It is no surprise that this initiative devoted to new research on Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo should have emerged from Anglo-Saxon scholarship. Here the artist is seen in the context of his surroundings, always a point of reference for him in various ways; his milieu cast an influence that was not always direct and immediate but was nevertheless unavoidable.
When interest first arose, many years ago, in the Milanese painterâs theoretical workâthe most individual and innovative aspect of his approach to the sphere of the visual and the visibleâanglophone historians and critics took the lead, from David Summers to James. B. Lynch and Martin Kemp, to cite only the most original contributors. Our interest in the ways in which the work of art could intersect with the intellectual realm originates in these studies. In turn they led to the exhaustive and all-encompassing work of Gerald Ackerman, following in the footsteps of the naturalised French scholar, Robert Klein. Fifty years after his tragic death, Kleinâs works are still an essential point of reference. This current of interest has continued uninterrupted. Indeed, it has grown in both quantity and quality in recent years, with the appearance of numerous valuable, penetrating, philologically based studiesâone need only mention Jean Julia Chaiâs admirable English translation of the Idea del tempio della pittura (1590).
One might be tempted to consider this legacy as the revival of an ancient lineage of connections, initiated by Richard Haydocke, the first and very early translator of Lomazzoâs Trattato dellâarte della pittura, scoltura et archittetura (1584). Haydocke was an eccentric figure, but at the time not an exceptional one among the polymathic cultural networks and intellectual personalities of the sixteenth century, who regarded every physical and metaphysical aspect of the real world with curiosityâindeed this very term recalls Haydockeâs translation of Lomazzoâs title: A tracte containing the artes of curious paintinge, carvinge & buildinge.
Such initiatives justified and encouraged a succession of eclectic studies, which not infrequentlyâas in the case of Haydockeâled on to the practice of medicine, focusing on the body, analysed inside and out in its physical reality. As in almost every treatise on anatomy up to now, however, medical studies left ample room for uncertainty and anxiety on problematic aspects that emerged from the dissecting table, and to which a large part of the richly illustrated material was dedicated. The visual representation of anatomy generated metaphors that could be lugubrious, pietistic, macabre and even necromantically inclined.
The body, in fact, was not only a site of scientific enquiry but also the source of the manifestation of aesthetic perfection, considered not in opposition to medicine, but as a consequence of necessary research in the field. With equal dedication, doctors and artists explored the study of the body, overcoming the repugnance experienced even by Leonardo, Lomazzoâs revered maître à penser in this descent into the underworld. The practice involved direct confrontation with the most horrifying causes of death, in direct opposition to the classical and Renaissance rhetoric that privileged the appeal and grace of beauty as the long-established foundation of the work of art.
In the act of creation, artists aimed for the ideal reconstruction of the anatomically fragmented body, reassembling the parts, not in adherence to a specific model, but through a special Underweysung der Messung (to borrow the title of Dürerâs treatise), which reduced the harmony and proportion of the human body to a geometrical exercise using ruler and compasses. Nevertheless they recognised the reality and legitimacy of variations in physiognomyâdue to the diversity of human types, to differences of sex and age, and to changes in pose and perspective.
Lomazzo was convinced of the importance of this procedure and took full account of it frequently in his work. Nonetheless his theory of proportion was not bound by the limits of what can be represented, but comprised realities that are not immediately perceptible as well as connotations dependent on character and temperament. His strict selection of the seven governors of the art of painting includes figures who had achieved general approval by that time, but also others of less prominence whose exclusion would be difficult to justify.
The fact is that these governors not only reached poetic and expressive heights, but represented modalities of approach to reality that constituted metaphorical mini-universes. Indeed, above all, in the analysis of the negative qualities of artists opposed to them, stylistic considerations of their work become less important, and judgment is based on unfavourable character traits of indolence and bad behaviour.
The seven governors correspond to the seven divisions of painting (the number is replete with sacred allusions), and impersonate in an allegorical sense an organisational scheme implicated by its similarity to the seven alchemical metals and the seven planets. Thus artistic practice becomes a creative process that is not limited to the achievement of a more or less perfect similitude, but activates a different kind of creation through the selection of similar but differently elaborated elements. In this esoteric and pantheistic religion, or rather in this occult philosophy, the artists are the priests and instructors, from Raphael the âphilosopherâ to Leonardo the âwiseâ, and from Dürer the âgreat druidâ to Michelangelo the âgymnosophistâ (in the Hellenistic lexicon gymnosophists are ascetic Indian brahmin philosophers). To these artists was assigned the task of revealing the existence of an iconic cosmos created from the mind of man and dominated by it, and of practising the cult.
Trust in the meaning of allegory constitutes the interpretative key to this philosophy, through the retrieval of symbolic mythology and the stories and geography of legend. Plinyâs âunnatural Natural Historyâ offers inexhaustible material, with its wide range of sources and innumerable epitomes, which provide ample scope for the proliferation of diversity. All this is contained within an exposition, which even in its zest for encyclopaedic knowledge, aspired to present itself as a treatise on the figurative arts and architecture, and on the biographies of its principal exponents. As such it legitimised the attention given to unusual typologies, to the deviant and the monstrous, to the delineation of character, and hence to caricature.
The theme was an old and long-enduring one, from the affirmation that âchi pinge figura si non può esser lei non la può porreâ, a discrete allusion to the relationship between copying, complicity and plagiarism, which in the realm of medieval fantasy bound the work, the author and the viewer together as collaborators. This evolved to comprise the disguises, counterfeits and simulations that extended from the Accademia della Val di Blenio to the art of Arcimboldo.
In all this, the theory of different temperaments, so dear to Lomazzo, found nourishment and justification. It categorised the specific types of artists, endowed with various different poetic, expressive and technical skills. These differences were associated with astral influences linked to the formal and physical variations that defined the deities of ancient mythology and served as models and archetypes. In nature, and especially in the human race, these gave birth to a taxonomy of existence and of its representation. Such mythical connotations could also be detected through anatomical investigation, even leading to necromantic inclinations that were not always discouraged in medicine at the time. To cite just one example within Lomazzoâs circle, it is well known that his friend Girolamo Cardano eagerly accepted diagnostic formulations derived from birth horoscopes.
At the same time, the lengthy discussion of the theory of proportion in Lomazzoâs treatise, based on a now well-established tradition, proposed an analogy in its aims and methods between Pythagorean thought and the figurative arts, an association known to the artist and his circle. This theory was based on geometrical relationships, verifiable through reason and harmonic ratios, which could even apply to transcendental visions and could be extended to include the practice of mathematical and geometrical magic.
To conclude, if the declared intention of the Milanese painter was the attainment of beauty in the arts (in their polyvalent sense), he nevertheless recognisedâthree centuries ahead of his timeâthe aesthetic of the ugly. In opposition to the classicism of the καλÏÏ ÎºÎ±á½¶ á¼Î³Î±Î¸ÏÏ (the beautiful and the good), ugliness is offered as its antithesis, to be accepted with equanimity and âdemocraticâ inclusivity.
I have deliberately focused on a single aspect of Lomazzoâs thinking, to the strict exclusion of other trains of thought, because this allows us to understand better the reasons for Haydockeâs interest in this artist, who had been dead for some years, and whose paintings the Englishman hardly knew, even though his travels on the continent had taken him to northern Italy.
Haydocke, though a student of medicine at Oxford, was also seriously engaged in the study of the arts and literature. In his reading of the recently published Trattato, Haydocke recognised profound connections with his open-ended course of study that aroused his underlying intellectual curiosity.
Although his familiarity with the minor and later works is highly unlikely, we know that Haydocke examined the Trattato at various different stages of his life. It is likely that he also knew the Idea, where the esoteric under-current is most evident, and perhaps also Della forma delle muse, in which he could have noticed a lexical resonance with the âPambiblion, or Temple to all the Musesâ, [the library in Oxford] reorganised in 1598 under the dedicated curatorship of his protector, Thomas Bodley, the dedicatee of Haydockeâs translation.
A first approach dates from the years of his sojourn on the Continent, but it was only after 1588 that Haydocke set about acquiring a printed version. Having first laid his hands on a copy that was only partly usable because it had been salvaged from a shipwreck, in the end âa most kind gentleman [â¦] procured a perfect coppie from Italy.â If this was the edition of 1585, which included for the first time the bust-length portrait of Lomazzo in profile, seen from the left and wearing a toga, set in an oval frame like a medal or cameoâthe likeness that Haydocke used in his own translationâthen it is unnecessary to claim his direct knowledge of the later editions of the Idea or of Della forma delle muse where the same woodcut appears.
It is nevertheless worth considering this frontispiece in more detail, because it casts significant light on the reasons for the ideological and cultural affinity. In sponsoring Lomazzo, Haydocke became the first propagator of artistic theory in England, and at the same time the promoter of the posthumous reputation of the Lombard treatise-writer. The frontispiece is arranged according to the conventions of the time, especially with regard to scientific literature, in which each figure assumed an allusive or emblematic role. Thus the depicted figures created a reverse ekphrasis through which collateral or cryptic messages could be attached to amplify the organic content of the text; such additions were necessary to allow a deeper understanding that could not easily be expressed in the discursive medium of the text. As an example relevant to the present discussion, we can refer to the preparatory drawing in the Albertina, now considered autograph, for the frontispiece of Lomazzoâs Trattato. We should add at once that the woodcut on the first page of A tracte containing the artes of curious paintinge, carvinge & buildinge (1598) was based on a sketch by Haydocke, which revealed his own limited artistic skill. In my opinion the portrait of Haydocke at the foot of the page, which is of much higher artistic quality, was kindly inserted by his friend Nicholas Hilliard, the miniature painter.
Richard Haydocke, title page from A tracte containing the artes of curious paintinge, carvinge & buildinge (Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1598).
Photo: courtesy of the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2968â733)
The composition of the page is organised in two facing sections arranged in two tiers, separated by heraldic displays which indicate the status of the author and his institution. Above are two goddesses, Juno and Minerva, and below two heroes or demi-gods, Prometheus and Dedalos. The four figures represent the figurative arts and architecture: Juno, with the peacock displaying a multicoloured tail strewn with eyes; Prometheus, âinventor of sculptureâ, who gave fire to mankind, supported by an eagle; Minerva, goddess of intellectual knowledge, expressed through geometry, from which sprang the technical knowledge needed to allow Dedalos to build the labyrinth, but which led to the tragedy of Icarus.
One could point out many other carefully balanced relationships and further moralising implications in the frontispiece. Here suffice it to add that, in this complex allegory, Haydocke used iconographic citations from book VII of Lomazzoâs Trattato, a rich resource distilled from Boccaccio, Cartari and Giraldi, in order to instruct the reader on the âform of the gods of the ancientsâ. We know that book VII was omitted from the Tracte. Was this imagery perhaps a foretaste of a promised completion of the work that was never carried out?