Jan de Jong

Spying and Speculating: Francesco Salviati's Painting of King David and Bathsheba in the Palazzo Ricci-Sacchetti in Rome

V I S I T O R S E N T E R I N G T H E sala grande of Palazzo Ricci-Sacchetti in Rome (Figs. 1 and 2), are confronted with a sort of triptych showing King David stalking Bathsheba (Fig. 3). The three pictures on the left wall, which appear to be panel paintings, are actually illusionistic wall paintings. The one in the middle shows Bathsheba bathing with her servants, observed by King David from the balcony of his palace (Fig. 4). In the scene on the right (Fig. 3) Bathsheba is seen three times climbing a spiral staircase to the king’s bedroom to sleep with him. In the scene on the left (Fig. 3) Bathsheba’s husband Uriah is killed on the battlefield. The story that these paintings illustrate is told in the biblical book of Samuel: In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king’s men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem. One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, »Isn’t this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?« Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (She had purified herself from her uncleanness.) Then she went back home. When Bathsheba announced that she was pregnant, King David first tried to make her husband Uriah appear to be the father of the child. When this failed he had him placed in the front lines of the battlefield, where he soon lost his life. The king then took Bathsheba as his wife. However, at God’s behest the prophet Nathan severely rebuked the king for his behaviour and made him repent. After this scandalous episode, King David wrote the penitential Psalm 51 , as an expression of his feelings of guilt and regret. This story may seem unfortunate to modern eyes, but we are not the first to see it so. As early as 1526 Erasmus of Rotterdam wrote critically about both the tale itself and depictions of it, and in 1570 bishop Johannes Molanus approvingly quoted Erasmus in full in his De picturis et imaginibus sacris: First, why is it necessary to have certain stories depicted in church at all? Why a youth and a girl lying in the same bed? Why David watching Bathsheba from his window and summoning her to be defiled, or embracing the Shunammite who was sent to him? Why the dance of Herodia’s daughter? The subjects are indeed taken from the holy books, but why has so much artistic licence (quantum nequitiae)

Monuments of Meditation and Propaganda. The tombs of Popes Pius III and Pius V

Monumenti di meditazione e propaganda Le tombe di Pio III e Pio V Questo articolo si interroga sulle caratteristiche dei monumenti funebri di due cardinali, che sarebbero poi divenuti papi, Francesco Todeschini-Piccolomini (Pio III, 1503) e Michele Ghislieri (Pio V, 1566-1572), e le loro motivazioni nella scelta dei rispettivi monumenti funerari. Il saggio, inoltre, analizza come e perche i due pontefici sono stati successivamente ricordati in modo diverso da quello che essi avevano scelto. Da vivi, ambedue i cardinali avevano fatto allestire il proprio monumento tombale in modo tale da veicolare due messaggi: in primo luogo, il concetto dell’umilta nei confronti della morte; in secondo luogo, l’idea che la tomba non era soltanto un luogo in attesa della resurrezione del corpo, ma anche uno spazio di meditazione che avrebbe ispirato pensieri sulla vita, la morte e l’oltretomba. Tuttavia, una volta deceduti, ambedue i pontefici furono deposti in monumenti funebri che celebravano principalmente il loro ruolo di capi della Chiesa. La loro volonta venne pertanto sacrificata per esigenze di propaganda papale, di carattere esclusivamente terreno, senza alcun richiamo spirituale alla morte, la salvezza celeste e la speranza della resurrezione.

Responding to Tomb Monuments. Meditations and Irritations of Aernout van Buchel in Rome (1587-1588)

Practically all Roman tomb monuments from the fifteenth and sixteenth century are based on a standard model, intended to arouse the viewers to meditate on the transience of life, death, and the hereafter. Van Buchels main interests were history and inscriptions. Consequently, he appreciated the monuments he saw mainly for their historical value and/or lettering, and not in the first place for their aesthetic qualities. The reconstruction of 1621 made the monument quite different from the way it appeared when Van Buchel saw it. Van Buchel examined the tomb monuments in the church of S. Maria in Trastevere in Rome. Hosiuss tomb monument has its counterpart in a monument on the left side of the choirs entrance. The propaganda that Van Buchel noticed in Rome was not in the first place meant to convince or convert Protestants or other non-Catholics. Keywords:church; Protestants; Roman tomb monuments; Van Buchel

Cultivating Piety. Religious Art And Artists After The Council Of Trent

Already since her youth, the Dominican tertiary Osanna Andreasi da Mantova had been very responsive to images. More than fifty years after Osanna Andreasis ecstacy on an image offered by a monk in the monastery of St Mary in Milan for inspection, Catholic clergymen may have raised similar questions when they took a critical look at contemporary religious images. This critical look was prompted by the generally disapproving attitude towards religious art by the Protestants. In December 1563, the church fathers at the Council of Trent decreed in accordance with the tradition of the Church, that images should not only instruct the faithful, but also move them to adore and love God and cultivate piety. A number of treatises were composed to clarify and specify these decrees. The two most important of them were written by Joannes Molanus, published in 1570, and Gabriele Paleotti, in 1582. Keywords: council of trent; Osanna Andreasi da Mantova; piety; religious art; religious images

“Where the gate drips near the Vipsanian Columns”. Aernout van Buchel Gathering Information on the Culture and History of Rome: the Pantheon

The Dutchman Aernout van Buchel lived in Rome between November and March 1587-1588. Visiting ancient and contemporary monuments, he recorded his impressions and knowledge in small notebooks. Several years later he worked these into a full report, expanding his notes with information from a wide range of scholarly sources. Focusing on his description of the Pantheon, this paper traces Van Buchel’s sources. Some were visual (prints and book illustrations) but the great majority were literary, ranging from ancient Greek and Latin writings to contemporary scholarly publications. In general, he used recent history books and guides of Rome as a first introduction proceeding to more specialized works. On the whole, he consulted over two hundred sources, usually quite critically. In the case of the Pantheon, he closely followed various guidebooks, adopting some incorrect information on the building’s history and original dedication, but also adding valuable information based on personal observation. His reconstru...

The Successes of Pintoricchio and the Problems of Vasari. Fortune and Reputation of an Umbrian Painter in Rome on the Threshold of the High Renaissance

Ever since Giorgio Vasari’s Vite was published, Pintoricchio has been considered a minor painter from the Early Renaissance, in spite of the prominence that he enjoyed during his lifetime. This paper argues that Vasari’s assessment sprang from anachronistic criteria: Pintoricchio’s style and his use of gold; from Vassari’s own personal frustrations in having to work with a large crew of assistants to be able to execute large projects, as did Pintoricchio; and from his partisan view that art either came from or was done in Florence. These criteria ensured that Pintoricchio, as a painter from Umbria who was very successful in Rome before c. 1500, did not fit into Vasari’s scheme, according to which the arts in Rome started to bloom only after Julius II became pope in 1503 and artists such as Bramante, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael — for the most part coming from Florence — reached the level of perfection. Vasari dealt a further blow to Pintoricchio by describing him as a morally despicable person and l...

Introduction, Special Issue: Describing Pictures vs. Depicting Descriptions. Guest Editor: Jan L. de Jong

This special issue of Visual Resources deals with the questionof painters illustrating tests and writers describing paintings. Can they do so accurately, or do they consciously or unconsciously make alterations in accordance with the demands of their own medium?

Recreating Ancient History: Episodes from the Greek and Roman Past in the Arts and Literature of the Early Modern Period

The papers in this volume offer a wide range of examples of how historians, writers, playwrights, and painters in the early modern period focused on classical antiquity as a source from which they could recreate the past as a way of understanding and legitimizing the present. This publication has also been published in hardback, please click here for details.

Love, betrayal and corruption: Mars and Venus and Danaë and Jupiter in the Palazzi stati-cenci and Mattei di Paganica in Rome

difficult, it is up to the specialists to make suggestions. Unfortunately, this concentra tion on stylistic problems sometimes leads to a neglect of iconographic matters. In this paper, I will discuss two examples and will try to show via these works how icono graphical analysis may be helpful in solv ing problems of dating and attribution. In 1984, a lavishly illustrated volume on the Palazzi Cenci and Giustiniani appeared; in 1989, the section on Palazzo Cenci was published as a separate book, with some additions to the text.1 Situated on the piaz za S. Eustachio in Rome, Palazzo Cenci, originally called Palazzo Stati, was built for Cristoforo Stati (c. 1498/1499-c. 1550/ 1551) by Giulio Romano. The sala grande and the adjoining salotto on the piano nobile have both been decorated with a