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A visualization of dissident voices insixteenth-century Italy: a reflection of thereligious debate in art.Nixon, Kathrine Mary Gillhttps://iro.uiowa.edu/discovery/delivery/01IOWA_INST:ResearchRepository/12730710620002771?l#13730725110002771

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A VISUALIZATION OF DISSIDENT VOICES IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY ITALY:

A REFLECTION OF THE RELIGIOUS DEBATE IN ART

by

Kathrine Mary Gill Nixon

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of

Philosophy degree in Religious Studies in the Graduate College of

The University of Iowa

May 2011

Thesis Supervisor: Professor Raymond A. Mentzer

Copyright by

KATHRINE MARY GILL NIXON

2011

All Rights Reserved

Graduate College The University of Iowa

Iowa City, Iowa

CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL

_______________________

PH.D. THESIS

_______________

This is to certify that the Ph.D. thesis of

Kathrine Mary Gill Nixon

has been approved by the Examining Committee for the thesis requirement for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Religious Studies at the May 2011 graduation.

Thesis Committee: ___________________________________ Raymond A. Mentzer, Thesis Supervisor

___________________________________ Ralph Keen

___________________________________ Julie Hochstrasser

___________________________________ Kathleen Kamerick

___________________________________ Glenn Ehrstine

ii

To Anthony 1988-2010

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... iv

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................1

CHAPTER TWO THE RELIGIOUS CLIMATE OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY ITALY ............................................................................................................15

Savonarola (1452-1498) ...................................................................19 The Republic of Venice and Religious Reform ...............................24 Reform within the Church ................................................................34 Protestant Reform .............................................................................45

CHAPTER THREE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY WORLD OF ART .................................55 The Church and Images ....................................................................60 Protestantism and the Image ............................................................63 Interpretation of Art .........................................................................67 The Emergence of a Theory of Art ..................................................77

CHAPTER FOUR SAVONAROLA .................................................................................86

CHAPTER FIVE PAINTINGS THAT REFLECT CATHOLIC REFORM .....................99 Jacopo Pontomo (1494-1556) ........................................................100 Lorenzo Lotto (1480-1556/7) .........................................................109

CHAPTER SIX TWO FRESCOS: 1537-1556 ................................................................125 Michelangelo’s Last Judgment .......................................................126 Pontormo in San Lorenzo ...............................................................136

CHAPTER SEVEN THE INCURSION OF PROTESTANTISM: PAINTINGS FROM 1535-1590 .........................................................................................158

Jacopo Bassano ..............................................................................163

CHAPTER EIGHT CARAVAGGIO (1571-1610) .........................................................183 Milan Under Borromeo ..................................................................183 Caravaggio .....................................................................................186

CHAPTER NINE CONCLUSION ..................................................................................200

BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................206

iv

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 Leonardo da Vinci St. John the Baptist 1513-16 Oil on Panel, 69x

57cm Musée du Louvre, Paris. (With permission from WGA) ................................83

Figure 2 Andrea del Sarto Madonna of the Harpies 1517 Oil on Wood, 208 x 178 cm Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. (With permission from WGA)...................84

Figure 3 Carlo Crivelli Madonna Enthroned with Saints 1488 Poplar Panel, 191 x 196cm Staatliche Museen, Berlin. (With permission from WGA)........................85

Figure 4 Lorenzo Lotto St. Vincent Ferrer c. 1511, Fresco, 265 x 166 cm. San Domenico, Recanati. (With permission from WGA) ...............................................96

Figure 5 Fra Bartolomeo della Porta. God the Father with Saint Catherine of Siena and Mary Magdalen. 1509, Panel, 361x236 cm Museo e Pinacoteca Nazionale di Palazzo Mansi, Lucca. (With permission from WGA) .......................97

Figure 6 Fra Bartolomeo della Porta Madonna della Misericodia 1515, Oil on Canvas Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi, Lucca. (With permission from WGA)........................................................................................................................98

Figure 7 Jacopo Pontormo Madonna and Child with Saints 1518 Oil on Wood 214 x 185 cm San Michele Visdomini, Florence. (With permission from WGA)......................................................................................................................116

Figure 8 Jacopo Pontormo Supper at Emmaus 1525 Oil on Canvas 230 x 173 cm Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. (With permission from WGA) .............................117

Figure 9 Jacopo Pontormo Annuciation 1527-28, Fresco 368 x 168 cm Cappella Capponi, Santa Felicità, Florence. (With permission from WGA) ........................118

Figure 10 Jacopo Pontormo Deposition 1528 Oil on Wood 313 x 192 cm Cappella Capponi, Santa Felicità, Florence. (With permission from WGA) .........119

Figure 11 Lorenzo Lotto Madonna and Child with Saints 1521 Oil on Canvas 300 x 275 cm Church of San Bernadino, Pignolo, Bergamo. (With permission from WGA) .............................................................................................................120

Figure 12 Lorenzo Lotto Trinity 1523 Oil on Canvas 170 x 11 cm Sant’Alessandro della Croce, Bergamo. (With permission from WGA) ...............121

Figure 13 Lorenzo Lotto Stories of St. Barbara (Detail) 1524 Fresco Oratorio Suardi, Trescore. (With permission from WGA) ...................................................122

Figure 14 Lorenzo Lotto Christ Carrying the Cross 1526 Oil on Canvas 66 x 60 cm Musée du Louvre, Paris. (With permission from WGA) ..................................123

Figure 15 Lorenzo Lotto Annuciation c. 1527 Oil on Canvas 166 x 114 cm Pinacoteca Communale, Recanati. (With permission from WGA) ........................124

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Figure 16 Michelangelo Last Judgment 1537-1541 Fresco 1370 x 1220 cm Cappella Sistina, Vatican. (With permission from WGA) .....................................143

Figure 17 Michelangelo Last Judgment (Detail) 1537-1541 Fresco 1370 x 1220 cm Cappella Sistina, Vatican. (With permission from WGA) ......................144

Figure 18 Michelangelo Last Judgment (Detail) 1537-1541 Fresco 1370 x 1220 cm Cappella Sistina, Vatican. (With permission from WGA) ...............................145

Figure 19 Michelangelo Reprobate, Last Judgment (detail) 1537-1541 Fresco 1370 x 1220 cm Cappella Sistina, Vatican. (With permission from WGA) ..........146

Figure 20 Michelangelo Last Judgment (Detail) 1537-1541 Fresco 1370 x 1220 cm Cappella Sistina, Vatican. (With permission from WGA) ...............................147

Figure 21 Michelangelo Flayed Skin, Last Judgment (Detail) 1537-1541 Fresco 1370 x 1220 cm Cappella Sistina, Vatican. (With permission from WGA ............148

Figure 22 Michelangelo Adam and Eve, Last Judgment (Detail) 1537-1541 Fresco 1370 x 1220 cm Cappella Sistina, Vatican. (With permission from WGA) ..........149

Figure 23 Michelangelo Charon’s Boat, Last Judgment (detail) 1537-1541 Fresco 1370 x 1220 cm Cappella Sistina, Vatican. (With permission from WGA) ...............................................................................................................150

Figure 24 Jacopo Pontormo Christ the Judge with Creation of Eve c. 1550 Black Chalk on Paper 326 x 180 cm Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. (With permission from WGA) ..........................................................................................151

Figure 25 Jacopo Pontormo Study for the Sacrifice of Cain and the Death of Abel 1546-1556 Drawing Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. (With permission from WGA)......................................................................................................................152

Figure 26 Jacopo Pontormo Labor of Adam and Eve c. 1546-56 Drawing Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. (With permission from WGA) ...........................................153

Figure 27 Jacopo Pontormo Four Evangelists c.1550. Black chalk on paper, 413x 177cm Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. (With permission from WGA)..................154

Figure 28 Jacopo Pontormo Moses Receiving the Tablets c. 1546-56 Drawing Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. (With permission from WGA) .............................155

Figure 29 Jacopo Pontormo Group of the Dead c. 1546-56 Drawing Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. (With permission from WGA) ....................................................156

Figure 30 Jacopo Pontormo Deluge 1546-56 Drawing Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. (With permission from WGA) ................................................................157

Figure 31 Lorenzo Lotto St. Lucy before the Judge 1532. Oil on Wood, 243x237cm Pinacoteca Civica, Jesi. (With permission from WGA) .....................175

Figure 32 Lorenzo Lotto Alms of Saint Antoninus 1542 Oil on Wood 332 x 235 cm Basillica di Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice. (With permission from WGA) ...............................................................................................................176

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Figure 33 Jacopo Bassano Supper at Emmaus c. 1538 Oil on Canvas 235 x 250 cm Sacristy, Parish Church, Cittadella. (With permission from WGA) .................177

Figure 34 Jacopo Bassano St. Eleutherius Blessing the Faithful 1565 Oil on Canvas 280 x 174cm Galleria dell’Academia, Venice. (With permission from WGA)......................................................................................................................178

Figure 35 Jacopo Bassano Purification of the Temple c. 1580 Oil on Canvas 162 x 268 cm National Gallery, London. (With permission from WGA) ..............179

Figure 36 Jacopo Bassano Sacrifice of Noah c. 1574 Oil on Canvas Staaliche Schlösser Und Gärten, Potsdam-Sanssouci. (With permission from WGA) ..........180

Figure 37 Jacopo Bassano Summer c.1575 Oil on Canvas 79 x 111 cm Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. (With permission from WGA) .....................181

Figure 38 Jacopo Bassano Adoration of the Shepherds 1590-92 Oil on Canvas 421 x 219 cm San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice. (With permission from WGA) ......182

Figure 39 Caravaggio Calling of St. Matthew 1599-1600 Oil on Canvas 322 x 340cm Contarelli Chapel, San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome. (With permission from WGA) .............................................................................................................194

Figure 40 Cerasi Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome. (With permission from WGA)......................................................................................................................195

Figure 41 Annabale Carraci Assumption of the Virgin Mary 1600-01 Oil on Canvas 245 x 115 cm Cerasi Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome. (With permission from WGA) ..........................................................................................196

Figure 42 Caravaggio Conversion of St. Paul on the Way to Damascus 1600 Oil on Cypress Wood 237 x 189 cm Cerasi Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome. (With permission from WGA) ....................................................................197

Figure 43 Caravaggio Supper at Emmaus 1601 Oil on Canvas 141 x 196 cm National Gallery, London. (With permission from WGA) .....................................198

Figure 44 Caravaggio Supper at Emmaus 1606 Oil on Canvas 141 x 175 cm Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan. (With permission from WGA) ...................................199

1

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

The sixteenth century witnessed the emergence of the nation state; the move from

an agrarian to a commercially based economy; expansion of European nations overseas

which in turn opened new markets and brought great wealth; a change in the

understanding of humanity’s place in the universe; confidence in human endeavor; shifts

in traditional religious practices; and devastating cycles of floods, famines and disease,

which decimated the countryside and led to a rise in poverty levels. The most disruptive

and significant of these developments was the disintegration of the religious landscape

into differing confessional practices, resulting in numerous religious wars.

Whilst it is true that medieval Christianity was not as uniform throughout Western

Europe as might be supposed, the church did provide a rhythm to the passing of the

hours. The year was marked by religious festivals, and the tolling of bells sanctified the

day with ritual prayer. It is difficult for us in the twenty-first century, here in the West, to

fully appreciate the extent to which the Church impacted society. We are accustomed, to

the idea, at least, of the separation of Church and State. An indication of how far down

the road to secularism our society has travelled is the fact that we find the Muslim call to

prayer alien, or that the religious significance of Jean-Francois Millet’s The Angelus

(Paris, Musée d’Orsay.) with its golden light and tranquility is lost to us, or that only the

old can sympathize with D. H. Lawrence’s nostalgic eulogy to the passing of the church’s

influence.1

1 D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and A Propos of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’:Cambridge Edition of the Works of D. H. Lawrence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 322-323. ‘We feel it in the festivals, the processions, Christmas, the Three Kings, Easter, Pentecost, St John’s Day, All Saints, All Souls. This is the wheeling of the year, the movement of the sun through solstice and equinox, the coming of the seasons, the going of the seasons. And it is the inward rhythm of man and woman, too, the sadness of Lent, the delight of Easter, the wonder of Pentecost, the fires of St John, the candles on the graves of All souls, the lit-up tree of Christmas, all representing kindled rhythmic emotions in the souls of men and women.’

2

The year 1517 marked the beginning of a time when the world was lit by the fire

of faith and the fires of the ensuing religious wars.2 Martin Luther began a religious

debate that captured the hearts and imagination of the European nations and took more

than a century to resolve. Countries were divided and rulers used religion as a means of

wresting themselves from the influence of the Papacy, causing untold bloodshed in

religious wars that ended with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Luther’s solutions to the

problems facing the Church found a resonance in the spiritual longing of the people.

What Luther did not anticipate was the speed at which his ideas spread and morphed into

other confessions.

This thesis has emerged out of two snippets of information encountered in the

course of general reading whilst searching for a dissertation topic, and which piqued my

curiosity. The first was that Caravaggio represented the Baroque art.3 Not being a student

of art history, the term “baroque” brought to mind art that upheld and supported the

doctrines of the Counter-Reformation and the wealth and power associated with

Absolutism. To my unpracticed eyes, Caravaggio’s art did not seem to easily fit with this

view of the Baroque. Perhaps more pertinent to the birth of the thesis, was the widely

accepted fact that that the religious debate in sixteenth-century Italy was conducted at all

levels of society, from the elite intellectuals to fishwives in the piazze. I began to wonder

if this widespread religious debate was reflected in some way in Italian religious art of

the sixteenth century, and if this had contributed to the fact that the peninsula had

produced such a singular artist as Caravaggio. What has resulted is a thesis that crosses

the disciplines of religious history, art history and aesthetics. The emphasis is on religious

history and this inevitably gives rise to faux pas in those areas that are the result of self-

2 Borrowed from the title of William Manchester’s A World Lit Only by Fire: the Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: A Portrait of an Age (Boston, New York and London: Little, Brown and Company,1991).

3 Sister Wendy Beckett, The Story of Painting (New York: DK Publishing, Inc., 1994), 176.

3

study rather than formal training.4 However, for all the difficulties that a cross-

disciplinary study entails, I think it is at boundaries, where disciplines encounter each

other that rich and rewarding avenues open onto new vistas.

In Italy, the Reformation did not follow the same pattern as found in other parts of

Europe. No secular rulers espoused wholeheartedly the Protestant cause and sought to

establish it in their realms. Rather, when Protestant ideas reached the peninsula, around

1521, the ground had already been cultivated both by efforts to reform the Church from

within and by the impact of humanist learning. Furthermore, discussion and

dissemination of religious ideas occurred through sermons and the printed word, and they

reached all levels of society. Ideas were exchanged in shops and the market place,

especially among artisan and merchants.5 Artists would not be impervious to this

religious debate and, one could expect to see some expressions of religious diversity in

paintings. Art historians have drawn attention to the paintings of some artists whose work

exhibits an iconography that is at odds with either the iconographical tradition, or

Catholic teaching, or both. Examples of this are Jacopo Pontormo’s frescoes in the

Capponi Chapel, Florence and Jacopo Bassano’s Supper at Emmaus, in the parish church

of Cittadella. Such findings have usually been treated in isolation, as anomalies within

the corpus of the artist, but they might equally reflect wider issues.

The Reformation had a profound effect on both the production of art and its

function in churches. The result has been the identification of the very different ways in

which Protestants and Catholics looked at religious art. For Catholics, religious art

opened up the possibility of God-with-us and “heaven-with-us,” as identified by García-

4 This type of apology and explanation was used by Alejandro García-Rivera and I felt it was appropriate to include a similar statement. Alejandro, García-Rivera, Wounded Innocence: Sketches for a Theology of Art. (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 2003), xii.

5 John Martin, “Salvation and Society in Sixteenth-Century Venice: Popular Evangelism in a Renaissance City” The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 60. No. 2 (1988), 213.

4

Rivera.6 Robert Scribner, taking a somewhat different approach, identifies the Catholic

way of looking as a “sacramental” gaze.7 Koerner talks of the Catholic Church as being a

“seeing-kingdom.”8 These terms are all expressions of the richness of Catholic religious

art and the manner in which a Catholic understood the purpose of a holy picture. In

contrast to this, the Protestants developed a “theological” gaze that relates to a “hearing-

kingdom,” based on the pre-eminence of the word. The manner in which the different

churches understood religious art had an impact on the type of art produced. In the

following pages I will be using these terms (God-with-us, “heaven-with-us”, “hearing-

kingdom”, “seeing-kingdom” etc.) to help identify Italian religious paintings that contain

subtle divergences from traditional Catholic art.

The thesis will also outline the shape of the religious debate in Italy. Unlike the

northern lands no rulers adopted Protestantism, so there were no Protestant churches.

Instead there was a network of people who exchanged some ideas and acted as conduits

for others. Since there were no legitimate channels of authority to give direction to or

consolidate the different strands of reform thought, it is important to give voice to these

various threads. These constitute attempts at reform in Italy and give shape to certain

works of art. These works of art sprang from a religious debate that was taking place at

the time. The artists themselves were participants, if only as members of society and not

necessarily as Protestants.

To a large extent I will draw upon the work of major researchers in the field.

Early studies within the historiography of Italian religious history were colored by the

hostile relations between liberals and conservatives of the new Italian State. Nineteenth-

6 García-Rivera, Wounded Innocence, 58.

7 Robert Scribner “Popular Piety and Modes of Visual Perception I Late-Medieval and Reformation Germany” The Journal of Religious History Vol. 15 (1989): 481.

8 Joseph Leo Koerner, The Reformation of the Image (London: Reacktion Books, 2004).

5

century studies of heretics saw them as victims of religious oppression by the Catholic

hierarchy generally and by the Inquisition in particular. However, since the 1930’s and

the appearance of Delio Cantimori’s Eretici italiani,9 sophisticated studies have made

Italian Reformation history a vibrant subfield of the early modern period. Cantimori’s

ground-breaking work changed the approach to Italian heretics who could no longer be

seen as mere followers of the northern Reformers. Rather, their writings indicated that

they were influenced by humanist thought, which informed the ideas they borrowed from

Luther and Calvin. A more contemporary work in the area of Italian Reformation is that

of Salvatore Caponetto. His Protestant Reformation in Sixteenth Century Italy provides a

valuable introduction to the Reformation in Italy and includes individual chapters on the

spread of Lutheranism, Calvinism, and the influence of Juan de Valdès. Also included is

an examination of the reception of Protestant texts and ideas on a regional basis in, for

example Venice, Ferrara, Mantua, Florence, and Naples.10

New approaches to the history of the period attempt to illustrate the complexity of

Italian society and the interconnections among people, as well as shifting political

alliances. Charmarie Jenkins Blaisdell’s work on Ferrara indicates the instability among

the city-states and illustrates how religion was often a political tool.11 In addition, the

collection of essays in Heresy, Culture, and Religion in Early Modern Italy edited by

Ronald Delph, Michelle Fontaine and John Martin,12 John Martin’s Venice’s Hidden

9 Delio Catimore, Eretici italiani del cinquecento, recherche storiche (Florence:G.C. Sansoni, 1939).

10 Salvatore Caponetto, The Protestant Reformation in Sixteenth Century Italy (Kirksville, Missouri: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1999), translated by. Anne C. Tedeschi and John Tedeschi.

11 Charmaire Jenkins Blaisdell, “Politics and Heresy in Ferrara, 1534-1559” The Sixteenth Century Journal, VI (1975): 67-93.

12 Ronald K. Delph, Michelle M Fontaine and John Jeffries Martin, Heresy, Culture, and Religion in Early Modern Italy: Contexts and Contestations (Kirksville, Missouri: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 2006).

6

Enemies,13 and Wietse de Boer’s work on Counter-Reformation Milan14 illustrate the

difficulty in creating overarching general studies of the history of the Italian peninsula.

Unlike its northern counter-part, Italy had no focus for political authority, due to the fact

that Italian heads of state needed to steer a course between accommodation with France

and the Holy Roman Empire, which used the peninsula as a battleground for more than

half a century. They were also preoccupied with their desire to increase their family

domains. And, of course, they had the Pope in their backyard. He not only had his own

political ambitions, but was the head of the Catholic Church. These political concerns

helped prevent the Reformation from taking hold in the peninsula as it had done in the

rest of Europe, but they did not lessen the pressing concerns regarding the state of the

Church nor the laity’s response to those concerns.

Within the peninsula, a vision of a purified church had deep roots extending back

into the fourteenth century, and embraced such diverse groups as the Waldensians and

Spiritual Franciscans. The need for reform had been heightened by the sojourn of the

Papacy in Avignon and the Western Schism which was finally resolved in 1417. The

necessity for Church reform remained near the surface, as can be seen in 1513 the

Libellus ad Leonem X. This document called for significant reforms of the priesthood, the

translation of the Bible into the vernacular, and reunion with the Eastern Orthodox

Churches, was presented at the Fifth Lateran Council.

Italian humanism generated a religious earnestness among the educated, which

led to debates as to the compatibility of the Christian life with active participation in the

civic order. This would bring the problem of the vita activa and vita contemplativa into

sharper relief, with the result that emphasis was placed on the interior life rather than the

13 John Jefferies Martin, Venice’s Hidden Enemies: Italian Heretics in a Renaissance City (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1995).

14 Wieste de Boer, The Conquest of the Soul (Leiden: Brill, 2001).

7

externals of devotion. These ideals became the hallmark of Italian evangelism. Studies of

Evangelism are plentiful, beginning in the 1950s with the publication of Eva-Maria

Jung’s article “On the Nature of Evangelism in Sixteenth-Century Italy” in 1953.15

Although the findings put forward in this pioneering article have since been seriously

questioned, the article still provides a useful general description of the key protagonists

and their inter-connections. A summary of the state of scholarship on this topic can be

found in Elizabeth Gleason’s “On the Nature of Sixteenth Century Italian Evangelism:

Scholarship, 1953-1978.”16 Although this too is somewhat dated, it remains the starting

point for researchers interested in Evangelism. The term itself is fraught with difficulty,

and scholars prefer using the term spirituali as a nomenclature for the individuals

espousing its principles. It is a label the evangelicals used of themselves.

In her article, Gleason shows how the understanding of Evangelism has changed,

and that there is no consensus of opinion as to how to define those people who were

interested in reform based on Scripture. Delio Cantimori believes that the spirituali were

products of Renaissance culture and humanist learning, which tended towards

indifference to the church as an institution, rather than being influenced by Protestant

ideas. 17 Dermont Fenlon also stresses the indigenous origins of Italian evangelism. He

regards it as part of the preoccupation with salvation and the desire for personal religious

experience that was widespread across Europe and which led men and women to consult

15 Eva-Maria Jung. “On the Nature of Evangelism in Sixteenth Century Italy” Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol.14 (1953): 513-514.

16 Elizabeth Gleason, “On the Nature of Sixteenth Century Italian Evangelism: Scholarship, 1953-1978,” Sixteenth Century Journal IX (1978): 3-25.

17 Gleason, “On the Nature of Sixteenth-Century Evangelism,” 4.

8

the Bible as the Word of God.18 Philip MacNair, on the other hand, traces direct

Protestant influences on Italian Evangelism through the work of Ochino and Valdés19

Taking a different approach, Anne Schutte’s article “The Lettere Volgari and the

Crisis of Evangelism in Italy,” studies anthologies of writings and sheds light on the wide

range of people who were interested in Evangelism. Editors selected the contents of the

anthologies based on the elegance of the Italian and because they contained “serious

reflections on political, social, literary, philosophical, and religious problems.”20 The

publishers also had two groups of readers in mind when choosing writings for the

anthologies. The first of these were those persons who were bi-lingual and who were

looking for exemplars of stylish and polished Latin and Italian. The second group were

those people who had no Latin and required models on how to write Italian.21 Printers

took seriously questions of religion, which presumably reflected the demands of their

readers. Caponetto makes several references to the target audience of certain printed

matter; pamphlets, broadsheets, and small works in the vernacular were produced for the

masses, indicating that Evangelism was not just restricted to the aristocracy.22

Access to texts of the Italian reformers has become easier in recent years with the

appearance of modern editions. Initiatives begun in the 1960s have brought forth some

critical editions of the more important works, the most useful being the Corpus

Reformatorum Italicorum series. The texts from this series are I costituti di don Pieitro

Manelfi edited by Carlo Ginzburg, and Salvatore Caponetto’s edition of Il Beneficio di

18 Gleason, “On the Nature of Sixteenth-Century Evangelism,” 9.

19 Ibid., 6-8.

20 Anne Jacobson Schutte, “The Lettere Volgari and the Crisis of Evangelism in Italy,” Renaissance Quarterly 28 (1975): 639-688.

21 Ibid., 658.

22 Caponetto, Protestant Reformation, 31.

9

Cristo con le versioni del secolo XVI: Documenti e testimonianze.23 An electronic

resource for texts in English is the Early English Books Online project. From this site I

have accessed the Tragedia di Libero Arbitrio of Francesco Negri and the One Hundred

and Ten Considerations of Juan de Valdès.24

A word or two ought to be said about terminology. The historiography of the

Reformation, and the Catholic response to it, is vast and can be approached from a

myriad of angles ranging from over-arching studies covering Europe as a whole, to

monographs focused on single towns or villages, and everything in between. One aspect

has been the lively naming debate, and it is not possible to approach the religious history

of the period without at least a nod to the scholarship this has generated. Historians have

been dissatisfied with the terms “Reformation” and “Counter-Reformation” since Hubert

Jedin coined the latter phrase in the mid-twentieth century.25 The ensuing debate

highlights the difficulty in giving names to historical periods, especially when they cover

a long expanse of time, stretch over an entire continent, and encompass a variety of

religious practices.

The most comprehensive study of the naming process is John O’Malley’s Trent

and All That, in which he traces the historiography and difficulties related to naming a

period in history.26 In the following study, I shall be using the term Catholic Reform to

mean those initiatives that encouraged an improvement in the religious life of the

23 Carlo Ginzburg ed., I costituti di don Pieitro Manelfi (DeKalb: Northern University Press; Chicago: Newberry Library, 1970); Salvatore Caponetto, ed., Il Beneficio di Cristo con le versioni del secolo XVI: Documenti e testimonianze. (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press; Chicago: Newberry Library, 1972).

24 http://wwwlib.umi.com/eebo.

25 David M. Luebke, The Counter-Reformation: the Essential Readings (Malden, Massachusetts; Oxford: Blackwell, 1999) contains an English translation of Jedin’s essay “Catholic Reformation or Counter Reformation.”

26 John W. O’Malley, Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London; Harvard University Press, 2000).

10

individual and saw the creation of new religious orders. Outram Evennett provides a

comprehensive outline of these initiatives, although he sees them as one aspect of the

Counter-Reformation.27 Catholic Reform can be characterized by the promulgation of

new techniques for meditative prayer, an emphasis on praxis, a stress on the humanity of

Christ, use of the Bible, especially the Gospels and Pauline Epistles, combined with a

humanistic understanding of human destiny in the economy of salvation. The term

Counter-Reformation is used to designate the Catholic Church’s official response to the

threat of Protestantism, which incorporates the polemical debate, the use of the

Inquisition, and increasing disciplinary efforts to curb rebellion within the Catholic ranks.

The term Reform is used to denote elements that have resonance with Protestant ideas or

are directly linked to Protestantism.

Following the present introductory discussion, the dissertation provides, in the

next chapter, an account of the religious backdrop out of which the artists emerged and

against which they worked. It explores the nature of Italian religious reform that

encompassed a whole cluster of ideas and aspirations, which were found to varying

degrees and combinations in religiously inclined individuals throughout the century.

These ideals and aspirations included an acceptance of justification by faith; a belief in

the ethical and moral reform of the individual Christian; an emphasis on encountering

God’s Word in Scripture, especially in the Gospels and Pauline epistles; a faith and trust

in divine mercy, through which humans have the incalculable benefit of Christ’s death on

the Cross; and an emphasis on the practice of Christian virtue. Reflection on these

understandings would lead some to work for a revitalization of the Church from within,

while others would find irreconcilable differences with the old Church and seek to

replace it.

27 Outram H. Evennett, The Spirit of the Counter-Reformation (Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1970).

11

It takes into account the influence of the Dominican preacher, martyr, and would-

be ruler Savonarola. Savonarola’s theocracy serves as an insight into how the self-

perception of the literate layperson was beginning to change. Through his sermons,

humanist emphasis on the dignity and divine image of the human person moved out of

elite, intellectual circles into the wider society. More importantly, the following that

Savonarola attracted, and which continued to disseminate his ideas after his death,

suggests the failure of the institutional church to meet the spiritual needs of the

population.

Finally it will address the importance of reform literature in informing the shape

of the debate. It notes the importance of the printing industry in promulgating polemical

and devotional literature. As will be seen, there was nothing that was fixed about the

beliefs, positions, or the ideologies of sixteenth-century Italian reformers.28 The

landscape of the period was one of convictions and contestation, of arguments amongst

the reformers and constantly shifting loyalties and beliefs, of spiritual searching that

could lead a person through an intricate array of practices and beliefs. There were few

fixed boundaries.29 To place these various approaches to reform within rigidly defined

parameters is to ignore the intersections at which different elements of societal structures

met and interacted.

In chapter three, the changing role of art in the early modern period will be

explored, since it is out of this milieu that the paintings to be examined in later chapters

come. The chapter will identify the effect of the Reformation upon art, taking into

account the differences between Catholic and Protestant art. In relation to this it includes

a discussion on the iconoclastic outbreaks and official responses to these. This leads into

28 John Jefferies Martin, “Renovatio and Reform in Early Modern Italy” Heresy, Culture, and Religion in Early Modern Italy ed.,Ronald Delph, Michelle Fontaine, John Jefferies Martin (Kirksville, Missouri: Truman State University Press, 2006) 3.

29 Martin. “Renovatio and Reform in Early Modern Italy,” 3.

12

a section on the interpretation of art, since aspects of iconoclasm relate to issues of

interpretation. Some words on interpretation are necessary because art not only invites a

response but also contains references that spectators of later generations may not

understand. At the same time, art from one historical period still speaks to viewers in

another period, which leads to questions of interpretation. This will involve some remarks

about the use of language borrowed from literary criticism and the salient points from

theories of response; here David Freedberg’s work is particularly helpful.30 An emphasis

will be given to how early modern individuals responded to religious paintings.

Finally the chapter will give a brief account of the theory of art. The Renaissance

was marked by a creativity that led to advances in literature, social and political theory,

visual arts, and the sciences. Humanist authors published diaries, letters, poems, histories,

and treatises on a variety of subjects ranging from art to religion. It is from this interest in

rhetoric that various writings on art emerged. A distinction can be made among these

writings between those that provide biographical information and those that are more

theoretical. Of the first category, the most important is that of Vasari’s Lives of the Artists

which contains not only biographical information but also descriptions of individual

works of art by the artist. Of the second grouping, the first to appear in print was Leon

Battista Alberti’s De pittura. Together these writings form the foundation of modern art

history and art theory.

Having presented some background information, the remaining sections of the

dissertation constitute the body of work in which I explore the idea of a visualization of

the Italian reformation. Chapter four is dedicated to works of art that reflect the preaching

of Savonarola. This has been treated as distinct unit because the influence of

30 David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991).

13

Savonarola’s preaching continues until late in the century, and gives an insight into

attempts at reform from within the Catholic Church.

Chapter five considers the effects of Catholic reform and considers early works of

Jacopo Pontormo and Lorenzo Lotto. These works express the anxiety experienced by

many Catholics as well as the questioning of some of the received Catholic practices such

as the cult of the saints. Questions about salvation and judgment were prominent in the

religious discussions and Michelangelo’s Last Judgment and Pontormo’s lost fresco cycle

in San Lorenzo, Florence, address this concern.

Jacopo Pontormo and Michelangelo share some common traits; they were

Florentines and favorable towards Savonarola. They were also connected to the educated

humanist circles of the Medici court, and they would come into contact with persons

associated with the evangelical circle of Cardinal Pole. Michelangelo was in direct

communication with the poet Vittoria Colonna, who was friends with several Protestants.

Michelangelo’s Last Judgment and Pontormo’s lost frescos of San Lorenzo, Florence

span the years 1537-1556. These two works both reflect the influence of the spirituali

and exhibit iconographical problems, which have resulted in a number of theories being

forwarded. In the case of the Last Judgment, it is also a significant work within the

development of art of the period. Both men’s work reflects Florentine approaches to art

and will be the focus of chapter six.

By the 1530’s Protestantism had made its appearance in the peninsula. In Chapter

seven we consider the works of Lorenzo Lotto and Jacopo Bassano that reflect the

religious debate in the Veneto. This debate was more in tune with ordinary people, and

more overtly Protestant. These paintings take us to the end of the century and the

beginning of the next.

Chapter eight considers some of the works of Caravaggio. It was a period of

transition within the Church as it moved from the polemical, rigid, and oppressive period

of Counter-Reformation to that of the Tridentine era, which was characterized by

14

triumphalism and authoritarianism. Within the sphere of art history, Caravaggio seems to

stand between the end of Mannerism and the beginning of the Baroque. Like

Michelangelo, Caravaggio is a pivotal figure in the history of the development of art. His

use of chiaroscuro, of reduction of any extraneous artifices, and of immediacy with the

central subject had a profound influence on future artists. There is a certain amount of

documentation about his personal life, in the form of appearances before the police and in

court, but no autographed writings or contracts have come to light. This deficiency has

generated a wide range of writings about him; he comes across as a violent man in his

personal life but creates paintings of great depth and sensitivity.

The religious climate in sixteenth-century Italy was one of anxiety,

destabilization, and perturbation. Efforts to reform the Church from within failed to

address the serious ailments affecting her. Questions about justification by faith,

salvation, heaven and hell, works and grace, and the immortality of the soul were being

raised at different levels of society. By the 1530’s the voices of Juan de Valdès and

Protestants mingled with those already being heard in the peninsula raising hopes for

reconciliation between the various religious factions. At the same time, immigrants from

other areas of Europe were arriving in the Veneto, and establishing clandestine Protestant

conclaves, offering religious alternatives to Catholicism. The reaction of the Church was

to introduce the Inquisition and wage war on the heretics. By the end of the century

Catholicism closed it ranks, as had the various Protestant churches, leading to a period of

consolidation and confessionalization. As we shall see, aspects of the religious

environment were reflected in paintings that spanned the century.

15

CHAPTER TWO

THE RELIGIOUS CLIMATE OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY ITALY

Early modern Italian society, as those in other areas of Europe, was marked by

significant fractures in the fundamental structures that bound members of society together

and imbued them with a sense of place and order. Feudalism, centered as it was around

powerful landowners and their peasant tenants, was giving way to emerging centralized

states and national identities.31 This, in turn, led to ruptures in the economic structures of

society. In face of rising populations and changes in agricultural practices, people moved

from the land into the cities providing a source of cheap labor but also increasing the

levels of urban poverty. Commerce began to develop in new directions, as did

employment, which led to changes in relations among social classes and had a profound

psychological effect on certain societal groups. The surge in production levels inevitably

led to a de-personalization of the workplace and a rise of harsher working conditions.

Simultaneously, these same economic pressures gave to the smaller, independent

craftsmen a sense of heightened social standing in relation to piecemeal workers.32

Advances in scientific theories, especially those associated with Copernicus,

raised questions as to the place of humanity in the order of the universe. The idea of a flat

earth had been questioned long before Columbus set sail.33 Jean Buridan (1297-1358), a

philosopher at the University of Paris, had raised the concept of the relative motion of the

planets, an idea which was taken up and developed further by Nicholas of Cusa (1401-

31 Theodore Rabb, The Last Days of the Renaissance and the March to Modernity (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Basic Books, 2006), 6, 27, 46.

32 John Martin. “Salvation and Society in Sixteenth-Century Venice: Popular Evangelism in a Renaissance City” The Journal of Modern History, 60 (1988): 223.

33 The concept of a round earth can be dated to pre-Christian times. Erstosthenes did an experiment showing the earth was spherical in about 200-250 BCE. Internet source http://www.newton.dep.anlgov/askasci/gen99/gen99427.htm.

16

64). Cusa suggested that the earth was mobile and spherical. He proposed that the earth

was a moving star, like the sun and other stars. He believed that the universe was an

infinite sphere whose center was everywhere and whose circumference was nowhere.34

Copernicus was already a known figure when he was invited to the Fifth Lateran Council

(1512-1517) to reform the calendar. By the 1520’s, and for the next twenty years, his

reputation grew and his hypothesis of the motion of the earth around the sun became well

known. Whilst his theory challenged the authority of the Catholic Church and Scripture,

which regarded the earth and humanity as the center of a spherical universe, it would not

meet with ecclesiastical reservations until the following century. In fact Copernicus

dedicated the printed edition of his theory to Pope Paul III. Heliocentric theories caused

more consternation amongst the Protestants than within the humanist circles of the papal

court.35

Perhaps the most influential of the changes that occurred in society was the

development of the printing industry, which aided in the rapidity of the diffusion of ideas.

The printing industry in Venice first made its appearance in 1469 and the Venetian

printing industry soon became the largest in Europe. The Venetian printers edited and

published editions of classical texts, as well as those of contemporary humanists, who

wrote on a wide range of subjects and published diaries, letters, poems and histories. To

what extent books were accessible and affordable to a wide and diverse population is a

subject that historians of literacy, printing and publishing are working to address.36

34 Valerie Shrimplin, Sun Symbolism and Cosmology in Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment” (Kirksville, Missouri: Truman State University Press, 2000), 256.

35 Ibid., 260.

36For a comprehensive historical treatment of the printing press see Elizabeth L .Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in early-Modern Europe Volumes I and II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Miriam Usher Chrisman, Conflicting Visions of Reform (Boston: Humanities Press,1996) for lay propaganda pamphlets in Germany; P.F. Grendler, The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540-1605. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977) provides an account of the press in Italy, though it is somewhat dated.

17

Change also affected the Church, which helped heighten the sense of anxiety felt

within society at large. The Church had given coherence and structure to late medieval

society. From the highest members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy down to the lowliest

country priest, everyone knew where they stood in relation to each other. The clergy were

spiritual guardians; providers of relief for the poor and sick; sources of literacy; and of

counsel and moral guidance.37 However, confidence in the Church was at an all-time

low. Papal authority had been eroded through the Babylonian Captivity in Avignon

followed by four decades of schism. Moral degradation and corruption of the clergy were

widespread.

The preeminence afforded the ascetic perfection associated with religious life was

challenged by an increasingly educated and self-confident laity. Independent in their

working lives, the laity resented the claims of priests and other intermediaries, who stood

between them and their God. They represented a broad spectrum of society and were

receptive to ideas of religious reform. It is perhaps not surprising that the laity found

appealing a religious ethic that encouraged lay reading and interpretation of the Bible in

the vernacular, or which stressed autonomy of religious praxis.38 The desire for active

participation in living the Christian life was not restricted to the educated elite but

encompassed ordinary members of society.

To treat in a succinct manner the course of the Reformation in Italy is a challenge.

The recent publication of a bibliography of secondary sources by John Tedeschi lists

6429 entries.39 For a subject that is usually classed as a failure by historians of the

period, the Italian Reformation has garnered the attention of a vast array of scholars. Yet

37 Rabb. Last Days of the Renaissance, 4.

38 Martin. “Salvation and Society in sixteenth-century Venice,” 224.

39 John Tedeschi, The Italian Reformation of the Sixteenth Century and the Diffusion of Renaissance Culture: A Bibliography of the Secondary Literature c. 1750-1997 (Ferrara: Franco Cosimo Parini Editore, 2000).

18

there are no single individuals who can serve as the focus of studies; Italy did not produce

a Luther or a Calvin. None of the princes or rulers of Italian city states, principalities, or

republics whole-heartedly adopted Lutheranism, Calvinism, or any other form of

magisterial Protestantism. Instead, the shape of religious reform was conditioned by a

wide range of ideas, which formed and informed human attitudes towards events. In the

peninsula, this meant that the vague religious unease was concretized into personal

aspirations, which took a variety of forms. The desire for institutional reform combined

with a tendency that looked to the ecclesiastical leaders for long-lasting solutions.40 The

multifaceted religious debate mingled with humanist learning and Renaissance culture to

create what might be seen as a uniquely Italian Reformation, a reformation that

engendered debate and discourse on all levels of society and which ultimately allowed for

the existence of “official” and “popular” solutions.

One of the most fundamental concepts to emerge from humanist learning was the

idea of using original sources - ad fontes. In the religious arena, this led to a desire to read

scriptural texts in the original languages, the application of literary criticism to the Bible,

and to translations of biblical books into the vernacular. The study of the Bible led to a

wide range of proposed solutions to the problems facing the Church. A mention of just a

handful of leading humanists illustrates the disparity in the understandings of reform.

Erasmus, perhaps the most well-known humanist, who decried perfunctory external

practices and emphasized interior piety, was in the forefront. Agostino Steuco, who

became the Vatican librarian and proposed a series of building projects for the renewal of

Rome, believed that religious discipline, built on external practice, was essential both for

popular piety and social order.41 Gasparo Contarini, a Venetian patrician was one of the

40 Oddone Ortolani, “The Hopes of the Italian Reformers in Roman Action” in, Italian Reformation Studies in Honor of Laelius Socinus ed., John Tedeschi (Firenze: Felice le Monnier, 1965), 13.

41 Martin. “Renovatio and Reform in Early Modern Italy,” 2.

19

leaders among the spirituali, that group of individuals who espoused reform of the church

as well as personal reform. He would be elevated to the rank of Cardinal in 1535.

Cardinal Gian Pietro Carafa was also intent on reform of the church, especially the

hierarchy, and this led him to be both a founding member of the Theatines and be

responsible for the introduction of the Roman Inquisition.42 Renewal of the Church

could be as straightforward as the deepening of personal piety, or as complex as seeking

the renewal of the entire church through the use of official channels, which could be

benign or favor more rigid and severe solutions

For the majority of people, the way back to the sources was through the institution

of the Church; they expected and waited for reform from the hierarchy.43 Even though

there had been calls for reform, dating as far back as the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215,

little action was taken. Lay and clerical members of the Church, tired of waiting for

directives from their spiritual leaders, sought to renew their own lives either individually

or collectively. Before addressing some of the directions religious reform took, it is

important to mention, albeit briefly, the influence of Savonarola in Florence and the

cultural environment of Venice, as both have relevance to the religious atmosphere of the

early modern period.

Savonarola (1452-1498)

The long-lasting Florentine republic effectively ended in 1434 when the Medici

came into power. The democratic principles that had existed were slowly eroded as the

Medici became, in effect, principal rulers. After sixty years of Medici rule the family was

exiled from the city and a new government installed under Girolamo Savonarola.

Savonarola’s efforts at reform of Florence (1494-1498) were based on a desire to restore

42 Kenneth Jorgensen, SJ. ‘The Theatines.” , Religious Orders of the Catholic Reformation Richard De Molen. (New York: Fordham University Press, 1994), 16.

43 Ortolani, “The Hopes of the Italian Reformers,” 15.

20

the republic, and on a vehement criticism of the clergy, who were venal, ignorant, and in

some cases, unsuitable for the ministry. Savonarola maintained that the corruption of the

Church had caused the current decline in religious praxis and represented a major

obstacle to reform. After rejuvenating the Dominican convent of San Marco, which

would serve as a base for reform, he turned his attention to the political structures of the

city.44

Savonarola believed that the government should be in the hands of the whole

population; it belonged to all citizens and should reflect God’s laws. All individual

political action should be guided purely by consideration of the common good, reciprocal

love, and natural and supernatural charity.45 He linked Christian charity with the

blessing and well-being of the city, since true Christian living could not thrive in a city

where poverty degraded and brutalized large numbers of people. This fed into the cultural

myth of Florence as a new Rome from whence universal peace would flow.46

Savonarola’s followers came from a wide spectrum of society and included minor

guild members, teachers, administrators, as well as the literati, humanists, and

philosophers who had gathered around Lorenzo de’ Medici, in addition to a number of

artists.47 His sermons were immensely popular and attracted throngs of people. Through

them the humanist concepts of the dignity and divine image of the human person reached

a wider audience. And whilst it is true that his sermons contain many references to the

44 Lorenzo Polizzotto, The Elect Nation: The Savonarolan Movement in Florence, 1494-1545 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 57.

45 Ibid.,30.

46 Ronald Weissman, Ritual Brotherhood in Renaissance Florence (New York: 1982).

47 Polizzotto, Elect Nation, 19.

21

figurative arts as metaphor, these ought to be viewed as an integral part of his concept of

Christianity rather than a theory of art as some scholars have suggested.48

Savonarola’s ideas of simplicity and naturalism were a mixture of medieval and

modern concepts taken from Thomas Aquinas and Neo-Platonism. Following Aristotelian

thought, Savonarola held that everything in nature, along with its operation, was ordained

to its own specific ends or purpose by a supreme intellect. The nearer a thing drew to its

cause, the more it partook of perfection; the more it differed from its cause the less it

participated in perfection. To stray from the prime cause was to stray from God. This was

the basis of Savonarola’s theology and was the basis of his thoughts on humans and

human pursuits.49

For Savonarola there were two types of beauty: the composite and the simple. The

composite was found in humans (and presumably all created things) and was evident

when all the parts were in harmony with each other. “You do not say that a woman is

beautiful only because she has a beautiful nose or beautiful hands, but only when all these

are in proportion. Beauty consists of the correspondence and proportion of form and

colors.”50 Simple beauty corresponded to light, specifically divine light, since God was

the most beautiful and simple of all. Color and proportion were needed to express

physical composite beauty. The closer humans were to God, the more they participated in

ultimate simple beauty, which affected the soul and was manifested in outward

appearances. For Savonarola beauty could not be manufactured. He believed that art

should imitate nature because the natural is closer to simplicity and purity and, by

association, closer to virtue and goodness.51 48 Richard M Steinberg, Fra Girolamo Savonarola, Florentine Art, and Renaissance Historiography (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1977), 53-57 provides a discussion on this topic.

49 R. Steinberg, Fra Girolamo Savonarola, 57.

50 Sermon on Amos and Zaccariah III: 5-6, Ezechiel I: 374-375. Quoted in R. Steinberg, 53.

51 R. Steinberg. Fra Savonarola, 54.

22

To emphasize his belief that a natural thing would always be discernable he

alluded to a famous anecdote from Pliny, which would have been familiar to the

humanists in his audience. The story recounted a competition between Parrhasius and

Zeuxis, who had painted a bunch of grapes with such realism that the birds came to peck

at them. In his sermon Savonarola argued that if a wood carver carved a bunch of grapes

and a painter colored them so that they could pass as real, and if they were hung on a

trellis next to real ones a bird would go only to the real grapes. No matter how perfectly a

work of art might imitate nature it can never do so in every way. Savonarola concluded

that those who were closer to God in their simplicity, or naturalness, would be able to

detect the differences between the true and false, the natural and the unnatural.52

Savonarola was opposed to excesses in clerical and secular dress, festive

decorations in churches, elaborate tombs, pomp and display of all sorts. This inspired two

“bonfires of vanity,” the first in February 1497, the other a year later. Among the items

collected to feed the fires were cosmetics, veils, books including those of Dante and

Petrarch, musical instruments, and examples of the plastic arts. The “bonfires” generated

a certain amount of popular and infectious enthusiasm, if not hysteria, and it is possible

that a number of writers and artists voluntarily contributed their own works to the

flames.53 Despite the extremity of these two events, Savonarola recognized the validity

of figurative arts for instruction and inspiration. Representations of holy subjects should

be straightforward and natural and so reflect the simplicity and virtuousness of the early

church. Following traditional understandings of images in church, Savonarola believed

that painting had the power to produce religious ecstasy, which bought the viewer closer

to God. Accordingly, a religious painting should not contain anything that would distract

the viewer in her or his attempt at union with the fundamental simplicity of God.


53 Ibid., 7.

23

Invention, ornamentation, and contrivances were regarded as hindrances.54 Luther would

adopt a similar approach to religious imagery.

Despite the frequent advice that Savonarola gave to artists, and the criticism of

their styles and subject matter, a number of the leading artists were among his followers.

They including Botticelli, Lorenzo di Credi, Michelangelo, and Bartolomeo della

Porta.55 There is some debate amongst art historians as to whether Savonarola had a

lasting and profound effect upon the artistic development in Florence. Certainly the

theocracy was polarizing and destabilizing to Florentine society and this might have

extended to painting styles. S.J. Freedberg, in his Painting of the High Renaissance,

recognizes a polarization of two different styles represented, at either extreme, by

Botticelli and Domenico Ghirlandaio. However, it cannot be said with certainty that the

polarization in society resulted in the dichotomy of styles between the two artists.

Stylistic differences could be due to a variety of influences not the least of which was the

natural inclination of an artist to prefer one artistic style over another. Further, Freedberg

acknowledges that the Florentine regime was only fleeting but that it played a role in the

inception of a “new period of culture and a new style of art,”56 a view contested by

Richard Steinberg.57 His theocracy reasserted the fact that “spirituality was not an

abstract fiction of religious experience but a vital and an actual motive force.”58 It

heightened the dichotomy between the physical and supernatural and that this had a

lasting effect upon Fra Bartolomeo della Porta and, to some degree, Pontormo.


55 Ibid.,19-31 for Botticelli and 35-42 for Michelangelo.

56 S.J Freedberg. Painting of the High Renaissance in Rome and Florence (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1961), 23.


58 S. J. Freedberg, Painting of the High Renaissance, 24.

24

Even after his death in 1498 Savonarola remained a popular figure. His legacy

was promoted within the Dominican order and in society through his followers among

the laity, and the circulation of his writings. In Anne Schutte’s listing of Italian religious

books, there are two hundred and twenty entries under his name; of the entries that are

dated most were printed between 1500 and 1547.59 There are sixty five entries under

sermons; devotional works of one sort or another make up another sixty five. These latter

include meditations on the Lord’s Prayer, love of God, mental prayer, right living,

humility and simplicity of life. Given the combination of sermons and devotional aids it

seems safe to assume that they were being published for the cultivation of the

individual’s private spiritual life. As Protestant literature arrived in the peninsula some of

Savonarola’s followers began to see Luther as a confirmation of their hope for renewal

and reform, and as a fulfillment of Savonarola’s predictions. Luther was appreciated by

the Savonarolans for his willingness to confront the decadence of both the religious

orders and the hierarchy. Luther also affirmed the value of the individual in a reform

based on Scripture rather than the hierarchy.60 Protestant writings and Savonarola’s

influence had a volatile effect on some of the Dominicans in Venice whose preaching

attracted sympathizers to the more radical expressions of Protestantism. Thus, it is to

Venice that we now turn.

The Republic of Venice and Religious Reform

The history of the Venetian Republic, known as the “Serenissima,” begins in the

mists of time when the Veniti fled the barbarian hordes and took refuge on the Rialto

from whence the city emerged Venus-like from the waves.61 Precariously balanced 59 Anne J Shutte, Printed Italian Vernacular Religious Books 1465-1550 (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1983.,) 329-353.

60 Cantimori, Eretici italiani del cinquecento. 23.

61 Georges Duby, and Guy Lobrichon, The History of Venice in Painting (New York, London: Abbeville Press Publishers, 2007), 7, 11.

25

between earth and water Venice has always been seen as a place set apart.62 The city was

once an outpost of the Byzantine Empire until Venetian merchants won trading privileges

from the Greeks in 1042, leading Venice to become one of the most prosperous and

vibrant commercial cities in Europe. She secured a foothold on the mainland, the

Terraferma, by conquering neighboring territories from Padua to Bergamo and into the

Alps. The newly found wealth, based on the spoils of conquest, was used by the

aristocracy to build villas on the mainland, a mark of a prosperity that led to the

patronage of goldsmiths and sculptors, and later painters. It has been remarked that the

painters of the golden age retained “only the essential qualities of Venice: the skies

above, their reflection in the waters below, the limpid golden light that bathed the

city.”63

The fortunes of Venice were built upon trade and the city gained a reputation for

being open and tolerant. Its streets were filled with foreign merchants, pilgrims, travelers

and immigrant communities, such as those of the Germans, Jews, Greeks, and Turks. The

presence of these outsiders served as a reminder that there was a wider world beyond the

watery boundaries of the Republic. They brought with them the exotic, along with the

mundane, which included alternative religious views. The Venetian commitment to trade

made the government relatively tolerant. This, along with religious diversity, was part of

the mental horizon of many Venetians both orthodox and heterodox.64 The city became a

haven for many Italians who wanted to preserve republican ideals and who wanted

religious reform. It also attracted many people from other areas of Europe as they found

themselves displaced by human and natural disasters.

62 John Martin, Venice’s Hidden Enemies: Italian Heretics in a Renaissance City (Baltimore & London: John Hopkins University Press, 2003), 3.

63 Duby and Lobrichon, The History of Venice in Painting, 8.

64 Martin Venice’s Hidden Enemies, 28.

26

Along with the diversity of peoples and cultures, Venice, like most of sixteenth-

century Europe, was caught up in the flurry of conspicuous consumption with aristocratic

families vying with each other in displays of opulence and extravagance. This, in its turn,

led to a hierarchical notion of social order with men and women becoming more sensitive

to issues of position and prestige. It has been suggested that these societal

transformations, secular and religious, laid the foundation both for baroque Italy with its

stress on hierarchy, formalism, and the widening gulf between rulers and their subjects,

and the Counter-Reformation Church with its studied ostentation.65

In the shifting fortunes of the peninsula, Venice managed to navigate a course that

enabled her to retain her Republic. Moves towards a centralized authority enabled a

handful of families to become dominant in certain Italian states whilst reducing other

states to satellites, beholden to their more powerful neighbors: the Medici of Florence

(they declared themselves Dukes of Tuscany in 1530), the Sforza in Milan, the Estensi in

Ferrara, the Gonzaga in Mantua, and in Rome the papal curia, which boasted the most

sumptuous court in all of Europe.66 As city republics in the peninsula declined, various

groups met to discuss and keep alive republican ideals: the Academy of Pomponio Leto

in Rome was committed to republican government. In the private gardens of Cosimo

Rucellai—the Orti Oricellari—in Florence, a circle of humanists and aristocratic

opponents of the Medici met regularly to discuss history and politics. Amongst the

members were Machiavelli, Francisco Guicciardini, Donato Giannotti, and Antonio

Brucioli who took part in the anti-Medician conspiracy of 1522 and subsequently went

into exile in Lyon. There he wrote several dialogues on republican culture. He would

eventually return to Italy and take up residency in Venice.67

65 Martin, Venice’s Hidden Enemies, 31.


67 Martin, Venice’s Hidden Enemies 32.

27

The idealization of republicanism colored the perception of the Venetian

oligarchy, and nourished the myth of Venice as the last bastion of Republican ideals,

especially after the demise of the Florentine republic. In the ideals of Renaissance

Republicanism, civic and personal virtue were intimately connected and were viewed as

an integral part of the character of citizens. Although some pagan ideas had been

incorporated into the discourse, Christianity served as the “font of virtues and the basis

for citizens” moral commitment to the state.68 Such ideals had been articulated in the

fourteenth century by Coluccio Salutati, who believed that charity enlightened the mind

for virtue, fostered the family, expanded the city and safeguarded the kingdom. In a

similar vein, in the fifteenth century, the Venetian Giovanni Caldiera held that the

theological virtues of faith, hope and charity were the most solid foundation of civic

virtues.69

The myth of Venice also encompassed a religious component. The Venetian

oligarchy was protective of its autonomy from Rome in the matters of control of the

Venetian church. Venetian bishops were all native, and the state oversaw monasteries.

The clergy were subject to state taxation and judicial courts. Parishioners who owned

property had the privilege of electing their own priests. When the Roman Inquisition was

established the city, the patriciate insisted on appointing members of its ranks to the

tribunal, thus serving as a check to Rome. It is not surprising that Venice became a sort of

melting pot for a wide range of religious views.70

Of the divergent religious views, perhaps the most prominent were those of the

evangelicals. It has been suggested that the evangelicals were the most conspicuous

68 Ibid., 44.

69 For a more detailed study on Salutati see Trinkaus. “The Religious Thought of the Italian Humanists and the Reformers: Anticipation or Autonomy?” in In the Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion. eds., Charles Trinkaus and Heiko Oberman, (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974), 341ff.

70 Martin, Venice’s Hidden Enemies, 34, 52.

28

representatives of Renaissance Republicanism.71 Gasparo Contarini, one of the leading

lights amongst this group, wrote an influential book on Venice: The Commonwealth and

Government of Venice. His early spiritual struggles, which followed a similar pattern to

those of Luther, led him to seek a spirituality that would enable him to remain in the

world. He went into service of the Venetian government and held prestigious

ambassadorial positions at the imperial court of Charles V and then at Rome. Indeed he

might have continued along that career path had it not been for the election of Alessandro

Farnese, as Pope Paul III, who appointed him a cardinal in 1535.

The evangelicals were not a cohesive group. At least two camps can be identified,

but even these should not be regarded as cohesive. The evangelical elites believed that

salvation was through faith in the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross but this was conceived

in terms of the internal spiritual renewal of the individual.72 They were very conscious

of the fact that certain interpretations of the New Testament could lead to political and

social upheaval, as Luther’s teaching had done in Germany in so far as his ideas

contributed to the Peasants Revolt of 1524-25. Since they saw reform in terms of a

personal journey they saw no conflict between their views and those of Rome, neither did

they demand change in the social and political order.73

On the other hand, the shopkeepers and craftsmen, who counted themselves

among the evangelicals, saw that the new teachings offered a message not only of

personal salvation and equality, but also provided a vehicle for reform both of the

Venetian Church and her political structures. Some in the group were exiles from other

regions of the peninsula, among whom were Baldassare Altieri, Antonio Brucioli and

71 Ibid., 45.

72 Ibid., 75.

73 John Martin, “Spiritual Journeys and the Fashioning of Religious Identity in Renaissance Venice” Renaissance Studies Vol. 10 (1996): 358-370.

29

Pier Paolo Vergerio. Vergerio, as bishop of Capodistria, had spent many years working to

reform his diocese using the structures of the Church. Having failed to make significant

headway he settled in Venice and began clandestine efforts to bring about a reformation

of the Venetian Church. Most political and religious refugees were drawn to Venice by

its reputation for tolerance. They made the city the center for their reform efforts. It was

these non-noble humanists and professionals who propagated the new ideas, and did so

effectively through the Venetian printing industry.

The role played by the printing industry in the spread of diverse religious opinions

cannot be overstated. The Venetian printers certainly saw a market in the reproduction of

devotional texts. The demand for religious texts in the vernacular indicates a readership

among the lower ranking civil servants, merchants, artisans and even laborers.74 Anne

Schutte itemized 3,678 titles in her listing.75 The intention of her work was to produce a

finding list of certain titles, which would provide a starting point for increasing our

knowledge of what people heard and read, in order to deepen our understanding of the

religious mentality of Italians in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.76 Schutte lists only

books written wholly or partially in Italian and whose titles would allow the reader to

know that the content was religious. She uses this as an indication that religious works

reached an urban reading public. Although the work is a finding list, it nonetheless gives

a sense of the wide range of authors and titles that were available to readers; and the

multiple entries of the same title are indicative of the popularity of a particular work.

Some of these popular works included Jacobus de Voragine’s Legenda aurea, of

which there are twenty seven editions. Thirty seven editions of Jerome’s Vite dei sancti

74 Salvatore Caponetto, The Protestant Reformation in Sixteenth Century Italy Translated by Anne C. and John Tedeschi. (Kirksville: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1998), 26. 75 Anne Schutte, Printed Italian Vernacular Religious Books 1465-1550: A Finding List. (Geneva, Lirairie Droz, 1983).

76 Ibid., 2.

30

padre are listed, and nearly seven pages of entries for Tommaso Gozzadini’s Fiore di

virtu. There are entries for extracts from the Gospels and Epistles, sermons, miracles,

prognostications, devotions to the rosary, lives of the saints, and works on the Virgin.

Also included are works by Protestants and Protestant sympathizers such as Luther,

Philip Melanchthon, Juan de Valdès, Teofilo Folengo, Ochino, and numerous editions of

Antonio Brucioli’s Biblia and Il Nuovo Testamento.77 These last two works were

extremely popular, and the editions of 1540 and 1546 contained impressive

commentaries. They were read in the rarified culture of urbane courts, in the homes of

professionals and merchants, as well as the humbler dwellings of artisans and barely

literate peasants and laborers.78

Clearly there was a demand for a wide range of printed religious material, but the

printing industry also helped disseminate ideas in other fields ranging from science to

artistic trends. Woodcuts were made of paintings and were soon circulated. As will be

seen, Jacopo Bassano bought numerous prints of woodcuts of the work of other artists

which were utilized in his workshop. Artists were engaged in providing images for

devotional works as well as for the vernacular polemical tracts that were especially

popular in Germany as the Reformation took hold.

As early as 1520, Luther’s writings were found in bookshops and the presence of

German merchants, many of whom were Lutherans, greatly aided the circulation of

religious ideas.79 In 1530 large numbers of people attended the Dominican church of

Santi Giovanni e Paolo, to hear controversial sermons based on the letters of St. Paul.

One such group, led by a master carpenter, came to deny the cult of the saints, votive

77 Anne Schutte, Printed Italian Vernacular Religious Books 1465-1550: A Finding List. (Geneva, Lirairie Droz, 1983).

78 Caponetto. Protestant Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Italy, 30.


31

offerings, the reciting of rosaries, and the miracles associated with the shrine at Loreto.

They placed their faith in God’s mercy rather than works.80 Such groups as these were

not hesitant in their desire to share their beliefs with fellow workers. The direct appeal to

faith in Christ rather than works attracted shopkeepers, artisans, tailors, and the more

regular folk.

The openness of the city also drew to it an increasing number of Anabaptists. This

group had its share of former clerics, physicians, humanists and tutors but the vast

majority sprang from the lower classes; they were tailors, cobblers, and textile workers.

Many were illiterate and had few contacts, if any, with the powerful and privileged

members of society.81 The network of Anabaptists spread across various parts of

Northern Italy reaching from Bologna, Ferrara, Padua and Venice and even down into

Florence. They posed an immediate threat, for, besides their rejection of infant baptism,

they also considered all political offices to be inimical to Christianity and the authorities

need not be obeyed. They were not a cohesive group, with some leaning towards

antitrinitarianism, with its denial of the Trinity and of the divinity of Christ, whilst others

adopted an extreme form of millenarianism denying that Christ was the Messiah. Some of

these antitrinitarians left Venice, joined the more radical currents in Switzerland, and

eventually morphed into Socinianism.82

The contours of religious dissent, not only in Venice but elsewhere in the

peninsula, were defined by evangelical, Anabaptist, antitrinitarian, and millenarian

currents.83 Sometimes this led to peregrinations through a variety of religious beliefs.84 80 Ibid., 27.

81 Martin, “Spiritual Journeys and the Fashioning of Religious Identity in Renaissance Venice,”361.

82 Massimo Firpo, “The Italian Reformation and Juan de Valdés” Sixteenth Century Journal XXVII (1996): 355.

83 Martin, “Spiritual Journeys and the Fashioning of Religious Identity,” 351.

84 Ibid., 359.

32

Having moved from the bounds of the Catholic community, dissidents searched for a

spiritual home which led some of them to switch from one brand of heterodoxy to

another. A number eventually wound up back in the Catholic fold through voluntary

confession to the Inquisition. For John Martin, Lorenzo Tizzano, a medical student at

Padua, is an example of the search for a spiritual home that people undertook. Tizzano,

before his imprisonment in 1552 by the Venetian Inquisition, had met Juan de Valdès in

Naples. Through his conversations with Valdès and other Neopolitans, Tizzano came to

reject the papacy, the cult of the saints, purgatory and sacerdotal confession, at the same

time espousing such Protestant doctrines as predestination and the relation of grace and

works. He then embraced the more radical ideas of the Anabaptists and ultimately moved

to an extreme position denying Christ as the Messiah.

After some of his friends were arrested, Tizzano returned to Padua where he

confessed his error and returned to the Catholic Church.85 It had been the confession of

another Anabaptist, Don Pietro Manefli in 1551 that had led the Venetian government to

repress the movement, a course of action that resulted in the arrest of Tizzano’s

friends.86 The same confession led to the arrest of some of Lotto’s friends which might

have the deciding factor behind Lotto’s decision to become an oblate at Loreto. For his

part Manelfi, through the influence of Ochino, had come to regard the Catholic faith as

diabolical. He then encountered the Anabaptists in Florence and later became an

antitrinitarian when in Venice. Similarly Francesco Spiera moved from Catholicism to

Calvinism; or to take another example, Giovanni Laureto di Buongiorno, formerly a

monk, came under Protestant and evangelical influences whilst in Naples. He moved to

85 Ibid.,358-9.

86 Carlo Ginzburg, ed. I costituti di don Pietro Manelfi (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press; Chicago: Newberry Library, 1970), provides an account of Manelfi’s confession.

33

Piacenza where he became an Anabaptist, and finally declared himself a Jew whilst

studying Hebrew and Greek in Thessalonica.87

Choices for a faith community abounded. In a letter to Luther, Baldassare Altieri

complained that the Venetian government did not allow Protestants public churches;

consequently “each is a church unto himself, according to his own individual whim and

will.”88 Such vacillations have led to many Italian Reformers being characterized as

malleable, restless and individualistic.89 Even when the Venetian State re-opened its

local branch of the Holy Office, in 1547, there does not seem to have been a curtailing of

meetings. It was, for instance, customary for Catholic merchants to meet to discuss

controversial sermons, a habit which continued after conversion to one or other variety of

heterodoxy.

Venice stands as an example of the blending of religious ideas that occurred, to a

greater or lesser degree, throughout the peninsula. Individuals were concerned about their

spiritual welfare and participated in an exchange of religious ideas, an exchange that

crossed social and class divisions. Sometimes this exchange took place in the market

place, in the workplace, or in the confines of a confraternity. Wherever one resided In the

peninsula, one way of taking care of one’s spiritual well-being was through membership

in one of the confraternities, which were very much part of the religious landscape. First

appearing in the thirteenth century, they played an important role in the social, religious,

political, and cultural networks that made up daily life.90

87 Martin, “Spiritual Journeys and the Fashioning of Religious Identity,” 360, 366.

88 Ibid., 360.

89 Ibid., 361.

90 For recent works on the confraternities see Christopher Black Italian Confraternities in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Ronald Weissman Ritual Brotherhood in Renaissance Florence (New York: 1982); Nicholas Terpstra: Lay Confraternities and Civic Religion in Renaissance Bologna. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); John Henderson: Piety and Charity in Late Medieval Florence (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

34

Reform within the Church

Confraternities, sodalities, and brotherhoods are terms which can be used

interchangeably. They refer to a group of people who came together under the auspices of

religious devotion and the exercise of Christian charity. Some were formed in order to

assist the parish priest, whilst others were formed due to the lack of resident priests.91

There were confraternities for those in the religious life, but the ones that are relevant to

these pages are those formed and controlled by the laity, although some influence was

exerted by spiritual advisors who usually belonged to religious orders.92

From the scholarship, it can be determined that four types of confraternity can be

identified: laudesi, disciplinati, Eucharistic, and devotional. The first two were usually

more independent of the clergy, as they often had their own oratories and, as will be

noted, commissioned altarpieces, candlesticks, banners, and other liturgical

furnishings.93 Membership represented virtually all levels of society from peasants and

artisans to merchants and noblemen and women. Many confraternities excluded the

clergy from membership, but would hire them on an ad hoc basis to lead services.94

Lay confraternities were concerned with external expressions of piety:

almsgiving, funeral processions, visiting the sick and dying.95 Other confraternities

adopted a specific charitable deed such as accompanying prisoners on their way to

execution. They often enjoyed a high degree of independence from the clergy. Some

confraternities shaped their own devotions, approved and sometimes wrote their own

91 Black, Italian Confraternities in the Sixteenth Century, 27.

92Ibid., 23.


94 Ibid. 33.

95 Nicholas Terpstra: Lay Confraternities and Civic Religion in Renaissance Bologna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 5.

35

statutes, provided opportunities for communal and private expressions of religion, and

were an outlet for charitable deeds.96 The liturgical practices that fuelled confraternal

spirituality were drawn from contemporary devotional material, such as the devotio

moderna and mendicant piety. The common threads between these sorts of devotion were

a discontent with the state of the Church, a desire to draw closer to God, and the

promotion of exercises in meditation and prayer, the aim of which was to bring about

conversion in a person’s daily life.97 Confraternities also created an environment in

which their members were exposed to ideas circulating amongst the educated elite, and

were an avenue through which the religious debate percolated to other sectors of society,

since membership usually crossed class distinctions and included merchants, artisans and

humble workers.

Confraternities afforded members of the literati an opportunity to write and

deliver sermons. These sermons shed light on the religious ethos to which confraternal

brothers and sisters were exposed. Ronald Weissman has analyzed at least fifty extant

sermons written by lay humanists and preached before confraternities. The confraternal

humanist lay preacher accepted medieval penitential theology and blended it with Neo-

Platonic ideas of purgation. Humanity was not able to enjoy the highest good, because the

soul was trapped in the darkness of the body, which must be purged in order for it to be

freed. Mortification was thus an aid to the ascent of the soul to God. The sermons seem to

indicate that sharp distinctions between devotional practices and elite learning should not

be drawn.98 The schema followed by most of the sermons was related to penance and

conversion; humanity was fundamentally sinful; acknowledgement of this led to the


97 Terpstra, Lay Confraternities, 40.

98 Ronald Weissman, “Sacred Eloquence: Humanist Preaching and Lay Piety in Renaissance Florence,” in Christianity and the Renaissance: Image and Religious Imagination in the Quattrocento eds., Timothy Verdon and John Henderson (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1990), 266.

36

contemplation of the Passion, the act of redemption worked by Christ for humanity. The

end result of such contemplation was the recognition of human frailty and sinfulness

leading to contrition and a desire to imitate the life of Christ. Acts of mortification,

charity and humility would aid in the quest for salvation, and benefit one’s neighbor.99

To some extent the short-comings of the clergy were addressed by the

confraternities. They afforded the laity an opportunity to approach the divine without the

intermediary figure of a priest. The ills that beset the Church did not go unnoticed by the

hierarchy, and both leading clerics and laity made attempts at correcting the Church’s

failings.

Efforts toward Catholic reform were underway throughout Europe and were

instigated by Christian humanists such as John Colet in England, Jacques Lefèvre

d’Etaples in France, Juan de Valdés in Naples, and Erasmus. In Spain, Cardinal Francisco

Ximénes de Cisneros founded the university at Alcalà, in 1508, in part to provide better

educated clergy, but also to offer a humanist education with an emphasis on linguistics,

which resulted in the Complutensian Bible of 1514. Savonarola’s government in Florence

can also be seen as part of the attempts to address the deficiencies of the clergy. Other

desires to reform the structures of the Church were combined with and sprang from

personal engagement with the Bible.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, two men, one in Germany and one in

Venice, reflected upon the Epistles of Paul and experienced a crisis of faith. Although

their experiences were similar, the resolution of their crises would lead one to lead a

revolutionary break from the Church of Rome, whilst the other would work for reform

from within. The story of Luther needs no retelling, since it is a familiar one, but some

remarks are required for the lesser known figure of Gasparo Contarini.

99 Weissman, “Sacred Eloquence,” 258.

37

Born in 1483, Contarini attended the University of Padua in 1501, where he met

Tommaso Giustiniani and Vincenzo Quirini, who, a few years later would join the

Camaldolese hermitage. These Venetian patricians would, in 1513, author the Libellus ad

Leonem X, giving an account of the failings of the Church and calling for reform. The

document was presented to the Church authorities at the Fifth Lateran Council.

Giustiniani and Quirini would remain firm friends with Contarini and encouraged the

latter in his pursuit of a Christian vocation. For Contarin, leading a Christian life was a

vocation that could “be done equally well in solitude, in the city, among people while

engaged in public administration, or with wife and children.”100

Like many individuals, Contarini studied the New Testament, especially the

Pauline corpus and, after much reflection, concluded that salvation was through Christ

alone; He alone had rendered satisfaction for humanity’s sins. Contarini wrote that

nobody can become justified through his own works or cleansed from the desires in his own heart. We must have recourse to divine grace which we obtain through faith in Jesus Christ, as St Paul says, and we too must say with him: happy the man to whom God does not impute his sin, irrespective of his works [Rom 4:6]…having experienced it, and seeing what I can do, I have taken refuge in this alone. All the rest seems nothing to me.101

Justification before God was a matter of believing firmly in the merits of Christ’s

sacrifice.

Contarini remained in the world and took up the traditional role of a Venetian

patrician. For him, the lay vocation had validity, acceptability, and dignity in the eyes of

God. In his capacity as a diplomat, he served as Venetian ambassador to Charles V

(1520) and Pope Clement VII (1528). His observation of the Spanish Inquisition led him

to reject violence and coercion in religious matters. He did not see combating heretics on

100 Elizabeth Gleason, Gasparo Contarini: Venice, Rome, and Reform (Berkley, Los Angeles; Oxford: University of California Press, 1993), 19.

101 Gleason, Gasparo Contarini, 24.

38

doctrinal grounds as being of prime importance to the Church. Rather, he felt that the

sinful and indifferent would be converted through the example of living a deep spiritual

life; charity and humility would revitalize the Church.102 Adversaries were to be

pacified through rational discussion, calm debate, and good example rather than

extirpation.103 He combined a commitment to ecclesiastical and political institutions

with an absolute belief in justification through the merits of Christ’s sacrifice.

In 1535 Pope Paul III elevated Contarini to the College of Cardinals, where he

became part of an august body of intellectual and spiritual figures, men who would shape

the religious debate and reform efforts. Pope Paul III is regarded as a transitional figure in

which the old morally lax habits of papal princes struggled with the new demands for

reform and the alarming spread of Protestantism. He sought to tackle the problem of

curial and ecclesiastical abuses and with this in mind he formed a commission of key

ecclesiastical figures, including Contarini. The commission was charged with the task of

compiling a succinct set of recommendations - remedies for the beleaguered Church,

resulting in the 1537 Consilium de emendanda ecclesia.

From the outset, the commission members made clear that they believed the Holy

Spirit had “determined to rebuild, through [Paul III] the Church of Christ, tottering, nay,

in fact collapsed.”104 The majority of abuses listed focused on the conduct of bishops,

priests, and the disbursement of benefices. The first abuse they call attention to was the

lack of diligence and care taken in the ordination of priests and clerics. If priests were too

young or severely deficient in moral standards, the Church would continue to be beset by

scandals and contempt for ecclesiastical order. Their remedy was the appointment of two


103 Ibid., 110.

104 John C Olin, ed., The Catholic Reformation: Savonarola to Ignatius Loyola. Reform in the Church 1495-1540 (New York, Evaston and London: Harper and Row, 1969), 186.

39

or three upright and learned prelates to oversee the ordination of clerics and priests, and

that ordinations should occur at the hands of the respective bishop.105 Furthermore, each

diocese should have a teacher to give instruction in humane letters and proper morals to

clerics in minor orders.

Bishoprics were to be bestowed on good and learned men able both to fulfill their

duties and take up residency. The committee members strongly recommended that

bishops and priests should not be absent from their churches for more than three

successive Sundays unless for some grave reason. Bishops would require papal

permission for a sustained absence, and priests would have to seek permission from their

bishops. It was believed that bishoprics should be assigned to natives of the country in

which the vacant see was situated. In other words, Italian bishoprics would go to an

Italian and not a German. Nor should bishoprics be awarded to cardinals, who primarily

worked in Rome, since the two offices were incompatible.106

The document drew attention to a number of abuses relating to benefices

including bequeathing them, selling them, and separating the income from the benefice

which would leave the new appointee in penury. The commission also recommended that

the majority of Cardinals should reside in Rome since their function was to assist the

Pope in governing the universal Church whereas bishops were responsible for their own

flock. Religious orders should be reformed, ungodly things not be taught in schools to

which end the Colloquies of Erasmus was banned in grammar schools, and care should

be employed in the printing of books.107

The document ends with some remedies relating to Rome as a See and the desire

to not give scandal to visitors. The committee felt that some of the priests in St Peter’s

105 Ibid., 188.

106Ibid., 191.

107 Olin, The Catholic Reformation, 190-191.

40

were not only “ignorant and vile,” but also very “poorly clad.”108 They also believed

that the city prostitutes should be prevented from attending to members of the cardinals’

households in daylight, that personal animosities between private citizens should be

addressed, and that the city hospitals, widows and orphans should be cared for by the

Church through the Cardinals.109 Copies of the Consilium were circulated among the

Cardinals and in spite of its confidential nature the document was soon printed in Rome,

Cesena, and Cologne. The German Protestants circulated it as validation of their own

accusations against the Roman Church. It is not altogether surprising that the Consilium

was ignored for some of the solutions seem to have been unrealistic. However it did

provide a way forward as the abuses it highlighted would be addressed eventually at the

Council of Trent.110

The Consilium was primarily directed towards correcting abuses on the diocesan

level. It did not specifically address laxity in the religious orders, but these were also in

need of correction. It is worth examining one particular religious house, not only as an

example of reform, but also because of the contribution its members made to the religious

debate.

Reform of the Benedictine monastery of Santa Giustina, Padua, began with the

appointment in commendam of Ludovico Barbo, an Augustinian prior. In 1409 he

became a Benedictine and set about building a library, reestablishing scholarship and

attracting new members. By 1505, four other Benedictine monasteries had joined with

Santa Giustina, which had now become a Congregation. That year the abbey at Monte

Cassino, where St. Benedict wrote the original rule and was buried, joined the

108 Ibid., 196.

109Ibid., 196-7.

110 Olin, The Catholic Reformation, 185.

41

Congregation, which became known as the Cassinese Congregation.111 Some of the

other monasteries included in the Congregation were San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice,

Saints Peter and Paul, Milan, San Severino, Naples, and San Benedetto di Polirone,

Mantua.

Within the Congregation an emphasis was placed on biblical and patristic studies,

along with humanist learning. Particular attention was paid to the writings of St. Paul and

the Greek Fathers. Discussions about justification, salvation, grace, and the role of works

became part of the fabric of the religious life. Themes disseminated within the

monasteries included the foolishness of the Cross, the degradation of human nature as a

result of Original Sin, the restoration of human nature to its prelapsarian state through the

operation of grace, Christ as the medicine to be accepted by faith, and Christ as the

benefit of God.112

In 1477 a certain Gabriel Brebia published a work just prior to him entering the

convent of SS Peter and Paul in Milan. In it, he took up the theme of salvation. Salvation

was freely available to all who eschewed worldly wisdom, and to all, without exception,

who feared God. Similar themes crop up in a work of 1522, which came out of the

monastery of San Severino, Naples. In this work, mortality, corruption, suffering, and

alienation are all seen as the penalty of sin. The remedy is salvation through Christ on the

cross and is a therapeutic gift for the cure of human mortality and corruption. The

Eucharist is a shield against unbelief.113 Similar themes would be incorporated into the

Beneficio di Cristo.

111 Barry Collett Italian Benedictine Scholars and the Reformation: the Congregation of Santa Giustina of Padua ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 5.

112 Barry Collett Italian Benedictine Scholars and the Reformation, 27.

113 Ibid., 50, 55 71.

42

For the Cassinese Benedictines, faith was a response to the grace and goodness of

God; it vivifies man and leads him to do good works. Faith restores human nature to its

original divine image through a process of sanctification which involved perseverance in

good works. It is a therapeutic faith. The monks believed the prime task of priest was

preaching and administering the sacraments, especially the Eucharist. Both of these were

necessary part of the healing and restoration of the imago dei, an approach based on the

Antiochene Fathers, particularly Chrysostum.114

Luciano degli Ottoni, a monk in San Benedetto in Polirone, Mantua, who was the

Cassinese representative to the Council of Trent and elected abbot in 1549, expanded

upon these themes. His translation of Chrysostum’s Commentary on Romans attempted to

bring the exclusive doctrines of grace and works into harmony without rendering

impotent human liberty or diminishing the role of grace. The work was viewed with

suspicion and placed on the Index of 1554 and 1559. For Ottoni, faith required a practical

expression in the world. He believed that speculative theology had obscured the

recognition that God, acting in history, exercises his providence over creation. This led

him to reject predestination since God’s providence extends to all men without exception-

- grace cannot choose some and not others. If humanity was predestined to salvation or

damnation then Christ did not liberate all men in the same way as Adam damned all men.

Sin would be stronger than the justice of Christ, and the anger of God greater than his

love.115.

It has been argued that by the second decade of the sixteenth century, the monks

of the Cassinese Congregation were expounding religious themes drawn from their

studies and reshaping the religious debate. Their views and understanding coalesced into

114 Ibid., 104-110. These pages contain a full account of Chiari’s argument with extensive quotations from his adhortatio.

115 Barry Collett Italian Benedictine Scholars, 119-134.

43

a pattern of salvation, which was both biblical and Patristic.116 San Giorgio Maggiore,

Venice, served as a major hub for the diffusion of the main Cassinese ideas. Gregorio

Cortese, the abbot, drew to himself a wide network of intellectuals who in turn connected

to others. His friends included Contarini, Cardinal Pole, who attracted a number of

intellectuals to his estate in Viterbo, and Marcantonio Flaminio.117

Those who gathered around Cortese in Venice and Pole in Viterbo were leading

figures among the Italian evangelicals, although this term has been abandoned by

historians in favor of the more neutral nomenclature spirituali. The spirituali are best

understood as a network of men, and a few women, held together by the bonds of

friendship, shared beliefs, and mutual support.118 This network encompassed a whole

cluster of ideas and aspirations, which were found to varying degrees and combinations

in individuals throughout the century.119 These ideals and aspirations included an

acceptance of justification by faith, a belief in the ethical and moral reform of the

individual Christian, an emphasis on encountering God’s Word in Scripture, especially in

the Gospels and Pauline epistles, a faith and trust in divine mercy through which humans

have the incalculable benefit of Christ’s death on the Cross, and an emphasis on the

practice of Christian virtue.120 Reflection on these understandings would lead some to

work for a revitalization of the Church from within, while others would find

irreconcilable differences with the old Church and separate from it.

116 Ibid.,10.

117 Ibid., 77.



120 Ibid., 191.

44

Italian Evangelism has generated a large body of scholarship.121 It has been

associated with the humanism and Neo-Platonism of the fifteenth century,122 with

Savonarola and the Spanish Alumbrados,123 and with Luther and Juan de Valdès. It has

been taken to mean the reform of the individual Christian with a deliberate emphasis on

the Word of God localized in Scripture.124 William Bouwsma characterized it as those

who struggled with the meaning of Scripture in a direct manner rather than through the

lens of Plato or the Neo-Platonists.125 It can be a return to the apostolic simplicity of life

for members of the hierarchy from the Pope down to the lowest clergyman,126 or a non-

dogmatic but ethically serious combination of medieval piety and humanistic culture

seasoned by Luther’s doctrine of salvation by faith alone.127

A thread running through the tapestry of internal religious reform was the deep-

seated anxiety about sin and salvation. In particular, the humanists were taken up with

this debate due to the heightened dignity they bestowed on humankind. The latter part of

the fifteenth century saw a revival by the Neo-Platonist of the question of the immortality

121 Eva-Maria Jung. “On the Nature of Evangelism in Sixteenth Century Italy” Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol.14, (1953) 513-514; Elizabeth Gleason, “On the Nature of Sixteenth-Century Italian Evangelism” Sixteenth Century Journal IX, 3 (1978) 3-25; Anne Jacobson Shutte “The Lettere Volgari and the Crisis of Evangelism in Italy” Renaissance Quarterly Vol. 28, No. 4(1975) 639-699; Charles Trinkaus and Heiko Oberman eds., In the Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974) offers a number of articles on the subject of evangelism.

122 Eugene Rice, ‘The Meanings of “Evangelical”’ In the Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion. eds.,Charles Trinkaus and Heiko Oberman (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974), 473.

123 Eva-Maria Jung,. “On the Nature of Evangelism in Sixteenth Century Italy” Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol 14, (1953): 513-514.

124 Elizabeth Gleason, “On the Nature of Sixteenth-Century Italian Evangelism,” 4.

125 William Bouwsma, ‘Interventions re. Father McConica’s Application of the Term “Evangelical” to Erasmus’ In The Pursuit of Holiness, 476.

126 McConica, ‘Erasmus and the “Julius”: a Humanist Reflects on the Church’ In the Pursuit of Holiness, 457.

127 George H Williams, The Radical Reformation (Kirksville, Missouri: Sixteenth Century Publishers, 1992), 2.

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of the individual soul. In 1487, Ficino published his Theologica platonica de

immortalitate in which he argued for immortality of a personal soul. The subject was

debated at the Fifth Lateran Council and incorporated into the body of Catholic doctrine.

However, the debate continued and in 1516 Pomponazzi published his De immortalitate

animae. In this work, Pomponazzi proposed that the immortality of the soul could not

proven on rational grounds. After being denounced as a heretic in Venice and having his

book publically burnt, he wrote an Apologia, In this work, he claimed that a doctrine of

the immortality of the soul could be sustained based on the resurrection of the body,

supernatural grace and redemption, but only if reason was abrogated. 128

The theological debate arising from the study of St. Paul’s letters, especially that

which centered around justification and salvation, led to the questioning of external

religious practices, such as the cult of the saints, the relative merit of good works, and

doctrines such as the existence of purgatory. For a great many people, the views that were

soon to arrive from Germany were not in conflict with Catholicism. It was not until the

1540s that firm theological distinctions were beginning to be clarified and

uncompromising attitudes were adopted. But even with the introduction of the Inquisition

in 1542, alternative views continued to circulate well into the last quarter of the century.

Protestant Reform

When the works of Luther and other northern authors arrived in the Italian

peninsula in the mid-1520s, the ground had already been prepared. Protestant literature

gave substance and depth to an ongoing debate that included many of the themes taken

up by Protestants. Salvatore Caponetto regards the great number of Inquisitional trials

128 Hall, “Michelangelo’s Last Judgment: Resurrection of the Body,” 87.

46

and inventories of confiscated books as indicative of the mass circulation in Italy of

works by the northern reformers and their collaborators.129

As we have seen, the religious landscape was extremely varied and fluid.

Dissenting voices included highly placed ecclesiastics, intellectuals, aristocrats, and a

large mass of teachers, merchants, artisans, and common people, along with a notable

feminine presence.130 The many heterodox communities ultimately encompassed

Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anabaptists, as well as groups that promoted their own unique

religious message.131 Amongst the latter, we can count the many followers of the

Spaniard, Juan de Valdés. Valdés was born into a converso family about 1509-10.

Although little is known about his early childhood, documentary evidence indicates that

he came into contact with and was influenced by the alumbrado Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz.

In a nutshell, the alumbrados were contemptuous of the cult of the saints, worship of

images, papal bulls, indulgences, fasting and abstinence, and the commands of the

Church. Alcaraz advocated a passive reliance on divine will that led to perfection. This

perfection was understood as a transformation of the love of God in a person into God

himself. Being a lay person living and working in the world was regarded as a hindrance

to the divine presence.132 Alumbradismo has been described as a fermentation of

129 Salvatore Caponetto, The Protestant Reformation in Sixteenth Century Italy (Kirksville, Missouri: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1998), 25.

130 Firpo, “The Italian Reformation and Juan de Valdés,” 355.

131 Ibid., 353.

132 The most comprehensive work on religious affairs in early modern Spain, although it remains to be translated into English, is Marcel Bataillon’s Erasmo y España, estudios sobre la historia spiritual del siglo XVI (Mexico City: Fondo de Económica, 1950); a concise account of alumbradismo can be found in Alastair Hamilton’s Heresy and Mysticism in Sixteenth-Century Spain: the Alumbrados (Toronto, Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1992).

47

religious ideas that was independent of any other movement and that was rooted in the

desire of the common people for a personal and direct communion with God.133

Whilst enrolled in the University of Alcalá de Henares, Valdés wrote and

published his short introduction to Christian doctrine, the Diálogo de doctrina christiana

of 1528. The work was well received by numerous members of the hierarchy, but came

under suspicion of heresy by the Inquisition. The initial trial found Valdés not guilty but

moves were soon made for a second trial. Before this could be initiated, Valdés fled

Spain and journeyed to Italy, where he arrived in 1531. He was appointed to the position

of Chamberlain to the Pope and secretary to the Emperor, and was awarded prebendaries

by both Clement VII and Paul III, though he remained a layman.134 After the death of

Clement VII and with the reshuffling of the curia that came with the election of Paul III,

Valdés left Rome for Naples.135

In Naples, Valdés embarked on a conscious program of spiritual direction and

proselytizing, promulgating a flexible religious message that accommodated a variety of

teaching methods from personal encounters to clandestine circulation of the written

Word, from colloquies to sermons from the pulpit.136 The Diálogo, his earliest work,

contained sections on the Ten Commandments, Baptism, the seven deadly sins, the

theological virtues and commandments of the Church; it also contained several chapters

from Matthew’s Gospel. The material was accompanied by simple examples and entailed

a gradual progression from self-criticism and proper understanding of doctrine to a

personal involvement with faith in Christ, resulting in conversion. It was characterized by

133 José Nieto, Juan de Valdés and the Origins of the Spanish and Italian Reformation (Geneva: Droz, 1970),59.

134 José Nieto, ed., Valdés’ Two Catechisms: The Dialogue on Christian Doctrine and the Christian Instruction for Children (Lawrence, Kansas: Coronado Press, 1981), 4ff.

135 Ibid., 8.

136 Firpo, “Italian Reformation and Juan de Valdés,” 359.

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a theocentricity, which grounded the individual in trust and faith in God’s grace

alone.137 Other works that were published posthumously included commentaries on the

Gospel and the Psalms, the Christian Alphabet, Five Evangelical Tracts and his One

Hundred and Ten Divine Considerations. They all contained similar material to that

incorporated in the Diálogo; they were straightforward, untainted by theological

erudition and possessed of a disregard for external praxis.138

For Valdés, the church was the gathering of all believers with Christ as the head.

Apostolic succession was founded upon Peter’s confession in Christ as the Messiah and

Peter’s successors could only claim to be Bishop of Rome rather than the universal head

of the Church.139 The foundation of Christian faith lay in the acceptance of justification

by faith alone; works were performed by the justified Christian in gratitude for the

benefits received and in order to glorify God. He saw little need for “vain ceremonies and

superstitious observances” and was certain that there would be established within his own

time a church similar to that of apostolic times; a utopia in which all members would live

in perfect harmony with God and with each other, the lion would lie down with the lamb,

and swords would be beaten into ploughshares.140

Among the followers of Valdés were the Augustinian Peter Martyr Vermigli, the

Benedictine Benedetto da Mantova, Marcantonio Flaminio, Giulia Gonzaga, and the

Capuchin General Bernadino Ochino. It was perhaps through the sermons of Ochino that

Valdés’ teachings reached a wider audience. In his Advent and Lenten sermons of 1537-

40, preached in Lucca, Florence, Siena, and Pisa, he brought to masses of artisans,

laborers, and peasants the themes of sin and redemption, gratuitous grace, and works as

137 Nieto, Juan de Valdés and the Origins of the Spanish and Italian Reformation, 115-134.

138 Nieto, Two Catechisms, 8.

139 Nieto, Juan de Valdés, 156.

140 Nieto, Juan de Valdés, 165.

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the fruit of the “living faith.”141 Another loyal supporter was Pietro Carnesecchi, who,

after Valdés’ death in 1541, took Valdés’ unpublished works and had them published and

circulated with the aid of Cardinal Pole at Viterbo. It was, perhaps, the stress on direct

communion with God coupled with the lack of any systematic theology that generated the

wide appeal of Valdés’ writings. They were adopted by a number of the spirituali, in

particular Giulia Gonzaga and Vittoria Colanna, and were the inspiration of Girolamo

Busale’s attempts to turn the Venetian Anabaptists in an antitrinitarian direction.142

Emerging out of the Neapolitan religious crucible was the most significant of the

reform writings, the Beneficio di Cristo, which circulated in manuscript form probably

around 1541 or 1542. It was published in 1543, after being revised and edited by

Marcantonio Flaminio. It was said to have run like a rapid torch, lighting fires throughout

Italy and not just among pious people longing to have their anxious souls quieted, but

also among prominent prelates.143 Pier Paolo Vergerio called it a “dolce libretto” which

had been printed anonymously so that the reader would be moved by the text rather than

the author’s name or lineage. 144 Vergerio also claimed that within the space of six years

40,000 copies were printed in Venice alone.145 That figure is no doubt an exaggeration,

but the success and accessibility of the text was sufficient to frighten Gian Pietro Carafa

into seeking its eradication. It was appreciated and praised by Gregorio Cortese;

Cristoforo Madruzzi, a cleric and statesman who would be raised to Cardinal in 1543 by

Paul III; Giovanni Morone, who circulated it in his diocese of Modena; Reginald Pole;

141 Caponetto, Protestant Reformation, 8.7

142 Firpo, “Italian Reformation and Juan de Valdés,” 356.

143 Tommaso Bozza, Novi Studi sulla Riforma in Italia. I. Il Beneficio di Cristo (Rome: Edizione di Storia e Lettura, 1976.), 79.

144 See Anne Schutte’s, Pier Paolo Vergerio: the Making of an Italian Reformer (Geneva: Droz, 1977), for an account of Vergerio’s life.

145 Caponetto, Benedetto da Mantova, 470.

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and Tomasso Badia. Caponetto believes it was known in all levels of society because

people found within its pages an ardent love of Christ, and a consolation and solace for

their spiritual doubts.146

This short text has prompted a wealth of scholarship centered round authorship

and sources. It is now accepted that the text was written by Benadetto da Mantova, a

Benedictine monk of the Cassinese Congregation who spent some time in Naples and

was in contact with Valdés. The text was revised and edited by Marcantonio Flaminio.

Questions of originality and influences on the author still remain; for sources scholars

have cited Valdés, Luther, Calvin, and Flaminio. More recently, Barry Collett has added

to the mix by examining the Cassinese background of Benedetto, who was a product of

the Congregation. Collett sees the original manuscript as coming from the spiritual

tradition of the Benedictines. It drew on the Cassinese theology of sin, grace, and faith

with roots in Pauline and Antiochene sources. Several members of the Cassinese

Congregation were involved in seeking reconciliation with the Protestants and it is

possible that that Benedetto’s manuscript was part of that effort.147 Ruth Prelowski, in

her translation, references those points that are similar to the views of Luther, Calvin, and

Valdés or those that appear to be Benedetto’s alone. It is also considered a possible

source for elements of the frescos of Pontormo.

The Beneficio is merely six chapters long and is theologically unsystematic.

Chapter one discusses the debilitation of original sin that Christ heals. The following

chapter offers an explanation of the function of the Law. Humanity is incapable of

satisfying the Law and so is led to Christ by despair. Forgiveness of sin, justification by

faith and salvation are the subjects of chapter three, whilst chapter four addresses living

the faith and union with Christ. Chapter five suggests patterning one’s life on Christ.

146 Ibid., 471.

147 Collett, Italian Benedictine Scholars and the Reformation, 184.

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Imitation of Christ leads to offering one’s works and one’s possessions to one’s neighbor

for whom Christ died. A Christian should be willing to lay down his life for his enemies,

or at the very least pray for them. In short, faith in Christ leads to acts of charity. 148

The final chapter contains remedies for the lack of confidence, and addresses what to do

about anxiety and uncertainty salvation.

Apart from the reception of Communion, the Christian is advised to reflect on

Baptism, to pray and to remember predestination. This thought keeps the Christian in a

“state of continual, spiritual joy.”149 A Christian believes he is predestined to eternal life

through the merits of Christ on the one hand, on the other, he pays attention to good

works and to the imitation of Christ as if his salvation depended on his own industry and

diligence.150 The author ends with a summary of the work as being the praise and

exaltation of the benefits that Christians receive from Christ crucified, that they are

justified by faith and that good works cannot be separated from faith.151

Whilst the Beneficio and works of Valdés appealed to a wide audience, especially

those who did not consider themselves as being outside the Catholic Church, another

widely circulated text brought more radical Protestant views into Italy. In 1546 Francesco

Negri published his La Tragedia de Libero Arbitrio, which would be re-printed again the

following year, and again in 1550. Negri had been a Benedictine monk in Santa Giustina,

Padua until 1525 when he left Italy to study with Bucer. He returned to Italy in 1550 to

attend the secret Anabaptist council in Venice. That same year he published a brief

summary of Christian doctrine, which may have been an Italian edition of Calvin’s short

catechism. Although the Tragedia centers around a Lutheran rebellion, the theological

148 Prelowski, 73-77.

149 Ibid., 85.

150 Prelowski, 93.

151 Ibid., 94.

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content seems to be closer to Zwingli or Calvin. The term “Lutheran” was used

indiscriminately by the Italian hierarchy to denote any Protestant teaching.

The setting of Tragedia is Rome and the protagonists include King Freewill;

Unlawful Acts, the king’s steward; Master Clergy, his steward; SS. Peter and Paul;

Justifying Grace; a court interpreter and a court barber. The dialogue centers around the

recent rebellion against Freewill led by the Lutherans. The court interpreter has been in a

council attended by the Pope and various heads of state. In the course of the play the

history of the Catholic Church is recounted, in less than complementary terms, with

attention given to Pope as head of the church, the elevated status of the Scholastics, the

sacraments, works and merit. All of these are questioned by the barber, who is the “voice

of faith” and who questions the authority of the Churchmen. For the barber scripture and

faith in Christ is all that is needed for salvation. He rejects the structures of the Church,

the sacraments apart from baptism and the Lord’s Supper, veneration of the saints, and

the use of images.

Until 1541 there had been a strong feeling of hope for a compromise with the

Protestants, especially among the spirituali. Those hopes were dashed with the failure of

the Diet of Regensburg to reach agreement on the Augsburg Confession. After the Diet

there was a change in the religious climate. A number of those who flirted with

Protestantism fled the peninsula but others, particularly in the Veneto, finally cut their

ties with Rome and began an earnest, if quiet, reform of the Church along Protestant

lines. The activities of the Roman Inquisition did not seem to deter them and a

clandestine book trade operated in Venice. Still efforts to establish Protestant churches

could not compete with the political and religious machinery of the Roman curia, leading

to a quiet demise.

To summarize, sixteenth-century Italians were receptive to initiatives for reform.

Such initiatives could encompass Protestant literature or it could center round traditional

53

devotional books; it could lead some to seek exile and others to adopt Nicodemism and

still others to implement harsh, repressive measures. In the early part of the century,

when there was a possibility of reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants,

discussion of key issues, such as justification, grace, faith and works, could occur openly.

After the reintroduction of the Inquisition and Council of Trent it would become more

difficult to hold heterodox ideas, although the Waldesians managed to survive to the

present day. Many Italian reformers opted to leave the country; others remained and

conformed to the externals of Catholicism.

Moral corruption of the hierarchy had reached new depths; the ignorance of the

parish clergy had reached such pronounced levels that the laity began to seek their own

way to salvation. Many turned to the confraternities for communal and private devotions,

for avenues of charity, for sermons given by laymen based on humanist learning,

Scripture and medieval piety, mixed with a distrust of the clergy. Humanists studied

ancient texts, which provided insights into the structuring of society based on the civic

duty. Ancient artifacts, especially newly discovered sculpting, led to a flowering of the

visual arts, which blended Christian themes with pagan mythology in lush, vivid colors.

The authenticity of the Vulgate Bible was challenged and new translations of the biblical

texts into Italian were printed. There were religious books available for all levels of

readers. People read and debated the works of the reformers in the universities, in

humanist circles, and in the corridors of the papacy. Sermons by leading preachers were

heard, leading to debates and discussion in the shops and market places, in gatherings in

humble homes, and in the work place.

Prior to about 1540 much of the religious debate took place within the framework

of the Church. Most people believed that internal reform was possible, and when

Protestant writings began to circulate they were viewed as compatible with Catholicism.

A change occurred in the early 1540s, many of the spirituali became discouraged, either

settling back into Catholicism or maintaining an outward appearance of adherence whilst

54

inwardly practicing a heterodox faith. Others took heart and adopted more firm Protestant

ideas and set about a reform of the Church albeit clandestinely.

To place the various approaches to reform within rigidly defined parameters is to

ignore the intersections where different elements of societal structures met and interacted.

It is at these junctures that it is possible to understand how an artist might be able to

produce a fresco cycle that reflects heterodox ideas and at the same time produce

traditional, orthodox, and pious altarpieces. In reality, however, as the affects of the

Reformation took hold, secular and religious rulers came to view with suspicion those

cults which favored a particular group or that gave to the laity too much religious

independence. At the same time, they validated those coteries that upheld the interests of

the ruling group. In the end Catholicism remained triumphant within the peninsula,

although heterodox groups continued to exist to the end of the century and some even

into the present day.

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CHAPTER THREE

SIXTEENTH-CENTURY WORLD OF ART

The experience of art in contemporary society is vastly different from that of the

fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. We are surrounded by pictures and artifacts; art objects

can be bought at Wal-Mart, galleries, or over the Internet. We can own reproductions of

the Great Masters on canvas, with or without added brush strokes, or as prints, the quality

of which varies according to price. Most consumer art comes ready-made and mass

produced, and barely a thought is given as to its provenance. The changes in artistic style,

which excite or depress the art critic, affect most of us not at all. And if we do let our

thoughts consider the artist we are likely to conjure up a romantic image of an angst-

ridden, poverty stricken, anti-social eccentric in some bohemian part of a city ignoring all

mores of society and, seeking inspiration at the feet of Aphrodite and Bacchus. But in the

early modern period, an artifact was the product of a conversation between a buyer and a

maker, and the end result was an object designed for a particular setting; domestic,

religious, or civic.

Much has been written about art from ancient times to the present day, and

approaches can be as disparate as a simple description of a statue to a theory that art

prefigures advances in physics.152 Bishops, artists, philosophers, and writers have all

addressed the subject of art. Perhaps art has engendered so much literature because as

human beings we believe that it has something to tell us about ourselves. Art involves

that elusive area of human activity – creativity. What enables us to create an art object, a

152See Leonard Shlain, Art and Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light (New York: William Morrow, 1993) for an exploration of the concept of the pre-figuration of science by art.

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piece of music, a poem? Indeed from where do ideas themselves come? Is human

originality and creativity a reminder that we were created in the divine image, created in

the image of creativity itself? Or is the source of creativity merely the product of

interactions among chemicals in the brain?

The early modern period is where the seeds that have led to modern

interpretations and theories of art can be found. It is in this period that significant changes

occurred in the way art was produced, purchased, and understood. Artists were still not

entirely independent of the workshop, nor were they free from the guild system; most art

production was still functional in nature --chests, beds, birthing trays etc. But towards the

end of the sixteenth century, an art market with art producers and art consumers was

beginning to emerge. It was the beginning of art as something to collect, to display--the

burgeoning concept of art for its own sake.

The art of the early modern period could not remain unaffected by the drastic

changes that occurred in the religious sphere. The Reformation had a dramatic effect

upon the production of art, both in terms of function and form. The Protestant

communities divided over whether religious art should be allowed in churches, and as the

process of confessionalization solidified, religious art in some areas moved from the

church into the temporal spaces of town halls and the domestic hearth. How art was

understood within Protestantism emerged as a reaction against Catholic images and the

violent outbreaks of iconoclasm experienced within its own ranks.

The aim of this chapter is to provide a synopsis of how both Catholic and

Protestant churches viewed religious art in terms of the place it served within the sacred

space, and how it was to be interpreted by members of the respective religious

57

communities. It will also touch upon changes that the Renaissance brought about in the

production of art, and the emergence of a theory of art, both of which affected the type of

art produced, and how the artist saw himself in relation to his social standing in society.

Even though the Renaissance saw an increase in paintings of secular subjects, the

vast majority of art was religious. The artist was a “professional visualizer of the holy

stories.”153 The laity, who would view artistic renderings of lives of the saints or biblical

events, were adept at creating mental images especially of the central events in the lives

of Christ and Mary. The relationship between the artist and the spectator has been

described as painters creating exterior visualizations, and the public interior

visualizations.154

A painting can only depict a certain amount of detail from any given episode in

the Bible. A person, on seeing the painting, would be able to continue the narrative of the

story illustrated, fill in the gaps, and unite the various elements visible before her or him.

The spectator had been well trained by the itinerant and popular preachers. Take, for

example, the Annunciation story that contained three main mysteries expounded upon by

the preachers: the Angelic Mission, the Angelic Salutation, and the Angelic Colloquy.

The technique used by preachers was that of affective piety, popularized by St. Francis

and disseminated by the Franciscans. The audiences would be invited to consider the

suitability of the messenger and the appropriateness of the salutation. Then viewers

153 Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 44.

154 Ibid., 45.

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would be asked to reflect on the disposition of the Virgin, how she went from being

troubled to humble acceptance and so forth.155

Thus in a painting of the Annunciation a moment in time is captured; the angel is

poised to speak and Mary to listen. Ordinary persons, on seeing this, would bring to bear

what had been heard in sermons and would be able to complete the story; they knew by

rote the details from before and after the distilled moment before them. For the educated

elite the same painting might have layers of meaning, depending upon the skill of the

artist, through the use of formal techniques, line, color, space, as well as symbolism and

allusion. They would have a set of visual tools that they would be expected to use when

viewing a painting. They understood that good art embodied skill and that as cultivated

beholders they would be able to make judgments about that skill.

It was not only by way of preaching that people were encouraged to exercise their

imagination. Devotional aids, such as the Garden of Prayer, composed for young girls in

1445, encouraged the reader, when trying to imagine Jerusalem, to think about a city they

were familiar with and people it with the protagonists from the biblical story.156 It was a

technique that Ignatius of Loyola incorporated into his Spiritual Exercises. The first

prelude to each exercise involved creating a mental image of the physical place in which

the event to be contemplated occurred. If the subject of the exercise was not a physical

object, Ignatius recommended imagining and considering the soul imprisoned in its

corruptible body.157

155 Baxandall, Painting and Experience, 51.

156 Ibid., Painting, 46.

157 Anthony Mottola, trans., The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius (New York, London: Image Books, Doubleday,1989) 54.

59

To some extent preachers could direct the manner in which their audience

visualized the content of their sermons. This would certainly be the case with the Ignatian

Exercises which were directed retreats. Control over visualization that might occur with

printed devotional material was less certain, although advice could be sought and given.

Images in churches were always susceptible to the charge of idolatry. This could be

through people’s response to the image or in the execution of the image. The hierarchy

was aware that sometimes there were faults in theology or decorum in some of the

paintings. Archbishop Antoninus of Florence (1389-1459) identified three areas of abuse:

Painters are to be blamed when they paint things contrary to our faith—when they represent the Trinity as one person with three heads, a monster; or, in the Annunciation, an already formed infant, Jesus, being sent into the Virgin’s womb, as if the body he took on were not of her substance; or when they paint the infant Jesus with a hornbook, even though he never learned from man. But they are not to be praised either when they paint apocryphal matter, like midwives at the Nativity, or the Virgin Mary in her Assumption handing down her girdle to St. Thomas on account of his doubt, and so on. Also, to paint curiosities into the stories of Saints and in churches, things that do not serve to arouse devotion but laughter and vain thoughts—monkeys, and dogs chasing hares and so on, or gratuitously elaborate costumes—this I think unnecessary and vain.158 Interestingly enough the apocryphal story of St. Thomas was the subject of the

largest sculptural decoration on Archbishop Antoninus’ own cathedral, the Porta della

Mandorla. Gentile da Fabriano painted his 1423 Adoration of the Magi (Galleria degli

Uffizi, Florence) for the humanist Palla Strozzi in which he incorporated various animals,

including monkeys. A century later Paolo Veronese would be summoned before the

Venetian Inquisition to explain his inclusion of unruly servants, exotic birds and animals

in a scene of the Last Supper. The complaints of the archbishop were a reiteration of

arguments put forward by Gregory the Great and would be restated at the Council of

Trent. 158 Baxandall, Painting and Experience, 43.

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The Church and Images

Catholic art is the combination of elements from Greek and Roman art, since it is

from these two cultures that the Christian community evolved. Greek art tended towards

the image, the icon, whereas Roman art told stories, as seen in the Trajan column in

Rome. As Christianity moved further from Constantinople and nearer to Rome, Western

Christian art came to be understood in terms of rhetoric.159 Yet the Church Fathers were

not entirely at ease with the use of images. Several of the early Church Fathers were

unrelenting on the question of images since these belonged to the demonic and pagan

world.160 Others, such as Clement of Alexandria, allowed motifs, such as the Good

Shepherd, to be used on vessels and signet rings.161 Once the Church was established

under Constantine, the visual arts developed and there is a considerable body of Christian

art from the fifth through the seventh centuries that has survived. Images, however,

continued to be a source of contention, resulting in the bitter iconoclastic controversy that

erupted in the eighth century.162

The iconoclastic controversy was more virulent in the East. The issue at hand was

making copies of the divine original, which challenged the doctrine of the Incarnation. In

the West, the controversy was over the ability to make present the invisible through the

visible. As García-Rivera has put it, Eastern iconoclasm challenged the possibility of

159 Alejandro, García-Rivera, Wounded Innocence: Sketches for a Theology of Art. (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 2003), 57

160 Henry Chadwick, The Early Christian Church (London: Penguin Books, 1967), 280.

161 Henry Chadwick, The Early Christian Church, 277.

162 Ibid., 281-284.

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God-with-us, whilst Western iconoclasm challenged the possibility of “Heaven-with-

us.”163

The second council of Nicaea (787) was convened to address the violent and

disruptive iconoclasm. The council determined that representational art was in harmony

with the belief that the Word of God became flesh; that holy images, whether painted or

of mosaic, were to be exposed in churches, on walls, panels, instruments or vestments;

that the images should be of Christ, the Virgin, angels and saints. The council decreed

that the more people saw figures of the saints in representational art, the more they would

be drawn to them. The people would see them as models. The Fathers believed that

people would be drawn to honor the images with the offering of incense and lights, as

was piously established by ancient custom. The Council Fathers believed that whoever

venerated an image, venerated that which it represented.164

By the medieval period, there was an uneasy mix of wealth, art, and beauty in the

Church. Since beauty could be seen either as a vanity or as a manifestation of God,

tension existed between images as idols and images as instruction “manuals” for the

faithful, which was at the core of Christian aesthetics. This tension can be seen in the

thoughts of two influential and powerful churchmen, St Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-

1153) and Abbot Suger of St. Denis (1081-1151). Bernard of Clairvaux advocated the

primacy of the written text over images. He believed that too much art in a church could

be a distraction. On the other hand, Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis thought the richness and

beauty of a church was a reflection of the House of God. Abbot Suger understood this as 163 García-Rivera, Wounded Innocence 58.

164 Decrees of the Second Council of Nicaea, at www.piar.hu/councils, a resource which provides the full texts of all the Ecumenical councils

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anagogical, reflecting on the beauty of the colors and gold would allow the faithful to be

transported to the divine. The interior decoration of St. Denis, especially the stained-glass

windows, is a perfect example of the visible making present the invisible, of “Heaven-

with-us.” Abbot Suger won the debate and his approach to images in church became the

official position of the Magisterium. For Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century,

beauty lay in integrity or perfection, proper proportion or harmony, and clarity, a

description that would be reflected in the writings of Alberti two centuries later.

In the sixteenth century there were two concerns facing the Church in regards to

religious images. The first was the challenge issued by the Protestants, who associated

religious art with idolatry. The second problem was one of content. During the

Renaissance, great importance had been placed on the role of invention and

ornamentation in the composition of a narrative painting, and this had led to the incursion

of secular motifs into religious art. At the Council of Trent the Council Fathers

reaffirmed the intercession and invocation of the saints, veneration of relics and the

legitimate use of images. For the Catholic hierarchy, images served as the books for the

unlettered. The function of art in churches was to teach the faithful, narrating biblical

stories or lives of the saints in such a manner that the emotions were awakened and

devotion instilled. The painter had a responsibility to create clear stories for the simple,

and in as lively and as memorable a way for the forgetful.

The Council reiterated pronouncements from past councils. Images of Christ the

Virgin and Saints were to be placed in churches where due honor and reverence could be

given them, with a reminder that the honor and reverence given to images was directed at

the prototype represented and not the image itself. Adoration of Christ and veneration of

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the saints were directed to them through the images whose likeness they bore. The

Council further stipulated that no representation could contain false doctrine, mislead the

people, or appear disordered, unbecoming or confused in its arrangement. Unusual

images were banned unless preapproved by the bishop, and any innovations, new

material, or subject matter had to be decided upon by the Roman pontiff.165 The Council

did add that in sacred images all lasciviousness be avoided, “so that images shall not be

painted and adorned with a seductive charm.”166

However, regardless of what the Council dictated, the problem of questionable

images appearing in churches was not resolved. The diocesan records from Milan under

the regime of Archbishop Carlo Borromeo are an indication of the difficulty ecclesiastical

leaders faced in implementing the council decree. Many of the diocesan synod records

and the minutes of provincial meetings repeatedly raised the question of inappropriate

images. Clearly theologians were aware of abuses but seemed unable to address them in

new ways; they relied on arguments put forward in earlier councils, even though these

had had little effect.

Protestantism and the Image

Protestant churches are built upon the two cornerstones of faith and the Word,

Luther’s sole fide and sole scriptura. Faith took precedence over all other religious

practices and objects, and the written Word, the Bible, became the creed and historical

165 H.J. Schroeder, OP., The Canons and Degrees of the Council of Trent, 217.

166 Schroeder, The Canons and Degrees of the Council of Trent, 216.

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founding.167 Luther’s position on the use of images seems to have been a progression

from his stance on indulgences, and was also a response to the emergence of the more

radical expressions of Protestantism. The violent outbreaks of iconoclasm, especially

those instigated by Thomas Müntzer between 1522 and 1524, shocked Luther and

compelled him to adopt a more authoritarian role as to how the young church was to

develop.168 Unlike Calvin, Luther did not have a systematic theology, nor did he place a

high regard on the shape of the liturgy, instead he took the structural models offered by

the Catholic Church and adapted them to his needs.

For Luther, the church was invisible; it was graspable by faith, a faith that was

preached, that was grounded in the Word. Christ’s kingdom was a “hearing-kingdom”

opposed to the Catholic “seeing-kingdom;” the ears guide a person to Christ not the

eyes.169 Luther, however, concluded that religious art had the right to exist and saw a

modest use for it in the new faith. He recognized that the simple-minded and the young

were more moved by images than words. He rejected exaggerated figurativeness and the

use of allegory, encouraging the literal reproduction of biblical texts.170 Luther’s main

interest in the use of art was its ability to serve the simple in their religious education; art

was a vehicle for transmitting religious truths and should be transparent.171 This

didacticism meant that the religious image became less visually seductive, less 167 Joseph Leo Koerner, The Reformation of the Image (London: Reacktion Books, 2004), 20-21.

168 Sergiusz, Michalski, The Reformation and the Visual Arts: The Protestant Image Question in Western and Eastern Europe ( New York and London: Routledge, 1993), 9,22.

169 Koerner, Reformation of the Image, 41.

170 Ibid., 31.

171 Ibid., 38.

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emotionally charged, less emotionally rich. Images became, in the words of Koerner,

“school pictures.”172

Luther’s German Bible contained 123 prints and became the pattern for Lutheran

church pictures that were designed to visualize nothing but the Bible’s content. The text

transmitted and visualized a Word-based faith. The two valid sacraments were Baptism

and Communion, since both were instituted by Christ’s verbal command. These two

sacraments provided a tangible, touchable, point of connection with the invisible for a

word-based faith.173 Through preaching and the sacraments the church was made

visible. Art’s task was the visualization of those elements of the invisible church that

ought to be visible.174 The church, then, is wherever the Word is preached and the

sacraments properly administrated. This triumph of the verbal over the visual is what

Koerner regards as the true reformation of the image.175

Zwingli, on the other hand, believed that Christ could not be depicted corporally

after the Resurrection, and for him images in church were idolatrous. For Zwingli the

image debate was not a high priority; he was more interested in the development of the

liturgy. He allowed the use of stained glass in church as he felt that this was the least

harmful of the visual arts, followed by painting and then sculpture, which was the worst

of all. Neither painting nor sculpture was to be included in church, but Zwingli had no

172 Ibid.,28.

173 Koerner, Reformation of the Image,43.

174 Ibid., 45.

175 Ibid.,46

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objection to their use in homes.176 In Calvin’s Geneva, the liturgy was structured around

the concept of the majesty and glory of God. Calvin believed that images led to a

misunderstanding of the essence of God and that art could become an instrument of

Satan, used to deceive the people. But even Calvin allowed for the use of ornaments in

churches provided they inclined the faithful to holy things.177

The Protestant leaders seem to have been unaware of the psychological power of

images to arouse emotions, and were surprised by the violence of some of the

iconoclastic attacks.178 The reasons behind the outbreaks of iconoclasm in the sixteenth

century were manifold. Some were spontaneous, others coldly calculated, such as Henry

VIII‘s stripping of the English monasteries, which included removal of the lead roofing

and which fattened the royal coffers. But, at the root of the issue, was the age old

reasoning that the closer an image is to its original so it is identical and equal to it. If an

image is perceived as identical, and if hostility to its representation is sufficient, then “the

motion to mutilate, destroy, ruin, or cripple is likely to come to the fore.”179 The violent

outburst of iconoclasm during the Reformation sprang from abhorrence to the cult of the

saints combined with the breaking of the divine command against graven images. Still,

176 Ibid., 57

177 Michalski, Reformation and Visual Arts, 62-66.

178 David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 409-412.illustrates that acts of violence towards images need not be associated only with religious movements for In the 1970’s a series of paintings were attacked in Germany, in 1975 Rembrandt’s Nighwatch was attacked for the third time in the century. A religious enthusiast assaulted Michelangelo’s Pietà, a suffragette slashed Velazquez’s Rokeby Venus. 179 Freedberg, Power of Images 392.

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the Protestant elites were deeply disturbed by the violence surrounding iconoclastic

outbursts, which only increased their suspicion of radical offshoots.180

In their discourses upon the use and abuse of religious art, both Catholic and

Protestant leaders, consciously or unconsciously, affected the type of art that was

produced. In the main, Catholic art remained the same. It continued to favor images of

the Virgin and Christ child, saints, and stories relating to the birth or Passion of Christ.

These served the dual purpose of drawing the believer into the realms of heaven as well

as being a source through which prayers could be directed to God. This was especially

the case for those images that were of saints or the Virgin. For Protestants, church

pictures became a visualization of the Word that they heard preached, and which they

read. Both churches attempted to control how their adherents interpreted the religious

pictures that they saw.

Interpretation of Art

Interpretation of art is problematic. It involves not only the spectator but also the

art object itself as well as the artist’s intent. Paintings are not produced in a vacuum. They

are products of a particular person living at a particular time, and are produced for a

specific person or persons and for a particular setting, a chapel or bedroom, for example.

They provide both an intellectual and tangible insight into what it might have been like to

be a person living in early modern Italy, thereby creating a nexus of ideas, images, and

social patterns, as well as political, economic and religious factors. In this regard they can

be viewed as a historical resource, perhaps not always considered as weighty as written

180 Ibid., 25.

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sources, but sources none the less. At the same time they have relevance for future

generations.

The artist in the early modern period still belonged to a workshop, practiced a

craft, and was a guild member, even though this system would begin to change during the

course of the sixteenth century. A master might have a successful workshop and the work

undertaken would be the result of collaboration between the master and assistants.181

Indeed, able journeymen would be given many of the mundane commissions to complete

on behalf of the workshop. It has to be remembered that large and important commissions

such as church frescos and altarpieces would make up a very small percent of the

business. Paintings by the master’s hand were more costly and so a contract might

specify those areas to be worked by the hand of the master. Most of the art produced in

the early modern period would have been domestic in function and religious in theme:

marriage chests, wall panels, domestic ceilings, wainscoting, banners, birthing trays,

scenery for plays. It was produced for the domestic world of the growing middle class

and very little has remained.182

Narrative paintings of the early modern period were not static; they were filled

with movement, gestures, gazes, and postures. Inspiration came from any number of

different sources. The public sermon was one such source both for the biblical stories that

preachers retold and for the manner in which the sermon was preached. During the course

of the liturgical year, popular preachers would cover the same ground in their ministry as

the painters did on their canvases. Gestures were a sort of universal language which 181 Vernon Hyde Minor Art History’s History (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2001), 10.

182 Bruce Cole, The Renaissance Artist at Work: From Pisano to Titian (Colorado: WestView Press, 1983), 153.

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enabled the majority of people to interpret Latin sermons. There were aids to effective

preaching that recommended numerous gestures.183 There was a close relationship

between the movement of the body reflecting the mind and soul which underpinned the

preaching of sermons.

Other possible sources of influences for the artist were dance and drama. Dance

was considered a demonstration of spiritual movement conforming to the measured and

perfected harmonies of music. The influence of dance can be clearly seen in Botticelli’s

Primavera, or in renditions of the Three Graces. Body language was a concern of

dramatists too; many of the plays were in choric form with all the players on the stage at

the same time. When a character was not required he would sit on the stage until he was

needed. This provides an explanation of many depictions of the nativity in which Joseph

is either sleeping or lurking in the background. In a play Joseph, having led Mary to the

stable would “retire” as the focal point of the drama moved to Mary and the baby. Such a

reading of a picture in relation to a sacred drama might help us understand Vittore

Carpaccio’s The Dead Christ with St. Jerome and Job (c. 1490, New York, Metropolitan

Museum of Art). This strange painting shows the dead Christ slumped on a chair of

broken marble, flanked by Jerome and Job seated at either side, protagonists waiting for

the moment of the Resurrection perhaps?184

183 For example this passage from Mirror of the World: whan thou spekest of a solempne mater to stande vp ryghte with lytell mevyngne of thy body, but poyntynge it with thy fore fynger. And whan thou spekyst of any cruell mater or yrefull cause to bende thy fyst and shake thyn arme. And whan thou spekyst of any heuenly or godly thynges to loke vp and ponte towards the skye with thy finger. And whan thou spelest of any gentilnes, myldeness, or humylyte, to ley thy handes vpon thy breste. And whan thou soekest of any holy mater or devocyon to holde vp thy handes. Quoted in Baxandall, Painting, 65.

184 Baxandall, Painting, 60.

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The point here is not so much that a sixteenth-century person would actively look

for gestures, dance movements, or harmonic series in a painting, but that through

education, attending sermons, plays, commerce, and a myriad of other daily interactions,

tools would be acquired that aided in visual experience. Any painting is susceptible to

interpretative skill; the patterns, categories, inferences, and analogies that a mind brings

to it. A painting is, then, accessible to everyone. However, during the early modern

period, among the educated elite and, increasingly, among merchants and professionals,

there was the expectation of deeper, hidden meanings in narrative art. These men and

women expected to use refined cognitive skills acquired through formal education,

through reading both ancient and contemporary literature, especially poetry, through

listening to sermons and watching plays and the theological explanations of the use of

images. It was this portion of the population that was the art consumer; they

commissioned works for their own private consumption but also on behalf of

organizations to which they may belong, such as a guild or confraternity.

Gathering historical data, not just about the immediate factors related to the

creation of an art object such as contracts and patrons, but also about the social, political,

religious, and economic milieu, enables us to situate that object within its own time-

frame. Such information aids in the process of interpretation, of trying to assess the

reception of a given art piece at the time of its unveiling. Historical data can also help in

our efforts to assess how a painting might have influenced, challenged or changed the

perspective of a spectator.

However, the limits of historical data have to be borne in mind. Whatever

conclusions we reach as a result of our historical research, whatever meaning we assign

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to an art object, it will not be what it meant to a sixteenth-century observer. The historical

gap between now and then inevitably means that we stand in a different relation to any

early modern conventions we uncover than the audience for which such conventions were

a reality.185 Thus, Vasari’s platitude that an artist’s realism was so skilled that viewers

expected a sculpture to move carries no weight for us.186 There will always be

something elusive about art because we, as modern spectators, cannot divorce ourselves

entirely from the constellation of our own existence, yet we still expect art of the past to

be meaningful to us.

Paintings carry with them both the past and the present and have a dual purpose;

they are at once original, formal objects and the bearers of cultural meaning.187 In this

they are not neutral; there is implied an intentionality and complicity. Intentionality lies

with the artist’s invention and design that assumes the presence of a spectator; complicity

lies in the spectator’s willingness to engage with the painting.188 One of the difficulties

in interpretation of art objects lies in the immediacy of the object to elicit a response from

the spectator. Another problem with interpretation is the fact any art object is the product

of an artist’s own way of seeing the world as it is given to him or her.189 As indicated

185 Arthur C. Danto, Transfiguration of the Commonplace: A Philosophy of Art (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press, 1981), 29.

186 Ibid., 162.

187 Marino Eugenio, “Art Criticism and Icon-Theology” in Christianity and the Renaissance: Image and Religious Imagination in the Quattrocento eds., Timothy Verdon and John Henderson (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1990), 577.

188John Shearman, Only Connect: Art and the Spectator in the Italian Renaissance (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.: Princeton University Press, 1992), 17.

189 Danto, Transfiguration of the Commonplace, 207.

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above, interpretation is further challenged by the fact that when we view a sixteenth-

century painting we bring to bear a slew of information and assumptions as well as our

own visual skills borne of processing our experiences. This is especially the case with

those paintings that have been removed from their original setting; we encounter them in

the clinical environment of a museum. This creates problems of interpretation and

analysis, which has become the subject of an ongoing scholarly debate within the

discipline of art history.190

The Catholic Church regarded religious pictures as a Bible for the illiterate. This

statement raises a number of questions to which there are no easy answers. What exactly

is meant by “Bible for the Illiterate?” In what sense is a painting a text? How is it to be

read? In the early modern period the division between Protestants and Catholics in their

understanding of church art had to do with the text. For Luther, the eye could not be

trusted to bring one to God. For the Catholic, the visual could make present the invisible.

That is not to say that the Catholic Church disparaged the Word, rather for it the Word

was privileged; it remained in Latin and was the possession of those in position of power.

The tension between seeing and hearing was not new, it can be found as far back as

ancient Greece. There is an account in Philostratus, in which a teacher is instructing a

student on how to navigate the meanings in a painting by averting the eyes: “let us try to

get at the meaning of it [a painting based on Homer]. Turn your eyes away from the

painting itself so as to look only at the events on which it is based.”191 The implication

is that the written text will not lead one astray. There is an underlying fear that we might 190James Elkins and, Robert Williams, eds., Renaissance Theory (New York, London: Routledge, 2008) provides an introduction to this debate.

191 Quoted in Leo Steinberg, “A Corner of the Last Judgment” Daedalus, 109 (1980): 210.

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become lost in the wonder of an image. Images are not quite the same as text. They elicit

an immediate response which is always emotional. We are moved by images, they can

arouse our passions, generate anger, placidity, or humor. Impressionist paintings can

sooth us whilst surrealist ones make us edgy and restless. The fact that art involves the

whole person is one of the factors that give validity to a theology of art.

In some ways texts and images are similar, the interpretation of both rests with the

viewer or reader. When we engage in these activities, we bring with us our history, our

predispositions, and our own self-awareness as individuals. We approach a text with

certain expectations before we even read a word. In the interaction between text and

reader these expectations are continually being modified and to some extent controlled by

the text.192 It might be that it is easier to control the interpretation of the written word.

To some extent this is a role that biblical commentaries serve; they give the “correct”

meaning to biblical texts. This sort of control is much harder to do with a painting.

Images have power to generate responses; this is especially true of religious

images which are bearers of latent potency. Religious images bring the pious believer

into contact with the holy, can induce ecstasy, and can be endowed with miraculous or

apotropaic qualities. A saint, who is represented in an image, is someone who has the

power to heal and to protect and is believed to operate both in the here and now and on a

fairly regular basis.193 Bargains would be made by the intercessor to perform a number

of pious acts in return of the favor granted by the saint. When Milan was visited by the

plague Archbishop Borromeo initiated a series of fasts and processions offered to God for 192 Paolo Berdini, The Religious Art of Jacopo Bassano: Painting as Visual Exegesis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 4.

193 Michael P. Carroll, Madonnas that Maim (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1992), 33.

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the relief of the city. There was a darker side to such bargains; failure to fulfill a promise

made could have unpleasant repercussions. Historian Michael Carroll relates how a

certain Benedetto Pareto failed to build a chapel and had a serious accident the next day,

and how a soldier threw a stone at an image of the Madonna and was immediately

swallowed up by the earth.194 It is hardly surprising that accusations of superstition were

leveled at the veneration of saints.

However, it ought not to be assumed that strong emotional responses to images

relate only to the medieval period, and that the Reformation saw the ascendency of

rational thinking. These characteristics of religious images persist even into

contemporary society. Today people still flock to pilgrimage sites such as Fatima and

Lourdes seeking healing or consolation, as in the early modern period they went to

Santiago de Compostela, Loreto or Walsingham. On the feast of San Gennaro in Naples

people gather, as they have done for centuries, to witness the liquefaction of his blood,

thus bringing good fortune to the city. If the saint takes too long in performing the

miracle a group of women, Le Zie di San Gennaro, hurl insults at the saint.195 That

patron saints were expected to protect communities from disasters and to bring succor in

time of need seems to fall into the range of valid pious responses. Other practices appear

to border on the extreme or superstitious. In recent years the image of Mary has appeared

in clouds, in condensation in the window of a building, and even on toast! More

194 Ibid., 69.

195 Michael P. Carroll, Madonnas that Maim, 121.

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personally, when selling a house I was assured that burying a statue of St. Joseph in the

ground facing away from the house would ensure a speedy sale.196

It would seem then, that of necessity, an art work demands an interpretation; it

cannot be viewed neutrally.197 In the early modern period the charges of superstition and

idolatry leveled by the Protestants seem to have been, at heart, the result of different

interpretations. For the Catholic Church the liturgy is the summit of its activity and the

fountain from which its power flows.198 The liturgy is a sign of the invisible; through

the engagement of the senses the believer ascends from the visible to the invisible and

divine. Through contemplation of a visible image, the believer moves to the mystery

behind it, leading to an imageless devotion that would be a direct apprehension of the

divine.199 Scribner associates this with an Augustinian semiotic system of reality that

represents “high Culture.”200 This can be witnessed among the humanist educated elite

many of whom eschewed external ceremonies in preference to a deeply personal piety.

The Catholic liturgy engages all the senses. Believers see the rich vestments and

gilded furnishings; they hear words and music; they smell the candles and incense; they

taste the consecrated host. But primacy is given to the act of seeing, when the consecrated

host, Christ crucified made present, is elevated. In the sixteenth century many people

196 The house was sold by the secular expediency of using a realtor!

197 Danto, Transfiguration of the Commonplace, 119, 124.

198 The Constitution of the Sacred Liturgy, in Walter Abbott, S.J, ed., The Documents of Vatican II (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1967), ch.1:10.

199 Robert Scribner “Popular Piety and Modes of Visual Perception in Late-Medieval and Reformation Germany” The Journal of Religious History Vol. 15, (1989): 457.

200 Ibid., 457.

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came to church only to witness the elevation of the host and they left immediatelt

afterwards.201 Scribner believes that this “sacramental seeing” encouraged a “prolonged,

contemplative encounter with the holy figure represented.”202 This personal engagement

with the holy figure came through the direct gaze of the depicted person, or through a

combination of gaze and gestures. Either way the believer was invited into a silent

conversation with the imago pietatis.203 This exchange between spectator and object

was a determining feature of the pious image.204 Some examples of this type of image

would be Leonardo’s John the Baptist (Fig. 1); Andrea del Sarto’s Madonna of the

Harpies (fig 2); and Carlo Crivelli’s Madonna Enthroned with Saints (Fig. 3).205

The reformers critique of the religious image came from their preference for the

Word. The function of religious images was to lead the viewers to holy things or to

instruct them in the faith. Thus in the Protestant tradition there developed a didactic and

non-sacramental approach to the image, which Scribner identifies as the “theological

gaze.” The encounter between viewer and viewed now became one in which

contemplation of the image was non-emotional. Instead, a holy image served to remind

the devout of a doctrine.206 Scribner believes that this change in the approach to the

201 Vestiges of this can still be witnessed in some European countries when parishioners arrive just before the Gospel is read and then leave immediately after Communion.

202 Scribner, “Popular Piety,” 461.

203 Ibid., 461.


205 Figures are located at the end of the chapter in which they are discussed or referenced.


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pious images was aided by the developments in the production of art, particularly with

the use of linear perspective that led to a dispassionate way of seeing.207

The Emergence of a Theory of Art

Finally a word or two needs to be said about the development of the theory of art

for “art is the kind of thing that depends for its existence upon theories.”208 In the early

modern period, abstract ideas of beauty were combined with an interest in rhetoric which

led to the appearance of written discourses on art, some of which can be viewed as the

precursors to art theory or a philosophy of aesthetics.

The first book about the theory of art was published in 1435 by Leon Battista

Alberti.209 Alberti considered painting to be worthy of our attention and study as it had a

divine power. Not only could it represent the dead to the living, but it could also represent

the gods “for painting has contributed considerably to the piety which binds us to the

gods, and to filling our minds with sound religious beliefs.” 210 The main virtue of

painting was that it was the mistress of all the arts or at least their principle ornament.

For Alberti, narrative painting was the area where the artist was both free and

constrained. A narrative picture was the summation of everything the artist was; it

represented the ideal order of art, the ideal mastery of craft that was the idea of inner

disposition. It was the “affirmation of a liberated and exalted mode of being and only true

207 Ibid., 463.

208 Danto, Transfiguration of the Commonplace, 135.

209 Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, translated by. Cecil Grayson (London: Penguin, 1972), 34.

210 Ibid., 60.

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artists attempt it without embarrassment,” because the internal order of the painting

needed to be unified.211 According to Alberti, the artist did not so much invent subjects

as reinterpret those that were well known, and the artist did this in such a way as to

elevate and touch the viewer. For him painting was a form of knowledge and he claimed

for it an intellectual importance akin to philosophy.212 The art historian Vernon Hyde

Minor thinks that Masaccio’s Tribute Money (Brancacci Chapel, S. Maria del Carmine,

Florence) is an almost perfect illustration of Alberti’s theories.213

One of the key components of the emerging art theory was that of imitation. The

use of linear perspective, and of light and shade enabled artists to bring more realism into

their paintings. There also developed the notion that a painting was a window to the

world, or a mirror image of the world. This had repercussions for religious art. A viewer

was encouraged to take a more objective view of the painting that he or she was

regarding. To this was coupled the use of invention, a highly desirable skill in narrative

compositions, for this was an area where an artist could display his talent. The educated

viewer of such paintings was encouraged to appreciate the artistic skill involved in the

production of the painting but also to search for hidden meanings. This led to a

disengagement with an art object, along with an objectification, and detached assessment

of it.

The relative merit of the plastic arts to poetry, and to each other, was a recurring

debate throughout most of the sixteenth century. Leonardo da Vinci believed that

211 Williams, Art, Theory and Culture, 98.

212 Williams, Art Theory: An Introduction, 59.

213 Minor, Art History’s History, 63.

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painting was better than poetry because it was a system of natural signs and had

immediate and universal appeal, transmitting knowledge more directly, securely and

accurately than words. He also thought painting was superior to sculpture, since it had a

greater variety of natural effects; he felt it was a more comprehensive means for

expressing a total understanding of nature.214 The sculptors, on the other hand, claimed

precedence arguing that sculpting was more permanent, and that it was grander since it

produced three dimensional objects.

Perhaps the best known writer on art from this period is Giorgio Vasari whose

Lives of the Artists laid out a scheme of ordering and conceptualizing art as a historical

phenomenon. The idea that art is an appropriate subject for a serious and sustained

history is a significant achievement; such accounts are usually reserved for generals and

statesmen, the “heroes.” Vasari followed a model of humanist historiography and insisted

on the right to offer judgments on art objects as well as to draw out lessons, and provide

biographical details. It is clear that for Vasari the visual arts develop, change, and

improve with the passage of time. The humanists had learned this from studying the

linguistic patterns of ancient texts. In showing that the progress of art reproduces a

pattern seen in antiquity, Vasari was claiming that it was fundamentally rational in

nature.215

For Vasari, antiquity had authority over the present. His artists are compared to

those who went before them, and he sees a movement towards perfection. The rules that

art followed reflected the composition, exactitude, and structure of the universe.


215 Ibid., 71.

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Proportion was defined as that which was upright and proper; disegno was the creative

capacity to imitate that which was most beautiful in the world and followed a system of

selectivity. Disegno was viewed as the intellectual, rational part of a work of art.216 The

progression of art towards its fulfillment was measured in increasing naturalism, beauty,

persuasive story-telling and greater success in presenting abstract ideas. 217 These were

similar arguments to those used in debates regarding the relative value of painting and

poetry. Similarly, Federigo Zuccaro in his Idea of Painters, Sculptors, and Architects

aimed to show that disegno was the underlying principle, perhaps even the cause, of all

human thought and so the arts of painting, sculpture and architecture deserve a privileged

place in the hierarchy of arts and sciences.218 Disegno was an essential activity of the

soul, a process by which the soul realized itself. All thought and perception were re-

enactments and extensions into the here-and-now of the creative, primeval gesture of the

divine. The soul perceived all things, took all things into itself and disegno was the means

by which all was ordered by the soul.219

Closely connected to these ideas, and emerging as well from humanist circles,

were notions of style and decorum. Style can be the overall quality of a work of art, or it

can refer to something distinctive and characteristic in an artist’s oeuvre. Style can be

used in a particular sense to refer to a single aspect of a work such as disposition or

elocution. It can also be something that is achieved by following well-established rules or

216 Minor, Art History’s History, 67


218 Ibid., 136.

219 Ibid., 74.

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formulae, or by imitating certain models. There is also an absolute sense in which we can

say that an artist has style or does not. Closely linked to style is decorum, those principles

of appropriateness of style to subject that governed composition, representation and even

location. By the mid-sixteenth century the increase of classical references in religious art

caused uneasiness in certain quarters of the elite, especially the inclusion of nudes or

other distracting elements in religious images. The Council of Trent’s injunctions on

suitable art for churches sprang from a sense of decorum, and led to some of the nudes in

Michelangelo’s Last Judgment being clothed. They were considered “unworthy” of the

papal chapel and even the religious content of the fresco could not compensate for the

lack of decency.220.

The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries saw significant changes in all aspects of

society. In the field of art, changes occurred on the practical and theoretical levels. The

developments in theory and practice occurred simultaneously; artists talked to and wrote

for other artists, sharing insights and ideas. At the same time, the humanists became

engaged in a discourse on the theory of art. These two developments affected the way an

artist worked and the way in which the public viewed art objects. An understanding of

these two aspects of art gives richness to the appreciation and interpretation of surviving

art from the period.

In the writings of the theorist that we have cited there seems to be an underlying

theoretical self-consciousness that was part of a larger, deeper cultural transformation.

220 Williams, Art, Theory, and Culture, 74.

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The period did not see a re-birth of classical art just as it did not see the re-introduction of

classical Latin; the writers and artist were centuries removed from antiquity and what

they brought from reading or seeing examples from the past were combined with many

contemporary concerns and worries that informed their experiences. The more we

understand of these historical developments, especially in the context of the development

of art, the more we will appreciate the unique combination of an infinite variety of visual

experiences that governed the creation of art objects and developed art theory. It is this

richness, coloration, and texture that enabled artists to include shades of meaning in their

works.

The early modern period also witnessed outbreaks of iconoclasm and the

emergence of art inspired by Protestantism. Although art in Italy remained predominantly

Catholic, as we shall see, the incursion into the peninsula of diverse religious views,

created a substratum where artists experimented with the visualization of heterodox ideas

leading to a different sort of religious art.

83

Figure 1 Leonardo da Vinci St. John the Baptist 1513-16 Oil on Panel, 69x 57cm Musée du Louvre, Paris. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 2 Andrea del Sarto Madonna of the Harpies 1517 Oil on Wood, 208 x 178 cm Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 3 Carlo Crivelli Madonna Enthroned with Saints 1488 Poplar Panel, 191 x 196cm Staatliche Museen, Berlin. (With permission from WGA)

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CHAPTER FOUR

SAVONAROLA

It cannot be denied that Savonarola had a lasting effect upon the religious

landscape of Italy. As has been noted, his sermons remained popular and in demand well

into the latter half of the sixteenth century. His call for personal piety and simplicity of

life combined with austerity appealed to many, even though this had resulted in several

acts of cultural violence. Like many preachers of the day, Savonarola made frequent

reference to art, especially painting. He had clear ideas about the kind of images that

should be displayed in churches. For him, religious images needed to be simple and

direct, thus leading the viewer to the divine. A number of artists were among his

followers and attempted to incorporate his ideas into their work. Botticelli’s Mystic

Nativity (National Gallery, London) and his Mystic Crucifixion (Fogg Museum, Harvard

University) can be attributed to his time among the piagnone—or “snivelers,” a

scurrilous term applied to Savonarola’s followers.221

Lorenzo Lotto captured the personality of Savonarola when he was commissioned

in 1511, by the Dominicans, to paint a fresco on the wall at the end of an aisle in the

church of San Domenico, Recanati, in the Papal States. It is a highly dramatic rendering

of St. Vincent Ferrer (Fig. 4).222 The fresco is in poor condition. Above the saint, where

only the trumpeting angels remain, was originally a Christ in glory. Also lost is a

landscape that would have been in bird’s-eye view at the bottom. The diminished size of

the landscape would have heightened the animated and dominant presence of the saint.

The features of the saint are reputed to resemble those of Savonarola. Steinberg’s

research into portraits of Savonarola has led him to conclude that Lotto had been given

221Ronald M. Steinberg, Fra Girolamo Savonarola: Florentine Art and Renaissance Historiography, (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1977), 20-24.

222 Figures have been placed at the end of the chapter in which they are discussed.

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some type of portrait of Savonarola to use as a model for his Vincent Ferrer. His

conclusion, in part, is reached through a comparison of other paintings of Vincent to that

of Lotto, which is unlike any previous rendering of the saint.223 Art historian Peter

Humfrey, follows Steinberg in supporting the claim that Lotto gave the saint the features

of Savonarola whose memory was very much alive within the Dominican order.224

Lotto has captured the dynamic and charismatic nature which the two Dominicans

seem to have shared. Both preachers were renowned for attracting huge crowds, and for

preaching a message of repentance of sin and preparation for the last judgment. They

both ran afoul of the Roman hierarchy; Vincent was investigated by the Spanish

Inquisition in 1395 for preaching that Judas had repented, whilst Savonarola was

“invited” to Rome to give an account of himself on several occasions. They also had

bands of followers who accompanied them. It is perhaps, then, not surprising if the friars

in Recanati, in wanting to commemorate Savonarola, chose to give his features to

Vincent Ferrer, especially if Savonarola was considered a persona non grata in the Papal

States.

Lotto’s figure of the fiery preacher bursts from the wall carried on a cloud. With

one hand he gestures heavenwards and with the other he holds a Bible opened at his

favorite text from Apocalypse: “Fear God and give glory to him, for the hour of his

judgment is come.”225 In comparison to the static renderings of the saint, such as

Bellini’s Polyptych San Vicenzo Ferreri (1464-8, Basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo,

Venice), Lotto has created a sense of presence and animation.226 In Savonarola’s


224 Humfrey, Lorenzo Lotto, 38.

225 Ibid., 38.

226 For other contemporaneous paintings of St. Vincent Ferrer see Andrea da Murano Polyptych, 1478 Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice and Cossa’, Griffoni Polyptych, 1473, National Gallery , London.

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preaching, prognostications of pending disasters were often linked to the survival of

Florence. For Savonarola, the well- being of the city, depended on the personal piety of

the citizens.

Savonarola attracted a number of artists to his cause. One of Savonarola’s most

devout followers amongst the artists was Fra Bartolomeo della Porta, who worked in

Florence and had painted a portrait of the Friar in 1498, before joining the Dominicans.

Although Vasari portrayed Bartolomeo as a deeply pious, humble and timorous man who

was among those who defended the friars when the convent of San Marco was attacked

by anti-Savonarolan forces, his name does not appear in the list of those defenders

interviewed by the Signoria. His piety did not prevent Fra Bartolomeo from entering into

a partnership with Mariotto Albertinelli, a “restless and lustful man who enjoyed good

living,” a partnership that produced a highly successful workshop.227

In 1500 Fra Bartolomeo entered the Dominican order in Prato and gave up

painting. He was transferred to San Marco, Florence in 1502 and was invited to be head

of the convent workshop in 1504. Fra Bartolomeo’s place as a Renaissance artist was

restored through the work of S. J. Freedberg. Generally his paintings are noted for rich

and delicate coloring, the use of drapery, and the play of light and shade to create the

illusion of movement, a technique gleaned from Raphael. They are religious in nature and

are in keeping with Savonarola’s insistence on simplicity in both style and content, but

that does not necessarily exclude experimentation and invention. Two of his most

unusual compositions seem to have been directly inspired by Savonarola’s sermons: his

God the Father with Saint Catherine of Siena and Mary Magdalen and Mater

Misericordia both in Lucca.228


228 Ibid., 82.

89

One of the cornerstones of Savonarola’s theology was the principle that all things

strive to fulfill their ordained purpose. In the case of human beings, this meant drawing

closer to God through contemplation. Fra Bartolomeo attempted to capture this process of

moving closer to God in his large altarpiece of God the Father, Mary Magdalene and

Saint Catherine of Siena (Fig. 5). The work is dated 1509, inscribed with the words Orate

Pro Pictore (pray for the painter), and was commissioned by the Dominicans at

Lucca.229 In keeping with Savonarola’s injunction that religious images should be free

of invention, the painting is austere and follows a traditional triangular composition. The

holy women form the base of a triangle at the apex of which sits God the Father circled

by angels, two of whom hold a rosary. God the Father holds an open book inscribed with

the letters Alpha and Omega. The two saints are situated within a window or high portico

and elevated on clouds just above the ground; Mary is holding an ointment jar and

Catherine is in the Dominican habit with a book and lily on the floor below her. In the

distance is a landscape with a few houses and a bridge.

In nearly all of his daily sermons, Savonarola would speak of God as the Alpha

and Omega, the first cause and prime mover, the first truth and ultimate purpose. For

Savonarola, the very purpose of human existence was to be united with God. For the

Christian this could be difficult, situated as he or she was between the spiritual and

corporeal worlds, being subject to the constant struggles between worldly enticements

and the ultimate end, which was God. The act of contemplation would raise the Christian

from the world and transport her or him to God. For Savonarola heaven was a condition,

a communion of all those who were raised up through divine contemplation. He told his

audience that the “elect of God, elevated through contemplation and love of the divine,

leave earthly things and trample evil desires which remain below.”230


230Quoted by R. Steinberg, Savonarola, 90.

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Next to the figure of Mary Magdalene, Fra Bartolomeo inscribed the words

NOSTRA CONVERSATIO IN COELIS EST, (our way of life is in heaven).

Representations of Mary Magdalene usually fall into one of two iconographical types:

Mary as a penitent hermit in the wilderness, usually placed in a landscape setting with a

crucifix and skull, clad in tatters, such as in Donatello’s Penitent Magdalene (Florence,

Museo dell’Opera del Duomo); or, she is shown as an elegantly attired woman reading

and is identified by an unguent jar. In keeping with Savonarola’s exhortation to his

followers to imitate Mary Magdalene, Fra Bartolomeo has chosen to represent a moment

of contemplation. With her heart and mind set upon God, the Magdalene is transported

from this world on a cloud.231 For Savonarola, Mary Magdalene was a perfect

exemplum because she had enjoyed the enticements of the world; she had been a sinner,

and she had repented. In many ways she gave hope to those who living a Christian life in

the hustle and bustle of life in the world.

As has been noted, the early modern period saw a radical change in the ranking of

the states of Christian living. Whereas in the medieval period the monastic life had been

given precedence, this was now seriously challenged by the elevated status that humanist

learning gave to life as a lay person actively engaged in human affairs.232The changing

attitude was also aided by the perceived laxity of the clergy, which resulted in many lay

people, especially the more privileged, taking control of their own spiritual well-being

and creating avenues whereby they could exercise their Christian duties. Savonarola

recognized a correlation between the exercise of one’s Christian duty and the welfare of

the state, a concept upon which he based his theocracy. Whether one lived in the world or

withdrew into a monastery, the goal of the devout Christian was a union with Christ. Fra


232 Pico Mirandello’s, On the Dignity of the Human Being is the classic example of the humanist attitude towards humanity.

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Bartolomeo reinforces this idea by placing the two saints on the same level. Regardless of

one’s position in the world, whether lay or clerical, the way to God is the same, and it is

through contemplation.

Divine contemplation was a recurrent theme of Savonrola’s preaching. During his

Advent sermons of 1493 he bemoaned the lack of spiritual love noting that nobody

languished for the love of God, a theme taken from the Song of Songs. He reminded his

listeners that the Virgin uttered “I am consumed, I am liquefied, I languish for love” and

then fell into a state of “sweet ecstasy” because of her “suave contemplation.”233 Fra

Bartolomeo took up this theme by placing the word AMOR LANGUEO (I languish for

love) to the left of and at a level with St. Catherine. The early biographies of Catherine

told of her devotion to the poor, her profound love of God and her ecstatic visions. Here

her willowy figure with its fluttering clothing, give her an ethereal quality in keeping

with her intense focus on the figure of God. To round out the theme of contemplation, Fra

Bartolomeo has placed a banner just below the figure of God, which reads DIVINUS

AMOR EXTASIM FACIT (Divine love brings ecstasy). The words are taken from

Dionysius the Aeropagite, to whom Savonarola made frequent reference and regarded as

a great authority on divine things.234 These words combine all the elements of divine

contemplation, love, ecstasy, transports of heavenly delight, and communion with

God.235

The Mater Misericordia (Fig. 6) was commissioned by Fra Sebastiano de’

Montecatini for the Dominican church of San Romano and was signed and dated 1515. In

its overall design, it followed the typical iconography of such paintings: a Madonna with

arms and cloak extended to encompass the surrounding supplicants. There are two


234 Ibid., 92.

235 Ibid., 91.

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inscriptions that are not very clear. On the raised and stepped architectural structure upon

which Mary stands is inscribed M[ATE]R PIETATIS ET MI[SERICORDIA]E (Mother

of mercy and piety). Immediately below these letters is the Montecatini coat of arms

centered between the letters F.S.O.P.(Frater Sebastianus Ordinis Praedicatorum),

indicating the patron. Just below the figure of Christ is a plaque that reads MISEREOR

SVP[ER] TVRBAM (compassion of the multitudes).

For the most part the painting follows traditional iconographical patterns for a

Mother of Mercy theme. Unique to Fra Bartolomeo’s painting is the inclusion of both

Christ and the Virgin in a Mother of Mercy painting.236 Also unusual are the threatening

black cloud, Christ hovering like a large winged bird with out-spread wings, and the

inscription below the Christ figure. It is these elements which link the painting to the

sermons of Savonarola.237 One of his most frequent topics was the imminent tribulations

that were to be visited upon Florence, Rome and Italy as a whole, as they had been

visited upon the Jerusalem of the Old Testament. Such prognostications were

accompanied by the image of a dark threatening cloud sent by God. In relation to this

Savonarola would often quote Psalm 91: “he will cover you with his pinions, and under

his wings you will find refuge…you will not fear the terror of the night …nor the

pestilence that stalks in darkness.” Another favorite and much used scriptural text was

that of Matthew 23:37: “O Jerusalem…How often would I have gathered your children

together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.”238 Certainly the extended cloaks

of both Mary and Christ are a visualization of these scriptural texts.

In his analysis of the painting Steinberg offers as a conclusion that it represents

Savonarola’s belief that those who remained steadfast in their faith when beset by


237 Ibid., 83.

238 Ibid., 84.

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difficulties, and those who have recourse to the compassion of Christ and the mercy of

Mary will be counted among the elect.239 There are, however, some aspects to the

painting that Steinberg has overlooked and which warrant further remarks. The role of

Mary in the composition is subordinated to that of Christ. The wing-like patterning of the

cloak extending either side of Christ combined with the movement of the angels holding

ribbons draws attention away from Mary to Christ. The left hand side of composition

contains a motley group of humanity expressing varying degrees of interest in their

surroundings-- humanity with all its cares and concerns, humanity living in the world and

not in a religious house; the active life, perhaps? On the right hand side of the

composition, the grouping seems more attentive and contains one cleric in the person of

St. Dominic, who is encouraging the devotion of a man in scarlet. Such devices--figures

that point--are designed to alert the viewer as to where to focus their gaze but in this case

the gesture is neutralized by another compositional element. The tightly knit group in

front of Dominic draws attention since it is isolated by the action of the older woman.

She encloses in her embrace the child next to her along with the young woman and child.

The strongly cast shadow reflected on the scarlet cloak and the black skirt of the young

woman adds to the isolation. It is further heightened by the gaze of the older woman, who

looks directly at the viewer, and the foot of the younger woman that extends almost out

of the picture frame.

The grouping is reminiscent of a St. Anne, the Virgin and Child with John the

Baptist. The closeness of the group seems to echo Leonardo’s Madonna and Child with

St. Anne and the Young St. John (National Gallery, London), which could be a possible

source of inspiration since Leonardo was working on his composition in 1510. If the

grouping is that of St Anne then we need to consider the implications. What bearing

could it have on the preaching of Savonarola? St. Anne, like the figure of John the


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Baptist, could be a bridge between the Old and New Testaments through her bearing the

Virgin. The holy family group is a summary of salvation: the Crucified one stood at the

center of the world and “has restored human nature. All those who have lived uprightly,

whether before Christ or after, all have understood this, moved by Him as their object of

love and desire…Because he is the Prime Cause.”240 The inclusion of a St. Anne, the

Virgin, Jesus and John the Baptist grouping strengthens the iconography of the altarpiece

encapsulating, as it does, the core of Savonarola’s preaching.

In Fra Bartolomeo’s paintings that we have considered here, some elements of

Savonarola’s preaching have been captured. Savonarola was not only attempting to

establish a theocracy in Florence, he was attempting to give the laity direction for living

an orderly, Christian life, that involved contemplation of Christ and personal moral

reform. Both these ideals appealed to the Christian humanist and became prominent in

the piety of the spirituali. Savonarola’s ideals would re-emerge in Florence when the

Medici were expelled in 1527, and the republic was re-established. Recalling

Savonarola’s theocracy, Christ was declared head of the city.

Fra Bartolomeo’s paintings are quintessential of Catholic religious images. They

invite the pious believer to contemplation, to add their prayers to those gather around the

Virgin, to follow the gaze of St Catherine to God the Father. The two paintings

considered encourage the viewer to remain and gaze. They are also comfortable images;

the protagonists are doing what the viewer would expect them to be doing. They are

painted in a straightforward manner; there are no distractions, no unusual gestures or

240 Savonarola, Selected Writings of Girolamo Savonarola: Religion and Politics, 1490-1498 translated by Anne Borelli and Maria Pastore Passaro (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), 8.

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exotic animals. In this they fulfill the Church’s expectation of religious images; that is to

draw the viewer to God and to uphold Catholic teachings.

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Figure 4 Lorenzo Lotto St. Vincent Ferrer c. 1511, Fresco, 265 x 166 cm. San Domenico, Recanati. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 5 Fra Bartolomeo della Porta. God the Father with Saint Catherine of Siena and Mary Magdalen. 1509, Panel, 361x236 cm Museo e Pinacoteca Nazionale di Palazzo Mansi, Lucca. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 6 Fra Bartolomeo della Porta Madonna della Misericodia 1515, Oil on Canvas Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi, Lucca. (With permission from WGA)

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CHAPTER FIVE

PAINTINGS THAT REFLECT CATHOLIC REFORM

The religious discourse of the first three decades of the sixteenth century

concentrated on themes that would become the hall-marks of Protestantism—justification

by faith, grace, free will, predestination, and the role of works. The discussions took

place within the framework of the Catholic Church and should be seen as part of the

efforts to address the ills of the Church. In the atmosphere of spiritual and moral malaise,

both clerics and laity sought alternative avenues through which to express their piety. For

many, especially educated humanists, this resulted in an interiorized, personal faith

combined with the exercise of civic duty. A number of clerics and laity were concerned

with the state of the Church. Some, after a certain amount of soul-searching, opted to

retreat from the distractions of the world and entered religious orders, a road taken by

Tomasso Giustiniani and Vicenzo Querini, who entered the Camaldolese hermitage at

Arezzo. Their concern for the well-being of the Church led them to compose the Libellus

ad Leonem X which was read at the Fifth Lateran Council (1512-1517). Great hopes had

been put in this council to address the ills afflicting the church but, in fact, little was

achieved by way of actual reform. The council drew to a close in 1517, the same year that

Luther began his protest.

Florence during this period experienced a certain amount of political instability.

When the regime of Savonarola collapsed with his execution, Piero Soderini established a

republican government. This was ended in 1512 with the return of the Medici. The

Florentines revolted again in 1527 and exiled the Medici, establishing a republic under

the kingship of Christ. The Medici returned to power with the aid of Imperial troops, in

1530. It was in this shifting environment that Jacopo Pontormo established himself as an

independent artist.

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Jacopo Pontomo (1494-1556)

Born in Empoli in 1494, Pontormo studied for a short time with Leonardo and

then successively with Albertinelli, Piero di Cosimo and Andrea del Sarto. It is likely that

in these workshops Pontormo would have become familiar with the teachings of

Savonarola, since all his masters had contact with Fra Bartolomeo. Pontormo worked in

and around Florence and was, at one time, one of the principle painters in the city. He

was praised by Michelangelo for his Joseph in Egypt (National Gallery, London), and

was precocious enough to have developed his distinctive style of restless movement and

discordant features, by the time he was 23. He is considered to be in the vanguard of

Mannerism.241 He was temperamental and idiosyncratic, often moody, and sensitive to

the opinions of others, which led him often to hide his work.

In 1517 Pontormo was commissioned to paint an altarpiece for Francesco di

Giovanni Pucci’s recently acquired chapel in the small parochial church of San Michele

Visdomini, a short distance from Santa Marie dei Fiore. Pontormo’s impatience with the

serene, well-balanced, and expressive compositions of both Fra Bartolomeo and Andrea

del Sarto is evident in his Madonna with Child and Saints (Fig. 7). Traditionally, such

groupings would be pyramidal, with the Madonna at the apex placed on some sort of

architectural structure. On either side there would be figures of saints, sometimes donor

portraits, and angels. A typical example would be Andrea del Sarto’s Madonna with the

Harpies in which the Madonna with child stands on a pedestal, angels clasping her legs,

with St. Francis and John the Evangelist on either side. There is a sculptural quality to the

picture; it is symmetrical, balanced and static.

In the San Michele Visdomini altarpiece (Fig. 7), Pontormo disrupts the

symmetry of the traditional pyramid with disordered figures, dissonant relationships, and

241 Adapted from Ian Chilvers, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

101

an imbalance in the distribution of full and empty space. The scene is animated by

exaggerated gestures and expressions.242 Pontormo has grouped the Madonna, St.

Joseph (holding a half standing child Jesus), and John the Evangelist (with an eagle at his

shoulder) along a diagonal. Their attention has been caught by the divine light coming

from the left. At Joseph’s feet, and on the opposite side of the diagonal, sits a happy John

the Baptist, who gazes at St. Francis whilst pointing to the Christ child. St. Francis kneels

in rapt adoration, and behind him St. James stands looking out at the viewers. Empty

space is used to create a separation between the Holy Family and the two saints, the

divine and the earthly. The Holy Family is bathed in a luminous light that gives emphasis

to the separation between them and Saints Francis and James. The bold figure of St.

James, who claims the spectators attention points to the ground with his left hand whilst

with his right he points to Christ. The cult of St. James attracted pilgrims from all over

Europe to Santiago de Compostela. The inference is that James stands as a reference to

pilgrimages the devout would undertake.

Although the painting has all the elements of a typical painting of the Madonna

and saints there is something unsettling about it. The painting is in a funeral chapel where

members of the family would come to pray for the repose of their ancestor’s soul. Asking

the Virgin Mary and saints to intercede on behalf of the dead would be the norm. As the

believers begin to offer his or her prayers, they become aware that only St. James is

looking at them and that he is drawing attention to both the ground and to Mary. To

whom does one address one’s prayers? There is no obvious focal point. Furthermore, all

the figures are wrapped up in their own distraction. In this animated scene St. Francis

kneels, adoring the Christ child, who seems ignorant of the fact that he is the subject of

such adoration. Francis, perhaps, has the correct attitude, that Christ should be focus of a

person’s devotion. However, in that very act of adoration, concentrated as it is upon

242 Bodart, Renaissance and Mannerism, 123.

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Christ, Francis subtlety draws into question the intercession of the saints, or at least the

role of the saints.

The viewer is presented with a sacra conversazione, but one that lacks dignity. To

eyes accustomed to the classical lines and graceful beauty of Florentine Renaissance art,

this must have appeared ugly, with its ungraceful figures and postures. But in the act of

looking, the painting presents the viewer with a challenge to reflect on the cult of the

saints as a means of accessing the divine. It also presents the pious believer with a

challenge as to the purpose of religious art. As such, it fails to live up to the Catholic

ideal of making “heaven-with-us” present. Pontormo has captured the loss of confidence

in the Church that was experienced by many people. He has also given validity to

Christians who were taking charge of their own spiritual life, without the need of priests--

an approach that was in keeping with humanist views on the dignity of the human person.

The 1520’s were productive years for Pontormo. He received several important

commissions that included the frescoes at the Certosa del Galluzzo, the Cistercian

charterhouse just south of Florence, and those in the Capponi Chapel, Florence. The

frescoes at Certosa are badly damaged and hardly discernible. Whilst Pontormo was

working on the main frescoes, he was asked to undertake a painting for the refectory of

the guest house to include scenes of the monastic life. Leonardo Buonafé, the monk

responsible for the iconographical program in both the cloister and the refectory, is

thought to be portrayed as the monk on the left, who directs his gaze at the viewer whilst

indicating the action at the table. For this, Jacopo produced a rendition of the Supper at

Emmaus (Fig. 8). The painting was removed by Napoleon in 1810, when the Certosa was

suppressed, and then moved to the Uffizi, Florence, in 1948 where it currently resides.

The event is taken from St. Luke’s gospel and relates how the two disciples were

met on the road to Emmaus by a traveler (Jesus in disguise), and they discuss the

happenings in Jerusalem, especially the Crucifixion. When evening falls, the two

disciples invite the stranger to eat with them. Pontormo has arranged the table with a

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simple meal. Jesus sits at the table blessing the bread and surrounded by monks, who are

acting as servants, which in actuality they would be for visitors to the guest house. The

two disciples sit with their backs to the viewer. The table is set with a still life of bread,

platter, knives and glasses. The domesticity of the scene is completed by the inclusion of

animals. The direct gaze of Jesus invites those in the refectory to participate in the

painted meal. The naturalism of the painting reflects a simplicity of life appropriate for

the Carthusians. Pontormo has also drawn out the humanity of Christ, on which the

humanists and spirituali placed great emphasis. The Eucharist would become a symbol

not only of Christ’s sacrifice but also of the broken body of the Church, and the subject of

the supper at Emmaus would be painted more frequently in the years that followed.

The eye in a triangle just above Christ’s head is a discordant surreal feature, and

represents the Trinity. It was added in 1582, or thereabouts, when the monks decided to

up-grade the iconography. The decree on art promulgated by the Council of Trent had

recently been published, and Jacopo Empoli, who was working for the monks at the time,

added the eye in the triangle, in keeping with the new directives of the Council of

Trent.243 However, after the publication of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and the

release of John Turtletaub’s National Treasure, one suspects that it is bound to be seen in

terms of the Illuminati or the Masons, rather than the Trinity.244

In 1525, Ludovico Capponi acquired a chapel in S. Felicità, Florence, to which he

made significant architectural changes and commissioned Pontormo for the frescoes.245

Originally the chapel had been dedicated to the Annunciation, but it was re-dedicated to

243 Philippe Costamagna, Pontormo (Milan: Electa, 1994), 178.

244 Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code (New York: Doubleday, 2004); John Turtletaub, dir., National Treasure (Disney Films, 2004).

245 Howard Saalman, “Further Notes on the Cappella Barbadori S. Felicta” The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 100 (Aug.1958): 270-275 and “Form and Meaning at the Barbadori-Capponi Chapel in S. Felicita” Burlington Magazine Vol. 131 (Aug. 1989): 532-539.

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the Pietà. Pontormo was working on the frescoes when news of the Sack of Rome

reached Florence and many Florentines believed that Savonarola’s predictions of

destruction were being fulfilled. The Medici household fled the city and for a short while

the Republic was restored. Niccolò Capponi was elected Gonfaloniere, and in 1528 he

proposed to the Consiglio Maggiore that Christ be elected as King of the City, a move

reminiscent of Savonarola. Given this, it is altogether probable that the Capponi family

were followers of Savonarola, and that the iconography in the chapel would reflect this.

When Imperial and Spanish forces defeated the Republic and restored the Medici, the

Capponi family left Florence, in fear of reprisals.246

The chapel is a rectangle with a vaulted ceiling set in a corner of S. Felicità. It

opened onto the nave on the east and north sides. Originally it was decorated with a

fresco of God the Father surrounded by four patriarchs in a hemispherical dome (these

are now lost); four circular panels for the pendentives, containing busts of the evangelists,

which were partly worked by Bronzino; the great altarpiece, variously known as

Deposition, Descent from the Cross, Pietà, Entombment, or Lamentation; and an

Annunciation on the wall window divided by a stained glass of the Deposition and

Entombment by Guillaume de Marcillat. The Annunciation, the pendentives, and

altarpiece are intact; the current window is a copy of the original. If we entered the chapel

from North we would be facing the altarpiece, and if from the East we would be facing

the Annunciation. Above would be God the Father and the Patriarchs. There is some

debate as to the exact placement of these latter figures.

In 1957, Janet Cox-Rearick identified seven drawings relating to the lost dome

frescoes from which she has suggested that God was seated in the center of the vault with

the patriarchs looking up at him.247 Such a view is supported by Vasari who singled out

246 Costamagna, Pontormo, 75.

247 Leo Steinberg, “Pontormo’s Capponi Chapel.”Art Bulletin. 56 (September, 1974):385.

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God as “being in the heavens.” John Shearman thought the viewpoint of figures showed

them to be all at the same level, around knee height. In the drawing, the figure of God the

Father is gesturing and if this had been placed in the center then God would have been

pointing to the floor. Furthermore God appears to have been seated on a low wall or

bench which would not make sense if it traversed the vault. Shearman believed that the

figures were arranged in a decorative and unified pattern around an open center with a

Dove of the Holy Spirit in the apex of the vault.248

Leo Steinberg noted that in one of the drawings a patriarch is resting an elbow on

a step at chest height. From this he extrapolated a configuration whereby a two-tiered

step ran around the dome but not across the vault. In this arrangement, God would be in a

deeper zone at the opposite pole to the altarpiece and would not interfere with the ordered

seating of the patriarchs above the pendentives. Rather, the figure would loom out from

greater depth and, abetted by the curve of the ceiling, the head would rise towards the

apex. Steinberg, like Shearman, thinks there may well have been a Dove in the summit of

the dome, which would be directly over the head of God.249

There is general agreement among scholars that the iconography of the chapel

ought to be read as a unit rather than in isolation; this has resulted in a number of

interpretations. John Shearman understood the frescoes as an allusion to the Eucharist.

Starting with the altarpiece he proposed that the body of the deposed Christ was being

lowered, figuratively, to the altar below whilst God the Father, the patriarchs and

Evangelists participated in the event.250 The Eucharist is a re-enactment of Christ’s

redemptive act through which all creation is reconciled to God. From the apex of the

dome, the Spirit hovered over the completion as it did over the void at the beginning of

248 Ibid., 395.

249 Ibid., 386.

250 John Shearman quoted in Steinberg, “Pontormo’s Capponi Chapel,” 390 n. 21.

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creation. The Annunciation (Fig. 9) was viewed as an afterthought by Shearman. He

believed that it was added as a reminder of the former dedication of the chapel.

For Leo Steinberg, the altarpiece of the Deposition (Fig. 10) is modeled after

Michelangelo’s Pietà in St Peter’s, but in Pontormo’s hand the static has become a

dissolving unit. He believes that Pontormo’s painting “stages the breaking up of a revered

symbolic form, the sundering of the familiar communion of Mother and Son, with the

Virgin, cognizant and acquiescent, letting go.”251 The body is being borne not to a tomb

or an altar but to God, who looks on from across the chapel to his son. From the drawings

we can see that Pontormo envisioned God thrusting out his arm and turning to look in the

same direction. Steinberg connects this image to the Dürer’s Gnadenstuhl woodcut of

1511.

Adding to the debate, Louis Waldman restores to the iconography of the chapel

the stained glass window that bisected the Annunciation and was designed and executed

by Guillaume de Marcillat. The scene depicted in the window was the descent from the

Cross and the entombment. Waldman believes that the window has been overlooked by

scholars in the past, since it had been removed during the 1736 renovations; it was,

however, in place before Pontormo began his project. It is possible that Pontormo had a

deposition in mind since there is a study for the altarpiece that included a ladder and cross

in the background. The presence of the window may have led to a change in the scheme.

In excluding the ladder, Pontormo “removed the last overtly narrative prop from his

painting, which then became the mystically timeless and iconic vision we behold

today.”252 Waldman places the action of the altarpiece as somewhere between the

deposition from the Cross and the entombment, and this would make it a Pietà.

251 Ibid., 387.

252 Louis Alexander Waldman, “New Light on the Capponi Chapel in S. Felicità” The Art Bulletin, Vol.84 (June, 2002): 300.

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Waldman also points out that the natural light from the window would illuminate

the Annunciation, making it redundant for rays to be painted. He feels that the play of

natural light refracted through the stained glass would dissolve the boundaries between

what was real and what was painted. This would have the effect of giving the illusion that

the “sacred figures have actually come down to inhabit the human realm for out benefit,

or that the spectator, rapt in devout meditation on the images has been raised up to the

level of the divine.”253

Events within a painting were never viewed by sixteenth-century spectators as

static, neutral pictures, nor did the onlookers see themselves as being passive.254 Even

the most humble person would have heard sermons in which she or he would have been

encouraged to visualize events from the Gospels; images were regarded as devotional

aids. With this in mind, the iconography of the chapel, taken as a whole, captures the

story of redemption. In the altarpiece, which seems to defy naming, the body of the dead

Christ is being returned to the Father (Steinberg), having been lifted from the knees of

Mary (Waldman). There are no visual props to anchor the action on an earthly plane. It is

taking place in some spiritual, ethereal dimension (Waldman). There is sadness in the

expressions, perhaps bewilderment, but not excessive grief. This would be in keeping

with Savonarola’s preaching that for Mary, the sight of her crucified son did not lead her

to faint or to express extreme distress. Rather, she was both sad and joyful. This was due

to her conformity to the will of God and in the same way those “who have conformed

[their] will to God’s will in [their] tribulations be both joyful and sad.”255

The body is above the altar where Mass would be said, and it would stand as a

reminder that the Eucharist is a commemoration of the sacrifice of Christ (Shearman).

253 Ibid., 302.

254 Baxandall, Painting and Experience, 39, 45.

255 Selected Writings of Savonarola, 20.

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The presence of God the Father on the opposite wall would be seen as the beginning and

the end. It is the love the Father has for humanity that led to the Incarnation, as seen in

the Annunciation broken by the window with the Deposition and Entombment. The

combination of the Annunciation with the deposition implies that the Virgin had

knowledge of her Son’s death. Even the annunciation to Mary seems to take place in an

undefined space. Although there are steps and a plinth, they are insufficient to anchor the

action in an historical setting. Instead events are to take place within the supplicant, in an

internal conforming of the will to God through which one will be among the elect.

The fresco is devoid of invention and ornamentation; it presents no distractions to

the viewer; it is bare. The viewers are not invited to place themselves within the fresco

and imagine how they would feel and what they would smell and touch. They are not

asked to feel the sorrow of Mary or the apostles. Like the altarpiece in San Michele

Visdomini, the fresco invites a different sort of looking. It raises questions about

salvation and justification by faith, and the relative roles of grace and works in the

economy of salvation that was being widely debated. Pontormo’s fresco offers no defined

answer to these questions. Rather an invitation to reflect upon the mystery of salvation

and the salvific act of redemption.

The frescos of Pontormo in the Capponi chapel are an example of cultured

evangelism, an evangelism characterized by an intense personal interior piety and an

indifference to external expressions of devotion. It was an attitude that made it difficult

for the Jesuits, when they arrived in Florence, to penetrate the various civic milieu. The

polemical debates instigated by the Jesuits were met with indifference, an indifference

that was a response to the rigid orthodoxy on the subject of Justification by faith.256

At the same that Pontormo was working in the environs of Florence, Lorenzo

Lotto was working in the Veneto and Papal States. He too, was affected by the religious

256 Caponetto, Protestant Reformation, 88.

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questions of the day, and would have friends with Protestant views and sympathies. Still,

the early paintings that we are to consider here reflect more the concerns of Catholic

Reform.

Lorenzo Lotto (1480-1556/7)

Born in Venice, Lorenzo Lotto was a contemporary of Pontormo, although they

worked in different regions of Italy and never met. Lotto would spend most of his career

moving from place to place, especially in the Veneto and Papal States. Lotto’s religious

inclinations have been a source of speculation among scholars.257 Bernhard Berenson

brought to light Lotto’s restless and dissatisfied character as well as difficult social

rapport, which can be seen in his paintings. Berenson placed Lotto within the arena of

Catholic Reform as experienced by the spirituali, who remained within the ranks of the

Catholic Church.258 Given the broader understanding of the religious currents of the

time, which we now have at our disposal, it seems reasonable to situate Lotto nearer to

the Protestant sects, at least for part of his life, as we shall see from his paintings.

However not all art historians accept the suggestion of Protestant influences on Lotto’s

work.259 There is a difficulty in trying to reconcile Lotto’s portrait of Luther and his

wife with his becoming an oblate in Santa Casa at Loreto.

In 1521 Lotto received the commission for the Madonna with Child and Saints

altarpiece in Pignola, Bergamo (Fig. 11). It was painted for the main altar of San

257 For a detailed description see Maria Calì”s “La ‘Religione’ di Lorenzo Lotto” in Lorenzo Lotto: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi per il V Centenario della Nascita (Asolo, 1980), eds.,P Zampetti,., and V Sgarbi,. (Treviso: Comitato per le celebrazioni lottesche, 1981).243-279; Cortesi Bosco, F., Gli affreschi dell’Oratorio Suardi: Lorenzo Lotto nella crisi della Riforma (Bergamo: Edizioni Bolis, 1980); Bernhard Berenson, Lorenzo Lotto (London: George Bell & Sons, 1901).

258 Berenson, Lorenzo Lotto, 254.

259 Francesca Cortesi Bosco, Gli affreschi dell’Oratorio Suardi. Cortesi Bosco advocates Lotto’s orthodoxy; especially in the Suardi frescoes in Trescore which she interprets as a confession of the Catholic faith.

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Bernadino, a small church used by the Confraternity dedicated to the Franciscan

saint.260 It is an unsettling work and perhaps should be considered in relation to the

shifts in the religious atmosphere. Luther had recently been excommunicated, and the

religious climate was becoming more uncertain and disturbed. The foundations of belief

were being questioned by people ranging from members of the hierarchy to merchants

and artisans. Lotto seems to have been acutely aware of the growing tension. Above the

Virgin looms a dark cloud and she is shielded by an even darker canopy.

The sense of impending doom created by the cloud and canopy is made more

pronounced by the writhing and contorted bodies of the angels. St Bernadino gazes

adoringly at the Christ child whose expression is downcast and whose gesture is hesitant.

The expression of the Virgin is anxious, and her body-language one of questioning. On

the opposite side, John the Baptist and Anthony the Great engage in an intense

discussion, which, given the direction in which St. John is pointing, could be about

Christ. The religious debate in the Veneto was channeled through the Benedictines at San

Giorgio Maggiore, where the Cortese gathered the spirituali, and the Dominicans in Santi

Giovanni e Paolo, who were known for their radical preaching. The religious

conversation included searching for internal solutions to the laxity and corruption that

bedeviled the Church, as well as themes relating to justification and works. The

veneration of the saints was closely tied to intercessory prayer, which was regarded as a

spiritual work, as well as to fund-raising.

In 1523 Lotto was in Bergamo painting his Trinity (Fig. 12) which was

commissioned by the Confraternity of Disciplinati della Santissima Trinità, Bergamo, and

originally housed in Santa Trinità. The Church underwent extensive renovations in the

eighteenth century; was suppressed in 1808, and razed in 1919. A curate bought the

painting at a church auction and bequeathed it to the sacristy of Sant’Alessandro della

260 Humfrey, Lotto, 48.

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Croce, Bergamo, where it is still situated. At some stage, the corners of the canvas have

been cut.

Earlier renderings of the Trinity usually fell into one of several categories: the

Hand of God, the Mystic Lamb of Christ, a dove, three heads grouped together, or God

the Father holding the crucified Christ beneath a dove. Lotto has chosen a rather unusual

representation, which has been described as a “new iconographical innovation.”261

Dominating the central field is the risen Christ with hands extended, palms facing

outwards, revealing the wounds of the cross. Above Christ’s head hovers the dove of the

Holy Spirit. Behind is an ethereal God the Father, from whom emanates the light that

illuminates the upper edges of the clouds. Below is a landscape containing rustic

buildings and people engaging in their daily chores. The robes of Christ billow and twist

in a current of air, and his slightly bent right leg indicate movement.262 The painting is

more like a Transfiguration than a Trinity.

Lotto’s Trinity is a perfect visualization of the Greek Fathers’ statement in regards

the doctrine of the Trinity that “he who had seen the Son had seen the Father,” for Lotto

has focused attention on Christ. The viewer is not being invited to speculate on the

theological questions raised by the relationship between the Father, Son, and Spirit.

Instead the open gesture and direct gaze of Christ is an indication that Christ is the key

both to salvation and an understanding of the community of the Trinity. The painting also

takes on a biblical tone in the gesture of the Father. The Father blesses the work of the

Son who brings to completion that which was begun in Creation. In Genesis, the spirit

hovered over the waters and God spoke his Word, and all things came into being. The

same Word of God took flesh in the Incarnation and died to restore humanity, the same

Word of God that was increasingly being read by ordinary people. In the increasing

261 Brown, Lorenzo Lotto, 142.

262 Ibid., 142.

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turbulence of religious questioning, the choice of a risen Christ, instead of a crucified

one, provided assurance of salvation to those who had faith in Christ’s redemptive act.

The risen Christ also serves as a hope in the resurrection of the body, which was being

questioned.

As we have seen, the spirituali stressed personal interaction with Christ through

the gospels and writings of Paul. Lotto’s Trinity can be read as part of that milieu, a

pointed reminder that the way to God is through the Son, a theme reminiscent, not only of

scripture, but also of the Imitation of Christ, a book owned by Lotto.263 Again we come

face to face with Lotto’s preference for compositions that remind the viewer that the

Christian life is one which involves an intense personal relationship with Christ.

In the same year as the Trinity, Lotto accepted a commission from the Suardi

family for frescos in the Oratorio Suardi, Trescore (Fig. 13). These were begun in 1523

and completed the following year. The Oratorio was constructed in 1501-2 and decorated

on the east wall and apse. Lotto was commissioned to complete the other three walls. On

the south wall Lotto painted scenes from the life of St. Brigid. The west wall contains

scenes from the life of St. Catherine and St. Mary Magdalene. The north wall is

particularly striking. In the center field is Christ with arms outstretch and from his fingers

come branches that curl into the upper region of the wall. Each branch ends in a roundel

containing images of saints and martyrs. It is a powerful rendering of John 15:5-6 “I am

the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much

fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth

as a branch and withers.”

On either side heretics tumble from ladders.264 Peter Humfrey suggests that the

presence of the heretics can be taken as an indication that the patron was concerned with

263 Calì, “La Religione di Lorenzo Lotto,” 246.

264 Cortesi Bosco, Oratorio Suardi, 33.

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the growing threat from Protestantism. He recognizes that as a learned Catholic, Suardi

would have been aware that several Catholic doctrines were being challenged by the

Protestants, and that Protestants were beginning to journey into the northern parts of

Italy.265

In the lower region of the wall there unfolds the Life of St. Barbara. The rhythm

of the narrative runs from left to right. We first see St Barbara, the only daughter of a

pagan father, being imprisoned in a tower; she was converted to Christianity in his

absence; her father then chased her out of the house and into the fields (in the left

background), then having caught her, he handed her over to the authorities to be tortured;

whilst in prison she was visited by Christ, who healed her wounds (all on the left of the

Christ-Vine). The narrative continues on the right of the Christ-Vine showing further

tortures which Barbara endured until she was finally beheaded at the hands of her father

(on the hill in the right background).266 The scenes are painted to reflect contemporary

settings and ordinariness which might be a reflection of Lotto’s own religiosity.

In the iconography of the Christ-Vine and St. Barbara frescoes Lotto seems to

exhibit the tenets of the devotio moderna espoused by Erasmus and taken up by those

who were searching for a means to reform their personal lives. The traditional passive

attitude was rejected and the saints were seen rather as heroes to emulate, or to be viewed

as exemplars in the imitation of Christ. The small devotional manual The Imitation of

Christ was especially popular, as were other prayer aids such as the Spiritual Exercises of

St. Ignatius Loyola. In these instances Lotto appears to be cognizant of the tendencies

towards Catholic Reform.

The spirituali were very active in Venice, they gathered at the Benedictine

monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore under the direction of Abbot Cortese. As has been

265 Humfrey, 78.

266 Cortesi Bosco, Oratorio Suardi, 48-49; Humfrey, Lotto, 80.

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noted, the spirituali were encouraged to put their faith in Christ alone. Lotto painted a

small Christ Carrying the Cross (Fig. 14), a favorite theme in Venetian and Lombard

Italian painting since the fifteenth century; it could have been for personal devotion.

Lotto depicts a half-length figure of Christ, surrounded by ugly, jeering soldiers who

press in upon him from either side. The feeling of oppression and closeness is heightened

by the fact that their forms are cut off at the edges of the canvas. Christ is centrally placed

on the canvas facing the viewer. His direct, gentle gaze is contrasted with the brutal

pulling of his hair and establishes a close emotional link with the spectator.267 It is very

personal and intimate. It is an appeal for a deeply personal and direct relationship with

Christ as savior, without the need for intercessory prayers to the saints.

Also in the vein of direct access to the Word is his Annunciation of 1527 (Fig.15).

It was commissioned for the oratory of the Confraternity of Santa Maria sopra Mercanti,

Recanati, whose members consisted of leading citizens and merchants. The setting is very

unpretensious, the Virgin’s bed chamber. It is furnished with domestic accoutrements and

gives on to a tidy cultivated garden. Mary is presented as a young girl, startled by the

angel and even more by the awkwardly fashioned God the Father, who comes zooming in

at a fast rate; perhaps that is Lotto’s quirky humor!

The main thrust of the canvas would seem to be the scriptural reference to Mary

being troubled by the angel. Many of Lotto’s figures are earthy, ordinary and here Mary

could be the girl from the baker’s shop; she is not anyone special. In keeping with the

domesticity of the painting Lotto has chosen to have the angel appear from behind rather

than from the left hand side, thus startling Mary. He also seems to have given some

thought to the role of the angel and what the mission meant to the angel, an insubstantial

being who had taken taking on a body and was in close proximity to a human.268 To this 267 Humfrey, Lotto, 98.

268 This reminded me of Rilke’s lines: ‘just she and he; eye and its pasture, vision and its view, here at this point and at this point alone:--see, this arouses fear. Such fear both knew.’ Annunciation to Mary.

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end, both Mary and the angel show a degree of anxiety in their expressions, as if the

encounter is not only troubling for both of them, but also highly unusual.

Lotto has placed a cat in the middle of the picture plane. Certainly it would have

been startled with the sudden arrival of the angel and perhaps it is there to lend credence

to the domestic scene. Humfrey has interpreted the cat as a representation of evil269.

With the annunciation to Mary and her fiat that followed, the evil of Original Sin will be

rectified in the birth of her son. On the other hand, the cat could simply be a cat and Lotto

is making one of the mysteries of the Church accessible to the viewer. The painting

remains a simple, direct, interpretation of the gospel account. It corresponds to Lotto’s

preference for a religion involving a personal commitment to God. It also stands in

contradistinction to the ornate, classicizing paintings of much Renaissance art. Lotto

roots his rendition of the Annunciation in the “garden of good and evil,” to borrow a term

from García-Rivera.270

We can see from these early works of both Pontormo and Lotto that the religious

debate in the first part of the century was very much set within trends towards Catholic

Reform, of which the spirituality of the humanists and spirituali were a part. Pontormo’s

works remained close to the cultured, humanist circles of Florence, whilst those of Lotto

have a more earthy and domestic feel to them, a reflection of the involvement of ordinary

people in the religious debate. Their works show the anxiety over many Catholic

practices that were being questioned, as well as the desire for the meaningful spiritual

life. As a result, their paintings tend to move away from typical Catholic images and

present the viewer not only with an invitation to reflect upon their faith but to do so with

a different type of religious art.

269 Humfrey, Lotto, 4.

270 García-Rivera. Wounded Innocence, 12.

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Figure 7 Jacopo Pontormo Madonna and Child with Saints 1518 Oil on Wood 214 x 185 cm San Michele Visdomini, Florence. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 8 Jacopo Pontormo Supper at Emmaus 1525 Oil on Canvas 230 x 173 cm Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 9 Jacopo Pontormo Annuciation 1527-28, Fresco 368 x 168 cm Cappella Capponi, Santa Felicità, Florence. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 10 Jacopo Pontormo Deposition 1528 Oil on Wood 313 x 192 cm Cappella Capponi, Santa Felicità, Florence. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 11 Lorenzo Lotto Madonna and Child with Saints 1521 Oil on Canvas 300 x 275 cm Church of San Bernadino, Pignolo, Bergamo. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 12 Lorenzo Lotto Trinity 1523 Oil on Canvas 170 x 11 cm Sant’Alessandro della Croce, Bergamo. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 13 Lorenzo Lotto Stories of St. Barbara (Detail) 1524 Fresco Oratorio Suardi, Trescore. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 14 Lorenzo Lotto Christ Carrying the Cross 1526 Oil on Canvas 66 x 60 cm Musée du Louvre, Paris. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 15 Lorenzo Lotto Annuciation c. 1527 Oil on Canvas 166 x 114 cm Pinacoteca Communale, Recanati. (With permission from WGA)

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CHAPTER SIX

TWO FRESCOS: 1537-1556

Early modern European society was characterized by widespread feelings of

melancholy, anxiety and guilt.271 In Italy, responses to these emotions were varied.

Some individuals focused on salvation, as can be seen in the spiritual journeys

undertaken by leading humanists such as Contarini and Guistiniani. For others, especially

in the philosophical circle that gravitated around Marcilio Ficino, the response took the

shape of an interest in the immortality of the soul. Still others turned to millenarianism

and utopian dreams which were preceded by prognostications of devastating natural

disasters. By the middle of the second decade of the sixteenth century the discourse on

salvation was widened by the addition of Lutheran concepts of justification by faith

alone, freedom and necessity, faith and works, and law and the gospel. Underpinning

these different responses was the concern about death and a fear of judgment day when

all souls would meet their maker and give an account of their lives. All of these issues

affected the understanding of the Last Day, and re-shaped the manner in which artists

represented the theme.

Two frescoes and two distilled moments in time, Michelangelo’s Last Judgment

and Pontormo’s lost fresco cycle of San Lorenzo, Florence capture some of the prevailing

thoughts on salvation. Michelangelo’s Last Judgment is a product of the humanist urbane

and elite culture of the Papal court and the religiosity of the spirituali. The Last Judgment

addresses the urgent questions of its time: justification, predestination, the place of works

in salvation, the role of the saints, purgatory, immortality of the individual soul, and a

heliocentric cosmology. Pontormo’s fresco cycle was a later work and had a singular

271 Jean Delumeau, Sin and Fear: The Emergence of a Western Guilt Culture, 13th-18th Centuries (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990) provides a comprehensive study of the anxiety affecting early modern society.

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intent and purpose It was a reflection and representation of the path to salvation as

encapsulated in the Beneficio di Cristo and the teachings of Juan de Valdés.

Michelangelo’s Last Judgment

Michelangelo’s Last Judgment (Fig. 16) is imposing not just in its physical

dimensions (1370x1220cm) but also in the amount of scholarship that is has generated. It

is almost impossible to grasp its size, because it is usually only seen in reproductions.

Those fortunate enough to visit the Sistine Chapel are joined by thousands who flock to

see the chapel, and are packed like sardines in the confining space, barely able to move,

let alone have an open vista of the walls. It is also difficult to fully grasp the impact it

must have made when it was first unveiled, since it has been “defaced” in the interests of

decorum. Numerous “breeches” have been added to many of the nude figures, beginning

in 1565 with the changes by Daniele da Volterra. The restoration of Last Judgment,

which was completed in 1994, brought to light many of the figures that had been hidden

under years of accumulated grime. One of the decisions the restoration team made was to

leave most of the “breeches” in place, on the grounds that they could be removed any

time, that they had now become part of the history of the fresco. Others have objected to

this on aesthetic grounds, since the additions were made when the fresco was dirty and

consequently those areas, with their darker tones, stand out against the purer colors.272

The body of scholarship is vast. There are works that take as their starting point

the circularity of the frescoes and relate it to the growing interest in heliocentric theories

of the universe and the correlation between Christ and Apollo.273 Another group

consists of those who see the work in terms of the resurrection of the body and the Last

272 Marcia Hall ed., Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 38.

273 Valerie Shrimplin, Sun Symbolism and Cosmology in Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment” (Kirksville, Missouri: Truman State University Press, 2000).

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Judgment, and fit it into the iconographical and theological tradition.274 Then there are

scholars such as Leo Steinberg, who begin with the act of looking. They look at what is

depicted and then reflect on the religious ideas that Michelangelo would have

encountered and relate these to the work, whilst questioning some of the interpretations

of other scholars.275

On its unveiling in 1541, the fresco brought Michelangelo praise and blame. It is

said that Pope Paul III was so overcome by its magnificence that he fell to his knees.276

On the other hand, Aretino felt that it was inappropriate for a church.277 Much of the

contemporary literature, especially the negative, was produced during the 1550’s and

beyond. By that time, the atmosphere within the ranks of the Catholic hierarchy was more

defensive and oppressive. But that was not the case when the scheme of the fresco was

being planned and discussed, nor was it the case when it was executed. That seems to be

a relevant fact to keep in mind when addressing the iconography of the work.

The Last Judgment, as a theme for visual representation, fell in and out of fashion

depending on the cultural environment. In times of depression and anxiety, as in the

fourteenth century, it became popular. In such times, there was a tendency to exaggerate

the domain of hell and to fill it with hideous demons and beasts. Individual sins were

emphasized, along with appropriate punishments, as can be seen in the Baptistery in

Florence. In times of relative peace, attention was drawn to the blessed who dwelt in the

serene tranquility of heavenly bliss, as can be seen in the work of Fra Angelico.

274 Marcia Hall ed., Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); idem. “Michelangelo’s Last Judgment: Resurrection of the Body and Predestination” The Art Bulletin, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Mar., 1976); Bernadine Barnes, Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment”:The Renaissance Response (Berkley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998).

275 Leo Steinberg, “A Corner of the Last Judgment” Daedalus Vol. 109 (Spring, 1980): 207-273.

276 Shrimplin, Sun Symbolism and Cosmology, 97.

277 Ibid., 100.

128

There was also a tradition of iconography from which an artist could draw

inspiration. Within the tradition, Last Judgments can be set either on the vertical, with the

elect and damned on either side of Christ, or horizontally in zones with Christ at the top,

with the elect immediately below Him, and on the bottom level the damned. Another

element was the depiction of Christ either blessing or damning souls according to the

positioning of his hands, the right hand raised for salvation, the left hand lowered for

damnation. Usually present, in proximity to Christ, were the Virgin and St. John, who

interceded for the newly awakened dead. St Michael, weighing the merits and demerits of

a life on his balance scales, was also popular. Depending on the historical time period, the

elect could outnumber the damned or vice-versa, and often bodies seemed ethereal and

lacking corporeality. Michelangelo would break with this tradition.

The sixteenth century witnessed the questioning of personal immortality. In the

twelfth century, the philosopher Averroes, following Aristotle, had deemed that the soul

was immortal but there would be no bodily after life; on death, the soul would be

subsumed into the divine. As has been noted, this was re-visited by the Neo-Platonists, in

particular by Ficino, who felt that, even though rationally, one could not prove such a

tenet, personal immortality was grounded on the dignity of the human being in the image

and likeness of God, and in humanity’s place in the cosmos.278 Theologians joined in

the debate, pointing out that belief in a bodily resurrection was a matter of faith. At heart

was the dichotomy between Greek philosophy, which spoke in terms of the soul, and

scripture, which referred to the immortality of the body. In turn this raised questions as to

the mechanics of the resurrection. How can the body be raised? When is it raised? Was it

immediately after death or at the end of time? So the debate raged with treatises written

in support of both positions.

278 Marcia Hall, “Michelangelo’s Last Judgment: Resurrection of the Body and Predestination,” 96.

129

There can be no question as to Michelangelo’s place in the debate; the Last

Judgment is a resurrection of the body. How can it not, coming out of the High

Renaissance tradition? If any painter could capture the humanist concept of the human

being as the divine image, it was Michelangelo. The wall is a mass of bodies. The only

other work comparable to Michelangelo’s is that of Lucca Signorelli, who, 1504,

completed his fresco cycle of the end of the world and the Last Judgment (Cappella

Nuova, Orvieto). The work, originally assigned to Fra Angelico, is a magnificent

eschatological fresco. Michelangelo took Signorelli’s approach towards corporeality and

made a statement about the physicality of the resurrection, based on 1 Cor. 15. In this

passage Paul lays out his arguments for belief in the resurrection of the dead, which is a

logical result of Christ’s resurrection. This was the favored text of Cajetan, house

theologian to Clement VII, and one of the principle voices advocating the resurrection of

the body.279

Michelangelo has abandoned points of reference such as the real world, real

space, rules of perspective, and recognizable human proportion--aspects often interpreted

as an espousal of Mannerism. However, these elements only heighten the realization that

the events take place outside of time and space. Here Christ comes forth with a cry, the

trumpets sound, and the dead arise (1Thess. 4:16-17). Christ initiates the events of the

final days, events Hall interprets to have been predestined. For Hall, Michelangelo’s

Christ is a not a judging Christ; there is no weighing or accounting of deeds. The fresco

depicts a process which begins in the lower left hand corner where the dead arise, some

as skeletons, which are shown regaining skin (Fig. 17). The movement upwards begins

with some being aided by angels or other members of the elect, we are not sure, whilst

others are claimed by devils and are pulled down. In the center of this lower band are a

group of angels, two of whom are consulting the books (Fig. 18). Christ initiates the flow

279 Hall, Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, 97.

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of movement; on the right, the damned are being forced out of Charon’s boat to face

Minos, judge of the dead. For Hall, the message here is one of predestination, the

decision was already made long ago, each name having been written in or excluded from

the books.280 Equally, the books consulted by the angels could contain the acts of free

will that have defined a person’s life in relation to how well he or she has followed the

tenets of Christianity.

There was considerable debate about the role of human free will in relation to

God’s, a debate that was sharpened by the arrival of Protestant literature that focused on

justification by faith alone and election by God. The believer’s conviction that he is one

of the elect preserved both God’s freedom and man’s. However, the assurance that belief

in the redemptive sacrifice of Christ was to bring did not always bring surcease of

anxiety. The Christian has hope that he will be saved, but not certainty. Michelangelo

captures this anxiety in the expressions on the faces. To the right of the trumpeting

angels, an isolated figure shows the psychological anguish that comes with the realization

he is excluded from God’s fellowship (Fig. 19). All the human forms are shown as

unique individuals rising to election or damnation. “Their uncertainty is psychologically

far more true to human nature than the placid self-assurance of the traditional Elect.”281

Among the damned there are no helping hands--only tormentors pulling them closer to

hell.

Michelangelo had close connections with the papal court. He had grown up with

Clement VII in the court of Lorenzo de’ Medici and knew Cardinal Giovanni Salviati,

son of Michelangelo’s great friend Jacopo Salviati. In this context he would have been

familiar with discussions about Copernicus. The commission and theme for the Last

Judgment was instigated under Clement VII; it seems unlikely that one so keen to reform


281 Ibid., 91.

131

the Church would include heretical concepts.282 The predominant idea in Copernicus’

theory placed the sun, the natural counterpart to the deity, at the center. Such theories

raised questions as to the order of the universe, and became part of the unease and

anxiety of the age.

Charles de Tolnay, in 1940, first raised the possibility of the fresco espousing a

heliocentric universe, but felt he could not substantiate the claim. This theme has been

taken up by Valerie Shrimplin who looks at sun symbolism and cosmology in the Last

Judgment. The fresco is centered on the Christ-Sun-Apollo figure, around which all the

movement circles. It does not seem too far a leap to make the supposition that

Michelangelo incorporated ideas of Copernican heliocentricity into his work.283

Shrimplin makes the case that within the Christian tradition the association of

Christ with the sun has a long history. The Church took over the pagan festivals of the

winter solstice for the celebration of the Nativity, and the celebration of Easter, the

resurrection, coincides with the Spring Equinox. She observes the fact that even the days

of the week reflect this relationship, for the Sun’s day was chosen for the Sabbath, which

is also linked to Easter. Christ’s crucifixion, when the sun darkened, occurred on the day

before Saturn’s day (Saturday), and he appeared resurrected on the day dedicated to

Helios: Sunday.284

A beardless, athletic, youthful Apollo type of Christ was often depicted in the

early Church. The connection to Apollo seems natural. Youthful, a son of Zeus who was

father of heaven, Apollo was known for his goodwill and clemency but could also be

powerful and vengeful when necessary.285 There are sufficient examples to be found in

282 Shrimplin, Sun Symbolism and Cosmology, 269.

283 Ibid., 288.

284 Ibid., 131.

285 Shrimplin, Sun-Symbolism and Cosmology, 146.

132

early Renaissance art to suggest that a Sun-Christ analogy was popular,286 and it is not

too far a leap to move from such an analogy to heliocentric theories.

The fresco is divided into two main circles and subsidiary areas. The center of this

circular movement, and of the diagonal rays extending outward, is the right thigh of

Christ. Shrimplin is certain that no other point creates the same effect; the thigh is

“clearly the point, undivided and stationary, upon which Michelangelo’s Heavens

depend.”287 There is a clearly visible mark on the thigh which could indicate a nail hole

for a plumb line (Fig. 20). Scholars had already ascertained that Michelangelo made use

of nails and plumb lines when the Sistine ceiling was restored. The thigh as a focal point

may seem odd until we remember that in the Book of Revelations, we read that Christ in

judgment shall have the name “King of Kings and Lord of Lords” written on his clothes

and on his thigh (Rev. 19:16). The Christ of the Last Judgment is the supreme ruler of the

universe both temporally and spiritually.288

Shrimplin is focused on the overall design of the fresco rather than the details; for

an accounting of these we turn to Leo Steinberg. Using early copies of the fresco,

Steinberg looks at its appearance before Volterra added the “breeches.” He begins in the

lower right corner with the figure of Minos, who features in Dante’s Inferno (which was

well known to the artist) and who decides where in hell ill-fated souls should go. This is

not an accurate representation of Dante’s Minos, who used his tail to indicate the level of

hell to which the soul descended. Michelangelo has painted Minos with a snake caressing

him, with its mouth wrapped around his genitals and its tail on his shoulder. Furthermore,

it would seem, from the facial expression that the snake is not biting. Rather he stands

“snugly wrapped in his snake which his right hand sustains in position; and entrusts his

286 Ibid., 147.

287 Leo Steinberg ‘A corner of the “Last Judgment,”’ 296.

288 Ibid., 296

133

private parts to its mouthing,”289 a hideously perverted and sacrilegious symbol of

indissoluble and timeless marriage—the hieros gamos that unites the soul to God. Here

the Adversary stands as a fount of poison, a polar opposite to the fount of Grace.290 It is,

surely, also an echo of that moment in time when the fate of all humankind was sealed,

the moment when the first parents fell from grace and alienated humanity from God.

There is a certain symmetry in the repetition of the image of the snake from Eden.

Steinberg does not think that this difficult figure is expendable. Rather, it is

connected to the whole system. An oblique diagonal can be drawn from the lower right

hand corner to the left lunette. If the line is followed, it passes through the flayed skin of

St. Bartholomew, to which Christ’s imminent action is aimed, and to which Michelangelo

has given his own features. The flayed skin (Fig. 21) is the center point along the

trajectory. The line extends upwards through the wound of Christ to the crown of thorns,

and so to the vault of heaven. Extending downwards the line passes through the guilt-

stricken reprobate to the viper’s mouth, the ultimate desecration. The line, with its center

in the self, highlights the hope or despair of the individual.291

Returning to the lower right corner, the Judge of the Dead is poised at the brink of

his domains, but his attention has been caught by one of his henchmen, whilst he gestures

with his left hand. Steinberg believes this bifurcation of gestures is directed at the

destination of the boat’s cargo, which is hell, rather than the cave.292 The cave is

troublesome. Marcia Hall designated it as purgatory, but this raises more problems than it

solves.293 Purgatory is the interval between natural death and the Resurrection of the

289 Leo Steinberg ‘A corner of the “Last Judgment,”’ 237

290 Ibid., 237.

291 Ibid., 138.

292 Ibid., 242.


134

Body. It does not feature in the iconography of the Last Judgment or in the eschatology

of the Last Things. If the cave is purgatory, why are there demons trying to snatch the

escaping souls? Steinberg suggests the cave is the harrowing of Hell, a return to the

Apostles Creed which stated that Christ descended into Hell before he rose on the third

day. The cave seems to be part of Hell, and the figure in the entrance is Christ claiming

his own.294The problem with this rather neat solution is that the Apostles Creed is time

specific, the harrowing of hell occurs between Christ’s death and resurrection, and not at

the Day of Judgment.

Let us assume that the cave is the harrowing of hell. It is a doctrine fraught with

difficulties, reference to which has been deleted from most modern translations of the

Creed. The implication of the harrowing of hell is that neither death nor the punishments

of hell are eternal; all are restored to life, creation is redeemed. In the Divine Office, the

cycle of liturgical prayers recited by religious and clerics, for Matins on Holy Saturday,

there is a reading from an ancient homily for that describes the events prior to the

resurrection, and in which Christ address Adam:

I am your God, who for your sake became your son, who for you and your descendants now speak and command with authority those in prison: Come forth, and those in darkness: Have light, and those who sleep: Rise.

I command you: awake, sleeper, I have not made you to be held a prisoner in the underworld. Arise from the dead; I am the life of the dead. Arise, O man, work of my hands, arise, you who were fashioned in my image. Rise, let us go hence; for you in me and I in you, together we are one undivided person.295

As has been noted earlier, members of the Benedictine Cassinese Congregation

were greatly influential in the spirituali circles. Their understanding of the Greek Fathers

had led some to believe that the sacrifice of Christ restores all men to felicity and eternal

294 Ibid., 252.

295 Divine Office: The Liturgy of the Hours According to the Roman Rite. II (London: Collins, 1974), 320.

135

life. In Consideration LXXXVII, Juan de Valdès states that Christ’s resurrection restores

all creatures and that through Christ’s obedience all humanity will be returned to that the

state of immortality and happiness lost through Adam.296 Even if Michelangelo did not

have direct contact with these ideas through his friendship with Vittoria Colonna, they

would have circulated at the Papal court and in humanist gatherings. Michelangelo gives

visualization to the restoration of all creation for, to the left of Christ, there is positioned a

male and female figure. Here stand Adam and Eve restored to their original condition

prior to the Fall of humanity (Fig. 22).

There is another piece of action that is taking place which suggests that the order

of things has been disrupted. In Catholic dogma, according to Thomas Aquinas, souls in

Hell are hopeless for they have an unchangeable evil will; the punishment of Hell is in

perpetuity. Yet in the boat of Charon, a youth is trying to rescue another of the damned

(Fig. 23). Again, this is not an accidental incident, for if we look at the angelic trumpeters

we will note that two have ceased playing. One is looking towards the angel with the

book, whose eyes are fixed on the youth in Charon’s boat. The eyes of the second

trumpeter also gaze in that direction, as he gestures towards the book of Life. For the rest,

the passengers are trapped in their own despair, no others come to aid the youth. Here

Steinberg follows another diagonal line: the foot of the Virgin rests on the gridiron of St.

Lawrence, a gridiron that is more like a ladder. If we follow the foot down the ladder, a

line passes through the head of the pointing trumpeter and to the heads of the unseeing

friends in the boat.297 They are unaware that their fate is being debated, a work of mercy

is being performed selflessly, and not for merit. However, the outcome is unknown and

uncertain. Michelangelo leaves the viewer with only hope in the justice of Christ.

296 Benjamin Wiffen, Life and Writings of Juan de Valdés (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1865), 477.

297 Leo Steinberg, ‘A corner of the “Last Judgment,”’ 260.

136

In light of this, is it any wonder that the reprobate gazing outward, and surrounded

by swirling confusion, looks anguished? Perhaps it is not so much the realization of his

isolation through sin that is the cause of his agony, but the numerous approaches to the

interpretation of salvation, reverberating throughout the peninsula. Or it might be both of

these, and Michelangelo has captured the unsettling nature of the religious debate. The

end of the faith journey is summed up in the Last Judgment with its magnificent and

powerful Christ claiming his own from the living and the dead. The blessed rejoice in

communion with each other and with Christ. It is one thing to say, write or paint of the

mercy and love of God, it is another to relieve the anxiety of salvation that seems to have

been the common experience of early modern Europeans.

Pontormo in San Lorenzo

Just four years after the unveiling of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, Pontormo

began his final fresco cycle, in San Lorenzo, Florence. By this time the religious

environment was changing; hopes for reconciliation with Luther had been dashed with

the failure to reach a compromise at Ratisbon (1541). The leading figure among the

spirituali, Contarini, had died, as had Juan de Valdès. The popular preacher, Bernardino

Ochino, had fled the peninsula along with Peter Martyr Vermiglio. The Inquisition had

been reintroduced, and the Council of Trent had just begun. However, nothing had been

settled and discussions still took place. Heterodox literature was still available, numerous

humanists continued to be involved in the internal spiritual renewal, and the extremely

popular Beneficio di Christo was being promoted. Anabaptist conclaves met in both

Florence and the Veneto. And like Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, Pontomo’s fresco

cycle had heterodox implications.

137

Pontormo was given the commission by Pier Francesco Ricci, private secretary to

Cosimo de’ Medici.298 Ricci had been tutor to the young Cosimo in the years after the

death of his father and in the last years of the Republic. Cosimo rewarded him with jobs,

benefices, and made him majordomo. He was Cosimo’s personal secretary for all

domestic affairs, oversaw artistic patronage, and played an important role in the cultural

and artistic choices of the first period of Cosimo’s government.299 Ricci was known to

favor the spirituali if not even more radical groups. He owned a copy of the Beneficio di

Christo, now in the Riccardian Library, Florence. He was friends with Pietro

Carnesecchi, disciple of Juan de Valdès, with close connections to Flaminio and the

Viterbo circle; Carnesecchi was condemned to death by the Inquisition in 1568. Corti

draws attention to documentation that reveals Ricci’s intervention on the part of a number

of known Protestant sympathizers, including Anonio Paleario and Antonio Bruciolo.300

Ricci’s intervention in the commissioning of the work for the San Lorenzo chapel

could be an indication that Ricci preferred the metaphysical and individualism of

Pontormo to the erudition of Salviati, who was hoping to be given the commission.301

Given Ricci’s involvement in the various artistic projects, it seems likely that he was the

one who formulated the iconography of the fresco cycle, although Cox-Rearick believes

that Pontormo was interested in realizing his own vision and went beyond the scope of

the commission.302 The latter may possibly have been the case. Some of his paintings

very much reflect the fluidity of views circulating within the different cities of Italy, and

it seems likely that the scheme put forward by Ricci would have appealed to the artist. 298 Raffaella Corti, “Pontormo a San Lorenzo: un episode figurative delle ‘spiritualismo’ Italiano” Ricerche di Storia dell’Arte, 6 (1977): 5-36.

299 Corti, “Pontormo a San Lorenzo,” 13.

300 Ibid., 14.

301 Ibid., 20.

302 Cox-Rearick, Drawings of Pontormo, 93.

138

Pontormo would work on the frescoes for the last ten years of his life and the

cycle was completed by his assistant Bronzino in 1556. The iconography of the work

puzzled Vasari, who wrote:

It seems to me [that Jacopo] has not observed in any single place the organization of scenes, measure, time, variety in the faces, …nor, in brief, any rules at all either of proportion or perspective, but the work is so full…of so much melancholy and so little pleasure for anyone who looks at the work, that I have decided, since even I do not understand it although I am a painter myself, to leave the judgment of the work to those who see it.303

The fresco cycle was destroyed in 1742 when the chapel underwent major renovations.

However, there exist a number of detailed drawings that Pontormo had produced before

painting the frescoes. It should be borne in mind that the drawings tell us only the

subjects that were going to be included in the fresco cycle and not necessarily the final

outcome.

The discovery of an anonymous engraving of the San Lorenzo chapel by Charles

de Tolnay has helped with the architectural structure as well as with the placement of the

frescoes of the upper end wall. In the engraving, the chapel is decorated for the funeral of

Philip II of Spain in 1598. The frescoes on the lower sections of the walls are covered

with funerary panels. However, the upper register of the altar wall showed a central

figure surrounded by a circle of human forms. There are figures on either side of the

windows.

Any reconstruction of the cycle is based on the existing compositional drawings

and the detailed analysis of them by Janet Cox-Rearick. Using a combination of the

descriptions of the cycle by Vasari and Bocchi, the studies by art historians such as Clapp

and Tolnay, as well as her own analysis of the drawings themselves, Cox-Rearick has

presented a convincing schematic of the chapel which I shall follow.304

303 Vasari, The Lives of the Artists, 411

304 Cox-Rearick, Drawings of Pontormo, 318

139

The fresco would have covered three walls, the main altar wall and the two lateral

walls, which were divided horizontally by an entablature. The upper register of all three

walls was divided by two windows, and on the back wall there were two windows in the

lower registers. Beginning at the entrance to the chapel, the upper left wall consisted of

Cain and Abel (Fig.25), the Ark, and Moses receiving the Law (Fig.28). Below were the

Flood (Fig.30) and the Blessing of Noah’s Descendants. The upper band of the main wall

consisted of the Expulsion from Eden, Christ in Glory with the Creation of Eve (Fig. 24)

below, and the Temptation of Adam and Eve. Beneath these were three panels illustrating

the ascension of souls, and, at the base, two skeletons either side of the Martyrdom of St.

Lawrence. To the right, in the upper zone would have been the Four Evangelists (Fig.27),

the Sacrifice of Isaac and the Labor of Adam and Eve (Fig. 26). Below would have been

the Resurrection of the Dead (Fig.29). Pontormo made a distinction between the

ascension of souls and the resurrection, situating the ascension beneath the figure of

Christ.

There are several plausible interpretations of the cycle on a symbolic level.

Tolany believes that it represented the triumph of grace over sin, a phrase that contains

Protestant undertones. Similarly Corti places the scenes one in front of another,

symbolizing the opposition between the themes of the law and sin, and that of grace and

redemption through the work of Christ. The nine scenes were arranged to give greatest

emphasis to the central figure of the Christ in Glory (Fig. 24). The instruments of passion

were seen at the corner to the right, which, along with the figure of Christ, indicated the

merits of justification. Beneath Christ, in what Corti has called a unique composition was

the creation of Adam and Eve.305 By placing these two scenes on top of each other,

Pontormo drew a direct line between the act of Creation and that of Redemption. It was

the telling of the human story in a single glance.

305 Corti, “Pontormo a San Lorenzo,” 22.

140

Cox-Rearick believes the Christ in Glory and Creation of Eve held the key to the

synthetic meaning of the cycle. The crossed figures of Adam and Eve became

interwoven, with the nude figures shifting and moving around the central figure of Christ,

creating a mandorla. “The image is only temporarily in focus, its peculiar fascination

stemming from mobile shapes that disturbingly suggest change, while the abstract

precision of the pattern that controls them denies any such possibility.”306 This fixity

and fluidity was perhaps a reflection of the unsettled religious atmosphere of the time in

which once-stable concepts of salvation and redemption were shifting and changing. For

Cox-Rearick the cycle depicts the themes of sacrifice and redemption.307

The key to the fresco cycle was the upper range of the altar wall where the

temptation and expulsion encapsulated the condition of humanity (Fig. 25), the remedy

for which was Christ. “There is no language that could express a thousandth part of our

calamity, that we, who were created by God’s own hands, have lost that divine

image.”308 The loss of justice and the inclination to impiety were the result of original

sin, which the Beneficio described in terms of sickness. Once the sickness was

acknowledged, then recourse was made to the physician, in this case, Christ, who could

heal.309

The key to the symbolism of the fresco seems to lie in the two corner frescoes as

we move away from the end wall. Using the Beneficio as a guide to interpret the fresco as

a whole, on the left is the giving of the Law to Moses (Fig. 28). What is the function of

the Law? Following the thought of the Beneficio, the purpose of the Law is first to make

306 Cox-Rearick, Drawings of Pontormo, 87.

307 Ibid., 326.

308 Ruth Prelowski, “The Beneficio di Cristo” in Tedeschi, John Italian Studies in Honour of Laelius Socinus (Firenze: Felice le Monnier, 1965), 49

309 Ibid., 49.

141

humans aware of the depravity of sin, their helplessness in face of such depravity and to

bring them to an awareness of their reliance on God. For the author of the Beneficio,

ultimately the Law compels us to run to Christ.310 The frescoes on the left wall are an

illustration of the function of the Law which we see being handed to Moses. We can see

the Sacrifice of Cain and the Murder of Abel as an example of the growth of sin and

below there is the wrath of God in the form of the Deluge.

The frescoes on the right side of the choir, Labor of Adam and Eve (Fig. 26),

Sacrifice of Isaac, Evangelists (Fig. 27), Resurrection of the Dead (Fig. 29) are troubling

since they appear to be randomly selected. If we return to the corner fresco we see the

four Evangelists. With the coming of Christ and his message, as told in the gospels,

humans have been offered the healing balm of God’s grace. Pontormo has selected two

examples from the Old Testament to illustrate the point that salvation is offered to all. It

is universal and extends both forwards and backwards in time. The Sacrifice of Isaac is

indicative of the fact that God makes demands of those who choose to accept his freely

offered gift; complete faith and trust in God is required, a view that is affirmed by the

inclusion of the Martyrdom of St. Lawrence.

The labor that humanity is subject to after the expulsion from paradise is usually

described in negative terms; it is a punishment for disobedience and a symbol of inherited

guilt. If the two corner frescoes, Moses Receiving the Law and the Evangelists, hold the

key to the iconography of the cycle, then the labor of humanity is under the gospel. It

stands as a representation of works, which, as has been shown, are the result of a living

faith. Here, then, the labor of Adam and Eve is seen in positive terms as a visible sign of

the human response to divine grace. This in turn leads to the ultimate end, the

resurrection of the dead, which is depicted in the lower ranges of the wall.

310 Prelowski, Beneficio di Cristo, 49-50.

142

In summary, Michelangelo’s Last Judgment was painted at a time when

prominent Catholics believed that reconciliation with Protestants was still possible.

Justification by faith alone was viewed as compatible with Catholic faith. One of the key

features of the piety of the spirituali was the emphasis on an individual relationship with

God; personal belief in the saving action of Christ was the source of Christian hope. As

has been noted, the iconography of the fresco supports several different approaches,

without having to choose one over another. One aspect that is noticeable is that none of

the identifiable saints are assisting the resurrected, which seems to cast doubt on the

value of the intercession of the saints, just as Michelangelo eliminates the role of works.

With the hindsight of history we can see that the Counter-Reformation did not encompass

all aspects of Catholicism and that elements which the spirituali embraced, and which

were disregarded by the Counter-Reformation, are now accepted within the Catholic

Church, certainly since Vatican II.311

Pontormo’s fresco cycle in San Lorenzo, illustrated some of the religious ideas

that were circulating in the elite humanist circles. This work represented the

metamorphosis that occurred when the thoughts of Luther and those of the Beneficio di

Cristo blended with nebulous ideas of justification, grace, and works that had sprung

from individual reflection of the letters of Paul. In the sin of Adam, human beings lost the

image and likeness of God. That image is restored through the sacrifice of Christ on the

Cross, which humans can never repay but have to accept by faith. The fresco cycle was

the story of faith in Christ without the aid of ceremonies or works.

311 Jung, “On the Nature of Evangelism,” 527.

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Figure 16 Michelangelo Last Judgment 1537-1541 Fresco 1370 x 1220 cm Cappella Sistina, Vatican. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 17 Michelangelo Last Judgment (Detail) 1537-1541 Fresco 1370 x 1220 cm Cappella Sistina, Vatican. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 19 Michelangelo Reprobate, Last Judgment (detail) 1537-1541 Fresco 1370 x 1220 cm Cappella Sistina, Vatican. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 21 Michelangelo Flayed Skin, Last Judgment (Detail) 1537-1541 Fresco 1370 x 1220 cm Cappella Sistina, Vatican. (With permission from WGA

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Figure 22 Michelangelo Adam and Eve, Last Judgment (Detail) 1537-1541 Fresco 1370 x 1220 cm Cappella Sistina, Vatican. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 23 Michelangelo Charon’s Boat, Last Judgment (detail) 1537-1541 Fresco 1370 x 1220 cm Cappella Sistina, Vatican. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 24 Jacopo Pontormo Christ the Judge with Creation of Eve c. 1550 Black Chalk on Paper 326 x 180 cm Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 25 Jacopo Pontormo Study for the Sacrifice of Cain and the Death of Abel 1546-1556 Drawing Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 26 Jacopo Pontormo Labor of Adam and Eve c. 1546-56 Drawing Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 27 Jacopo Pontormo Four Evangelists c.1550. Black chalk on paper, 413x 177cm Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 28 Jacopo Pontormo Moses Receiving the Tablets c. 1546-56 Drawing Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 29 Jacopo Pontormo Group of the Dead c. 1546-56 Drawing Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 30 Jacopo Pontormo Deluge 1546-56 Drawing Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. (With permission from WGA)

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CHAPTER SEVEN

THE INCURSION OF PROTESTANTISM:

PAINTINGS FROM 1535-1590

By the 1530’s there were a number of active Protestants in Venice who brought

with them anti-Catholic sentiments and sharpened the religious debate. Their views

joined those already being expressed by members of the Church, who were concerned

with reform from within. The nature of Venetian society enabled the city to become a

haven for many different groups. Even within religious orders there seems to have been a

certain amount of equivocation, and one cannot always assume that all the houses of a

particular order were bastions of orthodoxy.

The Dominican house at Santi Giovanni e Paolo, for example, attracted a number

of Protestant sympathizers due to the regularity of sermons on the letters of St. Paul.

When Rome, in 1531, tried to impose reforms on the convent, the prior led the friars in a

protest declaring that they would rather become Lutheran than submit to the reforms.312

In a letter of 1533 the Papal Nuncio wrote to Salviati that he feared the convent would

become another San Marco. It was not just the Dominicans, for in that same letter he also

expressed concern about the Carmelites and Servites.313 It was also during this time that

there was a resurgence of interest in the writings of Savonarola. Even the Basilca of the

Santa Casa in Loreto was not the epitome of orthodoxy. It was a preferred site for many

who were sympathetic to the Benficio di Cristo and, indeed, one of the canons, a Nicola

Bargellesi, was brought before the Inquisition to give account of the circulation of the

work.314 312 Massimo Firpo, “Lorenzo Lotto and the Reformation in Venice” in Heresy, Culture, and Religion in Early Modern Italy ed., Ronald Delph, Michelle Fontaine, John Jeffries Martin (Kirksville, Missouri: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 2006), 27.

313 Calì, “La Religione di Lotto,” 255.

314 Prosperi, “The Religious Crisis of Sixteenth-Century Italy,” 25.

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In Venice small “communities” formed around particular individuals. Bartolomeo

Carpan, a goldsmith and the possible subject of Lotto’s portrait of a goldsmith, held

regular meetings in his home. During these meetings Bartolomeo shared his views on free

will, papal authority, the cult of the saints, the value of Lent and prayer.315 The

Inquisition trials of Pietro Manelfi paint a picture of “apostles” going from house to

house in different parts of the peninsula, and expounding upon Anabaptist ideals. Since

there was no central authoritative voice for those professing heterodox views, there

tended to be multiple varieties of interpretation and understanding of what it meant to be

“church.” This might have suited Lotto, who seems to have favored a peripatetic lifestyle,

unable to settle in one place for any length of time. In this context it is possible to suggest

that Lorenzo Lotto presents an example of a religiously minded person reacting to, and

perhaps sampling, the various religious attitudes that were openly debated in the circles

he frequented.

Lotto was involved with various Protestant sympathizers and in 1532 was asked

to design the frontispiece for Antonio Brucioli’s Italian translation of the Bible.316

Brucioli had been expelled from Florence for his part in the anti-Medici conspiracy of

1522, and had come into contact with Protestant ideas whilst he was in exile in Lyons. On

his return to Italy he took up residency in Venice where he became active in evangelical

circles and worked on his translation of the Bible and his commentaries.317 The

frontispiece of his published translation depicts the Creation of Eve, the Temptation of

Adam and Eve and the Expulsion. Key events in the doctrine of Original Sin; they run

315 Renzo Fontana, “Solo, Senza, Fidel Governo et molto Inquieto de la Mente” in Lorenzo Lotto: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi per il V Centenario della Nascita (Asolo, 1980), eds.,P Zampetti,., and V Sgarbi,. (Treviso: Comitato per le celebrazioni lottesche, 1981) 281.

316 Not all scholars agree with this See Calì, “La Religion di Lotto,” 257; Humfrey, Lotto, 114 for a discussion on the arguments for and against authorship by Lotto.

317 Martin, Venice’s Hidden Enemies, 32, 45.

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across the top of the page in three panels. Down the right hand side there is the Night

Nativity and Resurrection, representing the birth and death of the Incarnate Christ. Across

on the left side are two scenes which are difficult to identify; one seems to be the

Conversion of Paul. The bottom two panels are larger in size and depict Moses Receiving

the Law and Paul in the Areopagus. The emphasis has been placed on the importance of

Paul and noticeably missing are references to St. Peter.318 For Brucioli, the translation

was important because Christ revealed himself in simple, elementary language so that the

Word of God could be heard by all. Since Lotto’s Latin was not very good, he would

have welcomed a Bible in the vernacular.

The anti-Catholic sentiments of various Protestants are evident in Lotto’s St. Lucy

altarpiece and his St Antoninus altarpiece. In the case of the St. Lucy (Fig. 31) altarpiece

in Jesi, the narrative incorporates both the smaller panels and the main canvas. The story

begins to unfold in the left hand predella panel, moves to the main altarpiece and then

back to the center and right predella panels. Most of the story of St. Lucy, including her

martyrdom, takes place in the small panels and Lotto has chosen to emphasize St. Lucy’s

encounter with the Roman Consul who orders the panders to invite the citizens to abuse

her body until she is dead. The Holy Spirit makes her so heavy that the panders cannot

move her. The arcade of the palace bears a resemblance to the Palazzo della Signoria,

Jesi that had recently been constructed according to designs by Andrea Sansovino.319 St.

Lucy is separated from the Roman Consul not only by the line created by the base of the

dais but also by the towering height of the seat of power and her own diminished size.

St. Lucy stands before the epitome of Roman authority, with its cohorts, pomp

and splendor, defending her belief in the one, true God. It is not too far a stretch of the

imagination to regard St. Lucy as representing evangelical truth as espoused by those

318 Calì, “La Religione di Lotto,”259; Humfrey, Lorenzo Lotto, 114.

319 Brown, Lorenzo Lotto, 181.

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opposed to the papacy. Inspired by the Holy Spirit alone, Lucy stands before the Consul

and speaks about her religious beliefs. Having being asked to worship idols, she is the

true believer defending herself against the superstitious practices of the Roman Church.

Lucy’s is a true faith which relies on direct inspiration and guidance of the Spirit rather

than the intermediaries of the Roman hierarchy. She stands firm in the face of the

panders, those purveyors of indulgencies and masses, who would seduce her into false

belief and lead her from the path of Justification by faith in Christ alone.

In keeping with his pro-Protestant sympathies, or anticlerical sentiments, which

need not be the same, Lotto produced the Alms of St. Antoninus (Fig. 32) altarpiece for

the Dominicans of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice. This is the same Church about which

the Papal Nuncio expressed concern. Like his St. Lucy, this can be interpreted as an

indictment to the corruption of the clergy. The hierarchical structure divides the canvas

into three unequal planes. On the upper plane, and dominating the painting, is St.

Antoninus, enthroned. He is engaged in reading, which could be interpreted as a reaction

against the polemical debates that had little relevance for the ordinary people. He is

flanked by two angels, who appear to be whispering to him. Their wings shield him from

the pending storm that looms behind, the swirling mass of angels heightening the sense of

doom.

On the carpeted step below the raised throne are a bishop’s miter and crosier,

bulging purses, and several thick tomes. Two clerics lean over a balcony wall, resting on

another rich carpet. One is reaching inside a purse, the other reaches down to accept

petitions. The milling crowd takes up the smallest allocation of space on the canvas;

some are begging for alms, others offering petitions. The attitude of St. Anthony and the

two clerics is striking. The cleric in charge of alms distribution is shown in the act of

reaching into the purse rather than distributing coins. Humfrey interprets this gesture as

an indication that charity was not to be dispensed indiscriminately, but according to the

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principles of informed justice.320 Nevertheless, it creates a sense of reluctance, of

hesitation, even a “holier than thou” attitude.

The wall creates as chasm between the clerics and the people, which the clerics

are unwilling to cross. The other cleric, having accepted one petition, is making a gesture

which seems to indicate that he can accept no more. St. Anthony, separated from the

crowd by wealth and status, is preoccupied with an open scroll, supremely indifferent to

the needs of the people far below, whilst two angels try to alert him to the plight of the

people. The painting exhibits a strong anti-clericalism that is reinforced by the

hierarchical division imposed upon the canvas by the artist.321 The clergy are symbols of

wealth and power. The canvas becomes an indictment of some of the ills that had plagued

the Church for centuries and which it had failed to address

Lotto’s work illustrates the changes that occurred in the religious debate, a move

from the personal and individualistic devotion of the spirituali, to the more overt and

radical expressions of Protestantism. Lotto was certainly involved with a group of people

who held heterodox views. He purchased five copies of a small book, The Christian

Institution, which can only have been inspired by the works of Luther or Calvin, as these

were the only catechisms in the vernacular in Italy at the time.322 His anticlerical

sentiments were incorporated into some of his paintings, and his sympathetic leanings

towards Protestantism allowed him to design the frontispiece for Brucioli’s bible. Finally,

Lotto was not the only northern Italian artist who would be involved in a religious

environment that was affected by Protestant activity.

320 Humfrey, Lorenzo Lotto, 137.

321 Massimo Firpo, “Lorenzo Lotto and the Reformation in Venice,” 29.

322 Ibid., 26.

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Jacopo Bassano

Turning to another painter from the Veneto, Jacopo Bassano, who was born in

Bassano del Grappa in 1510. Jacopo’s reputation as an artist has been inconsistent. As

Paola Marini, Bernard Aikema and others have suggested, Jacopo has had a checkered

history among art historians.323 Vasari (1568), Rocco Benedetto (1571), Lorenzo

Maruccini (1577), Raffaello Borghini (1584), and Karel van Mander(1548-1606) all

admired his use of color, landscapes, naturalism, pastoral scenes, domestic accoutrements

and animals.324 However, by the next century a much more negative attitude developed

which continued into the nineteenth century, he was derided as lacking invention,

nobility, dignity, grace and elegance. He was known for his genre scenes, which

guaranteed him commercial success, but drew criticism for emphasizing trivial themes

and failing to espouse the classicalism of the High Renaissance.325 In the twentieth

century, Jacopo gained more positive attention with the growing interest in Mannerism,

especially as the result of Alessandro Ballarin’s work of 1966-67, which brought to light

the fundamental role Jacopo played in the invention of the genre picture in Italy; the

discovery and publication of the Libro Secondo di Francesco e Jacopo Dal Ponte, one of

the detailed account books used in the workshop; and the rich and untiring scholarship of

William Rearick.326

Jacopo’s family had a successful workshop catering to the need of the towns

surrounding Bassano. Situated a short distance from Venice, the town of Bassano was

peripheral to Venice and the matrices of authority, religious, political, artistic, social and

323 Marini, “Jacopo Bassano Anew” in Jacopo Bassano c. 1510-1592 eds., Beverly Brown, and Paola Marini (Fort Worth, Texas: Kimbell Art Museum, 1993), 15.

324 Bernard Aikema, Jacopo Bassano and His Public: Moralising Pictures in an Age of Reform ca. 1535-1600 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996), 3.

325 Ibid., 4.

326 Marini, “Jacopo Bassano Anew,” 18.

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economic, found there. It was also peripheral in the sense that it was a frontier town

where interchanges between cultures took place and citizens were willing to defend their

ancient rights in face of Venetian opposition.327 One incident of this sort occurred in the

town of Cittadella when, in 1524, it successfully defended its right to elect its own priest,

Pietro Cauzio, and refused to accept the archpriest selected by Venice, a scion of the

Soderini family, a youth of eighteen, who would no doubt have been an absentee

appointment.328

The town of Bassano was also situated near the borders of Protestant regions to

the north and to the town of Trent, where from 1545 onwards, the Church Fathers

gathered to extirpate heresy and foster reform and renewal of the Church Militant.329

Jacopo, working in the area could hardly be unaware of the tensions between Protestants

and Catholics, especially since known Protestants lived in neighboring communities.

Cittadella was one such community. It was home to Pietro Speziale, a declared

Lutheran, whose book De dei gratia was published in 1542 and contained extracts from

both Luther and Zwingli. The work espoused salvation through grace alone, the rejection

of works, purgatory, Masses for the dead, intercessions of the saints, and the primacy of

the Pope. It contained two chapters on the Passion of Christ and sermons dedicated to the

Emperor Charles V. Two of Speziale’s followers, Francesco Spiera and Girolamo Faccio,

denied the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the validity of adoration of the Host,

and the power of priests to absolve sins. Speziale’s views were known in the community

as early as 1524.330 The town also attracted a small community of at least twenty

327 Muraro, Libro Secondo, 30.

328 Aikema, Jacopo Bassano and his Public, 11.

329 W. Rearick, “Life and Works of Jacopo Bassano,” in Jacopo Bassano c. 1510-1592 eds., Beverly Brown, and Paola Marini (Fort Worth, Texas: Kimbell Art Museum, 1993), 47.

330 Giuliana Ericana, “Jacopo and Fresco Painting” in Jacopo Bassano c. 1510-1592 , eds., Beverly Brown, and Paola Marini (Fort Worth, Texas: Kimbell Art Musuem, 1993), 43 n. 222.

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Anabaptists, who rejected the divinity of Christ, exalted in his human nature and

emphasized the use of the Bible in churches.331

It is not clear when the Anabaptists arrived in the Veneto. Many of these

communities, including Bassano, had commercial ties to Germany, and after the failure

of the Peasants War, Venice welcomed Michael Gaismar, author of the Articles of

Merano, and two thousand of his followers. The articles called for an elective republic

comprised of peasants and miners, the abolition of class distinctions, the reform of

religion, a systematic social welfare system and an integrated commercial collective

enterprise. The vision encapsulated in the Articles had little in common with the

conservative oligarchy and hints at the fluidity or perhaps elasticity of the Republic,

which tolerated a wide range of persons and ideas.332 The Anabaptists in Cittadella were

established enough in 1550 to send a delegation to the secret conclave held in Venice.333

Altogether, it would seem that new religious views were a topic that animated the life of

the community.334 It is against this background that we must set the commission of

Pietro Cauzio for the cathedral of the town. It consisted of a fresco cycle and altarpiece

for the cathedral.

The subject chosen for the altarpiece was the Supper at Emmaus (Fig. 33) based

on the post-resurrection story related in Luke 24:13-35. The painting shows a domestic

scene set within a portico separated from the outside landscape by a step and bar across

331 Ginzburg, I costituti di Don Pietro Manelfi, 33.

332 Muir, Edward. “Was There Republicanism in the Renaissance Republics? Venice after Agnadello” in John Martin and Dennis Romano eds., Venice Reconsidered: the History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297-1797. (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 2000), 153.

333 Ginzburg, I costituti di Don Pietro Manelfi, 35 Manelfi confesses that all the Anabaptist representatives accepted the outcome of the council except those from Cittadella, but does not elaborate further.

334 Giuliana Ericana, “Jacopo and Fresco Painting” 10-12; Muraro, Libro Secondo, 29; Ginzburg, I costituti di Don PietroManelfi, 31-34.

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the archway. In the distance three people walk towards the inn; they could conceivably be

Christ and the two walking to Emmaus, small because the incident has already happened,

or they could be peasants returning from the fields. The table is set with bread, wine,

cherries, fish on a platter and a flagon of wine on the floor. The inn-keeper is standing

looking at the action around the table. Christ sits at the center, at the apex of a triangle,

with the two disciples in front and serving as the base. In the background a servant girl is

arrested in her motion of lifting a curtain and whose attention is focused on the action at

the table.

Bernard Aikema believes the choice of the meal at Emmaus gave a clear message

that the Mass offered by the priest was the only key to salvation and that the orthodoxy of

the Church had to be maintained in face of opposition in the community.335 Such an

argument is strengthened when the surrounding frescoes are also taken into consideration.

Very little of these remain but a recent reconstruction indicates that they were as follows:

on the right in the upper zone was Samson and the Philistines and, below Judith. On the

left at the top was Joshua and below David and Goliath. According to Giuliana Ericani,

the frescoes had a one-point perspective with their vanishing point in the altarpiece.336

Thus, the Old Testament is fulfilled in the New Testament and everything has its

fulfillment in Christ, more specifically Christ present in the Eucharist.

However, one can equally argue that there is an obvious lack of anything

resembling the Catholic Eucharist. Furthermore, the fulfillment of the Old Testament in

the New Testament would, perhaps, speak more clearly to Protestants, familiar with the

Word of God, and, for whom the Eucharist was central to their faith. If attention is given

to the religious dimensions of the community, it would seem to be an apt choice,

ambiguous in its orientation.

335 Aikema, Jacopo and His Public, 12.

336 Ericana, “Jacopo and Fresco Painting,” 216.

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Apart from the Anabaptists, it is not known if any other Protestants lived in the

town, but if the citizens were willing to support an Anabaptist community it suggests a

certain degree of toleration. The fact that the meal at Emmaus was an unusual subject for

an altarpiece also needs to be taken into account. It seems that this was the first time the

theme had been used as an altarpiece in the Veneto.337 More often than not altarpieces

reflected the titular patron saint(s) or some scene from the Gospels. There was no

precedence on which to base the selection, and taken into account with the fresco cycle

which illustrated scenes from the Old Testament rather than the life of a patron saint or

scenes from the Gospels chosen to emphasize the primacy of Peter, it suggests something

other than Catholic propaganda was the intent.

Although the Eucharistic theme is obvious, along with bread, wine, white table

cloth and Christ in the act of blessing, Jacopo’s altarpiece is not a validation of the

sacrifice of the Mass as understood by the Catholic Church. For the majority of early

modern mass-goers, the central moment was the elevation of the consecrated host, Christ

physically present on view to all. There are two components to the Lucan account, the

walk to Emmaus during which time Jesus unfolds the meaning of the scriptures, and the

blessing and breaking of the bread at super. The disciples recognize Jesus in the breaking

of the bread and they recalled how their “hearts burned within them” as he spoke to them

of the scriptures. The point of the story is that Christ reveals himself directly to his

followers primarily through the spoken word and then the re-enactment of the Supper.

Word and Sacrament are united here in a distinctly Protestant way.338

337 Aikema, Jacopo and His Public, 12.

338 Although I cannot say with any certainty I think the coupling of the terms “word” and “sacrament” in Catholic parlance is a relatively modern concept, Word here meaning the Bible rather than the words used to effect a sacrament. The earliest reference I found was in relation to the work of a 20th century Catholic mystic whose work bears the title Cross, Word, and Sacrament.

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It is duality of Word and sacrament that the painting has captured, for as viewers

we are caught by the direct gaze of Christ and yet we are aware of the conversation of the

disciples. It is interesting that the disciples are talking to each other and seem unaware of

what Christ has done. In this, the altarpiece may serve as a reminder to all Christians of

the centrality of this particular sacrament. Indeed, it seems that the serving girl is the only

one who realizes that something important is taking place and arrests her movement to

take heed. There is a reductive quality to the scene; all the figures are homely; they are

rustics, not the elegant figures of the classical Renaissance. Jacopo has created a domestic

scene into which Christ comes. There is no need for extravagant external ceremonies;

Christ comes to the ordinary person in the Word and Sacrament, which are reduced to

their bare bones; there is no need for intermediaries, smells and bells, pomp and

ceremony. I think the sacrament here is something closer to Luther’s or even Zwingli’s

understanding of it, than to the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation.

Around 1565, two years after the final session of the Council of Trent, Jacopo

completed an altarpiece for the high altar of St. Eleuterio, Vicenza. The painting is an

illustration of Saint Eleutherius Blessing the Faithful (Fig. 34). Set within imponderable

architecture, St. Eleutherius is seen on the right and towards the back of the canvas. He

holds a reliquary with which he is blessing the people, who surround the saint, offering

reverence to the relics. The composition appears to be very disjointed. A man in green

half kneels precariously on a step; he might serve as a vehicle to draw the eye inward to

the adoring women and the reliquary, except we are distracted by the reclining soldier

and we lose our way. The figures look pale and sickly; perhaps they are expecting a

miracle from the relics. Their pallor is only exaggerated by the cold pale light that bathes

the scene but gives no warmth.339

339 W. Rearick, “Life and Works of Jacopo Bassano,” 116.

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In the upper portion of the painting Christ emerges from a cloud holding a

communion wafer and converses with Eleutherius. There appears to be a confrontation

between the saint and Christ who stares intently down, holding a wafer in one hand and

blessing with the other. St. Eleutherius regards Christ with a troubled expression, perhaps

even one of annoyance. The light surrounding Christ draws the viewer’s eye to Him, and

from there the viewer follows the direction of Christ’s gaze and so is led back to the saint.

There is an ambiguity in the meaning of the painting; given that Trent had wrapped up its

last session two years before, the tension between Christ and Eleutherius can be read as

an attempt by the Church in Vicenza to encourage reform in the cult of the saints. The

Council of Trent was concerned about superstitious practices that had crept into

veneration of the saints.340 On the other hand it could be an admonishment of the

Church, represented by Eleutherius, by Christ for leading the people away from the true

faith in Christ alone, and for encouraging the unwholesome practice of the veneration of

relics.

The next three paintings will be considered together since they are all

representative of Jacopo’s preference for biblical and pastoral scenes. It is likely that they

were all made for collectors. Rearick believes that by 1576 the demand for Jacopo’s

pastoral scenes, with their evocative Venetian countryside, was such that Jacopo put

together a listing of what was available in his workshop, either for direct purchase or

through a commercial art dealer.341 The concept of an art market was just becoming

established as more people, particularly among the merchants, found that they could

afford works of art. Of interest here, is that the merchants who bought Jacopo’s art

340 See Mary R. O’Neil, “Sacredote ovvero strione: Ecclesiastical and Superstitious Remedies in 16th Century Italy,” in Stephen Kaplan, ed., Understanding Popular Culture: Europe from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (Berlin; New York: Moulton Publishers, 1984) for an account of some superstitious practices.


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seemed to prefer biblical scenes, populated with peasants, or ordinary people, rather than

saints, or the Virgin, set in classical architecture.

The Purification of the Temple (Fig. 35) is filled with animals and people; there is

a surge of movement created along a diagonal line running from the stairs to the counting

table. Christ is hard to locate amongst all the buying and selling of goods. He is to the left

of the milkmaid and her companion. One feels that Christ’s efforts to clean up the temple

will be wasted. In the background, people are going about their business and those in the

lower left corner seem to have seated themselves to watch the performance. One can see

why a merchant might like it to grace his or her home; it captures the bustle of the

marketplace, even though the setting is the temple. And in this it serves as a reminder that

the business of money-making was in the world and not in the Church. On a more

spiritual dimension, believers are temples of the Holy Spirit and, just as Christ purged the

temple in Jerusalem, so believers have to take stock of their lives and purify themselves

in relation to the ideals of Christianity.

Series paintings were quite popular in Venice in the early modern period, and

Jacopo and his workshop produced a number of them. One series was the story of Noah.

Several versions of the cycle were produced in the workshop, which complicates the

provenance of any of the components of the cycle, especially in attempts to ascertain the

original set.342 Rearick believes that the Sacrifice of Noah (Fig. 36) is a copy of the

original. The coat of arms on the chest is that of the Barbarigo family and it is likely that

Nicolò Barbarigo, podestà of Verona in 1574, who commissioned the cycle.343 Another

series was that of the Seasons, which were combined with biblical motifs. Here, we

consider Summer (Fig. 37), because of its similarity to the Sacrifice of Noah.

342 See Brown, Jacopo Bassano, 382; 414-420 for the provenance of the cycle and subsequent copies.

343 Ibid., 384.

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The sacrifice of Noah takes place after the flood waters have receded and the ark

has been unloaded. In the distance the ark can be seen resting on Mt. Ararat, whilst in the

far distance the flood waters are receding. In the foreground the family is busy settling in

the dry land, everyday objects are strewn around. The men are busy constructing a house

whilst the women prepare a meal. In the middle distance Noah is making his sacrifice of

thanksgiving. Rays of light, stream down from the sky touching the rising smoke from

the sacrificial fire. On the horizon above the mountain is a rainbow, the sign of God’s

Covenant with Noah, that God will never again destroy the earth by water. Jacopo has

included some fine still life elements in the open chests and the crockery; the entire

composition has the look of a Netherlandish genre painting, a possibility given Jacopo’s

habit of acquiring prints for use in the workshop.344

For the Seasons, Jacopo has combined them with biblical elements, giving them a

moral quality. The seasons reflect the sequence of humanity’s fall from grace to

redemption. Beginning with spring, which is matched with the expulsion of Adam and

Eve from Eden, summer is paired with the sacrifice of Isaac, the prefiguration of the

sacrifice of Christ. Autumn brings with it Moses receiving the Commandments, the Law

under which humanity labors until, in Winter we find Christ carrying the cross and the

promise of redemption.

In the painting of Summer Jacopo has created what must have been a typical

summers day, the summer wheat is being harvested and the sheaves placed on the cart

harnessed to a yoke of oxen. In the foreground a man and young boy are shearing sheep,

the fleece in bundles besides them. In the meantime a group of women are preparing a

meal. On top of the mountain on the left Abraham is about to sacrifice Isaac, whilst in the

nick of time an angel stays his hand. The presence of the biblical scene, even though it is

344 Aikema denies links to Dutch art believing that all the influences on Jacopo are Italian see Jacopo Bassano and His Public, 67.

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reduced to a single motif in the background, nevertheless permeates the painting. The

divine breaks through into ordinary everyday life even if one is unaware of it.

What is striking in both canvases, even in the Purification of the Temple, and

indeed with a number of other canvases, is that Jacopo pushes the religious aspect to the

background, burying it in the domesticity of the scene. Another striking feature is the

faithful retelling of biblical stories without invention, and a rejection of the classicism of

the High Renaissance. Whether it was intentional or not Jacopo creates the sort of

religious image that would have suited Luther. Even the “hiddenness” of God seems a

Protestant touch—God’s message waiting to be revealed through the word, through the

reading or proclaiming the message.345 Jacopo seems to have more affinity with

Protestantism than Catholicism; he seems to prefer biblical stories to narratives of saints’

lives.

In his eightieth year Jacopo received a commission from the Benedictines of San

Giorgio Maggiore, Venice. For the first altar on the right, Jacopo produced a huge

Adoration of the Shepherds (Fig. 38) it is just over 14x7 feet. For a man of his age the

commission must have come as a surprise as well as being a daunting task. I have

included it simply because, out of all the paintings of Jacopo that I have looked at, I find

it striking. It is by no means a perfect painting, it is a reworking of an earlier horizontal

composition, and so there are some awkward passages, such as the stable roof that angles

down from just beneath the angles in the rafters of which sit two shepherd boys.346. The

darkness of the upper two thirds of the canvas renders comprehension of the pictorial

unity of the canvas difficult. In the distance, over the night landscape, we can barely

make out the annunciating angel, which is echoed by the trio at the top of the canvas. The

345 Koerner, Reformation of the Image, 43.


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figures of the shepherds and Holy Family appear ponderous, all cramped together in the

bottom third of the picture.

Yet despite its compositional drawbacks the canvas captures the beginning of

John’s Gospel (1:4-5) “in him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines

in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Word becomes incarnate,

illuminating everything. There is no need for distractions of any sort, there is only Christ.

Here almost at the end of his life, the artist presents a night scene of great simplicity that

focuses on the Protestant motif of Christ as the light of the world. 347

On the whole Jacopo painted scenes from Scripture, although he did produce a

number of sacra conversazione. The settings are invariably bucolic with great emphasis

on animals and country life. Working in the mountainous regions of Bassano allowed

Jacopo to experiment with his subject matter. The communities in which he worked were

keenly aware of differing religious views since, they had Protestants living in their midst.

There was certainly a group of Anabaptists in Cittadella as late as 1550, and enclaves

managed to survive beyond the Reformation period. Jacopo was sympathetic to

Protestant views especially the emphasis on the Bible. His renderings of biblical scenes

are without any theological gloss. This is evident in his early works, but becomes more

prominent after 1550 and dominates his genre paintings after 1563. Jacopo seems to have

shared, at least in spirit, the Lutheran idea of the private conscience of the individual and

direct interaction with Scripture.

The works of Lorenzo Lotto and Jacopo Bassano illustrate direct contact with

those who were convinced Protestants, whether Lutherans or Anabaptists, or both. Their

paintings are more Christocentric, biblically based and earthy. There few allusions to

antiquity, or to classical ideals of beauty. They both bestow dignity and value on the


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ordinary worker, this is especially true of Bassano with his bucolic settings and domestic

interiors

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Figure 31 Lorenzo Lotto St. Lucy before the Judge 1532. Oil on Wood, 243x237cm Pinacoteca Civica, Jesi. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 32 Lorenzo Lotto Alms of Saint Antoninus 1542 Oil on Wood 332 x 235 cm Basillica di Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 33 Jacopo Bassano Supper at Emmaus c. 1538 Oil on Canvas 235 x 250 cm Sacristy, Parish Church, Cittadella. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 34 Jacopo Bassano St. Eleutherius Blessing the Faithful 1565 Oil on Canvas 280 x 174cm Galleria dell’Academia, Venice. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 35 Jacopo Bassano Purification of the Temple c. 1580 Oil on Canvas 162 x 268 cm National Gallery, London. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 36 Jacopo Bassano Sacrifice of Noah c. 1574 Oil on Canvas Staaliche Schlösser Und Gärten, Potsdam-Sanssouci. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 37 Jacopo Bassano Summer c.1575 Oil on Canvas 79 x 111 cm Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 38 Jacopo Bassano Adoration of the Shepherds 1590-92 Oil on Canvas 421 x 219 cm San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice. (With permission from WGA)

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CHAPTER EIGHT

CARAVAGGIO (1571-1610)

During the course of the sixteenth century, Protestant ideas moved around the

peninsula through a network of friends and acquaintances, as well as through the written

word. The key concepts in the exchanges of ideas were centered round God and

humanity, the Bible, the failings of the Catholic Church, a personal response to Christ,

and a faith that did not rely on ceremonies or other externals of religion. A few artists

attempted to illustrate this in their works. These remained a small minority amidst the

dominant Catholic works. However, their efforts combined with Renaissance views on

the human person, and with an approach to art that encouraged viewers to see it in an

objective manner, that brought about a change as to how art was accomplished. The result

was an environment out of which the art of Caravaggio could emerge.

On the religious front, the Council of Trent had come to a close by 1563 and

clearer lines were being drawn between the various religious groups. The process of

confessionalization was underway, and the Inquisition had become a fairly well-oiled

machine, though it still met with resistance in Venice. In Milan, Charles Borromeo was

attempting to put into effect the requirements of the Council in regard to institutional

discipline with regular synods meetings, diocesan visitations, and the standardization of

liturgical praxis.

Milan Under Borromeo

Although born in the sleepy town of Caravaggio, the young Caravaggio and his

family lived in rented accommodation near the Sforza palace, in Milan, until 1576. Milan

was a city of contrasts: it was the home of reforms instigated by Borromeo, yet it was

also an access point for Protestant literature and ideas. It had a flourishing silk textile

industry, and numerous artisans, artists, and craftsmen were attracted to the city by the

Borromean building program. Yet its streets were filled with vagabonds, brigands, and

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wandering youths, armed and banded into groups loosely associated with a noble house.

Duels, murder, rape, and theft were all common crimes, for which the vagabonds and

poor were usually blamed. Laws were passed to try to deal with the situation, and the

Spanish garrison was reinforced from time to time when the undesirables were rounded

up and expelled en masse from the city.348 One of the leading forces behind attempts to

reform the Church and the city was the archbishop, Carlo Borromeo. Borromeo had a

dark, pessimistic view of human nature. Under his direction, reforms of the Church

included increased regulations and statutes that extended far beyond the correction of

financial abuses, intellectual incompetence, and sexual failings of priests; they spilled

over into the realm of social discipline.349

Borromeo was particularly interested in implementing the Tridentine decrees of

reform, including those concerning sacred images. He was concerned with restoring

dignity and functionality to the Church and took a great interest in the architectural

design for churches and the interior furnishings. He not only imposed heavy fines or

punishments for artists who departed from the prescribed rules, but also set penalties on

clergy who disregarded regulations and allowed unusual or offensive images in their

churches.350

Conformity remained a problem. Despite the lofty goals of Borromeo to restore a

sense of decorum and correctness to the visual aspects of church buildings, there was a

disregard for his ideas. He instigated a number of synodal and provincial meetings with

348 Peter Robb, M :The Man Who Became Caravaggio (New York: Picador, 1998), 25.

349 Boer, Wieste de, The Conquest of the Soul: Confession, Discipline, and Public Order in Counter-Reformation Milan.(Leiden, Boston, Kohn: Brill, 2001),.40.

350 Cecilia Voelker, “Borromeo’s Influence on Sacred Art and Architecture,” in San Carlo Borromeo: Catholic Reform and Ecclesiastical Politics in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century John Headley and John Tomaro eds., (Washington: Folger Shakespeare Library, London: Associated University Presses, 1988), 176.

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his clergy to help establish conformity. The records of these meetings reveal Borromeo

had to reiterate constantly his warning that those who failed to conform to reform

measures would be punished. He repeatedly warned against and forbade the use of

animals in images unless they were biblical or hagiographical in nature. He further

suggested that the bishops assemble the artists in their dioceses and explain to them the

requirements.351

Borromeo was deeply influenced by Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, a

process of meditation, the focal point of which was the life and passion of Christ. The

aim was to rouse empathy in the devotee and then to draw moral and personal lessons

from each meditation. Each exercise involved the creation of a mental image of the

biblical event, which consisted “of seeing with the mind’s eye the physical place where

the object we wish to contemplate is present.” 352 The remarkable element of Ignatius’

method was that even invisible things and abstract notions were to be made palpably

pictorial.353 The psychological power of this approach was not lost on Borromeo, who

encouraged pilgrimages to the sacro monte in the town of Varallo just outside of Milan.

The sacro monte at Varallo consisted of forty-five chapels containing polychrome figures

acting out biblical scenes with intense realism.

Andrew Graham-Dixon believes that Caravaggio would have been familiar with

Varallo. He points out that in his Crucifixion of Peter and his Conversion of Paul

Caravaggio is

blatantly rooted in the tradition of popular pious realism that produced the sculptures of the sacred mountain…so clear and direct is the connection, so manifest the visual resemblance, that it

351 Voelker, “Borromeo,” 176.

352 Mottola, Anthony trans., The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius (New York and London: Image Books, Doubleday,1989), 54.

353 Freedberg, David. The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 180.

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might even be said that his principal strategy as a religious artist was to translate the effects of these…theatrical sculpture into the painting of his time.354

He also strongly suggests that Caravaggio’s work is a product of Borromean Milan.

Caravaggio

Though he lived and died four hundred years ago, Caravaggio’s life and works

have captured the imagination of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He has been the

inspiration behind Peter Robb’s novel M, Derek Jarman’s movie Caravaggio, and Martin

Scorsese’s Mean Streets. He is the subject of a contemporary ballet, and more recently

caused a stir when a sixteenth-century body was unearthed in Port Ercole near Naples.

Could it be his? Even more recently, in the British press at least, a journalist has claimed

to have discovered how Caravaggio created his light effects. The fascination for this

long-dead man can, perhaps, be accounted for by the dichotomy between his violent and

seedy life and his striking, psychologically and emotionally charged, highly religious

paintings.

It is not until 1594 that we have documentary evidence of Caravaggio being in

Rome, when his name appears as being present at a vigil in church. He set himself up as a

painter and produced the Fortune Teller and Cardsharps, amongst others; both were

bought by Cardinal Del Monte. In 1595 he was invited to join the cardinal’s household

where he remained for several years.355 Del Monte introduced Caravaggio to the urbane

world of the cultivated wealthy and he was soon gaining commissions from rich patrons.

By 1599 he had earned a fine reputation and received his first important public

commission for two lateral pieces for the Contarelli chapel in San Luigi dei Franchesi;

these were the Calling of St. Matthew and the Martyrdom of St. Matthew. These were

closely followed by two commissions for the Cerasi chapel in S. Maria dei Popolo.

354 Graham-Dixon, Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane, 40.

355 Robb, M, 32.

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Caravaggio’s works are striking in their use of light and shade;356 they contain

little by way of ornamentation and seem to be pared down to the bare essentials.

Caravaggio’s work is unlike most Roman paintings of the time and stands in striking

contrast to the light-filled, richly colored, and classical forms of the Renaissance, as

represented by Raphael, Michelangelo, the Carraccis, Zuccaro , and Domenichino.

Caravaggio paints what he sees; he paints moldy fruit and dirty feet. He paints

with a realism that many of his patrons found unsettling, especially those who

commissioned works for churches. A number of his altarpieces were rejected, but

fortunately for Caravaggio, there were wealthy patrons who bought the rejected works to

add to their private collections. One of the themes that runs through a number of

Caravaggio’s works is the direct working of grace on the human person, a theme

explored in his Calling of St. Matthew (Fig. 39). Here, Caravaggio uses strong contrasts

between light and dark, which are both symbolic and pragmatic.357 The instructions for

the Calling of St. Matthew stipulated that Matthew be seated at a table and that it should

include Jesus with some companions.

Through the use of strong chiaroscuro, and the reduction of the scene to the barest

detail, the viewer has little sense of place or time. The light from the fictive window

implies an indoor scene, but a closer look at the deep shadows evokes a sense that the

figures are sitting near the outside corner of a building. It is a seedy scene. The action at

the counting table has been interrupted, as light moves in a diagonal line from behind

Christ towards Matthew. Two of the figures have already become aware of the gesturing

stranger. Matthew’s reaction and expression is one of surprise. The older man and youth

at the end of the table are still busy with the money, as yet unaware that any change has

356 Chiaroscuro is the term used to describe the effects of light and shade in a work of art, especially when they are strongly contrasted. Caravaggio used this technique to great effect.

357 Robb, M, 128.

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occurred. Only the barest of halos indicates that this might be a religious scene. Christ is

hidden in shadow, the light glancing off his face and striking his hand. The hand gesture

is a reference to Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, persiflage perhaps or a tribute; it is

hard to say.

It is Caravaggio’s use of light that gives the painting its religious significance. It

makes the viewer aware of the deeper issues of human interaction with the Divine and

what form that might take. The light falls across several characters, but it is only Matthew

who responds. The two dandies at the edge of the table look curiously at the stranger,

who has entered the space and is gesturing, yet they remain unmoved, excluded. The

central action occurs on an inner plane, in the look and gesture of Matthew. Matthew is

called by Christ and Matthew accepts by faith. Although the Council of Trent had defined

Catholic doctrine on the question it could not eradicate the fundamental Protestant

approach to salvation.358 For nearly half a century Italians had been exploring avenues

of faith and some had adopted a personal faith that rested on justification by faith alone.

Caravaggio presents the viewer with an immediate and striking representation of the

acceptance of the call of Christ by Matthew.

When in 1600, Monsignor Tiberio Cerasi commissioned works for the funerary

chapel in S. Maria del Popolo (Fig. 40), it caused quite a stir. He commissioned works

from both Annibale Carracci and Caravaggio. Carracci was given the main altar piece,

the subject of which was the Assumption (Fig. 41). Caravaggio was asked for a

Conversion of Paul (Fig. 42) and the Martyrdom of Peter for the two side panels. All

three works are in situ and the difference between the two styles of painting could not be

more evident. Carracci’s Assumption shows Mary being carried heaven-wards by angels

and putti, to the astonishment of the apostles. Here, as in many of his works, Carracci

358 Hibbard, Caravaggio, 130.

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combines rich Venetian coloring with High Renaissance monumentalism, the effect of

which is an evenly diffused light and rich color.359

Caravaggio’s offerings were filled with psychological tension and immediacy.

Caravaggio has taken the techniques he was experimenting with in the Calling of

Matthew and developed them. In the Conversion of Paul the scene is reduced to the bare

minimum and is a highly charged psychological piece. There are no identifiable

landmarks, no landscape to distract us, no iconographical accretions. Action has been

stilled to the raised arms of Paul and the raised horse’s hoof. The painting emanates

silence; everything is internalized, and, from this perspective, highly innovative. Our

attention is drawn to the full acceptance of the heavenly message symbolized in the band

of light. The rays of the light follow a steep diagonal path towards Paul’s face and body,

and seem to draw his arms upwards. We are given an unprecedented conception of the

subject matter, a visualization of an individual’s response to a transcendent

experience.360

Again the viewer is presented with the force of Divine calling; of grace and a

response to it. Paul is helpless before the will of God; he lies vulnerable to God, wounded

by a blindness that is both physical and spiritual. There is passivity in the response to the

invitation of grace that ignores the role of works and stresses personal faith. To heighten

the sense of the divine call, light falls on the groom, but it is not the same as the light that

is drawing Paul to submission. The position of the figure of Paul, almost breaking into

the viewer’s space, heightens the awareness that Paul is chosen.

In the period between 1599 and 1606, Caravaggio produced thirty seven pieces

most of which are considered masterpieces. His patrons, besides Del Monte, included

Maffeo Barbarini, who would become Urban VII; Vincenzo Giustiniani; Scipione

359 Puglisi, Caravaggio, 173; Robb, M, 161.

360 Puglisi, Caravaggio 166.

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Borghese, nephew of Paul V; Ottavio Costa; and the Mattei brothers. These individuals

formed a circle interested in the developments in the arts and sciences. They counted

Galileo as a friend and were known to have musical evenings. These were worldly and

wealthy cardinals and sought the works that Caravaggio produced.

Caravaggio seemed to have had a particular relationship with the Mattei for whom

he produced a number of works. It was Ciriaco Mattei who commissioned the Supper at

Emmaus (Fig. 43). Caravaggio, following tradition, depicts a supper table with still life

elements, Christ in the center flanked by the two disciples and the inn keeper. The Christ

figure is young, unharmed by the trauma of the crucifixion. Christ’s hand-gesture

indicates that the bread is being blessed and the moment of revelation is captured. This is

the risen Christ. One disciple is in the act of rising from his chair, the other has flung his

arms open in a cross-like pattern. The deep shadows serve to indicate the corporeality of

the risen Christ. 361

The inn keeper stands as a foil to the intense interaction between the three

principle characters. He appears to be skeptical. The still life elements are also significant

and worked with care. The reflection in the glass flask is especially eye-catching. All the

elements allude to the Eucharist, or Communion, and the Resurrection. The Lord’s

Supper was central to both Catholics and Protestants, although the theological

interpretation and liturgical praxis differed. Caravaggio presents the viewer with a neutral

depiction of the scene, one that could serve in either Church.

At the same time as this great artistic outpouring was taking place, Caravaggio’s

private life was disintegrating. In 1602, his name appeared in police records for the first

time. He was arrested for wearing a sword, but subsequent run-ins with the police, were

of a more violent nature, which ended with him participating in a duel. Caravaggio was

badly wounded, and his opponent was killed. With the help of his rich benefactors, he left

361 Puglisi, Caravaggio, 213.

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the city and took refuge with the Colonna family who managed to keep him hidden until

he recovered from his wounds. Meanwhile the pope put him under an interdict, which

meant that anyone could turn him in to the authorities dead or alive.

Whilst recuperating in the Colonna residency, Caravaggio painted a second

version of the Supper at Emmaus (Fig. 44). The compositional elements are almost the

same as in the earlier version; omitted are many of the still life elements and the strong

lighting. The tones and colors are more subdued, and the action is nearer the picture

frame, including the viewer at the table. This is a much more mature painting than the

earlier version; it is intense, reflective and inward-looking. All the characters are engaged

in the scene. All are listening to Christ. The hand gesture is economically worked, much

closer to the body, again bringing attention to the immediate, to the bread on the table.

Christ is care-worn; there is a feeling of sadness, almost tragedy surrounding him.

The cast of light on Christ’s face catches our attention; here is the central figure. Is this a

statement about Caravaggio’s understanding of religion? Religion ought to be about

interior prayer, direct communion with God, a modeling of one’s life in imitation of

Christ’s life. It ought to be about unity and community, healing in the broken world.

There is nothing triumphal, no transcendental elements. Caravaggio is recovering from a

serious wound and has been exiled. Perhaps the painting captures the feelings of the artist

as he reflects on the human condition. Perhaps the broken bread symbolizes the

fragmented church; separated into different confessions, each expressing a different

understanding of the Eucharist whilst, at the same time, acknowledging its centrality to

the different confessions. The humility of the protagonists makes an ironic statement

about the wealthy trappings of the Church. Caravaggio, having lived in the Del Monte

household, witnessed the opulence and worldliness at close quarters. At the same time, he

was drawn to the lower classes. The humble and unassuming were often models for his

paintings, and he treated them with great sympathy. He bestowed a dignity upon them

that was often denied them in society and by other artists.

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Once he was well enough to travel, Caravaggio moved from Naples and made his

way to Malta, where he sought and was granted admission into the Order of the Knights

of Malta who were responsible for keeping the seas clear of pirates. Whilst there, he

produced several portraits and his Beheading of John the Baptist, which could very well

have been his “passage money” that every novice paid to the order upon entering.362 He

seemed to have contentment contentment and was settled for a year. He then fought with

a fellow knight, not an uncommon event, and was incarcerated in a sunken cell accessible

by descent on a ladder which was removed once the prisoner reached the bottom. An

escape was somehow effected, and he fled the island. He spent 1608 in Sicily and

returned to Naples in 1609. In spite of being a fugitive from justice, Caravaggio managed

to gain important commissions in the places he resided.

In 1610, he began his homeward journey. A sustained effort had been made on the

part of his high-placed friends to secure a pardon, which was issued in 1610. He was

travelling by a felucca from Naples to Rome when bad weather interrupted the journey.

On landing at Porto Ercole, he was arrested under a case of mistaken identity and by the

time that was resolved the felucca had left with all his possessions, including three

canvases destined for Cardinal Borghese and Prince Marcantonio Doria of Genoa.

Caravaggio followed the coastline in an attempt to catch up with the boat but fell ill and

died a few days later, just shy of forty.

Caravaggio was a violent man living in a violent world, yet capable of great

sensitivity and compassion. Not known for close relationships, he inspired loyalty in

those who knew him and attracted influential patrons who protected him throughout his

stormy life. Primarily a religious painter, he is held as the epitome of Counter

362 Puglisi, Caravaggio, 299.

193

Reformation art, and yet his paintings were frequently rejected by the religious bodies

who commissioned them. He had a great influence on artists who followed him, in

particular Rembrandt and the Caravaggisti in the Netherlands, and the Catholic Baroque

artist Peter Paul Rubens. Caravaggio’s religious art reflected the pietism of his day but

did not necessarily meet the requirements of the Council of Trent. He removed all

trappings of ceremony, authority, wealth, and he often overlooked the use of halos. It is

also significant that his art avoided both the vicarious brutality and the triumphalism

found in much seventeenth-century Catholic art.

Caravaggio was and remains very much a man of his time. He was painting at a

precise moment when the aftermath of the Reformation was becoming settled and the

Church was stabilizing itself. Yet neither of these two developments had completely

come to a peaceful conclusion. This would not happen for another half century.

Nevertheless, the Church was reclaiming areas that had been won by the Reformers and

the latter were defining their own borders and territories. The landscape was only

gradually becoming more settled. Thus, Caravaggio was active during a period that was

still uncertain and unsettled. The decrees of the Council of Trent had not been put into

full effect and, as we have seen in Borromeo’s Milan, there would be some resistance to

the decrees. Also, we need to keep in mind the fact that Italy was not purely Catholic.

There were divergent voices to be heard. In many ways, Caravaggio’s art reflects this

undefined period.

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Figure 39 Caravaggio Calling of St. Matthew 1599-1600 Oil on Canvas 322 x 340cm Contarelli Chapel, San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 40 Cerasi Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 41 Annabale Carraci Assumption of the Virgin Mary 1600-01 Oil on Canvas 245 x 115 cm Cerasi Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 42 Caravaggio Conversion of St. Paul on the Way to Damascus 1600 Oil on Cypress Wood 237 x 189 cm Cerasi Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 43 Caravaggio Supper at Emmaus 1601 Oil on Canvas 141 x 196 cm National Gallery, London. (With permission from WGA)

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Figure 44 Caravaggio Supper at Emmaus 1606 Oil on Canvas 141 x 175 cm Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan. (With permission from WGA)

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CHAPTER NINE

CONCLUSION

The Church in early modern Italy, as in other countries in Europe, was beset by

troubles. Moral corruption of the hierarchy had reached new depths; the ignorance of the

parish clergy had reached such pronounced levels that the laity sought their own

approaches to salvation. Many turned to the confraternities for communal and private

devotions, for avenues of charity, for sermons given by laymen based on humanist

learning, Scripture and medieval piety. Others flirted with heterodoxy as they came into

contact with divergent points of view. Humanists studied ancient texts which provided

insights into the structuring of society, but also challenged the accuracy of the Vulgate

Bible leading to the publication of new translations of the biblical texts in Italian. The

printing industry played an important role in the promulgation and spread of religious

ideas through the production of indigenous Italian heterodox texts, writings from the

northern Protestants, as well as Catholic sermons, devotional aids and prayer manuals.

Even after the re-establishment of the Inquisition, a clandestine book trade continued to

operate. The Venetian government in particular realized that the printing industry was too

important an economic factor for it to be shut down or shackled.

The availability of inexpensive books allowed for the diffusion of ideas. There

were religious books available for all levels of readers. People read and debated the

works of the reformers in the universities, in humanist circles, and in the corridors of the

papacy. Sermons on critical religious issues by leading preachers could be heard, and

subsequently debated in shops and market places, in gatherings in humble homes, and in

the work place. Religion was a hot topic and everybody had an opinion. As the

Reformation took hold, and attempts at reconciliation failed, the Church convoked the

Council of Trent. The result was the reaffirmation of Catholic doctrine and a

condemnation of Protestantism. The Inquisition was introduced in the peninsula to

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control the dissemination of information. By the end of the century the reformation in

Italy had been suppressed, but the interaction and interweaving of ideas had left its mark,

reflected in a different sort of religious art.

The Renaissance, with its blend of classical references, linear perspective, and the

notion of mirroring reality, led to a change in how art was viewed. What began as a

simple marveling at the dexterity of an artist to reproduce life-like scenes, resulted in

humanist educated patrons discoursing on art in theoretical terms. Artists were

encouraged to hone their skills in invention and ornamentation, incorporating “hidden”

messages in a composition for their patrons to discover. Patrons began to take a more

objective approach, seeing a work of art not only in terms of competency but also with an

eye to beginning, or building up, an art collection. Art began to be valued in and of itself,

separated from any function it might have had. The increase of merchants, who could

afford to buy art, led to the emergence of commercial art dealers who were used by artists

as a way of broadcasting their wares. The Bassano workshop made use of such dealers to

shift existing stock.

The Church too, had an invested interest in art, since churches need to be

furnished with chapels, altars, vessels, vestments, altarpieces, and all the accoutrements

needed to create a suitable place of worship, all of which required the services of skilled

craftsmen and women. Religious images had always been regarded by the hierarchy as

bibles for the illiterate, a means for the laity to approach the divine through the saints and

the Virgin. The opulence of church interiors, along with the theatricality of the liturgy,

transported the believer from the mundane into the heavenly realms. Representations of

the saints made them more accessible, and gave to them a human face, facilitating

intercessory prayer. The Church, along with all its trappings, came into question and was

challenged during the course of the sixteenth century. A process that began with the ranks

of devout Catholics and then became more critical as Luther cobbled together his own

version of church, from which sprang the various Protestant churches and sects.

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The early modern period was marked by a general sense of anxiety over human

sinfulness and salvation. How that anxiety was expressed differed, depending on whether

one moved within Humanist spheres of influence, or whether one gravitated more

towards the merchants and artisans. Discussions of topics such as grace, salvation,

justification, sprang from studying the Bible and took place in humanist circles and

amongst small groups meeting in gardens and monasteries. Such groups encouraged

reform of the individual, a deep personal piety, and attempts to influence the hierarchy.

On the other hand, Savonarola’s theocracy, as an attempt at reform, was closely

connected to republican ideals combined with moral reform.

Savonarola was quite vocal on sumptuousness and vanity, his vehemence led to

the burning of fripperies that included both books and works of art. At the same time, he

understood the necessity of religious images, which should be transparent in their

meaning and worked without ornamentation or invention. To this end, Fra Bartolomeo’s

paintings encapsulated, not only the sort of art Savonarola favored, but also the themes he

frequently preached. His God the Father with Saints and Madonna Misericordia present

the believer with images that are familiar in their composition, the protagonists

recognizable. They were the type of image found in churches throughout Italy, images

before which people prayed. Both paintings encouraged people to be steadfast in their

faith in the face of hardship; to have recourse to the compassion of Christ and the mercy

of Mary so that they would be counted among the blessed.

Not all religious art of the first two decades of the sixteenth century would

encourage devotion. The various ailments of the Church, the anxiety that riddle the

population and the growing interest in religious matters, led many within the Catholic

Church to hold positions on justification that were similar to those of Luther. Many

Catholics questioned the value of external practices such as the veneration of the saints.

The anxiety and insecurity in the institutions of the Church are reflected in the early

works of Pontormo, particularly his Madonna and Child with Saints. Not only are the

203

principal cast of characters distracted and disengaged from the viewer, the use of line and

space creates a feeling of instability. With this painting the spectator is invited to re-think

both their ideas of the cult of the saints and purpose of religious images.

After the Sack of Rome in 1527 and into the fourth decade of the century, the

religious discussions became more intense. The piety of the spirituali was consolidated

by the teaching and preaching of Juan de Valdès, who placed great emphasis on the

sacrifice of Christ. It was through this action of Christ’s that the lost immortality and

impassability of the first parents were restored. The ideas of Valdès would take on two

different forms: in the humanist and aristocratic circles they led to an intensely personal

and individualistic piety that found expression in faith in the sacrifice of Christ, a

continued turning to Christ and a down-playing of the necessity of external rituals, along

with an inclination to seek for compromise with the Protestants. Among the merchants

and artisans, the views of Valdès would take on a more active character, and were linked

with an actual reform of the Church that was much closer to active heterodoxy. Such

views were summarized in the popular Beneficio di Cristo, and were proclaimed

throughout the peninsula through the preaching efforts of Ochino. These views were the

inspiration for Pontormo’s fresco cycle in San Lorenzo, Florence.

Nothing was settled; many leading churchmen accepted Justification by faith

alone and rejected the merit of works for salvation, and hopes for reconciliation still

existed. It was in this climate that Michelangelo produced his Last Judgment. It was a

synthesis of current ideas ranging from resurrection of the body, the existence of

purgatory, the merit of works, and free will in the economy of salvation.

In the Veneto reform ideas found resonance among the merchant, artisans and

lower classes who saw in them not only access to God, but also the potential for societal

changes. Here, they met with ardent Protestants and morphed into more radical forms.

Both Lotto and Jacopo Bassano spent their careers painting in peripheral communities.

Jacopo remained in the Veneto, but Lotto wandered further afield into the Papal States

204

and Lombardy, as well as to his native city of Venice. For Lotto, there is documentary

evidence, including his own account book, showing that he had personal contact and was

friends with persons who would later be investigated for heresy; they included a canon

from the Santa Casa in Loreto, where Lotto would spend his last days. Lotto’s early

works, such as his Trinity or Annunciation are related to movements of reform from

within the Church. They are expressions of a personal piety, and invite a conversation

with the protagonists. His figures are rarely classical, preferring homey models and

domestic settings. Lotto’s later paintings, his Alms of St Antoninus and St Lucy are much

more aggressive in their anticlerical sentiments. These date from the period when he is in

Venice and involved with Protestant sympathizers.

For Jacopo there is no documentary evidence to put him in direct contact with

Protestant groups, but there is evidence that the communities around which his life and

work gravitated were involved in the religious debate. His works reflect a strong

orientation towards Scripture without any theological or institutional glosses. There is a

simplicity in his renditions that seems more suited to Protestant than Catholic tastes.

Jacopo favored bucolic settings for his biblical scenes, which he peopled with rustic men

and women, the sort of person he encountered every day. Many of Jacopo’s works were

for private houses, and this suggests that the religious debate had triggered a desire for a

different sort of religious painting, one that was not necessarily devotional. Rather,

Jacopo’s works invite a reflection on the Bible, and in this sense his works are akin to

Protestant art, which favored the Word. That Jacopo managed to produce such works at

the height of the Counter-Reformation is an indication that the Church was unable to

exert absolute control over religious artistic expression

The works of art by Fra Bartolomeo, Pontormo, Lotto, Michelangelo, and Jacopo

Bassano that have been considered here, all helped to bring about some changed in the

way in which some people regarded religious images. Whilst the works of Fra

Bartolomeo, Pontormo and Michelangelo are complex and reflect the artistic

205

developments that occurred in Florence, especially the classicism associated with

Florentine art, they also provide insight into the popularity of Savonarola, the teachings

of Valdès, and the piety of the spirituali respectively. Lotto and Bassano are much closer

to the developments of the religious debate in Venice, and were working in an

environment that included radical Protestant sects. The subtle changes wrought by these

five artists helped to prepare ground for Caravaggio. Caravaggio produced religious

works of great sensitivity and depth in the heart of the Catholic world. Even though he

inhabited the world of wealthy patrons for a while, none of this is reflected in his art.

Like Lotto and Bassano who used country folk as models, Caravaggio used prostitutes

and pimps, the poor of society. In seventeenth-century Rome he painted religious art that

bore none of the trappings of the Church. Instead they were images that could have

universal appeal.

The religious art of Italy remained predominantly Catholic, but there were some

artistic “voices” that exhibited elements that appeared at odds with Catholic art. The artist

found ways to express an anxiety and lack of confidence in the Catholic Church, as well

as to give expression to the interior, personal spirituality that resonated, with differing

degrees of intensity, in a wide range of people through the entire peninsula. These works

introduced changes in the way of viewing religious art. They invited the viewer to look at

their own relationship with the divine, to seek a personal relationship with Christ. These

religious paintings were freed from external religious ceremonies, such as the veneration

of saints, to create a religious art that was theologically neutral; it was art that had appeal

across confessional boundaries.

206

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