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Summary
Painting, power and patronage
Professionalization, state formation and civilization
The role of artists in modern societies is considered a problem by the public, politicians and artists themselves. The functions of art in Western states are unclear and ambiguous. As a painter I became aware of these problems; hence I became interested in the changes in the social positions of painters and the social history of art. I expected that sociology would provide theories and methods to elucidate such questions. Though sociology could not provide ready made models, some sociological concepts were useful to select and organize the wealth of historical evidence, which as a rule belongs to the domain of art historians.
Modern opinions about art are to a large extent shaped according to artistic ideas developed in the Italian Renaissance. The main trends in artistic theory, professional organizations, social status of painters and patronage in Italy between 1250 and 1600 are discussed in this book as a process of professionalization. The first stage, roughly up to the 1340s, is related to the commissions of the mendicant orders and the patronage of the city states, in particular Siena. The second stage - seconda età, according to Vasari-was determined by the commissions of the wealthy Florentine families, particularly the Medicis. Professional expertise was further developed through the magnificent patronage of courts and states. The dynamics of patronage and professional competition between artists prompted successive generations of painters for more than three centuries to an unprecented - and according to some, unsurpassed - creativity. Individual originality on the one hand, and social control exercised by the economic, political and cultural elite on the other, were in a fruitful balance. The alliance of art and power was in the mutual interest of painter and patron.
The professionalization of painters, which was dependent on the dynamics of patronage, can be explained by the long term processes of state formation and civilization. These concepts are derived mainly from the work of Weber and Elias. Specific aspects of civilization and state formation are
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clarified with concepts developed by Durkheim and Mauss, such as collective representations, public ritual and gift relations. I try to integrate the sociology of religion into a more coherent historical survey: the rise of the mendicant orders, the integration of those in city states, the rise of nuclear families within church and state, and hence the formation of courts as the centre of territorial states. The professionalization of Italian painters coincided with the rise of the West within an emerging world economy; the famous painters in fact determined to a large extent our image of early modern Europe.
With priests, notaries, lawyers and bankers, the painters belonged to the first professional groups to emerge. They succesfully competed with established specialists such as ivory workers, goldsmiths, tapestry makers and sculptors. They became the acknowledged experts in visualizing codes of civilized behaviour and the claims of states to a monopoly on violence, taxation and legislation within a territory.
During the above mentioned three stages in the rise of the profession of painters, they were dependent mainly on commissions to decorate the newly built churches, town halls, family chapels and palaces. The first generations of painters described by Ghiberti and Vasari, worked to a large extent for the mendicants: Franciscans, Servites, Carmelites and Dominicans. They established themselves in the expanding towns, fulfilling functions in public administration, education, social control, ritual, charity and private devotion. The mendicants were more professional than the secular clergy and the aristocratic members of the agrarian orders. The mendicant monks were recruited from the bourgeoisie: the public to which they preached and the people they received for communion and confession. The mendicant monks were dependent legally on the pope and financially on the towns. They served to break the power of bishop and chapter in the interest of the lay bureaucracies in the towns and the central authority of the popes, particularly before their establishment in Avignon.
The mendicants popularized the elitist papal patronage and introduced painting in cities with a modest artistic tradition. The Roman tradition in fresco painting was renewed and spread to centres such as Assisi, Siena, Pisa, Florence, the northern towns and Naples. The commissions in Assisi, awarded from the 1280s to 1319, gave a major impetus to a group of fresco painters, born and educated in Siena and Florence. At the same time they and their less gifted colleagues developed new types of panel paintings to be placed on rood screens or choir walls, choir altars and side altars. Monumental crosses and panels like the Rucellai Madonna were probably made for choir enclosures, with the laity in the nave as the main public. At the same time smaller paintings were made for the monks' altar. Painted panels replaced older decorations, such as ciborium and antependium. This gave a
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major impetus to the rise of the painter's profession, as they developed a new product for which there was a growing demand: the Gothic polyptich.
Polyptichs proved so succesful that even aristocratic patrons commissioned these for secular churches with a liturgical setting which was less suited for monumental altarpieces. Cardinal Stefaneschi ordered a splendid double sided altarpiece for Old Saint Peter's, probably for the canons' choir. The aged patron presents a model of his donation to Saint Peter. Opposite his throne the hermit-pope Celestine v was portrayed. Stefaneschi also commissioned a mosaic, frescoes and several illuminated manuscripts, with texts he himself had written; one was about the recently canonized Celestine.
All social groups advocated their own saints. The city government of Siena ordered a magnificent polyptich for the high altar of the Duomo. The enthroned Maria was flanked by the four city saints, Ansanus, Savinus, Crescentius and Victorinus. Duccio's Maestà was flanked by four altarpieces containing narrative representations of the main events in her life and one of the four city saints. The decoration of Siena cathedral was determined by the bourgeois elite. The city government made the decisions about the enlargement of the church, the new dome, the Pisano pulpit, the new choir window and the programme of altarpieces. The chapter lost its authority, civic ritual became more important than the choir liturgy. The main function of the high altar was linked up with the state procession at Ascension Day, which had its apotheosis before Duccio's Maestà.
The artistic expression of power was brought a step further in Siena in comparison with the ways the mendicants celebrated their saints and statutes in painted images. In Siena the main commissions were given at the very same time new laws were codified. Paintings and laws were interrelated expressions of the same civic ideal in the Comune Senarum and Civitas Virginis. The claims to territorial authority, exercized by the city state were visualized in the town hall. In the council room a fresco similar to Duccio's Maestà was painted on the east wall. On the opposite wall the territory, governed in the name of Siena's city saints, was depicted.
The Lorenzetti frescoes not only mark an early culmination of juridical symbolism of the state, but are also to be considered the first realistic large scale depictions of town and landscape as part of a civic ideal. City and contado were depicted according to the prescriptions in the law of 1337-1339, with regard to police and army, education, the regulations for professions such as masons, butchers and teachers, the parks, streets, mills, churches, walls, roads, bridges, rivers and villages. The frescoes visualize the basic governmental structure of the Sienese state, dominated by the Nine, who claimed to represent the major civic virtues such as peace, justice, wisdom, concord and good government. In spite of the elaborate iconography, the meaning of the frescoes was simple and clear: law and order within a civilized state.
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After the 1340s Florence eclipsed Siena as the leading centre for painting. The Florentines managed to maintain their commercial economy, continued the growth of their state and further developed codes for civilized behaviour. The rich merchant families ordered frescoes and altarpieces for their newly acquired chapels in the great mendicant churches. Painters both educated and working in Florence formed a professional group. Older Florentines, like Giotto, who mainly worked outside their native city, were attracted to the city by major commissions and honorific titles. After the 1320s the Sienese painters lost Florence as a market for Gothic polyptichs. While important commissions became rare in Siena, Florence showed a remarkable continuity in patronage. In the fifteenth century the chapel commissions stimulated painters to develop new solutions. The mathematical devices used by architects were adapted by painters to solve problems of composition and perspective. Artists like Ghiberti and Alberti took a greater interest in the history and theory of their profession. A large group of painters learned to paint good portraits of nuclear families and the factions they formed. The Florentine elite was portrayed against the background of Tuscan landscapes and the city they governed. As a secular and aristocratic orientation became more important, Florentine painting was increasingly influenced by court art.
Palaces became the focus of artistic patronage. Princes and popes became the most important clients of the best painters. Refined display and magnificence was more important in the courts than in the city republics. Princes like Federico da Montefeltro were more powerful as patrons than merchants like Francesco Sassetti. The condottiere, who in 1474 became duke of Urbino, ordered a magnificent library, impressive palaces and expensive church decorations. He was portrayed as a kneeling knight and as an elegant prince on several altarpieces. His role as a ruler over a territorial state was expressed in portraits against the background of his domain. In his studiolo Federico was portrayed among the most famous authors in the Western culture. In the centre the prince sits in armour. He reads from a Bible to teach his son and heir, dressed as an elegant courtier. The extensive iconographic repertoire of the prince as learned statesman was integrated into a more coherent image by Julius ii.
Julius ii incorporated Urbino into the Papal State. As a sovereign ruler the Pope could be more explicit in state symbolism than a condottiere who received the title of Duke from the Pope. Moreover Julius could use the impressive tradition of papal patronage to express his spiritual and territorial claims. He was the patron of New Saint Peter's and commissioned Michelangelo to design and make a funeral monument of a magnificent scale. The political claims of the Pope were visualized in a more narrative way in the Vatican Palace. The Pope's workroom on the third floor, the Stanza della
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Segnatura, was redecorated with frescoes showing the superior knowledge and civilization in the Julian Rome. The wars with the signori in north Italy and the King of France prompted Julius to a more explicitly political programme. The political implications of the School of Athens and the Parnassus were emphasized in the Disputà and the Jurisprudence. The addition of host and altar, the leading councillors of Julius, the palace and church in the background, and Julius as supreme legislator changed the meaning of the two representations. They were turned into an allegory of the Fifth Lateran Council.
The state symbolism of papal Rome was designed after Julius' return from his unsuccessful military campaign to Bologna in the summer and autumn of 1511. The interplay of historical narrative, references to contemporary events and a general political programme was expounded in the Stanza d' Eliodoro. The topic is the spiritual, fiscal, military and diplomatic sovereignty of Italy under papal rule. These four aspects were stressed in the four frescoes: Julius in prayer, Julius and his nephew expelling a secular prince who robbed the possessions of the church, the liberation of Saint Peter and the barbarians leaving Italy as a result of papal diplomacy. The frescoes by Raphael and those in the adjacent rooms were meant for courtiers, councillors, ambassadors and rulers. Past, present and future were integrated into an impressive image of the state as a work of art.
To Vasari, who extensively wrote about the Vatican Palace, these frescoes served as a model for his work in the palace of Cosimo i, Duke of Tuscany. Vasari followed the examples set by Raphael and Michelangelo, in paintings, in separate buildings and in his concept of city planning. Cosimo i was presented as a wise legitimate ruler of a medium sized territorial state, which was depicted according to the Tuscan law codified in 1565. The continuity of republican institutions was stressed in the courtly imagery centred on the Duke as head of a civilized state.
Vasari was, in retrospect, more important as a writer than as a representative of the profession which he so excellently described in a synthesis of theoretical explanation and historical narrative. He traced his profession from the 1250s to his own days, the 1560s in the second edition of his Vite. He chose increasing expertise and growing recognition by patrons as his main themes, yet warning about the risk of reverse tendencies in his own time. Vasari distinguished three periods in which painters developed their practical skills and theoretical insights: the first età from the 1250s to the 1420s, the second età from Masaccio to Mantegna, and the third and final one with the artist-heroes Leonardo da Vinci, Titian and especially Raphael and Michelangelo setting the standard for Vasari and later generations. In the sixteenth century painters attained a high degree of professional perfection, after the successive innovations since the generation of Giotto
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and Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Vasari stressed the contrast with the period from the third century until the 1250s, lacking both patronage and competent painters.
Vasari wrote a theoretical introduction to his history of painting, sculpture and architecture. Concepts like inventione, disegno, maniera, grazia and sprezzatura were introduced to describe the progress in professional expertise. These historical and critical concepts were not formulated as a coherent theory, but were used as a framework to interprete the overwhelming amount of material about artists and patrons. The dynamics between painters and patrons was the main force behind the process of professionalization, so minutely described by Vasari.
The main goal of the Vite was not just historical narrative, but also to set examples to both painters and patrons, and to provide a programme for a new professional institution. The elite of painters, sculptors, architects and literati sought an organization devoted to the arti del disegno. The best painters stressed the differences with the majority of mere craftsmen. They saw themselves as learned professionals with knowledge about the history of art, antique culture, the Christian tradition and contemporary court civilization. They wanted to be members of an organization with other people who mastered intellectual persuits with great elegance and imagination. Guilds were suited neither for abstract discussions about mathematics, antique texts or the value of painting compared to sculpture, nor for an educational programme for artists along those lines. The attempts to establish a new professional organization in Florence, the Accademia del Disegno, were succesful partly because it fitted into a general reorganization of the Tuscan state, expressed in the new law of 1565 which was also the main point of reference to Vasari's decorations of the Sala dei Cinquecento.
Thus the professionalization of painters in Italy can be explained by the long tradition in patronage which focussed on painted images as the cheapest, most impressive and intellectually most varied symbols of social groups, like the mendicants, the city republics, the merchant families and the courts, which formed the basis of the territorial states. The combination of relatively cheap and yet effective craftsmanship and intellectual pursuits, which were also useful for city planning and the organisation of public ritual, provided the best painters with an important advantage to all the other craftsmen. So painters could attain a higher professional status than other specialists and were at the same time able to express their claims in a sophisticated vocabulary, derived from their patrons and learned advisors.
The sixteenth-century Italian professional ideal became a norm in the major cultural centres of Europe until the nineteenth century. With the decline of artistic patronage tied to the iconography of the state and its civilization, artists had to redefine their profession. They went even further
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in stressing autonomy vis à vis clients and the state; a small minority was confirmed in its attempts to continue the great tradition of famous and rich artists, yet without giving explicit visual expression to the social claims of patrons. Modern art itself became a symbol of civilization, precisely because it can hardly be judged by other standards than the artistic tradition itself. The alliance of art and power was confirmed: free art became an indispensable part of the presentation of modern democratic states and a small number of private corporations. The unusually wide gap between successful artists and the vast majority of their colleagues became even wider, because the market for less spectacular work collapsed. The professional example of the modern artist was clearly set by a biased image of the most excellent painters, working for the most powerful patrons. |
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