Aretino and Michelangelo, Dolce and Titian: Femmina

Transcription

Aretino and Michelangelo, Dolce and Titian: Femmina, Masculo, Grazia
Author(s): Fredrika H. Jacobs
Source: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 82, No. 1 (Mar., 2000), pp. 51-67
Published by: College Art Association
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Aretino
Masculo,
and
Dolce
Michelangelo,
and
Titian:
Femmina,
Grazia
FredrikaH. Jacobs
... you could truly say it was maidenly for a boy or boyish
for a girl.-Ovid, Metamorphoses8.322-231
Between October 1545 and March 1546 Titian resided in
Rome under the auspices of the Farnese. Little more than a
decade earlier the family patriarch had been elected Pope
Paul III and in this capacity named Michelangelo "Supreme
Architect, Sculptor, and Painter to the Apostolic Palace."2
Thus, in the winter of 1545-46 Titian and Michelangelo, the
"two aging chieftains of Renaissance art," found not only
their works but also themselves in the same place at the same
time.3 According to Giorgio Vasari, who also enjoyed Farnese
largess, Michelangelo one day decided to visit Titian at his
Belvedere residence. Accompanying Michelangelo, Vasari
would later recall two things about this visit: the painting by
Titian he had seen, and what Michelangelo had said about it.
The painting seen was the first of several variants of Danae and
the Showerof Gold, 1544-46 (Fig. 1). As Vasari tells it, Michelangelo commended the work for its coloritobut criticized it for a
lack of disegno. His purported quip-"it is a shame that good
design was not taught in Venice from the beginning"-went
on to become something of a stock reference in a long and
much discussed history of criticism that has positioned
Venetian stylistic sensibilities opposite those of central Italy.4
As the image that prompted the critique, the Danae predictably holds a prominent place in this discussion, as does its
presumed pendant, Venus and Adonis (Fig. 2).5 So, too, does
one of the undisguised progenitors of Titian's Danae, Michelangelo's Leda and the Swan, of about 1529-31 (Fig. 3), which
itself is a descendant of the Medici Chapel Night, begun by
1524 (Fig. 4). And because Giorgio Vasari and Pietro Aretino
were to promote Michelangelo by urging Titian's patrons to
purchase a copy of the Leda as well as paintings after
Michelangelo's VenusReclining with Cupid, 1532-33, the latter
image has also assumed a place in this art historical game of
one-upmanship (Fig. 5).6
As is the case with previous studies that focus on any or
several of these works of art, this one considers the images and
contemporaneous descriptions of them by Lodovico Dolce, a
friend and admirer of Titian and one of Michelangelo's more
malicious detractors, and Pietro Aretino in relationship to
one another.7 Given the circumstances surrounding the
making and marketing of these paintings as well as replicas of
them, it would be wrong to do otherwise. The competitive
sparring between Titian and Michelangelo was very real and
the stakes-patronage and status-were high. In the relatively
small world of the cultured elite the producers, sellers, and
buyers of art inevitably collided as patrons pursued renowned
artists of talent and artists sought the favor of wealthy patrons.
In this environment it was predictable that Michelangelo and
Titian would meet head-to-head.
In 1529, Duke Alfonso d'Este of Ferrara, one of Titian's
greatest and long-standing clients, had commissioned Michelangelo's Leda. Undoubtedly, Titian would have felt slighted by
the duke's defection, especially since he had only recently
produced three images of a similar kind for the same patron.
Soon, however, the insult was assuaged when Titian received
the patronage of the Holy Roman emperor, Charles V. Yet
when Charles visited the Medici Chapel in May 1536 and
expressed publicly and without equivocation his admiration
for Michelangelo's work-including
the already celebrated
Night-the gauntlet was thrown down. Titian was to remain
securely in Charles's favor, yet in 1541 the professional
antagonism between the two artists was aggravated anew. In
that year Vasari visited Venice, bringing with him copies of two
of Michelangelo's paintings: Leda and the Swan and Venus
Reclining with Cupid. Vasari hoped to present the paintings to
Guidobaldo della Rovere, duke of Urbino, "another of
Titian's most important patrons. To make matters still worse,
Aretino wrote to the duke in spring 1542, recommending the
acquisition of the Michelangelesque Leda and Venus."8
As the foregoing makes clear, it is impossible to ignore what
Lodovico Dolce described as the "jousting" that constituted
the professional relationship between Michelangelo and Titian at this time. But the intent here is not to reassess the
widely recognized polarities distinguishing the works of these
two artists. Nor is the objective to reargue their respective
places in the context of the paragone, a debate on the relative
superiority of the arts and styles, which in this case would pit
Michelangelo's disegno against Titian's colorito. Instead, my
goal is to suggest an additional, or supplementary, way of
looking at these pictures, one that acknowledges what has
been dubbed "the artifice of seduction" and also recognizes
what has more recently been described as "the erotic power
of artificial beauty."9 I suggest that these works participate in
what Baldassare Castiglione described in The Book of the
Courtier, 1528, as "a certain circumspect dissimulation [una
certa avvertita dissimulazione]," an elegance and grace that is
facile yet calculated and deceptive.10 In the context of book 2
of The Courtier,"circumspect dissimulation" is about appearance, verisimilitude, and a clever chiastic inversion of class. In
the context of this article, "circumspect dissimulation" is an
aesthetic that may best be characterized as an artful dissolution of differentiated categories aimed at heightening the
viewer's appreciation by myriad means, such as sensorial
stimulation and challenging conflations of gender identity. In
putting forth this suggestion I take my cue from Aretino's
promotional description of the Leda and VenusReclining with
Cupid as well as from Dolce's laudatory assessment of Venus
and Adonis and Danae. Both critics clearly recognize something beyond the paragone, something more than a network of
cliched contrapposti.
The contrappostoof Renaissance theory, which ultimately
derives from the Greek antithesis, referred to equilibrium
52
ART BULLETIN
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1
1 Titian, Danae and theShowerof Gold,
1544-46. Naples, Museo Nazionale di
Capodimonte, La collezione Farnese
(photo: Alinari/Art Resource)
between contrasting figural poses in spatial constructions,
lighting structures, and other compositional devices.11 In the
cases of the paintings considered here, however, the balancing of complementary components is acknowledged as giving
way to a veritable medley of merged-not simply counterAs Pietro Aretino and Lodovico Dolce
poised-opposites.
observed, the desired female has a masculine body while the
beloved hero possesses feminine features. This appropriation
of the features and physiology of one gender by the other is
matched by an evocation of the sensorial qualities of a
three-dimensional work of art by one that is limited to two
dimensions. The art of painting, in other words, seeks to
translate the tactile qualities and sensorial completeness of
sculpture into pure visuality, thus acknowledging the limitations of sight. Recognizing the importance of the sensations
of touch to the visual experience implies an inversion of or at
least a challenge to the established hierarchical order of the
senses. In the phenomenology of love, sight, and hearing as
well, were held to be qualitatively different from and superior
to touch, smell, and taste. For Marsilio Ficino and others, it is
sight that principally enables the mind to perceive beauty and
goodness, that is, the Divine. Yet for Renaissance poets from
Petrarch on, the sensorial sensations of touch were a crucial
aspect of sight. Paradoxically, these suggested syntheses actually accentuate antitheses. Thus, for all of this artful masquermales, masculine feading and dissimulation-feminine
males, and paintings that proffer the tactile qualities of
viewer is never confused about what it is that
sculpture-the
he actually sees. Indeed, aesthetic appreciation requires
lucidity. In the game of naturalized artfulness, the rules of
perceiving reaffirm identities even as the highest of the
senses, sight, admits the phenomenological satisfaction of the
lowest sense, touch, thereby enhancing an appreciation of the
virtuosic display and consequently increasing admiration for
the artist who made the image.'2 Elizabeth Cropper's penetrating reading of Dolce's L'Aretino(1557) as well as Dolce's letter
to Alessandro Contarini, which promotes Titian and is "generally considered to be a sort of first draft for the dialogue,"
emphasize this very point. As Cropper notes, in his discussion
of Titian's Venusand Adonis Dolce "never lets us forget that ...
Venus is a painted picture." Even as he "compares the effect
of looking at [Venus] to the famous story of the young man
who was so enamored of Praxiteles's Cnidian Venus that he
'left his stain upon it,' " Dolce makes clear that this seductively beautiful goddess is representedbeauty, no more and no
less.'3 It is important to note that the viewer's pleasure is
circumscribed by his knowledge of this fact and, moreover,
that this concept of phenomenological and aesthetic appreciation finds resonance with Aretino's earlier praise of Michelangelo's Leda and VenusReclining with Cupid.
Beyond Perceptual Pleasures
From the beginning the pleasures afforded by these paintings
have been recognized as being of two distinctive but clearly
related kinds. One resides in what is represented: Leda, who is
"soft of flesh," to quote Aretino,14 or, to cite Dolce, the
"puckering of [Venus's] flesh caused by her seated position"
and the "lascivious and amorous endearments" with which
Adonis comforts her as he takes his leave.15 The other form of
pleasure inheres in the artifice that is the act of representation itself. For Aretino it is Michelangelo's delineation of
form with a "wondrous roundness of line."16 For Dolce it is
Titian's legendary application of paint, which not only distinguishes this Venetian master as "unequalled" in the art of
coloring but is here combined with such "superhuman
critical judgment" that the image presents the viewer with a
remarkable demonstration of "double art."17That contempoverbalized-the
rary critics recognized-and
enhancing effects of rendering a sensual subject with a style that seductively
gratifies the senses is not surprising, given the capacity of
images to enrich the erotic imagination.8s While subject
matter most obviously determines which objects and images
ARETINO
AND MICHELANGELO,
DOLCE AND TITIAN
53
2 Titian, Venusand Adonis,ca. 1555. Madrid, Museo del Prado (photo: Scala/Art Resource)
may be categorized as erotic, it should not be overlooked that
the visualizing instrument and, by extension, artistic style play
potentially strong supporting roles in the perception process.
Agnolo Bronzino's burlesque poem "Del pennello" ("On
the Paintbrush"), replete with linguistic ambiguity, recognizes with ribaldry the complementary effects of style and
content.19 The poem begins with a description of a realistically rendered couple engaged in "a pleasurable act." The
represented subject, together with the generative potency
that is inherent in the creative act of painting (images are, as
Bronzino notes, "born from the bristle [nato di pel de setolo],"
enables the pennello to signify both paintbrush and penis
(pene). Of the many humorously suggestive ways by which
Bronzino discloses the alternative identity of the paintbrush,
one particularly clever tack deserves notice here. "Everyone,"
he says, "likes variety." He then goes on to explain. "It is
enough that in order to make it from behind, in front, across,
foreshortened, or in perspective one uses the paintbrush for
them all."20 Bronzino's language cannot help but bring to
mind Aretino's infamous I sonetti lussuriosi, 1527, a collection
of sonnets inspired by Marcantonio Raimondi's I modi, 1524, a
set of engravings based on Giulio Romano's graphic depictions of a wide and imaginative array of sexual positions.21 But
as is characteristic of Bronzino's burlesque poems, this enumeration of various positions can be read in more than one
way. Variety, or varietad,can carry the metaphor into the lofty
evinces an
realm of aesthetic pleasure and art theory. Variettd
artist's creative perambulations (invenzione and licenza) and
ensures the viewer against visual boredom. As Leon Battista
Alberti noted, "That which first gives pleasure in history
comes from the abundance [copia] and variety [varietd] of
things ... thus the mind is delighted with all copia and variettd;
54
ART BULLETIN
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3 After Michelangelo, Leda and the
Swan, ca. 1529-31. London: The
National Gallery (photo: Alinari/Art
Resource)
4 Michelangelo, Night, begun by 1524. Florence, S. Lorenzo,
Medici Chapel (photo: Alinari/Art Resource)
because of this, copia and varieta in painting are pleasing."22
Alberti was not alone in his recognition of this aesthetic
principle. Vincenzo Borghini singled out varietda,together
with learning (imparare) and the marvelous (meraviglia), as
artistic values that induce pleasure and delight.23
Bronzino's "Del pennello" was not unique in realizing the
possibilities for double entendre afforded by the paintbrush.
Less than a decade before he detailed the curvature and
texture of the body of Michelangelo's Leda, Aretino employed the same metaphor in Ragionamento della Nanna e della
Antonia. Cast as an edifying conversation about the pros and
cons of love and sex for a nun versus a married woman versus
a courtesan, the dialogue enables an older prostitute to
convey a lifetime of amatory experiences to a young proteg&e.
In this lampoon of Leonine Rome, the penis assumes a variety
of parodic roles.24 Among them is the paintbrush, which,
predictably, delights in dabbling in the "color cup." Nanna's
description of il pennello and lo scudellino del coloreaside, the
seductive powers of artworks-including
Titian's Venus and
Adonis and Michelangelo's Leda and the Swan-have not gone
unnoticed. Indeed, acknowledging the erotics of titillation is
ever present, as a fairly recent description of the Leda attests.
"Commissioned by Alfonso, the Leda includes an orgasmic
swoon, double penetration, and the sensuous tickling of the
woman's buttocks by the feathers of the disguised god.'"25
While this particular characterization of Leda seems to
reflect the "participatory" pleasures of voyeurism, those of
other scholars admit the enhancing effects of sensorial
apprehension that go beyond the depicted subject matter. As
Mary Pardo notes, and the sixteenth-century parodies on il
pennello make clear, "artifice itself [is] a vehicle for the
erotic."26 In other words, subject and style collude in order to
engage the viewer. It is undeniable that a sensuous style-a
richness of color and a roundness of line-is particularly
seductive when visual experiences stimulate the sense of
touch and elicit the joys of tactumfactum (tactile sensation).27
Aretino and Dolce implicitly acknowledge as much in their
respective descriptions of Michelangelo's and Titian's nudes.
Modern scholars, prompted by Aretino's and Dolce's critirecism, have in turn considered the phenomenological
to
in
these
works
terms
of
and
the
artifice,
sponse
efficacy,
paragone.28 To be sure, Leda "can be viewed as a carefully
pondered demonstration of Michelangelo's disegno."29And
certainly it is possible to see Danae, her form "languorous, not
energized; curved, not planar; soft, not hard; and, most
important, coloristic, not linear," as Titian's "visualization of
his rivalry with Michelangelo."30 But like other aspects of
these pictures and the critical responses to them, the sensorial
ARETINO
AND MICHELANGELO,
DOLCE AND TITIAN
55
5 After Michelangelo, VenusReclining
with Cupid,1532-33. Florence,
Accademia (photo: Alinari/Art
Resource)
play of sight and touch participates in the inversions and
transpositions that are inherent in the aesthetic of circumspect dissimulation.
In his very long, pedantic, and courtly Libro di natura
d'amore,first published in Venice in 1525 and followed by at
least eleven sixteenth-century editions (six of them appearing
in the decade of 1526 to 1536), Mario Equicola presents what
appears to be essentially a Neoplatonic excursus on the
philosophy of love.31 As one would expect, the treatise
includes a critique of concepts of beauty and a detailed
discussion of the relationship of the soul to the body. As is the
case with other Renaissance treatises on the subject, not the
least of which is Marsilio Ficino's seminal De amore,Equicola
considers the role played by the senses in man's experience of
pleasure. He does so by reconstituting rather than reiterating
Platonic notions of love. Thus, while he orders his discussion
according to convention, beginning with sight, moving to
hearing, smell, and taste, and ending with touch, he challenges Neoplatonic tradition by declaring touch rather than
sight to be the principal sense.32 Moreover, he underscores
this designation by associating touch with ether, the elusive
fifth element that is posited as the only uniquely heavenly
element. 33With this assertion, Equicola not only evinces his
philosophical eclecticism, he also inverts the accepted bottomto-top vertical ordering of the five senses. In addition, he
further privileges touch by allying it with that which is
ineffable and transcendent, namely, ether. Finally, he distinguishes touch as the sense that not only is essential to human
existence but the one that gives us "varied, multiple, and
continuous pleasure."34 Taken together, these arguments
define an integrated body/soul that bears little resemblance
to Ficino's independent and intellective soul. Susceptible
rather than immune to the solicitations of the flesh, which
include tactile sensations, the soul is as one with the body.35
Here, at least to some degree, Equicola seems to echo
Aristotle, who named "sight the principal sense" but nonetheless allowed that without touch "there can be no other
sense."36 His association of touch with ether is less easily
explained. Yet the apparent paradox of associating touch with
something that is intangible and impalpable is not as odd as it
might seem. Non so che, that indefinable something associated
with aesthetic grace (grazia) and charming elegance (leggiadria), was the acknowledged essence of love and beauty.37
In I libri dellafamiglia Alberti describes non so che as a "certain
something .., .which attracts men and makes them love one
person more than another."38 Many later critics and theorists,
including Lodovico Dolce, agreed. As Cropper, Sohm, and
other scholars have noted, Dolce's use of non so che may be
understood as the ineffable beauty of Petrarch's Laura.
Indeed, the indeterminate and unbounded nature of sensible
beauty that is part and parcel of non so che is implicit in the
term vaghezza, which is related to vagare, meaning to wander
or move about without a specific destination. Equicola captures the essence of this allusive indeterminacy in his discussion of the visual apprehension of grazia.39
He begins by repeating the often noted observation that
perfect beauty cannot be found in one place: "la singular
grazia in una non ritrovarse." It is scattered and, therefore,
must be collected and combined or reconstituted. Like others
before and after him, Equicola celebrates the example of
Zeuxis's painting of Helen, designating it the archetype of
imaged beauty that has been beautifully represented. The
story of how the image came to be was a familiar one,
recounted in greatest detail by Cicero in De inventione.
Desiring to enrich the Temple of Hera, the people of Croton
"hired for a large fee Zeuxis of Herakleia, who at that time
was thought to excel by far all other painters." More specifically, "he surpassed all others in painting the female body."
Given the artist's known expertise and aware that he wanted
to paint an image of Helen, the Crotonians requested a
picture of the incomparable beauty for their sanctuary.
Zeuxis's response was to the point. He "immediately questioned them as to whether they had beautiful virgins in the
city." The Crotonian response was equally quick. "They
immediately took him to a palaestra [wrestling court] and
showed him many youths ... [when] he marveled greatly at
56
ART BULLETIN
MARCH 2000 VOLUME
LXXXII
NUMBER
1
6 Hermaphrodite
Sleeping,Roman copy of 2nd-century Greek
original, restored by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in 1620. Paris, Mus&e
du Louvre (photo: Paul W.Jacobs, II)
7 Hermaphrodite
Sleeping,different view (photo: Paul W.Jacobs,
II)
the forms and the bodies of these boys, they exclaimed: 'Their
sisters are our virgins.' " Several of these beautiful sisters-or
more accurately, various parts of these beauties-became
Zeuxis's models. The painting has not survived but the story
of its creation became mythic. Zeuxis's composite method of
composition, which entailed combining various features from
diverse models-the lips of one, the eyes of another, limbs of a
third, and so on-was for the Renaissance the paradigmatic
demonstration of constructed beauty.40
Because proportion is an essential aspect of the construction process, Equicola recounts the painting of Helen while
reviewing the canonical proportions set forth by Vitruvius; the
length of the face is divided into three parts, the relative size
of the hand to the face, and so on. Then he makes the
following statement: "The visage of a woman is praised if it
has the features of a man; the face of the man if it has the
feminine features, hence the proverb: 'the effeminate male
and the manly female are graceful in almost every aspect
[quasi per ciascun luogo femmina masculo e masculo femmina
hanno grazia].' "41 The seemingly curious proverb Equicola
cites is not as strange as it initially seems in light of Zeuxis's
visit to the palaestra and in consideration of a remark by
Alberti regarding that highly esteemed classical painter.
According to Alberti, "In young maidens movements and
deportment should be pleasing and adorned with a delightful
simplicity, more indicative of gentleness and repose than of
agitation, although Homer, whom Zeuxis followed, liked a
robust appearance also in women."42 When, in the midsixteenth century, Vincenzo Danti acknowledged that perfect
beauty only exists potentially, he, too, invoked the Zeuxian
method. Because la perfetta bellezzacannot be found in one
place, a man of total perfection ("uomo in tutta perfezzione") is a composite whole made of diverse parts. Danti
explained the preferred compositional method advocated by
Renaissance writers.43 Seeking the assistance of nature, the
artist should "make use of various men, in each of whom
some particular beauty is to be seen. And having taken this
and that from this and from that man, they have composed
their figures with more perfection than is possible [in
nature]."44 Because Danti was one of the more articulate
voices expressing Michelangelo's theories of art, his transfor-
mation of Zeuxis's Crotonian maidens into Renaissance
uomini is, in light of the muscular physiques of Leda and Venus,
noteworthy.
Whether or not Zeuxis's purported aesthetic preferences
figured in Equicola's comments is, at best, conjectural, but for
an era that modeled itself after the classical and continuously
challenged antique prototypes, such remarks should not be
ignored. As for Equicola's ideas, in the context of Libro di
natura d'amore, that indefinable something-or
non so chewhich is grazia is, at least in part, an indeterminacy of gender
that results from a conflation of masculine and feminine
qualities. As such it can be viewed as an example of the
dissolution of differentiated categories aimed at establishing
an aesthetic of the indefinable and the ineffable. While
Equicola does not explain how an aesthetic of this kind is
actually apprehended, he makes it clear that love's pleasure is
in fact a mdlange of sensorial experience aimed at selfgratification. The unorthodox privileging of touch by Equicola
is consequently logical. By the end of the sixteenth century
touch had apparently come to be regarded in the philosophical literature as the most important sense in lovemaking and,
as such, was illustrated by a loving couple, personified as a
harlot, and associated with the scandalous DonJuan.45
In the context of the visual arts, Equicola's privileging of
the pleasures afforded by the sense of touch suggests that
from the viewer's position sculpture rather than painting is
the more effective catalyst for erotic reverie. Perhaps not
coincidentally, Equicola's proverbial definition of grazia as a
masculo e masculo
union of gendered opposites-"femmina
mind
one
of
the
most celebrated
to
femmina"-brings
of
antiquity: HermaphroditeSleeping (Figs. 6, 7). The
sculptures
recumbent figure, whose sexual ambiguity is iconographically
unique, is one of several figural types conveying the myth of
Hermaphroditus.46 Ovid provides the explanation for the
youth's sexual ambiguity in the Metamorphoses.A handsome
young man, Hermaphroditus had attracted the passionate
but unwanted attentions of the naiad Salmacis. One day he
inadvertently bathed in the spring of the naiad he had
spurned. Salmacis swam to the youth and wrapped her body
around his, praying to the gods that the two might forever be
united. The gods granted her wish. The separate bodies of
ARETINO
Salmacis and Hermaphroditus were joined into one, becoming a hermaphrodite, which, like the marble sleeping figure,
has female breasts and proportions but male genitals.47
HermaphroditeSleeping, an ancient sculpture that has been
characterized as "the very figure of erotic transformation into
the other,"48 was seen by Lorenzo Ghiberti soon after it was
unearthed in Rome. Although Ghiberti professed the impossibility of putting into words the work's perfection, he nonetheless carefully detailed what he saw. His description demonstrates how thinking about art in tactile terms gives easy
"access to the erotic."49
It is impossible to express in words the perfection of this
statue, of its doctrine, artifice, and mastery. [The figure]
was on turned-over soil, upon which a linen cloth was
spread, and the statue lay on top of the cloth turned in a
way to show both the male and the female characteristics.
Its arms rested on the ground and the hands were crossed
at the wrists one over the other ... one of the legs was
stretched out and the big toe had caught the cloth, and
where the cloth was pulled an admirable skill was displayed.... In this statue there were many subtleties, and
the eye perceived nothing [of them] if the hand had not
found them by touch.50
This passage evinces the already ingrained "habit of thinking about works of art in terms of tactile versus visual
information" by right of descriptive prose and by reason of its
position within Ghiberti's unfinished treatise.51 Included in a
chapter that explores the importance of viewing sculpture in
muted lighting so that the tactile qualities of the finished
surface are enhanced and, thus, intuitively apprehended by
the sense of sight, HermaphroditeSleeping demonstrates the
aesthetically judicious matching of visual and tactile stimuli.
Equicola's De natura d'amore aside, the relevance of the
HermaphroditeSleepingto any number of seductive Renaissance
figures, including Michelangelo's Leda and Venus Reclining,
has been noted by Mary Pardo. Appropriately, she includes in
her discussion a lengthy excerpt from Aretino's promotional
dispatch to Guidobaldo della Rovere.52 Considering Leda's
recognized role as progenitor of Titian's Danae and hence its
relevance to the Venus and Adonis, it seems logical that the
Hermaphrodite Sleeping should have some bearing on these
images as well. Moreover, if, as scholars have argued, Titian's
Danae and Venus and Adonis and Michelangelo's Leda and
Venus Reclining with Cupid speak to the paragone, which they
undoubtedly do, then the many and complex aspects of this
dialogue must be considered. I would argue that such a
consideration benefits from keeping in mind not only Hermaphroditus's status as the epitomization of the erotic transformation into the other but also the esteemed position of the
HermaphroditeSleepingas a masterpiece of antiquity. Recovered
by a culture preoccupied with the ancient world of Greece
and Rome, HermaphroditeSleeping must have figured among
the paragoni: especially, ancient versus modern and tactile
versus visual. Accordingly, the competition between Michelangelo and Titian was not solely about the superiority of disegno
over colorito or vice versa. It was also about a Hellenistic
AND MICHELANGELO,
DOLCE AND TITIAN
57
conceit revisited by artists, critics, theorists, and poets during
the middle decades of the cinquecento. And it was about the
powers of engagement, issues of gender and aesthetics, and
the artful inversions and conflations that comprise the game
of circumspect dissimulation. The difficulty of this gameand the importance of HermaphroditeSleeping as a classical
prototype-is underscored by a seemingly unequivocal insistence on gender difference in manuals detailing the artifice
of presenting oneself at court, theoretical tracts instructing
artists in the artful presentation of form, and even in
anatomical texts. Just as Castiglione was to state that "a
woman ought to be very unlike a man" and always "appear
the woman without any resemblance to a man," so Raffaello
Borghini directed artists "not to give a delicate young girl the
limbs and muscles of a fierce man."53 The canonical nudes in
Andreas Vesalius's De humani corporisfabrica librorum, epitome,
1543, which, says Vesalius, "you can compare other bodies to,
as if to the statue of Polykleitus," makes clear that males and
females look different.54 More important, Vesalius's remark
makes clear that this difference should be represented (Fig.
8).55 Conversely, Dolce distinguishes between nature and art.
A delicate and fleshy nude artfully rendered is always more
appealing to the eye.56
Mimetic Dissimulation
From the beginning representation as mimesis was an ambivalent concept. The Greek word mimesthai,for example, refers
both to the creation of a new object and the copy, or imitation,
of a preexisting one. Thus, Plato's Theaetetus is able to
confound the Stranger by polemicizing what he describes as a
"reciprocation of opposites." Arguing that "in the visibility of
the images there appears something invisible, something
between being and nonbeing, between true and false, [and]
between the same and the other," he compels his attentive
listener to recognize that "the difficulty is how to define art
without falling into a contradiction."57 The Aristotelian solution to the problem was to shift the focus from the replicated
product, or illusory presence, to the process of making.58 It
was by this means-simultaneously
allying the prefigured
world with and distancing it from its transfigured image-that
Renaissance theorists expanded imitation to include the
transfiguration of that which had already been transfigured,
namely, works of art. The resultant image, therefore, had as
much to do with the artistic paradigm as it did with the
natural model. Theorists of the mid-cinquecento are of one
voice in their recognition of this duality. Vasari, for example,
claims that "our art consists wholly of imitation, first of
Nature, and then, as it cannot rise so high of itself, of those
things which are produced from the masters of the greatest
reputation."59 Lodovico Dolce agreed. If "the artist, correcting [nature's] imperfections, would surpass nature, would
render her fairer than she is, he must be guided by a study of
the faultless antique."'6
An increasingly rich source of models facilitated artful
explorations into the possibilities of repetition and variation
that are part and parcel of this form of mimetic fusion. But as
sixteenth-century theorists make clear, the objective of the
imitation (imitare) game was not wholesale copying (ritrarre).
58
ART BULLETIN
MARCH 2000 VOLUME
IXTERNARVM
LXXXII
CORPORIS
HVMANI
NUMBER
SEDIVM
1
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PARTIVM'VE
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8 Adam and Eve, from Andreas Vesalius, De humani corporisfabricalibrorum,epitome,Basel, 1543 (photo: Steve Borack)
At the very least dependency should be masked. At best
existing masterpieces, whether ancient or modern, should act
as creative catalysts prompting artists to begin the inventive,
or transfiguration, process. To this end, Giovambattista Armenini advised artists to alter their sources "in such a manner
that the figures do not appear to be borrowed" while
nonetheless maintaining resemblance in a way that parallels
the familial likeness of "father to son and one brother to
another." He goes on to advise an effective means of achieving this goal. When appropriating the work of another,
"reverse members, change the head slightly, raise an arm, or
take away or add drapery."61 Examples of the Spinario, which
depart from the original by crossing the right leg over the left,
illustrate the pervasive adoption of this mimetic method.62 So
do the many variations on the Laoco6n, including images and
objects that transform the Trojan priest into Christ at the
Flagellation or recast him as Marsyas grimly suffering his
fate.63 But raising the right arm instead of the left or veiling a
nude figure with drapery were not the only ways of taking
possession of another's image or object. Another possibility
was to alter the sex of the model. One of the better-known
instances of this is Antico's (Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi, ca.
1460-1528) seminude woman, seated with one leg crossed
over the other. In 1501 Antico produced a small bronze
version of the Spinario for Isabella d'Este. The figure of a
naked boy sitting on a tree stump and extracting a thorn from
his foot was reportedly placed over a door in the duchess's
suite of rooms in the Castello di S. Giorgio, Mantua. Two years
later, the duchess commissioned a companion piece. The
result was a similarly posed and partially draped thorn-pulling
female.64
Michelangelo's Venus Reclining with Cupid can be viewed
within this theoretical frame. In contrast to the Leda, which
has been associated with a female type well known in
Hellenistic and Roman relief panels, the form of Venus
Reclining parallels a male prototype: the Hercules Chiaramonti.65Her body, impossibly positioned on her left hip so as
to tilt the torso forward and downward, should be viewed
against the Reclining Hercules of this type recorded in a
drawing by Sebastiano del Piombo.66 In 1568 one "maestro
Nicolo scultore" (Nicolo, master sculptor) restored the Reclining Hercules that is now in the Vatican by adding "a head of
Hercules, the left arm from the biceps, the right arm from the
shoulder, and parts of the lion skin."''67 Sebastiano's drawing
depicts a sculpture with similar, but not exact, breakages. His
sculptural model was missing the right hand, not the entire
arm. The right leg from the knee down was also absent. In a
similar manner the left arm of Michelangelo's Venus is not
visible and her right leg, which is pictured bent, can barely be
seen below the knee. As for her right arm, it holds the same
ARETINO
position as that seen in Sebastiano's drawing. Michelangelo's
transformative appropriation of a male sculptural figure into
pictorial female form, particularly as it is recorded in the
painted version of VenusReclining with Cupidnow in the Museo
di Capodimonte, Naples, is especially rich. Tied to Cupid's
bow with pink ribbon are two masks. The same pink ribbon is
twisted around and through the hair framing Venus's curiously masklike face. Given Michelangelo's frequent use of
masking as a conceit and even allowing for variations introduced by the copyist, this cannot be mere coincidence.68
In considering a broad spectrum of sixteenth-century
artworks there can be no question that the frequent unearthing of classical sculpture fragments facilitated l'arte
dell'imitazioneas it was understood and appreciated during this
era. Since one cannot copy something that is not there to be
seen, the typically mutilated and fragmentary condition of
rediscovered ancient works necessitated invention. Indeed, a
sculpture's state of preservation combined with the fact that
many of the represented subjects were unknown to the library
of ancient literature available in 1500 meant muchup for interpretative grabs.69 For
including gender-was
a
monumental
example,
pair of seated knees generally
understood to belong to ajupiterEnthroned was completed in a
drawing by Amico Aspertini as a woman with a mirror. Even a
work in perfect condition like the bronze Camillusincluded in
Sixtus IV's 1471 donation could cause confusion. Through
the sixteenth century, Camilluswas interchangeably identified
as a gypsy girl (Ulisse Aldrovandi, 1557) or a serving boy
(Andrea Fulvio, 1527).70 Among the many ancient sculptures
populating Renaissance villas and gardens, two are notable
for their resistance to appropriation via a change of gender.
One is the HermaphroditeSleeping described by Ghiberti. The
other is the HermaphroditeStanding recorded around 1500 in
the collection of Mariano Astralli in Rome.71 Clearly, changing the sex of the bisexual Hermaphroditus was impossible.
As for Armenini's suggestion that an artist "reverse members
... raise an arm, or take away... drapery," no one, with the
possible exception of Correggio, appears to have taken up the
challenge.72 But this should not be taken to mean, as has been
suggested, that these statues-specifically, HermaphroditeSleep"no direct influence ... in Renaissance art or
ing-had
drawings."73 While HermaphroditeSleeping is not a progenitor
of Renaissance images in the way that fragments related to
Myron's Discobolosengendered images like Francesco Salviati's
Saint Andrew in S. Giovanni Decollato, it was influential. For
artists and critics who defined their own era in relationship to
the classical past, this work presented the paradigmatic
challenge.
"Una Certa Gratiosa Bellezza"
HermaphroditeSleeping,Titian's Venusand Adonis, and Michelangelo's Leda and the Swan and VenusReclining with Cupid have
but one-albeit significant-common
denominator. All three
present figures whose gender is ambiguous to the extent that
the masculine and feminine are conjoined. More important,
this aspect of these works seems to have hit a particularly
responsive chord in their respective critical viewers, Ghiberti,
Dolce, and Aretino. I don't doubt that some of this is
attributable to the erotic sensibilities that inheres in these
AND MICHELANGELO,
DOLCE AND TITIAN
59
works. This, however, is not how the critics cast their appreciative descriptions. In each instance, antitheses are recognized
as demonstrations of artful virtuosity, or gran'artificio, and
testaments to the virtuosity of the artist, what Ghiberti and
Dolce say is an "indescribable" "perfettion dell'arte" and
Aretino considers "la vivaciti d'artificio." I suggest that these
figures embody the aesthetic Equicola referenced when he
quoted the proverbial definition of grazia: "quasi per ciascun
luogo femmina masculo e masculo femmina hanno grazia."
For Aretino the beauty of Michelangelo's Leda and Venus
resides, at least in part, in the masculinity of their female
physiques ("with the body of the female and the muscles of
the male so that with an elegant vivacity of artifice....
[nel
corpodi femina i muscoli di maschio; talche ella e mossa sentimenti
virili e donneschi, con elegantevivacita d'artificio... .]").74 Dolce
voiced the same idea, although in reverse, when he praised
Titian's rendering of Adonis. For him the hero's "particular
graceful beauty which, partaking something of the feminine,
does not however detract from its masculinity [certa gratiosa
bellezza, che participando della femina, non si discotessepero del
virile]," evinces the Venetian painter's mastery of art. In
addition, Dolce argues that it is desirable from the spectator's
point of view. "I mean to say, that in a woman there should be
something of the man, and in a man something of the
beautiful woman [vuo dire, che in Donna terrebbenon so che di
huomo, & in huomo di vaga Donna, mistura difficile,aggradevole,e
sommamente]."75As for the HermaphroditeSleeping, Ghiberti's
admiration for "the perfection of this statue, of its doctrine,
artifice, and mastery" is explicit. So, too, is his delight in
experiencing the work. His/her belly pressed to the ground,
his/her head turned to the right, Hermaphroditus's torso
twists just enough to the left to reveal his/her sexuality-a
visual revelation that invites verification by touch. As Equicola
would later claim, this type of sensorial experience is especially gratifying.
The "certa gratiosa bellezza" embodied in Hermaphrodite
Sleeping,Michelangelo's Leda and VenusReclining, and Titian's
Adonis can be considered from several points of view. First,
and in keeping with Plato's Symposium, the hermaphrodite
represents the perfect wholeness of the primordial androgyne. "In the beginning we were nothing like we are now. For
one thing the race was divided into three; that is to say, besides
the two sexes, male and female ... there was a third which
partook of the nature of both.''76 Marsilio Ficino's Christianizing exegesis for this passage acknowledges humankind's
nostalgia for completeness and the pursuit of transcendence
that it ignites."77Second, within the theoretical context of
artistic perfection and stylishness, or la bella maniera, this
"certa gratiosa bellezza" can be understood as an example of
the masterful merging of opposites. As the comments of
Dolce and Aretino suggest, an audience of self-consciously
stylish cognoscenti appreciated formal complexities and paradoxical play. Such a merging of opposites fit the tastes of a
cultured community that prided itself on producing works
that are determined by standards of proportion (misura) yet
are "beyond measure"; a cultivated collective that touted
grazia as an aesthetic norm, which, contradictorily, carries the
potential to undermine the very notion of norm; a generation
of artists and critics intent on representing and perceiving
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MARCH 2000 VOLUME LXXXII NUMBER
1
what appears "between the seen and unseen [fra '1vedi e non
vedi]" and one that anomalously celebrates as among its best
an artist whose maniera is always "anciently modern and
modernly ancient [anticamente moderna, e modernamenteantica]."78 Third, the ambiguity that characterizes this "particular graceful beauty" may be seen as a reflection of that
"certain circumspect dissimulation [certa avvertita dissimulazione]" that Baldassare Castiglione associates with grazia and
identifies in book 2 of The Courtieras the defining aspect--or
deception (inganno)-of courtly conduct.79 Just as the courtier who is able to put over the most credible "deception
[inganno]" wins the game of preferment, so the artist who
creates a "most pleasurable deception [piacevolissimo inganno]," to use Vasari's words, wins praise and patronage.80
The paradoxical play that distinguishes many of the images
and objects of la bella maniera is obviously an aspect of
"pleasurable deception." With reference to Hermaphrodite
Sleeping, the passive beauty of the figure seen from the back
has rightly been described as a "deliberate tease."81 The
disconcerting effect on the beholder of HermaphroditeSleepings chiastic torsions is undeniable. So, too, the chiastic
reversals of elite and vulgar, identity and disguise, and male
and female that punctuate The Courtier and other texts
intended for a like audience have their calculated effects,
which is, according to Castiglione, an aspect of "una certa
avvertita dissimulazione."82 Not surprisingly, the challenge of
constructing an identity or dressing the part ("vestirsi un altra
persona") figures in the discussion of the subtleties of sexual
difference that takes place in the third book of Castiglione's
handbook for courtly conduct. It also propels the narrative of
Ludovico Ariosto's Orlandofurioso (first edition 1516, second
edition 1521, third and definitive edition 1532).
Castiglione's treatise and Ariosto's romance epic have been
described respectively as the most influential prescriptive and
descriptive texts to construct identity in Renaissance Italy. But
neither Castiglione's prescriptions nor Ariosto's descriptions
are unproblematic. "Vestirsi un altra persona" has an emphasis on seeming rather than being. The cast of characters in
Orlandofurioso, which include a woman (Bradamante) roaming the woods as a man and a man (Ricciardetto) assuming
the guise of a woman in order to be taken, literally, for a man,
underscores this point. Rife with gender ambiguity and
masked identities, the epic is, like a masterful work of visual
art, a piacevolissimo inganno. Bradamante, a woman fortified
with masculine strength and nerve (35.47.2), duels with
Rodomonte to avenge another woman (35.40); then, changing into her feminine guise, she vanquishes Ferrau by the
beauty of her eyes (35.78). By contrast, Ruggiero, who is
Bradamante's beloved, is repeatedly described as an aesthetic
object with terms more typically applied to women. Indeed,
like Dolce's description of Titian's Adonis-"graceful
and
in
in
et
sua
every part [gratioso,
ogni
elegant
parte leggiadro']1Ariosto's Ruggiero has "supplely shaped shoulders and breast,
and movement filled with grace [le spalle e'l petto,/ le leggiadre
fattezze, e l'movimento/pieno di grazia]" (36.31.4-6).
The close theoretical kinship between painting and poetry,
particularly the rhetorical character of each, has long been
noted and intensively examined.83 This is especially true of
elocutio (rhetorical eloquence), which includes the artifice of
coupling contrarieties.84 There can be no doubt that maskings, inversions, and conflations of the kind described by
Ariosto and visualized in HermaphroditeSleepingand in images
by Michelangelo and Titian were appreciated by the cognoscenti. Such doublings and couplings evinced the creative
power to enchant, confound, and tease that is associated with
the artifice of elocutio.
Apart from Ariosto's tale, any number of similar examples
of ambiguity resulting from cross-dressing can be cited,
including Aretino's own capricious and entertaining description of the famed Pistoian courtesan La Zufolina. Writing to
the lady in March 1548 Aretino jokingly notes, "Twice my
good fortune has sent your fair person into that house which
is mine and others-the first time as a woman dressed like a
man and the next time as a man dressed like a woman. You are
a man when chanced on from behind and a woman when
seen from in front." This "modo composta in l'utriusque
sesso," which enables the courtesan to "one moment show
[her]self as a male and in the next as a female," so intrigued
Alessandro de' Medici, continues Aretino, that the duke "did
not wish to sleep with [La Zufolina] for any other reason than
to find out if, in reality, [she is] a hermaphrodite [ermafrodito]
or merely jesting....
What more can I say?" Aretino con-
cludes his letter with an identity play--"se la zufolina e zufolone
o se il zufolonee
zufolina.'"85
Benvenuto Cellini tells a similar tale of transgender masquerading. An artists' banquet was staged in Rome to which, says
Cellini, the best artists of the day--including Michelangelo
and Giulio Romano-invited their favorite courtesans. Cellini
attended with "Pomona," a sixteen-year-old male neighbor
otherwise known as Diego. Cellini describes him as "a
handsome boy with a wondrous complexion" and features
"even more beautifully modeled than those of the ancient
statue ofAntinuous."86 As the evening wore on, wine, women,
song, and general good cheer took hold of the assembled
company. Desiring still more diversion, the celebrants decided to stage a beauty contest. "Pomona," appropriately
dressed and adorned as a female and heralded by Michelangelo as a "beauteous angel," entered the competition and
won. But having vanquished the other contestants, "Pomona" became restless. To extricate herself from the chitchat
of the loose women seated on either side of her, she claims to
be indisposed--a "month or so with child." Pomona's identity is revealed when her companions take the opportunity to
verify the announcement. Not unlike Ghiberti's contention
that the subtle artifices of HermaphroditeSleepingcould not be
perceived by the eye but required the touch of the hand, so
did "discovering the real sex of the supposed woman"
demand "feeling her body."87
Given the influence and popularity of both The Courtierand
Orlandofurioso (it underwent a hundred and fifty printings by
the end of the century, seventy of them between 1536 and
1560), it is perhaps not surprising that "vestirsi un altra
persona" should seem omnipresent. But are we to understand these impersonations and deceptions as signs of problematized identity or might Dolce's admiration for Titian's
rendering of a feminine male and Aretino's praise of Michelangelo's imaging of masculine females signify something
more? Certainly fashion, which facilitates the masquerade of
ARETINO
Ariosto's Bradamante and Ricciardetto, Aretino's La Zufolina, and Cellini's Pomona, has no bearing on the masculine
appearance of the naked Leda, nor does it account for the
apparent femininity of Adonis. For Michelangelo's nude and
Titian's scantily clothed figure, vestito is a nonissue. Artful
the artifice of representation-is
nonethepresentation-or
less the measure of success.
Titian's Venusand Adonis
As Titian explains in a letter to Philip II dated September 10,
1554, Venusand Adonis is intended to complement the Danae
already in the king's possession: "Because the figure of
Danae, which I have already sent to your Majesty, is seen
entirely from the front, I have chosen in this other poesia to
vary the appearance and show the opposite side, so that the
room in which they are to hang will seem more agreeable.' 88
As this letter and a comparison of the painting with the story
narrated in Metamorphoses10, 525-59, 705-9, make clear,
fidelity to the Ovidian text was not the artist's principal
concern. Indeed, the pictured scene of Adonis's leave-taking
is not even in the poem. As Charles Hope explains, this makes
the painting itself a poesia. "According to the tenets of
contemporary criticism, fidelity to a written text was a prerequisite for a successful istoria or devozione,but when an artist
painted a poesia he was permitted the same freedom of
invention as poets.'"89Here, Titian's foray into the paragone is
particularly rich. Clearly, he has competitively appropriated
the poet's right to create narrative. In doing so, he makes the
picture into a poem. But the contest is not just between
painting and poetry. It is also between painting and sculpture.
By pairing the Venusand Adonis with the Danae, Titian created
a contrappostothat enabled the viewer to see a female figure
from both front (Danae) and back (Venus), thereby rivaling
the multiple views presented by sculptural form and proffering the viewer "a highly self-conscious, calculated demonstration of what the art of painting could achieve."90 The visual
appeal of and appreciation for this kind of artifice is most
succinctly conveyed in a letter Aretino wrote to Vasari in
which he admired a now-lost drawing for a Gathering of
Manna. Combining opposites (sforza/facile) and matching (or
perhaps rivaling) the visual with the verbal, Aretino takes
particular delight in Vasari's rendering of "the nude who,
bending down to the ground, simultaneously reveals both
front and back, so that by virtue of the effortless force [laforza
facile] and the grace of its forceful effortlessness [la sforzata
facilitade] it acts like a magnet to the eye."91 By Lodovico
Dolce's account, Titian's Venusand Adonis offers its viewer this
and a lot more.
In his well-known letter, written in 1554 or 1555, to
Alessandro Contarini, Dolce found much to praise in the
painting, including the artist's rendering of the "gratioso"
and "leggiadro" Adonis.
If I were able at this time to portray Titian's Adonis to your
Lordship ... as well as you ... described to me ... the
painting by Raphael of Urbino, I harbor the assured belief
that you would say that no more perfect creation was ever
conceived or painted, either by an ancient artist or by a
modern one....
To begin with the form; [Titian] has
conceived of Adonis as being of a height appropriate to a
AND MICHELANGELO,
DOLCE AND TITIAN
61
lad of sixteen or eighteen, well proportioned, graceful
[gratioso] and elegant [leggiadro] in every part with a
pleasing tint to his flesh in which extreme delicacy and the
presence of royal blood are conveyed. And one sees that in
the expression of the face this unique master has sought to
express a particular graceful beauty which, partaking
something of the feminine, does not however detract from
its masculinity; I mean to say, that in a woman there should
be something of the man, and in a man something of the
beautiful woman; a difficult and desirable mixture and-if
we are to trust Pliny--one greatly prized by Apelles. As for
the pose, one sees Adonis move, and the movement is easy,
vigorous [gagliardo], and gentle in its manner. Thus it
seems he is ready to step away from Venus. ... He turns his
face towards Venus with lively and smiling eyes, sweetly
parting two lips of rose, or indeed live coral; and one has
the impression that with lascivious and amorous endearments he is comforting Venus.... But let us move on to
Venus. ... [she] is shown from the back, not for want of art
... but to demonstrate double art; because in turning her
face to Adonis, straining with both arms to hold him back
and half seated on a soft fabric of peacock-blue, she
everywhere shows certain sentiments which are sweet and
vital.... With her, too, there is a marvelous piece of
dexterity ... in that one can see in her intimate parts the
puckering of her flesh caused by her seated position. ... I
swear to you, My Lord, that there is no man so sharp in his
sight and keen in his judgment who upon seeing her does
not believe she is alive ... if a marble statue could by the
stimuli of its beauty so penetrate to the marrow of a young
man so that he left a stain there, then what should this
figure do which is made of flesh and appears to be
breathing, and is beauty personified?92
The sexually stimulating marble statue to which Dolce
refers is, of course, Praxiteles' Cnidian Venus, or Aphrodite of
Knidos described by Pliny in Natural History 36.21. The Venus
is not the only work distinguished by the ardor it evoked. In
the same passage recounting the story of the Cnidian Venus,
Pliny comments on two male figures of Eros also carved by
Praxiteles. One, "which Cicero used in his charges against
Verres ... is now placed in the lecture rooms of Ottavia." The
other, "this one nude," he says, "is equal to the Aphroditeat
Knidos both for its fame and for the injury it suffered; for
Alketas the Rhodian fell in love with it and also left upon it the
same sort of trace of his love."'9 Dolce's carefully detailed
descriptions of Adonis's "smiling eyes [and] sweetly parting
... lips," "the puckering" of Venus's "intimate parts," and
"the lascivious and amorous endearments" by which the
lovers communicate with one another reveal the equal delight
Dolce took in gazing at bothfigures.
As Sharon Fermor has demonstrated, Dolce's verbal agility
points to Adonis's gender indeterminacy as one source of the
painting's appeal.94 Castigating historians of Renaissance art
for their reluctance to accept contemporaneous descriptions
as "accurate responses to visual experience," Fermor combines Dolce's words with those of Castiglione, Vasari, Pietro
Bembo, Gian Paolo Lomazzo, and others with the intent of
examining the discourse of dance and the language of
painting as expressions of a shared aesthetic of movement. It
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ART BULLETIN
MARCH 2000 VOLUME
LXXXII
NUMBER
1
9 Michelangelo, Bacchus,1496-97. Florence, Museo Nazionale
de Bargello (photo: Alinari/Art Resource)
is in this context that she discusses Dolce's subtle extension of
the feminine masculinity of Adonis's face to his form and
movement by way of a "series of carefully constructed
antitheses." She points out, for example, that Dolce describes
Adonis's physique as leggiadro, a term usually reserved for
women and young children when it is applied specifically to
the body. Moreover, "while [Adonis's] body is leggiadro, his
movement is gagliardo, a combination which is antithetical
insofar as a leggiadroform, as well as being primarily appropriate for women, was generally associated with movements
which were soft and gentle, rather than gagliardo. Conversely,
a gagliardo movement usually required, and demonstrated, a
strong and robust [masculine] form."95
Although scholars have approached Venusand Adonis from
diverse points of view and with different intents, when all is
said and done there is consensus concerning the source of the
painting's appeal. According to Charles Hope, the allure of
Titian's picture "lay not only in its sensuality ... or its
theoretical excellence, but above all in its understated artifice."96 Carlo Ginzburg concurs, citing Titian's realism rather
than figurative contrappostoand varietdas the most appreciated
aspect of the image. "As we see, aesthetic evaluation in terms
of realism imperceptibly surpasses the appreciation, which is
exceedingly explicit, of the painting's capacity to stimulate
erotically."97 For Rona Goffen, the power of the image is "its
visceral effect on the beholder," an effect achieved through
Titian's masterful artifice rather than the suggestive eroticism
of content.98 Sharon Fermor also sees Titian's display of
virtuosity, specifically, the "extraordinary complexity and
resonance" of antitheses that Dolce was to translate eloquently into prose, as the picture's source of appeal. I would
agree, adding that the "touch of the feminine in the masculine" recognized by Dolce in Titian's Adonis and, indeed, all
of the many and varied antithetical couplings he saw and
described, take part in a larger aesthetic. Certainly, it is not
difficult to find theoretical parallels to the "graziosa bellezza"
of Adonis that infuses masculinity with femininity. This youth
of sixteen years may be seen as a visualization of Equicola's
definition of grazia as "femmina masculo e masculo femmina" or even as a materialization of the indeterminacy and
ineffability of a dreamed figure Francesco Patrizi describes in
L'amorosafilosofia.99 Significantly, Titian's femininely masculine Adonis was preceded by Michelangelo's Bacchus, 1496-97
(Fig. 9), which Vasari praises for exhibiting "the youthful
slenderness of the male and the fullness and roundness of the
female [la sveltezza della gioventui del maschio, e la carnositd e
tondezza dellafemina]."100 Bacchus's presence in the garden of
the Casa Galli, Rome, where it was drawn by Maerten van
Heemskerck sometime between 1532 and 1535 and later
engraved by Cornelis de Vos, could have been known by
Titian.101 If so, the tottering and fulsome god may have
helped to fuel the smoldering fire of competition captured so
clearly by Vasari in his account of the meeting of Michelangelo and Titian in Rome during the winter of 1545-46. By that
date Michelangelo (or, more accurately, Vasari with a copy
after Michelangelo's Leda and the Swan in hand) had already
challenged Titian, quite literally, on his own Venetian soil as
well as in his preferred medium. The extent to which the
Bacchus figures in this artistic sparring is, therefore, of little
consequence. What is germane to this study is the fact that it
takes little effort to extend the indeterminacy of Titian's
Adonis to the entire image. Indeed, the Venusand Adonis can
be seen as a paradigmatic pictorial conceit: a poesia masquerading as a painting, a painting that translates into dance, and,
when viewed with its pendant Danae, a two-dimensional image
that begs favorable comparison with sculpture. Stated succinctly, this painting masterfully proclaims itself to be something (or several things) other than what it actually is and yet,
in the process, it asserts itself as a paragon of the art of
painting.1'02If Michelangelo's Leda was the competitive impetus for Titian's virtuosic display, then contemporary viewers
surely saw in it something similar.
ARETINO
Michelangelo's Ledaand theSwanand VenusReclining
with Cupid
In his official capacity as superintendent of Florence's fortifications, Michelangelo went to Ferrara in July 1529. Not
surprisingly, Duke Alfonso d'Este, who seventeen years before
had scaled the scaffolds in the Sistine Chapel to marvel at
Michelangelo's creations, was delighted by the artist's presence. Neither is it surprising that the duke, according to
Ascanio Condivi, made a parting request for "something....
by [Michelangelo's] hand." Michelangelo had every intention of obliging Alfonso's wishes, making the Leda for that
purpose. In the end, however, the duke's desires were not
met. The envoy sent to retrieve the prized picture foolishly
looked at the painting and labeled it "not much of anything."
As both Vasari and Condivi pointedly tell the tale, the remark
was a costly one. Disgruntled and angry, Michelangelo gave
the Leda and its cartoon to his pupil Antonio Mini, who took
both images to France. Thus, Alfonso lost his picture and the
envoy lost the pleasure of being in his lord's good graces.'03
The painted Leda was lost but the cartoon found its way
back to Florence following Mini's death. Like so many of
Michelangelo's works, this one was repeatedly copied. One of
these copies, together with a copy after Michelangelo's Venus
Reclining with Cupid, is the subject of Pietro Aretino's promotional letter to Guidobaldo della Rovere, duke of Urbino.104
the cartoons of these figures are by the hand of the
great, miraculous and singular Michelangelo. One of the
two images is of Leda, soft of flesh [ morbidadi carne], lovely
of limb [vaga di membra]and elegant in her whole being.
She is so very sweet and soft and suave in her manner. And
from every part of this nude comes such naked grace [e con
tanta grazia ignuda da tutte le parti de lo ignudo] that one
cannot look on her without envying the swan who takes
such believable pleasure in her. As he stretches his neck to
kiss her it seems as if he wants to exhale into her mouth the
very spirit of his own divinity. The other figure is of Venus,
who is delineated with a wondrous roundness of line.
Because the goddess infuses her qualities into the desires
of the two sexes, the wise man [i.e., the masterful Michelangelo] made her with the body of the female and the
muscles of the male so that with an elegant vivacity of
artifice she is moved by masculine and feminine sentiments .... [Eperchi tal dea diffondeleprop'rietdsue nel desiderio
dei due sessi, il prudente uomo le ha fatto nel corpo di femina i
muscoli di maschio; talchi ella &mossa sentimenti virili e
donneschi, con elegantevivacitd d'artificio .. .].o05
...
If in comparison with Dolce's celebration of Titian's poesia
Aretino is less loquacious, he nonetheless matches Dolce's
specificity when it comes to pinpointing what makes these
pictures so appealing and masterful. He appreciates Michelangelo's rendering of Leda's "morbida di carne," just as Dolce
delights in Titian's representation ofVenus's "macatura della
carne." Similarly, he finds the elegant stretching of the
god-swan's "neck to kiss" his beloved beautiful and believable, just as Dolce finds compelling Venus's "straining with
both arms to hold..,. back" her beloved Adonis. To be sure,
this is the language of longing and desire.'06 But it is the
similarity of Aretino's praise of Venus's masculinely feminine
AND MICHELANGELO,
DOLCE AND TITIAN
63
form to Dolce's admiring description of the femininely
masculine Adonis that is especially striking. Not only do both
writers celebrate the merging of the two sexes [due sessi], they
do so in a way that elicits the sensations of touch and that
evokes the proverbial definition of grazia as femmina masculo/
masculofemmina that Equicola cites in Libro di natura d'amore.
In a similar vein, Aretino's sylleptic play of ignuda and ignudo
could not have been lost on his reader any more than has the
masculinity of Michelangelo's Leda and Venusgone unnoticed
by viewers. Still, the emphasis is on the artful presentation of
content-"la
perfettion dell'arte" (Titian) and "la vivacitA
d'artificio" (Michelangelo). Dolce underscores this when, in
Dialogo della pittura, he considers the question of which is
more estimable, a muscular nude or one that is delicate.
In my view, a delicate body takes precedence over a
muscular one ... [because] in art it is more difficult to
imitate flesh.... The man who makes it delicate ... gives
an indication of the bones where he needs to do so; but he
covers them smoothly with flesh and charges the nude
[Moreover] the suggestive indicafigure with grace....
tions and passages of puckering skin give one the same
insight [as a detailed elaboration of the muscles]. And
above and beyond the fact that a tender and delicate nude
is naturally more pleasing to the eye than a robust and
muscular one, let me refer you in conclusion to the works
produced by the ancients, whose practice it was, by and
large, to make their figures extremely delicate.107
Dolce's remarks cannot help but bring to mind the "subtleties" of HermaphroditeSleeping that so enraptured Ghiberti.
With its complex disposition of limbs, the sensorial delight of
discovery encountered by anyone engaged in the act of
looking, indeed, the very way HermaphroditeSleepingembodies
the concept of grazia as femmina masculo e masculofemmina, this
"perfect statue" (to use Ghiberti's words) demonstrates the
remarkable "artifice" and "mastery" achieved by ancient
artists. Intent on besting the best, Renaissance artists who
accepted this mimetic challenge had to go beyond the
ambiguities and deceptions it visualizes. Responding to the
challenge with the brush expanded the competition to
include the paragone of painting versus sculpture in addition
to that of present versus past. Moreover, it placed Michelangelo and Titian in rivalry with one another. Both dissolved
differentiated categories such as masculine/feminine, sight/
touch, and painting/sculpture. In accordance with Castiglione's rules for "una certa avvertita dissimulazione," the piacevolissimi inganni of these works mask but do not obscure the
brilliance of their makers' artifice. Indeed, the play of
dissimulation and deception reaffirms the truth about what
we see.
FredrikaJacobs,associateprofessorof art historyat Virginia Commonwealth University, has published on art and theory in Renaissance
Italy. She is the author of Defining the Renaissance Virtuosa,
Women Artists and the Language of Art History and Criticism
[Departmentof Art History, Box 843046, Schoolof theArts, Virginia
Commonwealth University, Richmond, Va. 23284-3046, fjacobs@
atlas.vcu.edu].
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MARCH 2000 VOLUME LXXXII NUMBER
1
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Armenini, Giovambattista, De'veri precetti della pittura (Ravenna: Francesco
Tebaldini, 1587).
Barocchi, Paola, Scritti d'arte del cinquecento,3 vols. (Milan: Riccardo Ricciardi,
1971-76).
Bober, Phyllis Pray, and Ruth Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists and Antique
Sculpture: A Handbook of Sources (London: H. Miller; Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1986).
Cropper, Elizabeth, "The Place of Beauty in the High Renaissance and Its
Displacement in the History of Art," in Place and Displacement in the
Renaissance, ed. Alvin Vos (Binghamton, N.Y.: Center for Medieval and
Renaissance Studies, 1995).
Equicola, Mario, De natura d'amore: Di nuovo ricorretto,e con somma diligenza
riformato(1525; Venice: G. B. Bonfadino, 1583).
Ginzburg, Carlo, "Titian, Ovid, and Sixteenth-Century Codes for Erotic
Illustration," in Titian's "Venus of Urbino," ed. Rona Goffen (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997).
Goffen, Rona, Titian's Women(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997).
Hope, Charles, Titian (London:Jupiter Books, 1980).
Pardo, Mary, "Artifice as Seduction in Titian," in Sexuality and Genderin Early
Modern Europe, Institutions, Texts, Images, ed. James Grantham Turner
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Roskill, Mark W., Dolce's "Aretino"and VenetianArt Theoryof the Cinquecento(New
York: New York University Press, 1968).
Vasari, Giorgio, Le vite de'pini eccellentipittori, scultori ed architettori,in Le opere,9
vols., ed. Gaetano Milanesi (Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1906).
Notes
I undertook the research for this article with a grant from the School of the
Arts, Virginia Commonwealth University. I am indebted to the anonymous
readers from the Art Bulletin and John Paoletti for their constructive advice.
Paul Barolsky read an earlier draft of this article and it is to him that I would
like to dedicate this study. His creative suggestions are valued.
1. Ovid describing Atalanta's face, Metamorphoses8.322-23, trans. Frank
Justus Miller (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William
Heinemann, 1971), vol. 1, 428-29: " ... quam dicere vere virgineam in puero,
puerilem in virgine possis."
2. Alessandro Farnese (1468-1549) was elected Pope Paul III in 1534. For
Titian's relationship with the Farnese, see Roberto Zapperi, "Tiziano e i
Farnese: Aspetti economici del rapporto di committenza," Bollettino d'Arte76
(1991): 39-48. Also see idem, Tiziano, Paolo III e i suoi nipoti: Nepotismoe ritratto
di statto (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1990).
3. The phrase is that of Paul Watson, "Titian and Michelangelo: The Danae
of 1545-46," in Collaboration in Italian Renaissance Art, ed. Wendy Stedman
Sheard andJohn T. Paoletti (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 246.
4. Vasari, vol. 7, 446-47: "Era un peccato vinezia non s'imparasse da
principio a disegnare bene." See E. Tietze-Conrat, "Titian as a Letter Writer,"
Art Bulletin 26 (1944): 117, for recognition of a similar division in style. It is
worth noting that Gian Paolo Lomazzo opens bk. 1, chap. 1, "De la definizione
de la pittura," of Trattato dell'arte (1584) with a related distinction: Michelangelo excells in the rendering of anatomia, which depends on disegno, while
Titian takes high honors "nell rappresentare gl'effetti del lume col colore" (in
depicting the effects of light and color; Lomazzo, Scritti sulle arti, ed. Roberto
Paolo Ciardi [Florence: Marchi e Bertolli, 1973], vol. 2, 33).
5. The Danae seen by Vasari and Michelangelo is in the Museo Nazionale di
Capodimonte, Naples. Another version, painted for King Philip II and
described by Titian in a letter to the patron in 1554, is in the Museo del Prado,
Madrid. A third painting done with studio assistance and dated to the
mid-1550s is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Venus and Adonis also
exists in several versions: the National Gallery, London (studio of Titian); the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Jules S. Bache Collection; the
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Widener Collection; the Museo del
Prado, Madrid; Collection of Patrick de Charmant, Switzerland; the J. Paul
Getty Museum, Los Angeles (with assistants). An engraving by Raphael Sadeler
II, 1610, possibly records the image painted for Cardinal Alessandro Farnese
as the pendant to Danae. In the late 17th century the pair were displayed
together. See Harold E. Wethey, The Paintings of Titian, 3 vols. (London:
Phaidon, 1969-75), vol. 3, 133-35; and Mariella Utili, "Tiziano, Danae," in I
Farnese: Arte e collezionismo,ed. Lucia Fornari Schianchi and Nicola Spinosa
(Milan: Electa, 1995), 208. The most informative discussion of these images is
in Goffen, chap. 5, esp. 215-50.
6. Aretino (1492-1557) was opportunistic and mendacious in his relationship with Michelangelo. His critical support of the artist varied with the
spiritual climate of Counter-Reformation Rome. Although well known for his
infamous sexually explicit verses, I sonetti lussuriosi, and other lascivious
writings, Aretino nonetheless had no difficulty in condemning Michelangelo's
Last Judgment as a fresco filled with figures too lubricious for even a brothel.
See Bernadine Barnes, Michelangelo's Last Judgment: The Renaissance Response
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). See also Janet Cox-Rearick, Le
trisor des Merveilles: Les collections de Francois ler (Paris: Albin Michel, 1995),
chap. 6, cat. no. 4. The Leda is known today only in copies, which are in various
mediums, including Rosso Fiorentino's painting in the National Gallery,
London; Bartolomeo Ammannati's marble relief in the Museo Nazionale del
Bargello, Florence; and an engraving, ca. 1530, by Cornelis Bos, the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. The VenusReclining with Cupid is known today in the same
derivative form: Pontormo after Michelangelo, Accademia, Florence; Vasari
after Pontormo's version, the Royal Collection of Her Majesty Queen
Elizabeth II, Hampton Court; Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples (a
painting and a large and badly damaged cartoon are in the collection). The
only autograph sketch for the work is now in the British Museum, London,
Department of Prints and Drawings. See Charles De Tolnay, Corpus dei disegni
di Michelangelo (Novara: Istituto Geografico de Agostini, 1978), vol. 2, 87-88,
no. 302r. The letter, clearly promotional in its intent, was written to Guidobaldo della Rovere, duke of Urbino, in 1542. See Aretino, 137. The introductory preliminaries of the letter are missing from this collection of letters. They
can be found in the commentary to Giorgio Vasari, La vita di Michelangelo nelle
redazioni del 1550 e del 1568, ed. Paola Barocchi (Milan: Riccardo Ricciardi,
1962), vol. 3, 1101-22, which omits Aretino's comments concerning Venus
Reclining with Cupid.
7. A translatorof Latin texts, editor of contemporary writings (including
Aretino's Lettere,1537), and a poet, biographer, and critic in his own right,
Lodovico Dolce (1508-1568) was an outspoken advocate for Venetian art and
culture. Previous studies discussing these works include Watson (as in n. 3);
Ginzburg, 23-36; Pardo, 55-89; Cropper, 160-205; Leatrice Mendelsohn,
"Der Florentiner Kreis: Michelangelos Sonett an Vittoria Colonna; Varchis
Lezzioni und Bilder der Reformation," in Vittoria Colonna: Dichterin und Muse
Michelangelos,ed. Sylvia Ferino-Pagden (Vienna: Skira, 1997), 267-73; Goffen,
esp. chap. 5, "Introspection and Retrospection," 215-317; Bruce Cole, Titian
and Venetian Painting 1450-1590 (Boulder, Colo.: Icon Editions/Westview,
1999), 144-47.
8. Goffen, 237, provides the most concise and informative account of the
competitive relationship between these two artists. As she notes, "Surely it is
no coincidence that Titian's Danae was painted [in 1553-54] for Charles' son
Philip-nor is the [Farnese] patronage of the first Danae [1546] coincidental
to its appearance."
9. The first phrase comes from the title of Pardo's article, "Artifice as
Seduction in Titian." The second phrase is that of Cropper, 189. Pt. 2 of her
article, which is subtitled "Petrarchan Desire: Ludovico Dolce on Beauty,
Judgment and Affection," is particularly relevant to this study.
10. Baldassare Castiglione, II Cortegiano2.40 (Florence: Felice Le Monnier,
1854), 116. The Book of the Courtierwas completed in 1516 but not published
until 1528.
11. See David Summers, "Contrapposto: Style and Meaning in Renaissance
Art," Art Bulletin 59 (1977): 336-61; and James V. Mirollo, Mannerism and
Renaissance Poetry: Concept, Mode, Inner Design (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1984), 167-69.
12. A hierarchical structuring of the senses in which sight and hearing hold
a qualitatively different-and superior-place from the other three senses has
its roots in ancient thought. See, for example, Plato, Hippias major297e-298a,
trans. H. N. Fowler (1939; reprint, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1996), 397: "Beauty is the pleasure which comes through the senses of
hearing and sight." And, interestingly, "beautiful human beings, decorative
works, pictures, plastic art, beautiful sounds, music, discourses and tales of
imagination" afford such pleasure. Among the many Renaissance sources
advocating this hierarchy are Ficino's De amore, Pietro Bembo's Gli Asolani,
1505, Leone Ebreo's Dialogi d'amore,1535, Giuseppe Betussi's I Raverta, 1544,
and Tullia d'Aragona's Della infinitd d'amore, 1547. See Enrico Musacchio,
"The Role of the Senses in Mario Equicola's Philosophy of Love," in Eros and
Anteros: The Medical Traditions of Love in the Renaissance, ed. Donald A. Beecher
and Massimo Ciavolella (Toronto: Dovehouse, 1992), 87-101; and Carl
Nordenfalk, "The Sense of Touch in Art," in The Verbaland the Visual: Essays in
Honor of William Sebastian Heckscher,ed. Karl-Ludwig Selig and Elizabeth Sears
(NewYork: Italica Press, 1990), 109-32.
13. Cropper, 188. Dolce's letter to Contarini first appeared in print only a
few years after it was written. See Letterede diversi eccellentissimihuomini, ed.
Lodovico Dolce (Venice, 1559). It was reprinted in Giovanni Gaetano Bottari
and Stefano Ticozzi, Raccolta di letteresulle pittura, scultura ed architetturascrittede'
pid celebripersonaggi dei secoli
XVI, XVII (Milan: G. Silvestri, 1822), 182. For
an English translation of theX,letter, see Roskill, 212-17. For the story of the
Cnidian Venus, see Pliny, Natural History 36.21, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, 195666).
14. Aretino, 137: ". .. in modo morbida di carne, vaga di membra e svelta di
persona, e talmente dolce, piana e soave d'attitudine, e con tanta grazia
ignuda da tutte le parti de lo ignudo."
15. Lodovico Dolce, letter to Contarini, in Roskill, 212-17. The translations
here are those of Roskill with only slight alterations. "Volge il viso a Venere con
occhi allegri e ridenti; apprendo dolcemente due labbra rosate, o pure di vivo
ARETINO
corallo: e par, che con vezzi lascivi & amorosi la conforti a non temere" (He
[Adonis] turns his face towards Venus with lively and smiling eyes, sweetly
parting two lips of rose, or indeed live coral; and one has the impression that
with lascivious and amorous endearments he is comforting Venus so she will
not be afraid); ".. . dove e ancora mirabile accortezza di questo spirito divino,
che nell'ultime parti ci si conosce la macatura della carne causata dal sedere"
(... there is a marvelous piece of dexterity on the part of this divine spirit
[Titian] in that one can see in her intimate parts the puckering of her flesh
caused by her seated position)." For a commentary on the term macatura, see
Roskill, 294-95. I have opted to use Goffen's translation ("puckering") for this
term.
16. Aretino, 137: ". .. contornata con maravigliosa rotondita di linee."
17. Lodovico Dolce, letter to Contarini, in Roskill, 214-15: "Ma vegniamo
alla Venere, vedesi in questa un giudicio soprahumano"; "La Venere 6volta di
schena, non per mancamento d'arte ... per dimostrar doppia arte."
18. Ginzburg, 23-36, has specific relevance to the images discussed in this
study. Also see David Freedberg, The Power of Images (Chicago: Chicago
University Press, 1989), 317-77.
19. Agnolo Bronzino, Rime in Burla, ed. Franca Petrucci Nardelli (Rome:
Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1988), 23-26. Also see Deborah Parker,
"Towards a Reading of Bronzino's Burlesque Poetry," Renaissance Quarterly50,
no. 4 (1997): 1011-44, esp. 1024-25, for "Del pennello."
20. Parker (as in n. 19), 1025.
21. For an in-depth discussion of the images and Aretino's accompanying
text, see Bette Talvacchia, Taking Positions: On the Erotic in Renaissance Culture
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), esp. 85-100.
22. Leon Battista Alberti, Della pittura, ed. Luigi Malle (Florence: G. C.
Sansoni, 1950), 91.
23. Vincenzo Borghini, "Selva di Notizie," in Barocchi, vol. 1, 655, 658,
668-72. Linking varietd with difficultd, Vasari repeatedly notes this aspect of
Michelangelo's work. See, for example, the discussion of TheBattle of Cascina in
Vasari, vol. 7, 160. Both the "extraordinary attitudes" of the figures and the
various ways in which they were drawn-some outlines, others with highlights,
some defined by sfumato, and all of which "demonstrate his knowledge of
art"-are commended.
24. Pietro Aretino, Sei giornate: Ragionamento della Nanna e della Antonia
(1534); Dialogo nel quale la Nanna insegna a la Pippa (1536), ed. Giovanni
Aquilecchia (Bari: G. Laterza, 1969), 17-20. Ingrid Rowland situates the
dialogue in its cultural context in The Culture of the High Renaissance, Ancients
and Moderns in Sixteenth-Century Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1998), 248-49. For this and other metaphors in the context of "the
manly brush and women painters," see Philip Sohm, "Gendered Style in
Italian Art Criticism from Michelangelo to Malvasia," Renaissance Quarterly48,
no. 4 (1995): 799-800.
25.Joseph Manca, "What Is Ferrarese about Bellini's Feast of the Gods?" in
Titian 500 (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1993), 306. He
observes, "Generally speaking, only contemporary prints and small scale
paintings of this subject rival Michelangelo's work in eroticism."
26. Pardo, 55.
27. See Nordenfalk (as in n. 12), 109-33, esp. 115-17.
28. As concerns the first of these, see Ginzburg, 33, who, quoting from
Dolce's letter to Contarini, cites Ambrogio Catarino Politi's De cultu imaginum
(1542), in which efficacy is held to be the "common denominator between
erotic and sacred images. ... The former stimulated sexual appetite, the latter
religious sentiment." Prior to 1540, touch was regarded as the sense promoting the sin of lust. "Only later in the century did sight emerge slowly as a
prominent erotic sense, immediately after touch."
29. Pardo, 73.
30. Goffen, 235, 229.
31. Equicola. For a biography of Equicola and a list of the editions of Libro di
natura d'amore,see Stephen Kolsky, Mario Equicola: The Real Courtier (Geneva:
Librairie Droz, 1991).
32. As Ginzburg, 33-34, notes, touch was the eroticized sense. Indeed, "the
minute analyses of the sin of lust concentrate on the sense of touch and sound
well into the sixteenth century." This is not, however, the context in which
Equicola considers touch.
33. Equicola, 123b: "De sensi alcuni credeno principe il tacto." And "...
diria il tacto di tutte quelle parti celesti da Platone etere, da Aristotele quinto
element nominato."
34. Ibid., 124: "I1 tacto e dato ... a noi ... per augmentare, conservare et
mantenere la humana spetie; et che havessemo vario, multiplice et continuo
piacere."
35. Ibid., 49: "La verita, la quale i: nel nostro corpo non esser doe anime,
ma una, la qual il corpo vivifica et ministra ragione."
36. Aristotle, On the Soul (De anima) 429a. 2-3, 435b. 2, trans. W. S. Hett
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann,
1964), 163, 201.
37. Cropper's article on Petrarchismoremains the essential study on this.
Elizabeth Cropper, "On Beautiful Women, Parmigianino, Petrarchismoand the
Vernacular Style," Art Bulletin 58 (1976): 374-94. Also see the outstanding
article by Sohm (as in n. 24), 728-41, esp. 771-73.
38. Alberti, I libri dellafamiglia, quoted in Sohm (as in n. 24), 772-73.
AND MICHELANGELO,
DOLCE AND TITIAN
65
39. Equicola, Libro di natura d'amore,in Barocchi, vol. 2, 1613-27.
40. Cicero, De inventione 2.1.1, inJ. J. Pollitt, The Art of Ancient Greece:Sources
and Documents (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 150-51. It
should be noted that Equicola was no stranger to visual arts theory, having
composed about 1508-15 a brief discourse on painting as part of his Istitutioni
al comporrein ogni sorte di rima della lingua volgare,first published posthumously
in 1541. See M. Doglio, "Le Istitutioni di Mario Equicola: Dall Institutio Principis
alla formazione del segretario," Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana 159
(1982): 505-35.
41. Equicola, in Barocchi, vol. 2, 1617.
42. Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting and On Sculpture, ed. and trans. Cecil
Grayson (London: Phaidon, 1972), 85.
43. Danti discusses the problems of proportion that arise from this method.
See David Summers, Michelangeloand the Language ofArt (Princeton: Princeton
44. Vincenzo Danti, II primo libro del trattato delle perfetteproporzioni di tutte le
coseche imitare e ritrarresi possono con l'arte del disegno (1567), in Trattati d'arte del
cinquecentofra manierismo e contrariforma, ed. Paola Barocchi (Bari: Laterza,
1960), vol. 1, 240: ".... cioe cercato d'andare aiutando ... il naturale con
servirsi di diversi uomini, in ciascuno de' quali si veggia qualche diversa
bellezza."
45. Touch personified as a harlot first appears in a woodcut by Badius, La nef
desfolles, about 1500. The loving couple, a courtesan and a Turk, is on a South
Tyrolian majolica stove, mid-16th-century. Both are illustrated in Carl Nordenfalk, "The Five Senses in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art," Journal of the
Warburgand Courtauld Institutes 48 (1985): 1-22.
46. HermaphroditeSleeping is known in several copies, some of which were
restored during the 17th century. The example in the Louvre, which is
illustrated here, is the most celebrated. The buttoned mattress is Bernini's
addition. According to Pietro Santi Bartoli, this version was found near the
Baths of Diocletian, probably just before 1620. See Francis Haskell and
Nicholas Penny, Tasteand the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 234-35. Four main figural types of
Hermaphroditus have been catalogued. See Aileen Ajootian, "Hermaphroditus," in Lexicon iconographicummythologiaeclassicae (Zurich: Artemis, 1981), vol.
1, 5, 268-85.
47. Ovid, Metamorphoses8.285-388 (as in n. 1), vol. 1, 198-99.
48. Pardo, 62.
49. Ibid.
50. Lorenzo Ghiberti, Commentaries3.1, quoted in Elizabeth Holt, ed., A
Documentary History ofArt (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1957), vol. 1, 163-64.
51. Pardo, 62-64.
52. Ibid., 77.
53. Castiglione 3.4.172. Also see Giovanni della Casa, Galatea, 1554, cited in
David Kuchta, "The Semiotics of Masculinity in Renaissance England," in
Sexuality and Genderin Early Modern Europe, ed. James G. Turner (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993), 238-39. For Raffaello Borghini's remark in
IlRiposo, 1584, see Barocchi, vol. 1, 941. Also see Vasari, vol. 4, 9-10; Armenini,
bk. 2, chap. 7, 109.
54. The so-called Adam and Eve figures are in the center of Vesalius's
Epitome.The reader moves from this central point in the text either forward or
backward to reveal underlying viscera and skeletal structure. See Andreas
Vesalius, De humani corporisfabrica librorum, epitome (Basel, 1543). The 1555
reprint contains the illustrations. The smaller 1616 edition does not.
55.J. B. de C. M. Saunders and Charles D. O'Malley, TheAnatomicalDrawings
of Andreas Vesalius (New York: Bonanza, 1983), pls. 80, 81. For a discussion of
the "sculptural" aspects of Vesalian illustration, see Glenn Harcourt, "Andreas Vesalius and the Anatomy of Antique Sculpture," Representations17, no. 4
(1987): 28-60.
56. Lodovico Dolce, in Roskill, 142-43. Also see Cropper, 185-86.
57. Plato, Sophist 240b, in The Dialogues of Plato, trans. Benjamin Jowet
(Chicago: Britannica, 1952), 563.
58. Aristotle discusses the process in several works, notably, Poetics and
Posterior Analytics. For a discussion of these ideas in context, see Gunter
Gebauer and Christoph Wulf, Mimesis: Culture, Art, Society, trans. D. Reneau
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). Also see Summers (as in n.
44), 186-99.
59. Vasari, vol. 1, 222.
60. Lodovico Dolce, Dialogo delle pittura (1557; Florence: M. Nestenus e F.
Moficke, 1735), 190. Giovanni Andrea Gilio echoes Dolce's words almost
verbatim in Due dialogi (1564), in Barocchi, vol. 1, 310-11.
61. Armenini, bk. 1, chap. 8, 66.
62. The Spinario's "complex pose was copied frequently in painting, and
nearly twenty small variations are preserved from the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries." See Carolyn C. Wilson, Renaissance Small Bronze Sculpture and
Associated Decorative Arts at the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.:
National Gallery of Art, 1983),70-71.
63. The Laocoon, which "Pliny the Elder regarded as the finest of all works of
art, was seen in Renaissance times as expressing the quintessence of pain and
sorrow, as an exemplum doloris"; Manfred Leithe-Jasper, Renaissance Master
Bronzesfrom the Collectionof theKunsthistorischesMuseum, Vienna (London: Scala,
1986), 125. See Moderno's plaquette in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum,
66
ART BULLETIN
MARCH 2000 VOLUME LXXXII
NUMBER
1
inv. no. P1.1105, in Leithe-Jasper, 125-27. The Marsyas image is in the
Ashmolean, Oxford.
64. According to Wilson (as in n. 62), 70-71, "Antico selected as his model a
Hellenistic statue of a female figure known to him through one or more
Roman copies in marble." Wilson must be thinking of the so-called Nymph alla
Spina, which was originally paired with a dancing satyr with a foot clapper. See
Bober and Rubinstein, 97-98, no. 61. Differences in the arm positions
between the Nymph alla Spina and small bronzes like the thorn-pulling Venus
in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence, inv. no. 60, lead me to see the
Capitoline Spinario as the source.
65. Bober and Rubinstein, 53-54, nos. 5, 5b, provide examples of representations of two Leda types.
66. The drawing is in Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, E290, no. 22, illustrated
in Michael Hirst, Sebastiano del Piombo (Oxford: Clarendon; New York: Oxford
University Press, 1980), fig. 48; and Bober and Rubinstein, 169, no. 133a.
67. Bober and Rubinstein, 168, no. 133.
68. For a discussion of Michelangelo, masks, and "self-reflexive and complicated self-imag[ing]," see John T. Paoletti, "Michelangelo's Masks," Art
Bulletin 74 (1992): 423-40. In respect to VenusReclining with Cupid, specifically,
the version in the Accademia, Florence, Paoletti considers the viability of
reading the bearded mask in terms of "displac [ing] the act of viewing into the
painting," thereby calling "attention to the voyeuristic process." He concludes that here, as in other instances, "Michelangelo seems to have used the
mask as a surrogate for his own presence in the work of art." Also see Paul
Barolsky, Michelangelo's Nose: A Myth and Its Maker (University Park, Pa.:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990).
69. Leonard Barkan, "The Beholder's Tale: Ancient Sculpture, Renaissance
Narratives," Representations 44, no. 3 (1993): 133-66. "In observing the
rediscovery and reinterpretation of ancient sculpture ... we are considering
an important cultural event that centers on the viewing of representational
works of art whose representations were often impossible to identify with any
precision" (134). Barkan uses this situation to consider the difference
between verbal and visual narrative and the decipherment of the latter.
70. Haskell and Penny (as in n. 46), 169.
71. According to Bober and Rubinstein, 128-30, nos. 97, 98, Hermaphrodite
Standingwas also recorded in the vicinity of S. Marco about 1540 in a drawing
in the Basel sketchbook of Frans Floris. It was in its present home, Villa
Doria-Pamphili, Rome, by the early 17th century. Stanza 18 of "Prospettivo
Milanesi" reads: "Here is a famous hermaphrodite, offspring of the eternal
gods, and surrounded in part by a thin veil. ... [Ecci un inclita po hermafrodita/
productafu dalli superni dei/e parte un sottil velo ha circuita ... ]."
72. James M. Saslow, Ganymede in the Renaissance: Homosexuality in Art and
Society(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 75. "Ganymede's [Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna] pose resembles even more closely the pose of the
well-known Hellenistic sculpture the Sleeping Hermaphrodite.If this recumbent
figure were stood up, its bent left leg would extend backward behind the other
limb in a position only slightly less splayed than Ganymede's bent and flailing
right leg."
73. Bober and Rubinstein, 130.
74. Aretino, 137.
75. Lodovico Dolce to Contarini, in Roskill, 212-17. Also see Roskill's
commentary, 348-51.
76. Plato, The Symposium 189a-190a, in The CollectedDialogues, Including the
Letters,ed. E. Hamilton and H. Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1961), 542.
77. "The gist of our interpretation will be this. 'Men' (that is the souls of
men) 'originally' (that is, when they were created by God), 'were whole' and
equipped with two lights, one natural, the other supernatural; by the natural
light they beheld inferior and co-equal things. 'They aspire to equal God'; they
reverted to the natural light alone. Hereupon 'they were divided,' and lost
their supernatural light, were reduced to natural light alone, and fell
immediately into bodies." Marsilio Ficino's Commentaryon Plato's Symposium,
trans. S. R.Jayne (Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 1944), 155.
78. All of these remarks are found in Vasari's Vite.The first two appear in the
preface to pt. 3, Vasari, vol. 4, 9. They are in the context of Vasari's detailing
the factors that distinguish the third era as superior to the second. Vasari's
description of Giulio's style as "anticamente moderna, e modernamenteantica" is
found in the first edition of the Vite.See Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de'pin eccellenti
architetti,pittori, et scultori italiani, da Cimabueinsino a' tempi nostri, ed. L. Bellosi
and A. Rossi (Turin: Einaudi, 1986), 828. Scholars have recognized other
aspects of this play of oppositions, most notably, David Summers, "Figure come
fratelli: A Transformation of Symmetry in Renaissance Painting," Art Quarterly
1, no. 1 (1977): 59-88; Patricia Emison's remark, "Grazia was one of the first
optional ends in the history of style, a norm which carried the potential to
undermine the very idea of norm," speaks to the same issue. Emison,
"Grazia," Renaissance Studies 5, no. 4 (1991): 427.
79. Castiglione (as in n. 10), 115-16.
80. As Paul Barolsky argues, the word inganno is "basic to the vocabulary of
art. It is, Vasari says, a synonym for art itself." Barolsky, The Faun in the Garden,
Michelangeloand the Poetic Origins of Italian RenaissanceArt (University Park, Pa.:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), 109.
81. John R. Clark, Looking at Lovemaking: Constructions of Sexuality in Roman
Art 100 B.C.-A.D. 250 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 50.
82. The practicaljoke involving a cowherd masquerading as a courtier who,
in order to disguise his dialect, masquerades as a cowherd is a wonderfully rich
illustration of circumspect dissimulation. See Natasha Korda, "Mistaken
Identities, Castiglio (ne)'s PracticalJoke," in Desirein theRenaissance,Psychoanalysis and Literature, ed. Valeria Finucci and Regina Schwartz (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1994), 39-60.
83. Among the more notable studies are Rensselaer W. Lee, Ut Pictura Poesis:
The Humanistic Theory of Painting (1940; New York: W. W. Norton, 1967);
Michael Baxandall, Giottoand the Orators:Humanist Observersof Painting in Italy
and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1971); and Mirollo (as in n. 11).
84. See Charles S. Baldwin, Renaissance Literary Theoryand Practice:Classicism
in the Rhetoric of Italy, France and England 1400-1600 (Gloucester: P. Smith,
1959); and Donald Lemen Clark, Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1922).
85. Aretino, 199-201.
86. Benvenuto Cellini, La vita, 1.30, in Opere(Milan: Rizzoli, 1968), 114-19.
87. Ibid., 119: "mettendogli le mane corpo, trovorno che l'era mastio."
88. The translation of Titian's letter is from Hope, 125. The Italian version is
in Marie Tanner, "Titian: The Poesie for Philip II," Ph.D. diss., New York
University, 1976, 19: "E perche la Danae, che io mandai gia a Vostra Maesta si
vedeva tutta dalla parte dinanzi, ho voluto in quest'altra parte variare.... E
farle mostrare la contraria parte, accioch6 riesca il camerino dove hanno da
stare pifi gratioso alla vista. Tosto le mandero la Poesia di Perseo e Andromeda
che avra un altra vista diversa da queste, e cosi Medea e Iasone. .. ." Philip
acknowledged receipt of the Venusand Adonis on Dec. 6, 1554: "El quadro de
Adonis ha llegado aqui. .. ." The Perseus and Andromedapromised in 1554 was
sent to Philip in 1556. The Medea and Jason was never realized.
89. Hope, 126.
90. Ibid. Of course, in the opinion of sculptors, Titian's two views could not
begin to challenge the multiple views their art form offered the viewer. For
Benvenuto Cellini those views numbered "not only eight, but more than forty,
because even if the figure is rotated no more than an inch, there will be some
muscle showing too much or not enough, so that each single piece of
sculpture presents the greatest variety of aspects imaginable"; Cellini, "Discorso sopra l'arte del disegno," in Barocchi, vol. 2, 1931.
91. Pietro Aretino, Letteresull'arte, ed. E. Camesasca, 2 vols. (Milan: Milione,
1957-60), vol. 1, 175: "Lo ignudo che, chinato in terra, scopre il dinanzi e il di
dietro, per esser in virtfi de la forza facile e con grazia de la sforzata facilitade,
calamitA degli occhi."
92. Dolce (as in n. 13). The translation here is, with only a few slight
alterations, that of Roskill. Goffen, 246, also translates the passage. I have
opted for her translation of macatura as "puckering."
93. Pliny, Natural History 36.21, quoted inJ.J. Pollitt, TheArt ofAncient Greece:
Sourcesand Documents (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 84-85.
94. Sharon Fermor, "Movement and Gender in Sixteenth-Century Italian
Painting," in The Body Imaged: The Human Form and Visual Culture since the
Renaissance, ed. Kathleen Adler and Marcia Pointon (Cambridge: Cambridge
95. Ibid., 130. "Dolce's description of Titian's painting... appears not to be
just a display of verbal agility, an exercise in antithesis or contrappostodesigned
to match Titian's own, but as a complex and subtle analysis of the visual
qualities of Titian's figure [of Adonis], one which acquires its meaning by
reference to notions of sexual difference and behaviour." Fermor, 141-43,
examines the Venus and Adonis. In his Modi affigurati e voci scelte et eleganti della
lingua (Venice: Gio. Battista et Marchio Sessa Fratelli, 1564), 5 1v, Dolce defines
leggiadro/leggiadriaas "propriamente gratioso." As used in Petrarchan verse he
cites as an example of the term's proper usage, it is clearly associated with the
feminine. Texts like Agnolo Firenzuola's Dialogo delle bellezzedonne, 1548, and
Federico Luigini's II libro della bella donna, 1554, bear this out. See Cropper (as
in n. 37), 374-94, esp. 380 n. 34. Cropper's article remains the best study on
the subject. Finally, it should be noted that gagliardo, in contrast to the term
leggiadro/leggiadria, appears to have little if any "official" application in visual
arts discourse. Dolce does not define it in Modi affiguati, nor does Filippo
Baldinucci include it in Vocabolariotoscano dell'arte del disegno (Florence: Santi
Franchi, 1681). As Fermor notes, 142, the opposition of leggiadria/sforzi
approximates that offacilitd/gagliardezza.
96. Hope, 127.
97. Ginzburg, 30.
98. Goffen, 246.
99. Fermor, 142; and Francesco Patrizi, L'amorosafilosofia, ed. John Charles
Nelson (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1963), 31: "di una incomprensibile tra
maschile e donnesca bellezza et ineffabile" (a masculine and feminine beauty
of incomprehensibility and ineffability).
100. I am grateful to Paul Barolsky for reminding me of this wonderful
example. Vasari, vol. 7, 150.
101. Heemskerck's drawing is in the Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen
Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin. Bacchus was commissioned by Cardinal
Raffaele Riario. In 1571-72 the Galli family sold it to Francesco de' Medici,
who moved it to Florence.
102. Ariosto's Orlandofurioso has interesting parallels here. Not only is there
cross-sexual twinning (Ruggiero and Marfisia, Bradamante and Ricciardetto),
ARETINO
the work itself has "two codes, two goals, two endings: those of epic and of
romance." See Marianne Shapiro, The Poetics of Ariosto (Detroit: Wayne State
University Press, 1988), esp. chap. 5, "Ariosto's Multiple Vision."
103. ForJacopo Laschi's critical faux pas and Michelangelo's response to it,
see Vasari, vol. 7, 202; and Ascanio Condivi, The Life of Michelangelo, trans. Alice
Sedgwick Wohl, 2d ed. (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University
Press, 1999), 23-24. Also see n. 6 above and Armenini, bk. 3, chap. 15, 215-16.
104. Eventually both paintings were purchased by Don Diego Hurtado de
Mendoza, the imperial ambassador to Venice. For Titian's relationship with
Mendoza, see David Rosand, " Ut Pictor Poeta: Meaning in Titian's Poesie," New
LiteraryHistory 3, no. 3 (1972): 543-44.
AND MICHELANGELO,
DOLCE AND TITIAN
67
105. Aretino, 137. See n. 6 above. For a general discussion of Aretino's
criticism, see Rosand (as in n. 104); and Norman E. Land, "Ekphrasis and
Imagination: Some Observations on Pietro Aretino's Art Criticism," Art
Bulletin 68 (1986): 207-24, although this particular image is not reviewed.
106. Aretino's choice of words makes this abundantly clear. The phrase
"vaga di membra" can serve as an example. According to Dolce's Modi
affigurati (as in n. 95), 49v-50, vaga is used to suggest desire, something
underscored by the word in the phrase "vagheggiare ... dinota riguardar con
diletto, ammirare, e far l'amore" (vagheggiare ... signifies looking with
pleasure, admiration, and amourousness).
107. Lodovico Dolce, Dialogo della pittura, quoted in Roskill, 142-43.

Aretino and Michelangelo, Dolce and Titian: Femmina

Transcription

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