COLLECTORS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Collectors of the sixteenth century--Character of the time and the
artist’s attitude towards the antique--Cellini restores antique
statues--New Roman masterpiece discovered in Rome--Decadence
of art--A protest of Raphael against daily destructions of
Roman relics--First laws prohibiting exportation of Roman finds
--Barbaric attitude of a Barberini--First law against the
exportation of painting masterpieces.
As we have already observed, centuries in art cannot be separated
like horses in stable-boxes. There are periods between one change and
another, transitional times that make it impossible to fix any date
whatsoever. Thus we may say, without stating a date, that the sixteenth
century not only felt the benefit of the Quattrocento for a certain
time, but was itself actually Quattrocento for a score of years or
more. The men of the past had not vanished; Riccio, for instance, one
of the most active imitators of the antique, died in 1533. But when
the sixteenth century began to outline its own character, the cult of
art, art patronage and the passion for collecting fine things are seen
to have taken another turn. The Cinquecento has of course magnificent
patrons of art, and almost every prince collects something or other.
Life is still imbued with partiality for the antique.
Lorenzino Medici in playing Brutus and actually killing his cousin,
Duke Alexander Medici, is reconstructing an old heroic attitude in
his learned, pagan mind; Filippo Strozzi--or whoever planned his
suicide--makes one think of some hero of Plutarch when he is found
dead, apparently by his own hand, with a line of Virgil, _Exoriare
aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultur_ (may an avenger arise from my
bones), written in his own blood at his side. Painting still deals
with subjects from Roman history and so does sculpture, but artists
have lost all comprehension of them, a fact still more evident
with regard to Biblical subjects. In support of this statement it
is sufficient to quote the painting of Paolo Veronese, now in the
Academy at Venice, representing Jesus in the house of Levi, one of the
artist’s masterpieces, in which Christ is in the company of--Venetian
gentlemen of the sixteenth century; but if in this painting disregard
for the Oriental side of the scene is carried to an extreme, it must
be said that Titian and Tintoretto, and a great many other painters
of the time, were no better. This trait, which certainly originated
in the good period of the Renaissance and which we now find in its
full development, indicates that in its more significant and ripest
expression the Cinquecento is the logical decline of a past triumph in
art, the victim, as it were, of tradition--of tradition and a few
artistic personalities, such as Raphael and Michelangelo, who turned
a new leaf in art, awakened a new feeling, a new overpowering school.
Michelangelo, especially, with his fascinating and inimitable style
draws a legion of followers, fostering an art that during the great
sculptor’s life already is ripe for decadence.
Enlightened collectors abound in this period, their collections
increase daily, but are they really lovers of art as their predecessors
were, are they worshippers of the antique like the bygone collectors?
This is what we ask. In the sixteenth century when art is a tradition
of the far past, on the one hand, and on the other, almost a tradition
of the recent past, life seems to have taken the selfsame attitude:
people are not real lovers of art, but are so merely by tradition.
Every well-bred gentleman of the Cinquecento was obliged to have
the air of understanding art. Machiavelli might have added an
interesting chapter to his _Principe_ to demonstrate how important
it was for a prince to be interested in art, even though, perchance,
utterly indifferent to it in reality. When giving instructions in
his _Cortegiano_, as to what a gentleman of his time ought to know,
Castiglione adds that he must learn to paint. “Even if this art affords
you no pleasure,” advises Castiglione, “it will give you a better
understanding of things, and a clearer appreciation of the excellency
of ancient and modern statues, vases, monuments, medals, cameos,
carvings, and other such objects.”
In a word, ably or otherwise, with natural disposition or not, it
was part of good breeding for a gentleman of the sixteenth century
to be interested in art and play the connoisseur. It is from this
that the Cinquecento suffers. The patent prince-patron of art, the
stock gentleman-collector abounds, the genuine lover of art is rare.
A prince’s house or that of a simple person of good standing was
considered incomplete if without a collection of some sort. Yet while
the artists of the sixteenth century had certainly derived no small
benefit from their predecessors’ passion for the antique, they had
become far too individual, far too engrossed in their own art to be
susceptible to the art of the past. Michelangelo, the artist who
lived practically through both centuries, the sculptor whose genius,
tremendous and over-individual, was nevertheless responsible for the
decadence of sculpture, is a good example of this. He can, like many
another Italian artist, show his versatility and skill by imitating an
art other than his own, as he did with the Sleeping Cupid that deceived
Cardinal San Giorgio, but when the artist is genuine and gives his
own artistic temperament full play, craft and virtuosity disappear,
reminiscence is impossible. Even when the subject and peculiar quality
of the work suggest imitation and turn thought to the antique,
Michelangelo remains true to his own grand soul. His Brutus exemplifies
the point. It was a Roman subject of classical times, and Michelangelo
might easily have been infected by the history of the past and the
forms he had admired when interested in the excavation of ancient
statues in Rome. Yet his Brutus is more Dantesque in its tragic lines
than Roman.
Cellini, to illustrate another aspect, is a different case. He can
repair antiquities for his patron, Cosimo Medici, fairly well, but
he, also, is too highly individual to make an excellent imitation of
the antique. He tells us that he consented to repair his illustrious
patron’s Ganymede because it was a fine Greek work, and, prone as he
is to self-praise, he tells how stupendously he can do it; but he does
not like such work, he calls it _arte da Ciabattini_ (cobbler-work).
The fact, however, is that he is too much alive to his time, has too
strong an expression of his own art to be skilful in imitations. In
fact it happened that he had to try his hand at a portrait of Cosimo
I, in the guise of a Roman emperor. The portrait of the Grand Duke of
Tuscany will never deceive any art simpleton, in spite of its elaborate
cuirass fit for Augustus. Cellini is too delightfully cinquecentesque.
The same may be said of him as a medallist. Yet in some of Cellini’s
work, especially his medals, the idea of imitating the Romans must have
been in his mind, and no doubt he was convinced of his success. Yet he
belonged to the group that by their personality influenced others, and
when trying his hand at imitation quite congenial to his own artistic
temperament he makes something that is at least three-quarters Cellini.
These artists nevertheless admire the art of the past, though with
no danger of infection. Michelangelo is entranced when the _Laocoön_
is discovered in a vineyard near the Thermæ of Titus, and goes with
his friend Sangallo to see that the precious statue be carefully
unearthed. Partly for the sake of gain, and partly, maybe, for the love
of art, Cellini often goes to the Roman Campagna to see what “certain
Lombard yokels” have uncovered in their daily spading of the soil.
Raphael protests, in a famous document addressed to Leo X, against the
continual destruction of Roman relics. His words are worth repeating.
After declaring that the Goths and Vandals have not done so much damage
to Rome as his contemporaries, Raphael concludes by saying that far
too many popes have allowed Roman edifices to be ruined simply by
permitting the excavation of _pozzolana_ (clay) from the ground upon
which their foundations rest, that statues and marble ornaments are
daily burned in ovens and turned into mortar, that Rome, in fact--the
Rome of Raphael’s time--is built with naught but mortar made from old
statues, the sacred marbles of past glories.
Characteristic also is the fact that this country sees the first
protective laws against the exportation of antique art. This would seem
to indicate the consideration in which relics of past art were held in
Rome. Judging by the way it was applied, however, even this act serves
to show that there was no more genuine a passion for old and precious
antiques in the Cinquecento than in the century before. The Roman
laws of the sixteenth century are severe, meting out punishments to
all and sundry daring to carry the produce of excavations beyond the
Papal domains; but otherwise destruction goes on gaily, there seems
to be no discrimination as to what ought to be saved from the doom of
destruction and what is not worth keeping. So while edict after edict
is promulgated in order to safeguard the excavation of statues in
Rome and elsewhere, edicts often full of old-fashioned magniloquence,
“Prohibition concerning the exportation of marble or metal statues,
figures, antiquities and suchlike,” the best buildings in Rome were
allowed to fall into utter ruin without a protest. This state of
things reached the climax of absurdity in the seventeenth century when
Urban VIII, of the Barberini family, declared the Coliseum a public
quarry, where the citizens might go for the stones they needed for new
constructions--an act still commemorated in the protest of all lovers
of art with the proverbial pun, _Quod non fecerunt barbari fecerunt
Barberini_ (What barbarians did not do, the Barberini did).
From this curious inconsistency in the appreciation of art even
Tuscany, the cradle of the Renaissance, is not immune. A Medicean
law intended, like the Roman one, to prevent the exportation of
masterpieces and rare works of art, makes no mention of precious relics
of Roman or Etruscan origin, nor even of the fine pieces of sculpture
that were often excavated, but considers only the paintings of certain
artists of the past school of the Renaissance and those of other
contemporary artists, as being worth keeping, so the law declares,
for the glory and dignity of Florence. The regulations are given in a
second decree, along with a list of the names of the artists concerned,
dead and living. Their work must not be taken out of Tuscany. The list
is very instructive, for it passes over some of the best artists,
such as Botticelli, Credi, the Pollaiolos and others, and prohibits
the export of the work of artists that are either unknown to us or
are of such mediocrity that it is surprising their work should have
been esteemed above the average of their day. The following is one
of these lists, the first that was made. 1. Michelangelo Buonarroti.
2. Raffaelo da Urbino. 3. Andrea del Sarto. 4. Mecherino (?). 5. Il
Rosso Fiorentino. 6. Leonardo da Vinci. 7. Il Franciabigio. 8. Perino
del Vaga. 9. Jacopo da Puntormo. 10. Tiziano. 11. Francesco Salviati.
12. Angelo Bronzino. 13. Daniello da Volterra. 14. Fra Bartolommeo di
San Marco (Della Porta). 15. Fra Bast. Del Piombo. 16. Filippo di Fra
Filippo. 17. Antonio da Correggio. 18. Il Parmigianino.
Without insisting upon a comment that might appear paradoxical, what
kind of collectors of art can be expected from people who place in
the same list of merit Leonardo, Michelangelo, Titian, with Cecchin
Salviati, Perino del Vaga, to say nothing of the now forgotten
Mecherino, a painter whose well-deserved oblivion saves us from judging
his poor work. In another list other names are added. They are no less
grotesque--Santi di Tito Ligozzi, Jacopo da Empoli, etc, in far too
good company.