Ilaria Bianchi. [The Politics on Pictures in the Age of the Counter-Reformation. Gabriele Paleotti as Theorist and Patron]

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
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Ilaria Bianchi
La politica delle immagini nell'età della Controriforma
Gabriele Paleotti teorico e committente
[The Politics on Pictures in the Age of the Counter-Refermation.
Gabriele Paleotti as Theorist and Patron]

Bologna. Editrice Compositori, 2008

The cover of the volume
displayng a picture by Bartolomeo Cesi,
Virgin in Glory with Saints Benedict, John the Baptist and Francis, Bologna, San Giacomo Maggiore

[1] This volume discusses the interweaving between theory and iconography in the work of Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti. His activity encompassed writings, most notably the Discorso intorno alle immagini sacre e profane (Discourse on the sacred and profane images) of 1582, but also included specific orders which the Bologna-born cleric commissioned (such as, for example, the Confessio in St. Peter's). Designing those projects for implementation, Paleotti was very prescriptive, leaving only limited margins to the selected artists. This feature is of the utmost importance to guess how the fourth book of the Discorso, dedicated to the ordering of pictures, might have ever developed, if it had been completed (see the notes to the critical edition of the Discorso published by Libreria Editrice Vaticana in 2002). Mind you: the role and figure of Cardinal Paleotti have been extensively investigated, beginning with the anthologies of Paola Barocchi (the Discorso appears both in Trattati d’Arte del Cinquecento fra Manierismo e Controriforma - Art Treaties of the Sixteenth Century between Mannerism and the Counterreformation)  as well as the Scritti d’arte del Cinquecento - Art Writings in the XV Century and later on in Paolo Prodi’s Ricerca sulla teorica delle arti figurative nella riforma cattolica (Research on the theory of the visual arts in the Catholic reform), and eventually in the aforementioned critical edition of the Discorso.

Ludovico Carracci, Madonna with Saints also named La "Carraccina",
Cento, Pinacoteca Civica (the Museum is closed because of the 2012 earthquake)
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Federico Barocci, Annunciation, Assisi, Santa Maria degli Angeli
Source: Wikimedia Commons

[2] Ilaria Bianchi’s specific merit is to have conducted archival research, particularly in the Isolani private archives (a noble family from Bologna) where, in addition to the documents used to reconstruct precisely the jobs commissioned by the Cardinal, were found other materials of particular interest. Some of them display exchanges of views with ecclesiastical stakeholders, but also with artists, during the drafting of the Discorso intorno alle immagini sacre e profane (Speech around sacred and profane images): it is for instance the case of the letter sent in 1580 by Fr Egidio from Matelica to Paleotti where one of the most sensitive issues in respect of the Protestants’ positions is addressed, i.e. that on relics; or, again, the fragment of a letter (what remains of a text which miraculously escaped a fire in World War II) by the painter Prospero Fontana, where the voice of the artist explains the concerns of those who were confronted every day with market expectations and saw themselves somehow "forced" to execute "lascivious" images, in order not to fall into poverty. Therefore the artist calls for a top-down intervention, whereby the confessors should convince potential clients to request only the realization of paintings lined with the Counter-Reformation precepts.

Giovan Battista Crespi, aka Il Cerano, Flight to Egypt, Bristol, City Art Gallery
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Tanzio da Varallo, San Carlo Borromeo giving the Holy Communion to men affected with plague,
Chiesa parrocchiale di Domodossola
Source: Wikimedia Commons

[3] Ms Bianchi tracks also some fragments from the third and fourth book of the Discorso. According to what Paleotti stated in Italian, in the inaugural printed version (princeps) in 1582, the volume should have been made of five books, of which only two were however published. In 1594, when he moved permanently to Rome as cardinal, the Discorso was published in Latin. The new version attracted immediately a wider echo than the Italian princeps, with the linguistic aspect being only one of the reasons of success: the Cardinal had been given greater weight in the church hierarchy, and his words therefore enjoyed now greater authority. However, in those years Paleotti experienced a state of personal frustration (which explains his De tollendis imaginum, a text with very accentuated prescriptive tones), alleging the substantial circumvention of the Counter-Reformation’s principles concerning images, despite all church indications. Probably in this context, he therefore decided to revise again the Discorso, in order to complete it according to the scheme proposed in the 1582 princeps edition. The fragments that Ilaria Bianchi proposes here (also found in the Isolani Archive) were due to shape respectively the preface and Chapter XVIII of Book III. Most probably, according to the author, the third book (which in essence was dedicated to the moral precepts of the Counter-Reformation) was actually more advanced than she was able to track down. Quite in embryo appears instead the fourth book (which, in essence, was due to form a library of lascivious or admissible pictures), of which have survived fragments "related to the depiction of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, something on more complex depiction of the Trinity, as well as the notes taken from sources, which the theorist intended to use to draft the pages on Transfiguration" (p. 221).

Giulio Cesare Procaccini, Portrait of Cardinal Federico Borromeo, Milan, Museo Diocesano