que j’ay pû l’effet d’un vent impétueux, d’un air rempli d’obscurité, de pluye, d’éclairs et de foudres qui tombent en plusieurs entroits, non sans y faire du désordre. Toutes les figures qu’on y voit joûënt leur personage selon le tempts qu’il fait: les unes fuyent au travers de la poussière, et suivent le vent qui les emporte; d’autres au contraire vont contre le vent, et marchent avec peine, mettant leurs mains devant leurs yeux’ (‘I have tried to represent a land storm, imitating as well as I could the effect of a violent wind, of air filled with darkness, with rain, with lightnings and with thunderbolts which fall here and there, not without producing disorder. All the figures to be seen play their part in relation to the weather: some flee through the dust, and go with the wind which carries them along; others, in contrary fashion, go against the wind and walk with difficulty, putting their hands before their eyes’). Anthony Blunt, Nicolas Poussin (London: Pallas Athena, 1995), 297 & n. 40. Goodchild, K.H., A. Oettinger and L. Prosperetti (eds.), Green Worlds in Early Modern Italy. Art and the Verdant Earth, Amsterdam University Press doi: 10.5117/9789462984950_ch10

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emotional turmoil. It has been called an ‘ekphrastic masterpiece’, in which Poussin aimed to equal the mimetic abilities of two famous forerunners, the ancient Greek painter, Apelles, and the Renaissance master, Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), whose recommendations for how to represent a land storm in his Trattato della pittura Poussin appears to have followed carefully.2 Poussin showed trees that Leonardo recommended should ‘bend to earth almost as though they wished to follow the course of the winds’, as well as meteorological effects such as ‘smoky clouds, which, struck by the sun’s rays […] descend to earth, lighting it up with their beams’ and ‘infuriated bolts of lightning’ that illuminate ‘the shadowed countryside in various places’.3 Clearly Leonardo’s text motivated Poussin to explore the possibilities of the land storm – a subject far less common than the storm at sea in mid-seventeenth-century Roman art – and inspired him to create one of his most memorable landscapes. But was he the first to do so? I would argue that he was not. This essay will explore the development of the genre in the work of two different artists, both of whom have been given credit for the invention of the storm landscape: Herman van Swanevelt (c.1603–55), a Dutchman who pursued his career primarily in Rome and Paris, and Gaspard Dughet (1615–75) who, born in Rome, lived and worked there for his entire life. Both artists created landscapes agitated by land storms and it is not clear who should be given primacy for introducing the subject. Wolfgang Stechow, famously, summed up the confusion over who may have initiated the theme with his comment that Swanevelt’s Land storm in a private collection in Bad Harzburg was either ‘strongly reminiscent (or prophetic?) of Dughet’.4 Close examination will qualify this dangling question and will clarify the role of the two artists in the development of the new landscape genre, in particular their treatment of the phenomenological aspects of stormy weather. It will also address the origins of the subject in artistic precedent and theory, the literature of classical antiquity and the climatic conditions of seventeenth-century Europe.

The artists Swanevelt was born c.1603 in the Dutch town of Woerden, and moved to Paris in the early 1620s before travelling south to arrive in Rome c.1629. It was in the Eternal City that he developed a new form of backlighting and the kind of atmospheric effects that were particularly successful in evoking meteorological states and times of day. These 2 Richard Verdi, Nicolas Poussin, 1594–1665 (London: Royal Academy of Arts in association with Zwemmer, 1995), 289, plate 75, cat. 75; Alessandro Nova, The Book of the Wind: The Representation of the Invisible (Montreal, Kingston, London and Ithaca: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007), 102–107, esp. 106. 3 Codex Urbinas Latinus, 1270, Part III, 158. 553. Of the arrangement of a storm of winds and of rain; see A. Philip McMahon, Treatise on Painting [Codex Urbinas Latinus 1270] by Leonardo da Vinci (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1956), 198–199. 4 Wolfgang Stechow, “Significant Dates on Some Seventeenth-Century Dutch Landscape Painters’, Oud Holland 75 (1960): 79–92, esp. 83–85.

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effects are superbly demonstrated in the number of sunrise and sunset pendants that he executed for the Pamphilj family throughout the 1630s, paintings that were similar to, but developed independently from, the pastorals by Claude Lorrain (c.1600 or 1604/051682), a circumstance lately acknowledged in the scholarly literature.5 While a new sense of naturalism was a distinguishing characteristic of both artists’s landscapes Swanevelt reproduced phenomena that were closely derived from direct observation, while Claude used nature in a more fictional manner to achieve his poetic effects. Commissions such as those for the Pamphilj established Swanevelt’s reputation, which, however, did not prevent him from returning to Paris c.1643 for an equally successful career in the French capital.6 Meanwhile, Dughet emerged on the artistic scene as a prodigiously talented youngster: he was only in his late ‘teens when he began to paint his first known works.7 Born to French parents in Rome, he trained with his sister’s husband, Poussin, but it would be wrong to think of him as a mere imitator of his brother-in-law. To the contrary, he had his own clear vision of landscape, in which idiosyncratic trees and foliage play a major role. Moreover, it was Dughet who pioneered the storm landscape that Poussin would explore so fruitfully in Pyramus and Thisbe.8 Like Swanevelt, Dughet attracted important patrons, painting both easel pictures and frescoes for the palaces of Rome’s nobility.9 A personal relationship between the two artists is not documented, but Swanevelt associated closely with the French artistic community in Rome and in 1634 both painters became members of the Accademia di San Luca where they would undoubtedly have crossed paths.10 At a time when landscape painting was becoming a popular and influential genre there can be little doubt that the two were acutely aware of each other’s activities.11 5 For images see Andrea De Marchi catalogue entries in Caravaggio e La Fuga. La pittura di paesaggio nelle ville Doria Pamphilj, ed. by Alessandra Mercantini and Laura Stagno (Rome: Silvana Editoriale, 2010), 68–77 (70–77), cats 5, 6, 9, 11,12, 13, 14, 15, 16; Andrew C. Blume, “Herman van Swanevelt and his Prints”, Oud Holland 108 (1994): 1–13; Susan Russell, “Frescoes by Herman van Swanevelt in Palazzo Pamphilj in Piazza Navona”, The Burlington Magazine, CXXXIX (1997): 171–177; Anne Charlotte Steland, Herman van Swanevelt (um 1603–1655): Gemälde und Zeichnungen (Petersberg: Imhoff, 2010, 2 vols). For a seminal analysis of the distinctions between Swanevelt and Claude see Stechow, 1960, 83–85. 6 Extensive bibliography for Swanevelt can be found in Steland, 2010; additional see Susan Russell, “Herman van Swanevelt’s Landscape Prints in the Tom Roberts Album in the Art Gallery of NSW”, Melbourne Art Journal (2003): 65–76; Susan Russell, “Salvator Rosa and Herman van Swanevelt”, In Salvator Rosa e il suo tempo, 1615– 1673, ed. by Sybille Ebert-Schifferer, Caterina Volpi and Helen Langdon (Rome: Campisano, 2010), 335–356; Susan Russell, “His great genius was to make landscapes”: the Roman Years of Herman van Swanevelt (c.1603– 1655), vol. 67, Papers of the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome (Rome: Edizioni Quasar, forthcoming). 7 Marie-Nicole Boisclair, Gaspard Dughet (1615–1675) sa vie e son oeuvre (Paris: Arthena, 1986); Marco Chiarini, Gaspard Dughet 1615–1675 (Paris: Galerie de Bayser, 1990). 8 Blunt, 1995, 297–298; Verdi, 1995, cat. 75, 289–290. 9 Russell, 1997, 171–177. 10 Boisclair, 1986, 139; Blume, 1994, 2. 11 Swanevelt and Dughet both contributed paintings to the biggest and most prestigious landscape commission of the century for Philip IV’s Buen Retiro palace in Madrid, with Claude, Poussin, Jan Both (1610– 52), Jacques d’Artois (c. 1613–86) and Jean Lemaire (1598–1659); Giovanna Capitelli, “The Landscapes for the Buen Retiro Palace”, in Paintings for the Planet King: Philip IV and the Buen Retiro Palace, ed. André Úbeda de los Cobos (London: Museo Nacional del Prado/Paul Holberton Publishing, 2005), 241–261.

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Figure 10.1: Gaspard Dughet, Mountainous landscape with approaching storm (The Squall), c.1638–39. London, Dulwich Picture Gallery.

Dughet is better known as a painter of bad weather than Swanevelt and in her 1986 monograph Marie-Nicole Boisclair rightly claimed that his tempests are amongst the most original of his productions. At the same time, this led her to raise two questions: what do we know about the evolution of this new genre and was Dughet its inventor?12 Dughet’s Windy Day with Lone Traveller (Florence, Fondazione Longhi), c.1633– 35, [Plate 29], and Mountainous landscape with approaching storm (The Squall), c.1638–39 [Fig. 10.1], are early works, both of which show convincing depictions of wind and rain and certainly seem to qualify the younger painter as the initiator of the genre, yet problems in dating them make this a more complex issue than it appears, and will be addressed further below.13

The debut of landscapes with stormy weather As previously noted, paintings depicting storms and bad weather on land did not become a significant theme in Italian painting until the middle of the seventeenth century. There are sporadic examples of land storms before this date, such as the few 12 Boisclair, 1986, 36, 85. 13 Boisclair, 1986, fig. 30, cat. 22, 175 and cat. 61, p. 185. The painting is called Mountainous landscape with approaching storm on the Dulwich Picture Gallery website: http://www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk/. For the sake of brevity I adopt Boisclair’s title Bourrasque (The Squall).

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painted in the 1620s and early 1630s by the Flemish artist, Peter Paul Rubens (1577– 1640), but they do not appear to have provided the impetus for an immediate adoption of a distinctly new type.14 Storms at sea, on the other hand, were an established genre in Dutch and Flemish art.15 Marine subjects, known as fortunas, also became popular in Italy, largely through the agency of Paul Bril (c.1553/54–1626), his brother Matthias (c.1550–83) and other Netherlandish painters active in Rome in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and were quickly taken up by Italian artists like the landscape painter and quadratura specialist Agostino Tassi (1578–1644), amongst others.16 Tassi treated various aspects of marine activity in both easel paintings and frescoes and it is noteworthy that he painted a marine frieze, c.1635, in the Sala delle Marine at Palazzo Pamphilj in Piazza Navona where, in the contiguous Sala di Giuseppe, Herman van Swanevelt was also employed, painting a landscape fresco frieze of scenes from the life of Joseph.17 In c.1650, Dughet would paint a fresco frieze in the new wing of the Palazzo Pamphilj, its pastoral subject of herders, hunters and fishermen a classical response to Swanevelt’s Old Testament pastorals.18 In the 1630s, however, Swanevelt seems not to have been attracted to either marine subjects or storm scenes – at least nothing of this kind has survived from his Roman period. On the other hand, Dughet, as can be seen from the depiction of a ship in a storm, part of a fresco cycle he painted at Palazzo Muti Bussi, c.1635–38, showed an interest in bad weather early in his career.19 Like Tassi, he was most likely inspired by northern examples. The land storm, however, is not a pendant of a storm at sea. It became a separate genre, with its own visual vocabulary for rendering the fury of extreme weather as it lashed the vegetation on the solid earth. The subject reached mature expression in the number of land storms Dughet painted throughout his long career and as noted, proved influential enough to be taken up by Poussin in pictures such as the aforementioned Pyramus and Thisbe, the Landscape with a Storm (c.1651, Rouen, Musée des Beaux-Arts) and a late masterwork, The Flood (Winter), (c.1660–64, Paris, Louvre). If Boisclair’s dating is correct, it 14 Wolfgang Adler, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, Part XVII: Landscapes and Hunting Scenes (London and Oxford: Harvey Miller Publishers and Oxford University Press, 1982), 109–111, fig. 86, cat 9; fig. 92, cat. 34, 118; cat. 30, 112–113; fig. 122, 146–147 cat 44; Michael Jaffé, Rubens, Catalogo Completo, trans. Hermano Mulazzani (Milan: Rizzoli, 1989), 98–99. 15 See, for example, Lawrence Otto Goedde, Tempest and Shipwreck in Dutch and Flemish Art. Convention, Rhetoric and Interpretation (University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989), and Nova, 2007, 110–124. 16 See Patrizia Cavazzini, Agostino Tassi (1578–1644) un paesaggista tra immaginario e realtà (Rome: Iride, 2008); Patrizia Cavazzini, “Towards a Chronology of Agostino Tassi”, The Burlington Magazine CXLIV (2002): 396–408; Teresa Pugliatti, Agostino Tassi tra conformismo e libertà (Rome: De Luca, 1978). 17 Russell, 1997, 170–177; Steland, 2010, vol. 1, 36–37; Susan Russell, “The Fresco Friezes of Palazzo Pamphilj in Piazza Navona”, in The Palazzo Pamphilj: Embassy of Brazil in Rome (Milan: Umberto Allemandi, 2016), 127–153; esp.129–131. 18 Boisclair, 1986, 50–52; cats 103–106, figs. 144–147; Russell, 2016, 136–138. 19 Boisclair, 1986, fig. 61, cat. 45, 180.

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certainly appears that Dughet was the first artist in Rome to paint scenes in which windy or stormy weather conditions were fully realized. Yet, as Anne Charlotte Steland has observed, the fact that Dughet rarely dated his works makes it difficult, if not impossible, to provide a definitive answer to the question and in Swanevelt’s favour she cites a pendant pair of large landscapes in the Galleria Doria Pamphilj, painted in Rome in the late 1630s.20 The Landscape with Shepherds and Herds (Dawn) earns its title from a pale early morning sky, a change in the weather only hinted at in the grey clouds discreetly positioned above trees on the right hand side of the composition. The Landscape with Bridge (Dusk) where animals and people wend their way homewards in a sombre evening light, shows dark grey clouds mingling with white ones, perhaps prophetic of an evening thunderstorm, but also typical of a Roman sky in autumn. These effects are subtle – the trees remain undisturbed by the breeze and the figures do not react to the elements – too subtle, perhaps, to have inspired a scene like Dughet’s Windy Day with Lone Traveller [Plate 29], which appears to have sprung almost fully-formed from his brush and, if Boisclair’s dating is correct, some years before Swanevelt painted his Pamphilj pendants.

Figure 10.2: Gaspard Dughet, The Storm, c.1649–50. Chartres, Musée des Beaux-Arts.

20 Steland, 2010, vol. 1, cats G 2, 73A, G 2 73B, 181–182; vol. 2, figs G 85, G 86, 431–432; De Marchi, 2010, 73.

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Boisclair’s dates of c.1649–50 for two other Dughet land storms, The Storm (Chartres, Musée des Beaux-Arts) [Fig. 10.2] and The Flight into Egypt (Rome, Galleria Doria Pamphilj) [Fig. 10.8] appear convincing, supported as they are by persuasive stylistic evidence.21 However, using her catalogue as a guide, there is a gap of ten or more years between the works of the mid-late 1630s (Windy Day with Lone Traveller and The Squall) and those of the late 1640s (The Storm and The Flight into Egypt) during which Dughet apparently executed no other storm scenes. It is difficult to explain such a prolonged interval given that innovations in both subject and treatment would, presumably, have stimulated demand amongst collectors and connoisseurs. Perhaps there were more paintings that are no longer extant or that remain unrecognized, but even lacking such evidence the four pictures cited have so much in common that it seems likely that they were painted closer together than Boisclair’s dating suggests. For example, in both The Squall and another storm scene, The Good Samaritan (Montpellier, Musèe Fabre) [Plate 30], a painting that Boisclair consigned to 1635–37 (?), the handling is far less dry than in Windy Day with Lone Traveller of supposedly similar date. In this and in the treatment of the trees, both former pictures have strong analogies with the 1649–50 Flight into Egypt, suggesting that the Dulwich, Montpellier and Pamphilj paintings should be placed closer together. If so, this means that, apart from Windy Day with Lone Traveller, the majority of Dughet’s storm scenes may date from the mid- to late 1640s, that is, around the same time that Swanevelt’s first storm scenes appear. There are no known land storms by Swanevelt before he arrived in Paris c.1643 and few of his paintings of the subject survive. Steland records only six in her monograph, but at least ten others were offered for sale at both French and British auction houses during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.22 Three are described as depicting lightning, which appears in none of his known paintings, these works 21 Boisclair, 1986, cats. 99, cat. 101, 199–201. 22 In a French sale catalogue of May 1773, a pen and ink drawing of ‘un paysage, ou ce maître a très-bien représenté l’effet d’un coup de vent’ (‘a landscape, where this master has represented very well the effect of a gust of wind’) sold for 44 livres; Getty Provenance Database (henceforth GPD), Lot 0394, Sale Catalogue (henceforth S.C.). F-A 1260. On 8 April 1777 the same drawing went up for sale from the collection of LouisFrançois de Bourbon, Prince de Conti; GPD, Lot 1022, S.C. F-A I 389. The prince also owned a ‘Land storm, very capital’ which was sold by Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Lebrun in March 1785 at Christie’s in London; GPD, Lot 0004, S.C. Br-A 5539. In February 1755 ‘A Land Storm with the Flight into Egypt’ was sold for 10 guineas at Langford’s Auction House in London; GPD, Lot 0031, S.C. Br – A 1145. ‘A land storm, Figures, landscape, and Cattle at a distance’ described as ‘equal to Claude’ appeared at Henry Phillips Auction House in June 1806, selling for the healthy sum of £73.10 GPD, Lot 1128, S.C. Br-423. In 1808 ‘A landscape with a Shower of Rain’ owned by the Reverend Philip Duval was auctioned at Christie’s on 14 May; GPD, Lot 0057, S.C. Br-582. At the same auction house a ‘Landstorm with figures’ from General Erskine’s collection, described as ‘fine’ appeared on 28 April, 1809, and in 1817 ‘A land storm’ owned by Alexis Delahaute went up for sale on 31 May at Henry Phillips Auction House; GPD, Lot 0092, S. C. Br-666; Lot 0122, S.C. Br-1532. In Manchester on 30 June, 1825, Winstanley’s offered a ‘Land storm and figures’ from Messrs Zanetti and Agnew and in January 1831 George Shuttleworth auctioned a ‘Landscape with Figures, a storm coming on’; GPD Lot 0051, S.C. Br-12523; GPD Lot 006, S.C. Br-13402.

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Figure 10.3: Herman van Swanevelt, Stormy Weather, 1646. Rome, Finarte 1973.

either having not survived or not yet come to light.23 Unfortunately, the execution dates of these paintings are lost and attributions cannot be verified, but those with eighteenth-century French provenances suggest that they were conceivably made by Swanevelt during his second Paris sojourn, when his first known storm scenes were painted, c.1646. These include the aforementioned Land storm in a private collection in Bad Harzburg and Stormy Weather, which was on the art market in Rome in 1973 [Fig. 10.3].24 In 1649 Swanevelt was back in Rome, where he executed a signed and dated River Landscape now in the USA [Fig. 10.4].25 Although not strictly a storm scene, windy weather is suggested by the woman standing in the river, holding aloft a piece of cloth which is lifted as though by a breeze, although she may equally be raising the cloth in the act of washing it. Nevertheless, a similar female figure, reversed, performs an analogous task in another land storm, Windy Weather, signed but not dated, 23 GPD S.C. Lot 0195, Br-425: ‘A land storm with the effect of lightning’ went on sale in June 1806 at Harry Phillips Auction House. In 1810 ‘A rich landscape with travellers overtaken by a storm of lighting, wind and rain’ was put up for auction at London’s European Museum (GPD, Lot 0440, S.C. Br-816) and at Charles Farebrothers’ Auction House in London a ‘A Storm of Rain, Thunder and Lightning, Travellers passing a Bridge’ went up for sale on 24 May, 1811 (GPD Lot 0036, S.C. Br-887). These may, of course, describe the same picture, but the fact that lightning is specified suggests that Swanevelt employed this effect more than once. 24 Steland, 2010, vol. 2, fig. G 122, 458; vol. 1, cat. G I, 42,147; vol. 2, fig. G 123, 459; vol. 1, cat. G 1, 8, 135. 25 Steland, 2010, vol. 1, cat. G1, 48, 149–150.

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Figure 10.4: Herman van Swanevelt, River Landscape, 1649. USA, Private Collection.

Figure 10.5: Herman van Swanevelt, Windy Weather, c.1650. New York, Sotheby’s 1985.

last recorded on the art market in 1985 and probably painted around the same time as River Landscape or, as Steland has surmised, slightly later, c.1650 [Fig. 10.5].26 Windy Weather demonstrates a more intense treatment of meteorological effects than River Landscape, being convincingly a scene depicting a windy day, with trees reacting to unseen forces and figures battling the elements, their garments flattened 26 Steland, 2010, vol. 2, fig. G 122, 458; vol. 1, cat. G I, 42, 147; vol. 2, fig. G 123, 459; vol. 1, cat. G 1, 8, 135.

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Figure 10.6: Herman van Swanevelt, Stormy Weather, c.1650. Berlin, Private Collection.

against their bodies or lifted by the wind. Even so, it has several compositional features in common with River Landscape, including antique-inspired buildings on a dominating outcrop to the left, a motif that suggests that it may also have been painted in Rome. In Stormy Weather [Fig. 10.6] and its variant, Storm Scene (Munich, X. Scheidwimmer, 1989), two other unsigned and undated storm scenes probably painted c.1650 in Paris, the meteorological aspects are elaborated even further. 27 Dark, turbulent skies and dramatic lighting effects describe with complete conviction a storm blowing up suddenly on a sunny day. The painting now known as Stormy Weather was called A view of Avignon by Andrea Busiri Vici and, because of the city’s region, he also insisted on calling it a ‘Provençal landscape’, yet simultaneously considered it to be a ‘memory of Rome’, its setting reminiscent of the Roman campagna, drawings of which Swanevelt brought with him to Paris.28 But amid this confusing account of the picture he suggested, more importantly, that Swanevelt had invented the land storm.29 Moreover, he speculated about the Dutchman’s influence on the storm landscapes of Jan Frans van Bloemen, called Orizzonte (1662–1749), who he believed would have seen Swanevelt’s storm scenes in Paris, a not unlikely circumstance.30 27 Steland, 2010, vol. 2, fig. G 154, p. 477; vol. 1, cat. G 2, 21, pp.159–160; vol. 2, fig. G 153, 477, vol. 1, cat. G2, 58, 175–176; Andrea Busiri Vici, Jan Frans van Bloemen “Orizzonte” e l’origine del paesaggio romano Settecentesco (Rome: Ugo Bozzi, 1973), 85. 28 Blume, 1994, 2–3. 29 Blume, 1994, 2–3. 30 Busiri Vici, 1973, 85.

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Notwithstanding all the above, however, evidence for Dughet’s primacy as the inventor of the storm scene appears the more compelling. His attraction to the effect of wind on water in the Muti Bussi fresco, the convincingly early Windy Day with Lone Traveller [Plate 29], together with the strong probability that he painted other storm scenes in the 1630s, weigh more in his favour than Swanevelt’s, whose interest in the genre was clearly aroused only during his Paris years. There can be no doubt, however, that by the middle of the seventeenth century both Dughet and Swanevelt were at the forefront of the storm scene’s development. What, then, were their inspirations and sources?

Precedents and origins of the land-storm in seventeenth-century landscape painting During the early years of his second Paris sojourn, Swanevelt’s style altered somewhat, probably in an effort to appeal to the tastes of a French audience, and his storm landscapes were probably inspired by a desire to exploit his new market.31 While in Paris he travelled several times to Holland and Steland has proposed that he may have been prompted to attempt the new theme by seeing there the works of Jan van Goyen (1596–1656) a number of which, painted in the 1630s and 1640s, depict landscapes with gloomy northern skies and agitated atmospheric conditions.32 However, these Dutch paintings are not technically land storms but coastal scenes where the sea and ships are never far from view and changeable, lowering skies are, after all, a natural feature of the region. Nevertheless, Van Goyen’s subtlety of tone could have influenced Swanevelt, as could his use of strong and contrasting lighting effects, but the devices used by another Dutch painter of coastal scenes, Jan Porcellis (1580–1632), may have been equally significant to Swanevelt’s development of storm scene effects. In Porcellis’s Shipwreck off the Coast (1631, Mauritshuis, the Hague) the foreground is drenched with light behind a dark coulisse, birds wheel in the sky, the weather increasingly worsens across the canvas and incised brushstrokes accentuate the direction of rain, dramatic techniques which are also used by Swanevelt in Thunderstorm (1649, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne) [Plate 31]. In Paris, therefore, Swanevelt may well have begun to invent land storms combining his renewed experience of Dutch art with his own vision of the classical landscape, essentially blending Netherlandish naturalism with the idealised qualities of the Italian tradition. 31 As Steland points out, the colour and mood of Swanevelt’s paintings changed with his relocation to Paris; Steland, 2010 vol. 1, 19. 32 Steland cites in this context a 1642 painting by Van Goyen in the Prague National Gallery (Inv. Nr 4. DO 4132-Z456), which I have not seen; Steland, 2010, vol. 1, cat. G 1, 8, 135

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Boisclair attributed Dughet’s interest in the unsettled character of natural phenomena to a Venetian influence, citing in particular the print of Titian’s lost Assassination of Saint Peter Martyr (Fig. 9.6), in which the arc formed by the trees and foliage above the fleeing assassin in the foreground have certain similarities to the sinuous patterns created by Dughet’s trees and foliage.33 Yet the development of his unique style issued less, I would suggest, from a deliberate attempt to describe atmospheric conditions than from a desire to create an individual manner that was both expressive and decorative. As early as c.1633–35 Dughet had achieved a distinctive formula for the representation of tree trunks, branches and leaves in a set of prints, where natural forms were abstracted and manipulated to create graceful patterns.34 Yet the latter are not necessarily the result of being weather-beaten but more a ramification of stylized abstraction. Nevertheless, they undoubtedly convey the impression of air moving through foliage. Like most seventeenth-century landscape painters, Dughet drew directly from nature. His eighteenth-century biographer, Pierre-Jean Mariette (1694–1774), related that Dughet used a tent ‘in which he could paint in the shade […] protected from the wind’.35 But it was the effect of the wind itself that was clearly of interest to the young painter. A drawing in the Louvre for one of his frescoes in San Martino ai Monti, painted between c.1645–51, has the spontaneity of a sketch made from observed phenomena, one in which the branches of trees sway as if yielding to the elements.36 However, in developing his own style Dughet must have been equally influenced by colleagues in Rome, including Swanevelt himself. For example, the slender, elegant trunks and swaying branches of trees in the scenes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses that Swanevelt painted during the 1630s for Antonio Barberini (1607–1671) may have suggested to Dughet comparable stylisations of leaves and branches, effects that appear consistently throughout his early works, not solely in his storm landscapes.37

Landscape as metaphor Swanevelt’s ability to convey mood and emotion through landscape prompted a heightening of nature’s dramatic effects in the landscapes of Salvator Rosa (1615–1673), Dughet’s exact contemporary.38 A similar recognition of the older master’s aptitude for using the landscape as an expressive narrative device may have been equally apparent to Dughet. Both Swanevelt and Dughet relied on trees and meteorological phenomena 33 Boisclair, 1986, 36–37. 34 Boisclair, 1986, figs. 42–45. 35 Marcel Roethlisberger, Gaspard Dughet: Rome 1615–1675 (New York: Richard L. Feigen & Co; London: Herner Wengraf Ltd., 1975), 13. 36 Boisclair, 1986, fig. 116 (cat. 88) and fig. 117; 45–50. 37 Steland, 2010, vol. 2, fig. G 16: Perseus with the head of Medusa (vol. 1: cat. G2, 84); vol. 2, fig. G 24 Apollo and Marsyas (vol. 1, cat. G 2, 87); vol. 2, fig. G 46: Diana and Actaeon (vol. 1, cat. G 2, 82). 38 Russell, 2010, 335–356.

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to convey nature’s behaviour. In Swanevelt’s oeuvre trees function as significant compositional devices in addition to contributing to atmosphere. Their trunks, branches and foliage are employed for a range of effects – to create structure, vary surface rhythms, form or divide masses, make patterns and, most importantly, to indicate mood, their function in a narrative often symbolic or emotionally charged, the quality of the skies above assisting in creating the appropriate ambience.39 Trees operate in a similar way in the young Dughet’s landscapes and as he matured a distinctly heightened sense of animation developed in the way he treated foliage, communicating a sense of movement and drama that, together with vibrant skies and human reaction, were intrinsic to his narratives.40 In The Good Samaritan, for example [Plate 30], disturbed meteorological conditions do not, perhaps, primarily depict a wind storm but create, rather, a metaphor for the central, violent event of the attack on the lone traveller.41 The shattered tree stump that Swanevelt often placed in an emphatic position in the foreground of his early Roman pictures (evident, for instance, in the Melbourne Thunderstorm [Plate 31]) is another motif that contributed to the edgy mood of Dughet’s subject matter, one that he took up not only in The Good Samaritan but also in Windy Day with Lone Traveller and The Squall [Plates 30 & 29; Fig. 10.1].42 In all these works dead branches and unstable weather conditions represent the tensions and anxieties of the subject, where nature becomes a symbol for discord or for the transitory, storm-tossed nature of life, a poetic device that derived from both the Netherlandish and the Venetian traditions, a theme in harmony with Christian Neo-Stoicism.43

Bad weather and climate change In 1614 Renward Cysat (1545–1614), director of the Lucerne Passion plays, noted in his Collecteana (IV.2, 898) ‘a strange and wondrous succession of changes in the weather’ which only increased as the century progressed.44 Both northern and southern hemispheres suffered during what became known as the ‘Little Ice Age’, which saw 39 Swanevelt’s use of trees and his expressive use of landscape is discussed further in Russell, 2010, esp. 342–344. 40 Boisclair, 1986, figs 42–49; cat. 29–36, 178–179. 41 I am indebted to Dr Clovis Whitfield for alerting me to the current whereabouts of the Good Samaritan and to the Musée Fabré for permission to publish it. 42 Leopoldine Prosperetti, Landscapes and Philosophy in the Art of Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1525) (Farnham, UK and Burlington, USA: Ashgate, 2009), 162–166; Reindert L. Falkenburg, “The Devil is in the Detail: Ways of Seeing Joachin Patinir’s ‘World Landscapes’”, in Patinir, Essays and a Critical Catalogue, ed. Alejandro Vergara (Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2007), 61–79; Reindert L. Falkenburg, Landscape as an Image of the Pilgrimage of Life, trans. Michael Hoyle (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamin Publishing Co., 1988); Albert Châtelet, “Domenico Campagnola et la naissance du paysage ordonné”, in Interpretazione veneziane: studi di storia dell’arte in onore di Michelangelo Muraro, ed. David Rosand (Venice: Arsenale, 1984), 331–342. 43 Prosperetti, 2009, 39–47. 44 Geoffrey Parker, Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2013), 4.

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disastrous floods, famine and disease strike a global population simultaneously suffering from a continuous series of wars.45 Individuals enduring such misfortunes may well have believed them to be the result of divine displeasure. Storm landscapes, then, reflected to a great extent the prevailing climatic conditions in the middle of the century with which the seventeenth-century viewer would have been familiar, and in their pictorial representation could evoke responses that were equally sensual, emotional, and moralising. The ‘Little Ice Age’ was characterized by unstable weather patterns in which storms, variable temperatures and severe winters were increasingly common.46 In Northern European art snow landscapes proliferated during this period, as did images of skaters gliding over rivers that were frequently frozen during an episode of climatic change, which was most intense between the 1640s and the 1660s.47 Southern Europe was equally affected by poor weather conditions. The English writer, John Evelyn (1620–1706), travelling through Italy in 1646, commented on extremely cold and unpleasant weather on several occasions, notably in Padua where ‘extreame snow’ fell, and as he continued his journey towards the Simplon Pass the cold, wet conditions persisted – an unusual circumstance given that the month was May, well into the Italian spring.48 The dates of the Little Ice Age neatly coincide with the rise of the land storm as a discrete subject in the history of Italian art, a genre that expanded a long, calendrical tradition in both Italian literature and art, one that also existed in the Low Countries, where an established philosophical and moral culture influenced the subject and meaning of works of art, including landscapes.49 For instance, a metaphor for the instability of human life and endeavours is encapsulated in one of six scenes of seasonal activities by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c.1526/30–1569), the Gloomy Day (Early Spring) (1565, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum), which shows figures going about their daily chores in a sunlit foreground, seemingly oblivious to the darkness of gathering storm clouds in the distance, where ships list dangerously on an unquiet sea. The Roman land-storm brought humankind’s vulnerability to the elements directly into the terrestrial world, creating a new visual expression that 45 Parker, 2013, 3–25. 46 Hubert Horace Lamb, Climate: Present, Past and Future (London: Methuen, vol. 1: 1972; vol. 2: 1977), vol. 2: 461–473; Lisa Beaven, “Claude Lorrain and La Crescenza: The Tiber Valley in the Seventeenth Century”, in The Site of Rome: Studies in the Art and Topography of Rome 1400–1750, ed. David R. Marshall. (Rome: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider, 2014), 2–33, esp. 7. 47 Lamb, 1977, vol. 2, note. 39, 275–276; 465–467; David Huddart and Tim Stott, Earth Environments: Past, Present and Future (Hokoben: John Wiley and Sons, 2010), 863; Parker, 2013, 4. For a range of images of skaters and snow scenes in Dutch art of the period see, for example, Evert van Straaten, Koud tot op het bot. De verbeelding van de winter in de Zestiende en Zeventiende Eeuw in de Nederlanden (The Hague: Staatsuitgeverij, 1977) and Wolfgang Stechow, Dutch Landscape Painting of the Seventeenth Century (London: Phaidon, 1966), figs 162–196. 48 Lamb, 1977, vol. 2, 47; E.S. De Beer, The Diary of John Evelyn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955, 6 vols), vol. 2; Kalendarium, 1620–1649, 506, 511 and note 6. 49 Prosperetti, 2009, 33–38.

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allowed for metaphors both moral and philosophical but which, nevertheless, simultaneously reflected very real human anxieties over the effect that bad weather could exercise on prosperity and wellbeing, not to mention life itself.50

The literary traditions Other factors closely related to the history and production of art undoubtedly played significant roles. In Rome in particular, natural philosophies were debated at academies such as the Accademia dei Lincei and in the circle of Cassiano dal Pozzo (c.1583– 1657), the secretary of Cardinal Francesco Barberini (1597–1679), on whose behalf Dal Pozzo, a member of the Lincei, supervised an extensive copying programme for the extraordinary Paper Museum, which covered a range of subjects from antique sculpture, architecture, painting and mosaics, to natural history and curiosities.51 Dughet and Poussin both circulated in Dal Pozzo’s sphere, in which ancient and modern literatures were key sources for the form and iconography of works of art.52 Swanevelt, if less conspicuously, was also to be found in this orbit – his commission from Cardinal Antonio Barberini for the sequence of landscapes derived from Ovid are sufficient proof of this – and between 1635 and 1638 the artist is recorded attending meetings at the Accademia di San Luca, where theoretical issues were discussed under the ‘principate’ of Pietro da Cortona (1597–1669).53 Treatises of art formed part of such discussions, of which none was more relevant to the topic of the land storm than Leonardo da Vinci’s Trattato della Pittura, which Dal Pozzo was hoping to have published from various manuscript copies.54 Manuscript H228 in the Ambrosiana, Milan, contains diagrams as well as figure drawings by Poussin, and another copy, the Manuscript Ganay, was furnished with illustrations which, scholars believe, Poussin and Dughet provided for the first printed edition of the treatise in 1651.55 The history of the Leonardo manuscript copies has generated an enormous literature which cannot be addressed here, but it is certain that those who did have access to them, particularly landscape artists, would have found value in Leonardo’s writings on how 50 Apart from the effects of pestilence and malnutrition, Parker records that in Germany in 1640 people froze to death from the intense cold; Parker, 2013, 5. 51 Ingo Herklotz, Cassiano dal Pozzo und die Archäeologie des 17 Jahrhunderts (Munich: Hirmer Verlag, 1999). 52 Blunt, 1995; Goedde, 1989, 96; Verdi, 1995, cats 73, 74, 286–287; Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe, trans. R.E. Latham, revised with an introduction and notes by John Godwin (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1994). 53 Swanevelt’s biographer, Sandrart, records that he frequented the academies; Joachim von Sandrart, Teutsche Akademie der Edlen Bau- Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste von 1675: Leben der berühmten Maler, Bildhaue und Baumeister, ed. A. R. Peltzer (Munich: G. Hirth, 1925), 402, notes 856–857; Steland, 2010, vol. 1, 14. 54 McMahon, 1956, 361. 55 McMahon, 1956, 361. For Dal Pozzo and Poussin’s relationship to Leonardo’s manuscripts see Nova, 2007, 106–107; also Donatella Sparti, “Cassiano dal Pozzo, Poussin and the Making of Leonardo’s Trattato”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 66 (2003): 143–188; esp. 161, 143–188, 153–156.

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to represent trees, wind, clouds, lightning and thunder.56 It may well have been access to these manuscripts that inspired Dughet to embark upon the storm landscape. Furthermore, and perhaps just as importantly, Leonardo’s notes provided a distinguished antecedent for a new theme that otherwise lacked theoretical precedents. As previously noted, there is no doubt that in or around 1651, the year that Leonardo’s Trattato della Pittura was published in Paris Poussin followed Leonardo’s precepts in his depiction of the weather in his Pyramus and Thisbe.57 Dughet’s The Storm, c.1649–50 [Fig. 10.2], also appears to be a response to Leonardo’s recommendations. He certainly depicted ‘trees and grass [that] are bent against the earth, seeming almost as if they were trying to follow the course of the winds, with their branches twisted out of their natural direction, their leaves battered and turned upside down’.58 The variation in colour of the leaves on the tree to the right in The Storm and their topsy-turvy arrangement suggest that they are indeed being ‘twisted out of their natural direction’, displaying simultaneously the verdant tones of the leaves’ upper sides and the subdued colours of their undersides. Like Poussin, Dughet may have had a preview of Leonardo’s Trattato as Dal Pozzo was preparing it for publication. This might explain the premature appearance of Leonardo’s ‘figure that goes against the wind’ which in the 1651 Paris edition was illustrated with a print by Charles Errard (1606–1689).59 The central figure in Dughet’s The Storm is a good example of this motif, which Poussin later used for the pose of Thisbe. In both paintings, as in Errard’s print, the figure, dressed in classical garments, is shown in profile, one bent leg advancing to carry the weight of the torso, which leans forward to suggest both movement and the force of the wind, the whole balanced by an extended, straight supporting leg bearing the rest of the figure’s weight. Swanevelt also employed a similar pose in Thunderstorm [Plate 31], albeit foreshortened and in contemporary dress. Wrapped in a red cloak, the man in the black hat in the foreground strides toward the viewer, taking his weight on his bent, forward leg, his right arm raised to protect his face from the gale, its impact emphasized by both the gesture and the cloak’s flying drapery. By the late 1640s Swanevelt was part of Paris’s artistic elite – he had become peintre ordinaire to the King in 1644, in 1651 would become Agrée to the recently formed (1648) Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture and eventually, in 1653, a member of the Academy itself.60 Swanevelt probably knew Charles Errard in Rome, where 56 Carlo Pedretti, The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci, compiled and edited from the original manuscripts by Jean Paul Richter, commentary by Carlo Pedretti (Oxford: Phaidon, 1977, 2 vols), vol. 1, 296–298; 310–311; McMahon, 1956, 293–326. 57 Nova, 2007, 107–110. 58 Codex Urbinas Latinus 1270, Part 2: Of Rules for the Painter, 52v, 281. “How to represent a storm”; McMahon 1956, 114. 59 Codex Urbinas LatinusF 1270, Part 3: Of the Various States and Movements of the Human Body, 138 v, 354, “Of the figure that goes against the wind”; McMahon, 1956, 135. See Nova, 2007, fig. 66, 107; Sparti, 2003, 153–156. 60 Mickaël Szanto, “The Fortunes of a Northern Artist in Seventeenth-Century Paris: The Forgotten Years of Herman van Swanevelt”, The Burlington Magazine CXLV (2003): 199–205, esp. 201.

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the Frenchman had been based from 1627 to 1637, an assumption supported by the fact that Errard owned two Swanevelts, both episodes from the life of Joseph, which hung in his house in Piazza Navona.61 In Paris, Errard worked on Leonardo’s Trattato from c.1648 onwards, so it is possible that Swanevelt knew of his activities and perhaps had access to the Roman drawings representing aspects of Leonardo’s text, from which Errard was working.62 Yet even without assuming Leonardo’s notes as a source, Swanevelt’s interest in bad weather was a natural extension of his close observations of meteorology, such as the clearly opposed states of weather and times of day that he had recorded in the aforementioned Dawn and Dusk, and in other pendant paintings of sunrises and sunsets that he painted for the Pamphilj family during the 1630s.63 The move away from the 1646 Stormy weather with its contemporary travellers [Fig. 10.3] and the distinct development in subject and atmosphere of the more classicizing Windy Weather [Fig. 10.5] suggests that Swanevelt, then back in Rome, was inspired to expand his range of weather-related effects aware not only of formal developments in the genre but also, perhaps, of the majestic cycles of generation and destruction described by Lucretius (c.99-c.55BC) whose poem De rerum natura (On the Nature of the Universe) was now required reading for the natural philosophers of the age.64

‘We must sing of storms and flashing lightnings…’65 In Book Six, which deals with meteorology and geology, Lucretius wrote of the ‘conflict between summer and grim winter’ and of a similar occurrence in springtime, when ‘the vanguard of hot weather is the rear of cold’ and where ‘there must accordingly be tussle and turmoil of opposing forces’.66 Such seasonal variations of natural states represented meteorological changes analogous to the contrasts that Swanevelt had observed and recorded in his sunrise and sunset pendants. As the storm scene developed, pendant paintings made a similarly clear juxtaposition, where the serenity of a pastoral scene was contrasted with the violence of a storm. There is no evidence that Swanevelt’s storm scenes were hung in this way, but Poussin’s undoubtedly were: the Landscape with a Calm (Malibu, John Paul Getty Museum), was the companion of 61 Sparti, 2003, 159; GPI Item 0078, inventory dated 1689 (Archivio di Stato, Rome, Notai A.C. Petrochius, A.F., vol. 5899), ff. 491–97 & 506–10; Luigi Spezzaferro, “La collezione ‘academica’ di Charles Errard”, Roma moderna e contemporanea I. 3 (1993): 13–35, esp. 32. 62 Sparti, 2003, 160. 63 Six of nine pictures by Swanevelt in the 2010 exhibition Caravaggio e la fuga were displayed as pendants. At the time of writing they are displayed together in the Galleria Doria Pamphilj in Rome; see De Marchi, 2010, 72, 73, 75, 76. 64 Theoretical underpinnings of these contrasts are discussed in Verdi, 1995, 286–287. For the relationship of man to nature in Roman authors also see Goedde, 1989, 30–34. 65 Lucretius, 1994, 6: 85. 66 Lucretius, 1994, 6: 357–377.

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Landscape with a Storm (Rouen, Musée des Beaux-Arts), both painted c.1651.67 Lawrence Otto Goede observed that such ‘tensions of opposing qualities’ characterize the storm at sea, where the calm before and after are juxtaposed with the violence in-between.68 They are also embodied in the land storm, either in separate paintings like Poussin’s pendants or in a single composition like Swanevelt’s Thunderstorm, signed and dated 1649 [Plate 31].69 Originally entitled Italian Landscape on a Windy Day, the change to Thunderstorm was made with good reason, for it summarizes succinctly the picture’s meteorological effects.70 These include a blustery wind and a brilliantly captured low, late afternoon light in the foreground which changes to a dark, stormy sky in the background, where the impression of driving rain has been emphasised by the depth and direction of brushstrokes etched into the paint. The remains of a sunny day in the foreground – the calm before the storm – are contrasted with the storm’s full fury in the background, where the distant inn represents shelter and the promise of a resulting tranquillity – the calm after the storm. Swanevelt’s signature on the lower right hand side is followed by the contraction ‘FA / R’, indicating that he made it at a place beginning with the letter ‘R’, convincingly Rome, probably around the same time that he painted River Landscape [Fig. 10.4]. In the 1646 Stormy Weather [Fig. 10.3] Swanevelt had used trees to provide a frame for the scene they enclose, yet during his 1649 visit to Rome he produced Thunderstorm without such framing devices, the centrally placed tree assuming a dramatic, almost anthropomorphic function in directing the viewer’s eye to both background and foreground, where the human elements appear more vulnerable through their association with its windswept verticality. Swanevelt thus returned to a longstanding compositional device, the centrally-placed tree or trees that often govern his early Roman compositions. At the same time, nevertheless, he reverted in Thunderstorm to the genre subject of travellers in bad weather that he would take up again when back in Paris in Stormy Weather [Fig. 10.6], albeit retaining the central tree that proved so effective in his Roman storm scene. In their land storms Swanevelt and Dughet succeeded in making an important appeal to the senses of sight and hearing. Such synaesthesia was typically represented in allegories of the Five Senses by such obvious symbols as musical instruments. The storm scene, however, through its verisimilitude, allowed the educated viewer familiar with classical texts to see not only the effects of the storm but also to hear the sounds created by wind rushing through the sky, the rustling of leaves and the 67 Verdi, 1995, 286–287. 68 Goedde, 1989, 32. 69 In Steland’s monograph Thunderstorm (Italian landscape on a windy day) is listed at a Southeby’s sale in 2004; Steland, 2010, vol. 1, cat. G 1, 33, 144; vol. 2, fig. G 152, 476; Luuk Pijl notes Thunderstorm’s current location in his review of Steland’s book: Luuk Pijl, Review of A.S. Steland, Herman van Swanevelt (um 1603–1655): Gemälde und Zeichnungen, The Burlington Magazine CLIII (2011): 110–112, esp. 110. 70 http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/explore/collection/work/77795/

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clashing of branches, their boughs snapping and breaking.71 Both Dughet’s The Storm [Fig. 10.2] and Swanevelt’s Windy Weather [Fig. 10.5] come close to providing visual parallels for Lucretius’s explanation of how thunder is created. Dughet’s scene, where the lowering sky and whirling clouds are dispersed and tossed by the wind and trees bend to its power, is particularly evocative of Lucretius’s description of the terrifying sounds made by thunder: A swiftly gathered squall of storm wind has thrust its way into the clouds. There, being hemmed in, its eddying swirl scoops out an ever-growing hollow walled on every side by cloud with its substance more and more condensed. Finally, the concentrated energy of the wind splits the cloud and it explodes with a nerve-shattering crash.72

Lucretius declared that ‘another cause of the noise emitted by clouds is the wind blowing through them’ and that ‘when a gale blows through a dense wood, the leaves rustle and the branches creak’, sounds clearly meant to be conjured up by the land storm in the paradoxically mute medium of paint.73 The herder in the foreground of The Storm encapsulates the power of nature as he struggles against the gale, urging his beasts forward, his neck straining as though raising his voice against the elements. In addition to creating a scene in which, for the viewer, a remembered frisson of fear or discomfort could blend with visual pleasure, the land storm’s evocation of sound made a new claim for painting’s superior mimesis in the age-old paragone of the arts.74 The tastes of their patrons may account for the different approaches the two artists took to the storm scene, the more picturesque genre themes of Swanevelt’s pastoral landscapes being preferred in Paris and Dughet’s classical subjects reflecting the antiquarian tastes of the Roman elite. Dughet’s storm landscapes are consistently populated by figures in classical dress. They exemplify almost exclusively the turbulent aspects of a more benign Arcadia that he himself represented in, for example, the fresco frieze evoking Vergilian scenes of life in the countryside at Palazzo Pamphilj, c.1650, a date close to the execution of the The Storm [Fig. 10.2].75 Dughet’s frescoes there, in the Sala dei paesi, where herders and fishermen populate rural and coastal settings, plainly owe their subject matter to such literary precedents.76 The family palace, which had been enlarged and decorated to mark the election of Giovanni Battista Pamphilj as Pope Innocent X (1644–1655), was built on the site of 71 Lucretius, 1994, 6:96–441. 72 Lucretius, 1994, 6:125–130. 73 Lucretius, 1994, 6:133–137. For the notion of sound in Poussin’s storm scenes, which is convincingly drawn from Leonardo’s descriptions for representing wind and rain, see Nova, 2007, 108–109. 74 Nova, 2007, 108. 75 Russell, 2016, 136–138. 76 Russell, 2016, 137.

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Domitian’s stadium, the entire area becoming known as the Pamphilj ‘forum’, which reflected Innocent’s desire to confirm the continuity of Rome’s authority from its classical Empire to his own Christian regime.77 The idea of a Pamphilj Golden Age, reminiscent of an Augustan Peace, was reflected in subjects for the palace’s new decorations, which were drawn from the Augustan poets Ovid, Livy and Vergil.78 The latter were all found in Innocent’s library, together with the works of Jacopo Sannazzaro (1458–1530), whose Arcadia and Eclogae piscatoriae follow the example of Theocritus’s Idylls and Vergil’s Eclogues.79 The atmosphere of the Pamphilj frescoes is idyllic, but classical poetry could also convey the notion of nature as conflict, both physical and emotional, a state that is evident in Dughet’s The Storm and in many other storm scenes by the artist.80 Like Lucretius, Vergil in The Georgics describes the contrasts inherent in the change of seasons and the fundamental instability of humankind’s relationship with nature: Am I to tell you next of the storms and stars of autumn? The things, when days draw in and summer’s heat is abating, That men must guard against? […] The storm sent flimsy blades and stubble flying before it. Often too, huge columns of water come in the sky And clouds charged off the deep amass for dirty weather With rain-squalls black: then the whole sky gives way, falls, Floods with terrific rain the fertile crops and the labours Of oxen;81

In both Dughet’s The Storm [Fig. 10.2] and Swanevelt’s Windy Weather [Fig. 10.5] herders manage their animals in inclement weather, evocations of such bucolic verse. While seeming to applaud the natural world, where virtuous labour produces rewards, Vergil’s poem also suggests nature’s volatility and humankind’s vulnerability to its moods, for in the midst of a serene landscape sudden and intense reversals may occur. This juxtaposition reminds the reader of life’s unpredictability, a continuing 77 Susan Russell, “Innocent X, Pontifex Optimus Maximus, and the Church of Sant’Agnese: A Mausoleum for the Pamphilj ‘Forum”‘, in Living Through the Dead: Burial and Commemoration in the Classical World, ed. Maureen Carroll and Jane Rempel with a preface by John Drinkwater (Oxford and Oakville: Oxbow, 2011) 183–203. 78 Susan Russell, “Antiquarianism and the Villa Pamphilj on the Janiculum Hill”, Papers of the British School at Rome 82 (2014): 237–264. 79 Russell, 2016, 137. 80 Nova, 2007, 96 and 93, where he states that Vergil’s tenth Eclogue encapsulates the idea that ‘nature becomes a mirror for feelings and inner conflicts’. 81 Vergil, The Eclogues and The Georgics, trans. C. Day Lewis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 1: 311– 315; 318–325.

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refrain throughout the Eclogues and perhaps particularly pertinent to those enduring the changeable weather patterns of the Little Ice Age.82 The novelty and accuracy of depictions of such phenomena encouraged, as Alessandro Nova observes, a ‘growing metaphorical connotation’, for while images of disagreeable weather could summon up unique sensations, they equally functioned as reminders that human beings were at the mercy of nature’s power.83 In this, as Nova also points out, the essence of a terrible nature anticipates the aesthetics of the sublime, which Poussin’s storm landscapes so superbly exemplify.84

Synchronicity between Swanevelt and Dughet Two additional land storms by Dughet and Swanevelt depict a religious subject, the Flight into Egypt, in which unsettled weather gives the narrative more dramatic impact. The numerous analogies between these works suggest that the two artists may have enjoyed a close artistic relationship at a particular moment in time, perhaps similar to the connection that Swanevelt appears to have had with Claude, one of ‘mutual give and take’ which was almost certainly not lacking an element of rivalry.85 In Swanevelt’s print of The Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Hollstein 7) c.1644–50 [Fig. 10.7], a centrally placed single tree buffeted by the wind forms the major focus, as it does in the Melbourne Thunderstorm [Plate 31].86 Dughet, in a painting for the Pamphilj of The Flight into Egypt, c.1649–50 [Fig. 10.8], was similarly motivated to use a dominating group of centrally-placed trees being tossed by the wind and, like Swanevelt’s, Dughet’s trees are elevated above a mountainous terrain on top of a bare, earthy mound. The motif of three central trees placed on a hillock that form a background for figures also harks back to Swanevelt’s The Baptism of the Eunuch (c.1635, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), a Swanevelt masterpiece.87 In both Swanevelt’s print and Dughet’s painting the instability of weather is a metaphor for the upheaval in the lives of the Holy Family and their perilous flight. Dughet’s trees in The Flight into Egypt are variations of those in a number of his other 82 Lauren Lerner, “The Eclogues and the Pastoral Tradition”, in Vergil and His Influence, ed. Charles Martindale (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1984), 193–213, esp. 196. 83 Nova, 2007, 96. 84 Nova, 2007, 77; Louis Marin, Sublime Poussin, trans. Catherine Porter (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999). 85 Steland, 2010, vol. 1, 102. 86 Steland, 2010, vol. 2, fig. G 127, 462. Swanevelt used this device, derived from Paul Bril, with great effect to divide the continuous narratives of fresco friezes at Palazzo Mancini (c.1633) and Palazzo Pamphilj (c.1635); see Russell, 1997, esp. fig. 33; Steland, 2010, vol. 2, fig. G 28, 402. 87 Steland, 2010, vol. 1, cat. G 1, 2; vol. 2, fig. G 38, 406.

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Figure 10.7: Herman van Swanevelt, Rest on the Flight into Egypt, c.1644–50. London, The British Museum.

Figure 10.8: Gaspard Dughet, The Flight into Egypt, c.1649–50. Rome, Galleria Doria Pamphilj.

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storm scenes, in which the figures are conventionally situated at the centre of an enclosed landscape, surrounded by rocks and mountains that rise up behind them to create a dominating, claustrophobic mass [see esp. Figs 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, Plate 29]. The composition of The Flight into Egypt differs, however, in that the background is more open, with the Holy Family descending from an elevated position and thrown into relief against the middle ground, where two tiny figures in the distance negotiate a path through the mountainous landscape. In Swanevelt’s Rest on the Flight into Egypt a river occupies a similar position to the path in Dughet’s painting, where two small figures likewise define a distant incline in equally rugged terrain. In both works mountains and hills form a horizon that rises and falls to create rhythms that are balanced by a large expanse of sky, where clouds echo the shapes and angles of foreground trees, reinforcing the behaviour of the elements and the bonds that unite them. Swanevelt’s print has been dated as early as 1644, but I would suggest it was made closer to 1649, the undisputed year of his signed and dated Thunderstorm, with which it has much in common and nearer, therefore, to the date of the Pamphilj Flight into Egypt. The similarities between Swanevelt’s Thunderstorm, his print of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt and Dughet’s painting are compelling, yet problems in dating the latter two works make it difficult to conclude who may have inspired who.88 What is clear is that both artists, at a similar time, were using analogous motifs and compositional formats to create states of bad weather to emphasize the inherent drama of the narratives they treated.

Implications for the future Dughet’s dramatic land storms may well have been the catalyst for the renewed vigour of Swanevelt’s approach to windy weather when he was reacquainted with artistic events in Rome during his 1649 sojourn. At the same time, Dughet may have seen in the older master’s use of the central tree motif and the open landscape of both Thunderstorm and the Rest on the Flight into Egypt a powerful simplicity that he exploited in the Pamphilj Flight into Egypt. What is certain is that in both Paris and Rome at the end of the 1640s Dughet and Swanevelt were forerunners in creating a 88 It is assumed that most of the etchings Swanevelt made in Paris were published after 1650, when in August of that year he received the royal privilege, but this did not necessarily indicate permission to publish, being mainly a safeguard against illegal copies, so the print could have appeared at any time before 1650 – Hollstein records several proofs made before letters were added; Hollstein’s Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c.1450–1700, compiled by Dieuwke de Hoop Scheffer, George S. Keyes and Ger Luyten, ed. K.G. Boon (Blaricum: A.L. Van Gendt, B.V., 72 vols; vol. 29, 1984), 53. Steland assigned the print to c.1644 on the basis of a highly-finished preparatory drawing whose paper can be dated to this year by a watermark; Steland, 2010, vol. 1, 51; also vol. 1, 267–268 for preparatory drawings. There is, of course, no guarantee that Swanevelt did not use old paper to execute his preparatory drawing and that his print was not, indeed, published until c.1650 or later. Yet, by accepting the earlier date of 1644, or any time before c.1649–50, it means that Dughet could have seen Swanevelt’s print before commencing his Pamphilj picture.

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subject that invigorated the iconography of landscape and which inspired a younger generation of landscape painters who were working in Rome in the second half of the seventeenth century. These included the aforementioned Van Bloemen and Pieter Mulier II, the aptly named Cavaliere Tempesta (1637–1701), who adapted the storm scene to another new type of landscape, the Roman veduta, which flourished throughout the eighteenth century. The meteorological effects that Poussin explained at length in his letter to Jacques Stella reveal how significant the storm setting was to the artist’s intentions in his Pyramus and Thisbe, yet it was not until the end that he mentioned the subject: ‘In the front of the picture you will see Pyramus, stretched out dead on the ground and beside him Thisbe, given over to her grief.’89 In this brief sentence, however, lies the core of Poussin’s painting: the inability of human beings to control either the elements or their destinies. In so doing, Poussin raised the land storm to the level of a philosophical inquiry. Nevertheless, the initiatives of his brother-in-law, Dughet, and his Dutch colleague, Swanevelt, contributed immeasurably to establishing the storm landscape as an intellectually stimulating, aesthetically rewarding and versatile means of expression.

About the author Susan Russell, MA (La Trobe), PhD (Melbourne), is an Independent Scholar based in Melbourne, whose research focuses on seventeenth-century Rome. She has taught Art History at La Trobe, Melbourne & Monash universities and from 2003–2011 was Assistant Director at the British School at Rome. She has received awards from The Australian Centre for Studies in Italy, The British School at Rome, The British Academy and the Paul Mellon Centre. Publications on Pamphilj art and patronage, Pietro da Cortona, Pirro Ligorio, Herman van Swanevelt and the eighteenth century art dealer, Dr Robert Bragge, have appeared in conference proceedings, collected volumes of essays including a 2016 book on the Palazzo Pamphilj published by the Brazilian Embassy in Rome, and in The Burlington Magazine, Papers of the British School at Rome, Melbourne Art Journal, Master Drawings, Bollettino d’Arte, Storia dell’Arte and The British Art Journal. A monograph on Herman van Swanevelt is forthcoming from the Royal Netherlands Institute, Rome.

89 ‘Sur le devant du Tableau l’on voit Pyrame mort et étendu par terre, et auprès de luy Tysbé qui s’abandonne à leur douleur’. Blunt, 1995, 297 & n. 40; Verdi, 1995, cat. 75, 289–290.

 fterword: A Brief Journey through the Green A World of Renaissance Italy Paul Barolsky

Abstract This essay explores the art of the Venetian green world as seen in the paintings of Giorgione and Titian, in response to the claim of a great scholar of Venetian art who, speaking for many art historians, once wrote: “Not until the actual text on which a picture such as this [Giorgione’s Tempesta] has been found can we claim that we understand its subject.” I contend that although texts can guide us toward an understanding of works of art, there are inevitably gaps between those texts and the works of art that they are said to illuminate. Such gaps can, however, be partially closed by careful attention to what one sees in works of art and conveyed in careful, evocative descriptions. In short, description is interpretation. Keywords: Giorgione, Titian, Description, Interpretation, Green Worlds

Years ago, I published an essay offering a fresh interpretation of a major work of art in a respectable journal. Time went by and I had a new thought about the same work, and so I sent that aperçu to the journal that had published my earlier essay. The editor sent the piece to an outside reader who recommended against publication, saying that I had had my chance to publish my ideas years before, claiming, rather strangely, that it was too late to add anything. The editor deferred to the reader. The implication of the rejection was that one has an idea, and that is the end of that: a very queer notion indeed, since one’s thinking evolves over time. I subsequently published my new thoughts in another journal. And so the rejection did not matter. I mention this story here because it is my conviction that interpretation is never finished, and one can return to works of art time and time again to see aspects of such art in new ways. I have been writing about Giorgione and the green world of Venetian painting for decades, and I scarcely think I have gotten to the bottom of the subject. In what follows I return to many works I have previously discussed. I am delighted to have the opportunity to expand here upon old ideas with new thoughts. I remain convinced that one never finishes with such works as Giorgione’s Tempesta or Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love. Art historical interpretation is not static; it is forever evolving. As much as we know, our understanding is inevitably incomplete – non finito. Goodchild, K.H., A. Oettinger and L. Prosperetti (eds.), Green Worlds in Early Modern Italy. Art and the Verdant Earth, Amsterdam University Press doi: 10.5117/9789462984950_epi

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The green world, beyond its earliest definition as the wild, wooded realm outside city or court, is the immense extension of nature herself. It is the earthly abundance of mountains and valleys, hills and dales, oceans and lakes, ponds, and streams, flora and fauna. It is vast and various. And it is endlessly the subject of ever so much Renaissance art. I like the word ‘Renaissance’ here instead of ‘Early Modern’ because it resonates with the sense of rebirth that is fundamental to nature and her cycle of the seasons. We find various aspects of greenery in many great works of Italian art. Think of the ways in which flowers and fruits, evocative of the garden of Eden, frame the great doors of the Florentine baptistery, or recall the festoons of flowers and fruits that suggest paradise in pictures by Mantegna and Crivelli. Ponder the great villas of Italy, above all Palladio’s, but also the numerous villas of the Medici, with their splendid statuary, artful plantings and paintings within of rustic themes. Consider the variety of great works of art of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that typify the green world; for example, Filippo Lippi’s paintings of the Nativity that picture a flower-filled forest in rocky terrain – imagery that made a formative impression on Leonardo, who transformed Lippi’s sylvan Eden into the visionary Virgin of the Rocks. Think, too, of Leonardo’s numerous and expansive explorations of rocks, flowers, and birds, among other natural phenomena, his meditations on the relations of the parts of nature to the larger whole – an early manifestation of what has been called ‘the invention of nature’. Consider Botticelli’s Primavera, a courtly, spiritual, but also erotic, realm where the goddess of flowers, Flora, the personification of fertility, presides over the rebirth of nature as she scatters an abundance of flowers upon the green mantle of the earth set in an artfully designed forest. Remember Raphael’s decoration of the Loggia of Cupid and Psyche, which is an illusionistic pergola shaped by an abundance of fruits and flowers, including a phallic gourd that, penetrating a fig, stands for another fertility god of gardens and thus of the green world: Priapus. Or ponder Pontormo’s lunette at Poggio a Caiano, said to represent Vertumnus and Pomona, gods associated with fertility in a Roman myth celebrated by Ovid and other poets. Pontormo’s festoons of flowers and fruits epitomize the villa’s horticulture and agriculture both. Given such vast terrain that we cannot traverse here in full, I wish to restrict our journey to that of the green world encountered in the bucolic landscapes of Venice. Our point of departure will be Giorgione’s Castelfranco Altarpiece, a painting not unreasonably thought to be a memorial to the dead son of the patron (Plate 32). The space occupied by the Virgin and Child, as well as by the saints below, Liberale and Francis, is a singularity. In the first place, the picture renders the figures on a pavement, as if this floor were that of the interior of a church. At the same time, the Virgin is seated upon the lofty throne that rises above the red, cloth-covered wall below and merges with the haunting landscape and skyscape in the distance such that she belongs to and dominates the exterior realm of the landscape and sky above.

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The effect is ambiguous, if not paradoxical. The Virgin and Child are perceived as if both presiding over the churchlike interior, indeed at its apex, and above the haunting exterior landscape that it dominates. This is a poetic invention, a fantasy like no other, though one sees hints of this inside-out effect in the works of Giovanni Bellini. In Giorgione’s bucolic landscape we see clusters of rustic buildings, copses of deep green trees beyond pale green fields, conversing soldiers, their armor gleaming, and bluish mountains that dissolve into the distance – all this beheld in relation to Mary on high. Peaceful and serene, the green landscape, which frames Mary, functions as if it were an earthly paradise, a heaven on earth. Furthermore, the sky above the mountains, which is vast in Giorgione’s image, creates a celestial effect, as if to suggest Mary’s place on high in Paradise. The faraway, meditative gazes of Giorgione’s figures and the gleaming cloth of honor that dominates the throne re-enforce the heavenly connotations of this celestial skyscape. Neither exactly inside, nor exactly outside, the Virgin is enthroned in an imaginary space that is highly idealized. Giorgione’s most famous landscape painting is of course the Tempesta, a picture that elicits two fundamental approaches to the painter (Plate 33). Walter Pater spoke for many when he wrote about the artist in general, saying that he created ‘a sort of poetry which tells itself without an articulated story’. Many have followed Pater in their approach to the Tempesta as a picture that tells no story. However, there are dozens and dozens of scholars who have imagined that the picture does tell a particular story, but the sheer variety of such interpretations, well over a hundred, suggests the difficulty of reaching a persuasive consensus. One has little sense that there will ever be a convincing, definitive interpretation based on a particular text. One of our most distinguished scholars of Venetian art once wrote, however, ‘[n]ot until the actual text on which a picture such as this was based has been found can we claim that we understand its subject’. (We will not dwell here on the fact that even when we find a text that illuminates an image, that image is by no means identical with the text.) As one author of a highly respected survey of Venetian art put it, after summarizing a recent attempt at explanation, ‘[t]he problem with any specific interpretation of this kind is that Giorgione does not provide the information that would confirm it beyond a doubt’. Even if we did discover a text to which the Tempesta were related, there would remain a gap between the one and the other – a gap that is never fully bridged. That gap can never be completely closed because there is never an exact equivalence between word and image – despite the convention of seeing pictures as poems, which is a figure of speech. As a great philosopher once said, ‘what can be shown, cannot be said’. To this assertion might be added the converse, ‘what can be said, cannot be shown’. The point bears repetition: there is never an exact identity between text and image. Virtually all scholars seemingly agree with Pater that the school of Giorgione is ‘the school of genre’. Giorgione’s landscapes are seen as analogues of pastoral poetry in general. Analogy is never the same as identity. Rather than attempt an overly

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exacting interpretation, Pater and the many scholars who have followed him recognize Giorgione’s allusion to pastoral poetry in Venetian painting. Giorgione’s pictures do not necessarily refer to one pastoral poem or another, ancient or modern. They refer to the genre of pastoral painting. The trick in approaching any painting is not to talk around the work but to describe it and thus to interpret it. If we do not describe the work of art, we fail to interpret it. For description is interpretation; interpretation is description. Sometimes interpretations that cannot be verified are nonetheless useful because they stimulate suggestive description. The Tempesta has, for example, been interpreted as a representation of the four elements. We cannot be certain that the painter intended that we focus on this aspect of the picture, but to discuss this speculation or hypothesis the writer is obliged to describe the four elements. One makes note of the flash of lightning that is fire; the prominence of the water that flows under the bridge; the dark air with its heavy moist clouds; and the lush green mantle of grass upon the earth. As one looks, one sees more and more: above all, the stunning effect of light reflecting in the pool of blue green water, inflected with white highlights; the light illuminating the pale grass and the almost feathery touches of gold that highlight the distant trees of this magical landscape – ‘the inweaving of gold thread’, to speak in Pater’s terms. As one ponders the ominous storm that dominates the picture, one is amazed by the serenity of the male figure in red and white gazing across at the seated nude mother who nourishes her child. One marvels at the tranquility of this mother, who gazes out at us with no concern with the impending storm. The picture is not so much a puzzle to be solved as a mysterious fantasy that invites our scrutiny, indeed contributes to our delight. One might almost say that this mystery is the picture’s subject. We take pleasure in the contrast between the threatening storm and the strangely calm indifference to it of those figures who populate Giorgione’s green world. Ultimately, Giorgione’s singular image yields no secrets, and this fact is a central part of our enjoyment. In the final analysis, although we do not know that the picture was intended primarily as an allegory of the four elements, our recognition of the prominence of these elements is the point of departure for further contemplation. We can instructively contemplate aspects of the picture, its form as well as content, without being able to establish the painter’s intention definitively. And, so, as we contemplate the flash of lightning in Giorgione’s beguiling image, we are struck by what Pater refers to as an ‘animated instant’. The animation is that of the flash of lightning. As we ponder the still figures in Giorgione’s picture we also witness the antithesis of animation, what Pater refers to as an ‘exquisite pause in time’. I have been describing what I see in Giorgione’s picture without consideration of its context, because there is little instructive context to consider. A document tells us too briefly about the picture. The painting was in the collection of the Venetian nobleman, Gabriel Vendramin and it was said to depict a storm with a gypsy and a soldier. This is precious little. As I have already said, we are left to describe and

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thus interpret what we see or think we see in the image itself. To discuss what we behold in the image might be dismissed as ‘formalism’, but this charge is indefensible because the discussion of grass and trees, clouds and atmosphere is scarcely about form, or about form alone. Giorgione’s rendering of a highly atmospheric, lush green world with an impending storm and the seemingly impervious figures within this setting is what it is! I think that when we introduce the word ‘allegory’ to our descriptions, as we often do in interpreting Renaissance works of art and as I have done here, we are suggesting a depth of meaning beyond what we see on the surface. But such a pretense is misleading, for the four elements are there on the surface for us to see without our having to invent another layer of meaning. The four elements are not part of an allegory. They are what they are: four elements beautifully and mysteriously rendered. As the Tempesta depicts a fusion or unity of elements in the green world, Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus is another image so marked by a beautiful harmony (Fig. 11.1). The goddess of love, who is the impersonation or embodiment of nature in all her fertility and abundance, is one with the landscape in which she sleeps. Art historians have nicely observed this oneness in which the curving shapes of Venus’s body, for example, her breasts, abdomen, and legs, fuse with the undulating green hills that make up the background and lead us to the distant sea, the site of the goddess’s origins. What Titian does is similar to what Shakespeare would later achieve when he linked body and landscape in his poem Venus and Adonis. The poet’s goddess imagines her own body as a kind of deer park, where Adonis is encouraged to graze, feeding ‘on mountain or in dale’. Picturing her own body as a landscape, Venus invites

Figure 11.1: Giorgione, Sleeping Venus, c.1508–10. Oil on canvas. Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden.

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her beloved to feed upon her lips, to explore the sweet bottom grass of her body, its ‘round rising hillocks’. Whereas the poet is overtly sexual in his extended simile, the painter is more restrained. Giorgione distils the sensuality from his image and leaves the viewer/voyeur with a more highly refined impression of Venus. The painter also composes a unity between the outcropping of earth where the goddess rests her head and her body below. We see the contour of this earthly mass descending from the upper left hand side of the picture downward to the goddess’s body. Earth and body are fused into one entity. Towards the center of the picture we behold its focal point, for it is here that we encounter ‘the delta of Venus’ or ‘mons Veneris’, to which the painter draws our attention by concealing this self-identifying part of her anatomy with the gentle touch of her hand. What is intended to conceal paradoxically draws our attention – and it does so with the suggestion of a delicate tactility. In a truly remarkably poetical passage, a great art historian and critic once wrote of Giorgione’s Venus that she ‘denotes not the act of love but the recollection of it’. Venus, as our critic continues, is ‘the embodiment of Giorgione’s dream’. Such a voluptuous remembrance is appropriate here, since Giorgione’s painting was made on the occasion of the patron’s wedding. Giorgione’s Venus, given the occasion, is appropriately the dream-like embodiment of an exquisitely tempered eroticism. I have said little about the context of the pictures discussed thus far. It is of interest to know that Venetian landscapes reflect a turn of Venetians to the terra ferma for economic reasons – a move reflected in the efflorescence of villas throughout the Veneto – villas with points of view from which their owners could enjoy the highly cultivated landscapes surrounding them. Not surprisingly poets wrote beautiful bucolic poetry, Sannazaro and Bembo, for example, who wrote in the tradition of Theocritus and Vergil. But we should note that such bucolic poetry explains only so much. For there are no precedents in such poetry for the sensuousness and voluptuousness of the nude figures, such as Giorgione’s sleeping Venus, who populate the rustic world of Venetian painting. We often search so hard for the texts to which pictorial imagery is related that we easily ignore the significant ways in which such imagery departs from literary sources. Titian painted another picture of the green world, which, like the Sleeping Venus, is associated with a wedding. I speak of the so-called Sacred and Profane Love, which was painted on the occasion of the marriage of the Venetian chancellor Niccolò Aureliò (Fig. 11.2). Two female figurers, one dressed, the other essentially nude, are seated at a fountain in the grass set in front of a green landscape, especially notable for its dark green areas. Beyond all this, one beholds the rich variety of rolling hills, rustic architecture, an abundance of rabbits, indeed a rabbit hunt, a herdsman with a flock, and a couple making love nearby in the grass. Further in the distance we see a village in a golden twilight, a blue sky above, with striations and puffs of clouds.

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Figure 11.2: Titian, Allegory of Sacred and Profane Love, c.1514. Oil on canvas. Galleria Borghese, Rome.

This is not the place to discuss in full the various interpretations of the Sacred and Profane Love and the controversies that surround its interpretation – controversies that are by no means resolved. The painting is highly suggestive. The nude figure, seemingly Venus, perhaps even the celestial Venus, holds a flaming torch associated with the ardor of love. She leans towards her terrestrial counterpart or twin, the dressed bridal figure, who gazes, in turn, in the viewer’s direction. This earthly Venus wears a green crown of myrtle, which is traditionally associated with marriage. It would almost appear that the heavenly Venus rising from the fountain, springs forth toward her earthly twin as if to beckon, persuade or entreat her. But exactly what she urges upon the seated bridal figure escapes us. Is she beckoning her to love? And what is on the mind of the bridal figure gazing in our direction is also not evident. The twin Venuses (if we can even call them that) are linked to each other chromatically. The dynamic Venus appears surrounded but not entirely covered by an almost pulsating red robe, which is set off against a white drapery that with chaste convenience covers her pudenda. These colors, red and white, are seen in harmony with the off white dress of the bridal Venus and her puffed red undersleeves. Such a striking correspondence of colors, with all the appropriate connotations of passion and chastity, now in beautiful harmony, are projected against a lush green landscape, especially its darker greens. Titian paints roses prominently in front of the fountain, on the lip of the fountain, and in the gloved hand of the bridal figure – all at the center of the picture. According to a Renaissance fable, the rose was originally white but turned its present color when Venus pricked herself on a thorn and blood trickled onto the flower when she tried to defend her beloved Adonis from a jealous Mars. Might not Titian’s choice of the reds and whites framing the roses have been determined by this fable, since the color, rose, results from the melding of these colors?

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The story of the origins of the rose, as one shrewd observer reminds us, is part of the larger story of the goddess’s love of the beautiful young Adonis and his eventual death. The fountain in the Sacred and Profane Love is strikingly like the sarcophagus of Adonis transformed into a fountain in a woodcut from the enchanting and influential Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, which was published in Venice not long before Titian painted his marriage picture. Titian’s image is implicitly bittersweet, elegiac in its undertones. For the presumably joyful celebration of the modern bride is set against the ancient myth of Venus’s lost love. Of all Venetian presentations of the green world, perhaps none is more captivating and mysterious than the Fête Champêtre, also known as Concert Champêtre and Pastorale, or Pastoral Concert – titles that either focus our attention on the pastoral setting of the image or on the music being made in this pastoral world (Fig. 11.3). As I have often urged, there is no fixed, definitive meaning in many works of art. And what the picture suggests depends upon where one begins one’s description or interpretation of the work. This is certainly true of the Fête. But before we consider what unfolds in this picture, a word about its authorship. For a long period of time, the picture was said to be the work of Giorgione and, if we had time and inclination, we could compare many of the features of the Fête to other works by the painter. Over time, however, scholars have increasingly been

Figure 11.3: Giorgione and/or Titian, Pastoral Concert (The Fête Champêtre), c.1510. Oil on canvas. Louvre Museum, Paris.

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inclined to give the picture to Giorgione’s disciple, Titian. Without resolving this matter, one can say that the picture is decidedly Giorgionesque in subject and style, though I will admit that I am inclined towards the attribution to Titian. Where do we enter into the imaginary green world of the picture? The most animated of all the figures in the picture, and the one to whom we are immediately drawn, is the female nude at the left who holds a vase filled with water above what appears to be a well. Who is this woman? Is she a divinity, as some have suggested? Not inconceivably. Or might she be a nymph, a being who personifies or embodies the natural world of which she is an integral part? Is this female being pouring water into the well or has she just filled the vase with water? Who can say? And, either way, to what end or purpose does she tend to the vase of water? Why, too, is she wearing a drapery given that it falls away from her body, exposing her pudenda? Whereas she is sensuous in her exposure, that sensuousness is nonetheless highly refined, alluring but scarcely titillating. Perhaps the multiple pleasures of exploring this detail of the picture come from the variety of questions it raises. What compels us, if we are especially attentive, is the world in which this female nude appears, the way in which she is relates to the tree behind her. If we follow the contour of that tree from the top downward, we see that the graceful arc of the female’s body sustains its curving shape downward toward the ground. Or, we can follow the sweeping curve of her body upward to where it joins the bending trunk of the tree at her shoulder. This observation is not a mere reflection of formalism. On the contrary, we are made to see the link between the female being and the natural world that she seemingly personifies. The painter renders her as the embodiment of nature. Her bodily trunk is one with that of the prominent tree behind her. As in Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus, where the curving shapes of the goddess’s body are echoed by the rolling hills of the landscape, so the overlapping curving shapes of the hills behind the nude echo the rounding curve of her body. There is yet another way in which we might enter the world of the painting. The prominent shaded hill behind the female at the well descends and thus leads us to the center of the picture where we see three seated figures tightly composed in a semi-circular group, the curving shape of which is echoed by the copse of trees behind them. In her nudity the seated female of this trio echoes the nudity of the standing female at the left. The one stands, the other is seated. Whereas we see one from the front, we see the other from the side and back. When we come upon a figure from behind, as we do here, or as we do in the art of Giotto, we are implicated in the world of this seated figure as we look over its shoulder. Like her, we are drawn to her two male companions. These two figures, like Plato and Aristotle in the School of Athens, form a unity unto themselves as they seemingly gaze into each other’s eyes. In their inwardness and union these figures – the one a rustic in simple brown garb, the other a refined

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courtly presence, elegantly dressed – personify the music made manifest by the note or chord that is decaying before our very eyes where the courtier’s hand is suspended over his instrument. Is this not one of those ‘animated instants’ paradoxically defined as ‘exquisite pauses’, which Pater finds in Giorgionesque art? Is such art not about performance and listening to ‘unheard melodies’? Because music is a form of poetry, the Fête Champêtre has often been called an ‘allegory of poetry’. But it is no such thing. The Fête does not ‘stand for’ poetry; it is poetry. It is bucolic poetry or music that is made in a lush verdant pastoral landscape, where a herdsman tends to his herd – an idyllic, bucolic green world where the harsh sound of his goats becomes part of the painter’s poetry. There is another connotation of the picture worthy of note. Whereas the figure in brown is rustic, is somebody who belongs in the pastoral world, the elegant musician is refined. He personifies urbanity or courtly elegance. In other words, he and his companions are opposites. But as they look into each other’s eyes, they are united. They embody the Renaissance ideal of concordia concors – the reconciliation of opposites. In their union they are the epitome of a perfect world. As I have suggested, there are implications of paintings that enrich our understanding, even if they are not necessarily manifestations of the painter’s intentions. In the Fête Champêtre, the seated female figure holds a rustic pipe, the courtly musician plays a string instrument. These are two kinds of instrument that are performed in the primordial mythic competitions of Apollo and Marsyas and of Apollo and Pan. In both instances, the string instrument is adjudged to be superior to the pipe. One cannot say with confidence that the painter has intended for the observer to reflect upon the superiority of the string instrument here, but as we look upon the lute player performing and the female figure refraining from playing her rustic pipe, such significance comes to mind. This antithesis is part of the larger contrast between rusticity and courtly refinement that marks the Fête Champêtre. Nonetheless, the picture is ultimately not about conflict but about harmony – the beautiful harmony of opposites as a cultural ideal. That harmony is epitomized by the music that is the essence of the picture. There is yet another way of approaching the Fête Champêtre if one thinks of it as a painting by Giorgione, as many have, even if Giorgione did not in fact paint it. The imagery of the painting is of a piece with Giorgione’s biography as written by Vasari – that is, the painter’s life story is seemingly mirrored by the imagery of the picture. Vasari writes that, ‘although he was of humble origin, throughout his life he was nothing if not gentle and courteous’. Vasari’s Giorgione might have stepped right into the picture attributed to him. Whatever the facts, one sees Giorgione as if he were the fusion of the courtly musician and the humble rustic, visually united within the Fête. Moreover, Vasari writes, Giorgione ‘was extremely fond of the lute, which he played beautifully to accompany his own singing’. He could easily be the Giorgionesque lute-player of the Fête, the painting so often thought to be his own

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work. Maybe Giorgione was in fact a lute player who sang, but maybe he was not. It is not impossible that Vasari imagined the Giorgionesque persona that he constructed out of the imagery of the artist’s works or of works attributed to him. The possibility need at least be entertained. To imagine this possibility is not to indulge in what one scholar has referred to as a ‘mere literary exercise’. For Vasari art was often a fictional portrait of the artist who made it – that is to say, Vasari construed works of art as autobiographical fictions. Thus, it is as if the Giorgionesque were implicitly a moment from the life of Giorgione. To what extent Vasari’s account of Giorgione’s art is factual, however, cannot be determined on the basis of the scant information at hand. Closely related to the Fête Champêtre and other Giorgionesque works that picture the Venetian green world, Titian’s Three Ages of Man is also worthy of our close attention (Fig. 11.4). The titles of works of art are, we might say, very brief interpretations, but they are necessarily too brief, since there is much they do not illuminate. Nowadays Titian’s picture might well be called the Three Ages of Human Kind. Also, whereas the current title gives equal weight to the three ages in the painting, the image is dominated by the embodiment of youth seen in the left foreground. The area occupied by the handsome male figure and his beautiful female lover or, should I say, the female figure and her male lover, draws far more of the viewer’s attention than that of the figures representing infancy and old age. The vegetation behind the lovers sustains their prominence. The proximity of the lovers also stands in contrast to the vast panoramic landscape beyond them.

Figure 11.4: Titian, The Three Ages of Man, c.1512. Oil on canvas. Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh.

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Before discussing the lovers further, a word about the other figures. We see two sleeping babies, oblivious to the winged child who climbs onto one of them. Is this winged baby not Cupid, god of desire, of whom they are, in their infancy, so profoundly unaware? And what of the prominent, seemingly lifeless, tree stump that arises above them? The tree balances nicely with the vertical mass of vegetation at the left, but is there not more to it? Beyond the representation of infancy but on their side of the picture we behold an old man who holds two skulls. If the two sleeping innocent infants convey what the lovers once were, do not the two skulls allude to what the youthful lovers will one day themselves become? Titian pictures all three ages in terms of pairs: the two sleeping infants, the two skulls, and the two lovers. These connections are not to be missed. Although Titian’s female lover is dressed, her dress falls away from her breast in a suggestive way. She holds two pipes. Does one of them belong to her male lover? Do the two pipes stand for the music they make together – but not at this very moment? He is handsome and muscular, largely undressed except for a bit of drapery that covers his upper thigh and groin. He looks yearningly at his lover; she returns his gaze. Her left arm rests suggestively on his inner thigh. Whereas the female figures were nude in the Fête Champêtre and the male figures were dressed, now the female figure is dressed, the male figure nude. Gazing into each other’s eyes, the youthful lovers express an intense inwardness, like that of the rustic and the musician in the Fête Champêtre. It is significant that these beautiful young lovers should be seated on a rich green mantle of grass, which stands apart from the more arid earth where the babies recline. If Titian’s natural world is at times Giorgionesque in its quietude and silence, as in the Three Ages of Man, the painter becomes most fully himself in his dynamic representations of a throbbing, pulsating green world. This is so, for example, in his pictures for Alfonso d’Este. The sleeping infants of the Three Ages awaken, multiply, and explode across the picture known as the Worship of Venus, which is a riot of rapture, an expression of what it feels like to be alive in life’s most joyful moments (Plate 23). The bountiful apple trees, brimming with fruit, and the rolling grass-covered hills in the distance render yet another Renaissance celebration of fecundity, recalling (not in style but in theme) those by Botticelli, Raphael, and Pontormo that we touched on at the outset. Titian pictures his paean to Venus with vitality seemingly unprecedented in the history of Italian Renaissance art. Myriad winged creatures, amorini or ‘little loves’, riot below a statue of Venus as an expression of this life force. A veritable sea of baby flesh, they do not so much ‘worship’ the goddess as express her powerful role in the coming to life of the green world. We see a comparable eruption in Titian’s related, highly charged Bacchus and Ariadne, also made for Alfonso d’Este (Plate 22). Here Bacchus bursts forth from his chariot in a costal clearing just past a wooded area. The green panorama beyond merges gradually with blue mountains, blue sea, and blue sky – all of these brilliant

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blues echoing the shimmering blue dress of Ariadne and the blue dress of a bacchante whose cymbals resound. Clutching her dress and band of red cloth with one hand, Ariadne reaches out in a graceful gesture, arm crossing torso. She thus echoes the leap of Bacchus – as if they both were engaged in an imaginary dance. It would seem that with the dominance of sea and sky the green world has turned mostly blue. In any event, the atmosphere of the picture is electric. As Bacchus and Ariadne approach each other, their eyes lock – holding us in thrall! We experience their passion, the intensity of their passion. I can think of no more wonderful place to pause and thus end our little story – in a state of utter enchantment.

About the author Paul Barolsky, Commonwealth Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia where he taught for 47 years, is the author of Infinite Jest: Wit and Humor in Italian Renaissance Art, Michelangelo’s Nose, Michelangelo and the Finger of God, and Ovid and the Metamorphoses of Modern Art: From Botticelli to Picasso, among other works. He is particularly interested in the role of poetical writing in art historical interpretation.

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Index Accademia dei Lincei 231 Accademia di San Luca 219, 231 Adagia 83, 84, 85 Adam and Eve 161 Adonis 245, 247–48 Adoration of the Child (Lippi) 31, 33, 41, 43–44 Adoration of the Child (Pseudo Fiorentino) 42 Adoration of the Child with Saints John the Baptist and Bernard 41, 43–44 Aeneid 173 Aggházy, Marie 95n16 Agricola, Georgius 47 Alberti, Leon Battista 72, 101 Aldobrandini Madonna 209 Alexander the Great 85 Alexander VI, Pope 74 Alfonso I d’Este 167, 169, 252 Algarotti, Francesco 158, 216 allegory 244–45 Allegory of Charity 134 Allegory of Hope 134 Allegory of Sacred and Profane Love 241, 247–48 Alps 142n24 altarpieces 31–32, 41, 63, 156–57, 162, 168–69; see also Castelfranco Altarpiece; Death of St. Peter Martyr, The Altdorfer, Albrecht 20 amoena virecta 173 Andrians, The 169 Aniene falls 186, 192 Anthony of Padua 72 anthropomorphism 59 Cima’s St. Jerome 60, 61 Dürer’s St. Jerome 54, 55, 61 Gaddi’s Crucifixion 56, 58 Lotto 50–51, 63–66 Michelangelo 64 Muziano 191 see also trees, symbolism of Antibarbari 78 antiquity, influence of 118, 124, 128n43, 150 on storm landscapes 235–36 tripartite chorography 140–41, 147 see also ruins, featured in or by ants 85 Antwerp 35, 132 Apelles 218 Apennine Mountains 35 Apollo 93–94, 143–44, 250 Apollo Belvedere 211 arbutus 24 Arcadia 21, 22, 24, 81, 163, 236 influence on the visual arts 21–22 trees in 21–22, 24, 163–64, 201 architecture barchesse 149 belvederes 78, 149

cryptoporticus 83 loggia 124, 125n36, 128, 138, 194–95 soffits 115–16 see also bowers, pergolas architecture, green as boundaries 133–38, 140, 143–46, 149, 151 festive structures 110–11 labyrinths 25, 104–07, 137, 145, 146 in Toeput’s art 132–38, 143–45 see also bowers, pergolas; gardens; verzure Arden 19 Aretino, Pietro 109, 200–202 Aristotle 33, 249 Asolo Assunta 63 Aureliò, Niccolò 246 aviaries 150–51 azurite 40–41 Bacchanals 159, 167–71 Bacchus 114–17, 252–53 Bacchus and Ariadne 18, 169–70, 252–53 Baglione, Giovanni 177 on Muziano 178, 194 Baldovinetti, Alessio 38, 39, 40–41, 44 Banquet in the Open Air 135–36 Baptism of Christ, The 193 Baptism of the Eunuch, The 237 Barberini, Antonio 228, 231 Barberini, Francesco 231 barchesse 149 barcho 92, 104 Bartolomeo di Fruosino 45 basilisks 84 Bate, Jonathan 174 Baxandall, Michael 31–32 bears 116 bedcovers 35 beetles 84 Beguin, Sylvie 116, 117 Bellincioni, Bernardo 94n15, 102 Bellini, Giovanni 59, 82, 126, 140, 168, 197, 243 Bellini, Jacopo 56, 57, 59, 60 belvederes 78, 149 Bembo, Pietro 81 Beneš, Mirka 142 Berenson, Bernard 52 Bergamo 52 Bicci, Neri di 40–41 Biringuccio, Vannoccio 40 Birth of St. John the Baptist 36 Birth of Venus 18 birth trays 45, 46n39 Bles, Herri met de 21, 133 blue pigments 40–41 boats 137 Boccati, Giovanni 138 Boisclair, Marie-Nicole 220, 221–23, 228

278 INDEX Boldrini, Nicolo 166 bole 164 Bonfadio, Jacopo 140–42, 147 Book of Nature 51n9, 66, 80–81, 163n21 Bosch, Jheronimus 84 boskets 158–59, 165–66 Botticelli, Sandro 18, 31, 44–47, 242 festal verzure 110–11 technique of 46 Bouillon, Pierre 212–13 boundaries green architecture as 133–38, 140, 143–46, 149, 151 Sala delle Asse 92, 107 see also chorography, tripartite bowers, pergolas 91n6 Bellini 140 Boccati 138 Lippi 43 Raphael 242 in the Room of the Caryatids 122 Sala delle Asse 89–92, 95, 96–108 Tintoretto 136–37, 138 Toeput 137, 144, 149–50 Visconti’s Pasitea 94 Brescia 176, 177, 178 bridges Dughet 222 Dupérac 192 Lotto 52 Sala delle Asse 99–101, 104, 107 Titian 244 Toeput 144–45 Bridget of Sweden 43 Bril, Matthias 221 Bril, Paul 132, 176, 192–93, 221 Britto, Giovanni 164 Bruegel the Elder, Pieter 191, 192, 230 Brueghel the Elder, Jan 192 Brussels 146–47 Busiri Vici, Andrea 226 Calypso 110n4, 171 Camoldoli Adoration 41, 43–44 Camaldoli Hermitage 41 camels 114 Camillo Mantovano 118, 120, 121, 122 Campagnola, Domenico 26, 160, 176 and Muziano 176, 179–83, 186–87, 189–90, 193 Campani, Giovanni Antonio 72 Campen, Jacob van 207 Canzoniere 72, 79 cardinal virtues 33 Carson, Rachel 17 Castelfranco Altarpiece 242–43 Castello Sforzesco 90, 92, 94, 104–7, 122n28 cataracts 34 Cavaliere Tempesta 240 Cellini, Benvenuto 128 Cennini, Cennino 37, 38–39, 43, 46 Cesarini, Giulio 74–75 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor 109

chastity 247 chiaroscuro 164n26, 165, 190, 210–12 childbirth 35, 36, 45–46 chorography, tripartite 133–34, 138–51 and antiquity 140–41, 147 Christ and Scenes from the Golden Legend  63, 65 Christianity see devotional imagery; divinity and verdancy; Protestantism Christ Washing the Feet of the Apostles 185–86 Chrysoloras, Manuel 72 Cicero 69, 140–41 Cima da Conegliano 59, 60, 138 cityscapes 98–99, 104, 108 Claude Lorrain 155, 219 Cleopatra 78, 85 climate change 229–31 coastal landscapes 218, 221, 227, 230, 234 Cochin, Nicolas 210 Cock, Hieronymus 185 Codex Maggi miniatures 132, 145–46 Colonna, Vittoria 131 Comet? 62, 63 comets 62, 63n29 composition 133–34, 150, 189–91; see also chorography, tripartite Contarini, Taddeo 81–82 contemplation 55–56 Convivium religiosum 78–80, 82–86 copper acetate 38 copper resinate 18, 38 Corot, Camille 158 Cort, Cornelis 191, 192–93 Cortona, Pietro da 231 Cosgrove, Denis 20 Cosimo II, Duke of Tuscany 110 cosmopoesis 166n33, 167n38 Cranach, Lucas 73 Creation of Adam 65 credenzas 110n4, 114–15 Crescenzi, Pietro de’ 103 crimson dye 36 Crucifixion 56, 59, 63, 173 Crucifixion (Gaddi) 58 cryptoporticus 83 Cupid 242, 252 Curiositez de la nature et de l’art 143–44 Curtius, Robert 71 Cyprus 37 Cysat, Renward 229 Dal Pozzo, Cassiano 231–32 Danae 94n15 Dante Alighieri 102 Death of St. Peter Martyr, reproductive prints 198, 202–203, 207, 212, 215–16 bird’s nest in 209, 212, 214–15 Cochin 210 devotional 206 Fontana 202, 205–07, 212 Jackson 210–12

279

INDEX

Laurent 212–13 Lefebre 207–10, 212, 214 Rota 202–205, 207, 212 Vivant Denon 212 Wagner 212, 214 Death of St. Peter Martyr, The 26, 197–203 inspiration to Dughet 228 literary responses to 200–203, 212, 216 as an object of devotion 200 painted replicas of 198–99 de Bles, Herri met 21, 133 De finibus bonorum et malorum 69 De honesta voluptate et valetudine 70–71 Democritus 9, 211 De natura deorum 140 De natura fossilium 47 De re aedificatoria 72 De rerum natura 231 descriptions 244–45, 248–50 Desplaces, Louis 186 De Vita Solitaria 55, 56n19 De voluptate et vero bono 69 de Vos, Marten 132 devotional imagery 19, 23, 32, 41–47, 50–51, 161, 171–73 contemplation 55–56 from gold to green 31, 41, 44, 47 and trees 56–61, 63–66 see also Death of St. Peter Martyr, The Dialogo della pittura 200–203 dialogues 69–71, 78–80, 82–86, 200–203 Dionysus 171 disegno 126, 128, 200, 202, 215 divinity and verdancy 22–24, 51n9, 56, 78–82, 163n21, 243 Dolce, Lodovico 157n7, 200–203 Domus Aurea 124 Donatello 37 Dossi, Dosso 168 dragons 56, 57, 115n15 Drawing including pavilion of the Duchess of Milan 106 drawings 57, 60, 156–57, 159, 160 chalk and ink 106 pen and ink 76–77, 165–66, 179–84, 187–92 Dream of the Rood 56 dreams 55–56, 246 Dughet, Gaspard 26, 218–23, 227, 234–40 dating of works of 222–23, 239 influence of antiquity on 235 and natural philosophy 231–32, 235 sources of 228 trees in 219–20, 222–23, 228–29, 232, 237–39 Dupérac, Etienne 192 Dürer, Albrecht 52–53, 54, 55, 61–62, 63, 73, 77, 120n25, 161 duvets 35 dyer’s rocket 37 dyes 36–37; see also green pigments eagles 84 earth, green 37–38, 40, 169 Eclogues 163, 166n32, 174, 236–37

ecopoesis 159, 171–74 ekphrasis 141, 198, 201, 216, 218 elephants 114 emeralds 34 engravings 54, 55, 73–74, 76, 185, 191, 193, 202–207, 210–14 enjoyment honesta voluptas 69–71, 74–75, 78–79, 82, 86 of landscapes 72, 79, 85–86 of nature, verdancy 24, 72, 74–75, 78–80, 82, 86, 137 of painting(s) 83–86 sinfulness of 69–70, 75 environmentalism 17 Epicureanism 69–70 Epistulae 75 Erasmus, Desiderius 23–24, 78–80, 82–86 Errard, Charles 232–33 etchings 150–51, 186, 190, 202, 205–10, 213–14, 239 Evelyn, John 167, 230 exchange of green imagery in art 25–26 Fable for Tomorrow, A 17 Farnesina 127 fauns 73 favole mitologiche 93–94, 101, 108 Feast of the Gods 168–69 Feast of the Rosary 120n25 Feast of Venus 169 fertility 33, 35, 63, 242, 245 Fête Champêtre 248–52 Ficino, Marsilio 34–35, 44, 46 Flight into Egypt, The (Dughet) 223, 237–39 Flight into Egypt, The (Titian) 118, 119, 120 Florentine painters 23, 31–32, 35–48; see also painters by name Fontainbleau 115–16, 117 Fontana, Giovanni Battista 202, 205–06 forests see trees, featured in or by; woodlands fortunas 221 Francis of Assisi 63, 82, 242 Frank, Martina 132, 152 French Renaissance 20 frescoes 36, 37–38, 41, 56, 58, 64–65, 96–100, 114–15, 121, 125n36, 127, 147, 176, 192–95, 221, 235; see also Sala delle Asse Frezza, Costa 95n16 Friedrich, Caspar David 20, 23 fruits 75, 78, 141–42, 169, 242, 252 mulberries 90, 94 furniture credenzas 110n4, 114–15 spalliere 111, 112 tapestries 18, 35–37, 112 gabelle 40 Gaddi, Taddeo 56, 58 garden design 138–39, 142–43, 150 Garden of Eden 46, 56n22, 242 Garden of Hesperides 169 Garden of Paradise 138n12 Garden of Virtue 138

280 INDEX gardens and Bacchus 115 in Bellini 140 of the Castello Sforzesco 92, 104–07 in Erasmus 78, 82–86 of Giulio Cesarini 74–75 labyrinths in 25, 104–7, 137, 145, 146 in the Piacenza Tondo 44, 46 in Toeput 132–33, 135–38, 143–45, 147–51 and tripartite chorography 138–50 in Valckenborch 146–47 in Vallemont 143–44 gardens, Curial 74–75, 78 gardens, villa 132–33, 136, 138–39 garlands 111, 115–16, 120, 122, 127 Garofalo 118 Geddes, Leslie 101 Genga 120 Georgics, The 236 georgic tradition 71, 79–80, 82 Ghirlandaio, Domenico 36 Gilbert, Josiah 156, 163 Gilpin, William 165, 215 Giorgione 81–82, 101, 241, 242–46, 248–51 and music 250–51 trees in 243–45, 248–49 Vasari on 122–23, 126, 250–51 Giovanni, Tommaso di 38, 40 Giovanni da Udine 117, 118, 122–28 and antiquity 124 Girolamo Muziano see Muziano, Girolamo Giulio Romano 114–18 Giustinian, Leonardo 72 glaucoma 34 Gli Asolani 81 Gloomy Day (Early Spring) 230 Goede, Lawrence, Otto 234 Golden House of Nero 124 Golden Legend 50, 65 gold pigments 31–32 gold to green 31, 41, 44, 47 gondolas 137 Gonzaga, Francesco 70, 93 Good Samaritan, The 223, 229 Gozzoli, Benozzo 41 green, verdure 242 divinity of 22–24, 51n9, 56, 78–82, 163n21, 243 enjoyment of 24, 72, 74–75, 78–80, 82, 86, 137 pharmacological aspects of 18, 23, 33–35, 36, 45–47, 172 research on 19–21 symbolical aspects of 33, 172–73, 229, 242, 246–49 see also architecture, green; verzure green mantle of the earth 17, 167, 173, 242 green pigments 18, 23 malachite 33, 38–41, 43, 46–47, 169 organic 35, 37 price of 33, 36–38, 40 terra verde 37–38, 40, 169 verdigris 33–34, 38, 40, 43, 47, 169 green turn 19 Gregory XVI, Pope 192

Grondt der Edel Vry Schilder-Const 178 Grottaferrata Abbey 194 grotteschi 125n36 Group of Trees (Titian, multiple drawings) 155–56, 159, 160–61, 164–65 guadarella 37 Guarinoni, Luca 204 Guasconi, Giovacchino 78 hagiography 50, 55–56, 59, 65 Handbook of Art 37, 43 Harrison, Robert Pogue 20 health and verdancy 18, 23, 33–35, 36, 45–47, 172 Heliads 22, 162n20 herbs 172 Hercules 211 hermitage landscapes 23, 50–52, 54–57, 60, 66, 72, 146, 166, 191; see also Death of St. Peter Martyr, The Heroic Landscapes 212 Hesiod 171 Heydenreich, Gunnar 46 Hildegard von Bingen 34 Hochmann, Michel 176 Holanda, Francisco de 131 Holmes, Megan 41, 44 Holy Cross see Crucifixion Holy Family with Saint Elizabeth and John the Baptist 181 Homer 141, 171 honesta voluptas 69–71, 74–75, 78–79, 82, 86 hope 33 Horace 79, 80, 85 Humfrey, Peter 64 Hunt, John Dixon 140, 141 hunting grounds 92, 104, 145 Hypnerotomachia Poliphili 115n15, 248 indigo 37 Industrial Revolution 165n31 Innocent IV, Pope 199 Innocent X, Pope 235–36 interpretation 241, 243–45, 248–50 Ippolito II d’Este 185, 187, 192–94 Italian Landscape on a Windy Day 227, 229, 232, 234, 239 Jabach, Everhard 181–82 Jackson, John Baptist 210–12 Jacopo de Voragine 50, 55 Jerome 50, 55–56, 59, 146, 161, 165–66 John the Baptist 43–44 Julius II, Pope 52, 78 Jupiter and Io 193 Kainen, Jacob 211 kermes red 36–37 Kiang, Dawson 94 Knight, Leah 19 Koerner, Joseph 20 labyrinths 25, 104–7, 137, 145, 146 Lake Garda 140, 141

281

INDEX

lake pigments see individual colors Land, Norman 198, 202 landscapes enjoyment of 72, 79, 85–86 literary 72 paesi 22, 56, 120 research on 20 rise of genre 101 as socially constructed 20 see also specific landscape types and features landscapes, featured by Baldovinetti 38–39 Bellini 57, 60 Botticelli 44–46 Bruegel the Elder 230 Cima 60 Claude Lorrain 219 Dughet 218–23, 227–29, 231–32, 234–40 Dürer 53–54, 55, 61, 77, 161 Erasmus 78–79, 85–86 favole 93, 101 Fontana 203–05 Giorgione 81–82, 101, 243–46, 249–51 Giovanni da Udine 123–24 Gozzoli 41 Jackson 211–12 Laurent 212–13 Lefebre 207–10, 214 Leonardo da Vinci 98–104, 108 Lippi 41, 43–44 Loots 195 Lotto 23, 66 Muziano 26, 175–85, 187–94 Patinir 146 Porcellis 227 Poussin 217–18, 233–34 Rosa 228 Rota 203–04 Swanevelt 218–29, 231–40 Titian 119, 120, 156–57, 160–63, 169–73, 198–203, 211, 246–52 Toeput 132–33, 134, 136, 143–51 Valckenborch 146–47 Vallemont 143–44 Van Goyen 227 Vasari 118–21, 123–24 Visconti 99 Wagner 212, 214 landscapes, types of cityscapes 98–99, 104, 108 coastal 218, 221, 227, 230, 234 pastoral 66, 98–99, 141, 161, 179–84, 187–91, 219, 221, 244 snow 230 wilderness hermitage 23, 50–52, 54–57, 60, 66, 72, 146, 166, 191 see also gardens; meadows; rivers, streams; storm landscapes; trees, featured in or by; villas; woodlands Landscape with a Calm (Poussin) 233 Landscape with a Fall (Muziano) 190 Landscape with a River (Muziano) 189

Landscape with a Storm (Poussin) 234 Landscape with Bridge (Dusk) (Dughet) 222 Landscape with Pyramus and Thisbe (Poussin) 217–18, 219, 221, 232, 240 Landscape with Saint Jerome (Patinir) 146 Landscape with Shepherds and Herds (Dawn) (Dughet) 20 Landscape with the Good Samaritan (Toeput) 134 Landscape with Two Reclining Shepherds (Muziano) 180 land storms see storm landscapes Lapiths 85 L’Aretino 200–202 Laurentium 75 Lazio 142–43 lead-tin yellow 39, 43 lead white 37, 38, 39 Lefebre, Valentin 21, 207–10, 214 Leonardo da Vinci and Lippi 242 literary interests of 102 Sala delle Asse 24, 89–92, 94–108 storms 218, 231–33 Vitruvius 90n4 water 101–2 Leto, Pomponio 70, 71, 72 lex hortorum 75, 82 Liberale 242 Life of Hadrian 95n17 lightning 217–18, 223, 226 Ligorio, Pirro 150–51, 194 lions 56, 110, 165–66, 211 Lippi, Fra Filippo 31, 33, 41–43, 47, 242 technique of 43–44 Little Ice Age 229–30 Lives of the Artists, The 24, 111–29, 200–201; see for more details Vasari, Giorgio Livy 236 locus amoenus 71, 141, 163 Sala delle Asse 92, 94–96, 98–100, 103, 107–08 Loggia of Cupid and Psyche 242 Lomazzo 169, 171 Lombard, Lambert 185 Longa di Schiavon 132, 147, 149 Loots, Cornelis 194–95 Loth, Carlo 203, 209 Lotto, Lorenzo 23, 49–52, 63–66 influence of Dürer on 52–55, 61 influence of Michelangelo on 64–65 inventory of 40–41 patrons of 56n20 regional influences on 52 Louis XIV, King of France 207 Luciani, Domenico 139, 140 Lucretius 173n50, 233, 235 Lucrezia Tornabuoni 41, 44 Ludovico Sforza, ‘il Moro’ 90, 92, 94, 103–04 macchiati 128n43 MacKenzie, Louisa 19–20 Madonna Adoring the Child with St. John the Baptist (Botticelli) 31

282 INDEX Madonna and Child (Donatello) 37 Madonna and Child (Masaccio) 32 Madonna and Saints (Bellini) 197 Madonna della Vittoria (Mantegna) 138 Madonna di Ca’ Pesaro (Titian) 209 Madonna in the Rose Garden (Verona) 138n12 Madonna of the Meadow (Bellini) 140 Madonna of the Orange Tree (Cima) 138 Madonna of the Pergola (Boccati) 138 Madonna with Child (Baldovinetti) 38, 39 malachite 33, 38–41, 43, 46–47, 169 Malipiero, Domenico 78–79 maniera 125–26 Mantegna, Andrea 136, 138 Mantua 93, 117 Maria Maddalena of Austria 110 Mariette, Pierre-Jean 165, 178, 228 Mars 247 Marsyas 250 Martyrdom of St Christopher 136 Martyrdom of St. Peter Martyr 157, 162 Martyrdom of the 10,000 53, 55n15 Mary 23, 38, 44, 59, 63, 243 Mary Magdalen 171–73 Masaccio 32 Massé, Charles 181 Master of the Sola-Busca Tarocchi 76 Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor 146 mazes see labyrinths McColley, Diana K. 19 meadows Bellini 140 Botticelli 31, 46 curative powers of 34, 47 Lippi 43 Medici, Alessandro de’ 109 Medici, Cosimo II de’ 110 Medici, Lorenzo de’ 35, 37 Medici, Piero de’ 41, 44 Medici chapel 41 Medici family 31, 41 Meilman, Patricia 198 Michelangelo 64–65, 83–84, 131–33 Michiel, Marcantonio 81 Milan 89–90, 93–94, 102, 104–06 Milton, John 19 Miracle of the Slave 136 Mocetto, Girolamo 73 Montaigne, Michel de 184n28 Montauri Birth Tray 45, 46n39 monuments see ruins, featured in or by Mountainous landscape with approaching storm 220, 223, 229 mountain paths 43, 50 mountains 133, 141–44, 147, 150, 160–61, 220, 238–39 Mount Amiata 139 Mulier II, Pieter 240 music 136–37, 234, 248, 250–52 Muziano, Girolamo 26, 175–79 Baglione on 178, 194 and Bruegel the Elder 191, 192 and Campagnola 176, 179–83, 186–87, 189–90, 193

and Pittoni the Elder 184–85 and Titian 176, 182–84, 189–90 and Tivoli 186–88, 191–93 trees in 177, 179–82, 187–91, 193 Uffizi album 188–94 Van Mander on 177–78 vertical composition 189–90 works attributed to 179–82 Nastagio degli Onesti 110, 111, 115n15 Nativity (Bellini) 59, 60 Nativity (Lippi) 242 Nativity (Lotto) 66 Natural History 33, 46 naturalism 31–32, 47, 85, 227 Leonardo da Vinci’s 90, 102 Titian’s 155, 158, 162 Vasari on 113, 119–20, 126–29 natural philosophy 26–27, 166, 231–33 nature see green, verdure Nelli, Nicolo 206–07 Neptune 149 Nile 85 nitor 173 Noli Me Tangere 171–73 Nova, Alessandro 237 nymphs 72–73, 75, 76, 78, 82, 99, 249 Nymph set upon by satyrs 76 oil paintings 38–39, 47, 60, 61, 62, 114–17, 119, 127, 168–72, 245, 247–49, 251 Olympians 168 ontological arguments 81 Opera selectiora 207–09 Oratorio Suardi 65 Orbay, Francoise d’ 116, 117 Orfeo 93 Orizzonte 226, 240 ornaments 22, 24 garlands 111, 115–16, 120, 122, 127 grotteschi 125n36 in Venetian painting 66 verzure (cultivated greenery) 112–29 verzure (festive) 109–11 Outdoor Concert 135 Outdoor Feast 110, 111 Ovid 93, 228, 231, 236 owls 84 Padua 176, 179, 230 paesi 22, 56, 120 painting, paintings see devotional imagery; technique(s), painting and individual paintings by name Erasmus on 83–86 Leonardo da Vinci on 103 paintings, types of frescoes 36, 37–38, 41, 56, 58, 64–65, 96–100, 114–15, 121, 125n36, 127, 147, 176, 192–95, 221, 235 gouache on linen, waterverf 124n33 oil 38–39, 47, 60, 61, 62, 114–17, 119, 127, 168–72, 245, 247–48, 251

283

INDEX

tempera on panel 32, 33, 38–39, 42, 111, 115, 125n36 tondo 31, 44–46 palace decor 91, 101, 114, 116–17 Palazzo, Michela 98 Palazzo del Te 114, 116–17 Palazzo Muti Bussi 221 Palazzo Pamphilj 221, 235–37 Palazzo Ricci 194 Palazzo Vecchio 110 Paper Museum 231 Parable of the Rich Man 135 Paradiso 94n15 Paragone 103 Parnassus 143–44, 160–61, 171 Pasitea 93–94, 99 Pastoral Concert 248–52 pastosa 127–28 Pastoureau, Michel 20 pastourelle 72 Pater, Walter 243–44, 250 Patin, Carolina Catherina 210 Patinir, Joachim 133, 146 patrons of Dughet and Swanevelt 219, 235 of Giorgione 242, 246 of Lotto 56n20 Ludovico Sforza 90, 94, 103 Paul Bril 132, 176, 194–95, 221 Paul II, Pope 71 peacocks 211 Pedretti, Carlo 105 pendant paintings 222, 233–34 pergolas see bowers, pergolas Perugino, Pietro 52 Pesaro 120 Peter of Verona 199 Petrarca Spirituale 78–79 Petrarch 55, 56n19, 72–73, 79, 93, 102n35, 139, 167 Phaedrus 79–80 pharmacological aspects of green 18, 23, 33–35, 36, 45–47, 172 Piacenza Tondo 31, 44–46 Piccolomini palace 139 Pieve di Cadore 163 pigments see dyes; gold pigments; green pigments Pino, Paolo 48 Pintura antigua, Da 131 Pittoni the Elder, Giovanni Battista 184–85 Pius II, Pope 71–72, 139 planting zones 133, 142 Platina 70–71 Plato 79–80, 249 plays, pastoral 92–94 pleasure see enjoyment Pleasure Garden with Maze 25, 132, 137–38, 143–46, 149 Pliny the Elder 33, 46, 103 Pliny the Younger 75, 80, 140 poetry 18, 55, 92–93, 102, 156, 163, 166–67, 236–37, 243–46; see also Arcadia; Dream of the Rood Polidoro da Caravaggio 128n43 Poliziano, Angelo 93, 166–67 Pomedelli, Giovanni Maria 74

Ponte Lucano 192 Pontormo 112n10, 242 Porcellis, Jan 227 Poussin, Nicolas 155, 217–18, 221, 231–33, 240 Praecipua aliquot Romanae Antiquitatis Ruinarum Monimenta 185 Praglia Abbey 134 Priapus 82, 242 Primaticcio, Francesco 117–18 Primavera 18, 242 prints, reproductive see Death of St. Peter Martyr, reproductive prints prints, woodblock 160–61, 165–66, 192–93, 210–12, 238–39 colors 210–12 Protestantism 19 Pseudo Pier Francesco Fiorentino 41–42, 44 Pupila Augusta 73, 76–77 putti 65, 110, 122, 147n37 Pyramus 93, 217, 240 Pyramus and Thisbe 217–18, 219, 221, 232, 240 Quies 73–74 Rackham, Oliver 174 Raphael 52, 64, 117–18, 122–23, 124n32, 125n36, 128n43, 242 rebirth 33, 59, 63, 242 red lake 40 Renaissance, French 20 Rest on the Flight into Egypt, The (Swanevelt) 237–39 Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Titian) 118, 119, 120 Ricci, Marco 212 Ridolfi, Giovanni 105 River Landscape (Muziano) 182 River Landscape (Swanevelt) 224–26 River Landscape with a Mill (Muziano) 179 River Landscape with a Viola Player (Muziano) 180 rivers, streams 101 Botticelli 46 Muziano 179–80, 182, 188–91 Sala delle Asse 99–102, 104–05, 107 Swanevelt 224–25, 238–39 Toeput 144–45 Valckenborch 146–47 Robbia, Luca Della 44 Rocca Sinibalda 192 Romanticism 191 Rome 26, 49, 52, 82, 176, 186 Romuald 41, 44 Room of the Caryatids 122 Room of the Landscapes 147–49 Rosa, Salvator 228 Rosand, David 66 Roselli, Cosimo 44 roses Botticelli 31, 44, 46 Lippi 31 Titian 247–48 in weddings 110 Rosso Fiorentino 115–18 Rota, Martino 157, 162n20, 202–205

284 INDEX Rubens, Peter Paul 155, 221 Rucellai, Giovanni 110 ruins, featured in or by Giovanni da Udine 123–24 Jackson 211–12 Leonardo da Vinci 98 Muziano 182, 184–85, 192 Pittoni the Elder 185 Rural Landscape with a Fortified Town (Loots) 195 Rural Landscape with a River (Muziano) 188 Rural Landscape with Mills (Muziano) 187 Ruskin, John 165n31, 171 Sacchi, Bartolomeo see Platina Sacred and Profane Love 241, 247–48 Sacrifice of Abraham, The 160–62 saffron 41n30 St. Francis (Bellini) 82, 140 St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata (Cort) 192–93 St. Jerome Penitent in the Wilderness (Dürer, engraving) 54, 55 St. Jerome (Cima) 59, 60 St. Jerome (Dürer, oil) 61–63 St. Jerome in the Wilderness (Lotto) 23, 49–52, 55–56, 63–66 St. Jerome in the Wilderness (Bellini) 56, 59 St. Jerome in the Wilderness (after Titian) 163–64 Sala dei Pregadi 91n6 Sala delle Asse 24, 89–92, 94–108 and castle grounds 104–7 as a dermacator 92, 107 as the Vale of Tempe 95 Sala delle Fatiche d’Ercole 121 Sala delle Marine 221 Sala di Constantine 125n36 Sala di Giuseppe 221 Sala di Psiche 127 Sangallo, Francesco da 142, 143 San Martino ai Monti 228 Sannazaro, Jacopo 21–22, 24, 81, 163–64, 236 Santi Giovanni e Paolo 197, 200, 206 satyrs 73, 101, 116 Schama, Simon 20 Schilder-boeck 177 School of Athens 52n13, 249 scorpions 56, 57, 84 sea landscapes 218, 221, 227, 230, 234 Sebastiano Veneziano 81 Seneca 69 serpents 56, 57 Sforza court 89, 91–93, 104 Shakespeare, William 19, 245 shepherds 99, 101, 112n10 Carpi after Titian 160–61 Dughet 221, 235, 236 Lotto’s St. Jerome 51 Sannazaro’s Arcadia 22 Swanevelt 236 Titian 246–48 Vergil’s Eclogues 163 Visconti’s Pasitea 93–94 Shepherd Sleeping with his Flock, The 183 Shipwreck off the Coast 227 Sidney, Philip 25

silk 35–37 silva 159, 161, 166–67 Silver, Larry 146 sinfulness of pleasure 69–70, 75 Sistine Chapel 64 Sleeping Venus 245–46 Smith, Bruce 18, 19 snow landscapes 230 Socrates 79–80 soffits 115–16 Song of the Earth, The 174 spalliere 111, 112 Spartianus 95n17 Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae 151 Spenser, Edmund 19 Spring Landscape 146–47 Squall, The (Dughet) 220, 223, 229 Stechow, Wolfgang 218 Steland, Anne Charlotte 222, 223, 225, 227 Stella, Jacques 217 Stoicism 69–70, 229 Storm, The (Dughet) 222–23, 232, 235–36 storm landscapes 26–27, 217–20, 228–29, 237–40 and antiquity 235–36 and climate change 229–31 Giorgione 244–45 Leonardo da Vinci 218, 231–33 Lucretius 233, 235 and natural philosophy 231–33 precedents of 227–28 rise and attributions of 220–26 storms at sea 218, 221, 227, 230, 234 symbolical aspects of 229, 237–39 Vergil 235–37 see also Dughet, Gaspard; Swanevelt, Herman van Storm Scene (Swanevelt) 226 Stormy Weather (Swanevelt) 224, 226, 233, 234 streams see rivers, streams Strozzi, Filippo 78 structures see architecture sumac 37 Summer Landscape (Toeput) 132, 147–50 Susanna and the Elders (Tintoretto) 137 Sustris, Lambert 26, 176, 193 Swanevelt, Herman van 26, 218–27, 232–40 attributions to 223–26 and natural philosophy 231–33, 235 sources of 227–28 trees in 222, 224–26, 228–29, 234, 237–39 symbolism of green, greenery 33, 170–71, 229, 242, 246–49; see also trees, symbolism of Tabellae selectae 210 Taccone, Baldassare 94n15 Taegio, Bartolomeo 141, 142 taffeta 36 tapestries 18, 35–37, 112 Tassi, Agostino 221 technique(s), painting Botticelli 46 for decoration 128–29 for frescoes 37–38 Giovanni da Udine 125n36, 127–28 Lippi 43–44

INDEX

macchiati 128n43 Muziano 183 pastosa 127–28 Raphael 125n36 Swanevelt 234 Titian 169, 173 Vitruvius on 125n36 see also composition tempera 32, 33, 38–39, 42, 111, 115, 125n36 Tempesta 241, 243–45 four elements 244–45 Tempio della Tosse 192 temptation 55n15, 72–73 Temptation and Expulsion 64 terra verde 37–38, 40, 169 textiles, verdure 35 bedcovers 35 duvets 35 price of 36–37 silk 35–37 tapestries 18, 35–37, 112 Theocritus 236 Thisbe 93, 217, 232, 240 Three Ages of Man 251–52 Three Books on Life 34 Three Philosophers, The 81 thunder 232, 235 Thunderstorm 227, 229, 232, 234, 239 tigers 114 Tintoretto 132, 136–37, 138, 178 Titian 18, 25–26, 119, 241, 246–53 Bacchanals 157, 167–71 Dolce on 200–203 ecopoesis 159, 171–74 and Muziano 176, 182–84, 189–90 naturalism 155, 158, 162 silva 159, 161, 166–67 trees, woodlands 25–26, 119, 155–66, 169–74, 184, 198–99, 246–49, 251–52 Van Mander on 178 Vasari on 118–20, 200–203 see also Death of St. Peter Martyr, The Tivoli 21, 26, 186, 191–93 Toeput, Lodewijk 25, 131–38, 143–51 chorography, tripartite 133–34, 143–51 green architecture 132–38, 143–45 Tomacello, Plinio 140 tondo paintings 31, 44–46 Trattato della Pittura 218, 231–33 Trattato della seta 36–37 traveling and art 52 Treatise on Painting 47–48 trees, clumps of 158–59, 165–66 trees, featured in or by Bellini’s Feast 168 Bellini’s Nativity 59 Bellini’s St. Jerome 56, 57 Botticelli 111 Cima 59, 60 Dream of the Rood 56 Dughet 219–20, 222–23, 228–29, 232, 237–39 Dürer 53, 54, 55, 61, 77 Erasmus 79, 84

285 Fontana 205–06 Gaddi 56 Giorgione 243–45, 248–49 Jackson 210 Jerome’s hagiography 55 Laurent 213 Lefebre 208–09, 214 Leonardo da Vinci 89–92, 95, 96–99, 102–03, 107–08, 232 Ligorio 151 Lippi 31, 43 Loots 195 Lotto’s other work 65–66 Lotto’s St. Jerome 49, 50–51, 52, 55, 63–64 Lotto’s Virgin and Child 63 Michelangelo 64 Muziano 177, 179–82, 187–91, 193 Osimo 59 Plato 79 Pomedelli 74 Poussin 217–18 Rota 203–04 Sala delle Asse 89–92, 95, 96–99, 102–03, 107–08 Sannazaro’s Arcadia 21–22, 24, 163–64, 201 Swanevelt 222, 224–26, 228–29, 234, 237–39 Titian 25–26, 119, 155–66, 169–74, 184, 198–99, 246–49, 251–52 Toeput 134, 136, 145 Valckenborch 147 Vallemont 144 Vergil 163 Visconti 94 Wagner 212, 214 see also bowers, pergolas; woodlands trees, genera of aspens 162 beeches 21–22, 165, 169 buxus 110n4 conifers 55n15 elms 169 hollies 110n4 laurels 94, 168 lindens, lime trees 169 mulberries 24, 89–90, 94, 108 myrtles 18, 168 oaks 24, 142, 162n20, 169, 210 pines 111 poplars 22, 162, 210 trees, symbolism of Christ as a tree 59, 61, 63–65 Crucifixion 56, 58, 59, 63, 64, 173 Jerome’s hagiography 50–51, 55–56, 59–61, 63–64 rebirth 59, 63 in Swanevelt and Dughet 229 tree stumps Bellini 57, 59–60 Boldrini/Britto after Titian 165–66 Cima 60–61 Dughet and Swanevelt 229 Dürer 54–55, 61 Lotto 55, 63 Rota 203–04 Titian 160–62, 164, 251–52

286 INDEX tremoli 162 Treviso 52, 132 Tribolo, Niccolò 200 tripartite chorography see chorography, tripartite Turner, Richard 175, 176 Tuscany 35, 38, 43, 93 Two Arcadian Musicians 183–84 Uccello, Paolo 126 Uffizi album 188–94 Ugo da Carpi 160 Valckenborch, Lucas van 146–47 Vale of Tempe 95 Valla, Lorenzo 69–70, 86 Valle dell’Inferno 192 Valle Gaudente 194 Vallemont, Abbé de 143–44 Van Bloemen, Jan Frans 226, 240 Van Goyen, Jan 227 Van Mander, Karel 177–78 Varro, Marcus Terentius 150 Vasari, Giorgio 22, 24–25 on Camillo Mantovano 120–21 and festive verzure 109–11 on Giorgione 122–23, 126, 250–51 on Giovanni da Udine 122–28 on Giulio 114–18 and naturalism 113, 119–20, 126–29 on Rosso 115–18 on Titian 118–20, 200–203 verzure in the Lives 112–29 Vatican loggia 124, 125n36 Vatican stanze 52 Vendramin, Gabriel 244 Venetian painters 40, 48, 49, 59, 66, 179, 200–201, 246; see also specific painters by name Veneto 21, 52, 136, 174 Venice 26, 27, 40, 52, 197 Venus 115, 149, 245–48, 252 Venus and Adonis 245 verdancy see green, verdure verdigris 33–34, 38, 40, 43, 47, 169 Verona 37 verzure 24–25 as cultivated greenery 112–29 as festive decoration 109–11 and landscapes 118–21 terminology 112 Villa, La (Taegio) 141 Villa Chiericati 132, 147–50 villa culture 132, 146–48 villa design 138–39 Villa d’Este 193–94 Villa Farnesina 127 Villa Feltre 145n32 villa gardens 132–33, 136, 138–39 Villa Garden with Fountain (Toeput) 148 Villa Giulia 75, 194 Villa Gregoriana 192 Villa Imperiale 120–21 Villa Lante 142

Villa Madama 142, 143 villas 242, 246 in Erasmus 79–80, 82 of Manlio Vopisco 192 of Palladio in Platina 70–71 of Pliny the Younger 75 in Toeput 132–34, 136, 144–45, 147–51 violets 172 Vergil and Arcadia 21–22 bucolic poetry 163, 166 and storms 235–37 Virgin and Child, The 63 Virgin of the Rocks 242 virtue 69 Visconti, Gaspare 93–94, 102 vision, effect of colors on 33–35, 46, 47 Visitation in the life of the Virgin, The 161 Vite dei pittori, scultori et architetti 177 Vitruvius 90n4, 101, 103, 125n36 Vivant Denon, Dominique 212 voluptas see enjoyment Vulgate Bible 50, 51 Wagner, Guiseppe 209 Wagner, Joseph 212, 214 water see rivers, streams waterfalls 186, 190, 192 Watson, Robert N. 19 Watteau 155 weather 22, 222 lightning 217–18, 223, 226 rain 220, 227, 234 snow 230 thunder 232, 235 see also climate change; storm landscapes Wedding Scene (Botticelli) 110–11 Weemans, Michel 21 Wilson, E.O. 17 Windy Day with Lone Traveller (Dughet) 220, 222–23, 227, 229 Windy Weather (Swanevelt) 224–25, 233, 235–36 wine 38, 85, 171 woad 37 Wood, Christopher 20 woodblock prints see prints, woodblock woodcuts 53 woodcutters 51, 63; see also tree stumps woodlands 55, 155–67; see also trees, featured in or by wool 35 Worship of Venus 169–70, 252 wrens 84 yellow lake 41n30, 43 youth 33, 34, 47, 251–52 Zanetti, Antonio Maria 212, 215 Zardino de Oration 59 Zeri, Federico 156–58 zodiac signs 147–49