Looking at the
Renaissance
Artistic
identities
Fame and
anonymity
During the Renaissance, individuals were celebrated for great achievements in
public affairs and increasingly also in the arts. This cult of 'famous men' was
largely inspired by antique ideas and included not only politicians and
military heroes but potentially poets and artists as well. The Italian poet
Petrarch (1304-74), one of the earliest to take a renewed interest in
antiquity, recorded the feats of heroic men in his De Viris
Illustribus (On Famous Men), written in 1347 and modelled on the works of
the Roman historian Livy. This book included military and political heroes from
antiquity.
Taken up by subsequent
writers and artists, series of 'famous men' (and occasionally women) sometimes
included literary as well as military figures. For example, the mid-15th
century frescoes decorating the Villa Carducci in Legnaia by the Florentine
artist Andrea Castagno (d.1457) included three military heroes, three famous
women (the 14th-century Florentine writer Boccaccio had written a series of
lives of famous women) and three poets: Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. Artists
had in a sense already been elevated to the status of 'famous men' by Pliny in
his account of ancient Greek artists in his Natural History, providing
antique sanction for the high status claimed by Renaissance artists. In stating
that drawing had formed part of a liberal education in ancient Greece, Pliny
once again added power to their cause.
The persistent reputation
and popularity of Italian Renaissance artists is attributable to a great extent
to the publicity, even propaganda, provided by Vasari's Lives. While
Van Mander's biographies had nothing like the same impact in Europe, early
Netherlandish painters have increasingly attracted attention since the 19th
century - to the extent that the fame of the Arnolfini Portrait may
now plausibly be held to rival that of Brunelleschi's dome. This however, is
only half of the story.
Many artists escaped the
attention of the biographers, sometimes through historical accident and
sometimes because their products lay outside the designated boundaries of 'high
art', as in the case of tapestry weavers or goldsmiths. During the Renaissance,
countless other artists participated in a rich and varied commercial production
that did not lend itself to individual fame because it involved collaborative
practices and relatively standardised work. The quality of this work could
nevertheless be extremely high. Illuminated manuscripts from Ghent or Bruges,
for example, were produced in large numbers in the second half of the 15th
century and the early 16th century, and designs were extensively reused.
Despite this 'mass production', the level of skill displayed in some of these
miniatures is comparable to the technical virtuosity of Van Eyck; and the
Ghent/Bruges trademark - the illusionistic borders, usually incorporating
botanically-precise depictions of flowers and plants - are a worthy predecessor
of the Cracow botanical paintings. The painstaking work of reconstructing the
identities and working practices of these artists from documents, writings and
surviving work is still on-going.
Associated image links
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Mysteries and Methods
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