The Art Collector in Early Modern Italy: Andrea Odoni and his Venetian Palace 1108844081, 9781108844086

Table of contents :
Cover
Half-title page
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1 Venice in Transition
Chapter 3 Odoni’s Façade
Chapter 4 Creating Rome in Venice: Odoni’s Antigaia
Chapter 5 The Portego
Chapter 6 The Camere
Chapter 7 Transmuting the Self: Lotto’s Portrait of Odoni
Conclusion
Appendix Aretino’s Letter To Odoni
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

THE ART COLLECTOR IN EARLY MODERN ITALY

Lorenzo Lotto’s Portrait of Andrea Odoni is one of the most famous paintings of the Italian Renaissance. Son of an immigrant and a member of the non-noble citizen class, Odoni understood how the power of art could make a name for himself and his family in his adopted homeland. Far from emulating Venetian patricians, however, he set himself apart through the works he collected and the way he displayed them. In this book, Monika Schmitter imaginatively reconstructs Odoni’s house – essentially a ‘portrait’ of Odoni through his surroundings and possessions. Schmitter’s detailed analysis of Odoni’s life and portrait reveals how sixteenth-century individuals drew on contemporary ideas about spirituality, history, and science to forge their own theories about the power of things and the agency of objects. She shows how Lotto’s painting served as a meta-commentary on the practice of collecting and on the ability of material things to transform the self. Monika Schmitter, Professor of Italian Renaissance and Baroque art at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has written about collecting and domestic art in Venice for over twenty years. She was a fellow at the Villa I Tatti Harvard University Center for Renaissance Studies and at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.

THE ART COLLECTOR IN EARLY MODERN ITALY Andrea Odoni And His Venetian Palace

MONIKA SCHMITTER University of Massachusetts Amherst

University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 103 Penang Road, #05–06/07, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 238467 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108844086 DOI: 10.1017/9781108933315 © Cambridge University Press 2021 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2021 Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ Books Limited, Padstow Cornwall A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Schmitter, Monika Anne, author. Title: The art collector in early modern Italy : Andrea Odoni and his Venetian palace / Monika Schmitter, University of Massachusetts Amherst. Description: Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021058702 (print) | LCCN 2021058703 (ebook) | ISBN 9781108844086 (hardback) | ISBN 9781108933315 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Odoni, Andrea, 1488–1545. | Art – Collectors and collecting – Italy – Venice – History – 16th century. | Art and society – Italy – Venice – History – 16th century. Classification: LCC N5273.2.O37 S36 2021 (print) | LCC N5273.2.O37 (ebook) | DDC 707.5–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021058702 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021058703 ISBN 978-1-108-84408-6 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Cambridge University Press gratefully acknowledges the generous support of this book from Furthermore, a program of the J.M. Kaplan Fund.

To my parents, Barbara Schmitter Heisler and Philippe Schmitter, and my brother, Marc Schmitter, who have inspired me and helped see me through difficult times.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments Introduction CHAPTER

1

Venice in Transition CHAPTER

2

Second-Generation Venetian CHAPTER

3

Odoni’s Façade CHAPTER

4

Creating Rome in Venice: Odoni’s Antigaia CHAPTER

5

The Portego

page ix 1 10 32 53 80 111

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VIII

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

6

The Camere CHAPTER

7

141

Transmuting the Self: Lotto’s Portrait of Odoni

182

Conclusion

236

Appendix: Aretino’s Letter to Odoni Notes Bibliography Index

241 243 303 322

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T

been a long time in coming, so there are many people I would like to thank for help, advice, and constructive feedback at various stages. First, I would like to thank the organizations that funded the book: the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the Renaissance Society of America, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts. A generous grant from Furthermore, a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund, helped finance the illustration program. Beatrice Rehl at Cambridge University Press saw the value of the book from the first time she heard about it and has shepherded it through publication with efficiency and grace; many thanks also to Kaye Barbaro, Kathleen Fearn, and Jayavel Radhakrishnan for production planning, editing, and general oversight. I am very grateful to the staff at all levels at the Archivio di Stato, the Marciana Library, and especially the Library of the Museo Correr, who have been generous and kind on my various research trips to Venice. One of the things I love most about working on Venice is the community of scholars that gathers at these institutions. Among my fellow archive rats, I single out Anna Bellavitis, Matteo Casini, Beth Glixon, Jonathan Glixon, Vittorio Mandelli, and Reinhold Mueller for special thanks. I am also grateful for conversations and advice from other scholars of Venetian culture and history, including Linda Carroll, Philip Cottrell, Barbara Lynn-Davis, Michel Hochmann, Deborah Howard, Peter Humfrey, Daniel Maze, Sarah McHam, Dennis Romano, Anne Markham Schulz, Helena Szépe, Raymond H I S I S BO O K H A S

ix

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Waddington, and Diana Wright. I am especially indebted to Beverly Louise Brown, Patricia Fortini Brown, Alison Luchs, and Debra Pincus for their support and encouragement. Beyond Venice proper, Josip Belamarić, Kathryn Bosi, Andy Bowers, David Alan Brown, Elena Calvillo, Stephen Campbell, Kathleen Wren Christian, Rupert Featherstone, Diane Owen Hughes, Kris Kelsey, Nora Lambert, Claudia Laurenze-Landsberg, Giovanni Pagliarulo, Susannah Rutherglen, George Ryan, Siyu Shen, Patricia Simons, Barbara Weber, and Lucy Whitaker provided help and input at various venues and over email. I am lucky to be part not only of a supportive home institution, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, but also of the larger Five College Consortium in western Massachusetts. The staff at all the libraries and the University’s interlibrary loan office made my research possible. I also thank my colleagues Bettina Bergmann, the late Craig Harbison, Ann Rosalind Jones, Jim Kelly, Brian

Ogilvie, Teresa Ramsby, Peter Stern, the late John Varriano, and Donald Weber for their suggestions. Brian Shelburne was instrumental in finding and editing photographs. This book is dedicated to my biological family, but they are not my only family. I want to thank my dear friends at home, Gülru Çakmak, Cathy Luna, and Jutta Sperling, and my more widely cast “family” members, John Gagné, Liz Horodowich, and Tim McCall, all of whom read parts of the manuscript. My stepfather Martin Heisler and family friend Elissa Weaver have played special roles in fostering my interests. My Venetian “sister” Antonella Mallus and her daughter Francesca have been unfailingly kind and supportive over many, many years. Without my stepmother, Terry Karl, I am not at all sure I would be where I am today – I am deeply grateful to her for her faith in me. Last, but not least, I thank my partner Paul Staiti, whose astute eye and red editing pen have made this a better book. I am so happy to share my life with him.

INTRODUCTION

W

HEN CH ARLES II WAS

restored to the English throne in 1660, after the death of Oliver Cromwell and the end of the English Interregnum, the States of Holland and West Friesland sent the new monarch valuable presents in hopes of securing his favor. Having ascertained that Charles, like his father before him, was partial to Italian pictures and ancient statuary, the Dutch assembled a collection of twenty-eight paintings and twelve sculptures, which together with a luxurious yacht named Mary comprised the so-called “Dutch Gift.” Although the sovereign “thanked them for so worthy a Present, and express’d his willingness to enter into a neerer Alliance with them,” the tribute did little to preserve peace between the two maritime powers, who were back at 1 war several years later. Among the paintings shipped from Rotterdam to London in October 1660 was a sixteenth-century Italian portrait depicting a man surrounded by antique statuary and other collectible items (Fig. 1). Soon thereafter, the painting was hanging in the “Green Chamber next to the Bed chamber” at Whitehall. The inventory reads: “Lorenzo Lottie. A man sitting and holding a small head in one Hand w[i]th severall statues by Him. He being an Antiquery.”2 Although the painting came to England properly attributed (it is in fact signed and dated), whether accidentally or willfully, within about twenty years the artist’s name was obscured. By about 1687 it was said to be a self-portrait by Giorgione; not long after an attribution was made to Correggio, which endured until the middle of the nineteenth century.3 In the eighteenth and nineteenth

1

2

INTRODUCTION

Fig. 1 Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of Andrea Odoni, 1527, Royal Collection Trust. © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020.

centuries, both Giorgione and Correggio were much better known than Lorenzo Lotto, who had been more or less forgotten after his death. As doubts about the attribution began to mount, a crucial turning point came in 1858 when Charles Eastlake (1793–1865), the first director of the National Gallery, London, sent Richard Redgrave (1804–88), Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, a quotation from a text then known as the “Anonimo” or the “Anonimo Morelliano.”4 This one-of-a-kind manuscript had been discovered in Venice by the director of the Marciana Library, Jacopo Morelli (1745–1819), who published it in 1800 under the title Notizia d’opere di disegno nella prima metà del secolo XVI esistenti in Padova, Cremona, Milano, Pavia, Bergamo, Crema e Venezia scritta da un anonimo di quel tempo. Composed between ca. 1521 and 1543, the manuscript comprises approximately one hundred folios with

descriptions of works of art in public locations and private collections in the aforementioned Italian cities. Although the author of these notes had been identified within twenty years of their publication as the Venetian nobleman Marcantonio Michiel (1484–1552), for complex reasons it took a long time for this to be recognized, and as a result even today this fundamental resource is still occasionally referred to as “the Anonimo.”5 The passage from Michiel’s notebook that Eastlake sent to Redgrave reads: “Works in Venice . . . in the House of Messer Andrea Odoni, 1532 . . . in the bedroom upstairs . . . the portrait of Messer Andrea himself, halflength, in oil, who contemplates ancient marble fragments was by the hand of Lorenzo Lotto.”6 Under Eastlake’s supervision the painting was restored in 1863, at which point the signature “Lorenzo Lotto/1527” was discovered in the

INTRODUCTION

lower left quadrant of the painting (see Fig. 131).7 This felicitous conjunction produced not only the correct attribution and date, but also the identification of the sitter, the painting’s provenance, and even its original placement. This book is only possible due to that coincidence: that Lotto signed and dated the painting, that Michiel was in the habit of writing fairly detailed descriptions of what he saw when he went to people’s houses, and crucially, that when he visited Odoni’s residence, contrary to his usual practice, he recorded in what rooms he saw particular works of art. Two further documents create almost an embarrassment of riches for a scholar working on early sixteenth-century art: an inventory of the Odoni house made in 1555, which is also organized by room and is in some aspects more complete than Michiel’s notes, and a letter by the famous writer Pietro Aretino addressed to Andrea Odoni (dated 1538). In this letter Aretino compliments Odoni’s collecting practices, creating a remarkable synchronism with both Michiel’s notes and Lotto’s portrait. Aretino’s description of the house begins: “But whoever wishes to see how clean and candid his [Odoni’s] spirit is should look at his face and his house, look at them, I say, and you will see as much serenity and beauty as one can desire in a house and in a face.”8 The writer’s contention that Odoni’s house was essentially a portrait of its owner, a parallel to Lotto’s actual likeness, is the launching point for this book. The association between Odoni, his house, his collection, and his portrait also figures in Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists. In the edition of 1568, Vasari not only recorded the portrait by Lotto but also gave an extended description of the frescoes by Girolamo da Treviso on the façade.9 But most revealing is the very short statement he included only in the 1550 edition: “Lotto . . . painted Andrea de gli Odoni, whose house in Venice is full of painting and sculpture.”10 Although Vasari’s mention of Odoni’s house indicates how well known the collection was in

3

his lifetime, the ensemble did not last long. The works of art it contained were dispersed by the end of the seventeenth century, if not earlier, and the house itself was transformed beyond recognition in the nineteenth century. Nonetheless, the extraordinary confluence of sources (there are several others that will be discussed later) allows me to piece together and imagine the contents and decoration of his home, and as a result, to explore Odoni’s identity through his possessions. The detail provided in the documents and comparison with similar works of art and architecture that do survive, along with the few extant works owned by Odoni, especially the portrait, provide rich materials from which to draw my own “portrait of Andrea Odoni.” The study of Odoni’s life, house, and collection also enables me to examine Lotto’s compelling portrait with new eyes. The painting is far from being a straightforward “portrait of a collector” – in fact, as scholars have long known, the objects in it bear little relation to Odoni’s actual possessions. Instead, the portrait presents an imaginary collection, concocted by artist and patron together to depict collecting as a means of transmuting the self, of transforming a variety of material things into “higher gold.” My interpretation of the portrait demonstrates how both men conceived the power of objects to form the self. Exactly when the painting left the Odoni household is not known. A copy of the head and bust alone was likely made for the family in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century in order to preserve their ancestor’s likeness when they sold his portrait.11 By about 1622, the original was probably already in the collection of the Dutch merchant Lucas van Uffelen, who lived in Venice from 1616 to the early 1630s. Uffelen’s portrait by Anthony van Dyck, dated ca. 1622, is often thought to be inspired by Lotto’s composition (Metropolitan Museum, New York).12 Uffelen brought Odoni’s portrait back to his house in Amsterdam, where he also exhibited

4

INTRODUCTION

Fig. 2 Raphael of Urbino, Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, 1514–15, Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photo: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY.

another famous Renaissance portrait, Raphael’s Baldassare Castiglione (Fig. 2).13 After Uffelen’s death, Odoni’s portrait was purchased in 1639 by another Amsterdam collector, Gerard Reynst, and while in the Reynst collection, it was engraved by Cornelis Visscher.14 At Gerard’s death, it passed to his widow, who sold it, together with other prime pieces from the collection, to the Dutch government to create the “Dutch Gift.”15 While in Amsterdam, the painting was seen by various artists, including Rembrandt, who made use of it in several of his compositions.16 By this time, however, the identity of the sitter was long lost, only to be recovered, thanks to Morelli’s publication of Michiel’s notes in the nineteenth century. Luckily, the memory of Andrea Odoni himself had not been entirely erased in Venice. For his publication of Michiel’s notes, Morelli gathered information about the Venetian collector.17 His compilation was significantly

augmented by the indefatigable Venetian scholar Emmanuele Antonio Cicogna (1789–1868) in volume 3 (1830) of his six-volume Delle iscrizioni veneziane. Cicogna provided more information about the family and visited the still-standing house with a contemporary descendant of the Odoni family. Although Morelli and Cicogna were unaware that the portrait by Lotto had survived, their research formed the basis of future scholarship. In more recent years, a few facts have been corrected, additional primary sources have been discovered, and Odoni’s biography has been fleshed out, above all by Georg Gronau,18 Donata Battilotti and Maria Teresa Franco,19 Rosella Lauber,20 and the present author,21 but no monograph has yet been published on the collector.22 Although the portrait itself has received scholarly attention over the years, it continues to puzzle its interlocutors. As John Shearman, echoing Jacob Burckhardt, correctly surmised in 1983, “the picture is conceptually and psychologically more complex than a simple portrait of a collector.”23 Lotto’s portrait is widely regarded as one of the most accomplished and innovative of the Italian Renaissance – perhaps the best portrait by a painter known for his profound and idiosyncratic approach to the genre. Recent exhibitions devoted entirely to Lotto’s portraiture at the Prado Museum in Madrid and the National Gallery in London (both of which featured the Odoni painting) have further solidified his modern fame. It thus comes as some surprise to learn that the man Lotto depicted was not particularly talented, nor well educated, nor exceptionally wealthy. Odoni was no Castiglione. The son of a recent immigrant to Venice and a member of the nonpatrician class of cittadini (citizens), he lived in a smallish house on the outskirts of the city, and was known to his contemporaries primarily as a government bureaucrat who collected the state tax on wine. Odoni is an unexpected collector, and a surprising subject for such an ambitious and intellectually provocative portrait.

AIMS OF THE STUDY

Fig. 3 1996 Sansoni edition of Jacob Burckhardt’s The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy in the window of a bookshop in Venice, 1997. Photo: author.

In 1996, the Florentine publisher Sansoni used Lotto’s portrait of Odoni as cover art for a new edition of Burckhardt’s classic text, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (first published in 1860) (Fig. 3). While the choice is not meaningful in and of itself, the juxtaposition of Odoni’s portrait and Burckhardt’s text is thoughtprovoking. In essence this book questions what happens when we do indeed consider Odoni as a prototypical “Renaissance man.”

AIMS OF THE STUDY

I

argue that there is much to be learned from the analysis of Odoni, his house, his collection, and his portrait. It is quite unusual to have such a convergence of sources that describe a single house in Venice in the early sixteenth century.

5

While Renaissance domestic art and architecture has been the topic of many academic books and articles as well as museum exhibitions of late, these studies do not have the specificity and comprehensive detail that is possible in this case – to examine how urban design, architecture, space, furniture, domestic objects, and works of art of various kinds and media worked together to create an effect, and how the placement of works of art in particular influenced the way they were seen and understood. In her foundational study, Private Lives in Renaissance Venice (2004), Patricia Brown encouraged future scholars to expand upon her thematic overview of Venetian domestic art and space. This book is in part a response to that call, an attempt to dig deeper into an exceptionally rewarding case study of a Venetian house and collection.24 What emerges is a vivid sense of one sixteenth-century house, set in the context of broader collecting and display practices. With its wide range of comparative material, however, the book is not only about Odoni’s residence and collection. The history of collecting in Venice has been studied for many generations. Drawing on this historiography, as well as on original archival research, I evaluate to what degree Odoni’s practices were typical or unusual. While previous studies have generalized collecting “in the sixteenth century,”25 I address the transformation of practices over the course of the century. In this regard, I have been inspired by Kathleen Christian’s detailed study of collecting in Rome (Empire without End: Antiquities Collections in Renaissance Rome, c. 1350–1527 [2010]), which traces how and why collecting changed over time. Although this book is necessarily focused on a relatively short period of time, when possible I set Odoni’s practices in a historical trajectory. Scholars have often assumed that because the nobles in Venice were the political elite (although, as we shall see, not necessarily the monetary elite)

6

INTRODUCTION

they spearheaded artistic trends and determined aesthetic tastes.26 As I will demonstrate, however, Odoni was particularly interested in foreign trends, styles, and artists, and in numerous instances, far from trying to imitate Venetian patricians, he aimed instead to set himself apart. His highly unusual portrait by Lotto is “exhibit A” in this regard. Although Odoni has been recognized as “the most adventurous collector of modern sculpture on record in Venice in his time,”27 the full extent of his “very remarkable individualism”28 has not been explored before. It is a mistake to simply identify Odoni as a social climber emulating the nobility. Such an outlook fails to take account of the complexity of Venetian society in the early sixteenth century and the particular position of the cittadino class, and it flattens the identity that Odoni forged for himself and his family. As Renata Ago put it in her study of seventeenth-century Romans and their things: “the concrete possession of goods, by making visible and communicable the identity of the individual, contributed more than any legal title to establishing the social status of the owner . . . However, it was not necessarily true that the end goal of this accumulation of objects was to transcend one’s social class and live like an aristocrat.”29 In sixteenth-century Venice, it was possible to argue through one’s possessions that “nobility” was not just a matter of birth, but also, or more importantly, a matter of living in a particular manner, what we moderns might refer to as “lifestyle.”30 If Venetian nobles have received more scholarly attention than cittadini, this is in part because it is quite difficult to grasp cittadini identities due to a relative lack of sources. The major studies of the social group written by historians – Andrea Zannini, Burocrazia e burocrati a Venezia in età moderna: I cittadini originari (sec. XVI–XVIII) (1993), Anna Bellavitis, Identité, mariage, mobilité sociale: citoyennes et citoyens à Venise au

XVIe siècle (2001), and James Grubb, ed., Family Memoirs from Venice (15th–17th centuries) (2009) – do not consider works of art in their evidence. A number of articles investigate cittadini as patrons and collectors (including by this author), as does one book-length study, Blake de Maria’s Becoming Venetian: Immigrants and the Arts in Early Modern Venice (2010). My study complements de Maria’s in that it covers a slightly earlier period and provides more detailed examination of works of art and practices of display, rather than an overview of patronage. In the traditional historiography of Venice, the three strata of society, the nobili, cittadini, and popolo were presented as rigidly constituted, but in Chapter 1, drawing on the most recent research, I demonstrate that this was not the case in the early sixteenth century, when the cittadini were a varied and imprecisely defined group. While in some contexts they were constructed as inferior to the nobility, in others they were considered to be their peers. During Odoni’s lifetime there was notable social fluidity, and in fact, in some ways citizens were less constrained in their actions and modes of selfpresentation than nobles. The blurred ideas about class in Venice have important implications for understanding not only Odoni himself, but the artistic patronage of the “middling” group more generally. Although Odoni was not a typical cittadino (arguably there was no such thing), an examination of his house, collection, and portrait provides unprecedented access to the identity of a lesser-known, but highly ambitious individual, for whom collecting and displaying art were the chief means of creating distinction in his adopted homeland, and it shows us what was possible at this moment of Venetian history for a man who was not part of the patrician elite. The first two chapters of the book examine Venetian history and culture during Odoni’s lifetime (1488–1545) and the biography and

AIMS OF THE STUDY

background of Odoni and his family. Political and social historians have long considered the early sixteenth century to be “the great turning point in Venice’s history,”31 while cultural and art historians see it as a “golden age” of scholarship and the arts. Odoni, whose niece was married to the son of Venice’s most renowned publisher Aldo Manuzio, provides an unusual view into this moment in history, demonstrating how one individual made a name for himself and his family by participating in the city-state’s redefinition of itself as a “cultural capital.” I do not see Odoni either as the heroic “Renaissance individual” outlined by Jacob Burckhardt and his followers, or as a complete “social construction” lacking agency.32 My findings are in line with the recent study by the literary historian Douglas Biow, which demonstrates how some Renaissance men “used the discursive and representational strategies available to them to articulate a notion of what constituted the individual in light of their identities as men within their culture.”33 While Odoni was certainly not a “free agent,” he wanted to be recognized as a special individual. Conceivably a man like Odoni was only possible in Venice due to the city’s particular government, political ideology, and class structure. Although he was the son of an immigrant from Milan, he benefited from the specific social and historical circumstances of his adopted homeland. Nonetheless, it is possible to see him within the broader context of Renaissance Italy, and especially in relation to the role of collecting and portraiture, and consumption more broadly, in “fashioning” the self.34 In Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy, 1300–1600, the economic historian Richard Goldthwaite argued that Renaissance Italy saw an unprecedented increase in the production and importance of luxury goods, and “heralded the advent of one of the most characteristic features of modern life – the culture of consumerism.”35 For Goldthwaite one of the chief ways Renaissance

7

men foregrounded their “individuality” was through their dynamic, personal relationship to things, as expressed through “taste.” As he put it, “People entered a realm where possessions became an objectification of the self for the first time.”36 Goldthwaite’s arguments have had a resounding impact in the field of art history, stimulating increased study of material culture and Renaissance domestic art and architecture. The idea that in the Renaissance “people constructed identity through things” is now often claimed,37 but less often analyzed in the kind of detail I pursue here. Recent scholarship, again largely derived from the social sciences, has opened new avenues for thinking about how “people constructed identity through things,” or perhaps more appropriately, how things constructed people’s identities. The political theorist Jane Bennett, for example, has proposed a reconceptualization of the relationship between what were traditionally defined as “objects” and “subjects” and asks us instead to think about things (even more broadly “nonhumans”) as “actants” or having agency.38 In applying related theories to the material culture of homes around the world in the late twentieth century, the anthropologist Daniel Miller suggests we think not only about “what we do with homes,” but also “what the home does with us. The concern is with the agency of the home itself.”39 Although this book is focused on a human agent, I consider not just how Odoni may have expressed his identity through the material culture he lived in and with, but also how all that “materiality” constituted him – impacted, transformed, affected his sense of self.40 As we shall see, sixteenth-century individuals had their own theories of “thingpower,” couched especially in relation to contemplative practices, hieroglyphic assemblages, and alchemical processes (I address these issues most directly in Chapter 7).41 That being said, the notion that homes were representations of individuals and families was

8

INTRODUCTION

often voiced in the early modern period, and it is at the core of Aretino’s letter to Odoni. Using Aretino as a starting point, I will demonstrate that through the various parts of his house and the way he arranged his “things” Odoni projected various different selves to the general public through his façade and to increasingly intimate visitors through his courtyard, garden, salon, chambers, and portrait. Chapters 3 through 6 lead the reader though an evocative tour of the residence, space by space, illuminated in part through archival documents, in part through comparisons to other houses, and in part through surviving works of art either owned by Odoni or similar to those he possessed. At first glance, Odoni would seem to be the “poster boy” for Goldthwaite’s argument. Here is a man who literally fashioned his identity through the possessions that surround him in his portrait: a man who was, the documentary sources concur, famous for his possessions. Examining the portrait in detail in the final chapter of the book, I argue that it does not celebrate consumption along the lines of Goldthwaite’s thesis. On the contrary, it is a complex reflection upon man’s vexed relation to things and to collecting, and ultimately, I argue, a highly original pictorial formulation regarding the power of art to act as conduit between the material and the immaterial. I discuss the portrait last in the book in part because I understand it to be a metacommentary on the entire project of collecting. Goldthwaite’s encomium to Renaissance consumption has been questioned by scholars such as Evelyn Welch, Patricia Allerston, and Stephen J. Campbell, who have provided a more nuanced view, revealing the complex, often contradictory, attitudes toward material things and consumption in Italian Renaissance society.42 As Campbell notes, “From the panoramic perspective of Goldthwaite, Italians largely seem to have overcome such scruples [about the investment in

superfluous material goods]; at the level of the closer view and the case study, however, they can be found to linger, and to have stimulated extraordinary acts of creativity on the part of artists and indeed of collectors.”43 Odoni’s collection, and above all his portrait, is without question one of these “acts of creativity.” The painting poses, in ways that have often surprising resonance with contemporary discussions of materiality, the inextricable entanglement of things and selves. Aretino’s letter to Odoni illuminates the complexity of attitudes toward what we might call “conspicuous consumption.” The letter appears to be laudatory, and this is the way it has almost always been read by modern scholars.44 Aretino pronounces that the “kindness of the good Udone is so full of goodness that whatever he does is without ceremony and without arrogance.” The “serenity and beauty” of the house reflect Odoni’s “clean and candid mind.” From all the statues and antiquities on view, “one judges on the evidence of such a worthy and regal spectacle the greatness of your generous and magnificent spirit. Truly the pleasure of such carvings and castings does not issue from a rustic breast or an ignoble heart.” Aretino’s reading of the house as a set of signs about Odoni’s character would seem to be flattery, pure and simple. The missive, however, at some points reaches such a level of hyperbole that it flips back on itself into irony and implied criticism. In fact, Aretino begins on a slightly peevish note, apparently annoyed by a slight on Odoni’s part: “your delay and your promptness injured me twice, and then shamed me, considering that your service to me – that is owed to me – caused me embarrassment.”45 This seems to have had something to do with the invitation to see the house, reflecting the social tension of such a visit.46 Even Aretino’s compliments have an edge to them. He compares “the chambers, the salon, the loggia, and the garden of the apartment in which you live to a bride who awaits her relatives coming to

AIMS OF THE STUDY

attend her wedding.”47 Aretino’s friend, Sebastiano Serlio (who also worked for Odoni), made similar comments comparing a man’s house to his wife. According to Serlio: You also see, from time to time, men of very moderate means but generous of spirit, who spend the major part of their fortune on a house. The fact is there are in truth two fleeting things which bring men happiness, namely a beautiful and well-appointed house and a beautiful and fine-mannered wife who is accommodating to the man’s desires.48

Aretino is saying it is a beautiful house, but he is also saying that it is a house for show – not a wife, but a bride. “She” (here he does attribute a kind of agency to the house) is prepared (or has prepared herself?) to be seen. Aretino continues “it [ella] is so well-kept, tapestried, and splendid. I myself never visit that I do not fear to tread there with my feet, its floors are so exquisite. I don’t know what prince has such richly adorned beds, such rare paintings, and such regal decor.”49 It is just a bit too precious, too overreaching, Aretino hints while still maintaining the charade of compliments.50 Although written in the form of a letter, Aretino’s pronouncements were made public in the second volume of his epistles, published in 1542, three years before Odoni’s death. Being known for one’s house was potentially problematic. As the Venetian Giovanni Caldiera wrote in the second half of the fifteenth century: What is truly appropriate to the houses of citizens is utility not splendor . . . the householder should rather make himself worthy of admiration because of the virtue by which he excels than because of the sumptuous home by which he has desired to be

9

conspicuous. Not the house but virtue makes men immortal and equal to the gods.51

Caldiera, and others like him, were echoing the famous words of Cicero: “a man’s dignity may be enhanced by the house he lives in, but not wholly secured by it; the owner should bring honour to his house, not the house to its owner.”52 Such social concerns were arguably particularly stringent in Venice, where the republican ethos of mediocritas (the idea that single individuals or families should not stand out too much from the rest) played an outsized role. It is possible though that as a cittadino, Odoni may have been less bound by such social constraints than his patrician friends and colleagues. An important humanist text that advanced expenditure as a virtue was Giovanni Pontano’s “On Splendor,” but Pontano’s text is full of caveats. Pontano commences “In the furnishing of a house, in the care and the ornamentation of the body, great expense can be spent on one’s domestic goods. (We find that many are not satisfied with goods which are merely necessary unless they are also numerous and most excellent.)” But he continues, “In this type of expenditure, it is possible to err . . . One should always seek the mean that is that which is measured, ‘mediocritas’.”53 Aretino’s letter suggests that, in his view at least, Odoni did perhaps “err.” There were, however, other ways to view Odoni’s house and collection. In his portrait of Odoni, Lotto also presents the relationship between a man and his things, but in the end, he lends a transcendent value to the cittadino’s practices. We must come to terms with Odoni, his portrait, and his palace in the context of a society invested in, but at the same time, deeply conflicted about its attachment to a wide array of material goods.

Chapter 1

VENICE IN TRANSITION

The gentlemen in that Republic are so rather in name than in fact; they do not have great incomes from landed possessions, but their great riches are based on trade and movable property; moreover, none of them holds castles or has any jurisdiction over men. Thus that name of gentleman among them is a name of dignity and reputation, without being founded on any of those things in other cities signified by the word gentleman . . . so Venice is divided into gentlemen [among whom there are no distinctions] and people; and the rule is that the first shall hold or be eligible to hold all the offices; the others are wholly excluded from them. Niccolò Machiavelli, probably written in 1513–171 It has been our good fortune that here the worthy foreigner is not only equal to a citizen, but on par with a gentleman. Pietro Aretino to Jacopo Sansovino (November 20, 1537)2

S 10

IN CE THE

1970 S , the period of Odoni’s lifetime (1488–1545) “has

come to be regarded as the great turning point in Venice’s history.”3 In this span, Venice slipped from being a world power, to losing much of its dominance, to finally reinventing itself on a smaller scale politically

CULTURE AND IDENTITY : VENICE IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

but with a renewed sense of social and cultural importance. As international developments shifted Venetian priorities, the social structure of the city also underwent transformation. Scholars have long argued that the ruling political caste – the patriciate – became increasingly stratified, with more marked distinctions between noble families with great wealth and power and those that merely enjoyed seats on the Great 4 Council. Less studied has been the shaping and development of the social group to which Odoni belonged, the so-called cittadini. Although Venetian society has traditionally been depicted as composed of three distinct classes – gentlemen, cittadini, and popolo – in the early sixteenth century, this structure was still in many ways contradictory and ill-defined. As noted in Pietro Aretino’s letter to the architect and sculptor Jacopo Sansovino, evolving notions of class and a new openness to cultured immigrants created the climate in which Odoni, a Venetian cittadino and son of an immigrant, made a name for himself by having his portrait painted, decorating his house, and amassing a collection.

CULTURE AND IDENTITY: VENICE IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

A

t the time of Odoni’s birth (1488), with territories and trade in the East, dominance over northeastern Italy, and a corner on the market for just about everything, Venice was among the most prosperous and populous cities in the world and one of the greatest political and mercantile powers in Europe. By the time of Odoni’s death (1545), that was no longer the case. His lifetime saw the rise of the major northern European powers of France, the Holy Roman Empire, and Holland, not to the mention the expansion of the Ottoman Empire. Italy became a battleground between the first two in the so-

11

called Italian Wars, which began in 1494 and continued intermittently, with the Venetians involved with an ever-changing panoply of allies and enemies, until the Peace of Bologna in 1530, which recognized Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, as triumphant in Italy. The Italian Wars, and for Venice particularly the episode of the League of Cambrai, shifted international politics irreversibly. After the Peace of Bologna, Venice was no longer a powerful player, but as the largest surviving republic in Italy, it solidified its identity as a comparatively egalitarian and tolerant state, a cultural capital, and a “city of peace.” Odoni was not merely a “product” of this new environment, he was an active participant in it, shaping a position for himself as a nonnoble citizen from a recently immigrated family in a relatively open and flexible social and political milieu. This chapter proposes that Odoni’s remarkable and unusual decision to use his house and his collection as a means to project a new kind of identity was a response to and enabled by larger-scale forces of change in Venice.

Venice circa 1500 Since the Fourth Crusade, and especially after 1400, Venice had become a major maritime power and the entrepôt of trade in Europe, with extensive trading rights and territorial outposts throughout the Mediterranean. “The city had become, for a large part of international business, a necessary transfer point for unloading and reloading cargo and an obligatory warehouse facility. Merchandise of all sorts converged there, and everyone – Italians and others – came there to buy.”5 Canon Pietro Casola, who passed through Venice in 1494, observed “Indeed it seems as if all the world flocks there, and that human beings have concentrated there all their force for trading.”6 Initially, the city was

12

VENICE IN TRANSITION

wed to the sea – a society built around the trade and circulation of goods rather than around land and production. But in the fifteenth century, the Venetians expanded territorially onto the mainland of Italy, conquering the Italian “terraferma” piece by piece, from the nearby cities of Treviso and Padua, to Friuli and Udine in the north, and Vicenza, Verona, Brescia, Bergamo, and even Cremona in the west, to mention only the most prominent cities to fall under their dominion.7 Conquest transformed Venice in a relatively short period of time into one of the principal territorial states of Italy. No image conveys this heyday of Venetian power as effectively as the gigantic perspectival view of Venice produced by the painter/printmaker Jacopo de’ Barbari in 1500 (Fig. 4). Printed on six sheets of paper to form an image almost four square meters, de’ Barbari’s bird’seye-view woodcut is a visual representation of Venice literally, as well as ideologically and cosmologically.8 At the top of the composition, in a classic landscape view, to the left we see the nearby towns of the terraferma, Marghera, Mestre, and Treviso. To the right are the

Fig. 4 Jacopo de’ Barbari, Bird’s Eye View of Venice, 1500.

important islands in the lagoon (Murano, Torcello, Burano, and Mazzorbo), with the perimeter of the Alps behind them all. The world of Venice’s eastern trade, on the other hand, is figured by the many ships that dominate the foreground, larger than many buildings on the map. The geography of the city itself is centralized and framed, as if Venice were the center of the world, and within it the focal point is the civic space of the Piazzetta, the square in front of the Doge’s Palace that leads to the Basilica of San Marco.9 Circling the city, at the borders of the composition, are the personified heads of eight winds that make commercial sea transport possible. Overseeing it all are classical gods: Mercury, the god of commerce, above in the sky, and Neptune, the god of the sea, astride a maritime creature directly in front of the Piazzetta. The visual message of the map is driven home in the inscriptions. In a semicircle around Mercury, one reads “I Mercury shine favorably on this above all other emporia”; Neptune holds up a cartouche at the end of his trident that states “I Neptune reside here, smoothing the waters at this port.”10 The two gods look across at one another

CULTURE AND IDENTITY : VENICE IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

as if to coordinate their actions as they preside over the city. De’ Barbari’s map represents the physical city in which Odoni lived as a boy – its calle, houses, bridges, and churches – but also the mythical city, its prosperity, and its good fortune.

Crisis, and Then Rebirth De’ Barbari’s triumphant view of Venice as entrepôt, poised between East and West, was undermined less than a decade later. Although there were signs of trouble by the end of the fifteenth century,11 the real “crisis,” as recognized by Venetian historians since the sixteenth century, came with the formation of the League of Cambrai. This alliance, contracted in December 1508, united the King of France, the Holy Roman Emperor, the Marquis of Mantua, the Duke of Ferrara, the Pope, and the King of Naples – in other words, most of the powers of Europe – against the Venetian Republic. The aim of the League was not just to curtail Venetian expansion but to carve up the terraferma holdings amongst the allies.12 Faced with these odds, not surprisingly, the Venetians suffered traumatic defeat at the battle of Agnadello on May 14, 1509, losing control of the entire Italian territory except the city of Venice itself (which remained untouched due to the natural protection of the lagoon), nearby Treviso, and a few other settlements. As Machiavelli put it, a bit hyperbolically, “In one battle they lost what in eight hundred years they had won with so much effort.”13 Amazingly, however, in the ensuing eight years, despite several setbacks (the worst came in 1513 when they lost the entire land area except Padua and Treviso for a second time) and through shifting political and military alliances, the Venetian army eventually recovered almost all the territory it had lost; by 1517 the terraferma state was nearly exactly the same as it had been before 1509. The battles, however, started up

13

again in 1521 only to finally come to a conclusion with the Peace of Bologna in 1530, in which Venice’s borders were again drawn where they had been in 1517.14 From an external point of view, the city-state of Venice lost very little territory in the final analysis; however, this was a transformative period in Venetian history. Venice went into these troubled times as a powerful state, so feared that others were united in their animosity against it; it came out as the independent, but small and somewhat inconsequential state it would remain until its demise at the hands of Napoleon in 1797. While it regained its lands, the impact of the attack endured. The “crisis” of these events had a short- and long-term effect on the city and its inhabitants. First there was simply the shock of drastic military defeat and territorial loss, which led to selfrecriminations and loss of nerve. The modern historian Felix Gilbert describes the mood of despair following the routs in 1509 and 1513 especially, when Venetians believed God was punishing them for their decadence and moral corruption. The doge was particularly critical of the Venetians’ indulgence in luxury, which led to new legislation to reinforce sumptuary laws intended to curtail extravagant spending and display, for both moral/religious and political/economic reasons.15 The idea that too much luxury, too many fine things, could lead to political and social condemnation, not to mention divine retribution, was palpably alive in these years. While many laws were oriented toward personal attire and expensive feasts and parties, the interior decoration of one’s home was also viewed with critical legislative eyes. “A maximum of 150 ducats was placed on expenses for decorating a single room with wood paneling, goldleaf or paintings. In addition, the list of objects which the householder was forbidden to buy was very large: gold boxes, gilded mirrors, cushions of silk decorated with pearls, curtains of brocade or damask, silk

14

VENICE IN TRANSITION

hangings, gold or silver vessels.”16 The idea was to return Venetians to a prior way of life before they had so many “corrupting” things: “we must with all possible zeal and care imitate our ancestors,” they declared.17 Although in the short term the crisis of the Italian Wars led to a questioning of opulence and the luxury habits that had developed in an extremely prosperous city, in the long term it led Venetians to redefine their position in the world and in history. With this also came significant political change within the ruling elite, a development which will be discussed in more detail below. Most significantly, by the end of the Italian Wars, everyone in Italy came to recognize the ascendancy of the monarchical regimes in northern Europe, and especially the Holy Roman Empire. As Elisabeth Gleason writes, “The Peace of Bologna signaled a remarkable paradigm shift on the part of the Venetian ruling elite. In their diplomatic and political discourse, the old ideal of a powerful, militant, victorious republic was superseded by that of Venice as a city of peace, governing only a small Italian state.”18 At the worst moments, in 1509 and 1513, Odoni was a young man, twenty-one and twenty-four years old, at the very beginning of his career. He came to maturity in a period of economic recession caused by war and of moral questioning of the material society in which he lived. But the city’s turnaround, reaching what have been called “boom conditions” in the 1530s,19 coincided with his own growing prosperity and social stature. Thus, Odoni’s formation as a Venetian cittadino and his accrual of material cultural capital took place simultaneously with the Republic’s political and cultural travails and transformation. By 1530, he was forty-two years old and had already had his portrait painted by Lorenzo Lotto. The new Venice after the Peace of Bologna was a self-curated promotion. Under the leadership of Doge Andrea Gritti (1523–38), who had been an important military leader in the war, the city began

to represent itself as the last major surviving republic (the Florentine Republic, having been briefly revived in 1527 after the Sack of Rome by Hapsburg troops, came to abrupt end with the Peace of 1530), and the defender of a more open, rational, and tolerant society. This self-image was promulgated in various texts, in legislation, and in the physical fabric of the city itself.20 “The new vision of Venice came out of the de facto defeat and is an important monument to the intellectual vitality of the Gritti period. Checkmated politically by Hapsburg power, Venice fashioned herself into a city of peace and concord, art, architecture, and music, and thus a major player once more on the European scene.”21 Odoni’s activities as a collector and his attempts to make a name for himself through his house should be seen in relation to broader attempts to redefine “materialism” for a new age. If one initiative in the city sums up this phase of Venetian ideology it is certainly the building of the new mint, the library, and the loggetta, and the reconfiguring of Piazza San Marco, undertaken by the architect Jacopo Sansovino at the behest of Doge Gritti and his supporters (Fig. 5). This intervention at the core of the urban space was designed to promote the concept of Venice as altera Roma.22 Although the idea of Venice as a “new Rome” was not novel, it received renewed impetus and expression after the Peace of Bologna.23 Sansovino brought to the political center of the city the Central Italian classical style based on Vitruvian principles. As Aretino noted in the same letter written to Sansovino in 1537 excerpted at the beginning of this chapter, “for your [Sansovino’s] temples, statues and palaces are on par with those of the ancients.”24 For Aretino, the importation of foreigners like himself and Sansovino contributed to the glorification of their adopted homeland in its ongoing promulgation of the revered traditions and concept of “Rome.”

CULTURE AND IDENTITY : VENICE IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

15

Fig. 5 View of the Piazzetta from the lagoon, Venice. Photo: Manuel Cohen/Art Resource, NY.

Although Sansovino introduced a new style for Venetian public buildings, he nonetheless harmonized his additions with the existing Byzantine and Gothic buildings of San Marco and the Doge’s Palace – updating the city center and suggesting its ideological connection to the Republic of Rome without destroying the emblems of a more complex history. This conception is particularly clear in the view from the Molo, the main water entrance to the city, where the severe Zecca (Mint) and the ornamental Library on one side, and the distinctive Doge’s Palace on the other, frame a view into the Piazzetta with its triumphant columns, San Marco, and the clock tower in the background, transforming the center of Venice into a stage set for grand events. The streamlining and regularization of the plan of the Piazza and

Piazzetta contributed to the effect, evoking the grandeur and geometry of the ancient forum romanum.25 As Patricia Brown aptly concludes “Taken together, the three buildings document Venice’s acceptance of her Roman legacy and her rightful inheritance of Roman virtù.”26 The view of Venice as the defender of republican liberty, the peaceful state, the cultural Mecca, was, of course, propagandistic. This was the heyday of the “Myth of Venice,” the period in which Gasparo Contarini wrote his famous treatise De magistratibus et republica Venetorum (written ca. 1523–32, published 1543), the text that would promote Venice to European audiences for centuries to come as an ideal state.27 In one version of the myth, the French political philosopher Jean Bodin wrote:

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VENICE IN TRANSITION

not only because the Venetians delight in receiving strangers hospitably, but also because one can live there with the greatest freedom . . . This is the reason why people come here from everywhere, wishing to spend their lives in the greatest freedom and tranquility of spirit, whether they are interested in commerce or crafts or leisure pursuits as befit free men.28

Like most myths, though, there was some truth behind it. In fact, especially in the aftermath of the Sack of Rome, scholars and artists like Aretino and Sansovino, both Tuscans who had worked in Rome, were attracted to Venice because of its intellectual climate, artistic tolerance, and social fluidity.29 Aretino’s letter to Sansovino gives voice to this attitude. The architectural historian Manfredo Tafuri has suggested that under Doge Gritti humanist ideas went from being the domain of an isolated, studious elite, to playing an important role in creating a new ideological and physical Venetian state.30 The more liberal and tolerant regime and atmosphere helped to further Venice as the capital of publishing in Europe. Already by 1500 there were no fewer than 150 presses in the city, producing books on a wide variety of subjects, available in numerous shops in town.31 Venice’s vital print culture stimulated an intellectual environment marked by an open exchange of ideas. Both the political climate and the presence of the presses meant that Venice became an important center in Italy for the discussion of religious reform that took place before and after the official beginning of the Protestant Reformation in 1517. Until the reorganization of the Inquisition (1547), Venice was a center of religious debate in which the lines between dissent and orthodoxy were not yet set.32 As we shall see in the last chapter of this book, these reformist ideas impacted both Odoni and the artist who painted his portrait.

Of all the presses operating in Venice, the most prestigious and influential in the long term was that of Aldo Manuzio, who was also an immigrant to the city. Manuzio’s son Paolo would go on to marry Andrea Odoni’s niece, Caterina Odoni. Aldo made it his business to produce authoritative editions of Greek and Latin literature and philosophy in a portable and attractive format.33 Odoni’s engagement with the culture of antiquity would seem to be part and parcel of what we might call a “democratization of culture” in Venice in this period. As a mature adult, Odoni lived in “reborn” Venice, promoting its difference from other city-states but proud of its openness to ideas and influences. Culture, particularly culture associated with the Roman past, played an important role in this transformation.

A UNIQUE SOCIETY: SOCIAL CLASS IN VENICE

W

hile the Republic was reinventing itself on the international stage, the internal fabric of Venetian society was also undergoing change. Odoni is a particularly intriguing subject of study because he was not a member of the Venetian elite as traditionally defined. Because he was a cittadino and the son of an immigrant, the ambiguities of his social position require substantive investigation. The two quotations at the beginning of the chapter introduce the slippages and uncertainties of social class in early sixteenth-century Venice. In his Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli explained how the example of Venice does not contradict his general principle that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to establish a republic where there is an ingrained nobility. His point was that Venetian noblemen are “noble” only “in name [rather] than in fact.” The Venetian “nobility,” he made clear, had little in common with traditional European land-owning, feudal elites. Importantly,

A UNIQUE SOCIETY : SOCIAL CLASS IN VENICE

unlike other nobilities, the Venetians all possessed the same title and were as a matter of political principle considered equal in rank. They also earned their livelihoods through mercantile trade, which might have disqualified them from noble status elsewhere. Nor did they ride on horseback, engage in duels, usually wear armor, or go around with bravi – activities generally associated with European nobility in other places. In short, the word gentiluomini essentially had a different meaning in Venice than elsewhere. It referred to those men (the descendants of about 200 families) who were allowed to vote, to run for, and to hold political office. They were called gentiluomini as a term of “dignity and reputation” in order to distinguish them from those who lacked these rights. In the second epigraph, Aretino claimed that in Venice “the worthy foreigner is not only considered the equal of a cittadino, but on par with a gentiluomo.” He suggested that Venetian society was open to educated, talented newcomers like himself and Sansovino to the degree that they were easily accepted as the social equals of longtime, elite nonnoble citizens of Venice. He even suggested that they might compare themselves with the nobles. His comment implies a certain lack of standing on ceremony and less reification of hierarchy than elsewhere. On the other hand, the “not only . . . but also” construction of his sentence also signals that to be thought “on par with a gentleman” was even greater than to be “the equal of a citizen.” Aretino simultaneously signaled both the existence of social hierarchies within the elite and some flexibility within the system.

“Three Distinct Orders” The two epigraphs highlight the particularity of the Venetian situation and hint at its unusual elasticity. Older accounts of Venetian history and society have represented it as composed of

17

three hierarchically arranged and rigidly defined classes or estates.34 This view of Venetian society was presented in several influential descriptions of the city and its government written in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. It is worth reviewing these texts because they have played an outsized role in later accounts of class in Renaissance Venice. The earliest is Marin Sanudo’s encomium of the city written in 1493, in which he noted: There are three classes [generation] of inhabitants: gentlemen who govern the state and republic . . . citizens; and artisans or the lower class. The gentlemen are not distinguished from the citizens by their clothes, because they all dress in much the same way, except for the senatorial office-holders, who during their term of office have to wear the coloured robes laid down by law. The others almost always wear long black robes reaching down to the ground, with sleeves open to the elbows, a black cap on the head and a hood of black cloth or velvet.35

Sanudo stressed the similarities between cittadini and nobles (at least those who did not hold important political offices), both of whom were marked from the lower classes by their dress, but he did discern three rungs. In his more programmatic study of the Venetian government, Libro de la Republica de’ Vinitiani (written 1525–27, published in 1540), the Florentine political philosopher Donato Giannotti emphatically noted that the inhabitants of Venice belonged to “tre ordini distinti” (three distinct orders): popolari, cittadini, and gentiluomini, refuting earlier writers – in particular the historian Marcus Antonius Sabellicus, who, he said, “makes a single group of the first two, and calls it popolare.”36 By popolari he meant “those who we might otherwise call the plebs; the ones who practice low occupations in order to live, and in the city they have no status [grado] at all.” By

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cittadini he meant “all those who were born in the city, and likewise their fathers and grandfathers, and by practicing more honorable occupations, have acquired some splendor, and have climbed up one grade [grado], such that they can call themselves sons of this patria. The gentlemen are those who are the lords [signori] of the city, and entire Stato di mare and di terra.”37 His contemporary, the Venetian nobleman Gasparo Contarini, still subscribed in principle to the older bipartite model (patricians and popolo) in his De magistribus et republica Venetorum (Paris, 1543). To confuse matters, Contarini referred to the nobles as the cittadini, because they had the right to vote. In a subtler manner, however, he recognized a middle group by noting that the popolo was “devided into two partes, the one of the honester and best respected sort, the other of the very base common people, as mechanicall, and handcraftes men.”38 Although Giannotti’s notion of “three distinct orders” would come to predominate in Venetian historiography, Contarini’s text was the more famous and widely read, translated into several European languages and repeatedly reprinted.39 His ideas about the role of the cittadini in Venetian society became canonical. He described how the “other better kinde of people” within the popolo (that is, the cittadini) were given special offices in the state bureaucracy and leadership positions in the major charity institutions in Venice, the Scuole Grandi, “to the end that they should not altogether thinke themselves deprived of publike authority, and civile offices, but should also in some sort have their ambition satisfied, without having occasion either to hate or perturbe the estate of the nobilitie.”40 The governmental appointments, Contarini stressed, were reserved for the nonnobles only, although they might be attractive to noblemen for their financial remuneration, their social prestige, and their duration: “in which honor [their position] they

remain as long as they live, not by turns, as the gentlemen do in their offices.”41 Administration of the Scuole Grandi was also a dignitie belonging onely to the plebeians, wherein also they imitate the nobility, for these heades of societies doe among the people in a certaine manner represent the dignitie of the procurators, but to the end that neither their societies, nor their heads, may any way be daungerous or cumbersome to the common wealth, they are all restrained under the power and authoritie of the Councell of ten.42

Contarini depicted the cittadino government of the scuole as a smaller replica of the patrician state, one that remained safely subordinate to and controlled by its superior model.43 The writer Francesco Sansovino (himself a cittadino, the son of the architect Jacopo Sansovino), probably echoing Contarini, also claimed that the Scuole Grandi “represent a type of citizen government, in which the cittadini, as if in their own Republic, have ranks and honors according to their own merits and qualities.”44 The idea that the cittadini were given some outlet for their political and social aspirations through their responsibilities as state bureaucrats and scuole officers, and that this kept them faithful to the state, became a part of the myth of the wisdom and stability of the Venetian state.45 Recent scholars have also pointed out in a more pragmatic way the important role the cittadini bureaucrats played in providing continuity within state offices, as the patrician magistrates constantly went in and out of office.46 The cittadini’s function in government became increasingly important during the course of the Quattrocento, and by the turn of the century a distinct social class began to form around the men who occupied these bureaucratic offices.47 Due to Contarini’s influence, the cittadini are often depicted as an educated, efficient, and ultimately docile social group, dedicated to serving the needs of the patrician-run state. They

A UNIQUE SOCIETY : SOCIAL CLASS IN VENICE

have been described by modern historians as “a lesser aristocracy cast in the image of the greater” or a “cadet nobility.”48 Following Contarini’s metaphor of reflection or imitation, the cittadini are said to “appropriate the values and forms of behavior of the nobles,” to have “mimicked as much as possible their noble counterparts,” and therefore to have “no distinctive culture or outlook of [their] own.”49 Up to the end of the twentieth century, the stable, tripartite structure of Venetian society divided into patricians, cittadini, and popolo was generally taken for granted. Recent studies of the cittadini, particularly those published in this century, however, have complicated this picture, suggesting it is an oversimplification, if not a fiction. In a thoughtful overview of Venetian historiography published in 2000, John Martin and Dennis Romano pointed out that “the central paradox in Venetian history lies in the sharp contrast between the tendency of Venetians both to represent and to think about themselves in terms of fixed categories and the underlying reality of economic, social, and geographic fluidity.”50 They noted in particular that “the received model of Venetian society as a rigidly hierarchical and tripartite one in which legal definitions of status were central, is collapsing.”51 Studies of cittadini published since then, in particular those by Anna Bellavitis and James Grubb, have further contributed to this collapse. Nonetheless, many questions remain, and clear, up-to-date overviews of class in Venice, and the cittadini in particular, are hard to come by. As Grubb notes, “we know who they were and how they worked, but not what they were like – what they wanted, and how they went about getting it.”52 In what follows, drawing on the most recent research, I provide an overview of some of the issues and present my understanding of the relation between patricians and citizens, focused necessarily on the early sixteenth century, the period of Odoni’s lifetime. I begin by

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explaining how Venice arrived at its particular social structure, which was unique for its time, showing how the terms gentiluomini and cittadini used to describe the two upper groups are in many respects misleading. For all the seeming clarity of the writing of the contemporaries cited above, in fact the tripartite division was neither as clear nor as rigid as these texts presented it. In particular, the status group cittadini proves upon closer inspection to be so diverse and ill-defined that it is almost impossible to imagine them having much in common with one another.53

The Historical Development of the Cittadino Class How did this ostensible tripartite social structure become part of Venice’s “unique and singular political order”?54 In the Middle Ages, the emergent Italian city-states all grappled with two principal questions regarding governance: how to define nobility and how to curtail factionalism and family rivalries that could, and often did, lead to tyranny. The Venetians found a unique solution to both issues: in the years around 1297, they passed laws that limited participation in the Great Council (which would become the principal governing body of the city) to those who had served in the previous four years and their descendants, in perpetuity. Not exactly overnight, but over a period of years, the city created a closed ruling elite composed of the male descendants of about 200 families – only they were qualified for membership in the Great Council and were identified as gentiluomini. Although referred to as the “Serrata” (the closing) of the Council, in fact these actions expanded the size of the governing class at the time, making it relatively large in comparison to other contemporary city-states.55 In other words, what might appear as an attempt to create an exclusive aristocratic

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elite, was actually motivated by the desire to maintain a fairly widespread republican base for government. Ironically, in Venice the idea of “nobility” in its genesis was about republican values – from this central seeming paradox would spring forth some of the later complications of social class in the city. The oddity also helps explain how notions of “nobility” in Venice were historically so different from those in other parts of Europe. Although the Serrata may have helped preserve a republican form of government, it also effectively created a closed political caste that ruled the city from 1298 to 1797. While a few new families were added (and some died out), after 1381 there were almost no new additions for 265 years.56 In the sixteenth century, there was little or no hope that one could “become” noble in Venice; one could only be born noble, despite Aretino’s claim that he could be compared to one.57 Arguably the emergence over time of the cittadini as a status group was a byproduct of the Serrata in the sense that unlike in other Italian cities, individuals and families who distinguished themselves through wealth, occupation, or accomplishments had no possibility of entering the ruling elite. The social status identity of cittadino could be seen as an overflow category to acknowledge distinction, while still maintaining a closed nobility: as Contarini put it, so that “the peoples ambition, and desire for honour . . . may be throughy satisfied, and yet the government of the Nobilitie no way disturbed.”58 But the rise of the cittadini as a status group was a protracted affair, which only stabilized from a legal and social point of view in the second half of the sixteenth century. The earliest laws defining citizenship date from the early fourteenth century, thus around the time of the Serrata.59 In Venice, again unlike in most other city-states, citizenship involved no political rights, but was about economic

privileges.60 This was because Venice was above all a mercantile state – Domenico Malipiero characterized the merchants of the city in the late fifteenth century as a large commercial enterprise directed by the Senate.61 Thus these early laws defined two types of citizenship per privilegio (that is granted by the state); one, called de intus tantum, which required the applicant to have lived in the city and paid taxes for fifteen years, allowed the grantee to conduct business in the city of Venice itself (for example, to own an atelier or shop); the other, called de intus et extra, which required twenty-five years’ residence and tax-paying, also allowed the grantee to conduct business abroad as a Venetian (permitting use of Venetian ships and customs facilities).62 At its origin, “citizenship” in Venice had no particular social distinction attached to it (just as it had no political rights); it was simply a legal status that one applied for if one wanted to engage in certain business and professional practices. The laws passed in the early fourteenth century established general principles that were modified, expanded, and restricted based on the needs of the state. For example, after the Black Death the requirements for de intus tantum status were greatly reduced in order to encourage immigration.63 In extraordinary circumstances the state might even grant citizenship de gratia, waving residency and other requirements for particularly desirable 64 candidates. Along with economic advantages, however, citizenship also allowed Venetians to be appointed to certain bureaucratic government offices and to be elected to leadership positions in the Scuole Grandi (as described by Contarini).65 Over time, in the fifteenth and especially in the sixteenth century, the most politically sensitive government positions required a further, higher level of citizenship, called original citizenship.66 This was particularly true of the positions in the Chancellery. Indeed its head, the Grand Chancellor, was considered the citizen

A UNIQUE SOCIETY : SOCIAL CLASS IN VENICE

equivalent of the Doge, marching ahead of him in major civic ceremonies.67 The requirements for original citizenship varied over time and depended on the exact position for which one was applying, but they became increasing stringent until they were finally set in a law of 1569 that defined the status until the end of the Republic in 1797. According to this law, a man had to demonstrate that he, his father, and his grandfather had all been born in Venice of legitimate marriages, and furthermore that none of them had engaged in any kind of mechanical trade. This law finally formulated legally what had clearly been a social understanding for some time – that cittadini were men who did not engage in manual labor, but in civil professions.68 Andrea Zannini has referred to the law of 1569 as the “serrata cittadinesca.”69 By this time, Odoni had been dead for more than twenty years. According to Bellavitis, what type of citizenship one had was actually not so important – a man applied for the type of citizenship needed for a particular appointment, provided that he met the requirements for that form of citizenship.70 The significant development, which began in the fifteenth century but really evolved over the course of the sixteenth century, was that the generic designation “citizen” moved from being a juridical designation to a class identification.71 The complexity and even confusion surrounding the designation cittadino in the sixteenth century has led one recent scholar to suggest we abandon the term altogether as a designation of social class, and substitute it with the term huomini civili to refer to “an upper status level [that] existed within Venetian society just below that of the patriciate, which subsumed the cittadini.”72 A good example of the confusion about what it meant to be a cittadino is provided by the case of the lawyer Alvise da Noal who wanted to become Grand Chancellor. Sanudo wrote: “He is not even a Venetian citizen, but of Noale, although he

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says he has citizenship due to a law of 1407 that says that the husband of a Venetian woman is a citizen, and because he has practiced in Venice for 26 years”; but once the law was read that no one can be put forth for Grand Chancellor if he is not Venetian by birth and “originario di questa terra” he withdrew.73 He was a citizen, but not the right kind for the job. The fact that he put himself up for the position and was supported by the doge suggests that the laws and distinctions were not always at the forefront of everyone’s mind.74 In Odoni’s lifetime the transition from conceiving of “citizenship” as a legal category to understanding it as a caste definition was in progress, but not yet complete. It may be that he lived at a time when the fluidity of what it meant to be a cittadino best played in his favor. As the status became more defined, it also became more inescapable.75

A Heterogeneous Group The meaning of the term cittadino was at the very least imprecise. Not only were there different types of citizenship, with ever changing requirements and advantages to each, but the concept could be used variously in different sources: the legal definition was concurrent with, but not the same as, the social one, which was itself variously defined. Earlier studies of cittadini focused primarily on the cittadini originari, especially those who worked in the Chancellery. Bellavitis and Grubb, however, have considered a much wider range of individuals and families who called themselves and were recognized by Venetian institutions and people as cittadini. As Grubb points out, not only was the Chancellery staff just a small subset of a larger group of officeholding citizens, but many cittadini were uninvolved in public service altogether.76 As we have seen, cittadini could be immigrants to the city who had resided there for a certain amount of

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time, but even more broadly, anyone born in Venice of a legitimate marriage was eligible to apply for de intus tantum status by age twelve, and de intus et extra by age eighteen.77 In addition, citizens from the major cities of the Stato da Terra and some areas of the Stato da Mar, were granted de intus tantum status in Venice.78 Also included in the category were the illegitimate sons of the nobility, who were given cittadini originari status by custom, as well as members of patrician families who for whatever reason had never “proven” their noble status and joined the Great Council.79 The people who could be lumped into the category of cittadino were highly heterogeneous, and as a result, the line between popolo and cittadino, and even cittadino and noble, could be vague.80 Both the amorphous meaning of the term cittadino and the diversity of people whom it might encompass make it very difficult to imagine a consistent sense of cittadino identity. This heterogeneity also throws into question the emulation model that conceives of the cittadini as a minor aristocracy cast in the image of the noble class. The social behaviors and practices of some cittadini were similar to those of the nobility, but it does not necessarily follow that they thought only of fashioning themselves in the image of the patricians. It is worth considering that some cittadini and gentiluomini shared certain social practices (such as the use of coats of arms or wearing black togas – discussed below) rather than assuming the priority of the nobility per se.81

“Gentiluomini e cittadini”: Master and Servant or Separate but Equal? Texts like those by Giannotti and Contarini clearly portray a hierarchical relationship between gentiluomini, cittadini, and popolo (and it also lurks behind Aretino’s words to Sansovino). Giannotti notes the cittadini “sono

saliti uno grado” from the popolari, but the gentiluomini are the “signori.” Contarini, as we have seen, only grants that the cittadini are “the better sort” within the popolo. Examination of other kinds of documentary sources, such as marriage contracts, citizenship applications, family chronicles, and family memoirs, however, brings a more complex picture to light. In some contexts, the gentiluomini and cittadini were construed as equals with only a political, rather than social, distinction between them. Looking at dress, professions, sumptuary laws, and intermarriage reveals more of the subtleties, even contradictions, in Venetian notions of class. Finally, it is worth considering some texts written by cittadini in which they present themselves. Compared to Giannotti and Contarini, Sanudo is rather modest about the distinctions he draws between the two groups, although he was himself a nobleman. The gentlemen, he says simply, are those “who govern the state,” but they are “not distinguished from the citizens [non sono conosciuti] by their clothes,” because all men over the age of twenty-five, whether noble or citizen, were required to wear the long, black robes or togas (often referred to as veste) with balloon sleeves (Fig. 6).82 Like a school uniform, they distinguished one group, the nobles and citizens, from the general population, while at the same time masking distinctions within the group.83 In his description of Venice published in 1581, Francesco Sansovino suggests as much when he compares the togas to the habits of religious orders: “since Venetians from their origins professed peace and piety and equality amongst themselves, because stability and concord are born from equality and disparity feeds chaos and destruction, they wore clothes that resembled religious vestments.”84 The “equality amongst themselves” that led them to dress in this manner included both citizens and nobles. In his costume book published eight years later, Cesare Vecellio (like Sansovino, also a cittadino)

A UNIQUE SOCIETY : SOCIAL CLASS IN VENICE

Fig. 6 Cesare Vecellio, “Dress of the Venetian Nobleman,” from Habiti Antichi et Moderni, 1598. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

likened the robes to ancient Roman togas instead, but similarly noted their equalizing intention: We can confidently say that the dress ordinarily worn by the Venetian nobility is the ancient Roman toga, and its uniformity is perhaps no small reason for the harmony and concord with which this immense Republic has always been governed . . . This is the clothing worn not only by the nobility but also by citizens and by anybody else who wants to wear it. Almost all doctors, lawyers, and merchants wear it willingly, since, as a garment of the nobility, it confers great dignity on these others as well.85

While Vecellio implies that the toga is a garment of “nobility” that others wear in imitation, to my knowledge, there is no evidence that it was first

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worn by the nobility and then adopted by others. Interestingly, Vecellio also seems to suggest that anyone could decide to wear this “uniform.”86 While it is true, as Sanudo noted, that noblemen elected to higher offices wore robes of different colors that indicated their elevated positions, some cittadini, especially the Grand Chancellor and the Guardian Grandi of the Scuole Grandi, were also honored by colored robes.87 Men who had attained a certain social class were in fact expected to wear the robes whenever they went out in public in the city.88 Although Vecellio may have seen the toga as a sign of nobility, it was perhaps more accurately a legacy of republican values – a way in which the equality between the two groups was officially promoted. The shared dress code also signaled that cittadini and patricians largely engaged in the same professions, especially before the second half of the sixteenth century.89 Machiavelli was not alone in noting that Venetian “nobles” were not really nobles by the standards used elsewhere because they derived their income from mercantile trade rather than land-owning. Writing in 1543, Giovambattista Nenna of Bari remarked that “not only plebes, but [also] nobles, including their senators, are engaged in trade. The purity of the blood of their ancestors is what distinguishes noble from non-noble, not their profession.”90 Patricians, like cittadini, were also doctors and lawyers.91 The black gown was a sign that one engaged in a profession that did not involve the use of one’s hands. Indeed, the elaborate hanging sleeves of these garments actively inhibited manual labor. Patricians and cittadini also often worked closely together in business and in government.92 This was certainly the case for Odoni, who, as we shall see in the next chapter, partnered with the patrician Piero Orio to collect the state tax on wine. Joint ventures were common, sometimes extending to illegal conduct.93 Among the intellectual set whose day-to-day lives are often better documented, collaboration

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Fig. 7 Raphael of Urbino, Portrait of Andrea Navagero and Agostino Beazzano, 1516, Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome. Photo: Alinari/Art Resource, NY.

on projects and the exchange of ideas created easy social relations. The cittadino Giovanni Battista Ramusio, author of Delle navigationi et viaggi, visited the nobles Pietro Bembo and Andrea Navagero at their mainland villas.94 In the portrait Bembo commissioned from Raphael of Navagero and Agostino Beazzano (Fig. 7), his two friends – one noble, the other cittadino – are presented as equals.95 Michiel (whose mother, Paola Pessina, was a cittadina) had many friends in this circle and beyond, patricians and citizens, including his “amicissimo” Antonio Marsilio, a cittadino civil servant in the Chancellery.96 Examples such as these are too numerous to further belabor. Related to the issue of dress is the use of sumptuary laws in Venice. The laws applied to “our gentlemen and citizens” – the gentleman named first but closely coupled together with the cittadini. Legislation almost always applied equally to both groups (the only exception I know of regards dowries, to be discussed

below).97 Patricia Brown has argued that in Venice sumptuary laws were designed deliberately to downplay the distinction between cittadini and patricians, in contrast to other places in Europe where they were typically used to reinforce class divisions.98 Particularly revealing is the official statement recorded during a heated debate about home decoration: “We must in every respect give much consideration and use much study in conserving the equality between our nobles and citizens and in prohibiting those things that would give rise to any bad effect.”99 The concern was to curtail highly visible status distinctions both within the nobility and between nobles and citizens. Intermarriage between cittadini and patricians also indicates the close status relationship between the groups. However, in this field a more hierarchal model also emerges. The exact rate of intermarriage is debated depending on what sources are used, but more commonly the groom was patrician and the bride

A UNIQUE SOCIETY : SOCIAL CLASS IN VENICE

cittadina.100 This was because the offspring of such a marriage were considered nobles, which was not the case when bride and groom were reversed (nobility passed through male blood). There were, however, cases in which noble women were married into cittadini families (this was possibly the case with Andrea’s brother Gerolamo Odoni).101 The rarity of this, and the overall relatively low rate of exogamy, however, indicate that patricians were determined to maintain their position. The sumptuary laws regarding dowries also support this. The only case I know of in which sumptuary laws stated differences between the two groups was a law of 1420 limiting dowries to 1,600 ducats, unless the bride was a cittadina marrying a patrician, in which case the allowable limit was 2,000 ducats.102 On the one hand, this suggests that cittadine brides needed larger dowries to make them attractive to noblemen. But, on the other hand, the law also seems to deliberately encourage intermarriage by allowing a higher dowry for cittadine. And while the larger permissible dowry for nonnoble women marrying into the patriciate may have provided some incentive for intermarriage in the early fifteenth century, later laws generally encouraged patrician endogamy, as though trying to create a greater sense of distinction between the groups.103 Probably marriage into the patriciate was more common for some kinds of cittadini, such as the cittadini originari who worked in important government offices, and thus had more active ties with patricians. In these instances, the benefits of alliances across groups might have outweighed an imperative to preserve a “pure” bloodline.104 Texts like Giannotti, Contarini, and Machiavelli clearly reveal that the gentiluomini were accorded a kind of status that was not accessible to the cittadini. While to be “noble” in Venice was not the same thing as being “noble” elsewhere, it was still “a title of dignity and reputation” and the patricians were still “those who govern.” On the

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other hand, factors like dress, occupation, sumptuary laws, and even to some degree intermarriage suggest that the cittadini and patricians could also be seen as more or less the same social class, only distinguished by their political rights. As I have shown here, there were in fact different, even conflicting, models of the relationship between nobles and cittadini at work simultaneously. This is part of the paradox of a “republic” lead by “nobles,” the peculiarity of which was noted by Machiavelli.

“Those of the Council” and “Those Not of the Council” I argue that the lack of fixedness provided the opportunity for cittadini to both conceive of themselves and be perceived in different ways. How individual men (and this argument is about men, not about women) negotiated this amorphous, and changing, terrain emerges in what cittadini themselves wrote about their relationship to the nobles. The voices and attitudes of cittadini are only now beginning to emerge more fully from the archives and there is still much to be discovered. Although Odoni did not write about himself and his family, other cittadini did. Indeed, as Grubb and Bellavitis have investigated, it was cittadini, not nobles, who produced the few surviving family memoirs in Venice, a genre that was much more common in Florence. The Ziliol family memoir and other family documents studied by Bellavitis especially give important insight into how cittadini conceived their relationship to the patriciate. The Ziliol were similar to Andrea Odoni’s maternal family, the Zio. Indeed, Andrea Ziliol (1457–1544), a contemporary of Odoni’s uncle Francesco Zio, was a jewel merchant, an occupation shared by some members of the Zio family.105 Although the Ziliol, whose roots in Venetian society went back to before

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the Serrata, were a different sort of cittadini clan than the Odoni, their voices illuminate the complexity of class issues, providing a picture not of abstract ideology but of individuals grappling with it in relation to their own lives. Some members of the Ziliol clan unequivocally expressed their patriotic commitment to the Venetian state and the group of men who governed it. For example, in a letter addressed to his descendants, Vettor Ziliol (1459–1543) recommended they try “to always aim for the grace of God, the benevolence of the city, and the love of our Lords [Signori, i.e. the patricians].”106 His son Scipione (d. 1591) was more fulsome, even obsequious, writing in his will: I recommend to my nipote that they always have complete reverence for all the Venetian nobility, and serve them to the point of sacrificing their lives, not only because they [the nobility] merit it, but because our family is obliged like no other, for the numerous benefits and favors they have given us, and that they always have them above their heads, that they love and serve them in perpetuity, as their true and natural lords.107

But the example of the Ziliol clan also reveals that even within a single family views could differ. Some members were more inclined to express their equality with the patriciate, and even at times went so far as to criticize them. In his entries to the family memoir written in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth centuries, Andrea Ziliol (1457–1544) recommends that his descendants be faithful to their patria until death, which is the real glory of the good citizen, and especially of us Ziliol, who are among the most ancient families, of noble origin, and our ancestors were always faithful to this city and the present government. From the time of the events of Baiamonte Tiepulo and of the Querini [a famous uprising against the regime in

the fourteenth century], down to today, we were all on the side of the Doge and for the Council of Ten, as is well known from the chronicles, and although we are not of the Great Council nor able to be elected, as we were before 1297, nonetheless, for all that remains, all of us are treated as equal to them, with the benign willingness and modesty of this government, which as long as it is thus, will always be prosperous and great.108

He acknowledges, seemingly without spite, that they do not have the political rights of the patricians, but still finds that he is treated “pari de quel.” In another part of the family memoir he refers to the patricians not as “nostri signori” but simply as “i Cittadini de Conseio” and to a man of his own group as “el cittadin che non era de Conseio.”109 This formulation, “of the Council” and “not of the Council,” was also used in the title of a chronicle compiled in 1540 “of all the ancient and noble families of Venetian citizens who are not of the Great Council.” These families styled themselves as those who “are born and live nobly but don’t have a vote on the Council.”110 This chronicle, surely compiled by a proud, but unfortunately now anonymous, cittadino, demonstrates that at least some members of the group thought of themselves in this way. As we shall see, a later descendant of Andrea Ziliol not only continued the tradition of equating patricians and citizens but went so far as to actively criticize the noblemen for assuming their superiority.

The Early Sixteenth Century: Toward Definition? It is not a coincidence that the texts that seem to lay out the hierarchy of social orders in Venice most clearly were produced in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. This period was characterized both by the increasing definition and exclusivity of the nobility and by

A UNIQUE SOCIETY : SOCIAL CLASS IN VENICE

a burgeoning pride among cittadini families. As Stanley Chojnacki has argued, in the early sixteenth century, laws were passed to preserve the “purity” of the nobility by further defining and delimiting what it meant to be “noble.” First was a law of 1506 that required that all noble births of legitimate marriages be recorded in the so-called Libro d’Oro. The intent was to insure that illegitimate sons or the offspring of “inappropriate” marriages would not inadvertently be admitted to the Great Council at the age of twenty-five, but as Chojnacki points out, “this law altered the meaning of nobility in Venice.”111 Rather than being associated with entrance into the Great Council and the assumption of political responsibility, nobility was now officially identified at birth. To reinforce the rules, in 1526 the Council of Ten declared that all noble marriages had to be registered with the Avogadori di Comun, so that offspring from the marriage could prove purity of blood. According to Chojnacki, these laws led to the increasing endogamy of nobles.112 The growing number of poor nobles seeking state offices to support their families may be one reason why entrance into the nobility was more policed.113 The nobility was not only more delimited in this period, it was also increasingly stratified. While in theory all Venetian nobles were equals – they all had the same title and the same fundamental political rights – especially after the crisis of the League of Cambrai, power was concentrated in the hands of the wealthiest families, creating a split between nobles who held high offices and the rest of the patricians who were generally limited to membership in the Great Council.114 As the “haves” and “have nots” within the nobility were increasingly demarcated, some wealthy cittadini could afford to live in a manner more “noble” than many nobles, and indeed were sometimes responsible for providing charity to patricians.115 The official concern with the “purity” of the nobility coupled with further awareness that some members of the nobility were in fact lesser

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than others in terms of both power and wealth, may have fostered a certain cittadini pride and growing sense of identity. Grubb notes that the first compilations of chronicles of cittadini families appeared in the 1530s and 1540s, around the same time that several surviving cittadini family memoirs were composed. This was a literary genre that was picked up by a few cittadini families, although it apparently had no Venetian patrician precedents. These are the decades in which Odoni was building his career, embellishing his house, and gathering his collection. While in the early sixteenth century the “entire category [of cittadini] was relatively inchoate,” Grubb finds that it was “a pivotal era in the definition and affirmation of the cittadini originari, but it was also a period that was fraught with risk.”116 What is striking though is that the cittadini do not seem to have been fighting for their political rights. For all we can tell, they seem to have been fairly content to let “those of the Council” continue to rule.117 What they were trying to do, rather, was to shift the definition of “nobility” away from membership of the Council or birth into a particular family (the direction in which the nobility was tending to skew it in their concern for the “purity” of bloodlines) toward a definition based on family history, wealth, reputation, and manner of living regardless of whether you were among “those of the Council.” For Bellavitis, the cittadini families’ attention to reconstructing their past through written memoirs “can be interpreted as a desire to affirm their own identity, in opposition to a State that would only recognize them as ‘second class gentlemen’.”118 Odoni did not write a family memoir (at least as far as we know); instead he sought recognition for himself and his family in his own way, at this same moment. I argue that the first half of the sixteenth century was a particularly flexible and potentially advantageous moment for those who identified themselves and were recognized as cittadini. There was on the one hand, increasing

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consciousness of social stature, a kind of posturing for position among groups, but the groups were yet to become fully defined and regulated. This would happen only later in the sixteenth and especially in the seventeenth century. In this regard, it is instructive to look at the later entries in the Ziliol family memoir written by Alessandro Ziliol (died before 1646) after 1629. Alessandro was himself the product of a mixed marriage (his mother came from the patrician Bragadin family), so he may have been particularly sensitive to the arguably arbitrary distinction between “noble” and “nonnoble” (or “those who are of the Council” and “those who are not of the Council”). Alessandro expresses a degree of vitriol toward the nobility not seen in earlier citizen writings.119 He accuses the patriciate of trying to steal the wealth of the citizens and restrain those who might aspire to their level.120 “Quelli del Consiglio” enriched themselves with investments in the terraferma. While “altre casade non del Conseglio” also made such investments, they were not able to maintain their wealth in the same way because

forebears, who felt lucky to have been favored by their “Signori.” Alessandro’s comments are an aside in his narrative account of the lives of his ancestors, but he cannot leave the issue and returns to it again, this time clarifying that he believed that the social distinctions between nobility and cittadini were a relatively recent development. Of his ancestor Vettor, who lived in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, he noted that “desiring to elevate his casa,” he left the world of commerce, “which really was the origin of the greatness of the city,” to pursue bureaucratic office

it is impossible that any rich family that does not have the highest positions in their patria can maintain itself in that state, as is well known to those who do business in this city, and have enough judgement to understand their state. And from then on, no one who was not of the Council could ennoble himself (annobiliarsi) or improve his position (aggrandirsi) through trade, because the personal power of the Citizen of the Council was greatly increasing, and their insolence has closed and continues to close all the roads by which the populace or others can get ahead.121

In another irrepressible aside, he states that Vettor wore

Alessandro had the sense that the patricians were profiting at the expense of the cittadini and sequestering themselves through wealth as well as political position from the rest of the population, sentiments quite at odds with some of his

acquiring many friendships in the city, especially among patricians [patrizii], because at that time there was no other difference except the ballot between those of the Council and the other citizens [cittadini] who were born and lived nobly [nobilmente], nor was there in [those of the Council] such pretense [as now], because most of that group were poor, and many [noble] houses were humble that now are the wealthiest.122

the veste with large sleeves, without a belt, the long zazera and a barettina two fingers high, which one never took off one’s head except in Church and in the presence of the doge, because all those who wore the toga, whether they were of the Council, or not, greeted each other with the baretta still on, unless it was a great personage. But this practice has changed in our time, and the first who started to take off the baretta to those of the Council were those of the Ottobon house, to receive favors, having been voted into the Chancellery.123

The Ottobon family would be one of the few families actually admitted into the nobility in the seventeenth century.124 While we might

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imagine that Alessandro was fantasizing about an earlier golden age of equality, there may also be some truth to his perception. By the seventeenth century, the Venetian nobility had separated itself more fully from those who were merely citizens, transforming themselves into “nobility in fact, not just in name.” In the sixteenth century, however, this process was not yet complete. The Ziliol family memoir was presumably a fairly private document kept within the family, but Alessandro’s “class consciousness” also found expression in his Le due corone della nobilità veneziana (The Two Crowns of the Venetian Nobility), a two-volume collection of genealogical information about notable Venetian families. Although it is unpublished, it is a formal manuscript, probably consulted by both patricians and cittadini (see Fig. 8).125 While Ziliol does divide the families into two volumes, one for patricians and one for cittadini, he presents them as two equal “crowns”:

In Venice, a very noble city not only of Italy, but of the world, there are two orders of gentlemen, as everyone knows. The nobles who from their birth have the right to vote in the Great Council of the city are called Patricians and nobles of the Council. Those who are born and live nobly but do not have the vote in the above mentioned Council remain gentilhomeni popolari. But following popular usage, the first are called noble gentlemen, and the others, with a rather extravagant term, are called citizen gentlemen.126

In the introduction to the second volume, he discusses the origin of the “citizen order.” “This order originated in the year 1297, when the public government was reformed, and many noble houses and people were reduced to the state of families, who, as happens in Republics, were not included among them, giving origin to this order that we call today citizens.”127 Included among

Fig. 8 Oddoni Coat of Arms, from Alessandro Ziliol’s Due corone della nobilità viniziana, Codice Cicogna 2459, p. 103, Biblioteca del Museo Correr, Venice.

the families in this second volume are many that were not in fact living in Venice in 1297, including the Odoni, but for Ziliol, the origin of the “order” is in the division of the “nobility” into two groups, hence two crowns. Ziliol turns Contarini’s formulation on its head. The cittadini, rather than being the simply the best of the popolo, are a separate order of gentlemen distinguished from the other gentlemen simply by their lack of vote on the Council. The terminology “gentilhomeni popolari” may even be a deliberate provocation.128 Ziliol’s text reveals that cittadini could see the history of Venice and analyze its class structure in ways that cut against the grain of the more widely known accounts written by patricians and their

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VENICE IN TRANSITION

sympathizers. Although Alessandro Ziliol wrote in the mid-seventeenth century, not in Odoni’s lifetime, he expresses an alternative view that has some grounding in the writings of Ziliol’s earlier ancestors. Within the Ziliol family itself, a family with a much longer history in Venice and probably closer ties to political power than the Odoni, views could differ substantially from one generation to another, or perhaps more accurately from one individual to another. *** The Venetian nobility were a “governing class,” but as a group they were not necessarily coterminous with the social, economic, or cultural elite. At some level, at least in the sixteenth century, especially in the first half, both nobles and cittadini recognized, along with Machiavelli, that the “nobles” were indeed “noble” in name, but not in fact. And the artificiality of the distinction between those “who are of the Council” and those “who are not of the Council” I argue was to some extent acknowledged. However, for various reasons, probably due to later developments, art historians have tended to treat the nobility as though they were the only ones who counted, the “tastemakers.” Recent scholars have made substantial strides in unearthing cittadini identities by looking to sources beyond the standard accounts in texts like Giannotti, Sanudo, and Contarini. They have examined marriage contracts, wills, and other archival documents, chronicles compiling information about a number of cittadini families, cittadini family memoirs, and the works of art and architecture cittadini owned and/or commissioned.129 The pictures that emerge are far more complex and varied than had been imagined. Above all, they repeatedly suggest that the nonnobles were not necessarily only concerned with emulating the nobility.130 Bellavitis has argued that individual and family identity were a more insistent focus for cittadini

than for patricians who instead privileged their lineage in a larger “noble” clan.131 This accords with Grubb’s observation that, curiously, it was cittadini who adopted the literary genre of the family memoir (libro di famiglia) in order “to create identity, to instruct future generations, to legitimate the new or protect the old, to press claim to higher social status, to convey a patrimony of memory to descendants, to answer the most basic and enduring of questions: who are we?”132 A question that was both more pressing and more fraught, I would argue, for cittadini than for nobles, for whom the answer was already in large part determined by their structurally defined position as signori. Despite the many similarities and interactions between the two groups that are discussed above, their self-fashioning strategies could differ considerably.133 As Blake de Maria notes of one cittadino, “Denied access to those governmental mechanisms intended to preserve and cement patrician identity, it appears that Giacomo Ragazzoni took it upon himself to record his own family identity through the works of art he commissioned.”134 In the case of the “consortium” of immigrant families of the late sixteenth century that de Maria studied, one has the impression that they had such wealth, economic power, and international connections that they did not necessarily think about themselves primarily in relation to the Venetian nobility.135 Venice was a relatively liberal, cosmopolitan city with wealthy visitors from all over the world. Some of these foreigners became citizens and adapted to Venetian society, but it would be a mistake to believe the neat pictures of a stratified class structure found in contemporary texts. In the early sixteenth century, when issues of class and nobility were not yet set in stone (if indeed they ever were), a man like Odoni had considerable room in which to maneuver. His tombstone, discussed in the next chapter, addressed these issues head on.

A UNIQUE SOCIETY : SOCIAL CLASS IN VENICE

While there were certainly other major cittadini patrons of art and architecture in the Venice of Odoni’s generation (for example, the della Vedova, Savina, di Martini, Lando, and Aurelio families), it is quite unusual to have the depth and breadth of knowledge about a particular cittadino’s house and collection that we have for Odoni.

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I do not put Odoni forth here as a “typical” cittadino, indeed, as this chapter has argued, I am not sure there is such a thing, but I do put this study forward as a contribution to the ongoing investigation of who cittadini were and what they tell us about the Republic of Venice and its art.

Chapter 2

SECOND-GENERATION VENETIAN

In the year of our Lord 1490, Rinaldo Oddoni from Milan, from a noble and powerful family, came with a large amount of capital to live in Venice . . . With him came his brother Guglielmo, a hermit and very holy man who . . . died in Venice and was buried in Santa Maria in Torcello . . . Also noble and famous for his riches and his magnificent manner of living was Andrea, son of the first Rinaldo, who is mentioned by Pietro Aretino in his letters. One can read his epitaph in Santa Maria Maggiore . . . In the office of the Dazio dal Vino, there is a long memorial of this Andrea. Alessandro Ziliol, Le due corone della nobilità viniziana, first half of the seventeenth century1 For Andrea Odoni: a citizen marked by the splendor of his mind, his liberality, and elegance that surpassed his civil status. Erected by his grieving brothers Hieronimo and Alvise for themselves and their posterity. He lived 57 years. Died in the year 1545. Tombstone of Andrea Odoni in Santa Maria Maggiore, Venice2

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M

THE VENETIAN CONNECTION : UNCLE ZIO

OST O F T HIS BOOK

is concerned with an analysis of material culture within its physical setting – the Casa Odoni. But first we must concern ourselves with the archival record of Andrea Odoni’s life and occupations. As is typical for cittadini, there is no family archive and thus no private records. Instead Andrea’s biography must be traced through his encounters with institutions that kept records or his occasional appearance in the writing of his contemporaries. His own words, if they are his own, are limited to his will and tax returns. According to the inscription on his tombstone Andrea was fifty-seven years old when he died in 1545, which would mean he was born in 1488. Although it is unclear whether he was born in Venice, he was the son of an immigrant from Milan, as Alessandro Ziliol and other sources indicate. Ziliol’s entry in the manuscript Due corone della nobilità viniziana discussed in the previous chapter is, to my knowledge, the earliest surviving account of the family’s history in Venice, and it seems to be the primary source used by later writers such as the nineteenth-century compilers Emanuele Antonio Cicogna and Giuseppe Tassini (Fig. 8).3 Ziliol’s text fulfilled his desire to preserve the history of Venice’s “gentilhuomini populari”: without this resource these families might indeed have been forgotten. The Odoni do not appear in the earlier cittadini chronicles, written in 1536 and 1540.4 The family was not at that point established enough to be considered “Venetian,” much less to be counted among the most notable cittadino families. This is because it was Andrea himself who made a name for his family in the city. Although I have not been able to locate a grant of citizenship to his father Rinaldo, Andrea’s brother Gerolamo referred to their father as “cittadin veneto” in his will.5 Since Rinaldo came to the city with “grosso capitale di mercantie,” he needed citizenship de intus et extra in order to

33

engage in international trade. The Odoni were a particular kind of immigrant to Venice – a mercantile family who came to the city to further their already substantial business endeavors. Ziliol claimed the family was both “noble” and “powerful” before coming to Venice. They may have left the region of Milan due to political instability, seeking “a tranquil place of residence where their incomes could be enjoyed in splendid surroundings.”6 The Odoni may have been an early part of the exodus that led the Venetian Pietro Bragadin to comment in 1525 that “Venice is richer in gold, men and ships than it has ever been because the wars of the world have brought all the rich men to live there.”7 In all likelihood Rinaldo Odoni immigrated to Venice and took a Venetian wife.8 He may have obtained Venetian citizenship under the law of 1407 granting citizenship to those immigrants who married Venetian women.9 Family documents record that his wife was named Marieta, but unfortunately do not provide a surname.10 Given the social and familial connections that Andrea enjoyed long before his own marriage to a Venetian woman, it is likely that his father had a Venetian wife, even if Andrea was born two years before the date Ziliol gives for the family’s immigration.11 Other than their mention by Ziliol, little else is known of Rinaldo and his devout brother Guglielmo, the first generation of Odoni in Venice. The fact that Andrea’s father is remarkably absent from both official and family records suggests he may have died early; certainly he was dead by 1523.12 In any case, Andrea’s Venetian relative, Francesco Zio, played the key role in integrating Andrea, Rinaldo’s eldest son, into Venetian society.

THE VENETIAN CONNECTION: UNCLE ZIO

W

hen he visited Odoni’s art collection in 1532, Marcantonio Michiel noted that

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SECOND - GENERATION VENETIAN

several objects on display once belonged to Francesco Zio, whose collection Michiel had visited eleven years earlier in 1521.13 Zio’s testament, written on March 1, 1523 only a few days before he died, makes clear how this came to pass.14 He named his “nipote,” Andrea Odoni, as one of his executors, and left a portion of his estate to Andrea and Andrea’s three brothers, Gerolamo, Alvise, and Guglielmo (the brothers also had at least three sisters who were not mentioned in the will – Amelia, Faustina, and Franceschina). In other documents related to the estate, Odoni referred to Zio as “mio barba” (literally “my beard,” a term used in Venice to refer to an older male relative, often, but not always, an uncle). Other objects may have come into the Odoni family through Zio’s illegitimate son, Giacomo, who inherited the preponderance of his father’s estate. In his testament of 1525, Giacomo named Andrea Odoni, his “barba,” as his sole heir.15 While the nineteenth-century historian Cicogna confidently referred to Zio as Andrea’s uncle (zio), the term nipote can also mean grandson and sometimes even a more distant younger relative. Nor did Cicogna specify exactly how they were related. The most likely explanation is that Rinaldo’s wife, Marieta, was Francesco’s sister. Although Francesco had an illegitimate son, he apparently never married, and he does not seem to have had any brothers. In such situations it was common practice for the last male descendant to pass his inheritance to the male offspring of his sister(s).16 It may be that passing an inheritance through female descendants was more common among cittadini than patricians, who might pass it instead to a collateral branch of the noble family, so that it remained within the patronym.17 Material goods in the Odoni home support this supposition. The inventory of the Odoni household compiled after the death of Andrea’s brother Alvise in 1555 mentions that in the “new little room above” were “three pieces of old

tacked spalliere with the arms of Zio and Odoni, from the dark room.”18 The combining of family arms suggests a marriage between two families celebrated and commemorated through the decoration of domestic space.19 The fact that the spalliere were old suggests not a recent marriage, but one from the previous generation. Other objects listed in the inventory and seen by Michiel also suggest close family ties. In addition to the works of art Michiel specifically noted had been in Zio’s collection, he also saw two painted portraits of Zio by the artist Vincenzo Catena in the Odoni household. The inventory of 1555 lists only one of these, but also includes a sculpted bust of Zio.20 That the Odoni brothers inherited, or commissioned, these likenesses indicates that they were meant to carry on both the memory and the prestige of the Zio line. That the household did not contain any portraits of their actual father Rinaldo Odoni suggests that in some sense the Venetian barba, Francesco Zio, was the paterfamilias. While the exact relation I propose, namely that Francesco’s sister was Andrea’s mother, cannot be definitively proven, there is no question that Francesco Zio was “like an uncle” to Andrea and Andrea was “like a nephew” to Zio. In turn Andrea was “like an uncle” to Giacomo, Francesco’s illegitimate son – in his testament Francesco asks his “nipote” to continue to support Giacomo’s studies.21 Regardless of their specific kinship relation, their connection as descendants in a male lineage was the most important factor. The families were also related in a second, more circuitous manner: Andrea’s brother Alvise married a descendant of Francesco Zio’s stepmother, Maria Carlo, the later betrothal probably intended to reinforce established ties and preserve wealth (see Fig. 9).22 Although Rinaldo Odoni may have come from a wealthy and even “noble” family in Milan, his marriage into a Venetian citizen family was critical to the future success of his heirs in their adoptive city. There were several families in

35

THE VENETIAN CONNECTION : UNCLE ZIO ODONI-ZIO-CARLO Family Tree Zuane CARLO

Maria Margherita m. Benedetto ZIO (son of Zuan Zio) m. Zorzi Dragan d. 1506 m. Giacomo Fabiani (physician)

Gerolamo ODONI

Guglielmo

Rinaldo ODONI

m.

Marieta

Francesco ZIO 1477–1523 (son of Benedetto ZIO from earlier marrage)

Cornelia m. (daughter of Giacomo Fabiani from earlier marriage)

Marin

Bernadinus Pimazo

Giacomo (illegimate) Gerolamo d. 1556 m. Helena Valier

Amelia m. Bartolomeo Bozza

Francesca

Julia

Loredana m. Marco di Raspi 1550

Maretina

Carlo m. Cristina Polo

Gerolamo

Rinaldo (monsignor)

Maria

Faustina

Andrea Guglielmo Alvise ODONI 1488–1545 d. 1555 m. Isabetta de Monte (after July 1533) widow of Alvise Tagliapietra d. 1527

Caterina Renaldo m. Paolo Manuzio 1546 (1512–74)

Guglielmo Giacomo m. Camilla Capello

Giulio Aldo Manuzio the m. Francesca Younger (1547–97) Albini m. Francesca Giunti 1572

Carlo

m.

Giulia FABIANI

Odona Marieta m. Giovanni della Torre 1551

Andrea

Cornelia

Francesco

Fig. 9 Oddoni-Zio-Carlo family tree. By Marc Schmitter.

Venice with the surname Zio (Zio is the Venetian form of the relatively common name Giglio), and it is unclear if or how they were related. In his manuscript compilation on cittadini families, the nineteenth-century scholar Tassini listed only three members in Francesco’s direct line: Benetto (Francesco’s father), Francesco himself, and an illegitimate sister named Lucrezia, all of whom lived in Castello and had a family tomb in Santa Maria delle Vergini. According to Tassini, a more prolific Zio clan lived in the confine of San Pantalon (not far from the house Andrea Odoni would eventually own).23 According to the anonymous chronicle of cittadini families written in 1540, the Zio who lived in San Pantalon had originally been members of the “antichi consegli,” but were excluded in the Serrata of 1297.24 They were thus an old and established cittadino family.

Some members of the family were jewelers, a profession of high status that could also involve trade in antiquities and art objects.25 They were active members of the same scuola as Francesco, the Scuola Grande di Santa Maria della Carità, and used the same notary, Giovanni Francesco dal Pozzo.26 Thus it is quite possible that these two Zio families were fairly closely related. In any case, the professional positions Francesco held in Venice indicate that he was a man of considerable repute and social standing. Born in 1477, he had followed in his father Benetto’s footsteps as gastaldo (procurator) of the Augustinian convent of Santa Maria delle Vergini in Castello, a post he held until his own death in 1523.27 Such positions within the Church, which were open to patricians and cittadini alike, required substantial education and

36

SECOND - GENERATION VENETIAN

were important avenues of social advancement.28 Alison Sherman noted that although the post offered little “in the way of individual power or monetary gain . . . as the secular guardians of the churches and religious houses of Venice, those who assumed this role enjoyed a unique brand of reverence within the community.”29 The appointment at Santa Maria delle Vergini was especially prominent and prestigious, since it was one of the two wealthiest and most elite convents in the city (the other was San Zaccaria). Founded in 1224 by Doge Pietro Ziani, the convent was unique in Venice because it was under the direct ius patronatus of all subsequent doges, who ceremonially “wed” each abbess in the year of her election. The doge was directly responsible for appointing all clergy and other employees at the convent, including the procurator.30 The convent was one of the major sites of the city visited by dignitaries and other tourists, who went there to see the lavish decorations of the

church, to hear the nuns sing, and to listen to their Latin orations.31 Although the architectural complex no longer survives, it was located at the far reaches of the city, near the Cathedral of San Pietro in Castello.32 Zio lived nearby, presumably over the sottoportego and corte “da Cà Zio” that still exist in the neighborhood (Fig. 10).33 When Francesco died, Antonio Marsilio, a cittadino closely connected to humanist circles (and a good friend of Marcantonio Michiel), followed him in the position.34 Zio’s position as procurator of this wealthy, politically connected institution indicates that he was in close contact with the most elite and educated segments of Venetian society. It may very well be that Michiel came to know Zio through this position. As procurator, Francesco was responsible for the financial affairs of the convent. He employed a similar set of accounting and management skills in a second position he held working directly for the Venetian state. Although there is no record that his father Benetto held such a civil service

Fig. 10a, b Sottoportego and corte of the Palazzo Zio, San Pietro in Castello, Venice. Photo: author, 1995.

THE VENETIAN CONNECTION : UNCLE ZIO

office, Francesco was successful in this arena, which as we have seen was an important venue of public recognition and income for cittadini. As early as 1513 he was rewarded for his diligence; in exchange for discovering a worker at the Dazio del vin (the wine-taxing office) who was cheating the Signoria of 150 ducats a year, Francesco was awarded his office as scrivan (accountant) at the Raxon nuove, the central accounting office of the state, in vite ut in parte, which meant that he was allowed to pass the position on to his descendants after his death.35 Located at the Rialto, the Raxon nuove was one of the government’s most important accounting organs.36 By 1517 Zio had introduced his nipote, Andrea Odoni, into service as his assistant (cogitor) at the Raxon nuove, although not without some calamity. As Sanudo reported, Odoni was accused in that year of breaking open the safe at the office and of taking one of the account books home with him on the day “when there was the fire at the Rialto” (presumably the great conflagration that occurred several years before, on January 10, 1514).37 However, at a hearing on February 16, 1518, Odoni was defended by the lawyer Zuan Antonio Venier, a noblemen and an art collector whose house Michiel also visited, and was ultimately acquitted.38 It may have been that Odoni was doing nothing more than trying to save money and account books from the fire. As Sanudo noted in his account of the fateful night: “Many well-regarded patricians were there, busying themselves with emptying the offices and saving the books, especially salvaging the money that was in the office of the governors of the fisc.”39 He also remarked that “A number of foreigners rushed there, as did others who showed up to loot once they heard that there was a fire at the Rialto, which is the most important and richest spot in Venice.”40 Perhaps in this time of disaster, Odoni was perceived more as a foreigner than as a nobleman, leading to the accusation.

37

Zio not only introduced Odoni into a civil service career, but he also inducted the immigrant’s son into the other cittadino power base, the Scuole Grandi. Francesco, like his father Benetto before him, was elected several times to offices in the Scuola Grande di Santa Maria della Carità.41 Andrea followed an identical itinerary of offices when he joined the scuola, presumably at the behest of his uncle, in 1513 at the age of twenty-five. Andrea is the first member of the Odoni family to be mentioned in scuola records.42 Both Francesco Zio and Andrea held offices in the scuola when they were in their twenties and thirties. The responsibility then passed to younger members of the family, Andrea’s two surviving younger brothers.43 In some ways, the scuola functioned as an extended family.44 The Odoni had familial ties to several Carità members. Not only did Andrea and his brothers follow their uncle into the scuola, but their cousin Gerolamo Alberto and their brother-inlaw Bartolomeo Bozza were also members. Marriages between families within the same scuola were common.45 Through Zio’s connection to the scuola, Odoni was able to make alliances and connections that would otherwise have been less accessible to him. Like the other Scuole Grandi, the Scuola della Carità was an important corporate patron of art and architecture. During the time Andrea and his brother were members, Titian painted the twenty-five-foot-long Presentation of the Virgin for the sala dell’albergo between 1534 and 1538. As was the practice for such scuole narrative pictures, portraits of brothers of the Scuola were included, at least eight of them vividly painted by Titian (Fig. 11). Dressed in their official togas, none resembles Odoni, although it is possible that one of his brothers or another relative or close associate is depicted. Certainly, Andrea would have known the men Titian represented.46 Other members of the Scuola were also collectors and patrons of art. Andrea de’ Franceschi, elected Grand Chancellor of the Republic in

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SECOND - GENERATION VENETIAN

Fig. 11 Titian, detail of Presentation of the Virgin, 1534–38, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice. Photo: Scala/Ministero per i Beni e le Attività culturali/Art Resource, NY.

1529, was a member of the Scuola by 1515. One of the most important cittadini of the time, his portrait was painted by Titian and he was a collector of antique medals and sculpture (see Fig. 106).47 Another member of the Scuola was Jacomo della Vedova, son of Gasparo. The della Vedova family was very wealthy, and in 1523 Gasparo was Doge Gritti’s choice for Grand Chancellor.48 They also owned an art collection.49 While it is tempting to imagine that Odoni, along with these other men, may have had some hand in artistic commissions at the Scuola, no records to that effect survive. He was not a member of the banca at the time Titian was engaged to paint his famous Presentation of the

Virgin. The Odoni family did, however, own a representation of the same subject, a “gilt wood relief with the presentation of the Madonna,” which might have been an expression of their allegiance to the Scuola.50 Zio’s positions as gastaldo at the convent of the Vergini, scrivan at the Raxon nuove, and degano at the Scuola Grande di Santa Maria della Carità all reveal that he came from an established cittadino family that was well-connected to major Venetian institutions. He also earned a respectable income from these endeavors. His salary as scrivan was 200 ducats a year at the time of his death, one of the highest paid positions of this type.51 He was paid an additional sixty ducats annually for his

ODONI AT THE DAZIO DEL VIN

work at the convent.52 And he earned income from his landholdings. In 1514, the year he submitted his decima (tax return), he made a little over forty-seven ducats annually in rents.53 It is also likely that he had additional income through other investments or mercantile engagements.54 While we do not know his exact net worth, there is nothing to indicate that he was extraordinarily wealthy. Nor do we know anything specific about his education. The fact that he was gastaldo at such an important convent and was followed in this position by Michiel’s close friend Marsilio, suggests he had some humanist, as opposed to purely mercantile, education. That he valued education is evinced by his statement in his testament that he went to considerable expense to educate his illegitimate son Giacomo and asked his executors to continue to support him should he wish to further his studies.55 Zio was also a noted collector of art, antiquities, and naturalia. In this regard, as in others, he had a profound impact on the way Odoni comported himself in Venetian society. When Michiel returned to Venice from his sojourn in Rome and began compiling his notes about works of art in public and private collections in northern Italy, the first two collections he visited (in 1521) were those of Zio and Cardinal Domenico Grimani.56 The fact that Zio’s was one of the first collections Michiel detailed suggests its prominence; Grimani was the most eminent patrician collector of the time. The contents of the collection are known only from Michiel’s notes, as no inventory has been found. The collection was remarkable for its antique statuary and especially for its natural specimens, but Zio was also an adventurous patron of modern paintings, commissioning unusual religious narratives and hiring artists early in their careers. Zio was not simply following established trends; he was an active and innovative patron and collector.57 His fame as such was recorded by Francesco Sansovino in his guidebook to Venice published

39

in 1581. Describing Zio’s “beautiful tomb” in the church of Santa Maria delle Vergini, Sansovino noted “in his time he took great delight in sculpture and painting, conserving for a long time rare and exquisite examples of both these professions.”58 This must have been the stone tomb Zio asked his executors to build, elevated from the ground and bearing his name and coat of arms.59 Anne Markham Schulz has plausibly suggested that a sculpture of Christ as Man of Sorrows, Adored by Two Angels by Giammaria Mosca, now in the Casa Cardinal Piazza, Venice, was part of the monument.60 If so, it was probably commissioned by Andrea Odoni, perhaps together with Zio’s natural son, Giacomo, who wished to be buried beside his father.61 The inscription on the tomb commemorated the upstanding cittadino: “Francesco Lilio [Zio], son of Benedictis, procurator of the blessed Virgins, whose life was renowned for so many different praiseworthy virtues that it surpassed the exemplars of ancient probity.”62 The reference to ancient exemplars especially seems to connect to Zio’s interest in art and antiquities.

ODONI AT THE DAZIO DEL VIN

O

doni entered civil service as his uncle’s assistant at the Raxon nuove. Among the fiscal and auditing responsibilities of this office was oversight of the account books of the main customs and excise offices, including the Dazio del vin, the office that collected customs on the wine trade. Upon Zio’s death (1523), rather than taking his uncle’s position, as was his right, Andrea obtained the even more lucrative office of scrivan at the Dazio del vin, located on the busy Riva del Vin at the Rialto, which the Signoria intended to auction off for 4,000 ducats.63 In this period of Venetian history, to generate state income public offices were often sold for a payment of “100 [ducats] for every 10 which they receive in

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SECOND - GENERATION VENETIAN

stipend and net profits.”64 Most likely Odoni became scrivan by relinquishing his claim to his uncle’s position and paying the difference for the more profitable position at the Dazio. At 400 ducats a year, notary at Dazio del vin was among the highest paid public offices available to cittadini. As we have seen, Zio made only half this amount at the Raxon nuove, the same salary earned by the secretary to the Council of Ten. A typical chancellery secretary was paid 125 ducats.65 The high remuneration reflected the significance of the position. Sansovino noted that the revenue generated by the Dazio del vin “is of great importance, worthy of marvel, considering so much wine circulates through Venice.”66 Indeed, in 1469, the wine-taxing office produced an income of 77,000 ducats, the largest revenue item in the Venetian state budget aside from the Salt Office.67 (The scrivan of the Salt Office was also paid 400 ducats.)68 By the later sixteenth century, the wine tax had far surpassed the salt tax to become the single greatest source of income.69 Thus in 1523, at the age of thirty-five, four years before he was portrayed by Lotto, Andrea was entrusted with overseeing the administration of an extremely important, powerful, and growing financial organ of the state. In short, he was one of the best paid and most powerful administrators of the Venetian state economy. The prominence and significance of Odoni’s position in the civil service has never been fully recognized before. As the economic historian Ugo Tucci points out in his study of the wine market in Venice, the city was “the most important Italian center of wine consumption.”70 In addition to this, it was also, as for so many goods and products, a nodal point for international trade. Customs were levied in the city not only on the wine consumed, but on any wine that passed through on its way to a market elsewhere. And it came to the city from all directions with different tariffs depending on its provenance: by sea from the various coasts and islands of the

Adriatic and Aegean and by river from the Venetian terraferma and other parts of Italy.71 From there it passed on to northern Europe and England. Like other customs revenues, the tax on wine was farmed out as an investment to speculators, a system of raising taxes that was common in early modern Europe. Auctions were held at which contractors bid for estimates of two-thirds of the overall wine tax that would be collected that year (one-third was reserved for direct state taxation). If the actual amount the contractors collected exceeded the estimate, they kept the profit, and if it did not meet the bid, they suffered the loss. This system provided the state a guaranteed income, while also ensuring some oversight of the “tax farmers” or contractors whose accounts were reviewed by the Raxon nuove.72 Although Odoni earned one of the highest salaries available to citizen civil servants in his position as scrivan, he was apparently not satisfied at that. After nine years on the job, he partnered with the noblemen Piero Orio to make a successful bid to collect the tax on wine in 1532. According to Sanudo, Orio was the “principal” while Odoni was supposed to “attend to the estimates,” suggesting that Orio may have provided financing while Odoni handled the more practical matters.73 The profitable outcome of the partnership was commemorated on a marble plaque near the Riva del Vin. Although the plaque no longer survives, it was transcribed in 1716 as part of the application process for original citizenship undertaken by one of Odoni’s descendants (Fig. 12).74 It recorded the large sums they earned. In 1532 they contracted for 87,010 ducats and made a profit of 12,000 ducats. Awarded the task again in 1533 they promised considerably more, 104,010 ducats, but still made a profit of 7,200 ducats. And in 1534, contracting for 103,010 ducats, they earned 5,200. The inscription continues: In past seasons the annual estimated tax revenue on wines was between 60,000 and 80,000 and once in 1531 it was not more than 96,000, and by the

ODONI AT THE DAZIO DEL VIN

Fig. 12 Copy of the Odoni/Orio inscription from the Dazio del vin, Avogaria di Comun, Cittadinanze Originarie, b. 404, c. 92, p. 9, Archivio di Stato, Venice. Su concessione del Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali e per il turismo – Archivio di Stato di Venezia, n. 9/2020.

industry, faithfulness, and diligence of Piero Orio and Andrea Odoni, it reached that sum noted above. O future tax collectors [conduttori] in this divine Republic remember this amplitude! The shareholders [caratadori/caractatores] set up this monument. Their most grateful colleagues.75

In fact, the totals raised by Orio and Odoni were notably higher than in previous years (which in the sixteenth century averaged little more than 71,000 ducats), probably due to the increased prosperity in Venice after the Peace of Bologna, but perhaps also to the “industry” of Orio and Odoni.76 This is the reason the plaque was erected.77

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It is unclear how much longer Orio and Odoni continued to perform this function, since the chief source of information about the auctions is Sanudo, whose diaries stop in 1533. Orio and Odoni are listed as conduttori in 1536 in a document preserved in the archives of the Dazio. These documents also reveal that the Odoni family became indelibly connected to the Dazio. Andrea’s brothers, Gerolamo and Alvise, followed in his footsteps, just as they had followed him into positions at the Scuola Grande di Santa Maria della Carità.78 The Odoni family seems to have cornered the market for collecting the wine tax. In this way, as in others, Andrea functioned as the founding member of his family, establishing its power base and reputation. While the association with this important taxing office afforded the family wealth and prominence, it may also have had a negative side. Sanudo suggested that Andrea’s partner Orio, and therefore by association Odoni himself, was untrustworthy. Lamenting the team’s reappointment in 1533, he referred to Orio as a person of bad repute and accused him of cruelty.79 Odoni’s connection to the patrician Piero Orio was long-standing. In 1517, when he was accused of stealing at the time of the Rialto fire, Orio came to his defense.80 And in the main room of his house (the portego), Odoni displayed a banner (banderuola), probably of the sort used in public ceremonies and processions, decorated with the Odoni and Orio arms.81 Certainly the two men must have been closely associated by the public. Their alliance is typical of the kind of close business partnerships that developed between patricians and cittadini discussed in Chapter 1. Sanudo was in a good position to know about Orio and Odoni because his family owned a tavern, whose interests he represented “to the government when higher taxes were being levied on wine sales.”82 While it is possible that his comments were colored by self-interest, this is

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the only instance I found in all his reporting about the appointment of the conduttori where he actively complained about the incumbent. Nonetheless, Orio and Odoni were following in what was probably a long line of shady behavior, as there is considerable evidence of corruption at the Dazio. We have already seen that Francesco Zio was rewarded for catching fraud at the Dazio del vin in 1513.83 In 1516, a certain Marco Michiel, son of Andrea, was stripped of his office at the Dazio “for having made some discounts to some gentlemen against the rules of the Council of Ten.”84 The following year, Zuan della Vedova, Odoni’s predecessor as scrivan, was charged with embezzlement but allowed to keep the office after paying 200 ducats.85 “Fixing the distribution of the Dazi in advance by intimidation during the auctions” was one of the numerous crimes attributed to the erstwhile nobleman Zuanne Memo in 1598.86 Reports and accusations swirling around the customs offices in general, including the Dazio del vin, help to explain why the nobleman Gabriele Vendramin (1484–1552), in his will of 1547, specifically warned his nephews, about whose moral welfare he worried considerably, to avoid the taxing offices, saying that they were ugly and dangerous things (“son cosse brute et pericholoxe”).87 Vendramin was expressing a general disdain for involvement in these auctions, however handsome an investment they could be.88 Even when functionaries were not overtly corrupt, the entire system of tax farming lined the pockets of the tax collectors at the expense of the tax-paying public.89 Even in the best of circumstances, the men who derived profit from collecting the state’s most remunerative tax were probably seen in a somewhat unfavorable light by the general population. It is worth considering whether Odoni’s scrupulous attention to his house and collection was a way to counter the unfavorable view of his contemporaries. He

would certainly not be the last wealthy businessman to launder his reputation through the activity of collecting.

WEALTH

I

n addition to his salary and the profit from tax farming, Odoni likely derived other income from his post. Even as scrivan, he would have received fees for services.90 Economic historian Tucci describes a customs officer al Purgo (where cloth was washed and sealed), whose stipend was 200 ducats annually, but who supposedly had the opportunity through his position to “help himself” to another 40,000 more a year. While this was an exaggeration, it conveys the degree to which the official salary was only a part of what made such positions attractive.91 Sanudo was under the impression that even if a conduttore did not meet his estimate, he could still make money.92 Odoni was also probably not just an impartial officer but actively involved in the wine trade, since cittadini were often engaged in commerce related to their bureaucratic offices. In the case of the accountant Tullio Fabri, Tucci notes, “we see him carrying on an intense commercial activity which was so closely bound up with his public office that it would be difficult to establish which of the two was his principal occupation.”93 A document from later in the century, the provanze to determine the social stature of Aldo Manuzio, Jr. (Paolo Manuzio and Caterina Odoni’s son) before he could be admitted to the Order of the Knights of San Stefano, states that all his grandparents’ families “were engaged and engaged others in wholesale business, as do the majority of noblemen.”94 Like most merchants at the time, he would not have limited himself to only one type of commodity. In his decima, Odoni mentions one other moneymaking enterprise – a butcher stall at the

WEALTH

Rialto.95 And the inventory taken after Andrea’s brother Alvise’s death suggests the family was also involved in the cloth trade.96 If Andrea was a merchant, he was a wholesaler, not a retailer, for the latter was considered simply a trade, while the former was a respectable undertaking for men of cittadino status.97 In general, it is difficult to determine the net worth of Venetians in this period, especially cittadini.98 Dowry prices are one means by which historians can evaluate relative wealth, but unfortunately none of the marriage contracts for Andrea or his siblings is preserved in the archives of the Avogaria di Comun. Andrea did marry, but late in life, and he had no children. He was at least forty-five, and probably older, when he wed Isabetta Tagliapietra, née de Monte. Isabetta was the widow of Alvise Tagliapietra, son of Victorio, who left his entire estate to her when he died in October or November 1527.99 Although she appointed Odoni as an executor and beneficiary in the wills she wrote after the death of her first husband, Isabetta certainly did not marry him until after July 1533, and perhaps not until 1538.100 Isabetta’s inheritance from her first husband included landholdings in the village of Marcugiago (vicariate of Mirano), which were part of her dowry in her second marriage to Odoni.101 Isabetta’s property, augmented by purchases made by Andrea himself, eventually resulted in a feudal investiture for the Odoni family.102 However, it seems unlikely that Andrea entered this late and childless marriage primarily for financial gain: he was already Isabetta’s beneficiary, and if their respective inventories are any indication, Odoni was considerably wealthier than her first husband.103 Andrea’s brother, Gerolamo, married a woman named Helena Valier, who may have been related to a noble family. Valier was a noble family name, but there were also cittadini with the same surname.104 In Aldo Manuzio, Jr.’s provanze,

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Paolo Ramusio (1532–1600), a writer and prominent cittadino who knew the family well, testified in 1585 that “the said Mister Gerolamo was married to a woman of the house of Valier, nobles of this city, who was related to (that is, she was the sister of the wife of) the excellent Mister Lunardo da Pesaro, a principal senator of this Republic.”105 Another witness, however, the printer Domenico Guerra, also a close acquaintance, explicitly noted “I knew this Madonna Helena, who was said to be the daughter of a man of the Ca’ Valier, citizen of this city, whom I did not know.”106 This contradiction is typical of the slippage of terminology, and I believe even at times of conception, between “citizen” and “noble” discussed in Chapter 1.107 There is no evidence in either Helena’s own testaments or in other Odoni family papers that she was a noblewoman.108 It was somewhat unusual for noblewomen to marry nonnobles; the fact that Ramusio believed that his friend Aldo’s grandmother was a patrician in a strange way demonstrates the stature that the Odoni family had achieved within Andrea’s generation. Marriages contracted in the next generation are better documented. While Andrea and Isabetta had no children, two of his brothers, Alvise and Gerolamo, had daughters who married. Alvise provided dowries of 2,000 ducats to each of his three female offspring, Cornelia, Marieta, and the pointedly named Odona.109 Gerolamo’s daughter Loredana fared less well, receiving only 1,000 ducats.110 Significantly, all of Andrea’s nieces had dowries well below the legal limit established at the time: 4,000 in 1535, augmented to 5,000 in 1551, and to 6,000 in 1575. The dowry inflation of the sixteenth century seems to have applied more to patrician marriages than to those of cittadini.111 The Odoni dowries fit comfortably in an average range for registered nonnoble families at midcentury. Dowries below 1,000 ducats for cittadini marriages did not even have to be recorded at the

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Avogaria di Comun, suggesting this was a minimal standard for a certain social level,112 while amounts higher than 2,000 were relatively rare.113 However much wealth Andrea and his brothers may have reaped from their offices at the Dazio and other business activities, the dowries they provided for their female kin indicate that the family adhered to the values of mainstream, well-to-do citizenship. Other than Gerolamo’s possible marriage to a noblewoman, or near noblewoman, there are no other indications that the family used extraordinary wealth in order to marry into the patriciate, nor do they seem to have been interested in emulating the inflating dowry prices of the nobility.114 Another possible measurement of wealth was land ownership, which was recorded in the archives of the decime (tenths), taxes levied at irregular intervals on properties and rents. The decima was applied to “all the annual income that Venetian citizens [noble as well as nonnoble] receive from estates, mills, fields, houses, rent charges, and other properties and assets,” as well as “how much each house in owner occupation [domus a stacio] would yield if it were rented out.”115 It therefore provides information about the relative value of Odoni’s house, in the contrada of Santa Croce, which he claimed in his decima of 1538 was worth twenty-five ducats in rent. This suggests it was not particularly large or well-located.116 According to Sanudo, houses on the Grand Canal rented for approximately 100–120 ducats a year.117 In his decima, Andrea also declared that his butcher stall at the Rialto generated twenty-five ducats in income and that four little houses in the neighboring contrada of San Polo, which he inherited from his Uncle Zio, rented out for a total of thirty-five ducats.118 In 1540, Odoni filed a supplement to his decima, something which was usually done after the purchase of new property, in which he declared approximately three and a half fields in

Tresiegole in the vicariate of Oriago and twelve and a half fields in Marcugiago in the vicariate of Mirano.119 From his properties on the terraferma, Andrea made a little over fourteen ducats, making his total annual taxable income on land toward the end of his life approximately 100 ducats. While this is twice what Zio earned from his landholdings, it is still a modest sum, certainly not his major source of income. Thus, both in terms of salary and land ownership, Odoni’s wealth was greater than his uncle’s, but there is nothing definitive in official records to suggest that he was extremely well-to-do. It also suggests that what wealth he had did not go into dowries or land investments. Instead it seems to have gone to crafting his collection and ornamenting his relatively modest home. A final indication of the wealth of the Odoni family comes once again from Aldo Jr.’s provanze, which provides information about the families of Aldo’s four grandparents – the Manuzio, the Torresani, the Valier, and the Odoni. In the testimonies, the Odoni appear to be the richest of the four families. Although it was determined that all four families were Venetian citizens who “lived and live like gentlemen”120 (including references to the fact that they wore togas),121 only Gerolamo Odoni is singled out as “honoratissimo et ricchissimo cittadino” by one witness, the actor Tiberio Armano.122 Ramusio also stated, “I know that this Odoni family is most honored [onoratissima] in Venice.”123 Nicolò Manassi, the manager of the Aldine Press, was the most informative, declaring “from everything that I have understood and from my practical experience with these families, especially with the Manuzio and Odoni and Torregiani, I always understood that they lived honorably, indeed were well known for their wealth, especially the casa Odoni, which used to have [soleva haver] one of the most beautiful studij in Italy.”124 Here one finds the elision between the Odoni house as residence and the

EDUCATION

Odoni house as family, their wealth connected to their famous collection. One could not have a more transparent statement of the prestige the collection afforded the family, even after its dispersal had begun.

EDUCATION

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iven Odoni’s interest in art and antiquities, not to mention naturalia, one might expect he had a certain level of education, and perhaps some humanist training.125 Although Zio may have had this sort of education, and could at least write Latin, there is little to suggest the same for Odoni. Most striking in this regard is the relative lack of books in his household. Only two books are listed by name in the inventory taken in 1555 after the death of Andrea’s brother Alvise. The first was a popular world history by the Bergamasque Fra Giacomo Filippo Foresti (1434–1520), Supplementum Chronicarum, covered in carton rather than bound in leather. An easily accessible, well-known text, it was published in Venice numerous times in both Latin and Italian editions in the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. After 1486 it was published with significant woodcut illustrations, and perhaps the Odoni owned such a copy. In recounting world history from Creation to his own times, Foresti provides some information about classical history and mythology, but it is far from a humanist text. One might consider it the equivalent of owning an encyclopedia.126 The second text, “a book of medicine by Master Din da Fiorenza,” must have been one of several commentaries written by the Florentine physician Dino del Garbo (d. 1327), editions of which were also published in Venice in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century.127 In addition to these two books, which are simply mentioned among the household papers, there were

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also “seven books of different types, covered in leather” in the mezzado, a mezzanine room used as a business office or study.128 There were also two books of hours in the “studio,” one of which could be the object Odoni has before him on the table in his portrait.129 Although the inventory was taken ten years after Andrea’s death, making it possible that books left the house in the interim, much, if not all, of the art collection remained intact.130 There is no reason to think books would have had a different fate. Andrea makes no mention of books, or works of art for that matter, in his very short, indeed incomplete, testament. The meager number of books present in the Odoni house may be compared to the possessions of the patrician collector Gabriele Vendramin, whose inventory of his studiolo indicates that in this room alone he kept at least thirty-eight books. Along with a few manuscripts were printed books, including literature, grammar, and history.131 Although Vendramin was a nobleman, he was also a merchant, as Odoni seems to have been.132 One can also compare Odoni to Nicolò Aurelio (1464– 1531), another cittadino patron of art. Aurelio was a Chancellery employee who became Grand Chancellor and commissioned Titian’s famous Sacred and Profane Love.133 In his will, Aurelio, rather impoverished at the end of his life, recommended that his son turn to study “so that he not fall from his [condition] and that he make himself a worthy man, having a great many books, as he will find at home.”134 Another cittadino, Francesco della Vedova, whose father Gasparo was an important Chancellery employee once nominated for the chancellorship, owned thirtythree “printed books large and small, some ancient works.”135 Odoni’s very modest ownership of books does not necessarily mean that he was uneducated, but it surely suggests that he was not a scholar or a “humanist.”136 Some members of the Odoni family did, however,

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marry into families with more intellectual occupations. It is possible that Andrea’s activities as a collector, as well as those of his uncle Zio, provided the family with connections to these circles. Andrea’s brother Alvise married Giulia Fabiani, the granddaughter of the Paduan physician, Jacomo Fabiani.137 And Caterina, the daughter of Andrea’s other brother, Gerolamo, married the publisher and writer Paolo Manuzio.138 Her brother, Rinaldo, a prelate, was probably the most intellectual member of the family to bear the Odoni name. His short book, Discorso per via peripatetica, ove si dimostra, se l’anima, secondo Aristotele, è mortale, o immortale, based on an examination of Greek and Roman writers on the subject, was published by the Aldine press (run by his brotherin-law) in 1557.139 If Andrea passed on the interest he had inherited in collecting from his uncle Zio to any of his relatives, it was to his nephew Rinaldo, who is mentioned in several sources as a collector of ancient coins.140

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ndrea died, apparently quite suddenly, on March 21, 1545. That day, finding himself “healthy of mind, sentiment and intellect although infirm of body and lying in bed,” he called the notary Vettor Giordano to his house to make a will, which is preserved in the notary’s records but was left unfinished, as though the testator had died while dictating it.141 As one of the only documents we have that is ostensibly in some way autobiographical, it is disappointing. Perhaps because it was composed in haste, compared to most contemporary testaments, it lacks either religious sentiment or charitable donations (other than the purely formulaic “l’anima mia a Dio recomando”) or any expression of particular attachment to either people or things. He appointed his brothers, Alvise and Gerolamo,

along with a certain “Messer Donato Rallo who lives in my house,” as executors of his estate.142 He left his wife Isabetta the land in Mirano (both that from her dowry and his additional purchases) and the butcher’s stall at the Rialto, on the condition that she leave them, along with “the rest of the things in our house” to his nephews, the sons of Gerolamo and Alvise, after her death. He also left small legacies to his servants, giving us some sense of his household: ten ducats to Ortolan (“fante di casa”), five ducats to Michiel (“fante”), four ducats to Bertolin (“fante”), and to signor Thomaso Nanin “who should stay in the house and will have one payment of 30 ducats.” Other than telling us that Odoni had at least three servants and that at least two other men lived in his house (Messer Donato Rallo and Signor Thomaso Nanin), the will conveys little of his character and lifestyle. It does not suggest a particularly devout or sentimental man, although again this may be due to the circumstances in which the will was drawn up. The following day, March 22, his body was carried from the church of Santa Croce (now demolished, but previously on the site of what is now the Giardino Papadopoli) to that of Santa Maria Maggiore, where it was interred (Fig. 13). An uncommonly large crowd of scuola members – 309 – attended the funeral. More typically, members had 100 mourners or fewer. The high number of attendees was probably in large part due to the alms those who attended the funeral could expect to receive from an estate like Odoni’s.143 Although Odoni never rose to the highest position in his scuola, that of Guardian Grande, his large funeral cortege indicates his prominence and status in the city, whether elicited by good will or by financial incentive. In death, as in life, Andrea was the founding figure of the family. His burial established the family tomb in Santa Maria Maggiore. Both of his brothers were later interred there. Gerolamo’s “noble” wife Helena Valier changed her final will

DEATH AND TOMB

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Fig. 13 Lodovico Ughi, detail of Map of Venice, 2nd ed., 1747. Indicated are Odoni’s house, the Church of Santa Croce where his body was taken, and the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore where he was ultimately interred.

asking to be entombed there instead of in Santa Maria delle Vergini, San Francesco dalla Vigna, or Santa Justina, as she requested in previous wills.144 Subsequent generations followed suit. Gerolamo’s grandson, also named Gerolamo (son of Carlo), wrote in his testament of 1582 that he wished to be buried in the “family tomb,” noting that “if the altarpiece on our altar in Santa Maria Maggiore is not made in my lifetime, I want it to be done immediately after my death.”145 While an eighteenth-century descendant would still refer to “the venerated altar of the most holy crucifix, which belongs to my family,”146 there is no indication that Gerolamo’s wish was ever fulfilled. Since Andrea did not stipulate in his will where he was to be buried, it is not clear if he or his

brothers chose Santa Maria Maggiore. Certainly, the church was situated fairly near the Casa Odoni, but there were other reasons why it may have been attractive. Located in a remote, relatively uninteresting corner of Venice, closed to the public for centuries while it was used as a military base, a tobacco warehouse, and now part of a prison complex, the church of Santa Maria Maggiore has been completely depleted of its interior furnishings and all but forgotten.147 But it was once the public church that formed part of a large Franciscan convent, founded at the turn of the sixteenth century. The only part of the complex to survive is the church itself, which was built in a modern (i.e., classicizing), if somewhat archaic style. As the architectural historian Manfredo Tafuri demonstrated in

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the only monographic study of the monument, it was still incomplete in 1532, and was therefore under construction during Odoni’s adult life.148 It seems appropriate that he or his brothers would have chosen this nearby, relatively “modern” church (by Venetian standards) as a final resting place.149 But in addition to this, although the church was located in a poor and obscure neighborhood, it nonetheless attracted the patronage of wealthy and notable Venetians, patricians and cittadini alike. Particularly prominent was the patrician Alvise Malipiero, son of Perazo, who gave money first for the building of the campanile (1526–28), then in 1533 for the completion of the church and construction of his tomb and family chapel. In exchange for this benevolent act, Malipiero stipulated that no one be allowed to construct altars or tombs in the church without his permission or that of his descendants, in effect making himself, as Tafuri puts it, “the absolute proprietor of the building, ad infinitum.”150 In order to have Andrea interred there in 1545, the Odoni would have had to acquire permission from the Malipiero family. According to Tafuri, the Malipiero belonged to the more oligarchically inclined circles of the patriciate, whose political and economic interests were allied with the Holy See. The Odoni family was therefore considered acceptable by this elite circle of “papalisti” patricians.151 Perhaps due to the elitism of the church, over the course of the sixteenth century Santa Maria Maggiore became an important repository of art, leading Anton Maria Zanetti II in the eighteenth century to call it “a perfect gallery of the painters of the Venetian school.”152 According to Francesco Sansovino’s sixteenth-century guidebook, the church was most famous for Titian’s St. John the Baptist in the Desert (ca. 1540, now in the Accademia),153 but there were also pictures by Giambattista Cima, Giovanni Bellini, Jacopo Palma il Vecchio, Paris Bordone, and Paolo Veronese (who painted the high altarpiece, also

now in the Accademia), to name only the most prominent artists. While some works were commissioned for altars, others were donations from patrons’ palaces to the church.154 Along with notable patrician families buried in the building, there were also other citizens with particular interests in art who found it a suitable site for memorial. One of the most significant legacies was made by the ducal secretary Simon Lando, who died without male heirs and left his considerable collection of paintings and other objects to the church.155 With so much competition (one begins to wonder where they found space to hang so many pictures), one can understand why Gerolamo Odoni, son of Carlo, felt it was so necessary to have an altarpiece made for his family altar. At the time Andrea was buried many of these works were not yet in place, but it must have been clear that the newly completed church was becoming an important destination for elite patronage, which is especially surprising given its remote location. Given the current condition of the church, needless to say, Odoni’s tomb no longer survives. Luckily however, the inscription that Alvise and Gerolamo placed “at the feet of the altar of the Crucifixion” to honor their brother’s memory was transcribed in 1716 by Andrea’s descendants as evidence of the antiquity of their family.156 ANDREAE VDONIO CIVI INSIGNI ANIMI SPLENDORE LIBERALITATE ATQUE ELEGANTIA ETIAM SVPRA CIVILEM FORTVNAM SPECTANDA HIERONYMVS ET ALOYSIVS FRATRES MOERENTES SIBI AC POSTERIS PP. VIXIT AN. LVII. OBIIT A. MDXLV.157

“For Andrea Odoni a citizen marked by the splendor of his mind, his liberality, and elegance that surpassed his civil status. Erected by his grieving brothers Hieronimo and Alvise for themselves and their posterity. He lived 57 years. Died in the year 1545.” Like the letter by Aretino

DEATH AND TOMB

and the portrait by Lotto, the inscription is intended to memorialize Odoni and his character, colored of course by the wishes of his brothers. For this reason, it warrants close analysis. First, it is notable that, like Andrea’s testament, it lacks religious sentiment. Instead the epitaph above all expresses his supposed desire to “surpass his civil status.” Given what we know about the social context of the church patronage, one might even read into it a slightly assertive note, as if to say that despite his “civil” status, he deserved to be buried, to take his rightful place in the afterlife, alongside the Malipieros, Mocenigos, and Giustinians, all well-known patrician clans. But what is even more striking is how Odoni’s family made a claim to that status: Andrea surpassed his citizen status because of “the splendor of his mind, his liberality, and elegance.” All three words (splendor, liberality, and elegance) were part of the Renaissance discourse on the proper modes of spending, especially with regard to domestic activities and decoration. “Liberality” referred to generous spending, “dispensing money usefully, where, when and to whom it is needed,” in what might be termed secular charity.158 It could also include hospitality, entertaining, and patronage of various sorts, aiming for the perfect mean between avarice and prodigality. The word elegance can also be connected to monetary expense and display. Within an artistic or architectural context, it typically referred to restrained but adequate use of ornament. Perhaps the best example is Alberti’s recommendation that “in the private house modest materials should be used elegantly, and elegant materials modestly.”159 Michiel used it explicitly to refer to collectible art objects (or possibly a private palace) when he noted that Messer Michiel Contarini had inherited “le cose eleganti” (“the elegant things”) of Messer Pietro Contarini and Messer Francesco Zen.160 In the context of Odoni’s tomb inscription it could refer to his person, his way of presenting himself, and his manner of living.

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This brings us to perhaps the most significant term: splendor. The concept of “splendor” played an important rhetorical role in a new legitimation of worldly goods taking place in the Renaissance. While “magnificence” (notably not used in Odoni’s memorial) was thought to apply only to the grandest individuals who commissioned works on a large, public stage, according to the humanist Giovanni Pontano, writing in 1498, “splendour is primarily concerned with the ornament of the household, the care of the person and with furnishings, and in the display of different things” and was thus a virtue that could be pursued by a wider range of people.161 For the Florentine political philosopher Donato Giannotti, as discussed in the previous chapter, it was precisely the cittadini’s “acquisition” of splendor, through their exercise of honorable professions, that set them apart from the popolo.162 While the term “splendore” on Odoni’s tombstone was probably meant to recall his house and art collection, the word is used as an adjective to qualify the noun animo (soul or mind). Outer splendor is a sign of inner virtue. This was also Aretino’s gambit when he wrote that Odoni’s house was a reflection of “how clean and candid his mind is” and the collection was “a worthy and regal spectacle of the greatness of your generous and magnificent spirit.”163 As we have seen, contemporaries were inclined to refer to Cicero’s dictate that “a man’s dignity may be enhanced by the house he lives in, but not wholly secured by it; the owner should bring honour to his house, not the house to its owner.”164 Alberti, for example, warned that “he who wants to make his soul more splendid must certainly despise, hate, and abhor pleasures, as well as those enemies of the virtues, luxury and riches, and those plagues of the soul called honors, dignities and grandeur.”165 The tomb inscription signals Andrea’s distinguished manner of living, but quickly attests that it is a sign of the man’s character, not a virtue in and of itself.

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Especially in the context of its noble neighbors, Andrea’s tomb was a strong statement of family pride and aspiration; it even suggests a hint of chafing against, if not outright rejection of, caste distinctions. Proclaiming Andrea famous for his splendid mind, liberality, and elegance Alvise and Gerolamo both drew attention to Andrea’s nonnoble birth and claimed that he had surpassed it.

THE ODONI AFTER ANDREA

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fter his death, the casa da statio (family home) that earned Andrea his reputation for “liberality and elegance” passed to his brother Alvise. Alvise’s inheritance apparently included the contents of the house as well, since the inventory drawn up when Alvise died in 1555 includes nearly all the artworks mentioned by Michiel in 1532. Andrea’s other brother, Gerolamo, inherited the other properties – the four houses in San Polo, the butcher stall at the Rialto, and the land in Mirano and Oriago.166 According to Alvise’s testament, his sons Jacomo, Vielmo, and Renaldo were to inherit all his “beni mobeli et stabeli,” but exactly what happened to the house and artworks after his death is not clear.167 Certainly the house was already on the market by 1572, when Aldo Manuzio, Jr. and his new bride Francesca Giunti considered buying it. According to Aldo’s father Paolo, his uncle Rinaldo Odoni (son of Gerolamo) was behind the idea. This may have been an attempt to preserve (on the part of Rinaldo) and capitalize on (on the part of Aldo) the Odoni family reputation, which was closely associated with the house. But Paolo did not think the house was a good buy for both aesthetic and financial reasons, as discussed in the next chapter. Ultimately Aldo followed his father’s rather than his uncle’s advice and did not buy the house.168 The artworks were also apparently dispersed within a generation or two. As noted in the

Introduction, probably before 1623, Lotto’s portrait of Andrea was in the hands of the Flemish merchant Lucas van Uffelen, the names of both sitter and artist already forgotten, despite the fact that the painting is signed.169 Later inventories of Odoni’s descendants, compiled in 1692 and 1750 respectively, do list paintings, but none of them correspond with works in Andrea’s collection.170 While Gerolamo’s line died out with his grandson,171 the descendants of Alvise continued to live in Venice into the nineteenth century. Later descendants of the family, from the children of Jacomo’s brother, Guglielmo, included at least two doctors, Gerolamo (b. 1659) and his son Michiel (b. 1692). Gerolamo in particular was a famous and much sought-after physician, as well as an experimental natural philosopher.172 His father, another Guglielmo, was in the book business, a libraio at San Samuele.173 Perhaps he learned the trade from his relative Aldo Manuzio, Jr. Cicogna records several members of the family still living in Venice in the nineteenth century; in fact he visited the palace on the Rio del Gaffaro, still associated with the Odoni family although they had not lived there since the late sixteenth century, with his friend Gerolamo Odoni.174 But this tour will play a part in the following chapter. While Odoni’s descendants practiced a variety of professions, in general over time they gravitated toward the intellectual rather than financial elite. This additional investment in education may be tied to a decrease in wealth, the reason for the dispersal of the collection amassed by Francesco Zio and his “nipote” Andrea Odoni. Andrea was not only the paterfamilias of his generation, but he was also the primary founder of the Venetian branch of the family. When his eighteenth-century descendants applied to become cittadini originari they used Andrea to prove the antiquity and “nobility” of their family.175 It seems that Andrea Odoni was still something of a legend, at least to his kinfolk. ***

THE ODONI AFTER ANDREA

As demonstrated in the previous chapter, the cittadini class was varied and imprecisely defined in the early sixteenth century, the time when Andea was making a name for himself and his family in Venice. It is important to understand what kind of cittadino Andrea was and what that meant in the particular social and political environment of the time. On the one hand, through his “barba,” Andrea was a member of a wellestablished and respected cittadino family. Although there is no indication that Francesco Zio officially obtained cittadino originario status (probably because he did not find it necessary), it is very likely that the family had been there for some time, perhaps even since before the Serrata. Thus, on this side, Andrea belonged to that class of families who fashioned themselves citizens “not of the Council,” who were equal to those “of the Council.” On the other hand, Andrea’s surname, Odoni, his patriline, was decidedly not Venetian. He was the son of a wealthy immigrant from Milan. The family brought with it an already established prestige and standing. In the quote discussed in the previous chapter, Aretino suggested the special status foreigners could have in Venice: “not only equal to a cittadino, but on par with the gentleman.” Since Andrea’s Milanese father Rinaldo is almost absent from the historical record, he may have died young. In any case, it fell to Andrea to make his family’s name in their adopted city. In the chapters that follow, I will show that he did this with considerable vigor and inventiveness, but not necessarily by modeling himself on the behavior and practices of the local nobility. Indeed, his wealthy Lombard origins may have given him a certain sense of independence and difference that he promoted rather than squashed. While one might read the statement on his tomb inscription that he “surpassed his civil status” as an attempt to be like the nobility, one could also read it as chaffing against the arbitrary distinctions of political rank in Venice.

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Certainly, Andrea exploited the avenues to power and wealth available to cittadini, such as civil service and offices in the scuola. His Venetian connection through his uncle was key in this regard. He probably used his very important position in the Dazio del vin to increase the family’s already substantial resources, to the degree that he may even have earned an unsavory reputation. Whereas his uncle Zio was celebrated for saving the state money by ferreting out embezzlers, Odoni was the head of an office known for its shady dealings. Arguably, the most effective avenue to prestige enhancement to which Zio introduced Odoni was collecting, an activity that might also have helped him compensate for his loss of reputation through his work at the tax offices. As I have shown elsewhere, Zio was himself quite a notable collector. Odoni not only inherited objects from Zio, but he also seems to have understood the very powerful tool that investing in “cultural capital” could be, especially at this moment in Venetian history when the city was redefining itself as another kind of “cultural capital.” Indeed, the city was proclaiming itself a “new Rome” just when Aretino wrote that Odoni’s collection made him feel as though he was simultaneously in Venice and in Rome. But for Odoni, collecting was not just about owning the objects, it was about creating a realm and environment in his house, thus putting that “house” (both his home and his family lineage) on the map in his adopted city. Odoni did not promote himself or his family by marrying into the nobility or providing his nieces with large dowries. Nor did he make substantial investments in land. What is interesting, and is also revealed in the details of the tomb inscription, is that Odoni achieved his position in Venetian society through investment in his house, collection, and ultimately, in the very longue durée, in his portrait, which is what he is remembered for today. And this was despite the fact that he does not seem to have

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had a humanist education, and though he was surely wealthy, he was not among the wealthiest men of his day. He seems to fit perfectly with the attempt of cittadini in this period to redefine nobility as determined by family history, wealth, reputation, and above all manner of living rather than by membership in the Council or inscription in the Golden Book. As the witness Manussi noted in the provanze for Aldo Manuzio, Jr., the “Casa Odoni” was famous for “one of the most beautiful studij in Italy.” While this is surely an exaggeration, it nonetheless indicates the degree to which the prestige of the family was tied to that of the collection. It is no accident that we are left with an ample historical record regarding Odoni’s house and artworks, but with very little information about the man

himself. In his portrait, Odoni unequivocally sought to mark himself not as a merchant or government functionary, but as an antiquario, or more precisely, as Michiel put it, someone “who contemplates ancient marble fragments.” Andrea’s gambit seems to have worked in earning a name for himself and his immediate followers. However, in the long run, the family’s prominence did not last. Already in a generation or two, the house was no longer in their hands and the collection was being dispersed. Alessandro Ziliol, the author of Le due corone, seems to have had it right; rich families who were not “of the Council” had more difficulty maintaining wealth over time than those who had access to the “highest positions in their patria.”

Chapter 3

ODONI’S FAÇADE

I felt great grief . . . both for private reasons, because this house is a good friend of mine, and for public reasons, because it is the most beautiful house in Venice. Marin Sanudo, Diarii, August 16, 15321 Whoever wishes to see how clean and candid his spirit is should look at his face and his house, look at them, I say, and you will see as much serenity and beauty as one can desire in a house and in a face. Pietro Aretino, published letter to Andrea Odoni, dated August 30, 15382

T

H E TW O C OM ME N TS BY

Marin Sanudo and Pietro Aretino illustrate the role houses played as markers, indeed statements, of both family and individual identity in the dense urban fabric of Venice. Sanudo’s reaction to the conflagration of the famous Palazzo Cornaro on the Grand Canal in 1532 (a palace which, it should be 3 noted, was originally built by the cittadino Bartolomeo Malombra), reveals the deep association between “house” as family and “house” as abode. Comparing the fire to the burning of Troy, Sanudo found it a sad event “per privato,” 53

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because his family was allied with the Cornaro, as well as “per publico,” because the palace was an 4 ornament to the entire city. Like many of his contemporaries, Sanudo perceived that the house was the symbol of the family within the city – its spectacular end a loss to both clan and patria.5 In contrast, Aretino proposed that a house was a representation of an individual. Aretino engaged the double meaning of the Italian word fronte, which refers to the “forehead” as synecdoche for the face, as well as to the “front” of a building, or façade. Aretino’s letter to Odoni was the result of their mutual friendship with the painter Girolamo da Treviso, who had painted the fresco on the fronte of Odoni’s palace. The writer claimed that Odoni’s physiognomy, the façade of his house, and the house itself signified his “clean and candid” character: the casa was essentially a portrait of Odoni on public view.6 Sanudo’s and Aretino’s different choice of metaphor may be due to the circumstances in which they were writing, but perhaps the Venetian nobleman was more inclined to emphasize the idea of the casa as a symbol of family, whereas the Tuscan immigrant and self-made man focused on the house as a representation of individual character. For one, the house was a kind of “coat of arms,” for the other it was more akin to a “portrait.”7 One finds both analogies at play in a variety of Renaissance discourses, but undoubtedly the association between house and clan was particularly strong in sixteenth-century Venice. Palaces of the wealthy often housed multiple related nuclear families (typically on separate floors, called soleri), a practice derived from the fraterna business model. Both nobles and cittadini followed this custom, yet another example of the two groups’ shared habitus. Brothers and sometimes more distant male relatives who were involved in commerce together often lived in the same palace, which functioned as the headquarters of the enterprise. While this was the

ideal, in practice, it did not always work out in this manner.8 Nevertheless, families remained intent on preserving and maintaining what was called the casa da statio (roughly translated, “station house” or “seat house”), even if it was not to their liking, for whatever reasons, to live in it.9 Many Venetians included provisos in their testaments to ensure that the casa da statio not be sold, divided, and sometimes even altered in any way after their deaths.10 The topography of Venice could be understood as a giant collection of palaces, many of which were the known “headquarters” (if not necessarily the actual residences) of particular clans or branches of clans. Wealthy immigrants to the city learned this “map” and sought to mark their place on it by either building a casa da statio from the ground up or buying and renovating an existing house to serve as such. In his chronicle of cittadini families, Ziliol recorded the existence and location of a family’s casa da statio as an indication of stature.11 Not only ownership but also beautification was understood as a marker of citizenship.12 In his treatise on architecture, Leon Battista Alberti specifically noted that “we decorate our property as much to distinguish family and country as for any personal display (and who would deny this to be the responsibility of a good citizen).”13 The inscription the Venetian cittadino Giovanni Dario placed on his highly ornamented façade put his private house forward as a gift to the city: “URBIS GENIO IOHANNES DARIUS” (To the Genius of the City, Giovanni Dario [has dedicated this]).14 The house was Dario’s most lasting contribution to his patria, and the inscription he placed on it, as James S. Grubb has noted, was “an act of self-promotion never replicated by even the proudest of nobles.”15 Given the importance of houses as markers of family, citizenship, and individual identity for all Venetian clans of a certain stature, it is not surprising that Andrea Odoni invested in a casa da statio for himself and his descendants.16 In his tax

THE CASA DA STATIO

return (decima) of 1538 Andrea declared ownership of “the house in which I live” in the contrada of Santa Croce, but it is not clear how or when the property came into his possession.17 There is no evidence that his father Rinaldo owned property, and in 1517 Odoni was apparently residing with his uncle Francesco Zio on the opposite side of town, near the church of Santa Maria delle Vergini.18 By 1532, however, Odoni was definitely living in his own house on the Rio del Gaffaro when Michiel visited and described the art he saw there, and we can be fairly certain that it was around this time, 1531–32, that Odoni hired Girolamo da Treviso to paint the façade.19 In all likelihood Andrea himself either purchased an existing house or possibly built the house some time prior to 1531 and set about making it into what Giorgio Vasari would later term a “friend and refuge of virtuosi.”20 Just as he had established the name and reputation of the casa Odoni (i.e., the Odoni clan) in the city, as discussed in Chapter 2, he also created its physical manifestation in the form of the built “Casa” Odoni (i.e., the Odoni palace). This chapter introduces the exterior and interior structure of the house, focusing on its location, layout, and especially its colorful façade frescoes, replete with classical gods.

THE CASA DA STATIO

A

lthough the house that Odoni’s contemporaries – Aretino, Michiel, and Vasari among them – visited no longer stands, its original location may be determined from an address given by the nineteenth-century scholar, Emmanuele Antonio Cicogna.21 The nondescript residence now on the site (Fig. 14) may incorporate pieces of the earlier structure on the inside, but does not seem to preserve either the original exterior or the interior layout. The house was likely

55

destroyed or rebuilt beyond recognition sometime between 1829 and 1863 (probably before 1841).22 The location of the building within the city is significant. Near the present-day Piazzale Roma, it was decidedly on the periphery (Fig. 15). According to the Venetian Renaissance architect Vincenzo Scamozzi, lawyers, merchants, and bankers should live near the commercial center of the city, while nobles should have houses on major thoroughfares, but the houses of “private citizens and others who mostly live in ease and without cares, other than to manage their income and take care of their families, can be located in less frequented parts of the city . . . where moderately priced land makes it possible to lay out courtyards and small gardens for the family, and where the house looks out on a fine road.”23 The basic principle, he wrote, echoing a long history of such statements, was that “the location should match the social position of its owner.”24 The position of Odoni’s house suggests he respected the norms for someone of his station and did not draw attention to his casa through its location. One might contrast this for example with the cittadino Ludovico Talenti, whose family had immigrated from Florence in the fifteenth century. In 1527, around the same time Odoni was settling into his house, Talenti purchased a very prominent piece of property on the Grand Canal, and then commissioned a frescoed façade by Giovanni Antonio da Pordenone, resulting in one of the most remarked upon palaces in all Venice (Fig. 16).25 Odoni instead may have been thinking along the lines Scamozzi proposed: find a property that allows for a garden and a nice view out onto a pleasant street, or in this case, canal. Odoni’s façade faced onto the Rio del Gaffaro (now Rio di Malcanton), a major canal linking the upper part of the Grand Canal to the lower part past the Rialto Bridge (a shortcut around the large bulge created by the S-curve of the Grand Canal). Along the portion where Odoni

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Fig. 14 Dorsoduro 3537–38, Venice. Photo: author.

lived the canal is also flanked by two fondamente (walkways that run alongside Venetian canals), creating an unusually wide open and sunny space in the congestion of the city (Fig. 17). The peripheral situation also allowed for a substantial garden by Venetian standards. Jacopo de’ Barbari’s perspectival view of Venice in 1500 shows open space behind the houses on the Fondamenta del Gaffaro (Fig. 18). A property agreement of 1551 between the Odoni and their neighbors mentions gardens behind both houses, and the inventory of the Odoni residence reveals that they displayed fragmented statuary in theirs.26

The size of the house was moderate. The inventory, which presumably covered the entire structure, lists an entryway, courtyard and garden, three principal rooms, and six other more utilitarian spaces. In his decima, Odoni claimed that the house was worth twenty-five ducats in rent annually, which can be compared to Sanudo’s estimate of 100–120 ducats to rent a house on the Grand Canal, a disparity likely due to size as well as location.27 When Antonio Maria Zanetti II mentioned the house in the eighteenth century he referred to it as the “Casa Odoni,” although he often used the term “palazzo” for larger residences.28 Most revealing

THE CASA DA STATIO

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Fig. 15 Lodovico Ughi, Map of Venice, 2nd ed., 1747. With the location of the Casa Odoni indicated.

Fig. 16a Giovanni Antonio da Pordenone, Drawing for Façade Decoration for Palazzo Talenti-D’Anna, early sixteenth century, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Fig. 16b Palazzo TalentiD’Anna, Venice. Photo: Didier Descouens/CC BY-SA.

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Fig. 17 Rio di Malconton (formerly Rio del Gaffaro), Venice. Photo: author.

are the comments of the publisher Paolo Manuzio, responding to his son Aldo’s interest in purchasing his in-laws’ house in 1572: “this is what I have to say about the Odoni house, I don’t like it. There’s one room here and another room there, it doesn’t have a portico . . . how will you carve out an income from that house?”29 In a later letter he continued: “That house doesn’t have apartments for you and your library, that is two rooms conjoined, nor for your mother, and me, which would require two more rooms . . . I won’t speak of the kitchen where it is always night, and this is precisely where one needs light.” Paolo also objected that the house was “far away and most inconvenient,” and “the entire part that looks onto the garden has bad air because it is exposed to the air of the marsh.”30 Given these comments (perhaps exaggerated out of self-interest), it is amazing that the house came to be as famous as it did. But there must have been something appealing about it. In the early nineteenth

century, when Cicogna visited, it was owned by the literary figure Adriana Renier Zannini, granddaughter of the penultimate doge, Paolo Renier (1710–89), from whom she had inherited it.31

THE LAYOUT OF INTERIOR SPACE

W

hile it is possible to determine where the Casa Odoni stood, it is more difficult to picture its original ground plan. Paolo Manuzio’s comments about a less than ideal layout suggest that Odoni purchased an existing house and adapted it to his own purposes. In the “tour” that follows I draw on various primary sources that describe the house, my observations from a visit to the site, and my general knowledge of Venetian domestic space derived from the study of contemporary inventories, as well as secondary sources.

THE LAYOUT OF INTERIOR SPACE

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Fig. 18 Jacopo de’ Barbari, detail of Bird’s Eye View of Venice, 1500.

The most important primary source for this purpose is the inventory taken by the notary Francesco Colonna in 1555. For the most part, Colonna used subtitles to distinguish which objects were located in what rooms or spaces, including the garden.32 Less complete, but in some regards more detailed, are the notes that Michiel took after he visited in 1532. Remarkably Michiel also listed the objects in Odoni’s house by room. Of the many private houses Michiel visited, Odoni’s is the only one where he explicitly organized his notes in this manner.33 He may have done this because he was particularly struck not just by the objects themselves, but also by the way they had been put together in space, the gesamtkunstwerk of the whole. But Michiel

only recorded the rooms that were most important in terms of display and ornament – and these spaces are the focus of my discussion in later chapters. A comparison of his notes with Colonna’s inventory reveals that objects remained in the same spaces over the intervening twenty-three years with only a few exceptions.34 The parts of the house that Michiel did not pay attention to, such as the utilitarian rooms and the façade, are my chief concern in this chapter. A final key source concerning the layout is Cicogna’s account of his visit to the building in 1829, probably not long before it was irredeemably transformed, accompanied by his friend Girolamo Odoni (although the Odoni family had not lived there for generations).

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Passing through the front door, one entered the andedo (sometimes called an androne), a long and narrow ground floor entry hall characteristic of Venetian palaces. Typically the rooms that opened off from one or both sides of the andedo were used for storage (or perhaps to house servants) since in Venice the ground floor is often too damp for comfortable living.35 After traversing the usually dark andedo, the visitor emerged in the light of an open courtyard. At the end of the courtyard was a loggia, leading into the garden behind, as in the ground plan for a Venetian palace by Scamozzi from later in the century (Fig. 19). According to both the inventory and Michiel’s notes, this entire area – the andedo, courtyard, loggia, and garden – was filled with modern and antique statuary. This seems to have been the space referred to elsewhere in the inventory as the “antigaia,” and it is discussed in detail in Chapter 4. From the ground floor display area, a “beautiful staircase . . . [with] steps and a cordon of red marble, a work of the Cinquecento” led to the second floor or piano nobile.36 Halfway up the stairs was a door, which Michiel says was ornamented with a painting: “The Ceres in the door halfway up the stairs was by Jacopo Palma and is the one that Francesco Zio used to have in the door of his room [camera].”37 When Michiel saw the painting in Zio’s collection in 1521, he described it as “the painting of the nymph in the door of the room,” suggesting the subject was changed when Odoni adapted the work to its new location.38 Door paintings, sometimes referred to as sportelli, are known from surviving examples and archival records.39 Indeed, as we shall see in Chapter 6, Odoni had multiple door paintings in one of the principal bedrooms on the piano nobile. He seems to have had a particular penchant for them, apparently inherited from his uncle. Although scholars have attempted to identify the work with one of Palma’s reclining female

nudes, the description of the painting “in the door” suggests a vertical format.40 Recent technical studies support my earlier hypothesis that a Ceres (74.5 × 45.5 cm), attributed to Sebastiano del Piombo (Fig. 20), may be the work in question.41 The figure’s right hand originally lay behind her back, but was changed to its current position with the sprigs of grain (the element that identifies her as Ceres) added later.42 Although the painting is not by Palma, it is definitely Venetian and probably dates ca. 1510, around the time Zio began collecting.43 It may be one of the few objects from Odoni’s collection to come down to us, albeit in poor condition. The “Ceres” door most likely led into the mezzado, a room that Michiel did not describe, but was included in the inventory. As its name implies, a mezzado was a room on a mezzanine floor, typically used as a business office or study.44 The door’s position “a meza scala” would be appropriate for a mezzanine.45 The room contained seven bound but unnamed books, as well as a variety of silk and thread, perhaps pertaining to the Odoni family business in cloth. The furniture included a bed (beds were common in many rooms of a Renaissance household), a number of benches, six red chests with the Odoni coat of arms (three white rings on a red ground) (see Fig. 8), and two additional coffers also painted in red and white. A few works of art completed the decor: majolica vases positioned around the stringcourse (reme), three figurines, ten small gilt wooden heads, and a wood figure of Christ.46 The location of the room halfway up the staircase would have allowed Odoni’s business associates to meet him without passing into the living space on the piano nobile. The room may also have had windows and a balcony facing out onto the canal. The inventory records “four little heads of marble on the balconies of the mezzado,” a type of ornamentation one still finds on Venetian façades today (Fig. 21). The depiction

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Fig. 19 Vincenzo Scamozzi, Ideal Plan of a Venetian Palace, from L’idea della architettura universale, 1615. Photo: Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (82-B2019). orange–andedo blue–loggia green– courtyard

of Ceres, the goddess of grain and of the fecundity of summer, on the door to the mezzado is also connected to the subjects depicted on the façade of the house, as we shall see. The painting of Ceres created a focal point ascending the stairs and a resting spot at the landing where one might pause to examine the figure. From here, the stairway led to the first

floor proper, most likely emerging in that characteristically Venetian domestic space called the portego (also spelled portico) in Venetian dialect or the sala in Italian. Although Paolo Manuzio claimed the house had no portego, one is both listed in the inventory and mentioned by Michiel.47 My suspicion is that the space simply did not live up to the standard of the later

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Fig. 20 Sebastiano del Piombo, Ceres, ca. 1510, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. Photo: bpk/ Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen/Volker-H. Schneider/Art Resource, NY.

sixteenth-century architectural form of the portego, and it is possible, as I have suggested, that it was modified from an older building. The classic Venetian portego typically runs above the andedo, extending the length of the house from front to back to let in light and air from windows at both ends. The other living spaces, the camere (combined bedroom/sitting rooms), traditionally open off the portego, as in the idealized plan of a Venetian palace by Sebastiano Serlio (Fig. 22). In a more modest Venetian home, such as Odoni’s, the camere might only open off one side of the portego.48 The decoration of this key space is discussed in Chapter 5. Michiel noted works of art in three other rooms besides the portego on the piano nobile: a studiolo and two camere.49 One of these camere was referred to in the inventory as the “camera dalla scala,” suggesting it had some physical

relationship to the stairway, although it unclear what this was (again, this may relate to Paolo Manuzio’s complaint that the layout was not ideal). Like the mezzado, it had a balcony and may have faced onto the canal in front of the house.50 Michiel’s second camera is surely the room the notary called the “camera d’oro,” which opened directly off the portego.51 From the inventory, we can also determine that the room Michiel called the “studiolo de sopra” was attached to the “camera d’oro.” Colonna referred to “a study of a camera d’oro above the antiquarium.” After listing the objects in the studio, he then turned to the things “in the said room” (the camera d’oro).52 The fact that the notary indicates the room was “sopra dell’antigaia” suggests it overlooked either the garden or the courtyard where Odoni displayed his larger ancient and modern

THE LAYOUT OF INTERIOR SPACE

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Fig. 21 Heads as ornament on a Venetian balcony, Cannaregio, Venice. Photo: author.

statuary, and was thus located at the back of the house. A similar arrangement of a room with a studiolo in relation to the garden can be found in other inventories, presumably because this was the quieter end of the house, better suited for contemplative activities.53 The camere and studio are the subject of Chapter 6. The rest of the spaces in the house were not mentioned by Michiel, and for good reason. They contained far fewer, if any, works of art and seem to have been used either for storage, for more utilitarian purposes, or for servants. The room the notary described as “a new little room upstairs” may have been an addition since Michiel’s visit and it was possibly an attic-like space.54 It contained little furniture, only a bed and five white chests, but many objects, such as spalliere, carpets, blankets, clothing, various containers, and a few artworks, including a terracotta dog, a gilt wooden relief of the Presentation of the Virgin, and a canvas depicting Christ. Since a number of

the items were said to come from other rooms – the camera dalla scala, the camera scura, the mezzado, and the camera di famegi – and many are qualified as “old” or “used,” it may have been a storeroom.55 The location of three other rooms, the “camera d. Ser Martin,” the “camera scura,” and the “camera della massare,” is unclear.56 The “camera della massare,” the servants’ room, had two beds, two large chests, and not much else. Ser Martin may also have been an employee of some sort; his room was furnished very simply with a bedstead and four chests, the walls ornamented with old spalliere with coats of arms.57 Finally, the “camera scura” (“the dark room” – perhaps located on the ground floor) had a green bed and four red chests and was sometimes ornamented with old spalliere with the Odoni and Zio arms, but also contained twelve barrels. Perhaps it was a storage room as well as sleeping quarters.58 The only other space mentioned in the house is referred to as “where

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Fig. 22 Sebastiano Serlio, Floor Plan for a Venetian Palace, 1547–50, Codex Icon. 189, f. 52, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich.

one sifts and makes bread.” It too contained a bed. This may be the kitchen that Paolo Manuzio complained was too dark.59 From this overview, it must be concluded that Odoni’s casa da statio was not a very grand house nor was it in a grand neighborhood. What allowed the secondgeneration Venetian cittadino and son of an immigrant to draw the attention of his

contemporaries was the contents of the house and their disposition within it, as well the fresco he commissioned from Girolamo da Treviso to ornament the façade. He made a statement largely through the material culture of the home, and particularly the works of art he collected and commissioned, rather than through architectural design or conspicuous display of wealth.

THE FAÇADE

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Painted Façades

n examining the façade itself, three issues must be considered: Odoni’s decision to fresco the front, his choice of artist and style, and the invention of the iconography. Because the façade of a house was its most public feature, it bore the heaviest burden to satisfy measures of decorum. Above all, it was the façade that negotiated the house’s place in the city and thus metaphorically, and to some extent literally, the owner’s place in society.60 The façade was both the external shell of the private home and a part of the civic sphere, and it had to accommodate both roles suitably. The sensitivity of this site was particularly marked in Venice because the political ideology of the Venetian state, the so-called “myth of Venice,” held that civic harmony stemmed from (a form of) social parity, which, as discussed in Chapter 1, applied to cittadini and patricians in equal measure (at least in theory). In his treatise On the well-managed republic (begun 1497), Domenico Morosini’s provides an example of how these ideas could be applied to housing. As summarized by Margaret King, Morosini made the point that “just as the citizens are to be all of one mind in the ideal republic, the façades of all the buildings should so harmonize according to one grand plan.”61 In the following century, Francesco Sansovino noted the Venetian practice of referring to all homes as case (or ca’) rather than palazzi (a term reserved for the Doge’s Palace), which he claimed was done “out of modesty.”62 Façades thus were at least theoretically like the togas worn by Venetian patricians and cittadini; they were to cover rather than flaunt social distinctions. However, as Patricia Brown amply demonstrates in her study of the domestic sphere, “over the course of the sixteenth century, the myth of concord and unanimity was stretched very thin indeed.”63

Painted palace façades were once a flourishing public art form that reached its zenith in Venice, as well as elsewhere in Italy, in the sixteenth century. The practice of painting the intonaco (plaster) of buildings with decorative patterns and motifs began in the Gothic period, but at the end of the fifteenth century artists began to depict large-scale figures and scenes as well.64 An early example was represented by Gentile Bellini in the Venetian cityscape of his Miracle of the Cross at the Bridge of San Lorenzo painted ca. 1500 (Fig. 23). One can just make out larger than life-size figures painted in color between and above the windows on the front and side façades of one building on the left. The painter Giorgione played a key role in the development; in the first decade of the sixteenth century he painted the exteriors of several private homes with figurative scenes, including his own house. His most famous painted façade, fragments of which still survive in poor condition, was the Fondaco dei Tedeschi (begun 1508), the residence and trading center for German merchants in the city prominently located on the Grand Canal. He was joined there by Titian, who painted the side façade toward the Rialto Bridge. Although there are no detailed surviving illustrations of the whole, later prints indicate that the design combined fictive architecture with figures depicted in color, a combination that would be become common for Venetian façade frescoes (Fig. 24).65 Over the course of the sixteenth century, numerous painters active in the city contributed to transforming the canals of Venice into a large scale, outdoor picture gallery, including Palma Vecchio, Paris Bordone, Il Pordenone, Jacopo Tintoretto, Giuseppe Salviati, and Paolo Veronese.66 As David McTavish remarks, “Frescoes on the façades of buildings must have

I

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Fig. 23 Gentile Bellini, detail of Miracle of the Cross at the Bridge of San Lorenzo, ca. 1500, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice. Photo: Scala/Ministero per i Beni e le Attività culturali/Art Resource, NY.

been among the most conspicuous of the various pictorial arts favoured by Venetians . . . Once, almost every house in certain campi boasted an example.”67 For the most part, all that now remains are written descriptions (primarily by Giorgio Vasari, Carlo Ridolfi, and Marco Boschini), surviving drawings and prints related to commissions, and later efforts to record them for posterity, particularly the prints by the eighteenth-century scholar Anton Maria Zanetti II, such as the one illustrated here.68 The best preserved surviving example, the façade of Palazzo Barbarigo on the Grand Canal, painted ca. 1565–70 by Camillo Ballini (Fig. 25), provides a faded and fragmented sense of the façades’ former coloristic glory.69 Particularly well known and much admired was the front of the Palazzo Talenti (later D’Anna) by Pordenone, which was recorded in a drawing of the full façade (the palace itself, also on the Grand Canal, still survives) (see Fig. 16). Among the plethora of figures and subjects depicted were Mercury Appearing to Aeneas and Marcus Curtius Leaping into the Gulf, but some scenes are hard to identify for certain, and scholars have had difficulty deciphering the frescoes’ overall message.70 Although neither the Talenti nor the Odoni façade frescoes are documented, most scholars agree that the latter predates the former by several years.71 In Venice, the enthusiasm for painted figural scenes developed concurrently with dramatic changes in the look of strictly architectural façades. In the sixteenth century, architects abandoned the polychrome marble-clad style seen in the Palazzo Dario for an increasingly orthodox form of classicism based on Central Italian models. Mauro Codussi’s façade for the Palazzo Loredan, ca. 1502 (now Vendramin-Calergi) (Fig. 26) exemplifies this trend, which reached its culmination in the designs of Jacopo Sansovino, such as the Palazzo Corner (begun ca. 1542). In his justly famous study, Manfredo Tafuri connected this trend to the wealthiest

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Fig. 24 Anton Maria Zanetti II, after Giorgione, Seated Nude from the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, ca. 1508, illustration in Varie pitture a fresco de’ principali maestri veneziani (Venice, 1760), Seq. 23. Houghton Library, Harvard University.

faction of the Venetian patriciate, the so-called primi or papalisti families who enjoyed strong ties to the Papacy. Their “increasing taste for innovations,” intended as a “sign of ‘difference’,” deliberately violated the prevailing ethos of mediocritas.72 According to Tafuri, another faction of the patriciate remained more wedded to “traditional” values, commissioning more modest abodes, which at least on the exterior, promoted renovatio (renewal and updating of tradition) rather than novitas (novelty).73 Compelling as Tafuri’s analysis has been, he did not discuss palaces owned by cittadini, and more problematically, he ignored all forms of painted decoration. In fact, many of his examples of the more

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“modest style,” such at the Palazzo Zen in Cannaregio (Fig. 27), look particularly modest because they are now missing their frescoed decorations.74 Given the competition Tafuri describes, it is significant that Odoni’s façade was famous for its frescoes rather than its architectural design. If Odoni purchased an already standing structure the façade decoration might have been a way to update, regularize, and “classicize” – especially given the mythological subject matter – an older building. Certainly this was a common, if not exclusive, reason why frescoes were 75 commissioned. Although Tafuri is correct that in the mid to late sixteenth century the most architecturally extraordinary façades were commissioned by the wealthiest and best-connected noble families, further distinctions between façades commissioned by nobles and those commissioned by cittadini are difficult to discern.76 Painted façades had three primary qualities to recommend them to both social groups. First, fresco was less expensive than sculpture or architectural ornament in stone.77 Second, in part because of the lower cost, painted decoration could be completed in a more timely manner. Finally, figurative compositions rendered in paint were rhetorical – they could literally “tell stories” about or comment on the supposed qualities of the inhabitants/patrons.78 Sebastiano Serlio claimed to quote a “common saying”: “Praise the chisel, but use the brush; Painting is cheaper, and looks more plush.”79 As the head of an immigrant family, Odoni chose the option that allowed him to create a notable representation of himself and his family in an expeditious manner. Odoni may also have chosen fresco because it was considered less ostentatious, commensurate with the moderate size and peripheral location of his house and his nonnoble status. There is evidence to suggest that painted façades were perceived as a more modest alternative. When the Venetian government rebuilt the Fondaco dei

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Fig. 25 Camillo Ballini, frescoes on the façade of Palazzo Barbarigo, Venice, ca. 1565–70. Photo: author.

Tedeschi, it expressly forbid the use of either marble veneer or sculptural ornament on the façade, opting for the frescoes by Giorgione and Titian instead. The idea seems to have to been to limit both expense and presumption in the critical period leading up to the League of Cambrai.80 At the same time, however, painted façades were attention-grabbing, especially in Venice where they were usually painted in color rather than monochrome, color that would have been spectacularly reflected in the water of the canals. By following this trend, Odoni advertised his artistic discernment. In Ludovico Dolce’s Dialogo della pittura, intitolato l’Aretino (1557), the character named and fashioned after Aretino, exalting the art of painting in general, recommended this form of ornament: “the façades

[facciate] of houses and palaces give far greater pleasure to the eyes of other men when painted by the hand of a master of quality than they do with incrustations of white marble and porphyry and serpentine embellished with gold.”81 Painted façades thus could demonstrate the patron’s privileging of skillful art over mere rich material. While there was much about the Odoni house that was decorous in terms of size, location, and external ornament, at the same time the painted façade enabled him to put himself and his family on the artistic map of the city. A painted façade was an even more public form of patronage than commissioning an altarpiece in a church. It was directed at the entire population as well as visitors and it had a laudable civic purpose – to beautify Venice. Indeed painted façades, especially the Fondaco dei Tedeschi and the Palazzo Talenti-

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Fig. 26 Mauro Codussi, Palazzo Loredan Vendramin, Venice, begun ca. 1502. Photo: author.

d’Anna, were among the most praised works of art in the city.82 If Odoni’s goal was to draw attention to his house, himself, and his family, a frescoed façade was instrumental. And attention it did draw, so that even today, the painted figures long gone, we know much about its design from the admiring descriptions written by Vasari, Ridolfi, Marco Boschini, Zanetti, and others. Dolce’s comment suggests that a painted façade could be a statement of taste and discernment without committing the “sin” of material ostentation or flaunting wealth.

A New Style By the time Odoni commissioned his façade, Venetians could see figurative frescoes by

Giorgione, Titian, and other Venetian painters on the exteriors of buildings in the city. By hiring Girolamo da Treviso, however, Odoni was striking out in a new direction that would have set his façade apart, further demarcating it as an artistic statement of the type Dolce recommended. Although it is assumed that Girolamo was trained in the Veneto, his first dated works (1523) were in Bologna and show a marked interest in Central Italian painting.83 After earning major commissions in that city, Girolamo traveled in 1527 first to Mantua and then to Genoa. In 1527 he was involved in the fresco decoration of the Palazzo del Tè under Giulio Romano. In Genoa in 1528 he began the fresco decoration of the Palazzo Doria with Perino del Vaga.84 Girolamo returned to Venice in 1531 to paint an altarpiece for the Church of San Salvatore, and it is generally assumed that this is when he

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Fig. 27 Palazzo Zen, Venice, 1530s. Photo: Wolfgang Moroder.

painted Odoni’s façade.85 Already recognized as something of a specialist in façade frescoes, according to Vasari, Girolamo’s work on Odoni’s house further increased his reputation in this regard.86 The artist’s Raphaelesque romanista style differed from established local practices, leading William Rearick to call it “the first Venetian fresco in a modern, classical style.”87 A sense of the frescoes’ style may be approximated from an almost contemporary large-scale fresco by Girolamo in the apse of the Chiesa della Commenda in Faenza (completed in 1533), in which he harmoniously integrated figures with fictive architecture to illusionistic effect (Fig. 28).88 Odoni’s façade too, almost certainly depicted a combination of figures and painted architecture. By hiring Girolamo, Odoni was actively promoting what Mauro Lucco calls a “third style,” between those of Titian and Pordenone, intended to

represent the modern Roman manner. Lucco sees this as an indication of Odoni’s “marcatissima individualità.”89 With his choice of artist, Odoni embraced the opportunity to signal his own “foreignness”; his aim was not just to fit in, or to “emulate the nobility,” but in fact to distinguish himself within Venetian society.90

A Mythological Subject Not only the style but also the inventive iconography marked the façade. A sense of the overall composition and subjects depicted can be pieced together using visual evidence from other painted façades and the descriptions of Odoni’s façade by Vasari, Ridolfi, and Boschini written between 1550 and 1674.91 All accounts agree in identifying the principal subject in the upper portion of

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Fig. 28 Girolamo da Treviso, Madonna and Child and Saints, 1533, Chiesa della Commenda, Faenza. Photo: Raffaele Tassinari Faenza.

the façade as, in the words of Boschini, “a chorus of gods.”92 Vasari and Ridolfi agree on the identification of two of these – Bacchus and Ceres. While Ridolfi describes them simply as “sitting on clouds,” Vasari suggests a more narrative interaction: Bacchus is depicted as “fat and ruddy, with a vessel that he is upsetting, and holding with one arm a Ceres who has many ears of grain in her hands.”93 The latter figure reappeared inside the house on a door that possibly led into the room behind the façade, thus linking the façade of the palace with the “façade” (i.e., doorway) to the business office. Connected with Bacchus and Ceres was a second female figure. Vasari describes her as

“Juno, seen from the thighs upwards, flying on some clouds with the moon on her head, over which are raised her arms, one holding a vase and the other a bowl.”94 Ridolfi is less positive: “a girl, I think one of the Graces, who pours wine from two vases, and some flying children with flowers in their hands.”95 Ridolfi’s idea that it might be one of the Graces may stem from Vasari, who also notes the appearance of “the Graces, with five little boys who are flying below and welcoming them.”96 Both writers signal the presence of flying putti, a very common motif of painted façade decoration. All these principal figures were painted in color, although there seem to have been additional figures and ornament in chiaroscuro.97

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Fig. 29 Palazzo Contarini delle Figure, Venice, begun 1504. Photo: author.

Below, perhaps opening out of the front camera and/or the mezzado, were balconies with sumptuously carved figurative fretwork, which would have contrasted with the fresco on the rest of the façade.98 Such projecting balconies usually joined floor-length windows across the façade, as can be seen for example on the piano nobile of the Palazzo Contarini delle Figure (Fig. 29).99 Parts of at least one of the Odoni balconies survive and now ornament the façade of the Palazzo Torre, in another part of the city (Fig. 30). The Odoni arms that originally filled the central escutcheon have been replaced, but are still preserved on the inside of the panel (Fig. 31).100 The written descriptions of the façade

suggest that colored fresco figures of the gods Apollo and Minerva flanked the balconies.101 The written accounts provide enough information to determine the overall tone of the façade and its principal themes. Vasari described the Graces with “five little boys who are flying below and welcoming them, in order, so they signify, to make the house of the Udoni abound with their gifts.” He wrote that Girolamo painted Apollo and Minerva “to show that the same house was a friendly haven for men of talent.”102 The figures thus demonstrate that the house is full of grace (full of the gifts of the Graces) and a refuge for “virtuosi” (talented/virtuous/virile men). Vasari may have taken these interpretations from

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Fig. 30 Sculpture from Odoni’s balcony, 1373 Rio terrà San Leonardo, Venice, ca. 1530. Photo: author.

inscriptions that Ridolfi tells us once filled cartelle (cartouches) beneath the windows.103 Ridolfi could no longer read the words on the cartelle, so he probably relied on Vasari for his pronouncement on the meanings of the same figures; the flying putti “indicate the comfort and fortunes of Odoni,” and Apollo and Minerva “demonstrate the talents he derived from many virtues.”104 Of particular interest are the interconnected figures Bacchus and Ceres. While these gods would enjoy a long iconographic tradition in later painting, in the early sixteenth century they were a less likely pictorial couple. At the most basic level, they could be paired as male and female gods of fertility or as allegorical representations of the two most fertile seasons, summer

and fall. Odoni’s façade may also have referred to the proverb “SINE CERERE ET BACCO FRIGET VENUS” (“Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus freezes”), which would have been well known among educated Venetians through contemporary collections of proverbs such as Erasmus’ Adagia, if not directly from Cicero, Terence, or other classical authors. As the sources make clear, the general meaning of the adage was that food and wine incite desire or love.105 While the saying was not directly illustrated by Odoni’s time, there are several allusions to it in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, published in 1499 by the Aldine press. Illustrations of Venus, Bacchus, Ceres, and Aeolus (personifying the seasons) as individual reliefs that decorate the

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Fig. 31 Interior of balcony sculpture in Fig. 30. Photo: author.

base of an altar to Priapus seem to refer to the proverb, and in another part of the text, the inscription “To the gods – Venus the most reverend Mother and her son Cupid, Bacchus, and Ceres have given of themselves” hangs on a plaquette above a doorway.106 The association of these particular gods with an entryway may have inspired Odoni’s façade fresco. If a reference to the proverb was intended, perhaps the second female figure, whose identity Vasari and Ridolfi dispute, was Venus, who would then appropriately be accompanied by the Graces. What is clear is that the woman held two vessels, either a “vase” and a “bowl,” according to Vasari, or “pouring wine from two vases,” according to Ridolfi. While the description recalls figures of Temperance diluting wine with water, it

could conceivably be Venus holding burning lamps. It would fit the proverb since Venus would not be freezing now that she is in the presence of Bacchus and Ceres. An engraving (ca. 1595) after a composition by Titian shows Venus holding a burning censer in the shape of a vase with figures of Ceres and Bacchus around her (Fig. 32).107 The descriptive observations of Vasari and Ridolfi are as revealing as their interpretative musings. Bacchus is described as “fat and ruddy,” knocking over a vessel (surely of wine), with a woman on his arm (Ceres) – an image of drunkenness, sexuality, and superfluity. On one hand, it is an image of abundance and fertility, on the other, of lasciviousness and drunkenness. The figures of Apollo and Minerva, who are shown with weapons and armor – Apollo his bow and a cuirass and Minerva her lance and spear – represent arts and knowledge and emphasize the marital and the intellectual as opposed to the amorous and the sensual.108 The ebullience of Bacchus and Ceres, which conveys the abundance and fertility of the Odoni house, is kept in check to some degree by the other figures. The façade is thus simultaneously inviting and protective (particularly in the armor of Apollo and Minerva who stand guard on either side of the balcony), appropriate qualities for this permeable barrier between self and society, house and city. Similar themes emerge in the stone decoration of the balcony. Since the sculpted panels are in poor condition and not easily legible in photographs, I will describe them before considering their artistic sources. In the central panel (Fig. 33), two tritons with forelegs hold up an escutcheon that once bore the Odoni arms. Their marine tails transform into vines terminating in flowers which in turn birth little monsters. Birds fill the spaces in between and hanging above the heraldic shield is a grotesque skull-like mask, whose ribbons intertwine with the tritons’ tails. The two side

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Fig. 32 Jacob Matham, after Titian, Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus, 1595. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

panels by contrast represent frontal mermaids (Fig. 34), baskets of fruit on their heads and little satyrs nursing at their breasts. Their serpent-like legs intertwine with their arms before metamorphosing into foliate branches on which flowers bloom, other little children hang, and birds perch. In all three panels, the figurative forms create a perforated design. Between the male and female panels, at least in the current arrangement, stand naked putti (one male and one female), who also have baskets of fruit on their heads. The male child holds his penis as if urinating on the viewer below. Many sources inform this imagery of hybrid sea creatures, foliate forms, birds, masks, satyrs, and putti, some antique and some medieval, although all would have been understood as “all’antica” at the time.109 Examples are found in Venetian illuminated manuscripts where sea creatures

accompanied by putti hold up a family coat of arms, and in verbal descriptions as well as illustrations in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. The most famous three-dimensional examples are the mermaids, putti, tritons, and decorative motifs executed by the Lombardo workshop in Santa Maria dei Miracoli. At the turn of the sixteenth century similar maritime creatures were employed in sculpted renovations on the exterior and interior of the Doge’s Palace. Here the figures take on more explicit political meaning, especially pronounced in the flagpole bases by Antonio Lombardo and Alessandro Leopardi in Piazza San Marco (1503/5), all of it “telling in antiquarian language of the vitality and bounty of the sea as the nurturing force of Venetian glory.”110 Alison Luchs has suggested that the endlessly recombinable motifs circulated in drawings that were employed by the workshop that produced Odoni’s balcony design.111 What does seem to

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Fig. 33 Triton panel, detail of Fig. 30. Photo: author.

have been original is their adaptation for a balcony. While openwork designs (referred to as “staforo” in documents) were a common form of decoration on Venetian balconies, they were not usually figurative.112 Odoni’s balcony is probably the most impressive sculpted work of its type to come down to us. It is also the only example I know that transforms the maritime and grotesque motifs from regular relief sculpture into a perforated design. While these sculpted figures created a decorative design, they also coordinated thematically with the frescoes. Allusions to fertility, abundance, charity, and generosity are clear in the nursing figures, the baskets of fruit, the urinating putto, and the ever-transforming tendrils.113 The eroticized female figures (bare-breasted and frontal with curvaceous splayed “legs”) and the playful nude putti contrast with the central panel

with its male tritons, heraldic coat of arms, and grotesque mask that resonate with the more defensive characteristics of the façade. At the same time, the frontally posed mermaids may also have had a talismanic function to ward off evil.114 Perhaps for this reason mermaids were a not uncommon motif on doorknockers.115 Thus in its combined welcoming and protective qualities, the balcony worked in conjunction with the fresco that surrounded it.116 Given that Apollo and Minerva were the gods depicted to either side of the balcony, the frontal mermaids, also referred to as sirens,117 could allude to artistic and intellectual inspiration. Sirens were considered poetic muses, because they tempted Odysseus with their knowledge and learning and because Plato associated the song of the sirens with the harmonic beauty of the music of the heavenly spheres.118 A siren similar to the ones on Odoni’s

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Fig. 34 Mermaid panel, detail of Fig. 30. Photo: author.

balcony is depicted in a chiaroscuro woodcut designed by Titan, which served as a frontispiece for poems by Pietro Aretino in praise of a woman named Angela Serena (Fig. 35). The combined angel/siren refers to the dedicatee’s name while simultaneously serving as the poetic inspiration for the shepherd/poet in the foreground who gazes up at her.119 A viewer on the fondamenta in front of Odoni’s house would have been in a similar position. All together the painted and sculpted imagery of the façade signaled the prosperity and generosity, as well as the artistic inclinations of the homeowner, in Ridolfi’s words “i commodi e le fortune dell’Odone.”120 Vasari also referred to

hospitality and conviviality when he said the façade conveyed that the house was “a friend and refuge of virtuosi.”121 Through an iconography of abundance, if not excess, Odoni demonstrated his liberality as well as the splendor and elegance of his life – the three qualities stressed in his tombstone inscription. In Renaissance writings about the home, hospitality and liberality were key aspects of virtuous consumption. Beautifying the exterior of your house was a form of “splendor” available to cittadini and patricians alike. While the façade fresco had an overall thematic coherence, it is difficult to say that it had an iconographic program in the strictest sense.

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Fig. 35 Titian, Frontispiece for Pietro Aretino, Stanze in Lode di Madonna Angela Sirena, 1537. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Selecting mythological gods or scenes to depict on a façade was probably akin to choosing saints to include in an altarpiece. Personal associations were key. In Odoni’s case, he had at this point been working in the Dazio del vin for at least nine years so was closely connected to wine, a commodity that was key to the financial well-being of the Republic. The façade, prominently depicting the god of wine in a seemingly inebriated state, also featured vessels and flowing wine. Bacchus overturns one vessel and a female figure, according to Ridolfi, pours wine from one container to another (images of excess and of constraint regarding this

substance). It may not be coincidence that the façade was probably painted in or just before 1532, the year Odoni became co-conduttore at the Dazio del vin and Michiel made notes about Odoni’s collection. Was the decoration of the façade part of a successful strategy of promotion? Possibly Odoni’s transformation of the figure of a nymph he had inherited from his uncle into the goddess Ceres on his office door was part of a thematic program for the house as the center of his business activities. While the Odoni façade may have alluded to a classical proverb (notably a light-hearted one), it could also be understood as ludic by passersby,

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who may or may not have grasped the more learned sources. The depiction of a hefty Bacchus propped up against Ceres was also meant to be amusing, to suggest the owner’s own joviality and perhaps even a willingness to poke fun at himself. The putto pisciatore on the balcony was also “a stock comic character in Italian Renaissance art.”122 This levity would have been an important counter to what might otherwise have been perceived as heavy-handed self-aggrandizement. The classicizing subject matter and style of the façade also acted as an advertisement for the collection of antiquities and other art works housed within. Aretino pointedly commented that, upon entering Odoni’s house, he felt as though he had been transported to Rome, in particular to places where impressive classical statuary was on display.123 Odoni’s façade, with its novel Central Italian painting style and classical iconography, may have been Odoni’s attempt to participate in the renovatio of Venice as a New Rome then being advanced by Doge Andrea Gritti in Jacopo Sansovino’s projects for the Piazza San Marco (see Chapter 1). While this stylistic revolution is commonly thought of as a top-down campaign, instigated by Gritti after the war of the League of Cambrai, and promulgated by elite patrician patrons, Odoni’s façade was also a contribution to the celebration of renewed peace and prosperity. *** To get the full effect of the façade we must envision it on the outskirts of town but on a major canal and very visible because the canal is two fondamente wide. The house was not particularly large, but it had a brightly painted façade and sumptuously carved

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balconies. The façade, both in subject and in ornament, proclaimed the classicizing, innovative tastes and knowledge of the owner. We can imagine Odoni himself coming out onto the balcony, framed by his coat of arms carved below him and by the mythological “inhabitants” of his house depicted in the fresco above and to his sides – making of himself and his house a “degno e reale spettacolo” in the words of Aretino.124 As one scholar has noted, in Venice “every balcony was a personal stage.”125 Appearing thus, he became a kind of Bacchus, the god of wine, the ultimate authority regarding this commodity. Yet, he was a Bacchus also flanked by Apollo and Minerva, so that he would appear as a sophisticated bon vivant within a classicizing architectural structure and amongst the company of the gods. But the images of abundance – the intertwined, (re) productive figures of the god of wine and the god of grain, the carved putti with baskets of fruit, the maritime figures of sirens and tritons – not only signaled Odoni’s wealth and liberality, but also the renewed well-being of Venice. In this sense, the façade is about Venice as much as it is about Odoni, or more particularly it is about Odoni’s place in Venice. Celebrating Odoni’s relationship (through the Dazio del vin) to the city and its economic prosperity, the façade does not just combine honor for the city and promotion of the self/family, it intertwines them. It was Odoni’s most public portrait and a statement of his citizenship. By commissioning a painted façade, Odoni ornamented the city without explicitly flaunting his personal and familial wealth. At the same time, he undeniably drew attention to himself – his artistic discernment and cultural knowledge, as well as his profession and position in Venetian society.

Chapter 4

CREATING ROME IN VENICE: ODONI’S ANTIGAIA

No sooner have I arrived there [at your house] than my soul enjoys that pleasure it used to feel when it visited Belvedere on Monte Cavallo [the Quirinal Hill in Rome] or another of those places where such torsos of colossi and of statues are seen. Whence one judges on the evidence of such a worthy and regal spectacle the greatness of your generous and magnificent spirit. Truly the pleasure of such carvings and castings does not issue from a rustic breast or an ignoble heart. Aretino’s letter to Andrea Odoni.1

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house was a public work of art to be admired by anyone passing by on the busy canal or walking on one of the pleasant fondamente flanking the Rio del Gaffaro (see Fig. 17). While the colorful frescoes presented Odoni’s public persona and his connection to the city, their mythological figures as well as their romanista artistic style also served as a fitting frontispiece to the collection that lay behind. Apollo and Minerva clad in arms and armor on the façade suggested that not anyone could cross the threshold. Nonetheless, a great variety of people would have entered the house: not just virtuosi like Aretino and Michiel, but individuals whose activities and business affairs brought them to the Casa Odoni. The first spaces they encountered – the entryway and the courtyard, 2 and to a lesser degree the garden – were relatively public. It was this area of the

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ANDEDO , COURTYARD , LOGGIA , AND GARDEN

house above all that Aretino interpreted as “a worthy and regal spectacle” that represented Odoni’s “generous and magnificent spirit.” Although widely accessible, the ground floor in typical homes of the time remained primarily utilitarian space. The general practice in Italy of living on the second floor, the piano nobile, was even more pronounced in Venice where the bottom level was exceptionally humid, noisy, and vermininfested. Odoni, however, transformed this area of his home into a magnificent display space, creating a Roman style “garden-museum” with ancient and modern sculpture. As this chapter will demonstrate, the ground floor of Odoni’s house stood out in Venice in terms of what it contained and how objects were displayed. Rather than fitting into established Venetian traditions, Odoni employed collecting and display practices that were more common in Rome, just as he hired Girolamo da Treviso, who was trained in the latest Central Italian artistic styles, to fresco the façade. Aretino’s contention that upon entering Odoni’s house, he felt as though he had been transported to Rome was exactly the response this area of Odoni’s house was intended to elicit.

OVERVIEW OF THE ANDEDO, COURTYARD, LOGGIA, AND GARDEN

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he decoration and use of the space can largely be surmised by combining Michiel’s notes on the sculpture he saw in the courtyard in 1532 with the notary Francesco Colonna’s list of moveable objects in the entrance hall, courtyard, loggia, and garden in 1555. Vincenzo Scamozzi’s idealized ground plan for a Venetian palace helps envision the basic succession of spaces (Fig. 19). The front door led into the andedo (orange on Scamozzi’s plan).3 This tunnel-like space emerged into a courtyard (green) with a small loggia (blue). In Scamozzi’s plan the courtyard

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has two loggias; Odoni had only one small loggetta. A door, probably in the loggetta, led into the garden behind the house.4 The entire, partly indoor, partly outdoor, area contained antique and modern sculpture, while at the same time serving as a functional part of the household. Goods were stored there, fresh water was drawn from the well in the courtyard, the garden provided edible goods and respite, dining and social gatherings took place in the loggetta and courtyard. Every visitor had to pass through the space. The objects in the andedo immediately signaled that this was a special household. Traditionally the dark, damp space was little more than a passageway and storage area. While ornamental schemes in the andedo did become increasing common in the sixteenth century, the Casa Odoni was at the forefront of this transformation.5 In addition to a few functional items, such as vats of wine and copper cooking cauldrons, there were twenty-seven “heads, reliefs, and little busts of different types around the andedo above the reme [a stringcourse or cornice],” as well as “a stone bust without a head and arms, with its pedestal.” 6 The notary continued: “Around the andedo that goes into the courtyard, and in that courtyard, can be found large and small busts of natural stone, heads, legs and arms, and feet, in total numbering 59.” 7 Some works may have been displayed in niches seen by Cicogna when he visited the house in the early nineteenth century.8 The andedo, however, was only the foretaste; the courtyard, which particularly attracted Michiel’s attention – in fact, the first part of the house he described – was the primary locus. Confronted with so many fragments, the notary did not bother to describe the fifty-nine “busts . . . heads, legs and arms, and feet” distributed about the andedo and courtyard in any detail. Michiel, too, resorted to writing that “the many heads and marble figures, mutilated and lacerated, are antique,” although he singled out several works for special comment. These were three fragmented ancient sculptures: “the marble nude, without

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arms and head, in the act of walking, which is by the door,” the life-size “marble torso [busto], lying on the ground, without head and without hands,”9 and, most remarkably, “the whole marble figure of a dressed woman, without a head and hands . . . [which] used to be in the workshop of Tullio Lombardo and was copied by him more than once in more than one of his works.”10 Alongside these antique works, Michiel also included modern sculptures identified with the names of their makers – over life-size busts of Hercules and Cybele by the Paduan sculptor Antonio Minello11 and a “whole marble foot on a base” by the Tuscanborn Simone Bianco.12 These works will be discussed in more detail below. At the center of the courtyard was a more functional work of sculpture – a wellhead (vere da pozzo) topping the cistern, a common feature of Venetian homes that allowed for the collection and storage of fresh water. As Francesco Sansovino noted, “every comfortable palace has an uncovered courtyard with a well in the middle”;13 those in less “comfortable” circumstances used the public pozzi in neighborhood campi. Odoni’s wellhead was, as one might expect, more than a utilitarian item. Cicogna described it in such detail that it might one day be possible to identify it either transferred elsewhere in Venice (like Odoni’s balcony panels) or, like other Venetian wellheads, now part of a private collection or museum: To be admired in the courtyard is the round wellhead in pietra viva, carved with foliate garlands alternating with masks, with double coats of arms of the house – three Os on a shield – and with two cartelli. On one of them one reads DIV VALE, on the other DIV FELIX. This wellhead rests on a base of octagonal steps, and on each of the eight steps are carved the following words: 1. DAPHNIS. 2. MISERTVS. 3. IVPITER. 4. HVNC. 5. FONTEM. 6. EI QVOD. 7. HVMANITATEM. 8. REDDAT. DI: Inside the wellhead is an inscription recording the date of the sculpture’s execution: MDXXXIII.14

While the cartelli invoked enduring health and happiness, the engraving on the steps referred to the myth of Daphnis, the reputed inventor of pastoral poetry, who was turned to stone after betraying the love of a nymph.15 Appealing to Zeus, the inscription implored that “poor Daphnis regain his human form at this source.” The wellhead bespeaks the lifegiving powers of its water, so potent that they might bring Daphnis, and by implication, all the sculpted body parts on display in the courtyard, into life, stone to flesh. Although the wellhead has not been identified, similar examples are known, such as a slightly later wellhead once in the courtyard of Palazzo Corner della Palazzo Grande (Fig. 36).16 Instead of putti between the festoons, there were masks and coats of arms of the Odoni family. Coats of arms were commonly displayed on wellheads because the well was an important part of the family property and a centerpiece of domestic life.17 With its all’antica style and references to classical deities, the wellhead erected in 1533, the year after Michiel’s visit, contributed to the antiquarian atmosphere Odoni wished to create. Pictorial decoration in fresco complemented the sculpture on display. Vasari wrote that in addition to painting the façade, Girolamo da Treviso executed “some friezes of children in the courtyard . . . all of which he executed in colour, and not in chiaroscuro, because the Venetians like colour better than anything else.”18 Carlo Ridolfi (1648) also admired “animal battles in chiaroscuro and other fantasies” painted in the courtyard,19 while Boschini simply noted “varii puttini, molto gentili.”20 Frolicking putti were a common motif in a variety of media in Renaissance art, in fact, a motif that continued from the façade fresco into the courtyard. The Odoni frieze might have resembled prints showing putti engaged in humorous activities of various sorts, creating what Charles Dempsey has called “ornament in action” (Fig. 37).21 It is tempting to imagine, given Odoni’s position at the Dazio del vin, that the putti in his

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Fig. 36 Wellhead from Palazzo Corner della Palazzo Grande, mid-sixteenth century. Photo: Nino Barbieri/CC BY-SA.

Fig. 37 Master of the Die, Frieze with a Child Riding a Goat, sixteenth century, National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo.

courtyard were engaged in harvesting grapes and making wine like the amorini in one of the illustrations of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. The wellhead and the frieze were commissioned around the same time as the façade and balcony, and they provided continuity between the exterior on the canal and the interior of the courtyard. The classical gods and the themes of fertility, abundance, exuberance, and lighthearted humor are carried from outside to inside, while at the same time contrasting with the fragmented body parts strewn about the space. Odoni’s “generous and magnificent spirit,” to

quote Aretino, expressed on the façade was reiterated in the courtyard décor. The frieze of children painted in color would have provided an important note of energy and animation, while remaining in keeping with the antiquarian tone. While the courtyard was clearly given over to the display of ancient fragments and some modern sculpture, it was still a living space where members of the household and their guests worked, relaxed, dined, and entertained. This is made particularly apparent by the items in the loggetta, a covered and shaded space from which to view the antiquarium.22 In the space were an

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old table, two walnut chairs with yellow damask, seven walnut armchairs, and six painted walnut benches.23 Around the loggia, in niches (capitelli) above the cornice were six terracotta figures.24 One passed from this core space through a door, probably in the loggetta, into the garden behind the house. Jacopo de’ Barbari’s map, in fact depicts precious open land for gardens behind the houses on the Rio del Gaffaro (see Fig. 18). Two stone balls were positioned above the doorway to the garden, punctuating the transition.25 According to the inventory, in the “horto” were another twentyfour “heads, busts and legs of live stone.” 26 Also in the garden were six red and white marble balls placed in niches, a reference to the Odoni coat of arms that consisted of three white circles on a red background (see Fig. 8).27 Although neither Michiel nor the notary took note of plantings in the garden, they would have been an important component. In addition to creating a setting for the sculpture, they may have included rare or remarkable growing specimens. In his treatise, the humanist Giovanni Pontano recommended that a “splendid” house “should have gardens in which one can promenade and arrange banquets when needed. These gardens then should have exotic and rare plants, disposed with art and with the requisite care.”28 Later in the century, Francesco Sansovino highlighted famous gardens in the city, noting that foreigners were amazed that Venetians were able to grow “noble and rare plants” amidst the salt water.29 Odoni’s inventory listing sculpted marble fragments in the andedo, courtyard, and garden, however, is highly unusual for its time. Most surprising of all is the use of the term antigaia to refer to this part of the house. The first line of the inventory reads: “in a studio of a camera d’oro above the antigaia” (“In uno studio de una camera d’oro de sopra dell’antigaia”) (Fig. 38). The notary began his reckoning in a small study attached to one of the main bedrooms, which he described as located

“above the antigaia.” I have not found this exact term used in any other inventory; it must be an alternative spelling of antigagia, the Venetian dialect form of anticaglia.30 I believe the notary used the term for the downstairs arrangement of sculpture, either a particular part of it, such as the courtyard, or the entire ground floor display.31 While the word anticaglie described works of art (often, but not always, antiquities),32 and the word antiquario referred to an individual who was particularly knowledgeable about art,33 I know of no other application of this terminology to a space until later in the century. In his guidebook of 1581, Sansovino used the Italian expression “studi d’anticaglie” to refer to collections of antiquities.34 That Colonna, taking the inventory in 1555, in effect invented a Venetianism, antigaia, to refer to a part of Odoni’s house that we might translate as antiquarium, reveals how very original the space was in its time and place. The accounts of the ground floor of Odoni’s house indicate a somewhat haphazard organization of objects and an overwhelming impression of fragmentary elements and body parts. Michiel described a bust lying on the ground, while a truncated foot was exhibited on a pedestal. Other works were placed in niches or on cornices, still others were intermixed with vegetation in the garden. While Michiel’s descriptions of the works emphasized their missing body parts – for example, a bust “without head and without hands” – the notary perceived mostly the parts themselves, “heads, legs and arms, and feet.” And lots of them: he counted a total of 116 pieces – 27 in the andedo, 59 in the andedo and courtyard, 6 in the loggia, and 24 in the garden. The effect of the whole comes across when Michiel described “the many heads and marble figures” as “mutilated and lacerated,” language that evokes violence and suffering, whether by the ravages of time or the fury of Christian destruction.35

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Fig. 38 First page of Odoni Inventory, 1555. Cancelleria inferiore, Miscellanea, Miscellanea Notai Diversi b. 39, c. 58, p. 1, Archivio di Stato, Venezia. Su concessione del Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali e per il turismo – Archivio di Stato di Venezia, n. 9/2020.

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hile Venice was not a source of antiquities, it was, as for so many other commodities, an important marketplace for them.36 How might Odoni have amassed his collection and where did its contents come from? He almost certainly inherited some works from his uncle Zio. Michiel lists several ancient marbles in

Zio’s collection, including a statue of a Pan or a faun playing the bagpipes. While this work ended up in the collection of the patrician Antonio Foscarini, another ancient work Michiel saw at Zio’s house, “the trunk of the figure who was walking, made of marble,” is probably the same as the “marble nude, without arms and head, in the act of walking” that he later saw at Odoni’s house.37 Michiel also saw unnamed ancient marble teste in Zio’s collection, which may have been inherited by Odoni as well.

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The preponderance of antiquities available in Venice probably came from the eastern Mediterranean – the Aegean islands of Rhodes, Chios, Cyprus, and Crete and the coasts of the Peloponnese, Attica, and Asia Minor. Even when some territories ceased to be under Venetian dominion, continued trade would have included ancient remains. In the only instance where Michiel identified the provenance of an antiquity in a Venetian collection, it came from Rhodes.38 The mainland territories of the Republic were another important source. Other objects came directly from Rome, either found on the Roman properties of Venetians like the Grimani or purchased in the flourishing market there.39 In Venice, much of the trade in antiquities, especially smaller items like coins and cameos, but also sometimes larger objects like marble statues, was handled by jewelers. A famous and early example was the very wealthy Domenico di Piero (1406– 97), whom Michiel referred to as “zogiellier et antiquario singular.”40 At least one of the objects listed in the inventory of Odoni’s studiolo, a lateantique ivory, probably came to Venice through Domenico’s hands (Fig. 82).41 It is possible that Zio, and through him Odoni, had family connections to this circuit of jeweler/dealers.42 Odoni may have had even more direct access to antiquities. In his civil service position at the Dazio del vin, he had regular interactions with ships and merchandise arriving from precisely the areas in the Mediterranean and Italian mainland that were rich in antiquities. This is particularly true of the island of Crete, which remained in Venetian hands and was an important source of both wine and antiquities. Odoni’s brother-inlaw, Bartolomeo Bozza, operated a ship that transported cargo in the Mediterranean, including from Cyprus and Crete.43 The quantity of ancient marble fragments on display in Odoni’s antigaia, which seem to have greatly exceeded Zio’s holdings, suggests ready access of this nature. In his letter to Odoni, Aretino implied

that the works on display in the cittadino’s house had their origin in Greece: “Of the sculptures I will not speak: Greece would have the best of ancient form [art] had she not let herself be deprived of her relics and sculptures.”44 Venetian collections, in general, were distinguished from those in other parts of Italy by the prevalence of works of Hellenic origin.45 But, how did Odoni’s display of the works he procured compare to other collections in Venice in the first half of the sixteenth century? How common were larger-scale antiquities at the time and how were they typically presented? Was Odoni’s garden-museum common collecting practice or did it set him significantly apart? These are difficult questions. Although the subject of collecting in Venice has a long and distinguished historiography, greatly augmented in recent years by a new influx of research, to date there has not been a concerted effort to study the development and change over time of collecting and display practices in Venice, particularly with regard to antiquities. There is no equivalent of Kathleen Christian’s recent (2010) study of antiquities collections in Rome from ca. 1350 to 1527. As Christian notes in her introduction, unlike earlier studies, she is concerned with “how and why collecting changed over time” and “how one collected depended on one’s point of view and position in society.”46 While research on collecting in Venice has produced overview essays, studies of individual collectors, and publications of primary documents, still lacking is the analytic integration of documentary material into a developmental historical account. Several major recent publications on collecting in Venice are divided broadly by century.47 As a result, they tend to lump all sixteenth-century collections together in order to form an overview of collecting in that century. Less attention has been given to examining the important changes taking place during the sixteenth century.48 Nor has the focus been on understanding how different social groups approached the activity.49

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Part of the challenge lies in the nature of the surviving sources, which make it difficult to compare the earlier part of the century to the later part. For the first part of the century Michiel’s notes, written from 1521 to 1543, provide considerable, although certainly not complete, information about eleven private collections in Venice. While the text is an incomparable source of information, it also dominates, and therefore in some ways limits, our view of collecting in the first half of the century, especially since there are fewer inventories from this period and those that survive often do not supply much information about specific works or art or their locations within the house. In the second half of the century, the number of documented collections increases substantially, more inventories are preserved, and they tend to be more detailed. Some were even drawn up by the owner himself or by artists and specialists on his behalf, rather than by a notary. Some are veritable catalogs of the collections, complete with illustrations.50 Nonetheless, they are still not directly comparable to Michiel’s notes. In what follows I argue that the available evidence indicates that Odoni’s collection of antiquities was unusual in the early sixteenth century and that his way of displaying the collection had almost no parallels. Most importantly, his manner of display contrasted significantly with that developed in the later part of the century. The practice of placing sculpture in household courtyards in Venice dates back at least to the late fifteenth century, although there is no reason to believe it was common. The humanist and diplomat Girolamo Donato (ca. 1456–1511), for example, collected epigraphs, sculptures, and other antiquities through his political appointments and travels, including in Rome and Ravenna. At least some of these were set up in the courtyard of his family palace at San Stin, including a Roman statue of a man in a toga still on display in a niche in the atrium of the Palazzo Donà dalle Rose today.51 Donato’s contemporary and fellow

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humanist Pietro di Gianruggero Contarini (1452–1528), known as “il filosofo,” also owned ancient sculpture. In his will, he referred specifically to “the three marble figures in my courtyard on a column, which I wish to have placed for ornament in my [funerary] chapel.”52 Given that they were later installed in a church, it seems likely that these were modern works. Nonetheless they attest to a taste for sculpture in a courtyard setting, and there may well have been other works of art, including some of his antiquities, alongside them.53 A contemporary painting by the school of Giovanni Bellini, depicting Doge Pietro Orseolo I and his Wife Felicita Malipiero at Prayer (ca. 1490) in a space open to the outdoors, may provide some sense of what these early installations looked like (Fig. 39). Girolamo Donato and Pietro Contarini were exceptional men, born into prestigious patrician families. Both were highly educated, trained humanists, whose tastes were presumably formed in part through contacts outside the city. Their interest in antiquities is thus much more predictable than Odoni’s. When Michiel compiled his notes on art collections in Venice in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, he mentioned antique sculpture in six out of the eleven collections he visited. It is worth comparing the other five examples (Zio, Giovanni Ram, Antonio Foscarini, Michiel Contarini, and Gabriel Vendramin) to Odoni to see what they reveal about types of objects and their display. In Zio’s house Michiel saw three ancient marble sculptures, along with an unspecified number of teste. He listed these works together, separate from the paintings, illuminated manuscripts, and other precious objects. This might indicate that they were displayed in a distinct part of the house, but it might also be that Michiel wanted to organize his record of the collection by type of work.54 Michiel’s description of the antiquities in the house of Giovanni Ram, a Spanish merchant, in 1530 was very general: “the many marble heads and busts are

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Fig. 39 School of Giovanni Bellini, The Doge Pietro Oresolo and Dogaressa Felicita Malipiero at Prayer, ca. 1490, Museo Correr, Venice. Photo: Cameraphoto Arte, Venice/Art Resource, NY.

ancient works . . . . The many earthen vases, especially a large intact one, are ancient works. The many medals made of metal, gold and silver are ancient works”; he tells us nothing about their location and display.55 By the time an inventory of the house was taken in 1592, when it was owned by Ram’s descendants, marble sculptures – “Heads, arms, legs, hands and various things of marble – 73 pieces” – were located in the portego rather than in a courtyard and/or garden.56 Unfortunately, almost nothing in known about the display in the houses of the patricians Michiel Contarini and Antonio Foscarini. Michiel’s account of the Contarini house at the Misericordia (dated August 1543) begins by listing an antique marble sculpture of a faun or shepherd “complete and admirable,” as well as “various ancient marble heads and busts.”57 The fact that they are listed first may be because Michiel encountered them first, just as the first part of Odoni’s collection he described was the “corte a basso,” but there is no evidence to corroborate this.58 By contrast, Michiel’s account of the collection of Antonio Foscarini, written in 1531,59 begins with three paintings and only then goes on to describe many works of ancient sculpture – more than any of the other collections

he visited. Michiel mentions that several statues were almost life-size and fairly intact, suggesting they might be hard to accommodate inside the house.60 Like Odoni’s, the collection apparently included numerous fragments: in addition to thirteen heads “in various attitudes” and three “little busts,” there were “marble hands and feet” and “many stone fragments with figures and letters.”61 The mélange of objects, including inscriptions, many of them explicitly noted to be fragments, is reminiscent of Odoni’s collection, but unfortunately not enough is known about how they were exhibited. The collector himself is not well documented and remains something of a mystery, even though he was a member of one of the most important and well-established noble families in the city. In the case of the collector Gabriele Vendramin, the surviving evidence is much more informative. Michiel again divided the objects he saw in the patrician’s house in 1530 by type – paintings, then drawings, and finally ancient marble sculpture – without indicating where or how they were displayed. However, when Vendramin referred to the many objects he had collected in his testament of 1548, he specified that they were located “in my little

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room (chamerin) or outside that little room.”62 While there were objects, chiefly paintings, in other rooms of the house, it is clear from inventories taken after his death that the bulk of the collection, and in particular, the ancient and modern statuary, was in the chamerin, referred to in an inventory of 1602 as the “camerino delle antigaglie.”63 While it is hard to know how the works were displayed when Michiel saw them, clearly by his death in 1552 Vendramin had evolved an elaborate architectural setting within the chamerin in order to house his objects. The inventory describes a projecting cornice, bases or pedestals, niches, and at least eighteen cabinets with shelves and drawers, which might have looked something like the furnishings seen in prints illustrating later collections.64 Vendramin’s organized method of preservation and display differed entirely from Odoni’s approach to exhibiting his ancient statuary. None of the surviving inventories of the Vendramin collection give any indication of statues in an outdoor or semioutdoor setting. Bertrand Jestaz has established that Michiel’s notes include most of the major contemporary collectors of antiquities: his examination of over 1800 inventories shows that “antiquities were rare, even extremely rare, in palaces as well as bourgeois homes,” and that large-scale sculpture in particular was “exceptional.”65 As Jestaz notes, it is possible that there were other major collections that simply were not documented. Although a number of other inventories and documents have been discovered since Jestaz’s study, they have not altered his conclusions, especially as they pertain to the first half of the sixteenth century.66 Thus, in possessing large ancient marble statuary Odoni was among a very small subset of collectors; we cannot suppose him to be simply following along in established cultural practices. His display must have been unusual, and it was for this reason that Michiel

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(and later Aretino and Vasari) visited his house. Jestaz found only one collector of large-scale antiquities from the first half of the sixteenth century not mentioned by Michiel, and his manner of display somewhat resembled Odoni’s. According to the inventory of his house made in 1533, the patrician Nicolò Zorzi had “In the terrazeto: thirty-five pieces of ancient marble, that is torsos, heads, feet, broken and whole, of various sorts.”67 Although he did not have as many works as Odoni, the description of various sculpted body parts, broken as well as whole, placed in an outdoor space is similar. The term terrazza typically referred to roof terraces, but in this case, it is more likely that it was a space on the ground floor, like a garden terrace.68 References like this one are extremely rare. As Isabella Palumbo Fossati notes, spaces like corti, altane, giardini, and horti are almost never mentioned in inventories, presumably because they did not usually contain moveable objects of value.69 The best documented of all sixteenth-century Venetian collections of antiquities is that of the patrician Grimani family. In his 1521 notes about works owned by Cardinal Domenico Grimani, Michiel focused almost entirely on the collection of paintings, most of them from northern Europe. The subtitle he used for this section reads “Opere in Venetia” and then, “In casa del cardinal Grimano, 1521,” indicating that he must have seen the objects in the Grimani palace at Santa Maria Formosa in Venice.70 At this time, the cardinal’s collection of antiquities was presumably still in Rome at his villa on the Quirinal Hill and in his palace in town (now the Palazzo Venezia).71 In his testament of 1523, the cardinal made the unprecedented move of donating a good part of his art collection to the Venetian state. This gesture was undoubtedly inspired by Sixtus IV’s donation of antique statuary to the city of Rome in 1471,72 and probably also by a desire to thwart any attempts by the papacy to

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seize his collection.73 By willing the collection to the state, he was able to preserve (parts of) it intact and create a monument to his own and his family’s magnanimity. Cardinal Domenico, and his descendants who expanded the donation, especially his nephew Giovanni Grimani, thereby secured their positions as the most famous and best remembered Venetian collectors of antiquity of the sixteenth century. After Domenico’s death in 1523, twenty-eight boxes of marble and bronze statuary, along with others containing paintings and various art objects, were inventoried. Seemingly unsure of what to do with such a trove, the Signoria decided to take only a few of the ancient marble statues, eleven busts and five more intact, larger figural works. The bulk of the collection was returned to the family by 1528.74 The selected sculptures were set up in a special room in the Doge’s Palace, following the cardinal’s wishes that his collection be “preserved as an adornment for a room or a hall in my memory and be shown to virtuous people.”75 A special marble cornice was constructed for three sides of the room, on which were posed the “teste e busti” and a plaque was commissioned with an inscription by Pietro Bembo honoring the Cardinal.76 The room, which came to be known as the Sala delle Teste, is important for understanding the social and political context in which Odoni formed his collection. Grimani’s donation brought a Roman practice – the public display of antique sculpture in a place of government – to Venice. It established the idea that a collection of antiquities could be a civic symbol and a contribution to the greater good of the Republic. Later in the century, in his guidebook to the city (1581), Francesco Sansovino would list “Studi d’Anticaglie” in his section on “fabriche publiche,” rather than in the section on “palazzi privati et de loro ornamenti.”77 The Sala delle Teste is related to the larger Grittian project of transforming Venice into a “new Rome.” In his

report on its installation, Marin Sanudo suggested the room’s close association with the doge: Yesterday they finished setting up the antique marbles, heads and bodies of living stone found at Rome which his reverence Cardinal Grimani left to our state and which this Doge [Andrea Gritti] has had placed in the room in front of the Chiesiola behind the Sala d’Oro . . . . They fit excellently, and adorn the room which the Doge crosses when he comes from his private quarters to meet the Collegio.78

These works “found at Rome” and consisting mostly of portrait busts could serve as inspiration for the leader of the Venetian state as he passed from his personal space into the halls of state. While it is unclear how public the Sala delle Teste was and how many people saw it,79 Grimani had intended his collection to both preserve his memory and be seen by virtuosi, in the vein of earlier Roman collections of antiquity. It is worth noting that Odoni’s uncle Zio, whose collection Michiel visited in 1521, the same year that he visited Grimani’s collection, died the same year as the Cardinal (1523). Thus, at the time of the Grimani donation and its subsequent installation, Odoni was in the process of memorializing his uncle and inheriting parts of his collection, including some antiquities. The circumstances of the Grimani donation may have inspired him to make a more public show of his uncle’s and his own collection and, I argue, even to imitate Roman display practices. For the manner in which Odoni exhibited, his collection was not modeled on the Sala delle Teste itself, with its indoor display of exemplary portrait heads and relatively whole figural sculptures, but rather on the source of the objects, the garden-museums of Rome. Odoni sought to recreate the source, rather than merely import its objects.

THE ROMAN GARDEN - MUSEUM

THE ROMAN GARDEN-MUSEUM y “reconstruction” of Odoni’s antigaia resembles nothing so much as the verbal descriptions and visual representations of late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century antiquities collections in Rome, especially those immortalized in drawings by the Dutch artist Maarten van Heemskerck. The courtyard of the Maffei family (Fig. 40), which Heemskerck shows us from a position under a loggia, suggests a similar informal arrangement with various fragments almost littering the space. Many Roman collections also continued into the garden behind the house, as illustrated in Heemskerck’s drawing of the garden of the Galli family. As in Odoni’s sculpture garden, modern works, in this case, Michelangelo’s famous sculpture of Bacchus, were placed alongside antiquities.80 By the end of the fifteenth century this sort of “garden-museum”81 featuring

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figural statues, as well as reliefs and inscriptions, “had become the favored form of collecting in Rome.”82 By the early sixteenth century, the competition to acquire such objects was so fierce that only the most powerful, wealthy, and wellconnected patrons (i.e., the curial elites) could afford to insert themselves into the established circuit of collections of antiquities visited by artists, poets, and other virtuosi in the Eternal City.83 The term “garden-museum” is a better description for Odoni’s antigaia than the modern notion of a “collection.” “Garden” emphasizes the importance of creating a landscape or environment – in Odoni’s case, the andedo, courtyard, loggia, and garden – while “museum” evokes not today’s modern museum, but the etymology of the word, that is, a place to attract the Muses.84 When Odoni exhibited his fragments over the entire ground floor of his property, he was deliberately imitating Roman practices of collecting.

Fig. 40 Maarten van Heemskerck, House of the Maffei, Rome, 1532–37, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin. Inv. 79.D.2, vol. 1, fol. 3v. Photo: bpk Bildagentur/Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin/Joerg P. Anders/Art Resource, NY.

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Aretino understood this immediately when he saw the house, noting as follows: When I was at court I lived in Rome and not in Venice; but now that I am here, I am in Venice and in Rome. When I leave here where I do not see marbles or bronzes [Aretino’s own house], no sooner have I arrived there [Odoni’s house] than my soul enjoys that pleasure it used to feel when it visited Belvedere on Monte Cavallo or another of those places where such torsos of colossi and statues are seen.85

Odoni created a piece of Rome in Venice. It reminded Aretino of Monte Cavallo, the Quirinal Hill, famous not only for its colossal public statues of the Horsetamers, but also for important private collections of antiquities, including that of the Grimani family of Venice.86 How Odoni knew about Roman collecting practices remains unclear. He may have traveled there himself or he may have seen some of the many drawings made by artists who visited the collections (although not those by Heemskerck, which are too late in date). He could have heard reports from his artistically inclined acquaintances, such as Lotto and Michiel, who had traveled and worked there.87 Michiel’s project of gathering information about public and private works of art in northern Italy may indeed have been encouraged by his travels to Rome and the collections he saw there.88 Odoni may also have been inspired by collections within Venetian territory. For example, he could have known about outdoor displays of found antiquities on the Greek islands belonging to Venice. As early as the early Quattrocento, the Florentine Cristoforo Buondelmonti (ca. 1375– after 1430) reported visiting the “pleasure garden” owned by the Venetian patrician Nicolas Cornaro on the island of Crete, which included a display of ancient marbles culled from nearby monuments.89 But given the surge in popularity

of garden-museums in Rome in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century, I think it is more likely that Odoni’s primary model was the Eternal City rather than the Greek islands.90 To put together such a collection in Venice, however, was a very different proposition. In Rome or on Crete, the display of ancient marbles fragments in a somewhat haphazard arrangement was a recreation in miniature of the ruined remains of antiquities in the surrounding landscape. The objects on display were the natural “products” of the location – in many cases they had been unearthed on the property itself and might even be displayed in settings that included ruined classical buildings.91 In Venice, by contrast, a collection of antiquities had no possible “organic” relation to its setting. Venice had never been a Roman city and it conspicuously lacked any ancient remains at all. Thus, a collection like Odoni’s was a highly artificial construct, a deliberate attempt to create a fantasy world – a place where, as Aretino says, one can be both in Venice and in Rome at the same time. But what was a Roman-style garden-museum intended to accomplish? If Heemskerck’s drawings are any guide, these collections do not seem to have been set up to closely examine and admire the artistic qualities of particular works or to didactically present knowledge about antiquity. Instead, the arrangement seems to recreate the effect of random, inadvertent discovery, a condensed version of the experience that Renaissance viewers had when they encountered antiquities “in nature,” outside the confines of a collection. The “found object” and random assemblage of stones, sculpture, and plants were frequently admired by Renaissance writers.92 A good example, and one close to home, was expressed in one of the most famous literary monuments of Renaissance antiquarianism, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, published in Venice in 1499. I have already suggested how certain motifs from this text may have inspired the decoration

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and choice of subjects on Odoni’s façade, and it may also have had an influence on the way Odoni displayed antiquities behind the façade. In this uncategorizable book, the protagonist Poliphilo (whose name means both “lover of Polia,” his inamorata, and “lover of many [things]” – a suitable name for a collector) dreams that he is transported into an imaginary landscape filled with wild plants, cultivated gardens, beautiful buildings, ancient ruins, and fragmented statues. One of the early woodcuts in the book depicts the protagonist in this evocative terrain (Fig. 41), described in the following way: Many wild shrubs had sprouted over and among the broken ruins, especially the unshaken bean/ trefoil with its pods, both kinds of mastic, acanthus, dog’s-head, foetid silphium, coarse bindweed, centaury and many other plants that grow among ruins . . . . In many places there were great broken column-drums of serpentine and porphyry, coloured like coral and other beautiful shades. There

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were various fragmentary scenes carved in the round, in high and in low relief, displaying an excellence that is lacking in our times, and showing that the perfection of this art is defunct.93

The antiquities emerge out of the landscape of plants, almost as if they are an equivalent natural phenomenon. Poliphilo’s “encounters” recur throughout the book. In a later interlude, Polia encourages her lover to continue his explorations: “Poliphilo, my best-beloved, I am well aware that you are extremely fond of looking at the works of antiquity. . . . Go and admire these deserted temples which have collapsed through the ravages of time, or have been consumed by fire, or shattered by old age. Take your pleasure in looking at these, and examine the noble fragments that remain, which are worthy of admiration.”94

After describing in detail many fragmented objects with inscriptions, hieroglyphs, and

Fig. 41 Venetian (possibly Benedetto Bordon), Poliphilo in Landscape from Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, 1499.

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figures, also illustrated in the woodcuts, Poliphilo notes “Admiring these beautiful fragments with much delight and pleasure, I was still avid to search out new finds. I roamed like some animal always seeking better pasture over the heaps of ruins and the huge columns, some in pieces, other whole.”95 The text’s combination of lavish descriptions of plants and nature with elaborate particulars about ruins and fragments have led Christian to suggest Colonna’s writing was inspired by the garden-museums of Rome.96 Certainly his “dream” and the collections shared an aesthetic sensibility, one which Odoni’s ground-floor display was also intended to arouse. Such a display evoked the sensation of seeking and discovering, contrasted the growth of nature with the decay of human endeavors, and above all highlighted a lost past, tinged with nostalgia and melancholy, but also with dreams of grandeur. For Renaissance viewers, ancient marble fragments were more than just works of art; they could also stand in as the material remains or relics of actual ancient bodies, as Leonard Barkan has evocatively demonstrated: “sculptural works are representations of human beings . . . in the act of looking at ancient statues, modern [i.e. Renaissance] individuals are encountering their own mirror images from the classical past, not in bronze or marble but in the flesh.”97 This pained identification with the “mutilated and lacerated” bodies (to use Michiel’s words) was given voice by Sabba da Castiglione when he saw such objects in the garden of the Reverend Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes in Greece: Since these have not received recognition they are neglected, berated, and kept in such vile conditions that they lie exposed to wind, rain, snow, and storm, and so they are eaten up or ruined. I was so moved with pity for their cruel fate, no differently than if I had seen the disinterred bones of my own father in such conditions.98

Ancient marble body parts viscerally recalled the bones/stones of one’s ancestors. The notion of ancient statues as actual bodies was given visual form in the “dissected” marble fragments illustrating Andreas Vesalius’s treatise on anatomy De humani corporis fabrica (1543) (Fig. 42). As Barkan notes, “The encounter with the past . . . is the encounter with the dead.”99 The Renaissance garden-museum was thus also a graveyard – it is no accident that many of the objects Poliphilo encounters in his imaginary travels are funerary monuments (for example, Fig. 51); indeed, sarcophagi and tombstones were among the most common forms of ancient sculpture to survive into the Renaissance.100 The inscription on Odoni’s pozzo evoked a related sentiment, the idea that fragments, through the life-giving water, could be made to live again. On the other side of the coin, so to speak, in satirizing collectors, the Paduan playwright Ruzante (Angelo Beolco) decried, “those who take

Fig. 42 Andrea Vesalio, illustration from De humani corporis fabrica, 1543. Photo: Wellcome Library/CC BY 4.0.

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pleasure in those things [marble statues, and especially coins (medaglie), which he called “merdolagie” (roughly translated, “shit coins”)], do not understand they are taking pleasure in the dead: the dead should be with the dead, the living with the living.”101 The sense of an encounter with the dead was enhanced by the prevalence of fragments and by the unsystematic way the body parts were arranged or restored. For example, the de’ Rossi family in Rome posed a fragmented ancient female head on a specially made modern stone pillow. Miraculously, the head and its pillow, illustrated together in a Renaissance drawing, have recently been reunited (Fig. 43).102 On the one hand, the pillow adds to the illusion of an actual sleeping

Fig. 43a Erinni Ludovisi, Palazzo Altemps, Rome. Photo: CC BY-SA. Fig. 43b Pillow of the de’ Rossi Sleeping Nymph, pre1517, Curia Generalizia dell’Ordine di Sant’ Agostino, Rome. Photo: Scala/Art Resource, NY. Fig. 43c Giovannantonio Dosio, Sleeping Nymph of the Cesi (formerly the de’ Rossi), ca. 1560–80s, Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence. Codice N.A. 618, fol. 11.

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head; on the other hand, because the head is truncated from the body, this can only be the sleep of death. The fragment and its modern addition are put to good use to both invoke a reallife body and paradoxically highlight its mutilation. Venetian sculptors hired to restore antiquities similarly enhanced the fragments’ tragic status. Perhaps the most compelling example is the socalled Cleopatra from the Grimani collection (Fig. 44). The head and neck, right upper arm and hand with the vessel, the left hand, and the entire pillar on which it rests, not to mention the feet, were all restored by a Renaissance sculptor (both Tullio Lombardo and Simone Bianco have been suggested). Nothing about the work in its disassembled state (it probably originally

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Fig. 44 Greek, Cleopatra, Museo Archeologico, Venice. Photo: Scala/Ministero per i Beni e le Attività culturali/Art Resource, NY.

represented one of the Muses) suggests the pathos that the Renaissance artist added. In supplying her missing parts, he articulated the suffering latent in her original “mutilated and lacerated” condition.103 Another work from the Grimani collection, probably restored in the early sixteenth century, was given a similar expression of anguish (Fig. 45).104 Here the running, twisted pose of the torso, and perhaps its hermaphroditic body parts, suggested to the restorer a dramatic chase. The addition of the modern head allowed the viewer to imagine the distress of the fragment, which is in motion but lacks the arms and legs with which to flee: running for its life, the fragmented torso already embodies its demise. The

way in which these works were restored gratified Renaissance viewers’ sense of the pathos redolent in ancestral relics. The unfinished, enigmatic quality of ancient fragments was part of their appeal – they stimulated the viewer’s/artist’s imagination and creativity.105 This fascination is evident in the Hypnerotomachia when Poliphilo puzzles over the remains he encounters. Imaginary hieroglyphs (that is invented combinations of images that express meaning in the form of a language) appear repeatedly in the text, demanding to be deciphered (see Fig. 122); one could argue that the hieroglyph is the central metaphor of this heavily illustrated text. Even the language in

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the form of poems written about particular works, glorified its owner: In this sense, the collection was not a static place, with no single meaning or program, but a dynamic and self-regenerative one. It sought to defeat the impermanence that the fragmented sculptures themselves brought to mind by creating a lasting memory of the collector.108

Fig. 45 Restored Hermaphrodite, second-century Roman copy of Greek original, Museo Archeologico, Venice. Photo: author.

which the book is written, a unique combination of Latin, Greek, and Italian, mirrors the impenetrability of the physical remains Poliphilo encounters.106 While the activity of deciphering and imagining is framed as an act of contemplation – Poliphilo goes off on his own to ruminate about objects strewn in the fantastical landscape – in reality the garden-museum was the site of social gatherings, including banquets and theatrical performances.107 As Christian has shown, Roman collections were created in order to attract artists, poets, and other virtuosi, whose responses to the collection, often in

The inscription on the wellhead in the middle of Odoni’s courtyard evokes such poetic reactions. With its plea to Jupiter to bring the mortal lover and poet, Daphnis, back to life, it activates the space into something approximating a pagan temple. Odoni’s garden-museum was surely designed for the kind of poetic responses Christian has investigated. The social nature of the space is attested by the table, benches, and chairs in the loggia. While no poems survive that exalt particular objects in his collection, Aretino’s letter to Odoni serves much the same function, even if Aretino did not engage in the ritual exercise without ironic inflection. According to Vasari, the fresco on the façade depicted the Graces, Apollo, and Minerva in order “to make the house of the Udoni abound with their gifts; and to show that the same house was a friendly haven for men of talent.”109 Vasari’s words were not pure rhetoric – the antigaia on the ground floor suggests the house was deliberately designed to attract virtuosi. Visitors were required for it to reach its full potential.110 The beginning of Aretino’s letter suggests that Odoni did not know Aretino personally when he extended an invitation to him to visit the house and admire its contents.111 Michiel’s notes may preserve traces of the type of conversation that took place in the antigaia, such as his comment that one of the antique sculptures “used to be in the workshop of Tullio Lombardo and was copied by him more than once in more than one of his works.”112 Certainly, Odoni’s courtyard display, with its combination of ancient and

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modern works could have elicited comparisons between ancients and moderns, with the sculpture from Tullio’s workshop serving as a linchpin. It is possible that Odoni’s house served as a semipublic “museum,” as Vasari suggested in his description of it as an “albergo dei virtuosi.” Some collections in Rome had separate entrances so that visitors could admire the sculptures in the garden-museum without disturbing daily family life in the household.113 Given that most interior domestic life took place on the piano nobile in Venice, Odoni’s ground floor might have been accessible in this way.

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doni’s Roman-style garden-museum was remarkable for its time in Venice. In fact, the practices of collecting in the city were heading in a different direction, one more closely related to Gabriele Vendramin’s display. In Vendramin’s studiolo, all the pieces had their place in an articulated structure; there would appear to be nothing haphazard or whimsical – we are far from the magical world of the Hypnerotomachia. Vendramin’s antiquities collection was akin to a library or overgrown studiolo. Similarly, the Sala delle Teste erected in the Ducal Palace transported the Grimani objects from Rome to an interior, architecturally designed space. The Sala delle Teste, however, included only a very small part of Cardinal Grimani’s collection. The rest of it (including some 170 ancient statues, decorative stones, and fragments) eventually made its way to the family palace at Santa Maria Formosa. Over the course of the sixteenth century this nucleus was augmented by Domenico’s descendants, especially his nephew Giovanni, the Patriarch of Aquileia, who turned the family palace into a unique showplace for sculpture and painting, now recently restored and returned to its former glory. The sequence of rooms decorated by artists

of the Roman school culminated in the famous Tribuna or studio delle anticaglie, where the best ancient statuary was on display in a complex architectural framework designed specifically for this purpose (Fig. 46).114 Around 130 sculptures were exhibited in the niches, on pedestals, or directly on the floor, while reliefs were posed above the keystone heads in the central bays; the whole was lit from above by an eccentrically designed lantern crowning an oversize vault.115 This follows Sebastiano Serlio’s recommendation that collectors construct rooms with lighting like the Pantheon: Therefore, those who enjoy collecting different types of statues and other objects in relief ought to have a room like this one which receives light from above, because it would never be necessary to go begging light for the objects, but wherever the statues were placed they would display their perfect form.116

In essence, the result is a room that resembles a courtyard, with intense overhead lighting. As in many modern museums today, the novelty of the architecture in the Grimani Tribuna vied for the viewer’s attention with the works of art displayed. While one of the intended effects was surely originality and abundance, the other was a sense of ordered and purposeful arrangement, as the Camaldolese Germano de’ Vecchi noted when he saw the room in between 1587 and 1593: The illustrious Patriarch Grimani, taking so much pleasure in ancient things . . . built a room solely for the purpose of collecting them together with admirable ordering and placement . . . with wellconstructed niches and columns of other fine mixed marbles of great value.117

There was ancient statuary on display elsewhere in the house as well, including the courtyard.118

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Fig. 46 Tribuna, Palazzo Grimani Santa Maria Formosa, Venice, 1560s. Photo: Palgri/CC BY-SA 4.0.

Using an inventory compiled in 1593, Marcella de Paoli has tentatively reconstructed the arrangement of the sculpture in the courtyard. Many works were dispersed around the edges and in the loggias of the square enclosure. Reliefs and inscriptions were immured, and statues were exhibited on specially constructed pedestals.119 The architecture of the courtyard itself was based on Roman models, although its final form evolved over time (Fig. 47).

The first loggia on the east wing, intended to create the effect of a peristyle in an ancient Roman house, was constructed in the 1530s. Only later, in the late 1560s, were two additional wings (the south and west) added to create a square courtyard with a second loggia (before that the palace was merely L-shaped). Probably the sculptural ensemble detailed in the late sixteenth-century inventory was set up at this time.120 Unlike Roman

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Fig. 47 Courtyard, Palazzo Grimani Santa Maria Formosa, Venice, 1530–60s. Photo: Bridgeman Images.

collections, and also unlike Odoni’s collection, however, the Grimani’s outdoor display did not comprise a garden setting. The Grimani, whose ties to Rome and “papalist” sympathies are well known, also sought to create “Rome in Venice” through their house, patronage, and collecting. But their concerted effort to do so began in the 1530s at the earliest and became more fully realized in the 1560s. Although Odoni’s collection was not comparable to the vast holdings of the Grimani, he seems nonetheless to have had the idea of creating a Roman style garden-museum in Venice at an earlier date. Thus, rather than assuming that the wealthy segments of the patriciate were the driving force of artistic taste, it seems more probable that Odoni was in the vanguard in exhibiting works of art in a semipublic courtyard/garden setting in Venice. In his last will and testament, Giovanni Grimani, emulating his uncle Domenico decades earlier, donated much of the collection of antiquities to the state on the condition that it

be given suitable housing.121 This led to the foundation of the famous Statuario Pubblico in the antechamber of Jacopo Sansovino’s Libreria. Works from different parts of the Grimani household, including the courtyard, were brought together into a more architecturally sedate version of the Tribuna in the family palace (Fig. 48).122 One might see the Statuario as the ultimate triumph of a type of display that was evolving over the sixteenth century, an enlarged studiolo-like space with a specially designed architectural framework, replacing an earlier aesthetic of antiquities collecting originally common in Rome – the garden-museum. Both the Tribuna and the Statuario are the sculptural equivalent of the Salon installation. Many works of art compete for attention, exhibited one above the other, each with its place in a framework. Along with the rise of a more systematic form of display, the fragment and the “found object” recede into the past. There is little place for the pile, the seemingly arbitrary placement, and certainly no place for growing

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Fig. 48 Vincenzo Scamozzi and Giovanni Grimani, Statuario Pubblico in Biblioteca Marciana, Venice, 1596. Photo: author.

vegetation or daily living. The ancient marble fragments had become “works of art,” as well as trophies symbolizing the wealth, power, and knowledge of the Grimani family and the Venetian Republic. No longer did they seem to be the bones/stones of ancient human bodies or the devastated (“mutilated and lacerated”) relics of an evocative past. The architect Rem Koolhaas has noted the profound effect forms of display have on the experience of sculpture. The sculpture is inevitably a freeze frame of a moment of evident movement – forwards, sideways, or even backwards – but that movement is denied, sabotaged, deflated, aborted, and even contradicted by the pedestal . . . . Separating sculptures from their supports and imagining them simply standing, striding, falling, dying – on the ground – each work gains in eloquence and immediacy, simply because their “drama” is allocated more space, not condemned to unfold on the scale of a chess board.123

Koolhaas rebels against the form of display invented in the late sixteenth century and advocates instead for the sort of arrangement Odoni favored: “creating a landscape . . . to orchestrate a more intimate and meaningful encounter between the viewer and the object – almost as equals.”124 As we have seen with the Grimani palace, the practice of displaying sculpture in the courtyard did continue into the second half of the century. One recently discovered inventory seems particularly comparable to Odoni’s display. Like Odoni, Girolamo Superchi (post 1513–76) was also a cittadino, although he enjoyed a career in the Church that connected him with the ecclesiastical elite.125 The inventory of his household made in 1577 demonstrates that, like Odoni, he had sculpture on display in many parts of the house, but two rooms in particular, constituted an indoor “museum” along the lines of Vendramin’s camerino or Grimani’s Tribuna. In the inventory they are referred to as the “cameron

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delle statue” and “studio dell’antiquità.” But in addition to this, there was also a “cortesela scoperta” with two statues of pietra de Nanto, a marble vase, and “altre cosete de pietra.” The house of Superchi’s illegitimate son, Giulio, next door, also had “a broken marble fountain, two statues of pietra de Nanto, two stone oval tables, a marble relief [quadro] and various other pieces and fragments [rottami] of marble” in the cortesella, as well as “various pieces of marble with epitaphs, heads and other antique ‘baggage’ [bagaglie]”126 and “scraps of stone of little worth for the garden” (“rottami de pietra de pocco momento per l’horto).127 While Superchi’s manner of exhibiting his antiquities throughout his household resembled Odoni’s, the differences indicate how display practices had changed between Odoni’s generation and Superchi’s. While the courtyard and garden display continues, the works there are of lesser quality – “bagaglie antique” and “de pocco momento per l’horto.” Instead, the interior room serves as the primary locus for the most valuable antiquities.

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n constructing his antigaia, Odoni also commissioned modern works from local sculptors. From the notary’s account of the ground floor, there is no indication which heads, torsos, arms, legs, feet, and so on, were antique and which were modern. Notaries typically did not make such distinctions. But the meticulous Michiel singled out three modern works in the courtyard, identifying both the subjects they portrayed and the artists who made them. Odoni’s interest in contemporary sculpture sets him at the forefront of developments in Venetian collecting. His entire house was remarkable for the display of statuary in every significant part, leading Alison Luchs to conclude that Odoni was “the most adventurous collector of modern sculpture on record in Venice in his time.”128 The sculptures he

commissioned for the courtyard were not fakes or substitutes for antiquities; instead they were what I would term “faux” antiquities – works that depended on their acknowledged relationship to an antique type, but were appreciated as original modern imitations. A key to understanding the role of modern works in the antigaia is Michiel’s description of one of the antiquities: “The whole marble figure of a dressed woman, without a head and hands, is antique, and used to be in the workshop of Tullio Lombardo, copied by him several times in various works.”129 Tullio died in 1532, so it is possible Odoni purchased it from his estate;130 he might also have had a more personal connection to Tullio, who like most sculptors in Venice and like Odoni himself, was of Lombard descent.131 Michiel found the work notable not just for its provenance, but also because it had served as a model for the preeminent sculptor in Venice, who was responsible for introducing a new all’antica style of sculpture at the turn of the century. The work was thus a testament to the role ancient works played in the development of a new modern sculptural syntax. Unlike their counterparts in Florence and other parts of the mainland, prior to the sixteenth century, Venetians were not in the habit of commissioning or displaying large-scale sculpture in their homes. Statuary, for whatever reason, was largely an art form reserved for public commissions and settings. Even portrait busts of the type that were fairly common in fifteenth-century Florentine households were almost unknown in Venice, not to mention works on the scale of Donatello’s David, which the Medici exhibited in their palace courtyard.132 In Venice, it was the emerging taste for collecting antiquities that created a market for modern sculpture in a domestic context. Tullio played a fundamental role in the development of this new type of collectible. The most famous examples of domestic works by Tullio are his two high-relief

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sculptures of couples, A Couple (Fig. 49) and Bacchus and Ariadne (Fig. 50). An examination of these works demonstrates the profound connection between antiquarian tastes and the newfound interest in sculpture in Venice. Examples of “faux antiquities,” they reference antique works of art in a remarkably innovative and selfconscious manner. The couples resemble ancient Roman funerary reliefs that survived in considerable number in northern Italy. Influenced by Roman models, Tullio imagined his figures as though they were independently carved classical busts that have come to touch one another.133 In the Couple, the male is obviously cut across the bottom, revealing Tullio’s signature below; the female figure’s arms are cut off in a manner that simultaneously suggests the edge of her chemise and the truncation of a classical bust. The figure of “Bacchus” in the second relief has even more conspicuously

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cut arms, as though Tullio has created a sculpture of a fragment – a representation of a representation. At the same time, the relief is so high that the ground becomes a sort of pictorial frame from which the figures emerge in three dimensions, into a lifelike existence. Although they clearly evoke antique fragments through their classicizing forms, truncated arms, nudity, and in the case of the Bacchus, iconographic motifs, they are far from direct imitations of classical models. The effectiveness of the images depends on their status as fantasized antiquities, very much in line with the imagined fragments Poliphilo comes upon in his dream adventure. Indeed, one of the works he encounters is almost certainly a reference to Tullio’s relief (Fig. 51). According to the inscription below the image, the portrait Poliphilo encounters depicts “Sertullius,” a play on Tullio’s title and Latin name, “Ser Tullius,” as he is named in some

Fig. 49 Tullio Lombardo, A Couple, ca. 1490. Photo: Wolfgang Moroder/ CC-A 3.0.

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Fig. 50 Tullio Lombardo, Bacchus and Ariadne, ca. 1505. Photo: Georg Klein/CC BY-SA 4.0.

contemporary documents. This, and the prominent inscription “TVLLIVS/ LOMBARDVS. F.” (Tullio Lombardo made this) beneath the male figure in the Couple, have suggested to some scholars that the work is a self-portrait of the artist and his wife.134 Whomever both reliefs portray, they paradoxically represent both statues and living figures, while deliberately catering to discussions of the paragone between ancient and modern sculpture, as well as sculpture and painting. The first works Michiel listed in Odoni’s courtyard were two larger than life-size teste, heads or more likely busts, of Hercules with a garland of oak and Cybele with a mural crown, both by the sculptor Antonio Minello. Of equal size and with comparable headgear, they were probably commissioned as a pair and modeled on antique prototypes.135 The third modern work in the courtyard, “the whole marble foot on a base” by the Tuscan-born sculptor Simone Bianco must

also have been over life-size since Michiel singled it out amongst all the other fragments and described it as positioned on a base.136 Both Minello and Bianco were followers of the Lombardo family of sculptors. Minello, the son of the Paduan sculptor Giovanni Minello, worked with his father alongside Tullio and Pietro Lombardo at the Chapel of the Arca of St. Anthony in Padua as early as 1500. In 1522 he started a workshop in Venice, and presumably he executed the busts for Odoni’s courtyard between then and his death in 1528/9. While in his earlier career the sculptor worked chiefly on chapels and tombs in churches, he executed at least a few works in Venice oriented to the developing market in all’antica statuary for domestic display.137 Two surviving examples are indicative of the kind of work he would have done for Odoni. The first is a bust from the 1520s depicting an unidentified female figure, which at the

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Fig. 52 Antonio Minello, Grieving Heroine, 1520s, private collection, New York.

Fig. 51 Venetian (possibly Benedetto Bordon), illustration from Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, 1499.

height of 22.5 cm is smaller than life-size (Fig. 52). Her loose drapery, knotted on the right shoulder, exposed breast, and flowing hair crowned by a medallion evoke a figure from the classical world. While the bust may be intended to represent a particular classical goddess or heroine, in general she resembles the many sensuous female half-length figures of ideal beauties depicted in contemporary Venetian painting.138 A more archaeological sensibility prevails in the statue of Mercury that Minello sculpted for none other than Marcantonio Michiel (Fig. 53).139 For this work, Minello adapted the

striding pose of a classical statue of Hypnos thought at the time to depict Mercury.140 Made to look like an antiquity, it is at the same time a highly personalized work. The inscription on the base includes not only the names of the sculptor and patron and the date of its execution (February 14 to June 15, 1527), but also an astronomical diagram, perhaps a horoscope pertaining to the patron’s life and career. Michiel apparently had a personal relationship with the sculptor, since he witnessed documents related to Minello’s purchase of the workshop of the Bregno sculptors in 1525.141 A full figure, much smaller than lifesize (76.8 cm high), Michiel’s statue of Mercury is not directly comparable to Odoni’s oversize busts, but it does demonstrate that Minello could, for the right patron, create a “learned,”

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Fig. 53a, b Antonio Minello, Mercury, 1527, Victoria and Albert Museum. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

classicizing work that would harmonize with actual classical statuary. As when he selected the gods to be depicted on the façade, Odoni probably chose Hercules and Cybele for personal reasons. He apparently had a fascination with Hercules, who is represented three times in Odoni’s portrait by Lotto. The goddess Cybele, like Ceres, who appeared not only the façade but also on a door within the house, was associated with fertility and abundance. Both Hercules and Cybele were known as protectors of cities,142 so Odoni may have chosen them, echoing the themes in the façade fresco, as an expression of his attachment to his adopted homeland. Larger than life, the two busts

presided over and protected his “Rome in Venice.” The third modern work that Michiel reported seeing in the courtyard, a sculpture of a foot elevated on a pedestal, was a purposefully created fragment, perhaps based either on an antique prototype or on the many drawings that artists made reproducing classical feet and footwear. Irene Favaretto suggests it might be identical with a colossal foot illustrated in a midnineteenth-century sale catalogue of “antiquities” from the Grimani collection (Fig. 54).143 Simone Bianco became a Venetian citizen by 1512 and enjoyed a long career in his adoptive city where he was active until at least 1553.144

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Fig. 54 Piede Colossale, illustration from “Museo Sanquarico,” Stampe D 40, ca. 39, nineteenth century, Biblioteca del Museo Correr, Venice.

Like Minello, he emerged from the orbit of the Lombardo family, whose inclination to archaeological imitation he followed and amplified.145 More successful than his Paduan counterpart, Bianco enjoyed connections to a wide range of cittadini and patricians within Venice and even exported to international clientele. Although little known to nonspecialists today, he was one of the most prolific and well-regarded sculptors active in Venice in the second quarter of the sixteenth century and was admired by Aretino, Jacopo Sansovino, and Titian.146 Following the path created by Tullio Lombardo, Bianco specialized in classically inspired sculptures in bronze and marble for domestic display. Nearly all his surviving works are busts.147 Many are closely based on examples of Roman portraiture. In some cases they represent actual figures from classical history or mythology, although they are never direct copies of ancient works.148 In other cases, they might be portraits of contemporaries done in a style that so closely resembles Roman models that it is unclear if the subject is ancient or modern, as in the case of a male bust in Vienna (Fig. 55), which has been compared to portraits by Lotto and in particular, to the head depicted in the foreground of Odoni’s portrait.149 As Luchs has noted, Bianco’s busts run the gamut “from Lombardesque ideal

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fantasy types, by way of Roman portraiture, to increasingly individualized images.”150 Both of the works that Odoni commissioned from Bianco – the foot fragment in the courtyard and a statuette approximately two feet tall depicting Mars, which was in the portego (discussed in Chapter 5) – are atypical in comparison to the sculptor’s surviving oeuvre. They may have been made before Bianco had fully established his niche, or perhaps the artist was responding to the needs of his patron. Odoni clearly wanted works that imitated antiquities, but they were not necessarily just a “poor man’s” antiquity. There is some evidence to suggest that modern works could be thought of as substitutes for antiquities.151 In his Ricordi, first published in 1554, the collector Sabba da Castiglione noted that “because good antiquities [antiche] are rare and cannot be had without great difficulty and expense, some adorn [their houses] instead with works by Donatello [and other modern masters].”152 But the praise that Sabba proceeds to heap on these Renaissance sculptors clearly suggests he did not actually see their works as mere substitutes. In fact, many collectors reveled in juxtaposing ancient and modern works, deliberately creating puzzles for viewers to solve and discuss. The most famous examples involve works by Michelangelo, who was considered the greatest rival to his antique forebears.153 When Odoni commissioned his faux antiquities, he was not commissioning fakes, substitutes, or surrogates.154 We might see him instead as fabricating missing items.155 When hiring a sculptor who lived in the city, he was able to make choices about subject matter, size, and material in a manner that would not be possible when collecting actual antiquities. He could make these decisions to complement or embellish what he already owned. It is striking that all three of the modern works Michiel described were larger than life-size. As we have seen, Aretino compared arriving at Odoni’s house to visiting “Belvedere on Monte Cavallo

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Fig. 55 Simone Bianco, Bust of a Man, 1530s?, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Photo: KHMMuseumsverband.

or another of those places [in Rome] where such torsos of colossi and statues are seen.” If the colossus was the ancient statue par excellence – a marvel of artistic and technical skill – the colossal fragment had a special appeal. On the one hand, it evoked the idolatry of the ancients – gods depicted as larger than humans – but in a fragmented state, it also suggested the demise and destruction of an earlier form of worship. Pliny wrote of the Colossus of Rhodes: “Even lying on the ground it is a marvel. Few people can make their arms meet round the thumb of the figure, and the fingers are larger than most statues.” As Barkan notes, “It is that direct tactile relationship between the puny living arms and the gigantic

ruined thumb that tell the story of antiquity’s greatness and decline.”156 The giant foot may be particularly evocative when set up on a base, putting the viewer literally “at the feet” of the giant figure whose larger-than-life body had been toppled and destroyed (at least in the artist’s and patron’s imagination). Although some of Bianco’s works look as though they might have been made as deliberate fakes, the same works often proudly bear variations of the sculptor’s signature in Greek.157 The inscriptions encapsulate the ambiguity and play that is at the heart of Bianco’s enterprise – is it ancient or is it modern? On the one hand, by translating his last name Bianco [White], into Greek, he connected his work to ancient Greek

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sculpture, the mainstay of the market in antiquities in Venice. On the other hand, he also indicated that he was “Venetian” and therefore not to be mistaken for an ancient Greek artist. Until recently Bianco’s work was not much appreciated; his portrait busts were considered too derivative, nothing more than copies, or even worse, fakes. Lately, however, he has found a more sympathetic audience. In part, this has to do with the burgeoning interest in collecting, a milieu for which these works were so clearly made. But it may also be that in our postmodern era of replication and appropriation, we are better able to admire the way Bianco evokes his models but subtly changes them. As when we contemplate a film still by Cindy Sherman, Bianco’s contemporaries might have admired the masquerade: the ability to get the details of the model somehow “right” and yet at the same time to inject a contemporary distance from, even critique of, the model. The faux antiquities that both Odoni and Michiel commissioned exemplify what Alexander Nagel and Christopher Wood have termed the “anachronic” in Renaissance art. On the one hand, the object is a substitute for an absent original, or an original that should have or could have existed (what Nagel and Wood refer to as the “substitutional” model for art-making). On the other hand, it is also proudly the work of a particular artist who executed it at a particular moment (what they refer to as the “performative” or “authorial” model).158 The artwork “can represent itself as either a magical conduit to other times and places or an index pointing to its own efficient causes, to the immediate agencies that created it and no more. It is finally the tension between the two models of the work’s temporality that becomes the content of the work of art.”159 Simone Bianco’s foot, or Antonio Minello’s over-life-size busts of Hercules and Cybele, derive authenticity and value from their relation to possible antique originals. But in

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neither case does the substitutional erase the authorial, the recognition that the work is an instantiation by a particular historical individual. The presence of “modern antiquities” is, I argue, key to the objective of Odoni’s antigaia, which was not to create a collection of actual antiquities (as was more the case in later sixteenth-century collections like the Statuario Pubblico), but to create a fictive realm of ancient discovery. Modern works were needed, and needed to be identified as such, in order to highlight the authorial creativity of the ensemble. Marshalling both ancient works and modern artists, Odoni, the collector, is the “artist” of the whole. *** Odoni transformed the traditionally utilitarian space of the ground floor into a garden-museum that covered all the public areas from the entrance, through the andedo, into the courtyard and loggia, and continuing into the garden behind. The space was functional – one had to pass through it to get to other parts of the house, to collect fruits and vegetables from the garden, to get water from the well, to dine outdoors under the loggia, and so forth. But it was also clearly meant as a contemplative space where one admired the “relics” of ancient times and compared them to modern works. As Aretino noted in his letter to Odoni the appreciation of such objects was seen as a sign of a man’s sophistication and inner life. In bringing all these objects together and displaying them not so much as tokens of knowledge, but rather as evocative memento mori, Odoni exhibited a complex subjectivity. The collection of antiquities, with its “mutilated and lacerated” remains, gave form to the nostalgia for some lost whole, a key component of “melancholy.” As Juliana Schiesari has argued, the stance of melancholy was an enabling strategy for Renaissance men who sought to distinguish themselves: melancholy gave

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a “heightened awareness of self as ‘different’ from the common vulgus and by virtue of this difference, extraordinary.”160 Thus the collection, as the visible sign of the melancholic’s retreat to the “contemplative life,” became an important indicator of distinction – not only from the common people, but also from other members of the elite who did not share such a cultivated sensibility. The collection was not so much a form of conspicuous consumption as it was a “conspicuous display of privileged subjectivity.”161 But it also worth considering the “agency” of the assemblage itself. Walking through and living in this evocative “landscape” promoted a sense of transport to other times and places and inculcated subjective states, not just for Odoni, but potentially for anyone living in or even visiting the house.162 Odoni’s collection had few if any direct counterparts in Venice in the early sixteenth century. While there were some highly educated patrician humanists who had antiquities and sculpture in their courtyards in the late fifteenth century, these displays do

not seem to have been as extensive as Odoni’s, which transformed the entire ground floor of his house. As Aretino suggests, Odoni wanted to recreate Rome in Venice, which was not a widespread practice in Venice at the time. In fact, the collecting and display of antiquities in the city was headed in a different direction. Over the course of the sixteenth century we see instead the development of an interior room as an organized, architecturally structured and defined space that ultimately evolved into the Statuario Pubblico. Perhaps this had something to do with the climate in Venice, which makes outdoor gardens less useable and perhaps more likely to deteriorate the works of art themselves. Odoni’s display, like his façade, was eye-catching and unusual, but perhaps not necessarily meant to last. We can see it as an early moment in the development of the display of antique and modern statuary in Venice, which would ultimately take a different turn. But it testifies to the cittadino antiquario’s experimental and innovative approach, his desire above all to make an impression through the objects that he owned and organized.

Chapter 5

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and modern statues in the andedo and courtyard, privileged visitors to the Casa Odoni mounted the red marble stairway to the piano nobile, the principal living space of the house. Halfway up, they might pause to admire the painting of Ceres hanging on the door that probably led to Odoni’s business office. While some associates may have gone no further than the mezzanine, others could continue to the top of the stairs, landing in that quintessentially Venetian space referred to in dialect as the portego (also spelled portico), or the sala in Italian. Characterized as both “spine” and “heart” of the household, the long, fairly wide room typically extended the length of the house from front to back.1 It served as a central hall with doors leading into the main living spaces of the house, the camere, or bedroom/sitting rooms, as seen in an idealized floor plan by Sebastiano Serlio (see Fig. 22). In a grand house, such as the Palazzo da Mosto (Fig. 56), the rooms opened to both sides; in a more modest abode 2 like Odoni’s, there might only be rooms on one side. The distinctive ground plan is both characteristic of and unique to Venetian domestic architecture; as Sebastiano Serlio noted: “it is the custom everywhere in this city to build a portico.”3 Typically, the contrast between the utilitarian ground floor and the more sumptuous piano nobile would be stark, but this was less true of Odoni’s house.4 Odoni not only transformed the lower story into a Roman-style garden-museum, he also displayed statuary in the portego, creating an unusual sense of continuity between the two spaces, in effect transforming the entire house into a kind of “museum.” F T E R P E R U SI N G T H E AN C I E NT

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Fig. 56 Portego in Palazzo da Mosto, Venice. © Mark E. Smith/Scala/Art Resource, NY.

Odoni’s marked affinity for sculpture set him apart from many contemporary Venetian collectors and made his portego distinctive. At the same time, in this highly symbolic space, Odoni also adhered to Venetian practices and values by displaying paintings that highlighted exemplary behavior, piety, and civic ideals. More than in any other place in the house, he demonstrated his appreciation of Venetian painters and themes.

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he portego was the most important space in which Venetians exhibited social status and represented family identity.5 The fact that an abode had a portego was itself an indication of its owners’ stature, and the room was the focus of the exterior as well as interior design. As Francesco Sansovino noted: “the windows of the sala are placed in the middle of the facade

so that onlookers can easily recognize where [it is] located.”6 Since the room typically lacked a fireplace and was often sparsely furnished, it was probably not much used for day-to-day living. Instead, it served as a reception hall and a place for banquets, dances, musical and theatrical performances, and other forms of entertainment.7 As Patricia Brown has noted, “the function of the portego was, first and foremost, display. This was a privileged space of hospitality and celebration.”8 The room’s special significance came to the fore at a moment of national crisis when Odoni was in his mid-twenties. Venice was in the midst of the War of the League of Cambrai, in which Europe’s main powers were allied against the republic in an attempt to curtail its territorial expansion onto the mainland. Venice lost its mainland possessions in 1509, then gained them back, only to lose them again in 1513. Many Venetians interpreted this turn of events as an

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indication of God’s wrath against their decadence and moral corruption.9 As the enemy lay outside the gates of Padua and Treviso, Doge Leonardo Loredan admonished all the Venetian noblemen in the Great Council to take up arms themselves and lead infantrymen in defense of the patria. Marcantonio Michiel recorded the proceeding in his Diarii, an account of contemporary events that he kept for much of his life: the Doge exhorted us to imitate our ancestors, who courageously [virilemente] went themselves to do their duty on the mainland and did not attend as much as we do now to pleasurable pastimes [le delicie], and that we all used to have a rack of arms and armor in the halls [sale] where we now have tables for company, and other . . . [amusements?], as the doge himself confesses to have done in imitation of others.10

Michiel specifically mentioned the substitution of arms with tables in the portego, which he metaphorically construed as the replacement of virility with delights (which would have been clearly coded as feminine in Renaissance discourse). For the governing patriciate, the furnishings and objects in the portego represented the health of the Republic, especially its virility. The idea that great powers become weak because they favor delicie over arms was a trope.11 Michiel (or rather, Doge Loredan) focused these concerns on the portego in particular, portraying it as a charged, at this point even a contested, room, a spatialization of anxiety over social change. And for good reason: as Brown has demonstrated, in sixteenth-century Venice the expression of nobility was in fact shifting from an emphasis on military masculinity, family heritage, and civic duty to the display of wealth and taste in sumptuous living and entertainment.12 The doge implied that the weapons were pulled off the walls and used in actual combat, but arms were also attributes of nobility in

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a traditional, chivalric sense. By the later sixteenth century, their presence in porteghi was probably vestigial. Francesco Sansovino reported in 1581 that “in the reception rooms [sale] of great families there are racks of arms with the shields and standards of their ancestors who fought for Venice on land or at sea,” suggesting that the arms were a type of “antiquity” and emblem of family akin to portraits, rather than weapons one might actually employ.13 As Elisabeth CrouzetPavan has evocatively noted, the portego was a “space of genealogical memory,” in which “temporal discontinuity was surmounted through the coexistence of the present and the absent.”14 In sixteenth-century inventories, weapons and armor were sometimes listed in porteghi.15 Although more common in noble households, they were also found in cittadini homes, suggesting that any correlation between arms and nobility was not strict.16 They were displayed as emblems of family identity, symbols of nobility, and items of luxury and meticulous craft.17 Together with other objects in the room, they expressed the symbolic significance of the space.

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doni did display arms and armor in his portego. Most prominent was “a restelliera with arms of various sorts, and two helmets, with a curtain in front of it.” A restelliera was a special rack used for spears and other weapons so that they would fan out decoratively in the form of a rake.18 Also present were “a pair of golden spurs,” “an antique stamped leather helmet,” “two round shields and two rectangular shields,” and “a barrel made of stamped leather in the shape of a hand cannon” (presumably the case for such a weapon), as well as “a banner [banderuola] with the Orio and Odoni arms.”19 This last item signaled the Odonis’ close association with the noble Orio family.20

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In exhibiting military equipment in his portego Odoni was not necessarily emulating the nobility. He was not the only cittadino to take up the practice, and it may have been more common than is generally thought. The first quarter of the sixteenth century was a prolonged period of warfare in Venice, and cittadini participated. Possibly Odoni’s uncle Zio was involved in military actions since he was depicted in a portrait “in three-quarter length, in armor.”21 In any case, by putting weapons on display, Odoni participated in the celebration of a space associated with masculine, military commitment to the history, and defense, of the patria. That he promoted the practice at a time when contemporaries were lamenting its waning only suggests a more deliberate stance. According to Doge Loredan, the problem was that Venetians were replacing the arms and armor in their porteghi with tables for banquets and festivities, but inventories reveal that in fact the rooms contained little furniture, mostly limited to seating

of various sorts, tables, credenzas and sometimes chests. Odoni’s portego was particularly sparsely furnished, containing only “six benches [banche], two walnut credenzas, and a large walnut stool [scagno].”22 A table kept in an adjacent room was probably moved into the portego for special occasions when the credenzas would have been covered with dishes and vessels that were stored elsewhere.23 A painting of the Supper at Emmaus by Paolo Veronese, itself perhaps commissioned for a portego, shows such a bedecked credenza in the background to the right, behind the portraits of the patron’s family (Fig. 57).24 The only other functional objects in the Odoni portego were a hanging glass lamp (a cesendello), and a “broken clock in the form of a column.”25 “Around the said portego” were “old green cloths,” presumably used as wall coverings, similar to those depicted in a number of paintings by Lorenzo Lotto (Fig. 58).26 Cloth wall-hangings were often listed in inventories, sometimes stored

Fig. 57 Paolo Veronese, Supper at Emmaus, ca. 1559, Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photo: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY.

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Fig. 58 Lorenzo Lotto, Visitation, ca. 1534–36, Musei Civici di Palazzo Pianetti, Jesi. Photo: Mario Bonotto/Scala/Art Resource, NY.

away in chests for seasonal or occasional use.27 The color green seems to have been particularly favored, perhaps because it was considered a good foil for viewing works of art.28 Notably, the objects in Odoni’s portrait are shown against a green table covering. The inventory does not account for fixed ornaments such as architectural decorations, mantles, pavements, ceilings, or glass windows. If we can believe Aretino, who compared the trappings of the house to “a bride who awaits her relatives coming to attend her wedding,” these may have been quite sumptuous. He noted: “I myself never visit that I do not fear to trend there with my feet, its floors are so exquisite.”29

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ll the other objects in Odoni’s portego were paintings or sculptures, with the exception of two porcelain vases, one bronze vase, and the mysterious “ala de peste,” perhaps a wing made of papier-mâché.30 While paintings were not uncommon by the mid-sixteenth century, what set Odoni’s portego apart was the sculpture, which included works in the round, fragments, antiquities, and modern works. By favoring an art form most often practiced by Lombard immigrants, Odoni may have been identifying with his Lombard roots, perhaps another way in which he foregrounded rather than “overcame” his

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foreignness.31 Although not large, Odoni’s portego was chockablock with works of art in order to maximize the number of artistic objects exhibited, especially statuary, in as many parts of the house as possible. Comparing the list of works of art Michiel saw in the portego in 1532 to the 1555 inventory reveals some differences. In particular, the inventory mentions many more sculptures. It is difficult to know if the additional works were accumulated in the intervening years, or if Michiel’s account was only partial. Following his general practice, Michiel devoted a single page to the works “In portego” (52v) (Fig. 59). The last entry on the page looks as though he had trouble fitting it in; his writing gets tighter and the bottom margin is very small. Then at the bottom of the subsequent page, which has the subheading

“In la camera de sopra” (in the upstairs camera; 53 r), he added in the empty space at the bottom a line that reads: “In the portico, the portrait of Messer Pollo Trevisan dalla drezza, colored, and many gilt figures, all of terracotta, were by the hand of diverse masters.”32 The additional entry suggests that Michiel wanted to include more works from the portego, but ran out of space to record them. While Michiel’s primary focus was on the paintings he saw, he did include some sculptures. One of these was discussed briefly in the previous chapter: “The marble statue of Mars, nude, who carries his helmet over his shoulder, two feet tall, carved in the round, was by the hand of Simon Biancho.”33 Irene Favaretto has convincingly suggested that a sculpture illustrated in the nineteenth-century sales catalog of the dealer

Fig. 59 Manuscript of Marcantonio Michiel’s Notizia, 52v–53r, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice. It. XI, 67 (= 7351), ff. 52v–53r. Su concessione del Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo – Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana.

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Fig. 60 Ulisse in atto di andare al Bagno, illustration from “Museo Sanquarico,” Stampe D 40, c. 14, nineteenth century, Biblioteca del Museo Correr, Venice.

Antonio Sanquirico (Fig. 60) is the work in question.34 Although Sanquirico identified the work, previously in the Grimani collection, as an ancient representation of “Ulisse going to the baths,” it seems very likely that it is the unusual work by Bianco that Michiel described. Sanquirico’s measurement of the statue, fiftyseven centimeters, is not much smaller than Michiel’s rather approximate “two feet.”35 Like the over life-size marble fragment of a foot by Bianco that Michiel saw in the courtyard, the figure is not characteristic of the sculptor’s surviving oeuvre, which consists almost entirely of portrait busts. Perhaps this indicates a special commission. Odoni’s Mars bears a strong resemblance, however, to Michiel’s

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personalized statue of Mercury by Antonio Minello (see Fig. 53). The marbles are similar in scale (Mercury is seventy-seven centimeters tall) – large enough to be noticeable, but decidedly under life-size – and were probably commissioned around the same time. Both depict nude gods in the act of walking, with one arm hanging and the other raising an object to the shoulder. Both reenvision mythological figures in all’antica style, but they are not direct copies or fakes.36 Although Odoni’s Mars may have passed as an antiquity in the nineteenth century, Michiel unquestionably knew what he was looking at. Notably, Michiel, who knew Greek and Latin and aspired to become a senator, commissioned a statue of the god of eloquence and reason. Odoni, on the other hand, chose a representation of the god of war, a subject particularly appropriate for the portego. The muscular male nude with his helmet and discarded cuirass would have resonated with the arms and armor on display and underlined the martial significance of the space. The statue evokes strength and activity but not eminent bellicosity. In relative repose, the imagined god signals past military engagement and potential readiness for future battle. The other sculptures that Michiel saw in the portego were probably not “faux antiquities.” Michiel noted that the “many gilt figures, all of terracotta, were by the hand of diverse masters.”37 Although the works may have been designed to decorate the space, Michiel made a point of noting they were by “diverse masters,” suggesting a collector’s sensibility. While Michiel does not record the artists’ names, several wellknown sculptors active in and near Venice worked in terracotta, including Antonio Minello, Andrea Riccio, and Jacopo Sansovino.38 The notary Francesco Colonna had more patience inventorying the sculpture in the portego than he did in the downstairs antigaia. Rather than simply giving gross numbers, he described

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items individually, noting a total of thirty-eight works made of a variety of materials – not just marble and terracotta, but also wood, stucco, and bronze. Odoni sculptures were by diverse masters and in diverse media. The first work listed in the inventory of the portego was the most unusual: “A wooden head of Messer Francesco Zio.”39 Sculpted portrait busts of contemporaries were rare in Venice in the first half of the sixteenth century.40 Even more surprising is the fact that it was carved from wood, a medium typically used only for devotional objects.41 In her recent archival investigation, Anne Markham Schulz notes that Odoni’s bust of Zio is “the only testimony to the existence of such an object I have found in Venice.”42 The bust of Zio would almost certainly have been covered in gesso and painted, producing an extraordinarily lifelike effect, quite the opposite of Simone Bianco’s classicizing white marble busts. The fact that the portrait was the first object Colonna took note of suggests its prominence and/or importance. The Odoni wished to honor their Venetian ancestor, the man who introduced Andrea to activities in the civil service and at the Scuola della Carità, but they did so by commissioning a type of work that Venetians would be unlikely to encounter in other households. Zio’s likeness presided over the portego, the space in the house most closely associated with traditional Venetian identity. The portrait of Zio was not the only wood sculpture: there was also a second “head of wood,” listed right after the likeness of Zio, as well as “two wooden horses, with men on them.”43 Michiel probably saw one of these in the studiolo at an earlier date, but was unable to identify the artist who made it, leaving an ellipsis to be filled in later: “the wood figurine on horseback, was by the hand of . . . . . . . . ”44 That he would deem a wooden sculpture worth mentioning in his limited space and even try to identify the artist, suggests it was not a rudimentary carving.

The wooden statues may have depicted saints,45 or alternatively, military figures, as was certainly the case for a third equestrian statue in metal: a “bronze Gattamelata on horseback.”46 Most likely this last sculpture was a small-scale replica of Donatello’s famous statue of the general of the Venetian army in Padua, perhaps similar to known small-scale copies of the Marcus Aurelius in Rome, such as the one Filarete gave to Piero de’ Medici in 1465.47 Although Odoni may have admired Donatello’s work, the statue’s placement is also tied to the martial, patriotic pretenses of the portego. The busts and statuettes in wood, as well as the bronze Gattamelata, were modern works, as were the six terracotta figures, “the gilt stucco boy,” and “the little gilt figure above the door to the camera d’oro.”48 Other works, such as “a little marble figure without a head,” “a marble body [corpo] without a head, and without a leg,” “two little torsos of marble and a figure of a woman without a head,” and “a marble hand with half the arm, with a plume,” were fragments, thus antiquities or faux antiquities.49 The varied body parts recalled on a smaller scale the “mutilated and lacerated” figures on the lower level of the house. The most common body part on display in the room was heads. In addition to the two wooden heads already discussed, there were two “small gilt heads,” “a large stucco head,” “a little marble head of a woman,” “a marble head and half bust,” and “ten heads, some marble, some stucco, above their modillions [modioni].”50 The last were apparently positioned systematically around the room, probably above eye level. Decorative ensembles of busts are documented later in the century, such as those owned by the Paduan collector Marco Mantova Benavides, who had “various heads in gesso and terracotta of famous statues in Rome and other places by illustrious sculptors, all placed above the said cornice, alternating with various diverse and beautiful vases.”51 A Venetian inventory from 1599 lists “nine

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stucco heads in the wall” of a portego, perhaps in this case in niches.52 A visual depiction of the general practice is provided by a drawing attributed to Palladio for a decorative scheme perhaps devised for the sala of a Venetian palace, which shows busts positioned on consoles attached to the wall (Fig. 61).53 Although the notary did not identify the “heads” displayed on brackets, he set apart two other likenesses in the room: “a stucco Hadrian” and “a stucco Antinous.”54 These depictions of the Roman emperor and his young favorite were probably also heads or busts;55 Colonna may have singled them out because they were unusually large or prominently placed. As the Sala delle Teste display in the Doge’s Palace indicates, ancient portrait busts were

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particularly desirable collector’s items. There was a thriving market, especially in northern Italy, for Renaissance versions of ancient likenesses, made in a variety of materials, including bronze, marble, stone, and stucco.56 Examples by Simone Bianco were discussed in the previous chapter, and possibly he created Odoni’s Hadrian and Antinous.57 While some Renaissance portraits of ancient figures were direct copies of classical models, they were also often original compositions or pastiches of several known representations, perhaps even based on coins rather than three-dimensional portraits. Even when working from a single source, the modern sculptor often made subtle changes creating a different mood or interpretation of the “sitter’s” character. An apposite

Fig. 61 Attributed to Andrea Palladio, Project for the Design of a Sala in a Venetian Palace, sixteenth century, Royal Institute of British Architects, London. Photo: RIBA Collections.

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example is the slightly over life-size bronze of Hadrian now in the National Gallery, Washington (Fig. 62). Although the sculptor, probably Ludovico Lombardo (ca. 1509–ca. 1575), based his bust on a number of antique prototypes, especially the “Rollockenfisur” type, Victoria Avery notes that he “imbued his head with a more introspective and melancholic air than the rather severe and grave antique originals.”58 As when they restored antiquities, Renaissance sculptors sometimes infused their “copies” with their own pervading sense of pathos and nostalgia towards antiquity. Unlike the bust in the National Gallery, however, Odoni’s Hadrian and Antinous were made of stucco (i.e., plaster) rather than bronze.59 The fact that Odoni owned plaster casts is notable in itself. Although reproductive plaster

Fig. 62 Ludovico Lombardo, Hadrian, ca. 1550, National Gallery, Washington DC. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.

casts of famous works of art would become ubiquitous in later centuries, they were still a relatively new and rare phenomenon in Renaissance Italy, further evidence of Odoni’s experimental and adventurous attitude towards both sculpture and antiquity.60 Although plaster heads or busts are occasionally mentioned in sixteenth-century documents, very few examples survive. The most important trove is the nineteen gesso heads from the collection of Marco Mantova Benavides, now preserved in the Museo di Scienze Archeologiche e d’Arte at the University of Padua. Executed at different times and by different artists, some heads are copies of known ancient prototypes while others are apparently original creations, perhaps models for works in another medium.61 One of the more “scientific” copies, apparently taken

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from a bust once in the Grimani collection in Venice, is traditionally thought to depict Antinous. Odoni’s stucco could conceivably have been based on the same model.62 Although plaster casts were less valuable, they had a particular appeal. First, they provided “accurate” likenesses of important ancient figures at an affordable price. Second, they made it easier to obtain portraits of specific individuals, rather than having to simply accept what might be available on the market for actual antiquities. Both the fact that the heads of Hadrian and Antinous were specifically identified in the inventory, and the fact that they were made of stucco, suggests a very deliberate choice of subjects. Of all portraits of ancient figures, those of Roman emperors were probably the most often commissioned; Hadrian, considered one of the “good emperors,” was particularly popular.63 Odoni seems to have had a personal interest in Hadrian. A number of scholars have identified the sculpted head in the lower righthand corner of Odoni’s portrait by Lotto as a likeness of Hadrian, and have proposed that Lotto used Odoni’s plaster cast as a model.64 The head’s curly hair and beard, close-set eyes, and long straight nose certainly recall the emperor’s visage (Fig. 63). Lotto relates the two heads (Odoni’s and Hadrian’s) by making them a similar size and shape and tilting them in opposing directions.

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Hadrian’s head is like another view of Odoni’s, a ploy that vaguely recalls Titian’s Portrait of a Woman (“La Schiavona”), showing the same woman in two views, one a profile relief sculpture. If the head in the foreground of Lotto’s painting is indeed the bust listed in the inventory, then Odoni must have owned the plaster cast by 1527. It is not difficult to understand why Odoni might have singled out Hadrian as an exemplar. Despite his equivocal reputation in Roman histories, Hadrian was often admired by Renaissance men of letters, a perspective well expressed in the Venetian context by the humanist Giovanni Battista Egnazio, who was Michiel’s teacher and probably an acquaintance of Zio, if not of Odoni:65 “[Hadrian] was of subtle talent and imagination, very accomplished in all kinds of letters, especially in mathematics. He was an architect, a musician, a sculptor. And if he was not excellent in every science, he at least knew how to talk about them.”66 Hadrian was not just a learned man, but also a collector and patron of the arts. Furthermore, unlike some Roman emperors (Commodus for one), his passion for art could be construed as appropriately intellectual and restrained (despite the fact that it was not always presented as such in the ancient sources).67 Much of his learning and interest in art centered on his admiration of Greek culture. Venetians also took an active interest in

Fig. 63a, b Bust of Emperor Hadrian, ca. 130 C E , Archeological Museum, Naples. Photo: Carole Raddato/CC BY-SA 2.0.

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Greek culture and claimed to be its heirs, with Greek antiquities playing a prominent role in Venetian collections. Aretino’s letter specifically mentions the connection between Odoni’s collection and Greece.68 In preserving the relics of ancient Greece, Odoni could fancy himself a latterday Hadrian.69 The pairing of the bust of Hadrian with one of the young Greek Antinous is more surprising. More commonly in the Renaissance a bust of Hadrian would be displayed with other Roman heroes.70 I know of only one other Renaissance pairing of Hadrian and Antinous,71 whose statues were in fact “rarely, if ever, displayed” together in antiquity.72 In essence, Odoni was exhibiting the two figures as if they were a “couple,” which in some sense they were. Renaissance readers were familiar with Hadrian’s court favorite and young lover from classical and early Christian sources.73 When Antinous died at an early age, in his grief Hadrian had him deified, founded a city in his name, and commissioned many portraits of him in various guises, but always as a beautiful, sensual ideal of Greek male beauty.74 As a result, the figure of Antinous was well known and much copied in the Renaissance. It is tempting to read Odoni’s unusual pairing as an indication of his own erotic interests. Certainly, in the late Victorian period, Antinous became an icon of homosexual subculture,75 but it is unclear that this was the case in the Renaissance.76 It also seems unlikely that Odoni would advertise his illicit sexual inclinations in such a public part of his home. More likely, the choice of Antinous as a companion figure was intended, at least overtly, to underline certain qualities of Hadrian himself, namely that he was a lover of beauty and of Greece. Whether Odoni delighted in male beauty in real life, as well as in statuary, and in what capacity, is impossible to say. But significantly he was willing to risk the potentially negative associations of displaying busts of Hadrian and Antinous as a “couple” in order to

convey his appreciation of, indeed identification with, the emperor’s love of beauty and of Greece as embodied (literally) in the figure of Antinous.

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longside the three-dimensional art in the portego, Odoni displayed a significant number of paintings – a practice more in line with local norms. Inventories reveal that especially from the 1530s onwards, but probably starting in the 1510s, Venetians were increasingly decorating their porteghi with paintings. By 1528, the term quadro da portego was used to designate a picture that was considered particularly appropriate for display in this relatively public space. The intended placement of the paintings could influence their size and format, as well as compositions, subjects, and interpretations. While not every painting displayed in the room was necessarily designed deliberately for the space, by the latter half of the sixteenth century pictures were sometimes commissioned in sets to cover the walls.77 The inventory taken of the Odoni house lists twelve paintings in total. While not without precedent, this was a considerable number even by the standards of the midcentury, and especially if we take into account that Odoni’s portego was probably not very large.78 The notary listed the subject of only one, “a large painting of purgatory with a golden frame,” simply identifying the others as “seven small and four large.”79 Fortunately, Michiel recorded both the artists and the subjects of six of the pictures, and possibly a seventh: “the portrait of Misser Pollo Trivisan dalla drezza.”80 I will return to this puzzling work at the end of my discussion. Odoni’s paintings were not a “set” or “cycle”; of different sizes, by different artists, their subjects – some secular, other religious – were not clearly related. While Odoni himself probably

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commissioned most of the pictures, he inherited at least one of them and perhaps purchased others second hand or on the open market. Nevertheless, they had some thematic coherence, especially in conjunction with the other objects in the portego, and when compared to the pictures hanging in the camere. His choices about what to exhibit in this room suggest that he was responding to the symbolic associations of a particularly Venetian domestic space. Through these paintings, perhaps more than in any other part of the house, Odoni aligned himself with Venetian traditions and artistic tastes. In keeping with the martial and civic associations of the portego, paintings commissioned for the space often depicted military subjects of various sorts. While none of Odoni’s pictures represented a battle scene per se, at least three had martial undertones that reverberated with the arms and armor of his restelliera.81 Perhaps most conspicuous in this regard was the painting by Bonifacio Veronese (also called Bonifacio de’ Pitati, 1487–1553). Michiel described the subject as the “Transfiguration of St. Paul,” by which he surely meant the Conversion of Paul.82 The subject enjoyed some popularity in Venice, particularly for display in the portego. One reason for this may be the presence in Venice of both Raphael’s famous Sistine Chapel tapestry of the subject and its cartoon. Michiel saw the latter in the house of Cardinal Domenico Grimani in 1521, and the former in the portego of the patrician Zuan Antonio Venier in 1528.83 Raphael’s composition may have spurred artists active in Venice to tackle the theme. Archival inventories reveal at least two other paintings of the subject that once hung in porteghi. In both cases the works were owned, perhaps not coincidently, by other cittadini who were probably associates of Odoni – Angelo Savina and Francesco della Vedova.84 While the conversion of Paul is a religious subject with important moral and ideological

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implications,85 in the hands of sixteenth-century painters it also had many of the components of a battle scene – a grand and dynamic composition with soldiers, horses, arms, and armor. In an ekphrasis in praise of a print depicting the subject by Francesco Salviati, Aretino enumerated the martial accessories to be admired: I will not speak of the noble shape of the helmets, for I do not know how to express the excellence of your invention, which decorates them with so light an array of plumes and so rich an intaglio of ornaments. Moreover the praise which is due them is due also to the whole shields and the half swords which the co-militants of Saul hold on their arms or wear at their sides . . . I am pleased also by the agile skill and the grace of warlike valor with which they hold in their unconquered hands both the spear handles which are separated from the spear heads by a fringe, and the gonfalons which are stirred by the blowing of the winds.86

The Conversion of Paul was an ideal subject for the portego because it emphasized the traditional martial associations of the space, while also foregrounding the patron’s piety. Odoni’s painting by Bonifacio probably does not survive. Although a large canvas (124 × 264 cm) now in the Uffizi has sometimes been proposed (Fig. 64), from a stylistic point of view it seems too late in date to be Odoni’s work, and the attribution to Bonifacio is questioned.87 Odoni probably hired Bonifacio in the late 1520s, and certainly before Michiel’s visit in 1532. Although the artist’s career and oeuvre are still poorly understood, evidence suggests that he reached artistic maturity and independence and began to be awarded prominent commissions around that time.88 Odoni may have met him through Lotto. In his will of 1531, Lotto appointed Bonifacio to complete his works in the event of his death, suggesting their close association.89 In 1529, Bonifacio received

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the most important commission of his career, numerous canvases to decorate the Palazzo degli Camerlenghi, which was quite near Odoni’s office at the Dazio del vin.90 Given its placement in the portego and how the subject was painted at this time in Venice, Odoni’s painting was probably a large horizontal work with numerous soldiers and horses in an energetic composition, perhaps not too different from Jacopo Tintoretto’s Conversion (Fig. 65) in the National Gallery of Art.91 Certainly less energetic and grandiose, but also tangentially related to the theme of war, was a painting Michiel described as “the canvas of the young woman presented to Scipio” by Giovanni Gerolamo Savoldo (fl. 1506–48).92 The Brescian artist was active in Venice from around 1520, and Odoni would have known him through Zio, who was one of Savoldo’s first patrons in the city.93 The subject is the so-called Continence or Clemency of Scipio, an event from the life of the Roman general Publicus Cornelius Scipio (Scipio Africanus) told in several classical sources.94 According to these accounts, after a military conquest in Spain, Scipio was offered a beautiful local woman as a war prize. Upon learning of her betrothal, however, he returned her (along with the ransom offered by her parents) to her fiancé, demonstrating not only his self-control and chastity, but also his liberality towards his enemies who then became his allies. The theme was popular for cassoni panels in the Renaissance because of the continence of the hero and the ensuing nuptials of the young Spanish couple, but much less common for largescale Venetian paintings.95 Some years ago, Creighton Gilbert suggested that the composition of Odoni’s painting survived in a sixteenth-century copy. Gilbert saw the painting in Rome in 1961, but its present location is unknown (Fig. 66).96 Based on the style, Gilbert dated the design to 1529–30, notably around the same time I have suggested

Bonifacio painted the Conversion of Paul. As Gilbert indicated, this was also the time when Savoldo’s and Lotto’s works were particularly close in style, suggesting they were in close contact, perhaps through Odoni.97 Gilbert’s proposal is attractive: the painting in the photograph relates to Savoldo’s works and appears to depict the subject identified by Michiel – an oddity in Savoldo’s oeuvre and in general.98 The female figure on the far right resembles Savoldo’s series of paintings depicting the Magdalene at Christ’s tomb, while the main female figure resembles the Virgin in Savoldo’s San Giobbe altarpiece, dated 1540.99 The narrative told with half-length figures in close proximity, the effects of light on the seated man’s armor, and the emphasis given to hands are all hallmarks of the artist’s style as well. The composition, however, is not entirely satisfactory, lacking the intensity and density of the painter’s autograph works. This may be because it is a mediocre or inexact copy, but it could also be a pastiche, perhaps based in part on Odoni’s now lost painting.100 Regardless of whether the work Gilbert saw in Rome is an exact copy of Odoni’s composition, it gives an idea of how Savoldo might have approached the subject. Odoni’s painting probably depicted half-length figures with an emphasis on gesture and expression, in other words, something quite different from Bonifacio’s Conversion. The painting of Scipio was not the only work in the portego depicting the exemplary behavior of a classical figure. Michiel also noted: “The story [istoria] of Trajan, with the many figures and antique buildings, was by the hand of Zuanne del Comandador, but the buildings were designed by Sebastiano Bolognese.”101 Zuanne del Comandador is the Venetian painter of Bergamasque origin Giovanni Cariani (also called Giovanni de’ Busi, ca. 1485–after 1547), known in Venice by his father’s occupation, comandador (herald) at the law court of the Magistrato del

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Fig. 64 Attributed to Bonifacio Veronese, Conversion of St. Paul, ca. 1540, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence.

Fig. 65 Jacopo Tintoretto, Conversion of Paul, ca. 1544, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.

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Fig. 66 Giovanni Gerolamo Savoldo (after?), The Continence of Scipio, 1529–30? Photo: Biblioteca Berenson, Fototeca, I Tatti – The Harvard University Center of Italian Renaissance Studies.

proprio.102 Sebastiano Bolognese is the painter and architect Sebastiano Serlio, later author of a famous illustrated architectural treatise. Odoni already owned another painting by Cariani of “Cupid with a bow in his hand in a fiery landscape,” which he had inherited from his uncle Zio and which also hung in the portego.103 He must have commissioned the “story of Trajan” himself, however, since Serlio only moved to Venice around 1527. Serlio was certainly in the city by April 1, 1528, when he wrote his will, witnessed by none other than Lorenzo Lotto, suggesting once again connections among the artists who worked for Odoni.104 Several months later, in September, Serlio applied for a copyright, with the printmaker Agostino Veneziano, to publish prints depicting the architectural orders, as well as designs of “various buildings in perspective, and various other ancient things delightful to all.”105 While copies of the representations of the orders have survived, it is unclear if Serlio’s and Agostino’s other ideas were ever published. Very likely these drawings were used for Odoni’s painting with its “many . . . antique buildings.”106 The joint project (although Serlio may not have been directly involved in painting

the picture – Michiel distinguished between the picture as a whole, which “fu de mano de” Cariani, and the buildings, which “furono dissegnati da” by Serlio) must therefore have been produced sometime in the late 1520s or very early 1530s.107 Odoni’s interest in Serlio’s novel Central Italian architectural ideas demonstrates his openness to and contact with the most up-to-date developments, and once again suggests his interest in romanitas. Odoni’s painting may have been an early formulation of Serlio’s idea that different orders and ornamental features should be applied to architecture for expressive effect, according to the “rank and professions” of the owner or dedicatee of the building.108 Perhaps the backdrop for the “istoria de Traiano” featured the Corinthian order combined with rustication, which Serlio later claimed was used at the Porta Decumana of Trajan’s camp in Pannonia “to show figuratively the gentleness and mildness of the Emperor Trajan’s mind in giving pardon.”109 In any case, an elaborate Roman-style all’antica architectural backdrop was novel in Venetian painting at the time. Until the 1520s landscape dominated the backgrounds of Venetian

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narrative scenes; it was only in the 1530s and 1540s that architectural settings increased in popularity, in part due to the widening influence of Serlio.110 Such innovations would have been much appreciated by a group of Venetian noblemen, who according to Serlio “are not simply amateurs, but also know as much about this art [of architecture] as the best masters: like master Gabriele Vendramin, master Marcantonio Michiel and master Francesco Zen.”111 Although he does not mention Odoni by name, the fact that Odoni was interested in Serlio’s designs even before the publication of the architect’s treatise indicates that he belonged to the exclusive club of those who, like Michiel, were “molto intendente di architettura.”112 While part of the appeal of the painting must have been its all’antica setting, its subject was well suited for display in the portego. In describing the painting as the “istoria de Traiano,” Michiel was almost certainly referring to the medieval legend of the “Justice of Trajan,” a tale that originated as part of the life of St. Gregory and was elaborated in numerous medieval texts and oral traditions.113 According to the variant in Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend, the Emperor Trajan was “hurrying off to war with all possible speed” when he stopped to listen to the pleas of a widow whose son was unjustly killed (in some accounts by Trajan’s own son): “Trajan, moved with compassion . . . saw to it that the blood of the innocent was avenged.” Centuries later, St. Gregory, “crossing through Trajan’s forum,” remembered the emperor’s good deed and prayed for Trajan, who as a pagan had been condemned to eternal punishment. God answered his prayer by granting Trajan pardon.114 The story was also related by Dante in an ekphrastic passage describing a relief on the gates of Purgatory (Purgatory 10:73–94), which perhaps enhanced the subject’s appeal to artists and helped transform it into an independent scene, divorced from the life of St. Gregory.

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Sandro Botticelli’s illustration of Dante’s imagined relief reveals how the martial setting, referred to in passing by both Voragine and Dante, could be elaborated visually, to the point of transforming it into a battle scene (Fig. 67). In the lower right, the widow, her dead son behind her, kneels before Trajan on horseback; a throng of cavalry soldiers with lances and banners fills much of the composition. As Jean Seznec intuitively discerned, “although Dante is supposed to be describing a marble bas-relief, his description conjures up to mind a Venetian canvas, full of rearing horses, golden lights and fluttering standards” – that is, a scene not unlike the Conversion of Paul.115 Like the story of Scipio, this subject allowed for a military setting, while also presenting an exemplar of proper behavior. Trajan was simultaneously a classical and Christian model, and he demonstrated that the ancients, although pagans, were also sometimes enlightened and could even be saved. Serlio’s backdrop may have represented the Forum of Trajan, as in a print depicting the subject by Giovanni Maria da Brescia dated 1502 (Fig. 68).116 In the later sixteenth century, when Federico Zuccaro illustrated the passage in Dante’s text, he also chose a Roman architectural backdrop, in this case featuring buildings associated specifically with Trajan – the Pantheon and the Column of Trajan.117 These visual representations of the subject with all’antica architectural settings give us some sense of what Odoni’s “istoria de Traiano” might have looked like.118 The fact that another painting in the portego represented the Clemency of Scipio provides further support that the “istoria de Traiano” was the Justice of Trajan; these two subjects were associated, notably in Venetian political settings. They are both depicted on the same historiated capital devoted to the theme of Justice on the Doge’s Palace (1422–42).119 In the early sixteenth century, the subjects were also represented side-by-side in fresco on the façade of

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Fig. 67 Sandro Botticelli, The Justice of Trajan, illustration of Divine Comedy, before 1503, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin. Photo: bpk Bildagentur/Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin/Philipp Allard/Art Resource, NY.

a house in Verona (Fig. 69), accompanied by a large lion of St. Mark and a smaller representation of Doge Loredan and four Venetian senators (ca. 1518). Painted just after the city’s return to Venetian rule, the scenes are explicitly civic and political, figuring the justice and clemency of Venetian government.120 Both subjects concern forceful military rulers who listen to the needs and concerns of their subjects, the mighty rendering justice to the weak. The Roman historian Livy claimed Scipio was to be admired not only for his chastity, but also for “conquering everything by arms and especially by generosity and favours.”121 In Dante’s account of “The Justice of Trajan,” the Emperor expounds: “I must fulfil my duty before I go; justice requires it and compassion bids me stay.”122 A fifteenth-century humanist characterized the story as “a reference to the admirable mean maintained by the Emperor between Justice and Mercy.”123 The thematic political links between the two subjects suggested to Andrew Martin that Odoni’s paintings were commissioned as pendants.124 Indeed, it seems they were painted around the same time,

in the late 1520s or very early 1530s. However, not only were they by different artists, but their compositions were probably radically different. The Clemency of Scipio was likely a more intimate half-length image, while the Justice of Trajan was stage-set composition with buildings and full figures, probably some on horseback. In choosing these themes for display in his portego, Odoni both underlined the militaristic associations of the space and referred to Venetian political ideologies and traditions.125 He was also drawing attention to his own civic role as a tax collector. Scipio and Trajan were especially appropriate moral exemplars, of clemency and justice respectively, for a man who collected taxes for his livelihood. Given Sanudo’s pronouncement that Odoni’s business partner, the patrician Piero Orio, “ha mala fama” due to his corruption and cruelty, it suited Odoni to suggest his generosity, compassion, and humility in the execution of duty, learned through classical models of virtuous behavior, in the most public interior space of his house. As a cittadino whose family had recently immigrated,

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Fig. 68 Giovanni Maria da Brescia, The Justice of Trajan, 1502, British Museum, London. © The Trustees of the British Museum/Art Resource, NY.

Odoni was perhaps more intent on making such a statement than a member of a more established noble family would be. The Conversion of Paul, the Clemency of Scipio, and the Justice of Trajan all resonated with the civic and martial associations of the portego space. The three other narrative paintings Michiel identified – an image of St. Jerome, a Bosch-like scene of “purgatory,” and a depiction of Cupid in an “inferno” – seem less specifically geared towards display in this room; it is also less clear that they were commissioned directly by Odoni. The last

work he inherited from his uncle Zio, the second was probably purchased on the art market, while the first was a copy of an earlier composition: “The nude St. Jerome, who sits in the desert by the light of the moon, was by the hand of . . . . . . . . copied after a canvas by Zorzi de Castelfrancho [Giorgione].”126 Although no painting of this subject by Giorgione survives, a drawing sometimes attributed to him may have some relation to Odoni’s painting (Fig. 70).127 Michiel left an ellipsis as though he hoped to learn the name of the copyist and fill it in later; his interest in doing so

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Fig. 69 Attributed to Girolamo Mocetto, Clemency of Scipio and Justice of Trajan, ca. 1518, Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona. Kunstbeziehung (https:// kunstbeziehung .goldecker.de).

suggests it might have been by an artist of some repute. It is impossible to know when the copy was made, or how Odoni came to own it. The painting demonstrates more conventional Venetian tastes. Not only was it a copy of a composition by a famous Venetian artist from the previous generation, but it also depicted a very common subject in Venetian painting. Sixteenth-century inventories reveal that St. Jerome was one of the most frequently depicted saints in domestic art.128 While images

of St. Jerome were more often displayed in the camera, they were also sometimes found in the portego.129 Inventory descriptions, however, tell us precious little about how the saint was portrayed. “Un quadro de san Hieronymo” listed in an inventory might be a portrait-like image or it could represent the saint in his study or in the wilderness, two frequently depicted scenes in Italian Renaissance art.130 Odoni’s copy after Giorgione clearly fell into the last category; it envisioned St. Jerome during

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the years he spent living as a hermit in the Syrian desert. The subject emerged in Italian art around 1400; by the end of the fifteenth century a number of Venetian painters, Giovanni Bellini chief among them, created small-scale images of the saint seated in a landscape, often reading rather than actively beating himself with a stone, as was more common in Florentine renditions.131 Giorgione’s innovation was to depict the saint specifically “by the light of the moon,” as Michiel carefully recorded. The painter took inspiration from Jerome’s own letters describing his selfimposed exile: How often, when I was living in the desert, in the vast solitude which gives to hermits a savage dwelling-place, parched by a burning sun, how often did I fancy myself among the pleasures of Rome! I used to sit alone because I was filled with bitterness . . . I remember how I often cried aloud

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all night till the break of day and ceased not from beating my breast till tranquility returned at the chiding of the Lord.132

By setting the scene at night, Giorgione emphasized the saint’s isolation and torment. The innovation also suited Giorgione’s interest in the depiction of light and natural phenomena. The most obvious surviving example of this is his canvas known as The Tempest, which rises to the challenge posed by the classical artist Apelles to paint “things that cannot be represented in pictures – thunder, lightning and thunderbolts.”133 A painting of moonlight would have been a similar type of specifically pictorial challenge, and therefore was the sort of thing much sought after by collectors. In a letter of 1510, Isabella d’Este, learning of Giorgione’s sudden death, wrote to her agent in Venice: “we understand that in the inheritance of the painter

Fig. 70 Titian (Giorgione?), St. Jerome Reading in a Landscape, ca. 1509, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence.

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Zorzo da Castelfracho is to be found a painting of a night [una pictura de una nocte], very beautiful and original. If this is so, we would like to have it.” Her agent, Taddeo Albano, responded that although there appeared to be no such picture among the painter’s effects, “it is true that he painted one for M. Taddeo Contarini . . . [as well as] Another picture of the night [la nocte] . . . for a certain Victorio Becharo.”134 Although many scholars have assumed that the paintings of “una nocte” or “la nocte” must have represented the nativity,135 it is also possible that one of these was the original St. Jerome in the desert by the moonlight.136 In any case, Michiel’s identification of Odoni’s copy after Giorgione contributes to our understanding of the explicitly pictorial interests of this elusive and enigmatic artist. According to Mauro Lucco, Giorgione’s “exploration of the most fascinating aspects and secrets of nature” in the lost St. Jerome by Moonlight must have been of “extraordinary importance for later Venetian painting.”137 Surviving pictures by Venetian painters may echo Giorgione’s innovative composition.138 A painting by Savoldo depicts the saint almost in the dark, with the arrival of dawn or possibly dusk visible only in the distance (Fig. 71). A canvas by Titian, probably delivered to Frederico II Gonzaga in 1531, shows the saint in prayer before a crucifix, rock in hand, with an extraordinary impression of moonlight radiating from behind two trees (Fig. 72).139 Giorgione’s innovation may not have been limited to showing the saint by moonlight. Fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century depictions of Jerome in the wilderness are usually small pictures in a square or slightly vertical format, but Titian’s painting is somewhat larger (80 × 102 cm) and definitely more horizontal, as is Savoldo’s.140 The larger, wider format would have made the composition more conducive to display in Odoni’s portego.

Odoni may have owned the painting largely because it was a copy of a famous composition by Giorgione depicting unusual effects of light, not because of the subject. Indeed, this seems to have been Isabella d’Este’s primary motive in seeking her image of “una nocte.” Conceivably Odoni even placed the painting to create a counterpoint to all the sculpture on display in the portego: here, in the tradition of the paragone, was a painting that did what paintings could do best. But it is also true that the theme of St. Jerome in penance resonated with other paintings on the walls. As we have seen, the narratives involving Scipio and Trajan were in some sense counterparts, both setting forth moral exemplars from classical history. The scene of St. Jerome could be seen as a complement to the Conversion of Paul. Both men experience intense, personal engagements with the divine, although in quite different settings: Paul amidst a host of soldiers and horses, Jerome alone with nature and far from civilization. The two classical heroes, Trajan and Scipio, are shown in positions of power over their subjects, but nonetheless demonstrate their just rule. The Christian saints, by contrast, subject themselves to God’s will to achieve spiritual transformation and ultimate salvation. All four paintings depict exemplary male figures in dramatic narrative scenes. A fifth painting in the portego, described as “a large picture with a golden frame depicting purgatory,” is the second item listed in the inventory of the room, after the wooden portrait bust of Zio, perhaps due to its size and/or prominent placement.141 Michiel noted “The canvas of the monsters and inferno alla ponentina was by the hand of . . . . . . . .”142 Once again he left an ellipsis for the name of the artist, although he does record that the painting was “alla ponentina.” The term refers to people or things coming from countries to the west of the Mediterranean basin; Michiel used it throughout his notes to identify artists or works from northern Europe.143

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Fig. 71 Giovanni Gerolamo Savoldo, St. Jerome in Penitence, ca. 1525–30, National Gallery, London. © National Gallery, London.

In owning a painting by a northern artist, Odoni was solidly in the mainstream of Venetian tastes. In the early sixteenth century, the continued enthusiasm for fifteenth-century masters such as Jan van Eyck and Hans Memling expanded to include contemporary painters such as Hieronymus Bosch, Joachim Patinir, and Jan van Scorel.144 Odoni’s uncle Zio had commissioned a painting in the northern world landscape tradition from Scorel when the Dutch artist was passing through Venice on his way to the Holy Land around 1520. The surviving panel, depicting The Submersion of the Pharaoh, may have hung in Odoni’s house after his uncle’s death (Fig. 73).145 Works by

renowned masters, such as van Eyck or Bosch, fetched prices on par with antiquities. A single picture by van Eyck also depicting The Submersion of the Pharaoh sold at auction in 1506 for 115 ducats.146 Such works were difficult to come by and much coveted, but there is no indication that the northern work owned by Odoni belonged in this superstar category. Coexisting with the high-end competition for paintings by famous masters was a broader market for more run-of-the-mill imported pictures. Sixteenth-century inventories are full of paintings described as “alla fiandresa,” “fiamengo,” “fiandrioti,” and other variations of “Flemish,” in Venetian households of different class levels.147

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Fig. 72 Titian, St. Jerome by Moonlight, ca. 1531, Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photo: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY.

Some were probably purchased by Venetians who traveled north of the Alps; others were produced by northern artists working in Venice, either temporarily or on a more permanent basis, as was the case with Zio’s painting by Scorel. Guild restrictions, however, limited the ability of foreign artists to ply their trade locally.148 Therefore most of the Flemish paintings on display probably came to Venice through traders in luxury goods from Flanders; paintings were merely a small part of the larger commercial networks between Venice and Antwerp in particular.149 Most likely Odoni obtained his painting of fire and monsters by an artist Michiel could not identify via this route.150 Although the notary informs us the painting was large, according to Michiel it was “in tella” (on canvas) making it easier to transport.151

Odoni’s painting belonged to a subset of northern works that were particularly appreciated in Italy – landscapes with fires and monsters in the tradition of Bosch.152 In fact, Michiel’s description of Odoni’s painting closely resembles a work by the master that Michiel saw in the collection of Cardinal Grimani: “The canvas of the inferno with a great variety of monsters by the hand of Hieronimo Bosch.”153 Most scholars agree that Michiel was referring to the panels now in the Doge’s Palace in Venice (Fig. 74), which feature light effects and hell with monstrous creatures.154 While it is possible that Odoni’s painting was inspired by this or another work by Bosch, it seems more likely that it was a standard type imported en masse. The Veronese goldsmith Matteo del Nassaro, who was known for bringing

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Fig. 73 Jan van Scorel, Submersion of the Pharaoh, ca. 1520. Private collection, Milan.

northern paintings to Italy, sold no fewer than 120 landscapes to Duke Federico II Gonzaga of Mantua in 1535 (out of a total of the 300 that he brought with him), twenty of which depicted “only landscapes of fire which seem to burn the hands when one approaches to touch them.”155 Italian critics repeatedly admired monsters and fires in Netherlandish painting. Vasari wrote that the Bruges master Lanceloot Blondeel had a special gift for representing “fires, nights, splendors, devils, and other such things” (although he was probably confusing the artist with Bosch and Bruegel).156 The Paduan art collector Marco Mantova Benavides noted that in “a beautiful Flemish painting [there appears] a variety of men, animals, landscapes, rivers, fires, and other similar things, of which the Flemish are marvelous and excellent masters.”157 For Michiel, the monsters and fire were most memorable – he did not identify a particular narrative. The notary, however, referred to the scene as “Purgatory”; if he was correct, then Odoni’s painting might have depicted “Christ in Limbo,” a subject Bosch is known to have painted and which was repeated by his imitators.158 Although

probably later in date than Odoni’s painting, a panel in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, demonstrates how the subject was transformed in the Boschian tradition into a fiery landscape populated with devilish imaginary creatures (Fig. 75). Christ’s appearance on the scene is so small as to make him almost imperceptible.159 The sixth and final painting described by Michiel also depicted special effects of light and fire: “The inferno with the Cupid who is holding the bow was by the hand of Zuan de Zanin Comandador [Giovanni Cariani], and is the canvas that Francesco Zio had.”160 Michiel knew the provenance because he had seen the work at Zio’s house in 1521. As usual, Michiel was particularly attentive to issues of attribution. When he first saw the work, he thought it was by Palma Vecchio, but then changed his mind and wrote Giovanni Gerolamo Savoldo instead. It was only when he saw the painting in Odoni’s collection in 1532 that he finally settled on Cariani, going back to his notes on Zio’s collection to correct them.161 Perhaps Michiel had difficulty with the attribution because it was an early work by Cariani. Zio

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Fig. 74 Hieronymus Bosch, Visions of the Hereafter, ca. 1490, Doge’s Palace, Venice. Photo: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

may have commissioned it between 1509, when Cariani was first recorded as an independent master, and 1517, when the artist left for Bergamo.162 In his early career, Cariani was interested in poetic, pastoral subjects connected to the works of Giorgione and the young Titian, as exemplified by his Concerto campestre (Fig. 76).163 Broadly speaking, the painting Michiel described, first as Cupid sitting in an inferno, and later, reversing the primacy of figure and landscape, as an inferno with Cupid, fits this category. The image of Cupid in hell could have theatrical, even comic, appeal. In February 1515

(1514 more veneto), around the time Cariani may have executed Zio’s painting, a theatrical company known as Compagnie della Calza put on a Carnival performance of Plautus’ Miles Gloriosus featuring a special intermezzo by the famous Venetian buffone (popular comic performer) Zuan Polo Liompardi. According to Sanudo’s account, Zuan Polo put on another new comedia, pretending to be a wizard who had been to hell, and he made a hell with fire and devils appear. Then he pretended to be Cupid [Dio d’amor], and he was taken

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Fig. 75 Follower of Hieronymus Bosch, Christ in Limbo, second quarter of sixteenth century, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

to hell, where he found Domenego Taiacalze [Zuan Polo’s friend and fellow buffone who had passed away in February 1513] chasing wethers [men dressed as castrated rams].164

The performance would have featured pyrotechnics as well as Zuan Polo taking on various guises with different accents. The intermezzo was related to a play (L’historia bellissima) probably written by Zuan Polo, in which his dead friend Taiacalze describes his experience in the afterlife.165 While it is impossible to say whether Zio’s painting had any relationship to this performance, Zuan Polo’s act suggests the potential humor of the subject. No painting depicting Cupid in hell has come down to us, so it was probably Cariani’s invention. It is a less conventional choice for display in the portego, but perhaps Odoni placed it there to compliment the pyrotechnics of the Boschian hellscape and the cooler impression of the moonlight scene after Giorgione. All three paintings foreground effects that are technically possible in painting but not in sculpture. If Odoni’s

antigaia below provoked a comparison between ancient and modern, the works in the portego instead foregrounded the paragone between painting and sculpture. Given that many paintings and sculptures were present in the portego, it is difficult to know to which category one of the last works recorded by Michiel belonged. At the end of his entire entry on Odoni’s house, Michiel added a line that reads as follows: “In the portico the portrait [ritratto] of Misser Pollo Trivisan dalla Drezza, colored, and many gilt figures, all of terracotta were by the hand of diverse masters.”166 Because Michiel mentioned terracotta sculpture that was “dorate” (gilt) in the same entry, scholars have assumed that the “ritratto” of Polo Trevisan was also terracotta, but in this case “colorito” (colored) instead.167 Rosella Lauber, however, has recently suggested that it could just as well have been a painting, since elsewhere in the Notizia Michiel used the word “colorito” only to refer to paintings.168 Certainly, a painted portrait would have been much more common in Venice during this period. As we have seen,

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Fig. 76 Giovanni Cariani, Concerto campestre, ca. 1510–15, National Museum, Warsaw. Photo: Krzysztof Wilczyński/NMW.

however, Odoni was particularly interested in sculpture and in fact had other busts, including a portrait of his uncle Francesco Zio, on display in the portego.169 Whether the likeness was painted or sculpted, it is striking that Michiel was very exact in his identification of the sitter – calling him not just Polo Trevisan, a common name in Venice, but adding “dalla Drezza” above the line to identify a specific branch of the noble family.170 Who was this patrician whose portrait Odoni had on display in his portego? He appears numerous times in Sanudo’s Diarii, including the following final memorial: “Sir Polo Trivixan, the Cavalier, who was capetanio at Padua and savio dil consejo died. He was a very young man and very highly thought of . . . had he lived, he might have been elected doge” (October 8, 1505).171 In fact he was fiftythree when he died, not exactly a “young man,” but not old enough to be doge.172 This would seem to be the sort of patrician worthy of memorialization in a portrait.

Possibly Francesco Zio knew Polo Trevisan and passed the portrait on to his descendant. In any case, it is interesting that Odoni displayed this portrait of a patrician leader held “in gran reputation” in the portego where it was seen alongside the portrait of his Venetian uncle Zio, as well as the family arms and armor, including the banner with the arms of the Odoni and patrician Orio families. The display of Trevisan’s portrait was part of Odoni’s civic-minded presentation of self and family. *** Although the façade of Odoni’s house was his most public presentation of self, it was in the portego that he most clearly articulated his civil and religious values and commitments. This is not surprising given that the space was traditionally oriented towards a display of family lineage and civic engagement. Overall, the subjects and themes of works on display in the portego defined it as a space of male engagement in the public

PAINTINGS

sphere. All the protagonists of Odoni’s portego paintings were male – Scipio, Trajan, St. Paul and St. Jerome, even Cupid – as were all the identified portraits – Francesco Zio, the patrician Polo Trevisan dalla Drezza, and of course, the Roman emperor Hadrian and his beloved, Antinous. The female figures who appeared in two of the paintings were shown in subservient and supplicant positions: the bride offered to Scipio and the mother who beseeched Trajan. The representation of male dominance and mercy, particularly directed toward women, figured and reinforced the subservient position of women in general, but also justified authority in a larger social and political sense. By representing men in magnanimous acts of kindness towards women, the paintings figure the proper use of authority in relationship to those seen as weak and dependent. The women in the paintings can function as stand-ins for the less-powerful party in any patron–client, ruler–subject, or judge–supplicant relationship. These images addressed viewers in the portego by underscoring power relations deeply inscribed in Renaissance culture, relations that would have been enacted in the reception space of the sala. Studies of inventories listing paintings indicate that nonreligious subjects were rare in Venetian households, especially in the first half of the sixteenth century.173 Odoni’s portego pictures were equally divided between secular and sacred. The combination recalls a dining room described by Erasmus of Rotterdam in his colloquy, the “Godly Feast.” In his account, the host Eusebius invites his visitors to “beguile a brief hour by seeing the . . . wonders of my palace.” There the learned guests admire paintings of the Last Supper, Feast of Herod, Dives Dining and Lazarus Driven from the Gates, as well as Anthony and Cleopatra, the Battle of Lapiths and Centaurs, and Alexander piercing Clitus with a Spear. Sacred and secular subjects were combined to elucidate a Christian moral, as

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Eusebius explains: “these examples warn us to be temperate at feasts, and deter us from drunkenness and sensuality” – a theme well worthy of a portego.174 While Odoni’s paintings do not point quite so neatly to a single moral theme, taken together they make explicit issues of atonement, penitence, mercy, and justice. There were two ancient exemplars of virtuous governance, two saints engaged in direct and personal religious experience, and two reminders of the potential fires that await wayward behavior. The subject of the Justice of Trajan, a pagan figure transformed into a Christian role model, is indicative of the strategy of the portego decoration as a whole; the emperor’s humility and devotion to duty and justice qualify him for Christian forgiveness. Significantly, Dante describes the scene as an ornament on the Gates of Purgatory, a subject also depicted in the portego. While themes of exemplary behavior with a focus on atonement and penance may be generally applicable to any Christian’s life, they seem particularly apposite for a man whose activities as a tax collector were not always perceived as beyond reproach. On the one hand, the objects in Odoni’s portego underlined public moral values, and thereby conformed to what one might expect of a recent immigrant family eager to establish its place in Venetian society. On the other hand, Odoni also transformed the portego into an exhibition space for art in a manner that would clearly have set him apart. If one compares the inventory of Odoni’s portego to those of other contemporary households, the density of display of works of art is striking. Most unusual of all was the presence of sculpture, in effect carrying the collection of the garden-museum on the ground floor into the portego. Not just the amount, but also the variety is noteworthy. There were sculptures made of marble, bronze, terracotta, wood, and even stucco, some fragments and thus possibly antique, most probably modern. As Michiel indicated, even the terracotta sculptures, which one might presume were inexpensive

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decorative additions, were by “diverse masters.” The presence of sculpted portrait busts of contemporaries was also highly unusual. Odoni’s overarching artistic concerns also emerge in some of the paintings on display; the St. Jerome by moonlight, the scene of monsters and fire, and the Cupid in an inferno all seem to deliberately highlight the paragone with sculpture. Perhaps most indicative of all were the stucco busts of Hadrian and Antinous. By exhibiting this emperor whose love of art and Greece was well known and literally embodied in his idealized beloved Antinous in the portego, Odoni suggested

his particular affinity for this ancient figure – a surprising choice for a man who appears to have had no humanist education. In his portego, Odoni transformed what was traditionally already the main display space of a Venetian house into a veritable gallery of painting and sculpture, fashioning himself a follower of Hadrian. The portego was intended to demonstrate to visitors what Aretino obligingly articulated in his letter to Odoni, that the cittadino was a man whose “pleasure in such carvings and castings does not issue from a rustic breast or an ignoble heart.”

Chapter 6

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T

been the most important representational and ceremonial room, but with little furniture and no fireplace, it was poorly equipped for daily living. Instead, family members and their select companions spent much of their days, and certainly 1 their nights, in the camere that opened off the portego (see Fig. 22). Although the word camera is often translated as “bedroom,” this is somewhat misleading: first, because the word was sometimes used in sixteenth-century inventories as a synonym for stanza and thus referred to any kind of room regardless of whether it had a bed, and second, because a camera was more public and had a wider range of uses than the modern bedroom. In Venice, perhaps even more than in other parts of Italy, the camera was an all-purpose day room as well as bedroom, used for eating meals and for receiving and entertaining guests, as well 2 as for sleeping, dressing, and other more private activities. On grand occasions, 3 the camere were also opened up to the larger public along with the portego. The modern separation between the more public living quarters (i.e., the “living room”) and the more private sleeping quarters (i.e., the “bedrooms”) did not apply in the same way. It is true, however, that in passing from the portego into a camera, a visitor was entering a more privileged space in relation to the family – moving from the reception area into a place where one might more comfortably pass the time. Odoni’s house had two special camere, listed in the inventory as the “camera d’oro” (the golden room) and the “camera dalla scala” (the room at or by the stairs). In his notes, Michiel also indicated two camere “da sopra” (upstairs).4 This chapter analyzes the contents of both rooms, revealing their significant H E PORTEGO M AY H AVE

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contrast. Each was set up for a different purpose, and through its contents, represented a different facet of Odoni’s persona.

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rom the portego, the entrance to the camera d’oro was marked with a gilded statuette positioned above the door, an arrangement sometimes represented in contemporary Venetian

paintings. Giovanni Mansueti’s Healing of the Daughter of Ser Nicolò Benvegnudo of San Polo (ca. 1506) (Fig. 77) provides an excellent example.5 The name of the room alone suggests its privileged status in the household. The designation “camera d’oro” recurs frequently enough in inventories to suggest that it was a common name for rooms in prosperous Venetian homes.6 During his stay in Venice in 1494–95, the French ambassador Philippe de Commynes noted that fine houses had “at least

Fig. 77 Giovanni Mansueti, detail of Healing of the Daughter of Ser Nicolò Benvegnudo of San Polo, ca. 1506, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice. Photo: Scala/Ministero per i Beni e le Attività culturali/Art Resource, NY.

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Fig. 78 Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1538, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence. Photo: Scala/Ministero per i Beni e le Attività culturali/Art Resource, NY.

two rooms which have gilded ceilings, rich mantlepieces of cut marble, gilded bedsteads, and painted and gilded screens.”7 The historian Marcantonio Sabellico remarked only a few years later that “one does not see any new house that does not have golden chambers, and there are few who would not have covered their houses with gold if the laws did not restrict [such] luxury.”8 Mansueti’s painting depicts the kind of ornament the writers describe: gilding not only on the ceiling, but also the fireplace, the wall frieze, and various architectural ornaments, not to mention the bed alcove and the child’s bed.9 Such a room would shimmer in the daylight and glow by candlelight. Since fixed elements and decoration were not included in inventories, one can only conjecture that Odoni’s camera d’oro might have had such a ceiling, frieze, and architectural detailing in gold. The inventory does mention gilt leather wall-hangings (perhaps similar to those seen in the background of Titian’s famous Venus of

Urbino – Fig. 78), and that the walnut bedstead was “dorada,” probably meaning it had decorative details picked out in gold.10 The gold ornament both without and within Odoni’s camera d’oro made it the most opulent room in the household, best suited for impressing visitors.11 The furnishing of Odoni’s camera d’oro suggests, it was an important space for entertaining. Although both camere contained a bed and chests, the camera d’oro also had a portable trestle table that could be used for dining as well as other activities requiring a large, flat surface. The camera d’oro also had a more elaborate fireplace with a canvas cover (chimney-board) depicting the classical god of fire, Vulcan, and two tall bronze andirons ornamented with birds around the post and figures on top.12 The camera dalla scala, on the other hand, had the more luxurious bed, indicating the different emphases of the two spaces. What particularly distinguished the camera d’oro, however, was its attached studio, which

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Fig. 79a, b Vittore Carpaccio, The Vision of St. Augustine, 1502, Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, Venice. Photo: Cameraphoto Arte, Venice/Art Resource, NY.

Michel called the “studiolo.”13 While in Florence the word studiolo often referred to a piece of furniture used for studying, in Venice a studio (also occasionally called a studiolo) was a small room.14 The inventory makes clear that in the Odoni house, the studio and the camera d’oro were separate but connected rooms. The first subheading reads “in a studio of a camera d’oro above the antigaia,” followed by a four-and-ahalf-page list of objects; the second subheading reads “in the said camera,” followed by further objects including the contents of many chests.15 In his Diarii, Michiel referred to the studiolo in his own house as a room, not a piece of furniture: “on the night of [March] 10th thieves came into our house through a window in a studiolo.”16 The basic layout of a camera with small attached studio is reiterated in numerous Venetian inventories.17 The best visual representation of it is found in

Vittore Carpaccio’s Vision of St. Augustine (Fig. 79).18 Through a door in the back wall one sees into a smaller room, with its own window and a table and shelves laden with various objects associated with study and learning. Odoni’s studio probably also had built-in (and thus not inventoried) shelves, cabinets, and/or a desk.19 The studiolo has received more scholarly attention than any other Renaissance room type. As a “private” space purportedly devoted to individual contemplation and study, it fits the themes of “individualism” and the “pursuit of knowledge” so prevalent in Renaissance studies.20 In a classic book, first published in 1977, Wolfgang Liebenwein traced the evolution of the room type from medieval princely treasuries and monastic cells to the full-fledged, domestic form in the fifteenth century.21 Most attention has been paid to elaborate examples produced in

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courtly settings: the studio of the marquis of Ferrara Lionello d’Este at Belfiore with paintings of the Muses; the studio of Piero de’ Medici in the Palazzo Medici in Florence with terracotta roundels of the seasons; the studiolo of the duke of Urbino Federico da Montefeltro with exquisite intarsia panels; and the grotto and studiolo of the Marchesa of Mantua Isabella d’Este with paintings by Andrea Mantegna and others. These rooms were themselves jewels, in which small-scale, luxury objects were displayed and admired by owners and visitors. More recently, Dora Thornton has shown that these were only the most conspicuous and elaborate examples of a more widely diffused social practice of creating, decorating, and using small rooms, variously referred to as studi, studioli, studietti, scrittoi, camerini, camerette, in well-to-do houses all over Italy.22 Odoni’s studio is a Venetian example of this broader phenomenon. According to Thornton, “however humble the room, the study demonstrated the dignity of an individual, for it was . . . a space set apart for the use of a single owner. More than any other room in a house . . . the study was perceived by contemporaries as having an individual owner, and a secret identity of its own, which might persist long after that owner’s death.”23 A little room, containing small-scale objects to be handled, it was an intimate space, oriented toward a single occupant.24 Associated with a kind of spiritual transport,25 the studio was not found in all Venetian households, and when one existed. it usually belonged to the paterfamilias.26 The room literally constituted a “self” as separate and distinct from, indeed superior to, others: it was the physical representation of a “private” self, that is of a contemplating self.27 Although construed as a “hideaway” for individual study, in practice, the studio was also a social space for show. Inviting the right people at the right time to see the objects in a studio was part of the point of having it. The study had to be designated as private in order to evoke privileged

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subjectivity, but the “private self” had to be evinced through social activity and display.28 Marin Sanudo, for example, proudly noted in his Diarii on December 5, 1511: “after dinner, let me record, Signor Alberto da Carpi came to see my studio and worldmap along with the three savi ai ordeni, sier Alvise Bembo, sier Maffeo Lion, sier Daniel Barbarigo.”29 A couple of years later (July 20, 1513), the papal envoys Pietro Bibbiena and don Pindaro (Sindesio Gentile) “came the other day to my house to see my studio together with sier Hironimo Lipomano and sier Francesco da Pexaro.”30 Odoni’s studio was the first interior space Michiel detailed in his notes, immediately following the ancient and modern sculpture he saw in the courtyard below, as if these were the two spaces Odoni was most eager to present. Because studii were the most personal of rooms, their contents varied more than most rooms. Venetian studii in this period combined the functions of vault, study, and/or “collecting room.”31 As is the case in the Odoni inventory, notaries often began their inventories with this room because it usually contained the family’s most precious objects and crucial documents, constituting (in terms of possessions) the core of the household. The thieves who broke into Michiel’s studiolo, for example, absconded with “the little box with documents, and jewels, that is a balas ruby, a sapphire, pearls, and 80 ducats, and a piece of the wood of the Cross.”32 Other common objects found in this room, presumably of less interest to thieves, were accoutrements and utensils for writing and learning – books, writing tools of various sorts, and objects like the astrolabes and other instruments depicted by Carpaccio in St. Augustine’s studio.33 Finally, the space was often used for the display and admiration of smaller-scale works of art (both antique and modern) and various other curiosities. Some studii contained one or two of these three general categories more than the other(s).

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In any case, many objects, such as carved gems, illuminated manuscripts, or fancy inkwells bridged the categories of valuables, study implements, and works of art – all could be lumped together as what one testator revealingly referred to as his “ornamenti di studio.”34 The emphasis in Odoni’s studio was decidedly on works of art and curiosities. Although gems and money were also present in the Odoni household, they were kept in a strongbox [scrigno] in the camera dalla scala.35 The few books Odoni owned were likewise not in the studio, but in the mezzado, where he probably also kept family and business documents.36 One has the impression that Odoni used the mezzado as his business office and the studio as a room for less practical and defined activities. Most of the objects in Odoni’s studio were what the Neapolitan humanist Giovanni Pontano referred to his treatise on splendid living as “ornaments” rather than “furnishings.” While the latter (“domestic objects, such as vases, plates, linen, beds”) were needed to live comfortably, the former were acquired “not so much for use as for embellishment and polish . . . . The sight of these things brings pleasure and prestige to the owner of the house, when they are seen by the many who frequent his house.”37 The “ornaments” marked the studio as a place of reflection and leisure; unadulterated by the pressures of everyday life, it became essentially a collection room. Odoni’s studio fits well in the trajectory that Liebenwein outlined for the meaning of the word studio in the sixteenth century, from a place to study to “a synonym of collection.”38 By owning a studio like this one in Venice at this time, Odoni distinguished himself from most of his contemporaries by constructing a container for his “cultivated self,” distinct from his roles as Venetian citizen, public servant, gracious host, or virile lover, which were more directly figured in other parts of his domain. The fact that Odoni assembled such a room indicates

that he regarded himself as the sort of person who was not just in the business of making money, but also of contemplating larger truths. The notary described the studio as “sopra dell’antigaia” suggesting that it overlooked either the garden or the courtyard, both spaces where sculpture was displayed. Michiel also linked the antigaia and the studio conceptually; as noted, his account of the latter follows immediately upon the former, although the two spaces were almost certainly not contiguous. The association between these two spaces would be fused later in the century when Sansovino referred to Venetian collections in 1581 as “studi d’anticaglie,” literally conflating the two words. In verifying the honorable origins of Aldo Manuzio, Jr., the son of Andrea Odoni’s niece, Nicolò Manassi noted in 1585 the particular wealth of the Casa Odoni, which he said “used to have one of the most beautiful studij in all of Italy.”39 Although certainly a hyperbolic statement, it does suggest that the studio remained widely known and regarded as the most remarkable part of the house after Andrea’s death. The Casa Odoni was famous above all for its studio, that is, for its collection.

Utilitarian Objects and Works of Art The notary listed the bewildering variety of smallish objects in Odoni’s studio in no particular order, presumably as he came upon them. Some items were functional, the sort of thing one might expect to find in a study: two inkwells, one of bronze, the other of carved wood; a gilt leather box with scissors, a penknife, and other tools; a seal with the Odoni arms carved in precious stone; a gilt silver compass. Others were less specifically suited for study: four saltcellars, two spoons, two knives, a file, a Turkish-style wooden ladle, a Germanstyle silver purse, and five rosaries. These objects were probably housed there because they were

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particularly valuable.40 Practical household goods could also be luxury objects. According Pontano, “the base man and the splendid man both use a knife at table. The difference between them is this. The knife of the first is sweaty and has a horn handle; the knife of the other man is polished and has a handle made of some noble material that has been worked with an artist’s mastery.”41 Odoni’s saltcellars were made of rock crystal with gold or silver, as were the handles of his silver spoons; the file had a white bone handle, one knife handle was blue (turchin), the other yellow. The more common silver cutlery was kept in another part of the house.42 Alongside more functional items were smallscale art objects, intended to be held in the hand and examined closely. This included ancient coins and modern medals. The inventory lists five gold medaglie, fourteen gilded bronze medaglie, and thirty silver medagliette in the studio proper. Another twenty-four gilt copper and lead medaglie were kept in a black leather box in the adjacent camera.43 Some of these were probably antique, and some were probably inherited from Odoni’s uncle Zio.44 Medaglie were the most common type of antiquity found in Venetian households, much more common than ancient statuary.45 On the table in front of Odoni in Lotto’s portrait are what appear to be four larger bronze medals and two smaller silver coins. Just behind them is a book of hours with a black binding and ties, and what appears to be a jeweled ornament on the cover. This tiny book, smaller than Odoni’s hand, may represent one of the two prayer books listed in the inventory and described by Michiel. Michiel had already seen one of them in Zio’s house, where he noted: The four incipit pages [principii]46 of a prayer book [officiolo] on kidskin, finely and perfectly illuminated, are by the hand of Jacometto. Over a long period of time they have gone through the hands of

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various antiquarians [antiquarii], but were first made for Messer Zuan Michiel. They were always valued at least 40 ducats.47

This is one of Michiel’s longest entries on a single work of art within the entire Notizia, suggesting the object’s particular fascination. Not only does he report that the manuscript was “finely and perfectly illuminated” by Jacometto Veneziano (active ca. 1472–d. before 1498), one of the most admired miniature painters of his time, but he also gives its provenance and value.48 As Michiel specifically noted, this was an object that many “antiquarii” wished to own. Given its relative fame, perhaps Lotto intended knowledgeable viewers to recognize it in the portrait. In the inventory it is described as having a black velvet cover and its own protective black leather box.49 In Lotto’s portrait, however, the book is out of its box, its ties loose. In 1948, Otto Pächt attributed a breviary in the Bodleian Library (MS. Can. Lit. 410) (Fig. 80) to Jacometto based on comparison to portraits ascribed to the artist.50 Some years later, Lilian Armstrong tentatively suggested that the manuscript might be the one owned by Zio and inherited by Odoni, pointing out that it has four fully illuminated pages corresponding to Michiel’s “quattro principii.”51 “An elaborately decorated manuscript whose extraordinary quality has been consistently praised by all who have seen it,” the Oxford Breviary accords with Michiel’s high estimation.52 Whether or not this is the manuscript Michiel saw (the attribution to Jacometto is far from certain), it is an excellent example of the late fifteenth-century Veneto-Paduan school of illumination to which Jacometto belonged, and as such gives a sense of what Odoni’s book may have looked like. Many manuscripts of this type feature fascinating levels of visual play. The text is presented as if it is written on a torn piece of parchment attached by fictive strings so that it

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Fig. 80 Jacometto Veneziano (?), Breviary for Carthusian Use, 1475–76, MS. Canon. Liturg. 410, fol. 1r, The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford.

hangs in front of an architectural backdrop, while precious jewels are represented as if dangling in front of the parchment. Interweaving words and illusionistic conceit, text and image simultaneously vie for the reader/viewer’s attention. While intended to be an aid to devotion, books such as these were also sophisticated objects of visual delight. They were precisely the kind of contemplative, but at the same time precious and exquisite, things suitable for a studiolo. The second illuminated manuscript Odoni owned differed considerably in style. According

to Michiel, “The David on the incipit page [principio] of the other prayer book [officiol] was by the hand of Benedetto Bordon.”53 The illuminator, writer, editor, printmaker, and cartographer Bordon was active in Venice and Padua from 1477 until his death in 1530. The most prominent Venetian miniaturist of his generation, he illuminated many manuscripts and deluxe printed books on vellum for powerful and notable families.54 He was connected in various ways to the Aldine press and may have been responsible for the illustrations in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499).

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Fig. 81 Workshop of Benedetto Bordon, King David from the Belengo Book of Hours, before 1530, MS Typ 100, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

Odoni likely commissioned the illumination of David, an appropriate and common choice, since King David was thought to have composed the psalms, an essential component of a prayer book.55 A book of hours from Bordon’s workshop in the Houghton Library includes an image of King David in prayer (Fig. 81).56 Unlike the complex layering of the illumination attributed to Jacometto, Bordon adopted a more pictorial idiom, with the image framed on the manuscript page like an ideal Albertian window. The illumination of David is a little painting complete with coloristic effects, entirely separate from the beginning of the text on the facing page.57 Viewing and reading are extricated from one another in a new form of the prayer book, probably influenced by the introduction of printed texts with discrete woodcut prints of the sort

Bordon himself produced. Although Bordon’s officiolo did not have the same acclaim as the work by Jacometto, it is the only work by Bordon that Michiel recorded in his notebook, suggesting it was particularly remarkable.58 Odoni’s portrait by Lotto represents him with the kinds of objects he had in his studiolo. The table covering in the portrait may, in fact refer to the green cloth kept in one of the chests in the camera d’oro.59 However, the many statues in the portrait accord less well with the contents of his studio. In fact, despite the emphasis given to sculpture in almost all parts of Odoni’s house, there were surprisingly few examples in the studio. Some of these, such as two marble heads with stucco busts, a marble relief of a head, a little bronze head, and “a small foot and a small hand of stone,” could conceivably have been antiquities or faux

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antiquities.60 Others, like two stucco portraits of Odoni himself, were obviously modern works.61 Michiel made special note of two modern sculptures, although he was not able to identify the artists. One was a small bronze depiction of a dog, the other was a wooden statuette of a man on horseback.62 Statues of horses were a common studio prop; an example is illustrated in Carpaccio’s painting of St. Augustine, positioned on the sort of shelf typically used to display such objects in Venetian interiors (referred to as reme).63 The dog, an emblem of knowledge often found in representations of scholars in their studies, is also included in Carpaccio’s image, albeit “live” rather than sculpted.64 Charming as these ornamenti di studi may have been, the most noteworthy sculpture in the studio was the fifth-century, late antique ivory that placed Odoni in a lineage of renowned collectors. Although not mentioned by Michiel, it is the second item in the inventory, preceded only by “a small copper box with crystals pointed like diamonds,” which likely served as its protective case.65 Based on the inventory description, “a small ivory plaque [quadretto] with the gilded Barba arms, with an inscription on the back reading: Petrus herus meus etc.,” the ivory can be identified with the Querini Diptych, now in the Museo Santa Giulia in Brescia (Fig. 82). The two ivory panels were once the property of the most famed fifteenth-century Venetian collector, Cardinal Pietro Barbo (1416–71), later Pope Paul II. Barbo encased both reliefs in highly ornamental gilt copper frames with his coat of arms on the front and an inscription on the reverse that begins “Petrvs Hervs Mevs.”66 The inscription is written in the voice of the object itself: “My owner is Cardinal Pietro Barbo of Venice, noble son of Venice and, Vicenza, your Bishop. He delighted in his wondrous love for these works of great ingenium.”67 The epigram gave the object an impeccable pedigree and marked it with special aesthetic wonder. The

inscription’s cachet is recorded in a second Latin inscription, appended by a later owner of the diptych, Cardinal Angelo Maria Querini (1680–1755), to the back of panel A, declaring his admiration for the fifteenth-century pope’s refined taste and adding his own coat of arms.68 Odoni apparently did not place his own marker on the object. Were it not for the detailed description in the inventory, his place in this lineage of famous collectors would be lost. It is unclear when Odoni came to own one or both panels, perhaps not until after Michiel’s visit in 1532. But in all likelihood, the ivories came to Venice via the jeweler and antiquario Domenico di Piero, who purchased objects from the Barbo estate after the pope’s death in 1471 (having helped the pope amass his collection in the first place).69 Since Odoni was only nine years old when the jeweler died in 1497, he probably obtained one or both of the ivories through an intermediary, perhaps even Zio.70 Like the illuminated manuscript by Jacometto, Barbo’s ivory was a coveted object, with a well-known pedigree and high monetary value (estimated at twenty ducats each in the 1457 inventory of Barbo’s collection). Its small size (28.3 cm tall including the frame), elegant workmanship, and sumptuous materials made it a particularly compelling ornamento di studi. Although Odoni owned another ivory depicting St. George, it would not have had the added appeal of the enigmatic, but clearly pagan, subject matter.71 Both Querini panels feature couples within a classical archway. The subjects are now often identified as Diana and Endymion (panel A) and Hippolytus and Phaedra (panel B), but there would have been little for Renaissance viewers to latch onto other than a general amorous overtone.72 In panel B, the one that retains Barbo’s inscription and thus is marginally more likely to be the one Odoni owned, if he owned only one, the pair are clearly a couple although the male lacks genitalia. Not only are they linked by the winged cupid with a bow and torch, but they sensuously

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Fig. 82a, b, c, d Querini Diptych, fifth century, Museo Santa Giulia, Brescia. Photo: Archivio fotografico Civici Musei di Brescia – Fotostudio Rapuzzi.

incline toward one another, their forearms touching. Although positioned on separate plinths, their heads angle together; the male figure holds a book, of a size that would have recalled a Petrarchino in the Renaissance; the woman appears to listen, pointing to herself. The dog on the man’s plinth,

which could be read as an emblem of fidelity, looks up at and reaches out for the woman. Overall the image combines a certain modesty with love motifs, a mixture that would have resonated with the conventions of medieval and Renaissance love poetry.

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Vessels and Other Containers The late antique ivory was a special item. By far the largest number of objects in the studio were vessels and containers of one sort or another – vases, cups, bowls, and boxes – usually ornamented in some manner and made from a variety of materials including silver, alabaster, porcelain, copper, ivory, petrified wood, horn, crystal, and porphyry. Some of them, particularly those carved from pietre dure (hardstones), were highly prized and among the most valuable objects Odoni owned. According to the inventory, several were kept in their own individual cases (for an example, see Fig. 83). Michiel described three vessels in considerable detail, two of which had formerly been in the collection of Francesco Zio, and attributed all of them to known artists:73 a porphyry cup by the Florentine gem-carver Pier Maria Serbaldi da Pescia; a rock crystal cup with carved scenes from the Old

Testament by the sculptor Gian Cristoforo Romano; and a cup made of petrified wood by Vettor di Archanzoli, probably the same Venetian jeweler (Vittorio de Angelis) who crafted a monstrance for the Split Cathedral in 1532 (Fig. 84).74 Vessels carved from semiprecious stones were desired by famous collectors all over Italy, such as Pietro Barbo, Lorenzo de’ Medici, and Isabella d’Este. Lorenzo made a practice of inscribing the ones he owned with his own name, in the same manner that Barbo added a frame and inscription to the ivory that Odoni came to own (Fig. 85).75 The appreciation of such objects was understood to be a sign of social distinction and humanist learning: according to Baldassare Castiglione, the ideal courtier should be able to judge the excellence of vases, cameos, and other such objects, as well as painting, sculpture, and architecture.76 Vases and vessels were an important component

Fig. 83 Milanese workshop, rock crystal cup with leather case, second half of sixteenth century, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Photo: KHM-Museumsverband.

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Fig. 84 Victor de Angelis, Monstrance with Angels Holding Frame, 1532, Cathedral Treasury, Split. Photo: Živko Bačić.

of the nostalgic regard for antiquity. They feature prominently, for example, in Francesco Colonna’s “antique” fantasy Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, and ancient descriptions of famous carved goblets served as an inspiration to Renaissance artists.77 Porphyry. in particular, was associated with antiquity.78 According to Michiel, Odoni’s porphyry cup by Serbaldi was “sold several times as antique at a great price” after the artist buried it underground to protect it during the French King Charles VII’s invasion of Rome in 1495.79 The subsequent unearthing and the resulting damage done presumably contributed even further to its “antique” aura. It was another venerable “collector’s object” along the lines of Jacometto’s illuminations and the Barbo’s late antique ivory.

Although Odoni’s semiprecious stone cups were not actual antiquities, they were deliberately meant to evoke the essence of classical splendor.80 Valued for the durability and beauty of their materials, they embodied a kind of immortality and were sometimes considered to have magical properties.81 They were simultaneously admired as works of art and nature, appreciated as both as art found in nature, and art transforming nature. As the example from Lorenzo de’ Medici’s collection illustrates, such vessels were typically simple in shape, highlighting the beauty of the color and markings of the stone itself. Also to be admired was the grace of the form, as well as the difficulty of carving such hard

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Fig. 85 Vase of Lorenzo de’ Medici, sardonyx with fifteenth-century mounting, Museo degli Argenti, Palazzo Pitti, Florence. Photo: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

material. Michiel described the porphyry cup by Serbaldi as having “three handles and a spout” (3 maneghi et el bocchino), presumably carved from a single piece of stone. In the case of the crystal cup by Gian Cristoforo Romano, the attempt to combine art and nature reached a less than perfect resolution. Seeing the work earlier in the collection of Francesco Zio, Michiel noted that the cup was “made from five pieces tied together by gilt silver bands, completely carved with stories from the Old Testament . . . . It is not a perfect work, but it shows much industry [nè è opera molto perfetta, ma ben operosa].”82 Cristoforo’s piece may have been a kind of experiment, for it was not until later in the sixteenth century that the practice of carving istorie into crystal was fully developed (see for example, Fig. 86).83

A variety of other containers in different shapes and materials were present in the studiolo. For Pontano, this type of variety was an essential component of the “splendid” lifestyle: It is praiseworthy if along with the quantity and excellence of the furnishings there is a variety in the work, the artistry and the material of a series of objects of the same category . . . Some should be in gold, silver and porcelain; and they should be of different forms . . . Of these some should seem to be acquired for use and for ornament, and other for ornament and elegance alone. Some should be made precious by their cost and size, others exclusively by the refinement and rarity which comes either from the hand of the artist or from some other reason.84

Pontano espoused the humanist aesthetic of “variety,” but his emphasis on different materials

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Fig. 86 Valerio Belli, The Entry of Christ into Jerusalem, ca. 1531–33, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

indicates that these works were cherished for their natural substance as well as for the artistic skill with which they were wrought.85 One material that Odoni particularly favored was porcelain. The inventory lists vases of various sizes, bowls, plates, and cups, in white, blue (biave), and green (verde) porcelain. One of these (a vaso basso) was kept in an individual storage box like the precious stone cups discussed above.86 It has never previously been noted that the small bowl on the table behind Odoni is made of transparent white porcelain with a blue design (see Fig. 135).87 Its presence in the portrait further demonstrates Odoni’s attraction to the exotic material. It is possible that it is indeed the particular work that Odoni kept in a box. The porcelain vessels were primarily aesthetic items for display rather than utilitarian objects, as their presence in the studiolo suggests.88 According to Pontano, porcelain was to be admired more for its artistic properties than for its monetary value: “There are some that prefer the tiniest little vase of that material which they call porcelain to vases of silver and of gold even though the latter are of higher cost. It does happen occasionally that the excellence of the gift is not judged so much by its cost, as by its beauty, its rarity, and its elegance.”89 One piece of porcelain in a contemporary Venetian

inventory was indeed described as “the one that is thought to be the most beautiful even though it is small”; even in the context of a mundane inventory, porcelain was accorded a special aesthetic appeal.90 Due to trade and gift exchange with the East, porcelain was probably more easily available in Venice than elsewhere in Italy in this period, but it was certainly not commonplace.91 Michiel understood the appeal of the material since he gave “a beautiful and singular porcelain vase” to the writer Jacopo Sanazzaro as a gift. Sanazzaro wrote a letter in thanks, praising both Michiel and the object, which in effect stood in for him: The more I admire it, the greater is my obligation to you. I will not hide that weakness, which I have had since childhood, if one can call in our time a weakness that which was well known to Augustus: to delight in such furnishings/ornaments [suppellettili] . . . . Not gold or silver would ever be so dear to me as this delicacy. And because it came from your lordship, I would not exchange it for the emerald of Genova, and I will keep it close to me like the finest jewel, in memory of my most beloved and virtuous Messer Marc’Antonio.92

Both Pontano and Sanazzaro emphasize the refined, artistic beauty of porcelain, but in the

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Renaissance the material was also considered a curiosity of nature. The substance of porcelain was poorly understood in Europe and its manufacture could not be reproduced.93 One prevailing theory proposed that porcelain came from eggshells and shells of umbilical shellfish (named porcelains, whence the name) . . . pounded into dust, which is then mingled with water and shaped into vases. These are then hidden underground. A hundred years later they are dug up, being considered finished, and are put up for sale . . . . They are buried every year and the dates are marked in calendars, from which they know when to dig up those which are mature.94

In this way, porcelain had more in common with naturalia and antiquities (or pseudo-antiquities like the porphyry cup) than with common forms of ceramic and earthenware. Even those who held that porcelain was a form of clay, as Michiel evidently did, considered it a rare substance comparable to precious stones, rock crystal, or rhinoceros horn.95 Like these substances, it was thought to have magical properties, and its manufacture was considered an alchemical puzzle.96 Like the pietre dure objects, porcelain containers were simultaneously wonders of nature and of artifice. A few other jars in the studio are more mysterious. Michiel noted another “five little precious stone vases [vasetti de gemme] ornamented with gold” that Odoni had inherited from Zio.97 Some of these may correspond with various jars listed in the inventory: a little jar [bossolin] made of precious stone with gilded bands . . . a jar [bossolo] made of alabaster . . . a jar made of black horn. a little jar [bossoletto] made of ebony, with a miniature of St. Joseph inside a little jar made of wood with a small skull inside a little red jar with an eye inside98

The last two, in particular, seem to cross the line from objet d’art to objets curieux. Accompanying them were other gem-like objects that combined artifact and valuable raw material: a satyr made of pearl with a golden head, the foot/ base [pè] in precious stone with a gilded band . . . a head made of precious stone with a wooden base . . . a heart made of precious stone, with a red stone inside . . . an impression [pronto] of a head in precious stone, with a gilt copper band around it. a large piece of mother of pearl, with in figure inside . . . a snail made of mother of pearl . . .. a walnut plaque [quadro] with a transparent stone in it a shell of white maiolica99

Some of these objects, like the satyr made of pearl, gem, and gold, might have resembled curios later found in the Gonzaga collection, like a little winged dragon made of pearl, enameled gold, and two diamonds (Fig. 87).100 The gems Odoni kept in his studiolo were all representational in some sense, transformed by art, in contrast to the “plain” gems he kept in a strongbox in the camera dalla scala.101

Fig. 87 Flemish (?), dragon made of pearl, enameled gold, and two diamonds, late sixteenth century, Museo degli Argenti, Florence.

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Naturalia These objects, manufactured from various natural materials, were displayed together with “pure” objects of nature, which provoked the visitor to admire the art of nature itself. Michiel noted that in addition to the vases and medals that Odoni had inherited from his uncle Zio, there were also “natural things – that is petrified crabs, fish, and snakes, a dried chameleon, little and rare shells, crocodiles, bizarre fish” (see Fig. 88).102 Naturalia are also listed in the inventory although they do not correspond exactly with what Michiel saw: two petrified crabs (a granciporo and a granzetto) (see Fig. 89), shells, a snake, pieces of coral, a carved ivory horn, a large snail, and “two pieces of yellow amber with a butterfly and an ant inside.”103 Possibly the crocodiles, chameleon, and “bizarre fish” were removed (or disintegrated) between 1532 and 1555. It is difficult to determine how common naturalia were in Venetian collections at the time.

Fig. 88 Pesce palla (Arothros hispidus), first half of the nineteenth century. Photo: Saulo Bambi – Sistema Museale dell’Università degli Studi di Firenze.

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According to Krzysztof Pomian, “before 1750 the collectors interested in such objects in the Venetian Republic could be counted on the fingers of one hand,” and it is true that Michiel does not mention any other such collections in Venice or elsewhere, which I find significant.104 Zio and Odoni were, however, not unique in this passion, which would become more widespread as the century wore on.105 The collection of the cittadino Bernardino de Redaldi, who died in 1527, was notable for porcelain and Islamic bronzes, but it also contained a few shells and two pieces of coral.106 The nobleman Cardinal Marino Grimani wrote in an inventory of 1528 that he owned two elephant teeth, a serpent’s tongue, and a serpent’s jaw, as well as coral and a “bizarre” shell.107 Another nobleman, Gabriele Vendramin, whose house Michiel also visited, displayed several animal horns, a number of shells, an animal tooth, and the back (schena) of a crocodile alongside the antiquities, coins, drawings, and paintings in his “camerino.” Vendramin specifically mentions his “animal horns and other

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Fig. 89 Fossilized crab, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Lent by Hearn Family Trust. Photo: author.

diverse thing . . . of great value” in his will, and his naturalist inclinations were further revealed in a series of manuscripts containing illuminations of birds, animals, and fish, which are mentioned by Michiel as well as in an inventory.108 In both the Odoni and the Vendramin houses, natural objects were juxtaposed with art objects in a studio environment. While the two men obviously shared interests, naturalia encompassed a larger percentage and were of greater variety in Odoni’s collection, which overall was much smaller than Vendramin’s. While Odoni’s assemblage of shells and animals did not have the encyclopedic scope of natural history collections or of the wunderkammern popular in the latter part of the century, it demonstrated his catholic tastes. His collection extended beyond art, luxury objects, and antiquities to include things valued chiefly for their ability to provide knowledge and stimulate curiosity about the natural world. What did Zio and Odoni and their visitors appreciate in such collectibles? In part, they were seeking the “exotic” (exotica) and the “wondrous” (mirabilia).109 Michiel described the shells as “rare,” the fish as “bizarre” – indeed contemporaries used the word bizzarrie more than naturalia to describe natural specimens in this period.110 Furthermore, a number of the things Odoni had in the studiolo were thought to have magical and/or medicinal

properties – in particular, snakes, coral, rock crystal, and porcelain.111 At the same time, these items were objects of knowledge, specimens of natural history. The butterfly and ant caught in amber are preserved specimens that can be examined closely. The diversity of fish and shells, perhaps culled from the local markets as well as through trade with distant places, also suggests an attempt, if not at classification, at least at comparison.112 For Pliny, whose ideas were at the origin of much Renaissance thinking on nature, shells (along with flowers) were the supreme example of Nature’s great variety and creativity – revealing “the breadth of nature’s imagination.”113 Nature was seen to be “most diverse in those [creations] which originate in the sea.”114 Many of the objects listed by Michiel or noted in the inventory fall into the category of “jokes of nature,” as discussed by Paula Findlen. A particular example of this was coral, which, like porcelain, was difficult to classify as either plant or mineral, and as such was a tantalizing demonstration of nature’s awe-inspiring flexibility.115 Chameleons, with their ability to change colors, and fossils (like Odoni’s “petrified” crabs), thought to be stones miraculously created in the form of animals and plants, were “natural paradoxes” that delighted collectors.116 Snails were another puzzle;

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they seemed to reproduce spontaneously, and thus were understood as “a physical metaphor for the mystery of creation” itself.117 “Jokes of nature” are different from natural aberrations and the monstrous, the taste for which would develop only later in the century. In them, nature surprised or produced unexplainable results, but they were “irregular regularities” rather than monstrous or prodigious productions.118 They demonstrated the permeability of the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms, and crossed over from Nature to Art and back again.119 As such, they were conversation pieces par excellence, allowing Odoni and his visitors to marvel at and contemplate Nature’s wonder, variety, and creativity, looking for symbols and meaning in the Book of Nature that would help them grasp the nature of creation and the divine. The objects in Odoni’s studio transcended strict categories and made “manifest the interconnectedness of things in the manifold of nature.”120 Whether natural specimens or artistic representations, a number of the objects found in Odoni’s studio also participate in what one might call the “iconography of the study.” For example, the sculpture of a dog might be understood as an emblem of knowledge.121 Chameleons were particularly popular because they were understood to have a “plasticity and malleability of identity” that mirrored man’s.122 Crocodiles, on the other hand, symbolized the difficulty of study.123 And snakes were symbols of knowledge, the “embodiment of the co-existence of good and evil in the world.”124 In the final analysis, however, the “symbolic,” the “scientific,” and the “marvelous” coexisted and intertwined in the space of the studio; indeed they cannot be separated in the Renaissance view of nature. The juxtaposition of objects in the studio is particularly intriguing, for there is no evidence that the natural specimens were in any way separated from the other types of objects. The objective was less to incite the comparison of antique and modern so central to the courtyard

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display than to provoke the paragone of nature and art, either in the contemplation of a single object (for example, in the semiprecious stone vases in which one could admire the “handiwork” of God in making the material, as well as man’s ability to sculpt the beautiful, but exacting, stone), or through the juxtaposition of objects, for example, by comparing the natural complexity and beauty of a seashell with the various works of art in the collection. Objects like the maiolica shell and the fossilized crabs demonstrated the tie between Artifice and Nature in its most concrete form. One can easily see how a shell made from maiolica could compete in its realism with an actual shell – an example of art imitating nature. Fossils, on the other hand, were understood to be “inorganic analogues of the animals and plants whose appearance they inexplicably replicated.” They were “jokes of nature” because nature reversed the equation by imitating art.125 According to the humanist Angelo Decembrio, insects preserved in amber were Nature’s “lessons in representation,” which men should imitate in creating art.126

The Camera d’Oro Rather than the studio being an extension of the camera d’oro, in some sense, the opposite was true. The studio was a condensed space, intentionally so. It had to be in order to project the notion of individual, private study, to give form to, indeed to inculcate “privileged subjectivity.” While Odoni may have spent time alone in the studio, since the camera d’oro seems to have functioned as the primary “living” space in the house, one can imagine that when guests arrived, objects were brought out from the studio and examined in the room, perhaps posed on the table as visitors sat on the bed or benches warmed by the fire in the hearth.127 The works of art, both pictorial and sculptural, in the camera d’oro suggest its functional and

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symbolic tie to the studio. One of these was a particularly noteworthy item, a French Portrait of the Dauphin Charles-Orlant as a baby that had been plundered by the Venetian army at the battle of Fornovo in 1495. Michiel described this painting in greater detail than any other in the house, highlighting its special provenance much in the way he did for the porphyry cup and illuminated manuscript in Zio’s collection: “The portrait of the little boy as a baby with a French-style white cap over a headdress, and a paternoster in his hand was by the hand of . . . . . . . . and is the portrait of . . . . . . . . acquired by our soldiers in the battle of the Taro among the royal booty.”128 Contemporary Venetian writers attest to this event. Domenico Malipiero reported that among King Charles VIII’s goods taken by soldiers in the battle was “a portrait of his son at the age of three.” And according to the writer of De Bello Gallico, booty taken at Fornovo was brought back to Venice and at least some of it was placed in the guardroom (munizione) of the Council of Ten.129 How the painting made its way to Odoni’s house is unknown. Both Zio and Odoni were too young to have been involved in the battle of the Taro. Perhaps the painting was sold at auction by the state, anxious to replenish its coffers during or after the battles of the League of Cambrai.130 A painting now in the Louvre, attributed to Jean Hey (the Master of Moulins), fits Michel’s description (Fig. 90).131 Either this portrait of Charles-Orlant (1492–95), son of Charles VIII and Anne de Bretagne, or a similar copy must have been the painting Odoni possessed.132 The small size of the panel (39.2 × 33.3 cm including the frame) would have required the kind of close, attentive looking given to the objects in the studio. Portraits of children were rare in Italian art at the time, making this a curiosity item, especially with its “alla franzese” headdress.133 The colorful past of the portrait made it just the sort of object a collector would relish owning, one about which an epic story can be told, in this case of the

exploits of the Venetian army that triumphed at the River Taro and brought back the King’s very son, or at least his portrait, to the lagoon city. It was probably for these qualities that it was kept in the room with the studiolo. Other paintings noted by Michiel in the camera d’oro were also portraits. This included the single image of a female figure in the space: “a portrait of a woman, with a gilt frame.”134 Michiel also recorded gouache or tempera quadretti, which were probably identical with the “seven simple portraits of wood and paper on the stringcourse [reme]” listed in the inventory.135 Portraits were de rigueur in studioli; likenesses of famous men especially were supposed to inspire the collector, whose virtù was projected through his choice of role models. The most prominent of these role models was Odoni’s uncle Zio, who was represented in not one but two, presumably larger, portraits by the artist Vincenzo Catena. Michiel noted both, a halflength portrait of Zio and “a small portrait of the same Zio in armor and painted to his knees” (i.e., in three-quarter length).136 The fact that Zio was depicted in armor suggests, he was involved in military affairs; cittadini are known to have participated in the defense of their patria, although no specific evidence is available about Zio.137 As noted in the previous chapter, it is possible that some of the arms on display in the portego once belonged to Zio, and it is worth noting that his portrait bust was also kept there. Only one of the two portraits by Catena is mentioned in the inventory, but it is described as having a particularly ornate frame “carved and gilt,” suggesting the prominence of this likeness.138 Whether Odoni inherited Zio’s portraits or commissioned them himself, they powerfully evoked the connection between the space and Odoni’s uncle, the well-known collector, responsible for assembling much of the contents of the studio.139 By exhibiting Zio’s portraits in this room, as well as in the portego, Odoni

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Fig. 90 Jean Hey (the Master of Moulins), Le Dauphin CharlesOrlant, 1494, Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photo: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY.

signaled the tie between his ancestral heritage and the social prestige of collecting – he demonstrated his descent from a lineage, not only of Venetians, but also of collectors. Two other objects in the room, listed in the inventory but not in Michiel’s notes, reveal how the emphasis on collecting and study reached beyond the studio proper to the adjoining room. One was a stucco representation of St. Jerome displayed on a shelf (soaza).140 Since it was made of inexpensive material, it was presumably chosen primarily for its subject. Images of St. Jerome, the scholarly translator of the Bible, were frequently displayed in studii and related rooms. Possibly Odoni’s stucco was similar to the St. Jerome in

Penitence made of terracotta (Fig. 91) that once ornamented the studiolo of Sabba da Castiglione.141 Images of St. Jerome were symbols of retreat from the world to the vita contemplativa that the studio supposedly facilitated; as such they figured the connection between the hermit’s cell and the “privacy” of the studio.142 The second painting (or possibly a carved relief) of a narrative scene depicted “Christ preaching.”143 Of all the images of Christ that might have been shown in this room, this one shows him teaching, forming a counterpoint to the idea of secluded contemplation embodied in St. Jerome.

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Fig. 91 Attributed to Alfonso Lombardi, St. Jerome in Penitence, before 1537, Pinacoteca Comunale di Faenza.

Alongside the painted portraits and two religious subjects there were also two mirrors, both of which are listed in the inventory. One of them was especially elaborate, a work of art in its own right: “a gilded glass mirror, with its frame with columns [colonelle], and an embroidered cloth [fazzuol], and curtain.”144 This might be the same mirror Michiel saw in Zio’s house, which he attributed to the Venetian jeweler Vettor di Anzoli (Vittorio de Angelis), who also made a cup out of petrified wood

for Odoni.145 The monstrance in Split designed by Vettor features a frame with columns held up by two angels; one might imagine that a similar classicizing design was used for the surround of Zio’s mirror.146 The framed mirror with its polishing cloth and curtain presumably hung on the wall of the camera d’oro. The second mirror was described in the inventory as a “round glass mirror with a gilded base and knob handle in the middle of the room beneath the ceiling beams” [à mezzo ditta

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camera, sotto la travadura].147 Given its shape, it may have been a convex mirror, and apparently it was either affixed to the ceiling or hanging from the beams.148 In the early sixteenth century, mirrors were far from ubiquitous. The use of reflective surfaces, usually some type of polished metal, goes back to antiquity, but the technology for making clear glass mirrors with dark grounds developed slowly, reaching an advanced state only in the early sixteenth century. The Venetian glass industry on Murano played a key role in these developments, eventually creating a statesponsored monopoly so that Venetian mirrors made with a very special clear and transparent glass called cristallin came to dominate the international market in Europe and even to the East.149 Since Venice was the epicenter for their production, mirrors are found with some frequency in sixteenth-century Venetian inventories of well-to-do homes. The special, carefully guarded technology needed to make the reflective surface meant that mirrors remained luxury items, their high value enhanced through elaborate framing and decoration. Lorenzo da Pavia described a mirror he crafted for Isabella d’Este as “the most beautiful thing that I have ever made.”150 Indeed, the mirror Zio owned was attributed to an artist just like any other art object. In the Renaissance, mirrors were more than luxury items or grooming tools. Significantly, while there were two mirrors in the camera d’oro, there were none in the camera dalla scala, suggesting once again a connection between the function of the camera d’oro and its attached studiolo. Mirrors were commonly listed among the contents of studii and were sometimes featured in visual representations of them. This was in part, because mirrors were study aids, used both as an optical lens and as a way to focus and concentrate light. They were also objects of visual interest and curiosity akin to the objets

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d’art, naturalia, and “bizarre” items exhibited alongside them, an analogy made by Paolo Pino in his treatise on painting: for nature imitates herself, and by nature do all artificers love the things she makes. Nature demonstrates this often by painting on her own, in marble and tree trunks, a diversity of figurate forms, and elsewhere in smoke and cloud is she similarly engaged; and nature does this with that same delight one experiences on seeing one’s effigy in the mirror.151

Like many of the objects in Odoni’s studio, the mirrors combined the wonder of nature and the ingenuity of human invention.152 The placement of the round, probably convex, mirror on or hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the camera d’oro may have highlighted these curious properties. Reflecting the contents of the room from above, it would have captured a large space in its small shape. The mirror created a miniature, real-time “painting” of the room in which the viewer stood. Images that include mirrors often thematize this idea. For example, in a depiction of the Marriage Feast at Cana by Juan de Flandes (Fig. 92), a convex mirror takes pride of place, hanging on the curtain of honor above the engaged couple, conceptually “taking in” the scene gathered in front of it. The strange ability of a convex mirror to encapsulate space was noted and praised by Leonardo Fioravanti: “A mirror can be a fine ornament in a room, on account of the bizarre effect of seeing [per quella bizaria di vedere] everything which is in the room reflected in it: this is why it is so much valued.”153 Sabba da Castiglione similarly remarked: And if by chance you were to ask me which item of furnishing or which ornament it would please me most to have in my house, I would immediately respond: a steel mirror. It would be one of the large

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Fig. 92 Juan de Flandes, The Marriage Feast at Cana, ca. 1500–04, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

and beautiful ones made by the German Giovanni della Barba, most excellent at making mathematical instruments such as solid spheres, globes, astrolabes and mirrors. I would hold it more dear, because it represents reality more than the others.154

Like a scientific instrument, the mirror made things that were hard to perceive visible and knowable. By reflecting “reality” in a microcosm of the external world, the mirror was itself a metaphor for the study of nature, as in the title of Fioravanti’s book about all the arts, sciences, and trades of his time: Dello specchio di scientia universale (Mirror of Universal Science).

In addition to its functional uses and curious properties, the mirror made the self visible to the self, and at least from the time of Socrates, was understood as both a tool and a metaphor for selfknowledge.155 A mirror was a particularly suitable instrument for the kind of self-reflection that the studio was designed to elicit. The idea of a mirror as a device for contemplation was sometimes expressed on the object itself, as in a Venetian example from the late fifteenth century. The inscription reads, “Perché in sorte destina non sollida” (“Because in fortune destiny is not firm”) – asking viewers to look at themselves and reflect on the uncertainty of their future (Fig. 93).156

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Fig. 93 Venetian mirror, end of the fifteenth century, Bagatti Valsecchi Museum, Milan.

Of all the spaces in the Venetian house, the studio was most clearly constructed, both physically and socially, as the personal domain of its owner – whether because of the value of the objects it contained or for the opportunity for withdrawal it presented. The studio was the physical representation of a “private” self, that is, a “contemplating” self. It also, arguably, contributed to creating such a self. Odoni’s studio was not the typical studio of a Venetian nobleman or citizen. It did not contain family papers, conventional jewels, or even books, as did many other Venetian studii of the period detailed in inventories. Aside from a few, undoubtedly very luxurious, functional objects related to writing

and study, Odoni predominantly used the suite of the studio and camera d’oro as a place to store, admire, display, and share with visitors a variety of objets d’art and other curiosities. Their variety and juxtaposition would incite curiosity and visual delight, as well as philosophical speculation and contemplation. Awe of the creations of God was combined with admiration of man’s ability through the ages to fashion that material. The studio was the heart of the collection. But the ethos of the studio proper expanded beyond its four little walls; the camera d’oro functioned as its extension, outfitted with further objects of curiosity (such as the portrait of the French dauphin and the ceiling

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mirror) as well as portraits of the founder of the collection, Francesco Zio. Informing our understanding of Odoni’s possessions in general, the studio demonstrates the seriousness and purpose of what might otherwise be construed simply as “conspicuous consumption.” The camera d’oro and its studiolo identified Andrea Odoni (and later his brother Alvise) as the inheritors of Zio’s virtue. Michiel’s notes indicate that some of the most precious objects in the studiolo – the pietre dure cups kept in special leather cases and the officiolo owned by numerous “antiquari,” as well as the remarkable collection of natural specimens – had originally been Zio’s. As if to celebrate this lineage, Odoni hung two portraits of Zio in the camera. The concentration of objects associated with Zio suggests that the room was in some sense a memorial. In the inventory taken in 1555, ten years after Andrea’s death, there were also “two portraits [ritratti] or impressions [impronti] of the late Messer Andrea Odoni in stucco” in the studio.157 Perhaps these were death masks added to the collection to record Andrea’s own role in preserving and augmenting the family’s storehouse of virtù. Like Gabriele Vendramin and Domenico Grimani, both Zio and Odoni had no legitimate children. In such a circumstance, the collection functioned like the man’s offspring – his own descendant. Whatever the psychological, sociological, or financial underpinning of this may have been, it does seem that collections were often assembled and bequeathed by men without direct legitimate offspring. In Odoni’s case, it was especially important to keep his uncle’s memory alive through the objects in the camera d’oro and its studio. Although Odoni did not share his uncle’s family name, Zio represented his tie to Venezianità. Especially if Rinaldo Odoni died young, Zio may have been a surrogate father. In any case, as Zio’s nipote, Odoni was heir to a legacy of collecting as well as to civil service and education.

The camera d’oro made that heritage apparent and preserved it. The objects brought together here also suggested that Zio, and following him Odoni, were part of a larger lineage of “men who study virtù.”158 A number of the items on display had distinguished provenances. Most significant was the late antique ivory once owned by the renowned Venetian collector, and later pope, Pietro Barbo. To this were added the porphyry cup by Serbaldi “sold several times as an antique at great price” and the officiolo by Jacometto “long in the hands of diverse antiquarii.” These objects create a symbolic tie to a larger, nongenetic family of collectors. Zio and Odoni were men of wide-ranging curiosity and perhaps students of natural history/philosophy. As collectors, they were not just interested in luxurious, expensive works of art, they also valued objects for their ability to convey knowledge and stimulate curiosity. Remarkably, aside from the books of hours, there were no books in Odoni’s studio, but the natural specimens themselves formed a “book of nature” from which one could learn. The studio presented knowledge in the form of visual objects rather than texts. More than any other space in the house, this space represented Odoni as, in the words of Michiel, a man “who contemplates.” In constructing both a lineage of collectors and a zone of “contemplation,” the studio and camera d’oro were chiefly a male domain. This is not to say that women may not have used the room, which was clearly one of the most significant parts of the house, but that its primary symbolic orientation was toward male visitors and members of the household. Contemporary inventories commonly identify a particular room as that of the deceased male head of household. While this pattern is not followed in the Odoni inventory, we can safely assume that the camera d’oro was chiefly “Andrea’s room,” and later that of his brother Alvise. As Alberti made clear in his treatise on the family, as well as in his writings

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on architecture, the studio was by definition “for men only.”159 Women were to be segregated from a space associated with knowledge.160 These were Alberti’s chauvinistic ideals; whether they were followed in practice in sixteenthcentury Venice needs further investigation. The contents of Odoni’s studiolo suite, however, do suggest that the room excluded associations with women and feminine activities. With one possible exception, not a single object or image in the room represented a woman. This characteristic of the space only becomes more evident when it is compared to the other primary living space, the camera dalla scala.

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he inventoried contents of the camera dalla scala correspond almost exactly with Michiel’s account of the works of art he saw in a second camera “de sopra” (upstairs).161 Both accounts reveal a striking contrast with the camera d’oro. Although the camera d’oro was highly ornamented with gilded decoration, its chief attraction was the many interesting objects and works of art contained in the studio, as well as in the room itself. The principal feature of the camera dalla scala, on the other hand, was its systematic decor revolving around the bed. Although the rooms were quite different, each was equally “showy” in its own way. In his letter to Odoni, Aretino made specific note of the beds in the collector’s house: “I don’t know what prince has such rich beds, such rare paintings, such royal clothing,” he opined in the crescendo of hyperbole in his letter.162 Aretino insinuated that the opulence threatened the boundaries of decorum – a cittadino playing a prince. The inventory lends credence to Aretino’s remark: the bedclothes ornamenting the bedstead in the camera dalla scala had “furnishings [fornimento da letto] in yellow damask, with embroidery around all the

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curtains, with two golden pillows and a silver bedspread.”163 A decree of 1512 specifically outlawed the use of gold, silver, and damask for bedclothes; when the rules were repeated in 1530, the Senate admonished “all try to outdo one another, and if something is not done about it, total ruin will effectively follow for many of our nobles and cittadini.”164 Odoni’s bed was in fact in violation of current sumptuary laws. Nor was the ornament of the bed limited to soft stuffs. Michiel noted that “the chests in this room, the bedstead and the doors were painted by Stefano, a student of Titian.”165 The painted chests (although not the doors or the bedstead) are also mentioned in the inventory: “six painted and gilded chests with walnut covers,” as well as “two little chests that accompany the chests.”166 Michiel only mentioned painted furniture in one other instance in the Notizia.167 In both cases, he found the decoration to be of such high quality, most likely including figural scenes, that it was worth recording like other works of art.168 Fresco decoration on the walls complemented the painted doors and furniture. According to Vasari, in addition to the façade and the frieze in the courtyard, Girolamo da Treviso also painted a room upstairs.169 When Cicogna visited the Casa Odoni in 1829, he saw “an upstairs room that served as a bedroom with an alcove, which has a carved frieze painted in chiaroscuro with little nude Venuses and amorini, I’m not sure by what hand, but certainly sixteenth century.”170 Both men were almost certainly referring to the camera dalla scala.171 The “three pieces of spalliere with vegetation and figures that furnish the camera dalla scala” listed in the inventory would only have added to the ensemble.172

Painted Furniture and Titian’s Student From the fifteenth century through at least the mid-sixteenth century, furniture painted with

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figural scenes or decorative designs was relatively common in Renaissance domestic interiors. The most famous surviving legacy of this practice are the many panels from cassone (chests; usually called casse in Venetian inventories) on exhibition in museums around the world. However, in very few, if any, instances are the pieces of furniture themselves intact. While many examples of panels from painted furniture are Tuscan, they also come from other parts of Italy. Complete “bedroom sets” of the sort Odoni had are better documented in Florence because Florentines more regularly kept records of household purchases.173 Venetian commissions were less frequently recorded, and inventories are usually vague. The Odoni inventory is a case in point; the casse are simply described as “painted and gilded.” Michiel’s account of Odoni’s bedroom furniture is unusual because he detailed the types of furniture painted (chests, a lettiera, and the doors) and provided the name of a particular artist. A few other Venetian writers provide further information about furniture painting. According to Paolo Pino and Carlo Ridolfi, painters only practiced the art form early in their careers or when they hit hard times.174 Ridolfi described painted scenes on furniture by Giorgione, Bonifacio Veronese, and Andrea Schiavone.175 They included “bed enclosures” (recinti da letto), cabinets, armoires, and many chests graced with mythological subjects, Old Testament scenes, “sacred and profane stories, the Muses with their attributes, the planets, Venuses with amorini, satyrs, landscapes,” and so forth.176 One example seems especially close to Odoni’s decoration: Schiavone’s “two doors of a room [with] depictions of Apollo and Diana” and a bed enclosure with “some stories alluding to the birth of a child.”177 That Odoni’s painted doors, bed, and chests were by a student of Titian named Stefano fits the pattern described by Pino and Ridolfi. Although it is unclear who this “Stefano” was, the fact that he was identified as Titian’s apprentice suggests he

was early in his career in 1532, perhaps not yet an independent master. Michiel saw another work by “Stefano” the year after he visited Odoni in the house of Antonio Pasqualino, another cittadino collector: “The large painting of the supper of Christ was by the hand of Stephano, a student [discipulo] de Titiano, finished in part by Titian himself, in oil.”178 Possibly Titian also had a hand in the design of the painted furniture in Odoni’s house since he painted a sacra conversazione for the same room probably around the same date (early 1530s) (see discussion below). Some scholars have identified “Stefano” as the Netherlandish painter Jan Steven van Calcar (?1499–?1546), whom Vasari named as one of Titian’s few true “discepoli.” Calcar is documented in Venice by 1536 or 1537, but he may have arrived earlier and worked in Titian’s workshop. By 1538, he was established enough to be publishing anatomical illustrations with the famous surgeon Andreas Vesalius at the University of Padua (see Fig. 42).179 More recently, however, Mauro Lucco has revived the candidacy of Stefano Cernotto, sometimes called Stefano d’Arbe (b. ca. 1500–05, d. 1541). Lucco’s proposal is appealing because Cernotto is documented in Venice by 1530, and there is a large surviving painting by him of the Last Supper, which Lucco suggests is the canvas owned by Pasqualino (Fig. 94).180 It is not difficult to imagine the prolific and facile Cernotto executing paintings for chests and doors. Given the diversity of decorations and subjects that Ridolfi describes in his examples of painted furniture, it is hard to know what Odoni’s furniture might have looked like. Cicogna described an alcove, most likely for a bed, with a carved frieze painted in chiaroscuro with “little nude Venuses and amorini.” This may have been part of the bed ornament by Stefano. Ridolfi notes that one of the subjects Bonifacio Veronese painted on “recinti di letto, casse e simili cose” was indeed “Veneri con Amorini.”181

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Fig. 94 Stefano Cernotto, Last Supper, ca. 1530, formerly private collection, Treviso. Photo: Biblioteca Berenson, Fototeca, I Tatti – The Harvard University Center of Italian Renaissance Studies.

In Bed with “Venus” That the subjects painted on the bedstead, chests, and doors of the camera dalla scala fit with the alcove frieze of Venus and amorini seems even more likely given the subject of another painting that Michiel connected with the bed: “The large reclining female nude behind the bed was by the hand of Girolamo Savoldo from Brescia.”182 The location is confirmed in the inventory, where a “portrait of the nude woman” is said to be “in the callesella of the lettiera.”183 In his Dizionario del dialetto veneziano, Giuseppe Boerio defined the “calesèla del leto” as “the space between the bed and the wall.”184 Since a separate bedstead (lettiera) is not listed in the inventory, I am inclined to be believe the camera dalla scala had an alcove bed, similar to those represented in contemporary Venetian paintings (for example, Fig. 77), and Cicogna indeed mentions an alcove in his account of the house.185 The practice of placing beds in alcoves was illustrated by Sebastiano Serlio in volume 6 of his architectural treatise (Fig. 95). In the elevation drawing of camera C, a bed is placed in a niche, which Serlio referred

to as an “albergo,” with the head against the left wall and a space between the end of the bed and the right wall. This space could be a callesella. Certainly, it would be a perfect spot for hanging a longish horizontal painting that could be seen from the bed.186 It is also possible that the callesella was the space between the bed and the back wall. That objects or works of art might sometimes be placed in this location is suggested by a famous fresco depicting a bed, Il Sodoma’s Alexander visiting Roxana (ca. 1511) in Agostino Chigi’s suburban villa in Rome (Fig. 96). On the wall visible through a parted bedcurtain, is a round mirror.187 Odoni’s nude might have hung in a similar position. In this case, when he lay in bed, he would have been literally reclining next to his “portrait of a nude woman.” Whatever the exact location, there is no doubt that there was an intimate relationship between Odoni, his bed, and his painting of a reclining female nude. Michiel’s description of the painting is perhaps the most discussed passage from his entire account of Odoni’s house for two reasons. First, Michiel referred to the image as a “nuda” rather than “Venus,” and second he tells us not only that

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Fig. 95 Sebastiano Serlio, detail of Floor Plan for a Venetian Palace, 1547–50, Codex Icon. 189, f. 52, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich.

the painting was in a bedroom, but that it was closely connected to the bed. Art historians have therefore used this excerpt to explain and interpret a type of painting, the reclining female nude, that would not only become very popular in Venetian art, but would also, of course, have an enduring impact in European painting in general. The first Venetian artist to produce such a painting was apparently Giorgione with his famous Sleeping Venus, now in Dresden,188 but Giorgione’s basic subject matter and format were imitated and modified by a number of painters active in Venice, most prominently Palma Vecchio, but also Giovanni Cariani, Bernardino Licino, Girolamo da Treviso, Lorenzo Lotto, Paris Bordone, and, we learn from Michiel’s

notes, Savoldo. Titian himself produced the painting’s most famous descendant, the so-called Venus of Urbino for Guidobaldo II della Rovere, the son of the duke of Urbino (see Fig. 78). Titian’s version effectively exported what had previously been a largely Venetian genre of painting into the international art market. It is therefore safe to say that when Michiel saw Odoni’s nude in the camera dalla scala, the type was quite well established in Venice. There was nothing particularly novel about Odoni’s painting of a reclining female nude, other than that it was by Savoldo, an artist who is not otherwise known to have painted nudes of any sort. It is perhaps an indication of the popularity of the type that he would be pressed into doing so.

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Fig. 96 Il Sodoma, detail of Alexander visiting Roxana, ca. 1511, Villa Farnesina, Rome. Photo: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

That Michiel referred to the woman in the painting as “la nuda grande” rather than specifically as Venus has supported the suggestion that at least some nudes did not have any mythological pretensions whatsoever. The discussion has been particularly intense regarding the identity of the woman in the Venus of Urbino.189 Odoni’s

inventory is less often cited in these debates but provides significant corroboration for Michiel’s observation. Referring to the painting as a “portrait [retratto] of a nude woman,” the notary distances her even further from identification with a mythological figure. While the word “retratto” does not necessarily mean a likeness of

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Fig. 97 Girolamo da Treviso, Sleeping Female Nude, early 1520s, Galleria Borghese, Rome. Photo: Scala/Ministero per i Beni e le Attività culturali/Art Resource, NY.

a particular individual, it does at least suggest the figure was “drawn from life.”190 In fact, the designation “donna nuda” is quite common in Venetian inventories, while the identification “Venus” is relatively rare.191 This may be due to the descriptive imperative of inventory language, which has a tendency to remain on the most elemental level of iconographic identification.192 The generic wording is more surprising in Michiel’s notes, because he did identify as Venus the woman in the Giorgione painting (finished by Titian), which once also had a figure of Cupid. But a number of Venetian paintings of reclining female nudes have no attributes associated with Venus, other than their similarity to the Dresden prototype, including a work by Girolamo da Treviso, which was once thought to be Odoni’s painting by Savoldo (Fig. 97).193 Two other contemporary written sources shed light on the seeming conundrum. The first is an inventory of the house of Odoni’s contemporary (and probable acquaintance), the cittadino Francesco della Vedova. In 1557, the notary recorded “a large painting with a female nude, that

is, Venus” in the portego.194 Although it is not clear that this was a reclining figure (and it is somewhat surprisingly that it was located in the portego),195 the wording suggests that “nuda” and “Venere” were more or less interchangeable terms. A similar slippage can be found in a negotiation between the Gonzaga family and King Francis I of France for a painting by Lorenzo Costa. The king wrote in 1518 that he would very much like to have “some female nude figure or some Venus” by the artist.196 The Gonzaga quickly provided the work in question, and the duke himself wrote to the king: “I had one made on purpose by my painter, because I understood the desire to have an image of this kind. I know that this picture will be placed before someone who is a great and good judge of the beauty of bodies, especially those of women, and for this reason I am all the more pleased to send it.”197 Neither the duke nor the king seemed to care very much whether, strictly speaking, the painting depicted Venus or not. The business at hand was the “judgment” of the “beauty of bodies.” Based on these sources as well as surviving pictures, while Odoni’s “nuda grande destesa”

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might have depicted Venus, it seems more likely that it represented a female nude without clear iconographic indicators – as in Girolamo da Treviso’s example. The situation is very similar to the designation “una cena” that one often finds in inventories. While this might be a depiction of the “Last Supper,” it could also be another dining scene from the New Testament (such as the “Supper at Emmaus”), or it could be any type of banquet event, perhaps mythological or even a genre scene. Both the “cena” and the “nuda” suited a particular need for a particular location in the household (a dining scene in the portego; a nude in the camera).198 In the final analysis, the distinction between “donna nuda” and “venere” is much more important to twentiethcentury art historians than it ever was to owners of paintings in sixteenth-century Venice (or probably elsewhere). For them, all “donne nude” were in some sense “Venuses,” and Venus was, for the most part, depicted as “una donna nuda.”199 The fact that both Michiel and the notary locate Odoni’s “donna nuda” in the camera and in particular relation to the bed has led many scholars to suppose that most female nudes were similarly placed.200 Was the placement another example of Odoni’s unusual tastes, or was he instead following traditional practices? Although we have seen numerous instances when Odoni did exhibit art in novel ways, in the case of the reclining nude by Savoldo, there is some evidence to suggest he was not alone. Vasari explicitly referred to a painting of Venus and Cupid by Paris Bordone as a “quadro da camera.”201 For the most part, paintings of nude women listed in Venetian inventories were indeed found in camere. Normally no further indication is given than that, except in one example I found. This was a second nude in the inventory of Francesco della Vedova located “in camera bassa.” The notary recorded: “a large walnut bedstead with columns with its canopy and female nude.”202 We might imagine this bed to have looked somewhat like the one in Sodoma’s fresco. The offhand way in

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which the notary mentions the “donna nuda,” as if it were as common a part of the bed as the posts or the canopy, implies that it was accepted practice to display such images almost as part of the bed. But, if the popular Venetian reclining female nudes were created to decorate bedrooms, and even beds proper, on what occasion they were commissioned and for what purpose? That they had the straightforward purpose of arousing sexual desire, like a “pin-up,” has been suggested by Charles Hope, among others.203 If Odoni’s nude was not on the headboard, but rather, as I have suggested, to the side of the bed, or perhaps on the wall at the foot of the bed, the primary viewing point for the image would indeed have been from the bed. The curtains around the bed could be used to close the painting off from general view, but they, of course, could be opened to show the image to certain visitors, as for example, it was shown to Michiel. Modern scholars have found it difficult to imagine that Italian Renaissance patrons, at least Venetian patricians and cittadini, would commission such an image outside the confines of marriage. They suggest that such works of art catered to the belief that seeing beautiful images during intercourse would facilitate the production of more beautiful children. The idea had roots in ancient medical and other writings and was not infrequently repeated in the Renaissance.204 Alberti noted that “[w]herever man and wife come together, it is advisable only to have portraits of men of dignity and handsome appearance; for they say that this may have a great influence on the fertility of the mother and the appearance of future offspring.”205 The most direct statement of this “purpose” for images was not articulated in writing until the seventeenth century, when the doctor turned art critic, Giulio Mancini gave his opinion: Lascivious things are to be placed in private rooms, and the father of the family is to keep them covered, and only uncover them when he goes

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there with his wife, or an intimate who is not too fastidious [persona confidente e non scrupolosa]. And similar lascivious pictures are appropriate for the rooms where one has to do with one’s spouse; because once seen they serve to arouse one [all’eccitamento] and to make beautiful, healthy and charming children.206

Art historians have especially used the texts by Alberti and Mancini to argue that paintings of reclining female nudes were commissioned for marriage in order to ensure attractive offspring.207 But it is worth pointing out that Mancini does not say that this is the only purpose for such images. He says they can be seen with one’s spouse or “an intimate who is not too fastidious” and that they “serve to arouse one and make beautiful . . . children” (emphasis mine). While there is some evidence to suggest that the Dresden Venus was commissioned for the marriage of Girolamo Marcello, it is not incontrovertible.208 Perhaps the image that has the best claim to be a visual epithalamium is Lorenzo Lotto’s Venus and Cupid (Metropolitan Museum, New York) with its conspicuous symbolism and the portrait-like face of a possible bride depicted as Venus.209 We have no further evidence for any of the other reclining female nudes produced in Venice. Although attempts have been made to tie the Venus of Urbino to the marriage of Guidobaldo III, these arguments are questionable.210 The case of Odoni’s nude emphatically does not support the “marriage picture” thesis, as he was certainly not married at the time Michiel saw the reclining nude in the Casa Odoni.211 In the final analysis, Maria Ruvoldt’s argument that images of sleeping female nudes “functioned within a masculine economy of intellectual and aesthetic pleasure, rather than exclusively within that of marriage” is more plausible (see further discussion below).212 Odoni’s nude was part of a design scheme centered on the very sumptuous bed, but other works of art decorated the room. Odoni was determined to transform all areas of his house

into showcases for his collection. Here, as in every other part of the house, sculpture was on display. The notary recorded “20 bronzes of various sorts, that is, heads, lamps, busts, candelabras, and others.” Michiel’s notes indicate that these were modern works: “The many small bronze figures are modern, by various masters.”213 The objects were notable for their variety – they were not a set but a collection, of different forms, by different artists. Although the inventory does not specify, they may have been exhibited around the room on the reme or soaza, in the manner shown in Carpaccio’s Vision of St. Augustine (see Fig. 79). Neither Michiel nor the notary identifies the works with any precision, but their presence further emphasizes Odoni’s interest in sculpture by modern masters, an artistic interest which, as we have seen, was relatively unusual in Venice at the time. As Debra Pincus has noted “Perhaps more than any other category of art, small-scale bronzes speak of the private collector. The small bronze was meant to be savored at close quarters, turned in the hand, ‘beautiful from all sides’.”214

Half-Length Beauty Although neither Michiel nor the notary gave much information about Odoni’s bronzes, they were luckily more forthcoming about the paintings in the room. Odoni’s “nuda grande destesa” was not the only image of feminine beauty. A second picture that hung in the camera dalla scala fit this bill: “the painting of two half-length figures of a young woman and an old woman behind her, in oil, was by the hand of Jacomo Palma.”215 The painting probably adopted a compositional type – two halflength figures, one in front of another – that was developed by Giorgione and Titian in the first two decades of the sixteenth century and was emulated and elaborated by a number of other Venetian painters. Such compositions appropriated the “close-up” format of portraits in order to depict

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either narrative or allegorical subjects, often of an ambiguous nature.216 Chriscinda Henry has linked the compositional type to the literary form of the contrasto (a dialog between characters) used in contemporary popular comedies and farces.217 Odoni’s painting of a “young woman and an old woman behind her” may have depicted a narrative or theatrical subject, as in Giovanni Cariani’s Judith and Her Maidservant (Fig. 98). Presumably, however, an iconographic clue, such as Judith’s sword or the head of Holofernes, would have prompted Michiel to identify a specific scene. A surviving painting accords with Michiel’s rather generic description, and is also stylistically linked to Palma. It may be a copy of the painting Odoni owned (Fig. 99). Tentatively attributed to

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Palma’s student Bonifacio Veronese by Philip Rylands, it represents a typically Palmesque Venetian “beauty.”218 In the background, an old woman puts her hands on the younger woman’s shoulders and peers over as if to look into the mirror that the young woman holds in her right hand. The quality of the picture does not appear to be very high, but its compositional conception is intriguing.219 It combines the half-length sensuous female beauty, for which Palma was so famous, with the narrative/allegorical two-figure compositional type described above. She is eroticized by her unbound hair as well as her open camicia, which teasingly just barely covers her nipples. Her dress is also parted beneath the waist, revealing the white underlayer, and her

Fig. 98 Giovanni Cariani, Judith and Her Maidservant, ca. 1515, Palazzo Butera, Palermo. Photo: Alex Fox (Roy Fox Fine Art Photography).

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Fig. 99 Bonifacio Veronese (?), after Palma il Giovane, Young Woman with an Old Woman Behind Her, ca. 1530, formerly San Diego Museum of Art. Photo: Fondazione Federico Zeri.

left hand is positioned suggestively; her fingers fondle or draw apart the folds of cloth in a pose that recalls Raphael’s La Fornarina. Her state of undress and the mirror connect her to a series of half-length sensuous images of women at their toilette engaged in making themselves up, paralleling the artist creating his own “beauty.”220 The mirror at the lower corner emphasizes the idea that the woman is being pictured, framed as image. She is so lacking in expression, so indifferent to the older woman behind, that she almost appears to be a picture within a picture. The painting is about woman as image, as beauty, a beauty that, fleeting in reality, is caught for “eternity” by the painter. While the younger woman turns away from the mirror, the older woman looks into it and, with her hands on her shoulders, seems to turn the younger woman to look as well. On the one hand, it is a vanitas theme – the older woman wants the younger woman to face what she will become. On the other hand, the older woman might be a procuress, assisting her charge/protégée in the “art” of self-presentation. In this regard, the painting

could indeed be connected to the contemporary satiric comedies that often featured the characters of the courtesan and her procuress.221 As Henry has noted, half-length images such as this one were often deliberately ambiguous and playful.222 Odoni’s painting likely resembled this surviving work – a play on a well-established type of Venetian composition. The painting of “a young woman and an old woman behind her” was certainly an allegory of feminine beauty; most likely it was also to be understood as a courtesan and her procuress. Such a composition, while celebrating female beauty, also undermines its power. The young woman may be beautiful, she may transform herself into art, but it is a fleeting art. The mirror and the old woman behind her both condemn her frivolity, even while her beauty is presented as a delectation for the patron/viewer.

A Deluxe Madonna A third painting in the camera dalla scala also centered on a female protagonist: “The painting of our

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lady in the countryside, with the Christ child and young St. John the Baptist, and S(ant)a . . . . . . was by the hand of Titian.”223 Rather surprisingly, this is the only image of Madonna and child listed by either Michiel or the notary in the entire house. In general, images of the Madonna and child were not only the most common type of representation in Venetian homes, but they were often found in multiple rooms in the house.224 As if to make up for this overall lack, the “painting of our lady” in the camera dalla scala, as it was succinctly described in the inventory, was what we might call a deluxe model.225 Not only was it by the most famous Venetian painter of the day, but Michiel’s description allows us to identify it as a type of composition that became popular in Venice: the sacra conversazione with saints in a landscape, most likely with full-length figures.

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This new kind of composition adapted the country setting of scenes like the nativity or rest on the flight to Egypt, while also incorporating various other saints and sometimes donor portraits as well. In his discussion of the development of the type, Rylands notes that “By the second decade [of the sixteenth century] it was already a mature genre of painting.”226 Palma Vecchio executed quite a number of them, as did other artists, including Lotto, and, of course, Titian. Like the reclining female nude and the half-length image of a beautiful woman, it was a standard kind of Venetian painting that would have been relatively common in well-to-do Venetian households by the early 1530s. One well-known surviving composition by Titian fits Michiel’s description (Fig. 100). Now, in the National Gallery, London, it represents, as detailed

Fig. 100 Titian, Aldobrandini Madonna, ca. 1532, National Gallery, London. © National Gallery, London.

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by Michiel, the Madonna, the Christ child, young St. John the Baptist, and a female saint. The last lacks a clear attribute, perhaps explaining Michiel’s blank. That she is young and beautiful and kneels before the Christ child with intense, personal affection leads modern scholars to assume that she is St. Catherine of Alexandria. To the right, a lovely landscape of greens and browns recedes into blue, with shepherds and their flock in the middle ground, and an angel above in the sky. The background “subplot” recalls the apparition to the shepherds, while also creating a pastoral, bucolic setting for the women and children in the foreground. “Catherine” shows her passion and adoration for the child, both as a mother would a child and as a worshipper would Christ. Placed in the foreground, she is a surrogate for the viewer, in adoration before the image. The Christ child reaches upward in a gesture characteristic of infants, perhaps to reach for his mother or toward heaven figured by the angel in flight above. The Madonna touches the child’s head to embrace and shelter him, but is also abstracted and distant, as if contemplating the events to come. With her other hand, she takes a fruit with flower and leaf (symbolizing the Fall of Man) offered her by the obliging John, who carries the ultimate symbol of the passion, the cross. As occurs so often in images of the Madonna and child, the joy and love for the newborn child is mixed with the sorrow of ultimate sacrifice (in this case contrasted through the loving figures of “Catherine” and Christ, and the foreshadowing figures of Mary and John). It is a pleasing, even calming, picture, with intimate and affecting emotion, in short, a very suitable quadro da camera. On stylistic grounds, the painting is usually dated to the early 1530s, and scholars have repeatedly suggested it could be the work Michiel saw in Odoni’s house in 1532.227 It is worth noting that the painting is 100.6 cm tall, about the same height as Odoni’s portrait by Lotto (104.3 cm), which also hung in the room. The size of both may have been

dictated by the height of the walls and other ornaments on the wall. While it is possible that the canvas in the National Gallery was the work owned by Odoni, there is nothing in its provenance to support the idea, and in fact some have argued that it must have been owned at an early date by Alfonso d’Este of Ferrara.228 Cecil Gould suggested another possible identification of Odoni’s painting: a work now known only through a drawing (Fig. 101) and print by Cornelis Visscher, said to be after Titian.229 The composition also features the Madonna and Child, the young St. John the Baptist, and a female saint with no clear attributes, but in this case, she is an older woman, most logically St. Elizabeth. St. Joseph is shown at some distance in the landscape to the left. In this case, the provenance supports the identification; in the seventeenth century, the painting was part of the Reynst collection in Holland, which also included Odoni’s portrait by Lotto. Both paintings were engraved by Visscher and were subsequently part of the “Dutch Gift” to King Charles II of England, although for unknown reasons the sacra conversazione is now lost.230 To complicate matters further, several copies and variants of the London composition survive. Clearly, it was a popular type that Titian, with varying degrees of input from his workshop, reconceived for different patrons.231 Thus it is entirely possible that Odoni owned a version of this type, but not necessarily the one in the National Gallery.232 In the final analysis, with our current state of knowledge, while it possible that the National Gallery painting was Odoni’s, it cannot be conclusively established. In any case, Michiel’s description together with existing paintings of the subject by Titian provide a good sense of what Odoni’s painting looked like. Most importantly, it featured two female saints and two young children and it was likely set in a soothing, pastoral landscape. Thus it reiterated the emphasis in the room on women, and perhaps especially on female beauty, particularly if it

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Fig. 101 Cornelius Visscher, after Titian?, Holy Family with St. John and St. Elizabeth, ca. 1654–58, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

featured the young, well-dressed St. Catherine. With the frieze that Cicogna saw of Venus and amorini, mythological women and children would have resonated with their Christian counterparts. *** On a visual level the contrast between the camera dalla scala and the camera d’oro was quite stark. In the former, the focus was decidedly on depictions of women. In addition, rather than narrative subjects or portraits of exemplary males, the paintings in the second bedroom depicted more sedate and static imagery: a reclining female nude in a landscape, a woman at her toilet, a holy scene featuring women and children in a pleasant outdoor setting. As we have seen, the camera d’oro was a sort of extension of the studio, a room focused on the contemplation of art and nature, as well as the memory of the male lineage of the family. If in that room

looking was about learning and curiosity, in the camera dalla scala looking was about relaxation and desire. How might one explain this contrast? One possibility is that the two rooms had fundamentally different audiences, or at least audiences in different frames of mind. In this scenario, perhaps the camera d’oro was the day camera, whereas the camera dalla scala, was the sleeping room. While this is possible, I do not know of any textual evidence to support this. Perhaps the differences between the camere are not so much functional, for different uses or different viewers, as they are representational; the objects in the camera dalla scala may have expressed, even helped form, another aspect of Odoni’s masculine identity. Here, rather than the civic-minded male head of household we see in the portego, or the contemplating man of curiosity in the studio and camera d’oro, we encounter the virile lover of women and connoisseur of female

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beauty. Like King Francis I, he conveyed that he was “someone who is a great and good judge of the beauty of bodies, especially those of women.” Although the two camere seem very different, their decorative programs may not be as opposite as they at first appear. In her discussion of the reclining female nude in art, Ruvoldt has demonstrated how the contemplation of female beauty could be conceived as a pathway to intellectual, even devotional, enlightenment. Desire “motivates the viewer to climb the ladder of spiritual ascendance.”233 While this may seem

counterintuitive, the concept is repeated in numerous Renaissance texts, including Castiglione’s The Courtier: “by putting together all beauties, he will form a universal concept . . . thus he will no longer contemplate the particular beauty of one woman, but that universal beauty that adorns all bodies.”234 In this context, King Francis I’s request for a female nude also takes on another light. The female form, and the erotic stimulus it could provide, were “linked to the process of inspiration and creativity.”235 Ruvoldt concludes that “in the same way that

Fig. 102 Venetian (Pietro degli Ingannati?), Allegory, ca. 1510, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.

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the true dream might be invoked to define the creative self, the image of the sleeping female nude might help to define the category of connoisseur.”236 Odoni’s two camere are reminiscent of a Venetian painting sometimes attributed to Pietro degli Ingannati (Fig. 102). Possibly a portrait cover, its composition is visually divided in two by a tree, against which leans a scudo with the coat of arms of the Venetian Contarini family. On the right side, a sleeping female nude in a landscape is unveiled by a male satyr. A second satyr in the foreground hunches down with an inclined pitcher in one hand, looking toward the other side of the composition. There a putto holds a compass, surrounded by paper, book, squares, and a string instrument. Although it is tempting to read the two sides as opposites, lust vs. learning, Ruvoldt argues convincingly that they represent the interconnected concepts of “discipline” and “inspiration.”237 Just as the

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two sides of the painting might have figured the identity of the Contarini sitter whose portrait the image covered, so the camera d’oro and camera dalla scala conveyed the different sides of Odoni’s masculine activity of contemplation. There is one last painting in the camera dalla scala to be addressed: Lotto’s portrait of Odoni. It is somewhat surprising to find this image of him here, shown as if he were in his studiolo, whereas in the camera dalla scala he was surrounded by images of beautiful women. The presence of the fragmented, sculpted bodies in the portrait connects the theme of female beauty to the larger “program” of Odoni’s household decoration. Revealingly, when Michiel saw the painting in the space, he changed his notes to read that Odoni is shown “contemplating ancient marble fragments.” In this statement, as we will see in the following chapter, Michiel reveals himself to be a highly astute, if jejune, interpreter of Lotto’s art.

Chapter 7

TRANSMUTING THE SELF: LOTTO’S PORTRAIT OF ODONI

Fig. 103 Albrecht Dürer, from Vnderweysung der Messung mit dem Zirkel und Richtscheyt, 1525. Photo: © Bildarchiv Foto Marburg/Art Resource, NY.

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depicts the act of portrayal (Fig. 103). The setting is an upperclass patron’s bedroom. The artist stands and examines his subject, who sits formally on a throne-like chair. The two men face off; in some ways the sitter is superior – seated and better dressed – but the artist objectifies his subject through his apparatus and is therefore in control. Despite the distance between them, the ornamented alcove bed in the background, recalling the one in Odoni’s camera dalla scala, links them together: the bed curtain is drawn aside, as if proposing a conjugal union. An hourglass, a candlestick, and, of all things, a chamber pot occupy the space in between. The print represents both the social hierarchy and the necessary intimacy of the act of portrayal – two men from different walks of life metaphorically “get into bed” with one another. Although the class distinctions between Lorenzo Lotto the painter and Andrea Odoni the cittadino would have been less pronounced in sixteenth-century Venice than in Dürer’s contemporary Nuremberg, one can imagine a similar faceoff between Lotto and Odoni.1 Michael Baxandall’s famous formulation that the Renaissance painting is “a deposit of a social relationship” is nowhere more true than in a portrait taken from life.2 Lotto depicts Odoni in an interior space, not unlike the one in which the portrait was seen, with oblique light entering through a window to the left (Fig. 104). Dressed in a voluminous, fur-lined robe, Odoni turns toward the viewer. In one hand he holds a statuette of the pagan goddess Diana of Ephesus, a symbol in the Renaissance of both nature and idolatry; in the other he holds a small golden crucifix on a chain to his chest. Encircling him, positioned on or beside the green-clothcovered table are more works of art: bronze figurines, fragmented marble sculpture, a book and coins, and a porcelain bowl and pearls. Very few, if any, of these objects can be identified with works Odoni owned; instead this is an imaginary

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collection.3 With gestures of sincerity and offering, Odoni communicates across the picture plane and across time. The picture begs the questions: What is he telling us about himself, about his time, indeed about the nature of time, of the divine, and of nature itself? What part of this tour-de-force composition was Lotto’s idea, what part might be due to Odoni’s input? The first part of this last question is easier to answer than the second. Many of Lotto’s pictorial strategies and intellectual interests can be discerned in the painting. In this chapter, the artist will play a prominent role. While Odoni’s part in conceiving the composition is harder to calibrate, the portrait is particularly inventive even within Lotto’s highly original oeuvre, suggesting that Odoni was, at the very least, an inspiring subject. According to Renaissance norms of patron/artist relationships, Odoni would have considerable say in his portrait’s conception and execution; certainly he would have to approve the final results. I argue that Lotto’s painting of Odoni is the product of the confluence of the two men’s ambitions, both at transitional moments in their careers, and a manifesto of their shared belief in the special, transmutational power of visual art.

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doni was thirty-nine years old when Lotto painted him in 1527, on the cusp of his full stature as family patriarch. By this point, Odoni was a well-established figure in Venice, although he had not yet reached the height of his career as a tax collector. He had begun working at the Dazio del vin five years earlier but would not be appointed coconduttore until 1532. He was certainly still a bachelor. Four years earlier he had inherited works of art and antiquities, along with property and other goods, from his Venetian uncle Francesco Zio. But in 1527 Michiel had not yet compiled his

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Fig. 104 Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of Andrea Odoni, 1527, Royal Collection Trust. © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020.

notes about the house, Aretino had not written to him, and probably Girolamo da Treviso had not yet frescoed the façade. When he contracted Lotto, Odoni obviously was starting to cultivate an image of himself as an antiquario, but much of the investment in the house and collection actually came afterward. Possibly the process of commissioning the portrait and engaging with it daily shaped Odoni’s further patronage and collecting: the painting provided an image with which to mirror and transform the self.

Hiring Lotto was a daring move. Although born in Venice ca. 1480, and presumably trained there, Lotto had only returned to the city in December 1525, after working for many years in less cosmopolitan centers, mostly recently in Bergamo, at the outer reaches of the Venetian state. There, over the course of twelve years, he had established himself as the city’s most soughtafter painter, but he would have been virtually unknown in his birth city. At the time Odoni commissioned the portrait, Lotto was making

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inroads into Venetian patronage networks and staking out a position for himself. Professional advancement was on the artist’s mind, as in July 1526 when he explained to his Bergamasque patrons why he could not travel back to check on unfinished business: “You will understand that so soon after my arrival it is important for me to act prudently, and to treat people here with great consideration.”4 One of those people was Odoni. Although Odoni was a cittadino rather than a patrician, his notable interest in art and antiquities offered Lotto an opportunity to make an impression among those who mattered most for an artist seeking patronage. The preeminent portraitist in Venice was unquestionably Titian, whose portraits from

Fig. 105 Titian, Man with a Glove, ca. 1524–25, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

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the 1520s illustrate what a departure Odoni’s likeness was from established norms. Titian’s Man with a Glove (ca. 1524–25) (Fig. 105), for example, is vertical in format, and dark, almost monochrome, in color. The sitter’s clothing and attributes are sedate and minimal. Although his identity is unknown, his air of distant remove and calm sophistication has encouraged scholars to propose that he was a nobleman.5 A few years later, in 1530, Titian portrayed a cittadino, albeit a particularly famous one, Andrea de’ Franceschi (ca. 1530–35) (Fig. 106), who had been elected Grand Chancellor in 1529. The image follows a similar formula. Franceschi wears the special red robes of his office, but other than a letter in his hand there are no objects or accessories.6

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Fig. 106 Titian, Portrait of Andrea de’ Franceschi, ca. 1530–35, Detroit Institute of Arts. Bequest of Mr. and Mrs. Edgar B. Whitcomb, 53.362.

Titian’s portraits of Venetians mostly emphasize facial features; all else is subordinate. If Titian was too busy to take on Odoni’s portrait (although, as we have seen, he painted a sacra conversazione for the camera dalla scala around 1530), Palma Vecchio was another option. Palma’s portraits, less psychologically compelling and technically dazzling than Titian’s, still have many of the same formal characteristics – vertical format, restrained color, and limited accessories, as seen for example in his Portrait of a Man, called “Francesco Querini” (1525–28) (Fig. 107).7 If these works give a sense of what a typical Venetian male portrait looked like in the 1520s, Odoni evidently desired something more novel – something that would

set him apart in Venice. Lotto was one of the few artists in the city at the time experimenting with portraiture and the Odoni portrait was destined to have an important impact on the genre.8 In his choice of artist, Odoni demonstrated an independent spirit and willingness to stand out rather than conform, characteristics already noted in other aspects of his patronage and collecting. The portraits Lotto executed in Venice before 1527, works that might have inspired Odoni to hire him, demonstrate the artist’s novel tactics. Lotto’s sitters have an intensity of gaze and interaction that render Titian’s and Palma’s portraits distant and formal by comparison. In Portrait of a Dominican Monk (Fig. 108), prominently signed and dated “Laurentius Lotus 1526” on

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Fig. 107 Palma Vecchio, Portrait of a Man called “Francesco Querini”, 1525–28, Museo Querini Stampalia, Venice.

the monk’s wooden desk, the hunched sitter regards us intently as he writes.9 His hands do not merely hold gloves or a letter, but clamp onto the papers in front of him with the fervor of engagement. Lotto’s manner of painting is also different. Using neither Titian’s rough, bravura brushstrokes, nor Palma’s soft vagueness of forms, he brought an almost Netherlandish attention to the less flattering particularities of likeness, including the blue veins in the monk’s strangely shaped bald head, the gray cast to his newly shaved beard, and his dimpled double chin. Everything in the painting, including the keys, account book, pens, inkwell, wicks, and coins, is rendered with precision in blocked-out colors. In Lotto’s Man with a Golden Paw (Fig. 109),

probably painted slightly later, the sitter also looks out fixedly, pressing forward and bending as if to fit into the picture frame. Here, the desire to reach out to the viewer is made even more overt through the man’s actions – clasping one hand to his heart, he brandishes a curious object in his other hand, an animal paw made of gold.10 The portrait does not merely present the sitter; it literally lures viewers, almost beseeching their engagement. What Lotto had to offer as a portraitist was clearly something quite different than what had previously been available. Whether Odoni saw these portraits before commissioning his own is not known, but Lotto was also engaged in another major project at the time – drawings for intarsia designs for the church

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Fig. 108 Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of a Dominican Monk, 1526, Museo Civico di Santa Caterina, Treviso.

of Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo. Lotto received the commission in the spring of 1524 while in Bergamo, but completed the work in Venice, sending drawings back to Bergamo and communicating with his patrons in writing. The commission amounted to around seventy designs – four large and thirty small Old Testament narrative scenes plus the same number of protective covers featuring symbolic imagery devised by Lotto himself.11 Among the smaller covers, two completed in February 1527 feature the motif of a statuette resembling the one held by Odoni in Lotto’s portrait (Fig. 110, Fig. 111, Fig. 112).12 It is quite possible that the imaginative imagery of Lotto’s intarsia designs, even particular motifs, played a role in convincing Odoni

to hire Lotto, as well as in developing the final composition of the portrait. Given Lotto’s evident pride in these marvelous creations, he likely would have shown them to prospective clients.13

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s a subject and patron Odoni elicited one of Lotto’s finest paintings. The result of the two men’s encounter stands out within the artist’s career for its technical qualities and formal innovations, as well as its iconographic inventiveness. Scholars agree that is among Lotto’s best paintings, and it remains one of the most celebrated of all Renaissance portraits.14

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Fig. 109 Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of a Man with a Golden Paw, ca. 1526, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

The Odoni portrait is an extraordinarily successful “compromise” between Lotto’s desire to promote his novelty and originality and his attempt to adjust his manner of painting to Venetian practices. In the Bergamo portraits, forms are more outlined, details more precise, and colors sharper, stronger, and more discrete. But as scholars have long noted, once in Venice, Lotto adopted a more painterly and sfumato style to accommodate local tastes exemplified in the works of Titian and Palma.15 The Odoni portrait is perhaps the culmination of Lotto’s new painting technique. In the painting Lotto captured subtle gradations of light and a sense of atmospheric space that were new for him. In Odoni Lotto

saw a patron who would welcome and appreciate these technical displays. Even more striking is both men’s willingness to experiment with the conventions of portraiture. Most conspicuous in this regard are the dimensions of the canvas – about twelve centimeters wider than it is tall (104.3 × 116.8 cm). The only horizontal Italian portraits that can certainly be dated earlier are double portraits, such as Raphael’s Portrait of Andrea Navagero and Agostino Beazzano (see Fig. 7). Lotto himself painted two wide double portraits when he was in Bergamo (see Fig. 114).16 In the same year as the Odoni portrait, he also produced the unusual likeness of Bishop Tommaso Negri (Fig. 113), which also exhibits Lotto’s finely shaded, atmospheric Venetian style, and employs a horizontal format,

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Fig. 110 Designed by Lorenzo Lotto, Cover for the Death of Absalom, 1527, Santa Maria Maggiore, Bergamo. Photo: with authorization of the Congregazione della Misericordia Maggiore di Bergamo – MIA.

Fig. 111 Designed by Lorenzo Lotto, Cover for David’s Mourning of Absalom, 1527, Santa Maria Maggiore, Bergamo. Photo: with authorization of the Congregazione della Misericordia Maggiore di Bergamo – MIA.

albeit smaller in scale (42 × 53.8 cm).17 Lotto’s big portrait of Odoni was part of a new experiment in format, which continued only into the early 1530s.18 Lotto’s innovations extended to the space he created. As in the Negri portrait, the broad

format creates an enhanced sense of mise-enscène, not unlike a wider aspect ratio used in film. In most Venetian portraits of the period, as in the examples discussed above by Titian and Palma, sitters are set against dark, nondescript

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Fig. 112 Detail of Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of Andrea Odoni (rotated), 1527, Royal Collection Trust. © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020).

backgrounds with highly artificial spotlighting on their faces. Lotto deploys a more natural light that suffuses the room, sitter, and objects, as well as the spaces between them. In the Negri portrait a window is visible, whereas in the Odoni portrait the darkness of the upper part of the back wall suggests a low ceiling and a window to the left more or less at the height of the seated Odoni. In both cases, we encounter the sitter in a particular space and atmosphere, and this offers a more personalized, intimate, and less artificial setting. The wide format enhances the sense of an informal, even accidental, “encounter” between sitter and viewer. In the Negri portrait, the viewer is positioned close to the sitter, who pays no attention, engrossed as he is in meditation. In Odoni’s portrait, the sitter is set deeper in the picture, at three-quarter length, which allowed

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Lotto to make fuller use of the space created by the wider format. There are three spatial planes in Odoni’s portrait – the foreground with the statues in front of the table, the middle ground with Odoni himself, and the background with the sculptures on the shelf. The sense of depth is accentuated and at the same time shortcircuited by Odoni’s very conspicuously foreshortened right arm – reaching out from the middle ground toward the picture plane. The depth and complexity of space here was unusual in a portrait of the period, particularly in Venice. The extra room also allowed for one of the portrait’s most radical inventions – the inclusion of the many works of art surrounding Odoni. While objects, or accessories as one scholar has termed them, were of increasing importance in sixteenth-century portraits, their large number and compositional placement are remarkable.19 The only real Italian precursor is a remarkable portrait by Parmigianino (Fig. 115), which shows a man in an interior space holding a book, surrounded by coins, medals, and bronze and marble sculpture. It too has a tripartite spatial arrangement of objects, albeit more condensed than in Lotto’s work. The Parmigianino most likely dates ca. 1523–24, towards the end of the artist’s early career in Parma.20 It is possible that both he and Lotto simply came to similar conceptions independently,21 but I hold out the possibility that while he was living in Bergamo Lotto saw Parmigianino’s portrait. Bergamo is only about 150 km from Parma, and Lotto is known to have traveled to the Marches in December 1523.22 Later I discuss another reason why I suspect that Lotto knew the younger artist’s work. It is often argued that Lotto’s Odoni and Parmigianino’s Portrait of a Collector established a new “portrait of a collector” type.23 Although Lotto’s innovation inspired later compositions,

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Fig. 113 Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of Bishop Tommaso Negri, 1527, Franjevacki samostan sv. Ante na Pojudu, Split. Photo: Živko Bačić.

most famously Titian’s Portrait of Jacopo Strada (1567), thinking about the Odoni picture as a “portrait of a collector” or focusing on it as the first, or almost first, in a longer lineage, only goes so far. By including all these objects Lotto suggested their importance to Odoni; however, as we shall see, they are there to do much more than identify him as an antiquario. In showing the sitter surrounded by figural works of art Lotto effectively combined his desire for naturalistic representation with his interest in visual symbolism. The “collection” in the portrait enabled Lotto to seamlessly link the metonymic and the metaphoric; works of art can be read as the “furnishings” of Odoni’s house and, at the

same time, without conflict, can be interpreted as symbols, or more precisely as we shall see, as “hieroglyphs.” Lotto was set apart from many of his contemporaries, especially his fellow Venetian painters, by his lifelong attraction to emblematic meaning.24 One among many examples is the double portrait of Messer Marsilio and his Bride (1523) (Fig. 114) depicting the groom putting a ring on his bride’s finger, while a flying Cupid places a large branch around their necks. Metaphoric content both intrudes upon and amplifies metonymic meaning. The betrothal of the young couple is signified metonymically by the act of placing the ring on the finger, while

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Fig. 114 Lorenzo Lotto, Messer Marsilio and his Bride, 1523, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.

it is signaled metaphorically through the mythological character, the object of the yoke-like branch, and Cupid’s laurel leaves.25 Some of Lotto’s portraits are more metonymically weighted, such as the double portrait of Giovanni Agostino and Niccolò della Torre (signed and dated 1515) (Fig. 116). Here the father and son physicians are shown with books and objects appropriate to their occupation.26 Objects play an important role, but they are included in a way that does not disrupt the illusion of an everyday encounter with the sitters. Lotto continued this strategy in Venice in his portraits of A Dominican Monk and Bishop Negri. While the things included in both portraits may also be subject to metaphorical interpretation (for example, the prominent keys in the first, and the eyeglasses in the second), they primarily have a naturalistic pretense. A monk in charge of accounts could surely have keys to

the monastery; an older bishop might need glasses to read the Bible. One of Lotto’s acknowledged innovations as a portraitist was to import into the main field of the portrait the kinds of symbolic meanings that had previously been depicted on backs or covers of portraits.27 The strategy reached its peak in his Bergamo likenesses. But in Venice he sought to integrate the emblematic, so fundamental to his conception of art, with the more naturalistic idiom (at least in some senses) practiced by other portraitists in the city. In Odoni’s portrait, Lotto was not trying to create a “portrait of a collector” type, or even primarily to characterize Odoni as an antiquario, but rather to find a way to introduce emblematic meaning while preserving the naturalism of the whole. In part, it is this balance, or interplay, between metaphor and metonymy that makes the painting so compelling and successful.

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Fig. 115 Parmigianino, Portrait of a Collector, ca. 1523–24, National Gallery, London. © National Gallery, London.

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ecause the Odoni portrait is so formally and iconographically innovative, and because scholars continue to puzzle over the identification and meaning of the various objects in the painting, little attention has been paid to the way that Lotto depicted the man himself – his expression, personal grooming, and clothing. These were particularly important signs his contemporaries would

decode in order to understand Odoni’s “selffashioning.” Aretino wrote in his letter to Odoni that Odoni’s face (fronte), as well as his house, revealed his character: “whoever wishes to see how clean and candid his mind is should look at his face and his house.” As already noted, Aretino’s words of praise are excessive, if not hyperbolic, to the point of irony: “the kindness of the good Udone is so full of goodness that whatever he does is without ceremony and without arrogance.”28

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Fig. 116 Lorenzo Lotto, Giovanni Agostino and Niccolò della Torre, 1515, National Gallery, London. © National Gallery, London.

It is challenging to link Aretino’s characterization to Lotto’s portrait, in part because the expression on Odoni’s fronte is ambiguous. Is he earnest, concerned, melancholy, beseeching? We are on subjective ground. His gaze is slightly unfocused, as if he is caught up in an internal chain of thought. Harry Berger Jr. asks the key question: “what is he looking meaningful about?”29 Despite the fact that Odoni is reaching out to us, we have less sense of direct engagement than with either the Dominican Monk or the Man

with a Golden Paw. The quandary of “reading” Odoni’s face mirrors the challenge of understanding all the objects that surround him. Despite Odoni’s seemingly annunciatory pose, there are no declarative statements here. Difficult as it may be to interpret expression, Lotto does characterize Odoni using facial features, hair, and clothing. His face is rounded and full with a low forehead, his blue eyes deeply sunken, and his nose somewhat bulbous. This fleshiness of countenance suits the apparently

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ample body beneath his capacious robes, all of which conveys fullness and a corresponding sense of prosperity and comfort – a message about Odoni also conveyed on the façade of his house. His most distinctive facial feature, aside from the plumpness of his face in general, is his bushy beard, so vigorous that it almost hijacks his face. This feature demands further scrutiny. Sporting beards had become fashionable in Italy by the second decade of the sixteenth century, a trend that reached Venice by 1525.30 Partly the attraction was the association between beards and mature masculinity and virility. The growth of facial hair supposedly correlated with martial ability and reproductive capacity, and medical texts explicitly tied it to the production of semen.31 Only two years after Lotto depicted Odoni, Giovanni Pierio Valeriano published his defense of beards, Pro sacerdotum barbis. Although somewhat ironically the tract is an argument for allowing priests to wear beards, it has much to say about facial hair in general; Valeriano treated the subject again in his Hieroglyphica, which he had been working on since 1505.32 In this text, Valeriano presents the beard as a “hieroglyph,” that is a sign or pictograph (as we shall see, a subject of great interest for Lotto), “for man, not for his sex, but for virtue [virtù] itself.” It is also, by extension, “a hieroglyph of strength,” as well as “a sign of wisdom and of our perfection.”33 By the late 1520s, a man’s beard was a manifestation and representation of his virtù in all senses of the term – his virtue and virility. Thus at one level Odoni’s beard shows him conforming to social conventions of masculinity at the time, but a beard was also one of the most important “furnishings of the face” that could be manipulated for effect both by Odoni in his grooming and by Lotto in his painting.34 “Wearing a beard,” Douglas Biow writes, “signaled conformity to a general fashion, but the type of beard you wore could spell out publicly,

and indeed conspicuously, your own affiliation with a particular style and, at the same time, provide the opportunity to assert your unique style within that group context as a model of performatively addressing the world through your face.”35 Odoni’s beard signals both his conformity and his individuality – shaping one’s beard, whether on the face or in the portrait, was a supreme act of fashioning the self for Renaissance men. So what might Odoni’s facial hair indicate about him beyond a general assertion of masculine vigor? Although most of Lotto’s middle-aged male sitters from the 1520s onward sport beards, Odoni’s is particularly full-bodied, bushing out to the sides and connecting with his hair. Odoni’s facial hair verges on the unkempt. He would not have been subject to the criticism of paying too much attention to his beard, like the artist Albrecht Dürer who was teased by his contemporaries for the vanity of “his pointed beard, which doubtless has to be waved and curled every single day.”36 Odoni’s beard, at least as represented by Lotto, is deliberately less caredfor, and therefore less an artificial “work of art.”37 The exuberance and force of Odoni’s bushy beard conveys his vitality, especially next to the cold marbles and bronzes that surround him. This contrast is underlined by the bearded portrait head in the foreground, usually identified as Emperor Hadrian, who was famous for his Hellenizing beard. Unlike the beard frozen in stone, Odoni’s facial hair almost appears to increase before our very eyes. The unmanicured look of Odoni’s beard at the same time complements the battered and worn quality of the works of art. Overall, it contributes to the informality of the portrait: we have interrupted Odoni in his home surrounded by objects strewn somewhat haphazardly around the space. In the end, the unshorn immediacy and lack of affectation recall Aretino’s characterization of Odoni as a man whose every act is “without ceremony and

ODONI ’ S LIKENESS

without arrogance.” Aretino and Lotto perhaps picked up on the same aspect of Odoni’s disposition, or perhaps wished to flatter him in the same manner. If Odoni’s beard walks a fine line between the exuberant and the unconstrained, his clothing combines opulence and originality with Venetian norms of restraint. Odoni’s dress is not the first thing that draws attention in the painting; in fact, it has been largely ignored by scholars.38 This is particularly striking given that the cloak comprises about one third of the picture surface, and contemporary viewers would have paid close attention to Odoni’s dress as a highly significant social marker. As Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, among others, have argued, in early modern Europe clothes were not a social covering for a preexisting, interiorized self, but rather constitutive of identity, markers that not only signaled to others, but literally formed the self of their wearer.39 The relationship between clothing and status was particularly fixed in Venice, where all male inhabitants of a certain social standing adopted a long, loose overgarment, known as a toga or vesta. Cittadini like Odoni were for the most part limited to the black toga, which would have been the official dress Odoni wore in public – a type well illustrated in the slightly later portrayal of citizen officers of the Scuola della Carità (to which Odoni, his uncle, his brothers, and his brother-in-law belonged) in Titian’s Presentation of the Virgin (see Fig. 11). In Lotto’s portrait Odoni is not, however, wearing his official dress. Closest to his skin, he wears a white camicia, the standard underclothing of both men and women of the time, on top of which is a black garment – probably a zupon, a waist-length, fitted doublet – seen at his neck under his fur collar and at his left wrist.40 Its deep blackness contrasts with the brightness of the camicia, and serves as a more subtle foil to his most formidable piece of clothing, the fur-lined, gray-blue overcoat, a color

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which resonates with the violet blue of the background wall.41 Since this garment is open in the front with large lapels rather than closed at the neck, it cannot be a toga. Nor is Odoni wearing the stola (the over-the-shoulder sash) and bareta (cap) typical of official dress (as in Titian’s Presentation). Instead he inhabits the dress of a Venetian cittadino or nobleman at home. In his detailed description of Venetian dress, Cesare Vecellio relates that “once at home, men take off the gowns already described [the toga or vesta] and in their place they wear a zimarra, a pretina or a Romana, as they call it . . . These garments are floor-length, like those worn outdoors, and . . . are lined according to the season” (Fig. 117).42 Since Odoni is not represented in his official, “outdoor” uniform, but instead in more

Fig. 117 Cesare Vecellio, “Dress of the Venetian nobleman at home,” from Habiti Antichi et Moderni, 1598. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

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informal, less regulated dress, he is emphatically represented in the private aspect of his citizenship. He thereby eschewed the conventions of Venetian social hierarchy based on dress. The lack of hat, unusual for a Lotto portrait, further underlines this. Unlike his fellow cittadino Andrea de’ Franceschi, Odoni does not represent himself in relation to the state bureaucracy he served. Instead the painting evokes Machiavelli’s famous description of his scholarly activity: “When evening comes, I return home and enter my study; before I go in I remove my everyday clothes, which are very muddy and soiled, and put on clothes that are fit for a royal court. Being thus properly clad, I enter the ancient courts of the men of old.”43 Although Odoni’s clothes were likely not “very muddy and soiled,” except perhaps metaphorically, his luxurious cloak, not to mention the objects that surround him, indicates he has entered his own realm, in which, like Machiavelli, he communes with the past. Although not his official garb, Odoni’s clothing nonetheless conveys that he is Venetian. The overcoat is a somber color, if not exactly black, and it covers his other clothing in a loose, gownlike manner similar to a toga. His dress lacks the fancy buttons, ties, or slashes depicted in some other Lotto portraits, and he has no visible codpiece.44 However, as we have come to expect of Odoni by now, this is not the full story. While Odoni’s romana adheres to Venetian habits and decorum, it is also notably voluminous and lavishly lined, probably with red squirrel or fox.45 Subtly departing from the common black, his bluish-gray cloak suggests a “dashing style of his own.”46 The cloth itself may be a prestigious double pile velvet, in which higher pile velvet forms a pattern on a velvet ground of the same color. The soft, plush quality of the fabric and its design are most visible on Odoni’s right sleeve.47 The fur lining not only provided warmth, but also signaled status, as Vecellio notes: “And in the fur linings of these gowns variations can be seen, not only according to the weather but also to the variety

of animals, of lesser or greater value, depending on the wealth of each man.”48 Such linings were also a prime opportunity for Venetian artists to demonstrate their painterly skills. Newly arrived in Venice, Lotto engaged in this showmanship; as he did in depicting Odoni’s sleeve, he abandoned the more precise, detailed and linear manner characteristic of his Bergamo period, for a softer, broader application of paint that emphasized the tactile qualities of both velvet and fur. The garment’s most striking, and puzzling, feature is its sleeves. They are a gomito: wide at the elbow, but gathered at the wrist, they hang like bags, making a display of extra material.49 Odoni’s romana has at least two openings for each arm, one higher and one lower. On the right side of Lotto’s composition, the longer sleeve stretches out on the table. Above the sleeve there is a second opening, slit horizontally under the forearm, also trimmed in white fur. Odoni’s left arm seems to bypass both openings, whereas his right arm appears to be put through the short sleeve, which billows out above his hand. Below Odoni’s right hand must be the longer right sleeve, hanging down with the fur lining and trim prominently turned up at the end. A similar cut is described and illustrated by Vecellio: “These gowns [the romana, zimarra or pretina] have half-length sleeves, some cut across and some cut lengthwise, and they can put their arms through them, letting the rest of the sleeve dangle down with a show of elegance.”50 The “elegant” extra sleeves can be seen in a number of period portraits, for example Paolo Veronese’s Portrait of a Young Man (Fig. 118), where the longer sleeve is just visible in the lower right corner of the painting.51 Odoni’s overgarment more precisely resembles the cloak illustrated in Recueil de la diversité des habits, a costume book published in 1562, but illustrated with earlier clothing styles (Fig. 119). Here we see a blouson upper sleeve together with a longer

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Fig. 118 Paolo Veronese, Portrait of a Young Man, 1551–53, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest. Photo: HIP/Art Resource, NY.

hanging sleeve; the French print may represent an international style of the 1520s and 30s.52 As much as Odoni’s romana conveys “at homeness” and prosperity, it is also the organizing hub of the painting. The elaborate arrangement of Odoni’s romana draws the viewer in and joins all the objects in a circular scheme. The long sleeve laid out diagonally across the tabletop forms a pyramidal shape with Odoni’s head at its peak, while also extending to the picture plane. This extension is matched by Odoni’s right arm, which plunges

toward the viewer, proffering the statuette. Through one arm and one sleeve, on opposite sides of the body, Odoni reaches out almost as if to embrace us. The light-colored, fur linings of the sleeves are also purposeful. On the right, the long sleeve creates a tactile invitation to the viewer, while the white fur trim on the shorter opening of the sleeve creates a mouth-like shape, next to and approximately the same size as, the small book on the table. This fur helps mark the spatial recession

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concentric circles around the hand and statuette. Directly below is the more lavishly fur-trimmed, turned-up end of the longer sleeve. Also compositionally necessary, it echoes the light statuette in Odoni’s hand, just as the opening of the sleeve on the right parallels the book. It further leads the eye from the background statue of a man seen from the back, through the statuette in Odoni’s hand, downward and over to the female nude and portrait head in the foreground.

“CONTEMPLATING ANCIENT MARBLE FRAGMENTS” hile the figure of Odoni in his octopuslike robe is of central importance, viewers are also asked to take in the objects that surround Odoni – his companions and “inanimate” extensions of his person. Despite their various amputations, the sculptures are lively, giving pictorial form to the “agency of things.”53 The demands the objects make of us are even more obvious if one compares Odoni’s portrait to a drawing by Lotto of a younger man also shown in an interior space with various objects associated with collecting and scholarship (Fig. 120). In the drawing, the bric-a-brac shows the collector’s passion for possessions, but viewers cannot inspect them individually in the same way. In Odoni’s portrait, viewers must address the objects one by one, in the way they might engage with them if they were to visit Odoni in his actual studio. We encounter Odoni is his “lair” of things, much in the way that Aretino or Michiel might have. Although the notes Michiel took after visiting collections are often described as jejune or straightforward, he could be very select and deliberate in his choice of words. This is definitely the case in his description of Odoni’s portrait; Michiel first wrote that the painting depicted the sitter “con” (with) antique marble

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Fig. 119 Le bourgeois, from Francois Desprez, Recueil de la diversité des habits, 1562. Photo: Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (92-B21604).

between the book and the dish further back on the green tabletop. Its rounded shape mimics that of the bowl and leads the eye even further back to the slightly taller vase in which a female figure washes her leg. On the left side of the picture, Odoni’s hand emerges out of the shorter sleeve, its fur trim forming a circle around the statuette, which is in turn amplified by three large, structurally rather implausible, folds of cloth above the figurine that Lotto used to foreshorten the extended arm. An odd construction, it creates the illusion of

“ CONTEMPLATING

ANCIENT MARBLE FRAGMENTS ”

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Fig. 120 Lorenzo Lotto, A Cleric in his Study, late 1520s–early 1530s, British Museum, London. © The Trustees of the British Museum/Art Resource, NY.

Fig. 121 Description of Lotto’s Portrait of Odoni in the manuscript of Marcantonio Michiel’s Notizia, It. XI, 67 (= 7351), 52r, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice. Su concessione del Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo – Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana.

fragments, but then crossed out “con” and inserted above the line “che contempla” (who contemplates) (Fig. 121).54 In that substitution, Michiel interpreted, not just described, what he saw in 1532. I argue that this small change demonstrates his profound understanding of the painting.

The Italian verb contemplare derives from the Latin tĕmplum, originally “a circumscribed place used for the observation of the flight of birds.”55 At its core is the interpretation of divine meaning through the faculty of sight. In both pagan antiquity and Christianity, “contemplation” was associated with religious practices, especially of

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a mystical sort.56 By the sixteenth century, the word was used consistently to describe the act of observing art or beauty in the world as a means to spiritual enlightenment.57 It is in this sense that Michiel used it here and elsewhere in his Notizia, as well as in his other writings.58 Lotto employed the concept of “contemplation” in a similar way when he described an antique carved carnelian stone he owned, the impression of which survives as a seal on many of the letters he sent to his intarsia patrons in Bergamo at the time he was painting Odoni’s portrait.59 To him, the carnelian depicted “a crane taking off and a yoke at its feet, and in its beak the sign of Mercury; this signifies the active and contemplative life, and the possibility of rising above earthly matters through spiritual meditation.”60 Made from a ring used as a seal, the impression was in effect the artist’s pictorial signature – a stamp created in a material substance transmitted from his body to the body of the recipient. Lotto probably based his interpretation of the seal on a Greek text – Horapollo’s Hieroglyphica – that purported to explain Egyptian hieroglyphs. According to Horapollo, “When they [the Egyptians] desire to indicate a man who knows the higher things, they draw a crane in flight. For the crane flies extremely high that it may see the clouds in order not to be storm-tossed, and to remain in the calm.”61 Notably Lotto used similar motifs – a pair of wings and a yoke – in one of the intarsia designs he made the same year as the Odoni portrait (see Fig. 111). In 1528 Lotto responded to his Bergamasque patrons’ understandable questions about the arcane meanings of his intarsia panels with the following statement: “you must understand that these are things which are not written; imagination must be used to bring them to light.”62 For him, these images not only do not illustrate texts, they are beyond words; they are figures that

facilitate enlightenment through the act of visual contemplation.

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n the Odoni portrait, objects are set forth to contemplate and interpret in the manner of hieroglyphics or emblems, much as Lotto interpreted his own carnelian. This is what Michiel meant when he wrote that the portrait shows Odoni “contemplating” ancient marble fragments, because in fact Odoni is not even looking at his objects. Instead he turns toward us, seems to address us, and invites us to join in contemplation. To fully engage in contemplation, however, the modern viewer requires initiation into Lotto’s intellectual and artistic preoccupations. Much of the English-language literature on the artist foregrounds his piety, while underplaying his interest in arcane and heterodox ideas. In fact, the two aspects of his character were deeply intertwined, a point that has been more prominently recognized in Italian publications.63 Although Lotto apparently did not read Latin, at every stage of his career he took an interest in some of the most abstruse thinking of his time, which he came into contact with through his patrons as he traveled from city to city.64 Although it is difficult to know to what degree Odoni himself may have shared these interests, his portrait suggests he was at least partially initiated into the artist’s viewpoint. Three aspects of Lotto’s mindset, developed over his peripatetic career, are crucial to understanding his portrait of Odoni. These are his fascination with the concept of hieroglyphs, his interest in alchemy, and his attraction to religious reform movements. All three were connected for Lotto, as they were for others at the time.

HIEROGLYPHS , ALCHEMY , AND RELIGIOUS REFORM

Although the Renaissance interest in Egyptian writing began in Florence, by the early sixteenth century it shifted to the Veneto region.65 Fra Urbano Valeriano (ca. 1443–1524), a member of humanist circles in Florence, played an important role in the transfer. His nephew Giovanni Pierio (1477–1558/60) was brought to Venice in 1493 to live with his uncle and followed in his footsteps, eventually going on to publish the very popular Hieroglyphica (1556) mentioned above. At the turn of the century, the Venetian press of Aldo Manuzio printed the enigmatic Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499) probably written by the Venetian Dominican monk Fra Francesco Colonna, which contains the first published Renaissance “hieroglyphs” (Fig. 122).66 A few years later the same press produced the first edition of Horapollo’s Greek text on hieroglyphs (1505). Michiel, who was friends with Giovanni Pierio Valeriano, also

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took an interest in the pictorial language; the base of his statue of Mercury by Antonio Minello has symbol-like depictions of objects – “a lyre, the caduceus of Mercury, a money bag, a cock, a curved sword (the harpe) and another bird (possibly a crane),” all in a kind of cartouche (see Fig. 53).67 The pictorial inscription is clearly related to “hieroglyphic” compositions from the Hypnerotomachia.68 As is apparent from these examples, the Renaissance conception of hieroglyphs actually had little to do with the writing of the ancient Egyptians. Renaissance scholars followed Greek and Roman writers in their fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the written Egyptian language. They believed that, unlike their own manner of writing, the Egyptians did not rely on an “artificial” sign system used to compose syllables transcribing oral language. Rather, hieroglyphs were believed to be metaphorical, so that things, for

Fig. 122a, b, c Venetian (possibly Benedetto Bordon), “Hieroglyphs” from Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, 1499.

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example a falcon, stood directly for ideas, such as “swiftness.” It was also believed to be a sacred (hiera) language which could only be understood by those Egyptian priests who had been initiated into its mysteries.69 Hieroglyphs were thought to embody very ancient knowledge and moral meaning, which were then passed on in a more intelligible, but diluted, manner by the Greeks, Romans, and Hebrews.70 In this way hieroglyphs were seen to contain within them the meanings of things themselves, their essential natures, and all knowledge about them. Hieroglyphic images were thus closer than words to “real things,” in the same way that the Egyptians themselves were historically closer to God’s creation of the world.71 Hieroglyphs, by Renaissance reckoning, could be understood as “images of the divine Ideas.”72 They were privileged over words, but concealed knowledge that had to be deciphered, or contemplated, by initiates. Since Renaissance enthusiasts had little experience of actual hieroglyphs, they were free to use their imagined notion of how the language worked for their own purposes. As a result the “Egyptian” theory was used to legitimize (and intellectualize) already established allegorical and symbolic pictorial conventions.73 The very capacious notion of what might constitute a “hieroglyph” is described by Leon Battista Alberti who admired the Egyptians for using a visual language that, he claimed, was universal. Most astonishingly, he suggested that the Romans (“our own Latin ancestors”) adopted this “language” when they used figurative art “to express the deeds of their most famous men through sculpted histories. This gave rise to columns, triumphal arches, and porticos, covered with histories in painting or sculpture.”74 According to this logic, essentially all visual art could be construed as a descendant of the “sacred” image language of the Egyptians. That Egyptian “picture writing” could be a source for artists and patrons alike is demonstrated by Filippo Fasanini’s Explanation of

Sacred Writing extracted from various authors, an “appendix” to his Latin translation of Horapollo’s Hieroglyphica published in Bologna in 1517. Fasanini writes that he has “translated these hieroglyphs and sacred signs, adaptable for many purposes, from Greek into Latin” because people “never cease demanding inventions and novelties exactly suited to their current need and taking account of each person’s character.” Note the idea of developing a picture language to represent “character.” Using his translation, many will be able to borrow short sayings or signs which they can inscribe on swords, rings, hairnets, belts, a cithara, on beds, couches, ceiling panels, carpets, doors, in the study, on a table, on mirrors, in the bedroom, on earthenware and silver vases. Indeed they could, with these signs both painted and carved, wrap their secret thoughts in veils and put them all over the walls of their houses.75

Michiel’s statue of Mercury is an example of the “decorating” fad, as well as of a mode of interpretation that had fairly wide appeal in Venice among cittadini and noblemen. For example, in a letter to his descendants, the cittadino Vettor Ziliol (1459–1543) interpreted the “hieroglyph” on the back of a coin as a message about unity and identity: I remembered that famous and ancient coin that has on one side two hands conjoined, holding the caduceus of Mercury with two serpents revolving around it. In the opinion of wise and learned men, this is none other than a hieroglyph of human concord.76

Michiel’s statue and Ziliol’s discussion reveal that seemingly arcane ideas were employed with some familiarity by Odoni’s contemporaries, patrician and citizen alike. The coding aspect of the visual language was picked up by another cittadino later in the

HIEROGLYPHS , ALCHEMY , AND RELIGIOUS REFORM

century, the Chancellery Secretary Agostino Amadi, a specialist in ciphers. In his ten-volume manual produced for the Venetian state he included hieroglyphs, noting “Egyptian priests used ciphers . . . with images of animals which through their nature indicated words and entire passages, or entire concepts, thereby keeping the knowledge of sacred things secret from idiots.”77 Amadi was not seriously proposing that the state adopt this practice; he was adding a learned, fashionable flourish to his treatise. The few visual examples he provided of “secret” hieroglyphic messages are copied from the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. Colonna’s text and its discussion of the pictorial “ciphers” of the Egyptians clearly had a lasting impact among men of a certain education in Venice and the surrounding region. Lotto was probably first exposed to the Renaissance idea of hieroglyphs in Treviso, where he had moved by 1503. His primary patron in the city was Bishop Bernardo Rossi, who gathered a small court of humanist writers. Most scholars agree that Lotto first developed some of his most enduring and idiosyncratic artistic preoccupations in this intellectual environment.78 While none of Lotto’s images explicitly illustrate Horapollo’s descriptions of hieroglyphs or copy known examples of Egyptian writing, I argue that the ideology of hieroglyphs – that art is a visual language of signs that communicates truths more directly because it is composed of representations of things rather than words – was core to Lotto’s art-making practices.79 In Renaissance humanist circles, such as the one around Rossi, interests in inventive imagery often went hand-in-hand with an attraction to alchemy.80 A figure Lotto certainly knew in Treviso (he probably painted his portrait) was the poet Giovanni Aurelio Augurello,81 most famous today for his poem Chrysopoeia, considered “the first great alchemical poem written in pure classical style.”82 The title, Greek for “to make gold,” refers to the process of

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transmutation. While Augurello may not have undertaken actual experiments, he used alchemy as a metaphor.83 As was common in alchemical writing, the meaning of the poem is deliberately elusive, but as one modern scholar concludes: “To the reader of the Chrysopoeia, it gradually becomes clear that the poet’s main objective was not the purification of gold, but that of the soul.”84 Early modern alchemy was essentially the study of how substances can be broken down and transformed into other substances, especially through the process of distillation – what we now call chemistry. The spheres and competences of alchemists and artists/artisans overlapped.85 Jewelers and bronze workers, but also painters, transformed natural materials through various (al)chemical processes into art. It is plausible that Lotto’s connection to Augurello would give a practical interest in “alchemy” a more intellectual and metaphorical depth and might have encouraged Lotto to actively reflect on his own art as a form of spiritual alchemy. While Lotto’s interests in alchemy and hieroglyphs probably began in Treviso, they grew in Bergamo, and are visible in works he produced there. One example is in the series of frescoes he painted for the learned nobleman Battista Suardi in the oratory on his estate in Trescore near Bergamo in 1523–24. In her study of the complex iconography of the whole, Francesca Cortesi Bosco identifies a self-portrait of Lotto prominently located above the side door (Fig. 123).86 Above the self-portrait, to the right of the window, is a sibyl in a rondel holding a scroll that labels her “Chimicha.” This is a rare, but not unknown, manner of referring to the sibyl Cimmeria, also called Cumea. In labeling her Lotto did not emphasize her name as a reference to her geographic origin, but rather as an explicit tie to the opus alchemicum.87 Adding to the alchemical allusion, on the ceiling, directly above the

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Fig. 123 Lorenzo Lotto, Self-Portrait [?], Sibyl Chimicha and Urinating Putto, 1523–24, Oratorio Suardi, Trescore. Photo: Mondadori Portfolio/Electa/ Antonio Quattrone/ Bridgeman Images.

supposed Lotto self-portrait, is a figure of a male child urinating. He is part of a troupe of putti who clamber through grapevines collecting and eating grapes according to wellknown Christian iconography connected to the Eucharist. The urinating child is also a figure associated with alchemy: urina puerorum was an important ingredient as well as a metaphor within the tradition. Significantly the word used to refer to urine in alchemy is “lot” (from the Latin lotium), thus a punning reference to the name of the artist, and part of

the argument in support of the identification of the portrait.88 Further alchemical content emerges in Lotto’s intarsia panels for Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo. Bosco has identified several panels in which alchemical themes are addressed, while Mauro Zanchi interprets the entire cycle in relation to alchemical theories and metaphors.89 While their arguments are not always convincing in their entirety, the two scholars provide sufficient evidence that Lotto was knowledgeable about alchemical lore, and

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that he wished to employ that knowledge, as many alchemists did, in the service of spiritual enlightenment.90 As already noted, while Lotto was given Old Testament scenes to depict, he invented the symbolic covers. The idea of covering or veiling meaning was important in alchemy and it may be that the unusual decision to create protective covers (which appears to have been Lotto’s idea) is related to his interest in alchemical conceptions.91 In the surviving correspondence, Lotto often referred to the designs for the covers as imprese.92 Although he never used the word hieroglyph, the images derive from and add to the approach to creating hieroglyphs seen in Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia.93 In a number of the symbolic covers, objects, animals, and/or

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body parts are isolated against a blank ground, but connected to one another through ribbons and ties.94 Compare, for example, the Cover for David’s Mourning of Absalsom (Fig. 111) to designs in the Hypnerotomachia (Fig. 122). The cover for the Submersion of the Pharaoh (Fig. 124) employs the same strategy but combines it with a more “naturalistic” style. The central motif of the naked man riding an ass with flames beneath it, a mirror and a compass in his hands, and a cage over his head, reads more like a “scene,” however strange it might be. Unlike the examples in the Hypnerotomachia, however, Lotto’s imagery is not translated into a sentence in an accompanying text; rather the images provoke without providing closure. As Bosco notes, “Every figuration on Lotto’s covers

Fig. 124 Designed by Lorenzo Lotto, Cover for the Submersion of the Pharaoh, 1527, Santa Maria Maggiore, Bergamo.

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is rich with significations that can never be fully understood but must be explored in the process of contemplation for which they were made.”95 Lotto’s imprese pose puzzles. Some are more easily decipherable than others, yet all were meant to relate to the meaning of the narratives they covered.96 In his correspondence, Lotto used words like imaginatione, pensier, fantasia, inventione, and my favorite “cavar dal mio cervellazo” (“excavated from my little brain”) to describe his process in creating the designs.97 Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola succinctly described the widely held idea that forms from the outside world are collected in the brain, separated into parts, and recombined into new images “such as cannot be brought to light by nature” in his On the Imagination, published in Venice by the Aldine Press in 1501.98 It is as though Lotto sought to project those preword image fantasies from his mind onto the designs. The imagination was understood to be a state between sense and intellect, between corporeal and incorporeal.99 Images produced in the imagination, based on the forms it drew from nature, were the ciphers through which “the discursive reason and the contemplative intellect” engaged and interpreted the world.100 In this sense, one can understand Lotto’s intarsia designs, and perhaps by extension much of his art, as selfconsciously concocted “fantasy images” made for contemplation. For Pico, and I believe for Lotto, “The spiritual eye, joined to the body, makes use of images to contemplate truth.”101 Lotto was in the midst of designing both biblical scenes and hieroglyphic covers at the time he painted Odoni’s portrait, simultaneously deploying visual images as a form of naturalistic depiction of narrative, which we might call metonymy, and as symbolic language derived from God’s language, what we might call sacred metaphor. In the Odoni portrait, he sought to seamlessly combine narrative invenzioni and metaphoric imprese in one image – a portrait of a collector.102

When Lotto came to Venice in 1525 he was not just entering an important artistic center; he was also encountering a city in the throes of intense philosophical and theological debates in the wake of Martin Luther’s resounding call for the reformation of the Church. At this time and in this city, social, historical, and intellectual opinions about religion were circulated and openly addressed in a way that was not possible in other places and at other times in early modern Italy.103 As John Martin has noted, in this open environment before 1550, “no clear line was drawn between dissent and orthodoxy”; the contemporary reformer Bernardino Ochino commented that “Almost everyone has his own set of beliefs.”104 The nature of “Lotto’s religion” – that is, his connection to reformist and even openly heretical Protestant groups – has been the subject of much discussion.105 Over and over again in what Lotto wrote about himself and in what his contemporaries wrote about him, as well as in his works of art, Lotto comes across as a person in search of a purer, more pious, more authentic spiritual experience.106 He certainly shared with “many Evangelising Catholics a special devotion to the person and sufferings of Christ,” subscribing to the “Christocentric” orientation of reformist movements of the time. He was also committed to the values of an ascetic and contemplative life, and shared Luther’s emphasis on a more “direct, unmediated relationship between man and God.”107 This probably included an interest in reading the Bible in Italian, and many scholars believe he designed the frontispiece for Antonio Brucioli’s translation published by Gian Mario Giunti in 1532.108 Lotto’s writings indicate that he was spiritually distressed and questioning, while remaining fervently pious, and that, at the very least, he was sympathetic to reform movements. When Lotto moved to Venice he lived in the Dominican monastery of San Giovanni e Paolo,

HIEROGLYPHS , ALCHEMY , AND RELIGIOUS REFORM

one of the primary spots in the city where philosophical and theological ideas were openly debated.109 Correspondence with his patrons in Bergamo reveals that Lotto actively listened to and sought out preachers and theologians for inspiration and advice about his intarsia panels, if not for other works as well. In May 1527, the year he painted Odoni’s portrait, he suggested a new subject for one of the large intarsias at the front of the choir: “I think that . . . the story of Joshua making the sun stand still would be appropriate, a story that this Lent I heard told by our preacher. And if this pleases you tell me and send me the written story.”110 The preacher in question was probably Fra Damiano Loro, magister theologiae at San Giovanni e Paolo, who was accused of heresy in 1531.111 Inspired by his sermon, Lotto suggested a highly unusual subject – Joshua making the sun stand still – for inclusion in the Bergamo cycle.112 Less than a year later, in a letter dated February 10, 1528, Lotto again mentioned consulting with “great men, valiant theologians and preachers” in Venice regarding the iconography of the intarsia designs.113 Lotto may also have been influenced by radical thinkers from the Observant Franciscan monastery of San Francesco dalla Vigna, where his friend Jacopo Sansovino served as architectural consultant. The key intellectual figure at San Francesco was Fra Francesco Zorzi, author of De harmonia mundi (On the Harmony of the Universe) published in 1525, the year Lotto arrived in Venice.114 Zorzi’s cosmology in Latin is a heady mix of Neoplatonic and cabalistic ideas.115 Lotto was not the only artist in the city absorbing reformist ideas and thinking about how he might incorporate them into his art. Two of his closest friends in the city, the architects Jacopo Sansovino and Sebastiano Serlio, were linked to evangelical circles and open to heterodox ideas, whose impact can be discerned in their works.

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Manfredo Tafuri has suggested that the three of them together formed a “‘spiritual’ clique.”116 Through Serlio, who was also involved in producing a painting for Odoni, it is very likely that Lotto came to know one of the period’s most esoteric thinkers, Giulio Camillo Delminio.117 In his will written April 1, 1528, Serlio named Camillo, referred to as “meum cordialissimum et amicissimum,” his sole heir; the two “requested and sworn” witnesses for the document were none other than Lotto and Alessandro Citolini da Serravalle (born ca. 1500), a close friend and follower of Camillo.118 Several other scholars have argued that the two men knew one another, and have suggested a connection between Camillo’s ideas and Lotto’s art.119 Whether or not they met in person, given their overlapping circles and similar interests, Lotto was probably familiar with Camillo’s ideas and knew about his grandest undertaking, the Theatro, which he had been working on since the 1520s.120 Although there has been understandable debate about what the Theatro was exactly, most scholars agree that at some point it was a built structure, as well as a metaphorical concept and/or compilation of texts.121 Camillo himself referred to it as “questa mia mente artificiale,” declaring “I have built a large mind [mente] outside of us that contains the forms of all the things and all the words.”122 Camillo’s ambitious conception was informed by a combination of Neoplatonic, alchemical, hermetic, mythological, and Christian ideas and symbols, many of which were dependent on earlier thinkers like Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola. He was also much influenced by the syncretism of the Venetian theologian and patron of Sansovino, Fra Zorzi.123 The best description of the “theatre” is a posthumous text published in 1550, L’idea del theatro, a transcription of Camillo’s concept by his associate Girolamo Muzio.124 According to Muzio, the theatre was divided vertically into seven sections marked by seven columns, each

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of which was devoted to one of the seven planets. Horizontally, the theatre was composed of seven levels. At the bottom level were the first things of the world that were created – those that are most pure and closest to nature as God invented it. Each progressive level was further refined, but further from God’s original idea, until the seventh level which consisted of the arts. The whole created a kind of inclined chessboard, with fortynine places at which the verticals and horizontals intersected.125 At these intersections were images on doors, behind which were collections of knowledge (in an actual structure these were presumably collections of papers) pertaining to the meaning of the image. The images functioned to “jog the memory” so that viewer/reader would recall and have access to a set of ideas.126 What is particularly important here, and surely of great interest to Lotto, is the role images played in the schema. As Lina Bolzoni has noted, based on Camillo’s own words, the theatre was “una grande galleria di immagini.”127 The published text of Muzio’s L’idea is largely a list of images described, and illustrations for it were produced by two artists, Francesco Salviati and Titian, although unfortunately neither set has survived.128 For Camillo, the images spoke of divine things “as signs and by similitude, so that by the way of visible things we climb to those that are invisible.”129 In the Theatro, itself “a guide to elevation and to contemplation,”130 the visual depictions were not just stimuli for memory; they were meant to literally embody and evoke the knowledge “behind the door” in an almost magical way. Camillo thought of visual language as universal language; he imagined that if one could see into the minds of babies all around the world, one would see the same images, and only later would their minds develop different words to correspond to those images.131 Predictably, Camillo was drawn to hieroglyphs as a “sacred language” that transcended verbal articulation, and he was an admirer of the images

of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, which he interpreted in alchemical terms.132 In the discussion of the portrait that follows, I argue that Camillo and Lotto, and by logical extension Odoni, shared a similar cosmic and spiritual interpretation of the role of images as a means to attain enlightenment. Camillo and Lotto in their own ways synthesized aspects of hermeticism, alchemy, and Christianity in order to formulate theories of images that ultimately had much in common.133 The commission for Odoni’s portrait was an opportunity for Lotto to explore the heady ideas that surrounded him, from the spiritual debates at the church of San Giovanni e Paolo, to the syncretist theology of Zorzi, to the hermetic abstractions of Camillo, for a man who would appreciate it. The portrait demonstrates Odoni’s “contemplation” of the connection between ancient and modern religious beliefs. Even if Odoni lacked a humanist education and did not own many books, his interests in nature, art, and the antique were evident throughout his house. Armed with a better understanding of Lotto’s mindset and intellectual milieu, we are now in a better position to follow Michiel’s implied directions to “contemplate” the objects that surround Odoni. As I have noted, the objects are not there just to show that he is a collector. Scholars have long demonstrated that the works of art depicted, for the most part, do not correspond to works of art Odoni actually owned; at least they do not represent the most prominent works in Odoni’s collection. Some could of course be based on fragments mentioned in the Odoni inventory that are only summarily described. Some scholars have also suggested they are objects that Lotto owned.134 But overall it seems that Lotto painted, and Odoni invites us to commune with, an imaginary collection, concocted by artist and patron together, to reflect on the very nature of collecting and of art itself.

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THE IDOL AND THE CRUCIFIX

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s already noted, the objects in the portrait encircle Odoni. The white fur lining of the coat keeps the eye moving from one work of art to the next, and that circular form is echoed in Odoni’s round head, his bushy beard, the shape of his body engulfed in the cloak, and the puffy right sleeve of the garment. The objects in the painting are also paired. The headless nude female figure rests against the head of Hadrian; coins or medals lie next to a book; two figures struggle in a background sculpture; two small bronze statuettes contrast with a standing marble nude; and pearls spill out of a bluish dish. But the most important pairing, at the very heart of the picture, consists of two objects that Odoni holds in his hands – a gold crucifix on a chain and a stone herm-like statuette. One is held close, the other extended outward, each inclined in opposite directions. This core pairing has only recently been rediscovered. For most of the second half of the twentieth century, the crucifix on the chain at Odoni’s chest was not visible due to overpainting. It was only uncovered in 1996 when the painting was cleaned by Rupert Featherstone in preparation for the exhibition “Lorenzo Lotto: A Rediscovered Master of the Renaissance.”135 For almost fifty years, scholars believed that Odoni was simply touching a gold chain around his neck. As a result, previous studies concentrated on the object in Odoni’s other hand, long identified as a statuette of the goddess Diana of Ephesus.136 Although Lotto decidedly downplayed the goddess’s most notable iconographic feature – her numerous breasts – the crown on her head and her hermlike body, sectioned into rings and ending in a pedestal, approximate the general type.137 Similar representations can be found in small statuettes and on coins from antiquity (Fig. 125).138

Fig. 125 Bronze Statuette of Diana of Ephesus, inv. no. MCABo Rom 1532, Museo Civico Archeologico, Bologna. Photo: Courtesy of Museo Civico Archeologico, Bologna.

Statues of the goddess worshipped by the Ephesians are mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles (19:24–41) in relation to St. Paul’s attacks on the pagan worship of idols. The passage focuses on artisans, whose “silver temples for Diana, brought no small gain to the craftsmen.” The silversmith Demetrius warned his colleagues that Paul’s message that “they be not gods which are made by hands,” will have repercussions: “Our craft is in danger to be set at nought.”139 It would be hard to overestimate

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the topicality of this biblical story for an artist making religious images at the time of Protestant Reformation in a city where the polemics of reformers were being taken especially seriously.140 Citing Acts, some scholars have interpreted the “pagan idol” in Odoni’s hand as a condemnation of idolatry. The recent discovery of the cross in Odoni’s other hand has fuelled that interpretive fire.141 While the statuette may refer to idolatry, I am not convinced that the painting is an apology for Odoni’s interest in antiquity. Instead, I see it as an example of what Alexander Nagel has called “soft iconoclasm” – here seen not in a religious image, as in the cases Nagel discusses, but in a secular work of art, a portrait. While Italy did not experience the outright iconoclasm that occurred in northern Europe, Nagel has drawn attention to the “iconoclastic impulses” that could be present within works of art themselves.142 To be sure, the painting both stresses Odoni’s devotion to Christ and raises the specter of idolatry, but the relationship between the two objects in his hands is not necessarily one of opposition. At the time Lotto painted the portrait, ancient statues of Diana of Ephesus had only recently been discovered.143 The first known representation of the multibreasted goddess in the Renaissance was painted by Raphael on the ceiling of the Stanza della Segnatura, where she adorns the throne of the allegorical figure of Philosophy. Lotto was familiar with this fresco because he worked alongside Raphael in the Vatican rooms in 1509–11.144 As a number of early sixteenth-century texts and images attest, in this period she was generally believed to represent “the idea or goddess of Nature” and was associated with Isis, the Egyptian goddess of wisdom (in late antiquity, Isis was conflated with Diana of Ephesus).145 Marcantonio Michiel was certainly familiar with that association. In 1520 he attended

a carnival parade in Rome with a series of floats representing “the victories of the antique Romans and concerning the present state of Rome.” In a letter, he wrote that one of the “fantasie di carta” (probably papier-mâché) on the carts showed “a goddess of Nature similar to the antique statue recently put in the palazzo [the Vatican], and it is an Isis, which signifies the subjugation of Egypt.”146 Michiel called her both the “goddess” (dea) of Nature and the “Idea” (idea) of Nature, suggesting that he thought of the statue as representing the Platonic “Ideal” of Nature – its abstraction in divine will.147 Later in the century, Benvenuto Cellini used a figure of the goddess in his design for a proposed seal for the Florentine Accademia del Disegno (1563–69) (Fig. 126).148 He explained his choice beneath the drawing: design is truly the origin and principle of all the actions of man and that since the true Iddea della Natura [the word combines within it both “idea” and “dea” (goddess)] was represented by the ancients with many breasts in order to signify that she alone nourishes everything as the unique and principal ministress of God [come sola e principale ministra di Dio] – who sculpted and created the first man from earth in the image and likeness of himself.149

The seal is interposed within a “hieroglyphic” alphabet Cellini invented out of the tools of the artistic trades. In an earlier version of the design (Fig. 127), Cellini made the connection between the Iddea and the hieroglyphs more explicit with the inscription: “Hieroglifice si chiamavano le caratte degli Egitii.” Visually the centered line of text functions as a caption not only for the invented alphabet, but also for the figure of Diana, herself a hieroglyph of “the idea of Nature.”150 Previous scholars have suggested that the statuette in Odoni’s hand is intended to signify

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Fig. 126 Benvenuto Cellini, Proposal for the Seal of the Florentine Accademia del Disegno, 1563–69, British Museum, London. © The Trustees of the British Museum/Art Resource, NY.

Nature. Indeed, this was the more common interpretation before the rediscovery of the crucifix. In those arguments, the statuette was seen to represent “Nature” in relation to “Art” (or “the Antique” or “Culture”), supposedly signified by the other sculptures surrounding Odoni.151 One might also connect the figure of Natura to Odoni’s collection of natural specimens – dried fish, insects in amber, and the like – that was juxtaposed with works of art in his studiolo.

I argue that Odoni does not offer his “Iddea della Natura” as the antithesis of either “Art” or Christ but rather (or also), as Cellini put it, as the “unique and principal ministress of God” – the conduit through which we might, like Odoni, and like Lotto himself, come to know the divine.152 Lotto depicted the same statuette Odoni holds in his hand in two other works designed in the same year – covers for the narrative scenes of Death of Absalom and David’s Mourning of Absalom made for the choir in Bergamo (see Fig. 110 and Fig. 111). In her

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Fig. 127 Benvenuto Cellini, earlier draft for Proposal for the Seal of the Florentine Accademia del Disegno, 1563–69, formerly Archivio Calamandrei, Florence. Photo: Private Collection Photo © Christie’s Images/ Bridgeman Images.

reading of the panels, Galis proposes that the “idol” represents David’s “idolatrous” love of Bathsheba.153 Bosco, on the other hand, argues she is a symbol of “nature,” but nature in its negative connotations – that is, lussuria or sexual obsession.154 Probably Lotto deployed the same figure, in the same year, in both the intarsias and the portrait to suggest both idolatry and nature, concepts that were intertwined.155 Interpretation

also depended on the placement of the “hieroglyph” in the larger “cartouche” of the image’s composition. In the intarsias Diana has a negative influence. In both panels, she is associated with a collar or yoke. In Lotto’s portrait, however, Odoni looms above Diana, holding her firmly in his hand, in effect possessing Nature. Multivalent as Diana might be, in Lotto’s portrait, Odoni has harnessed, rather than been yoked by, the “Iddea della Natura.”

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The statuette held out to the viewer opens up the rest of the portrait. She could be understood as a hieroglyph of Nature – not simply nature as earth goddess, but nature as the container of mysteries, of secrets, and potentially of knowledge. In the painting, she is the hieroglyph that sets the stage for the reading of the hieroglyphic whole. Of all the works in the portrait, she is the only figure who is represented clearly as “an image of an image: a statue, an idol, not of a ‘living’ goddess.”156 A herm-like figure, without arms or legs, she contrasts with the bodily, naturalistic if fragmented, forms of the various statues in the background and in the right foreground. A stiff, hieratic stub, she signals that she is the representation of an abstract idea. The other sculptures in the painting, too, are both works of art and her (Nature’s) products.

HERCULES TIMES THREE otto’s “soft iconoclasm” – open-ended and question-posing rather than judgmentmaking – extends from the central juxtaposition of cross and idol to the other “couplings” of objects. Following the circle around Odoni clockwise, above Diana, sitting on a shelf in splendid isolation in the upper left quadrant of the painting, is a marble sculpture of a muscular male nude holding up an indeterminate piece of stone. It is a small version of an ancient statue of Hercules and Antaeus, then in the most famous collection of antiquities – the Statue Court at the Vatican Belvedere. The much admired figural group was sketched and copied by numerous artists in its original fragmented state.157 Lotto himself drew the group while he was working in Rome in 1509–11 (Fig. 128).158 A decade and a half later he made use of the academic study in his portrait of a Venetian citizen who wished to associate himself with collecting practices in the Eternal City.

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Fig. 128 Lorenzo Lotto, Statue of Hercules and Antaeus in the Belvedere Courtyard, ca. 1510, Veneranda Bibloteca Ambrosiana, Milan. © Venderanda Biblioteca Ambrosiana/Mondadori Portfolio/Bridgeman Images.

The fragment is one of three representations of Hercules in the painting. To the right, the headless male statue in contrapposto is loosely based on a sculpture also in the Vatican courtyard, then identified as a representation of the emperor Commodus in the guise of Hercules (Fig. 129).159 Lotto transformed the Belvedere statue into a more generic representation of the victorious demigod resting on his club and wearing an animal skin around his neck. Further to the right is a smaller intact figurine of Hercules, painted to look like bronze, his club now over his shoulder, using his other hand to direct the stream of his urine. This representation is also based on a classical type known as Hercules mingens, which was well known and often copied in the Renaissance (Fig. 130).160

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Fig. 129 Hercules and Telephus, second-century C E copy of Hellenistic original, Vatican Museums, Vatican State. Photo: Alinari/Art Resource, NY.

Why might Hercules be so important in the composition? As with the statuette of Diana of Ephesus, multiple forces are in contention. Hercules was much admired in antiquity and in the Renaissance for his hypermasculinity, both in terms of physical strength and sexual libido.161 The three mature nudes echo Odoni’s own corporeal presence, with his ample robe and bushy beard. Hercules mingens in particular signifies manliness in a most direct manner since urinating while standing was considered a primary indicator of masculinity.162 Despite his association with

brute strength, Hercules also came to represent the life of the mind and his labors were conceived as allegories of the “toils of the inner life.”163 For the humanist scholar Cristoforo Landino, Hercules was the “the most noble and supreme example to be followed.”164 In Odoni’s portrait, the three Hercules suggest that he also saw the demigod as an exemplar.165 It is worth remembering that Odoni exhibited an over life-size bust of Hercules by Antonio Minello in the courtyard below, probably commissioned directly from the sculptor. The only other male “presence” in the painting is the bearded head in the foreground, usually identified as a bust of Emperor Hadrian. Hadrian also associated himself with Hercules, who was depicted on the reserve of some of the emperor’s coins. In one example, the figure of Hercules standing in contrapposto with his club in his right hand rather resembles the middle Hercules in the portrait. Lotto or Odoni could have owned such a coin.166 Odoni also displayed plaster casts of Emperor Hadrian and his companion Antinous in his portego. Like Hadrian before him, Odoni wished to identify himself with Hercules’ virtù, both his masculine prowess and his intellectual associations. At the same time, the figures of Hercules, like Diana of Ephesus, are also pagan idols. In his 1503 critique of the worship of saints, Erasmus of Rotterdam singled out the ancient worship of Hercules as an example of the pagan polytheism which he believed lived on in the cult of saints. Prayers have been misdirected to saints, he claimed, piety should instead be directed to Christ.167 The representation of Hercules urinating underscores the problem of Hercules’ exemplarity. Drinking to excess and being unable to contain oneself was hardly model behavior,168 and in the Odoni portrait he is even positioned as though he were relieving himself into the vase of the female figure in front of him – a humorous note that arguably

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Ephesus) and forerunners of Christ (linked to the crucifix). This “conflict,” prominently on display in Lotto’s painting, merits contemplation as part of a picture that is, in effect, a manifesto of the power of art as a stepping stone to the divine.

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Fig. 130 Hercules mingens, ca. 200, Musée cantonal d’histoire et d’archeologie, Lausanne. Photo: akgimages/André Held.

rather undermines the seriousness of imagining oneself as “Hercules.” The three statues of Hercules in Odoni’s portrait represent various ways the ancients portrayed this human turned god. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance Hercules was also understood as pagan typus of Christ.169 Born of a mortal woman and heavenly father, he undertook great struggles to save his kind and was ultimately deified. The fact that that Odoni is holding an image of Christ to his chest further underlines this connection. The figures of Hercules in the portrait are both pagan idols (thus linked to Diana of

he reproduction of Hercules and Antaeus is singled out in the composition; the only item to Odoni’s left, it is bathed in the light from the window. Of all the stories about Hercules, that of Hercules and Antaeus was most often allegorized and moralized by Christian writers. To defeat the giant Antaeus, the son of the earth goddess Gaia, Hercules had to lift his body off the earth, the source of his strength. In a Christian humanist context, the story was interpreted as an allegory of virtue over vice, reason over libido, the spiritual over the material.170 Camillo provided a succinct statement of these Christianizing ideas when he described an image of Hercules and Antaeus as one of the visual memory codes in his theatre of knowledge: Hercules is the human spirit, Antaeus is the body . . . These two (as Paul says) are in a continual struggle and wage incessant warfare . . . Here we have two things principally to consider: the one is the death of the body, the other is almost its transformation into the spirit . . . And if our interpretation is considered well, one will find that we have another manifestation of transmutation . . . Now this image – in order to symbolize both the strength in the embrace which Hercules makes and the raising up from earth – shall cover a volume, in which there shall be distinguished all things pertaining to this part, such as the impressions which the soul carries from Heaven, memory, knowledge, judgment, the “practical intellect,” that is

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understanding, thought, 171 contemplation.

imagination,

and

For Camillo, this battle represents the metaphorical – and alchemical – transformation of body into spirit. In Lotto’s depiction, Hercules’ body is fully sculpted, in movement, rippling with muscles – the stone seems to come to life. Antaeus, by contrast, is formless, mere rock. Compared to the earlier drawing, Lotto has made the figure of Antaeus less determinate and Hercules more faceless, enhancing the distinction between the natural raw material of stone and its transformation into a figure drawn from nature. He thereby highlights his own artistic conversion of material from substance into form, and the idea of lifting material things up from the earth (Antaeus) into divinity (Hercules as antetype for Christ). As was the case in the juxtaposition of the “the idea or Goddess of Nature” and Christ on the cross, within itself the statue of Hercules and Antaeus reiterates the theme of the transformation of nature into something divine.172 In his own Herculean struggle, Lotto not only transformed stone into muscles, but also paint into a variety of materials in the picture, including Odoni’s flesh and the gold of the crucifix. The battle between Hercules and Antaeus may be a psychomachia of virtue and vice, but on a literal level is also a struggle, a wrestling match – the Italian word Camillo uses is lotta. I think it is no coincidence that the statue is placed directly above Lotto’s signature and the date, “Laurentius Lotus/1527,” legible in the shadows beneath the shelf on which the statue is posed (Fig. 131). Playing on his name, Lotto signaled his own lotta of ideas over mere paint. It was certainly not the first time Lotto had engaged in such tactics. Only the year prior to painting Odoni’s portrait, Lotto went out of his way to include an extra scene in the intarsia designs for Bergamo – “Lot and his daughters.” He wrote to his patrons that he had included the composition even though

Fig. 131 Detail of Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of Andrea Odoni, 1527, Royal Collection Trust. © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020.

it “was not given to me by anyone, but for my own pleasure, of the five cities of Sodom, in order to insert my family name [cognome] Loto.”173 Two other “hieroglyphic” signatures populate Odoni’s portrait. Lotto placed the figure of Hercules mingens next to another bronze-colored sculpture based on a classical model of Venus such as Fig. 132.174 He depicted the figures so that Hercules appears to be urinating into the vase

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Fig. 132 Statuette of Venus in Amber, first century C E , Museo Nazionale Concordiese, Portogruaro, Italy. Su concessione del Ministero per i beni e la attività culturali e per il turismo.

on which Venus rests her foot as if in the act of washing, the acidity of his urine eroding the metal of her ankle (a kind of “fragmenting” all the more noticeable because it is so implausible). Both figures allude to Lotto’s name. Lotus, the Latin version of Lotto he used in his signature, is the past participle of the Latin verb lavo (meaning “washed”). Thus Venus’ washing (either her own washing or the “washing” she is receiving from Hercules) is also a pun on Lotto’s name. Lotto used this same pun in an earlier painting, the St. Jerome in Penitence (ca. 1513–16) (Fig. 133). In the lower right corner an unnecessary spurt of water bathes Lotto’s signature “LAUREN[T]. LOTUS” inscribed on a rock.175 Furthermore, as has been discussed, the Latin word for urine is lotium, often abbreviated in alchemical texts as lot. Lotto also deployed this pun in his frescoes in Trescore where he depicted

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a putto urinating above his apparent self-portrait.176 The pun served not only to evoke Lotto’s name but also, following alchemical discourse, to associate him with “the mercurial spirit, that spiritus which is the origin of generation and akin to the divine spiritus that feeds the imagination and thought of the artist.” Thus, “it sheds light on his conception of art as an inspired act, aimed at the transformation of man and above all of materials, from the formless to form.”177 For Lotto, it was his artistic signature.178 He used another combination of Venus washing and a urinating figure in his gigantic picture of the Toilette of Venus, which he may have painted for a relative.179 At the very center of Lotto’s portrait, the object that Odoni holds to his chest, closest to him, is a crucifix, which though small, is made of gold – the ultimate product of alchemical endeavors (Fig. 134). The gold substance is striking because of its placement, but also because it contrasts with the many other types of substances or materials that Lotto depicted in the portrait, from the plush fabric of Odoni’s gown, the soft fur of its lining, and the wiriness of his beard, to the stone, bronze, metal, parchment, porcelain, and pearls that surround him. The underlying metaphor of the painting as a whole is the transmutation of earthly things into higher spiritual realms. It is not that all the “material things” that surround Odoni are rejected by the presence of the small gold cross. Rather Lotto, and through him implicitly Odoni, suggests that the objects are so many paths to Christ – the material may be transmuted into the spiritual.180

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he intersection of alchemy and spirituality also helps to explain one of the least understood passages in the painting – the small dish with pearls at the right edge. Usually identified as glass or stone,181 I believe the bowl is blue and white porcelain, based on the blue line around

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Fig. 133 Lorenzo Lotto, St. Jerome in Penitence, ca. 1513–16, Muzeul National Brukenthal, Sibiu, Romania.

the rim and the blue decorations on the body (Fig. 135). Lotto rendered the much admired translucent properties of porcelain so that the white background of the bowl appears pale blue as the light passes through it. Pieces of oriental porcelain, a prized collector’s item, were listed in the inventory of Odoni’s house. And Lotto depicted two porcelain bowls in his altarpiece for the Church of Santa Maria dei Carmini, completed around the same time as the Odoni portrait – perhaps inspired by the examples he saw in Odoni’s studio. But why are the porcelain and the pearls included in the portrait, and more puzzling still, why are they interconnected in this strange manner? The pearls are on a string, but loose on the string; some are in the bowl, others spill out onto the tabletop. The passage has all the hallmarks of Lotto’s “hieroglyphic” mindset: these are not just

collector’s items, they are signs whose secrets must be “contemplated.” As expensive luxury products whose method of creation was considered mysterious, both pearls and porcelain were the subject of alchemical investigations. Some of the earliest surviving alchemical recipes are for making artificial pearls.182 In the early modern period, Europeans were fascinated by Chinese porcelain, but they did not understand what porcelain was made of or how it was fabricated. Several Venetian alchemists or craftsmen were engaged in the early sixteenth century in experiments to counterfeit the mystifying substance.183 Furthermore, according to one theory, porcelain was made from sea shells that were buried in the ground and transformed into a special sort of clay.184 Since natural pearls are found in oyster shells, arguably both substances, porcelain and pearls, derived from the same base

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Fig. 134 Lorenzo Lotto, detail of Portrait of Andrea Odoni, 1527, Royal Collection Trust. © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020.

Fig. 135 Chinese, Porcelain bowl with Lotuses, early sixteenth century, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, accompanied by a detail from Lotto’s portrait of Odoni.

material, what would be called the prima materia in alchemy, sea shells. In fact the word porcellane is taken from the term used for sea shells; in northern European sources there is confusion about whether the word refers to vessels made of porcelain or mother of pearl.185 What may

initially seem a strange juxtaposition – pearls and porcelain – is in fact a reference to the fact that both luxury items, translucent white substances of very high value, could be understood as a transmuted form of sea shell. Theoretically, through an alchemical process, shells could be

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transformed into substances of greater value and beauty – indeed into two different kinds of seemingly miraculous materials.186 Conceivably, pearls and porcelain are even a reference to the much sought-after philosopher’s stone, used to transform base metals into gold, which like porcelain or pearls was described as “white, pure, hard, and incorruptible.”187 The pearls and bowl are intertwined to evoke pearls produced inside a mollusk, the porcelain akin to mother of pearl.188 By depicting the pearls falling off a string, Lotto highlighted that they are both products of nature (the individual pearls) and of human artifice (the strand of pearls). Created from base material through a process (partly natural, partly artificial), they become a marvelous substance and an art form, remarkable for beauty, value, and purity. Pearls were part of the Christian interpretation of alchemy. An important early fourteenthcentury text, which propounded that the study of alchemy contributed to an understanding of Christian doctrine, is titled New Pearl of Great Price (Margarita pretiosa novella). Its author, Petrus Bonus of Ferrara, associated the practice of alchemy with Christ’s parable of the merchant who “seeking goodly pearls” gives up everything for the “one pearl of great price,” which represents the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 13:45–46).189 The pearl is an apt Christian metaphor because, formed through a process of suffering within the shell of the oyster, it emerges “precious, without an obscuring spot, but clear and pure,” and unlike other precious stones, it is created by nature perfect and complete without need of polishing or cutting.190 Caught by a ray of light, the porcelain and pearls are positioned at the end of Odoni’s left elbow, so that his arm and hand draw the eye towards the gold crucifix. The pearls and porcelain are precious, transmuted substances that lie on the path to the ultimate “gold” of Christ. The pairing thus echoes the

central pairing of Diana of Ephesus and the crucifix. The stone statuette represents the prima materia, which through Lotto’s art and our contemplation can be transmuted or distilled into the gold of Christ raised up on the cross.191

BOOK AND COINS/TEXT AND IMAGE rom the pearls and porcelain, a diagonal – formed by Odoni’s shadow, the jutting arm of the tabletop, and the fur-lined opening in his cloak – leads to a small book and several medaglie. Placed directly in front of Odoni, these objects occupy a privileged niche in the composition. The black cover of the book is ornamented with four gold studs at the corners and a central medallion that looks to be a cameo surrounded by a gold rim. The black strings used to hold the book closed are untied and disordered, one of them inadvertently cutting through the pages. Haphazardly strewn in front, and echoing the ornament of the cover, are two silver and four bronze coins (or possibly medals). Lotto represented the items as though Odoni had been perusing them and only recently turned away from them to address us with his urgent message. The book may refer to a specific object from Odoni’s collection. When Michiel visited the house of Odoni’s uncle Francesco Zio, he wrote an unusually long and detailed description of an officiolo (prayer book) he saw there. Michiel later saw the illuminated manuscript in Odoni’s house, declaring it to be the one that “Zio used to own.”192 What is probably the same “officietto” is listed in the inventory of Odoni’s house. There it is described as “covered in black velvet” with its own black leather box.193 Based on these records, it seems plausible that Odoni’s contemporaries might have recognized the book in the portrait as

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the famous, highly valued work of art that Odoni had inherited from Zio.194 It is this detail above all that suggests that Lotto knew Parmigianino’s Portrait of a Collector (see Fig. 115). Here the sitter also holds a highlyornamented book of hours in his hand, in this case definitively recognized as the Offiziolo Durazzo from its distinctive cover.195 In my opinion, the use of the book of hours juxtaposed with coins in both portraits is too similar to be mere coincidence. Although Lotto’s rendition of the codex is less particularized than Parmigianino’s, it makes sense that Odoni would want to highlight his ownership of the much esteemed book, not only because it signaled his Venetian lineage through Zio, but also because it placed him in a broader “lineage” of antiquarii. Even if a reference to the manuscript Odoni inherited from Zio is not certain, given its size and ornamentation, it seems likely that it is a private devotional text. Its proximity to the crucifix, and Lotto’s propensity to combine the Bible and the cross in other paintings, further supports the assumption that this is a religious codex.196 Perhaps Lotto was less particularizing about the book than Parmigianino because he also wanted it to be understood on a more abstract, metaphorical level. One might read the combination of the book and coins as a small “hieroglyph,” along the same lines as the pearls and porcelain. Both require mini acts of decoding. A book of hours is a combination of text and image that is contemplated in religious devotion; coins and medals are similarly composed of text and image, and they were carefully studied by collectors in order to discern the knowledge and wisdom they might contain.197 In fact, the enigmatic images on coins were interpreted as though they were “hieroglyphs,” and coin imagery was used in order to invent new Renaissance “hieroglyphs.” Both sides of this process are exhibited in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.198 Lotto combined the book and coins

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to signify their inherent similarity as objects of contemplation of the past and of the divine. Indeed, as Christopher Nygren has convincingly shown, ancient coins, “contact relics of another era,” were interpreted as metaphors for the human soul “minted” from the likeness of God: “Numismatic collecting was reconfigured as a form of spiritual exercise that combined the pursuit of classical virtue with the infusion of Christian grace.”199 The ties of the book visually link it to the coins, as do the ornaments on the book’s cover. The strings may be read metaphorically as the “ties that bind” together the devotional book and the coins/medals. In illustrated “hieroglyphs” from the Hypnerotomachia, ribbons signify vinculum (bond/tie) and are used to indicate close relationships between symbols to construct a single word or “to relate groups of words or phrases.”200 The ties that connect the book and coins echo the string that connects the porcelain bowl and the pearls – both serve as hieroglyphic “binders.”

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inally we come to the last, in some ways most prominent pairing: the large-scale, bearded male head and the smaller headless, armless body of a female nude in the right foreground. The head leans left and the torso leans right so that the two compose an almost perfect pyramid, a shape that repeats on a smaller scale Odoni’s bulky body behind. Placed furthest in the foreground, the two sculptures nearly pop out of the picture plane. They are dependent on one another, hold each other up, and most peculiarly they push up the green tablecloth creating an arch from which they emerge. Close examination of the painting reveals that Lotto likely experimented in this section and only arrived at this solution after first trying something else.201 Indeed the placement and “action” of the two

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figures are remarkable. They are not on the table, or clearly on the floor. Rather they appear, especially the head, to be emerging from under the table, the motif of the tablecloth suggesting a kind of unveiling or rising up. In a painting with many unusual passages, this is certainly one of the most unprecedented. Like the figure of Hercules peeing into the female nude’s vase, the head/body duo is slightly comic. At the same time, however, it is another confluence of symbols that requires “decoding.” The more generic of the two sculptures is the nude. Although a variety of identifications have been put forward, the most convincing is the recent suggestion that it is based on an ancient sculpture owned by the sixteenth-century Paduan collector Marco Mantova Benavides (Fig. 136).202 Lotto’s depiction of the statue preserves its fragmentary state; the manner in which the drapery wraps around the left elbow and the ways the arms and head are broken off are too similar to be coincidental.203 Lotto has even made sure to include the holes where metal originally attached the head and lower parts of the arms, revealing the manner of the sculpture’s making, how the stone was transformed through human ingenuity. The sculpture may have been owned by Odoni, although it is also possible that Lotto saw the work elsewhere.204 Lotto, however, has transformed what is probably actually a male figure into a female reminiscent of the “delicate yet voluptuous” Hellenistic female nudes from Rhodes and the surrounding area, which often but not always, depict Venus.205 Irrespective of its prototype, it is clearly a sensual work, not just because of the nudity, but also the pose. The body is half reclined, resting on the left elbow as the opposite hip swings sensuously to the left. The fact that she reclines in a provocative pose against a larger scale male head also adds to the effect. Her nude body is quite literally “on his mind.”

Fig. 136 Roman, Statuette leaning on a pilaster, secondcentury copy of Greek original, Museo di Scienze archeologiche e d’Arte, Padua. Photo: Courtesy of the Università degli Studi di Padova, Italia.

Scholars have nearly unanimously agreed that the bust is a likeness of the Roman emperor Hadrian.206 As discussed in Chapter 5, there is considerable similarity to known antique and Renaissance portraits of the emperor. The fact that a stucco portrait of Hadrian was on display in the portego of the Odoni house in 1555 supports the identification, and the head is often said to be the only work in the painting that can positively be identified as a work from Odoni’s collection. On the other hand, it is also possible that the inclusion of a head of Hadrian in the portrait later led Odoni to put busts of Hadrian and Antinous on display in his portego – that is that the portrait

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was not based on the Hadrian head but encouraged its purchase. As already discussed, it seems plausible that Hadrian (like Hercules) is posed here as an exemplar, or “antique alter-ego” for Odoni.207 One of the “good emperors” Hadrian was especially well known for his patronage of art, his love of beauty, and his Hellenophilism, not to mention his beard.208 The identification of the head, however, is not beyond doubt. Some have suggested that it might represent another emperor,209 and even that it might not be an ancient work.210 In fact, there is nothing to preclude that it is instead a portrait of Francesco Zio by Simone Bianco, who made other works for Odoni. Indeed, it bears some resemblance to the bust of an unidentified man by the Tuscan sculptor, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (Fig. 55).211 Whatever individual might be represented in the bust, a comparison of the two similarly sized heads, “Hadrian’s” and Odoni’s, is unavoidable – one is painted to look like sculpture and the other painted

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in color to look alive. Lotto set up the classic paragone of sculpture and painting (and for that matter, of ancient vs. modern). Lotto’s interest in deploying the paragone in portraiture is demonstrated in another one of his experimental, horizontal portraits, Goldsmith in Three Views, completed approximately two years later, ca. 1529–30 (Fig. 137). Here the same man, perhaps Lotto’s friend, the jeweler Bartolomeo Carpan, is depicted from three different angles in order to demonstrate that painting can rival sculpture in presenting various points of view.212 One aspect of the paragone between painting and sculpture is the argument that sculpture is more enduring. In the Odoni portrait, the sculpted head, which unlike most of the other sculptures is intact, foregrounds the commemorative project of portraiture and art in general. Odoni’s portrait, like “Hadrian’s”, will survive into a new world (ours) to carry on his legacy. But the painted portrait is decidedly more alive and most importantly, dramatically engaged across the picture plane. The sculpted head in the foreground, itself made more

Fig. 137 Lorenzo Lotto, Goldsmith in Three Views (Bartolomeo Carpan?), ca. 1529–30, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

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lifelike and animated through paint, brings these themes, latent in all portraiture, to the fore as a topic of discussion.213 But the reference to the paragone is more than a game of artistic one-upmanship. It serves here to foster Lotto’s and Odoni’s grander artistic and spiritual aims. Nagel has investigated the symbolic associations of different media, especially when one media is taken into another, in the first half of the sixteenth century, providing new insight into what is at stake in the paragone.214 Summarizing a particularly intriguing passage in the writings of none other than Camillo, Nagel notes: Applying a form of species theory, which claimed that objects send out from all their surfaces images of themselves that are reconstituted in different media, he [Camillo] put a succession of these various “phases” in sequence: he proceeds from the physical body, which is the most easily graspable to our senses, to the statue, which behaves essentially like a body, and then to ever more subtle, ethereal forms, such as the image in a painting (he invokes the portrait made of him by Titian), the reflection in a mirror, or the pure and invisible ether through which the figure passes on its way to the mirror.215

For Camillo, the less corporeal is always better and purer.216 The liminal placement of the sculpted head, pushing out of the picture plane, links our “bodily” world to the “ethereal” world of the depicted (and now dead) Odoni. Painting may not survive as well as sculpture, but it is closer to a spiritual state; for Camillo, like a mirror it creates a noncorporeal image of the soul. The inclusion of sculpture in the portrait, particularly the portrait head, serves to highlight, even glorify, the status of Lotto’s less material, more transitional and therefore more “soul-like” depiction of Odoni in paint. The “Hadrian” head is in dialog with Odoni’s head, but more conspicuously, it is “coupled” with the female torso. The homey interaction

(even interdependence) of the disembodied head and the decapitated body recalls Roman portraits of couples, such as Imperial Group as Mars and Venus (Fig. 138).217 The lifted tablecloth acts as a canopy, uniting male and female in a manner reminiscent of Lotto’s portrait of Messer Marsilio and his Wife yoked by Cupid (see Fig. 114). The foregrounded pairing of male and female is repeated in the background by the pairing of Hercules mingens and Venus, as well as in the Diana of Ephesus and Christ on the cross in Odoni’s hands. While Diana and Christ are chaste, the other two pairings suggest sexual relations, either through the metaphor of urine/ ejaculation or leaning/obsession. Most scholars have folded these references to sexuality into a moralizing analysis of the picture. For Syson, for example, the more sexual figures “stand for the worldly” in contrast to the bust of Hadrian, which reminds “the viewer of the impermanence of earthly fame and the potential destruction even of the memorial.”218 The sexual references, as well as the humorous notes, in the painting are consistent with the decoration of the rest of the house: Bacchus and Ceres on the facade, the nursing sirens and peeing putto on the balcony, the nude bodies in the courtyard, and most particularly the imagery in the bedroom: Venus and amorini, reclining nude, old and young woman. An articulation of masculinity through the subjection of the feminine is a recurring motif in the painting. Diana is bound and wrapped, her breasts, symbols of fertile power, firmly under control. Odoni holds her tightly in his hand, having harnessed her power. In the background, the standing Venus is assaulted by the small Hercules, and she turns away, hunched over, looking towards Odoni as if beseeching his help. Finally, the enticing, nubile female body is erotically posed for the viewer, but she has been deprived of her head and arms, the holes for their attachment still visible like the “stigmata” of an attack. By contrast, the male

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Fig. 138 Roman, Imperial Group as Mars and Venus, 120–140, Musée du Louvre, Paris. © RMN-Grain Palais/ Art Resource, NY.

figures are strong and triumphant, albeit fragmented – in his three forms Hercules tackles Antaeus, stands erect, and pees on Venus.219 The male figures echo Odoni’s burly presence, his voluminous facial hair, and his dominion over the small army of artworks that surround him. But are the references to sensuality meant to be read as admonitions? On the one hand, that conclusion is unavoidable, resonating with the contrast between Diana and Christ. Diana is an idol, and a symbol of fertility. The connection between sensuality and idolatry was well known,220 and is clearly represented in Lotto’s intarsia panel depictions of Diana of Ephesus. But on the other hand, Diana’s form is columnar and her many breasts suppressed. Odoni is not shown grasping or fondling distinctly female forms, which are all at some remove from him. “The idea/goddess of Nature” was also, at the same time, “the ministress of God.” So too, I think, the

female nudes cannot be read only in a moralizing tone. To return to the nude female leaning on the “Hadrian” head: a dichotomy is constructed between female and male. The head, seat of the brain and the intellect, is the more spiritual aspect of the body, whereas the torso is the seat of passions, thus the more material aspect.221 The male head is dominant; not only is it larger in scale, it also forms the top of the pyramid and is the force raising the tablecloth. But at the same time, the female body also has pride of place; her nonchalant pose, resting familiarly on the larger head, suggests a kind of assertiveness. The juxtaposition of the two sculptures could be understood in an alchemical, hermetic vein as representing the relationship between body and spirit. As early as the writings of the GrecoEgyptian alchemist Zosimos of Panopolis, metal was thought to be composed of two parts, the

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nonvolatile “body” and the volatile “spirit.” It is the spirit that defines the metal, which contains its identity and must be separated from the body to be transferred to another body in order to create another metal.222 She represents the corpus and he represents the anima. As Lawrence Principe notes: Sexual intercourse and reproduction are common elements of alchemical imagery . . . Alchemy’s aim is to give rise to new substances and new properties by combining existing ones, just as parents give rise to new offspring through their union . . . The idea or sight of two substances reacting and combining to form a third easily suggests the image of a marital couple to an imaginative mind practiced in drawing metaphors.223

Not only do corpus and anima lean on one another, they are visually “married” to one another under the arched drapery of the tablecloth. The female body and the male head should not be read as two separate symbols, rather they are combined by Lotto in a kind of hieroglyphic sentence, in the manner of Colonna’s hieroglyphs, or the book and the coins, the pearls and the porcelain, the washing Venus and peeing Hercules. Here the “connector” (vinculum or copula) is the lifted tablecloth. This detail is significant: Lotto not only linked the body and mind, the female and the male, but also suggested that together they are “uplifted” – placed under a kind of dome of heaven, or heavenly cloth. On the one hand, the green color of the tablecloth is merely descriptive. Green cloth was common in sixteenth-century interiors, and indeed it was used in Odoni’s portego and studiolo. But it is also possible to read Lotto’s choice of color symbolically. The uplifted tablecloth in Odoni’s portrait recalls in a minor key the large green canopy held over the Virgin by four angels in the San Bernardino Altarpiece (1521) in Bergamo (Fig. 139) among other works by Lotto.224 While one might object that this “awkward” detail should not be given so much attention,

there is no denying that Lotto must have intended this jokey touch.225 Humor and erudition often went hand in hand in the Renaissance.226 The inclusion of the headless female nude and the male portrait head emerging from under the table is both playful and serious. However Lotto might have translated his visual image into words, it evokes the idea of opposites united, married under the dome of heaven. The emergence from under the table further suggests a resurrection. The head, the portrait, literally comes up from below, and comes to life in the portrait head of Odoni himself. The motif of the lifted tablecloth animates the sculptures, which themselves only serve to further animate Odoni, who is painted in color. Lotto’s peculiar solution for the lower right corner has the quality of an improvisation, as if he were experimenting on the canvas “hieroglyphically.” The motif is a microcosm of collecting itself – how different objects can be combined, even interconnected in particular ways to create meaning. It seems that both Lotto and Odoni enjoyed this sort of “curating.” The objects in Odoni’s portrait are exhibited in a seemingly careless way – the pearls cast into the bowl, the book and coins just discarded, and above all the statues of the female nude and the male head emerging from under the table – that is reminiscent of the display of ancient and modern works in Odoni’s courtyard. Pieces and fragments are juxtaposed and combined, displayed in an aesthetic of the haphazard, the chance encounter, the surprise discovery. The lifting of the “veil” of the tablecloth by the decapitated body and the bodiless head is the ultimate staging of this kind of play.

THE CRUCIFIX AND THE CHAIN he smallest and most important figurative representation in the portrait is the crucifix on a chain that Odoni holds to his chest, the only

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Fig. 139 Lorenzo Lotto, San Bernardino Altarpiece, 1521, San Bernardino in Pignolo, Bergamo.

object in the painting (aside from some very small rings on Odoni’s fingers) made to look like gold. Significantly it is not a cross, but a crucifix, so like the other bronzes and marbles, a figurative work, in this case made by a jeweler, a type of artisan Lotto was connected to in a number of ways and to which Odoni’s family may also have been related.227 Lotto may have depicted many substances in the painting, but this is the highest substance, relying on an alchemical metaphor between gold and Christ. The crucifix is surprisingly rare in early sixteenthcentury Italian portraiture. There are a few examples of people wearing crosses in Lotto’s religious paintings; for example, in his portrait-like image of

St. Catherine of Alexandria (1522), the saint was originally shown with a cross pendant.228 In Lotto’s altarpiece for Santa Maria dei Carmini (1527–29), painted around the same time as the Odoni portrait, St. Nicolas of Bari has a large cross (although notably not a crucifix) on a chain around his neck. And finally, perhaps most comparable, is the Greek (or Coptic) cross on a chain that St. Catherine of Alexandria wears not around her neck but stuffed in her bodice in the Vienna Sacra Conversazione, also painted ca. 1528–30. Lotto’s obsession with the cross is played out in St. Catherine’s chain where the links are positioned to create a very small Latin cross directly in the center of her bodice (Fig. 140).

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Fig. 140a, b Lorenzo Lotto, Sacra Conversazione, 1528–30, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Photo: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY.

In the case of the Odoni portrait, the crucifix is combined with one of Lotto’s favored gestural motifs, used in both religious works and portraits, the hand to the chest. Although there is some variety in the positioning and rhetorical meaning, in general the gesture suggests a sense of passion and reference to self.229 One might read it as a gesture of sincerity – a statement that “I truly believe” or “I hold close to my heart.”230 In Lotto’s nearly contemporary Portrait of a Man with a Golden Paw (see Fig. 109), ca. 1526–27, the sitter holds one hand to his chest while the other extends an object to the viewer. Also close in date and concept to the Odoni portrait is Lotto’s likeness of Bishop Tommaso Negri (see Fig. 113). Negri is shown in the act of religious devotion, his hands in prayer in front of an open book on which rest his rosary beads. Enclosed in his left arm is a wooden cross with a polychrome sculpture of Christ’s body, facing towards him as if to underline the special relationship between the two figures. Negri makes an interesting contrast with Odoni. Odoni’s book is closed, his crucifix much smaller, and of course the juxtaposition of

book and cross, which is at the heart of the painting, is augmented by all those things that Odoni “contemplates.” Lotto is not suggesting a critique of Odoni and his religiosity, but rather another means to a similar outcome.231 Odoni owned two small crosses, which were kept in the iron strongbox in the same room as the portrait. Both crosses were made of silver, one ornamented with “little rubies.” While it is not known if these were pendants that could be worn on a chain, they were small and kept together with other jewels.232 Thus, Odoni could be wearing his own crosetta transformed from silver into gold in accordance with the alchemical conceits of the painting. In any case, it was unusual at the time for Odoni to have been depicted wearing such a crucifix, and it might therefore be a sign of the particular nature of his faith. Odoni was in fact buried in front of an altar dedicated to the crucifixion.233 “Christocentric piety” may have been as important an aspect of Odoni’s identity as it was of Lotto’s.234 The “contest between the statue and the cross” was fundamental to Christian polemics about

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Fig. 141 Jacopo Bellini, St. Jerome in the Desert, ca. 1460, Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona. Photo: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

idolatry.235 Scholars have read the cross in Odoni’s portrait as a condemnation of, or at least apology for, the statuary. At some level, this is correct – the antiquities that surround Odoni are put into a Christian context because of the presence of the cross. Compare it for example, to Jacopo Bellini’s St. Jerome in the Desert (Fig. 141). The saint’s devotion to the sculpted figure of Christ on the cross is contrasted with the figure of an idol on a column in the background. But the contrast is not absolute, not unequivocal. The figure of Christ is also a statue – in fact quite a lifelike one, which St. Jerome looks up to in prayer as he beats his breast – although it hangs on a cross and is turned

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away from the viewer.236 But Lotto’s painting is not a devotional image; it is a portrait of a man committed to collecting and displaying a remarkable amount of statuary, both ancient and modern, throughout his house. And it is by an artist who was also fascinated by the emblematic content encoded in such objects. In Lotto’s and Odoni’s world, pagan art and even pagan religious practices could be incorporated into Christian art, thematically as well as formally, in order to reflect upon Christian theology “in inventive and sometimes unorthodox ways.”237 Odoni seems to reflect when he offers the “idol” while holding the cross. Diana of Ephesus, he seems to propose, may be the link, the open rather than barred doorway to Christ. The painting does not condemn, it poses questions for contemplation, not questions with clear unequivocal answers. But this does not mean that the painting has no aim and is completely openended. Rather, it engages the viewer in a process of contemplation that will lead to an understanding of the profound significance of transmuted materials, that is collectible things – sculpture, antiquities, porcelain, pearls, books, coins – and how they can lead to the real truth of Christ. The painting, itself a material object, if less material than the other art forms as Camillo suggests, is also a path, arguing that the activity of collecting is connected to higher truth and religion. It is not an “apology” but a very complex, and open-ended exploration as a means to explanation. Given the way that Lotto laid out the objects in the portrait as combinations of images connected together, and given the interest in hieroglyphs he demonstrated in other works, it is also possible to understand the crucifix as a hieroglyph. The idea of the cross as a form of hieroglyph had its origins in the writings of the Christian historian Rufinus of Aquileia (ca. 345–411 C E ), who described the destruction of the Serapeum in Alexandria. He noted the discovery of “hieroglyphs” in the form of a cross, which were then interpreted as “a prophecy of the triumph of Christianity and the cross over

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the idols of paganism.”238 The account was reprised in Renaissance Neoplatonism. Ficino included a discussion of the Egyptian “hieroglyph” of the cross, the form he considered to have “the greatest power among images.”239 The Florentine Pietro Crinito (1475–1507) noted that “By the representation of this sign [the cross] the priests and philosophers of Egypt wished the hope of future salvation to be understood, as Rufinus, a meticulous author, relates in his sacred history, where he declares that the cross was found among the priestly letters, and designated by allegory the life to come.”240 When Fasanini published his Latin translation of Horapollo’s “hieroglyphic dictionary” in 1517, he added a discussion of the cross (based on Crinito) to his appendix.241 The cross hieroglyph would be proof of the sacred nature of hieroglyphic language in general,242 and within the language of the portrait, it could be considered a hieroglyphic representation of salvation.243 Odoni’s crucifix may however be only one part of Lotto’s hieroglyph, for it is attached to a chain. In the most illogical passage in the painting, the chain does not actually hang around Odoni’s neck. Rather, against normal expectations, in terms of both physics and social practice, both sides of the golden chain climb up Odoni’s chest to the right side of his neck, disappearing into the cloak (see Fig. 134). It is the only part of the painting were metonymy breaks down. We are left with something that can only be explained through metaphor. Although Christ’s body “hangs” on the cross, the cross itself, as a hieroglyph of resurrection, cannot hang. Rather, it miraculously rises up of its own accord, perhaps held in place by Odoni’s hand.244 If the chain were around Odoni’s neck, he would possess it; it would de-pend from him. Rather the crucifix surges up; it is not a rigid, perpendicular line, but a dynamic diagonal suggesting resurrection in its positioning as well as in its symbolic form. Finally this leaves the chain. That the crucifix does not hang from the chain draws attention to the chain not as just an expedient part of

metonymy, but also as a metaphor. In fact, the “golden chain” (also called “The Great Chain of Being”), derived from book 8 of the Iliad, is one of the classic examples of metaphor in the Western tradition. Asserting his supreme power, Zeus describes a chain from earth to heaven, from which the whole world depends; with this chain he can drag everything and all the gods up, but they cannot drag him down (8.18–27). Plato allegorized the passage in Homer and likened the golden chain to the sun, which keeps earth and heaven in place: “so long as heavens and the sun go round everything exists and is preserved, among gods and men.”245 Plotinus connected this to the Neoplatonic idea of “World-Soul and God,”246 and the allegory passed to the Middle Ages through Macrobius, who wrote that “the close observer will find that from the Supreme God even to the bottommost dregs of the universe there is one tie, binding at every link and never broken. This is the golden chain of Homer which, he tells us, God ordered to hang down from the sky to the earth.”247 The metaphor of the chain thus alludes both to the interconnection of things and to oneway elevation: Zeus (God) can bring inferior beings up, but they cannot bring him down. Camillo used the “Golden Chain” as an image in the Theatro, noting it “shall indicate going to the sun, taking the sun, to stretch out in the sun.”248 A contemporary book illustration published in Venice may be related to Camillo’s conception (Fig. 142).249 Lotto may or may not have borrowed the metaphor from Camillo, but I think we can be certain that the golden chain in Odoni’s portrait is related to Christ metaphorically as well as metonymically. The chain resembles a winding ladder, a set of links, leading upward from the crucifix; the analogy between Homer’s golden chain and Jacob’s ladder was common.250 An informed viewer of Odoni’s portrait is asked to ponder the mini hieroglyph – the golden crucifix and the golden chain – at the thematic center of the picture. Christ, in the

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Fig. 142 Giuseppe Porta Garfagnino, Il fato, from Francesco Marcolini, Le sorte intitolate giardino d’i pensieri, p. 36, 1550. Photo: Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2806-561).

form of the golden crucifix, is the chain or ladder leading to God. For the Franciscan St. Bonaventura, visible creation is a ladder that one ascends “through contemplation to the vision of god”:251 with this ladder (or chain), writes Bonaventura, “let us also be Christians crossing with Christ from this world over to the Father.”252 While these ideas may seem arcane to the modern reader, they were much less so among a certain subset of Venetians interested in the interconnections between antiquity and Christianity. Even though Odoni probably did not have a humanist education and apparently did not own many books, his interest in antiquity and naturalia, and especially his commission of this complex portrait by Lotto, indicates that at some level he “belonged” to this social class – a class that included artists and patrons, patricians and cittadini. *** The complexity of Lotto’s invention has by now become apparent, but it is more than a collection

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of decipherable parts. Lotto has placed the cross at the center, and the other objects are like satellites around it. The revolving composition is then echoed in the peculiar way in which the sleeve billows around Odoni’s right arm so that concentric rings of cloth circle the statuette of “Nature.” Through the composition, Lotto proposed that the “ancient marble fragments” and other objects in the portrait, are part of a “cosmos” – the spokes of a wheel that lead back to the center. In the thought of Francesco Zorzi, earthly material things, “as far as they might be from their divine origins, are in some sense the reflection of those origins, and can in the right circumstances lead the way back to them.”253 Nature (here represented by the stone statuette of Diana of Ephesus) contains within it the divine and thus can lead back to the divine through contemplation. Art is the transformation of Nature by Man, who is made in God’s image, and therefore Art, even if it is not specifically of a Christian nature, is a path to that contemplation. Odoni’s collecting, so clearly referenced in the portrait, could be construed as a form of religious devotion. For Lotto, and presumably for Odoni, the crucifix is a representation of God that is not categorically different from the representations made by the ancients. All things of this world are indeed things of this world, but they are also the means by which we “contemplate,” and thus gain access on earth to the divine and to the afterlife. The portrait is intended to help us see into that very structure.254 The painting is not an embrace of the new consumerist society described by Goldthwaite (see Introduction), but rather a serious proposal about the role of the material as well as of images in religion, made at a time when Catholicism was being questioned and rethought. Odoni’s portrait was painted in the year of the Sack of Rome, when the Protestant troops of Charles V destroyed many works of art and relics in the city. Lotto’s and Odoni’s affirmation of the

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crucifix should be understood in the context of the Protestant Reformation, where at times even the symbol of Christ’s death could become the object of iconoclasm. The year before Odoni’s portrait, a gilded cross, which may have been a gift from Charlemagne, was removed from Strasbourg Cathedral and perhaps melted down.255 With its emphasis on the crucifix, the painting suggests both Lotto’s and Odoni’s allegiance to a reformist “Christocentric” set of beliefs. At the same time, the devotional role of sensible objects is defended through radical equalization. The magical powers of idols may be denied, but figurative transformations can nonetheless be agents of contemplation – can lead to Christ. In his essay “De l’humana deificatione” (“Of Human Deification”), Camillo compares his portrait by Titian to a mirror. One might also see this analogy at play in Odoni’s portrait.256 It is curious that the canvas was not hung in the portego, the most public space in the house, or the camera d’oro, which was the heart of the collection. The camera dalla scala may not have been entirely private – after all Michiel visited it, and Giorgio Vasari and Pietro Aretino may have as well – but the kinds of pictures shown here seem to be less about impressing visitors and more about satisfying desires, both in the form of beautiful women as well as Odoni’s idealized self. While Odoni’s address in the painting appeals to all viewers, in the context of his bedroom it appeals above all to himself. The resemblance between mirror and painting may have been figured in one of the other pictures in the camera, Jacopo Palma’s picture of “two half-length figures of a young woman and an old woman behind her.” The workshop composition fitting that description shows the young woman holding what can only be a mirror with her right hand (see Fig. 99). She does not look in it herself, but both the older woman behind and the viewer understand its implied vanitas message – the mirror acts as

a metaphor for the painting itself – reflecting both beauty and its demise. We also know that Lotto sometimes used mirrors as covers for his portraits, at least later in his career.257 The owner of such an object would see his or her reflection in oscillation with the rendered likeness by Lotto. The portrait as a tool for “self-reflection” finds support in a roughly contemporary painting by Giovanni Gerolamo Savoldo (Fig. 143). Although its exact date is much debated, the painting demonstrates how remarkably in tune Lotto and Savoldo were with one another in this period in their radical experimentation with portraiture.258 Like Lotto’s Goldsmith in Three Views, Savoldo’s image shows the same sitter (often thought to be a self-portrait) in three different views, although here the second and third views are shown in mirrors to the left and in back of the sitter. The similarities between Savoldo’s painting and Lotto’s of Odoni are striking: the unusual horizontal format, the sitter’s outward glance, the foreshortened arms and pointing gestures, and the surrounding things, including the repoussoir object in the lower right corner. Reflected in the left mirror in Savoldo’s painting we even see an alcove bed that could have been present in the background of the Odoni portrait, were it an actual mirror.259 Savoldo’s sitter points to his own mirror image, as if to signal his ongoing act of self-reflection. Aretino was also interested in reflecting surfaces and portraits, and he owned Parmigianino’s Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror, that ultimate conflation of mirror and portrait.260 Particularly revealing is a letter in which Aretino described looking at his own portrait by Titian, which, he says, he placed before him “like a continuous mirror of my very self” – the reflexive “me medesimo” underlining the encounter between self and image of self.261 To be sure, in the early modern period, commissioning a portrait was

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Fig. 143 Giovanni Gerolamo Savoldo, Self-Portrait (?), ca. 1530 (?), Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photo: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

an act of “self-presentation” to others, but it could be an act of defining the self to the self, of creating an aspirational image. The portrait could aid in the process of transformation, or transmutation, of the soul. The work of art could be an “actant.” The meanings are embedded and secret, only to be understood by those with special skills. Thus Odoni, looking at his “continuous mirror” in his house, was its primary audience. This is why the painting was displayed in the camera dalla scala. As Odoni “contemplated” his orbiting marble fragments, he contemplated himself. Regarded in this light, it is difficult to say if Odoni’s portrait is an “object” or a “subject.” The

animated statues within it and the “mirror” image of Odoni are agents of transformation. In the final analysis, Lotto and Odoni together figure an objective that bears some resemblance to the twenty-first-century proposals of Jane Bennett: “The idea was that moments of sensuous enchantment with the everyday world – with nature but also with commodities and other cultural products – might augment the motivational energy needed to move selves from the endorsement of ethical principles to the actual practice of ethical behaviors.” Odoni’s portrait proposes not only that the self is inextricably formed in relation to things, but also that the “sensuous enchantment” with material “moves selves.”262

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Ritrasse Andrea de gli Odoni che in Vinegia ha la sua casa molto adornata di pitture e di sculture. Giorgio Vasari, 1550 edition of The Lives1 a very short mention in the first edition of Vasari’s Lives. The single paragraph devoted to him is a coda to the life of Jacopo Palma and mentions only four pictures; three are public altarpieces, the fourth is Andrea Odoni’s portrait. Vasari’s single sentence about the portrait, however, is not actually about Lotto’s painting, it is about the sitter: Lotto portrayed Odoni, “whose house in Venice is much adorned by painting and sculpture.” In this way – through his entanglement with visual art, both painting and sculpture – the cittadino tax collector earned a place in Vasari’s groundbreaking and enduring account of the history of art. It is perhaps Odoni’s most fitting epitaph, and the most appropriate epigraph to this book. Though it is a small passage within the grand scheme of The Lives, Vasari’s citation is a sign of just how effective Odoni was in his ambition to make his “house” (his abode and his family) known through what we would now call a “collection.” The building that housed the family (the casa da statio) mattered, but in this case not for its notable architecture, its grand size, or its prominent location. Although the mythological frescoes on the façade may have drawn attention, it was primarily the interior and the arrangement of objects and works of art within that set the house apart. This is probably why it was the only collection in Michiel’s entire Notizia in which he felt compelled to record the

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individual rooms in which the various works of art were located. Michiel wished to account for the placements and combinations in the “much adorned,” but also at the same time relatively modest, house. The house was itself a “work of art.” But neither the house nor the collection was lasting, and in the end it was the portrait by Lotto, the object which initially gained Odoni entry to Vasari’s Lives, on which Odoni’s posthumous fame would rest (although not without assistance from Michiel and his notes). The painting is a metacommentary on Odoni’s project to ornament his house, on the activity of collecting, and even on the role of material and images in connecting earthly existence to the ineffable divine. Its fundamental message is in fact communicated in Michiel’s one-line description – it shows Odoni “who contemplates” nature, transformed by human ingenuity throughout time, as a means to connect to Christ and through him to God. Although I have argued that it is a mistake to see Odoni’s portrait primarily as the starting point for the “portrait of a collector” type, the portrait gives visual form – an identity – to the concept of a collector, a concept that was being formed at that moment. Lotto’s portrayal of Odoni’s relation to his objects also provided ideological cover in an age when too much attachment to material things was liable to criticism. Odoni, a man who was not particularly well educated or even particularly wealthy, and not a member of the highest elite, staked out this new territory, with the help of Lotto the painter. At the beginning of Chapter 7, I pondered to what degree the portrait was a product of Lotto’s ideas and to what degree it was a product of Odoni’s worldview. As I have shown, there is no question that Lotto’s mind was very much at work in the painting, but in the way that the portrait creates an assemblage of objects that work together, Lotto may have taken inspiration from Odoni and his collection. Odoni’s

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collection could itself be seen as a set of “hieroglyphs” – individual objects, or objects combined – that are joined together in the “cartouche” of the house, or even the individual rooms, just as the objects in the painting function in the “cartouche” of the portrait. Lotto (likely with input from Odoni sitting across from him) “curated” the imaginary collection in the portrait in emulation of the “curating” process Odoni undertook in his house – a process clearly admired by Michiel, Aretino, and Vasari. I do not think Odoni was a “typical” cittadino, but his example reveals what was possible for nonnoble citizens of Venice in the first half of the sixteenth century. Odoni reached maturity when the city-state was reinventing itself through its embrace of cultural production, from works of art and architecture to Aldine editions. Newcomers, immigrants to the city like Aretino, Sansovino, and Serlio (and even Lotto, who while born in Venice, had made his name elsewhere), were lauded for their contributions to the renewal and reinvigorated myth of Venice. In such a heady climate, it was precisely the imprecision of the status of the cittadini that could allow them to claim that “nobility” was not necessarily determined by whether one was “of the Council” or “not of the Council,” but rather by the splendor, liberality, and elegance (to quote from Odoni’s tombstone) of one’s manner of living. Some cittadini might fashion family memoirs, others might climb to the top of the administration of the Scuole Grande, others might marry into the nobility, still others might build fancy palaces on the Grand Canal. Odoni sought his own way, quite innovative at the time, which was to create a house renowned for its studio (or collection). We might see Odoni as a transitional figure, at the leading edge of a new development in which family honor was found not just in the house as a public ornament to the city, but also in a collection. As already noted, later in the century, Francesco Sansovino included his account

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of famous collections in the city in his section on public monuments. In making his house in effect into a “museum,” Odoni’s aim was not primarily to emulate the ruling class of his adopted city. Instead, he turned the interest in things Roman – both ancient and modern – to his advantage. The emphasis in Odoni’s collection on sculpture, antiquities, and artists trained in Central Italian traditions, suggests an attempt to circumvent traditional Venetian lineages of prestige. As the portrait by Lotto makes abundantly clear, Odoni referred to all Italians’ shared roots in the “nobility” of antiquity as the source of his special status. In the portrait, as in the house, his identity was formed in relation to the fragments of a heroic past, a past that predated even the establishment of the city in which his family had come to reside. Viewed this way, one has a hint of the boldness, rather than the submissiveness, of Odoni’s position as the son of an immigrant and a nonnoble citizen. No Venetian patrician would even have thought to commission a portrait of himself as novel as Odoni’s, at least not at this point in time. But Odoni, in a somewhat marginal position, needed drastic, extravagant means to establish his family in the city and to be remembered. In seeking out a new identity as a “collector,” how was Odoni perceived? Men were not typically known as “collectors” until later in the sixteenth century. Indeed, to be remembered primarily as such was potentially problematic. The precepts of Cicero’s De Officiis were well known to Odoni’s contemporaries.2 In a discussion of “propriety,” Cicero considered “what sort of house a man of rank and station should . . . have.” He described the example of “an attractive and imposing house” built by Gnaeus Octavius, which “everyone went to see . . . and was thought to have gained votes for the owner, a new man. Octavius, then, was the first in his family to bring the honour of a consulship to his house” (italics mine). But when Octavius’ son Scaurus tore down the

house and replaced it with a grander one, he brought “to the same house . . . not only defeat, but disgrace and ruin.” The moral of the story according to Cicero is “a man’s dignity may be enhanced by the house he lives in, but not wholly secured by it; the owner should bring honour to his house, not the house to its owner.”3 The story is remarkably similar to Odoni’s own. The basic principle that a man’s house had to be a proper representation of his actual position was repeated ad nauseam in a variety of Renaissance sources. There is, I think, no question that Odoni was famous for his house, above all else, and that the house brought him honor rather than the other way around. Did Odoni’s contemporaries see him as the ambitious but honorable Octavius or the overweening Scaurus? The difference may not always have been as clear as in Cicero’s tale. Serlio expressed some admiration for “men of very moderate means but generous of spirit, who spend the major part of their fortune on a house.”4 But it was a bold move to be remembered not just for a house (which, after all, on its exterior is a public ornament), but also for its sumptuous interior. Aretino’s letter to Odoni, sly in the way that only Aretino could be, both compliments Odoni and critiques his ploy. The house, Aretino said, was like a bride awaiting her wedding, the pavements too precious to be used. As Vasari wrote, the house was “molto adornata.” Cicero and those who followed him did not consider that to be the “prime object” of a house, which was instead “serviceableness.”5 In this context, the ideological work that Lotto’s portrait performs becomes all the more apparent. In my introduction I proposed that this book would consider what happens when we consider Odoni as the prototypical “Renaissance Man.” By all accounts Odoni was a master of fashioning the self through objects, both in his house and, with Lotto’s aid, in his portrait. In this way, Odoni appears to be the consummate example of Goldthwaite’s argument that Italian Renaissance

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self-fashioning took place through a new relationship to things and to consumption. But as I argued in Chapter 7, the painting is by no means purely an endorsement of man’s relationship to things. The “things” that are given particular attention in Lotto’s portrait are the things that most clearly transcend their material status. Not only are they fragments of an esteemed past, but through the hieroglyphic compositions, and above all through the central placement of the golden cross at the end of the golden chain, Lotto demonstrated that however valued these objects are, they are not status symbols, but stepping stones toward the contemplation of God. Odoni was seeking “distinction,” which is rather different from saying he was a social climber. Seeking distinction can also be motivated out of genuine interest and out of a desire to form one’s self. In this sense I see Odoni not as an “individual” actualizing himself in some modernist sense, but as someone wanting to project an image of complex subjectivity, or one might say, someone seeking or acquiring complexity through special things. I think his portrait, on its own but especially when seen in the context of the rest of his house and collection, makes this clear. He did not create distinction by buying a big, expensive house, or by inflating dowries, or marrying into the nobility, or by emulating the display practices of the local nobility. If there is a single Italian Renaissance text that encapsulates the idea of distinction through selffashioning, it is Baldessare Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier.6 Interestingly, Castiglione, like Aretino, compared himself to a portrait painter:7 “I send you this book as a portrait of the Court of Urbino, not by the hand of Raphael or Michelangelo, but by that of a lowly painter and one who only knows how to draw the main lines, without adorning the truth with pretty colors or making, by perspective art, that which is not seem to be.”8 Castiglione himself has often

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been seen to embody the model he set out. He noted himself: “others say I have thought to take myself as a model, on the persuasion that the qualities which I attribute to the Courtier are all in me.”9 And his portrait by Raphael (Fig. 2) especially is thought to be a distillation of the idea of sprezzatura, which Castiglione defined as “to conceal all art and make whatever is done or said appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it.”10 Both Raphael’s Castiglione and Lotto’s Odoni were owned by Lucas van Uffelen in the seventeenth century. It is intriguing to imagine them side by side. What do they reveal about the Renaissance idea of the “Renaissance man”? The portraits, like the men, were about ten years apart in age. Castiglione was painted at the age of thirty-six or thirty-seven in 1515 or 1516, Odoni was thirty-nine in 1527. Both men wear somber colors and are bearded, both are decidedly mature but not yet in their old age. Raphael has done more work to idealize his sitter. Castiglione’s face is a perfect oval, his eyes round circles, forms that are echoed in the soft, self-contained rhythms of his clothing and position. With its plain background and reserved, if lush, colors, the portrait gives us only the sitter’s pose, clothing, and face to interpret. As the only element of real color in the picture, Castiglione’s intense blue eyes, “the windows of the soul,” grab our attention and make him available to us. All else is fundamentally subordinate to them. In the full light of the portrait we examine the details, read the “natural” signs of the sitter positioned before us. The painting is mostly about Castiglione’s exterior, but it gives hints of the “inner” man: reflective in the eyes, sensitive in the mouth. Time and usage have etched a few furrows on his forehead and lightened the hair of his brows and around his mouth. Like the eyes, these are the signs of the physical and to some extent psychological connection between the exterior and interior self.

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Overall, Odoni is distinctly less idealized. His hooded eyes are sunken and close together. His nose bulbous, his forehead short, his body stocky. Although he reaches out to us, he is a brooding figure, much further back from the picture plane, more difficult to access, even barricaded by the objects that surround him. Whereas in Raphael’s portrait, the viewer is directly across from the sitter, here we are positioned slightly below him, looking upward. This, combined with the lift and slight twist of Odoni’s head, casting his eyes into shadow, makes him appear a bit superior. Seen directly next to Raphael’s Castiglione, Bernhard Berenson’s idea that Lotto had antipathy for his sitter makes sense.11 Next to Raphael’s Castiglione, itself undoubtedly a masterpiece of the genre, one sees very clearly the ambition of Lotto’s portrait, with its wide format, animated sitter, and demonstrative pose, not to mention the profusion of artworks and their complex combinations and allusions. Beside it, Raphael’s portrait is a school photograph – well rehearsed and posed in front of a backdrop, as if to make a record. Lotto instead seeks to create a fiction of encounter, in a particular space, and with the sitter in motion, interacting with us. He is in his home garb sharing his collection and its always slightly elusive meaning with us. Although the portrait is of course highly composed, it seeks to create the impression of being uncomposed. Odoni’s clothing is slightly disheveled, his beard not closely groomed, his head caught in a momentary pose, the coins and book of hours before him having just been in use. The objects encircling him almost seem to come alive despite their “mutilated” state. It is a very active, even agitated portrait. It conveys a sense of urgency on behalf of the artist and the sitter. If Castiglione is the embodiment of his own idea of sprezzatura, as is so often argued, Odoni is the opposite.12 The portrayal of self seems more in line with Aretino’s sensibility than Castiglione’s. Lotto’s Odoni echoes the “untrammeled hirsuteness” of Aretino’s portraits

that proclaimed his “aesthetic of following nature, not art.”13 Aretino, who rejected the culture of the court for the relative openness of Venetian society, may have projected his own sensibilities onto Odoni when he commented that the cittadino was “without ceremony and without arrogance,” but Lotto too conveys a persona that even while surrounded by art purports to “lack art.”14 Are the differences between Castiglione and Odoni due to the different styles of the artists? Or is it the different temperaments of the sitters? Or are we looking at the difference between the 1510s and the 1520s? Or between a court culture and a “republic,” a courtier and a cittadino? Probably some of all of the above. But what interests me most is the way the two portraits propose different ways to formulate identity, to construct an “individual,” however much that person might be circumscribed or formed through and by social conventions. In Castiglione Raphael presents us with the ideal of wholeness, knowableness. Lotto, however, conveys a notion of identity as fundamentally composite and ungraspable – there is no readable tie between exterior and interior. For all the theatrics and for all the interpreting the portrait asks of us, the pieces do not in the end fully “add up.” It withholds while at the same time trying almost painfully hard to communicate. The sitter refers to himself with one hand, indicating his sincerity, while reaching out to us in offering with the other. Nonetheless, Odoni remains elusive. There are so many items to examine, so much gesticulating and drawing of our attention, yet there is so much shifting and encryption. Lotto is interested in the particulars of personhood as a set of signs, but those signs require a lot of decoding and do not create an illusion of ideal unity. Raphael’s portrait might be a more satisfying icon of personhood, but in its fragmentation, urgency, beckoning, and evasion, Lotto’s representation of Odoni offers more fully the convolution, and the anxiety, of identity, both Renaissance and modern.

Appendix

ARETINO’S LETTER TO ODONI

A MESSER ANDREA UDONE Non vi crediate, o uomo ottimo, che lo aspettar io che mi si mandi ciò che vi scrive d’Inghilterra il nostro signor Girolamo da Trevigi, spirit molto degno de la reputazione ne la quale l’ha posto il fortunato e religioso Enrico, sia stato di mia superbia: però che d’ogni altro difetto posso esser macchiato, ma di cotal vizio no. Certo che il desiderio di veder voi e la vostra casa è suto cagione che prima mi sia capitate la predetta carta in mano che io abbi potuto aver grazia di vedere e la casa vostra e voi. Onde lo indugio e la prestezza di noi mi ha fatto due ingiurie con una vergogna appresso, avenga che il far voi l’ufficio che a me si debbe mi è suto di molto rossore. Benché la benignità del buono Udone è talmente core de la bontade che ogni sua operazione è senza cerimonia e senza arroganza. Ma chi vol vedere in che modo il suo animo è netto e candido, miri di lui la fronte e l’abitazioni; e mirile, dico, e vedrà quanto di sereno e di vago si può bramare in una abitazione e in una fronte. Se non che parrebbe un non so che, simigliarei le camere, la sala, la loggia e il giardino de la stanza che abitate a una sposa che aspetta il parentado che dee venire a veder darle la mano; e ben debbo io farlo, sì è ella forbita e atapezzita e splendente. Io per me non ci vengo mai che non tema di calpestarla coi piedi; cotanta è la delicatura dei suoi pavimenti; né so qual principe abbi sì ricchi letti, sì rari quadri e sì reali abigliamenti. De le scolture non parlo, con ciò sia che la Greccia terrebbe quasi il pregio de la forma antica se ella non si avesse lasciato privare de le

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reliquie de le sue scolture. Perché sappiate, quando io era in corte, stave in Roma e non a Vinezia; ma ora ch’io son qui, sto in Vinezia e a Roma: però che nel partirmi di qui, dove non veggo marmi né bronzi, non son prima costì giunto che l’animo piglia di quel piacere che soleva sentire nel giugner a Belvedere, in Monte Cavallo o in qualcuno dei luoghi dove si veggono di sì fatti torsi di colossi e di statue. Onde si giudica col testimonio di sì degno e reale spettacolo la grandezza del generoso e magnifico animo vostro; imperò che il diletto di simili intaglio e di cotali getti non nasce da petto rustic né da core ignobile. Or, per tornare a lo avviso de le felicità sue ci dà il compare, dico che me ne rallegro, e rallegrandomene pregovi che ne lo arrivare degli accrescimenti di lui vi degnate che io venga a intendergli nel Vostro palazzo, però che il sentirlo in sì bello aloggiamento mi dupplicarà la letizia. Di Vinezia, il 30 di Agosto 15381 Do not think, my excellent man, that my waiting for the letter from England of signor Girolamo da Trevigi – a man most worthy of the reputation he has earned through the favor of that fortunate and religious [King] Henry – was due to my pride. Of every other defect I may be accused, but not of that vice. Certainly, the desire to see you and your house was the reason that before I had that letter in hand I was given the pleasure of seeing your house and you. Whence your delay and your promptness injured me twice, and then shamed me, considering that your service to me – that is owed to me – caused me embarrassment. True, the kindness of the good Udone is so full of goodness that whatever he does is without ceremony and without arrogance. But whoever wishes to see how clean and candid his mind is should look at his face and

his house, look at them, I say, and you will see as much serenity and beauty as one can desire in a house and in a face. If it were not for a little something: I would compare the chambers [bedrooms], the salon, the loggia, and the garden of the apartment in which you live to a bride who awaits her relatives coming to attend her wedding. So I must [do], it is so well-kept, tapestried, and splendid. I myself never visit that I do not fear to tread there with my feet, its floors are so exquisite. I don’t know what prince has such richly adorned beds, such rare paintings, and such regal décor. Of the sculptures I will not speak: Greece would have the best of ancient form [art] had she not let herself be deprived of her [these] relics and sculptures. For your information, when I was at court I lived in Rome and not in Venice; but now that I am here, I am in Venice and in Rome. When I leave here where I do not see marbles or bronzes, no sooner have I arrived there [at your house] that my soul enjoys that pleasure it used to feel when it visited Belvedere on Monte Cavallo or another of those places where such torsos of colossi and of statues are seen. Whence one judges on the evidence of such a worthy and regal spectacle the greatness of your generous and magnificent spirit. Truly the pleasure of such carvings and castings does not issue from a rustic breast or an ignoble heart. Now to return to the announcement that our friend gave us of his happiness, I tell you it cheers me up. And in this cheerful mood, I beseech you, when you have more news from him, that you be so kind as to let me hear it at your palace, because hearing from him in such lovely accommodations will redouble my joy. August 30, 1538, Venice.

NOTES

INTRODUCTION 1. Anne Marie S. Logan, The “Cabinet” of the Brothers Gerard and Jan Reynst (Amsterdam, 1979), 86. 2. Anna Reynolds, “Collecting Old Master Paintings,” in Charles II: Art and Power, ed. Rufus Bird and Martin Clayton, exh. cat. Buckingham Palace, London, December 2017 (London, 2017), 274. 3. For the full attribution history see John Shearman, The Early Italian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen (Cambridge, 1983), 144–45. 4. Shearman, Early Italian Pictures, 145. 5. The attribution was first proposed by Daniele Francesconi (1761–1835). Giannantonio Moschini, “Narrazione intorno alla vita e alle opere di D. Jacopo Morelli,” in Operette di Jacopo Morelli (Venice, 1820), 1: lxxxv; Monika Schmitter, “‘Into the Public Light’: The Early History of Marcantonio Michiel’s Notizia,” forthcoming. Notice of Michiel’s authorship was first published in the appendix to Cesare Bernasconi, Studi sopra la storia della pittura italiana dei secoli XIV e XV (1864). 6. Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS Ital. XI 67 (7351), 52v; Marcantonio Michiel, Der Anonimo Morelliano (Marcanton Michiel’s Notizia d’opere del disegno), ed. Theodor Frimmel (Vienna, 1896), 82, 84. For the various published editions of the Notizia, see Monika Schmitter, “The Dating of Marcantonio Michiel’s ‘Notizia’ on Works of Art in Padua,” Burlington

7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12.

13. 14.

Magazine 145 (August 2003), 564n1. The first published notice connecting the painting to Michiel’s description is an addendum to William Smith, A Catalogue of the Works of Cornelius Visscher (Bungay, 1864). Shearman, Early Italian Pictures, 145. See Appendix. Giorgio Vasari, Le opere di Giorgio Vasari con nuove annotazioni e commenti di Gaetano Milanesi (1906; reprint, Florence, 1998), 5: 135–36, 249. Giorgio Vasari, Le Vite de’ più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani, ed. Luciano Bellosi and Aldo Rossi (Turin, 1986), 2:802. The copy is illustrated and discussed in Lars Olaf Larsson, “Lorenzo Lottos Bildnis des Andrea Odoni in Hampton Court,” Konsthistorisk Tidskrift 37 (1968), 23–24 and n9. In a letter on file at Windsor Castle (February 19, 1997), the restorer Rupert Featherstone, who saw the picture in the Östergötlands Museum in Linköping, Sweden, noted that it is a close copy, perhaps even traced from the original, and early in date. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/ 110000693; Janet Southorn, “Uffelen, Lucas van,” in Grove Art Online: https://doi.org/10.1093/gao/ 9781884446054.article.T086876. Uffelen owned the Raphael painting by 1630. Guido Rebecchini, Private Collectors in Mantua 1500–1630 (Rome, 2002), 131–32. Shearman, Early Italian Pictures, 144; Logan, “Cabinet” of the Brothers, 130–32.

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15. Shearman, Early Italian Pictures, 75. 16. Shearman, Early Italian Pictures, 147–48; Lucy Whitaker and Martin Clayton, The Art of Italy in the Royal Collection: Renaissance and Baroque (London, 2007), 207. 17. [Marcantonio Michiel], Notizia d’opere di disegno, ed. Jacopo Morelli (Bassano, 1800), 190–99 and nn101– 11. 18. Georg Gronau, ed., “Beiträge zum Anonymus Morellianus (Marc’ Antonio Michiel),” in Italienische Forschungen IV (Berlin, 1911), 55–71. 19. Donata Battilotti and Maria Teresa Franco, “Regesti di committenti e dei primi collezionisti di Giorgione,” Antichità viva 17:4–5 (1978): 79–82, and “La committenza e il collezionismo privato,” in I tempi di Giorgione, ed. Ruggero Maschio (Rome, 1994), 217–20. 20. Rosella Lauber, “Andrea Odoni” and “Francesco Zio,” in Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia. Dalle origini al Cinquecento, ed. Michel Hochmann, Rosella Lauber, and Stefania Mason (Venice, 2008), 298–300, 326–28, with references to her other publications and her dissertation. 21. Monika Schmitter, “The Display of Distinction: Art Collecting and Social Status in Early SixteenthCentury Venice” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1997); “‘Virtuous Riches’: The Bricolage of Cittadini Identities in Early-Sixteenth-Century Venice,” Renaissance Quarterly 57 (2004): 908–69; “Odoni’s Façade: The House as Portrait in Renaissance Venice,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 66:3 (2007): 294–315; “The Quadro da Portego in Sixteenth-Century Venetian Art,” Renaissance Quarterly 64 (2011): 718–22. 22. Apart from one article: Andrew John Martin, “‘Amica e un albergo di virtuosi.’ La casa e la collezione di Andrea Odoni,” Venezia Cinquecento 19 (2000): 153–70. 23. Shearman, Early Italian Pictures, 147. 24. Brown’s analysis was at the forefront of a wave of scholarship and museum exhibitions devoted to material culture in the domestic realm in Renaissance Italy. Most notable are the exhibitions “At Home in Renaissance Italy” at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2006) and “Art and Love in Renaissance Italy” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2008–9), and books such as Jacqueline Musacchio’s Art, Marriage, and Family in the Florentine Renaissance Palace (New Haven, 2008), Anne Dunlop’s Painted Palaces: The Rise of Secular Art in Early Renaissance Italy (University Park, PA, 2009), and Renata Ago’s Gusto for Things: A History of Objects in SeventeenthCentury Rome (Chicago, 2013).

25. Key recent contributions are the compilations Bernard Aikema, Rosella Lauber, and Max Seidel, eds., Il collezionismo a Venezia e nel Veneto ai tempi della Serenissima (Venice, 2005) and Hochmann, Lauber, and Mason, Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia. 26. See discussion in Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” 8–11, and “‘Virtuous Riches’,” 12–13. 27. Alison Luchs, Tullio Lombardo and Ideal Portrait Sculpture in Renaissance Venice, 1490–1530 (Cambridge, 1995), 9–10. 28. Mauro Lucco, “‘Di mano del mio Travisio, pittore certo valente e celebre’,” in Sabba da Castiglione 1480–1554. Dalle corti rinascimentali alla Commenda di Faenza, ed. Anna Rosa Gentilini (Florence, 2004), 373. 29. Ago, Gusto for Things, 8. 30. Patricia Brown, Private Lives in Renaissance Venice (New Haven, 2004), vii, 1–21, has argued that during the sixteenth century the expression of nobility in Venice shifted from an emphasis on family heritage and civic duty to a display of wealth and taste in sumptuous living and entertainment. 31. Stanley Chojnacki, “Identity and Ideology in Renaissance Venice: The Third Serrata,” in Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297–1797, ed. John Jeffries Martin and Dennis Romano (Baltimore, 2000), 265. 32. I am referring here to Burckhardt’s classic argument in The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (New York, 1958 [orig. published 1860]), 1: 143, that in the Renaissance “man became a spiritual individual, and recognized himself as such” and to Stephen Greenblatt’s counterargument in Renaissance SelfFashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago, 1980) that Renaissance identities were instead formed by social and cultural forces. I do not think Greenblatt actually claims that the individuals he studied had no agency, but his argument is often characterized in this manner. See discussion in John Jeffries Martin, Myths of Renaissance Individualism (New York, 2004), 4–7, 9–16, 125–27, and Douglas Biow, On the Importance of Being an Individual in Renaissance Italy: Men, their Professions, and their Beards (Philadelphia, 2015), ix–x, 3–4, 87–92, 227–28. 33. Biow, On the Importance of Being an Individual, 227. 34. The concept of self-fashioning derives from Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, although he does not focus on material culture. 35. Richard A. Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy 1300–1600 (Baltimore, 1993), 255, also see 5–8. 36. Goldthwaite, Wealth and Demand, 255. Goldthwaite’s argument is explicitly Burckhardtian.

NOTES TO PAGES

37. Paula Findlen, “Early Modern Things. Objects in Motion, 1500–1800,” in Early Modern Things: Objects and their Histories, 1500–1800, ed. Paula Findlen (New York, 2013), 10. 38. Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham, NC, 2010). Bennett draws on a wide range of philosophical and critical theory. The notion of “actants” comes from the work of Bruno Latour (viii–ix); the concept of the agency of things is Alfred Gell’s (Art and Agency. An Anthropological Theory [Oxford, 1998]). 39. Daniel Miller, “Behind Closed Doors,” in Home Possessions: Material Culture Behind Closed Doors, ed. Daniel Miller (Oxford, 2001), 4. 40. For the application of these ideas to the study of early modern material culture, see Ulinka Rublack, “Matter in the Material Renaissance,” Past and Present 219 (2013): 41–85, and Grażyna Jurkowlaniec, Ika Matyjaszkiewicz, and Zuzanna Sarnecka, eds., The Agency of Things in Medieval and Early Modern Art: Materials, Power, and Manipulation (New York, 2018). For their application to the study of collecting in early modern Italy in particular, see Leah R. Clark, Collecting Art in the Italian Renaissance Court: Objects and Exchanges (Cambridge, 2018). 41. For “thing-power” see Bennett, Vibrant Matter, 1–19. 42. Evelyn Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance: Consumer Cultures in Italy 1400–1600 (New Haven, 2005); Patricia Allerston, “Consuming Problems: Worldly Goods in Renaissance Venice,” in The Material Renaissance, ed. Michelle O’Malley and Evelyn Welch (Manchester, 2007), 11–46; Stephen J. Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros: Renaissance Mythological Painting and the Studiolo of Isabella d’Este (New Haven, 2006). Also see Lauro Martines, “Review Essay: The Renaissance and the Birth of Consumer Society,” Renaissance Quarterly 51 (1998): 193–203. 43. Campbell, Cabinet of Eros, 50. 44. With the exception of Irene Favaretto, Arte antica e cultura antiquaria nelle collezioni venete al tempo della Serenissima (Rome, 1990), 75. 45. See Appendix. 46. See Schmitter, “Odoni’s Façade,” 295 and n12. 47. See Appendix. 48. Addition in the Columbia University manuscript of Book VI of Serlio’s architectural treatise. Sebastiano Serlio, Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture. Volume 2, ed. and trans. Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks (New Haven, 2001), 619. 49. See Appendix. 50. This combination of “praise and blame” is not unusual for Aretino, who styled himself the “Assiduous Demonstrator of Virtue and Vice.” See Schmitter,

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“Odoni’s Façade,” 295; Raymond B. Waddington, Aretino’s Satyr: Sexuality, Satire, and Self-Projection in Sixteenth-Century Literature and Art (Toronto, 2004), 50, 64, 99–100. 51. Quoted in Margaret L. King, “Personal, Domestic, and Republican Values in the Moral Philosophy of Giovanni Caldiera,” Renaissance Quarterly 28 (1975), 552. 52. Cicero, De Officiis, trans. Walter Miller, in Complete Works (Hastings, 2014), book 1, 39.139. See Georgia Clarke, Roman House – Renaissance Palaces: Inventing Antiquity in Fifteenth-Century Italy (Cambridge, 2003), 63. 53. Italics mine. As translated in Evelyn Welch, “Public Magnificence and Private Display: Giovanni Pontano’s De splendore (1498) and the Domestic Arts,” Journal of Design History 15:4 (2002), 222.

CHAPTER 1 VENICE IN TRANSITION 1.

2. 3.

4. 5. 6. 7.

Translation from Machiavelli. The Chief Works and Others, trans. Allan Gilbert (Durham, 1965), I :310. Niccolò Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, ed. Francesco Bausi (Rome, 2001), I :269–70 (book 1, chap. 55). See Patricia Fortini Brown, “Behind the Walls: The Material Culture of the Venetian Elites,” in Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297–1797, ed. John Jeffries Martin and Dennis Romano (Baltimore, 2000), 298–99. Monika Schmitter, “‘Virtuous Riches’: The Bricolage of Cittadini Identities in Early-Sixteenth-Century Venice,” Renaissance Quarterly 57 (2004): 908. Stanley Chojnacki, “Identity and Ideology in Renaissance Venice: The Third Serrata,” in Martin and Romano, Venice Reconsidered, 265, discusses the historiography of this view. See discussion below, “The Early Sixteenth Century: Toward Definition.” Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavin, Venice Triumphant: The Horizons of a Myth, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Baltimore, 2002), 94. M. Margaret Newett, Canon Pietro Casola’s Pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the Year 1494 (Manchester, 1907), 129. For an overview see Crouzet-Pavan, Venice Triumphant, 128–31; Elizabeth Horodowich, A Brief History of Venice. A New History of the City and its People (Philadelphia, 2009), 122–27.

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8. See Juergen Schulz, “Jacopo de’ Barbari’s View of Venice: Map Making, City Views, and Moralized Geography before the Year 1500,” Art Bulletin 60:3 (Sept. 1973): 425–74; Deborah Howard, “Venice as a Dolphin: Further Investigations into Jacopo de’ Barbari’s View,” Artibus et Historiae 18:35 (1997): 101–11. 9. Howard, “Venice as a Dolphin,” 104. 10. Translations from Schulz, “Jacopo de’ Barbari,” 468. 11. Crouzet-Pavan, Venice Triumphant, 81–82, 91. 12. On the League of Cambrai and the build up toward it, see especially: M. E. Mallett and J. R. Hale, The Military Organization of a Renaissance State: Venice c. 1400–1617 (Cambridge, 1984), 55–64, 221–27; Felix Gilbert, “Venice in the Crisis of the League of Cambrai,” in Renaissance Venice, ed. J. R. Hale (London, 1973), 274–92; Nicolai Rubinstein, “Italian Reactions to Terraferma Expansion in the Fifteenth Century,” in Hale, Renaissance Venice, 197–217. 13. Quoted in Edward Muir, “Was there Republicanism in the Renaissance Republics? Venice after Agnadello,” in Martin and Romano, Venice Reconsidered, 138. 14. Mallett and Hale, Military Organization, 221–27. 15. Gilbert, “Venice in the Crisis.” 16. Gilbert, “Venice in the Crisis,” 279. The 150-ducat cap was first introduced in 1476, but reiterated and affirmed in 1512: Brown, “Behind the Walls,” 321–24. The idea that too much luxury was corrupting certainly predated the crisis, but it had renewed and heightened significance at this time. 17. Gilbert, “Venice in the Crisis,” 280. 18. Elisabeth G. Gleason, “Confronting New Realities: Venice and the Peace of Bologna, 1530,” in Martin and Romano, Venice Reconsidered, 178. Also see Lester Libby, Jr., “Venetian History and Political Thought after 1509,” Studies in the Renaissance 22 (1973): 7–45. 19. Deborah Howard, Jacopo Sansovino: Architecture and Patronage in Renaissance Venice (New Haven, 1975), 22. 20. Manfredo Tafuri, “Renovatio urbis Venetiarum: il problema storiografico,” in “Renovatio Urbis.” Venezia nell’età di Andrea Gritti (1523–1538), ed. Manfredo Tafuri (Rome, 1984), 9–55, and other essays in the same volume. On the relative openness and tolerance of the Venetian republic see John Jeffries Martin, Venice’s Hidden Enemies: Italian Heretics in a Renaissance City (Berkeley, 1993), esp. 3–4, 28–30, 33–34, 46–47, 77–78. 21. Gleason, “Confronting New Realities,” 179–80.

22. The literature is extensive. For overviews, see Patricia Fortini Brown, Venice and Antiquity: The Venetian Sense of the Past (New Haven, 1996), 273–81; Ennio Concina, A History of Venetian Architecture, trans. Judith Landry (Cambridge, 1998), 173–87; Manfredo Tafuri, Venice and the Renaissance, trans. Jessica Levine (Cambridge, MA, 1995), 108–12. 23. Barbara Marx, “Venezia – Altera Roma? Ipotesi sull’umanesimo veneziano,” Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani Quaderni 10 (Venice, 1978); David Chambers, The Imperial Age of Venice 1380–1580 (London, 1970), 12–30. 24. Howard, Jacopo Sansovino, appendix 1, 158. 25. Concina, A History of Venetian Architecture, 187. 26. Brown, Venice and Antiquity, 281. 27. Gleason, “Confronting New Realities,” esp. 178–80. 28. Quoted in Martin, Venice’s Hidden Enemies, 29. 29. On Gritti’s program of hospitality to talented foreigners, see Howard, Jacopo Sansovino, 4–6. 30. Tafuri, “Renovatio urbis,” 28–29. 31. Horodowich, Brief History, 129–30, and The Venetian Discovery of America: Geographic Imagination and Print Culture in the Age of Encounters (Cambridge, 2018), 4–6. 32. Martin, Venice’s Hidden Enemies, 9, 47. 33. Horodowich, Brief History, 130–31. 34. At the top, the ruling class of patricians, at the bottom, the popolo composed of artisans and workers, and in the middle, the “citizens” who had higher status than the members of the popolo but lacked the political rights of patricians. Based on the censuses of 1563, 1586, and 1593, between 4 and 4.5 percent of the population were nobles, between 5 and 8 percent were citizens, and the rest comprised the popolo. See David Chambers and Brian Pullan with Jennifer Fletcher, Venice: A Documentary History, 1450–1630 (Toronto, 2001), 241. 35. Marin Sanudo, De origine, situ et magistratibus urbis Venetae, ovvero, la città di Venetia (1493–1530), ed. Angela Caracciolo Aricò (Milan, 1980), 22; translation based on Chambers and Pullan, Venice: A Documentary History, 6–7. 36. Donato Giannotti, “Della Repubblica de’ Viniziani,” in Opere politiche, ed. Furio Diaz (Milan, 1974), 1:46. 37. Giannotti, “Della Repubblica de’ Viniziani,” 1:46. By cittadini, Giannotti does not seem to mean all legal citizens, but specifically cittadini originari (see discussion below). Writing in 1563, the Venetian nobleman Giovanni Maria Memmo also noted three tiers, but identified them differently: “essendo la Città nostra divisa in tre qualità di huomini . . . di Cittadini, di mercatanti, & di artefici.” At this point, later in the sixteenth century, the patricians had increasingly

NOTES TO PAGES

38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43.

44.

45.

46.

47. 48.

disassociated themselves from trade, hence the cittadini became for Memmo the “mercantanti,” and following Gasparo Contarini (see below), the patricians were the citizens. Dialogo del Magn. Cavaliere M. Gio. Maria Memmo (Venice, 1563), 79. Gasparo Contarini, The Commonwealth and Gouernment of Venice (1599; reprint, Amsterdam, 1969), 141. For the historiography of the bipartite versus tripartite models and the popularity of Contarini’s text, see James Grubb, “Elite Citizens,” in Martin and Romano, Venice Reconsidered, 339–40. Contarini, Commonwealth, 142, 146. Contarini, Commonwealth, 143. Contarini, Commonwealth, 146. Similarly, the Grand Chancellor, the cittadino head of the Chancellery, is fashioned “the prince of the common people,” a nonnoble equivalent of the doge. Contarini, Commonwealth, 144. Francesco Sansovino, Venezia citta nobilissima (1663; reprint, Farnborough, 1968), 282. Another cittadino, Antonio Milledonne, secretary to the Council of Ten, fulsomely endorsed the structure of the three orders – “nobili, cittadini, et popolo” – as part of the mythic stability of the Venetian state: “each is content with his state, and his existence, and does not attempt to surpass his position and disturb the universal peace” (“che cadauno si contenta dello stato, et essere suo, et non tenta cól sturbare la quiete universal di passare più oltre.”) Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice, MS. It. Cl. VII, 709 (8043), Ragionamento di doi gentilhuomini, l’uno Romano, l’altro Venetiano, sopra il governo della Repubblica, fatto alli 15. Gennaro 1580 al modo di Venetia, 3v. See Grubb, “Elite Citizens,” 340; Brian Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice: The Social Institutions of a Catholic State, to 1620 (Cambridge, 1971), 99–100, 107–8. Grubb, “Elite Citizens,” 340; Anna Bellavitis, “‘Per cittadini metterette . . . ’. La stratificazione della società veneziana Cinquecentesca tra norma giuridica e riconoscimento sociale,” Quaderni storici 89 (August 1995), 367–70, and Identité, mariage, mobilité sociale: citoyennes et citoyens à Venise au XVIe siècle (Rome, 2001), esp. 68–69, 312. Andrea Zannini, Burocrazia e burocrati a Venezia in età moderna: I cittadini originari (sec. XVI–XVIII) (Venice, 1993), 40–42. Pullan, Rich and Poor, 131; Grubb, “Elite Citizens,” 348. Also “minor aristocracy”: Joanne M. Ferraro, Venice: History of the Floating City (Cambridge, 2012), 81.

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49. Ugo Tucci, “The Psychology of the Venetian Merchant in the Sixteenth Century,” in Hale, Renaissance Venice, 372; Dennis Romano, Patricians and Popolani: The Social Foundations of the Venetian Renaissance State (Baltimore, 1987), 55; Pullan, Rich and Poor, 107. 50. John Jeffries Martin and Dennis Romano, “Reconsidering Venice,” in Martin and Romano, Venice Reconsidered, 21. 51. Martin and Romano, “Reconsidering Venice,” 16. 52. James S. Grubb, “Piero Amadi Acts like his Betters,” in A Renaissance of Conflicts: Visions and Revisions of Law and Society in Italy and Spain, ed. John A. Marino and Thomas Kuehn (Toronto, 2004), 260. 53. I argued for the flexibility and diversity of the cittadini as a social group in “The Display of Distinction: Art Collecting and Social Status in Early SixteenthCentury Venice” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1997), 2–11, but the topic has since been investigated in much greater detail by Grubb in various publications cited in this chapter. For the most part, I concur with his conclusions. For points where I differ, see nn75 and 81. 54. Horodowich, Brief History, 100. 55. For overviews see Horodowich, Brief History, 97–100; Crouzet-Pavan, Venice Triumphant, 210–15. For more detail, see Gerhard Rösch, “The Serrata of the Great Council and Venetian Society, 1286–1323,” in Martin and Romano, Venice Reconsidered, 67–88. 56. James Cushman Davis, The Decline of the Venetian Nobility as a Ruling Class (Baltimore, 1962), 18. 57. This does not mean that cittadini did not try to become nobles. See the attempt by Paolo il giovane Ramusio (1532–1600) discussed in Christopher J. Pastore, “‘Nobility is Natural’: Solidarity, Social Mobility and Strategy in the Serenissima,” in Reflections on Renaissance Venice: A Celebration of Patricia Fortini Brown, ed. Blake de Maria and Mary E. Frank (Milan, 2013), 155–61. 58. Contarini, Commonwealth, 141. For an overview of the formation of the class see Zannini, Burocrazia, 23–60. It is unclear whether the class emerged due to their own ambitions or due to the needs of the governing class. It is generally assumed that the cittadini themselves pushed for special recognition. See, for example, Stephen Ell, “Citizenship and Immigration in Venice, 1305–1500” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1976), 206; Mary Frances Neff, “Chancellery Secretaries in Venetian Politics and Society, 1480–1533” (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1985), 2, 190–93; Grubb, “Elite Citizens,” 354. But it has also been noted that

248

59. 60. 61.

62. 63. 64. 65.

66. 67.

68.

69. 70.

71.

NOTES TO PAGES

20–22

the formation of a special status group served the interests of the nobility. See Bellavitis, “‘Per cittadini metterette . . . ’,” 367–70. Bellavitis, Identité, 20–21. Bellavitis, Identité, 1–5. Gaetano Cozzi, “Politica, società, istituzioni,” in La Repubblica di Venezia nell’età moderna, vol. 1, Dalla guerra di Chioggia al 1517, ed. Gaetano Cozzi and Michael Knapton (Turin, 1986), 121. Bellavitis, Identité, 20–21. Bellavitis, Identité, 19–32. For an example, see Blake de Maria, Becoming Venetian: Immigrants and the Arts in Early Modern Venice (New Haven, 2010), 27. Different bureaucratic positions required different degrees of citizenship. According to Bellavitis, Identité, 105 (and this contrasts with some other accounts), elected officials of the Scuole could be either “de intus et extra” or “originari.” The literature on cittadini in the Scuole Grandi is large: see esp. Bellavitis, Identité, 105–37; Pullan, Rich and Poor, 99–131. Some possible reasons why these distinctions were increasingly made are discussed in Bellavitis, Identité, 65–71. Marin Sanudo, Cità Excelentissima. Selections from the Diaries of Marin Sanudo, ed. Patricia H. Labalme and Laura Sanguineti White, trans. Linda L. Carroll (Baltimore, 2008), 309. See discussion in Bellavitis, Identité, 65–86, and the many citations therein. Donato Giannotti’s definition of “cittadini,” written in the 1520s (see p. 18), already conveyed this understanding, although from a legal point of view at the time he was incorrect. Zannini, Burocrazia, 45. Bellavitis, Identité, 82, 85–86, who notes that those who had citizenship by privilege rarely applied for original status unless they needed to prove that status for a particular position. Indeed, this was true of the Odoni family; the first member to apply was Gerolamo Odoni (b. 1659), son of Guglielmo, in the eighteenth century, although earlier generations were eligible. Archivio di Stato, Venice (hereafter ASV), Avogaria di Comun, Cittadinanze Originarie, b. 404, c. 92. The records of applications for cittadini originari status are fully preserved from 1569 (Bellavitis, Identité, 81). As Bellavitis describes the process, since one needed the juridical status of citizenship in order to practice certain “civil” occupations, over time the practice of these occupations came to be associated with a certain “citizen” manner of living. At the same time though, the term “citizen” also remained

72. 73. 74. 75.

76. 77. 78. 79.

80.

81.

a purely legal status without any associations of class. This confusing situation led to the notion of “honorable merchants who could pass for citizens” – that is who have the manner of living and dressing of citizens without necessarily actually, legally, being citizens. Bellavitis, Identité, 101n120. Alexander Cowan, Marriage, Manners and Mobility in Early Modern Venice (Aldershot, 2007), 173, see also 15. Marino Sanuto, I diarii, ed. Rinaldo Fulin (1879–1903; reprint, Bologna, 1970), 36: 471 (July 14, 1524). Bellavitis, Identité, 95–96. While I agree with Grubb that the first half of the sixteenth century was a crucial period for cittadini, I view the law of 1569 differently. For Grubb, the law represents the moment when the patricians “accepted the cittadini’s aspirations” and “concede[d] distinct and privileged standing to loyal subalterns” (“Elite Citizens,” 356). But it is not clear to me that the cittadini themselves pushed for the law or that, in the long run, it benefitted them. I suggest that in being recognized as a “cadet nobility” (Grubb’s term), they also became finally, and clearly, defined as different from the nobility, limiting their ability to exploit the ambiguities of the earlier situation. Grubb, “Elite Citizens,” 341–42. Bellavitis, Identité, 43–44, 65, 311. Bellavitis, Identité, 30–31. On natural sons of noblemen, who were the only illegitimate children allowed to become citizens, Zannini, Burocrazia, 108–18. Grubb, “Elite Citizens,” 341, notes it was a “loosely defined social elite” including “in all probability a further body of eminent commoners descended from fallen nobles.” Cowan’s study shows how difficult it was sometimes for Venetians to determine who was and was not “civile,” i.e., not of the popolo (Marriage, esp. 35, 52–54). The border between patrician and cittadino was clearer, but there was something of a gray area here too, since the children of nobles were considered cittadini if they were illegitimate. Illegitimate daughters, however, were sometimes then married back into the patriciate (Cowan, Marriage, 14). On this point I disagree with Grubb. In “Piero Amadi,” he describes a number of behaviors shared by patricians and cittadini, but he assumes that the patricians started the practices (whether good or bad) and that the cittadini, seeking “to position themselves as close as possible to the nobility” (260), engaged in “emulation of [their] superiors” (262). For a critique of the model of social emulation, see Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” 8–11, 16–18, 286–93;

NOTES TO PAGES

82. 83. 84. 85.

86.

87.

88.

89.

90. 91.

Patricia Allerston, “Clothing and Early Modern Venetian Society,” Continuity and Change 15 (2000), 368–70; Schmitter, “‘Virtuous Riches’,” 909–15; and Renata Ago, Gusto for Things: A History of Objects in Seventeenth-Century Rome, trans. Bradford Bouley and Corey Tazzara with Paula Findlen (Chicago, 2013), 7–8, 220–22. For the cittadini’s participation in the compagnie della calza, a tradition they in fact claimed to have started, see Matteo Casini, “Cittadini and Celebration in the Renaissance,” Studi veneziani 74 (2016), 48–53. For the cittadini use of coats of arms, see the Ziliol Cronichetta published in Bellavitis, Identité, 337. Stella Mary Newton, The Dress of the Venetians 1495–1525 (Aldershot, 1988), 77. Newton, Dress, 9–31. Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima, 399. Translation from Margaret F. Rosenthal and Ann Rosalind Jones, Cesare Vecellio’s Habiti Antichi et Moderni. The Clothing of the Renaissance World. Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas (London, 2008), 158. Grubb, “Piero Amadi,” 263–64, assumes that the practice was started by the nobility and imitated by the cittadini, although he provides no evidence for this. On the dress of the Great Chancellor, see Newton, Dress, 19, 24, 146 (his relatives also wore scarlet on the day after his election). Sanudo, Cità Excelentissima, 78: “Andrea di Franceschi was dressed in crimson velvet, and the other secretaries of the Collegio, that is, the secretaries of the Council of Ten, were wearing scarlet.” In his family chronicle, Alessandro Ziliol notes how his ancestor Vettor (1459–1543), who was elected Guardian Grando of the Scuola di San Marco in 1515 and 1524, “andava vestito con la veste senatoria cremesina tutto el tempo del suo reggimento” and also had himself depicted in “la vesta ducale cremesina” in his portrait. Bellavitis, Identité, 343. See Fausto Nicolini, L’arte napoletana del Rinascimento e la lettera di Pietro Summonte a Marcantonio Michiel (Naples, 1925), 89, for the time Marcantonio Michiel disobeyed the rules in 1525. Brown, “Behind the Walls,” 299. According to Tucci, “Psychology,” over the course of the sixteenth century the occupation of merchant was increasingly abandoned by the nobility who “left” it to the cittadini. Quoted in Brown, “Behind the Walls,” 300. See Allison Sherman, “‘Soli Deo honor et gloria’? Cittadino Lay Procurator Patronage and the Art of

92.

93. 94. 95.

96. 97.

98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106.

107.

108. 109. 110. 111. 112.

22–27

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Identity Formation in Renaissance Venice,” in Architecture, Art and Identity in Venice and its Territories, 1450–1750. Essays in Honour of Deborah Howard, ed. Nebahat Avcıoǧ lu and Emma Jones (Farnham, 2013), 16–17, for noblemen and cittadini in the position of procurator. Cowan, Marriage, 18; Tucci, “Psychology,” 360; Neff’s study of Chancellery secretaries reveals the many professional and personal relations between citizens and patricians who administered the Venetian state. For examples, see Romano, Patricians and Popolani, 144–46; Grubb, “Piero Amadi,” 271. Pastore, “‘Nobility is Natural’,” 155–59. On Beazzano, see http://www.treccani.it/enciclope dia/agostino-beaziano_%28Dizionario-Biografico% 29/. For his career as a cittadino civil servant see Neff, “Chancellery Secretaries,” 374. For the portrait see Carol Plazzotta, cat. 41, in Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian, ed. Lorne Campbell, et al., exh. cat. National Gallery, London, October 15, 2008-January 18, 2009 (London, 2008), 164–65. Nicolini, L’arte napoletana, 65–98; Jennifer Fletcher, “Marcantonio Michiel: His Friends and Collection,” Burlington Magazine 123 (August 1981): 453–67. Brown, “Behind the Walls,” 321, 325; Newton, Dress, 37–38, 41. Sometimes the formulation was “citizens of all conditions” (1420) or “nobles, citizens and all inhabitants treated as such” (1505): Bellavitis, Identité, 158–9. Brown, “Behind the Walls,” 319–29. Italics mine. Brown, “Behind the Walls,” 325; ASV, Senato, Terra, reg. 43, fol. 109v (Feb. 12, 1559 mv). On intermarriage, see especially Bellavitis, Identité, 235–36; Grubb, “Elite Citizens,” 350–52; Cowan, Marriage, 67–90; Grubb, “Piero Amadi,” 266–69. See discussion in Chapter 2. Bellavitis, Identité, 156. Chojnacki, “Identity and Ideology.” See discussion in Grubb, “Piero Amadi,” 267–69. See Chapter 2. Bellavitis, Identité, 279. Bellavitis, Identité, 345. The family memoir is published in full in appendix 4 of Bellavitis, Identité, and in James Grubb, ed., Family Memoirs from Venice (15th–17th Centuries) (Rome, 2009), 339–63. ASV, Notarile, Testamenti (Notary Giovani Baptista Padavino), b. 1225, vol. 1 of protocol, 75r (will of Scipionis Ziliolo q. Victoris, February 1, 1591); Bellavitis, Identité, 295–96. Bellavitis, Identité, 285, 340. Bellavitis, Identité, 338, 340. Grubb, “Elite Citizens,” 349. Chojnacki, “Identity and Ideology,” 271. Chojnacki, “Identity and Ideology,” 271–78.

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113. Chojnacki, “Identity and Ideology,” 266–68. 114. See Gilbert, “Venice in the Crisis,” esp. 286, 290; Edward Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton, 1981), 27–29. 115. Brown, “Behind the Walls,” 301, and n26; Cowan, Marriage, 9, and n26; Grubb, “Piero Amadi,” 269–71. 116. Grubb, Family Memoirs, xxiii. Grubb refers here to the “cittadini orginari” but it is unclear to what degree these families were considered socially superior to other cittadini. Bellavitis’ research would seem to suggest not, but Grubb continues to make this distinction without clearly stating why. 117. Grubb, “Elite Citizens,” 349. 118. Bellavitis, Identité, 281. 119. Bellavitis, Identité, 307. 120. Bellavitis, Identité, 308. 121. Emphasis mine. Bellavitis, Identité, 342–43. 122. Emphasis mine. Bellavitis, Identité, 343. English translation based on Grubb, Family Memoirs, xxv. 123. Bellavitis, Identité, 342. While Scipione Ziliol recommended that his ancestors make sure that they “keep their heads below those of the nobles,” here interestingly his ancestor is offended that cittadini should be expected to take off their hats in the presence of nobles. These are the kinds of details that give a visceral sense of day-to-day negotiations of status between the groups. 124. In 1646, to be precise. 125. Bellavitis, Identité, 309. The Marciana Library, Venice, owns copies of both volumes: Ms. It., cl. VII, 4–5 (7925–26). A fancier copy, with color coats of arms and family trees, of volume 2 only can be found in the Biblioteca Museo Correr, Venice (hereafter BMC): Codice Cicogna 2459. 126. Emphasis mine. Bellavitis, Identité, 309n82. 127. Bellavitis, Identité, 309n84. 128. Bellavitis, Identité, 309–10. In the introduction to the second volume, he writes that he is providing “le Genealogie de gentilhuomini populari viniziani chiamati volgarmente cittadini.” Bellavitis, Identité, 233; BMC, Codice Cicogna 2459, p. II. 129. Bellavitis, Identité, chapter 8, looks at a series of families in detail. In addition to the memoirs studied by Grubb, see also that of Carlo Maggi discussed in de Maria, Becoming Venetian, 30. 130. For studies focused on art and architecture: Peter Humfrey, “Competitive Devotions: The Venetian Scuole Piccole as Donors of Altarpieces in the Years around 1500,” Art Bulletin 70:3 (1988): 401–23; Manfredo Tafuri, “The Scuole Grandi,” chapter 4 in Venice and the Renaissance; Schmitter, “‘Virtuous Riches’”; de Maria, Becoming Venetian; Tracy E. Cooper, “Patricians and Citizens,” in Venice and

131. 132. 133.

134. 135.

Veneto, ed. Peter Humfrey (Cambridge, 2007), 151–203; Sherman, “‘Soli Deo honor et gloria’”; Deborah Howard, “Contextualising Titian’s ‘Sacred and Profane Love’: The Cultural World of the Venetian Chancery in the Early Sixteenth Century,” Artibus et Historiae 34:67 (2013): 185–99. Bellavitis, Identité, esp. 281, 307, 310. Grubb, “Introduction,” Family Memoirs, xv. Compare, for example, Allison Sherman’s discussion of how cittadini used positions as procurators to advance themselves and their families to Patricia Brown’s discussion of Pietro Bembo’s nephew’s need to appear humble and self-facing to profit from his government appointments. See Monika Schmitter, review of Architecture, Art and Identity in Venice and its Territories, 1450–1750. Essays in Honour of Deborah Howard, by Nebahat Avcıoǧ lu and Emma Jones, eds. in CAA.reviews: http://www.caareviews.org/reviews/ 2438#.WcqcUvOGP3g (July 16, 2015). de Maria, Becoming Venetian, 169. See Monika Schmitter, review of Becoming Venetian: Immigrants and the Arts in Early Modern Venice, by Blake de Maria, Renaissance Quarterly 64:2 (2011): 598–99.

CHAPTER 2 SECONDGENERATION VENETIAN 1.

2.

Biblioteca Museo Correr, Venice (hereafter BMC), Codice Cicogna 2459, Alessandro Ziliolo, Le due corone della nobilità viniziana. Corona seconda, p. 103: “L’anno di Christo 1490 si trasferi ad habitar in Venetia con grosso capitale di mercantie un Rinaldo Oddoni Milanese di famiglia nobile et potente, la quale ancora si conserva in quella Città, et seco venne anco Guglielmo suo fratello eremita huomo santissimo, il quale . . . si mori in Venetia et fù sepolto à Torcello in S.ta [Maria] . . . È stato anco Nobile, et famoso Andrea figli del predetto Rinaldo per copia di richezze, et per magnificenza di Vita, et di lui ne fà mentione Pietro Aretino nelle sue lettere. Di costui ci legge questa memoria in S.ta Maria Maggiore . . . Nell’officio del Datio dal Vino si trova una lunga memorie di quest’Andrea.” “ANDREAE VDONO CIVI INSIGNI AMINI SPLENDORE LIBRALITATE ATQ. ELEGANTIA ETIAM SVPRA CIVILEM FORTUNAM SPECTANDA HIERONYMVS ET ALOYSIVS FRATRES MOER. SIBI AC POST. POSVERE. VIX ANNOS 57 OBIIT 1545,” as recorded in Emmanuele Antonio Cicogna, Delle inscrizioni veneziane (1830; reprint, Bologna, 1969), 3:434.

NOTES TO PAGES

3. The text is not dated, but Ziliol wrote in the first half of seventeenth century and died in 1646. For the manuscripts, see Chapter 1, n125. See Anna Bellavitis, Identité, mariage, mobilité sociale: Citoyennes et citoyens à Venise au XVIe siècle (Rome, 2001), 308–10, and “‘Quando la Seconda Corona della Veneta Repubblica si racconta’: la Cronichetta da ca’ Ziliol,” in Family Memoirs from Venice (15th– 17th Centuries), ed. James S. Grubb (Rome, 2009), xlix–li. Cicogna, Inscrizioni, 3:454, paraphrases Ziliol. Referring generically to “cronache nostre,” Cicogna reports that three Odoni brothers – Baldassare, Melchiorre, and Gasparo – came to Italy from Great Britain, and their descendants settled in Turin, Milan, Genova, and Naples. Tassini also provided a family tree that is not entirely correct: Archivio di Stato, Venice (hereafter ASV), Miscellanea codici, Storia veneta (Cittadinanze Tassini, vol. XI, M–P), b. 14. 4. BMC, Ms. Gradenigo-Dolfin 192, pp. 3–32 (1536 chronicle); Cicogna 2156, pp. 170–89 (1540 chronicle). See Chapter 1. 5. ASV, Notarile, Testamenti, Angelo de Canale, b. 209, n. 292 and b. 211, c. 41r (October 15, 1556). Furthermore, two witnesses for Aldo Manuzio, Jr.’s admission to the Ordine dei Cavalieri di Santo Stefano declared that Rinaldo had been a “cittadino venetiano honoratissimo.” Tullia Gasparrini Leporace, “Le ‘provanze’ di Aldo Manuzio il giovane per essere ammesso nell’ordine dei Cavalieri di Santo Stefano,” in Contributi alla storia del libro italiano: miscellanea in onore di Lamberto Donati, Biblioteca di bibliographia italiana 57 (Florence, 1969), 182, 184. 6. Ugo Tucci, “The Psychology of the Venetian Merchant in the Sixteenth Century,” in Renaissance Venice, ed. J. R. Hale (London, 1973), 352. 7. Quoted in Tucci, “Psychology,” 375n36. 8. The rates of intermarriage between new immigrants and Venetians were so high that it seems likely that most immigrants moved to the city before marriage. Stephen Ell, “Citizenship and Immigration in Venice, 1305–1500” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1976), 175, 180. 9. Ell, “Citizenship and Immigration,” 127, 233. 10. In the inventory of Odoni family documents, the mother of Alvise Odoni, Andrea’s brother, is called “Marieta”: ASV, Cancelleria inferiore, Miscellanea, Miscellanea Notai Diversi (hereafter MND), b. 39, c. 58, 20r. 11. Perhaps Ziliol’s date was approximate (he was writing almost 150 years later), or Andrea may have been the offspring of an earlier relationship, brought to Venice with his father.

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12. He is listed as “quondam” in Francesco Zio’s testament written in 1523. See n14. 13. Marcantonio Michiel, Der Anonimo Morelliano (Marcanton Michiel’s Notizia d’opere del disegno), ed. Theodor Frimmel (Vienna, 1896), 82–86, 94–96 (hereafter, Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano). On the date of Michiel’s visit to Zio’s collection, see n56. 14. ASV, Notarile, Testamenti, Giovanni Francesco dal Pozzo, b. 764, c. 101 and b. 765, c. 89v–90r; published in part in Donata Battilotti and Maria Teresa Franco, “Regesti di committenti e dei primi collezionisti di Giorgione,” Antichità viva 17: 4–5 (1978), 80. For Zio’s date of death (March 5, 1523), see Monika Schmitter, “‘Virtuous Riches’: The Bricolage of Cittadini Identities in EarlySixteenth-Century Venice,” Renaissance Quarterly 57 (2004), 920n44. 15. See Monika Schmitter, “The Display of Distinction: Art Collecting and Social Status in Early SixteenthCentury Venice” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1997), 44–45; Rosella Lauber, “Andrea Odoni” and “Francesco Zio,” in Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia. Dalle origini al Cinquecento, ed. Michel Hochmann, Rosella Lauber, and Stefania Mason (Venice, 2008), 300, 326. For “barba”: Giuseppe Boerio, Dizionario del dialetto veneziano (1856; reprint, Florence, 1993), 62. 16. See, for example, Dennis Romano, Patricians and Popolani: The Social Foundations of the Venetian Renaissance State (Baltimore, 1987), 49. 17. Anna Bellavitis, “La famiglia ‘cittadina’ veneziana nel XVI secolo: Dote e successione. Le leggi e le fonti,” Studi veneziani 30 (1995), 66. 18. Georg Gronau, ed., “Beiträge zum Anonymus Morellianus (Marc’ Antonio Michiel),” in Italienische Forschungen IV (Berlin, 1911), 64. 19. Patricia Brown, Private Lives in Renaissance Venice: Art, Architecture, and the Family (New Haven, 2004), 13–16. 20. See Chapter 6. 21. Cicogna, Inscrizioni, 5:59 22. Francesco identifies Maria Carlo as his noverca (stepmother) and Marin Carlo as her brother in his will (see n14). A 1512 document listed in the 1555 inventory of the Odoni household (22r) identifies Margarita Carlo as another sister of Marin Carlo and as the wife of “Jacomo di Fabriani fisico.” Alvise’s mother-in-law (socera), Cornelia Fabiani, was the daughter of Jacomo Fabiani from another marriage (her mother was Isabetta Gingali not Margarita Carlo). ASV, MND, b. 39, c. 58, 13v, 16r, 16v, 27v, 29r.

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35–37

23. ASV, Miscellanea Codici, ser. 1, Storia Veneta 16, Giuseppe Tassini, Cittadini, vol. XII I , 2321–22. See Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” 40n8. 24. BMC, Codice Cicogna 2156, 188: “Questi furono sempre delli antichi consegli, ma restorono esclusi del 1297. Trovasi al presente M. Andrea dalla Camera d’Imprestidi. Habbita à San Pantaleon in Casa propria. Vive d’Intrada, e d’Officio. Hanno sepolture à San Pantaleon e in San Lucca.” 25. Tassini notes that the Zio at San Pantalon “erono giojellieri” (see n23). Michiel referred to the jeweler Domenico di Piero as “zogiellier et antiquario singular” (Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 114). Domenico’s wife, Helena, named “Hyernonymum Zio zioelarium” as one of executors of her will (dated March 15, 1495). Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” 40n10. 26. BMC, Codice Cicogna 2118, Mariegola 120; ASV, Scuola Grande di S. Maria della Carità, register entitled Successioni, ereditate, guardini, e confratelli. The archivist Piero Scarpa allowed me to consult this unindexed volume in 1994 and 2004, but unfortunately, despite considerable effort, the current staff at the Archives was unable to locate it in 2019; Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” 40–41. 27. Zio’s birthdate can be calculated from his tombstone inscription recorded in Cicogna, Inscrizioni, 5:59. Marino Sanuto, I diarii, ed. Rinaldo Fulin (1879–1903; reprint, Bologna, 1970), 3:706, called Benetto “gastaldo di le munege di le Verzene” in 1500. An inventory of “scriptur, et libri spectanti al monestero de le verzene trovate in casa del quondam messer Francesco Zio fo suo gastaldo” lists an account book covering the period 1498–1512 which was “de man del q. mx. benedeto zio, et compido de mano del q. mx. fr.o Zio” (ASV, S. Maria delle Vergini, b. 4, “Scritture imperfette, et di pocho momento”). I would like to thank Alessandra Schiavone of the Archivio di Stato in Venice for helping me find documents in this unindexed archive. It would therefore appear that Francesco stepped into the position after his father’s death in 1506. For Benetto’s date of death see Cicogna, Inscrizioni, 5:627. 28. Romano, Patricians and Poplani, 95–96. On cittadini lay procurators, their jobs, and their use of the positions for self-promotion, see Allison Sherman, “‘Soli Deo honor et gloria’? Cittadino Lay Procurator Patronage and the Art of Identity Formation in Renaissance Venice,” in Architecture, Art and Identity in Venice and its Territories, 1450–1750. Essays in Honour of Deborah Howard, ed. Nebahat Avcıoǧ lu and Emma Jones (Farnham, 2013), 15–32. 29. Sherman, “‘Soli Deo honor et gloria’,” 17.

30. On the convent see Kate Lowe, “Elections of Abbesses and Notions of Identity in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Italy, with Special Reference to Venice,” Renaissance Quarterly 54:2 (2001): 389–429, and “Power and Institutional Identity in Renaissance Venice: The Female Convents of S. M. delle Vergini and S. Zaccaria,” in The Trouble with Ribs: Women, Men and Gender in Early Modern Europe, ed. Anu Korhonen and Kate Lowe (Helsinki, 2007), 128–52; Anne Markham Schulz, “A Newly Discovered Work by Giammaria Mosca, called Padovano,” Burlington Magazine 146 (October 2004), 662–63; Alvise Zorzi, Venezia Scomparsa (Milan, 1972), 2: 364–67. 31. Lowe, “Power and Institutional Identity,” 140–44, 146, 148. 32. Schulz, “Newly Discovered,” 662–3. 33. Zio stated in his decima of 1514 that he lived in confine of San Pietro di Castello: ASV, Dieci Savi sopra le Decime in Rialto, b. 58, (S. Pietro di Castello), c. 24 (Redecima 1514). He was still living there when he died (see his will cited in n14). 34. He is called procurator of the monastery in a document dated December 23, 1523 (Francesco died in March of that year). Flaminio Cornaro, Ecclesiae Venetae Antiquis Monumentis (Venice, 1749), 121. For Antonio Marsilio, see Jennifer Fletcher, “Marcantonio Michiel: His Friends and Collection,” Burlington Magazine 123 (August 1981), 459–60; Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” 97–98. 35. “Fu posto, per li consieri, atento uno scrivan di le Raxon nuove ha trovato uno dil dazio dil vin qual ingana la Signoria ogni anno di ducati 150; che con efeto trovando tal eror abi l’oficio suo in vita ut in parte, e fu presa. Fo dito è contra Rizardo dil dazio dil vin, e chi vol intrar è Francesco Zio.” Sanuto, Diarii, 17:389 (December 17, 1513). 36. David Chambers and Brian Pullan with Jennifer Fletcher, ed. Venice: A Documentary History, 1450–1630 (Toronto, 2001), 463. 37. Sanuto, Diarii, 24:622 (September 1, 1517); Lauber, “Francesco Zio,” 326. 38. Sanuto, Diarii, 25:252–53. Also see Lauber, “Andrea Odoni” and “Francesco Zio,” 298, 326. For Venier, see Lauber, “Giovanni Antonio Venier,” in Hochmann, Lauber, and Mason, Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia, 320–22. 39. Marin Sanudo, Cità Excelentissima. Selections from the Diaries of Marin Sanudo, ed. Patricia H. Labalme and Laura Sanguineti White, trans. Linda L. Carroll (Baltimore, 2008), 345. 40. Sanudo, Cità Excelentissima, 344.

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41. See Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” 43–44; “‘Virtuous Riches’,” 920–21n48. 42. Schmitter, “‘Virtuous Riches’,” 941n114. 43. Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” 147. 44. Members of the scuola were called fratelli. They were also sometimes referred to as the “sons” of the patron saint. Brian Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice: The Social Institutions of a Catholic State, to 1620 (Cambridge, 1971), 76. 45. Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” 44–45, 147. 46. David Rosand, Painting in Sixteenth-Century Venice: Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto, rev. ed. (Cambridge, 1997), 92–93, discusses possible identifications. 47. Mary Frances Neff, “Chancellery Secretaries in Venetian Politics and Society, 1480–1533” (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1985), 431–35; Deborah Howard, “Titian’s Portraits of the Grand Chancellor Andrea de’Franceschi,” Artibus et Historiae 74 (2016): 139–51. 48. Neff, “Chancellery Secretaries,” 573–78. 49. A 1557 inventory of the house of Jacomo’s brother Francesco lists numerous paintings, printed books (“parte a opera antiga”), and musical instruments. ASV, MND, b. 39, c. 6. 50. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 66. 51. Neff, “Chancellery Secretaries,” 182–83. 52. This is the sum he was paid in 1521: Schulz, “Newly Discovered,” 663. 53. ASV, Dieci Savi sopra le Decime in Rialto, b. 58, S. Piero di Castello, c. 24. Francesco declared ownership of four rented houses in the confino (district) of San Polo, a newly built house in Mazzorbo, and thirty-one fields near the town of Candela. 54. On the difficulty of determining the wealth of cittadini, see Neff, “Chancellery Secretaries,” 156–58. 55. See n14. 56. Some time subsequent to writing the entries Michiel added the date “1512” in a different pen to his description of Zio’s collection, but he clearly intended to write “1521.” Philip Rylands, Palma Vecchio (Cambridge, 1992), 19–21; Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” 39n5. For Michiel’s trip to Rome and his return in January 1521, see Fletcher, “Friends and Collection,” 455–56. 57. Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” 46–134; “‘Virtuous Riches’,” 922–38. 58. Francesco Sansovino, Venezia citta nobilissima (1663; reprint, Farnborough, 1968), 20. 59. ASV, Notarile, Testamenti, Giovanni Francesco dal Pozzo, b. 764, c. 101. 60. Schulz, “A Newly Discovered Work,” 664, fig. 1. 61. Lauber, “Francesco Zio,” 326.

37–40

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62. Cicogna, Inscrizioni, 5:59: “Francisco Lilio Benedicti fil[io] sacr[arum] Virg[inum] Proc[urator] vita cvivs tam variis virtvtum lavdibvs clara fvit vt veteris probitatis exempla svperarit. Nepotes Patrvo B. M. P. [benemerenti posuere] vixit annis XXXXV. M. VI. D. XVIII.” 63. Zio earned the right to pass on his office at the Raxon nuove to his descendants as a reward for uncovering graft at the Dazio del vin. See n35. According to the records of the Scuola Grande di Santa Maria della Carità, Odoni was already working at the Dazio in some capacity by 1522; in 1523 he is listed specifically as “scrivan al datio del vin.” ASV, Scuola Grande di S. Maria della Carità, register entitled “Successioni, ereditarie, guardiani, e confratelli, 1450–1545,” c. 59r (see n26 above); and ASV, Scuola Grande di S. Maria della Carità, Reg. 254, c. 179r. Sanudo, Diarii, 34:41 (March 26, 1523), reported that after Zio’s death (he mistakenly referred to him as Alvise rather than Francesco), his position at the Raxon nuove was given to Zuan della Vedova, son of Gasparo, in partial exchange for the latter’s office as “scrivan, et nodaro” at the Dazio del vin. He reported on the auction plan April 17 (102): “Da poi disnar, fo Consejo di X con la Zonta. Et preseno di far uno lotto e darlo a far a Zuan Manenti sanser, di ducati 15 mila, et meter l’oficio dil dazio dil vin, era dil fiol di Gasparo de la Vedoa, qual ha tolto quel de le Raxon nuove era di Francesco Zio; il qual dazio del vin val ducati . . . a l’anno et lo meteno per ducati 4000, e tanti vol la Signoria.” See Neff, “Chancellery Secretaries,” 574–75. 64. Chambers and Pullan, Venice: A Documentary History, 143–44. 65. For the value of a variety of offices and comparative salaries in general, including the notaryship at the Dazio del vin and the scrivania of the Raxon nuove, see Neff, “Chancellery Secretaries,” 181–83; Sanudo, Cità Excelentissima, 542. 66. Francesco Sansovino, Delle cose notabili che sono in Venetia (Venice, 1562), 63. 67. Fabio Besta, ed., Serie seconda, Bilanci generali, I (Venice, 1912), 148; Chambers and Pullan, Venice: A Documentary History, 140. 68. Neff, “Chancellery Secretaries,” 183. 69. Besta, Bilanci generali, I , 365; Chambers and Pullan, Venice: A Documentary History, 148. For the importance of indirect taxes and customs in general for the Venetian state income, and the Dazio del vin in particular, see Luciano Pezzolo, L’oro dello Stato: Società, finanza e fisco nella Repubblica veneta del secondo ’500 (Treviso, 1990), 64–70 (see his

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70.

71. 72.

73.

74.

75.

76.

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40–42

appendix V for the escalating revenue of the Dazio del vin from 1551 to 1605). Ugo Tucci, “Commercio e consumo del vino a Venezia in età moderna,” in Il vino nell’economia e nella società Italiana Medioevale e Moderna (Florence, 1988), 185. Tucci, “Commercio e consumo,” 191. For an example of a loss, see Chambers and Pullan, Venice: A Documentary History, 144. On the system in general see Tucci, “Commercio e consumo,” esp. 195, 197–99; Besta, Bilanci generali, I , esp. xliii–xlv; Michael Knapton, “Guerra e Finanza (1381–1508),” in La Repubblica di Venezia nell’età moderna, vol. 1, Dalla guerra di Chioggia al 1517, ed. Gaetano Cozzi and Michael Knapton (Turin, 1986), 329–36; Pezzolo, L’oro dello Stato, 66–70. Sanudo explained the system in his account of the auction in 1500: in the previous year Francesco Pizamano contracted for 56,000 thousand ducats, but he collected 68,000, while spending 5,000 to do so. This would have left a profit of 7,000 ducats; as Sanudo notes “sì che vadagna assai.” Sanuto, Diarii, 3:733. Sanuto, Diarii, 56:781 (August 20, 1532): “In questa matina, in Rialto, per li governadori di l’intrade poi dà il terzo incanto fo deliberà el dazio dil vin per uno anno, et lo tolse sier Piero Orio fo patron a l’Arsenal, qu. sier Bernardin el cavalier, insime con Andrea di Odoni, ma lui è il principal et l’Odoni atende a le stime, per ducati 87 mile et 10 ducati a l’anno.” In the fifteenth century, the contracts were given to noblemen, but later also to cittadini and popolari, according to Tucci, “Commercio e consumo,” 197. ASV, Avogaria di Comun, Cittadinanze Originarie, b. 404, c. 92, p. 9. The application was made January 4, 1716 by Gerolamo Odoni, son of Guglielmo, on behalf of his sons Michiel and Guglielmo. The plaque is also referred to, but not transcribed, in Le due corone by Ziliol. See n1. The “caratadori” were shareholders or investors in a company or financial investment. See Beth L. Glixon and Jonathan E. Glixon, Inventing the Business of Opera: The Impresario and his World in Seventeenth-Century Venice (Oxford, 2006), 11; Frederic C. Lane, “Family Partnerships and Joint Ventures in the Venetian Republic,” Journal of Economic History 4:2 (1944), 188n21. This would suggest that the entire profit did not go directly to Orio and Odoni. For a chart of the bids made between 1499 and 1533 based on the reports in Sanudo see Luciano Pezzolo, “La finanza pubblica: dal prestito all’imposta,” in Storia di Venezia dalle origini alla caduta della Serenissima, vol. 5, Il Rinascimento, Società ed

77.

78.

79.

80. 81. 82. 83. 84.

85. 86. 87.

88. 89. 90.

91.

economia, ed. Alberto Tenenti and Ugo Tucci (Rome, 1996), 743. In the many volumes of his Diarii, Sanudo reported some instances when the contracts lost money, but he often noted that they made quite a bit, “vadagnà benissimo” (7:626). The highest sum he ever reported was the profit made by Odoni and Orio in 1533 (14,000 ducats, although according to the inscription at the Dazio they only made 12,000). ASV, Ufficiali al dazio del vin, b. 1, “Decreti, Parte, e Statuti Veneti dal 1400 fino al 1600,” n. 714, n. 374, n. 548, n. 375, n. 386. In 1547 and 1548, after Andrea’s death, the conduttori were the nobleman Vicenzo Giustiniani and “il fidel nostro Hieronimo Odoni” (“our faithful Hieronimo Odoni”). Alvise, on the other hand, took on the responsibility himself and is listed the sole conduttore, without a noble partner. Sanuto, Diarii, 58:642–43 (September 3, 1533): “Fo in Collegio questa mattina ballotà el condutor dil dazio dil vin sier Piero Orio qu. sier Bernardin el cavalier et Andrea di Udoni . . . el qual Orio ha mala fama, usa grande crndeltà [sic] con tutti, fa stimar fino li cerchii, fa meter per l’ordinario una quarta de più per anfora contra el statuto.” Sanuto, Diarii, 24:622. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 63. Robert Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice (New Brunswick, NJ, 1980), 15. Sanuto, Diarii, 17:389 (discussed above). “Per haver fatto alcuni sconti ad alcuni gentilhuomini contra li mandati del consiglio di X.” BMC, Codice Cicogna 2848, Diarii di Marcantonio Michiel 1511–1521, 235r. Sanuto, Diarii, 24:517, 536–37, 559 (July and August 1517); Neff, “Chancellery Secretaries,” 574. Jonathan Walker, “Bravi and Venetian Nobles, c. 1550–1650,” Studi Veneziani n.s., 36 (1998), 102. Lanfranco Franzoni, “Antiquari e collezionisti nel Cinquecento,” in Storia della Cultura Veneta, part 3, vol. 3 (Vicenza, 1981), 216. ASV, Notarile, Testamenti, Antonio Marsilio, b. 1208, c. 403. Pezzolo, L’oro dello Stato, 172. Pezzolo, L’oro dello Stato, 67–69. During the War of the League of Cambrai, the salaries of public servants were suspended, but Felix Gilbert notes that “the consequences of this decree were not as devastating as might appear at first glance, since the fees the officials received from those who needed their services were as important as their salaries.” The Pope, His Banker, and Venice (Cambridge, MA, 1980), 20. Also see Pezzolo, L’oro dell Stato, 46–47. Tucci, “Psychology,” 362.

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92. Thus in 1515 Beneto Badoer and Marco Bragadin contracted for 68,000 ducats, “but people say they lost . . .. thousands of ducats; but it doesn’t matter if they lose, the conduttori still earn their commission, which is 400 ducats, and then the contraband on top of that.” Sanuto, Diarii, 22:517 (September 2, 1516). 93. Tucci, “Psychology,” 361. 94. Leporace, “Le ‘provanze’,” 183. The unpublished portion of the Odoni inventory lists numerous account reckonings and receipts concerning the Dazio del vin and various wine merchants and estimators, but it is difficult to determine if these pertain to the Odonis’ own trade in wine, or whether they are merely records pertaining to their positions at the customs office. 95. ASV, Dieci savi sopra le decime, b. 100, c. 274 (March 30, 1538). He also mentioned it in his will: Gronau, “Beiträge,” 55. 96. Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” 149–50. 97. Andrea Zannini, Burocrazia e burocrati a Venezia in età moderna: I cittadini originari (sec. XVI–XVIII) (Venice, 1993), 69. 98. On the difficulty of determining wealth see Romano, Patricians and Popolani, 32–37; Neff, “Chancellery Secretaries,” 156–58. 99. Alvise referred to her in his will by her maiden name, Isabetta de Monte. ASV, Notarile, Testamenti, Giovanni Maria Cavaneis, b. 217, c. 4; protocol b. 218, c. 1 (October 5, 1527). He was dead by November 18, 1527, when an inventory was made of his property. ASV, MND, b. 34, c. 42 (November 18, 1527). 100. Isabetta wrote two wills after her first husband’s death, but before her marriage to Odoni, dated August 5, 1528 and July 16, 1533. ASV, Notarile, Testamenti, 190 (notary Girolamo Canali), c. 251; Notarile, Testamenti, 201 (notary Giacomo Chiodo), c. 114. In the first will she identified Odoni as the scrivan at the Dazio del vin, suggesting she knew him primarily in this capacity and not as a family relation. She did not refer to any living relatives in either will. In the second will she mentioned her deceased father, Antonio de Monte, and a deceased sister. For the 1538 date see note below. 101. Mentioned by Odoni in his will in 1545 and in his tax filing of 1540. They are not, however, recorded in Odoni’s earlier filing of 1538, suggesting he may only have married after this date. See Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” 155–56. 102. The investiture is mentioned in his descendants’ application in 1716 for original citizenship. It was granted in 1546 (the year after Andrea’s death) to

103.

104.

105.

106. 107.

108.

109.

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Andrea’s brothers Gerolamo and Alvise. Avogaria di Comun, Cittadinanze Originarie, b. 404, c. 92. It also does not seem to have been a love match, at least on Isabetta’s part: in the two wills she wrote after Andrea’s death, she asked to be buried with her first husband, who had passed away almost twenty years before. She also left various bequests for the benefit of her soul and that of her first husband but made no mention of Odoni. The first will is dated March 29, 1545 (eight days after Andrea’s will): ASV, Notarile, Testamenti (notary Niccolo Moravio), b. 675, c. 330. The later will is dated January 11, 1545 [m.v.]: Notarile, Testamenti (notary Giorgio Drago), b. 927, c. 113; Codicil, January 26, 1545 [m.v.]. In his collection of information about cittadini families, Tassini labels a Valier family tree: “Dello stesso sangue di quelli del M. Consiglio.” ASV, Miscellanea Codici, ser. 1, Storia Veneta 14, Giuseppe Tassini, Cittadini, vol. XI II , 2156. It was not uncommon for cittadini to have the same surnames as nobles; see James Grubb, “Elite Citizens,” in Martin and Romano, Venice Reconsidered, 346–48. Leporace, “Le ‘provanze’,” 180. Ramusio also refers to Caterina, the daughter of Gerolamo Odoni and Helena Valier (and mother of Aldo Manuzio Jr.) repeatedly as “la magnifica Cateruzza” (180–81), an honorific usually reserved for nobles (although according to Grubb, Family Memoirs, xxiv, cittadini often gave themselves such titles). Italics mine. Leporace, “Le ‘provanze’,” 184. The cover document for all the witness statements follows Guerra’s statement, declaring that Helena was the legitimate and natural daughter of “a*** Valier cittadino venetiano.” Leporace, “Le ‘provanze’,” 176 (asterisks are Leporace’s). Helena’s status may have been somewhat abnormal; for example, she could have been the daughter of an illegitimate son of the Valier noble family. For her testaments: ASV, Notarile, Testamenti (notary Pietro Abramo), b. 36, c. 22. In his testament, he left 2,000 ducats for Cornelia and Marieta: ASV, Notarile, Testamenti (notary Nicolò Moravio), b. 675, c. 47 (June 17, 1555). Odona married her husband Giovanni della Torre in 1551 with a dowry of 2,000 ducats: ASV, Avogaria di Comun, Martimoni Cittadini, reg. 144, f. 52v–54v, January 6, 1551. Anna Bellavitis, “Family and Society,” in A Companion to Venetian History, 1400–1797, ed. Eric R. Drusteler (Leiden, 2013), 331, notes that members of the nobility gave their daughters first names that would recall their patriline

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110.

111. 112. 113.

114.

115. 116.

117. 118.

119. 120.

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43–45

once they were married; it is interesting to see the Odoni doing the same thing. She married Marco di Raspi in 1550. ASV, Avogaria di Comun, Contratti di Nozze, b. 144, “Cittadini I, 1535–1575,” c. 284v (May 6, 1550). The contract for Caterina’s marriage to Paolo Manuzio in 1546 to my knowledge does not survive. According to Ester Pastorello, L’epistolario Manuziano. Inventario Cronologico-Analitico 1483–1597 (Florence, 1957), 302, Paolo and Caterina married January 14, 1546, and her dowry was 320 gold ducats. Bellavitis, “La famiglia ‘cittadina’,” 62. Bellavitis, Identité, 160, suggests that this means most citizen marriages had dowries lower than 1,000 ducats. According to Bellavitis, “La famiglia ‘cittadina’,” 64, cittadini dowries were generally under 2,000 ducats in the first half of the century, rising to 3,000 to 4,000 in the second half. See her chart of cittadini marriages from 1506–1601 in Identité, 246–54. See also the chart of dowries for the families of chancellery secretaries in Neff, “Chancellery Secretaries,” 220–21, with similar findings. This contrasts with the strategy of the cittadino Giacomo Ragazzoni at the end of the sixteenth century, who married nine daughters to patricians, their combined dowries amounting to 130,000 ducats. See Bellavitis, “Family and Society,” 327. For Ragazzoni, also see Blake de Maria, Becoming Venetian: Immigrants and the Arts in Early Modern Venice (New Haven, 2010), 33–34, 37–38, 41–43, 48–49, 104–5, 159–69. Chambers and Pullan, Venice: A Documentary History, 138. ASV, Dieci savi sopra le decime, b. 100, c. 274 (March 30, 1538). The document is incorrectly cited as c. 93 in Battilotti and Franco, “Regesti,” 80–81. Carta 93 is Alvise Odoni’s decima. Carta 76 is the decima submitted by Alvise for their brother Gerolamo. Both decime submitted by Alvise are dated January 30, 1537. Marin Sanudo, De origine, situ et magistratibus urbis Venetae, ovvero, la città di Venetia (1493–1530), ed. Angela Caracciolo Aricò (Milan, 1980), 21. Odoni had inherited these “caxette” in the “Corte da cha Charlo” from Zio, who obtained them through his stepmother Maria Carlo. They are mentioned in Zio’s decime of 1514, as well as in his testament of 1523 (for the latter see note 14). ASV, Dieci savi sopra le decime, b. 58, c. 24. ASV, Dieci savi sopra le decime, b. 106, c. 703 (October 27, 1540); Battilotti and Franco, “Regesti,” 81. See note 101. Leporace, “Le ‘provanze’,” 176.

121. Andrea Torrigiani “andava vestito a manega comeo come li altri cittadini et nobili di Venetia.” Leporace, “Le ‘provanze’,” 178. 122. Leporace, “Le ‘provanze’,” 178. 123. Leporace, “Le ‘provanze’,” 180. 124. Leporace, “Le ‘provanze’,” 183. 125. Odoni has sometimes been referred to as a “humanist,” for example in Pietro Zampetti, Mostra di Lorenzo Lotto, exh. cat. Palazzo Ducale, Venice, June 14October 18, 1953 (Venice, 1953), 107. 126. ASV, MND, b. 39, c. 58, 15r; Gronau, “Beiträge,” 71. On the text and its editions, see Achim Krümmel, Das “Supplementum Chronicarum” des Augustinermönches Jacobus Philippus Foresti von Bergamo. Eine der ältesten Bilderchroniken and ihre Wirkungsgeschichte (Herzberg, 1992). 127. ASV, MND, b. 39, c. 58, 15v; Gronau, “Beiträge,” 71. This text would certainly have been in Latin, and was possibly in the house as a legacy of Alvise Odoni’s wife’s grandfather, Jacomo Fabiani, who was a physician. See Augusto De Ferrari, “Del Garbo, Dino (Aldobrandino, Dinus de Florentia),” Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 36, 1988, www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/dino-delgarbo_(Dizionario-Biografico)/. The inventory of Alvise Odoni reveals that he inherited many papers having to do with Fabiani’s affairs, where he is referred to as “fisico” or “dottor.” 128. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 68. Although elsewhere in the inventory the word “libbro” is used to describe account books, the fact that these seven books are located in a particular room and are covered in leather suggests they were reading material proper, not just account books. 129. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 58. 130. According to the agreement reached by Andrea’s brothers Alvise and Gerolamo after his death, the property was divided in such a way that the main house and its contents passed to Alvise. Lauber, “Andrea Odoni,” 300. 131. Aldo Ravà, “Il ‘camerino delle antigaglie’ di Gabriele Vendramin,” Nuovo Archivo Veneto 39 (1920), 171–73. 132. The literature on Vendramin, an almost exact contemporary of Odoni, whose collection was also described by Michiel, is extensive. See Rosella Lauber, “Memoria, visione e attesa. Tempi e spazi del collezionismo artistico nel primo Rinascimento veneziano,” and “Gabriele Vendramin,” in Hochmann, Lauber, and Mason, Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia, 66–70, 317–319, and citations therein. 133. On Aurelio, see Neff, “Chancellery Secretaries,” 361–64; Rona Goffen, “Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love: Individuality and Sexuality in a Renaissance Marriage Picture,” in Titian 500, ed. Joseph Manca

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134. 135.

136.

137.

138.

(Washington DC, 1993), 121–44; Deborah Howard, “Contextualising Titian’s ‘Sacred and Profane Love’: The Cultural World of the Venetian Chancery in the Early Sixteenth Century,” Artibus et Historiae 34:67 (2013): 185–99. Original transcribed and translated in Goffen, “Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love,” 135, 138. The will is dated June 28, 1527. “Libri a stampa grandi et picoli, et parte a opera antiga n.o 33”: ASV, MND, b. 39 c. 6, p. 8v (October 23, 1557). The inventory is contemporary with the Odoni inventory and thus makes a particularly good comparison. For the della Vedova family, see Neff, “Chancellery Secretaries,” 572–78; for Francesco see Bellavitis, Identité, 125. Also see Isabelle Palumbo Fossati, “Livres et lecteurs dans la Venise du XVIe siècle,” Revue française d’histoire du livre 49 (1985), 498, 500, 504; Sarah Gwyneth Ross, Everyday Renaissances: The Quest for Cultural Legitimacy in Venice (Cambridge, 2016), esp. 29–36. The scripts of both Andrea and his brother Alvise shows some vestigial mercantesca characteristics, especially when compared the hand of Marcantonio Michiel, for example, who was trained in Greek and Latin. Andrea and Alvise handwrote their decime: ASV, Savi sopra le decime, b. 100, c. 93 (Alvise); b. 100, c. 703 (Andrea). For a discussion of the relationship between handwriting and schooling, see Paul F. Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning 1300–1600 (Baltimore, 1989), esp. 323–29. He may be the “spectabilis artium doctor dominus Iacopus Fabianus,” steward of the Arca del Santo in Padua, mentioned in documents of 1520 for the sculptor Giammaria Mosca’s panel The Miracle of the Goblet for the Chapel of St. Anthony: see Anne Markham Schulz, Giammaria Mosca called Padovano, a Renaissance Sculptor in Italy and Poland (University Park, PA, 1998), 1: 193, 194, 334. In his published letters, Paolo Manuzio expressed respect and admiration for his in-laws. In a flattering letter addressed to Gerolamo he claimed “if you are not my father by nature, you are my father by love, and observance, and I hold you as a father and will always do so.” Paolo Manuzio, Lettere volgari (Venice, 1560), 77r. In correspondence with his son Aldo, Manuzio wrote that Rinaldo Odoni was one of his three best friends, “the one who is more dear to my heart than any other.” Paolo Manuzio, Lettere copiate sugli autografi esistenti nella Biblioteca Ambrosiana (Paris, 1834), 165–66. But he was also critical of his brothers-in-law when they fought over their

139. 140. 141.

142. 143.

144.

145.

146. 147.

45–47

257

inheritance. See Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” 159–162. Discussed briefly in Bruno Nardi, Saggi sull’Aristotelismo padovano dal secolo XIV al XVI (Florence, 1958), 410. See Cicogna, Inscrizioni, 3:436. The will ends abruptly with no witness signatures. On the reverse is written in a different ink “non completa.” ASV, Notarile, Testamenti, Vettor Giordano, b. 528, c. 40; published in Gronau, “Beiträge,” 55–56. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 55, mistakenly transcribed “fioli” (sons) rather than “fratelli” (brothers), causing confusion in subsequent literature. For the period for which these records survive (1538–46), only one other member had more attendees, the nobleman Francesco Bembo, who had 314. ASV, Scuola Grande di S. Maria della Carità, register entitled “Successioni, ereditate, guardini, et confratelli,” 99v (see n26 above). Pullan, Rich and Poor, 76–77, notes that “attending funerals became, not an act of piety performed by all members of the the Scuola indifferently, but a means whereby the poorer brothers obtained alms, either from the testator himself or from the Scuola.” Alvise wrote that he would like to be buried in the same church. ASV, Notarile, Testamenti (notary Nicolò Moravio), b. 675, c. 47 (June 17, 1555). Gerolamo’s wife, Helena Valier, requested that she be buried in the tomb in Santa Maria Maggiore where her husband was buried: ASV, Notarile, Testamenti (notary Pietro Abramo), b. 36, c. 22 (codicils of June 29, 1561 and October 26, 1561). Helena’s other wills can be found in ASV, Notarile, Testamenti (notary Giovani Maria Cavaneis), b. 217, c. 118 (June 14, 1539); Notarile, Testamenti (notary Angelo de Canali), b. 209, c. 193 (March 19, 1555, with codicil March 15, 1557); Notarile, Testamenti (notary Pietro Abramo), b. 36, c. 22 (February 18, 1560). ASV, Notarile, Testamenti (notary Giovanni Baptista Padavino), b. 1225, protocol vol. 2, cc. 124r-126r. (5 Feb. 1582); ASV, S. Maria Maggiore, Atti, b. 2, c. 36 (5 Febuary 1582); Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” 157–8; Lauber, “Andrea Odoni,” 300. Gerolamo Odoni, son of Guglielmo, in his application for cittadinanza originaria. ASV, Avogaria di Comun, Cittadinanze Originarie, b. 404, b. 92, cover page. See Cicogna, Inscrizioni, 3:417–22; Zorzi, Venezia Scomparsa, 2:533–35; John McAndrew, Venetian Architecture of the Early Renaissance (Cambridge, MA, 1980), 473–83; Manfredo Tafuri, “La chiesa di

258

148. 149.

150. 151. 152. 153. 154. 155.

156. 157.

158.

159.

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48–50

Santa Maria Maggiore a Venezia: Un’ ipotesi per Tullio Lombardo,” Arte Veneta 40 (1986): 38–53. Tafuri, “Chiesa di Santa Maria Maggiore,” 48. While Tafuri analyzes many infelicities of construction and design in the church, he nonetheless finds that, within the context of public buildings erected in Venice in the 1520s, its architectural significance is “anything but negligible” (“Chiesa di Santa Maria Maggiore,” 45), tentatively proposing the involvement of Tullio Lombardo. Tafuri, “Chiesa di Santa Maria Maggiore,” 44. In a testament written in 1536 (June 16), Malipiero gave detailed instructions about the tombs: Tafuri, “Chiesa di Santa Maria Maggiore,” 44n37. Della pittura veneziana (Venice, 1771), 118. Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima, 269. See Cicogna, Inscrizioni, 3:418–21. According to Ziliol, like the Odoni the Lando family emigrated from Milan in 1490: BMC, Codice Cicogna 2459, 134. On Lando and his donation, see Michel Hochmann, Peintres et commanditaires à Venise (1540–1628), Collection de L’École Française de Rome155 (Rome, 1992), 199–202, and “Simone Lando,” in Hochmann, Lauber, and Mason, Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia, 290–91. ASV, Avogaria di Comun, Cittadinanze Originarie, b. 404, b. 92, p. 13. This is the transcription given by Jacopo Morelli in his edition of Michiel’s Notizia published in 1800: [Marcantonio Michiel], Notizia d’opere di disegno, ed. Jacopo Morelli (Bassano, 1800), 193). The inscription was recorded by several other sources as well. Cicogna, Inscrizioni, 3:434, records that he took it from the “Codice di Giovan Georgio Palfero” (now Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice, Ms. Lat. Cl. X, 144 (3657), 178v). The transcriptions by Morelli and Cicogna both record that Odoni was fifty-seven years old when he died in 1545. The 1716 transcription, on the other hand, reports that he was sixty-two when he died in 1514. Certainly the latter cannot be correct. The Roman numerals were inaccurately transcribed. Guido Guerzoni, “Liberalitas, Magnificentia, Splendor: The Classic Origins of Italian Renaissance Lifestyle,” in Economic Engagments with Art, ed. Neil De Marchi and Craufurd D. W. Goodwin (Durham, NC, 1999), 335, citing Silvio Antoniano (1584). Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor (Cambridge, MA, 1988), 293 (9:1). “sed utetur mediocribus eleganter, elegantibus moderanter”: Leon

160.

161.

162.

163. 164. 165.

166.

167. 168.

169.

Battista Alberti, L’Architettura [De re aedifacatoria], trans. Giovanni Orlandi (Milan, 1966): 1:785. See Rosella Lauber, “Michele Contarini,” in Hochmann, Lauber, and Mason, Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia, 262. Frimmel transcribed “le case elegante,” but Lauber suggests the reading (which is very difficult) should be “cose.” Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 110. Translated in Evelyn Welch, “Public Magnificence and Private Display: Giovanni Pontano’s De splendore (1498) and the Domestic Arts,” Journal of Design History 15 (2002), 222. Donato Giannotti, “Libro della Repubblica de’Viniziani,” in Opere Politiche, ed. Furio Diaz (Milan, 1974, 1: 46: “cittadini . . . per avere esercitato arti più onorate, hanno acquistato qualche splendore, e sono saliti uno grado.” Interestingly, Alessandro Ziliol wrote of his ancestor, Vettor, that though he was not so wealthy, “with the little he had, he lived splendidly, kept a gondola with two servants . . . [and] always lived in large and noble houses.” Bellavitis, Identité, 344, italics mine. See Appendix. See Introduction, n52. Italics mine. As quoted and translated in Stephen J. Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros: Renaissance Mythological Painting and the Studiolo of Isabella d’Este (New Haven, 2006), 36, citing Alberti, De Commodis litterarum atque incommodis, c. 1428. Andrea’s wife Isabetta was already dead by July 30, 1548. For the documents regarding the passage of Andrea’s property, see Lauber, “Andrea Odoni,” 300. As was typical at the time, Andrea’s wife Isabetta left the house upon the death of her husband, and upon her death whatever she had from the estate of her husband reverted back to his nephews, the sons of Alvise and Gerolamo. For her wills, see n103. Although Gerolamo Odoni, who lived only one year longer than Alvise, referred to “quadri” in his will, there is no indication he inherited them from his brother. ASV, Notarile, Testamenti (notary Angelo de Canale), b. 211, c. 40r–41v (21 Lugio 1555). ASV, Notarile, Testamenti (notary Nicolò Moravio), b. 675, c. 47 (June 17, 1555). The inventory is dated June 23. The house had certainly passed into other hands by the second half of the seventeenth century. Marco Boschini, Le ricche minere della pittura veneziana (Venice, 1674), 378–79, records that it was inhabited by “Antonio Triva, Pittore valoroso.” When the work was sold in 1639, after Uffelen’s death, the sitter was unknown and the painting was attributed to Titian in the sales catalog:

NOTES TO PAGES

170.

171.

172. 173. 174.

175.

John Shearman, The Early Italian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen (Cambridge, 1983), 144. The inventory of 1692 compiled after the death of the bookseller (libraio) Guglielmo di Giulio Odoni contains only paintings (no antiquities or sculpture) and all the paintings have religious subjects (ASV, Giudici di Petizion, Inventari, b. 392, c. 44). The inventory of 1750 lists primarily portraits, paintings with religious subjects, and still lives (again no sculpture or antiquities): ASV, Giudici di Petizion, Inventari, b. 447, c. 17. Gerolamo, son of Carlo (the one who was anxious to erect an altarpiece at Santa Maria Maggiore), does not mention any sons or brothers by name in his will, and leaves the provision that if he has no surviving sons, his estate should go to the sons of Vielmo and Renaldo “mie barbari” (the Alvise line). And if they have no children, his wealth should go to cittadine women’s doweries and cittadine widows with children. ASV, Notarile, Testamenti (notary Angelo Padavini), reg. 1225, c. 124–126r (February 5, 1582). Cicogna, Inscrizioni, 3:437. Cicogna, Inscrizioni, 3:437. Cicogna, Inscrizioni, 3:435, 437–38: “Oggidi la Veneta cittadinesca casa Oddoni è rappresentata dalli probi signori Girolamo, Giuseppe e Sebastiano fratelli Oddoni quondam Antonio Maria.” They copied the inscriptions on the Dazio del vin and Odoni’s tomb. Such petitions normally only present genealogical information from the two previous generations. Neff, “Chancellery Secretaries,” 27n10.

5. 6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

CHAPTER 3 ODONI’S FAÇADE 1.

2. 3.

4.

“Io . . . havendo grandissimo dolor . . . sì per il privato che questa caxa e mia amicissima, sì per il publico ch’è la più bella caxa di Veniexia.” Marino Sanuto, I diarii, ed. Rinaldo Fulin (1879–1903; reprint, Bologna, 1970), 56:753 (August 16, 1532). See Appendix. After building the house he was nicknamed Bartolomeo Malombra della bella casa (“of the beautiful house”). Patricia Fortini Brown, Private Lives in Renaissance Venice (New Haven, 2004), 26. For the original Palazzo Malombra-Cornaro and its demise, see Deborah Howard, Jacopo Sansovino: Architecture and Patronage in Renaissance Venice (New Haven, 1975), 134–36; Brown, Private Lives, 26 and citations therein.

12.

13.

14.

15.

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For the house as “embodiment of the family” (24) in Venice see Brown, Private Lives, 23–26. See Monika Schmitter, “Odoni’s Façade: The House as Portrait in Renaissance Venice,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 66:3 (2007), 293–97. See Hans Belting, “The Coat of Arms and the Portrait: Two Media of the Body,” in his An Anthropology of Images: Picture, Medium, Body, trans. Thomas Dunlap (Princeton, 2011), 62–83. Brown, Private Lives, 195–96, has shown that an unusually large number of well-to-do Venetians did not in fact reside in their family homes, but instead lived in spaces that they rented from others. For the casa da statio (also spelled stazio or stacio): Brown, Private Lives, 56, 191; Juergen Schulz, “Houses of Titian, Aretino, and Sansovino,” in Titian: His World and his Legacy, ed. David Rosand (New York, 1982), 83. For examples see, Howard, Sansovino, 134; Schulz, “Houses of Titian,” 83–84; Brown, Private Lives, 196–97; Blake de Maria, Becoming Venetian: Immigrants and the Arts in Early Modern Venice (New Haven, 2010), 105, 110. Biblioteca Museo Correr, Venice, Codice Cicogna 2459, Alessandro Ziliolo, Le due corone della nobilità viniziana. Corona seconda. He does this explicitly for the Lando family (p. 144), for example, but often comments in general on the houses that a family once owned or now owned or had built. For example, he notes that the Bozza family (who were intermarried with the Odoni) “appreso Santa Maria di Miracoli tiene una nobil casa che fù già degl’Emi, et da loro passata nei Morosini dal ditto et da questi ne i Bozza” (p. 208), indicating the way in which a residence could also earn an esteemed “provenance” from the history of its ownership. David Friedman, “Palaces and the Street in LateMedieval and Renaissance Italy,” in Urban Landscapes: International Perspectives, ed. J. W. R. Whitehand and P. J. Larkman (London, 1992), 70–71, 96. Italics mine. Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, ed. and trans. Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor (Cambridge, MA, 1988), 292 (bk 9, I). Deborah Howard, Venice and the East: The Impact of the Islamic World on Venetian Architecture 1100–1500 (New Haven, 2000), 153–54; Brown, Private Lives, 30. James S. Grubb, “Piero Amadi Acts like his Betters,” in A Renaissance of Conflicts: Visions and Revisions of

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16.

17.

18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24.

25. 26. 27.

28.

NOTES TO PAGES

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Law and Society in Italy and Spain, ed. John A. Marino and Thomas Kuehn (Toronto, 2004), 275. The house is explicitly referred to as a “casa da statio” in the property settlement between Andrea’s two brothers Alvise and Gerolamo. Archivio di Stato, Venice (hereafter ASV), Dieci savi alle decime in Rialto, [Traslati], n. 1239, 30 Luglio 1548, cc. 6v– 7r. Rosella Lauber, “Andrea Odoni,” in Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia. Dalle origini al Cinquecento, ed. Michel Hochmann, Rosella Lauber, and Stefania Mason (Venice, 2008), 300. ASV, Savi sopra le Decime, 1538, b. 100, c. 274 (dated March 30, 1538); Donata Battilotti and Maria Teresa Franco, “Regesti di committenti e dei primi collezionisti di Giorgione,” Antichità Viva 17: 4–5 (1978), 80–81. Monika Anne Schmitter, “The Display of Distinction: Art Collecting and Social Status in Early SixteenthCentury Venice” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1997), 42. For the date, see discussion below. Giorgio Vasari, Le opere di Giorgio Vasari con nuove annotazioni e commenti di Gaetano Milanesi (1906; reprint, Florence, 1998), 5:136. Schmitter, “Odoni’s Façade,” 311n53. Schmitter, “Odoni’s Façade,” 297. Vincenzo Scamozzi, L’idea della architettura universale (1615; reprint, Bologna, 1982), 1:254. Although in this chapter he is writing about siting houses in mainland cities, he references examples in Venice. Scamozzi, L’idea della architettura, 1:254. Translation from Vincenzo Scamozzi, The Idea of a Universal Architecture Book III, Villa and Country Estates (Amsterdam, 2003), 104. Michel Hochmann, Peintres et commanditaires à Venise (1540–1628) (Rome, 1992), 201–2; de Maria, Becoming Venetian, 99–103, and references therein. ASV, Notarile, Atti (notary Vettor Maffei), b. 8098, c. 214v–215v. See Chapter 4. Marin Sanudo, De origine, situ et magistratibus urbis Venetae, ovvero, La Città di Venetia (1493–1530), ed. Angela Caracciolo Aricò (Milan, 1980), 21. In September 1530 Pietro Bembo was given sixty ducats to rent a house in Venice: Susan Nalezyty, Pietro Bembo and the Intellectual Pleasures of a Renaissance Writer and Collector (New Haven, 2017), 26. Pietro Aretino paid sixty-five ducats to rent one floor of the Palazzo Dandolo on the Riva del Carbon in 1554: Schulz, “Houses of Titian,” 86 and n. 43. Antonio Maria Zanetti II, Della pittura veneziana e delle opere pubbliche de’ veneziani maestri (Venice, 1771), 213.

29. Paolo Manuzio, Lettere copiate sugli autografi esistenti nella Biblioteca Ambrosiana (Paris, 1834), 248 (October 18, 1572). 30. Manuzio, Lettere copiate, 258–60 (November 21, 1572). 31. Emmanuele Antonio Cicogna, Delle inscrizioni veneziane (1830; reprint, Bologna, 1969), 3:435. 32. There are, however, places where this modus operandi breaks down, reverting to a simple list of items for which it is not possible to determine the location. 33. For Odoni’s collection he was very careful to devote different pages to different parts of the house: Page 51 recto is devoted to the courtyard, page 51 verso to the studiolo upstairs, page 52 recto to the room upstairs, 52 verso to the portego (salon), and page 53 recto to another room upstairs. Some of Michiel’s notations on other Venetian collections may be similarly organized, although in a less explicit manner. See Rosella Lauber, “‘Et è il nudo che ho io in pittura de l’istesso Zorzi.’ Per Giorgione e Marcantonio Michiel,” Arte Veneta 59 (2002), 105. 34. Wolfgang Liebenwein, Studiolo: Storia e tipologia di uno spazio culturale, ed. Claudia Cieri Via and trans. Alessandro Califano (Modena, 1988), 115–16. 35. Scamozzi, L’idea della architettura, 1:242, who refers to the space as the “sottoportico.” Also see Patricia Fortini Brown, “The Venetian Casa,” in At Home in Renaissance Venice, ed. Marta Ajmar-Wollheim and Flora Dennis (London, 2006), 53. 36. Cicogna, Inscrizioni, 3:435–36. For the use of red marble from Verona for interior architectural finishes, see Francesco Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima et singolare (1663; reprint, Farnborough, 1968), 383. 37. Marcantonio Michiel, Der Anonimo Morelliano (Marcanton Michiel’s Notizia d’opere del disegno), ed. Theodor Frimmel (Vienna, 1896), 86 (hereafter Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano). I have found other examples of paintings displayed “a meza scala” in contemporary inventories: “Un quadro d’un Salvator,” ASV, Cancelleria inferiore, Miscellanea, Miscellanea Notai Diversi (hereafter MND), b. 44, c. 8, p. 9v (Nicolò Padavino, segretario del Consiglio di Dieci, April 3, 1594). “A meza schalla vegnando i[n] mezado un quadro con un xpo. dorado con un tellaro de nogara”: ASV, MND, b. 38, c. 56 (Giovanni Griffalconi, q. Francesco, June 1–4, 1551). In the house of Alessandro Ram, “uno quadro della madonna nell’andar zo della scala” and “uno quadro con doi anzoletti che butta aqua, à pie della scalla.” Georg Gronau, ed., “Beiträge zum Anonymous

NOTES TO PAGES

38. 39.

40.

41. 42.

43.

44. 45.

Morellianus (Marc’Antonio Michiel),” in Italienische Forschungen I V (Berlin, 1911), 82. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 94. For example, Jacopo Foscarini listed in his will (dated 1599) the works of art that he ordered remain in situ: these included a painting above the fireplace and “the two small paintings that are in the door of the room.” Hochmann, Peintres et commanditaires, 361. See Susannah Rutherglen, “Painting at the Threshold: Pictures for Doors in Renaissance Venice,” Art Bulletin 98:4 (2016): 438–65, and “Ornamental Paintings of the Venetian Renaissance” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2012). For example, Philip Rylands, Palma Vecchio (Cambridge, 1992), 21, 184; Mauro Lucco, “Venezia, 1500–1540,” in La pittura nel Veneto, Il Cinquecento, vol. 1, ed. Mauro Lucco (Milan, 1996), 83. Beverly Brown, however, expressed doubt in Renaissance Venice and the North, ed. Bernard Aikema and Beverly Louise Brown (Milan, 1999), 492 (cat. 140). Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” 57–58; Rutherglen, “Painting at the Threshold,” 450–51. Thus the painting was apparently initially a “nude” – or what Michiel had referred to in 1521 as a “nymph,” perhaps inspired by the fountain edge at which she sits – and only subsequently converted to represent Ceres. Claudia Laurenze-Landsberg, “Le autoradiografie al neutrone eseguite dalla Gemäldegalerie di Berlino con particolare riferimento a Sebastiano,” paper delivered at the Convegno Internazionale di Studi su Sebastiano del Piombo in Rome, April 16–17, 2008. X-radiography also reveals that the painting was cut down on both sides and the bottom, so would have been somewhat larger and thus I think even more appropriate for a door. The poor condition and the fact that it was transferred from panel also support the sportello theory. Overall the quality of the painting is not high and it is in extremely poor condition; however, the hand and sprigs of grains are particularly rudimentary. Monika Schmitter, “‘Virtuous Riches’: The Bricolage of Cittadini Identities in Early-Sixteenth-Century Venice,” Renaissance Quarterly 57 (2004), 925–26. The technical studies by Laurenze-Landsberg support the attribution to Sebastiano, which is accepted in Mauro Lucco, cat. 5, in Sebastiano del Piombo 1485–1547, exh. cat. Palazzo di Venezia, Rome, February 8-May 18, 2008, and Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, June 28-September 28, 2008 (Milan, 2008), 100–1. Giuseppe Boerio, Dizionario del dialetto veneziano (1856; reprint, Florence, 1993), 415. I have found the association between mezzadi and stairways in other inventories: One inventory describes a “mezado a meza scala da basso”: ASV,

46. 47. 48.

49. 50. 51. 52.

53.

54.

55. 56.

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MND, b. 35, c. 48, p. 18v (Nicolò Zorzi, q. Bernardo, March 6, 1533). Another inventory lists “Item in uno studiolo app.sso la scala, ch[e] va da basso/”: ASV, MND, b. 42, c. 15 (Andrea Pasqualigo, q. Piero, 9 March 1579). For another example where the mezzado was connected with the stairway, see ASV, MND, b. 37, c. 10 (Zuan Marco Trevisan, q. Vito Antonio, 14 February 1537, m.v.): “mazà in cavo la schala” (mezzado at the end of the stairs). Gronau, “Beiträge,” 67–68. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 84, 86; Gronau, “Beiträge,” 63. Norbert Huse and Wolfgang Wolters, The Art of Renaissance Venice: Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting, 1460–1590, trans. Edmond Jephcott (Chicago, 1990), 18, 26. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 82–86. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 66–67. The notary indicated that in the portego there was “a small gilt figure above the door that goes into the camera d’oro”: Gronau, “Beiträge,” 64. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 56, 59. While sometimes the word studio was used to refer to a piece of furniture within a room, in this case, as in most cases in Venice at this time, it referred to a small room attached to the larger camera. See Chapter 5. For example, in the house of Gerolamo Zon, q. Piero: “In studio dela camera sopra lhorto nela qual soleva habitar el ditto q. M. Hieronymo” is followed by “in ditta camera sora l’horto.” ASV, MND, b. 37, c. 49, p. 1r, 2v (June 20, 1545). In the house of the nobleman Zuan Marco Trevisan, q. Vito Antonio: “la camera sopra la chorte dove el q. Messer Zuanmarco habitava” is followed by “in studio della ditta camera.” ASV, MND, b. 37, c. 10 (February 14, 1537). For the connection between studies and bedrooms more generally see Paula Findlen, “Masculine Prerogatives: Gender, Space, and Knowledge in the Early Modern Museum,” in The Architecture of Science, ed. Peter Galison and Emily Thompton (Cambridge, MA, 1999), 36–38. On connections between studies and gardens, see Dora Thornton, The Scholar in his Study: Ownership and Experience in Renaissance Italy (New Haven, 1997), 30–31; Liebenwein, Studiolo, 112–13. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 64–66. Richard J. Goy, Venetian Vernacular Architecture: Traditional Housing in the Venetian Lagoon (Cambridge, 1989), 159, notes that Venetian palazzetti often had “two or three additional rooms in the roof, one of which may have been the kitchen, and the others probably servants’ rooms.” Gronau, “Beiträge,” 64–66. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 66, 68, 69.

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57. The title “Ser” suggests he was more than a servant. 58. There seems to have been a little room adjacent with other casks, barrels, and a variety of silver eating utensils. The spalliere were kept in the “cameretta nuova.” Gronau, “Beiträge,” 68, 64. Brown, “The Venetian Casa,” 51, notes that servants’ quarters were often located on a floor above the piano nobile, but in the case of the Casa Odoni it is hard to know for sure where they were. 59. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 66. Isabella Palumbo Fossati, “L’interno della casa dell’artigiano e dell’artista nella Venezia del Cinquecento,” Studi veneziani 8 (1984), 116, notes that the “camera dove si fan il pan” was commonly listed in inventories (also see 127–29). Kitchens were typically on the ground floor, according to Brown, “The Venetian Casa,” 51. 60. See especially Charles Burroughs, The Italian Renaissance Palace Façade: Structures of Authority, Surfaces of Senses (Cambridge, 2003); Elisabeth S. Cohen and Thomas V. Cohen, “Open and Shut: The Social Meanings of the Cinquecento Roman House,” Studies in the Decorative Arts 9 (Fall/Winter 2001–2): 61–84. 61. Margaret L. King, Venetian Humanism in an Age of Patrician Dominance (Princeton, 1986), 148. Morosini’s treatise is not specifically about Venice, but as a Venetian nobleman, his concept of an ideal closely resembled his patria; King, Venetian Humanism, 141. According to Venetian mythology, as embroidered by the sixteenth-century patrician Nicolò Zen, the early settlers of the city fixed “by law, that all residences should be equal, alike, of similar size and ornamentation.” Manfredo Tafuri, Venice and the Renaissance, trans. Jessica Levine (Cambridge, MA, 1995), 3. Also see Brown, Private Lives, 35. 62. Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima, 381; Brown, Private Lives, 2. 63. Brown, Private Lives, 7. 64. The development occurred more or less simultaneously throughout Italy. Gunter Schweikart and Charles Avery, “Façade decoration,” in Grove Art Online, https://doi .org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T027298 65. For Giorgione’s painted façades, see Lodovico Foscari, Affreschi esterni a Venezia (Milan, 1936), 31–41. For the Fondaco in particular, see Giorgione a Venezia, exh. cat. Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice, SeptemberNovember 1978 (Milan, 1978), 117–42; Jaynie Anderson, Giorgione: The Painter of “Poetic Brevity” (Paris, 1997), 267–84, 304–6. 66. Foscari, Affreschi esterni; David McTavish, “Roman Subject-Matter and Style in Venetian Façade

67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

72. 73. 74. 75.

76. 77. 78. 79.

80. 81. 82.

Frescoes,” RACAR: Canadian Art Review 12:2 (1985): 188–96; Francesco Valcanover et al., Pittura murale esterna nel Veneto: Venezia e provincia ([Venice], 1991); Wolfgang Wolters, Architettura e ornamento: La decorazione nel Rinascimento veneziano, trans. Benedetta Heinemann Campana (Sommacampagna, Verona, 2007), 79–105; Monika Schmitter, “Falling Through the Cracks: The Fate of Painted Palace Façades in SixteenthCentury Italy,” in The Built Surface, vol. 1, Architecture and the Pictorial Arts from Antiquity to the Enlightenment, ed. Christy Anderson (Aldershot, 2002), 130–61; Brown, Private Lives, 43–46. McTavish, “Roman Subject-Matter,” 188. Anton Maria Zanetti II, Varie pitture a fresco de’ principali maestri veneziani (Venice, 1760). See Valcanover, Pittura murale, 35–36 (cat. 3). McTavish, “Roman Subject-Matter,” 190–91; De Maria, Becoming Venetian, 101–3. Based on documentary evidence, de Maria, Becoming Venetian, 99, concludes that the Talenti frescoes were painted between 1528 and 1537; based on the style of the preparatory drawings, Charles E. Cohen has dated them ca. 1535 ( The Art of Giovanni Antonio da Pordenone: Between Dialect and Language [Cambridge, 1996], 1: 392–99, 2:712–14). Tafuri, Venice and the Renaissance, 7. Tafuri, Venice and the Renaissance, 1–13. Schmitter, “Falling Through the Cracks,” 142–45, 154. Wolters, Architettura e ornamento, 83–86; Monika Schmitter, “Delight and Dignity: Painted Façades and the ‘wishes of the owner of the house’” (forthcoming). See Schmitter, “Falling Through the Cracks,” 132, 139–45. Sebastiano Serlio states this explicitly: Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture. Volume 1, ed. and trans. Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks (New Haven, 1996), 314. Schmitter, “Falling Through the Cracks,” 133. “[O]sservarassi quel commundetto: Lodalo scarpello, & tienti al pennello, che costa manco, & par più bello.” Sebastiano Serlio, Tutte l’opere d’architettura, et prospetiva (1619; reprint, Farnborough, 1964), book 7: 150. Translation from Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture. Volume 2, ed. and trans. Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks (New Haven, 2001), 304. Schmitter, “Falling Through the Cracks,” 144–145. Translation and original in Mark W. Roskill, Dolce’s Aretino and Venetian Art Theory of the Cinquecento (Toronto, 2000), 115. For example, Giovanni Battista Armenini, On the True Precepts of the Art of Painting, ed. and trans.

NOTES TO PAGES

83.

84.

85. 86. 87. 88.

89. 90.

91.

92.

Edward J. Olszewski (n.p., 1977), 272–73, reports that they were “much praised” and “the cause of great wonder.” John Shearman, The Early Italian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen (Cambridge, 1983), 117. For a recent overview of Girolamo’s career see Mauro Lucco, “‘Di mano del mio Travisio, pittore certo valente e celebre’,” in Sabba da Castiglione 1480–1554. Dalle corti rinascimentali alla Commenda di Faenza, ed. Anna Rosa Gentilini (Florence, 2004), 357–78. Vincenzo Mancini, “Un insospettato collaboratore di Giulio Romano a Palazzo del Tè: Girolamo da Treviso,” Paragone 38 (November 1987): 3–21; Piero Boccardo, “L’episodio Genovese del Pordenone all’interno di una nuova proposta cronologica per la decorazione di Palazzo Doria,” in Il Pordenone. Atti del convegno internazionale di studio, ed. Caterina Furlan (Pordenone, 1985), 165–69. Schmitter, “Odoni’s Façade,” 312n58, and citations therein. Vasari, Le opere, 5:136. Mancini, “Uno insospettato,” 20n46, notes the preponderance of sources referring to Girolamo’s activity in this field. William Rearick, “Pordenone ‘Romanista’,” in Furlan, Il Pordenone, 130. Paolo Casadio, “Un affresco di Girolamo da Treviso il Giovane a Faenza,” in Furlan, Il Pordenone, 209–215; Anna Colombi Ferretti, Girolamo da Treviso a Faenza: Il restauro dell’aside della Commenda (Faenza, 2007). The fresco was commissioned by the collector Sabba da Castiglione. Lucco, “‘Di mano del mio Travisio’,” 373. Odoni was also a patron of the Central Italian painter and architect, Sebastiano Serlio; see discussion in Chapter 5. See Chapter 4 for his imitation of Roman collecting practices. The fresco is also mentioned in Zanetti, Della pittura veneziana, 213; Marcantonio Michiel, Notizia d’opere di disegno, ed. Jacopo Morelli (Bassano, 1800), 192; and Cicogna, Inscrizioni, 3:436. Marco Boschini, Le ricche minere della pittura veneziana (Venice, 1674), Sestier di Dorsoduro, 52–53. According to Boschini, the “chorus of gods” was above, with the statues in chiaroscuro and figures of Apollo and Diana in color below (although see n101 on the identification of this figure as Minerva by Vasari and Ridolfi). Vasari also says these figures are “in a large scene in the middle of this façade.” Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, trans. Gaston du C. Vere and ed. David Ekserdjian (New York, 1996), 1:887; Vasari, Opere, 5:136.

69–76

263

93. Carlo Ridolfi, Le maraviglie dell’arte (Padua, 1835), 1: 305; Vasari, Opere, 5:136. 94. Vasari, Lives, 1:887; Vasari, Opere, 5:136. 95. Ridolfi, Maraviglie, 1:305. 96. Vasari, Lives, 1:887; Vasari, Opere, 5:136. 97. Vasari, Lives, 1:887, notes that Girolamo executed Odoni’s façade “in colour, and not in chiaroscuro, because the Venetians like colour better than anything else.” However, Ridolfi, Maraviglie, 1:305–6, noted that “there are figures in chiaroscuro above the windows,” and Boschini, Le ricche minere, Sestier di Dorsoduro, 52–53, identified “various statues in chiaroscuro” below in contrast with Apollo and Diana “in color.” 98. Ridolfi mentions a pergolato, which was described in detail by Cicogna, Inscrizioni, 3:436. 99. For a discussion of balconies in Venice, see Huse and Wolters, Art of Renaissance Venice, 25–26; Wolters, Architettura e ornamento, 137–39; Serlio, Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture. Volume 1, 414. 100. Schmitter, “Odoni’s Façade,” 302. 101. Boschini identifies the female figure as Diana, but Vasari and Ridolfi concur on Minerva; Ridolfi describes her as holding a “lance and shield” – attributes more appropriate to Minerva than Diana. 102. Vasari, Lives, 1:887; Vasari, Opere, 5:136. 103. Ridofi, Maraviglie, 1:306. Cicogna, Inscrizioni, 3:436, noted remnants of inscriptions in fresco on the side of the house as well. For inscriptions on façades see Georgia Clarke, Roman House – Renaissance Palace: Inventing Antiquity in Fifteenth-Century Italy (Cambridge, 2002), 227–32, although she does not mentioned painted inscriptions, which were probably quite common. 104. Ridolfi, Maraviglie, 1:305. 105. See Anthony Colantuono, Titian, Colonna and the Renaissance Science of Procreation (Farnham, 2010), 67–69. 106. Alison Luchs, Tullio Lombardo and Ideal Portrait Sculpture in Renaissance Venice, 1490–1530 (Cambridge, 1995), 158n10, was the first to connect the proverb to Odoni’s façade. 107. Jaynie Anderson in Tiziano. Amor Sacro e Amor Profano, exh. cat. Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, March 22May 22, 1995 (Milan, 1995), 435–36 (cat. 149). 108. As described by Ridolfi, Maraviglie, 1:305. 109. Alison Luchs, The Mermaids of Venice: Fantastic Sea Creatures in Venetian Renaissance Art (Turnhout, 2010), 7–35. 110. Luchs, Mermaids of Venice, 115. 111. Luchs, Mermaids of Venice, 181. 112. Wolters, Architettura e ornamento, 137–39. 113. On urinating and nursing figures as symbols of fertility, see Waldemar Deonna, “Fontaines

264

114. 115. 116.

117. 118. 119.

120. 121.

122. 123. 124. 125.

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76–82

anthropomorphes. La femme aux seins jaillissants et l’enfant ‘mingens’,” Genava 6 (October 1958), 239–96. Also see Beverly Louise Brown, “Picturing the Perfect Marriage: The Equilibrium of Sense and Sensibility in Titian’s ‘Sacred and Profane Love’,” in Art and Love in Renaissance Italy, ed. Andrea Bayer, exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, November 11, 2008-February 16, 2009, and Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, March 15-June 14, 2009 (New York, 2008), 242; Norberto Massi, “Lorenzo Lotto’s New York Venus,” Watching Art: Writing in Honor of James Beck (Todi, 2006), 169; and Luchs, Mermaids of Venice, 152n88, for further references. Luchs, Mermaids of Venice, 28, 53, 115, 166. Luchs, Mermaids of Venice, fig. 224, 227, 229, and esp. 233, where the mermaid breastfeeds. Perhaps the balcony was ordered or installed at the same time as the wellhead in the courtyard, which was carved with foliate festoons between masks and bore the date 1533. Cicogna, Inscrizioni, 3:436. Luchs, Mermaids of Venice, 28, 98. Luchs, Mermaids of Venice, 32, 78, 166–67. See Luchs, Mermaid of Venice, 78, 204n41, who notes that the more erudite meanings of sirens are alluded to in the poems. Also see Raymond Waddington, Titian’s Aretino: A Contextual Study of all the Portraits (Florence, 2018), 10–12. Ridolfi, Maraviglie, 1:305. Vasari, Opere, 5:136. Francesco Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima, 387, used similar terminology when he described the house of the patrician art collector Gabriele Vendramin as a “ridotto de i virtuosi della Città.” Paul Barolsky, Infinite Jest: Wit and Humor in Italian Renaissance Art (Columbia, 1978), 164. See Appendix. See Appendix. Alexander Cowan, “Seeing is Believing: Urban Gossip and the Balcony in Early Modern Venice,” Gender and History 23:3 (2011), 734.

CHAPTER 4 CREATING ROME IN VENICE: ODONI’S ANTIGAIA 1. 2. 3.

See Appendix. Patricia Fortini Brown, Private Lives in Renaissance Venice (New Haven, 2004), 56. Georg Gronau, ed., “Beiträge zum Anonymus Morellianus (Marc’ Antonio Michiel),” in Italienische Forschungen IV (Berlin, 1911), 70. Also sometimes called an androne or soto portego. Avoiding

4. 5.

6.

7. 8. 9.

10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

Venetian terminology, Scamozzi used the word sottosala, and elsewhere sottoportico. Vincenzo Scamozzi, L’idea della architettura universale (1615; reprint, Bologna, 1982), 1:244; See Chapter 3, n35. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 70. Scamozzi, L’idea della architettura, 1:244, writes that the house he designed would have a garden in back. Patricia Fortini Brown, “The Venetian Casa,” in At Home in Renaissance Italy, ed. Marta Ajmar-Wollheim and Flora Dennis (London, 2006), 53; Isabella Palumbo Fossati, “La casa veneziana,” in Da Bellini a Veronese: Temi di arte veneta, ed. Gennaro Toscano and Francesco Valcanover (Venice, 2004), 450. A remo is an oar, but within an architectural context the term probably refers to a stringcourse or cornice. Claudio Franzoni, “‘Rimembranze d’infinite cose.’ Le collezioni rinascimentali di antichità,” in Memoria dell’antico nell’arte italiana, vol. 1, L’uso dei classici, ed. Salvatore Settis (Turin, 1984), 333. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 70. Emmanuele Cicogna, Delle inscrizioni veneziane (1830; reprint, Bologna, 1969), 3:435. Marcantonio Michiel, Der Anonimo Morelliano (Marcanton Michiel’s Notizia d’opere del disegno), ed. Theodor Frimmel (Vienna, 1896), 82; hereafter Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano. Rosella Lauber, “Memoria, visione e attesa. Tempi e spazi del collezionismo artistico nel primo Rinascimento veneziano,” in Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia. Dalle origini al Cinquecento, ed. Michel Hochmann, Rosella Lauber, and Stefania Mason (Venice, 2008), 48, reads the last passage as “El busto marmoreo iacente in terra senza testa et senza mani per al naturale, è opera anticha.” This probably makes more sense than Frimmel’s reading of “incontro in terra.” Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 82. For attempts to identity this sculpture, see n129. Although Michiel refers to them as teste (heads), the word was also used for busts. See Alison Luchs, Tullio Lombardo and Ideal Portrait Sculpture in Renaissance Venice, 1490–1530 (Cambridge, 1995), 28n180. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 82. Quoted in Brown, “The Venetian Casa,” 54. Cicogna, Inscrizioni, 3: 436. The wellhead is also mentioned in the inventory: Gronau, “Beiträge,” 70. As related in Ovid’s Metamorphoses 4, 275ff. It is also eight-sided like Odoni’s wellhead and has the Corner coat of arms. Brown, Private Lives, 56–59. For example, Brown, Private Lives, 34, 59; Peter Humfrey et al., The Age of Titian: Venetian Renaissance Art from Scottish Collections, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, August 5-December 5, 2004 (Edinburgh, 2004), 346 (cat. 171). Elisabeth Crouzet-

NOTES TO PAGES

18.

19. 20.

21. 22. 23.

24.

25.

26. 27.

28.

29.

Pavin, Venice Triumphant: The Horizons of a Myth, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Baltimore, 2002), 14–16, discusses the expense and importance of family wells. Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, trans. Gaston du C. Vere and ed. David Ekserdjian (New York, 1996), 1:887; Giorgio Vasari, Le opere di Giorgio Vasari con nuove annotazioni e commenti di Gaetano Milanesi (1906; reprint, Florence, 1998), 5:135. Carlo Ridolfi, Le maraviglie dell’arte (Padua, 1835), 1: 306. Marco Boschini, Le ricche minere della pittura veneziana (Venice, 1674), Sestier di Dorsoduro, 53. For fresco painting on the interior of Venetian palaces, almost none of which survives, see Wolfgang Wolters, Architettura e ornamento: La decorazione nel Rinascimento veneziano, trans. Benedetta Heinemann Campana (Sommacampagna, Verona, 2007), 143–64. Charles Dempsey, Inventing the Renaissance Putto (Chapel Hill, NC, 2001), 49. See Brenda Preyer, “Planning for Visitors at Florentine Palaces,” Renaissance Studies 12:3 (1998), 359–60, 364, 371. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 70. While only the table is explicitly said to be under the loggia, the fact that the other furniture follows right after it suggests that the seats were often used in the space together with the table. Capitelli in Venetian are little altars or tabernacles: Giuseppe Boerio, Dizionario del dialetto veneziano (1856; reprint, Florence, 1993), 134. In this context, “niches” seems the best translation. For balle used to offset the display of sculpture, see Dora Thornton, The Scholar in His Study: Ownership and Experience in Renaissance Italy (New Haven, 1997), 103. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 70. For another example of arms on display in a garden: “in horto arme sie d. piera d. malmoro.” Archivio di Stato, Venice (hereafter ASV), Cancelleria inferiore, Miscellanea, Miscellanea Notai Diversi (hereafter MND), b. 37, c. 49, 11v – Girolamo Zon q. Pietro (June 20, 1545). Evelyn Welch, “Public Magnificence and Private Display: Giovanni Pontano’s De splendore (1498) and the Domestic Arts,” Journal of Design History 15 (2002), 226. Francesco Sansovino, Venezia citta nobilissima (1663; reprint, Farnborough, 1968), 369. For gardens in Venice see Brown, Private Lives, 48–50; Paula Findlen, “The Market and the World: Science, Culture, and Collecting in the Venetian Republic,” in Il collezionismo a Venezia e nel Veneto ai tempi della

30. 31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

82–85

265

Serenissima, ed. Bernard Aikema, Rosella Lauber, and Max Seidel (Venice, 2005), 58–61. Boerio, Dizionario del dialetto veneziano, 37. One can find similar descriptions of space in contemporary sources. In his inventory of 1599, Giacomo Foscarini referred to a “camera sopra la corte”: Michel Hochmann, Peintres et commanditaires à Venise (1540–1628) (Rome, 1992), 361. An inventory of 1581 lists objects “nella camera del solaro da basso sopra la corte”: Isabella Palumbo Fossati, “L’interno della casa dell’artigiano e dell’artista nella Venezia del Cinquecento,” Studi veneziani 8 (1984), 124n31. Also ASV, MND, b. 42, c. 15 (Andrea Pasqualigo, q. Piero, March 9, 1579): “In una camera che guarda sopra la corticella, che và nell’ horto.” See Chapter 6, n17. The term “anticaglia” was applied to collectible objects of various sorts, sometimes even paintings. It was one of the words used in the Renaissance to suggest the idea of the “collection,” before the term “collection” came into use. See Alexander Nagel, Some Discoveries of 1492: Eastern Antiquities and Renaissance Europe (Groningen, 2013), 5–14; Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood, “What Counted as an ‘Antiquity’ in the Renaissance?” in Renaissance Medievalisms, ed. Konrad Eisenbichler (Toronto, 2009), 53–74. Giada Damen, “Shopping for Cose Antiche in Late Sixteenth-Century Venice,” in Reflections on Renaissance Venice: A Celebration of Patricia Fortini Brown, ed. Blake de Maria and Mary E. Frank (Milan, 2013), 134–135; Luba Freedman, “Jacopo da Strada: A Portrait of an ‘Antiquario’,” Renaissance Studies 13:1 (1999), esp. 17–19. Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima, 372. The expression studio d’anticaglie was also used a few years earlier in the inventory of Girolamo Superchi (1577): Hochmann, Lauber, and Mason, Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia, 359. For another example, see n63. Michiel’s description recalls Petrarch’s descriptions of surviving written texts from antiquity as “fragmentary,” “mangled,” “mutilated,” and “dismembered.” See Paula Findlen, “Possessing the Past: The Material World of the Italian Renaissance,” American Historical Review 103:1 (1998), 107. Michel Hochmann, “Le collezioni veneziane nel Rinascimento: storia e storiografia,” in Hochmann, Lauber, and Mason, Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia, 8–15; Marcella de Paoli, “Opera fatta diligentissimamente”: Restauri di sculture classiche a Venezia tra Quattro e Cinquecento (Rome, 2004), 61–63; Giada Damen, “The Trade in Antiquities Between Italy and the Eastern Mediteranean (ca. 1400–1600),” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2012),

266

37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42.

43.

44. 45. 46. 47.

48. 49.

50. 51.

NOTES TO PAGES

85–89

esp. 1:221–86, 2:287–351; Damen, “Shopping for Cose Antiche,” 133–41. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 96. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 110. Irene Favaretto, Arte antica e cultura antiquaria nelle collezioni venete al tempo della Serenissima (Rome, 1990), 65–66. See Chapter 2, n25. For other jeweler/dealers, see Lauber, “Memoria, visione e attesa,” 47–48; Hochmann, “Le collezioni veneziane,” 11–12; Damen, “The Trade in Antiquities,” 2:294–321. See Chapter 6. See Monika Schmitter, “The Display of Distinction: Art Collecting and Social Status in Early SixteenthCentury Venice” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1997), 40–41; Rosella Lauber, “‘Opera Perfettissima.’ Marcantonio Michiel e La notizia d’opere di disegno,” in Aikema, Lauber, and Seidel, Il collezionismo a Venezia, 95. Marino Sanuto, I diarii, ed. Rinaldo Fulin (1879–1903; reprint, Bologna, 1970), 28: 489; also see 2:1081; 5:793, 820–21; 6:65; 23:540; 26:130; 27:620; 36:553, 555. See Appendix. Favaretto, Arte antica, 47–49, 65–66, 80. Kathleen Wren Christian, Empire without End: Antiquities Collections in Renaissance Rome, c. 1350–1527 (New Haven, 2010), 2, 6. For example, the exhibition catalog, Venezia! Kunst aus venezianischen Palästen. Sammlungsgeschichte Venedigs vom 13. bis 19. Jahrhundert, exh. cat. Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, September 27, 2002-January 12, 2003 (Bonn, 2002); Aikema, Lauber, and Seidel, Il collezionismo a Venezia e nel Veneto ai tempi della Serenissima; and the volumes of Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia dedicated to the sixteenth century (Venice, 2008), the seventeenth century (2007), and the eighteenth century (2009). Although see the comments by Hochmann, “Le collezioni veneziane, ” 19–21. Something I began investigating in Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” and “‘Virtuous Riches’: The Bricolage of Cittadini Identities in Early-Sixteenth-Century Venice,” Renaissance Quarterly 57 (2004): 908–69. Hochmann, “Le collezioni veneziane,” 20. Also see Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” 35–37. Claudio Franzoni, “Girolamo Donato, collezionismo e instavratio dell’antico,” in Venezia e l’archeologia. Un importante capitolo nella storia del gusto dell’antico nella cultura artistica veneziana (Rome, 1990), 27–31; Luchs, Tullio Lombardo, 26; Patricia Fortini Brown, Venice and Antiquity: The Venetian Sense of the Past (New Haven, 1996), 242–46;

52. 53. 54. 55.

56. 57. 58.

59.

60. 61. 62.

63.

64.

Rosella Lauber, “Girolamo Donà (Donati, Donato),” in Hochmann, Lauber, and Mason, Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia, 272–74. Donata Battilotti and Maria Teresa Franco, “Regesti di committenti e dei primi collezionisti di Giorgione,” Antichità viva 17: 4–5 (1978), 83. Luchs, Tullio Lombardo, 25. Michiel also listed antique earthenware vases and medals, but these are separate from the sculpture. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 106. For the date of the visit as 1530, see Rosella Lauber, “Giovanni Ram,” in Hochmann, Lauber, and Mason, Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia, 306 (it is difficult to read in the original if the date is 1530 or 1531). Gronau, “Beiträge,” 77. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 110. No inventory has been found of Michiel Contarini’s collection. For other primary documents and literature relating to this collection, see Battilotti and Franco, “Regesti,” 83–86, and Lauber, “Michele Contarini,” in Hochmann, Lauber, and Mason, Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia, 262. According to Rosella Lauber, the date should be read 1530 February (m.v)=February 1531: “Antonio Foscarini,” in Hochmann, Lauber, and Mason, Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia, 282. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 90–92. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 92. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 72. Vendramin ordered an inventory taken “de tute et qualunque sorte cose, existente in esso chamarin, como fora de esso chamerin, et precipue le picture, per eser state poste in piui lochi dela caxa per adornamento” (73). The implication is that the paintings might be hung as “ornament” about the house, but that the sculpture, coins, drawings, and naturalia were concentrated in the “chamerin.” The inventory is published in an appendix to Hochmann, Lauber, and Mason, Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia, 371–75. The term “Camarin dale Antigaglie” was used in a document dated 1569 as well, see Lauber, “Memoria, visione e attesa,” 66. For Vendramin’s collection of antiquities, including some possible identifications of particular works, see Rosella Lauber, “Per un ritratto di Gabriele Vendramin. Nuovi contributi,” in Figure di collezionisti a Venezia tra Cinque e Seicento, ed. Linda Borean and Stefania Mason (Udine, 2002), 55–57. Brown, Private Lives, 227–29; Hochmann, “Le collezioni veneziane,” 19, suggests Gabriele ordered special furniture to house the collection, creating “una scenografia spettacolore.” Also see Catherine Whistler, “Uncovering Beauty: Titian’s Triumph of Love in the Vendramin Collection,”

NOTES TO PAGES

65. 66.

67. 68.

69. 70. 71.

72. 73. 74.

75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82.

Renaissance Studies 26:2 (2011), 227–30. The inventory of 1567–68 is published in Aldo Ravà, “Il ‘camerino delle antigaglie’ di Gabriele Vendramin,” Nuovo Archivo Veneto 39 (1920), 161–79. Bertrand Jestaz, “Les antiquités dans les inventaires vénitiens du XVIe siecle,” in Venezia e l’archeologia. 35–40. Much of this new research is published in Hochmann, Lauber, and Mason, Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia. In his introductory essay to the volume, Hochmann, “Le collezioni venetiane,” 4, 8–9 still cites Jestaz’s conclusions as valid. ASV, MND, b. 35, c. 48, 14r. (Nicolò Zorzi, q. Bernardo, March 27, 1534); Jestaz, “Les antiquités,” 37. Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima, 382, speaks of “la terrazza sopra il tetto,” also called an “altane.” Jestaz, “Les antiquités,” 37, found another fragment of an inventory without a date, but perhaps from 1562, which lists “alquanti pezi de marmorii de sculpture antigue et de creda cota in terazo in n.o 170.” ASV, Giudici del proprio, Mobili, b. 11, reg. 23, p. 173r (The writing is not very clear; I was less certain about the reading of the word “terazo.”) Palumbo Fossati, “L’interno della casa dell’artigiano,” 115. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 100–4. Michel Hochmann, “La famiglia Grimani,” in Hochmann, Lauber, and Mason, Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia, 208; Christian, Empire without End, 322–26. Detailed in Christian, Empire without End, 103–19. Christian, Empire without End, 323. Marilyn Perry, “Cardinal Domenico Grimani’s Legacy of Ancient Art to Venice,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 41 (1978): 215–44; Hochmann, “La famiglia Grimani,” 212, 214. Italics mine. Perry, “Cardinal Domenico Grimani’s Legacy,” 220; Sanuto, Diarii, 34:387 (from a letter dated August 27, 1523). Perry, “Cardinal Domenico Grimani’s Legacy,” 220–21. Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima, 372. Quoted and translated in Perry, “Cardinal Domenico Grimani’s Legacy,” 221. Perry, “Cardinal Domenico Grimani’s Legacy,” 225. On these drawings and the collections they represent, see especially Christian, Empire without End, 157–159, 172–175, 255, 317–20, 326–30. The term was used by Rodolfo Lanciani, cited in Christian, Empire without End, 221n4. Christian, Empire without End, 9.

89–96

267

83. Christian, Empire without End, esp. 9–10, 151–57, 183, 204–206. 84. Christian, Empire without End, 163; Paula Findlen, “The Museum: Its Classical Etymology and Renaissance Genealogy,” Journal of the History of Collections 1 (1989): 59–78. 85. See Appendix. 86. Christian, Empire without End, 112, 177, 211. 87. Lotto was in Rome in 1509 (see Chapter 7); For Michiel’s sojourn 1518–21, see Jennifer Fletcher, “Marcantonio Michiel: His Friends and Collection,” Burlington Magazine 123 (August 1981), 455. 88. The earliest entries on collections in Venice were made the year he returned from Rome. 89. Brown, Venice and Antiquity, 80–81; Favaretto, Arte antica, 47–48. 90. For the importance of Roman models for Venetian collections in general, see Favaretto, Arte antica, 54–55. 91. A good example of this is the collection of the Colonna family in Rome, discussed in Christian, Empire without End, 48–61. 92. Leonard Barkan, Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture (New Haven, 1999), 17–20. 93. Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. The Strife of Love in a Dream, trans. Joscelyn Godwin (New York, 1999), 22–23. 94. Colonna, Hypnerotomachia, 242. 95. Colonna, Hypnerotomachia, 260. 96. Christian, Empire without End, 210. 97. Barkan, Unearthing the Past, 55. 98. Translated in Christian, Empire without End, 195. Sabba was in Rhodes from 1505 to 1508. Similarly Pietro Corsi expresses pity for the “fright” ancient statues experienced during the Sack of Rome in 1527, construing them as living beings who in fear of the soldiers turned to stone and became mute: Christian, Empire without End, 216. 99. Barkan, Unearthing the Past, 61. 100. On the relation between antiquities collections and funerary gardens and tombs, see Christian, Empire without End, 146–48. 101. Giorgio Padoan, “Ruzante e le ‘merdolagie’ di Domenico Grimani,” in his Momenti del Rinascimento veneto (Padua, 1978), 227–28. 102. Christian, Empire without End, 179, 362–63. 103. For the statue and its restorations, see Debra Pincus, “Tullio Lombardo as a Restorer of Antiquities: An Aspect of Fifteenth Century Venetian Antiquarianism,” Arte veneta 33 (1979): 29–42; de Paoli, “Opera fatta”, esp. 96–98, 154–57, 181, 195, 197, 224, 276; Anne Markham Schulz, “Simon

268

104.

105. 106. 107. 108. 109.

110. 111.

112. 113. 114.

115. 116. 117.

NOTES TO PAGES

96–101

Bianco, the Grimani Collection of Antiquities and Other Unexpected Findings,” Jahrbuch des Kunsthistorischen Museums Wien 17/18 (2015–16): 27–43. Alison Luchs, “The London Woman in Anguish, attributed to Cristoforo Solari: Erotic Pathos in a Renaissance Bust,” Artibus et Historiae 24:47 (2003), 166; Alessandra Sarchi, “Cultura e pratica antiquaria nel percorso di Antonio Lombardo. Una proposta per il cosiddetto Ermafrodito Grimani,” in Tullio Lombardo: Scultore e architetto nella Venezia del Rinascimento, ed. Matteo Ceriana (Verona, 2007), 345–60. Barkan, Unearthing the Past, esp. 118–207. On Colonna’s language, see Godwin, “Introduction,” in Colonna, Hypnerotomachia, ix–x. See Christian, Empire without End, 135, 140, 142–44, 182–87, 218. Christian, Empire without End, 6. Vasari, Lives of the Painters, 1:887; Vasari, Le Opere, 5:136. Christian, Empire without End, 9, 53–6, discusses how the statue of the Graces, the centerpiece of Cardinal Prospero Colonna’s collection, was construed as an emblem of the patron’s generosity and liberality by various visitors to his house. For examples of sociable encounters in Venetian collections, see Brown, Private Lives, 221–23. See Monika Schmitter, “Odoni’s Façade: The House as Portrait in Renaissance Venice,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 66:3 (2007), 309n12. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 82. Christian, Empire without End, 199. Annalisa Bristot, ed., Palazzo Grimani a Santa Maria Formosa. Storia, arte, restauri (Verona, 2008). The Tribuna was probably constructed in 1568: de Paoli, “Opera fatta”, 44. The room was referred to in contemporary documents as Giovanni Grimani’s “studio”: letter from Nicolò Stoppio to Johann Jakob Fugger, November 26, 1568, published in Otto Hartig, “Die Kunsttättigkeit in München unter Wilhelm IV. und Albrecht V. 1520–1579. Neue Forschungen,” Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst 10 (1933), 220. Brown, Private Lives, 233–5. Sebastiano Serlio, Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture. Volume 1, ed. and trans. Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks (New Haven, 1996), 99. “L’illustrissimo Patriarca Grimani sommamente dilettandosi delle cose antichi . . . ha fabbricata una stanza a questo solo effetto di collocarle con mirabile ordine e disposizione, molto nobile e ricca e per esser incrostata di marmi con nicchj ben lavorati e accomodati con colonelle di altri finissimi marmi mischi e di gran prezzo.” The quote comes

118.

119.

120.

121.

122. 123.

124. 125.

from BMV, Mss. Riservati 73, cc. 25r–26r, which is an excerpt, dated 1779, taken from Germano’s Istorie del Friuli in the Biblioteca Civica di Padova, Ms. 589 (Luigi Maria Minciotti, Catalogo dei codici manoscritti di Sant’Antonio di Padova (Padua, 1842), 148). See de Paoli, “Opera fatta”, 42; Marcella de Paoli, “Intorno a Palazzo Grimani e alle sue raccolte di antichità: le sculture del cortile, i vasi e i bronzi del primo piano,” Atti dell’IstitutoVeneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti: Classe di scienze morali, lettere ed arti 165 (2006–7), 429n21 and 434. Sansovino wrote “one sees there in diverse rooms that open one into the other, entire and fragmented figures, torsos, and heads in unequaled abundance, and all select and praiseworthy.” Translation from Brown, Private Lives, 234. de Paoli, “Intorno a Palazzo Grimani,” 419–59. Also see Irene Favaretto, “Un ‘cortile delle statue’ veneziano. Per un percorso della memoria nel palazzo dei Grimani di Santa Maria Formosa,” in Studi di archeologia in onore di Gustavo Traversari, ed. Manuela Fano Santi (Rome, 2004), 1:341–44. Brown, Private Lives, 229–30, who notes that Giovanni Grimani created a courtyard and “installed classical statuary, as Andrea Odoni had done on a more modest scale several decades earlier.” Also see Annalisa Bristot and Mario Piana, “Il Palazzo dei Grimani a Santa Maria Formosa,” in Lo Statuario Pubblico della Serenissima: Due secoli di collezionismo di antichità 1596–1797, ed. Irene Favaretto and Giovanna Luisa Ravagnan, exh. cat. Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice, September 6-November 2, 1997 (Cittadella, Padova, 1997), 45–52; Mario Piana, “La storia costruttiva del palazzo,” in Bristot, Palazzo Grimani a Santa Maria Formosa, 31–59. The donation was made in 1587, his testament written in 1592. Giovanni’s actions were spurred by the fact that the Sala delle Teste was going to be dismantled. De Paoli, “Intorno a Palazzo Grimani,” 420–21; Perry, “Cardinal Domenico Grimani’s Legacy,” 226–31. Also see Marilyn Perry, “The Statuario Publico of the Venetian Republic,” Saggi e memorie di storia dell’arte 8 (1972): 74–105. Designed by Vincenzo Scamozzi with much input from Giovanni Grimani himself. Brown, Private Lives, 245. Rem Koolhaas, “The Socle and the Vitrine,” in Serial/ Portable Classic: The Greek Canon and its Mutations, ed. Salvatore Settis, exh. cat. Fondazione Prada, Milan, May 9-August 24, 2015, and Venice, May 9September 13, 2015 (Milan, 2015), 200. Koolhaas, “The Socle,” 201–2. Lina Borean, “Girolamo Superchi,” and Paola Benussi, “Inventario di Girolamo Superchi – 2

NOTES TO PAGES

126. 127. 128. 129.

130.

131.

132. 133.

134. 135. 136. 137.

marzo 1577,” in Hochmann, Lauber, and Mason, Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia, 312–15, 352–65. On Superchi, also see Sarah Gwyneth Ross, Everyday Renaissances: The Quest for Cultural Legitimacy in Venice (Cambridge, 2016), 64–65, 108–109. I think the meaning here is “broken antiques.” Boerio, Dizionario del dialetto veneziano, 55: “bagagio” means in a joking manner, “rottura” – breakage or break. The inventory is published in Hochmann, Lauber, and Mason, Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia, 352–65. Luchs, Tullio Lombardo, 9–10. See n10. Given the generic quality of Michiel’s description, it is difficult to identify the work definitively. For some suggestions, see Debra Pincus, “An Antique Fragment as Workshop Model; Classicism in the Andrea Vendramin Tomb,” Burlington Magazine 123 (June 1981): 342–47; Luchs, Tullio Lombardo, 131–32n156; Marcella de Paoli, in Il Camerino di alabastro. Antonio Lombardo e la scultura all’antica, ed. Matteo Ceriana, exh. cat. Castello di Ferrara, Ferrara, March 14-June 13, 2004 (Milan, 2004), 188–89 (cat. 36). Michiel visited the collection in 1532, but if he was using the Venetian dating system this would also include the months of January and February 1533. In his testament, dated November 14, 1532 (he was buried three days later), Tullio asked that all his goods be sold at auction, and this may indeed have been how the sculpture came into Odoni’s hands. Anna Pizzati and Matteo Ceriana, ed., Tullio Lombardo: Documenti e testimonianze (Verona, 2008), 212–13 (document 274). Norbert Huse and Wolfgang Wolters, The Art of Renaissance Venice: Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting, 1460–1590, trans. Edmond Jephcott (Chicago, 1990), 129, 132. Luchs, Tullio Lombardo, 17–20, seeks to explain this absence. Alison Luchs, “A Sculpture of Longing,” 5, and Sarah Blake McHam and Alison Luchs, “Venetian Expressive Busts. Portraiture, Narrative, or Fantasy?” in Tullio Lombardo and Venetian High Renaissance Sculpture, ed. Alison Luchs, exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, July 4October 31, 2009 (New Haven, 2009), 61. Luchs, “A Sculpture of Longing,” 7, and citations therein. Luchs, Tullio Lombardo, 28. See n12 above. On Antonio Minello see Debora Tosato, “Minelli, Antonio,” Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 74 (2010): www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/antoniominelli_res-637ff01f-dce3-11df-9ef0-d5ce35 06d72e_(Dizionario-Biografico)/; Luchs, Tullio

138.

139. 140. 141. 142. 143.

144.

102–106

269

Lombardo, 28; Sarah Blake McHam, The Chapel of St. Anthony at the Santo and the Development of Venetian Renaissance Sculpture (Cambridge, 1994), 32–33, 80, 126–27; Anne Markham Schulz, “Four New Works by Antonio Minello,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 31 (1987): 291–325; Anne Markham Schulz, Giambattista and Lorenzo Bregno. Venetian Sculpture in the High Renaissance (Cambridge, 1991), 10, 27–30, 87, 209–12; Anne Markham Schulz, The History of Venetian Renaissance Sculpture, ca. 1400–1530 (Turnhout, 2017), 1: 312–21. Anne Markham Schulz, “Two New Works by Antonio Minello,” Burlington Magazine 137 (December 1995), 805–8; Luchs, Tullio Lombardo and Venetian High Renaissance Sculpture, 82–85 (cat. 5). See http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O18105/mer cury-statuette-minello-antonio/ for bibliography. John Pope-Hennessey, Catalogue of Italian Sculpture in the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, 1964), 2: 512. Schulz, “Four new works,” 296; Schulz, Giambattista and Lorenzo Bregno, 27, 124. As noted by Luchs, Tullio Lombardo, 28. Irene Favaretto, “Simone Bianco: Uno scultore del XVI secolo di fronte all’antico,” Quadarni Ticinesi. Numismatica e antichità classiche 14 (1985), 405–8; Biblioteca Museo Correr, Venice, “Museo Sanquarico,” Stampe D 40, c. 39. Sanquarico gives the foot a measurement of 51 cm. On Simone Bianco, in addition to Favaretto’s article cited above, see Peter Meller, “Marmi e bronzi di Simone Bianco,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 21:2 (1977): 199–210; Ursula Schlegel, “Simone Bianco und die venezianische Malerei,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 23 (1979): 187–95; Luchs, Tullio Lombardo, 28–29, 86–87, 104–14; Mina Gregori, ed., In the Light of Apollo. Italian Renaissance and Greece, exh. cat. National Gallery, Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Athens, December 22, 2003–March 31, 2004 (Milan, 2003), 515–17 (cat. XIV.8 and XIV.9); Claudia Kryza-Gersch, “Discovered in the Stores: Two Female Busts by Simone Bianco in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna,” in Carvings, Casts and Collectors: The Art of Renaissance Sculpture, ed. Peta Motture, Emma Jones, and Dimitrios Zikos (London, 2013), 72–87; Claudia Kryza-Gersch, “Simone Bianco: Venezianische Skulptur zwischen Antikenbegeisterung and Antikenfälschung,” Pseudoantike Skulptur I , ed. Sascha Kansteiner (Berlin, 2016–17), 9–24; Schulz, “Simone Bianco,”

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145.

146. 147.

148.

149. 150. 151.

152. 153. 154.

155. 156. 157.

158. 159. 160. 161.

NOTES TO PAGES

107–112

26–43; Schulz, The History of Venetian Renaissance Sculpture, I: 355–65. McHam and Luchs, “Venetian Expressive Busts,” 65n14; Matteo Ceriana, “Bust of a Woman” (cat. 4), in Luchs, Tullio Lombardo and Venetian High Renaissance Sculpture, 78. Lauber, “Memoria, vision e attesa,” 52. For a few exceptions, Favaretto, “Simone Bianco,” 410; Luchs, Tullio Lombardo, 109–10; Andrea Bacchi, “Riflessioni e novità su Pirgotle,” Nuovi studi. Rivista di arte antica e moderna 11 (2004–5), 115n41; Ceriana, “Bust of a Woman” (cat. 4), in Luchs, Tullio Lombardo and Venetian High Renaissance Sculpture, 78. See Luchs, Tullio Lombardo, 110–12; Irene Favaretto, “‘La memoria delle cose antiche . . . ’: il gusto per l’antico e il collezionismo di antichità a Venezia dal XIV al XVI secolo,” in Hochmann, Lauber, and Mason, Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia, 90. Meller, “Marmi e bronzi,” 204n31; Luchs, Tullio Lombardo, 110–11. Luchs, Tullio Lombardo, 112. Luchs, Tullio Lombardo, 108–112; Findlen, “Possessing the Past,” 102; and Victoria Avery, “The Production, Display and Reception of Bronze Heads in Renaissance Venice and Padua: Surrogate Antiques,” in Kopf/Bild: Die Büste in Mittelalter and Früher Neuzeit, ed. Jeanette Kohl and Rebecca Müller (Munich and Berlin, 2007), 75–112, all discuss what they call “surrogate antiquities.” Sabba da Castiglione, Ricordi (Venice, 1560), 56v. See Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood, Anachronic Renaissance (New York, 2010), 295; Christian, Empire without End, 171–73. I chose the word “faux” because it implies emulation with some recognition that it is not a direct copy. A faux object depends for its meaning on the original type, but also on its difference from the original. Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, 286. Barkan, Unearthing the Past, 123. For his signatures, see Meller, “Marmi e bronzi,” 199; Luchs, Tullio Lombardo, 110; Kryza-Gersch, “Discovered in the Stores,” 72; Kryza-Gersch, “Simone Bianco: Venezianische Skulptur,” 11–12, 19, 22; Schulz, “Simon Bianco,” 38n62, 43n67. Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, esp. 15–17. Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, 17. Juliana Schiesari, The Gendering of Melancholia: Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Symbolics of Loss in Renaissance Literature (Ithaca, 1992), 19. Schiesari, Gendering of Melancholia, 264. See also Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy

(Berkeley, 1994), 296; Stephen J. Campbell, “Giorgione’s Tempest, Studiolo Culture, and the Renaissance Lucretius,” Renaissance Quarterly 56:2 (2003), 302–3. 162. For “the agency of assemblages,” see Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham, NC, 2010), 20–38.

CHAPTER 5 THE PORTEGO 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Patricia Fortini Brown, Private Lives in Renaissance Venice (New Haven, 2004), 71; Manfredo Tafuri, “Il pubblico e il privato: Architettura e committenza a Venezia,” in Storia di Venezia dalle origini alla caduta della Serenissima, vol. 6, Dal Rinascimento al Barocco, ed. Gaetano Cozzi and Paolo Prodi (Rome, 1994), 368. Norbert Huse and Wolfgang Wolters, The Art of Renaissance Venice: Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting, 1460–1590, trans. Edmond Jephcott (Chicago, 1990), 26. Sebastiano Serlio, Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture. Volume 2, ed. and trans. Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks (New Haven, 2001), 106. For the origins, development, and terminology of the portego, see Juergen Schulz, The New Palaces of Medieval Venice (University Park, PA, 2004), 5–28, 39. Isabella Palumbo Fossati, “L’interno della casa dell’artigiano e dell’artista nella Venezia del Cinquecento,” Studi veneziani 8 (1984), 139, discusses how the portego increasingly became a display area in upper-class homes, differentiating it from the lower andedo, which was used more for storage. On the room and its interior decoration see Juergen Schulz, “Houses of Titian, Aretino, and Sansovino,” in Titian: His World and His Legacy, ed. David Rosand (New York, 1982), esp. 89nn51–52; Palumbo Fossati, “L’interno della casa dell’artigiano,” esp. 138–40, 144–47; Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavan, “Sopra le acque salse.” Espaces, pouvoir et societé à Venise à la fin du Moyen Âge (Rome, 1992), 1:402–6; Patricia Fortini Brown, “Behind the Walls: The Material Culture of Venetian Elites,” in Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State 1297–1797, ed. John Jeffries Martin and Dennis Romano (Baltimore, 2000), 306–11; Brown, Private Lives, 63–67, 71–75; Isabella Palumbo Fossati, “La casa veneziana,” in Da Bellini a Veronese. Temi di arte veneta, ed. Gennaro Toscano and Francesco Valcanover (Venice, 2004), 448, 450,

NOTES TO PAGES

6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16.

17.

460–61, 473–77; Brown, “The Venetian Casa,” in At Home in Renaissance Venice, ed. Marta AjmarWollheim and Flora Dennis (London, 2006), 51, 54–57; Margaret A. Morse, “Creating Sacred Space: The Religious Visual Culture of the Renaissance Venetian Casa,” in Approaching the Italian Renaissance Interior: Sources, Methodologies, Debates, ed. Marta Ajmar-Wollheim, Flora Dennis, and Ann Matchette (Oxford, 2007), 105–7; Nicholas Penny, The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings, vol. 2, Venice 1540–1600 (London, 2008), 227–29; Monika Schmitter, “The Quadro da Portego in Sixteenth-Century Venetian Art,” Renaissance Quarterly 64 (2011): 693–751. Francesco Sansovino, Venezia citta nobilissima (1663; reprint Farnborough, 1968), 384. Translation from Brown, Private Lives, 74. Vincenzo Scamozzi, L’idea della architettura universale (1615; reprint, Bologna, 1982), 1:243. For events in the portego mentioned by Marino Sanudo, see Schmitter, “Quadro da Portego,” 695n6. Brown, “The Venetian Casa,” 57. Felix Gilbert, “Venice in the Crisis of the League of Cambrai,” in Renaissance Venice, ed. J. R. Hale (London, 1973), 274–92. Biblioteca Museo Correr, Venice, Codice Cicogna, 2848, 95v. See Schmitter, “Quadro da Portego,” 702n18. Schmitter, “Quadro da Portego,” 702–3. Brown, Private Lives, esp. vii, 1–21. Sansovino, Venezia citta nobilissima, 384–85. Translation from Brown, “Behind the Walls,” 296. Crouzet-Pavan, “Sopra le acque salse”, 1:406. On arms in the portego, see Schulz, “Houses of Titian, Aretino, and Sansovino,” 89n51–52; Palumbo Fossati, “L’interno della casa dell’artigiano,” 150; Crouzet-Pavan, “Sopra le acque salse”, 1:405–6; Brown, “Behind the Walls,” 317; Brown, Private Lives, 19–20, 73, 224. For examples of cittadini households with arms in the portego, see Monika Schmitter, “The Display of Distinction: Art Collecting and Social Status in Early Sixteenth-Century Venice” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1997), 187; Blake de Maria, Becoming Venetian: Immigrants and the Arts in Early Modern Venice (New Haven, 2010), 131; and Schmitter, “Quadro da Portego,” 745–46 (appendix, inv. 27, 60, 72, and 73). Weapons, shields, and banners often displayed the family coat of arms; for an example, see Brown, Private Lives, 20. For the decorative nature of many of these objects, see Anna Contadini, “MiddleEastern Objects,” in At Home in Renaissance Italy,

18.

19. 20. 21. 22.

23.

24. 25.

26. 27. 28.

29. 30.

31.

112–116

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ed. Marta Ajmar-Wollheim and Flora Dennis (London, 2006) 319–21. Georg Gronau, ed., “Beiträge zum Anonymus Morellianus (Marc’ Antonio Michiel),” in Italienische Forschungen IV (Berlin, 1911), 63. On restelliere, see Brown, Private Lives, 19–20, 73, 224. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 63–64. On banners with coats of arms in the portego, see Crouzet-Pavan, “Sopra le acque salse”, 1:405–6. See Chapter 6. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 64 (who mistakenly reads “barche” rather than “banche”). On scagno, banche, and credenzas, see Peter Thornton, The Italian Renaissance Interior 1400–1600 (New York, 1991), 168–73, 207, 220–23. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 62. For dining and tables in the portego, see Schulz, “Houses of Titian, Aretino, and Sansovino,” 111n51. On the portability of Renaissance furniture, see Brown, Private Lives, 71, Penny, The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings, 229. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 64. On cesendelli see Thornton, Italian Renaissance Interior, 282; Brown, “The Venetian Casa,” 56–57. Clocks were rare and a sign of status: Thornton, Italian Renaissance Interior, 270; Palumbo Fossati, “L’interno della casa dell’artigiano,” 150. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 64. Brown, Private Lives, 71. Sansovino, Venezia citta nobilissima, 385, lists “panni verdi” (green cloths) among the attributes of Venetian houses that demonstrated the “politia di questa città” (the politesse of this city). Isidore of Seville claimed that the color green “refreshes” the eye and therefore was suitable for libraries and as a backdrop for examining coins and gems: The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. and ed. Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach, and Oliver Berghof (Cambridge, 2006), 3, 141 (VI.xi.2–3). Also see Bruce R. Smith, The Key of Green: Passion and Perception in Renaissance Culture (Chicago, 2009). See Appendix. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 64, suggested “un’ala” might be an abbreviation for “un’altra,” but I have not seen this elsewhere. Gronau also suggests peste is cartapesta (papier-mâché), which seems plausible. In the studiolo there was “un’ala de bronzo granda,” perhaps a wing made of bronze (Gronau, “Beiträge,” 58). For Odoni’s interest in sculpture, see Alison Luchs, Tullio Lombardo and Ideal Portrait Sculpture in Renaissance Venice, 1490–1530 (Cambridge, 1995), 9–10, 27–29; Monika Schmitter, “‘Virtuous Riches’: The Bricolage of Cittadini Identities in EarlySixteenth-Century Venice,” Renaissance Quarterly 57 (2004), 947–54.

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32. “In portico el ritratto de Misser Pollo Trivisan [two short words crossed out] dalla drezza [added above line] colorito et molte figure, dorate, tutte de terra cotta furono de man de diversi maestri/.” Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice, Ms. Ital. XI, 67 (7351), 53r. 33. Marcantonio Michiel, Der Anonimo Morelliano (Marcanton Michiel’s Notizia d’opere del disegno), ed. Theodor Frimmel (Vienna, 1896), 86; hereafter Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano. 34. Irene Favaretto, “Simone Bianco: Uno scultore del XVI secolo di fronte all’antico,” Quadarni Ticinesi. Numismatica e antichità classiche 14 (1985), esp. 405–8. 35. A Venetian foot (piedo) equals 0.35 meters: Angelo Martini, Manuale di metrologia (Turin, 1883), 817. 36. For the literature on Michiel’s Mercury see http:// collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O18105/mercurystatuette-minello-antonio/. 37. See n32. These are likely identical with “Sei figure de piera cotta dorado” in the inventory: Gronau, “Beiträge,” 64. 38. Bruce Boucher, “Italian Renaissance Terracotta: Artistic Revival or Technological Innovation?,” in Earth and Fire: Italian Terracotta Sculpture from Donatello to Canova, ed. Bruce Boucher, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, November 18, 2001-February 3, 2002, and Victoria and Albert Museum, London, March 14-July 7, 2002 (New Haven, 2001), 22–24, 29–30, and 154–55, 166–69 (cat. 24, 29, 30); Giancarlo Gentilini, “La terracotta a Padova e Andrea Riccio, ‘celebre plasticatore’,” in Rinascimento e passione per l’antico. Andrea Riccio e il suo tempo, ed. Andrea Bacchi and Luciana Giacomelli, exh. cat. Castello del Buonconsiglio, Trent, July 5-November 2, 2008 (Trent, 2008), 59–75. 39. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 63. 40. Luchs, Tullio Lombardo, 4–5, 9–24, 112–14. 41. Anne Markham Schulz, Woodcarving and Woodcarvers in Venice 1350–1550 (Florence, 2011), 52, 61. 42. Schulz, Woodcarving, 52. 43. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 63. 44. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 84. 45. For an example, see Schulz, Woodcarving, 29. 46. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 64. 47. Ilaria Ciseri in The Springtime of the Renaissance: Sculpture and the Arts in Florence 1400–1460, ed. Beatrice Paolozzi Strozzi and Marc Bormand, exh. cat. Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, March 23-August 18, 2013, and Musée du Louvre, Paris, September 23, 2013January 6, 2013 (Florence, 2013), 374 (cat. V.7). 48. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 64. 49. “Un bustetto [little bust?] de marmoro” may also fall into this category. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 63–64. 50. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 63–64.

51. Irene Favaretto, “La fortuna del ritratto antico nelle collezioni venete di antichità: Originali, copie e ‘invenzioni’,” Bollettino d’Arte 79 (1993), 71n9. Benavides was collecting from the mid-sixteenth century until his death in 1582. 52. “In Portego . . . Nuove quadri grandi con suoi teleri de diverse sorte nuove teste de stucco nel muro”: Archivio di Stato, Venice (hereafter ASV), Cancelleria inferiore, Miscellanea, Miscellanea Notai Diversi (hereafter MND), b. 44, c. 2, 1r (Nicolò Rimondo, 17 May 1599). An inventory of 1593 also lists “Otto teste di Imperatori finti di bronzo” that were made of stucco, also in the portego. ASV, MND, b. 44, c. 5, [4r] (Lucio Martinello, q. Alessandro, September 27, 1593). 53. Martin Gaier, “Ius imaginis nihil esse aliud, quam ius nobilitatis. Bildpolitik und Machtanspruch im Patriziat Venedigs,” in Kopf/Bild: Die Büste in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed. Jeanette Kohl and Rebecca Müller (Munich and Berlin, 2007), 277; Howard Burns in Palladio e Verona, ed. Paola Marini, exh. cat. Palazzo della Gran Guardia, Verona, August 3-November 5, 1980 (Verona, 1980), 119 (cat. V.3). 54. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 64. 55. Irene Favaretto notes that there are very few known cases of reproductions of full-figure antiquities in the Veneto, whereas there were many heads and busts: “L’immagine raddoppiata: Calchi, copie e invenzioni ‘all’antica’ nelle collezioni venete di antichità,” in Les moulages de sculptures antiques et l’histoire de l’archéologie, ed. Henri Lavagne and François Queyrel (Geneva, 2000), 13. 56. There is a growing literature on the subject. See Klaus Fittschen, “Über einige Römische Porträts in Venedig: Antike Vorbilder und neuzeitliche Nachahmungen,” in Venezia e l’archeologia. Un importante capitolo nella storia del gusto dell’antico nella cultura artistica veneziana (Rome, 1990), 203–208; Favaretto, “La fortuna del ritratto antico,” 65–72; Favaretto, “L’immagine raddoppitata,” 13–21; Antonia Boström, “Ludovico Lombardo and the Taste for the all’Antica Bust in Mid-Sixteenth-Century Florence and Rome,” in Large Bronzes in the Renaissance, ed. Peta Motture, Studies in the History of Art 64 (Washington DC, 2003), 155–79; Victoria Avery, “The Production, Display and Reception of Bronze Heads in Renaissance Venice and Padua: Surrogate Antiques,” in Kopf/Bild: Die Büste in Mittelalter and Früher Neuzeit, ed. Jeanette Kohl and Rebecca Müller (Munich/Berlin, 2007), 75–112. 57. As suggested by Peter Meller, “Marmi e bronzi di Simone Bianco,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 21:2 (1977), 209n31. 58. Avery, “Production, Display and Reception,” 82.

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59. Odoni’s “stuccoes” were probably made of what Favaretto, “Immagine raddopiata,” 13, calls “stuccoforte,” a base of gesso reinforced with marble powder and straw. 60. Eckart Marchand, “Plaster and Plaster Casts in Renaissance Italy,” in Plaster Casts: Making, Collecting and Displaying from Classical Antiquity to the Present, ed. Rune Frederiksen and Eckart Marchaud (Berlin, 2010), 49–80. For Bishop Ludovico Gonzaga ordering plaster casts of ancient works, including a head of “Adriano barbuto,” in 1501, see Clifford M. Brown, “Nuovi documenti riguardanti la collezione di oggetti antichi di Ludovico Gonzaga e un dono di diverse ‘teste di marmo’ a Marc’Antonio Morosini,” in Civilità Mantovana, 3rd series, 1 (1991): 41–45. Also see Daniela Gallo, “The Rebirth of the Plaster Cast: Workshops, Collections, and Academies,” in Serial/ Portable Classic: The Greek Canon and its Mutations, ed. Salvatore Settis, exh. cat. Fondazione Prada, Milan, May 9-August 24, 2015, and Venice, May 9-September 13, 2015 (Milan, 2015), 161–64. 61. Bianca Candida, I calchi rinascimentali della collezione Mantova Benevides nel Museo del Liviano a Padova (Padua, 1967); Irene Favaretto, “Il Museo di Marco Mantova Benavides,” in Marini, Palladio e Verona, 134–38; Favaretto, “La fortuna del ritratto antico”; Favaretto, “L’immagine raddoppiata”; Avery, “Production, Display and Reception,” 95–103; Marchaud, “Plaster and Plaster Casts,” 74–77; Giulio Bodon in Pietro Bembo e l’invenzione del Rinascimento, ed. Guido Beltramini, Davide Gasparotto, and Adolfo Tura, exh. cat. Palazzo del Monte di Pietà, Padua, February 2May 19, 2013 (Venice, 2013), 330–31 (cat. 5.9). 62. Candida, I calchi rinascimentali, 43–46; Gustavo Traversari, Museo Archeologico di Venezia: I ritratti (Rome, 1968), 65 (cat. 44, fig. 43). Eberhard Paul, “Falsificazioni di antichità in Italia dal Rinascimento alla fine del XVIII secolo,” in Memoria dell’antico nell’arte italiana, ed. Salvatore Settis, vol. 2, I generi e i temi ritrovati (Turin, 1985), 429–30, believes the Grimani bust is itself a Renaissance invention. 63. A number of different Renaissance busts of Hadrian survive, in both bronze and marble. See Avery, “Production, Display and Reception,” 81–87; Klaus Fittschen, “Sul ruolo del ritratto antico nell’arte italiana,” in Memoria dell’antico nell’arte italiana, ed. Salvatore Settis, vol. 2. I generi e i temi ritrovati (Turin, 1985), 399–400; Cécile Evers, Les portraits d’Hadrien. Typologie et ateliers (Brussels, 1994), 201–11; Traversari, I ritratti, 104–5, figs. 88, 89. For their popularity in Venice in particular, see Pietro C. Marani, “The ‘Hammer Lecture’ (1994):

64. 65.

66.

67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

72.

73.

74.

120–122

273

Tivoli, Hadrian and Antinoüs. New Evidence of Leonardo’s Relation to the Antique,” Achademia Leonardi Vinci 8 (1995), 217–18. See Chapter 7. Barbara Coli, “Lorenzo Lotto e il ritratto cittadino: Andrea Odoni,” in Il ritratto e la memoria. Materiali I, ed. Augusto Gentili (Rome, 1989), 191. On Egnazio’s relationship to Michiel and Zio, see Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” 97–98, 130–31. Le vite de gl’ imperadori Romani di Monsignore Egnatio nuovamente della lingua latina tradotte alla volgare (Venice, 1540), sig. B5v–B6r. The book was originally published in Latin in 1516 by the Aldine press. James Bruce Ross, “Venetian Schools and Teachers Fourteenth to Early Sixteenth Centuries: A Survey and a Study of Giovanni Battista Egnazio,” Renaissance Quarterly 29:4 (1976), 550–52. See Mary Taliaferro Boatwright, Hadrian and the City of Rome (Princeton, 1987), 14. See Appendix. Andrew John Martin, “‘Amica e un albergo di virtuosi.’ La casa e la collezione di Andrea Odoni,” Venezia Cinquecento 19 (2000), 166. See Avery, “Production, Display and Reception,” 81–87. Mentioned in Paul, “Falsificazioni di antichità,” 424. However, Aurélie Gerbier, Curator at the Musée National de la Renaissance at the Château d’Ecouen, informed me that the busts may be eighteenth-centuries copies of Renaissance busts. Caroline Vout, “Biography as Fantasy, History as Image,” in Antinous: The Face of the Antique, exh. cat. Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, May 25-August 27, 2006 (Leeds, 2006), 24. The most important classical sources were Cassius Dio’s Roman History (vol. 9, book 69) and the Scriptores Historiae Augustae (vol. 1, book 14, 5–8). Neither text explicitly calls Antinous Hadrian’s lover, although the Historiae Augustae insinuates it and elsewhere notes Hadrian’s “passion for males.” Early Christian writers provided a scathing indictment of the relationship, which they understood to be sexual. See Royston Lambert, Beloved and God. The Story of Hadrian and Antinous (New York, 1984), 7–8. Thorsten Opper, Hadrian: Empire and Conflict (Cambridge, MA, 2008), 168–91; Lambert, Beloved and God. According to Opper (186), about one hundred ancient marble images of Antinous have survived, turning “his portrait type into one of the most powerful legacies from classical antiquity, in numbers only surpassed by the images of the Emperors Augustus and Hadrian himself.”

274

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122–124

75. Sarah Waters, “‘The Most Famous Fairy in History’: Antinous and Homosexual Fantasy,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 6:2 (1995), 198. 76. In his autobiography, Benvenuto Cellini compared his beautiful sixteen-year-old neighbor to Antinous and dressed him up as a woman. When the ruse was discovered, the boy was insulted with “such gibing words as are commonly addressed to young men of eminent beauty.” The story therefore compares Antinous to contemporary catamites. Benvenuto Cellini, La Vita, ed. Guido Davico Bonino (Turin, 1973), 66 (book 1, chapter 30); The Life of Benvenuto Cellini Written by Himself, trans. John Addington Symonds (New York, 1949), 36. 77. Schmitter, “Quadro da Portego,” esp. 706–708. 78. By comparison, his contemporary, the patrician collector Taddeo Contarini, had four paintings (and no sculpture) in his portego. See Schmitter, “Quadro da Portego,” 722–28. 79. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 63–64. 80. See n32. 81. Schmitter, “Quadro da Portego,” 708–11, 715–22. 82. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 84. 83. Schmitter, “Quadro da Portego,” 716. 84. Savina: ASV, MND, b. 38, c. 40, 5r (November 30, 1550). The inventory was drawn up by the same notary as the Odoni inventory (Francesco Colonna), and Gerolamo Odoni, Andrea’s brother, is mentioned in it (p. 1r of scripture inventory). The Savina were also members of the same scuola as the Odoni: ASV, Scuola Grande di S. Maria della Carità, register entitled “Successioni, ereditarie, guardiani, e confratelli, 1450–1545,” c. 40v, 41v, 44v (see Chapter 2, n26); BMC, Codice Cicogna 2118, Mariegola 120, 2r, 2v, 8v. Della Vedova: ASV, MND, b. 39, c. 6, 11v (October 23, 1557). Francesco’s brother Jacopo was a member of the same scuola as Odoni (BMC, Codice Cicogna 2118, Mariegola 120, 10v). Odoni also appears to have exchanged offices with another della Vedova brother, Zuan: see Chapter 2. On the della Vedova family, especially Gasparo and Francesco, see Chriscinda Henry, “Buffoons, Rustics, and Courtesans: Low Painting and Entertainment Culture in Renaissance Venice” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2009), 68–73. 85. Daniel Arasse, “Il Sacco di Roma e l’immaginario collettivo,” in Il Sacco di Roma del 1527 e l’immaginario collettivo, ed. Massimo Miglio (Rome, 1986), 57–58; Thomas Martone, The Theme of the Conversion of Paul in Italian Paintings from the Early Christian Period to the High Renaissance (New York, 1985); Guillaume Cassegrain, “‘Ces choses ont été des

86.

87.

88. 89.

90.

91.

92. 93.

94.

95.

figures de ce qui nous concerne’. Une lecture de la Conversion de Saint Paul du Tintoret,” Venezia Cinquecento 6:12 (1996): 55–85. Pietro Aretino, Lettere sull’arte, ed. Ettore Camesasca and Fidenzio Perile (Milan, 1957–60), 2:85–86 (August 1545); translation from Thomas Caldecot Chubb, The Letters of Pietro Aretino (Hamden, CT, 1967), 211. See David Landau and Peter Parshall, The Renaissance Print 1470–1550 (New Haven, 1994), 293–94. In her 1931 monograph, Dorothee Westphal accepted the attribution, but concluded the work must date to the mid-1540s and could not be Odoni’s: Bonifazio Veronese (Bonifazio dei Pitati) (Munich, 1931), 62–63. Giorgio T. Faggin, “Bonifacio ai Camerlenghi,” Arte veneta 17 (1963), 95n11, suggested it could date to c. 1531 and might be Odoni’s. But more recent scholars reject the attribution to Bonifacio altogether: Simonetta Simonetti, “Profilo di Bonifacio de’ Pitati,” Saggi e memorie di storia dell’arte 15 (1986), 122; Todd A. Herman, “Out of the Shadow of Titian: Bonifacio de’Pitati and Sixteenth-Century Venetian Painting” (PhD diss., Case Western Reserve University, 2003), 169–72; Philip Cottrell, “Bonifacio’s Enterprise: Bonifacio de’ Pitati and Venetian Painting” (PhD diss., University of St. Andrews, 2001), 16n32. Cottrell, “Bonifacio’s Enterprise,” 14–16. Francesca Cortesi Bosco, “Autografi inediti di Lotto: Il primo testamento (1531) e un codicillo (1533),” Bergomum 93: 1–2 (1998), 9, 42–46; Cottrell, “Bonifacio’s Enterprise,” 15. Faggin, “Bonifacio ai Camerlenghi,” 79–95; Philip Cottrell, “Corporate Colors: Bonifacio and Tintoretto at the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi in Venice,” Art Bulletin 82:4 (2000): 658–78. I have suggested that this work may have been commissioned for a portego: Schmitter, “Quadro da Portego,” 716n75. Bonifacio is known to have influenced Tintoretto’s work and may even have been his teacher. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 84. Creighton E. Gilbert, The Works of Girolamo Savoldo. The 1955 Dissertation, with a Review of Research 1955–85 (New York, 1986), 27–29, 448–49; Schmitter, “‘Virtuous Riches’,” 925. Cristelle L. Baskins, “(In)Famous Men: The Continence of Scipio and Formations of Masculinity in Fifteenth-Century Tuscan Domestic Painting,” Studies in Iconography 23 (2002), 113–14. Paul Schubring, Cassoni. Truhen and Truhenbilder der italienischen Frührenaissance (Leipzig, 1915), no. 141,

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96.

97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102.

103. 104.

105. 106. 107. 108.

plate XXVII; no. 486, plate CXV; no. 541, plate CXX; Baskins, “(In)Famous Men,” 109–36. One of the few Venetian paintings thought to depict the subject is the long, frieze-like composition that Giovanni Bellini painted for the Venetian palace of the nobleman Francesco Cornaro (National Gallery of Art, Washington DC) I have not found reference to the subject in any sixteenth-century Venetian inventories. For various copies of the work, see Gilbert, Works of Girolamo Savoldo, 516 (cat. 16bis), and plate 41; Antonio Boschetto, Giovan Gerolamo Savoldo (Milan, 1963), 224; Renata Stradiotti, cat. entry in Giovanni Gerolamo Savoldo und die Renaissance zwischen Lombardei und Venetien. Von Foppa und Giorgione bis Caravaggio, ed. Sybille Ebert-Schifferer, exh. cat. Shirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt am Main, June 12-August 26, 1990 (Milan, 1990), 202; Andrew John Martin, Savoldos sogenanntes “Bildnis des Gaston de Foix”: Zum Problem des Paragone in der Kunst und Kunsttheorie der italienischen Renaissance (Sigmaringen, 1995), 79 and fig. 31; Luigi Coletti, “Giunte a G. Gerolamo Savoldo,” Acropoli 1 (1960), 50–52 and figs. 6, 9. 10. Gilbert, Works of Girolamo Savoldo, 449–53. Gilbert, Works of Girolamo Savoldo, 449–50. Gilbert, Works of Girolamo Savoldo, 367–68, 450, 545. Also see Mary Pardo, “The Subject of Savoldo’s Magdalene,” Art Bulletin 71 (March 1989), 71. Mary Pardo, “Subject,” 71n13, also expresses doubts. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 84. Rodolfo Palluchini and Francesco Rossi, Giovanni Cariani (Bergamo, 1983); Mauro Zanchi and Simonetta Cavalleri, Giovanni Cariani. Il Giorgionismo dal realismo terragno (Clusone, 2001); “Giovanni Cariani,” in Bergamo. L’altra Venezia. Il Rinascimento negli anni di Lorenzo Lotto 1510–1530, ed. Francesco Rossi, exh. cat. Accademia Carrara, Bergamo, April 4-July 8, 2001 (Milan, 2001), 148–75; Henry, “Buffoons, Rustics and Courtesans,” esp. 16–21. See discussion below. Loredana Olivato, “Con il Serlio tra i ‘dilettanti di architettura’ veneziani della prima metà del’500. Il ruolo di Marcantonio Michiel,” in Les traités d’architecture de la Renaissance, ed. J. Guillaume (Paris, 1988), 247–54. Deborah Howard, “Sebastiano Serlio’s Venetian Copyrights,” Burlington Magazine 115 (August 1973), 512. Howard, “Serlio’s Copyrights,” 512–16. For Cariani’s movements in this period, see Pallucchini and Rossi, Cariani, 67. Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture. Volume 1, ed. and trans. Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks (New Haven, 1996), 254; John Onians, Bearers of Meaning: The

109. 110. 111. 112.

113.

114. 115. 116.

117. 118.

119.

124–127

275

Classical Orders in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance (Princeton, 1988), 271–77. As quoted and translated in Onians, Bearers of Meaning, 277. Cecil Gould, “Sebastiano Serlio and Venetian Painting,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 25 (1962): 56–64. Serlio, Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture, 1:251. For this circle see Olivato, “Con il Serlio,” 247–54, who alludes to Odoni’s involvement as well (250). Serlio refers to Michiel in this manner in another part of his treatise: Sebastiano Serlio, Tutte l’opere d’architettura, et prospetiva (Venice, 1619), 121v. Salvatore Settis, “Traiano a Hearst Castle: Due cassoni estensi,” I Tatti Studies 6 (1995): 31–82; Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, “Les noces feintes: Sur quelques lectures de deux thèmes iconographiques dans les cassoni florentins,” I Tatti Studies 6 (1995): 11–30; Anna Maria Cetto, Der Berner Traian- und Herkinbald Teppich (Bern, 1966). The Golden Legend. Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan (Princeton, 1993), 1: 178–79. Jean Seznec, “Diderot and the Justice of Trajan,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 20 (1957), 111. An inscription on the left edge of the triumphal arch in the background identifies the locale as “FOR(UM) TRAIANI.” On a balcony opposite, St. Gregory looks out on the scene. Arthur M. Hind, Early Italian Engravings (London, 1948), pt. II , vol. 5:57–58; Cetto, Berner Traian- und Herkinbald Teppich, 128–29; Beverly Brown, “Seeing the Past: Titian’s Imperial Adaptation of a Classical Relief,” in Depth of Field: Relief Sculpture in Renaissance Italy, ed. Donal Cooper and Marika Leino (Bern, 2007), 296–97. See Cetto, Berner Traian- und Herkinbald Teppich, 112–113, 182 (Kat. Nr. T 1/81). In their monograph, Pallucchini and Rossi, Cariani, 250–51 (cat. D3), tentatively suggest that a drawing depicting a young woman approaching a man in armor, in half-length, might be a study for Odoni’s painting. However, this would be a highly unusual representation of the subject; more importantly the composition does not suit Michiel’s description of a scene with “the many figures and the antique buildings” worthy of a design by Serlio. As noted by Martin, “Amica e un albergo,” 167. For the sculpture, see Antonio Manno with Giandomenico Romanelli and Guido Tigler, Il poema del tempo. I capitelli del Palazzo Ducale di Venezia: storia e iconografia (Venice, 1999), 69–77, who highlights the imperialistic theme of the capital as a whole.

276

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128–133

120. Gunter Schweikhart, Fassadenmalerei in Verona vom 14. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1973), 27, 219–20 (cat. 69); Serena Romano, Ritratto di fanciullo di Girolamo Mocetto (Modena, 1985), 92–98. 121. Livy, History of Rome, bk. 26, l. 13. 122. Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy. 2: Purgatorio, trans. John D. Sinclair (New York, 1939), 135 (Canto X ). 123. Angelo Decembrio, as translated in Michael Baxandall, “A Dialogue on Art from the Court of Leonello d’Este: Angelo Decembrio’s De Politia Litteraria Pars LXVIII,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 26 (1963), 316. 124. Martin, “Amica e un albergo,” 166–67. 125. Martin, “Amica e un albergo,” 167. 126. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 86. 127. Wolfgang Eller, Giorgione. Catalogue Raisonné. Mystery Unveiled (Petersberg, 2007), 169–70 (cat. 47). It is more commonly attributed to Titian, but is certainly an early work from around 1509, and was reproduced in a print by Marcantonio Raimondi. See Paul Joannides, Titian to 1518: The Assumption of Genius (New Haven, 2001), 74–75. 128. Schmitter, “Quadro da Portego,” 707–8; Margaret Anne Morse, “The Arts of Domestic Devotion in Renaissance Italy: The Case of Venice” (PhD diss., University of Maryland, College Park, 2006), 70, 184–88. 129. I have found three examples: “un teller d. S. Hier.mo soazado doro qual era inportego”: ASV, MND, b. 34, c. 34 (Ettore Brunelli, July 1, 1527). “un san hieronymo che e in portegho indorado anticho”: MND, b. 39, c. 59, p. 25r (Mag.co Piero Gritti, q. Marco, March 22, 1557). “In Portego: un quadreto de S. Hier.mo”: MND, b. 42, c. 4, p. 1r (Michele Melchiorre, q. Andrea, January 17, 1577). 130. ASV, MND, b. 34, c. 63, p. 6v (Daniele Dolce, July 29, 1528). 131. Millard Meiss, “Scholarship and Penitence in the Early Renaissance: The Image of St. Jerome,” in his Painter’s Choice: Problems in the Interpretation of Renaissance Art (New York, 1976), 189–202; Hans Belting, “Poetry and Painting: Saint Jerome in the Wilderness,” in Giovanni Bellini: Landscapes of Faith in Renaissance Venice, ed. Davide Gasparotto, exh. cat. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, October 10, 2017-January 14, 2018 (Los Angeles, 2017), 24–35. 132. Italics mine, translation from Meiss, “Scholarship and Penitence,” 190. 133. Pliny, Natural History, 35.36.96. See Regina Stefaniak, “Of Founding Fathers and the Necessity of the Place: Giorgione’s Tempesta,” Artibus et Historiae 29:58 (2008), 143–44; Sarah Blake McHam, Pliny and the Artistic Culture of the

134. 135. 136. 137. 138.

139.

140.

141. 142. 143.

144.

Italian Renaissance: The Legacy of the Natural History (New Haven, 2013), 174. Jaynie Anderson, Giorgione: The Painter of “Poetic Brevity” (Paris, 1997), 362. For example, Anderson, Giorgione, 17, 184, 294–96; Piermario Vescovo, La virtù e il tempo. Giorgione: Allegorie morali, allegorie civili (Venice, 2011), 33–38. As suggested in Louis Hourticq, La Jeunesse de Titien (Paris, 1919), 219; Filippo Pedrocco, Titian (New York, 2000), 149 (cat. 88). Mauro Lucco, “Venezia, 1500–1540,” in La pittura nel Veneto. Il Cinquecento, ed. Mauro Lucco (Milan, 1996), 1:27–29. Archival records may as well. For example, the nobleman Vincenzo Querini (son of Zorzi) owned “un quadro grande de San Hier.mo Inito [?] in’ una notte.” ASV, MND, b. 42, c. 40, p. 6r (March 28, 1574). Pedrocco, Titian, 149; Harold E. Wethey, The Paintings of Titian (London, 1969), 1: 133–134 (cat. 104); Konrad Oberhuber in Le siècle de Titien: L’âge d’or de la peinture à Venise, exh. cat. Grand Palais, Paris, March 9June 14, 1993 (Paris, 1993), 517–18 (cat. 162). On the Savoldo painting, which measures 120.4 × 158.8 cm, see Giovanni Gerolamo Savoldo tra Foppa Giorgione e Caravaggio, exh. cat. Monastero di Santa Giulia, Brescia, March 3-May 31, 1990 (Milan, 1990), 156–59 (cat. I.23). Other painters after Giorgione such as Paris Bordone (Philadelphia Museum of Art) and Vincenzo Catena (Walters Art Museum, Baltimore) also adopted a more horizontal canvas for the subject. See Sylvie Béguin in Le siècle de Titien, 429 (cat. 85). Gronau, “Beiträge,” 63. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 86. According to Bernard Aikema, “The Lure of the North: Netherlandish Art in Venetian Collections,” in Renaissance Venice and the North, ed. Bernard Aikema and Beverly Louise Brown (Milan, 1999), 83n5, this terminology was in general use in the sixteenth century for “artists or works of art that came from the north of the Alps,” however, Ferdinando Bologna claims Michiel invented this “neologism” (La coscienza storica dell’arte d’Italia [Turin, 1982], 78). As far as I know, the term does not appear in inventories in reference to works of art, although I have found it used for clothing (ASV, MND, b. 34, c. 12, Sebastiano De Lameriis, Bombello, June 30, 1525). See especially Lorne Campbell, “Notes on Netherlandish Pictures in the Veneto in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries,” Burlington Magazine 123 (August 1981): 467–73; Bert W. Meijer, “Fiamminghi nella Serenissima nel primo Cinquecento,” in Giovanni

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145. 146. 147.

148. 149. 150.

151. 152.

153. 154.

Gerolamo Savoldo tra Foppa, 78–86; Aikema and Brown, Renaissance Venice and the North; Bernard Aikema, “Tesori ponentini per la Serenissima. Il commercio d’arte fiamminga a Venezia e nel Veneto fra Quattro e Cinquecento,” in Tra committenza e collezionismo. Studi sul mercato dell’arte nell’Italia settentrionale durante l’età moderna, ed. Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo and Leonida Tedoldi (Vicenza, 2003), 35–48. See Schmitter, “‘Virtuous Riches,’” 923–24, 928–31, and citations therein. Clifford M. Brown and Anna Maria Lorenzoni, “An Art Auction in Venice in 1506,” L’Arte 18–20 (1972): 125. For examples, see Henry, “Buffoons, Rustics and Courtesans,” esp. 5–6, 97–105, 266–67, 269; Aikema, “Lure of the North,” 84, 89–90. Sometimes the paintings were also described as German (“todescho”), but this term was probably used more or less interchangeably with “Flemish” to designate a work from northern Europe (Aikema, “Lure of the North,” 84n7). Louisa C. Matthew, “Working Abroad: Northern Artists in the Venetian Ambient,” in Aikema and Brown, Renaissance Venice and the North, 61–69. Aikema, “Lure of the North,” 90; Aikema, “Tesori ponentini,” 42–43. Particularly intriguing is the Flemish merchant Daniel van Bombergen, who conducted business in Venice between 1515 and 1556. Van Bombergen traded in tapestries and other luxury goods and was connected to Venetian intellectual and publishing circles. According to Karel van Mander, when Scorel was in Venice he met “a certain Daniel van Bomberge, a lover of the art of painting.” Karel van Mander, The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters, ed. and trans. Hessel Miedema (Doornspijk, 1994), 1:198–99. Van Bombergen may in turn have introduced Scorel to Zio. Aikema, “Tesori ponentini,” 38–40. Although it should be noted that Michiel’s indications about medium are not always reliable. See Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” 68. See especially Caterina Limentani Virdis, “Across the Alps and to the Lagoon: Northern Artists in Venice during the Sixteenth-Century” and Beverly Louise Brown, “From Hell to Paradise: Landscape and Figure in Early Sixteenth-Century Venice,” both in Aikema and Brown, Renaissance Venice and the North, 73–74, 424–97; Nancy Corwin, “The Fire Landscape: Its Sources and its Development from Bosch through Jan Bruegel I, with Special Emphasis on the Mid-Sixteenth Century Bosch ‘Revival’” (PhD diss., University of Washington, 1976). Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 102. The literature on these panels is extensive; see most recently Vittorio Sgarbi, ed., Bosch a Palazzo Grimani

155. 156.

157.

158.

159. 160. 161. 162. 163. 164.

165.

166. 167. 168.

169.

170.

133–138

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(Milan, 2010); Beverly Brown in Aikema and Brown, Renaissance Venice and the North, 432–35 (cat. 111). Quoted and discussed in Brown, “From Hell to Paradise,” 426. Also see Aikema, “Tesori ponentini,” 42. Quoted and discussed in Brown, “From Hell to Paradise,” 427. In describing one of the doors in his teatro (see Chapter 7), Giulio Camillo noted that it depicted a Hellmouth like those in Flemish paintings. Giulio Camillo, L’idea del theatro con “L’idea dell’eloquenza,” il “De transmutatione” e altri testi inediti, ed. Lina Bolzoni (Milan, 2015), 171. Translation from Aikema, “Lure of the North,” 84. Also see Bernard Aikema, “‘Stravaganze e bizarie de chimere, de mostri, e d’animali.’ Hieronymus Bosch nella cultura italiana del Rinascimento,” Venezia Cinquecento 11:22 (2001), 114. See Gerd Unverfehrt, Hieronymus Bosch: Die Rezeption seiner Kunst im frühen 16. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1980), 201–5 and figures 181–96; Corwin, “The Fire Landscape,” 127–130. http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/searchthe-collections/110000158; Corwin, “The Fire Landscape,” 406–8 (cat. 144). Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 84. Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” 80. Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” 88. Pallucchini and Rossi, Cariani, 20-30; Henri, “Buffoons, Rustics and Courtesans,” esp. 19-20. Marin Sanudo, Cità Excelentissima. Selections from the Diaries of Marin Sanudo, ed. Patricia H. Labalme and Laura Sanguineti White, trans. Linda L. Carroll (Baltimore, 2008), 489. For Zuan Polo, the performance, and the Historia bellissima see Daniele Vianello, L’arte del buffone. Maschere e spettacolo tra Italia e Baviera nel XVI secolo (Rome, 2005), 47–48, 67–85; Giorgio Padoan, La commedia rinascimentale veneta (Vicenza, 1982), 56–59; Henry, “Buffoons, Rustics and Courtesans,” 138–39. See n32. Luchs, Tullio Lombardo, 10; Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” 182. Rosella Lauber, “Per l’edizione critica della Notizia d’opere di disegno di Marcantonio Michiel” (Dottorato di Ricerca, Università degli Studi di Udine, 2001), 127–29. Luchs, Tullio Lombardo, 10, suggests that the portrait Michiel identified as Pollo Trevisan might be the same bust that the notary identified as Francesco Zio. As noted by Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 87. See discussion in Schmitter, “Virtuous Riches,” 948.

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171. Marino Sanuto, I diarii, ed. Rinaldo Fulin (1879–1903; reprint, Bologna, 1970), 5:7 (April 2, 1503); 6:169, 185, 186, 208, 243. 172. Robert Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice (New Brunswick, NJ, 1980), 132. Schmitter, “Virtuous Riches,” 948. Lauber, “Per l’edizione critica,” 127–29, independently came to the same conclusion about the identity of the sitter using mostly different sources. 173. See Bertrand Jestaz, “Les collections de peinture à Venise au XVIe siècle,” in Geografia del collezionismo. Italia e Francia tra il XVI e il XVII secolo, ed. Olivier Bonfait, et al. (Rome, 2001), 185–201; Michel Hochmann, “Quelques réflexions sur le collections de peinture à Venise dans la première moitié du XVIe siècle,” in Il collezionismo a Venezia e nel Veneto ai tempi della Serenissima, ed. Bernard Aikema, Rosella Lauber, and Max Seidel (Venice, 2005), 117–34; Chriscinda Henry, “What Makes a Picture? Evidence from Sixteenth-Century Venetian Property Inventories,” Journal of the History of Collections 23:2 (2011): 253–65. 174. Desiderius Erasmus, Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 39, Colloquies, trans. Craig R. Thompson (Toronto, 1997), 205 (II .15-23). The colloquy was written in 1522.

3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

CHAPTER 6 THE CAMERE 1.

2.

There are no indications, such as firedogs or other hearth equipment, of a fireplace in the Odoni portego, but they are present in the camere. Patricia Fortini Brown, Private Lives in Renaissance Venice (New Haven, 2004), 73–74, notes that Venetian porteghi seldom had fireplaces. For camere in Venice and elsewhere, see Patricia Fortini Brown, “Behind the Walls: The Material Culture of Venetian Elites,” in Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State 1297–1797, ed. John Jeffries Martin and Dennis Romano (Baltimore, 2000), 305–8; Brown, Private Lives, 77–81; Brown, “The Venetian Casa,” in At Home in Renaissance Venice, ed. Marta AjmarWollheim and Flora Dennis (London, 2006), 55–63; Brenda Preyer, “Planning for Visitors at Florentine Palaces,” Renaissance Studies 12:3 (1998), 362–63; Preyer, “The Florentine Casa,” in Ajmar-Wollheim and Dennis, At Home in Renaissance Venice, 40–46; Jacqueline Marie Musacchio, Art, Marriage and Family in the Florentine Renaissance Palace (New Haven, 2008), esp. 105–6;

11.

12.

13.

Howard Burns, “Letti visibili e invisibili nei progetti architettonici del Rinascimento,” in Aspetti dell’abitare in Italia tra XV e XVI secolo. Distribuzione, funzioni, impianti, ed. Aurora Scotti Tosini (Milan, 2000), esp. 135. See Monika Schmitter, “The Quadro da Portego in Sixteenth-Century Venetian Art,” Renaissance Quarterly 64 (2011), 695n6. Georg Gronau, ed., “Beiträge zum Anonymus Morellianus (Marc’ Antonio Michiel),” in Italienische Forschungen IV (Berlin, 1911), 56–62, 66–67; Marcantonio Michiel, Der Anonimo Morelliano (Marcanton Michiel’s Notizia d’opere del disegno), ed. Theodor Frimmel (Vienna, 1896), 84, 86; hereafter Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 64. Brown, Private Lives, 77–79, 86; Blake de Maria, Becoming Venetian: Immigrants and the Arts in Early Modern Venice (New Haven, 2010), 128–29. The Memoirs of Philippe de Commynes, ed. Samuel Kinser, trans. Isabelle Cazeaux (Columbia, SC, 1973), 2: 490. Marc’Antonio Sabellico, Del sito di Venezia città (1502), ed. G. Meneghetti (Venice, 1957), 32. Translation from Brown, Private Lives, 79. Brown, Private Lives, 77. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 59–60. Given that there were four panels, they may have covered all four walls. They are the first objects mentioned in the inventory of the room, suggesting their importance. For gilt leather wall-hangings, see Peter Thornton, The Italian Renaissance Interior 1400–1600 (New York, 1991), 52, 85, 88 (plate 89); Brown, Private Lives, 76–77; Ulinka Rublack, “Matter in the Material Renaissance,” Past and Present 219 (2013), esp. 80–85. The other type of camera besides a camera d’oro that one finds repeatedly in inventories is the camera grande. This was often the room of the deceased head of household, and so perhaps is used in the manner we would use “master bedroom” today to designate the largest bedroom, occupied by the head of household. Some houses had both a camera d’oro and a camera grande, so they were not necessarily equivalent: for example, ASV, MND, b. 42, c. 66, p. 1r, 6v (Donado da Lezze, October 19, 1582). Gronau, “Beiträge,” 60, 62. The camera dalla scala also had “un quadro da fuogo, con tutti li sui fornimenti da fuogo,” but apparently the notary did not find these worthy of further description (Gronau, “Beiträge,” 67). Gronau, “Beiträge,” 56; Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 82.

NOTES TO PAGES

14. Dora Thornton, The Scholar in His Study: Ownership and Experience in Renaissance Italy (New Haven, 1997), 18. 15. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 56, 59. 16. “Adi x. ditto di notte introrono ladri in casa nostra per una finestra d’uno studiolo, et portorono via la cassetta con le scritture, et gioie, cioè uno balascio, un saphil, perle, et duc.ti 80 et un pezzo di legno della +.” Biblioteca Museo Correr, Venice (hereafter BMC), Codice Cicogna 2848, 296v, italics mine. 17. For example, in the house of Antonio Hieronymi Zorio q. Antonio Petris, was a “studio della camera sopra lhorto nela qual soleva habitar el ditto q. M. Hieronymo” followed by “in ditta camera sora l’horto.” In the house of Mag.ci D. Joanus Marci Trivisan q. Vitiantonij, “la camera sopra la chorte dove el q. Messer Zuanmarco habitava” is followed by “in studio della camera.” ASV, MND, b. 37, c. 49 and c. 10. The word studiolo is less common in Venetian inventories; Michiel’s use of it may be due to his experiences in central Italy. 18. Wolfgang Liebenwein, Studiolo: Storia e tipologia di uno spazio culturale, ed. Claudia Cieri Via and trans. Alessandro Califano (Ferrara, 1992), 107– 8. 19. For built-in furnishings, see Thornton, Scholar in His Study, 53–54. 20. Thornton, Scholar in His Study, 1; Maria Ruvoldt, “Sacred to Secular, East to West: The Renaissance Study and Strategies of Display,” Renaissance Studies 20:5 (2006), 640. 21. Liebenwein, Studiolo, first published in German in 1977. 22. Thornton, Scholar in His Study, esp. 8–9, 18. 23. Thornton, Scholar in His Study, 1. 24. For example, Isabella d’Este did not buy a large crystal vase because she considered it “troppo grande da studio.” Davide Gasparotto, “‘Ha fatto con l’occhio e con la mano miracoli stupendissimi’: il percorso di Valerio Belli,” in Valerio Belli Vicentino 1468c.–1546, ed. Howard Burns, Marco Collareta, and Davide Gasparotto (Vincenza, 2000), 70. 25. Ruvoldt, “Sacred to secular,” 640–57. 26. Isabella Palumbo Fossati, “Il collezionista Sebastiano Erizzo e l’inventario dei suoi beni,” Ateneo Veneto 22 (1984), 206 and 217n16. 27. On collecting as “aestheticizing the self” (294), see Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley, 1994), 293–345. For the studio as a representation of self, see Thornton, Scholar in His Study, 1–13; Stephen J. Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros: Renaissance Mythological Painting and the Studiolo of Isabella d’Este (New Haven, 2006), esp. 29–57; Ruvoldt, “Sacred to Secular,” 640–57.

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28. Stephen J. Campbell, “Giorgione’s Tempest, Studiolo Culture and the Renaissance Lucretius,” Renaissance Quarterly 56:2 (2003), 302–3; Campbell, Cabinet of Eros, 29–57; Thornton, Scholar in His Study, 12. 29. Marino Sanuto, I diarii, ed. Rinaldo Fulin (1879–1903; reprint, Bologna, 1970), 13:293. See Thornton, Scholar in His Study, 114, and Brown, Private Lives, 221–23. 30. Sanuto, Diarii, 16:517. On another occasion Sanudo reported that the prince of Salerno “a scholarly man and a lover of letters . . . wished to see my study. I made my excuses because I did not want him to come” (53:173, April 27, 1530). Translations from Marin Sanudo, Cità Excelentissima. Selections from the Diaries of Marin Sanudo, ed. Patricia H. Labalme and Laura Sanguineti White, trans. Linda L. Carroll (Baltimore, 2008), 32–34. 31. I base this statement on my own examination of over 800 sixteenth-century Venetian inventories. Also see Thornton, Scholar in His Study, 10. 32. See n16. 33. On books and writing equipment in the study, see Thornton, Scholar in His Study, 1–2. 34. BMC, PDC 916, c. 37 (1525 16 October). The term “ornamenti de studii camere” was also used by Nicolò Massa: Sarah Gwyneth Ross, Everyday Renaissances: The Quest for Cultural Legitimacy in Venice (Cambridge, 2016), 102–3n82. 35. There is a separate subheading in the inventory for “Robbe trovade nel scrigno de ferro sopraditto,” and a “scrigno de ferro” is listed among the objects in the camera dalla scala: Gronau, “Beiträge,” 67–69. 36. See Chapter 3. A couple of other books and many account books are enumerated in the last section of the inventory with the subheading “inventario di libbri et scritture et altro” (Gronau, “Beiträge,” 71). It is unclear where these documents were kept, but it is worth pointing out that the mezzado contained two “forcieri” (coffers/safes) painted in red and white (the colors of the Odoni arms) as well as six red boxes (casse) whose contents are not listed in that section of the inventory. My guess is that the documents listed at the end of the inventory (which, for the most part, are not published by Gronau), were kept in these containers. 37. Evelyn Welch, “Public Magnificence and Private Display: Giovanni Pontano’s De splendore (1498) and the Domestic Arts,” Journal of Design History 15 (2002), 223–24. 38. Liebenwein, Studiolo, 115. 39. See Chapter 2. 40. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 57–59.

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41. Welch, “Public Magnificence and Private Display,” 215. 42. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 68. 43. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 57, 59, 62. 44. In Zio’s house Michiel noted: “Li molti vasi de terra sono antichi sicome le molte medaglie.” Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 96. 45. Bertrand Jestaz, “Les antiquités dans les inventaires vénitiens du XVIe siecle,” in Venezia e l’archeologia. Un importante capitolo nella storia del gusto dell’antico nella cultura artistica veneziana (Rome, 1990), 35. 46. Principii were probably full-page illuminations beginning different sections of the text. 47. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 94. The last phrase, “stimati sempre almento ducati 40,” is a later addition by Michiel, perhaps added after he saw the manuscript again in Odoni’s collection. See Monika Schmitter, “The Display of Distinction: Art Collecting and Social Status in Early Sixteenth-Century Venice” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1997), 105n302. In Odoni’s collection, Michiel describes it more succinctly as “Li 4 principii del officiol fo de mano de Jacometto i quaj solea haver Francesco Zio” (Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 82). 48. On Jacometto see Peter Humfrey, “Jacometto Veneziano” in Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, https://doi-org/10.1093/gao/978188 4446054.art icle.T043117; Alessandro Serafini, “Jacometto Veneziano,” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 62 (2004), http://www.treccani.it/enciclope dia/jacometto-veneziano_%28 DizionarioBiografico%29/; Rosella Lauber, “‘Opera Perfettissima.’ Marcantonio Michiel e La notizia d’opere di disegno,” in Il collezionismo a Venezia e nel Veneto ai tempi della Serenissima, ed. Bernard Aikema, Rosella Lauber, and Max Seidel (Venice, 2005), 96–99. For the original patron, currently identified as the cittadino Giovanni Giacomo Michiel (no relation to Marcantonio), see Jennifer Fletcher, “The Provenance of Bellini’s Frick ‘St. Francis’,” Burlington Magazine 114 (April 1972): 206–14; Lauber, “‘Opera perfettissima’,” 100. 49. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 58: “Un officietto de miniatura con quatro figure, coperto de veludo negro, con la cassetta de cuoro negro.” Presumably the “quatro figure” are the same as the “4 principii” noted by Michiel. 50. Otto Pächt, Italian Illuminated Manuscripts from 1400–1550. Catalogue of an Exhibition Held in the Bodleian Library (Oxford, 1948), 23, no. 69. 51. Lilian Armstrong, Renaissance Miniature Painters and Classical Imagery. The Master of the Putti and His Venetian Workshop (London, 1981), 30–49 (esp. 33 and 49), 127–29 (cat. 39).

52. Armstrong, Renaissance Miniature Painters, 32. Although the Oxford manuscript is a breviary for Carthusian use rather than a book of hours (officiolo), Michiel seems not to have made much of this distinction since he also referred to the famous Grimani Breviary as an “officio”: Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 104. 53. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 84. This may be the same as a second “officio” listed in the inventory, which is noted as having a gilded green-leather binding with silver closures: Gronau, “Beiträge,” 58. 54. On Bordon see Helena K. Szépe, “The Book as Companion, the Author as Friend: Aldine Octavos Illuminated by Benedetto Bordon,” Word and Image 11:1 (1995): 77–99; Szépe, “Bordon, Dürer and Modes of Illuminating Aldines,” in Aldus Manutius and Renaissance Culture, ed. David Zeidberg (Florence, 1998), 185–200; Lilian Armstrong, “Benedetto Bordon, Miniator, and Cartography in Early Sixteenth-Century Venice,” Imago Mundi 48 (1996): 65–92; Armstrong, “Benedetto Bordon, Aldus Manutius, LucAntonio Giunta: Old Links and New,” in Zeidberg, Aldus Manutius and Renaissance Culture, 161–83. 55. Szépe, “Bordon, Dürer and Modes of Illuminating,” has argued that most illuminations by Bordon in Aldines were ordered by the manuscript owners, not by the press. 56. Called the Belengo Book of Hours, based on the identification of a coat of arms from the Venetian patrician family in the manuscript. See Lilian Armstrong in Beyond Words: Illuminated Manuscripts in Boston Collections, ed. Jeffrey F. Hamburger et al., exh. cat. McMullen Museum of Art, Houghton Library, and Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston-area, 2016–2017 (Boston, 2016), 294–95 (cat. 234). Armstrong notes that about twenty other books of hours illuminated in the Bordon workshop have survived. 57. Helena K. Szépe, Venice Illuminated: Power and Painting in Renaissance Manuscripts (New Haven, 2018), 174–75, attributes Bordon’s success to his ability to emulate the effects of contemporary large-scale painting in his miniatures. 58. In addition to the “officietto de miniatura” and the “officio,” the inventory also listed “a calendar/ almanac covered in green silk with gold” and “a miniature painting on paper, with its small walnut frame” in the studio: Gronau, “Beiträge,” 58, 59. 59. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 62: “Do pezzi de banchal de panno verde vecchi, de brazza sie in circa” and “Un pezzo de panno verde, con panno destiado sopra,” kept in the chests in the room.

NOTES TO PAGES

60. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 57–59. 61. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 57: “Do retratti over impronti del q. m. Andrea di Odoni de stucco.” 62. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 84. By the time of the inventory, the wooden figure on horseback seems to have been removed to the portego. 63. On the popularity of statuettes of all’antica style horses, see Thornton, Scholar in His Study, 161–62. 64. Gadi Algazi, “At the Study: Notes on the Production of the Scholarly Self,” in Space and Self in Early Modern European Cultures, ed. David Warren Sabean and Malina Stefanovska (Toronto, 2012), 28–34. One other interesting object, described as “Un’ala de bronzo granda,” might have been a sculpture, perhaps of a wing, similar to the “ala” in the portego. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 58. 65. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 56. 66. In an addendum Gronau, “Beiträge,” 170, noted the connection between the description in Odoni’s inventory and the description of ivories in Barbo’s inventory of 1457, published in Eugène Müntz, Les arts à la cour des papes pendant le xve e le xvie siècle (Paris, 1879), 236. Roberto Weiss, The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity (Oxford, 1969), 187n4, made the connection between the two inventories and the surviving object. It is unclear whether Odoni owned both panels of the diptych or just one – the inventory only refers to “un quadretto.” According to Barbo’s inventory both panels originally had the pope’s personal inscription on the reverse. On the diptych and its illustrious history, see Roberto Weiss, Un umanista veneziano Papa Paolo II (Venice and Rome, 1958), 34–35, 83–87; Clara Stella in Milano Capitale dell’Impero Romano (286–402 d.C.), exh. cat. Palazzo Reale, Milan, January 24-April 22, 1990 (Milan, 1990), 340–41 (cat. 5b.1c and 5b.1c.1); Mara Minasi in La Roma di Leon Battista Alberti: Umanisti, architetti e artisti alla scoperta dell’antico nella città del Quattrocento, ed. Francesco Paolo Fiore, with Arnold Nesselrath, exh. cat. Musei Capitolini, Rome, June 24October 16, 2005 (Milan, 2005), 344–45, 350 (cat. III.14.2); Lauber, “Opera perfettissima,” 95–96; Kathleen Wren Christian, Empire without End: Antiquities Collections in Renaissance Rome, c. 1350–1527 (New Haven, 2010), 94, 263. 67. Translation from Christian, Empire without End, 94. 68. Stella in Milano Capitale, 341. 69. Domenico was still selling these objects in 1486. Gasparotto, “‘Ha fatto con l’occhio’,” 71n115. For Domenico di Piero, see Chapter 2, n25. 70. Lorenzo Lotto may have seen one or both panels before he painted Odoni’s portrait. Beverly Louise Brown, “The Bride’s Jewellery: Lorenzo Lotto’s Wedding Portrait of Marsilio and Faustina Cassotti,” Apollo 169 (2009):

71. 72. 73.

74.

75.

76. 77.

78. 79. 80.

81. 82. 83.

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48–55; Miguel Falomir in Lorenzo Lotto. Portraits, ed. Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo and Miguel Falomir with Matthias Wivel, exh. cat. Museo del Prado, Madrid, June 19-September 30, 2018, and National Gallery, London, November 5, 2018-February 10, 2019 (Madrid, 2008), 241–43 (cat. 17). Gronau, “Beiträge,” 57. See citations in n66. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 56. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 82. The first two works were described in more detail by Michiel when he saw them earlier in Zio’s collection. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 96. Bertrand Jestaz, “L’orfèvrerie et les objets précieux à Venise dans la première moitié du XVIe siècle d’après les inventaires,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome. Italie et Méditerranée 110:2 (1998), 707n15. See Kruno Prijatelj, “Le opere di due orefici veneziani nel tesoro del Duomo di Spalato,” Arte Veneta 11 (1957), 193; Ivana Prijatelj-Pavičić, in Tesori della Croazia restaurati da Venetian Heritage Inc., exh. cat. Chiesa di San Barnaba, Venice, 2001 (Venice, 2001), 138–40 (cat. 54). Detlef Heikemp and Andreas Grote, ed., Il tesoro di Lorenzo di Medici, vol. 2, I vasi (Florence, 1972); Laurie Fusco and Gino Corti, Lorenzo de’ Medici: Collector and Antiquarian (Cambridge, 2006), esp. 92–95, 123, 199; Eva Helfenstein, “Lorenzo de’ Medici’s Magnificent Cups: Precious Vessels as Status Symbols in Fifteenth-Century Europe,” I Tatti Studies 16:1–2 (2013): 415–44. Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, trans. Charles S. Singleton (New York, 1959), 82 (Book 1, chapter 52); Gasparotto, “‘Ha fatto con l’occhio’,” 53. Gasparotto, “‘Ha fatto con l’occhio’,” 70; Detlef Heikemp, “Vasi in pietre dure nelle fonti italiane,” in Heikemp and Grote, Il tesoro di Lorenzo di Medici, vol. 2, I vasi, 68–70. Heikemp, “Vasi in pietre dure,” 67. See n73. On Serbaldi see Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de’ Medici Collector and Antiquarian, 320–21. Sabba da Castiglione, Ricordi (Venice, 1560), 56v, 57r, recommends both Serbaldi and Giovan Cristoforo Romano as artists whose works were sought if antiquities were too rare or difficult to procure. According to Vasari, Serbaldi “fu grandissimo imitatore di cose antiche.” See discussion in Heikemp, “Vasi in pietre dure,” 67. Heikemp, “Vasi in pietre dure,” 59. On “cristallo di rocca,” Gasparotto, “‘Ha fatto con l’occhio’,” 67–68. See n73. Heikemp, “Vasi in pietre dure,” 70; Gasparotto, “‘Ha fatto con l’occhio’,” 69–70. It is unclear exactly when the cup was made and there are no similar surviving

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84. 85. 86.

87. 88. 89. 90. 91.

92. 93.

94.

95.

96. 97.

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154–157

works by Gian Cristoforo. He seems to have been in Venice and Padua frequently around the turn of the century: Pierluigi Leone de Castris, Studi su Gian Cristoforo Romano ([Pozzuoli], 2010), 42n34. Welch, “Public Magnificence and Private Display,” 224. Welch, “Public Magnificence and Private Display,” 215. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 56–59. “Biave” is a light blue; possibly “verde” is celadon. Bertrand Jestaz, “Porcelaine de Chine et bronze islamique à Venise. La Collection Redaldi (1527),” Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Classe di lettere e filosofia, 3rd series, 20 (1990), 32–33. Some of the pieces were probably inherited from Zio, since Michiel noted porcelain vessels in his collection as well. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 84, 96. See discussion in Chapter 7. Odoni also had a few pieces of porcelain in the portego. Welch, “Public Magnificence and Private Display,” 212. Jestaz, “Porcelaine de Chine et bronze islamique,” 38, 57. On porcelain in Venice, see Deborah Howard, Venice and the East: The Impact of the Islamic World on Venetian Architecture 1100–1500 (New Haven, 2000), 60; Paul Hills, Venetian Color: Marble, Mosaic, Painting and Glass 1250–1550 (New Haven, 1999), 127; R. W. Lightbown, “Oriental Art and the Orient in Late Renaissance and Baroque Italy,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 32 (1969), 229; Rosamond E. Mack, Bazaar to Piazza: Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300–1600 (Berkeley, 2002), 104–7; Jestaz, “Porcelaine de Chine et bronze islamique,” 23–60. Jacopo Sanazzaro, Le opere volgari (Padua, 1723), 457. Lightbown, “Oriental Art,” 229–31; Robert Finlay, “The Pilgrim Art: The Culture of Porcelain in World History,” Journal of World History 9:2 (1998), 173–75. J. C. Salinger, Exotericarum. Exercitationum. Liber Quintus Decimus, de Subtilitate, ad Hieronymum Cardanum (Paris, 1557), fol. 135v–136r; cited and translated in Lightbown, “Oriental Art,” 231. Also see Jestaz, “Porcelaine de Chine et bronze islamique.” Finlay, “The Pilgrim Art,”174. Michiel seemed to have ascribed to this theory, when he mentioned “li molti vasi di terra sono porcellane” (italics mine) in the collection of Antonio Foscarini (Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 920). See discussion in Chapter 7. Michiel had noted “El vaso de allabastro . . . et più vasetti, de diaspro” in Zio’s collection. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 84, 96. The word gemme can mean gems or jewels (Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de’

98.

99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104.

105.

106. 107.

Medici Collector and Antiquarian, xxii); in this context I would suggest it means precious or semiprecious stone. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 57. It is not clear whether the St. Joseph, skull, and eye were depicted inside the vessel, or whether they were independent objects. I suspect the latter; that is, the object rather than the container was the prized item. One finds this construction “con un . . . dentro” in other contemporary inventories: for example, in the inventory of the goods of Bernardino di Redaldi taken in 1527: “una scatola de rame zallo con una testa dentro” and “una vaso lavorà a la damaschina con una zoia dentro.” Jestaz, “Porcelaine de Chine et bronze islamique,” 59, 60. Jack Hinton, “By Sale, By Gift: Aspects of the Resale and Bequest of Goods in Late-Sixteenth-Century Venice,” Journal of Design History 15:4 (2002), 261, translates “bosolo” as “vase/form of container.” For another inventory listing numerous “bossoli,” see Jestaz, “L’orfèvrerie et les objets précieux à Venise,” 719–21, who refers to them as “petites boîtes rondes.” The Venetian word zoia, gioie in Italian, also has a wide range of meanings (see Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de’ Medici Collector and Antiquarian, xxii). I have translated it to the best of my ability based on context. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 57–59. Raffaella Morselli, ed., Gonzaga. La Celeste Galeria: Le raccolte, exh. cat. Palazzo del Te, Mantua, September 2-December 8, 2002 (Milan, 2002), 300 (cat. 107). See n35 above. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 84. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 57–58. Krzysztof Pomian, Collectors and Curiosities: Paris and Venice, 1500–1800, trans. Elizabeth Wiles-Portier (Cambridge, 1990), 217. Also Paula Findlen, “The Market and the World: Science, Culture, and Collecting in the Venetian Republic,” in Aikema, Lauber, and Seidel, Il collezionismo a Venezia, 55–56. For examples from the later sixteenth century and seventeenth century, see Pomian, Collectors and Curiosities, 69–78, 99–105; Findlen, “The Market and the World,” esp. 58–62; Michel Hochmann, “Le collezioni veneziane nel Rinascimento: storia e storiografia,” in Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia. Dalle origini al Cinquecento, ed. Michel Hochmann, Rosella Lauber, and Stefania Mason (Venice, 2008), 5–8. According to Jestaz, “Porcelaine de Chine et bronze islamique,” 30, these objects reveal Redaldi was a “pioneer” in the field of collecting naturalia. Pio Paschini, “Le collezioni archeologiche dei prelati Grimani del Cinquecento,” Rendiconti. Atti della

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108.

109.

110.

111.

112.

113.

Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia 5 (1926–27), 177–79. On the magical properties of “serpents’ tongues” (fossilized teeth of chondrichthyes), see Martin Kemp, “‘Wrought by No Artist’s Hand’: The Natural, the Artificial, the Exotic, and the Scientific in Some Artifacts from the Renaissance,” in Reframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin America 1450–1650, ed. Claire Farago (New Haven, 1995), 182. Aldo Ravà, “Il ‘camerino delle antigaglie’ di Gabriele Vendramin,” Nuovo archivio veneto 39 (1920), 161, 163, 165, 167, 168, 173; Gronau, “Beiträge,” 72–74; Frimmel, Der Anonimo Morelliano, 108. The literature on the exotic and the miraculous in collecting later in the century is extensive. See for example Adalgisa Lugli, Naturalia et mirabilia: Il collezionismo enciclopedico nelle Wunderkammern d’Europa (Milan, 1983); Pomian, Collectors and Curiosities; Joy Kenseth, ed. The Age of the Marvelous, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, September 21-November 24, 1991; North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, January 25-March 22, 1992; and High Museum of Art, Atlanta, October 6, 1992-January 3, 1993 (Hanover, NH, 1991); Kemp, “‘Wrought by No Artist’s Hand’,” 176–96. Reporting on the dispersal of Andrea Loredan’s collection, Jacopo Strada noted “è ben vero che vi son molte cose chio non ò volsuto, cioè vasi di vetro antiche et di terra, bizarre varie di cose convertite in pietro e un truncho di legno di brugne il quale esso lo stime un thesoro, io non gli darei V. 100 . . . ” Quoted in Claudio Franzoni, “Girolamo Donato, collezionismo e instavratio dell’antico,” in Venezia e l’archeologia, 348. The word was also used for mirrors and for works by Bosch, see below and Chapter 5. On snakes, Findlen, Possessing Nature, 92, 241–45. On coral, Kemp, “‘Wrought by No Artist’s Hand’,” 182; Marta Ajmar-Wollheim and Flora Dennis, “Introduction,” in Ajmar-Wollheim and Dennis, At Home in Renaissance Italy, 15, fig. 1.5. On “cristallo di rocca,” see Gasparotto, “‘Ha fatto con l’occhio’,” 67–68. On porcelain, see Chapter 7. The naturalist collector Ulisse Aldrovandi collected specimens at the fish market: Findlen, Possessing Nature, 175–77. Also see Findlen, “The Market and the World,” 61, for Leone Tartaglini, a “vendor of rare and wonderful (and sometimes quite artificial) bits of nature,” “reputed to be an expert on fish as well as plants,” who plied his trade in Venice in the latter part of the sixteenth century. Paula Findlen, “Jokes of Nature and Jokes of Knowledge: The Playfulness of Scientific Discourse

114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126.

127.

128. 129.

130. 131. 132.

133.

158–160

283

in Early Modern Europe,” Renaissance Quarterly 43:2 (1990), 296–97. Girolamo Cardano in De rerum varietate (1557), cited in Findlen, “Jokes of Nature,” 302. Findlen, “Jokes of Nature,” 302, 311–12. Findlen, Possessing Nature, 299, 232–33; Findlen, “Jokes of Nature,” 313. Findlen, Possessing Nature, 305. Findlen, Possessing Nature, 302–3, 306. Findlen, Possessing Nature, 307, 324–25. Kemp, “‘Wrought by No Artist’s Hand’,” 185. Kemp’s discussion of “artifacts which incorporate natural objects” argues many of the same points discussed above. Liebenwein, Studiolo, 108; 152n238. Also see n64. Findlen, Possessing Nature, 299–302 (299). Findlen, Possessing Nature, 339. Findlen, Possessing Nature, 243. On fossils, Findlen, Possessing Nature, 232–33. Michael Baxandall, “A Dialogue on Art from the Court of Leonello d’Este: Angelo Decembrio’s De Politia Litteraria Pars L XVIII ,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 26 (1963), 322. The room was furnished with a gilded walnut bed, a moveable table with its “trespedi,” a walnut scagno with drawers (perhaps a small table, see Thornton, Italian Renaissance Interior, 168), and eight painted fir chests and two “half chests.” The chests contained clothing, textiles of various sorts including carpets, and a few other assorted items. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 60–62. Frimmel, Der Anonimo Morelliano, 86. See [Marcantonio Michiel], Notizia d’opere di disegno, ed. Jacopo Morelli (Bassano, 1800), 197–99; Georg Gronau, “Venezianische Kunstsammlungen des 16. Jahrhunderts,” Jahrbuch für Kunstsammler 4–5 (1924–25), 22; Domenico Malipiero, “Annali Veneti dell’anno 1457 al 1500,” Archivio Storico Italiano, VI I , 1 (Florence, 1843), 371; De Bello Gallico in Lodovico Antonio Muratori, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, vol. 24 (Milan, 1738), col. 22. For auctions in Venice, see Hinton, “By Sale, By Gift,” 245–62. Albert Châtelet, Jean Prévost. Le Maître de Moulins (Paris, 2001), 125–6, 189. It is odd that Michiel was unable to identify the sitter (he left an ellipsis, as he did for the name of the artist), although the Dauphin’s name is inscribed on the frame of the painting. For this reason, Michiel may have seen another copy of the composition. The provenance of the Louvre painting prior to 1890 is not known. Its foreignness, with the baretta “alla franzese” may have led it to be identified as a “portrait of a woman” in the later inventory: Gronau, “Beiträge,” 60.

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134. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 60. However, this might be a reference to the French painting. See note above. 135. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 86. Michiel thus gives neither the subjects nor the artist(s). Gronau, “Beiträge,” 59. It is difficult to know what is meant by portraits in “legno et carta schietti,” but they might have been prints or drawings mounted on wood: for the difficulty of identifying the media of works of art based on inventory descriptions, see Chriscinda Henry, “What Makes a Picture? Evidence from Sixteenth-Century Venetian Property Inventories,” Journal of the History of Collections 23:2 (2011), esp. 262. According to the inventory, there were also “Sie vasetti de maiolica sopra le reme,” which might have alternated decoratively with the portraits. 136. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 86. Neither painting has been identified. On Catena, see Giles Robertson, Vincenzo Catena (Edinburgh, 1954); Enrico Guidoni, ed., “Vincenzo Catena: Giornata di Studi,” Studi Giorgioneschi 3 (1999); Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo, “Appunti su Catena,” Venezia Cinquecento 16:31 (2006): 5–104. 137. On cittadino involvement in the army, see M. E. Mallett and J. R. Hale, The Military Organization of a Renaissance State. Venice c. 1400 to 1617 (Cambridge, 1984), 336–37. 138. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 59. 139. For more discussion of Zio’s portraits by Catena, see Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” 91–105; Monika Schmitter, “‘Virtuous Riches’: The Bricolage of Cittadini Identities in Early-Sixteenth-Century Venice,” Renaissance Quarterly 57 (2004), 935–38, 962–63. 140. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 59. 141. Thornton, Scholar in His Study, 106–109. 142. See Claudia Cieri Via, “Il luogo della mente e della memoria,” preface to Liebenwein, Studiolo, xv, on St. Jerome as a “topos of the humanist iconography of the studiolo.” 143. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 59. Although it is tempting to identify this as a depiction of the Sermon on the Mount, it was not a common subject, especially for domestic settings. 144. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 59. A “fazuol” is a fringed cloth, often embroidered, that hung on pegs surrounding a mirror and was used to polish and protect its surface: Thornton, Italian Renaissance Interior, 234, 237, with an example illustrated in fig. 267; Gustav Ludwig, “Venezianischer Hausrat zur Zeit der Renaissance: Restello, Spiegel und Toilettenutensilien in Venedig zur Zeit der Renaissance,” in Italienische Forschungen (Berlin, 1908), 272–79, 296–300. 145. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 96: “El specchio de christallo fu opera de Vettor di Anzoli.” In this context,

146. 147. 148.

149. 150. 151.

152. 153. 154. 155. 156.

157. 158.

159.

“christallo” does not refer to rock crystal, but rather to transparent glass usually referred to as cristallin (see discussion below). See Luigi Zecchin, “Specchi di vetro cristallino,” Vetro e silicati, Anno XII 6:72 (November– December 1968): 23–26; Sabine Melchior-Bonnet, The Mirror. A History, trans. Katharine H. Jewett (New York and London, 2001 [1994]), 18. See n74 above for Vettor di Anzoli or Archanzoli. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 59. Thornton, Italian Renaissance Interior, 237. Possibly it is to be identified with a second mirror that Michiel saw in Zio’s house and described as “the polished metal mirror worked on both sides.” Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 96. On mirrors made of “azal,” see Ludwig, “Venezianischer Hausrat,” 318; Thornton, Italian Renaissance Interior, 234–36. Some steel mirrors were also convex. Melchior-Bonnet, Mirror, 9–34. Thornton, Scholar in His Study, 172. Translation and original in Mary Pardo, “Paolo Pino’s ‘Dialogo di pittura’: A Translation with Commentary” (PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1984), 330. On mirrors in studies Findlen, Possessing Nature, 298–303; Thornton, Scholar in His Study, 167–74. Leonardo Fioravanti, Dello specchio di scientia universale (Venice, 1572), 62v. Translation from Thornton, Scholar in His Study, 169 (italics mine). Sabba da Castiglione, Ricordi, 59. Translation from Thornton, Scholar in His Study, 110. Melchior-Bonnet, Mirror, 105–107; Thornton, Scholar in His Study, 173–74. Clelia Alberici, Il mobile veneto (Milan, 1980), 89. The inscription currently reads “Perche in me sorte destina non sollida,” but the “me” seems to have been added later. It is squeezed between “in” and “sorte” where there must originally have been an ornamental motif, as seen between all the other words. I am grateful to Tiziana Ballati, Ombretta Frau, Carlo Maraccini, and Filippo Naitana for helping me make sense of the inscription. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 57. In his last testament, the collector Gabriel Vendramin wished to assure that his collection would only pass to his descendants who qualified as “homeni studiosi di virtù.” Donata Battilotti and Maria Teresa Franco, “Regesti di committenti e dei primi collezionisti di Giorgione,” Antichità viva 17: 4–5 (1978), 67. Leon Battista Alberti, The Family in Renaissance Florence, trans. Renée Neu Watkins (Columbia, SC, 1969), 209; On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor (Cambrige, MA, 1991), 149. See Paula Findlen,

NOTES TO PAGES

160. 161.

162. 163.

164. 165. 166. 167. 168.

169. 170. 171.

172. 173.

174.

“Masculine Prerogatives: Gender, Space, and Knowledge in the Early Modern Museum,” in The Architecture of Science, ed. Peter Galison and Emily Thompson (Cambridge, MA, 1999), 36–37. Findlen, “Masculine Prerogatives, 32. The one work of art listed in the inventory that was not mentioned by Michiel was a small painting of Christ that hung above the door. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 57. See Appendix. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 67. A “fornimento da letto” was the complete ensemble of cloth hangings for a bed, which could include a “roof,” valances, and curtains: Thornton, Italian Renaissance Interior, 121. Giulio Bistort, Il magistrato alle pompe nella republica di Venezia (1912; reprint, Bologna, 1969), 240–41. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 84. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 67. The other was in the house of Alvise Cornaro in Padua: Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 12. For a discussion of painted furniture in Venice, see Susannah Kathleen Rutherglen, “Ornamental Painting of the Venetian Renaissance” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2012), esp. 118–30. She also discusses painted doors in the dissertation (130–41), and in her article, “Painting at the Threshold: Pictures for Doors in Renaissance Venice,” Art Bulletin 98:4 (2016): 438–65. Also see Caroline Campbell, “When Is a Cassone Painting Not for a Cassone? Towards a History of Furniture Painting in Sixteenth-Century Venice,” in “Una insalata di più erbe”: A Festscrift for Patricia Lee Rubin, ed. Jim Harris, Scott Nethersole, and Per Rumberg (London, 2011), 11–20, 179–81, fig. 1.1–1.10. Giorgio Vasari, Le opere di Giorgio Vasari con nuove annotazioni e commenti di Gaetano Milanesi (1906; reprint, Florence, 1998), 5:135–36. Emmanuele Antonio Cicogna, Delle inscrizioni veneziane (1830; reprint, Bologna, 1969), 3:436. Since there is some indication that the camera dalla scala had an alcove in which the bed was placed (see below), I think it is likely that both Vasari and Cicogna are referring to the camera dalla scala. They were stored in the “cameretta nuova de sopra”: Gronau, “Beiträge,” 64. See examples in John Kent Lydecker, “The Domestic Setting of the Arts in Renaissance Florence” (PhD diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1987), 162; Musacchio, Art, Marriage, and Family, 111. Pardo, “Paolo Pino’s ‘Dialogo di pittura’,” 344; Paolo Pino, Dialogo di pittura, ed. Susanna Falabella (Rome: Lithos, 2000), 113; Carlo Ridolfi, Le maraviglie dell’arte (Padua, 1835), 1: 321.

167–169

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175. Ridolfi, Maraviglie, 1:123, 124–26 (Giorgione); 1:321–22, 326, 327–28 (Schiavone); 1:384–85 (Bonifacio Veronese). 176. Ridolfi, Maraviglie, 1:384–85. 177. Ridolfi, Maraviglie, I:326. 178. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 78. Although Michiel’s entry is dated January 15, 1532, Lucco suggests this is more veneto, and therefore the date is 1533: Mauro Lucco, “Occultato nell’ombra di Bonifacio Veronese: disvelamento di Stefano Cernotto,” Artibus et Historiae 34:68 (2013), 172. 179. Vasari, Le opere, 7:460–61. To my knowledge, this identification was first proposed by Theodor Frimmel, “Bemerkungen zu Marc-Anton Michiels Notizia d’opere di disegno,” Blätter für Gemäldekunde 3 (1907), 69. The idea is repeated by Rodolfo Pallucchini, Tiziano (Florence, 1969), 1: 214–15, and most recently in Giorgio Tagliaferro and Bernard Aikema, eds., Le botteghe di Tiziano (Florence, 2009), 343–44. 180. Although he admits it is hard to imagine that Titian was involved its execution. Lucco, “Occultato nell’ombra,” 171, 172. Lucco argues Stefano was Titian’s student on a stylistic basis. See also his “Ancora su Stefano Cernotto,” Artibus et Historiae 74 (2016): 177–93. Cernotto was first proposed by D. von Hadeln in Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler, ed. Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker (Leipzig, 1912), 4:296. 181. Ridolfi, Maraviglie, 1:384–85. 182. Italics mine. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 84. 183. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 67. 184. Giuseppe Boerio, Dizionario del dialetto veneziano (1856; reprint, Florence, 1993), 119. Also see Manlio Cortelazzo, Dizionario veneziano della lingua e della cultura popolare nel XVI secolo (Limena, Padua, 2007), 258, who provides an example of usage from 1561: “de quei, che no dorme mai de notte, e che fa i lamenti col cussin in callesella.” 185. Brown, Private Lives, 77, notes that beds built into the walls were not recorded by notaries. The inventory does mention the bedclothes already discussed, as well as “un letto, un stramezzo devisado et un paiarizzo” (Gronau, “Beiträge,” 67). 186. Sebastiano Serlio, Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture. Volume 2, ed. and trans. Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks (New Haven, 2001), 106. For a discussion of the placement of beds in Renaissance rooms (including alcoves), see Burns, “Letti visibili,” 130–41. 187. Curiously (teasingly?), in the reflection of the mirror one sees what seems to be the image of the closed bed.

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188. In 1525, Michiel saw the Dresden Venus in the house of Girolamo Marcello: Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 88; Jaynie Anderson, Giorgione: The Painter of “Poetic Brevity” (Paris, 1997), 307–8. 189. See Charles Hope, “Problems of Interpretation in Titian’s Erotic Paintings,” in Tiziano e Venezia (Vicenza, 1980), 119; David Rosand, “‘So-And-So Reclining on Her Couch’,” in Titian 500, ed. Joseph Manca (Washington DC, 1993), 104–5; and Rona Goffen, “Renaissance Dreams,” Renaissance Quarterly 40:4 (1987), 695–701. 190. A nude in Palma’s studio on his death was also described as “una nuda retrata.” Philip Rylands, Palma Vecchio (Cambridge, 1992), 350. 191. Chriscinda Henry, “Buffoons, Rustics, and Courtesans: Low Painting and Entertainment Culture in Renaissance Venice” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2009), 267 and 268n15; also see Maria Ruvoldt, The Italian Renaissance Imagery of Inspiration: Metaphors of Sex, Sleep, and Dreams (Cambridge, 2004), 79. 192. As noted by Rosand, “‘So-And-So Reclining on Her Couch’,” 111. 193. Roberto Longhi, “Precisioni nelle gallerie italiane: Galleria Borghese,” Vita Artistica 1 (1926): 71–72, and “Amplimenti 1940,” in Officina Ferrarese (Florence, 1968), 162–63. For the attribution to Girolamo da Treviso, see Luigi Coletti, “Girolamo da Treviso il Giovane,” La Critica d’Arte 4 (1936), 172–74; Gianvittorio Dillon in The Genius of Venice 1500–1600, ed. Jane Martineau and Charles Hope (New York, 1984), 173 (cat. 40). 194. ASV, MND, b. 39 c. 6, 11v: “uno quadro grando con una nuda cioe, venere.” Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” 219n365. 195. I did find at least one other example of a female nude on display in the portego: “un quadro di retrato di una donna nuda.” ASV, MND, b. 42, c. 32 (Gasparo Segezi, miniatore). 196. Alessandro Luzio, La galleria dei Gonzaga venduta all’Inghilterra nel 1627–28. Documenti degli archivi di Mantova e Londra raccolti ed illustrati (Milan, 1913), 27n4; Gronau, “Venezianische Kunstsammlungen,” 14n1. 197. Luzio, Galleria dei Gonzaga, 27n4. 198. See Schmitter, “Quadro da Portego,” 708–711. 199. Ruvoldt, Italian Renaissance Imagery of Inspiration, 80, argues something similar to this. 200. For example, Gronau, “Venezianische Kunstsammlungen,” 14; Rosand, “‘So-And-So Reclining on Her Couch’,” 109; Rona Goffen, “Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love: Individuality and Sexuality in a Renaissance Marriage Picture,” in Manca, Titian 500,

201.

202.

203. 204.

205. 206. 207.

208.

209. 210. 211.

141n25; Andrea Bayer, “From Cassone to Poesia: Paintings of Love and Marriage,” in Art and Love in Renaissance Italy, ed. Andrea Bayer, exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, November 11, 2008-February 16, 2009, and Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, March 15-June 14, 2009 (New York, 2009), 232. See Zygmunt Waźbiński, “‘ . . . Un quadro da camera di Venere e Cupido’ di Paris Bordone per il Duca Francesco di Lorena,” in Paris Bordon e il suo tempo (Treviso, 1987), 109–18. “Una littiera grande de nogara in collone con il suo ciel et donna nuda,” ASV, MND, b. 39, c. 6, 12r; Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” 219n364. See Thornton, Italian Renaissance Interior, 121, for the cielo of beds. See n189. A common reference was to St. Augustine’s story of the tyrant Dionysius, who “because he was deformed, did not wish to have children like himself. In sleeping with his wife he used to place a beautiful picture before her, so that by desiring its beauty and in some manner taking it in, she might effectively transmit it to the offspring she conceived.” Quoted and discussed in David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago, 1989), 2. The preacher Bernardino de Siena echoed the idea in 1425: “Augustine talks about those who had acts of love painted on their beds in order to have children.” Bernardino da Siena, Le Prediche Volgari: Predicazione del 1425 in Siena, ed. Ciro Cannarozzi (Florence, 1958), 2:195. Alberti, On the Art of Building, 299. See Rosand, “‘SoAnd-So Reclining on Her Couch’,” 109. Translation from Freedberg, Power of Images, 3. Giulio Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, ed. Adriana Marucchi (Rome, 1956), 1:143. Rosand, “‘So-And-So Reclining on Her Couch’,” 109, writes of Odoni’s nude: “The location of Savoldo’s picture . . . would seem to confirm its higher talismanic function: to conceive a child under the sign of Venus would increase the chance, presumably, of generating beauty.” Jaynie Anderson, “Giorgione, Titian and the Sleeping Venus,” in Tiziano e Venezia (Vicenza, 1980), 337–42, gives the painting an earlier date so that it corresponds better with Marcello’s marriage in 1507. See Andrea Bayer in Bayer, Art and Love in Renaissance Italy, 321–23 (cat. 148), and citations therein. See Rona Goffen, “Sex, Space, and Social History in Titian’s Venus of Urbino,” in Titian’s “Venus of Urbino”, ed. Rona Goffen (Cambridge, 1997), 79–85. See discussion in Chapter 2.

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212. Ruvoldt, Italian Renaissance Imagery of Inspiration, 103. Also see Anthony Colantuono, Titian, Colonna and the Renaissance Science of Procreation: Equicola’s Seasons of Desire (Farnham, 2010), 251–52. 213. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 66; Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 84. 214. Small Bronzes in the Renaissance, ed. Debra Pincus (Washington DC, 1991), 12. 215. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 84. It is described similarly in the inventory (Gronau, “Beiträge,” 66). 216. See Wendy Stedman Sheard, “Giorgione’s Portrait Inventions c. 1500: Transfixing the Viewer,” in Reconsidering the Renaissance, ed. Mario A. Di Cesare (Binghamton, NY, 1992), 141–76. 217. Henry, “Buffoons, Rustics, and Courtesans,” 142–209. 218. Rylands, Palma Vecchio, 298 (cat. A58). Formerly in the San Diego Museum of Art, sold at Christie’s, New York, January 10, 1990, lot 10. 219. I have not been able to examine the original, but had access to a color photograph, which I was unable to publish. 220. My discussion is informed by Anne Christine Junkerman, “Bellissima Donna: An Interdisciplinary Study of Venetian Sensuous Half Length Images of the Early Sixteenth Century” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1988), esp. 20–21, 49–52, 371–75. 221. Henry, “Buffoons, Rustics, and Courtesans,” 142–43, 158–60, 204–8. 222. Henry, “Buffoons, Rustics, and Courtesans,” 147. 223. Frimmel, Anonimo Morelliano, 84. The ellipsis is Michiel’s. 224. Schmitter, “Quadro da portego,” 707. 225. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 66. As is common in inventories, the image of the Madonna is the first painting (indeed the first object) mentioned in the room. 226. Rylands, Palma Vecchio, 70. 227. I believe it was first proposed by Gustavo Frizzoni in his edition of Michiel’s text: Notizia d’opere di disegno (Bologna, 1884), 159–60. See Nicholas Penny, “Two Paintings by Titian in the National Gallery, London. Notes on Technique, Condition and Provenance,” in Tiziano. Técnicas y restauraciones (Madrid, 1999), 109; Peter Humfrey, Titian. The Complete Paintings ([Antwerp], 2007), 153. 228. Harold E. Wethey, The Paintings of Titian (London, 1969), 1: 104; Keith Christiansen, “Titianus (Per) fecit,” Apollo 125 (March 1987), 192. The earliest history of the work is, however, conjectural. 229. Cecil Gould, The Sixteenth-Century Italian Schools (London, 1975), 278. 230. See Anne Marie S. Logan, The “Cabinet” of the Brothers Gerard and Jan Reynst (Amsterdam, 1979), 38–41, 82–83, 87, 130–32 (cat. n. 16), 154–55 (cat. n. 35).

174–186

287

231. See Christiansen, “Titianus (Per)fecit,” 190–96; Penny, “Two Paintings by Titian,” 109–12; Lucy Whitaker and Martin Clayton, The Art of Italy in the Royal Collection: Renaissance and Baroque (London, 2007), 194–97 (cat. 61). 232. Andrew John Martin, “‘Amica e un albergo di virtuosi.’ La casa e la collezione di Andrea Odoni,” Venezia Cinquecento 19 (2000), 169n34. 233. Ruvoldt, Italian Renaissance Imagery of Inspiration, 102. 234. Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, 255 (IV , 67), discussed by Ruvoldt, Italian Renaissance Imagery of Inspiration, 87, who also notes similar themes in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. El libro del Cortegiano, ed. Giulio Preti (Turin: Einaudi, 1965), 382. 235. Ruvoldt, Italian Renaissance Imagery of Inspiration, 88. 236. Ruvoldt, Italian Renaissance Imagery of Inspiration, 115. 237. Ruvoldt, Italian Renaissance Imagery of Inspiration, 115–17.

CHAPTER 7 TRANSMUTING THE SELF: LOTTO’S PORTRAIT OF ODONI 1.

2. 3. 4.

5.

6. 7.

Dürer famously wrote from Venice to his friend Willibald Pirckheimer in 1506: “Here I am a gentleman [Herr], at home a sponger.” Peter Burke, The Italian Renaissance: Culture and Society in Italy, rev. ed. (Princeton, 1986), 76. Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1988), 1. Lars Olaf Larsson, “Lorenzo Lottos Bildnis des Andrea Odoni in Hampton Court,” Konsthistorisk Tidskrift 37 (1968): 21–33. Translated in Peter Humfrey, Lorenzo Lotto (New Haven, 1997), 176. Francesca Cortesi Bosco, Il coro intarsiato di Lotto e Capoferri per Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo, vol. 2, Lettere e documenti (Bergamo, 1987), 9. For example, Peter Humfrey, Titian (London, 2007), 84; Jean Habert in Titian: Prince of Painters, exh. cat. Palazzo Ducale, Venice, June 2-October 7, 1990, and National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, October 28, 1990-January 27, 1991 (Venice, 1990), 192 (cat. 17). Deborah Howard, “Titian’s Portraits of the Grand Chancellor Andrea de’Franceschi,” Artibus et Historiae 74 (2016): 139–51. Philip Rylands, Palma Vecchio (Cambridge, 1992), 106, 227 (cat. 84).

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186–191

8. The other artist active in Venice at this time who was experimenting in a manner similar to Lotto was Giovanni Gerolamo Savoldo. See n18. For the impact of the Odoni portrait, see the discussion of the “portrait of a collector” type below. 9. Enrico Maria Dal Pozzlo in Lorenzo Lotto. Portraits, ed. Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo and Miguel Falomir with Matthias Wivel, exh. cat. Museo del Prado, Madrid, June 19-September 30, 2018, and National Gallery, London, November 5, 2018-February 10, 2019 (Madrid, 2018), 259–61 (cat. 22). 10. Humfrey, Lotto, 104–6, suggests the date ca. 1526–27 and discusses various interpretations of the attribute. While some date this portrait a bit earlier to Lotto’s Bergamo period, I believe the similarities with the Odoni portrait, including the use of one sleeve that billows and one sleeve that extends on the tabletop, suggest the two portraits are very close in date. 11. Four additional designs were made for the pedestals at the entrance to the choir. On the intarsias, completed between 1522 and 1533, see Diana Galis, “Concealed Wisdom: Renaissance Hieroglyphic and Lorenzo Lotto’s Bergamo Intarsie,” Art Bulletin 62:3 (1980): 363–75; Cortesi Bosco, Coro, 2 vols.; [O. Roncelli, G. O. Bravi, M. Zanchi, and F. Noris,] The Tarsias by Lorenzo Lotto: A Route between Bible and Alchemy (Clusone, n.d.); and the following publications by Mauro Zanchi : Lorenzo Lotto e l’immaginario alchemico: Le “imprese” nelle tarsie del coro della Basilica di S. Maria Maggiore in Bergamo (Clusone, 1997); The Bible According to Lorenzo Lotto: The Wooden Choir, Inlaid by Capoferri, in the Basilica of Bergamo (Clusone, 2005); “Il sole neoplatonico nel coro di Santa Maria Maggiore,” in Lorenzo Lotto e le Marche: Per una geografia dell’anima, ed. Loretta Mozzoni (Florence, 2009), 330–49; In principio sarà il sole: Il coro simbolico di Lorenzo Lotto (Florence, 2016). 12. For the completion dates of the drawings, see Cortesi Bosco, Coro, 1:116 (table C). 13. Lotto was always reminding his Bergamo patrons to be careful with the drawings and to send them back to him in Venice. Later he made special dispensations for them in his wills. Humfrey, Lotto, 89, 176–77; Francesca Cortesi Bosco, “Autografi inediti di Lotto: il primo testamento (1531) e un codicillo (1533),” Bergomum: Bollettino della Civica Biblioteca Angelo Mai di Bergamo 93: 1–2 (1998), 9, 64–66. 14. Humfrey, Lotto, 106; Wendy Stedman Sheard, “The Portraits,” in Lorenzo Lotto: Rediscovered Master of the Renaissance, ed. David Alan Brown, Peter Humfrey, and Mauro Lucco, exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, November 2, 1997-March 1, 1998; Accademia Carrara, Bergamo, April 2-June 28, 1998;

15.

16. 17. 18.

19.

20.

and Grand Palais, Paris, October 12, 1998-January 11, 1999 (Washington DC, 1997), 48; Lucy Whitaker and Martin Clayton, The Art of Italy in the Royal Collection: Renaissance and Baroque (London, 2007), 206. Anna Banti with Antonio Boschetto, Lorenzo Lotto (Florence, [1953]), 39; Humfrey, Lotto, 96; Elsa Dezuanni, “Lorenzo Lotto: sentimento e modernità,” in Lorenzo Lotto, ed. Giovanni Carlo Federico Villa, exh. cat. Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome, March 2-June 12, 2011 (Cinisello Balsamo, 2011), 199. Messer Marsilio Cassotti and his Bride, 1523 (Madrid, Prado), 71 × 84 cm; Couple with a Squirrel and a Dog, 1523–24 (St. Petersburg, Hermitage), 96 × 116 cm. Signed and dated 1527. See Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo in Dal Pozzolo and Falomir, Lorenzo Lotto. Portraits, 265–68 (cat. 24). Lotto’s other horizontal portraits include Portrait of a Young Man (Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia – 98 × 111 cm), the date of which is debated (Humfrey, Lotto, 107–8, argues for a date of ca. 1530, although earlier scholars had placed it ca. 1524–28); Goldsmith in Three Views (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, ca. 1529–30 – 52 × 79 cm); Portrait of a Lady as Lucrezia (London, National Gallery, ca. 1533 – 95.9 × 110.5 cm); and the recently discovered Portrait of an Architect (private Collection, ca. 1540 – 86 × 120 cm). For the last see Peter Humfrey et al., eds., The Age of Titian: Venetian Renaissance Art from Scottish Collections, exh. cat. Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, August 5-December 5, 2004 (Edinburgh, 2004), 120–21 (cat. 33). With the exception of this last painting, later in his career Lotto reverted to the vertical format. The painter Savoldo was also experimenting with the horizontal format in the same period in works such as Portrait of a Man in Armor (Paris, Louvre – 91 × 123 cm); Portrait of a Woman as St. Margaret (Rome, Capitoline Gallery, ca. 1535 – 92 × 123 cm); and Flutist (Brescia, Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo, 1539? – 74.3 × 100.3 cm). Unfortunately, Savoldo’s works are notoriously difficult to date. Petra Kathke, Porträt und Accessoire: Eine Bildnisform im 16. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1997); see 207–14 for the Odoni portrait; Monika Schmitter, “The Display of Distinction: Art Collecting and Social Status in Early Sixteenth-Century Venice” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1997), 237–39. Cecil Gould, Parmigianino (New York, 1995), 46, 187 (cat. A19); David Ekserdjian, Parmigianino (New Haven, 2006), 121–24; Patricia Lee Rubin, Portraits by the Artist as a Young Man: Parmigianino ca. 1524 (Groningen, 2007), 10–20; Giancarla Periti, “Regarding Parmigianino’s Early Portraits,” Memoirs

NOTES TO PAGES

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31.

of the American Academy in Rome 59/60 (2014/15): 284–309. This is proposed by Patricia Rubin, “‘Contemplating Fragments of Ancient Marbles’: Sitters and Statues in Sixteenth-Century Portraiture,” Studiolo 4 (2006), 18. A few Venetian portraits with sculptures do predate the Odoni portrait; see Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” 239. David Oldfield, “Lorenzo Lotto’s Arrival in Venice,” Arte Veneta 38 (1984), 141–42; Humfrey, Lotto, 85. If he traveled by land, he could easily have passed through Parma. Gould, Parmigianino, 46n19, suggests a mutual influence between Lotto and Parmigianino, but it remains to be determined how this occurred. On the type, see Salomon Reinach, “De quelques prétendus portraits de sculpteurs,” Revue Archéologique, 5th series, 3 (1916): 399–417; Larsson, “Lorenzo Lottos Bildnis,” 27–32; Gunter Schweikhart, “Das Porträt des Sammlers in der Renaissance,” In medias res: Festschrift zum siebzigsten Geburtstag von Peter Ludwig (Cologne, 1995), 21–32; Linda Borean, “Ritratti di collezionisti a Venezia tra secondo Cinquecento e prima metà del Seicento. Alcune considerazioni,”Artibus et Historiae 68 (2013): 105–19. I use the word “emblem” here to translate impresa as discussed in Kristen Lippincott, “The Genesis and Significance of the Fifteenth-Century Italian Impresa,” in Chivalry in the Renaissance, ed. Sydney Anglo (Woodbridge, 1990), 49–76. Lotto himself used the word impresa in relation to both his intarsia cover designs and his portrait inventions. See n102, as well as Zanchi, In principio sarà il sole, 24, esp. n14. Falomir in Dal Pozzolo and Falomir, Lorenzo Lotto. Portraits, 238–43 (cat. 17); Beverly Louise Brown, “The Bride’s Jewellery: Lorenzo Lotto’s Wedding Portrait of Marsilio and Faustina Cassotti,” Apollo 169 (2009): 49–55. A similar abruptness of symbolic content characterizes Lotto’s Portrait of a Man with a Golden Paw (Fig. 109). See Matthias Wivel in Dal Pozzolo and Falomir, Lorenzo Lotto. Portraits, 217–20 (cat. 12). Lippincott, “Genesis and Significance,” 71–75; Sheard, “The Portraits,” 44. See Appendix. Harry Berger Jr., Fictions of the Pose: Rembrandt against the Italian Renaissance (Stanford, 2000), 221. See Stella Mary Newton, The Dress of the Venetians 1495–1525 (Aldershot, 1988), 87–90, 153–54; Douglas Biow, On the Importance of Being an Individual in Renaissance Italy: Men, Their Professions, and Their Beards (Philadelphia, 2015), esp. 181–206. Will Fisher, “The Renaissance Beard: Masculinity in Early Modern England,” Renaissance Quarterly 54:1

32.

33.

34.

35. 36. 37.

38.

39.

40.

41.

191–197

289

(2001), esp. 172–74; Patricia Simons, The Sex of Men in Premodern Europe: A Cultural History (Cambridge, 2011), 29–30. For Pro sacerdotum barbis, see Kenneth Gouwens, Remembering the Renaissance: Humanist Narratives of the Sack of Rome (Leiden, 1998), 149–52. For Valeriano’s Hieroglyphica, first published in 1556, see Diana Wronski Galis, “Lorenzo Lotto: A Study of his Career and Character, with Particular Emphasis on his Emblematic and Hieroglyphic Works” (PhD diss., Bryn Mawr College, 1977), 96–99. Giovanni Pierio Valeriano, Ieroglifici, overo commentari delle occulte significationi de gli Egittij, & d’altre Nationi (Venice, 1602), 475: “la barba appresso de gli antichi è stato segno dell’huomo, che non per il sesso, ma per la virtù stessa . . . che la barba significhi l’huomo, molti detti de savi ne rendono testimonio . . . la barba era gieroglifico della fortezza, per che significa l’huomo . . . il capo e la barba dice Efichio, è segno della sapienza, e perfettion nostra.” Peter Burke, “The Presentation of the Self in the Renaissance Portrait,” in his The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy: Essays on Perception and Communication (Cambridge, 1987), 154. Biow, On the Importance, 195. Joseph Leo Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art (Chicago, 1993), 169. Raymond B. Waddington argues that the “untrammelled hirsuteness” of Aretino’s author portraits of the 1530s conveyed the writer’s “proclaimed aesthetic of following nature, not art”: Aretino’s Satyr: Sexuality, Satire, and SelfProjection in Sixteenth-Century Literature and Art (Toronto, 2004), 65. John Shearman plausibly suggests that Odoni is depicted wearing the “old Roman robe of thick black cloth without (?) lined with wolf-skins” listed in the 1555 inventory of the Odoni house: The Early Italian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen (Cambridge, 1983), 146–47. Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (Cambridge, 2000), 1–14. For a recent overview of the literature on Renaissance clothing, see Timothy McCall, “Materials for Renaissance Fashion,” Renaissance Quarterly 70 (2017), 1449–64. Newton, Dress, 33–38. Lotto emphasized the minute pleats and delicate embroidery at the neck of Odoni’s camicia, characteristics of the finer versions of such a shirt. The light in which the painting is exhibited affects the perception of the cloak’s color. At the Lotto exhibition in Rome in 2011, where it was exhibited with bright spotlighting, the garment appeared to be a midnight blue. However, in the more recent

290

42. 43.

44.

45. 46. 47.

48. 49. 50. 51.

52. 53. 54.

55.

NOTES TO PAGES

197–203

exhibition of Lotto portraits in Madrid (2018), where the lighting was more diffuse, the entire painting was more washed out and the garment appeared more gray. Margaret F. Rosenthal and Ann Rosalind Jones, Cesare Vecellio’s Habiti Antichi et Moderni. The Clothing of the Renaissance World (London, 2008), 163. Niccolò Machiavelli, letter to Francesco Vettori (December 10, 1513); translation from Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, ed. Quentin Skinner and Russell Price (Cambridge, 1988), 93 (appendix A): https://it.wikisource.org/wiki/Lettere_(Machiavelli)/ Lettera_XI_a_Francesco_Vettori. Compare for example to Portrait of a Gentleman (Galleria Borghese, Rome) and Portrait of a Man (Cleveland Museum of Art). The Portrait of a Man with a Golden Paw (Fig. 109) has similar somber dress (here the black plays off a dark brown), but the sitter’s left leg is visible, showing off fancy cut hose with teal cloth poking through. Ann Rosalind Jones, email correspondence: November 3, 2013. Ann Rosalind Jones, email correspondence: November 6, 2013. For velluto alto-basso, see Doretta Davanzo Poli, “La produzione serica a Venezia,” 26, and Giovanna Galasso, “Modelli e schemi per la produzione tessile in età moderna,” 229–33, in Tessuti nel Veneto: Venezia e la Terraferma, ed. Giuliana Ericani and Paola Frattaroli (Verona, 1993), as well as Lisa Monnas, Merchants, Princes, and Painters: Silk Fabrics in Italian and Northern Paintings 1300–1550 (New Haven, 2008), 24, 254–58. There is, however, some question about type of fabric Lotto is portraying. Timothy McCall suggested that it might instead be watered silk (email correspondence, February 18, 2019). Rosenthal and Jones, Cesare Vecellio’s Habiti, 163. Newton, Dress, 11–12. Rosenthal and Jones, Cesare Vecellio’s Habiti, 163. Lotto made use of sleeves as pictorial devices in other portraits, but the Odoni portrait is a particularly complex example. See for example, Portrait of Man with a Golden Paw (Fig. 109) and Portrait of a Man (Cleveland Museum of Art). Ann Rosalind Jones: email correspondence, November 3, 2013. See discussion in the Introduction. The change was noted in Theodor Frimmel, “Bemerkungen zu Marc-Anton Michiels Notizia d’opere di disegno,” Blätter für Gemäldekunde 3 (1907), Beilage: 53; discussed in Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” 248. Garzanti i grandi dizionari italiano (1998).

56. Some of the most important writers on contemplation are Plato, Plotinus, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Marsilio Ficino. See definitions and literary uses of “contemplare” and “contemplativo” in Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, ed. Salvatore Battaglia (Turin, [1964]), 3:637–38. Also see Cuthbert Butler, Western Mysticism: The Teaching of Augustine, Gregory and Bernard on Contemplation and the Contemplative Life (New York, 1968); John N. Deck, Nature, Contemplation and the One: A Study in the Philosophy of Plotinus (Toronto, 1967). For Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola’s use of the term, see discussion below, esp. nn100, 101. 57. See Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” 249–52. 58. For examples, Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” 249–52, and “‘Virtuous Riches’: The Bricolage of Cittadini Identities in Early-Sixteenth-Century Venice,” Renaissance Quarterly 57 (2004), 956n171. 59. Cortesi Bosco, Coro, 2:7–26, notes the seals used on the letters. Lotto seems to have particularly favored the crane in flight seal in the year 1527. 60. Translation from Humfrey, Lotto, 181 (appendix C); Lorenzo Lotto, Il “Libro di spese diverse” con aggiunta di lettere e d’altri documenti, ed. Pietro Zampetti (Venice and Rome, 1969), 304 (March 25, 1546). In 1553 Lotto also described the gem in his account book: Lotto, Libro di spese, 190–92. 61. Book II, no. 98. Translation from The Hieroglyphics of Horapollo, trans. George Boas (New York, 1950), 107. The work was discovered in 1419 and first printed in Venice in 1505. See discussion below. 62. “Circha li disegni de li coperti, sapiate che son cose che non essendo scritte, bisogna che la imaginatione le porti a luce.” Cortesi Bosco, Coro, 2:19 (February 10, 1528). In an earlier letter, dated February 18, 1527 (Cortesi Bosco, Coro, 2:12), Lotto, however, referred to writing the meanings of some of his drawings on their reverse: “Tuti questi disegni sono notati da riverso quello significano le cose.” 63. See Alexander Nagel’s review of books on Lorenzo Lotto, Art Bulletin 80:4 (1998): 742–47. For a recent overview of the Italian literature in English, see Federica Ambrosini’s essay “Lorenzo Lotto’s Times, Places, and Encounters,” in Falomir and Dal Pozzolo, Lorenzo Lotto. Portraits, 21–41. 64. For Lotto’s limited knowledge of Latin, see Cortesi Bosco, Coro, 1:141; Massimo Firpo, Artisti, gioellieri, eretici: Il mondo di Lorenzo Lotto tra riforma e controriforma (Rome and Bari, 2001), 51. 65. Some major sources on the Renaissance interest in hieroglyphs include: Galis, “Lorenzo Lotto,” esp.

NOTES TO PAGES

66. 67.

68.

69. 70. 71.

89–104; Galis, “Concealed Wisdom,” esp. 364–68; Brian Curran, The Egyptian Renaissance: The Afterlife of Ancient Egypt in Early Modern Italy (Chicago, 2007), esp. 89–105, 227–43; Karl Giehlow, The Humanist Interpretation of Hieroglyphs in the Allegorical Studies of the Renaissance with a Focus on the Triumphal Arch of Maximilian I, ed. and trans. Robin Raybould (Leiden, 2015 [first published in German in 1915]). For the authorship of the Hypnerotomachia, see Patricia Fortini Brown, Venice and Antiquity: The Venetian Sense of the Past (New Haven, 1996), 287–90. John Pope-Hennessy, Catalogue of Italian Sculpture in the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, 1964), 2: 511. For discussion of the statue, dated 1527, see Chapter 4. For Michiel’s connections to Valeriano, dating back before 1510, see Jennifer Fletcher, “Marcantonio Michiel: His Friends and Collection,” Burlington Magazine 123 (August 1981), 460, 465; Fausto Nicolini, L’arte napoletana del Rinascimento e la lettera di Pietro Summonte a Marcantonio Michiel (Naples, 1925), 134. For another product of the northern Italian interest in hieroglyphs, see the manuscript produced by Filippo Alberici (ca. 1470–1531), based on a variety of Aldine publications, for the king of England, Henry VII: Sonja Drimmer, “The Hieroglyphs of Kingship: Italy’s Egypt in Early Tudor England and the Manuscript as Monument,” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 59/60 (2014–15): 255–83. Galis, “Lorenzo Lotto,” 90–91; Galis, “Concealed Wisdom,” esp. 364. Maurice Pope, The Story of Decipherment: From Egyptian Hieroglyphic to Linear B (London, 1975), 24. Plotinus (v 8, 6), for example, writes “when [the Egyptians] wanted to express their meaning philosophically they did not go through the whole business of letters, words, and sentences. They did not employ devices to copy the sounds of a proposition and how it is pronounced. Instead, in their sacred writing, they drew signs, a separate sign for each idea, so as to express its whole meaning at once. Each separate sign is in itself a piece of knowledge, a piece of wisdom, a piece of reality, immediately present.” From Pope, Story of Decipherment, 21. Ficino commented on this passage: “The Egyptian priests did not use individual letters to signify mysteries, but whole images of plants, trees and animals; because God has knowledge of things not through a multiplicity of thought processes, but rather as a simple and firm form of the thing.” Quoted in Rudolf Wittkower, “Hieroglyphics in

72. 73. 74.

75.

76. 77.

78.

79.

80.

203–205

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the Early Renaissance,” in his Allegory and the Migration of Symbols (Boulder, CO, 1977), 116. Giehlow, Humanist Interpretation, 50. This is Wittkower’s argument in “Hieroglyphics in the Early Renaissance,” supported by Lippincott, “Genesis and Significance,” esp. 65. Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor (Cambridge, MA, 1988), 256–57. See discussion in Curran, Egyptian Renaissance, 72–76. Translation and original in Denis Drysdall, “Filippo Fasanini and his Explanation of Sacred Writing (Text and Translation),” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 13 (1983): 132–35. Anna Bellavitis, Identité, mariage, mobilité sociale: Citoyennes et citoyens à Venise au XVIe siècle (Rome, 2001), 344. Archivio di Stato, Venice, Inquisitori di Stato, b. 1269, 62r: “da sacerdotti agiptij furono usate le zifre . . . con le immagini de gli animali per le loro nature dimostravano parole et intiere clausule overo intieri concetti con qualli tenevano occolti à gli homini idiotj la intelligencia delle cose sacre.” For the treatise, see Piero Lucchi, “A 16th Century Cryptographic Treatise: Agostino Amadi’s Zifre, Between Humanistic Culture and Practical Mathematics,” in Mathematics and Culture, ed. Michele Emmer (Berlin and New York, 2004), 39–49. Humfrey, Lotto, 7, 25; Cortesi Bosco, Coro, 1:177; Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo, “‘Laura tra Polia e Berenice’ di Lorenzo Lotto,” Artibus et Historiae 13:25 (1992), 120. Rossi’s secretary at the time, the humanist Galeazzo Facino, owned a copy of the Hypnerotomachia. The first scholars to interpret Lotto’s art in light of the Renaissance interest in hieroglyphs were H. A. Van den Berg-Noë, “Lorenzo Lotto e la decorazione del coro ligneo di S. Maria Maggiore in Bergamo,” Mededelingen van het Nederlands Institut te Rome 36 (1974), 158–62, and Galis, “Lorenzo Lotto.” Although it cannot be proven that Lotto had a direct connection to scholars with published interests in hieroglyphs, such as Valeriano, I am convinced that his association with Bishop Rossi in Treviso gave him access to these ideas. On the relationship between alchemy and hermeticism, see the special volume of Early Science and Medicine 5:2 (2000). For the interest in alchemy in and around Treviso in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century, see Francesca Cortesi Bosco, Gli affreschi dell’Oratorio Suardi. Lorenzo Lotto nella crisi

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81.

82.

83.

84.

85.

86.

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della Riforma (Bergamo, 1980), 134, and Viaggio nell’ermetismo del Rinascimento: Lotto, Dürer, Giorgione (Padua, 2016), esp. 289–416. Augurello knew Marsilio Ficino in Florence and was also connected to Aldine circles in Venice but was residing in Treviso during the years Lotto was there. For Augurello’s interest in arcane imagery, see Salvatore Settis, Giorgione’s Tempest: Interpreting the Hidden Subject, trans. Ellen Bianchini (Chicago, 1990 [original Italian, 1978]), 128. For his portrait by Lotto, which probably had an allegorical cover, see Dal Pozzolo, “‘Laura tra Polia e Bernice’,” 119. Augurello was also a friend and correspondent of Marcantonio Michiel: see David Alan Brown, “Giulio Campagnola: The Printmaker as Painter,” Artibus et Historiae 31:61 (2010), 87. Zweder Von Martels, “Augurello’s ‘Chrysopoeia’ (1515) – A Turning Point in the Literary Tradition of Alchemical Texts,” Early Science and Medicine 5:2 (2000), 179. He does refer to the alchemical experiments of his friend, the artist Giulio Campagnola. See Augusto Gentili, with Marco Lattanzi and Flavia Polignano, I giardini di contemplazione: Lorenzo Lotto, 1503/1512 (Rome, 1985), 23; Giuseppina dal Canton, “Giulio Campagnola ‘pittore alchimista’ (I),” Antichità viva 16:5 (1977): 11–19. Campagnola also apparently produced an illustrated, manuscript version of the Chrysopoeia, which does not seem to have survived: Gentili, Giardini, 23–24. It is worth noting that the manuscript on hieroglyphics made by Filippo Alberici for King Henry VII of England has an illumination based on a print of the Abduction of Ganymede by Giulio Campagnola, which is presented as a hieroglyph (Drimmer, “Hieroglyphs of Kingship,” 265). Zweder von Martels, “The Chrysopoeia (1515) of Ioannes Aurelius Augurellus and the Importance of Alchemy around 1500,” Studi umanistici piceni 13 (1993): 121–30 (126). I have found Lawrence A. Principe’s The Secrets of Alchemy (Chicago, 2013) particularly helpful. For the connection to artists also see William R. Newman, Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature (Chicago, 2004); Sven Dupré, ed., Laboratories of Art: Alchemy and Art Technology from Antiquity to the 18th Century (Cham, 2014) (e-book); and Pamela H. Smith, The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago, 2004). Cortesi Bosco, Affreschi, 124–41. The identification has been accepted by other scholars; for example, see

87. 88. 89.

90. 91. 92. 93. 94.

95. 96.

97. 98.

99. 100.

Alexander Nagel, review of books on Lotto in Art Bulletin, 745, and Matthias Winner, “Das ‘O’ von Lorenzo Lotto und Parmigianino’s Selbstbildnis im Konvexspiegel,” Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana 36 (2006), 99. Cortesi Bosco, Affreschi, 128–34. Cortesi Bosco, Affreschi, 138–39. Cortesi Bosco, Coro, esp. 1:175–80, 340–52; Zanchi, Lorenzo Lotto e l’immaginario alchemico; Zanchi, The Bible According to Lorenzo Lotto; Zanchi, “Il sole neoplatonico,” 330–49. Also see Nagel, review of books on Lotto in Art Bulletin, 746. The most convincing discussion regards the panel Cortesi Bosco titles La nutrizione del lapis (The Nourishing of the Stone): Coro, 1:177, 340–52. Cortesi Bosco, Coro, 1:122–29. For the use of Decknamen (cover names) in alchemical writing: Principe, Secrets, 18. On imprese/emblems, see Lippincott, “Genesis and Significance,” and n102 below. Van den Berg-Noë, “Lorenzo Lotto e la decorazione del coro ligneo,” 158–62; Galis, “Concealed Wisdom”; Humfrey, Lotto, 90. Cortesi Bosco, Coro, 1:167 notes that the “ribbon motif” occurs in twenty out of thirty-two cover panels. The hieroglyph design on Michiel’s Mercury also involves ribbons. Cortesi Bosco, Coro, 1:132. See n62, however, on Lotto’s notes on the back of his designs, but these were intended for his patrons, not for viewers. According to the terms of the commission, the “picture de dite travolete [the covers] siano de quella corespondenza in significato a li altri quadri [the narratives] sopra quali se ponerano respectivamente.” Cortesi Bosco, Coro, 1:125. Cortesi Bosco, Coro, 1:126. Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, On the Imagination, ed. and trans. Harry Caplan (New Haven, 1930), 30–31. Pico also notes that Plato likened “phantasy” to a painting (27): “Phantasy likewise has sometimes been called a ‘picture’ by Plato . . . in its sensorium are painted the impressions of things . . . in a manner not unlike that in which painters depict the various and dissimilar forms of things.” See Alexander Nagel, The Controversy of Renaissance Art (Chicago, 2011), 55–57. Pico, On the Imagination, 31, 37. Pico, On the Imagination, 37. Also (29): “The soul . . . employs reason for investigating these likenesses [the images in the imagination] . . . It employs the intellect for contemplating the intelligible things [again, the

NOTES TO PAGES

101.

102.

103.

104. 105.

106. 107.

images in the imagination] that are absolutely removed, not only from matter, but even from every likeness of matter.” Pico, On the Imagination, 51. Pico repeatedly employs the concept of “contemplation” to describe reason and intellect’s relationship to the images in the imagination: see 29, 37, 57. That Lotto thought about his portraits as incorporating imprese is documented in his own writing. In October 1544, Lotto recorded in his Libro di spese that his patron Ludovico Avolante requested two drawings. One was “per invention de una impresa da medaia a far su la beretta” (“for the design of a medal impresa to be put on his hat”). The other was “un’altra impesa sul paese nel quadro del suo retrato lui in mare con Cupido” (“another impresa in the landscape of the painting of his portrait, the sea with Cupid”). Lotto, Libro di spese, 122. See Elsa Dezuanni, “Due ritratti trevigiani di Lorenzo Lotto dall’indentificazione degli effigiati alla datazione dell’opera,” in Mozzoni, Lorenzo Lotto e le Marche, 38–47. In April 1552, Lotto noted in his Libro (188) that one of his portraits was worth more money due to its “ingeniosa impresa de inventione” (“ingenious emblematic meaning”). See Rubin, “‘Contemplating Fragments’,” 23. The literature on the subject is large; see especially John Jeffries Martin, Venice’s Hidden Enemies: Italian Heretics in a Renaissance City (Berkeley, 1993); Firpo, Artisti, gioiellieri, eretici; Firpo, “Lorenzo Lotto and the Reformation in Venice,” in Heresy, Culture, and Religion in Early Modern Italy: Contexts and Contestations, ed. Ronaldo K. Delph, Michelle M. Fontaine, and John Jeffries Martin (Kirksville, MO, 2006), 21–31; Adriano Prosperi, “The Religious Crisis in Early Sixteenth-Century Italy,” in Brown, Humfrey, and Lucco, Lorenzo Lotto, 21–26. Martin, Venice’s Hidden Enemies, 9 (also see 40). Firpo, Artisti, gioiellieri, eretici, examines the evidence, including the fact that Lotto painted for his nephew portraits of Luther and Luther’s wife, concluding that Lotto had heterodox beliefs and was closely connected to heretical circles in the 1530s and 1540s. The artist’s stance in the 1520s remains difficult to pin down – perhaps because his beliefs, like those of many at the time, were in flux. Firpo, Artisti, gioiellieri, eretici, esp. 5, 51, 71; Humfrey, Lotto, 3–4, 124, 142. Quotes from Humfrey, Lotto, 124, 142. On the “Christocentrism” of Reformist movements, see Nagel, Controversy, esp. chapter 4. Also see Manfredo Tafuri, Venice and the Renaissance, trans. Jessica Levine (Cambridge, MA, 1995 [Italian

108.

109.

110.

111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117.

118.

119.

208–209

293

original published 1985]), 59–62; Prosperi, “The Religious Crisis,” 21–22. On the frontispiece, see Firpo, Artisti, gioiellieri, eretici, 100–16; Francesco de Carolis in Lorenzo Lotto: Il richiamo delle Marche. Luoghi, tempi e persone, ed. Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo, exh. cat. Palazzo Buonaccorsi, Macerata, October 19, 2018-February 10, 2019 (Milan, 2018), 198 (cat. VIII.1.8). Firpo, Artisti, gioiellieri, eretici, esp. 71–85; Cortesi Bosco, Coro, 1:159, 162. Although it used to be believed that Lotto only remained in the monastery for some months, a more recent reinterpretation suggests he may instead have stayed several years. See Bernard Aikema, “Lorenzo Lotto: La pala di Sant’Antonino e l’osservanza domenicana a Venezia,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 33:1 (1989), 138; Firpo, Artisti, gioiellieri, eretici, 53–56 (esp. n40). “Et penso che per uno de li quadri per li pilastri, seria al proposito quel de Iosuè [Joshua] che firmò il sole che in questa quadragesima lo sentì ricordar dal nostro predicatore et sel vi piaccia mandatemelo a dire et in scritis la storia.” Cortesi Bosco, Coro, 2:13 (May 9, 1527). Firpo, Artisti, gioiellieri, eretici, 72; Cortesi Bosco, Coro, 1:159, 162. Joshua 10:12–14. Humfrey, Lotto, 89; Firpo, Artisti, gioiellieri, eretici, 74; Cortesi Bosco, Coro, 1:124, 159–60; 2:19. Cortesi Bosco, Coro, 1:160. Francesco Zorzi, L’armonia del mondo, ed. and trans. Saverio Campanini (Milan, 2010). On Zorzi, see Nagel, Controversy, 264–65, 268–72, 278–80. Tafuri, Venice and the Renaissance, 58–64. Also see Firpo, Artisti, gioiellieri, eretici, 87–100. On Camillo, see Lina Bolzoni’s introduction to Giulio Camillo, L’idea del theatro con “L’idea dell’eloquenza,” il “De transmutatione” e altri testi inediti (Milan, 2015), 9–138. Serlio’s testament is published and discussed in Loredana Olivato, “Per il Serlio a Venezia: Documenti nuovi e documenti rivistati,” Arte Veneta 25 (1971): 284–91. For Camillo’s and Citolini’s heterodox, even openly heretical beliefs, see Firpo, Artisti, gioiellieri, eretici, 94–100; Tafuri, Venice and the Renaissance, 61–64. The scholar who has made the most of the connection is undoubtedly Zanchi. See especially his L’opera ermetica di Lorenzo Lotto (Clusone, 1999), where he interprets Odoni’s portrait (46–51) partly in relation to Camillo’s ideas, reaching conclusions similar to my own. In a highly conjectural but influential essay, Lionello Puppi has reconstructed the entire circle through hypothetical identifications of sitters in Lotto’s portraits:

294

120.

121.

122. 123. 124. 125. 126.

127.

128.

129. 130. 131. 132.

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209–212

“Riflessioni su temi e problemi della ritrattistica del Lotto,” in Lorenzo Lotto, Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, ed. Pietro Zampetti and Vittorio Sgarbi (Treviso, [1981]), 393–99. Bolzoni, introduction to L’idea, 25, has recently pointed out that Camillo’s description of a coin depicting a crane resembles the carnelian that Lotto had among his possessions, and supposes that Camillo saw Lotto’s object. Lu Berry Wenneker, “An Examination of L’Idea del Theatro of Giulio Camillo, including an Annotated Translation, with Special Attention to his Influence on Emblem Literature and Iconography” (PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1970), 18. The classic study of the Theatro is Frances Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago, 1966), 129–72, but the scholarship on Camillo has been growing, culminating in Bolzoni’s recent edition of L’idea del theatro. Bolzoni, introduction to L’idea, 36. Nagel, Controversy, 279–80. Yates, Art of Memory, 136; Wenneker, “An Examination of L’Idea del Theatro,” 32–37. Bolzoni, introduction to L’idea, 20. Wenneker, “An Examination of L’Idea del Theatro,” 37. For example, if one wanted to recall information and references pertinent to the hunt, one would look for the image/door at the intersection of the Moon (associated through Diana with the hunt) and the top level of the arts (because the hunt is a human activity): radio interview with Lina Bolzoni (Radio3 Suite, June 22, 2015). Bolzoni, introduction to L’idea, 23. More casually, Bolzoni has characterized it as “a kind of internet that works with images” (Radio3 Suite, June 22, 2015). Vasari mentions that around 1535 Salviati made a book with the images for Camillo’s patron, the king of France, Francis I. A version of the L’idea del theatro with 201 parchment pages of paintings by Titian burned in a fire in the Escorial in 1671. Bolzoni, introduction to L’idea, 30. Bolzoni, introduction to L’idea, 9. These are Bolzoni’s words, introduction to L’idea, 19. Bolzoni, introduction to L’idea, 35–36. Bolzoni, introduction to L’idea, 26, 27, 31–32. One can certainly think of the images in the Theatro as “hieroglyphic,” in that they do not represent a text, but stimulate allusions to many texts, from different traditions simultaneously. Already we can see some parallel here with Lotto’s imprese for the Bergamo choir; Lotto’s “covers” correspond to Camillo’s “doors.”

133. This is proposed by Zanchi, see n119 above, and in his more recent book, In principe sarà il sole, 9, 40, 92. 134. Irene Favaretto, Arte antica e cultura antiquaria nelle collezioni venete al tempo della Serenissima (Rome, 1990), 77; Beverly Louise Brown, “Seeing the Past: Titian’s Imperial Adaptation of a Classical Relief,” in Depth of Field: Relief Sculpture in Renaissance Italy, ed. Donal Cooper and Marika Leino (Bern, 2007), 282– 83n17, 18. 135. The cross is visible in a print after the painting made by Cornelis Visscher in 1653, as well as in photographs taken before the cross was painted over in a restoration ca. 1952/53. See Andrew John Martin, “‘Amica e un albergo di virtuosi.’ La casa e la collezione di Andrea Odoni,” Venezia Cinquecento 19 (2000), 153–55. 136. Jacob Burckhardt, Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte von Italien, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1911), 304; Shearman, Early Italian Pictures, 146. 137. The nodules were not originally meant to represent breasts, but part of a necklace of animal testicles or eggs; however, even antique writers mistook them for mammalia. Andrea Goesch, Diana Ephesia. Ikonographische Studien zur Allegorie der Natur in der Kunst vom 16.–19. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt, 1996), 27. 138. For ancient examples in various media see Hermann Thiersch, Artemis Ephesia: Eine archäologische Untersuchung (Berlin, 1935). Thiersch accepts the Odoni statuette as a rendition of the goddess (103). 139. Douay-Rheims Bible English translation of the Latin Vulgate. 140. To my knowledge the connection between the particularities of the biblical account, the iconoclasm of the Reformation, and the statue of Diana of Ephesus in the Odoni portrait has never been made before. 141. For example, Galis, “Lorenzo Lotto,” 225–29. According to Sheard, “The Portraits,” 49, “Odoni is presenting the viewer with a choice between false pagan religions of classical antiquity and true Christianity.” In the same catalog, Humfrey in Brown, Humfrey, and Lucco, Lorenzo Lotto, 164 (cat. 28), suggests: “it may have been precisely because of his [Odoni’s] deep interest in antique civilization that he felt impelled to stress that his ultimate loyalty remained with Christ.” Kathleen Wren Christian concurs: “the gesture confirms the sitter’s belief in Christianity’s superiority to antique polytheism,” and that “his Christian faith supersedes his curiosity about the antique”: “Between Reality and Representation: Portraits, Objects, and Collectors,” in Serial/Portable Classic: The Greek

NOTES TO PAGES

142. 143.

144.

145.

146.

147.

Canon and its Mutations, ed. Salvatore Settis, exh. cat. Fondazione Prada, Milan, May 9-August 24, 2015, and Venice, May 9-September 13, 2015 (Milan, 2015), 165, 167. Michel Hochmann, “Le collezioni veneziane nel Rinascimento: storia e storiografia,” in Il collezionismo d’arte a Venezia. Dalle origini al Cinquecento, ed. Michel Hochmann, Rosella Lauber, and Stefania Mason (Venice, 2008), 17–19, follows Humfrey although not without a question mark. Nagel, Controversy, 10. See Goesch, Diana, 26–29; Kathleen Wren Christian, Empire without End: Antiquities Collections in Renaissance Rome, c. 1350–1527 (New Haven, 2010), 361–2, 364; Phyllis Pray Bober and Ruth Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture, 2nd ed. (Turnhout, 2010), 95–97, no. 48. For Lotto’s work at the Vatican see Arnold Nesselrath, “Lorenzo Lotto in the Stanza della Segnatura,” Burlington Magazine 142 (January 2000): 4–12; “Lotto as Collaborator in the Stanza di Eliodoro,” Burlington Magazine 146 (November 2004), 732–41; “Il periodo romano del Lotto,” in Mozzoni, Lorenzo Lotto e le Marche, 22–26. Pierre Hadot, Veil of Isis: An Essay on the History of an Idea, trans. Michael Chase (Cambridge, MA, 2006), esp. 236; Goesch, Diana, esp. 26–29; Katharine Parks, “Nature in Person: Medieval and Renaissance Allegories and Emblems,” in The Moral Authority of Nature, ed. Lorraine Daston and Fernardo Vidal (Chicago, 2004), 58–60. There is some question as to whether Renaissance thinkers actually connected the multibreasted statues with the goddess Diana of Ephesus mentioned in Acts since they never refer to the statue as “Diana.” I am inclined, however, to think they probably did link the two through her representation on ancient coins. See discussion in Rebecca Zorach, Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold: Abundance and Excess in the French Renaissance (Chicago, 2005), 97, 127–28. Marino Sanuto, I diarii, ed. Rinaldo Fulin (1879–1903; reprint, Bologna, 1970), vol. 28: 300 (February 23, 1520). Michiel wrote with slightly greater detail in his own Diarii: “Una Idea della Natura, quale è la statua della loggia, con duoi Cani appresso, uno bianco, et uno nero, che significano il di, et la notte, et dinota l’Egitto.” Biblioteca Museo Correr, Venice, Cicogna 2848, c. 319v (February 16, 1520). See Zorach, Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold, 127. Diana of Ephesus is also represented on the reverse of a Renaissance medal depicting Aristotle by Valerio Belli. The Greek inscription translates: Nature most divine. Davide Gasparotto dates the medal 1520–30 and suggests that Pietro Bembo was involved in its conception, which puts

148.

149. 150. 151. 152.

153.

154. 155.

212–214

295

the object squarely within Michiel, Lotto, and Odoni’s social and intellectual milieu; Pietro Bembo e l’invenzione del Rinascimento, ed. Guido Beltramini, Davide Gasparotto, and Adolfo Tura, exh. cat. Palazzo del Monte di Pietà, Padua, February 2-May 19, 2013 (Venice, 2013), 255–56 (cat. 4.9), illustrated on p. 228. See also Susan Nalezyty, Pietro Bembo and the Intellectual Pleasures of a Renaissance Writer and Art Collector (New Haven, 2017), 180–81. The goddess is also represented on the frontispiece of an index volume of Venetian state treaties, dated 1538 (Archivio di Stato, Venice, “Indice dei primi 9 libri dei pacta,” once exhibited in Sala Regina Margherita, now in the stanze chiuse). In this context she represents the wealth and abundance produced by treaties that encourage peace and trade. For the manuscript and its illuminator see G. M. Zuccolo Padrono, “Il Maestro “T°. Ve” e la sua bottega: minature veneziane del XVI secolo,” Arte Veneta 25 (1971), 60 and fig. 57. For related iconography in France, see Zorach, Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold, esp. 88–107. See Robert Williams in Donatello, Michelangelo, Cellini: Sculptor’s Drawings From Renaissance Italy, ed. Michael W. Cole, exh. cat. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, October 23, 2014-January 23, 2015 (London, 2014), 225–29 (cat. 40); Michael W. Cole, Cellini and the Principles of Sculpture (Cambridge, 2002), 121–27; Piero Calamandrei, “Il sigillo e i caratteri dell’Accademia,” in his Scritti e inediti Celliniani, ed. Carlo Cordié (Florence, 1971 [originally published 1956]), 123–46; Peter Meller, “Geroglifici e ornamenti ‘parlanti’ nell’opera del Cellini,” Arte lombarda 3/ 4 (1994): 9–16. Italics mine. Translation from Robert Williams in Cole, Donatello, Michelangelo, Cellini, 225 and 229n1. Calamandrei, “Il sigillo,” 132–37. See summaries and citations in Shearman, Early Italian Pictures, 147; Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” 244–45. Cellini did not invent the concept. On Natura as vicaria Dei see George D. Economou, The Goddess Natura in Medieval Literature (Cambridge, 1972), 74, 76, 91, 94, 115, 142, 143, 149. Galis, “Concealed Wisdom,” 372–74. She argues by extension that the figurine in Odoni’s portrait alludes to “the temptation . . . to fall into the sin of idolatry”: Galis, “Lorenzo Lotto,” 229. Cortesi Bosco, Coro, 1: 425–6, 428–30. On the eroticized, sexual aspect of Nature, see Zorach, Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold, 3, 168; Parks, “Nature in Person,” 56. On sexuality as “itself a primary modality of idolatry,” see Nagel, Controversy, 28.

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215–219

156. Zorach, Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold, 128. 157. First identified by Giovanni Becatti in a letter of March 5, 1952 and published by Bernard Berenson, Lorenzo Lotto (London, 1956), 98. The work was certainly on display at the Vatican by the time Lotto was working there in 1509. Bober and Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture, 188–89 (no. 137); Christian, Empire, 267, 369. 158. Although the attribution to Lotto has been questioned, the painted version is extremely close to the drawing and must have been copied from it. The attribution is accepted by Elsa Dezuanni in Villa, Lorenzo Lotto, 214, and Arnold Nesselrath, “Il Cortile delle Statue: luogo e storia,” in Il Cortile delle Statue. Der Statuenhof des Belvedere im Vatikan. Akten des Internationalen Kongresses zu Ehren von Richard Krautheimer, Rome, 21–23 October 1992, ed. Matthias Winner, Bernard Andreae, and Carlo Pietrangeli (Mainz, 1998), 7–8. 159. Barbara Coli, “Lorenzo Lotto e il ritratto cittadino: Andrea Odoni,” in Il ritratto e la memoria. Materiali I, ed. Augusto Gentili (Rome, 1989), 192. For the sculpture, which was found May 15, 1507, see Bober and Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture, 180–81, no. 131; Christian, Empire, 266–67. 160. Reinach, “De quelques prétendus portraits de sculpteurs,” 405; Coli, “Lorenzo Lotto,” 195. 161. Nicole Loraux, “Herakles: The Super-Male and the Feminine,” in Before Sexuality. The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, eds. David M. Halperin, John J. Winkler, and Froma I. Zeitlin (Princeton, 1990), 21–52; Patricia Simons, “Hercules in Italian Renaissance Art: Masculine Labour and Homoerotic Libido,” Art History 31:5 (2008): 632–64; Emma Stafford, Herakles (New York, 2012). 162. See Patricia Simons, “Manliness and the Visual Semiotics of Bodily Fluids in Early Modern Culture,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 39:2 (2009): 331–73. 163. Stephen Orgel, “The Example of Hercules,” in Mythographie der frühen Neuzeit. Ihre Anwendung in den Künsten, ed. Walther Killy (Wiesbaden, 1984), 33. Also see Leopold D. Ettlinger, “Hercules Florentinus,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 16:2 (1972): 119–42. 164. Ettlinger, “Hercules,” 136. 165. Coli, “Lorenzo Lotto,” 201. 166. Sebastiano Erizzo, Discorso sopra le medaglie antiche (Venice, 1559), 277, provides an example of how a coin of Hadrian and Hercules might be interpreted: “ha per riverso un bel figurone in maestà di un’ Ercole ignudo, sedente sopra la pelle leonina, che ha sotto alcune spoglie, et nella desta tiene la clava appoggiata

167. 168. 169. 170.

171.

172.

173. 174. 175.

ad una corazza, et con la sinistra sostiene un Trofeo . . . Et per questa gura di Ercole s’intende la Idea di tutte le virtù, et la clava di Ercole ancora è simolacro di valore et di virtù . . . La spolgia del Leone dimostra una generosa fortezza d’animo. La qual virtù in questa medaglia fu à questo buon principe attribuita.” According to the inventory, Odoni owned about fifty coins and medals (see Chapter 6). See Nagel, Controversy, 39–40. For the “contradictions of Herakles,” see Loraux, “Herakles”; Orgel, “Example”; Simons, “Hercules in Italian Renaissance Art.” Ettlinger, “Hercules,” 126–28; Stafford, Herakles, 202–6. Michael A. Jacobsen, “Note on the Iconography of Hercules and Antaeus in Quattrocento Florence,” Source: Notes in the History of Art 1:1 (1981): 16–20; Ettlinger, “Hercules,” esp. 134–37; Simons, “Hercules in Italian Renaissance Art,” esp. 637–49. Zanchi relates this passage to the Odoni portrait in L’opera ermetica, 49. Translation based on Wenneker, “An Examination of L’Idea del Theatro,” 313, 315. Camillo, L’idea del theatro, 216–17. In one manuscript, Camillo refers to a sculpted (scolpita) “figura d’Hercole nella lotta con Antheo”: Bolzoni, introduction to L’idea, 98. Camillo’s text was transformed by Valeriano into a hieroglyph; see Wenneker, “An Examination of L’Idea del Theatro,” 420. The connection between “the goddess of Nature” or “Isis” and Hercules and Antaeus is also figured in another “hieroglyphic” work of art, the “Egyptian page” of the Colonna Missal (ca. 1530–38) (Curran, Egyptian Renaissance, plates 1 and 13). A representation of Hercules lifting Antaeus is directly opposite a statue of Diana of Ephesus, with a depiction of the annunciation to Zacharias in between. The central scene depicts a literal connection between earthly and divine: the angel points heavenward, directing Zacharias’ attention as he transcribes the divine inspiration for the name of his unborn son. The statue of Diana/Isis and the figures of Hercules holding up Antaeus represent the same concept (the connection between heavenly and earthly) metaphorically, or hieroglyphically. See Curran, Egyptian Renaissance, 245–77. Letter of October 18, 1526: Cortesi Bosco, Coro, 2:11, discussed in 1:440–41 (no. 53). Coli, “Lorenzo Lotto,” 193, 196. Zanchi, L’opera ermetica, 12. On the painting, also see Raffaella Poltronieri in Dal Pozzolo, Lorenzo Lotto: Il richiamo delle marche, 177–78 (cat. IV.3).

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176. See p. 205–206. Also see Zanchi, L’opera ermetica, who also connects the idea to the Odoni portrait, 50, 62. For the iconographic relation between urinating infants and Hercules mingens, see Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, “The Art of the Misbegotten: Physicality and the Divine in Renaissance Images,” Artibus et Historiae 30:60 (2009), 202. 177. Francesca Cortesi Bosco, Lorenzo Lotto: The Frescoes in the Oratorio Suardi at Trescore (Milan, 1997), 25. 178. The washing and urinating figures also participate in the Christian message of the painting. If Hercules is Christ, and his urine is the transformation of the wine he has drunk, by analogy, the blood of Christ is given and saved into the vessel, which bears some resemblance to a “lavabo” or a container for holy water. Peeing putti associated with wine, holy water, and vessels were depicted on lavabos (for examples, see Lavin, “Art of the Misbegotten,” 198–207) and in many religious paintings, including in Lotto’s frescoes in Trescore, where the inscription “Venite e bevete con gioia voi che siete stati nella tristezza” [“Come and drink with joy those of you who have been in sorrow”] is written just above the peeing putto climbing through the grapevines. Cortesi Bosco, Affreschi, 139, notes that an acquasantiera was originally positioned beneath the frescoed figure of the urinating putto. For a discussion of peeing figures in Lotto’s art, including the Odoni portrait, see Simons, “Manliness”, 359–61. 179. Patricia Simons, “The Visual and Verbal Wit of Lorenzo Lotto’s Signatures,” Source: Notes in the History of Art (Fall 2017), 42–43. For the painting see most recently, Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo in Dal Pozzolo, Lorenzo Lotto: Il richiamo delle Marche, 180–182 (cat. V.3); Peter Lüdemann, Metamorfosi di una dea. La Venere adornata dalle Grazia di Lorenzo Lotto restaurata (Ponanzo Veneto, 2018). For Lotto’s inventive, often metaphoric, uses of his signature, in addition to Simons, see Augusto Gentili, “The Stories, The Metaphors,” in Brown, Humfrey, and Lucco, Lorenzo Lotto, 38–39; Winner, “Da ‘O’ von Lorenzo Lotto,” 93–116; Creighton Gilbert, “A Preface to Signatures (with Some Cases in Venice),” in Fashioning Identities in Renaissance Art, ed. Mary Rogers (Aldershot, 2000), 83–87. 180. For another painting that ties collecting to spiritual contemplation, see Christopher J. Nygren, “Titian’s Christ with the Coin: Recovering the Spiritual Currency of Numismatics in Renaissance Ferrara,” Renaissance Quarterly 69 (2016): 449–88. 181. Shearman, Early Italian Pictures, 144; Dezuanni in Villa, Lorenzo Lotto, 214; Galis, “Lorenzo Lotto,” 377.

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182. Principe, Secrets of Alchemy, 10, 72; Newman, Promethean Ambitions, 28, 121 (including a recipe found in Leonardo da Vinci’s Codice Atlantico). 183. The strongest tie between alchemy and the production of porcelain in Venice in the late fifteenth century comes from a no longer traceable letter published by Giuseppe Marino Urbani de Gheltof, “Una fabbrica di porcellana in Venezia nel 1470,” Bullettino di arti, industrie e curiosità Veneziane 1 (1877–78): 78–82. According to this source, an alchemist named Maestro Antonio was producing porcelain plates and vases in Venice in 1470. Because the letter cannot be verified, some have suggested it was invented, but I agree with Lightbown that it has the ring of truth to it: Ronaldo Lightbown, “L’esotisimo,” in Storia dell’arte Italiana, ed. Giulio Einaudi (Turin, 1981), 10:459n3. Less questionable documentation demonstrates that by 1504, Ercole d’Este, duke of Ferrara, was purchasing porcellana contrefacta in Venice, and in 1518, a mirror maker named Leonardo Peringer reported to the Providitori di Comun that he had discovered a new process to make porcelain vessels, “transparent” in the manner of those from the “Levant.” Lightbown, “L’esotisimo,” 459. The alchemical production of porcelain is well known from later sixteenth-century accounts, especially socalled Medici porcelain produced in Florence. 184. See Chapter 6, p. 156. 185. Bertrand Jestaz, “Porcelaine de Chine et bronze islamique a Venise. La Collection Redaldi (1527),” Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Classe di lettere e filosofia, 3rd series, 20 (1990), 31; Marco Spallanzani, Ceramiche orientali a Firenze nel Rinascimento (Florence, 1997 [1978]), 36–39. 186. On close examination with the naked eye there appears to be a faded image or pentimento in the area between the pearls lying on the table and Odoni’s left elbow. In a high-resolution digital photograph, it looks to me like an eyeball or a small squid, reminiscent of the flying eyeball motif depicted on Alberti’s Self-Portrait plaque (National Gallery of Art, Washington DC). This may be an artifact of the digital image, but in the print made after the Odoni portrait by Cornelis Visscher in 1653 there also appears to be something in front of the pearls on the table that looks a bit like a shell. Both from a metonymic and metaphoric point of view, a shell would make perfect sense since Odoni also collected shells. Future scientific analysis may shed more light. 187. Glenn Adamson, “The American Arcanum: Porcelain and the Alchemical Tradition,” suggest this analogy, albeit in reference to a later period: www.chipstone

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188. 189. 190.

191.

192. 193. 194. 195.

196. 197.

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org/article.php/394/Ceramics-in-America-2007/ The-American-Arcanum:-Porcelain-and-theAlchemical-Tradition. Coli, “Lorenzo Lotto,” 200, suggests that the bowl and pearls allude to Venus born from a seashell like a pearl. Bonus of Ferrara, The New Pearl of Great Price, trans. Arthur Edward White (London, 1963). See Principe, Secrets of Alchemy, 68. Quote from the introduction by Janus Lacinius to Bonus of Ferrara, New Pearl of Great Price, 7. See Karen Raber, “Chains of Pearls: Gender, Property, Identity,” in Ornamentalism: The Art of Renaissance Accessories, ed. Bella Mirabella (Ann Arbor, 2011), 159–81. Principe, Secrets of Alchemy, 191, notes: “The central chymical operation of distillation – the separation of a pure, volatile (that is ‘spiritual’) substance from the crasser, baser components of the mixture – appears frequently as a trope in devotional literature.” Writing in the fourteenth century, the alchemist John of Rupescissa noted: “it is necessary to raise up the Son of Man in the air by means of the cross, which in literal terms means that the material that was digested in the third operation, after being finely ground, is put at the bottom of flask to be dissolved, and the purest and most spirituous of what is there is then turned upwards into the air, and is raised up in the cross of the head of the alembic, like Christ . . . was raised up on the cross.” Principe, Secrets of Alchemy, 68. Material substances are distilled in the flask, purified, and rise up into immaterial, spiritual gas captured in the head of the alembic, like Christ was transformed from body into spirit on the cross. See Chapter 6, p. 147-48. Georg Gronau, ed., “Beiträge zum Anonymous Morellianus (Marc’Antonio Michiel),” in Italienische Forschungen IV (Berlin, 1911), 58. As seen in Chapter 6, in the camera d’oro Odoni paid homage to his uncle with various objects on display. It was first identified by Silvana Pettenati, “La biblioteca di Domenico della Rovere,” in Domenico della Rovere e il Duomo di Torino, ed. Giovanni Romano (Turin, 1990), 105–6. On the cross and the book in Lotto’s oeuvre, see n231. For Renaissance discussions of the value of looking at ancient coins, see those of Angelo Decembrio and Paolo Manuzio: Michael Baxandall, “A Dialogue on Art from the Court of Leonello d’Este. Angelo Decembrio’s De Politia Litteraria Pars LXVII I ,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 26

198.

199. 200. 201.

202.

203.

204.

(1963), 324, 326, and Schmitter, “‘Virtuous Riches’,” 916–17. This is discussed throughout Giehlow’s book, Humanist Interpretation, but see esp. 71–80, 109–10, 156, 173, 177, 262. Also see Curran, Egyptian Renaissance, 76, 156. Also note the example of the coin interpreted by Vettor Ziliol discussed above (p. 204). Nygren, “Titian’s Christ with the Coin,” 460, 451. Giehlow, Humanist Interpretation, 110, 123. Ribbons and ties are among Lotto’s favorite motifs in many of his works and deserve further study. In a high-resolution photograph one can make out some underdrawing in this section of the painting, and there is clearly pink paint under the bangs area of the head and at the severed neck of the torso. The back of the head also extends too far, as if Lotto was filling in extra space. In this rear part of the head, the pink underpaint is less visible. In a telephone conversation (June 24, 2016), Rupert Featherstone, who restored the painting in 1996–7, suggested that the tablecloth may originally have been down and that Lotto had planned something else and then changed his mind, leaving a pentimento. He stressed that this was probably a second thought rather than “an afterthought” or “later addition” as Shearman, and others following him, have proposed: Shearman, Early Italian Pictures, 145; Christian, “Between Reality and Representation,” 170n3. Also see Whitaker and Clayton, Art of Italy, 207n15. No X-rays or other technical studies of the painting were on file at the restoration lab at Windsor Castle (May 2016). Syson in Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian, ed. Lorne Campbell et al., exh. cat. National Gallery, London, October 15, 2008-January 18, 2009 (London, 2008), 122 (cat. 21). The sculpture was displayed alongside Lotto’s portrait in the recent exhibition, Lorenzo Lotto. Portraits at the Prado in Madrid (June 19 to September 30, 2018); see Miguel Falomir in Falomir and Dal Pozzolo, Lorenzo Lotto. Portraits, 269–73 (cat. 25). For the sculpture see Maria Trojani, “La statuetta n. 49 e il tipo classico della figura in appoggio al pilastrino,” in Marco Mantova Benavides. Il suo museo e la cultura padovana del Cinquecento. Atti della giornata di studio, 12 Novembre 1983, ed. Irene Favaretto (Padua, 1984), 39–57; Irene Favaretto and Alessandra Menegazzi, eds., Un museo di antichità nella Padova del Cinquecento: La raccolta di Marco Mantova Benavides all’Università di Padova – Museo di Scienze Archeologiche e d’Arte (Rome, 2013), 40–41 (cat. 17). The first notice of the work is in an inventory of 1695.

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205. Wall label for Marble Statuette of Aphrodite Emerging from the Sea (Boston, MFA, Hellenistic, 150–100 BCE ): “Pergamon and the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World,” Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, April 18–July 17, 2016. The statue resembles Roman statues of “sexy boys,” whose leaning poses using one arm as support evoke “latent eroticism”: see Elizabeth Bartman, “Eros’s Flame: Images of Sexy Boys in Roman Ideal Sculpture,” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome. Supplementary Volumes, vol. 1, The Ancient Art of Emulation: Studies in Artistic Originality and Tradition from the Present to Classical Antiquity (2002): 249–71. It is possible that the statue was understood to be female in the Renaissance. Vincenzo Mancini, Antiquari, “vertuosi,” e artisti. Saggi su collezionismo tra Padova e Venezia alla metà del Cinquecento (Padua, 1995), fig. 12, has published a posthumous portrait of Gian Pietro Benavides that appears to show the statue in the upper corner reconstructed as female. 206. First proposed by Larsson, “Lorenzo Lottos Bildnis,” 25. 207. Christian, “Between Reality and Representation,” 165. 208. See discussion in Chapter 5. 209. Irene Favaretto suggests Commodus: “Immagine raddoppiata: Calchi, copie e invenzioni ‘all’antica’ nelle collezioni venete di antichità,” in Les moulages de sculptures antiques et l’histoire de l’archéologie, ed. Henri Lavagne and François Queyrel (Geneva, 2000), 15. Christian (“Between Reality and Representation,” 170n12), suggests resemblance to a so-called “Lucius Verus” in the Benavides collection. Huse suggests Trajan: Norbert Huse and Wolfgang Wolters, Art of Renaissance Venice: Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting, 1460–1590, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago, 1990), 243. 210. Peter Meller, “Marmi e bronzi di Simone Bianco,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 21:2 (1977), 209n31. 211. The bust is signed, and the museum dates the work ca. 1540. 212. Miguel Falomir in Falomir and Dal Pozzolo, Lorenzo Lotto. Portraits, 292–94 (cat. 32). 213. Christian, “Between Reality and Representation,” 167–68; Luke Syson, “Witnessing Faces, Remembering Souls,” in Campbell et al., Renaissance Faces, 27–29. 214. Nagel, Controversy, esp. 7. 215. Nagel, Controversy, 100; Cesare Vascoli, “Uno scritto inedito di Giulio Camillo ‘De l’humana deificatione’,” Rinascimento 24 (1984), 225–26.

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216. While Lotto probably did not read this particular passage of Camillo’s writing, he likely imbibed and subscribed to similar ideas, using them to his own purposes in his artwork. 217. I would like to thank Bettina Bergmann for this observation. 218. Syson, “Witnessing Faces, Remembering Souls,” 28. 219. Berger, Fictions of the Pose, 221–26, also notes the underlying violence in the image and its gender implications. 220. See Nagel, Controversy, 28 and 232. 221. See for example, Camillo, who in the Theatro, describes an image of “a man without a head, that is, without the brain, which is the bed of intellect.” Wenneker, “An Examination of L’idea del Theatro,” 327. Camillo, L’idea del theatro, 225. On the mind/body male/ female opposition, see Genevieve Lloyd, The Man of Reason: “Male” and “Female” in Western Philosophy, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis, 1984), 3–7, 17, 23–27, 33. 222. Principe, Secrets of Alchemy, 16. 223. Principe, Secrets of Alchemy, 75–77. 224. I am indebted to Zanchi for this comparison. His book on Lotto’s hermetic symbolism has a short chapter on “il telo verde” in Lotto’s works (L’opera ermetica, 121–22). 225. Christian, “Between Reality and Representation,” 170n3. 226. A good example is Poggio Bracciolini’s Facetiae (first published 1470). See also Monique Kornell and Patricia Simons, “Annibal Caro’s After-Dinner Speech (1536) and the Question of Titian as Vesalius’ Illustrator,” Renaissance Quarterly 61:4 (2008): 1069–97. 227. Humfrey, Lotto, 110. 228. Mauro Lucco in Brown, Humfrey, and Lucco, Lorenzo Lotto, 129 (cat. 19). 229. Some examples are discussed in Schmitter, “Display of Distinction,” 267–68. Others include Santa Lucia in the Santa Lucia Altarpiece (Pinacoteca Civica di Jesi); St. Catherine in The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine (Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Rome), and Fra Gregorio Belo (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) (although here the hand is clenched in a fist). 230. See Mauro Lucco, “Tre schede per Lorenzo Lotto,” in Hommage à Michiel Laclotte. Études sur la peinture du Moyen Age et de la Renaissance (Milan and Paris, 1994), 351; Józef Grabsky, “Sul rapporto fra ritratto e simbolo nella ritrattistica del Lotto. Il giove con la lampada, Il ritratto triplice e L’uomo trentasettenne,” in Zampetti and Sgarbi, Lorenzo Lotto, 387. 231. While a crucifix as jewelry may be uncommon in Lotto’s oeuvre, particularly in his portraits, the

300

232. 233. 234. 235. 236.

237.

238. 239.

240. 241. 242. 243.

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motif of the cross or crucifix appears repeatedly, often in rather unusual circumstances. His apparent devotion to the image of Christ on the cross has been linked to his spiritual inclinations, characterized by “deep Christocentricity and sympathy with the idea of a direct, unmediated relationship between human beings and God” (Sheard, “The Portraits,” 49). Gentili, “The Stories, the Metaphors,” 39–40, also discusses crosses and crucifixes in Lotto’s paintings. I would add to this that Lotto frequently depicted the cross in close proximity to a book. Besides the Odoni and Negri portraits, another good example is the scene of The Investiture of St. Brigid of Ireland in the Suardi frescoes at Trescore. Other examples include, not surprisingly, some of Lotto’s scenes of St. Jerome (especially the version in Bucharest); St. Catherine in the Sacra Conversazione in Vienna; the figures of St. Jerome and St. Ambrose in the Trescore frescoes; and the Portrait of Fra Gregorio Belo of Vicenza. Gronau, “Beiträge,” 68–69. See Chapter 2. As has been suggested by Sheard, “The Portraits,” 49. On “Christocentrism” and “Christocentric restoration,” see Nagel, Controversy, esp. 88–95. Nagel, Controversy, 125. Discussed in Nagel, Controversy, 126–8, who notes that “The painting . . . treats its viewer with respect, offering not a simple devotional object but instead a series of reflections on correct image devotion.” Nagel, Controversy, 181. In this sense Lotto (and probably Odoni) belonged to an intellectual milieu similar to, if not overlapping with, the one Nagel describes in his analysis of the works of Andrea Riccio (154–94). Curran, Egyptian Renaissance, 25. Marsilio Ficino, Three Books on Life, ed. and trans. Carol V. Kaske and John R. Clark (Binghamton, NY, 1989), 334–35; Curran, Egyptian Renaissance, 99; André Chastel, “Il ‘signum crucis’ del Ficino,” in Marsilio Ficino e il ritorno di Platone: Studi e documenti, ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini (Florence, 1986), 1:211–19. Curran, Egyptian Renaissance, 179–80. Drysdall, “Filippo Fasanini and his Explanation of Sacred Writing,” 142–43, 155n28; Curran, Egyptian Renaissance, 181–82. Giehlow, Humanist Interpretation, 36, 247. For more on the cross as hieroglyph see Giehlow, Humanist Interpretation, 25, 36, 142, 247.

244. I hesitate to read too much into the exact positioning of the hand because photographs taken during the recent cleaning of the painting reveal that this area is badly abraded. 245. Plato, Theaetetus, 153c–d. 246. H. David Brumble, Classical Myths and Legends in the Middle Ages and Renaissance: A Dictionary of Allegorical Meanings (Westport, CT, 1998), 141. 247. On the Dream of Scipio, 1.14.14–15. Commentary on the Dream of Scipio by Macrobius, ed. and trans. William Harris Stahl (New York, 1990), 145. For further references in Ficino and Pico, see Brumble, Classical Myths, 141. Also see Luc Brisson, How Philosophers Saved Myths: Allegorical Interpretation and Classical Mythology, trans. Catherine Tihanyi (Chicago, 2004), 39, 114–16, 121; Economou, The Goddess Natura, 16–17, 114–115; Pierre Lévêque, Aurea Catena Homeri. Une étude sur l’allégorie grecque (Paris, 1959). 248. Camillo, L’idea del theatro, 230. Translation from Wenneker, “An Examination of L’idea del Theatro of Giulio Camillo,” 337. Camillo also refers to the “golden chain” in his “Lettera del rivolgimento dell’huomo a Dio,” in L’opere di M. Giulio Cammillo (Venice, 1579), 1:54 (see note below). For Lotto’s particular interest in sun symbolism, as evidenced by his desire to depict the unusual topic of Joshua stopping the sun, see Zanchi, In principio sarà il sole, and above p. 209. 249. As suggested by Bolzoni: Camillo, L’idea del theatro, 322 and fig. 63. In his “Lettera del rivolgimento dell’huomo a Dio” (see note above), Camillo refers specifically to the interpretation of the “catena aurea d’Homero” by Dionysius the Areopagite, and this may be what is represented in the print. Dionysius described the uplifting power of prayer: “Let us then elevate our very selves by our prayers to the higher ascent of the Divine and good rays – as if a luminous chain being suspended from the celestial heights, and reaching down hither, we, by ever clutching this upwards, first with one hand, and then with the other, seem indeed to draw it down, but in reality we do not draw it down, it being both above and below, but ourselves are carried upwards to the higher splendours of the luminous rays.” Dionysius the Areopagite, Works (1897), The Divine Names (1–127), Caput III, Section I. http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/areopagite_03_ divine_names.htm.

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250. See Robert M. Durling, introduction to The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri (Oxford, 1997), 1:xxxii– xxxi v. 251. Durling, “Introduction” to The Divine Comedy, 1: xxxiii. 252. Durling, “Introduction” to The Divine Comedy, 1: xxxiii. 253. Nagel, Controversy, 264. Pico writes in On the Imagination, 43: “The Platonists affirm that the soul descends, imprinted with ideas, into the body, yet they admit that the soul forgets these ideas, and as a result, for reminiscence requires the help of sense and phantasy.” 254. Nagel, Controversy, 265, notes that the thought of Zorzi and others of his kind “involved a high degree of optimism with regard to the spiritual role that could be played by works of art and architecture, whose job it was to heighten, focus, and attune earthly experience into greater accord with divine harmony,” that is “a fundamental belief in the potential of art to serve spiritual ends.” 255. Robin M. Jensen, The Cross: History, Art, and Controversy (Cambridge, 2017), 187; Lee Palmer Wandel, Voracious Idols and Violent Hands: Iconoclasm in Reformation Zurich, Strasbourg, and Basel (Cambridge, 1995), 123–24, 138. 256. On the portrait/mirror analogy see Jodi Cranston, The Poetics of Portraiture in the Italian Renaissance (Cambridge, 2000), esp. 127–67; Periti, “Regarding Parmigianino’s Early Portraits,” 305–6; Catherine Whistler, “Uncovering Beauty: Titian’s Triumph of Love in the Vendramin Collection,” Renaissance Studies 26:2 (2011), 223. 257. Lotto, Libro di spese, 45, 69. See Susannah Rutherglen, “Ornamental Paintings of the Venetian Renaissance” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2012), 142n181; Angelica Dülberg, Privatporträts: Geschichte und Ikonologie einer Gattung im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1990), 38–39; Miguel Falomir and Ana González Mozo, “Lotto’s Portraits: Their Conception and Execution,” in Falomir and Dal Pozzolo, Lorenzo Lotto. Portraits, 77. 258. Dates from 1515 to the early 1530s have been suggested. Andrew John Martin, Savoldos sogenanntes “Bildnis des Gaston de Foix”: Zum Problem des Paragone in der Kunst and Kunsttheorie der italienischen Renaissance (Thorbecke, 1995); Cranston, Poetics of Portraiture, 133–40; also see n18 above. 259. The Savoldo portrait represents the kind of mirror that would have formed the analogy to Odoni’s

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portrait – not the small convex mirror, but the large flat mirrors that were a recent Venetian innovation. 260. For Aretino’s ownership, see Ekserdjian, Parmigianino, 130. 261. Luba Freedman, Titian’s Portraits through Aretino’s Lens (University Park, PA, 1995), 174n122. 262. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham, NC, 2010), xi. In this passage, Bennett is describing her previous book, The Enchantment of Modern Life.

CONCLUSION 1. Giorgio Vasari, Le Vite de’ più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani, da Cimabue, insino a’ tempi nostri, ed. Luciano Bellosi and Aldo Rossi (Turin, 1986), 2:802. 2. On the popularity of Cicero’s De Officiis, see James R. Lindow, The Renaissance Palace in Florence: Magnificence and Splendour in Fifteenth-Century Italy (Aldershot, 2007), 10–13. 3. Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Officiis, trans. Walter Miller, in Complete Works (Hastings, 2014), book 1, 39.138–139. 4. Sebastiano Serlio, Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture. Volume 2, ed. and trans. Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks (New Haven, 2001), 619. 5. Book 1, 36.138. 6. Perhaps his most essential statement of the concept is in book 1: some men are so perfect that they seem “to have been fashioned by the hands of some god,” but “those who are not so perfectly endowed by nature can, with care and effort, polish and in great part correct their natural defects.” Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, trans. Charles S. Singleton (New York, 1959), 29. 7. Aretino wrote: “I strive to portray other men’s manners with the liveliness that the amazing Titian portrays in this and that face.” Lora Anne Palladino, “Pietro Aretino: Orator and Art Theorist” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1981), 54–55. 8. Castiglione, Book of the Courtier, 3. 9. Castiglione, Book of the Courtier, 7. 10. Castiglione, Book of the Courtier, 43. On the connection between Castiglione’s portrait and his description of the ideal courtier, see for example, Roger Jones and Nicholas Penny, Raphael (New Haven, 1983), 159. 11. Bernhard Berenson, Lorenzo Lotto (London, 1901), 259. I don’t actually think this is necessarily true, just that Berenson’s perception

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makes more sense when one looks at the portrait compared to Castiglione. 12. I draw here on Stephen J. Campbell’s interesting observation that Lotto’s sitters in general exhibit a “‘preoccupation’ which precludes spezzatura”: “Pietro Bembo e il ritratto del Rinascimento” in Pietro Bembo e l’invenzione del Rinascimento, ed. Guido Beltramini, Davide Gasparotto, and Adolfo Tura, exh. cat. Palazzo del Monte di Pietà, Padua, February 2-May 19, 2013 (Venice, 2013), 163. Also see his The Endless Periphery: Toward a Geopolitics of Art in Lorenzo Lotto’s Italy (Chicago, 2019), 149–51.

13. See Chapter 7, n37. 14. To have sprezzatura is to cover art, not to lack art. It is “true art” that does not seem to be art. Castiglione, Book of the Courtier, 43.

APPENDIX 1. Pietro Aretino, Lettere. Libro secondo, ed. Francesco Erspamer (Parma, 1998), 152–55.

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INDEX

abundance, 74–79, 83, 106, 295n147 actants, 7, 235, 245n38 agency of objects, 7, 110, 200 Agnadello, Battle of, 13 Ago, Renata, 6 Alberti, Leon Battista, 49, 54, 149, 166–67, 173–74, 204, 297n186 Alberto, Gerolamo, 37 alchemy, 7, 205–7, 210, 219–22, 227–28, 291n80 Aldine Press, 16, 44, 46, 73, 148, 208, 237, 273n66, 280n55, 291n68, 292n81 Amadi, Agostino, 204–5 amber, 157–59, 213 andedo (entryhall), 60–62, 81–84, 91, 109, 111, 270n4 andirons, 143 antigaia, 60, 62–63, 84, 86, 91–92, 97–98, 102, 109, 117, 137, 144, 146 Antinous, 119–22, 139, 140, 216, 224, 273n73 antiquario, 52, 84, 86, 110, 147, 150, 166, 184, 192, 193, 223 Antwerp, 134 Apollo, 72–74, 76, 79, 80, 97, 168 Aretino, Pietro, 68, 107, 123, 234, 237, 239, 240, 245n50, 260n27 letter to Andrea Odoni, 3, 8–9, 32, 48–49, 51, 53–54, 79, 80–81, 86, 92, 97,

322

107–10, 115, 122, 140, 167, 194–97, 238, 241–42 on class in Venice, 10, 11, 17, 20, 22 on Venice, 14, 16 Stanze in lode di Madonna Angela Sirena, 77, 78 Armano, Tiberio, 44 arms and armor, 113–14, 117, 123, 138, 160 Augurello, Giovanni Aurelio, 205, 292n81 Aurelio family, 31 Nicolò, 45 Bacchus, 71–74, 78–79, 91, 103, 226 bachelors, 166, 183 balconies, 60, 62, 63, 72, 73, 74–77, 79, 82, 83, 226 Ballini, Camillo, 66, 68 balls, as ornaments, 84 Barbari, Jacopo de’, Bird’s Eye View of Venice, 12, 12–13, 56, 59, 84 Barkan, Leonard, 94, 108 beards, 34, 121, 196–97, 216, 219, 225, 239, 240 Beazzano, Agostino, 24 beds, 9, 60, 63–64, 141, 143, 146, 159, 168, 169, 204, 283n127 clothes and curtains, 167, 169, 173, 183, 285n163

depictions of nudes connected to, 169–74 enclosures (recinti da letto), 168 in alcoves, 143, 167, 168, 169, 183, 234, 285n171 stead (lettiera), 143, 167, 169, 173 Bellavitis, Anna, 6, 19, 21, 25, 27, 30, 248n65, 250n116, 255n109 Bellini Gentile, 65, 66 Giovanni, 48, 87, 88, 131, 275n95 Jacopo, 231, 231 Belvedere Statue Court, Vatican Palace, 215 Bembo Francesco, 257n143 Pietro, 24, 90, 250n133, 260n27, 295n147 Benavides, Marco Mantova, 118, 120–21, 135, 224, 299n209 Bennett, Jane, 7, 235 Beolco, Angelo (Ruzante), 94 Bergamo, 2, 12, 136, 191 Lotto in, 184–85, 191, 198, 202, 205–7 Lotto, intarsias in S. Maria Maggiore, 186–87, 190, 206–209, 207, 213–14, 218, 288n13, 294n132 Lotto, San Bernardino Altarpiece, 228, 229 Lotto’s portraits in, 189, 193, 288n10 Bianco, Simone, 82, 95, 106–7, 108–9, 118, 119, 225 Bust of a Man (Vienna), 108, 225

INDEX

Colossal Foot, 104, 106, 107 Mars, 116–17 Biow, Douglas, 7, 196 bizzarrie, 157–58, 163, 283n110 Bodin, Jean, 15–16 Bolzoni, Lina, 210, 294n119 Bonifacio Veronese (Bonifacio dei Pitati), 123–24, 168, 175, 176 Conversion of St. Paul, 123, 125 books account, 37, 39, 256n128, 279n36 in Odoni’s house, 45, 60, 146, 165–66, 210, 233 in Venice, 16, 45–46, 148, 253n49 books of hours, 45, 147–49, 166, 223, 240, 280n52 Bordon, Benedetto, 148–49, 149 Bordone, Paris, 48, 65, 170, 173, 276n140 Bosch, Hieronymus, 129, 133–35, 136, 137, 283n110 Boschini, Marco, 66, 69, 70–71, 82, 258n168, 263n92 Bosco, Francesca Cortesi, 205–208, 214, 292n90, 297n178 Botticelli, Sandro, 127, 128 Bozza, Bartolomeo, 35, 37, 86, 259n11 Bragadin family, 28 Marco, 255n92 Pietro, 33 breastfeeding, 75, 76, 226, 264n115 Brown, Patricia Fortini, 5, 15, 24, 65, 112, 113, 244n24, 250n133, 259n8, 268n120 Buondelmonti, Cristoforo, 92 Burckhardt, Jacob, 4, 5, 7, 244n36 butcher stall at the Rialto, 42–44, 46, 50 Calcar, Jan Steven van, 168 Caldiera, Giovanni, 9 callesella, 169 Cambrai, League of, 11, 13, 27, 68, 79, 112, 160, 254n90 camere, 62–63, 141 camera dalla scala, 62, 141–43, 167, 183, 186, 234, 235 nude paintings and, 169–74 women and, 169–80 camera d’oro, 62–63, 118, 142–44, 159–67, 179–81, 234 and masculinity, 166–67 connection to studio, 143–44, 159–60, 163, 165–66 camera grande, 278n11 Camillo, Giulio, 209–10, 217–18, 226, 231, 232, 277n156, 293n119 De l’humana deificatione, 234 L’idea del theatro, 209–10, 217, 232, 277n156, 294n132

illustrations for, 210, 294n128 Campbell, Stephen J., 8, 302n12 capitelli (niches), 84, 265n24 Cariani, Giovanni (Giovanni de’ Busi, Zuanne del Comandador), 124–26, 135–37, 170, 275n118 Concerto campestre, 136, 138 Judith and Her Maidservant, 175, 175 Carlo family, 35, 256n118 Margarita, 251n22 Maria, 34, 251n22, 256n118 Carpaccio, Vittore, The Vision of St. Augustine, 144, 144, 145, 150, 174 Carpan, Bartolomeo, 225, 225 casa da statio, 44, 50, 54–58, 64, 236, 260n16 Casola, Canon Pietro, 11 Castiglione, Baldassare, 4, 152, 180, 239–40, 301n6 Castiglione, Sabba da, 94, 107, 161, 163–64, 263n88, 281n80 Catena, Vincenzo, 34, 160–61, 276n140 Cellini, Benvenuto, 274n76 designs for the seal for the Accademia del Disegno, 213, 212–13, 214 Ceres, 60–61, 71–74, 78–79, 106, 111, 226, 261n42 Cernotto, Stefano, 168, 169 cesendello, 114 chameleons, 157, 158–59 Chancellery, 20–21, 28 secretaries, 21, 24, 40, 45, 205, 249n92, 256n113 Charles II, King of England, 1, 178 Chojnacki, Stanley, 27 Christian, Kathleen, 5, 86, 94, 97 Christocentrism, 208, 230, 234, 299n231 Cicero, De Officiis, 9, 49, 238 Cicogna, Emmanuele Antonio, 4, 33, 34, 50, 55, 251n3, 252n27, 258n157 visit to Casa Odoni, 58, 59, 81, 82, 167, 168, 169, 179, 263n98 ciphers, 204–5, 208 citizenship, 33, 54 types of, 20–22 Citolini da Serravalle, Alessandro, 209 cittadini, 4, 6, 10–11, 16–31, 33–35, 37–38, 40, 41, 42–44, 49, 51–52, 54, 101 family memoirs. See family memoirs historiography of, 6 intermarriage with nobles, 24–25 relationship with nobility, 18–19, 25–31, 41, 48 self-fashioning, 25–26, 30 class, 6, 11, 16–19, 21, 24, 26–31, 43–44, 54, 55, 67 and dress, 17, 22–23, 28 cittadini. See cittadini fluidity, 6, 10–11, 51

323

nobility (or gentiluomini), 16–17, 19–20, 23, 26–31, 37 popolo, 6, 11, 18, 19, 22, 29, 49, 246n34, 248n80 shared practices, 54 Cleopatra, so-called, from the Grimani Collection, 95–96, 96 coat of arms, 22, 39, 41, 54, 60, 63, 72, 74, 75, 76, 79, 82, 84, 146, 150, 181, 248n81, 250n125, 264n16, 271n17, 279n36, 280n56 Codussi, Mauro, 66, 69 coins and medals and portraiture, 119, 187, 191 and Renaissance hieroglyphs, 204, 223 and spirituality, 223 collecting of, 46, 86, 94–95, 147, 157, 223, 271n28 in Odoni portrait, 147, 183, 211, 222–23, 228, 231, 240 in Odoni’s house, 147, 296n166 motifs on, 211, 216, 294n119, 295n145, 296n166 collecting, 7, 14, 37–38, 39, 42, 51–52, 85–90, 97, 98–100, 102, 109, 110, 157–58, 161, 210, 215, 228, 231 historiography of, 5–6, 86–87 of antiquities, 85–102 of modern sculpture, 102–109 Colonna, Francesco (notary), 59, 62, 84, 117–18, 274n84 Colonna, Francesco (writer), 92–94, 153, 203, 205, 207, 228 Commynes, Philippe de, 142–43 Compagnie della Calza, 136, 249n81 consumerism, 7, 233 consumption, 7, 8–9, 14, 77, 110, 166, 238–39 Contarini family, 181 Gasparo, 15 on cittadini, 18–19, 20, 22, 25, 29, 30, 247n37 Michiel, 49, 87, 88 Pietro, 49, 87 Taddeo, 132, 274n78 contemplation, 7, 63, 97, 109, 110, 144, 145, 148, 159, 161, 164–65, 166, 179, 180, 200–2, 204, 207–8, 210, 217, 218, 220, 222, 223, 230, 231, 233, 234, 235, 237, 239, 290n56, 293n101, 297n180 coral, 157, 158 Cornaro family, 53–54 Alvise, 285n167 Francesco, 275n95 Nicholas, 92 Correggio, 1 Costa, Lorenzo, 172

324

INDEX

Dante, 127, 128, 139 Daphnis, 82, 97 Dario, Giovanni, 54 Dazio del vin, 32, 39–42, 44, 51, 78, 79, 82, 86, 124, 253n63, 255n94 conduttori, 41, 42, 78, 183, 254n78, 255n92 corruption at, 37, 41–42 de Maria, Blake, 6, 30 de’ Rossi family and collection (Rome), 95 Decembrio, Angelo, 159, 298n197 Del Garbo, Dino, 45 del Nassaro, Matteo, 134 Della Vedova family, 31, 38, 274n84 Francesco, 45, 123, 172, 173 Gasparo, 38, 45, 253n63 Jacomo, 38, 265n31 Zuan, 42, 253n63 Desprez, François, Recueil de la diversité des habits, 198, 200 Diana of Ephesus, 183, 211–15, 216, 217, 222, 226, 227, 231, 233, 294n140, 295n145, 296n172 dining, 81, 139, 143, 173 distinction, 6, 20, 22, 24, 28, 110, 152, 239 Doge’s Palace, 12, 15, 65, 75, 90, 119, 127 Sala delle Teste, 90, 98 dogs, representations of, 63, 150, 151, 159 Dolce, Ludovico, 68–69 Donatello, 102, 107, 118 Donato, Girolamo, 87 doors, painted, 60–61, 71, 78, 106, 167–68, 261n39 dowries, 24–25, 43–44, 46, 51, 239, 255n109, 256n110 Dürer, Albrecht, 182, 183, 196 Dutch Gift, 1, 4, 178 Dyck, Anthony van, 3

Fabiani family, 35 Cornelia, 251n22 Giulia, 46 Jacomo, 46, 251n22, 256n127 façades, palace in Venice, 65–70 painted, 65–70 family chronicles, 26, 27, 30, 33, 35, 54 family memoirs, 25–30, 237 Fasanini, Filippo, 204, 232 faux antiquities, 102–9, 117, 118, 149–50, 270n154 Favaretto, Irene, 106, 116–17, 272n55 Featherstone, Rupert, 211, 243n11, 298n201 fertility, 73–76, 83, 106, 173, 227, 263n113 feudal investiture, 43 Ficino, Marsilio, 209, 232, 290n56, 291n71, 292n81 Findlen, Paula, 158 Fioravanti, Leonardo, 163–64 fire landscapes, 134–35 fireplaces, 112, 141, 143, 159, 261n39, 278n1 fish, 157–58, 213, 283n112 Fondaco dei Tedeschi, 65, 67–68 Foresti, Fra Giacomo Foresti, Supplementum Chronicarum, 45 Foscarini, Antonio, 85, 87–88, 282n95 Foscarini, Jacopo, 261n39 fossils, 157–59, 283n107 fragments, 81–84, 88, 91–97, 98, 100–102, 103–4, 106–108, 115, 118, 139, 181, 183, 200–201, 210, 215, 224, 228, 233 Franceschi, Andrea de’, 37–38, 185, 186, 198, 249n87 Francesconi, Daniele, 243n5 Francis I, King of France, 172–73, 180, 294n128 fraterna, 54 furniture beds. See beds built-in, 144 credenzas, 114 tables. See tables

Eastlake, Charles, 2–3 Egnazio, Battista, 121, 273n65 elegance, 32, 48–50, 77, 154–55, 198, 237 emulation, 6, 22, 30, 70, 114, 238, 239, 248n81 entertainment, 83, 112–13, 141, 143 Erasmus of Rotterdam, 73, 139, 216 Erinni Ludovisi, 95, 95 Este Alfonso d’, 178 Ercole d’, 297n183 Isabella d’, 131–32, 145, 152, 163, 279n24 Lionello d’, 145

garden-museums in Rome, 90–98, 100 Odoni’s, 81, 86, 91–92, 97–98, 100, 109–10, 111, 139 gardens, 8, 55–56, 58, 59, 60, 62–63, 80–81, 84, 88, 89, 91, 92, 93, 94, 100, 102, 109, 110, 146, 242 Gattamelata, 118 Giannotti, Donato, 17–18, 22, 25, 30, 49 Gingali, Isabetta, 251n22 Giordano, Vettor (notary), 46 Giorgione, 1–2, 136, 168, 174 painted façades, 65, 68, 69

crabs, 157–59, 158 Crete, 86, 92 Crinito, Pietro, 232 crocodiles, 157, 159 Cybele, 82, 104, 106, 109

Sleeping Venus, 170, 172 St. Jerome in the Moonlight (lost), 129–32, 137 Gleason, Elisabeth, 14 gold, 3, 141–43, 205, 218, 219, 222, 228–29, 230, 232–33, 239 Golden Chain, the, 232–33, 300n248 Goldthwaite, Richard, 7–8, 233, 238–39 Gonzaga family, 156, 172 Bishop Ludovico, 273n60 Frederico II, 132, 135 Graces, the, 71–72, 74, 97, 268n109 Grand Chancellor, 20–21, 23, 37–38, 45, 185, 247n43 Great Council, 11, 19–20, 22, 26–30, 51–52, 113, 237 green cloth, 114–15, 149, 183, 228, 271n28 Grimani family, 86, 89, 92 Cardinal Domenico, 39, 89–90, 98, 100, 123, 134, 166 collection, 90, 98–101, 117, 121 Giovanni, Patriarch of Aquileia, 90, 98, 100, 101 Gritti, Doge Andrea, 14, 16, 38, 79, 90 Grubb, James, 6, 19, 21, 25, 27, 30, 54, 247n53, 248n75, 249n86, 250n116 Guerra, Domenico, 43 Hadrian (Roman emperor), 119–22, 139, 140, 196, 216, 224–26, 273n63, 296n166 Heemskerck, Maarten van, 91, 91, 92 Hercules, 82, 104, 106, 109, 215–17, 225, 226–27, 296n166, 297n178 and Antaeus, 215, 217–18, 296n172 and Hadrian, 216 as pagan typus of Christ, 217, 218 mingens, 215, 216–17, 217, 218–19, 224, 226, 228 Hermaphrodite (Museo Archeologico, Venice), 96, 97 hermeticism, 209, 210, 227, 291n80 Hey, Jean, The Dauphin Charles-Orlant, 160, 161 hieroglyphs, 7, 93, 96, 192, 196, 202–5, 207, 210, 212, 214–15, 223, 228, 231–32, 237 Homer, 232 homosexuality, 122 Horapollo’s Hieroglyphica, 202–205, 232, 290n61 horn, animal, 147, 152, 156, 157–58 hospitality, 49, 77, 112 house or palace as family seat. See casa da statio as representation of owner/family, 3, 53–54 as woman/bride, 8–9, 115, 238, 242 class distinctions in, 55

INDEX

courtyards, 55, 56, 60, 80–84, 87, 91, 97–102, 104, 106, 109–110, 145, 146, 159, 167, 215, 226, 228 loggia, 8, 60, 81, 83–84, 91, 97, 99, 109 housing, cost of, 56 humanism, 9, 16, 36, 39, 45, 49, 51–52, 84, 87, 110, 121, 128, 140, 146, 152, 154–55, 159, 203, 205, 210, 216, 217, 233, 256n125 humor, 78–79, 82–83, 137, 216–217, 224, 226, 228 Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, 73–74, 75, 83, 92–94, 93, 96, 98, 105, 148, 153, 203, 210, 291n78 hieroglyphs in, 203, 205, 207, 223 iconoclasm, 212, 234, 294n140 soft, 212, 215 identity, 3, 6, 7–8, 11, 22, 27, 30, 53–54, 112, 159, 179, 197, 204, 230, 237–38, 240 idolatry, 212–17, 227, 230–32, 234 illegitimate offspring of the nobility, 22, 27, 248n80 immigration, 33, 55, 128–29 citizenship and, 20, 21 imprese, 207–208, 289n24, 293n102, 294n132 individualism, 6, 7 Isis, 212, 296n172 Italian Wars, 11, 14 Jacometto Veneziano, 147–50, 148, 153, 166 Jestaz, Bertrand, 89 jewelers, 25, 35, 86, 134, 150, 152, 162, 205, 225, 229, 252n25 John of Rupescissa, 298n191 Juan de Flandes, Marriage Feast at Cana, 163, 164 Juno, 71 kitchen, 58, 64 Koolhaas, Rem, 101 Landino, Cristoforo, 216 Lando family, 31, 258n155, 259n11 Simon, 48 Lauber, Rosella, 4, 137 leather wall-hangings, 143 Leopardi, Alessandro, 75 liberality, 32, 48–50, 77, 79, 124, 237 Licino, Bernardino, 170 Liebenwein, Wolfgang, 144, 146 Liompardi, Zuan Polo, 136–37 Livy, 128 Lombardi, Alfonso, 162 Lombardo Antonio, 75

family of sculptors, 104, 107 Ludovico, 120, 120 Pietro, 104 Tullio, 95, 104, 107, 269n130 A Couple, 102–4, 103 antique statue owned by, 82, 97, 102 Bacchus and Ariadne, 102–4, 104 Santa Maria dei Miracoli, 75 Santa Maria Maggiore, 258n149 Loredan, Doge Leonardo, 13, 113, 114, 128 Loro, Fra Damiano, 209 Lotto, Lorenzo, 114, 115 A Cleric in His Study (drawing), 200, 201 book and cross in paintings by, 230, 300n231 carnelian owned by, 202, 294n119 frescoes in the Oratorio Suardi, 205–6, 206, 300n231 frontispiece to Antonio Brucioli’s translation of the Bible, 208 Goldsmith in Three Views, 225, 225, 234, 288n18 hand to heart gesture, 187, 230 Hercules and Antaeus (drawing), 215, 215, 218 hieroglyphic signatures, 202, 218–19 intarsias in S. Maria Maggiore in Bergamo, 187–88, 190, 202, 206–209, 207, 213–14, 218, 227, 288n13, 289n24, 294n132 interest in alchemy, 202, 205–7 interest in hieroglyphs, 202, 205 Portrait of Andrea Odoni, 1–5, 2, 8, 184, 191, 218, 221 bust of Hadrian, 224–25 clothing, 197–200, 240 crucifix and chain, 183, 211, 213, 219, 228–33 face, beard, and hair, 194–97, 240 Lotto’s innovation in, 186–87, 189–92 painted copy of, 3, 243n11 provenance and attribution, 1–4, 50 religion and, 210, 212 representations of Hercules, 217–19 sleeves, 200 statue of Diana, 183, 215, 227 portraits Bishop Tomaso Negri, 189–91, 192, 193, 230, 300n231 Dominican Monk, 186–87, 188, 193, 195 exhibitions, 4 Giovanni Agostino and Niccolò della Torre, 193, 195 Man with the Golden Paw, 187, 189, 195, 230, 289n25, 290n44 Messer Marsilio and His Bride, 192, 193, 226, 288n16

325

religious beliefs, 202 Sacra Conversazione (Vienna), 229, 230 signature, 1, 2, 218, 219, 297n179 St. Catherine of Alexandria, 229 St. Jerome in Penitence (Sibiu), 219 St. Nicholas in Glory (Santa Maria dei Carmini), 220, 229 The Toilette of Venus, 219 ties, ribbons, and strings in the work of, 207, 223, 292n94, 298n200 Venus and Cupid, 174 Lucco, Mauro, 70, 132, 168 Luchs, Alison, 75, 102, 107 Luther, Martin, 208, 293n105 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 10, 13, 16, 23, 25, 30, 198 Macrobius, 232 Maffei family (Rome), 91 magical properties, 153, 156, 158, 210, 234, 283n107 magnificence, 8, 32, 49, 80–81 maiolica, 156, 159, 284n135 Malipiero family, 48, 49 Alvise (son of Perazo), 48 Domenico, 20, 160 Malombra, Bartolomeo, 53, 259n3 Manassi, Nicolò, 44, 146 Mancini, Giulio, 173–74 Mansueti, Giovanni, 142, 142–43 Mantegna, Andrea, 145 Manuzio family, 44 Aldo, 7, 16, 203 Aldo Jr., 35, 42, 43, 50, 52, 58, 146, 251n5, 257n138 Paolo, 16, 35, 42, 46, 50, 58, 61–62, 64, 256n110, 257n138, 298n197 marble, red, 60 Marcello, Girolamo, 174 Marcugiago (vicariate of Mirano), 43, 44 Mars, 107, 116–17 Marsilio, Antonio, 24, 36, 39 Martin, John Jeffries, 19, 208 Martini, di, family, 31 marvels, 108, 159, 222 materiality, 7, 8, 217–19, 231 Medici family, 102, 297n183 Lorenzo de’, 152, 154 Piero de’, 118, 145 mediocritas, 9, 67 melancholy, 94, 109–110, 120, 195 Memling, Hans, 133 Memmo, Giovanni Maria, 246n37 Memo, Zuanne, 42 Mercury, 12, 66, 105, 117, 202, 203, 204 mermaids (sirens), 75–79, 226 mezzado, 45, 60–63, 72, 146, 261n45, 279n36

326

INDEX

Michelangelo, 91, 107, 239 Michiel, Marcantonio, 24, 36, 92, 121, 127, 145, 155, 156, 181, 212, 257n136 Diarii, 113, 144, 254n84 Mercury by Antonio Minello, owned by, 105–6, 106, 117, 203, 204, 292n94 Notizia, 2–4, 39, 59, 87–89, 90, 116, 116, 132, 135, 137, 167, 169, 236, 243n5, 253n56, 260n33, 265n35, 277n151, 280n47 description of Odoni’s collection, 3, 59, 116 description of Odoni’s portrait, 3, 166, 200–2, 201, 210, 237 Michiel, Marco (son of Andrea), 42 Milan, 2, 7, 32, 33, 34, 51, 251n3, 258n155 Miller, Daniel, 7 Minello, Antonio, 82, 104, 107, 109, 117, 216 Grieving Heroine, 105 Mercury, 105, 106, 106, 117, 203 Minerva, 72–73, 74, 76, 79, 80, 97, 263n101 Mirandola Gianfrancesco Pico della, 208, 292n98 Pico della, 209 mirrors, 13, 162–64, 165, 169, 175–76, 204, 207, 226, 234–35, 283n110, 284n148, 297n183, 301n259 Mocetto, Girolamo, 130 Montefeltro, Federico da, 145 Morelli, Jacopo, 2, 4, 258n157 Morosini, Domenico, 65 Mosca, Giammaria, 39, 257n137 Muses, 91, 96, 145, 168 Muzio, Girolamo, 209–210 myth of Venice, 13, 15–16, 18, 65, 237 Nagel, Alexander, 109, 212, 226, 300n237 Nanin, Thomaso, 46 naturalia, 39, 45, 156, 157–59 nature “jokes of”, 158–59 and art, 153, 159, 233 book of, 159, 166 symbolism of, 159 Navagero, Andrea, 24 Neoplatonism, 209, 232 Netherlandish painting in Venetian collections, 132–35 Noal, Alvise da, 21 nobility. See class nostalgia, 94, 109, 120 nude, reclining female, 60, 169–74, 177, 179–81 Nygren, Christopher, 223, 297n180

Ochino, Bernardino, 208 Odoni family, 35, 44–45 Alvise, 32, 34, 41, 43, 46, 48, 50, 166, 254n78, 255n102, 256n116, 257n136, 258n166 inventory made after his death, 34, 43, 45, 50, 256n127 Amelia, 34 Andrea, 4 and Hercules, 106, 216 at Dazio del vin, 39–42, 41 at Scuole Grande di S.M. della Carità, 37–38 death and tomb, 30, 33, 46–50, 51, 77, 237, 259n175 education, 45–46 interest in central Italian art, 70, 79, 81, 126 interest in sculpture, 3, 6, 102, 112, 115–16, 138, 174 marriage, 43, 255n103 relationship to Francesco Zio, 33–39, 44, 46, 85, 90, 126, 129, 138, 147, 157, 160 “Renaissance man”, 5, 238, 239 self-affinity with Emperor Hadrian, 121–22, 225 wealth, 42–45 Caterina (wife of Paolo Manuzio), 16, 42, 46, 255n105, 256n110 citizenship, 33 coat of arms, 29, 74, See coat of arms Cornelia, 43, 255n109 family seat. See casa da statio Faustina, 34 Franceschina, 34 Gerolamo, 25, 32, 33, 34, 41, 43–44, 46, 48, 50, 255n102, 256n116, 257n138, 258n166, 274n84 Gerolamo (b. 1659), 50, 248n70, 254n74 Gerolamo II (son of Carlo), 47, 48, 259n171 Girolamo (friend of Cicogna), 50, 59 Guglielmo (Andrea’s uncle), 32, 33 Guglielmo (bookseller), 50, 259n170 Guglielmo (brother of Andrea), 34 Guglielmo (son of Alvise), 50 Helena Valier, 43, 46, 255n105, 257n144 inheritance, 34, 44, 50, 78, 85, 90, 123, 126, 129, 147, 156, 157, 166, 183 Isabetta (formerly Tagliapietra, née da Monte), 43, 46, 255n100, 258n166 Jacomo (son of Alvise), 50 Loredana, 43 Marieta (Alvise’s daughter), 43, 255n109 Marieta (Andrea’s mother), 33, 34, 251n10 Michiel (b. 1692), 50

Odona, 43, 255n109 Renaldo (Andrea’s nephew, son of Alvise), 50, 259n171 Rinaldo (Andrea’s father), 32, 33, 34, 51, 55, 166, 251n5 Rinaldo (Andrea’s nephew, son of Gerolamo), 46, 50, 257n138 Vielmo (son of Alvise), 50, 259n171 Orio, Piero, 23, 40–42, 113, 128, 138 ornamenti di studi, 146, 150 Ottobon family, 28 palazzi Palazzo Barbarigo (Grand Canal), 66, 68 Palazzo Contarini delle Figure, 72, 72 Palazzo Corner (by Jacopo Sansovino), 66, 82 Palazzo Dario, 54, 66 Palazzo Grimani at Santa Maria Formosa, 89, 98–100, 99, 100 Palazzo Loredan (now VendraminCalergi), 66, 69 Palazzo Malombra-Cornaro, 53, 259n4 Palazzo Talenti-d’Anna, 55, 57, 66, 68–69, 262n71 Palazzo Torre (Cannaregio), 72 Palazzo Zen (Cannaregio), 66–67, 70 Palladio, Andrea, 119, 119 Palma Vecchio (Jacopo Palma il Vecchio), 48, 60, 65, 135, 170, 174–75, 176, 177, 189, 234, 236, 286n190 portraits, 186–87, 187, 190 papalisti, 48, 66–67 papier-mâché, 115, 212 paragone ancient and modern, 104, 137, 159, 225 art and nature, 159 painting and sculpture, 104, 132, 137, 140, 225–26 Parmigianino, 234, 289n22 Portrait of a Collector, 191, 194, 223 Pasqualino, Antonio, 168 Patinir, Joachim, 133 Paul II, Pope (Pietro Barbo), 150, 152, 153, 166, 281n66 Peace of Bologna, 11, 13, 14, 41 pearls, 13, 145 and alchemy, 220–22 in Odoni portrait, 183, 211, 219, 220–22, 223, 228, 231, 297n186, 298n188 objects made with, 156 Pesaro, Lunardo da, 43 Pessina, Paola, 24 petrified wood, 152, 162 Petrus Bonus of Ferrara, 222 philosopher’s stone, 222

INDEX

Piazza and Piazzetta San Marco, 12, 14–15, 79 flagpoles, 75 Piero, Domenico, 86, 150, 252n25 Pino, Paolo, 163, 168 Plato, 76, 232, 290n56, 292n98 Pliny the Elder, 108, 158 Plotinus, 232, 290n56, 291n71 Pomian, Krzysztof, 157 ponentina, 132 Pontano, Giovanni, 9, 49, 84, 146, 147, 154–55 popolo. See class porcelain, 115, 152, 154–56, 157, 158, 231 and alchemy, 219–20, 297n183 and shells, 156, 220–22 bowl in Odoni portrait, 183, 219–20, 222, 223, 228 Pordenone, Giovanni Antonio da, 55, 57, 65–66, 70 porphyry, 68, 93, 152–53, 154, 156, 160, 166 portego, 41, 61–62 arms and armor in, 113–14, 138 as symbolic space, 112–13 martial associations, 112–13, 117, 118, 123, 129 paintings in, 122–38 sculptures in, 107, 111, 115–22 portrait as mirror, 184, 235 portrait of a collector type, 3, 4, 191–92, 193, 237, 288n8 portraiture, horizontal, 190, 225, 234, 288n18 precious materials ivory, 150, 152, 157, 166 jewels and gems, 145, 147, 156 pearls. See pearls petrified wood. See petrified wood porphyry. See porphyry rock crystal. See rock crystal prima materia, 221–22 Principe, Lawrence A., 228, 292n85 procurators (gastaldi), 35–36, 39 Protestant Reformation, 16, 208, 212, 233–34 publishing, 16. See also Aldine Press putti (amorini), 71, 73, 75, 79, 82–83, 167, 168, 179, 206, 226, 297n178 pyrotechnics, 137 quadro da camera, 173 quadro da portego, 122, 124, 127, 128, 139 Querini Diptych, 150–51, 151 Querini, Cardinal Angelo Maria, 150 Querini, Vincenzo (son of Zorzi), 276n138 Ragazzoni, Giacomo, 30, 256n114 Rallo, Donato, 46 Ram, Giovanni, 87–88 Ramusio

Giovanni Battista, 24 Paolo, 43, 44, 247n57 Raphael, 70, 239 Allegorical Figure of Philosophy, Stanza della Segnatura, 212 Conversion of St. Paul (cartoon and tapestry), 123 La Fornarina, 176 Portrait of Andrea Navagero and Agostino Beazzano, 24, 24, 189 Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, 4, 4, 239–40 Raxon nuove, 37, 38, 39–40, 253n63 Redaldi, Bernardino de, 157, 282n98 Redgrave, Richard, 2 reform movements, religious, 16, 202, 208–9, 212, 233–34 reme (stringcourses), 60, 81, 150, 160, 174 Renier Adriana Zannini, 58 Doge Paolo, 58 renovatio, 67, 79 restelliera, 113, 123 Reynst collection, 4, 178 Riccio, Andrea, 117, 300n237 Ridolfi, Carlo, 66, 69, 70–74, 77–78, 82, 168, 263n97 Rio del Gaffaro, 50, 55, 58, 80, 84 rock crystal, 147, 150, 152, 154, 156, 158, 284n145 romanista style, 70, 80 Romano, Dennis, 19 Romano, Gian Cristoforo, 152, 154 Rome, 5, 15, 16, 39, 51, 79, 81, 86, 87, 89–92, 94–95, 98, 100, 110, 118, 153, 212, 215 Palazzo Venezia, 89 Quirinal Hill, 80, 89, 92, 107–108 Rossi, Bishop Bernardo, 205, 291n78 Rufinus of Aquileia, 232 Sabellico, Marcantonio, 17, 143 Sack of Rome, 14, 16, 233, 267n98 Salviati, Francesco, 123, 210, 294n128 Salviati, Giuseppe, 65 San Francesco della Vigna, 47, 209 San Giovanni e Paolo, 208–9, 210 Sanazzaro, Jacopo, 155–56 Sanquirico, Antonio, 117 Sansovino, Francesco on cittadini, 18 on Francesco Zio’s tomb, 39 on Santa Maria Maggiore, 48 on the Dazio del vin, 40 on Venetian dress, 22–23 on Venetian houses and private collections, 65, 82, 84, 90, 112, 113, 146, 237, 260n36, 264n121, 268n118

327

Sansovino, Jacopo, 10–11, 16, 17, 18, 22, 66, 79, 82, 107, 117, 209, 237 Libreria, 100 Piazza and Piazzetta projects, 14–15 religious beliefs, 209 Santa Croce, 46 Santa Justina, 47 Santa Maria dei Miracoli, 75 Santa Maria delle Vergini, 35–36, 39, 47, 55 Santa Maria Maggiore, 32, 46–49, 257n144, 258n149, 259n171 Santa Maria, Torcello, 32 Sanudo, Marin on Andrea Odoni, 37, 40, 41–42, 128, 253n63 on citizenship, 21 on class and dress in Venice, 17, 22, 23, 30, 249n87 on his studio, 145, 279n30 on houses in Venice, 44, 53–54, 56 on performances, 136, 271n7 on Polo Trevisan dalla Drezza, 138 on the Dazio del vin, 41, 42, 254n72 on the Sala delle Teste, 90 Savina family, 31, 123 Savoldo, Giovanni Gerolamo, 124, 135, 169, 170–72, 173 Continence of Scipio, 124, 126 Self-Portrait (?), 234, 235 St. Jerome in Penitence, 132, 133 Scamozzi, Vincenzo, 55, 60, 61, 81, 101 Schiavone, Andrea, 168 Scipio, Clemency of, 124 Scorel, Jan van, 133, 277n150 Submersion of the Pharaoh, 133–34, 135 sculpture ancient/antique. See also faux antiquities display of, 81–102 origins of, 86 restoration of, 95–96 Venetian collections of, 87–90 Venice as marketplace for, 85–86 bronze, 107, 118, 119, 120, 139, 149, 174, 183, 191 display of, 81, 102 functional. See wellhead heads and busts, 84, 87, 107, 118, 149 ivory, 150 marble, 81–82, 84, 85, 86, 87–88, 89, 90, 92, 94, 102, 104, 107, 116, 117, 118, 119, 149, 183, 191 modern, 6, 91, 174. See also faux antiquities on balconies, 60, 72, 79, 226 over doorway, 118, 142 stucco. See stucco terracotta. See terracotta wood, 38, 60, 63, 118, 139, 146, 150

328

INDEX

Scuola Grande di Santa Maria della Carità, 35, 37–38, 41, 46, 118, 197, 274n84 Scuole Grandi, 18, 20, 23, 37, 51, 237, 249n87 Sebastiano del Piombo, 60, 62, 261n42 self, 3, 7, 74, 110, 138, 145, 146, 164–65, 184, 197, 230, 234–35, 239 self-fashioning, 7, 8, 22, 30, 51, 194, 196, 239, 244n32 Serbaldi, Pier Maria da Pescia, 152–54, 166, 281n80 Serena, Angela, 77 Serlio, Sebastiano, 9, 62, 64, 67, 98, 111, 126–27, 169, 170, 209, 237, 238, 263n90, 275n112 serpent’s tongue, 157, 283n107 Serrata, 19–20, 26, 35, 51 serrata cittadinesca, 21 servants, 46, 60, 63, 258n162, 261n54, 262n57 sexual desire, 173, 214, 216 sexual intercourse, 226, 228 sexuality, 74, 226, 295n155 shells, 156–59, 220–22, 297n186 Sherman, Cindy, 109 signatures, artists’ Lorenzo Lotto. See Lotto, Lorenzo, hieroglyphic signatures and signature Simone Bianco, 108 Tullio Lombardo, 103 Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus, 73–74, 75, 78–79 Sixtus IV, Pope, donation of, 89 sleeves, 17, 22, 23, 28, 198–200, 211, 233, 288n10, 290n51 snakes, 157–59 Socrates, 164 spalliere, 34, 63, 167, 262n58 splendor, 9, 18, 32, 48–50, 77, 84, 146–47, 153–54, 237, 242, 258n162 sprezzatura, 239, 240, 302n14 St. Bonaventura, 233 staircase (stairway), 60–62, 111, 141, 261n45 Statuario Pubblico, 100–1, 101, 109, 110 stucco, 118–21, 139–40, 149, 161, 166, 224, 272n52, 281n61 studiolo/studio, 62–63, 98, 100, 143–67, 181, 213, 237 sumptuary laws, 13–14, 22, 24, 25, 167 Superchi Girolamo, 101–2, 265n34, 269n125 Giulio, 102 syncretism, 209, 210

tables, 84, 97, 102, 113, 114, 143, 147, 159, 191, 204 Tafuri, Manfredo, 16, 47–48, 66–67, 209, 258n149 Tagliapietra, Alvise (son of Victorio), 43 Taiacalze, Domenego, 137 Talenti, Ludovico, 55 Taro, Battle of, 160 Tassini, Giuseppe, 33, 35, 251n3, 255n104 tax farming, 40–42 terracotta, 63, 84, 116, 117–18, 137, 139, 145, 161 terraferma, 12, 13, 28, 40, 44 thing-power, 7–8, 235 Thornton, Dora, 145 Tintoretto, Jacopo, 65, 124, 125 Titian, 69, 70, 74, 107, 136, 174, 176–78, 189, 226, 234, 258n169, 276n127 Aldobrandini Madonna, 177, 177–78 as portrait painter, 185–87, 190–91 frescoes on the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, 65, 68 frontispiece to Stanze in lode di Madonna Angela Sirena, 78 his student named Stefano, 167–68 illustrations for L’idea del theatro, 210, 294n128 Man with a Glove, 185, 185 Portrait of a Woman (“La Schiavona”), 121 Portrait of Andrea de’ Franceschi, 38, 185–86, 186 Portrait of Jacopo Strada, 192 Presentation of the Virgin, 37–38, 38, 197 Sacred and Profane Love, 45 St. Jerome by Moonlight, 132, 134 St. John the Baptist in the Desert, 48 Venus of Urbino, 143, 143, 170–72 togas, 17, 22–23, 28, 37, 44, 65, 185, 197, 198, 249n87 Torresani family, 44 Trajan, 126, 132, 299n209 Justice of, 124–29, 139 transmutation, 3, 183, 205, 217, 219, 221–22, 231, 235 Tresiegole (vicariate of Oriago), 44 Trevisan, Polo (Pollo Trevisan dalla drezza), 116, 137–39, 277n169 Treviso, 12, 13, 113, 205 Treviso, Girolamo da, 54, 69–70 altarpiece in San Salvatore, Venice, 69–70 Chiesa della Commenda, Faenza, 70, 71 façade of Odoni house, 3, 55, 64, 81, 184 Odoni house interior, 82–83, 167 Sleeping Female Nude, 170, 172, 172–73 tritons, 74–76, 79

Uffelen, Lucas van, 3–4, 50, 239, 258n169 utensils, 146–47, 262n58 Valeriano Fra Urbano, 203 Giovanni Pierio, 196, 203, 291n79, 296n171 Valier family, 43, 44, 255n104 van Eyck, Jan, 133 Vasari, Giorgio, 55, 66, 89, 135, 168, 173, 234, 281n80, 294n128 Lives of the Artists, 3, 55, 69–71, 72–73, 74, 77, 82, 97, 98, 167, 236–37, 238 Vecellio, Cesare, Habiti antichi et moderni, 22–23, 23, 197, 197, 198 Vendramin, Gabriele, 42, 45, 87, 127, 166, 264n121, 284n158 collection display, 88–89, 98, 101 naturalia collection, 157–58 Venice and paradox, 19, 20, 25 as “new Rome” (altera Roma), 14–15, 51, 79, 90 as cultural capital, 7, 11, 14–15, 51 dress in, 17, 22–23, 24, 28, 250n123 Venier, Zuan Antonio, 37, 123 Veronese, Paolo, 48, 65, 114, 114, 198, 199 Vesalius, Andreas, 94, 94, 168 vessels and containers, 14, 71, 74, 78, 114, 152–56, 221 virtù, 15, 160, 166, 196, 216, 284n158, 289n33, 296n166 virtuosi, 55, 72, 77, 80, 90–91, 97, 264n121 Visscher, Cornelis, 4, 178, 179, 243n6, 294n135, 297n186 Vittorio de Angelis (Vettor di Anzoli or Archanzoli), 152, 153, 162 Voragine, Jacobus de, The Golden Legend, 127 war booty, 160 wellhead (vere da pozzo), 82–83, 94, 97, 264n116 wine tax, 40–42 wings, 115, 271, 281n64 wunderkammern, 158 Zanchi, Mauro, 206, 293n119, 294n133, 296n171, 297n176, 299n224 Zanetti, Anton Maria II, 48, 56, 66, 67, 69, 263n91 Zannini, Andrea, 6, 21 Zen Francesco, 49, 127 Nicolò, 262n61 Ziliol family, 25–26 Alessandro, 28–30, 33, 52, 249n87, 258n162

INDEX

Le due corone della nobilità veneziana, 29, 29–30, 32–33, 54, 258n155, 259n11 Andrea, 25, 26 memoir, 28–29 Scipione, 26, 250n123 Vettor, 26, 28, 204, 249n87, 258n162, 298n198 Zio family, 25, 34–35, 35 Benetto, 35, 36, 37, 39, 252n27

Francesco, 25, 33–40, 44, 45, 50, 51, 55, 138 as collector, 34, 39, 90, 152, 154, 166, 183, 222 as procurator at S.M. delle Vergini, 35–36 house of, 85, 87, 135, 147, 162 portraits of, 34, 118, 132, 160–61

329

relationship to Andrea Odoni, 33–39, 44, 46, 85, 90, 126, 129, 138, 147, 157, 160 tomb, 39 Giacomo, 34, 39 of San Pantalon, 35 Zorzi, Fra Francesco, 209, 210, 233, 301n254 Zorzi, Nicolò, 89 Zosimos of Panopolis, 227 Zuccaro, Federico, 127