Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
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Paolo Pino
Dialogo di pittura [Dialogue on Painting]
Edited by Susanna Falabella
Rome, Lithos, 2000
Review by Giovanni Mazzaferro. Part Two
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| Titian, 'La Bella', 1536, Florence, Galleria Palatina Source: The Yorck Project via Wikimedia Commons |
Go Back to Part One
What is Painting?
But what is,
in the end, painting? Here (via the Tuscan Fabio) Pino established a tripartite
division which, for all we know, was unprecedented (although, it reformulated
already known elements): "The art of
painting imitates nature in superficial things. In order to let you all
understand it better, I will divide it into three parts in my own way. The
first part will be drawing, the second invention and the last colouring" (p. 107). None of these terms - of course - was new in itself (if we assume that
"fantasy" was synonymous with "invention", it was a term already
used at the end of the fourteenth century by Cennino Cennini). The division was however different, e.g. compared with Leon Battista Alberti.
Moreover, drawing, in turn, was divided into four subsets: judgment, circumscription,
practice and composition. Judgment was a gift of nature (and depended,
basically, upon astrological combinations); you could exercise through the
study, not achieve it by yourself. Circumscription assumed a very different
value from the one indicated by Alberti with an identical term (Alberti spoke of
it as "the encircling of the rim in
painting"; here, instead, circumscription indicated the outlining of
shapes, giving light and dark, while making a sketch. Practice indicated manual
skills and techniques ranging from having good drawing skills, knowing how to
make a watercolour, knowing how to draw on coloured papers, showing easiness in
painting, and finding the lights. In essence (Pino did not say it, but he hinted
to it), it was practice which was taught and transmissible. With the composition,
instead, the reference (and adhesion) to Alberti’s thought was compelling: to compose
meant to put together a series of figures in a harmonious whole.
The term 'invention' indicated the artist's
ability to find original stories that would become objects to his paintings ("virtue used by few of modern
artists"), but also to reinterpret, in a personal way, the subjects
already used by others ("to distinguish
carefully, sort, and use the things said by others"- see p. 108).
As it often
happens, when one has to do with treatises on painting, the most indefinite
aspect is colour, because it is the less prone to the coding of rules to be followed
[5]: "The things pertaining to
colour are infinite and it is impossible to explain them with words, because
each colour – either by itself or in composition with others – can provide more
effects, and no colour by its own properties is able to produce even a minimum of
natural effects" (p. 111). To obtain the natural effects (e.g. for
flesh) requires an extremely meticulous and diligent study. It should be however
said that Pino took a position that, under this point of view, makes us
understand how much time had passed since (for example) the Libro dell'Arte (Book of the Art) of Cennino Cennini: "I will not dwell any further on the species
and the properties of colours, as this is something so much well known, than
even those who sell them know how to produce them and their qualities, both for
artificial as well as mineral colours" (p. 111). I consider it
extremely unlikely that Pino knew the Book
of the Art (though there are some affinities). He certainly did not mention
it, and if he had mentioned it, he would have probably written something very
similar to what Vasari said in his Lives:
the Book talked about things that, in
his day, everybody knew very well. So much so that, when Fabio promised Lauro to
offer him a 'recipe' on how to paint, we understand early on that he intended
to speak of painting techniques (oil painting, fresco, etc.) and did not
provide guidance on how to derive the colours or other practical issues (see.
pp. 114-115).
In reality,
the tripartite division of painting between drawing, invention and colouring did
not exhaust its scope. Vagueness overarched all of them. It was not obtained by
painting with particularly precious colours: true vagueness was nothing but
grace, which was generated by a proportionate representation of the beauty of
nature. The grace of a painting was what really made an artist great.
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| Titian, Sacred and Profane Love, 1515, Rome, Galleria Borghese Source: Wikimedia Commons |
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| Titian, Sacred and Profane Love (detail), 1515, Rome, Galleria Borghese Source: Wikimedia Commons |
The beauty of nature
Painting
(and it was no surprise), then imitated nature in its phenomenal aspects.
Nature was superior to art because "nature
gives relief and let speak its figures, which is the impossible to us" (p.
91). The real beauty of nature was being proportionate. The artist's task was
(except as discussed later) to replicate this system of proportions. The theme
of proportion (and of the man as measure of all things) was notoriously one of
the dearest to humanism; that being said, it is easy to show that it originated
from the classical world (think of Vitruvius) and was already present in the
late Middle Ages. In principle, the system outlined by Pino (see pp. 96-97) with
the related system of measurement (which basically gave a predominant value to
the face) was quite similar to that mentioned not only by Alberti, but already previously
by Cennini at the end of the fourteenth century. There was, however, a clear
step forward, when Fabio emphasized that the proportions of the human body
applied in reality very rarely. In fact, proportions were ultimately modified
by the rendering of movement, which resolved itself into a series of foreshortenings
and dimensional realignments bringing the rule into crisis. This was the
complexity challenging the skill of the artists. The latter were explicitly
invited (this was clearly a topic testifying the influx of Mannerism) to paint
"in all your works [...] at least
one foreshortened, mysterious, and difficult figure, so that you will be noticed
as valiant by those understanding the perfection of art" (p. 109).
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| Titian, Portrait of a woman with a mirror, about 1512-1515, Paris, Louvre Museum Source: Wikimedia Commons |
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| Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1538, Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi Source: Wikimedia Commons |
Between Middle Ages and Mannerism
The game of
crossed references to the medieval past and the incipient Mannerism, as already
seen on several occasions so far, could go on for ever. So, when Fabio said
that painting was a liberal art, he mentioned it stating that "the reason
is that every painter cannot produce any effect in our art [...] if the thing
which is first imagined is not afterwards reduced by the other senses [...] to an
Idea, with that integrity, which such idea can produce, so that the intellect
understands it perfectly in itself " (p. 99). It is a theme that, in fact, is
the forerunner of Zuccari’s interior design and of the Mannerist theory. It is worth
noting, however, that the most fascinating thing, for those who study art
literature, is to follow the birth and historical development of a concept. The
concept of Idea was basically already foreshadowed in Cennino Cennini, where he
said that the practice of drawing "will
make you expert, ready and capable to design within your head" [6].
In the
context of the constant references to the past, I would also like to include the
issue of the comparison between arts, and in particular the comparison between
painting and sculpture, to which Pino gave much prominence, solving it (as
logical to him, since he was a painter) in favour of the first. Rightly, Barocchi
and Falabella highlighted the fact that the discussion followed, by only two
years, the second lecture given by Benedetto Varchi to the Florence Academicians,
which was a sort of climax of the discourse on the comparison. Not only Varchi
lived for a couple of years in Padua and certainly attended in the early '40s
that Academy of Infiammati that - for better or worse - was forever linked to the
name of Pino. What interests me, in this case, however, is (to try to) prove
that the issue of the comparison was not only a literary exercise, but (at
least in the specific Venetian case) reflected a concrete reality, which we
witnessed and that directly affected the system of the medieval guilds. We
should not forget that, in practice, the abolition of the guild system was decided
by Napoleon. In his Antiquity of the Union of Painters at Venice (written in the late eighteenth century) Pietro
Edwards stated clearly that, within the guild of painters, a conflict existed between
painters and sculptors. The latter, in 1458, tried to subvert a system that, in
fact, saw them in a subordinate position compared to the former ones. In fact,
sculptors were prevented to paint if not previously recognized by the Art,
while painters were granted the right to sculpt anyway [7]. Most probably, the
controversy (which thus had an economic motive, limiting the work of sculptors)
went on for the following decades. The importance which Pino attached to the
issue of the comparison, in short, aimed to reaffirm the superiority of
painting not only for reasons of principle, but to avoid that the status quo in the world of the guild (to
which the painter was probably much closer than we can think of) be put into
discussion. For the rest, the claim of art belonging to the liberal world repeated
themes which were already dear to Alberti, but even before him to Cennini. Pino’s
painting was liberal because it was granted "freedom of forming what it likes" (p. 100); for Cennino, the
painter had the power to paint "as
he likes, according to his fantasy" [8] .
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| Titian, Balbi Holy Conversation (detail), about 1512-1514, Traversetolo (Parma), Fondazione Magnani-Rocca Source: Wikimedia Commons |
An issue
that I definitely find new in the field of art treatises is the beauty of
women. Mind you: the exaltation of the beauty of women, as a form of purity and
nobility of her soul, found its literary roots even in the birth of Italian
literature (think to Dante, as one for all). Moreover, the fact that there was reference
to female beauty did not mean by itself that the role of women was upgraded to
an inexistent emancipation. Pino cited a number of female painters testified in
antiquity and immediately Lauro exclaimed: "I cannot compare women with the excellency of men in this virtue, and,
I think, that it would deny art, if you pulled the female species out of its
own nature. Women do not befit anything else but distaff and spinning wheel" (p.
101). So much so that Fabio immediately found an explained to that: "You say well, but those whose virtues were
so celebrated were in fact females belonging to men, as it is fabled of the hermaphrodites"
(p. 101).
Nevertheless,
there was without any doubt some progress compared to Cennino (who refused to
deal with the woman's measures because in it, as in animals, there was no
perfection). Barocchi and Falabella bind the description to the Dialogo della bellezza delle donne (Dialogue
of the beauty of women), published by the Florentine Agnolo Firenzuola in 1541.
However, it is undeniable that the description of Pino recalls in our
imagination the female beauty to which Palma the Elder and Titian had attributed a new
standard with their works in the immediately preceding years.
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| Palma the Elder, Portrait of a blod woman, about 1520, London, National Gallery Source: Google Art Project via Wikimedia Commons |
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| Palma the Elder, Young Woman in a Blue Dress, about 1512-1514, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum Source: Google Art Project via Wikimedia Commons |
Pliny
The part
where Pino recalled the antiquity of painting (to reinforce his thesis on the
nobility of the same) was generally considered the weakest and the least
interesting. There is no doubt that, if the criterion was original thinking on
antiquity, these pages did not fit it. But I would like to emphasise the
universality of the Natural History
of the Roman writer. Pliny and his book were the true common denominator of all
the writers on art in Europe at least in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. When it came to supporting the nobility of painting and its
belonging to liberal arts, there was no other reference but him. Vasari
himself, who in 1550 did not devote systematic attention to the work, warned
that his Lives lacked something and
accompanied the second edition with the letter of Giambattista Adriani, which was,
in fact, precisely a repetition of the Plinian story. Thus we find Pliny everywhere.
The same anecdotes which Pino recalled in his dialogue could be found in
Spanish treatises of the early 1600 (Carducho and Pacheco) and in the
seventeenth century in Northern Europe, from Van Mander to Philips Angel. Pliny
became a formidable tool for the benefit of all those who claimed a special
status for art making, regardless of the reliability of what he said, or
perhaps because he told amazing stories. Unknowingly, he wrote a work that,
about 1,500 years later, would culturally unite Europe long before we started
to talk about it in political terms.
NOTES
[5] Just
think of the enormous efforts made by Matteo Zaccolini seventy years later to
establish a rule on the distance of colours from the experience of nature.
[6] Cennino Cennini, Il
libro dell’arte, (The Book of the Art), by Fabio Frezzato, Vicenza, Neri
Pozza, 2003, p. 71.
[7] See Pietro Edwards, Antichità
dell’Unione dei Pittori in Vinezia (The Antiquity of the Union of Painters
in Venice), in: Giovanni Mazzaferro, Le Belle Arti a Venezia nei manoscritti di Pietro e Giovanni Edwards (The Fine
Arts in Venice in the manuscripts of Peter and Giovanni Edwards), p. 235.
[8] Cennino Cennini, Il
libro dell’arte... cit., p. 62.
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