Patricia Emison

Prolegomenon to the study of Italian Renaissance prints

Abstract Because generally Italian Renaissance art was intellectually dependent on textual authority, it has been possible to study it extensively by referring to the valued literary sources of the day. Whenever the subject was religious, deviancy might have constituted heresy and had therefore to be avoided.1 Even when the didactic element was more nearly in the realm of ethics than theology, often paintings and sculptures implicitly paid homage to authoritative books or authors. The prestige of images, at least until the peak of the High Renaissance, was less than that of words; correspondingly, the glory of artists was usually less than that of writers and editors. Because of this reliance on respected texts, fifteenth-century criticisms of works of art almost always pertain to style; it is only in the sixteenth century, when we presume that stylistic discretion began to be an issue, that decisions about content (or, in Renaissance terms, invention, a term which allows for some overlap with style) attr...

Leonardo's landscape in the "Virgin of the Rocks"

ception, since it was commissioned by such a confraternity2. In addition, it has long been recognized that Leonardos own notebooks attest to his experience of such a place as the painting shows, in a passage normally dated within a few years previous to it. He reports having felt first amazement and incomprehension, followed by simultaneous fear and desire. It is such a piece of autobiography as we seldom have if not for a contemporary artist, and highly suggestive not only about certain landscape motifs in Leonardos art but about the role of

Raphael's Dresden cherubs

The writer attempts to account for the facial expressions and presence of the two cherubs at the bottom of Raphaels Sistine Madonna (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Gemaldegalerie, Dresden, Germany). The painting depicts a heavenly vision of the Virgin and Child revealed by a curtain. At the bottom are the two cherubs, lounging and rolling their eyes in what at least verges on an expression of boredom. The writer discusses possible iconographic sources for the painting, particularly Fra Bartolommeos altarpiece God the Father with Sts. Mary Magdalen and Catherine of Siena (Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi, Lucca, Italy). She considers the composition of Raphaels painting, arguing that the two putti function as expressive foils to the Christ Child; their lackadaisical expressions are meant to ensure that the viewer does not miss the significance of Christs more attentive and respectful expression, one of bodily calm and facial solemnity precipitated by the implicit presence of God.

The Ignudo as proto-capriccio

Abstract The range of interpretation accorded Michelangelos Sistine Chapel ignudi (figure 1) is disconcertingly comparable with that applied to Giorgiones La Tempesta, utterly contrasting though the imagery is in almost every respect. In both cases the artists conception has sometimes been taken to be free of iconography and even of standard subject. Alternatively, various references have been proposed, sometimes to abstruse literary or theological texts. Fanciful or even (in the case of Michelangelo) unconscious self-portrayal has provided an alternative thread of interpretation. A key factor in both sets of interpretations is the valence of the nude — might these be cases in which the prominent inclusion of the nude does not straightforwardly connote the ideal? Might these nudes partake of qualities we could call realistic even while retaining some reference to an abstract or ideal realm? Giorgiones female nude has intermittently been seen, since its earliest mention by Marcantonio Michiel, as a gyp...

Asleep in the Grass of Arcady: Giulio Campagnola's Dreamer*

T HE RAREST FIGURAL VIEW IS THAT involving a protagonist seen from behind, not directing a look outward toward the spectator. One such example is Giulio Campagnolas engraving of a solitary woman in a landscape, seen in a three-quarters rear view (fig. I). Radically stripped of iconographic attributes as it is, this print is less narrative, or even lyrical, in its presence than many pastoral compositions. Here there is no warm, atmospheric, and mellow world of wish-fulfillment as in the Dresden Venus. Giulio offered

Truth and bizzarria in an engraving of lo stregozzo

Although sixteenth-century print images of witchcraft from Germany are well known, this large Italian engraving, associated stylistically with Michelangelo, is a relatively obscure oddity. It is argued here that the print was made to quell unrest over the execution of ten people for “Il Corso” (the Course or Procession), that is, gathering at night for devil worship, in Mirandola. Particular as its circumstances seem to have been, the engraving provides evidence of the problematics of the imagination, the viewers as much as the artists, in a world in which fantasia tipped easily from legitimate to illegitimate realms.