by Larry Witham
39.For the Saint Anthony Altarpiece in Perugia, Marco received the final payment for his brother on June 21, 1468, suggesting again how slowly Piero could work (or how slowly patrons paid their debts).
40.Roberto Bellucci and Cecilia Frosinini, “Piero Della Francesca’s Process: Panel Painting Technique,” in Contributions to the Dublin Congress, 7-11 September 1998: Painting Techniques: History, Materials and Studio Practice, ed. Ashok Roy and Perry Smith (London: International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, 1998), 92.
41.James R. Banker, “The Second ‘Casa di Piero della Francesca’ and Hypotheses on Piero’s Studio and his Role as Builder in Borgo San Sepolcro,” in Mosaics of Friendship: Studies in Art and History for Eve Borsook, ed. Ornella F. Osti (Firenze, Centro Di, 1999), 147-57.
42.Quoted in Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, Piero della Francesca (New York: Phaidon, 2002), 287; Hendy, Piero della Francesca and the Early Renaissance, 20; and Longhi, PDF, 187.
43.Pacioli’s De divina proportione, quoted in Bianconi, All the Paintings of Piero Della Francesca, 74.
CHAPTER 7
1.Francesco Guicciardini, The History of Italy, trans. Sidney Alexander (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984 [c. 1540]), 32.
2.Savanarola, quoted in J. H. Plumb, The Italian Renaissance (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961), 220.
3.Karel van Mander’s 1604 Schilder-boeck drew its information on Italian artists from Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists (1550, 1568), which included a biography of Piero. See Bert W. Meijer, “Piero and the North,” in Lavin, PFL, 154.
4.For Pacioli’s biography see R. Emmett Taylor, No Royal Road: Luca Pacioli and His Times (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1942).
5.Pacioli’s Summa de Arithmetica, quoted in James Dennistoun, Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino, Illustrating the Arms, Arts, and Literature of Italy, 1440-1630, vol. 2 (New York: John Lane, 1909 [1852]), 204.
6.Pacioli’s De divina proportione, quoted in Piero Bianconi, All the Paintings of Piero Della Francesca, trans. Paul Colacicchi (New York: Hawthorn, 1962), 74.
7.The plagiarism charge against Pacioli has been at issue since Vasari first leveled it in his Lives of the Artists, written in the mid-sixteenth century. For modern interpreters, the issue has become remarkably complex due to the difficulties in finding and interpreting ancient manuscripts written by Piero and by Pacioli, the precise comparison of which—and this in the historical context of who actually produced the manuscripts and when—has been required to prove the case one way or another. On the whole, however, it does not look good for Pacioli, at least in regard to copying Piero’s Five Regular Solids (since Pacioli seems to match up less precisely with Piero’s Abacus Treatise). Suffice it to say, however, that there are two views. First, Pacioli is guilty: he simply plagiarized from Piero’s two works, failing to give him credit. Second, Pacioli is innocent for a variety of reasons. For a start, it has been argued, Piero had already copied other sources, and indeed, by one interpretation, he may even have copied from Pacioli. Furthermore, the very idea of plagiarism did not exist in the sixteenth century. Many works were willy-nilly compilations of other manuscripts, mostly without attribution and credit. This was especially so with the rise of book publishing: publishers stitched together whatever they could find to sell books. Meanwhile, it is not perfectly clear who actually wrote the treatises now attributed to Pacioli; it could have been his students, or it may have been publishers who patched together his volumes and put his name on the book; his name would improve sales. If this is the case, Pacioli could not have plagiarized. In contemporary writings, for the general pro-Piero view see James R. Banker, Piero Della Francesca: Artist and Man (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). For a pro-Pacioli view see Pacioli’s modern biographer, R. Emmett Taylor, No Royal Road: Luca Pacioli and His Times (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1942), especially his chapter “The Charge of Plagiarism” (352-55). Taylor said it was untenable that Pacioli would turn to Piero to learn mathematics, since Pacioli already had mastered the same topics by the time of Piero’s old age: “Piero was no great mathematician. In view of these facts does it seem likely that Pacioli took the work of Piero?” (344). For another defense of Pacioli also see S. A. Jayawardene, “‘The Trattato d’abaco’ of Piero della Francesca,” in Cultural Aspects of the Italian Renaissance: Essays in Honour of Paul Oskar Kristeller, ed. C. Clough (Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1976), 29-43.
8.Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks, ed. and trans. Thereza Wells (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 332.
9.In his lifetime, Leonardo never produced a formal “treatise” on anything. Rather, he left behind some twenty thousand unorganized pages, loose and in notebooks, of writings and drawings. Later editors organized these, for example, into his so-called “treatise on painting,” which included various notes on perspective.
10.James R. Banker, “Three Geniuses and a Franciscan Friar,” lecture, The Frick Collection, New York City, March 20, 2013. I borrow from Banker’s theme of the two cultures and how Piero and Leonardo bridged them.
11.Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, vol. 1, trans. Gaston du C. de Vere (New York: Abrams, 1979), 471.
12.Ibid., vol. 2, 773.
13.Ibid., vol. 1, 475.
14.Ibid., vol. 1, 470.
15.Ibid. For a discussion of Vasari’s charge of plagiarism against Pacioli see herein chapter 7, n.7.
16.Vasari, Lives, vol. 1, 304.
17.Ibid., vol. 1, 475.
18.Dürer, quoted in Martin Kemp, The Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), 55.
19.Albrecht Dürer, The Painter’s Manual, trans. Walter L. Strauss (New York: Abaris, 1977 [1525]), 28.
20.Barbaro, quoted in James Elkins, The Poetics of Perspective (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 174.
21.The Quadraturisti buildings are diverse in their shapes, but the scenes are spookily absent of human beings. In this movement, one such painter credited Piero, writing in 1585 of him as the “never-sufficiently-praised … greatest geometrist of his time.” Quadraturisti, quoted in Longhi, PDF, 214.
22.The nine parts of Barbaro’s work typified an expanding curriculum of study that combined optics, math, and perspective. Part one was about “principles” and “fundamentals,” in which he looks at the history and theory in general. Part two concerns basic methods, drawing upon Piero. Parts three to nine are on solids, scenography, a “secret” shortcut method, maps, light and color (and shadows, which Piero never covered), the human body, and finally perspective devices. For a summary of Barbaro’s Pratica della perspettiva see both Elkins, The Poetics of Perspective, 90-96, and Thomas Frangenberg, “Piero della Francesca’s De Propsectiva Pingendi in the Sixteenth Century,” in Emiliani, PDFAS, 428-35. Barbaro’s comment on Plato in Martin Kemp, “Piero and the Idiots: The Early Fortuna of His Theories of Perspective,” in Lavin, PFL, 207.
23.Barbaro, quoted in Kemp, “Piero and the Idiots,” 205.
24.For this interpretation of Vasari and Dürer see Erwin Panofsky, Idea: A Concept in Art Theory (New York: Harper and Row, 1975 [1968, English] [1924]), 6-68, 121-26. Panofsky quotes Vasari thusly: “Design is nothing but a visual expression and clarification of that concept which one has in the intellect, and that which one imagines in the mind and builds up in the idea” (62).
25.Dürer, quoted in Panofsky, Idea: A Concept in Art Theory, 124.
26.Historians disagree on the origins of science, especially its origins in the philosophy and religious thought of the medieval world. Those who see Renaissance art playing a role directly, or in parallel, include the science historian Alistair C. Crombie, the art historian Samuel Y. Edgerton, and cultural historians Leonardo Olschki and Eugeni
o Garin. Crombie said, for example, that Renaissance art and science are “exemplary products of the same intellectual culture.” See Alistair C. Crombie, “Science and the Arts in the Renaissance: The Search for Truth and Certainty, Old and New,” in Science and the Arts in the Renaissance, ed. John William Shirley and F. David Hoeniger (Washington, D.C.: Folger, 1985), 15-16. See also Leonardo Olschki, Geschichte der neusprachlichen wissenschaftlichen Literatur, vol. 1 (Leipzig, Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1919); and Leonardo Olschki, The Genius of Italy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1949).
27.On science and quantification see Samuel Y. Edgerton, The Heritage of Giotto’s Geometry: Art and Science on the Eve of the Scientific Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991); and Alfred W. Crosby, The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 1250-1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
28.The concept of “rationalization” of visual space was introduced in William Mills Ivins, On the Rationalization of Sight (New York: Da Capo, 1973 [1938]).
29.Marsilio Ficino, The Book of the Sun (De Sole), excerpted in Marsilio Ficino: Western Esoteric Masters Series, ed. Angela Voss (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2006), 205, 213. Unlike Cusanus, Ficino never voiced the Copernican/Galilean view of the Earth moving. Nevertheless, Ficino’s Book of the Sun, a companion to his Book of Light (De lumine, both around 1491-92) repeated Plato’s assertions about the primacy of the Sun: “Plato twice refers to the dual constitution of the Sun in the Timaeus, first placing it amongst the planets as their companion, secondly presenting it as divine, with a light miraculous beyond all things and with a regal authority.” For the role of the Sun in the new astronomy see also Edward A. Gosselin, “The ‘Lord God’s’ Sun in Pico and Newton,” in Renaissance Society and Culture, ed. Ronald G. Musto and John Monfasani (New York: Italica Press, 1991), 51-58. Gosselin says that the “Solar Age” began with Ficino’s discourses on light, De lumine and De sole, and ended with Newton’s Sun theology and gravitational theory. Historian Eugenio Garin has called this collective approach from 1480 to 1700 “solar literature” (Gosselin, 52).
As the early proponent of a Sun-centered world, Copernicus had embraced the Platonic solar emphasis. He had studied in Italy, the great school of Padua, and in his lifetime had read both Cusanus and (probably) Ficino. He read Plato and cited him to justify the making of astronomical calendars to help order society. Noting that the ancients spoke of the sun as the “visible god,” Copernicus expounded on why the deity would put the Sun at the center of things: “For who would place this lamp of a very beautiful temple in another or better place than this wherefrom it can illuminate everything at the same time? … And so the sun, as if resting on a kingly throne, governs the family of stars which wheel around.” See Nicholas Copernicus, On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1995 [1453]), 24-26.
30.Ficino, quoted in John Hendrix, Platonic Architectonics: Platonic Philosophies and the Visual Arts (New York: Peter Lang, 2004), 143.
31.Ficino, quoted in All Things Natural: Ficino on Plato’s Timaeus, ed. Arthur Farndell (London: Shepherd-Walwyn, 2010), 93.
32.For the importance of Platonism in changing scientific concepts see James Hankins, “Galileo, Ficino and Renaissance Platonism,” in Humanism and Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Jill Kraye and M. W.F. Stone (London: Routledge, 2000), 209-37.
33.Kepler, quoted in Edgerton, The Heritage of Giotto’s Geometry, 20.
34.Despite this difference in temperament, it has been documented that Galileo was influenced by Kepler’s argument for a Sun-centered universe in his most visionary, Platonist, and “least scientific” book, Prodromus (1596). See Stillman Drake, “Galileo’s ‘Platonic Cosmology’ and Kepler’s Prodromus,” Journal of the History of Astronomy 4 (1973): 175. As contemporaries, Galileo and Kepler communicated over the Prodromus, which had both astronomical calculations and vivid speculations useful to Galileo. What Galileo found most useful in Prodromus was Kepler’s suggesting—contrary to Aristotle and supported by Plato—that the universe combined rectilinear (straight) and curved motion, allowing the two to be combined in mathematical equations.
35.Quoted in “Aristotle,” in Encyclopedia of Catholicism, ed. Richard P. McBrien (New York: Harper Collins, 1995), 94.
36.For the kind of elaborate perspective books and experiments produced after Dürer see Kemp, The Science of Art, 62-162; and James Elkins, The Poetics of Perspective (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 145-80.
37.For Kepler and the Platonic solids see Judith V. Field, “Rediscovering the Archimedean Polyhedra: Piero della Francesca, Luca Pacioli, Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Dürer, Daniele Barbaro, and Johannes Kepler,” Archive for History of Exact Sciences 50 (September 1997): 241-89. Kepler quoted, 273.
38.Galileo used several non-scientific sources to argue for his world system. For his preference for perfect circles over Kepler’s elliptical orbits see Erwin Panofsky, “Galileo as a Critic of the Arts: Aesthetic Attitude and Scientific Thought,” Isis 47 (1956): 3-15; and Gerald Holton, Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 434. Galileo also used the Bible to argue for his science when necessary, citing theologians who pointed to the Bible statement that God “shakes the earth out of its place” (Job 9:6) and quoting Plato and his interpreters. On Galileo citing theologians see David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers, God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter Between Christianity and Science (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986), 98-103.
39.Galileo’s two major works, which cite Plato for a new theory of motion, adopted the dialogue style begun by Plato’s writings. In his Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), Galileo’s mouthpiece is Salviati, who says: “[L]et us suppose God to have created the planet Jupiter, for example, upon which He had determined to confer such-and-such a velocity, to be kept perpetually uniform forever after. We may say with Plato that at the beginning He gave it a straight and accelerated motion; and later, when it had arrived at that degree of velocity, converted its straight motion into circular motion whose speed thereafter was naturally uniform.” In the dialogue of Two New Sciences, his mouthpiece Sagredo congratulates Galileo himself for finding such true scientific principles hidden in Plato’s poetry: “The conception is truly worthy of Plato, and is to be the more esteemed to the extent that its foundations, of which Plato remained silent, but which were discovered by our Author [Galileo] in removing their poetical mask or semblance, show it in the guise of a true story.” Both are quoted in Hankins, “Galileo, Ficino and Renaissance Platonism,” 209, 210.
40.Quoted in David C. Lindberg, Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 176.
41.Kepler, quoted in Lindberg, Theories of Vision, 200. As modern optics would later discover, the cornea area of the eye focuses two thirds of the light, while the lens—which changes shape under muscle control—produces the final one third of a precisely focused ray of light.
42.Kepler, quoted in Lindberg, Theories of Vision, 203.
43.Newton, quoted in Kemp, The Science of Art, 285.
44.Newton, quoted in Margaret Livingston, Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing (New York: Abrams, 2002), 14.
45.Newton, quoted in Kemp, The Science of Art, 286.
46.Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999 [1709]), 77-78.
47.Ibid., 106-108.
48.Locke, quoted in Victor Nuovo, “Reflections on Locke’s Platonism,” in Platonism at the Origins of Modernity, ed. Douglas Hedley and Sarah Hutton (Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer, 2008), 209.
49.Winckelmann, quoted in Udo Kultermann, The History of Art History (New York: Abaris, 1993), 53.
50.Ibid.
51.Goethe, quoted in Kultermann, The History of Art History,
56.
52.Winckelmann, quoted in Kultermann, The History of Art History, 39. The German title of his work is Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums.
53.Luigi Lanzi, The History of Painting in Italy, trans. Thomas Roscoe, vol. 1 (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1847 [1795]), 26, 15.
54.Ibid., vol. 1, 15, 338, 339, 340.
55.Ibid., vol. 1, 339.
56.Ibid., vol. 2, 467.
57.Ibid., vol. 3, 188. He said the other “foreign” painter who influenced Ferrara was Francesco Squarcione, who had a noted painting academy in Padua.
58.Ibid., vol. 1, 11.
59.Ibid., vol. 1, 23.
CHAPTER 8
1.Quoted in Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, Piero della Francesca’s Baptism of Christ (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981), 165. In Sansepolcro, the Sassetta altarpiece of 1444, which had substituted for Antonio’s failed commission, had been apparently segmented into parts and carried off. One of its parts made the journey all the way to the Louvre, where it, too, remains down to the present.
2.See C. P. Brand, Italy and the English Romantics: The Italianate Fashion in Early Nineteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957); and J. R. Hale, England and the Italian Renaissance: The Growth of Interest in its History and Art (London: Faber and Faber, 1954). Before the Protestant break with the papacy, England had warm enough ties to the principalities of Italy, especially over trade and banking, and to include the generations around Piero. Before Piero was born, English poet Geoffery Chaucer’s visit to the Italy of Dante—this was around 1373—had inspired a new form of English literature. As Piero came of age, the Florentines had honored the English mercenary John Hawkwood by putting his great equestrian portrait in their cathedral. In Piero’s last years with the House of Montefeltro, the king of England awarded the duke of Urbino the Order of the Garter.
