Bronzino's Martyrdom of St. Lawrence & Counter Reformation PDF

The President and Fellows of Harvard College Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology
Counter Reformation Polemic and Mannerist Counter-Aesthetics: Bronzino's "Martyrdom of St. Lawrence" in San Lorenzo Author(s): Stephen J. Campbell Source: RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, No. 46, Polemical Objects (Autumn, 2004), pp. 98119 Published by: The President and Fellows of Harvard College acting through the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20167641 . Accessed: 09/10/2013 17:31
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RES 46 AUTUMN 2004
Figure 1. Agnolo Bronzino, Martrydom of St. Lawrence, 1565-1569.

Resource).
Florence, San Lorenzo (Photo: Alinari/Art
Counter Reformation
counter-aesthetics
polemic and Mannerist
Bronzino's Martyrdom of St. Lawrence in San Lorenzo

STEPHEN J. CAMPBELL
means a known that the term Mannerism art it deal less than used and historians to, many good seem to have decided that it has outgrown its use. was decisively Before it realigned with the Italian word It iswell maniera, effortless ideals of positive social and aesthetic and "stylish" virtuosity, Mannerism had in the account become a central concept philosophical of art as the bearer of historical consciousness.1 on the work of Max Dvorak, Friedrich Antal, Following and with
in tendency already recognized on the earlier twentieth-century literature Mannerism. Alienation stood as a symptom of crisis befalling the itwas the sign of a individual at the outset of modernity; events historical experience such as the shaped by and the Catholic reaction to it, economic rise and the of the centralized, upheaval, state. and bureaucratic authoritarian, Reformation and social version of this model of Mannerism in the art criticism of the 1980s, among the theorists of post-modernism, it defined the artist where as alienated from a historical tradition that terminated survives with Modernism, and as an ironic celebrant of capitalist Art dystopia.4 history, on the other hand, now seldom with of art that H?user, or with a philosophy engages too globalizing, has been pronounced ideologically and lacking in empirical conviction. of this elaborate system of historical the principle of artistic consciousness explanation to the history of Renaissance became unavailable overinvested, the rejection alternative links between With also A reduced
elaborate
an agonistic
andWilhelm Pinder,Arnold H?user had by 1965

developed alienated a theory of Mannerism as a mode of artistic expression characteristic of an epoch of art where works of "a manifest crisis, process of turning a subject into an object" ultimately pointing to a loss of self.2 For Hegel, whose remarks on alienation served as a starting point for H?user, alienation had been an inevitable
and positive outcome of artistic creation, the work of art, transcending the control and whereby of itsmaker, assumed a thought-like capacity intentions of its own.3 Hauser drew on Marx, Weber, and Freud to
1. The watershed Ideal." Acts vols. of the Twentieth (Princeton:
text
In The Renaissance Princeton
is John Shearman, "Maniera as Aesthetic and Mannerism. Art. Studies of Western Congress Press, University of the History of Art. 4 1963), II, pp. 200-222, 1967). For reviews Penguin, emotion and
set of terms in art history emerged historical dispensations of the self and the
retain the grasp of the self in that 'other' the alien factor into it to itself." G. W. F.
art; no to address
International
which
followed (Harmondsworth: by Mannerism see Ernst Gombrich, of the term and the concept "The in The Renaissance and Mannerism, Historiographical Background," see also Elizabeth Cropper's to Craig Hugh Smyth, Preface 163-174; Mannerism comments and Maniera. 2nd ed. on the maniera
I (Vienna: RSA, 1992), and Cropper's to Francesco in the postface Salviati e la bella maniera. Actes des colloques de Rome et de Paris (1998), eds. Catherine Monbeig and Michel Goguel, Philippe Costamagna, Hochmann for a (Rome: ?cole Fran?aise de Rome, 2001), 691-698; on Mannerism of twentieth-century see selection representative writing Liana De Girolami ed. Readings in Italian Mannerism (New Cheney, York: Garland, 1997). 2. Arnold H?user, Mannerism. The Crisis of the Renaissance and the Origin of Modem Art (Cambridge and London: Harvard University 96-97. Press, 1965), especially 3. "And although works of art are not thought and notion simply as such, but an evolution of the notion out of itself, an alienation of the same in the direction of sensuous being, yet for all that the might of the thinking spirit is discovered not merely itself in itsmost native form as pure thinking, completely, to recognize in its ability to grasp but also, and as in the medium itself in its self-divestment
part I) trans. F. P. B. 4 vols. (London: Bell and Sons, 1920), vol. 1,16. Osmaston, 4. See for instance Achille Benito Oliva, L'ideolog?a del traditore. manierismo Arte, maniera, (Milan: Electa, 1978 and 1998), 17-19, which extends the reach of the term from a Cinquecento moment of disenchantment to the late and alienation avant twentieth-century e anche gardes: "La transavanguardia gli artisti della generazione successiva le maniere di prodursi del linguaggio in un ripercorrono inarrestabile nomadismo linee de scorrimento che non conosce e esclusive del farsi dell'opera ? privileg?ate, L'esperienza obbligate. l'unico spazio possibile in tal modo la per l'artista che circoscr?ve coscienza
to the sensuous, but is not, and by so thought-expression, The Philosophy of Fine Hegel, it transforms
transforming
recovering doing Art (introduction,
della propria minorit?, storica dell'arte insufficienza di ?I il riparo ed il recinto del dentro mondo, fronteggiare linguaggio, le sue artic?late maniere, dentro le uniche capaci di dare al soggetto frantumato il collante di una precaria onnipotenza." For other critical see Philip Drew, The Architecture of mannerism, of appropriations Arata Isozaki (New York: Harper and Row, 1982); Elke Racholek manieristischer (Un)Limited. Zum Stellenwert Brandt, Imagination in amerikanischer Traditionen Prosa der Postmoderne (Frankfurt and New York: Peter Lang, 1988).
of
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RES 46 AUTUMN 2004
art of the generations who matured following Raphael's death in 1520. now chiefly defines a stylistic ideal, a set Mannerism of formal characteristics typical of a new institutional artistic of practice and a prescriptive theory organization self-conscious in the model predominates?as of art. A patron-centered is that Mannerism above all the frequent observation or the style promoted by the court of France from 1530, this courtly style Medici ducal court from 1540. Although is seen to recognize or even demand artistic performances it above all of patrons and the effects pursued and achieved by the artists who serve them. It therefore registers as an art of an ornament to power; an unruly complacency, a willing arch-pariah of like becomes Cellini personality or dissidence might the Medici; of gestures heterodoxy but not in his art.5While in some of the recent important exceptions it is taken for granted that an art literature, generally "about" itself is also a politically preeminently art, or one incapable of disrupting an complacent ideological continuum.6 The following essay is part of a larger project that seeks to restore a sense of critical potential to the be found there are in his autobiography, Italian artists of the mid-sixteenth as a to and reopen the question of Mannerism century, will It reaction to historical tensions and predicaments. as a practice that points to a understand Mannerism own processes of making meaning, its between cleavage and the political its own internal theoretical concerns, to serve. While and religious institutions it is designed artists might affect a posture of courtly or academic before tradition and authority, the self subordination in their work might be that operates consciousness as an "other" self, one that confronts the regarded viewer with unauthorized and where meanings, alienation might have a critical potential. This is not to practice of central
5. the For an instance of this view Art." see Frederick Hartt, "Power and and Mannerism,
say that a certain libertine, parodie, or facetious inMannerist character has not long been recognized art, but this has normally been addressed as an alleged failure to attain the sublimity of the High Renaissance, or solely in accordance with the worldly sensibility of seen as the Renaissance Mannerism is thus patrons. will of artistic imitation, ennervating through excessive an unhealthy passivity before the unsurpassable case of and Raphael. It is an epidemic Michelangelo influence without the anxiety, lacking oedipal for the emergence of necessary antagonism supposedly a robust artistic selfhood. Yet this essay will show that it is in part through affecting a kind of passivity that Mannerism emerges as a strategy, and one with a radical potential. These possibilities will be explored in relation to one seen as a often colossal of Mannerist work, apotheosis art in all its supposedly effete virtuosity and courtly in Bronzino's Martyrdom of St Lawrence sycophancy: of San Lorenzo in Florence (fig. 1). The from Agnolo fresco was commissioned in 1565 and Bronzino by Duke Cosimo de' Medici on unveiled August 10, 1569, the feast day of the Medici family saint.7 Despite being the largest single work undertaken by the artist, in effect the most the basilica massive significant project of his late career, and the fact that it is in scale or ambition by any work of painting unmatched in Florence during the last third of the sixteenth century, is among the least studied of all of the St. Lawrence Bronzino's works. Those who have referred to it?usually done so in almost universally only in passing?have terms. From the very beginning, with disparaging Raffaelle Borghini's // Riposo of 1584, the criticism has of been leveled at the admittedly striking abundance in festive naked, highly animated bodies, arranged in the lower zone of the fresco.8 Modern arabesques
of self-consciousness, wit, even eccentricity, a harmony between the wishes presupposes
Individual 6. There
inMannerist are a few
In The Renaissance
recent discussion, 7. For a comprehensive which also pronounces see the "failure" of the work, L'Accademia Wazbinski, Zygmunt a Firenze nel 2 del Disegno Medicea Idea e Instituzione, Cinquecento. Other discussions vols. (Florence: Olschki, include 1987), I, 197-213. on Marcia Cosimo Vasari and Duke and Counter-Reformation. Hall, Renovation in S. Maria Novella and S. Croce 1565-1577 (Oxford: The in Central Clarendon Press, 1979), 73, and After Raphael. Painting and New York: Cambridge Century (Cambridge Italy in the Sixteenth Press, 1999), 238; Massimo Firpo, Gli affreschi di Pontormo University a San Lorenzo: Erisia, pol?tica e cultura nella Firenze di Cosimo I Use of Graham (Turin: Einaudi, 1997), 403-407; Smith, "Bronzino's IX (1978-1979), Print Collector Prints: Some Suggestions." Newsletter trans. David Poole Radzinowicz 1, 30-32; Maurice Brock, Bronzino, 313-326. and Christine (Paris: Flammarion, 2002), Schultz-Touge 8. Raffaele Borghini, // Riposo (Florence: Marescotti, 1584); e reprint, ed. Mario Rosci, 2 vols. (Milan: Labor riproduzioni
222-239. "The important exceptions: Nancy Vickers, K. in The Poetics of Gender, in the Masterpiece," ed. Nancy Mistress Miller 19^1; Michael (New York: Columbia Press, 1986), University and New of Sculpture and the Principles Cole, Cellini (Cambridge for the York: Cambridge 13-14, Press, 2002), University especially not an art artfulness would of that necessarily conspicuous argument or even autonomous in the have been seen as soulless, superficial, sixteenth modes "allow artists new century, and that it could, on the contrary Steen Hansen, Morten of social and religious connectedness"; Dissertation, Baltimore, The
and the Art of Hubris." "PellegrinoTibaldi 2001. Johns Hopkins University,
Campbell: Counter Reformation polemic
and Mannerist
counter-aesthethics
101
criticism has regarded the work as a kind of endgame or final decadent excess of the stylistic current, in the imitation of Michelangelo, that grounded "The St. had represented for several decades. wrote "a Charles fusion of Lawrence," McCorquodale, one most ballet and Turkish bath, is of Mannerism's Bronzino monumental failures from every point of view."9 in 1928, Arthur McComb had written that "the Earlier,
and dogmatic efficacy of Standards for the devotional in fall short Bronzino's churches, painting would images on the following grounds: there is no call for nude therefore their figures in the subject being depicted, is and both presence distracting profane, as is the virtuoso artificiality of their poses and gestures; the prioritizing by the painter of formal design over narrative concerns inhibits the readability of the image; scenes from Christian history should include actual or plausible inventions such as the allegorical figures, and not poetic in the foreground of who brandish their attributes group the Christian the painting. Finally, far from moving to pious sentiment, tenor the overall emotional beholder could be termed ambivalent; the painting conspicuously lacks the pathos and horror demanded by a scene of (the protagonist is, after all, being roasted martyrdom in some reformer's terms alive on a gridiron), for which no amount of graphic violence too could be deemed
excessive.13
of S. Lorenzo is empty of all significance, Martyrdom devoid of taste, crassly Michelangelesque."10 Sydney in a more positive Freedberg recast these sentiments the theatrical character of vein, perceptively addressing the image: "[the fresco] transforms its violent and tragic theme into a beautifully artificial fusion of gymnasium and ballet, played upon an antique stage; the result is one of the most consistent demonstrations of the aesthetic of the High Maniera and one of the finest in its whole range of style."11 More recently, the gigantic fresco has been regarded as an instance of the kind of artificial and licentious painting that provoked a call by Catholic prelates (such as Bishop Gabriele Raleotti of a reform of Bologna) for to the newTridentine religious imagery.12 According
documentazioni, storia a fresco suoi baroni mal disconvenevole nella sua 1967), I, 62: ". . . ha fatto I'imperadore di San Lorenzo che fa tormentare ilmartire interniato
and Profane 1582, Bronzino must have been aware of the new standard operating for for well religious imagery, which had been publicized over a decade. In fact, several of the works, which Although Images was just before and just after the St. show he was fully conscious of the that Lawrence, demands for a clear, decorous, and affecting in the Resurrection of of sacred history?as presentation the Daughter ofjairus for S. Maria Novella the (1570), Piet? for S. Croce (1570), and the Noli me tangere for S. These works were for mendicant Spirito (1561-1565).14 at San but Lorenzo, a church where art, churches, Bronzino executed and liturgy itself had long been oriented architecture, towards the ceremonial ends of the Medici court, a
See Raleotti, Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane, Lib. is "Pitture fiere et orrende," noting that gross cruelty in representations with their "wheels, of martyrdoms, permissible . . ." razors, iron hooks, fiery ovens, gridirons, racks, crosses. artist's Ulise full mastery the Aldrovandi Contemporaneously, justified 13. II cap xxxv: of anatomy so that he can know how to "both internal and external, the heart, the liver, the spleen, the intestines, the stomach, represent to paint a martyrdom the throat, the brain; so that when he happens like that of S. Erasmus and others like it... he will be able to depict in a natural manner." On the prerequisite in scenes of of violence
Raleotti's Discourse not published until
on Sacred
da
tutti nudi, o con pochi panni recoperti, casa moite a si come personi che servano superbi principi; vi si convengono donne quelle virt? ?n forme di bellissime
ancora a sedere
e si pure li ?n aria o in altro il farlevi, dovea piaceva . . ." Later, ismore complimentary: luogo separate figurarle Borghini il Bronzino "?ltimamente ? fresco in una facciata della Chiesa dipinse ?I de San Lorenzo martirio d'esso Santo con un numero infinito di fra l'altra gente: e vi figure var?ate d'habiti, e di gesti, con una bellissima prospettiva, son? molti con grande diligenza, e disegno (538)." So ignudi condotti too is Francesco di Firenze (Florence: Giunti, Bocchi, Bellezze 1591), 257: "Son? pronti iministri del tormento, & altri portano legne, & altri raro attizano, & con diversi, e varij atti mostrano, quanto valesse questo artefice. de superbo sembiante: si veggono le che diminuiscono, colonne, lequali son? di lungi, con bellissima e tutte le parte espresse con molto senno fanno vista proporzione, L'Accademia Medicea, ricca, & mirabile." Wazbinski, 198, incorrectly states huomini that Bocchi ?ntendenti bronze faults Bronzino's eccessive pulpit fresco "dove riconoscono artifizio." The criticism gli is in fact directed E lodato un'edifizio
at Donatello's 9. Charles
relief of the same Bronzino
McCorquodale,
(250-251 ). subject (New York: Harper and Row,
it
1981), 154. 10. Arthur McComb, His Life and Works Bronzino: Agnolo Press, 1928), 52. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University 11. Sydney (Harmondsworth: 12. Pamela Hierarchical J. Freedberg, 1971), Penguin, Jones, "Art Theory in Painting Italy, 315. as Ideology: 1500-1600
and the role of the Peristephanon martyrdom during the Cinquecento, source for the martyrdom of Prudentius of (the principal hagiographie see Robert Gaston, St. Lawrence), "Prudentius and Sixteenth Century Antiquarian 161-176. 14. directions Renovation Scholarship," Medievalia et Human?stica n.s. iv (1973),
Gabriele
Raleotti's
Reframing America
Notion of Painting's Universality in and Reception," the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin ed. Clare Farago (Cambridge and New York: 1450-1650, 127-140. 1995), Press, University Cambridge
For the
art commissioned
of the "counter-maniera" of the works of investigation for the mendicant of Florence under the churches of Cosimo I's reign, see Hall,
of Vasari
in the closing years and Counter-Reformation.
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RES 46 AUTUMN 2004
different
be said to operate. The artistic idiom mirrors that employed by the artist for in very explicit court projects, and above all it advertises terms a relationship of artistic filiation to Michelangelo. license in In fact, all of the criticisms of excessive set of criteria could
in 1564, religious art referred to above had been made on the Errors of in his Gilio Giovan Andrea Dialogue by a Painters Concerning History. Gilio's dialogue employs to criticize a strict theory of pictorial genre and decorum number of contemporary works of religious painting, which most notably the Last Judgment by Michelangelo, on saw as all of the above grounds (fig. he offending that 2).15 Some years ago, Zygmunt Wazbinski proposed reaction the St. Lawrence should be seen as a defensive in the Last Judgment to such criticism of Michelangelo's that Bronzino's fresco could Sistine Chapel. He proposed imitation of the earlier, best be seen as a programmatic more noteworthy for the all controversial work, deeply a period of escalating out in carried polemics being as a kind of manifesto of against the Last Judgment, and the del Disegno which maintained the new Accademia artist Florentine and status the and of cult memory great of Gilio's defiance The and very pointed specific poet.16 criticism may be seen in such elements as the acrobatic nudes, their forceful gestures and poses which speak more of art than of doctrine, the inclusion of angels without wings (unusual for Bronzino, but not for and the very prominent display of naked Michelangelo), pagan divinities, which Gilio abominated. is indeed on many that the painting While accepting that affirms the demonstration levels a kind of academic want to consider a duality I imitation of Michelangelo, in Bronzino's practice, which both aligns itwith the in religious art after Trent, official pursuit of orthodoxy more Itcan be shown, has radical also yet implications. a preoccupation with firstly, that the fresco evidences of characteristic mid-sixteenth-century genre entirely were judged in literary and artistic theory, when works with principles of literary classification accordance derived from Aristotle's Poetics. Bronzino, himself
15. Giovanni errori e degli Andrea Gilio,
and a member of the Accademia Fiorentina, can be seen to redefine and reframe the formal language of to literary categories. according Michelangelo this emerges at the same time engagement Paradoxically, in the work that Michelangelo's from a recognition as a kind of Gilio Sistine Chapel, characterized by of is adulterated deeply undermining history painting, between genres as these were then the distinctions a notion of genre that was being theorized.17 Only inimical to the rationalizing and disciplinary purposes to serve could accommodate genre was designed Sistine frescos, or their imitation in Michelangelo's All of this is to say that the Bronzino's St Lawrence a moment for the art of self-definition constitutes fresco a of inwhich of the maniera, working particular way and of thinking becomes apparent to itself, discovering its own operative principles. and describing The notion of imitation is in itself not sufficient to at work the adaptation of Michelangelo understand in the St. Lawrence; the fresco in fact shows a of Michelangelsque models, which we the confront that question: what has requires For this is no routine into? been adapted Michelangelo or pattern-book exercise. The first striking academic is Freedberg appears to have noticed, departure, which of Michelangelesque that a relief-like assemblage figures in (we might even say against) an has been placed and perspectival architectural space, realized according at of Vitruvian theatrical design?or to the conventions transformation least as these had been interpreted by Peruzzi, Serlio, and other architectural theorists; in Florence at this time a stage set could be referred to as a prospettiva.^9 The
17. Charles For some comments on Gilio's Invention with preoccupation in Counter-Reformation ed. Texts genre, see
"Mythic Dempsey, in the Renaissance: in Rome New
Painting,
(Binghamton, 1982), 55-75. 18. A concern course, here
York, Medieval with
The City and the Myth, and Renaissance
P. A. Ramsey and Studies,
determined
a poet
observation
of is not necessarily, genre and decorum the in every case by an instrumental purpose; of genre theory is limited to the ideological co-opting
de'pittori ed. Raola Barocchi Cinquecento, L'Accademia 16. Wazbinski, c'? un chiaro also Hall, elaborated intento: After
abusi
nel qu?le si ragiona degli Dialogo In Trattati d'arte del circa l'istorie. 3 vols. Medicea, II, 3-97. (Bari: Laterza, 1961), 200: "In questo operazione
and to the "reformed" maniera imposed by by Raleotti and Gilio, For an and Santa Croce. Cosimo and Vasari at Santa Maria Novella argument coercion, that decorum to argue and Culture "stands the claims of the of art to resist for the potential ?deal," see Robert Williams,
study model Vasari artistic Roman
See di Michelangelo." parlare col linguaggio is and restated 238. Wazbinski's argument Raphael, In a forthcoming 322-323. especially by Brock, Bronzino, as a of Michelangelo Patricia Reilly will show that the centrality for imitation had in recent years been challenged by Giorgio second and his partisans; Vasari's in the 1550s and 1560s practice history painting of Raphael. edition shows of the Lives and a new adherence his to the
Theory Metatechne 1997),
Art, to Century Italy. From Techne and New York: Cambridge Press, University (Cambridge about genre and artistic For literary controversies 73-108. in Sixteenth
see also Stephen "The Carracci, Visual J. Campbell, responses in and Heroic Narrative, Poetry after Ariosto. The Story of Jason and Image 18 no. 3 (2002), 210-230. Fava." Word Palazzo in 19. See the illustrations of the Vitruvian "tragic scene" Sebastiano subsequent Serlio, Reg?le editions). general i di architettura (Venice, 1540, and
Campbell: Counter Reformation polemic and Mannerist
counter-aesthethics
103
Figure 2. Michelangelo,
Last Judgment, 1536-1541.
Vatican, Sistine Chapel
(Photo: Musei Vaticani, Archivio Fotogr?fico).
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RES 46 AUTUMN 2004
Figure 3. Jacopo Pontormo, (afterMichelangelo), Venus and Cupid (The "Bettini Venus"), 1532. Florence, Accademia (Photo: Scala/Art Resource).
perspective grid acquires visible form as the very instrument of Lawrence's martyrdom, in the gridiron on which he reclines. Such a rendering of space is not only uncharacteristic of Michelangelo, it is also a distinct Bronzino's from normal practice, although the departure sets artist certainly designed for comedies stage at Medici The second feature the court.20 performed
in palazzo, "Fece anche quasi ne'medesimi tempi, due anni fila per carnevale, due scene e prospettive che per comedie, . . . furono tenute bel Iissime." Vasari, "Delle Accademici del Disegno e prima del Bronzino," in Le opere di Giorgio Vasari, ed. Gaetano 20. alla Milanesi, discussion 9 vols. (Florence: Sansoni, of Bronzino's connection 1906/1981), VII, 598. For a with the worlds of theater, see Leatrice Mendelsohn, "L'Allegoria di Londra
is the range of of Michelangelo uncharacteristic wholly and enacted by the distinctions both embodied of what first appears as a teeming individual members interlace of nudes. Lawrence himself is a decorative ephebic ?mage of Michelangelesque paradigmatic in references to two fact combines beauty?he is the Creation of Adam prototypes. One Michelangelo on the Sistine ceiling, the other is the cartoon of Venus had made for Bronzino's mentor that Michelangelo Pontormo; Pietro Aretino had already praised the "Bettini Venus" for its androgynous beauty, a of the allure of male and female bodies combination is almost (fig. 3).21 The citation of the Creation of Adam
as the hub of a spatially ample scene, the storm center of moving, in a space now more rational foreshortened figures. St. Lawrence,
in Kunst des Cinquecento in di carnevale," der Toskana, ed. Monika C?mmerer (Munich: Bruckmann, 1992), 160. In an unpublished in of S. Lorenzo paper, "Bronzino's Martyrdom has proposed that the "terrifyingly Malcolm Perspective," Campbell the flattened patterning of forms and the steep rising ground plane, grotesquely compacted figures" can of view from which the Medici Duke in part be explained by the point would have seen the fres ?a
festivity, and carnival e la retorica del Bronzino
and
of the have expressly recommended the attention coherent, would to the Cappella Maggiore in Glory as revealed and to the Christ Duke mentor Bronzino's and friend." in the frescoes of Pontormo, beloved that of the tyrant have suggestively crossed Such a point of view would in the fresco, who 21. On gender Bettini Venus surveys the scene from a raised position. in anatomical invention, with crossing regard to the see Frederika H. Jacobs, "Aretino and and other works, also
raised balcony located directly across the nave of the church: "From this elevated Duke Cosimo would have seen the St. Lawrence position
counter-aesthethics
105
Figure
4. Marcantonio
Raimondi,
after
Baccio
Bandinelli,
The Martyrdom
of St.
Lawrence,
ca.
1525. Los Angeles County Museum
of Art (Photo: Los Angeles County Museum
of Art).
in that the animating hand of violently incongruous, God has now become the condemning hand of the to is far that the relation tyrant, indicating Michelangelo an ironic, even transgressive from passive and possesses dimension. The allusion to the Bettini Venus also introduces an erotic charge, if that were not already implicit in the gesture of bringing Michelangelo's heavenly nudes "down to earth," to the perspectival world of the piazza where they are so fully available to our gaze. The availability of bodies to vision goes beyond the logic of in that the nudes, for the most part, do not perspective or encroach upon each other; they appear eclipse the space as much as in it. placed against Lawrence reclines rather serenely on his gridiron, but framed by a turmoil of agitated and precariously poised as if the sensation of torment has been anatomies,
from this tranquil center, in order to register in displaced their bodies rather than his. The exuberant physicality of the work is to some extent a response to an earlier treatment of the same subject (1525) by Baccio Bandinelli, well known through an engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi (fig. 4).22 No less than eleven nude tormentors appear in the foreground of Bandinelli's yet in Bronzino's fresco the nudes composition, dominate the entire historia, and are not offset by the gravitas of the heavily draped observers Bandinelli had in the upper tiers of his architectural setting. If placed the effect seems to border on the ludicrous, this would seem to have been calculated by the artist: to the lower a massive figure in a particularly bizarre right appears a parodie restoration of the Belvedere torso. convulsion,
to Vasari, Opere 22. According vol. 5, 418-419, Bandinelli's was in the choir of San composition initially intended for a fresco commissioned Lorenzo, by Clement VII in 1525. See Berenice "Marcantonio's of S. Lorenzo." Bulletin of the Davidson, Martyrdom 47/3 Rhode Island School of Design, 1-6; Bruce Davis, (1961), Mannerist Prints: International (Los Century Style in the Sixteenth Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1988), 114-115.
Grazia." Art Dolce and Titian: Femmina, Masculo, Michelangelo, See also the exhibition Bulletin 82 no. 1 (2000), 51-68. catalogue Venus and Love: Michelangelo and the New Ideal of Beauty, ed. Franca Falletti and Jonathan Katz Nelson (Florence, 2002).
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His attributes?a wolf, a child, a flowing pitcher? as the river Tiber, and thus the torsions of identify him his body can be seen to have a purpose: his left leg and course of this river. left arm describe the meandering seem more Bronzino's other nudes active and more yet than those of Bandinelli, squatting, extravagantly abandon twisting, and bending with an exhibitionistic that was not lost on contemporary critics, such as Raffaele Borghini: "he showed the Emperor in his fresco painting of St. Lawrence having the martyr tormented while surrounded by his barons all naked, or with only scant drapery, something which ismost unfitting for It is striking persons who wait upon great princes."23 how for this ideologue of reform the standard of over propriety operating for a court takes precedence that for a church and religious art, even when the court is that of a ruler who persecutes the faith. His remark testifies to the extent to which decorum could be primarily a social concern, arising from the maintenance of distinctions between courtly and vulgar, civil and an uncivil. Theatrical space is itself, by convention, a urban and public space: it brings with it consideration of the city and of a social fabric, however abstracted or idealized. There is also a sense that Bronzino himself to create a hierarchal juxtaposition of beautiful wanted and noble bodies, like that of Lawrence, with what we term marked might profane or "uncivil" bodies?bodies Hence he by labor and by a kind of social physiognomy. resorted to a procedure which, on the basis of his surviving drawings, appears to have been untypical of his normal working practice: the imitation of "real" in the form of live studio models. Three figure bodies studies survive, two of them apparently drawn from life, and without exception these are for low-life or non a heroic characters: porter, an executioner with bellows, and the river god.24 We might contrast the study for the left, made from a young studio porter on the extreme antic
Figure 5. Agnolo Bronzino, Study for the Martyrdom of St.

Lawrence, ca. 1565. Paris, Mus?e du Louvre, Cabinet des
dessins
(Photo: R?union des Mus?es Nationaux/Art Resource).
model
(Paris, Mus?e du Louvre; fig. 5), with the vastly musculature and hulking demeanor of the in the finished work (fig. 6). figure corresponding in the drawing, above all in the figure's right Pentimenti exaggerated
23. Borghini, // Riposo, 62: ". . . ha fatto l'imperadore storia a fresco di San Lorenzo che fa tormentare ilmartier da suoi baroni disconvenevole tutti nudi, a personi o con che pochi servano panni superbi ricoperti,
nella
sua
intorniato
arm, suggest that this styl ization towards greater torso) corporeal bulk (again reminiscent of the Belvedere even at the The stage. preposterous began drawing classicism of the river god, the grotesque profile of the stoker, and the loping gait (as well as ineffectively draped buttocks) of the porter introduce an effect of deliberate bathos and an element of social distinction in the contrast with other figures: the porter reinforced turns towards a youth of a different anatomical "caste," as if he was who directs him towards the martyrdom ?ts significance. explaining as a popular Bronzino ?sconceiving the martyrdom within the heterogeneous space of spectacle, locating it the piazza and the crowd. His invention here may be of a crowd?in the inspired by another famous depiction to Allori, frontispiece of a book which, according Bronzino claimed to know well and to value highly: the
cosa molto
see Craig as 24. On the drawings Hugh An Introduction (Locust Valley, N.Y.: J. J.Augustin, Draughtsman. in the Uffizi is here identified as a the stoker drawing 1971), 44-45; it probable that an original drawing by Bronzino copy, but this makes once existed; Renaissance see also Florence The Medici, Michelangelo (New Haven and London: and the Art of Late Yale University Press, the river god see also Larry under Art the
principi." Smyth, Bronzino
2002), 303, entry by Janet Cox Rearick. On Fein berg, From studio to studiolo. Florentine First Medici Museum, Grand 1991), Dukes 80. (Oberlin College:
Draftsmanship Allen Memorial
counter-aesthethics
107
another form of theater, is a central Anatomy, effectively new academic ritual of the program with which Florentine artists like Bronzino were recently aligned. Although complicit with the spectacle of coercive criminals, justice enacted on the bodies of condemned as the means artistic anatomy could also be conceived to a triumphant "resurrection" of the body, recomposed at the hands of the artist. Such is the claim of Bronzino's own cheerfully skinless St Bartholomew (1555; Rome, Nazionale di San Luca), appropriately Accademia as both an anatomical demonstration piece as regarded to as a have who well appears subject, hagiographie art his death been reanimated by by flaying.27 following of So too in the St Lawrence, the triumphant allegrezza artistically fashioned bodies overrides the tragedy and horror of the event. Naked bodies, of course, were not a typical feature of it should be theatrical performance; contemporary is result of an act of the that their presence emphasized vice into theater?and translation?of Michelangelo versa. Yet Bronzino's painting also recalls elements of a much older theatrical tradition of boisterous physicality, in Jean of which a rare visual record is preserved from the Hours of Saint Apollonia Fouquet's Martyrdom 1460 from around of Etienne Chevalier dating (fig. 8) with its gesturing authority figures, straining torturers, of bodily torture with more unruly and confrontation forms of bodily display. Fouquet makes a clear distinction so does Bronzino, in between performers and audience: in the that the sober portrait groups he incorporated right rather than and left background suggest observers participants (fig. 9). Bronzino's painting does not simply emulate these aspects of traditional sacra rappresentazione; them. In the itmay even be said to have assimilated the kind of popular religious spectacle and we are in Fouquet's miniature, represented in Bronzino's evoked also fresco, was in fact proposing, was such as reformers identified by passing away; it as an Paleotti Carlo Borromeo and Gabriele instigation of riot and disorder as well as moral corruption. to the reformers, the lud i sacri provoked According "laughter and chatter" rather than piety and reverence.28 1560s
are debated in Andrea Carlino, Books of the Renaissance Ritual and Anatomical Learning (Chicago: Body: the also explores of Chicago Press, 1999), 70-85, which University at public anatomies. and disorder of tumult phenomenon Ferrari's conclusions "'Fare una Cosa Morta Parer Viva' See Stephen J. Campbell, LXXXIV of Art." Arf Bulletin the and Rosso, (Un)Divinity Michelangelo, (2002), 596-620. 27. 28. Alessandro 1891), Loescher, d'Ancona, II, 178-184. Origini del Teatro Italiano, 2 vols. (Turin:
Figure 6. Agnolo Bronzino, Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, detail: Resource). porter (Photo: Ali?ar ?/Art
De As
humani corporis fabrica of Vesalius (1543; fig. 7).25 in the St. Lawrence, a tumult of naked and clothed itself around a prone body at the center, figures besports in a either reflecting on this central event or engaged own (see, for burlesque carnal curiosity of their the naked between instance, the animated exchange the column on the left, and his male figure clutching in the crowd). Such carnivalesque clothed counterpart in records of tumult, riot, and demeanor, manifest disorder, appears to have been an actual characteristic in centers like which of public anatomy demonstrations, Rome or Bologna took place during the carnival season.26
see his IIprimo libro de'ragionamenti 25. For Allori's testimony ed. Raola in Scritti d'arte del Cinquecento, del le reg?le del disegno 3 vols. (Florence: 1971-1977), II, 1949. Barocchi, the Lessons and the Carnival: 26. G. Ferrari, "Public Anatomy Past and Present Theatre of Bologna." 50-106; 117(1987), Anatomy
108
RES 46 AUTUMN 2004
B A S I L E AE
?#?; ,..,';?*.**
fci?
Figure 7. Frontispiece to Andreas Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica (1543) (Photo: The National Library of Medicine).
counter-aesthethics
109
The four women below Lawrence's grill seem both in the action: they bear observers of and participants attributes that enable us to identify them not just as ordinary bystanders but also as the cardinal virtue of Fortitude, with her truncated column, and her three sisters: Faith, Hope, and Charity. The figures theological virtues and one cardinal virtue of the three theological form an unusual grouping, and direct us to consider the whereabouts of the other three virtues. Certainly one of them is not to be found in the tortuously posed hulk to their left, identified as the Tiber, or the figure of the naked wood-bearer who ostentatiously bends over to their right. But the remaining virtues are indeed to be found among the courtiers of the tyrant who sits aloft to the right: Justice is the young man with the axe and the on a Sistine ignudo; the missing sword, modelled is ingeniously displaced into his and unstable balanced posture (fig. precariously patently is the aged, brooding philosopher, 10). Prudence reminiscent of Michelangelo's figure of Dusk in the Medici Chapel, who gestures towards his breast; he is prompted at his right shoulder by the figure of Temperance with her vase.29 By contrast with the demonstrative gestures of the female virtues in the are marked by a curious reticence, virtues these piazza, a troubled inwardness and melancholy self-absorption, attribute of the balance in the extraordinary which is especially marked countenance of the youthful Justice, and which might aptly term a psychomachia. we
Figure 8. Jean Fouquet, Martyrdom of Saint ApolIonia, ca. 1460. From the Hours of Etienne Chevalier. Chantilly, Mus?e Cond? (Photo: Giraudon/Art Resource).
How should we describe what we are seeing here? It is hard to resist the inference that the virtues of civic action, of the active life, have been paralyzed under the rule of the prince, forced into a dissimulating, despotic anxious acquiescence. It is all the more noteworthy, then, that the tyrant is based on the effigy of Duke de' Medici, visible only a few meters away in Medici Chapel Michelangelo's (fig. 11); that the same a is enthroned under tyrant figure of Hercules, who bears the features of Duke Cosimo I, and that the tyrant's court includes portraits of several contemporary Giuliano
son and heir among them Cosimo's Francesco de' Medici dark-haired young (the apparent, man visible above the tyrant's right knee), and the Lieutenant of the Accademia del Disegno, Vincenzo Borghini (the bearded figure just below Francesco).30 On the far side of the piazza, under the figure of Mercury, we have portraits of Bronzino, his pupil Allori, and his individuals,
30. The bearded older male closely resembles the anonymous in Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford, portrait of Borghini although a somewhat Bronzino's fuller beard. Borghini was one of the figure has most distinguished in Florence, and held a number of intellectuals important Accademia administrative del Disegno; so imbued with them lieutenant of the among positions, in a this probably his prominence explains the spirit of the academy. For the
29. standard appear example,
inwhich is not the only occasion Bronzino subjects to a poetic that can sometimes iconographies reworking the London Allegory of Venus is a well-known oblique; This as are the two Bronzino tapestry designs discussed Some Iconographical by Themes
"Time, Truth and Destiny. Lynette Bosch, in Bronzino's Primavera and Giustizia." des Mitteilungen Institutes in Florenz XXVII (1983), 73-82. Kunsthistorischen Like the who appears with an hourglass but not figure of Time in the Allegory, in the with a scythe, the figures of the Tiber, Justice, and Temperance St. Lawrence an additional all omit vase. one crucial attribute: an additional child, a scale,
of the portraits, see Wazbinski, Accademia Medicea, in Bronzino's Portraiture and 199; Robert W. Gaston, "Iconography Christ in Limbo." Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in 27 (1983), 65, proposes different identifications: "Prince ... the Francesco de' Medici Medici recently deceased Pope, Pius IV, and ... the Accademia del Disegno's heroic genius, Michelangelo." If the portrait of Pius IV can be verified, this poses no particular since his inclusion would be on the basis of his status as an difficulty, Florenz
painting identification
110
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Figure 9. Agnolo Bronzino, Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, detail: portraits of Bronzino, Pontormo, and Allori (Photo: Alinari/Art Resource).
mentor Pontormo, while in the second group of women front are also probable portraits (fig. 9). What would a contemporary observer have made of this apparent conflation of the court of the tyrant with In reflecting on whether the ducal court of Florence? the work opens a space for a dissenting, alienated subject of autocratic rule, itmust be borne inmind that the cartoon for the fresco was probably approved by Duke I himself, as is indicated in a letter of 1565.31 Cosimo But Cosimo's monitoring of the design may itself be the cause that results in such an unsettling effect: an image that draws attention to the fact that the authority of a ruler who ruler, even a tyrannical and despotic not could Christian be undermined, heroes, persecutes but must be affirmed with all the trappings of empire, and aligned with a portrait of the ruler of Florence. This is the very premise underlying Borghini's complaint that the ruler's retainers are not comporting themselves with sufficient dignity. Particularly jarring is the presentation of the subjects of Duke Cosimo as subjects of the tyrant. They are placed under Mercury, and under Cosimo/ but where, we might ask, in relation to the Hercules,
spectacle of coercive power enacted before them, do they really "stand?" To sum up so far: between the Last Judgment and the of St Lawrence there has been a crossing of Martyrdom limits or boundaries?from sacred epic, in a Dantesque sense, to what might be called sacred theater. Bronzino's to imitation, handling of the subject, and his approach offer several indications that he was thinking of history
of the Medici adopted member family. On the Ide' Medici, Cosimo Granduca di Cantagalli, 1985), 238. 31. The letter of February 11,1565 makes was originally commission for two frescoes on ". . . quanto alle pitture che disegniate church: . . . facciate di San Lorenzo potrete cominciare accioli vediamo e ce ne risolviamo l'ornamento Michelangelo
adoption Toscana clear
see Roberto (Milan: Mursia,
that the
facing walls of the di fame nel le dua a fame i disegni
perch? ce sar? grate per in The Medici, di quella chiesa." Cited by Cox-Rearick 303. and the Art of Late Renaissance Florence,
Figure 10. Agnolo Bronzino, Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, detail: Justice (Photo: Alinari/Art Resource).
counter-aesthethics
111
in terms of theatrical genre, as itwas then painting and of theatrical practice. The theatrical understood, there are in mise-en-sc?ne has already been mentioned; between addition some direct points of correspondence the forms of contemporary Florentine sacred drama and the St Lawrence, although Bronzino's painting ultimately points to an "idea" of theater that by the 1560s was increasingly less possible on the stages of Giovan Maria Cecchi, a notary and The of Italy. plays member of the Accademia Fiorentina, can provide a in the St parallel with Bronzino's experiment written for Cecchi's dramas, mainly religious known as the Vangelista and the boys' confraternities San'Sebastiano dei Fanciulli, and performed from 1559 inmany respects a onwards for the Medici court, were suggestive Lawrence. and humanistic refinement of traditional classicizing sacre rappresentazioni?the longstanding mode of theater which, as noted above, was popular religious a somewhat troubled currently going through transformation.32 to the academic refinement of Cecchi's approach was inventive: he realized drama particularly religious traditional religious that the strongest analogy between rather than theater and classical drama lay in comedy a serious and While didactic preserving tragedy. own which he his purpose, exemplary religious plays, in a comic mode?they draw called farces, are written upon stock characters from Plautus and Terence including porters, parasites, garrulous female servants, thieves, merchants, innkeepers, and nobles. hypocrites, to preserve the popular This adaptation allowed Cecchi as well as texture of older sacre rappresentazioni, social appeal, richness of reference to of a urban life, and the experience contemporary is with mixed The farsa described audience. socially to his final in the prologue these hybrid characteristics "Two things Ipromise you about play, La romanesca: this [farce]: it shall be both cheerful and grim. . . .The farce is a third new thing between tragedy and comedy; their wide
Tomb of Giuliano de' Medici, ca. Figure 11. Michelangelo, 1522-1534. Florence, San Lorenzo, New Sacristy (Photo: Alinari/Art Resource).
was In 1564, for instance, Vincenzo Borghini charged sacra rappresentazione a for of traditional organizing staging and he regretfully informed Duke Cosimo that the d'Austria, companies nearly passed away. The traditional neighborhood 32. longer performed to reunite constrained S. Spirito; these
with Giovanna form had no
it avoids it enjoys the breadth of both of them, while it takes in great lords and princes, their limits, because which comedy does not do; it receives, as if itwere an inn or a hospital, the people as they are, common and never Its which would do. plebian, Lady Tragedy subjects are not restricted: it can take on happy and sad actions, matters profane and of the church: urban, rustic, It takes no account of place: it has grim and delightful. its stage in the church or the piazza and in every other
place_"33
of St. Agnes were plays; finally, the Company at of the Festa della Nunziata for a performance
in his St Lawrence, Bronzino, theatrical rendering of a religious
is also presenting a subject, one located
in
to certain to suit the refinements the old play was subjected to with di but the questi tempi," according Borghini, "gentilezza See had "gran pratica del le cose vecchie." of experts who participation 185-187. Teatro del II, Vasari, VIII, Italiano, d'Ancona, Opere, Origini was given to the greatest satisfaction 616, notes that the performance of the populace "che essendone state per molti'anni privo."
Florentino 33. La Romanesca; farsa di Giovanmaria Cecchi (Florence and Rome: Tipograf?a Cenniniana, 1874), 2. On the play and see and others by Cecchi Carnival Comedy Radcliff-Umstead, Douglas Dramas of Giovan Maria Cecchi Sacred Play. The Renaissance (Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 1986).
112
RES 46 AUTUMN 2004
but of comedy and popular spectacle, new classic Tuscan idiom of in it the recasting While Cecchi himself appears to have Michelangelo. of a saint, it only one farsa on the martyrdom composed sometime of the known member is that another one Bronzino to whom had Accademia Fiorentina, and "commedie verifiable ties, composed spirituals on the Saint Catherine, and of Saint Apollonia, martyrdoms Saint Ursula.34 This was Antonfrancesco Grazzini, also who wrote (1503-1584), to Varchi of "il mio Bronzino" Benedetto affectionately an epitaph for the painter.35 Furthermore, and composed sources for the looking at the subject matter and a it St of Lawrence, might be asked whether Martyrdom known and literate artist like Bronzino might genre-conscious to be inmany ways of comedy found the notion have is directly engaged irresistable. For the idea of comedy source on in the most classic and humanist-approved of Prudentius, the legend of the saint, the Peristephanon a narrative hymn that precisely conscripts the power of as a weapon of rhetorical and sophistication irony, wit, the triumphant martyr and of the Christian faith. The in an extravagant gallows hymn of Prudentius abounds the humor (or gridiron humor?), through which infuriates the tyrant with his undaunted martyr Lawrence urbanitas (pleasantry). Among the words spoken "in jest" remark by the saint that his is the notorious (ludibundus) so can be cooked on both it be turned body should it is it "eat "it is he done" sides: up, try whether says, an to raw or in is offense Lawrence fact nicer roasted." the is against the grain of his urbanitas decorum; in the ritual of capital austeritas that should be manifest as a result refers to him as a The tyrant punishment. or a comic actor: clown scurra, pantomime "He ismocking us," cries the prefect, mad with rage, "what a wonder that he makes fun of us with his clever figures of so bold, you speech, and yet this lunatic lives! Are you can with such as to think you get away gallows bird, comedian's jabbering and cheap stage antics? Do you think as "II Lasca"
an urban milieu
it'sa fitting kind of pleasantry to make fun of me? Do you think to raise laughs at my expense and turn me into a spectacle? Have the magistrate's fasces lost their stern control? Has soft lenity blunted the axe of authority?"36 in the St Lawrence, like Bronzino Cecchi, juxtaposed scenes of court lifewith scenes of the street, and his of the court take their character from the representations Medici regime. He wrote a play on the downfall of King Ahab and Jezebel, performed for the Medici court in
which the Biblical 1559; his Coronation of Saul, in

tyrant appears as a type of divinely appointed kingship, was staged for the visiting Archduke Karl of Austria a decade fresco was unveiled. later, in the year Bronzino's historical events to which the titles of The momentous these plays refer are mainly presented through the eyes of characters of different social stations, many of them comic moreover, who, and plebian types. These comic characters, speak and act with a license and not extended to the courtiers and nobles forthrightness
as Douglas "must Radcliff-Umstead observes, in secret because speak with caution and frequently they have a great deal to fear and much to lose by on official corruption and the imprudence."37 Attacks vices of the court are not infrequent: "Truth gives rise to in The its best friend," notes a character Hatred, Exaltation vice proper
is the of the Cross, "and the adulation which to the court is the frequent ruin of are finally princes."38 Yet the glimmers of subversion a series of countered pageants constituting by allegorical the lavish intermezzi: the cardinal virtues join forces with the theological virtues, along with Biblical heroes and martyrs, to signify the mutually supportive alliance of Church and State and their joint triumph. Cecchi's of the bleak Ahab may thus appear to offer confirmation Foucaultian view of Stephen Greenblatt regarding the in Renaissance effects of apparent political subversion drama: "the ideal image [of the prince and the state] the constant production involves as its positive condition
34. "Noces
For Cecchi's terrestres,
ses remaniements." Permanences
comedy noces spirituelles: In Culture et id?ologie ed. Michel
on St. Agnes,
see Jacqueline Brunet, L'acqua vino de G. M. Cecchi apr?s Plaisance le concile (Abbeville: F.
Beatissimi et
de Trente:
in honorem II:Hymnus Laurentii passionis furens / praefectus, 312-330; "'ridemur,' exclam?t Martyris, / per tot figuras ludimur: / et vivit insanum caput! / 'et miris modis mimico / te nexuisse Inpune tantas, furcifer, / strophas cavillo 36. Peristephanon
et changements, 1985), 62. Paillait, II Lasca's commedie 35. On Grazzini:
Antonfrancesco (Madison:
friendship Allori. A Genealogy University Press,
see Robert J. Rod i ni, spiritual'! 1503-1584 and Novelliere, Poet, Dramatist of Wisconsin 105; on Bronzino's Press, 1970), University II Lasca see Elizabeth with Bronzino, Pilliod, Pontormo, of Florentine 2001), 110, 177. Art (New Haven and London: Yale
visa urbanitas / / dum scurra saltas fabulam? / concinna existimas, festivum tractare nosmet vend?tes / acroma ludicris? / egon cachinnis nulla est fascibus? / adeon / censure nulla austeritas, fui? / adeone securem 37. 38. sacre / mollis retudit publicam Carnival Radcliff-Umstead, della L'Esaltazione Cecchi, italiane lenitas?'" Le and Sacred Play, 132. Comedy inApollo Lumini, Croce, quoted dei secoli xiv, xv, e xvi (Palermo:
rappresentazioni 1877), 267. Montaina,
counter-aesthethics
113
and the powerful of that subversion."39 Yet in the case of Bronzino's heroic and farcical drama of St. Lawrence, we might wonder whether can any such containment occur: we a find rather, really promiscuous mingling of the comic and the heroic, the allegorical and the historical, the erotic and the sacred, greatly exceeding the comic license of Cecchi's plays. radical subversion containment in the heroic The adaptation of history painting modern maniera of Michelangelo into comic drama has a double-edged significance. On the one hand, itmay be regarded as an academic refinement of popular and vernacular forms entirely typical of the cultural Fiorentina, to which Cecchi enterprise of the Accademia
of
its own
But another
seeing to suppress defenders Michelangelo's usually wanted and deny; Bronzino effectively embraces and affirms some of the most negative criticism of Michelangelo's Last Judgment, and by this means the language of ismade to serve ends not finally Michelangelo congruent with the political. Because the academic, the institutional, and
is possible: Bronzino understanding about art which Michelangelo's something
was
and IILasca belonged and in which Bronzino himself

reinstated in 1566 after a twenty-year In its observance, suspension.40 perhaps even definition, of a Florentine artistic canon, Bronzino's enterprise could be seen to reflect the Medici instrumentalization of the Accademia del Disegno and the Accademia Fiorentina as ideological apparatuses of the Tuscan state. had been The purpose of these institutions was to define, administer, and supervise Florentine culture, including not only arts and letters but also the festive and collective popular forms of religious and public and elite sectors of society.41 life embracing
of the fundamentally and ambiguous as a nature of the human bearer of ungovernable body in was it to meaning religious painting, quite possible read even a serious work like Michelangelo's Last in a profane and facetious register, and many Judgment of Michelangelo's critics chose to do this: one from the 1540s accused Pope Raul IIIof for a from Michelangelo depravity commissioning "so obscene and filthy" that it would better painting serve as a theater or a stage-set for a comedy.42 Gilio broadsheet finds the gesticulations naked Michelangelo's and ambiguous couplings of saints to be similarly vulgar, suitable to the remarking that they manifest deportment or or to the carnival marketplace fairground, performers, rather than to sacred history. Gian Paolo Lomazzo again associated and
39.
Greenblatt,
"Invisible
Bullets."
In Shakespearean 41.
Negotiations.
The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (Berkeley:

of California Press, 1988), University 40. Most artists had been expelled in 1549 in 1547; statutes academy's readmitted was Duke Cosimo if they demonstrated readmitted a reform of the following itwas deemed that they could be a capacity to write poetry. Bronzino of
the figures in the Last Judgment with fachini intention had been to istrioni, as if Michelangelo's make "a crew of porters and ham actors who would keep jumping up and down" in an indecent manner.43 Yet for Bronzino itmeant something different to read in this way; the younger artist, throughout Michelangelo is deeply absorbed his work, in this ambivalent of the the significance body, sign of man in God's also the vessel of carnal image yet temptation, and
relations with Renaissance University
the presentation of two canzoni in praise following in 1566. On Bronzino's and his literary enterprise see Deborah the academy, Parker, Bronzino:
42.
The
letter circulated Ochino:
under
the name
of the Catholic
reformer
Fra Bernardino
as Poet and New York: Cambridge (Cambridge academic culture see Michel 2000). On Florentine ? Florence de 1542 ? 1551 : Lasca et "Culture e politique Plaisance, les 'Humidi' aux prises avec l'Acad?mie Florentine." Les escrivains et Painter Press, Italie ? l'?poque de la Renaissance, 2 vols. (Paris: la Sorbonne and Rick nouvelle, 1974), II, 149-202, In David S. "Borghini and the Florentine Academies." de (London: Italian Academies of the Sixteenth Fran?ois Quiviger, The Warburg Michael Institute, 1995), 137-163; "The Accademia Fiorentina and the Question of the The Politics of Theory 26-55. in Ducal Florence." Renaissance see Karin State: and en
quella di Michel Angelo offitii divini, la quale molto meglio ove qualche cosa obscena c?mica Romeo 1981), 43. de Maio, 53 n51. For Gilio's to a Michelangelo identification wedding
"una pittura cos? obscena et sporca come ove si hanno da cantare nella cappella, li servirebbe si havesse in un theatro de o scena in recitare." Quoted (Bari: Laterza,
e la Controriforma of behavior
le pouvoir Universit? Scorza, Chambers Century Sherberg, Language:
to the tavern, #5, a fictitious comments more Raul other on
dialogue the kisses
party, see Dialogo, between Phidias and "da nozze
to the stage, appropriate 75. Lomazzo's Sogni Leonardo da Vinci, Ii" and on behavior
e da bordel
appropriate IV's intention exhibition
to "fachini" to have
LVI (2003), Quarterly 41. For this understanding edis Barzman,
"wicked academies and the Early Modern
and "istrioni"; he also reports on Pope on account the fresco destroyed, of its of nakedness For these and and buffooneries." characterizations
of the Florentine Academy
The Florentine
contemporary atti istrionici and Bernardine
TheDiscipline of Disegno (Cambridgeand New York:Cambridge

University Press, 2000).
Response
of the Last Judgment in terms of see de Maio, and 39, Michelangelo, Last Judgment: The Renaissance Barnes, Michelangelo's of California Press, 1998), 87. (Berkeley: University low comedy,
114
RES 46 AUTUMN 2004
in his noted this play of ambiguity contemporaries in the words of the poet earlier religious painting which to fall "from Alfonso de'Razzi, could cause the beholder to Heaven the Abyss."44 iswhy? And what is the force The question of course, lies of doing this in Florence in the 1560s? The answer in the wholesale transformation of the religious culture of Florence, along with that of Catholic Europe, during
the superstitious extravagance, venality, the ceremonial cults of saints' relics, which were legitimated as the in the mid 1550s, of practice "good works." Beginning we find these same individuals, who include illustrious names like Benedetto Varchi, Giovambattista Gelli, Grazzini, Antonfrancesco Doni, Bartolomeo and Cosimo Bartoli, recanting their previous of conformity enthusiasms, making elaborate professions or and obedience, their carefully republishing religious to bring them into line with the new writings Panciatichi, In this reorientation, there is an obvious orthodoxy.45 and perceptible shift from the idea of salvation as an individual and inward process, based on the private experience collective of spiritual grace, to more outward and include of devotion, which performances ritual observance, and the open performance Antonio
the pontificates of Paul IV (1555-1559), Pius IV(1559
to the 1565), and Pius V (1566-1572), corresponding most militant phase of post-Tridentine reform. Bronzino on his fresco at the end of a decade began working Index which had seen the publication of theTridentine in Florence, the first bonfires of heterodox books in 1552, the opening a new rapprochement between for a thorough policing and demands papacy, whose error he had generally resisted in and of heresy purging the earlier part of his reign. Cosimo, for instance, had the religious dissident Piero Carnesecchi, long protected a Medici and a leading courtier and academician, inclined reformist group who member of the Catholic towards Valdesian the theological position of Juan de Valdes. The like that of Luther in the position, grounded of St. Raul, held that one could maintain a of the Tribunal of the Inquisition, and Duke Cosimo and the
of prayer, good works. Inmany respects the iconography of the fresco is fully in line with the current climate of orthodoxy. Even to writers later like failed Raffaele though Borghini some most of the the distinctive fact, acknowledge aspects of its imagery can be explained with regard to of the 1560s, especially the doctrinal preoccupations In in of sola the who acted fides. 1559, repudiation boys Cecchi's plays heard their author deliver a series of followed from his own religious crisis sermons, which in Cecchi's and conversion. Substantial passages sermons deal with the martyr-saints, and on martyrdom as an ultimate expression of good works. "Good works," of course, are exactly what adherents of the sola fides position had rejected in their insistence that faith, and a divine grace that could not be earned through meritorious for action, were the sole prerequisites salvation. Meritorious action is the realm of human life virtues. the Faith, Hope, and Charity, says governed by are like the Cecchi, bones, the nerves, and the skin? intertwined, they cannot exist without they are mutually each other. Charity, the virtue which mandates works on to the skin; it is the sign by others' behalf, corresponds In 1568, which Christianity shows itself in the world.46 Silvano Razzi, the friend and literary executor of the a dialogue academician Benedetto Varchi, published entitled Della econ?mica Christiana e civile inwhich
scriptures Catholic observance
while at the same time embracing the doctrine of sola fides?salvation through Faith alone. The doctrine was officially proscribed by the Council of after long resistance on the Trent in 1547. Carnesecchi, was handed over to the of Florentine the Duke, part in 1567; Cosimo's Roman Inquisition and executed was two bestowal the reward, years later, by Pius V of the Grand Ducal Crown of Tuscany. This is the very in the fresco, in fact, that Lawrence receives crown, rather than his traditional martyr's crown of laurel (lauro). A remarkable number of Florentine and outside the Accademia
within
intellectuals, Fiorentina, had fallen under the sway of the religious thought of Juan de the Council of Trent made Valdes by 1547, when on and absolutely chillingly clear its position found These reform-minded individuals justification. in the same position as members of the themselves Roman curia whose profession call for a reform of the church, of sola fides went with for a purging of the a
45. On 44. d?lie Razzi's chiese poem was cited devise istoriche Richa, Notizie ne' sue quartiert, 10 vols. (Florence: of his art: "Scusi il Pittor of the depravity in Guiseppe embrace Lorenzo, religious 52-66. 46. notes
florentine,
orthodoxy, 155-290; thought
of these Florentines and their efforts the predicament a San see Firpo, Gli affreschi di Pontormo on Varchi's and Gelli's relation to heterodox and Portraiture," see also Gaston, "Iconography
to
I, 97, as proof 1754), Viviani, chi guarda, e fermi il passo, / Perch? Di
sua fu di far questo, / l'intenzion i Santi, e il resto, / Ma egli sbagli? dal Raradiso al formar Cristo, and Portraiture," 42. See also Robert W. Gasten, chiasso." "Iconography
Cecchi, Ragionamenti by Konrad Eisenbichler
and introduction Spiritual'! (1558), with (Toronto: Dovehouse Editions, 1986), 97.
Campbell: Counter Reformation polemic and Mannerist counter-aesthethics
115
and Varchi both appear as speakers.47 Despite in the the title, and to the frustration of participants on to who be household lectured expect dialogue the focus of Razzi's text is in fact the administration, seven in his own of virtues. Varchi, who the practice to had close the sola fides been dangerously writings Bronzino here affirms the Council of Trent, makes profession of orthodoxy against heresy, a defense of with works the cult of the saints and the good along tradizioni of the Holy Roman Church, and once again we have the injunctions about the practice of Faith, position, and Charity in the form of good works.48 The is firstly interior, through practice of religion, says Varchi, which by Faith, Hope, and Charity we are conjoined with God; but it is also exterior: "nothing other than a Hope, inward devotion, which is rendered certain and manifest observances visibly through signs in the gaze of others."49 Varchi goes carried out openly on to defend the role of images in Christian cult?"Who of is there that on seeing, for instance, paintings of the birth and the suffering and death of Our Lord, who would not himself feel something by considering how to suffer for us, and as a result much Christ wished would not make some sign of gratitude or at least of consciousness of benefits?"50 Images, in other words, should not only stimulate consciousness of the benefit of Christ, but should also produce signs of this in the beholder; consciousness they should produce a in accordance with inward demeanor. The performance of is a question of open Catholic profession orthodoxy not only to be manifested in and public demonstration: the form of acts of Christian fortitude and charity, but also inmaking manifest signs and gestures of prayer and demonstration a
in the sight of others. Such is the very ritual observance doctrine painted by Bronzino in his Martrydom of St. Lawrence. Razzi's economy is here of visibility in the perspectival visualized and gestural idiom of not theater, accommodated only in the heroic of the martyr but also in the actual performance enactment of his virtues by Faith, Hope, Charity, and Fortitude themselves. The "courtier" virtues, on the other hand, who are not attended by Fortitude, abstain from their attitudes instead suggest a any such performance; tension between interior character and outward a dichotomy surface and substance, between demeanor, which at this time defined not only the actor but also or those religious and the courtier, the "Nicodemist," political dissidents who sought alternative modes of for their alienation. expression In the remainder of this essay I will propose that Bronzino's "theatrical" art on the one hand serves an official with purpose: his patron's realignment of Florence the newly defined orthodoxies of the Roman church. On the other hand, by casting its reformist in a Michelangelesque artistic program theological that Catholic reformers had language recently rejected, Bronzino might be said to resist the total hegemony of Rome over Florence. It will further be suggested that The of St Lawrence cannot be reduced to the ends of either Medici power or ecclesiastical totalizing it finally constitutes a distinct critical and that authority, initiative of its own. What is ultimately at stake in Bronzino's painting is a contestation of art's instrumental status under a new organ of the state set up to regulate its production; it also envisions other possibilities for such intellectual and creative communities. In one sense, then, we would have to acknowledge
Martyrdom
see Gaston, dialogue 56, and Firpo, Gli affreschi Portraiture," 48. Silvano Razzi, Della econ?mica On Razzi's quali da una nobile
47.
"Iconography di Pontormo, 252-260. . . . ne Christiana e civile
and
si ragiona della cura e brigata di donne e huomini secondo ?a legge Christiana e vita civile (Florence: governo famigliare, on Faith, of Trent, 64-79 Sermartelli, 1568), 35, on the Council Hope and Charity, 152 on prayer and good works, and 156ff. on the cardinal virtues. l'intelletto e l'affezzione) ci (mediante "Interiore, per lo quale con mezzo e e Dio col della Fede, Charita, congiugniamo Speranza che non ? altro che una certa dimostrazione di esso culto esteriore, il quale si manifesta visibilmente interiore, per certi segni e cerimonie nel copsetto Ibid., 94. apparenti degl'huomini." 50. "Chi ? le pitture le quali ci quegli che, nel vedere caso il nascere, il patire e la morte del nostro rappresentano poniam Signore, che non si risenta tutto in considerando quanto ha volute per noi sofferire il figliuol di Dio et per conseguenza non mostri e non faccia alcun segno de'benefizii?" di gratitudine Ibid., 79. o almeno di conoscenza 49.
Greenblatt's counter-Bakhtinian position, and allow that comic to and carnival inversion correspond impropriety a kind of official limit of what the Medici regime could tolerate in terms of protest and dissent. The presence of the gigantic fresco in the very church that proclaimed the Medici dynasty and its continuity may be said to
signify a kind of official approval of the dissident
in festive forms. In fact, at least up energies manifest until the decade before the execution of this fresco, Cosimo was prepared to tolerate carnivalesque and ludic forms of protest against his regime. In 1556 his secretary Lorenzo Pagni informed his prince with some alarm that a group of Florentines constituting the Accademia del Piano, including members of families with a long history of opposition to the Medici, had a for in festive celebration the of house gathered Bartolomeo Ranciatichi, a person under suspicion as a
116
RES 46 AUTUMN 2004
of heterodox religious beliefs. The on the had taken anniversary of the place gathering Alessandro de' of Cosimo's predecessor assassination of celebration it the and involved Medici, burlesque as a an Archbishop of Pisa for identified mock-exequies creature of the Medici. Cosimo that responded former adherent could hardly be hatched involving such conspiracies "since the minds of and that of people, large numbers are the Florentine people incapable of idleness, it is in similar goings on, themselves better that they occupy to than remain pensive (cogitabundi)."51 Cosimo appears so blatant could not that insubordination have assumed have been dangerous; secrecy, or being quietly was what was to be feared. But he was cogitabundo, in of the this instance, for several members wrong of the del Piano, including members Accademia Pucci, and Capponi families, some of them Cavalcanti, close be to the prince Francesco de' Medici, turned out to in a deeply laid conspiracy against his were in 1559 and 1560.52 executed and regime, a mode could In the case of Bronzino's ludic fresco, involved
long served as an arena for the a of production distinctly Medici version of Florentine in the festive culture, especially through its centrality had and religious life of the laity. The realms of the sacred and of the marketplace there as nowhere interpenetrated were else; generous indulgences granted to those who which visited the altar of St. Lawrence on Wednesdays, was also the day when a market was held outside the church, and the grace afforded by these indulgences was increased by the two Medici popes Leo X and Clement VII. Hence also the annual P?lio of San Lorenzo, the of relics, the rather grisly feast-day gifts annual ostensi?n of roasted meat to preeminent donor families, and the funerals.54 Comedies by increasingly elaborate Medici II Plautus were performed there in the time of Lorenzo sacra with traditional the tragi-comic Magnifico, along the Play of Cosmas and Dami?n. By rappresentazione the range of novelties and curiosities that mid-century, a sermon an church the included by eight-year packed friar inMay 1564 (recalling the "boy old Dominican bishop" of carnival tradition), and the spectacular for Michelangelo the following year? funeral obsequies itself a laboriously arranged marketing enterprise for the new Accademia del Disegno.55 Traditions could prevail at San Lorenzo despite an internal, Trent-inspired reform in the 1560s; Bronzino's fresco could thus be seen as a
a century,
a symbolic compensation for the perhaps have provided by Cosimo's political compromise austerity mandated reform. But it could also with Rome and with Tridentine at an assimilation that exorbitant attempt signify unleashes more than it can control. Many of the features in terms of familiar of this work can be characterized Medici cultural politics, but it remains to be seen that would be adequate as an account of whether the fresco. The festive dimension might remind us of habit of drawing on the the Medici's long-established vital elements of Florentine culture, as a reinforcement identification with of their own charismatic Florence.53 Both elite and popular cultural forms had been re-forged into a civil and characteristically of Florentine cultural identity, a to links popular and republican past, but maintaining idealized and purged of politically contrary elements. for over San Lorenzo, a church under Medici patronage aristocratic version
perpetual enactment of a kind of popular religious

theater increasingly under attack by religious reformers in the 1560s; from this decade onward, Florentine
life of San Lorenzo was 54. Gaston has shown that the liturgical even before it became the primary arena heavily shaped by the laity of where Medici power was placed on show for the whole spectrum commerce in liturgy at Florentine society. He points to the veritable as families "took over" from the fifteenth century onward, to the privatization of liturgical space correlative feast days?a See and chaplaincies. the string of chapels the elite, with among in Patronage, Art at San Lorenzo, 1350-1650," "Liturgy and Patronage San Lorenzo saints' W. Kent and Patricia Simons in Renaissance and Society Italy, eds. F. For the liturgy and 111-133. (Oxford: Oxford Press, 1987), University see also Domenico Continuazione traditions of San Lorenzo Moreni, delle memorie 2 vols. istoriche dall delI'Ambrosiana erezione della Lorenzo Mediceo. document! 69-75. di Firenze di San Imperial Basilica a tutto il regno chiesa presente "Scenari festivi a and Maria Ciseri, I
51.
Parody Accademia Medici, 189-205. 52.
is examined The episode by Domenico Cosimo Florence. inMid-Cinquecento
"Ritual and Zanr?, and the de'Medici I de'
in The Cultural Politics of Duke Cosimo del Piano," ed. Konrad Eisenbichler 2001), (Burlington VT: Ashgate, "Ritual and Parody," 198; on the by Zanr?, I de' Medici, Cosimo of Randolfo Pucci, see Cantagalli,
San Lorenzo:
1816); (Florence, in San Lorenzo: Cerimonie, Apparati, Spettacoli," e i tesori nascosti (Florence: Marsiglio, 1993), 41-44,
As noted
conspiracy 242-246.
most recent scholarship, of much characteristic 53. An approach Florence Life in Renaissance (Ithaca, notably Richard C. Trexler, Public on sacre 374-377 N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1980), see especially rappresentazioni.
1564 55. On May 3, 1564 Lapini's Diario reports "A di 3 Maggio in S. Lorenzo di Firenze un Fraticino doppo Vespro predico che di et? di anni otto, pi? testo mancho, di S. Domenico dell'Ordine et quelle aveva certe prediche, recitava, imparato a mente pi?, quale lui poco petto, e spirito, satisfazione che se n'ebbe pocha per havere era tutta piena, e fu tenuta cosa rarissima, considerando et la Chiesa alia te?era et?." Cited inMoreni, Continuazione, II, 305.
counter-aesthethics
117
with theater showed increasing signs of accommodation a newly didactic standard and more rigorous decorum.56 di S. Giovanni Angelo Lottini's Sacra rappresentazione a in is version of the 1592, Lorenzo, published purified that saint's legend, fully divested of the comic elements in the hymn of Prudentius or the fresco by abound
Bronzino.57
the symptoms On the one hand, Bronzino manifests of an alienated enterprise, passively drawing his identity forerunner. Yet on the from that of a powerful, canonical other hand, Bronzino also appears as a reader of symbols rather than an absorber of influences; his ironic the Sistine Adam and of Michelangelo?of misprisions ignudi, the Bettini Venus, the Medici Chapel capitano? to read symbols against the indicate that it is possible of the "readers" finally have that meanings grain, over of the meanings "authors," and that the priority or severance alienation of the work from its author as a it precarious make bearer of official meaning. The one of bathos; is not completely art another crucial element, supplies Michelangelo's which greatly extends the expressive range of the effect, however,
Thus far, the fresco would constitute a rather in successful example of an absolutist cultural policy means an of ruling through extension of the action, forms associated with pleasurable misrule. Yet it is not the only way to understand Bronzino's painting; as an instrument that works through openness absolutist and manifold that desires to accommodate inclusiveness, Florentine traditions and the social groups and identities whether associated with them, it is at best questionable can be seen to serve a single instrumental its operations function, to extend a pervasive "dominion of the eye."58 Writing of Florentine public space, Stephen Milner has a mode of analysis that can address "the for argued manner inwhich symbols, with their multiple associations, permitted alternative visions of social to coexist alongside the dominant form. ordering in the deployment of a particular symbol by Changes those in power appropriation an alternative of that symbol preferred did not so much constitute an as the imputation reading."59 to itof
sc?nographie mode of history painting being defined by

often dramatize poetry and writings of the artist's works from the artist's self, certain works were also seen to have a quality that placed them beyond the reach of the Bronzino. While Michelangelo's the alienation It is frequently observed desired by patrons. significance in the sixteenth century that the human and recognized art often moves and acts less in figure inMichelangelo's a narrative function than with an accordance with of pensive disquiet that as melancholia.60 identified contemporaries of the "Florentine" This was above all characteristic was seen and it rather than the "Roman" Michelangelo, enigmatic pathos, sometimes a dimension
to define the allegorical figures of theMedici Chapel in
56. Comedy 1993), theory
Scripts Press, Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University an in dramatic demonstrates 220-225, increasing tendency to take and practice for the "decorum of orthodoxy"
Richard Andrews, in Renaissance
and Scenarios.
The Performance
of
over "decorum of verisimilitude." The celebrated precedence comedy in the mid-1560s La pellegrina, written of the Academia by members to cuts and changes for its restaging at Intronati, was subjected degli in 1589, reflecting the wedding of Ferdinando de' Medici the new to toward orthodoxy; the references pressure defamatory clergy or to in general are omitted. religious matters 57. Giovanni di S. Lorenzo Lottini, Sacra rappresentazione Angelo (Florence: Sermartelli, 1592). 58. The expression is that of Marvin Trachtenberg, Dominion of the Eye: Urbanism, Art and Power in Early Modern Florence (Cambridge especially principate, urbanistic converted inwhich new order." 59. Stephen "The Piazza della Signoria as Practiced J.Milner, in Florence. the Renaissance Place," Re-Visioning City: Art, Patronage, and the Dynamics of Space, eds. Roger J. Crum and John T. Raoletti (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). and New 276 and on the Piazza York: Cambridge Press, 1997), University della Signoria under the Medici
to the Medici regime by the time of particular. Opposed in 1534, Michelangelo his final departure from Florence ten years later famously assign a negative would to the melancholy lassitude of political significance these figures: Night bids the observer not to rouse her from her reverie "as long as injury and shame endure"; the poem was embraced by anti-Medicean political notes on exiles.61 The artist's own earlier iconographie
sulle
In Scritti Gian Raolo Lomazzo, Idea del Tempio della Pittura. and Bertolli, arti, ed. Roberto Ciardi, 2 vols. (Florence: Marchi I, 292: "Perch? egli ha dato alle figure sue una forma 1974-1975), altri terribile cavata da Iprofondi sescreti dell'anatomia, da pochissimi 60. intesi, tarda, ma quali
the perspective effects of the Uffizi: "the powerful instrument of authority created by the early republic was into a Medicean of rule, an operation apparatus semiotically the very process of construction dramatized the power of the
maninconici,
con le arie e piena di dignit? e maest?, gli affetti sono degli uomini dati alio studio et all E perch? egli era tale ancora nei suoi costumi, si pu? contemplazione. dire che sia state fra pittori come un Socrate." 61. "Caro m'?'l dura; deh, Saslow la vergogna che'l danno e sonno, e pi? esser di sasso, / mentre / non veder, non sentir m'? gran ventura; / pero non ed. parla basso." Text in The Poetry of Michelangelo,
mi destar, James M.
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991 ), 419, noting the discussion in the dialogues of the of the sonnet Gianotti. exiled Donate
118
RES 46 AUTUMN 2004
the tomb project characterized the allegories as of one of the Medici dukes, now blinded and in his death.62 The language of deprived of motion assassins thus not only manifests the scandal of the Michelangelo of the histrionic, indecorously performing body; it also it with insubordination of the the brings potential the the such pensive, melancholy, cogitabundo; as are no means Bronzino realized, dispositions, by to one another. opposed was not the first artistic interpreter of He to realize this. In the same church of San Michelangelo a Lorenzo, Bronzino's master Pontormo had completed monumental fresco cycle in 1556, the iconographie and which of confounded contemporary stylistic peculiarities it as "full of nude figures beholders; Vasari described
the courtly virtue of Machiavelli and seems a an less virtue like than Castiglione, essential skill for survival, and one characterized above in the presence of such a ruler, it is all by dissimulation; indeed Prudent for Justice and Temperance not to assert their claims, or to act on their disquiet.65 Even Razzi particular evokes which conceives of Prudence shrewdness.66 For members in terms of a political of the Florentine court or are here
for those Medici intelligentsia, subjects who for portrayed as subjects of Lawrence's persecutor, "Nicodemists" like Carnesecchi who professed outward conformity with the forms of official religion, while inwardly remaining true to the spirit of sola fides, these which virtues might evoke the necessity of discretion, the imperative of righteous conduct. Their reticent, absorptive demeanor signifies the only recourse of a princely subject in a climate of coercive For this most theatrical of ideological conformity. overrides resists the economy of showing, the open and of faith Catholic performance orthodoxy enjoined its official and by Varchi in Razzi's dialogue. Beyond rather orthodox program, the image affirms an alienated, paintings sense of disjunction?the dissenting beholder's to disguise and protect more troubling dictates
conscience.
cardinal
with
an order, invention, composition, design, coloring and painting done in his own personal way, with so and so little pleasure for the much melancholy was finally unintelligible: beholder" "even I, who that it am an artist, cannot understand Vasari's terms, it it."63 In was a similar quality commission. It failed as a Medici of alienated, melancholy insouciance that Cosimo in his son Francesco, and that he found to be deplored in his passivity the prince seemed, insubordinate; a to bitter letter from his father from 1561, according "more likely to be governed by others than to govern."64 It is just this quality that characterizes the figures at the base of the prince's throne, those that have been identified above as Justice, Temperance, and Prudence. These are possessed of an inscrutable self-absorption that seems to run counter to the visibility and space, where intelligibility of the painting's perspective bodies and their motives are so fully present to our view. contrasts Such reserved and troubled demeanor
here
need of
Is it conceivable
respects to place fact, a reading of Bronzino's burlesque poetry suggests that this ismore than an unconscious effect. The poem // a is sinister (ca. 1552-1555) piato fantasy about a series of bawdy and violent misadventures that befall Bronzino one chaotic in Florence, night involving raging crowds, monstrous furtive homosexual encounters, hybrid beings, and enigmatic allegorical tableaux. At the center
in so many other that an artist who as a Medici appears partisan might have wished his art in some respects beyond their reach? In
of markedly with the open and public self-declaration and who the Faith, Hope, Charity, Fortitude, exemplify condition of seeing and responding enjoined by Razzi and by Cecchi. and Prudence, the Justice, Temperance, virtues which should attend on rulers, are by contrast to inactivity, even dissimulation. in Prudence consigned
65. On
this aspect
Sincerity, Refashioning Renaissance Europe."
see John Martin, "Inventing in The Discovery of the Individual Review The American Historical (102/5 (1997), of Prudence Prudence:
1325 quoting Lucio Paolo Rosello's Ritratto del 1309-1342, especially vero governo vivo Cosimo del principe del de gran dall'esempio "I submit that there is a great difference between the prudent Medici: man, I to speak, and the flatterer; because the wish he is pushed and not because accord, by manner in a deceptive and with false others necessity, approaches . . . and but the former is compelled blandishments, by necessity about whom latter, of his own accommodates as circumstances himself allow." to the times, now concealing, now revealing,
62. duca
"Noi abbi?no ..."
col
nostro
veloce
corso
condotto
alla morte
el
84. of Michelangelo, 63. Vasari, Opere, VI, 287. ForVasari's and professional political see Pilliod, Pontormo, Bronzino, Allori, against Pontormo, prejudices 187-211. especially Giuliano entra nella comune "Ma guai se el futuro principe opinione e aggirato dai suoi servitori, in fama di essere maneggiato della gente For the letter ridicolo agi i occhi del mondo." diventa semplicamente 64. see Cosimo Antonio Cantagalli, Ranella. Lettere, ed. Giorgio (Florence: Vallecchi, 1940), Cosimo 249-252. de' Medici, I de' Medici: Spini, preface by 174-188; paraphrase in
Full text
in Poetry
156: "Secondo Agostino, che ell' 66. Della econ?mica Christiana, la quale secondo, ? una Virtu, che richiede I'honesto, insegna e che fuggire, a quello all'huomo quello, quello che dee desiderare, come il Signore, che sia da dare, e quello che no. Siate prudenti dice come colombe." e semplici Serpenti,
Campbell: Counter Reformation polemic
and Mannerist
counter-aesthethics
119
is an impassive, enthroned giant called Arcigrandone who extracts gold and silver from human beings caught to the chaos in a swamp, but is otherwise oblivious around him. His body swarms with human parasites who courtiers and squabbling resemble mercenary at while his feet a mob calls for justice academicians, a is attended by two rather virtuous girl, who against
is the irony Central to its enterprise a in the spirit of promoting theology entirely and the reform, the St Lawrence deliberately adopts a stylistic idiom and figurative consciously absolute conformity. that while language that counters and resists the Roman demand and simplified for a chastened religious imagery. The to both allusions Michelangelo, straightforward and facetious, design, the tensions the combination of narrative and monumental of history, portraiture, and of the Medici even in a scene the glorification allegory, all give the work a of absolutist "tyranny-in-action" that of enables the artist to ironic detachment quality serve a prince's self-image as reformer while also crisis of religious identity and a personal agency affecting large number of his peers. to Bronzino's Mannerism here may indeed correspond an an early manifestation art ruled of academic painting, engaging by theoretical procedures that is the case, however, if and the imitation of canons; it also marks the hope that the more than an extension of be academy might something into yet another area of the domain of Medici hegemony Florentine life and thought. a broader
woman with a broken familiar allegorical beings?a who holds a scepter. and another column, porphyry seem to represent Fortitude These figures, who would and Justice, do nothing to intervene as the innocent girl is tortured by the crowd; she is eventually saved by a terms in her that suggest who addresses genius winged she isAstraea, the true goddess of Justice who forsakes the hostile earth for heaven with the final passing of the Golden Age. The poem has been seen as a parody of "ruins Dante's Inferno, or as the deliberately enigmatic an some of of that allegory"; yet it is hardly possible Bronzino's readers did not see the giant?a figure of Cosimo, extorting wealth truly "cosmic" dimensions?as from the people and evidently doing nothing to prevent the maladministration Like of justice in his dominions.67 IIpiato is characterized his other burlesque poems, above sense, whom all by the passive persona of its author (in every to is someone including a sexual one); Bronzino own. without real his of agency things happen, events
as if in a dream, yet them. Such passivity has it enables things to be tremendous advantages; as are or not if presented they being actively shaped an sense. an extreme in It is controlled "authorial" of courtly dissimulation, which dissembles performance authorial responsibility; is seemingly the poet Bronzino as he appears engulfed by swamped by images, just more powerful artistic influences in his painting. as a chaotic system where everything Language appears Like Dante, he witnesses claims not to understand potentially means something else, and usually suggests a gross or carnal or sexual subtext. The burden of reading such subversive meanings is thrown back on the reader, as to understand it is left to the beholder the just as a Lawrence St. of carnivalesque negative exemplum the Medici court. Florentine culture, as it is here invented by a member of a group charged with its definition and preservation, in an ideological climate of offers a site of resistance
67. Petrucci 218-272. address
For the poem see Agnolo Bronzino: Rime Nardelli (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia
in Burla, Italiana, nonetheless
ed.
Franca
For a useful reading of // Piato, which see Parker, Bronzino: to Cosimo, the apparent reference Renaissance Painter as Poet, 133-139 and 142-151.
1988), does not

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The President and Fellows of Harvard College Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology

RES 46 AUTUMN 2004

Figure 1. Agnolo Bronzino, Martrydom of St. Lawrence, 1565-1569.

Florence, San Lorenzo (Photo: Alinari/Art

polemic and Mannerist

Bronzino's Martyrdom of St. Lawrence in San Lorenzo

andWilhelm Pinder,Arnold H?user had by 1965

1. The watershed Ideal." Acts vols. of the Twentieth (Princeton:

In The Renaissance Princeton

recovering doing Art (introduction,

RES 46 AUTUMN 2004

of self-consciousness, wit, even eccentricity, a harmony between the wishes presupposes

inMannerist are a few

and the Art of Hubris." "PellegrinoTibaldi 2001. Johns Hopkins University,

Campbell: Counter Reformation polemic

Raleotti's Discourse not published until

relief of the same Bronzino

(250-251 ). subject (New York: Harper and Row,

in the closing years and Counter-Reformation.

RES 46 AUTUMN 2004

"Mythic Dempsey, in the Renaissance: in Rome New

(Binghamton, 1982), 55-75. 18. A concern course, here

York, Medieval with

The City and the Myth, and Renaissance

P. A. Ramsey and Studies,

study model Vasari artistic Roman

Theory Metatechne 1997),

Campbell: Counter Reformation polemic and Mannerist

Last Judgment, 1536-1541.

Vatican, Sistine Chapel

(Photo: Musei Vaticani, Archivio Fotogr?fico).

RES 46 AUTUMN 2004

festivity, and carnival e la retorica del Bronzino

Campbell: Counter Reformation polemic and Mannerist

1525. Los Angeles County Museum

of Art (Photo: Los Angeles County Museum

RES 46 AUTUMN 2004

Figure 5. Agnolo Bronzino, Study for the Martyrdom of St.

(Photo: R?union des Mus?es Nationaux/Art Resource).

principi." Smyth, Bronzino

Draftsmanship Allen Memorial

Campbell: Counter Reformation polemic and Mannerist

RES 46 AUTUMN 2004

Campbell: Counter Reformation polemic and Mannerist

29. standard appear example,

RES 46 AUTUMN 2004

adoption Toscana clear

see Roberto (Milan: Mursia,

facing walls of the di fame nel le dua a fame i disegni

Campbell: Counter Reformation polemic and Mannerist

with Giovanna form had no

in his St Lawrence, Bronzino, theatrical rendering of a religious

is also presenting a subject, one located

RES 46 AUTUMN 2004

which the Biblical 1559; his Coronation of Saul, in

For Cecchi's terrestres,

ses remaniements." Permanences

comedy noces spirituelles: In Culture et id?ologie ed. Michel

et changements, 1985), 62. Paillait, II Lasca's commedie 35. On Grazzini:

friendship Allori. A Genealogy University Press,

rappresentazioni 1877), 267. Montaina,

Campbell: Counter Reformation polemic and Mannerist