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Mannerism, Spirituality, and
Cognition
A forum for the critical inquiry of the visual arts in the early modern world, Visual
Culture in Early Modernity promotes new models of inquiry and new narratives of
early modern art and its history. The range of topics covered in this series includes,
but is not limited to, painting, sculpture, and architecture as well as material
objects, such as domestic furnishings, religious and/or ritual accessories, costume,
scientific/medical apparata, erotica, ephemera, and printed matter.
Lynette M. F. Bosch
First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 Lynette M. F. Bosch
The right of Lynette M. F. Bosch to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
Typeset in Sabon
by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd.
For Liana De Girolami Cheney, Charles Burroughs, Paul Barolsky,
and Larry Silver
In Memoriam
Janet Cox-Rearick and H. Wiley Hitchcock
They embodied the best of an American intellectual tradition of art,
music, books, and the pursuit and transmission of knowledge.
Contents
5 Maniera: a history 72
The funding for this book began with a Franklin Research Grant from the Ameri-
can Philosophical Society (2004) and continued with additional research support
from the Geneseo Foundation, SUNY Geneseo, from 2006 to 2018.
I thank Erika Gaffney for her patience and her faith in my ability to complete
the manuscript, when she was at Ashgate. I especially thank Katie Armstrong, at
Routledge, for her patience and for her editorial assistance.
For numerous discussions and personal support over many years on the topic of
Mannerism, I thank, Diane Ahl, Paul Barolsky, Deborah Berendt, Judith Berg Sobré,
Mary Bergstein, Tina Waldeir Bizzarro, Laura Blanco, Charles Burroughs, Gregory
Clark, Janet Cox-Rearick, Mark Denaci, Liana De Girolami Cheney, Susan Duncan,
Conchy Fajardo-Hopkins, Mary Gibbons, Cristiano Giometti, Karen Goodchild,
George Gorse, Steve Hord, Maddu Huacuja, Fredrika Jacobs, H. Wiley Hitchcock,
William Hopkins, Thomas Jackson, Randy Barbara Kaplan, Dorothy Limouze, Tom
and Linda MacPherson, Norberto Massi, Jessica Maratsos, Anne Matthews, Catherine
Mayes, Leatrice Mendelsohn, Rick Morales, Fred and Miranda Orton, Maureen Pelta,
Robert Penzer, Ann Priester Towne, Bianca Potterton, Naomi Sawelson, Larry Silver,
Ellen Shortell, Beryl, Dave, Jon, Will and Celeste Stroll, and Adrian Wilson.
In the trajectory of my scholarly career, it was Liana De Girolami Cheney, who
thought that I had something worthwhile to say about Mannerism. Paul Barolsky
and Larry Silver never failed to read my early essays. Larry was always there with
his ready eye and quick ability to point out where I should zig instead of zag. Paul
stopped me many times from going off cliffs. Maureen Pelta and Tina Waldeier
Bizzarro have always been there throughout the process of the work that led to this
book, and without their support and belief in my ability to complete it, I might not
have done it.
I owe gratitude above all to Charles Burroughs, my husband and friend, who has
been consistently loving, supportive, and constructively critical. He has unselfishly
devoted many hours of his own creative time to discussing my work and ideas,
always with joy and interest, as he has tirelessly accompanied me to museums,
churches, libraries, and archives in the pursuit of Mannerism. Writing this book
with him at my side has been a profound experience, as we have traveled, learned,
and grown together. I could ask for no more of an ideal husband and partner and
it is above all to him that this book is dedicated as a reflection of our life together.
This book is dedicated to Charles, to Liana de Girolami Cheney, to Paul Bar-
olsky, and to Larry Silver without whom it would not have been written, as they
persisted for eight years in telling me to ‘Get the damned book done!’
Prologue
Mannerism: A personal history
This book has been a long time coming. I first became interested in Mannerism, in
1976, while taking a Research Methods seminar from Janet Cox-Rearick at Hunter
College, CUNY. The seminar’s topic was Agnolo Bronzino and Mannerism. Many
projects later, I return to Mannerism. The trajectory leading to this book originated
with a series of talks, given from 2001 to 2019, at conference sessions organized
by Liana de Girolami Cheney.1
‘Mannerism and Spirituality’ was the subject of the first talk in the series, given in
2001, at a meeting of the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference. An interest in Giorgio
Vasari led, in 2005, to a talk entitled, ‘From Vasari to Now: What Does Iconography
Mean Today?’ given at the Renaissance Society of American conference in Cambridge,
U.K. It was, however, in 2007, with a talk entitled, ‘Mannerism, Orthodoxy and Het-
erodoxy,’ presented at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, that the germ of this
book began to form. Continuing this train of thought led to an expanding understand-
ing of Mannerism forwarded in: ‘Mannerism and Spirituality: The Artist as Alternate
Priest’ (Renaissance Society of America, 2009); ‘Altered States of Mannerism: From
the Spiritual to the Erotic to the Courtly’ (Sixteenth Century Studies Conference,
2009); ‘Mannerism and Cognition’ (Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, 2010);
‘Vasari and God’ (Renaissance Society of America, 2011), and ‘God in his Heaven and
in Vasari’s Lives’ (Heavenly Discourses Conference, Bristol, England, 2011). Following
was ‘Counter-Reformation Style and Spirituality: Juan de Valdes, the Spirituali and
Juseppe de Ribera’ (Renaissance Society of America, 2012). In 2018, I gave ‘From the
Ars Nova to the Maniera Moderna: Alberti To Vasari’ (Sixteenth Century
Studies, Albuquerque). In 2019, came the last talk in the series prior to the publication
of this book, ‘Before 1962: Mannerism and Historiography’ (Renaissance Society of
American Conference, Toronto, Canada).
I am deeply grateful to Liana De Girolami Cheney, for her support for this project,
which would not have been completed without her indefatigable organization of the
scholarly conferences, in which she included me. Liana’s work has given a platform,
for decades, to alternative ways of studying and thinking about the Renaissance in
a context of warm support and friendly colleagues, always welcoming of revolutionary
ideas. Hence, forty plus years after taking Janet Cox-Rearick’s course on Bronzino, my
early interest in Mannerism has taken form in this book. I hope that its readers will
find in it new ways of thinking about the art of the sixteenth century and that they will
be, at the least, provoked into renewed effort to understand how and why the variety
and diversity of sixteenth-century art developed.
Prologue xi
Note
1 Mannerism and Spirituality at the Medici Court, Sixteenth Century Studies Conference,
Denver, CO, October 2001; Mannerism, Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy, Sixteenth Century
Studies, Minneapolis, MN/St. Paul, MN, October 2007; Mannerism and Spirituality: The
Artist as Alternate Priest, Renaissance Society of America, Los Angeles, CA, April 2009;
Altered States of Mannerism: From the Spiritual, to the Erotic to the Courtly, Sixteenth
Century Studies Conference, Geneva, Switzerland, May 2009; Mannerism and Cognition,
Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, Montreal, October 2010; Vasari and God, Renais-
sance Society of America, Montreal, March 2011; God in his Heaven and in Vasari’s
Lives, Heavenly Discourses, Bristol University, October 2011; Counter Reformation Style
and Spirituality: Juan de Valdes and Jusepe Ribera, Renaissance Society of America,
Washington, DC, March 2012; ‘From the Ars Nova to the Maniera Moderna: Alberti To
Vasari,’ Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, Albuquerque, NM, November 2018; and
‘Before 1962: Mannerism and Historiography,’ Renaissance Society of America Annual
Conference, Toronto, Canada, March 2019.
Introduction
Approaching mannerism
Mannerism did not happen in a vacuum. It was the outcome of two-hundred years of
artistic experimentation on the part of European artists at a time of transition from
late Gothic to Renaissance. Mannerism, the art of Giorgio Vasari’s bella maniera
moderna,1 coincided with the Protestant Reformation and the Counter-Reformation,
in the aftermath of Martin Luther’s posting of his 95 Theses on the door of Castle
Church, Wittenberg.2 The art of the maniera (Mannerism) is the main focus of this
book, which explores the interaction between Mannerism and spirituality, during
a time of change for Europeans. The changes that altered the sixteenth century
included: the collapse of the Roman Catholic Church; the realization of the existence
of the Americas and Galileo Galilei’s discovery that the Universe did not revolve
around the Earth.3 This altered world of knowledge and discovery was a time of shock
and dynamic change, in which artistic culture became a nexus of experimentation on
the part of artists, patrons, and audiences coming to terms with changed realities.
With an emphasis on the way in which art, philosophy, spirituality, and rhetoric
intersected in the style identified as Mannerism, this study suggests that Vasari’s
maniera can be considered to be a form of Classical enargeia or evidentia.4 As such,
its transformative dynamics formed part of a search for comfort in an uncertain
age, when Europeans sought the way to salvation by all means possible, and art
became a pathway in this search.
This study is not intended to provide a comprehensive or definitive recasting of
Mannerism and its attendant history nor will it provide a general historiographic
overview for Mannerism and maniera. It is designed to promote thinking about
how artists, patrons, and audiences sought to connect to God’s plan for humanity’s
salvation, through the images made to be seen and understood within ritual and
liturgical environments. Accompanying the potential for spiritual metamorphosis,
produced by inspired art, was a renewed, fifteenth- and sixteenth-century interest in
rhetoric, oratory, and Classical philosophy. Vasari and other art theorists under-
stood that the visual arts could play a powerful role in leading audiences to God,
with a living art suggestive of spiritual transcendence brought about by emotional
and intellectual responses to art. The process whereby this search for a living art
was performed can be traced in the treatises, written by artists and theorists,
intended to instruct and inform artists, patrons, and audiences about the technical,
conceptual, intellectual, and spiritual basis for art that could transform lives and
save souls. This process will be traced in this study.
Chapter 1 (From the ars nova to the maniera moderna) presents an examination of
how the fifteenth-century ars nova of Northern Renaissance art affected, influenced,
2 Introduction
and changed the inspiration for Italian, late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century art. The
effects of the recombination and innovations that defined the vividity of the pathways
of late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century art were most notable in painting (the focus of
this book), the medium that presented audiences with images wherein alternative real-
ities that concretized their spirituality were found. Such images evoked emotional
responses, from their audiences, such as simple devotion, increasing to the transcend-
ing awe necessary for belief in the power of God and his plan for their salvation. These
Northern models showed fifteenth-century, Italian artists how to create for patrons
and audiences vivid works of art expressive of their longing for connection with God.
In following Northern models, sixteenth-century, Italian artists eventually transformed
the ars nova into Vasari’s maniera moderna.
Chapter 2 (From lifelike to living: enargeia and the maniera moderna) explores
the connections between sixteenth-century visual styles and the renewed spirituality
of reform and change that followed the impact of the Reformation on European
culture. The approach and arguments forwarded in this chapter connect Vasari’s
maniera moderna to sixteenth-century spirituality and the issues raised by a divided
Church. In this chapter, it is argued that maniera’s meaning can be found in Clas-
sical enargeia. As such, maniera became an expressive mode that enabled patrons
to employ artists, who provided works of gripping vividity – ‘il vivo’ as Vasari
called it. This living art was a visual counterpart to Classical enargeia, with its abil-
ity to bring to life the events of the past. As such, Mannerism or maniera became
a means whereby the Church could distinguish its history and primacy from that of
competing Protestant denominations.
Chapter 3 (Enargeia, spirituality, and maniera: from St. Paul to Vasari) traces the
incorporation of enargeia into the theology of the Early Church. This process began
with St. Paul, who understood how Classical enargeia or evidentia could be used in
preaching to bring to life the events of the life of Christ. Such preaching served to
stimulate an emotional connection to the Church. From St. Paul to later theologians,
the employment of enargeia to make present that which was absent, with the goal of
bringing to life the Church’s history and mission. St. Paul’s characterization of enar-
geia as the art of vivificat was transformed by succeeding generations and applied in
different ways, and within this development can be located Vasari’s maniera, the art
of lifelikeness or vivacità, comparable to Paul’s vivificat.
Chapter 4 (From Leone Ebreo to Federico Zuccari: God’s plan for art) considers
the role of art in the process of salvation as developed in sixteenth-century treatises
on art. In describing how to make the best art, the authors of these treatises
focused on the process whereby images imbued with certain proportional and
visual effects could assist audiences to realize God’s love and to discern the path to
salvation he gave humanity. Authors bracketed by the parameters of Leone Ebreo
(1464–1530) and Federico Zuccari (1540–1609) are considered and their treatises
are analyzed toward establishing that art was consistently understood by sixteenth-
century artists, patrons, and audiences as being a means to achieving an increased
understanding of God.
Chapter 5 (Maniera: a history) explores Mannerism’s historiography, with an
emphasis on Mannerism and spirituality. This overview begins with the reaction
against maniera found in seventeenth-century theorists, who saw maniera as being
antithetical to the reformed Church, thereby considering it to be artistically the
equivalent of vice. From Walter Friedlander to more recent developments in this
Introduction 3
historiography, the goal was to develop a profile of reactions to and consideration of
maniera as an art of spirituality. The different and diverse methods and approaches
employed in the study of maniera are presented, concluding with current consider-
ations of approaches that include formalism, iconography, interdisciplinarity, Marx-
ism, feminism, and Cognitive Science. As the history of visions, apparitions, and
mystical experience was for on which the Church had an undeniable and unshakable
monopoly, maniera’s enargeia became an adjunct to its mission to retain its traditional
authority.
This study concludes with (Conclusion: mannerism, mysticism, and cognition), com-
prising an analysis of Pontormo’s Supper at Emmaus (c. 1525) (Figure I.1), a painting
that incorporates inspiration from Albrecht Dürer’s Supper at Emmaus (c. 1510), from
the Small Passion (Figure I.2). Pontormo’s painting is an unequivocably a visionary
painting, intended to generate a transcendent experience for the spectator, thereby
Figure I.1 Pontormo, Jacopo (1494–1556/7). The Supper at Emmaus. 1525. Oil on canvas.
90 ½ × 68 1/8 in. (230 × 173 cm). Photo Credit: Art Resource, NY.
4 Introduction
Figure I.2 Albrecht Dürer, Supper at Emmaus, c. 1510, from the Small Passion. Photo Credit:
Fogg Museum, Harvard University, Boston, MA.
Notes
1 Giorgio Vasari, Le Opere dei Giorgio Vasari con nuove annotazioni e commenti di Gaetano
Milanesi (Florence: Sansoni, 1973), IX Volumes, IV, 12.
2 Craig Hairline, A World Ablaze: The Rise of Martin Luther and the Birth of the Reformation
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
3 For these events, see: Roland Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (Nashville, TN:
Abingdon Press, 2013); John O’Malley, Trent: What Happened at the Council (Cambridge:
Belknap Press, 2013); Michael Wintroub, The Voyage of Thought: Navigating Knowledge
Introduction 5
across the Sixteenth-Century World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017);
Stephen Hawking, On The Shoulders of Giants (Philadelphia, PA: Running Press Adult, 2003).
4 See “Enargeia,” Arethusa, vol. 37 no. 3 (Fall 2004), 445–447, for a basic definition of,
‘Enargeia or vividness, the power of language to create a vivid presence intimately con-
nected to the emotions of the interpreter/perceiver.’ Rutger J. Allan, Irene J.F. de Jong
and Casper C. de Jonge, “From Enargeia to Immersion: The Ancient Roots of a Modern
Concept,” Style, vol. 51 no. 1 (2017), 34–51.
1 From the ars nova to the
maniera moderna
By the 1960s, the trajectory of discussion of Giorgio Vasari’s maniera and Mannerism
had undergone diverse transformations, and in this process, both became generally
identified very closely with developments in Italian art. In 1964, Jacques Bousquet felt
obligated to correct general assumptions, when he asserted,
Bousquet’s assertion held a door open for a renewed study of the polymorphic and
transformative nature of Mannerism and maniera and his invitation was accepted
by a series of scholars, who specialized in Northern Renaissance art. For these area
specialists, Mannerism originated with the stylistic diversity found in late fifteenth-
century art, influenced by recurrences of lingering Gothicism and with the experimen-
tal, stylistic hybridity that occurred in the first two decades of the sixteenth century,
throughout Europe. During the sixteenth century, local, regional, and national styles
were transmitted beyond their original boundaries by art markets and art fairs, as
well as by individual, transnational commissions. Purchases, gifts, and other kinds
of exchanges created an internationalized world of art, accompanied by a growing
interest in ‘antiquities’ (Classical, Byzantine, and Medieval). The models provided for
artists by the multiplicity of styles that existed gave inspiration for the multiple visual
styles found in sixteenth-century art.
As transnationalism and hybridity provided artists with inspirational blends of
the old into new, fifteenth- and sixteenth-century patrons, artists, and audiences
participated in ongoing experiments that challenged visual perception. Such artistic
experimentation and innovation became integrated into contemporary cultural per-
spectives on reality and spirituality and the art of Giorgio Vasari’s maniera was the
result. This chapter traces how ultramontane artistic exchange transformed Jan Van
Eyck’s ars nova into Vasari’s maniera moderna.
For Vasari, the sixteenth century was the time of the maniera moderna – the
modern style that became the bella maniera in the hands of experienced and talented
practitioners, who could create works of unparalleled beauty and lifelikeness.2 In
keeping with Vasari’s Italocentric history of art, scholars have placed significant
emphasis on the primacy of Italian artistic development. In this traditional and Italo-
centric art history, Italian artists have been considered the innovators, who were
From the ars nova to the maniera moderna 7
imitated by artists working in the Netherlands, France, Germany, and Spain. While
there is no question about the important role Italian artists played in the innovative,
technical developments of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the emphasis given to
Italy has too much obscured Northern contributions to Italian and European art.
Even as Italian artists gave a more thorough knowledge of classical art to their
Northern counterparts, Northern artists introduced Italian artists to techniques that
could bring life to their figures. In the North, the introduction of oil into tempera
and the displacement of tempera by oil was a great innovation initiated by Jan van
Eyck. Jan’s experiments with oil created the Northern ars nova, credited by all who
saw its effects as the way to bring the spirit of life to art. It is argued, in this chapter,
that there exists a trajectory of artistic exchange initiated by Jan Van Eyck’s ars
nova, with its innovative lifelikeness, that continued into the artistic movement Gior-
gio Vasari identified as the maniera moderna.
However influential, oil technique was not the only aspect of Northern art that
changed Italian art. Northern experimentation with devotional painting; landscape;
the minute observation of nature; and innovative, spatial design, and figural pro-
portions, observable in Northern art also influenced Italian artists. These exchanges
evolved into the hybrid and diverse, artistic, sixteenth-century styles that produced
the levels of lifelikeness and vividity evident in the art of Leonardo, Michelangelo,
Raphael, and their followers. Such lifelikeness was the result of their employment
of Northern techniques and compositional devices.
Representational vividity, linked to the high devotional impact of Northern art,
with its emphasis on the representation of visions and visionary experience, had
charged meaning within the complex spirituality of the Counter-Reformation. Thus,
the liveliness of the visual arts connected with the devotional mysticism associated by
Italians with Northern art culminated in the complex visual and cultural matrix of
the sixteenth century. Below is traced how artistic exchanges between the North and
Italy generated the international, transnational hybridity characteristic of the styles
scholars have consistently labeled Mannerism. In tracing the significance of the
artistic exchanges that developed the foundation for Mannerism, this chapter also
emphasizes connections made by fifteenth-century humanists and sixteenth-century
art theorists, which link the visual arts to spirituality, as images were understood as
loci for spiritual development.
In the past decade, the scholarship of Bernard Aikema, Beverly Brown, Till-
Holger Borchert, and Paula Nuttall, among others, has focused attention on artistic
exchange between Northern and Southern artistic centers.3 These recent studies
have emphasized the interactive connections between the art of Flanders, France,
Belgium, Holland, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Portugal.4 The result of this research
indicates a paradigm shift that acknowledges the innovative leadership of Northern
artists in achieving detailed accuracy in the transcription of nature into art. Italian
contributions are well known, as the Italian canon of innovations includes Brunel-
leschi’s rediscovery of linear perspective, the absorption and imitation of Classical
models and Leonardo’s chiaroscuro and sfumato. In architecture, the classical vocabu-
lary, linked to the classical style’s associations to early Christian buildings, provided
forms that became part of an international architectural vocabulary associated with
the history of the early church. Thus, fifteenth- and sixteenth-century European art can
be understood better if it is considered from a transnational perspective that assumes
hybridity and cross-cultural influences.
8 From the ars nova to the maniera moderna
These cultural and visual crossings generated a diachronic and synchronic visual
continuum inherited by sixteenth-century artists. Within this trajectory, sixteenth-
century vividity, such as that seen in Michelangelo’s Judgment, can be understood as
having begun with the Eyckian ars nova. Subsequent Northern innovations, initiated
by artists such as Dürer and the Antwerp Mannerists, continued to impact Italian
art. This impact joined to earlier influences and developments were the foundation
for Vasari’s maniera moderna, itself part of an ongoing sixteenth-century continuum
of international artistic exchange that eventually affected the formation of Northern
European, sixteenth-century art.
As the work of the above-mentioned scholars has demonstrated, the origin of the
ars nova can be linked to Valois patronage in Bruges, Ghent, Lille, Valenciennes,
Liège, and Tournai. These artistic centers were home to the workshops of Robert
Campin, Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden, Jacques Daret, and Petrus Chris-
tus – the harbingers of the ars nova so admired by Italian patrons and humanists.5 By
1430, as Paula Nutall indicated, Italian collectors valued Northern paintings for their
extraordinary verisimilitude, brought to their attention by an international art
market.6 By the mid-1450s, as Borchert has established, the ars nova was well known
in Italy carried there by professional art merchants, who purchased works to sell for
profit; royal gifts and inheritances; traveling artists, who also sold work; artists versed
in the ars nova, who settled in countries foreign to them, and by itinerant artists, who
followed the moving courts of Europe taking commissions and selling works.7
In 1456, Bartolomeo Fazio, writing from Naples, praised the lifelikeness of the
donor portraits found in Jan van Eyck’s Lomellini Triptych, painted c. 1444, for the
Genoese merchant, Battista Lomellini.8 Fazio also praised the realism of two lost
works: a painting by Jan van Eyck of Women Bathing, owned by Ottaviano della
Carda, nephew and adviser to Federico da Montefeltro, and a Deposition, by Rogier
van der Weyden, in the collection of Lionello d’Este, with panels depicting Adam and
Eve and the Angel Expelling them from Paradise.9 Contemporary praise by Filarete
(Antonio di Pietro Averlino) focused on the superior lifelikeness of Jan and Rogier’s
paintings, identifying their use of linseed oil as the source for their remarkable
accomplishments.10
In Northern Europe, the ars nova spread, with regional variations, from Belgium
to Paris, Cologne, Antwerp, Spain (Castile, Valencia, and Barcelona), Portugal,
Switzerland, Austria, and Italy (Venice, Florence, and Naples). In Italy, the ars nova
became intermixed with the Italian emphasis on classical idealized realism.11 Filippo
Lippi is one instance of such eclecticism, reflected, in his paintings by their classical
idealization of form and architectural motifs and in his technique, which is imitative
of the ars nova’s detailed realism.12
As part of a process of artistic exchange, Northern painters traveled south, bringing
their techniques to Italy, as is documented, for example, in the rolls of the painter’s
guild, the Fraglia, in Padua. In the 1440s, Giovanni d’Alemagna was working in
Venice and Joos Amman, from Ravensburg, painted an Eyckian Annuciation in the
Genoese Church of Sta. Maria in Castello (1451).13 Numerous other similar examples,
noted by Paula Nutall, exist.14
One genre of the ars nova that especially captivated Italian audiences was portrait-
ure. Jean Fouquet, who stopped in Rome on his way to Ferrara, painted the Portrait of
Gonella, for the d’Este as an example of living portraiture.15 Fouquet’s Roman visit,
which occurred before 1447, is recorded in Filarete’s Trattato d’Architettura.16 Filarete
From the ars nova to the maniera moderna 9
characterized Fouquet as a ‘buen maestro maxime a retrarre del natural.’17 In Rome,
Fouquet painted a portrait of Pope Eugenius IV, perhaps for Archbishop Jean Bernard
of Tours, which was displayed at Santa Maria sopra Minerva.18 Filarete and Francesco
Florio praised the portrait as being surpassingly lifelike.19 Eugenius also owned works
by Jan van Eyck, which would have been seen by visitors to his collection, providing
another point of contact between Italians and the ars nova.20 In assessing Jean
Fouquet’s portrait of Eugenius IV, Filarete remarked on its realism, which rendered
the painting so lifelike that ‘in truth [it] seemed to be really alive.’21 A comparable
level of verisimilitude was noted by Vespasiano da Bisticci’s assessment of Justus von
Ghent’s portrait of Federigo da Montefeltro, which ‘lacked only breath.’22 Giovanni
Santi considered that Jan and Rogier had ‘surpassed reality many times.’23 Bartolomeo
Fazio, Guarino da Verona’s pupil, described Jan van Eyck’s verisimilitude as being
comparable to that of Zeuxis, whose art was so close to nature that it could fool the
eye into mistaking painting for reality.24
Northern realism was also evident in the depiction of space and Fazio especially
praised Jan Van Eyck’s Lomellini St. Jerome In His Study for the way in which its
perspectival space receded inward as one stepped back to gaze at the painting.25 As
Nutall noted, this is a perspectival effect visible also in the Arnolfini Portrait and
the Detroit St. Jerome.26 Of the patron’s portrait found in this work, Fazio wrote
‘you would judge he lacked only a voice.’27 Fazio also praised the hair of the Angel
Gabriel in this painting, stating that it was of ‘surpassing reality.’28 Fazio was not
alone in praising Northern technique for the painting of hair and Giovanni Bellini
was so impressed with Dürer’s ability to paint hair that he asked Dürer if he used
special brushes. He was surprised to find that he did not and that the effect was
the product of skill alone.29
Other examples of the ars nova, known in Italy, include Lorenzo il Magnifico’s
ownership of a portrait by Petrus Christus of an unknown ‘donna francesca,’ which
hung in his studiolo, alongside an Eyckian St. Jerome in his Study.30 Commissions of
portraits by Italian merchants, such as Marco Barbarigo, the Venetian consul (who
commissioned his portrait from a follower of Jan van Eyck); the Bolognese, Giacomo
Loiani, whose portrait was painted by the Master of the Baroncelli portrait; as well
as the unknown Genoese patron found on Jan Van Eyck’s Dresden Triptych; and
the well-known portraits of the Portinari by Hugo van der Goes, found in the
Portinari Altarpiece document Italian familiarity with the ars nova.31
By 1470, as Nutall indicated, significant aspects of Italian portraiture were based
on Northern prototypes.32 Nutall noted that perhaps the earliest Florentine use of
Netherlandish portrait types is found in Andrea del Castagno’s Portrait of a Man,
dated c. 1457.33 Northern influence is evident in Perugino’s Self-Portrait, which is
modeled on Memling’s portraits, such as the Portrait of a Young Man, now in the
Metropolitan Museum’s Lehman Collection.34 Other examples of Northern influ-
ence on Italian portraits, beyond Leonardo’s Memlinguesque Ginevra de’ Benci,
are: Botticelli’s Youth with a Medal of Cosimo de’ Medici; and Cossa’s Man with
a Ring, in the Thyssen Bornemisza Collection.35 As Nutall pointed out, Northern
influence continues into the sixteenth century in Leonardo’s Mona Lisa and
Raphael’s Portraits of Angelo and Madalena Doni.36
Northern Italian collections had many examples of the ars nova. Alessandro Sforza,
Lord of Pesaro (1445–), brought from Bruges a Portrait of the Duke of Burgundy,
a Crucifixion and his own portrait – all painted by Rogier van der Weyden.37 This
10 From the ars nova to the maniera moderna
Crucifixion included a portrait of Battista Sforza, the future wife of Federico da Mon-
tefeltro. Their son, Federico II, Duke of Urbino, who wanted artists who could paint
in the Northern manner, employed Justus von Ghent and Pedro Berruguete, in the
1470s.38 Vespasiano da Bisticci described Justus von Ghent’s Portrait of Federico II as
‘lacking only breath to seem alive.’39 Additional examples abound, such as Marco
Barbarigo, the Venetian consul, who commissioned his portrait from a follower of Jan
van Eyck; the Bolognese, Giacomo Loiani, portrayed by the Master of the Baroncelli
Portrait, now in the Courtauld Gallery; and Jan Van Eyck’s Dresden triptych of the
merchant, Raffaelo Giustiniani.
Another famous work by Jan van Eyck, found in Italy, was the portrait of Alfonso
V of Naples. The Neapolitan artist, Niccoló Colantonio, copied this portrait, in an
Eyckian style that he taught to his pupil, Antonello da Messina.40 Alfonso’s interest
in Netherlandish art was aligned with the Spanish court’s interest in the ars nova,
evident in Isabella of Castille’s patronage of Juan de Flandes, Jorge Inglés, Michael
Sittow (Bruges), Juan Guas (Germany), Gil de Siloè (Flemish), and Egas Cuéman
(Flemish).41 Alfonso’s interest in the ars nova was so extensive that he sent his court
painter, Luis Dalmau, to the Netherlands, in 1431, to learn the Eyckian way of
painting, which he later taught to Spanish artists.
Neapolitan interest did not, however, begin with Alfonso, but with Renè of
Anjou, who employed Pierre du Billant and Bathélemy van Eyck, from Liège.42 It
was these artists who taught the ars nova’s techniques and pictorial conventions to
Colantonio, which he employed in his Eyckian St. Jerome in his Study (Naples,
Capodimonte), for the Church of San Lorenzo Maggiore.43 In keeping with this
Neapolitan interest in Northern Art, after Alfonso gained power in 1442, he invited
to the court the Italians artists: Pisanello, Leonardo da Besozzo, and Francesco
Laurana, along with Jaume Baçó (Jacomart) and Juan Reixach – all Spanish artists,
who worked in Flemish-inspired styles.44
Alfonso’s ownership of Northern paintings was noted by Giovanni Pontano, in De
Splendore (1493–1494), who recorded that Alfonso owned a St. George by Jan van
Eyck, which had been bought from a merchant, named Gregori, at an auction in
Bruges.45 Pietro Summonte’s admiration of this painting especially praised its special
effects – ‘On the [saint’s] left leg was reflected the image of the dragon, as well repre-
sented in the polished armor, as in the glass of a mirror.’46 Alfonso also owned a lost
Eyckian Annunciation, perhaps sold to him by the Genoese, Battista di Giorgio, when
he visited Naples, in 1444.47 When Fazio described this Annunciation, he noted that
the portraits of the patron included in the painting,
seemed to lack only a voice, while the woman he loved was very beautiful and
was painted exactly as she was, down to the minutest detail. A sunbeam fell
between the two, as if through a crack, which appeared entirely real.48
Alfonso’s heir, Ferrante I, continued this tradition bringing the techniques of Northern
art to Naples, when he sent Giovanni Basilio to Bruges to study the ars nova.49
Milan was another center of diffusion of the ars nova in Italy. From that city, the
Sforza Countess, Bianca Maria Visconti, sent Zanetto Bugatto to study with Rogier
van der Weyden.50 When Bugatto returned, in 1463, he was sent to the court of
Louis XI of France to continue his Northern, artistic education. Later Bugatto
returned to Milan, where he died, in 1476. To fill the void left by Bugatto’s death,
From the ars nova to the maniera moderna 11
Gian Galeazzo Sforza tried to entice Antonello da Messina to come to Milan to
provide continuity for the Milanese taste for the ars nova.51
By the sixteenth century, Italian artists could see examples of Northern art in private
collections, some public places, and in newly established international art markets.
Michael North has studied these markets, which emerged in fourteenth-century Italy
and were similar to the market established, in Florence, by Francesco Datini.52 These
markets continued through the fifteenth and into the sixteenth centuries and they
continued being important points of artistic exchange.53
Two of the more important Northern markets, where Italians could buy Northern
works, were located in Antwerp and Bruges – the center of the Medici Bank, managed
by Angelo Tani and Tomasso Portinari.54 At Bruges, Portinari commissioned significant
works from Hans Memling and Hugo Van der Goes, with the Portinari Altarpiece being
the best-known example.55 This work arrived in Florence on May of 1483, making
available for study by Florentine artists a monumental example of the ars nova.56 Also
in Bruges, the Arnolfini purchased the Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck.57
Sales of goods in pandts, ad hoc markets in monastery courtyards, were also sources
for goods that included tapestries and works of art.58 The Medici became good cus-
tomers in this international art market.59 In 1448, an agent buying for Giovanni de’
Medici notified him that tapestries had been purchased. In 1466, Tommaso Portinari
notified the family that he had purchased a work for them.60 The Medici inventories
record that in the palaces in Florence and at the Villas at Careggi and Caffagiuolo
there were numerous Northern tapestries, as well as paintings on cloth and on linen.61
These same Medici inventories record that among the approximately one hun-
dred and forty-two paintings, owned by the Medici, about forty-two were
Northern.62 Two of the better-known examples from the workshop of Rogier van
der Weyden, owned by the Medici, are: the Madonna and Child with Saints
Cosmas, Damian, John the Baptist and Peter (not mentioned in Medici inventories)
and the Entombment, now in the Uffizi.63 The Entombment appears in Medici
inventories from 1482 and 1492, when it was at the Villa at Careggi.64 Additional
examples of Northern works in the Medici collections were: a Virgin and Child
owned by the Medici and displayed at their villa at Cafaggiolo; an Adoration of
the Magi on cloth, which was also part of the Medici collection and in the Casa
Vecchia of Lorenzo and Giovanni, sons of Piefrancesco de’ Medici, there was
a Netherlandish painting, over the fireplace that represented Moses Discarding the
Crown of Pharaoh, in the room where there was displayed Botticelli’s Primavera,
the Pallas and the Centaur, and a marble John the Baptist by Michelangelo.65
The Bruges market also sold examples of the ‘Holy Face of Christ’ type, developed
by Petrus Christus and Hans Memling, which became popular in Italy.66 In 1460,
Alessandra Macinghi Strozzi wrote to her son in Bruges, asking him to buy paintings
for her there and noting that she would not part with her ‘Volto Santo,’ because it
was ‘divota figura e bella.’67 It was, however, Memling’s paintings that appealed
more to Italian collectors.
Hans Memling was the third, fifteenth-century, Northern artist, who significantly
influenced Italian artists, as his style was copied, by Italian artists, from Perugino to
Leonardo.68 Benedetto Paganotti, the Dominican Bishop of Vaizon, owned a triptych
by Memling, now divided between the Uffizi and the National Gallery.69 The painting
is dated to about 1480 and it inspired Filippino Lippi, who borrowed from it when he
saw it in Florence, c. 1482–1483. Compositional elements found in the Pagagnotti
12 From the ars nova to the maniera moderna
Triptych (Florence, Uffizi Museum, and London, National Gallery) were quoted by
Fra Bartolommeo, Filippino Lippi, Lorenzo de Credi, and Piero di Cosimo.70
In the Ginevra de’Benci, Leonardo adapted Memling’s portrait style for his por-
trayal, becoming, according to Nutall, the first Italian artist, who fully explored
Eyckian technique.71 Thus Leonardo’s use of oil washes in light and dark colors
(chiaroscuro and sfumato) to indicate modeling and depth had its source in the ars
nova.72 In the Ginevra de’Benci, as Nutall argued, Leonardo adapted Memling’s
style to his purpose, when he used the Northern devices of: the three quarter por-
trait type; landscape backgrounds; emblematic content indicative of the sitter’s
identity and interests.73
From Hans Memling, Tommaso Portinari commissioned the portraits of himself
and his wife, Maria Bandini Baroncelli, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
which belonged to a portable altar featuring the Virgin and Child.74 For Portinari,
Memling also painted The Passion of Christ, now in Turin, which included portraits
of the spouses.75 Angelo Tani, Portinari’s predecessor at the Medici Bank in Bruges,
was another patron who sought works by Memling and he commissioned a Last
Judgment from the artist.76
For fifteenth-century humanists, the ars nova was a rebirth of Classical traditions
of realistic painting associated with Pliny’s descriptions of the verisimilitude of
Greek art. In 1468, Cardinal Jean Jouffroy, Bishop of Arras, equated Jan van Eyck
and Rogier Van der Weyden to Apelles, when he wrote,
Consider now the … age in which Aetion, Nicomachus, Protogenes [and] Apelles
flourished or those who surpassed them – John of Bruges (Jan van Eyck), whose
paintings you have seen in Pope Eugenius’s palace and dearest to me, Rogier of
Brussels, whose pictures ad luster to the palaces of every king.77
Jouffroy’s evocation of Pliny to describe Jan and Rogier’s work indicates that the
ars nova was regarded as forming part of Classical, representational traditions of
idealized verisimilitude.
Italian admiration of the ars nova was not confined to portraiture, as Italian collect-
ors also admired Northern compositional and pictorial devices. An example being, as
Margaret Koster noted, the employment by Italian artists of the sacra conversazione
format, used in Jan Van Eyck’s Madonna of the Canon Van der Poele (January,
1436).78 The sacra conversazione format did not become popular in Florence in the
1440s, but in the North it was established by the mid-1430s. The use of cartellini in
Italian paintings is another element Koster identified as originating in the North.79
Instances of specific imitation of Northern compositional arrangements abound in
Florence, where the Eyckian St. Jerome in his Study, owned by Lorenzo, il Magnifico,
inspired Ghirlandaio’s St. Jerome and Botticelli’s St. Augustine in the Ognissanti and
Antonello da Messina St. Jerome in his Study.80 Fra Angelico, Colantonio, Jacopo
Bellini, Andrea Mantegna, Antonello da Messina, Fra Angelico, Botticelli, and Gio-
vanni Bellini copied Jan Van Eyck’s lost Holy Face of Christ.81 Koster has also
argued that another lost Eyckian painting, the Stigmatization of St. Francis, inspired
Botticelli, Verrocchio, and Leonardo in the composition of rock formations found
in their works.
The accurate and moving representation of emotion was another element of North-
ern art admired by Italian collectors, humanists, and artists. The ability to achieve the
From the ars nova to the maniera moderna 13
representation of emotion that could move a spectator to empathy was valued by
Leone Battista Alberti, in De Pictura (1435). It was not, however, Italian but Northern
artists, such as Rogier, who most efficaciously pioneered and accomplished what
Alberti had advised Italian artists to perfect. Rogier’s work was plentiful in Italy and
Mauro Lucco noted that there were many works by Rogier in Ferrara, which could
have been seen by local painters, such as Angelo Parrasio, Macagnino da Siena, Bono
da Ferrara, Michele Pannonio, Cosmè Tura, and Andrea Mantegna.82 On 8 July 1449,
Ciriaco d’Acona saw a Deposition, by Roger Van der Weyden, and praised Rogier’s
ability to engage the emotions of the spectator, who could be moved to sorrow by
Rogier’s able representation of emotion.83
Nutall and Lucco brought attention to the value placed on Rogier’s ability to
depict emotions, described by Fazio as an ability to paint ‘grief and tears [of figures]
so represented [that] you would not think them other than real.’84 Ciriaco d’Anco-
na’s description was more detailed, as he wrote that Rogier’s figures were so lifelike
that – ‘You would seem to see breathing, as if alive, the faces of those he wished to
show as alive and the dead [person] in all respects like one dead.’85 Rogier’s
expressive figures match Alberti’s words:
An istoria will move spectators when the men painted in the picture outwardly
demonstrate their own feelings as clearly as possible … we mourn with the
mourners, laugh with those who laugh, and grieve with the grief-stricken. Yet,
these feelings are known from movements of the body. We see how the melan-
choly, preoccupied with cares and beset by grief, lack all vitality of feeling and
action, and remain sluggish their limbs unsteady and drained of color. In those
who mourn, the body is weighed down, the neck bent, and every part of their
body droops as though weary and past care.86
In effect, as Nutall pointed out, between Rogier and Jan, Alberti’s recommendations
were fulfilled, as they could represent the living and the dead and those who were
struck by sorrow in a way that made his figures seem to live and breathe.87 Thus, it
would seem, as Nutall has argued, that the best illustration and actualization of
Alberti’s art theory is found in the work of Northern artists, especially in that of Jan
van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden. Even Alberti’s advocacy of the idea of
a painting as a window resonates with the Netherlandish custom of framing sitters
in portraits with window frames and ledges.88 Similarly, Alberti’s advice to painters
to include figures who establish eye contact with the spectator is an echo of Northern
practice.89 These perspectives alter the established Italo-centric norm of assessment
and understanding of fifteenth-century European artistic developments, which should
be revised so that a more accurate understanding of Northern European primacy in
technical and conceptual innovations can be achieved.
As a result of the exceptional technique found in his works, Rogier’s reputation
was so well known, in Italy, that Bianca Maria Visconti wrote to the artist, inform-
ing him that she was sending her painter, Zanetto Bugatto, to study with him. The
Duchess wrote – ‘Having heard of your fame and greatness on numerous occasions,
we decided to send our Master Zanetto to you, so that he might learn from you
something of the art of painting.’90 Praise of Rogier continued into the sixteenth
century, when Marcantonio Michiel noted that he had seen a work by Rogier in
the collection of Zuan Ram, a work that he found praiseworthy.91 Rogier received
14 From the ars nova to the maniera moderna
Italian pupils and traveled in Italy. As Fazio noted, he arrived in Rome for the 1450
Jubilee, where he admired Gentile da Fabriano’s frescoes in St. John Lateran.92 Rogier
was emblematic of a steady stream of artists, within which Albrecht Dürer was
another, who traveled back and forth across the Alps, forming points of artistic
exchange.
In addition to portraiture and devotional paintings of the ars nova, Italian human-
ists greatly admired Northern landscape painting, as Manfred Sellink has discussed.93
Bartolomeo Fazio praised Northern landscape painting, stating ‘there are also
horses, minute figures of men, mountains, groves, hamlets and castles carried out
with such skill you would believe one was fifty miles distant from another.’ As
a specific example, Fazio also praised the landscape vignettes of the mappamondo
Jan van Eyck painted for Philip the Good of Burgundy.94
Alberti, in De Re Aedificatoria, described ideal landscapes with words that imply
he was thinking about Northern landscape paintings, when he wrote – ‘Our minds
are cheered beyond measure by the sight of paintings, depicting the delightful coun-
tryside, harbors, fishing, hunting, swimming, the games of shepherds, flowers and
verdure.’95 Although, as Nutall indicated, Alberti paraphrased Pliny’s description of
rural scenes, Alberti’s summary of what was necessary for good landscape painting
aptly described those found in Northern paintings.96 Hence, the ars nova also may
have influenced Italian art theory as well as Italian artists.
The relationship between Alberti’s descriptions of what constitutes good painting
and the ars nova has led Nutall to suggest that Alberti’s ideas were founded in
Classical literary descriptions (such as Pliny’s), which were first achieved in fifteenth-
century Northern painting. Additionally, Nuthall has suggested that Alberti’s encoun-
ter with Northern art occurred when he saw the collection Alberti’s employer,
Pope Eugenius IV, owned.97 Thus, Nutall suggested that Alberti’s recommendation to
painters to paint glass and gold with paint and to be sparing in the use of white was
the result of his having seen these effects in Northern paintings.98
As Italian artists studied the works of Jan van Eyck, Rogier Van der Weyden,
Hugo Van der Goes, Hans Memling, Martin Schöngauer, Albrecht Dürer, and their
contemporaries in the North, they incorporated aspects of the ars nova into Italian
art. These elements included exposure to different proportional systems from those
provided by Classical sculpture, which enabled artists to engage in the exploration
of diverse ways of presenting the human body. The ars nova’s heightened realism,
which surpassed a naturalistic imitation of nature, gave Italian artists an alternative
lifelikeness to that which could be achieved through idealized and classicizing pro-
portional formulas for figural representation. Northern spatial representation was
very complex and provided alternatives to Italian linear and sequential perspective.
Northern painters employed flattened spaces, asymmetrical compositions, and quix-
otic juxtapositions of figural scale that altered the perception of reality in a manner
that enhanced the innate spirituality of their subjects through spatial dislocation
from the material world.
The ars nova’s identification with devotional intensity was partly the result of the
detailed representational clarity that was the result of Northern technique, which
focused the spectator’s attention on devotional subjects. Additionally, Northern paint-
ers developed a refined visual system for expressing mystical visions and accompanying
devotional emotions. This system was composed of seemingly irrational juxtapositions
of unrealistic spatial representation joined to figural elongations and torsions that were
From the ars nova to the maniera moderna 15
not ‘natural.’ Northern painters, who were much closer to the grotesque traditions of
Romanesque and Gothic art, freely invented creatures of the imagination manifesting
an imaginative fantasy that was missing in early, fifteenth-century Italian art. The
element of fantasy would later become greatly prized by Italian sixteenth-century the-
orists, who linked fantasy to imagination and inventiveness, these being desirable qual-
ities for artistic excellence.
As the turn of the sixteenth century approached, artistic exchange continued as
artists from the north came to Italy and Italian artists went north in search of commis-
sions. Admiration for Northern technique did not end with the fifteenth century and,
in 1509, Francesco Lancilotti (writing in Rome) stated that landscape was best done
by Flemings because – ‘Painting landscapes both near and far requires a certain skill
and diligence (ingegno e discrezione), which the Flemings possess to a greater degree
than the Italians.’99 As a result of travel and the ongoing art market, the international-
ization of artistic production that existed in the fifteenth century continued. Northern
artists developed innovative ways of using the Classical vocabulary they learned from
Italian classicism (especially evident in the work of the later Antwerp Mannerists)100
and Italian artists saw alternative ways of representing figural proportions and spatial
configurations, which they acquired from Northern painters, such as Bosch and
Breughel. The continuing transnationality of artistic production led to hybrid, Italian
styles that evinced influence from Netherlandish and Germanic traditions alongside
Classical idealization and architectural quotations.
These sixteenth-century exchanges followed visits to Italy from artists such as Jost
Amman (1539–1591), whose Venetian patrons were Lionello and Emmanuelle
Grimaldi. Amman worked in a style comparable to that of Conrad Witz, with linger-
ing influence from Robert Campin.101 Earlier, Justus van Ghent (c. 1410–c. 1480),
who had worked in Antwerp and Ghent, arrived in Rome, in 1469.102 Later, he
moved to Urbino, where he painted the Communion of Apostles and collaborated
with Pedro Berruguete on a series of uomini famosi.103 At Urbino, Justus worked
alongside the Castilian, Pedro Berruguete (c. 1450–1504), who also worked in
a Netherlandish style, thereby making artistic hybridity the norm at the court of
Urbino.104 The Portrait of Federico da Montefeltro with His Son Guidobaldo has been
attributed to either Justus or Berruguete and the uomini famosi series is variously
attributed to each.105
The internationalization of Italian art continued under the influence of new arrivals
from the North, who became part of established Italian workshops. One example of
such is the arrival, on 2 June 1508, of Alonso Berruguete (c. 1488–1561), who
Michelangelo received, in Rome. Alonso was the son of Pedro Berruguete, who
worked in a Netherlandish style, as did Alonso. There, he allowed the younger artist
to see his drawings for the Battle of Cascina.106 This meeting, representing, as Nicole
Dacos has pointed out, a significant point of contact between Italian and Netherland-
ish style. Thus, two traditions, the Spanish and the Italian, each influenced by North-
ern European art met in Rome, in Michelangelo’s workshop.
In 1508–1509, Jan Gossaert went to Rome as part of the retinue of Philip of
Burgundy.107 Gossaert was part of a diplomatic mission to the Papal court and his
arrival was a singular point of contact between Italian artists, working in Rome, and
the new style being developed in the Antwerp art market. Gossaert’s work is represen-
tative of the style classified as Antwerp Mannerism and he was a member of this group
before he arrived. Thus, Gossaert’s arrival in Rome, when Michelangelo was working
16 From the ars nova to the maniera moderna
on the Sistine Ceiling and as Raphael began work on the Stanze, represents a point of
contact between Antwerp Mannerism and Michelangelo and Raphael’s Roman
manner.
Jan van Scorel is another Northern artist, who came to Italy and continued artistic
exchanges between North and South. In 1521, during the brief Papacy of Adrian VI
(9 January 1522–14 September 1523), Van Scorel was appointed as an official painter
to the Vatican and painted a portrait of the Pope, as well as other works. He knew
Michelangelo and Raphael and became keeper of the Belvedere after Raphael died.
Van Scorel remained in Rome until 1524, when he returned to Utrecht, where he con-
tinued his career. Before his departure, he visited Venice, in 1518 and 1524.108
Van Scorel is considered to be the leading member of the group identified as the
Romanists,109 i.e. Northern painters who came to Rome and established an artist colony
in the city. This group included Jan Gossaert (in Rome 1508–1509), Jan Sanders Van
Hemessen (in Rome, c. 1520), Pieter Coecke Van Aelst (in Rome, before 1527), Maarten
Van Heemskerck (in Rome, c. 1532), Lambert Lombard (in Rome, c. 1537), Michael
Coxie (in Rome, 1529–1538), and Frans Floris (in Rome, c. 1540). As these artists stud-
ied contemporary Italian and ancient Classical art, they continued producing work in
Italy in the styles in which they had been trained. Italian artists, in turn, learned about
contemporary, Northern styles, through the work of the ‘Romanists’ and it can be
argued that both groups influenced each other. Additional Northern influence in Italy
can be found in the distribution of the prints of Bernard Van Orley (1487/91–1541).110
Spanish artists, such as Pedro and Alonso Berruguete, who worked in a Northern
style participated in artistic exchanges and in the production of internationalized,
hybrid styles. To Pedro Nunyes, previous scholarship attributed the Manchester
Madonna, now given to Michelangelo, although that work is perhaps from the hand
of Ascanio Condivi, as may be the drawing, entitled The Epiphany, in the British
Museum.111 Nunyes settled in Florence, while Leonardo was working on the Battle
of Anghiari (1504–1505), and worked as Leonardo’s assistant.112 Pedro Fernández
(the Pseudo-Bramantino), another Spaniard, was in Rome between 1514 and 1516,
after having joined the circle of artists around Donato Bramante, c. 1500.113
Guglielmo de Marcillat was another foreign artist, who came to Italy, on 19 Octo-
ber 1509, invited by Bramante to become part of this circle.114 Marcillat remained in
Italy, going to Cortona (15), then Arezzo (1520).115 Jean de Chenevières came from
France to join Bramante’s workshop, bringing another artistic stream to the group of
foreign artists brought together by Bramante.116 Joining the others was Juan de
Burgunya (Juan de Borgoña – c. 1470–1536), a Fleming transplanted to Spain, who
came to Florence and Rome between 1510 and 1525.117 Diego Siloé and Bartolome
Ordoñez also came to Italy, joining the group of Spaniards, who brought Northern
Styles to Italy, while taking away Italian influence.118
Francisco de Hollanda (1517–1587), famously came from Portugal, on 5 Jan-
uary 1528, and made the acquaintance of Michelangelo, whose slighting remarks about
Netherlandish painting he recorded.119 Hollanda was an architect, sculptor, art theorist,
and painter, who worked in a Flemish style, complemented by a theoretical position
that synthesized Neoplatonism, Christian Kabbala, and Lullism120 and included cosmo-
graphic and astrological perspectives, incorporated into his art theory.121 Another out-
lier, Giulio Clovio (1498–1578), came from Croatia to Rome, in 1526. In Rome, he
became known for his ‘Mannerist’ style, found in the illuminated manuscripts he illus-
trated for Rome’s aristocrats.122
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III.
»Sinä päivänä kuin minä pelkään, luotan minä Sinuun.» ps. 66:4.
National Sermons.
M.S. Letters.
Westminster Sermons
National Sermons
Water of Life—Sermons.
Village Sermons.
V.