SOBRE TOTAL

Just as monographs on Michelangelo tend to focus on his role in designing and executing commissioned works of art, extended studies of significant patrons tend to incorporate artistic commissions as part of a larger narrative of the patron’s accomplishments. For example, William and Thomas Roscoe treat patronage projects of Leo X in the Vatican and Florence as straightforward examples of patronal erudition and munificence.13 Rodolfo Lanciani examines how Pope Paul III enriched the city and contributed to reconstructing Rome as a modern capital with ancient roots.14 Francis Haskell focuses on the patronage (rather than a broader biography) of several individuals in the seventeenth century. 15 In what some have dubbed the ‘hero-patron’ model, he treats patrons as artistic protagonists, working to secure artists and have their desired projects executed. More recent scholarship considers how patrons could construct identity, in part, by strategically collecting art, as well as commissioning new works.16 Each of these examples offers a valuable interpretation of how patrons used art to construct identity and convey meaning, but tends to consider the contributions and motivations of artists as secondary.

13

William Roscoe and Thomas Roscoe, The Life and Pontificate of Leo the Tenth (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1900).

14

Rodolfo Lanciani, The Golden Days of the Renaissance in Rome from the Pontificate

of Julius II to that of Paul III (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906). 15

Francis Haskell, Patrons and Painters: A Study in the Relations between Italian Art

and Society in the Age of the Baroque, revised and enlarged ed. (New Haven: Yale University

Press, 1980).

16

Dale Kent introduced the study of the “patron’s oeuvre” in Dale Kent, Cosimo de’

Medici. For additional analysis based on this model, see Maarten Delbeke, “Individual and

Institutional Identity: Galleries of Barberini Projects,” in Art and Identity in Early Modern Rome, ed. Jill Burke and Michael Bury (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008), 231-46.

17

In 1902, Aby Warburg suggested in a study of Florentine portraiture that works of art “owed their making to the mutual understanding between patrons and artists. The works were, from the outset, the results of a negotiation between client and executant.”17 The success of the patronage relationship between Paul and Michelangelo derives from an exceptional level of mutual understanding and collaboration. The pontiff was remarkably sensitive to the artist’s needs, which he consistently supported. Michelangelo devised innovative images that

demonstrate keen perception of Paul’s multi-faceted objectives. Their relationship corresponds to Warburg’s model, but it developed over the course of fifteen years and yielded multiple commissions.

In her exhaustive study on the artistic commissions and collection of Cosimo de’ Medici of Florence, Dale Kent presents a new approach to patronage studies.18 Rather than studying patterns of behavior among many patrons, she hones in on the collecting and commissioning of art by one individual. Characterizing this body of works as “the patron’s oeuvre,” she examines how Cosimo Il Vecchio systematically and consciously constructed his own heroic identity through the acquisition of art. By bringing together the entire body of works, Kent calls attention to recurrent themes that, as an ensemble, form an image of how the patron interpreted and

presented his role in the world. Dale Kent’s study is a model for examining a group of artworks with a common patron to draw out recurring themes.

17

Aby Warburg, “Art of Portraiture and the Florentine Bougeoisie,” in The Renewal of

Pagan Antiquity: Contributions to the Cultural History of the European Renaissance (Los

Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 1999), 187.

18

Dale Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici.

18

Part of the inspiration for Kent’s model is found in fifteenth-century sources that refer to patrons as “authors” of specific monuments or objects that they commissioned. For example, a prior of San Marco in Florence referred to Cosimo and Lorenzo de’ Medici as the “authors” of the convent’s rebuilding.19 Demonstrating how a patron may self-identify as creator, Dale Kent cites the enormous inscription on Santa Maria Novella in Florence which reads, in translation, “I, Giovanni Rucellai, son of Paolo, made this in the year of our Lord 1470.”20 Certainly Rome was replete with such inscriptions heralding patrons. In the Eternal City, pontifical imprese ensured that honor deriving from building or repairing churches, roads, and fountains would long be associated with patrons and their families. Such visual reminders were especially important for popes because the usual means of conferring honor and power onto their relations and

descendants were restricted. Throughout my study, I consider numerous factors that complicate attempts to identify either Paul or Michelangelo as sole “author” of the projects under

consideration.

Some recent scholarship emphasizes the role of the patron in determining the

iconography and appearance of commissioned works. In a collection of essays edited by Ian Verstegen, ten scholars examined how several generations of the Della Rovere family worked to

19

Dale Kent, Cosimo de' Medici, 5.

20

The inscription reads: “IOHANNES ORICELLARIUS PAUL[LI] FIL[IUS] AN[NO] SAL[VATIONIS] MCCCCLXX.” Transcribed and trans. Grant Allen, Florence, vol. 1. (Boston: L.C. Page & Co., 1902), 44.

19

construct familial identity through strategic commissions of art and architecture.21 Verstegen examines how Cardinal Giulio della Rovere (who was elevated to the cardinalate by Paul) strove to balance art patronage with a reform-inspired restraint over a period that included reigns of six popes after Paul III. This delicate balance between magnificent display and piety is a constant influence on art, and a theme that warrants careful consideration. In a collection of essays edited by Jill Burke and Michael Bury focusing on patronage and the formation of identity in Rome, several contributors continue this trend of delving deeply into patronage from multiple

perspectives. Addressing the multi-faceted motivations behind papal art commissions, Maarten Delbeke examines how the “double imperative” of promoting the office of the pope as well as supporting personal and familial aspirations played out in the art patronage of Urban VIII (1623- 29).22 In a similar vein, I contend with Paul’s overlapping agendas in relation to Michelangelo’s projects at the Vatican. Frescoes in the Pauline Chapel suggest continuity from the apostolic Church to the modern papacy while the structure commemorates the patron’s munificence and piety. While consideration of layers of meaning and concurrent messages tailored to multiple audiences necessarily creates a complicated interpretation of works of art, the resulting analysis expresses the sophistication of the project as intended by the artist and patron.

21

In the introduction, Ian Verstegen ties together the essays as studies of different Della Rovere agents in different times that return repeatedly to identifications of the family with scholastic-Franciscan origins as a means of identifying the family as “enlightened nobility” in competition with the traditional status of “ancient nobility.” Ian Verstegen, ed., Patronage and

Dynasty: The Rise of the Della Rovere in Renaissance Italy (Kirksville, MO: Truman State

University Press, 2007), xiv.

22

Delbeke, “Individual and Institutional Identity,” 231-32. 20