Giovanni Mazzaferro
Vasari's Lives: A Sample once belonging to Taddeo Pepoli with XVII-Century Marginal Annotations
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| Fig.1) Giorgio Vasari, The Lives, ‘Taddeo Pepoli's copy’, Volume II, p. 148, Life of Giovan Francesco called 'il Fattore'. Photo: Giovanni Mazzaferro |
General remarks
The specimen of Giorgio Vasari’s Lives in the Giuntina edition (1568),
which is the subject of this article, is currently property of a private collection: it presents a very high number of marginal notes, especially in the second of its
three tomes.
In general, it can certainly be said
that the annotator wished to make the text more clear and handy, probably for
didactic purposes (but it is not known whether for self-learning or teaching to
third parties). Without any doubt, the annotation of the books must have lasted
many months, if not years. The criteria by which the author of the annotations
chose the sections to be annotated are in all honesty not evident. They were, in
the first volume, the preface, the life of Cimabue and that of Nicola and
Giovanni Pisani, and in the third one those from Taddeo Zuccari to
Michelangelo. The second volume was, without doubt, the one in which the annotation
became systematic (only the latest biographies were without comment) and hinted
at the overall meaning of the operation: the indices were systematically
integrated with data taken from the reading of the tome (see, for example, the
index of names, with the addition of dozens and dozens of items, almost all
figures treated as secondary by Vasari in biographies dedicated to other
artists). Of particular interest, in this regard, is the annotation placed at
the beginning of the medallion on Polidoro da Caravaggio and on Maturino (Volume
II p. 197): "This life of Polidoro,
and Maturino is so comprehensively written, that it is not necessary to extract
any information and add it at the margin, but it must be read entirely; whoever
wants to have news of these mentioned works will found them here". To “extract"
the most important information and its addition at the margin. This was the
purpose of the commentator. The most important information was meant to be the
one on the personality of the creator, his dates of birth and death, the completed
works, and the possible disciples. In this specific case (moreover) either the
same commentator or whoever for him must have changed his opinion because, in
correspondence of the lives of Maturino and Polidoro, there is a sheet folded
in four with the compendium of their biographies, which abides in all respects
to Vasari’s wording.
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| Fig. 2) Giorgio Vasari, The Lives, ‘Taddeo Pepoli's Copy’, Volume II, Index of Artists' Names Photo: Giovanni Mazzaferro |
It should also be added that, in addition to
the actual highlighting of the contents and their (possible) inclusion in the
index, within the whole work, and therefore also for the whole volume I and the
volume III, it is manifest that the note taker created a series (over three hundred) of cross-references
aimed precisely at facilitating the consultation. This suggests a double level
of reading: a first (completed) level, characterised by the insertion of
references (and by the correction in the text of typographical errors reported
in the errata of each volume) and a second (not completed) level with the
highlighting through marginal notes of the salient news on the art creators.
It is only in the context of the system of
references that the annotator allowed himself to show polemical accents towards
Vasari. He was disturbed by the silences or the inconsistency of some of his statements.
Some examples:
- Inconsistencies within the same Life: see the Life of Bartolomeo da Bagnacavallo and other painters of Romagna (Volume II, p. 213). At the beginning of the life (which is a collective biography) Vasari wrote that Bartolomeo da Bagnacavallo, Amico Bolognese, Girolamo da Cotignola and Innocenzo da Imola were so seriously envying each other, that they eventually damaged their respective careers. In the end, however (p. 217) he said that Innocent was a humble and good person. The commentator wrote (on p. 217): "Why did he then include him, in the beginning of this life, among the others whom he called haughty and envious?"
- Inconsistencies between different Lives. In the Life of Bramante very little has remained of the presence of Bramante at St. Peter's – as Vasari wrote in the Volume II, p. 32 – because Raphael and Giuliano da Sangallo subsequently modified the work. The commentator reported: "At page 62 Vasari wrote that Giuliano did not accept the assignment and returned to Florence”. And indeed at page 62 of the same volume (Life of Giuliano and Antonio da Sangallo) he mentioned the version that Giuliano renounced because of too much work and returned to Florence with the Pope's assent.
Most of the inconsistencies (and the
polemical tones) are present in Volume III. I am pointing out at two of them in
particular, in the context of the Life of Michelangelo. In the framework of the
praise of the statue of the Moses, Vasari wrote (Volume III, p. 717 at the bottom of the page)
that Moses can be called more than any other 'friend of God' because God wanted
to set up and prepare his body for his resurrection through the statue of
Michelangelo. In correspondence with these words, the reporter wrote: "A cold and false concept". It is
clear that he contested the sentence from a theological angle, and it seems
logical to think, at this point, that the annotator was a religious. Later, in
correspondence with Michelangelo's "reconciliation" with the Pope
(who was in Bologna) - p. 718 - the annotator affixed not one but a series of
notes, identifying them with letters and referring to the bottom of the page
(see photo 3). Let's see the disagreements:
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| Fig.3) Giorgio Vasari, The Lives, ‘Taddeo Pepoli's copy’, Volume III, p. 717, Life of Michelangelo Photo: Giovanni Mazzaferro |
- “So dubious are these stories! And yet he also professes to be rightly informed because of his friendship with him, mentioned above in page 7 [..]";
- "And what about the scaffold made to make sure the Pope would go to see it? See page 726". Here he made the point that Michelangelo did not want to show any of his things, based on what is written on p. 726, where Vasari wrote that Julius II had let build a movable scaffold to see how he was working;
- "it does not seem that the Pope needed to bribe, and perhaps Julius did not know how to order": once again an intervention that seems to be that of a religious. The idea that the Pope could corrupt (in this case Michelangelo's apprentices to show him the Sistine Chapel) is not accepted;
- "this began after the Pope had returned to Rome from Bologna" (referring to the Sistine Chapel);
- "he has not yet spoken about it": here he disputed that Vasari ever wrote that the Pope had made him paint the Sistine Chapel "as it was said shortly before".
The criticisms of Vasari are either confined on
the lack of coherence in his statements, or reach the verge of disdain for
affronts to religion. However, they never enter into questions of intra-Italian
parochialism, and even less into stylistic facts. In fact, the commentator knew
the controversies concerning the author's alleged partisanship in favour of
Tuscany (the so-called 'anti-Vasari reaction' from other regions of Italy), which
were particularly accentuated at the beginning of the seventeenth century and were
the subject of annotations in other specimens [1]. He responded to such
criticisms with a very balanced and realistic annotation at the bottom of the Life of Giovan Francesco called il Fattore (Tome
II, p. 148): "In the 2nd book at the
end of the second chapter, Lomazzo tarnished Vasari for having forgotten
Gaudenzio [2]; and yet Vasari spoke very well above him in a few words; and it
is to be considered that a painter like Vasari was not able to go all over the
world looking for information for the Lives, and the works of the painters. And
if most of those, whose lives he wrote on, were Tuscan, it is also certain that
some major painters had come out of Tuscany; and he did not defraud Raphael's
due praise although he was not Tuscan; and so of others, from other countries,
who were famous" (fig. 1). In short, Vasari was altogether worthy of
faith, and for this reason it made sense to study him and to make its work more
usable.
The owners
The specimen was in the
twentieth-century Banzi library, where it was placed with the mark B VII 35-37.
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| Fig. 4) Giorgio Vasari, The Lives, ‘Taddeo Pepoli's copy’, Ex-libris of the Banzi Library Photo: Giovanni Mazzaferro |
However, under the ex-libris of the First book,
there is a different and only partially legible signature, which certainly
referred to a previous location.
All three frontispieces show two
stamps, one in sepia that seems to be the first to be affixed, and the second
in black ink, both crossed off and rendered almost illegible. Nevertheless, at
least in the case of the black ink stamp, I was able to identify the owner. See
the title page of the second volume (fig. 5).
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| Fig. 5) Giorgio Vasari, The Lives, ‘Taddeo Pepoli's Copy’, Ownership stamps on the frontispiece of Volume II Photo: Giovanni Mazzaferro |
It's possibile to clearly identify three stones with
the initials P L T and a cross at the top. This was the possession stamp
of the Bolognese Taddeo Pepoli, as it can be deduced from the relative file of
the archive of owners of Bologna’s library Archiginnasio.
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| Fig. 6) Taddeo Pepoli's ownership stamp - Archiginnasio Bologna. See http://badigit.comune.bologna.it/possessori/dettaglio.asp?lettera=165 |
The three stones indicate the three peaks of
Mount Calvary surmounted by a cross flanked by two olive branches (typical of
the Olivetan monks).
Taddeo Pepoli (1605-1684), a descendant of the
famous noble Bolognese family,
was an Olivetan monk. The biographical information about his person can be
found in Notizie degli scrittori
bolognesi raccolte da Giovanni Fantuzzi (News about the Bolognese writers collected by Giovanni Fantuzzi), Sixth
Volume, 1787, Bologna, in the Printing House of St. Thomas Aquinas, pp.
358-362. See
His religious life was linked to the monastery
of San Michele in Bosco, in Bologna, where - according to Fantuzzi - he entered
at the age of fifteen and of which he became abbot in 1645. Pepoli held the
office of General of the Order from 1651 to 1672. I assume (Fantuzzi is not
clear in this regard) that he moved to the 'mother-house' of the Abbey of Monte
Oliveto Maggiore (in the Siena area), where the congregation had originated from
at the end of the 1200s. On returning to Bologna he again assumed the direction
of the monastery of San Michele al Bosco, just before his death.
A man of letters and a lover of fine arts,
Pepoli was famous because he set up, in this final period of his life, the
library in the Monastery, thanks also to the help of the other Olivetan Don
Pietro Bonini. The interest of an Olivetan for the work of Vasari was, without
doubt, logical, given that the latter painter had worked at length on
commission of that Order; it was even more so for those who lived in San
Michele in Bosco, where Vasari painted three large tables for the refectory
around 1540 (see http://www.pinacotecabologna.beniculturali.it/it/content_page/item/368-cena-di-san-gregorio-magno-368). Was Taddeo Pepoli the extender of
the marginal notes to the example of the Lives
in question?
The profile, in many respects, would coincide:
Pepoli, for example, was a religious and had a great passion for books. However,
other aspects do not seem to square. Today, the Bolognese libraries conserve
sixteen books belonging to Taddeo Pepoli (https://sol.unibo.it/SebinaOpac/Opac?action=search&KF_XPOSS=Pepoli%2C+Taddeo&startat=0). Only two cases show manuscript abbreviations:
In sum, Pepoli did not annotate all his books.
He would have done it systematically, in short, only for Vasari's Lives. Moreover, it should also be noted
that some of the marginal notes contained in the Lives pertain to Spain. Now, from the words of Fantuzzi, Taddeo had
no particular relationship with Spain.
At this point the attention must be
shifted to the other stamp (the one with a sepia colour) which, however, I have
not been able to identify. It must also be said that, if we take the title page
of the first tome (the least illegible) and we overturn it, one can read, at
the bottom, the term "retrat" that could stay for the Spanish term
"autorretrato".
While I am not able to decipher it, it could be the stamp of a Spanish owner.
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| Figura 7 Giorgio Vasari, The Lives, ‘Taddeo Pepoli’, Volume I, Sepia ownership stamp in the frontispiece of the first volume (overturned) Photo: Giovanni Mazzaferro |
Spain
The annotator included only a few personal
notes. Among these, most have to do with Spain. The two most evident (but less
important, and perhaps of a different hand) are those affixed in the third tome
in correspondence with the date of birth and death of Michelangelo, where one
can read respectively: 'Nacimiento de Miguel Angel' and 'Muerte de Miguel Angel'. All other notes are in Italian, and indeed in perfect Italian.
In correspondence with the Life of Leonardo (volume II, p. 6), where the Last Supper is discussed,
the commentator added: "There is a
copy in the Escorial in the refectory of the College F. Josef de Siguenza".
The reference is to the Historia de la
Orden de San Jéronimo, Tercera parte, 1605, which was actually dedicated to
the description of the Escorial. The quote is correct. Again, in the Life of Taddeo Zuccari (volume III, p.
699), where his brother Federico was discussed, the commentator added: "This Federico went to Spain to paint at the
Escorial, he earned a lot of money but little honour as told by F. Joseph de
Siguenza in the 3rd part of the Historia of the order of San Geronimo in c. 742
column 2 ". Here too the quote was correct.
This last remark also documents a further
element: the annotator was most probably not from Rome. Federico Zuccari was
the first Prince of the Academy of Saint Luke and, although considered a
mannerist surpassed by the Bellorian classicists, he was always highly respected as founder of the Academy, which he strongly
desired. Any deference was missing here.
Moreover, one should also consider that the Historia di Sigüenza was most probably
particularly rare in Italy. On https://opac.sbn.it, the integrated Italian library
service on the internet, I found two copies, one in Spoleto and the other in
the Alessandrina Library in Rome. Of course it is very possible that some
copies may have been lost, but the annotator had at his disposal a well-stocked
library, especially concerning religious texts (as only the third volume of the
Historia di Sigüenza had value for
the fine arts).
And finally, here is the probably
most interesting note of the entire annotation: again in the Life of Leonardo (Tome II, at the bottom
of p. 4), when Vasari spoke of the artist's drawings on paper and wrote he had
made a head in a chiaroscuro, the annotator added: "A head of an old woman of light and dark is hanging in Spain with D.
Geronimo of Villaforte". There is no reference to where this information
may have been taken from, which suggests that the author may have seen it or
heard it directly from someone (of course the attribution to Leonardo is questionable).
Jerónimo Villafuerte Zapata (dates of birth and death unknown to me) was Butler
of the King of Spain and Conservator of the King of Spain since at least 1627.
Vicente Carducho, in his Diálogos de la Pintura, published in 1633, remembered him as one of the leading collectors
of Spain. In reality, however, we know very little, and in any case Carducho did
not mention Leonardo’s head [3].
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| Fig. 8) Giorgio Vasari, ‘Taddeo Pepoli's Copy’, Volume II, p. 4, Life of Leonardo da Vinci Photo: Giovanni Mazzaferro |
The relations with Spain are therefore the most
peculiar aspect of the annotation.
Other notes
The personal notes of the annotator, as
mentioned, are scarce in numbers. We have already seen the Spanish ones, and the
one on Lomazzo. In the literary field, one should take note of a reference to
Boccaccio in The Life of Giotto's, in
which Vasari wrote that the latter was highly praised in the context of the
novel by Forese da Baratta (Volume I, p. 120). The commentator added: "Day 5 Tale 5” (and was wrong, because it
is Day 6, Tale 5). Siguenza, Lomazzo, Boccaccio: these were the only references
to volumes by other authors, which still give the idea of a man of culture.
A separate discussion is deserves by two notes
on the Life of Marcantonio Raimondi.
Here, as known, Vasari traced a brief history of engraving and referred to many
prints produced in his years. The commentator added two engravings by Dürer; it
was something fairly common in the annotated Vasarian specimens, and testified
to the great diffusion achieved by the graphics during the seventeenth century.
In particular, the added notes were the following:
- Volume II p. 295: the note appears in the lower margin of the page, in which the text spoke about Albrecht Dürer's creations: “I saw a 3-arm long folio with a cart pulled by many pairs of horses, accompanied by all the virtues. The emperor was on the cart with a sun above, and above the horses there were many Latin verses; and it is wood". It is undoubtedly the xylography representing the Triumph of Maximilian I, whose first printing had German verses (1518), while from the following year the verses were in Latin: https://durerarcoditrionfo.cfs.unipi.it/carro-trionfale/
- Volume II p. 296: the note appeared in the lower margin of the page, in which the text referred to the creations of Albrecht Dürer: "I saw a very thinly carved copper In-8 with Adam and Eve". It must be assumed that this is the Original Sin of 1504: https://www.alinari.it/it/dettaglio/ADA-F-002958-0000
Dating
What is the date of the annotations? In their
text there is no explicit feedback that would allow us to set an exact date. We
were however in the first half of the seventeenth century. The books of Lomazzo
and Sigüenza were from 1584 and 1605. Villafuerte became the Butler of the King
of Spain in 1626.
In 1647 the third edition of Vasari’s Lives,
edited by Carlo Manolessi, were published in Bologna. In many ways, the edition
corresponded to several aspects addressed by the commentator. In particular Manolessi
(badly) revised the indexes and inserted lateral printed notes to allow the
reader to orientate himself better (the quality and the level of analysis were however
in any case infinitely inferior compared to the specimen belonging to Taddeo
Pepoli). Of course, it could be argued that the Pepoli sample might have also represented a
sort of reaction to the Manolessi version: the annotator wanted to do a better job
that it had been done by the publisher. However, it is very unlikely that a man
who showed a similar precision in reading the Lives, by systematically referring to the pages, and included exact
quotations to other volumes, never mentioned the Manolessi edition to highlight
errors and shortcomings. Therefore, I would infer that, most probably, the
notes were affixed before 1647; and perhaps (as long as the author has not had
other motivations or, for example, died) it may precisely have been the publication
of the Bolognese version to decree the end of the immense effort of a man who,
to this day, continues to be still anonymous.
NOTES
[1] See Giovanni Mazzaferro, The Annotated Specimens of Vasari's 'Lives': an Inventory: http://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.com/2016/06/giorgio-vasari.html
[2] The quotation is correct and refers to
Giovan Paolo Lomazzo, Trattato
dell’arte della pittura, scoltura et architettura, diviso in sette libri (Treatise on the Art of Painting,
Sculpture and Architecture, divided into seven books), Milan, Paolo Gottardo,
1584, in particular Book II, p. 112: "This
great painter [n.d.r. Gaudenzio] although
with reason could be compared, in terms of prudence, wisdom, and value, to
those who are named in the Third Book of Architecture, was nevertheless
neglected by Giorgio Vasari, in the lives he wrote of the painters, sculptors,
an architects; a reason not to assign to him an ever worse mark is that he
intended only to raise his Tuscan art to the sky.” See: https://archive.org/details/trattatodellarte00loma/page/112
[3] See On Art and Painting. Vicente Carducho and
Baroque Spain. Edited by Jean Andrews, Jeremy Roe and Oliver Noble Wood,
Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 2016, pp. 131-132 with my review here: http://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.com/2016/11/vicente-carducho15.html. The citation of Villafuerte in
Carducho's original is in the Dialogue VIII at p. 150: https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_8RNuctXwSl8C/page/n321
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