What’s the Real Find Behind “Finding the Lost da Vinci”?

Following the news stories of Maurizio Seracini’s search for The Battle of Anghiari, a “lost” 1505 fresco by Leonardo da Vinci that Seracini believes is hidden behind Giorgio Vasari’s 1563 fresco titled Battle of Marciano in Val di Chiana (shown above) in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy, has seemed like one long tease. When National Geographic announced that they would premier their exclusive footage of Finding the Lost da Vinci this past weekend, I had high hopes. Alas, the tease continues and the debates swirling around the enterprise—whether the da Vinci fresco is there and if it’s worth possibly ruining a Vasari fresco to find out—rage on. Although Seracini, who has pursued this dream for 36 years, failed to find his grail, those who look closely at Finding the Lost da Vinci didn’t come away empty handed. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "What’s the Real Find Behind “Finding the Lost da Vinci”?"

[Image: Giorgio Vasari. Battle of Marciano in Val di Chiana (1563). Fresco in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, Italy.]

Fathers and Sons

After the death of his father Pedro Berruguete, Alonso Berruguete questioned whether to follow in his father’s footsteps as a painter or pursue a career as a lawyer. Years later, when Berruguete died on September 25, 1561, many considered him the “Spanish Michelangelo,” the one artist more than any other who translated the Italian Renaissance into the Spanish Renaissance. Born around 1488, Berruguete’s rebirth and moment of epiphany came when he traveled to Florence and Rome in 1504 and saw the works of Michelangelo firsthand. Berruguete soon earned a place in Michelangelo’s workshop and learned at the feet of the master and befriended other young artists such as Andrea del Sarto and Bartolommeo Bandinelli. Berruguete trained as a painter with his father, but under his spiritual “father” Michelangelo, Alonso became a sculptor, creating years later works such as The Sacrifice of Isaac (above, from 1526-1532). Part of the San Benito altarpiece, The Sacrifice of Isaac shows the dramatic expressiveness of Michelangelo’s sculpture and painting that captivated the young Spaniard. Berruguete adds to the drama of the piece by painting the sculpture, adding to the liveliness and expression of the figures more than unadorned carved wood possibly could.

Berruguete brought Michelangelo-esque touches to his painting as well. In Salome (above, from 1512-1516), we see the young seductress looking down upon the severed head of John the Baptist. The bizarre calm with which she looks upon the head shows the influence of Mannerism upon Berruguete, who tried to amplify reality to the point of hyper-reality in pursuit of Michelangelo’s forcefulness of effect. Unable to match Michelangelo in technique, Berruguete resorted to other means to attract the same kind of religious fervor from viewers. Most of Berruguete’s works show episodes of great ecstasy or great agony, but Salome arrives on the scene after the fact—the calm after the storm of John’s martyrdom. Berruguete painted Salome at the end of his time in Italy, just before returning to Spain in 1517. In 1518, Charles V of Spain appointed Berruguete court painter and sculptor, positioning him to set the standards of taste for all of Spanish art.

It’s easy to see parallels between Michelangelo’s Dying Slave and figures such as Berruguete’s Saint Sebastian (above, from 1526-1532) from the same San Benito altarpiece that The Sacrifice of Isaac belongs to. Yet, Berruguete doesn’t just imitate Michelangelo’s art but extends certain elements of it, adjusting the settings on the drama just enough to create a difference but not set the entire work out of balance. With the official seal of approval of the Spanish court, Berruguete influenced an entire generation of Spanish artists who followed the example of Michelangelo and the other Italian Renaissance giants yet added their own subtle flavor. I look at this Saint Sebastian and imagine a young El Greco arriving years later from Greece, standing before this or some other work by Berruguete, and thinking, stretch the torso a bit here, extend the arms, lengthen the face… Alonso Berruguete’s wise career choice helped shape the direction of Spanish art for generations.

Setting the Stage

God needs the Devil, like Superman needs Lex Luthor or Sherlock Holmes needs Professor Moriarty. Without the tension of opposite forces pitted against each other, there is no story, just drab, monotonous perfection. When Giorgio Vasari mapped out his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, he knew his ultimate destination—the perfection of human artistry embodied by Michelangelo. “In our age the Divine Goodness has created for us Michelangelo Buonarroti,” Vasari writes in his preface to that landmark of art history. Knowing that unabashed praise of the master would lack drama, Vasari devised an entire journey through the history of Italian art from the late thirteenth century to his own sixteenth century painted with the chiaroscuro of bright good and dark evil artists. In Victims and Villains in Vasari’s Lives, the late Andrew Ladis demonstrates the importance of Vasari’s “bad guys” who helped define genius through their flaws and made the stars of the Renaissance shine all the brighter. Vasari, Ladis believes, casts the heroic Giotto (depicted above in a woodcut from Vasari’s 1568 edition of the Lives), Masaccio, and others versus a series of contemporary foils in “a great morality play in which sacred virtues, such as humility, charity, and faith, vie against the base motives that perpectually threaten Vasari’s sacred brotherhood.” Vasari, who, Landis writes, “appreciated the rhetorical power of anecdotes, whether true or not,” never lets the facts get in the way of the greater mission of paving the way for the “messiah” Michelangelo.

Ladis’ work presents an often forgotten side of Vasari’s Lives. Most modern abridged translations leave out the minor figures, preferring to give the major names full coverage. Ladis shows how those “minor” figures play a significant role in the Lives as a whole. The Lives lives more fully through the completeness of the opposition Vasari intended. Giotto’s exemplary life becomes humanized through the story of Buffalmacco, who becomes “an extended counterdemonstration of what it takes to be a true artist, a cautionary example of how not to lead one’s life.” Most of Buffalmacco’s works were already gone in Vasari’s day, damaged much like Buffalmacco’s The Triumph of Death (above, from 1355), a visual correlative to the self-destructive impulses of the artist himself. One of the few works of Buffalmacco that Vasari does see intact is a depiction of the suicide of Judas Iscariot, the template for self-destruction. Such “coincidence” always play right into the hands of Vasari as he weaves his narrative.

Ladis not only analyzes the bad painter—good painter dynamic of Vasari’s text, but also shows how Vasari took creative liberties to portray the “heroes” in the specific heroic manner that suits his higher purpose. In the case of Masaccio, Ladis writes, Vasari “ignored chronology and structured the life so that it comes to a climax with the Brancacci Chapel, still regarded as the painter’s greatest work. Making the Brancacci Chapel a kind of shrine and leading the viewer on a symbolic pilgrimage to it, Vasari compresses all of his story into the narrow confines of that sacred space, the holy of holies of the new art.” Images from the Brancacci Chapel, such as St. Peter Baptizing the Neophytes (above, from 1425), thus prefigure the ultimate sacred space of the Sistine Chapel , the site of Michelangelo’s greatest triumph.

While deconstructing the rhetorical life Vasari breathed into his history, Ladis himself shows a flair for vivacious prose. Vasari “turns Perugino into an avatar of avarice,” Ladis writes, “felled by the same thing that had lifted him up: Florence itself.” Ladis uses the case of Perugino to make the distinction between villains and victims. Perugino’s avarice makes him a villain, but the double whammy of being eclipsed by both Raphael, his student, and Michelangelo makes Perugino an unfortunate victim whose reputation has never fully recovered from those blows. Perugino once stood high enough in the art world that he placed frescoes such as The Delivery of the Keys (above, from 1482) in the Sistine Chapel. Later, however, some of his work was destroyed to make room for Michelangelo’s Last Judgment. Such erasure of an artist, however, is acceptable to Vasari as long as it serves to make way for the star of the Renaissance show.

Just before Michelangelo, the ultimate hero, steps into the spotlight, Vasari presents the ultimate villain, Baccio Bandinelli, whom Ladis calls “a larger-than-hell villain.” With the exception of Vasari’s life of Michelangelo, Bandinelli’s life takes up more pages than any other, including all the other good guys going back to Giotto. In life, critics measured Bandinelli’s accomplishments against those of Michelangelo, a contest that Bandinelli himself welcomed. Bandinelli’s Hercules and Cacus (above, from 1543) not only stood as a rival to Michelangelo’s David but physically stood near the David in Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio. Bandinelli’s villainy reaches it’s height when he, according to Vasari, destroyed Michelangelo’s cartoon for The Battle of Cascina, one of the great lost works of the master. Vasari presents Bandinelli as a great artist whose lack of character denies him the same magnitude of genius that the virtuous Michelangelo achieves. Even in death, Bandinelli’s sinister character as embodied in his art shows how greatly he differs from Michelangelo. The tomb Bandinelli sculpted for himself contains a self-portrait of himself as Nicodemus holding the dead Christ. That self-portrait as Nicodemus characteristically upstages the fallen savior—one final demonstration of Bandinelli’s hubris. Ladis remarks that Bandinelli stole the idea of a pieta from Michelangelo’s Pieta, but I’d argue that a closer source might be Michelangelo’s Florentine Pieta, in which Michelangelo cast himself in the role of Nicodemus, but in a much more servile role than Bandinelli’s Nicodemus. These dueling Nicodemi exemplify the larger story Vasari, and Ladis, tell.

You cannot come away from Victims and Villains in Vasari’s Lives and not want to go back to the source and read it again with Ladis’ ideas lurking in the back of your mind. Just as Herodotus’ Histories and Plutarch’s Parallel Lives can be seen equally as literature and history, Vasari’s Lives deserves to be seen as a masterpiece of Renaissance infotainment, but with a purpose. Michelangelo descends from heaven in Vasari’s eyes to redeem the world through art. Vasari, himself a painter, accepts the role of evangelist and spreads the word of Michelangelo’s majesty. Perhaps Ladis’ work will lead to a reappraisal of those minor figures so blithely excised from the abridged versions of Vasari’s work, whose flaws are more fascinating and human than those artistic god that once walked among us. Although Vasari always sided with the angels, he knew the value of the fallen angels to his story. Andrew Ladis’ Victims and Villains in Vasari’s Lives gives the devils their due, just as Vasari intended.


[Many thanks to the University of North Carolina Press for providing me with a review copy of Andrew Ladis’ Victims and Villains in Vasari’s Lives.]

Telling Tales

“All men of whatsoever quality they be, who have done anything of excellence, or which may properly resemble excellence, ought, if they are persons of truth and honesty, to describe their life with their own hand,” wrote Benvenuto Cellini in his famous Autobiography. Born November 3, 1500, Cellini certainly lived a colorful life, but stretched the truth whenever he felt the need. Cellini always strove to break out from the pack of the great Renaissance artists, creating works such as Perseus Holding the Head of Medusa (above, from 1545) as his own grand public gesture in Florence to compete with Michelangelo’s David. Cellini took on all comers and made as many friends in high places as he did enemies.

The Salt Cellar of Francis I (above, from 1540) stands as perhaps Cellini’s most memorable work, a relatively small piece of elaborate tableware fit only for a king, in this case, the king of France. A mythological sea god and women sit upon the cellar, their legs entwined. Cellini’s male figures always stand above his depictions of women, a lacking that some see as evidence of his sexual preference. Rival sculptor Baccio Bandinelli, among others, denounced Cellini as a homosexual. A lover and a fighter, Cellini took up arms in defense of the Vatican and Pope Clement VII against the attack Charles III, Duke of Bourbon in 1527, killing the duke himself, if you believe Benvenuto’s version.

As undeniable as Cellini’s talent for art (as shown in his drawing of A Satyr, above, from 1544) is his appetite for self-promotion and self-destruction. The Autobiography abounds with tales of his bloodthirsty revenge against his enemies, complete with his cold, calculating plotting of the when, where, and how. Cellini often delves into the fantastic, calling upon devils in the Roman Colosseum to come to his aid at one moment and upon choirs of angels to protect him at another. Such fantasies inspired Hector Berlioz to compose an opera about Cellini’s life, but even the drama of the stage couldn’t match the drama inside Cellini’s imagination. By telling his tall tales, Cellini earned himself a place in art and cultural history for all time.

Secondary to None

Baccio Bandinelli (1488/1493-1560), The Descent from the Cross, c. 1528/1529; pen and brown ink over black chalk (Private Collection)

The German artist Adolph Menzel lived the motto “Nulla dies sine linea,” or “No day without a line.” The artists featured in the National Gallery of Art’s exhibit Private Treasures: Four Centuries of European Master Drawings prove that those are excellent words to live by.

The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and The Morgan Library and Museum join together to present this incredible collection of European master drawings collected by a single, anonymous collector in just the last eleven years. As the Director’s forward to the catalogue says, “the quality of her collection bespeaks her profound knowledge and connoisseurship.” Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Andrew Robison of the National Gallery of Art and Rhoda Eitel-Porter and Jennifer Tonkovich of The Morgan Library and Museum not only have assembled a magnificent exhibit but have also written a beautiful and informative catalogue to compliment it.
One of the strengths of the collection is its early Italian drawings from the age of Michelangelo and Da Vinci. Neither of those greats appears here, but this exhibit demonstrates the massive depth and breadth of talent of draftsmanship during the Renaissance like few others. Familiar names such as Fra Bartolommeo, Correggio, Bronzino, Parmigianino, and Sodoma appear, but it is in the resurrection of these names as living, breathing artists that this exhibit excels. Baccio Bandinelli, once the rival of Michelangelo as a sculptor, lives again in the presentation of his boldly drawn, almost Michelangelo-esque Descent From the Cross (above) from 1528/1529. Even Giorgio Vasari, now known mainly for his Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, the first compilation of artist biographies and study of art history and styles, shows off his drafting skills. (As an added treat, one of Vasari’s drawings has notes for his Lives written on the back.)

Federico Barocci (probably 1535-1612), Madonna Reading, with the Christ Child on her Lap; verso, Torso of a Bearded Man, 1568/1580; black and red chalk with pink, light blue, yellow, orange, and brown-red pastel on blue-gray paper; verso, black chalk with pink, red, and brown pastel (Private Collection)

The Madonna Reading, with the Christ Child on her Lap (above), from 1568/1580, demonstrates the pioneering work in pastels by Federico Barocci. Pastels suffered under the misconception of being a lesser medium until the 19th century, but Barocci’s work proves that artists hundreds of years before Degas made that medium their own. Such re-evaluations of media and techniques lay at the heart of this exhibit and any exhibit on drawing, in my mind. Although many drawings are prepatory works for paintings, they should no longer be considered lesser works and should be appreciated for the techniques and talent behind them.


Ferdinand Bol (1616-1680), Christ and the Woman of Samaria, mid-1640s; pen and brown ink with brown and gray-brown wash with corrections in white (Private Collection)

The idea of drawings as primary works unto themselves, rather than servants of a final work, seems to originate with Rembrandt. In Ferdinand Bol’s Christ and the Woman of Samaria (above), from the 1640s, Bol uses the same vibrant lines and bold strokes of his teacher Rembrandt to revisit a familiar biblical scene and infuse it with new life. Rembrandt, who is not represented in the collection, looms over much of the drawing of the 17th century and later, freeing the medium of drawing from second-class status and freeing the hand of the artist from the purely classical lines of the Renaissance to express the emotional strokes of early Romanticism and Modernism.



Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), Moonlit Landscape with Lovers and a Church, 1797/1798; pen and dark brown ink with brown, gray, and blue washes, heightened with white and touched with yellow and pink chalks, over graphite, with border lines by the artist (?) in pen and black ink (Private Collection)

Caspar David Friedrich’s 1797/1798 A Moonlit Landscape With Lovers and a Church (above) heralds this new wave of Romanticism. Andrew Robison’s short essay accompanying this work deftly analyzes the potential symbolism of Friedrich’s tiny work and also places it within the context of his later, grander Romantic landscapes. The works collected from the 19th and 20th centuries represent a turn away from the earlier religious works towards more individualized, humanist subjects. For example, Ingres’ double portrait of himself and his wife offers a glimpse in graphite into the artist’s soul that few other works by him allow.



Adolph Menzel (1815-1905), Seated Man Leaning Forward, 1887; graphite with stumping (Private Collection)

Friedrich’s drawing is only part of the second area of strength of the collection—later German drawings. Adolf Menzel’s Elderly Man Leaning Forward (above) from 1887 is done entirely in graphite, showing how Menzel was able to master that deceptively simple format and construct an almost sculpturally solid portrait full of fascinating textures.

Käthe Kollwitz (1867 - 1945), Grieving Mother, 1903; black chalk and graphite on greenish wove paper (Private Collection)

Käthe Kollwitz’s Grieving Mother (above), related perhaps to her Mother and Dead Son series of 1903, continues the collection’s exploration of German draftsmanship. The exactingly drawn hands of the grieving mother, who may be resting her head on a pillow or her child’s dead body, express the anguish we cannot see in her hidden face. Kollwitz’s portrait of herself at 60 years of age, also in the collection, reveals the weariness and the pride of the artist with an honesty seldom seen outside of the portraits of Rembrandt.

I’m leaving out many of the well-known names also in this exhibit (Degas, Constable, Gainsborough, Delacroix, Fragonard, and Redon, to name a few) because the true stars of this collection are the medium of drawing and the vision of this single, anonymous collector. Such exhibits of the lost masters of the past as well as the forgotten aspects of better-known genius should go a long way in establishing the field of drawing and works on paper as second to none.

[Many thanks to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, for providing me with a review copy of the catalogue to Private Treasures: Four Centuries of European Master Drawings and the images from the exhibit.]