by Dana Arnold
Pliny was an important influence on one of the most enduring and influential writers about art, Giorgio Vasari (1511–74). He was a Florentine painter and architect who is often seen as the first historian of art and his work the Lives of the Artists is still in print today and is an important source book for our knowledge about Renaissance artists. Vasari was aware of the precedents for this kind of enterprise, including Pliny’s Natural History, as he states:
I left out many things from Pliny and other authors which I could have used had I not wanted, perhaps in a controversial way, to leave everyone free to discover other people’s ideas for himself in the original sources.
But his biographies proved equal to their antique sources, as Vasari’s Lives was first translated into English in 1685, so becoming a model for how to write about art in the post-classical world.
Vasari’s Lives, as they are often known, comprise three parts. The first of these covers artists Cimabue and Giotto, who were working in what Vasari sees as the ‘rebirth’ of the arts after the Dark Ages. The second part discusses the period we now call the Early Renaissance and includes the artists Masaccio and Botticelli, the architect Brunelleschi, and the art theorist and architect Alberti. It is important to remember that there was little differentiation between the practices of architecture, painting, and sculpture at this time and many ‘artists’ practised all three. (Vasari, for instance, designed the building that is now the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.) The final part of the Lives begins with Leonardo da Vinci and covers what we now regard as High Renaissance artists.
Vasari’s choices about how to arrange his material have had a resounding effect on art history. By placing so much emphasis on the ‘genius’ and achievements of an individual artist, Vasari laid the foundations for the kind of connoisseurial approach to art history I discussed in Chapter 1. Vasari was one of the first historians to make qualitative judgements about art in order to create a canon of great artists and within this great works by these practitioners. For Vasari, quality was based on the artist’s skill in the illusion of naturalism and the technical ability required for this degree of idealized ‘beauty’. Moreover, as I have already pointed out, this kind of approach to art history encourages the attribution of works of art to an artist, or the influence of one artist on another, on the basis of stylistic similarities – if two things look alike, they must be related.
Firstly, it’s important to consider the idea of writing a history based solely on the lives of artists and whether this is really a history of artists rather than art history. There is the obvious problem that Vasari probably knew a lot more about some artists than others. And, like all of us, he had his personal favourites. In the case of the Lives this had a resounding effect on how it was written and how it has influenced art history. Vasari’s first edition of the Lives, published in 1550, was intended to be a celebration of the genius of Michelangelo Buonarroti – the temperamental sculptor and painter who had stunned early 16th-century Italy with his painted decoration of the Sistine Chapel ceiling (1508–12) and his giant marble sculpture of David (1501–4). Indeed, Michelangelo is the only living artist whose biography appears in the first edition of the Lives. Michelangelo died in 1564 and the second, much better known edition of the Lives appeared in 1568.
The problem with Vasari’s trajectory of art history is the simple question of what happened to art after Michelangelo. Did it stop or go into decline? Once the pinnacle of perfection had been reached, where could art go? You can see from this that setting up the idea of artistic progress, whether it be towards the superlative art of one individual, as here, or a more abstract idea of the re-creation of classical forms or the flawless representation of the human subject, implies that there is an end to art history. This point raises an important issue about ways of writing any kind of history. Histories are written with the benefit of hindsight; we know what came before and after the events being discussed. The idea that events unfold towards an identified outcome is known as teleology. But history continues beyond the moment at which the historian is writing; we are, then, capable of reconfiguring the processes and narratives of art history. But I am getting ahead of myself here.
The second point about Vasari is that the way he divided up the development of art in Italy from c.1270 to 1570 has never really been challenged. We still see the artists he places in Part Two of the Lives as belonging to the Early Renaissance, showing only the beginning of what Vasari saw as the important aspects of art – that is the re-use and re-interpretation of the art of antiquity. But we know that Vasari’s contemporaries did not see such divisions between Early and High Renaissance artists. Moreover, Vasari had neither interest in nor appreciation of the art of earlier periods which are now known as Gothic or Byzantine. But there is overlap as well as disagreement between Vasari’s division of art history into specific periods and those set up by later historians. For instance, Giotto is included in the Lives as the prima luce (‘first light’) of the Renaissance as in his work Vasari saw the first signs of an interest in nature, whereas more recently Giotto has been presented as working in the Gothic tradition because of his interest in the stylized poses and compositional formulae of that period.
Although Vasari did not see any relationship between art, society, and politics, he did set up criteria that could be used to judge the quality of a work of art. These five aspects of art have done much to underpin the way in which the story of art has been put together by subsequent generations. A brief discussion of these also enables me to outline one of the major influences on the philosophy of art, Neoplatonism, and how it interacted with artistic practice in the Renaissance period. Vasari’s criteria include Disegno – the art of good draughtsmanship or design. Here, Vasari is using the Neoplatonic idea that the artist has the Idea of the object he is trying to reproduce planted in his mind by God. The artwork, whether painting or sculpture, relates both to the object the artist sees and the perfect form that exists only in the mind. The second criterion is Natura – art as an imitation of nature was a new concept in the 15th century. Here again, Vasari brings in the Platonic idea of the artists being able to improve on nature through the knowledge of perfect forms. Thirdly, Grazia, or grace, is an essential quality of art as evident in the softness of the works of artists like Michelangelo. Fourthly, Decoro refers to artistic decorum or appropriateness – for instance, a saint should look like a holy man or woman. This also came to mean a form of modesty that demanded that the genitals of sculpted or painted nudes were covered up – sometimes after the work was finished. Vasari’s final category was Maniera, which refers either to an artist’s personal style or to that of a specific school of artists. These criteria still have a great deal of currency today as part of the continuing interest in the naturalism of classical art as refracted through the Renaissance and beyond.
Vasari’s method of writing about art history remained focused on the works themselves and relied on close observation of detail together with biographical fragments from the artist’s life. I think it is useful here to compare Vasari’s discussion of a given work with that of a different art historian. Ernst Gombrich is one of the best-known cultural historians from the 20th century. His work centred mainly on the Renaissance, and he wanted to examine works of ‘high’ culture (or art) as evidence of the broader intellectual climate of the time. Gombrich was also interested in anthropology and psychoanalysis as ways of getting to the cultural meaning of art. As a scholar of the Renaissance, Gombrich has been accused of conservatism and reinforcing canonical art history. But his work also covers the psychology of art, using cartoons and advertisements as his evidence. Whether he is discussing high art or popular culture, Gombrich’s awareness of the changing functions of images and the importance of their social and cultural context imbues his analysis with a layering of meaning and nuances, so that I find it hard to see him as a traditionalist. That said, I must here raise my hand and state my objections to Gombrich’s best-selling book The Story of Art, first
published in 1950 and still in print today. This sets up a linear development of art, focusing on canonical artists with little regard to the broader contexts or theoretical approaches manifest in his other writings. Like Vasari’s Lives, The Story of Art is all about ‘great men’ and ‘style’. If not by now, then certainly by the end of this book, you will see all the reasons behind my negative position on the ‘caveman to Picasso’ linear, teleological narrative of art.
A comparison between how Gombrich and Vasari write about the same work of art demonstrates the differences in their approaches to art history. Raphael’s School of Athens (Fig. 9) is a useful example for this exercise as it is a complex image with enduring appeal. Raphael, alongside other artists, was employed by Pope Julius II to decorate a series of rooms in the Vatican palace – these are often referred to as the Vatican Stanze. The wall paintings, known as frescoes, in the Stanza della Segnatura, the Stanza dell’ Incendio, and the Sala di Constantino were worked on by Raphael and his workshop assistants from about 1509 onwards. The Stanza della Segnatura is usually considered to be the most important of these rooms as Raphael was most involved with the execution of the work there. The two main frescoes in this room were the School of Athens and the Disputa concerning the Blessed Sacrament – their subject matter showing an interesting juxtaposition between the secular and the sacred, or the pagan and Christian. Pope Julius II was a very keen patron of the arts – his sculpture collection at the Vatican, which included the Apollo Belvedere, was discussed in the previous chapter.
Vasari’s account of these important commissions is as follows:
At that time Bramante of Urbino, who was working for Julius II [told Raphael] that he had persuaded the Pope to build some new apartments where Raphael would have the chance to show what he could do.
9. School of Athens by Raphael (c.1509–11/12), one of the frescoes adorning the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican, Rome.
[A]fter he had been welcomed very affectionately by Pope Julius, Raphael started to paint in the Stanza della Segnatura a fresco showing the theologians reconciling Philosophy and Astrology with Theology, in which there are portraits of all the sages of the world shown disputing among themselves in various ways. Standing apart are some astrologers who have drawn various kinds of figures and characters relating to geomancy and astrology on some little tablets which, by the hands of some very beautiful angels, they are sending to the evangelists to expound. Among them is Diogenes with his cup, lying deep in thought on the steps: this is a finely conceived figure which deserves high praise for its beauty and the appropriate negligence of its clothing. There, also, are Aristotle and Plato, one holding the Timaeus, the other with the Ethics; and round them in a circle is a great school of philosophers. The astrologers and geometers are using compasses to draw innumerable figures and characters on their tablets; and it is hardly possible to describe how splendid they look.
In his 1972 book, Symbolic Images, Ernst Gombrich challenges and corrects Vasari’s account:
On his arrival in Rome . . . Raphael ‘began in the Camera [Stanza] della Segnatura a painting of how theologians harmonize Philosophy and Astrology with Theology, where all the sages of the world are shown discussing in various ways.’ These opening words of Vasari’s account . . . naturally set the key for the interpretation of these frescoes for centuries to come. Not only did Vasari establish the conviction that the subject of this cycle was meant to be of profound philosophical import, he also enforced the interpretation by isolating the individual frescoes from their intellectual and decorative context . . . . We now know the source of this error: Vasari worked from engravings after the frescoes [and as a result] placed Evangelists among the Greek philosophers . . . [and] this tendency persisted . . . and though scholars failed to agree on any one interpretation the conviction persisted that there was a key to these frescoes which must be in accord with the humanistic ideas of the sixteenth century.
Gombrich blames the misunderstandings of the iconography of the Stanza as a whole on Vasari’s misleading account and the way in which subsequent historians looked at the individual components of the room – the ceiling and walls – instead of the composition as a whole. He argues that, if read in this way, the room, with its mixture of pagan and Christian subjects, ‘should not have caused any surprise to anyone who knew the habits of medieval moralists or indeed of St Augustine.’ The ceiling comprises enthroned personifications that relate to the representations underneath; these in turn amplify these ideas. The School of Athens is coupled with Philosophy, which together with the other ceiling figures of Law, Theology and Poetry represented the Liberal Arts as taught in Italian universities at that time.
Vasari’s approach to art history, as we have seen, still has currency, but challenges to it – or more accurately a different way of thinking about the subject – came about in the 18th century. Johann Joachim Winckelmann was one of the first historians to put art in its context using as many different sources as possible. Placing art in its cultural context was a revolutionary idea as it meant that the art became more important than the artist. Indeed, Winckelmann stated that individual artists had little to do with his project, which was to come up with a more systematic way of organizing knowledge about art. That said, Winckelmann still emphasized that a detailed examination of the work of art was necessary, and like Vasari he adhered to the connoisseurial preoccupation with identifying ideal beauty or perfection. But where Vasari got into difficulties over the problem of the ‘decline of art’ after the death of Michelangelo, Winckelmann confined his interests to the art of antiquity. For Winckelmann, ancient Greek art from the 5th century BCE, known as the classical period, constituted the pinnacle of artistic achievement in terms of the representation of beauty and perfection. The biographical details of the artists who produced these works are very scant, but this was of little concern to Winckelmann who saw art history as being about the aesthetic rather than the artist. Winckelmann introduced a systematic, chronological study of art history. The artistic remains of antiquity were seen as coherent survivors of the classical age that could at once determine and augment the human condition (although unbeknown to Winckelmann many sculptures were Roman copies of Greek originals). The ‘invention’ of ancient Greece, or at least its establishment as a high point in human civilization, was an essential element of this Eurocentric concept of an ideal or classical tradition. In turn this had relevance for modern times. In his Imitation of the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks (1755), Winckelmann states:
[there] is but one way for the moderns to become great, and perhaps unequalled, . . . by imitating the ancients . . . . It is not only nature which the votaries of the Greeks find in their works, but still more, something superior to nature; ideal beauties, brain born images.
Winckelmann’s ideas draw heavily on mid-18th-century theories of language, which was seen as having developed its resources to allow a clear knowledge of things, but excesses in style and rhetoric led to its degeneration. He traced a similar path through art, seeing classical Greek art as the pinnacle and the subsequent movement and vigour of the Hellenistic period as the ‘excess’ and ‘degeneration’. This idea of development and decline in the art of the ancient world has remained the standard chronology for art history. Winckelmann’s analysis, or system of history as he preferred to call it, is firmly rooted in the verbal tradition – the critical apparatus of language was transposed onto art. Winckelmann relied on textual descriptions of objects to identify works in order to write his verbal history. It is important to remember here that neither Winckelmann nor Vasari had access to good, accurate illustrations of the works they were discussing – something we take for granted today. They had to rely on prints and engravings of varying quality that could be misleading. This point is implicit in Gombrich’s critique of Vasari’s analysis of School of Athens. But the absence of good visual records has much wider importance, as it was not until the middle decades of the 20th century that photographic techniques became
sufficiently refined to enable the close study of art objects other than in situ. Clearly, the use of photography brings with it a new set of problems, but it does make us think carefully about the relationship between verbal and visual systems of recording art, a point that is developed further in Chapter 5.
The idea of cultural history as developed by Winckelmann had as much resonance in the writing of art history as Vasari’s biographical approach. For instance, the Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt adopted a similar approach to Winckelmann in his two-volume The Civilisation of Renaissance Italy, which first appeared in German in 1860, but was quickly translated into English. Burckhardt placed the art of the Italian Renaissance firmly in its cultural context to explain its ‘civilizing’ and ‘civic’ qualities. The Civilisation of Renaissance Italy remains a standard work and did much to prompt a revival of interest in this period as well as endorsing the predominant position given to the survival of the classical tradition in Western art.
Winckelmann also had influence in the way in which the art object attained an autonomous status. His emphasis on the work rather than the artist may well have helped open up a new way of thinking about art history. In 19th-century Germany one of the most influential philosophers in the history of Western thought, G. W. F. Hegel, proposed that the shape of history was not one of linear progression of inevitable decline and fall – which had been one of the problems that faced Vasari and Winckelmann. Instead, he believed that history was the result of the workings of a ‘world spirit’ and that art was one of the ways in which this spirit manifested itself. The term Zeitgeist (‘the spirit of the age’), now familiar in English, comes from Hegel’s philosophy of history. His system is a way of explaining not just works of art but all cultural production from a given moment in time. As such the actions of individuals, that is to say artists in our case, have little importance, and nor did the social context of the production of a work of art matter – something I pick up on in Chapter 4. The preoccupation with style from an Hegelian perspective is different from Vasari’s connoisseurial approach. Here, style has a kind of autonomy as it develops over time and transcends human activity, so playing down the idea of genius so crucial to other ways of writing art history. Ernst Gombrich’s idea of cultural history was influenced by Hegel, but Gombrich attributed art or images with changing functions that react with their context – something Gombrich called an ‘ecology of art’. This is a term borrowed from sociology that means the relationship between art and its environments.
