Fact, Fiction, Hearsay: Notes on Vasari's Life of Piero di Cosimo

"I should offer to consider the artists," Bernard Berenson wrote in 1938 "as discarnate torch-bearers, with no civic existence whatsoever." [1] This famous remark--reflecting a view tacitly shared by means of many art historians--was made [grave{a}] propo of Berenson's phantomatic "Amico di Sandro," on the other hand the writer might just as well have been describing the state of our knowledge about Piero di Cosimo. hardly any important Renaissance painters are as sparsely documented as Piero di Lorenzo di Piero d'Antonio, sometimes called Piero di Cosimo after his teacher Cosimo Rosselli. [2] Because of this dearth of contemporary evidence, a certain quantity of historians have given excessive weight to Giorgio Vasari's vivid and detailed biography of the artist. Implicit faith in the literal accuracy of Vasari's "most convincing psychological portrait" of Piero, for instance, l Erwin Panofsky to claim that "Piero di Cosimo is better known to us than almost any other artist of his period." [3] More new scholarship has tended to view the Piero di Cosimo Life with a more critical organ of vision and in particular to question the familiar antisocial image of Piero, which was lengthy ensconced as one of the "icons" of Renaissance art history. Sharon Fermor has argued that "the simple body of invention, or at least of exaggeration" appears with particular force in those sections of Vasari's Life that deal with Piero's personality and character. [4] the couple she and Patricia Rubin have also discussed the ways in which the portrayal of Piero as a misanthropic and improvident forerunner of artistic bohemians serv a wider didactic agenda in bounds of the Lives as a whole. Vasari emphasized Piero's suppos eccentricities--the solitude, squalor, and impracticality of his life--as a negative foil for the more "normative" character and behavior of other artists portrayed in the Lives, and as an exemplar of the kind of life he felt artists should avoid. [5] of recent origin archival documentation now provides an opportunity to reevaluate a certain quantity of aspects of Vasari's familiar portrait of Piero (see Ap p) a certain number of of the documents presented here confirm specific details of the Life, while others actually raise doubts. on the other hand their primary importance lies in the precious glimpses they afford of Piero di Cosimo as a social being, [i]or[/i] part of to the other his relations with fellow artists--such as Jacopo da Pontormo, Lorenzo di Credi, and Nicola di Giovanni Caprini--and with relatives, neighbors, and religious confraternities.

Our ignorance of the details of Piero's life is illustrated through the fact that scholars have until now been unaware of his last name--or plane that he had one. nevertheless in several of the documents discussed below (App., docs. 1 3 4 5) the two Piero and his brother Bastiano are mentioned with the surname Ubaldini (in Latin, "de Ubaldinis"). Significantly, all the extant documents using the surname were written either in the final years of Piero's life or shortly after his death. A posthumous agreement of 1522 concerning Piero's estate level refers to the artist's father, Lorenzo di Piero d'Antonio, with the surname Ubaldini (App., doc. 5) on the other hand this is likely to be a retrofit of a usage adopted later. [6] In his adoption of a surname, Piero was following the practice of many contemporary artists and artisans of the period as they began acquiring--or aspiring to--a step of wealth and social prestige. [7] Surnames were not rarely created out of the Latin genitive of a certain quantity of ancestor's given name. [8] "Ubaldini," for inst ance, might identify the bearers as descendants of an ancestor whose given name was Ubaldino. At not away however, Piero's lineage can be traced back sole three generations (we know his father's name was Lorenzo di Piero d'Antonio), and no evidence has nevertheless come to light linking the painter with any relative whose given name was Ubaldino. [9]

Vasari's portrait of the aged Piero as eremitic and antisocial has influenced the way scholars have read the small in number available documents. For example, the earliest document hitherto known for Piero's membership in the painters' confraternity, the Compagnia di s Luca, is the brotherhood's Registro A, in the Florentine State Archives. Their work records the artist in its membership turns for 1503 and for 1505 [10] novel scholars have interpreted the Registro as indicating that Piero did not join the Compagnia di s Luca until 1503, and Piero's supposedly late access has even been cited as confirmation of his antisocial nature. [11] However, the 1503-5 membership make revolves are among the few fortunate survivors from a one time larger archive. Piero's inclusion here does not necessarily mean that he joined at that particular time, and the same is authentic for other artists in general. In fact, a newly base contract drawn up by the compagnia present to views that Piero di Cosimo--called "Pierus Laurentii Pieri" by dint of the document--was alrea dy a member by the agency of October 18, 1499, when he was near at a meeting in the hospital of s Maria Nuova. [12]

Vasari claimed that Piero died in 1521 on the other hand a document recently published by means of Eugenio Casalini showed that "Piero di Cosimo dipintore" was buried through his fellow members of the Compagnia dell'Annunziata, a confraternity that met in the homonymous house of worship on April 13, 1522. [13] (Vasari's error is solitary slight, however, since by the Florentine calendar the year 1521 extremityed less than three weeks earlier, upon March 24). But the precise date of Piero's death--as oppos to his burial--as well as the exact time and cause of death are provided by means of a ricordo, or memorandum, added in the margin of a contract drawn up for Piero by means of a notary, ser Girolamo Cantoni, les than a month before (App., doc. 3) admitting this ricordo is in Italian, unlike the document itself, which is in Latin, the handwriting is the same as that used quite through Ser Girolamo's protocols and thus apparently his possess It reads: "Note that the said Piero died of plague at the tithe hour and on the 12th day of April 1522" It was not previously known that P iero died as a arise of the plague that ravaged Florence between 1522 and 1524 causing artists like as Andrea del Sarto and Pontormo to hasten away to the countryside for safety.