ENGLISH SUMMARY OF PUBLICATIONS
Based on a detailed analysis of art theories written by Lorenzo Ghiberti, Antonio Averlino Filarete, Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Dürer, Luca Pacioli, Fra Giovanni Giocondo, Diego Sagredo, Jean Martin, Cesare Cesariano, Guillaume Philandrier, Daniele Barbaro, Francesco Giorgi and Agrippa of Nettesheim, the study attempts to show that a symbolical meaning of Vitruvius's proportional figure - as has been argued by Rudolf Wittkower in 1949 - did not have any significance in 15th and 16th century architecture. The ideas of the authors mentioned above are examined thoroughly and some suggestions are put forward towards a new understanding of proportions in art and architecture. Additionally, the practical background of Vitruvius's "De architectura", the material on Vitruvius in the middle ages and the methodological impact of Aby Warburg (and his "Bilderatlas") on such scholars as Wittkower are reconsidered.
Catchwords: Art theory, architectural theory, proportion; Vitruvius, Aby Warburg, Rudolf Wittkower, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Antonio Averlino Filarete, Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Dürer, Luca Pacioli, Fra Giovanni Giocondo, Diego Sagredo, Jean Martin, Cesare Cesariano, Guillaume Philandrier, Daniele Barbaro, Francesco Giorgi and Agrippa of Nettesheim.
Critical review of Heydenreich's collected writings on the visual arts, plus up-to-date bibliographical references to each essay. Finally, an assessment of Heydenreich's methodological approach, who was initially influenced by the writings of Aby Warburg but later returned to a more traditional kind art history.
Catchwords: Leonardo, Heydenreich, Warburg.
The article investigates the importance of the so-called Codex Huygens (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library) for Leonardo's study and theory of bodily movement and links some parts of the manuscript much closer to Leonardo's proportional studies of 1490 to 1496 and to his modes of composition for the Louvre S. Anne. It follows an analysis of Leonardo's study of movement in his Treatise of Painting.
Catchwords: Leonardo, Codex Huygens, Codex Urbinas, artistic theories of movement.
This is a study dedicated to the afterlife of Polycleitos and of works of art (erroneously) attributed to this artist in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance until c. 1550. Taking Polycleitos as a point of reference, the essay investigates the varied and specific antiquarian interests of humanists, poets and artists. It emerges that the antiquarian culture of the fifteenth century, which was based to a large extent on private collections, focused above all on smaller art objects arts such as gems or reliefs. Most of these objects are today regarded as insignificant, however, in the fifteenth century, they were highly praised and attributed to Polycleitos. The artist's interest in these art works concentrated mostly on motifs of complicated movements of the human body.
Catchwords: Polycleitos, Benvenuto da Imola, Leon Battista Alberti, Poggio Bracciolini, Cyriaco d'Ancona, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Filarete, Leonardo da Vinci.
An old apple tree, rescued by Aby Warburg in the year of his death, becomes a metaphor for the deep historical roots of Warburg as a scholar who did not teach any kind of method but who made clear to his colleagues and friends that the fundamental basis of academic work lies in the passion of a scholar's interests. This is demonstrated by the impact of Warburg's famous `Hertziana-Lecture' of 1929 on Kenneth Clark's way of describing Leonardo's paintings.
Catchwords: Aby Warburg, Kenneth Clark, Leonardo da Vinci, superstition, symbolism.
Argues that the drawing of the Battle of Anghiari (Fight for the Standard) traditonally attributed to Rubens (Paris, Louvre) was executed in the first half of the 16th c. and that this drawing and two earlier copies after it, made before Rubens made the alterations, should be regarded as authentic reproductions after Leonardo`s original version of the fresco of the Battle of Anghiari.
Catchwords: Leonardo, Rubens, drawing, copies of Renaissance paintings,.
Draws attention to the negative connotations of the Tuscan proverb "Every painter paints himself", in the 15th c.; and considers the relationship between automimesis and the habit of Italian painters of repeating particular types; focuses on the example of Leonardo, arguing that although he can be seen to have used types and was accused by Gaspare Visconti of automimesis in the Last Supper (Milan, S. Marie delle Grazie), he in fact rejected it in his writings and made great efforts to avoid it in his art.
Catchwords: Leonardo, automimesis, physiology, types in painting, psychology of art.
Considering the available information about the Giocondo family, Lisa's portrait is placed in its historical context. The circumstances of the portrait's commission, namely the birth of Lisa's third child and the acquisition of a new home by Lisa's family, are proposed as the motives for the portrait's commission in spring 1503. These circumstances of the commission fit neatly into the context of Florentine patronage and portraiture at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries. Lisa's portrait can be seen within a prominent typology of female portraiture in Florence and it continues the tradition of women's portraiture celebrating female virtue and beauty. Finally, Leonardo's artistic aspirations and his response to the challenge of earlier portraiture, found their way into Lisa's portrait.
Catchwords: Portraiture; Leonardo, Mona Lisa; Raffael, Portraits; Florentine Art c. 1500.
The article reconstructs the history of Leonardo's portrait of Mona Lisa from the 16th to the early 20th century and analyses the loan of this painting in 1963 to the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC and New York, when, during the cold war, it was momentarily made the icon of the Free World. In particular the political aims of André Malraux and President Kennedy in planning the Mona-Lisa-exhibition are emphasized.
Catchwords: Leonardo, Mona Lisa; Cold War, Art and Politics, André Malraux, John F. Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy.
Considering the available information about the Giocondo family, Lisa's portrait is placed in its historical context. The circumstances of the portrait's commission, namely the birth of Lisa's third child and the acquisition of a new home by Lisa's family, are proposed as the motives for the portrait's commission in spring 1503. The circumstances of the portrait's commission fit neatly into the context of Florentine patronage and portraiture at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries. Lisa's portrait can be seen within a prominent typology of female portraiture in Florence and it continues the tradition of women's portraiture celebrating female virtue and beauty. Finally, Leonardo's artistic aspirations and his response to the challenge of earlier portraiture, found their way into Lisa's portrait.
Catchwords: Portraiture; Leonardo, Mona Lisa; Raffael, Portraits; Florentine Art ca. 1500.
The article deals with the "career-patterns" or patterns of patronage of the artistic career of Leonardo da Vinci from his early years in Florence to around 1508. It also offers a new and provocative view of the economic background of Leonardo's career as a painter. It is suggested that Leonardo's father played a significant role in acquiring the first important commissions for his son (namely for the "Adoration of the Magi" and "S. Gerome"), and that similar family connections where vital for a some of his commission, such as the portraits of Ginevra de' Benci and of Lisa del Giocondo. A large section of the article is dedicated to Leonardo's financial situation, to the developement of his salary from the 1490ies to 1519 and to his difficult economic situation at the Sforza court.
Catchwords: Leonardo da Vinci, Leonardo's paintings, Leonardo's salary, Leonardos as a court artist, modes of payment for court artists (e.g. in Milan).
In this article Rudolf Wittkower's interpretation of the so-called "Vitruvian Man" is compared to the original significance of this figure in antiquity and in the Renaissance. Wittkower made the Vitruvian man a symbol of Renaissance architecture and of proportional harmony. This view is challanged. It follows a historical explanation for Wittkower's ideas and a comparison with Walter Benjamin's interpretation of Paul Klee's "Angelus Novus". In both cases, in Wittkower's view of the Vitruvian man and in Benjamin's interpretations of Klee's "Angelus Novus", the scholar being an emigrant from fascist Germany played an important role.
Catchwords: Vitruvius, proportion, Leonardo, R. Wittkower, W. Benjamin, Paul Klee, "Angelus Novus" (Gerusalem).
The article traces the origin of "decoro" as a category of art-theory back to the writings of Leonardo da Vinci and Lorenzo Valla, outlines its developement in the Cinquecento, and sums up some 15th-century ideas about decorum in the visual arts with examples from Filerete's "Trattato" and other contemporary sources dealing with the correct depiction of the Virgin Mary and the Annunciation. It follows a discussion of works of art which, by some, have been judged as not being appropriatly made and therefore violating notions of `decorum´: e.g. Mantegna's "Assumption of the Virgin" in Padua, an early version of Uccello's John Hawkwood, Donatello's Gattamelata, his bronzedoors and S. George. The evidence from these examples is taken to demonstrate that in Verrocchio's sculpture Thomas hesitates to touch Christ's wound, because in this instance it would have been in-appropriate. The article concludes with a general discussion of the "sexualization" of the image of Christ by such modern scholars who associate Christ's wound with the vagina.
Catchwords: Decorum, "decoro", 15th-century sculpture, Andrea del Verrocchio's Christ and S. Thomas, Leonardo da Vinci, Lorenzo Valla, Donatello, annunciation of the Virgin, sexuality of Christ.
The history of Alberti's "De pictura" (1435) suggests that only the latin version found readers in the 15th and early 16th centuries; the vernacular translation produced by Alberti himself in 1436 was soon forgotten. "De pictura" did not have a significant impact on Renaissance painters because most innovations described by Alberti had already been inaugurated by artists some years earlier. Alberti's art theory followed the practice of the artists and not "vice versa". Thus Alberti's discription of the emotional interaction between painting and the beholder (Affektübertragung) seems innovative at first because it is described in terms of antique Rhetoric. However, the same interaction was already known from Trecento-religious painting. Alberti only labelled a known phenomenon with categories of rhetoric - presumably to convince the humanist reader of "De pictura" that painting was an art worth to be treated seriously. Alberti also shows a new attitude towards pleasure (voluptas, Kunstgenuß) connected with the visual arts.
Catchwords: Leon Battista Alberti, De pictura; Renaissance art theory; rhetoric, humanism, humanist attitude to pleasure in the visual arts.
The article discusses the early history of Leonardo's "Mona Lisa", the male phantasies which this portrait inspired in 19th-century Romantic literature and the impact of theses phantasies on recent scholarship. It follows a detailed account of the painting's most dramatic "sufferings" in our century, namely the theft of Mona Lisa in 1911 and its loan in 1963 to the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Here, at the climax of the cold war, John F. Kennedy and André Malraux declared the painting to be the icon of the Free World, an image to be defended against World Communism with nuclear arms if necessary. The article concludes with some critical remarks in the relationship between art and politics.
Catchwords: Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa; art and politics; art and the Cold War; block-buster exhibitions; André Malraux; John F. Kennedy; Washington, National Gallery of Art.
The publication contains a discussion of the early copies and drawings of Leonardo`s lost mural painting of the Battle of Anghiari for the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. It attempts both a political and mythological interpretation of the original composition. It follows a discussion of the political situation in Florence in 1503, the interpretation of a new source (Lorenzo Spirito`s poem "L`altro marte") and a comparison with the iconography of paintings for other italian town halls. It is argued that the first horseman to the left, Francesco Piccinino, should be understood as an allegory of Mars. In fact he is equipped with a ram`s skin and horns on this headgear which in older sources (e.g. Statius and Isidor) are described as martian attributes. Francesco Piccinino can be seen as the symbol of the ruthless and unreliable "condottiere", whereas the two horsemen on the right (with a dragon and a mask respectively on their heads) symbolize the virtue "prudentia" and the protection of the goddess Minerva under which the Florentines should ideally win their war against Pisa. There is also an allusion to Alexander the Great as guide to successful warfare. - The publication concludes with an appendix with a discussion of all early copies of the Battle of Anghiari of the 16th and 17th centuries.
Catchwords: Leonardo, Battle of Anghiari, iconographiy of Mars, iconography of Alexander the Great, Michelangelo, mythology in painting, history painting.
The article on Botticelli`s "Primavera" reviews and analyzes the most important literary sources for the painting (included in an appendix) and comes to the conclusion that only four of them are sufficient for a complete understanding of Botticelli`s painting: Horace (Odes), Lucretius, Ovid (Fasti) and Vergil (Aeneid). It can be demonstrated beyond doubt, that the "Primavera" was painted on the occasion of the wedding between between Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de` Medici and Semiramide Appiani. Additionally, the significance of the orange tree behind the figure of Flora is interpreted as a symbol of Semiramide Appiani`s particular role in her marriage with Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco. Finally, the article discusses the importance of texts for our understanding of mythological paintings and the share of fifteenth-century beholders in the "reading" of pictorial symbolism.
Catchwords: mythology, Mars, Venus, Graces, wedding pictures, revival of antiquity, spalliera-painting.
Recent research (summarized in a bibliographical appendix) has amply demonstrated the importance of such family events as marriage, birth and death for the production of italian renaissance painting. In the light of this new direction of scholarship, the meaning of Botticelli`s mythological paintings is re-interpreted. The book argues against traditonal attempts to understand these paintings in terms of Renaissance Philosophy (e.g. of Neo-Platonism) and tries to relate Botticelli`s "Primavera", "Minerva and the Centaur", "Mars and Venus", the so called "Birth of Venus" (interpreted here as the arrival of Venus) and the frescoes from the Villa Lemmi (Paris, Louvre) to precise moments and events in the family life of their patrons. Thus the use of mythology in painting becomes a new dimension and can be understood differently, e.g. in defining the role of men and women in renaissance society. Relevant texts from mythological and other sources are given in an appendix.
Catchwords: mythology, Mars, Venus, Graces, wedding pictures, revival of antiquity, spalliera-painting.