Sunday, December 23, 2018

Giovan Paolo Lomazzo's Temple of Painting (1590)

Michelangelo
Doni Tondo
1506-1508
tempera on panel
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Michelangelo
Entombment
ca. 1500-1501
oil on panel (unfinished)
National Gallery, London

"Imagine walking into a small, round classical temple and immediately being stopped short – blinded by a cascade of light streaming in from above that reflects off the surface of a  marble floor.  As our eyes grow accustomed to the interior space, seven colossal statues emerge from the shadowy walls.  They serve as columns to support the entablature, and, above that, a dome and fenestrated lantern.  We examine the face of one figure and gradually discover the features of Michelangelo: high prominent forehead, beady little eyes, broken nose, scraggly beard, and cropped hair.  Cast in lead, the Florentine master carries the tools of his trade and stands proudly on an elaborately carved pedestal that depicts artists formed from his alter ego, Saturnine characters gone bad – anxious, tedious, envious, desperate types – who warn the visitor against any similar folly.  Continuing along the wall of this edifice, we next encounter a statue of Guadenzio Ferrari, a sixteenth-century Piedmont painter of the finest kind who worked extensively in Milan.  His Jovian aspect forms a pleasant contrast to the greedy, tyrannical counterparts engraved on his pedestal.  The third statue, made of iron, represents Polidoro da Caravaggio.  And so we proceed around the perimeter of the circle, identifying the other statues, one by one, as Leonardo, Raphael, Andrea Mantegna, and Titian, each cast in a different metal and mounted on a decorated pedestal displaying the dark flip side of each artistic temperament.  Where are we?  Who are these artists?  We are standing in the ideal Temple of Painting conceived by Giovan Paolo Lomazzo in 1590.  These eminent masters are the gods he chose to govern this art."

– from the introduction by Jean Julia Chai to her translation of Giovan Paolo Lomazzo's Idea of the Temple of Painting (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013)

Gaudenzio Ferrari
Christ rising from the Tomb
before 1546
oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Gaudenzio Ferrari
St Andrew
before 1546
oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Polidoro da Caravaggio
Scene of Battle
before 1543
oil on canvas (grisaille)
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Polidoro da Caravaggio
River God
before 1543
oil on canvas (grisaille)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Leonardo da Vinci
Leda
ca. 1510-15
oil on panel
Galleria Borghese, Rome

Leonardo da Vinci
La Belle Ferronière
ca. 1490
oil on panel
Musée du Louvre, Paris

Raphael
Entombment
1507
oil on panel
Galleria Borghese, Rome

Raphael
Alba Madonna
ca. 1510
oil on panel, transferred to canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Andrea Mantegna
Christ as Suffering Redeemer
ca. 1495-1500
tempera on panel
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Andrea Mantegna
Judith
ca. 1495
tempera on panel
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Titian
Noli me tangere
ca. 1514
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

Titian-
Tarquin and Lucretia
ca. 1571
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge