(Dis) Assembling: Marsyas, Michelangelo, and The Accademia Del Disegno Author(s) : Fredrika Jacobs Source: The Art Bulletin, Sep., 2002, Vol. 84, No. 3 (Sep., 2002), Pp. 426-448 Published By: CAA

(Dis)assembling: Marsyas, Michelangelo, and the Accademia del Disegno
Author(s): Fredrika Jacobs

Source: The Art Bulletin , Sep., 2002, Vol. 84, No. 3 (Sep., 2002), pp. 426-448
Published by: CAA
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3177307
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
CAA is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Art Bulletin
This content downloaded from

177.102.113.160 on Mon, 17 May 2021 16:42:04 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
(Dis)assembling: Marsyas, Michelangelo,
and the Accademia del Disegno
Fredrika Jacobs
[Marsyas's] sinews lie bare, his veins throb and quiver with There, onJuly 14, 1564, a huge catafalque glorified in image
no skin to cover them.... .-Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.389-901 what the subsequent publication of both the funeral oration
and a detailed description of the temporary monument
Merciful to others and merciless only to itself,
would memorialize in word. A finished drawing in the Codex
a lowly creature's born, who with pain and sorrow
clothes another's hand and strips off its own skin, Resta, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, attributed to the provveditore,
and only through death might be called truly born. or comptroller, of the academy, Zanobi di Bernardo Lastri-
-Michelangelo, "D'altrui pietoso e sol di se spietato," cati (1508-1590), records what is generally understood to be
ca. 15352 the design of the catafalque (Fig. 1). A descriptive text by a
different and later hand supplements the image. In essence it
Disaffected with the Medici and sought after by the newly
matches the description of the temporary structure given in
elected Farnese pope, Michelangelo locked the doors of his
the 1564 Orazionefunerale di M. Benedetto Varchifatta, e recitata
Via Mozza workshop and left Florence for Rome on Septem-
da Lui pubblicamente nell'essequie di Michelangnolo in Firenze.... 7
ber 20, 1534. Thereafter absent from the city that had nur-
The drawing in the Codex Resta and the account of the
tured him, Michelangelo would nonetheless retain a com-
obsequies in Benedetto Varchi's Orazione detail the great
manding presence among Florentine artists and conoscenti,
catafalque as a freestanding multistoried monument. The
who, together with the duke, did all they could to identify the
first and second stories of each side were decorated with
city's artistic heritage, style, and workshop practices with the
paintings illustrating significant events in Michelangelo's life
departed master. In myriad ways, the founding and govern-
ing statutes of Florence's art academy, the Accademia et Lastricati's drawing visually documents two of the eight pain
Compagnia dell'Arte del Disegno, reflect efforts to advance ings described by Varchi as having been on the erected
the belief that Michelangelo's incomparability both defined monument. Of the two preserved, the iconography of one o
and mirrored the city's own artistic preeminence, which in the second tier deserves careful consideration (Fig. 2). D
turn owed much to Medici largess.3 Instituted onJanuary 13, vided roughly into thirds, it shows on the left Lorenzo d
1563, the Accademia del Disegno amended its rules and Medici (1449-1492) receiving the young artist. Michelang
regulations on July 1 to include the requirement that all lo's David, 1501-4, occupies the right-hand side of the com-
academy members attend an annual "anathomia," or dissec- position. Clearly discernible between the scene of reception
tion. The mandate can be seen as implicitly recognizing three on the left and the famous gigante pictured on the right is a
things. First, Michelangelo's rendering of the human form arched portal, obviously flanked by two bound figures. One
was perfect and paradigmatic. Second, this perfection re- has its arms secured above its head, tautly stretching the bod
flected a profound knowledge of anatomy. Third, a course of into a rigid vertical. The other figure, which appears to hav
study based on Michelangelo's practices, notably his study of its hands bound behind its back, does not share the vertical
anatomy, would provide the academy's seventy-five members axis of its pendant. This figure seems either to have collapsed,
with a means to perfect their own styles.4 At Michelangelo's the knees having buckled under the weight of the body, or,
funeral one year later these contentions were revisited, ag- more likely, to be seated. Although Varchi identifies the
grandized, and mythologized. Marsyas, or rather the restored subject of this catafalque painting as Lorenzo il Magnifico
ancient statues of the Phrygian satyr marking the entrance
welcoming Michelangelo into his sculpture garden, he says
into the Medici garden, which was widely recognized as the
nothing about the figure-flanked portal that so conspicuously
precursor to the Accademia del Disegno, assumed a defining
occupies the central position of the painting recorded by
role in this process.
Lastricati. He had no need to do so. By the time Varchi stood
Two months after the January 1563 inauguration of Flor-
before the great catafalque to eulogize Michelangelo, Loren-
ence's Accademia del Disegno, Giorgio Vasari wrote to Mich-
zo's sculpture garden and Michelangelo's place within it had
elangelo in Rome informing him that the academicians had
become legendary.8 The pair of statues positioned at the
unanimously elected him as one of the two capi, or nominal
entrance into this celebrated site, each one a representation
heads, of the fledgling institution.5 The honor of the posi-
tion, which he shared with Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, was not of the satyr Marsyas, were also celebrated. As Lastricati's
enough to entice the revered master back to Florence. Only drawing suggests, the distinguished status of the statues partly
his death in February of the following year at last ended arose from the association with Lorenzo's garden. But, again
Michelangelo's three-decade absence from the city. Deter- as implied by Lastricati's drawing, the Marsyas figures did
mined to honor the man who for thirty-two years had been more than identify a place. As their prominence on this
called divine, academy members focused their collective tal- particular monument suggests, the two Marsyas statues were
ents on the organization of an elaborate funeral.6 The site also and unequivocally identified with Michelangelo and thus
selected for the service was the Medici church of S. Lorenzo. with the excellence and academic values of la terza maniera.

177.102.113.160 on Mon, 17 May 2021 16:42:04 UTC
MARSYAS, MICHELANGELO, AND THE ACCADEMIA DEL DISEGNO 427
1
I/( '
^^Tri^A i-??A IffV
?; ,,, ,, r/
< *;J.^
0,tA*./
,hiX.noOt *"
L.irtyrc , t .
uf.'l~[,a. A --- ?
/ 0,g.q. S
.,(*.L4 . l y ,.,~ . /'

.... ,.^ V .... - ^7^
'^ ...c.,, ,z. ?t/,;,, * '-^.u- o ,,_
--..-..J ).'___!
PITTOr,
- ^.t I~ C^i/.^y.^t*
),*r4^t
o ,. R u .<^ ./^# '1
^-u ~~4kYI ^ ^ n6'^;.~??
9..:f,.,,,,~, d,;ss1i,,,,?.
| llttr It rtC t<elc~

.^_- A ,,,,,,,.t,t_
_./,."e ,^ .t,- , ,r ^ *,,
/ ^5^
Pl TTOR I
ror! P (e} SrexesD .:c
eG MetA %eYlr*'L
SCVLTOR1
^- :O?a/1'*'.*
r'CttK CDi t l ^ t . |
(2E7L ,t 8 : ^7',,-
s !
'~~~
or : . :: i.....' i ^ 't
von1 > t tz-. ,-0 ,<x R Ir" ""'s ' ..'..: / t ..- .-^.^ ..":.A'-
. , ; ^ .._^ ;~.< . .>< . ?<' ,,< ? * ,,,;C* _ ',.<?l ,.,,:, ,,r,:*/, ;. ...:.. . ~..;..: . .( .- , .,.._ * : .. /!o ;....' .:.. c ,.. s, St - .......d ? C t ...
1 Za
.-? , ,~ - - '' , ...... .Y
Cata
Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana
The Medici Garden(s) and Its Portal Magnificent ... found the
According to Ascanio Condivi and Giorgio Vasari, Michelan- and, approaching quite n
gelo made his debut in Lorenzo's garden, which, because of the excellence of the wo
the many ancient and Renaissance works of art within it, was tells the tale in like deta
a veritable "school" for artists.9 In his Life of Michelangelo and the mastery of the w
Buonarroti, 1553, Condivi relates how the painter Francesco ensuing magnanimity. Ii
Granacci, "perceiv[ing] the boy's inclination and burning would come to be known a
desire" to advance his art while recognizing the inability hold "as a son."
and/or reluctance of his master, Domenico Ghirlandaio, to Regardless of whether or not Michelangelo first encoun-
assist him in this endeavor, took the youth to "the Medici tered Lorenzo as related by Condivi and Vasari, the bond
Garden at San Marco, which Lorenzo the Magnifi- between the artist and the Medici family was real. Not only
cent... had adorned with figures and various ancient stat- were the Buonarroti related distantly to the Medici, but also
ues." Happening on an ancient Head of a Faun, Michelangelo in 1515 Leo X (Giovanni de' Medici) acknowledged the
"decided to copy it in marble." "In the midst of this, the familial tie, conferring on the Buonarroti the right to add the

177.102.113.160 on Mon, 17 May 2021 16:42:04 UTC
428 ART BULLETIN SEPTEMBER 2002 VOLUME LXXXIV NUMBER 3
2 Detail of Fig. 1
Medici palle to their own coat of arms.10 As for the fabled locus of creative and intellective gatherings, a place where
garden, at the time of Michelangelo's death it was already artists, poets, philosophers, and princes conversed as they
being touted as the precursor to the recently instituted Ac- gazed on ancient objects of beauty. In actuality, the idyllic
cademia del Disegno, and the presence of two ancient sculp- Medici garden referred to by Vasari in his Lives is a composite
tures of Marsyas on either side of its entrance gate was of Lorenzo's garden and one created by his grandfather
unquestioned. That Michelangelo, a capo of the Accademia Cosimo il Vecchio (1389-1464).13 Cosimo had a small gar-
den occupying the area behind the palatial Medici residence
del Disegno, had in his youth frequented the garden to study
the collected artworks exhibited within its hallowed walls did
that fronted onto the Via Larga. As Condivi notes in his Life
more than enrich the academy-garden association, it effec-of Michelangelo, that belonging to Lorenzo was located further
north on the Via Larga, at the corner of the Piazza S. Marco
tively and apocryphally transformed the site into a place that
both Varchi and Vasari called "una scuola" and "una acca- and the Via degli Arazzeri.'4 In contrast to the small garden
demia." But much about Lorenzo's sculpture garden requiresbehind the Medici Palace, this consisted of a large tract of
closer scrutiny, for there are many indications thatland that combined Lorenzo's garden with one that came
Condivi's
and especially Vasari's Laurentian garden is a purposeful into the possession of his wife, Clarice Orsini, in 1480.
compilation of half-truths and re-sitings in which twoEven Medicibefore it was combined with the Orsini property,
gardens merge to become the precursor to the Accademia Lorenzo's garden held cultural significance, so much so, in
fact, that by 1480 it was a designated stop for tourists
del Disegno. Reflecting the cultural politics of mid-sixteenth-
century Florence, it was of critical importance thatvisiting
the late the city. Cosimo's garden-or more specifically the
fifteenth-century garden scuola, which brought together gate that
art-opened into it from the Borgo S. Lorenzo (now
ists under the aegis of a Medici prince, be recognized Via de'as
Ginori)-seems
an to have had its own attraction. In
"important family precedent."" 1536 Johannes Fichard, a jurist from Frankfurt visiting
Already in the 1550 edition of The Lives of the Most Florence,
Eminent described it in his travel diary.l5 One entered the
Painters, Sculptors, and Architects the always politicallygarden by means of an arched portal flanked by classical
astute
Vasari had paid homage to the Medici as generoussculptures patronsof Marsyas, who, according to the Ovidian myth,
who wisely recognized the visual arts as something more unwisely ventured into a musical contest with the god Apollo
than
craft and regarded artists-like himself-as men and whothenpos- suffered the gruesome consequences of inevitable
sessed something far greater than manual skill. Vasari defeat.
ampli-
As described by Fichard, the statues depicted Marsyas
fied these tributes in the significantly enlarged edition in two clearly
of distinctive poses. One of the statues repre-
1568, revealing the interests of the academicians, the sented
duke,the satyr seated, the other tied to a tree and flayed.
and, at least to some degree, the author's new position Although
within Vasari had worked in the Medici Palace (on a now
the Medici court. On December 15, 1554, Vasari had entered lost fresco series from Caesar's Commentaries) two years before
the service of Duke Cosimo with an annual stipend of 300 Fichard recorded the appearance of the Marsyas portal that
ducats. While his personal fortunes certainly generated some led into the garden behind the palazzo, by the time he wrote
of the book's more sycophantic passages, the family did in The Lives he seems to have become somewhat confused.
fact have a history of magnanimity that Cosimo I sought to Whether by happenstance or design, he obfuscates what w
revive.12 Among the many examples of Medicean cultural in Cosimo's garden and what was in Lorenzo's and, by exte
munificence, the sculpture garden of Lorenzo il Magnifico sion, which garden boasted the gate flanked by two statues
stood out. Indeed, as it is presented in The Lives, it is a Marsyas. On one point, however, he is perfectly clear. Bot
mythologized site of prophetic and propitious import, the gardens function as a "school" and/or "academy." Thus, fo

177.102.113.160 on Mon, 17 May 2021 16:42:04 UTC
example, in the life of Pietro Torrigiano (1472-1528), Vasari cover them: you could count the entrails as they palpitate,
and the vitals showing clearly in his breast... all wept for
describes "the loggia, the walks, and all the apartments"
fronting a garden "on the Piazza di San Marco," that is,him." As Marsyas dies and those witnessing the atrocity weep,
Lorenzo's garden, as having been "filled with the best ancienta metamorphosis begins to take place. "The fertile earth was
statuary ... [and] adorned with ancient noble figures of mar-soaked [with tears], and soaking caught those tears and
ble, pictures and other such things, made by the hands of the drank them deep into her veins [fertilis immaduit madefactaque
best masters who ever lived." Together, the collected works terra caducas concepit lacrimas ac venis perbibit imis]," at last
"were like a school and academy for young painters and dispersing them as a river. Marsyas the satyr is thus trans-
sculptors, as well as for all others who attended the arts of formed into Marsyas "the clearest river in all Phrygia."19
design."16 Michelangelo was among this privileged group.17 Ancient depictions of Marsyas show the satyr at one of
The life of Mariotto Albertinelli (1471-1515) mentions an-
three moments in the Ovidian narrative. In the first, Marsyas
other garden, "full of feminine and masculine torsi that werereaches for the discarded flute as Athena counsels him to
not only lo studio of Mariotto but of all the sculptors and leave it where it lies. In the second, the satyr, seated with hi
painters of his time," situated "on the side toward San hands bound behind his back, turns and twists against h
Lorenzo," that is, behind Cosimo's palace.18 The instruc-constraints to look up at the victorious and vengeful god in
tional as well as aesthetic function of these gardens-or final and fruitless appeal for mercy. The satyr's companion
rather, this composite garden-best explains the prominentOlympus, is sometimes pictured pleading on behalf of Mars
yas. Finally, his wrists tied to a tree high above his hea
position afforded the portal pictured between the scene of
Lorenzo welcoming Michelangelo (presumably to his gar- Marsyas hangs helplessly, his torture imminent or havin
den) and the image of the David on the catafalque erectedalready begun (Fig. 3). A pendant figure, the executione
for the great master's obsequies. Beyond identifying the por- kneels to sharpen the blade that will peel the satyr's skin fro
tal as the entrance into the Laurentian precursor to Cosimo'shis body.20 Some sixteenth-century illustrations of the myt
Accademia del Disegno, the statues of Marsyas, according to conflate the second and third types. The woodcut in Vita et
Vasari, stood as examples of the perfection of art. Moreover,Metamorfosei d'Ovidio of 1559 portrays Marsyas pinned again
the ancient torso fragments of the flayed satyr could not helpa tree, his right arm pulled back instead of up, his lef
stretched forward by Apollo, who holds the satyr's wrist (Fi
but raise the specter of anatomical dissection. In turn, dissec-
tion inevitably brought to mind the pervasive belief that the 4). Depictions of Marsyas during the final excruciating mo-
perfection of Michelangelo's rendering of the human form ments of his life are of the so-called "hanging" or "red" type
resulted from anatomical study. It was this acknowledgmentThe color alludes to the flayed body and the red porphy
that undergirded the Accademia del Disegno statute requir- that was often but not always used in sculptural renderings
ing its members to attend an annual anatomical dissection. the satyr. One of the Medici garden portal statues, accordin
to the descriptions of both Johannes Fichard and Giorg
Marsyas: Myth, Representation, and Meaning Vasari, represented a "hanging" Marsyas. Known throug
fifty-nine
The myth of Marsyas related by Ovid is perhaps the grimmest typologically identical statues based on a Perg
and most repellent story in the Metamorphoses. The goddessmene original, this Marsyas type is the sort Pliny described
Athena invented a double-reed flute but threw it away in
having been painted by Zeuxis.21 A so-called Marsyas religatu
disgust when she realized that playing it distorted her face. depicts the satyr at the preceding moment in the story. Th
Marsyas happened on the instrument and, despite Athena's Marsyas type, which matches a description in Philostratus's
warnings, picked it up and mastered it. Then, with unfor- Imagines, became widely disseminated through numerou
tunate shortsightedness and unimaginable hubris, he pro- copies and variants of an antique carnelian known as the Sea
claimed himself the greatest of musicians. Piqued by such a of Nero (Fig. 5).22 Before reaching the Museo Nazionale
presumptuous claim, Apollo, a virtuoso on the lyre and the Naples, the greatly celebrated intaglio, which features
seated, bound, and fearful Marsyas, his pleading discip
principal god of divination and the arts, challenged the satyr
to a musical contest. After agreeing to the terms of the Olympus, and an indifferent Apollo, passed through t
competition-the victor was entitled to subject the van-hands of a succession of collectors, including Lorenzo d
quished to whatever punishment he wished-Marsyas and Medici.23 Besides being reproduced as a plaquette cast (
Apollo set to the task at hand. The satyr's defeat was, of which seventy still survive), Lorenzo's gem was further pop
course, preordained not only by the nature of the challenge,ularized by its inclusion in Vincenzo Cartari's Le vere e nov
which had been devised by the god, but also by the compo- imagini de gli dei delli antichi, 1556 (Fig. 6), as well as throug
the production of decorative bronzes, some of which fun
sition of the jury impaneled by Apollo. "I challenge you to do
with your instrument [the flute] as much as I can do with tioned as finials or lid handles for inkwells and oil lamps.24
mine [the lyre]. Turn it upside down and both play and singThe Marsyas statuette placed on the keyboard of the clav
at the same time." The failure of Marsyas to make music from
cytherium in Andrea Sacchi's Allegorical Portrait of the Sing
Marcantonio Pasqualini (ca. 1640) pictures a decorative Ma
an inverted flute while simultaneously singing meant that
Apollo's fellow Olympians and the Muses could do no less
syas religatus (Figs. 7, 8).25
than give the deity a favorable verdict. In a particularly hor- Despite their detail, Giorgio Vasari's several descriptions o
rific passage, Ovid describes the satyr's fate. "'Why do you the figures on either side of the portal into the Medici gard
tear me from myself?' ... As he screams his skin is stripped lack the specificity of Fichard's diary entry. Whereas t
German jurist pointed out the different poses of each Mar-
off the surface of his body ... blood flows down on every side,
the sinews lie bare, his veins throb and quiver with no skin to
syas, Vasari identifies clearly only one. Perhaps because of th

177.102.113.160 on Mon, 17 May 2021 16:42:04 UTC
-t
4 Apollo and Marsyas, from Vita et Metamorfosei d'Ovidio: Figurato

abbreviaro in forma d 'epigrammi, 1559. New York, The New York
Public Library
courtyard of the Medici home" reside several works by Do-

natello, who, at Cosimo's request, "was also responsible for
the restoration of an ancient statue of Marsyas in white
marble erected at the entrance gate into the garden."26 The
next reference appears in the life of Andrea del Verrocchio
(1435-1488). The "statue in white marble of Marsyas, bound
to a tree trunk and ready to be flayed" that stood inside the
"garden gate, or rather [Cosimo's] courtyard that opens onto
the Via de' Ginori," gained a porphyry pendant. This one,
which had been acquired by Lorenzo, is described as "very
ancient" and, even in its ruinous state, "much more beautiful
than the other." Although the fragmentary Marsyas report-
edly consisted of only "a torso with a head," Vasari says
nothing about the head. FIe has much to say concerning the
torso, however:
The ancient torso . . . was wrought with such care and

judgment that certain delicate white veins, which were in
the red stone, were carved . . . exactly in the right places so
as to appear to be little nerves, as seen in real bodies when
they have been flayed. Originally this must have made that
work . . . appear to be a most lifelike thing [cosa vivissima] .27
In these passages Vasari explicitly identifies one Marsyas

figure and suggests strongly that the second was of the "hang-
ing" or "red" type. Although carved in white marble, Cosi-
mo's statue depicting the satyr "bound to a tree and ready to
3 C. Randon, Marsia scorticato da Apollo, engraving, 17th
be flayed" is incontestably a "hanging" or "red" Marsyas.
century, identified as "from the Medici Garden [negl'orti
lMedicei] " Vasari's description of the torso acquired by Lorenzo, so
expertly rendered that the porphyry appears to be a "real
bod[y] when [it has] been flayed," insinuates that it belongs
in the same category. A pair of "hanging" Marsyas statues in
fragmentary state of the second statue at the time of its the Uffizi, one white and the other red, appear to substanti-
acquisition, Vasari chose to celebrate the ancient torso as a ate what these two passages imply: the Marsyases at the en-
masterful, indeed, paradigmatic example of virtuosity rather trance to the Medici garden depicted the satyr at a point after
than describe the restored whole, which would have disclosed the flaying has begun.28 Vasari's focus on the ancient and
the figure type. The first reference to an ancient Marsyas can "most lifelike" porphyry torso should be taken for what it
be found in the life of Donatello (ca. 1382/86-1466) . "In the is a pointed and didactic signification and not for what it

177.102.113.160 on Mon, 17 May 2021 16:42:04 UTC
5 Apollo, Marsyas, and Olympus, Florentine, 15th century, copy

of the Seal of Nero. Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art,
Widener Collection (photo: ? 2001 Board of Trustees,
National Gallery of Art)
6 Apollo and Marsyas, from Vincenzo Cartari, Le vere e nove

imagini, 1556. Rome, Biblioteca Angelica
is not-a straightforward description of a second "hanging"
Marsyas. He makes this clear in the third reference to the
satyr statues.
The third reference to the two Marsyases, because of its uses the Marsyas, replete with added parts, to demon-
Vasari
place in The Lives and the treatment that Vasari accords strate
it, the stylistic shift from the second era to the third while
distinguishes the porphyry Marsyas as a work of criticalsimultaneously
im- illustrating the excellences that tie modernity
to of
port.29 It appears in the preface to part three, the section antiquity. Thus distinguished, the porphyry Marsyas be-
comes in every sense a pivotal work of art for sixteenth-
Vasari's voluminous history of Renaissance art that sets forth
century aesthetics. It at once illustrates the accomplishments
the stylistic excellence of la terza maniera by both contrasting
of the ancients, points to the weaknesses of artists of the
it with the preceding second style and arguing that it first
appropriated, then bested, the paradigm of the antique. In
immediate past, and, with reference to academic theories of
order to define the third style art historically and thus imitation
aes- and the recently instituted practices of anatomical
dissection, heralds future achievements. Here, as elsewhere
thetically, Vasari revisits Verrocchio's decidedly second-style
restoration of Lorenzo's Marsyas fragment. Significantly, throughout
in The Lives, Vasari chose his representative exam-
the proemio alla parte terza, it is the only specific work ple
of with care and didactic intent. The academicians who
designed
art-or, more accurately, part of a specific work-that is the imagery to be placed on Michelangelo's cata-
falque displayed equal judiciousness in the specificity of their
actually described rather than merely named. In fact, rather
than simply cite it among the rediscovered ancient worksiconographic selections. One must conclude, therefore, that
the Marsyas myth and the porphyry Marsyas torso at the
listed in the preface, Vasari sets the Marsyas torso apart.
entrance into the Medici garden were invested with much
Juxtaposing the ancient torso with its fifteenth-century addi-
meaning. The collection of paintings in the Casa Buonarroti
tions, he condemns Verrocchio's replacement limbs as "lack-
ing a certain finish and finality of perfection." Whilethat thepay homage to Michelangelo and conspicuously feature
porphyry fragment appears to quiver with life, the arms, alegs,
torso, such as Cristofano Allori's Portrait of Michelangelo with
hands, and feet made by Verrocchio seem lifeless. Like so
a Hovering Muse, begun 1615, alludes to the nature of that
meaning (Fig. 9).30
much of the art produced during the second era, they reveal
The Marsyas myth has frequently been read as a warning
the artist's straining to capture "that finish and that certain
against the arrogance of claiming godlike abilities and a
something" that is the mark of perfection. Such effort robs
condemnation of the uncultured stupidity on which such
art of its immediacy and vibrancy because it inevitably results
claims rest.31 Conversely and more recently it has been said:
in "drying out style [insecchisce la maniera]." In other words,

177.102.113.160 on Mon, 17 May 2021 16:42:04 UTC
-g-
- -
a
l 2 -
l l -
I
I
7 Andrea Sacchi, Allegorical Portrait of the Singer Marcantonio Pasqualini, ca. 1640. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Purchase, Enid A. Haupt Gift and Gwynne Andres Fund, 1981 (photo: (C) 1982 The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

177.102.113.160 on Mon, 17 May 2021 16:42:04 UTC
I j. . . ..
.~~~~~~~~~~ ~ ~~~~~~~ .' I . . ;,i . . I

.. . ., .
. --IL-
8 Detail of Fig. 7
The great Renaissance painters sensed in Marsyas an af-

finity to their own existence as artists.... Marsyas suffers
torture as a chosen one, and Apollo absorbs himself in the
sacrificial process as an instrument of necessity. He wields
the knife much as the engraver guides his burin over the
plate.... Marsyas is... a martyr for art. Art is meant to
radiate through his agonizing death, as does the assurance
of Christian salvation through Christ's sacrifice. Marsyas has
the pious, humble relentlessness of the Christian saint.32
In other words, Marsyas can be understood as a "metaphor of

voluntary sacrificial self-transcendence," which thus links him
typologically with the flayed Saint Bartholomew.33 Marsyas
himself has been invoked as emblematic of the beauty of
wisdom veiled by a brutish exterior. Alcibiades' praise of Soc-
rates in Plato's Symposium is the principal example of this.34 The
language of the Metamorphoses suggests a third possibility, one
9 Cristofano Allori, Portrait of Michelangelo with a Hovering
that would not have lacked its own logic for a sixteenth-
Muse. Florence, Casa Buonarroti (photo: Alinari)
century audience versed in the theoretical literature of
the creative process and one with particular resonance for
Michelangelo's catafalque.
In his phrase, "The fertile earth was soaked, and soaking
caught those tears and drank them deep into her veins," this creative context. For example, in his commentary on the
Ovid's use of the term concepire, which means "to absorb"text,
(as Raphael Regius associates the satyr with audacia, or
liquid), "to catch" (as fire), or "to conceive" (as a child),
imaginative daring and a creative assumption of artistic li-
cense.38 In the parlance of sixteenth-century Italy the act of
especially since it is associated with the fertility of the earth,
does more than evoke the restorative and regenerative pow- imagining, a word that comes from the Latin imaginare,
ers of nature.35 During the Renaissance, belief in the long- meaning "to form an image or to represent," suggests the
recognized metaphorical likeness of physiological and artisticgenesis of an idea and a series of conceptual metamorphoses
creation reached its apogee.36 Each of these creative that
pro-enable an artist's concetto to be transformed into a visible
cesses was deemed indispensable to its counterpart asimage
the or object. As both Michelangelo and Francesco Bocchi
ideal means of explaining the other; each was viewed as thethe creative process is also one of penetration (penetrare)
note,
ontological model from which the other took its being. It and
is flaying (scorzare) in the sense of peeling away layers to
not hard to see how the metaphor works. Ideas, like children,discover the hidden secrets of nature and art.39 To put it
are frequently said to be conceived during the heat ofanother pas- way, the skin of a marble block is cut away in order
sion, which, at its greatest intensity, is wholly absorbing. that
Apol-a sculpture can come into existence. Without doubt,
lonio Filarete took full advantage of the analogical likenessnotions of regeneration are intertwined with those of gener-
when, pointing to "the way a mother gives birth to a child ation and, consequently, artistic creation. Benvenuto Cellini's
after nine months," he explains to a patron how an architec- account of having reheated cooled bronze and thereby "hav-
tural design is first generated, then realized.37 The language
ing resuscitated the dead [avere risuscitato un morto]" with his
Perseus
Ovid employed in the Marsyas myth can be understood in and Medusa, 1545-54, and Vasari's description of

177.102.113.160 on Mon, 17 May 2021 16:42:04 UTC
cetto," of about 1538-44, a work noted for the author's

Michelangelo's making of David as an act of resurrection
(risuscitare) speak to this concept.40 revelations of artistic theory.45 In his second lezzione Varchi
The appropriateness of the theme of metamorphic regen- weighed the comparative values of the arts of painting and
eration to a sepulchral monument is obvious. Leaving aside sculpture against one another and against that of poetry. In
the association of the flayed Marsyas with the martyred Saintorder to present a balanced view of the paragone, a debate
Bartholomew and all the implications of Christian salvation about which of the arts was superior, Varchi had solicited
comments from four painters and four sculptors, among
that inhere in it, the price paid by the satyr for his audacia is,
albeit in a far more limited way, one also paid by Michelan- them the venerable Michelangelo. Although Michelangelo's
gelo. According to Condivi, Michelangelo worked all day with voice was only one of the eight that informed Varchi's second
such intensity that he often collapsed on his bed exhausted lecture, its resonance is no less audible than in the first. It is
and fully clothed. When he finally put down his brushes andfair to say that by 1564 the opinions of this already deified
undressed, he ripped away the skin on his feet in removing artista divino had acquired a reverential ring. Indeed, remarks
credited to him-"come diceva Michelangelo"-had already
his paint-spattered and paint-filled boots.41 While Condivi
compares this tearing off of skin to the shedding of skin by begun
a their advance down a distinguished path. Around
snake-a comparison that underscores the notion of regen- midcentury Michelangelo's ideas started to make their way
eration-the image of Michelangelo conjured by Condivi is into virtually every dialogue, treatise, and letter written by,
for, to, or about artists and art, including, among others,
of complete absorption in and self-sacrifice to the creative
process. When, in the Divine Comedy, Dante requests Apollo-Paolo Pino's Dialogo di pittura, 1548, Lodovico Dolce's Dialogo
nian inspiration, an inspiration he describes as "enter[ing]
della pittura intitolato l'Aretino, 1557, Vincenzo Danti's II primo
into my breast and breath[ing] there as when you drewlibro del trattato delle perfette proporzioni, 1567, Raffaello Borghi-
Marsyas from the sheath of his limbs," he, too, speaks to a ni's Il riposo, 1584, Gian Paolo Lomazzo's Trattato dell'arte della
poignant metamorphosis of creativity, identifying himself aspittura, scoltura et architettura, 1584, and Idea del tempio della
much with the satyr as with the god.42 In light of Michelan-pittura, 1590, Giovan Battista Armenini's De' veri precetti della
gelo's famed knowledge of and affinity for Dante, the impli-pittura, 1587, and Gregorio Comanini's II Figino, 1591.46 Al-
cations of the imagery make perfect sense in the context ofthough some theorists, most notably Lodovico Dolce, stri-
Michelangelo's catafalque and the prominent reference todently argued against the Michelangelo model, the members
the Marsyas gate on it.43 of Florence's Accademia del Disegno, who had assembled on
But it was not simply the legend of Marsyas, replete withthat July day in 1564 to hear Varchi's tribute, revered the
implications of metamorphic regeneration, that made the artist, his works, and his ideas as paradigmatic. In life he had
satyr's presence on the funerary monument appropriate andembodied the ideals of the new academy. In 1564 he symbol-
meaningful. It was the combination of the Marsyas myth with ized them.
the Medici garden portal. In a variety of ways the Marsyas In this atmosphere of glorification and appropriation,
portal speaks to the creative process. It alludes to the learningLorenzo de' Medici's sculpture garden by the Piazza S. Marco
and making that were nurtured in the garden. It signifies themetamorphosed into the prototype for Florence's newly in-
metamorphic process by which soft clay is modeled into stituted a academy. Mentioned in Vasari's life of Michelangelo,
figure, the transformation of an image in the mind's eye intodescribed at length in the biography of Torrigiano, and
a painting for all to see, and the transmogrification of afeatured in the lives of Mariotto Albertinelli, Andrea Sanso-
marble block into the head of a faun. And, finally, it identifies vino, Francesco Granacci, Giuliano Bugiardini, and Giovan
a mythic realm associated not only with Marsyas but also byFrancesco Rustici, the "giardin de' Medici di San Marco" is
implication with the triumph of Apollo and thereby with allunequivocally identified by Varchi as the Laurentian precur-
artistic enterprise. In other words, it recalled Dante's under-sor to the Accademia del Disegno.47 The collected works
standing of Apollonian inspiration. Finally, with reference to within its walls "were like a school and academy for young
the analogical likeness of the artista divino and the Deus artifex, painters and sculptors, as well as for all others who attended
it is notable that in the preface to The Lives Vasari employs the the arts of design."48 Vasari's choice of descriptive terms-
same terms used by Ovid-concepire and nutrire-to describe "scuola ed accademia"-was pointed, predictable, and bor-
God's creation of man, "il primo modello." In the early yearsrowed.49 In his eulogy to Michelangelo, Varchi had called the
of the 1560s this web of meanings had particular significance garden "una scuola, e Accademia."50 Reportedly, it was here,
for two events-the founding of the Accademia del Disegno passing between the red and white Marsyas statues, that the
and the funeral of Michelangelo. Like Marsyas bound to his youthful Michelangelo came to see the collection of antiqui-
tree, these events were inextricably tied to one another, theties assembled by the Medici and hear what the sculptor
cord binding them having been secured years before. Bertoldo di Giovanni (ca. 1440-1491), a disciple of Do-
natello, had to say about them.51
Disegno For Vasari as well as for his friend and literary adviser
During the period of Lent in 1547, the humanist, historian, Vincenzo Borghini, who also served as the Accademia del
and philologist Benedetto Varchi delivered two lectures to Disegno's deputy, Michelangelo's funeral and the academy's
the Accademia Fiorentina, an incorporated but unofficial founding came in the midst of efforts to revise The Lives.
sapienza, or college, dedicated to promoting the edifying Predictably, a notable number of additions to the greatly
activities of "reasoning, discussing, reading [and] disput- expanded book reflect the academic preoccupations of its
ing."44 The first of Varchi's lectures, or lezzioni, was an analysis author and his collaborator. For example, several passages on
of Michelangelo's poem "Non ha l'ottima artista alcun con- study (studio, pratica, and esercizio) as well as numerous brief

177.102.113.160 on Mon, 17 May 2021 16:42:04 UTC
asides, including those advocating anatomical dissection in- of perfection, the crown and glory of the three sister arts.59
serted into the lives of Donatello, Verrocchio, and Raphael, The device easily lent itself to the Accademia del Disegno. In
echo the instructional statutes promulgated by the academy. addition to its association with the academy's nominal heads,
However, it is the discourse on disegno, which was added asMichelangelo
a and Duke Cosimo (as well as its earlier three-
foreword to the technical essay On Painting preceding the ring variant), it also visualized the theoretical premise on
actual corpus of lives, that articulates best Vasari's concerns
which the institution was founded: one principle, disegno,
about and aspirations for the recently established Accademia united the three arts.
del Disegno. Vasari's definition of disegno accommodates Michelange-

Disegno signifies both the concept of design and the image lo's contention that artistic excellence cannot be reduced to
a pedagogical program. Still, the author of The Lives was a

that results from the act of drawing. As such, it is the critical
aspect of making art, the linchpin that unites theory withpragmatic man who knew his audience. Envisioning his book
practice and conjoins the intellect and the hand. Benedetto as a didactic tract as well as a commemorative text, he ad-
Varchi calls it "the origin, source, and mother" of painting dressed it to his peers. The "honored and noble craftsmen
and sculpture.52 Vasari, Francesco Doni, Alessandro Lamo, [onorati e nobili artefici]" of Tuscany, he claims, can benefit
and others consider it "the father of the three sister arts" from practical advice and instructive example. Accordingly,
(architecture as well as painting and sculpture).53 Disegno, Vasari admits to having set out to write a history, a genre "that
Vasari argues, "proceeds from the intellect [and] draws from truly teaches men . .. and makes them wise." To this end, he
many things a universal judgment." It fosters knowledgeprofesses
and to "having undertaken to write the history of the
thus facilitates the formation of ideas. "One may conclude most noble artefici in order to assist the arts." Moreover, he
[therefore] that disegno is nothing else but an apparent says ex- he "strove not only to say what they have done, but also,
pression and declaration of the concept [concetto] that isinhelddiscussing them, to distinguish the better from the good
in the mind [animo] and of that which is also imagined [menteand the best from the better."60 As a guiding principle that
mediates between the learned hand and the inspired mind,
immaginato] and fabricated in the idea [fabbricato nell'idea]."54
It is, indeed, disegno figures prominently in Vasari's critical judgments and
holds a particularly privileged place in the 1568 edition.
the very soul that conceives and nourishes within itself all
the parts of man's intellect-already most perfect before He who would express in drawing [disegnando] the con-
the creation of all other things, when the Almighty God cepts of the mind and anything else that pleases him must,
forming man, discovered, together with the lovely creation after he has to some degree trained his hand .. ., exercise
[vaga invenzione] of all things, the first form of sculpture
it by copying figures in relief, whether of marble or stone
and painting; from which man thereafter, step by or plaster casts taken from life or some beautiful ancient
step ... as from a true pattern, there were taken statuesstatue or from clay models, either nude or draped or
and sculptures, and the science of pose and outline; and clothed. All of these objects being motionless and without
for the first pictures... softness, harmony, and the con-feeling greatly facilitate the work of the artist because they
cord in discord that comes from light and shade.55 stand still.... When he has trained his hand by steady
practice in drawing such objects, let him begin to copy
In putting forth God's "forming [of] man" as the paradig- from nature... for things studied from nature are those
that truly do honor to him who strives to master them
matic creative act, Vasari advances the metaphorical relation-
ship of art and life, thereby underscoring the analogical since they have within themselves, besides a certain grace
likeness of artists like Michelangelo il Divino and the Deusand liveliness [grazia e vivezza], a simplicity, ease, and
artifex.56 In doing so he explains how it is that truly goodsweetness that is nature's own and which can only be
artists, like the blessed Raphael and divinely inspired Leo-learned perfectly from her and not to a sufficient degree
nardo da Vinci, are able to breathe life into their works. from things of art.61
Despite an insistence on creative license (licenza) and re-
gardless of his demand that artists exercise their own discre- The first portion of this passage reflects provisions for the
tion (discrezione and giudizio) rather than abide by a set of
instruction of artists formulated by Vasari and other senior
established rules, Michelangelo was extolled by many as the academicians, most notably, the formation of a study collec-
personification of the promise of perfection inherent intion theof drawings, models, and architectural plans assembled
nascent academicism. The maker of canonical works of art, from artists' bequests. Yet Vasari also acknowledges that the
he was himself canonized. Michelangelo certainly fostered stated benefit of copying (ritrarre) inanimate objects and im-
and probably contributed to the form of this distinctive ages such as "plaster casts taken from life [formate sul vivo] or
honor. As noted, in 1515 Leo X had granted Michelangelo some beautiful ancient statue" can be detrimental, given that
the privilege of adding the Medici palle to the Buonarroti coat "all of these objects [are] motionless and without feeling."
of arms. By the 1520s the Medicean emblem of three inter- These man-made things do not possess that "certain grace
locking rings had become the artist's personal mark.57 The and liveliness [grazia e vivezza] ... that is nature's own and
device, in turn, seems to have evolved into the three inter-
which can only be learned perfectly from her .. ."If an artist
laced wreaths emblazoned on Michelangelo's catafalque and is to visualize this "grace and liveliness," that is, if he is to
carved into the decoration of his permanent tomb in S. excel as an artista divino, then he must study the "primo
Croce.58 According to Pietro Aretino, Michelangelo was modello" of the Deus artifex. This first and principal model is,
"unico scultore, unico pittore e unico architetto," the master of course, man himself. Contemporaneous Florentine draw-

177.102.113.160 on Mon, 17 May 2021 16:42:04 UTC
!'a.:';-": ,' :.':v' . '- '. -'e ;'. $;:. .-e0.-: 4f;,iw,.; r,
436 s\RT BULLETIN SEPTEMBER 2002 VOIJUME l.XXXIV NUMBER 3
drawing the model dal vivo or copying plaster casts of miscel-

laneous body parts. Nor should the human form be studied
solely as it is presented in ancient art or as mediated through
the vision of the great Renaissance masters. A human being
could and should-be studied in its anatomized form. Fig-
ures pictured with paint, modeled of clay, or carved in stone
speak through a language of the body. This language can be
articulated only if the creator has penetrated the body's skin
and come to understand the body's vocabulary, interior struc-
ture, and mechanics. In other words, dismembering a dead
body is a prerequisite for composing a lifelike figure. Capi-
tolo II of the addenda to academy statutes seems to recognize
this as fact. In July 1563, that is, seven months before Mi-
chelangelo's death and six months after the institution of the
Accademia del Disegno, the academy mandated attendance
at an annual winter anatomical dissection performed at the
hospital of S. Maria Nuova, the largest of Florence's thirty
to thirty-five spedali and a site that had been associated
with Florentine artists since 1345.64 While it presented a
horrifying spectacle, anatomical dissection was said to reveal
"the amazing and divine workmanship of God the Creator"
and to disclose "the mysterious profundities of nature."65
During the winter of 1563- 64 Alessandro Allori (1503-
1572) and Giovanni Stradano (Jan van der Straet, or Jo-
hannes Stradanus, 1523-1605) were charged with organizing
the annual dissection.66 Stradano's Academy of Art, 1573, a
z ' - ;se
10 Giovanni Stradano, Academy of Art, 1573. London,

The British Museum
ings like Santi di Tito's Study of a Prone Figure and Jacopo da

Empoli's Study of a Reclining lVale Nude in Three-Quarter View
indicate that life drawing, in fact, was integral to academic
practice. Later textual sources, like Filippo Baldinucci's Noti-
zie de' professo7z del disegno.... of 1681, reconfirm the visual
evidence.62 As for copying statues, clay models, and plaster
casts taken from life, countless drawings after the antique and
numerous studies of feet and hands obviously drawn after
plaster casts, wax models, or sculpture fragments demon- id:; ' 3 0 0 ;' X
strate that this, too, was a common practice. As is evident in
the accoutrements of academicism pictured in studio views
such as Enea Vico's engraving Bandinelli's Academy of about
1550 and Lavinia Fontana's Self-Portrait in the Studiolo, 1579,
's:ipA",r, 'ff i,'99; ;X
both of which include miniaturized replicas of ancient statues
and sculptural fragments and casts of torsos, heads, hands,
and feet, the practice was associated with a course of training
resulting in stylistic perfection.63
On the other hand, several additions to the second edition
of The Lives as well as to Accademia del Disegno statutes
W Avesr; |@4 ; 0
underscore the importance of"Anathomia," which, in the
view of Florentine academicians, accounted for the perfec-
tion of Michelangelo's renderings of the human form. An 11 Attributed to Alessandro Allori, Studies of Arms and Legs.
examination of il primo modello should not be limited to London, The British Museum

177.102.113.160 on Mon, 17 May 2021 16:42:04 UTC
MARSYAS, MICHELANGELO , ANTD THE ACCAD EM IA D EL DISEGNTO 437
12 Title page of Andreas Vesalius, % 9-lCR C^S5ARS^S{ s rM^le
De humani corporis fabrica, 1543. M=eJ7.GdlitzrtvssR*gis,dc Sendtas Vnraprz

, >tirtn'arEg.onsttit ptoxrdtlstontdtx7connxrter,
Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University
tS d
(photo: Steve Borack)
drawing engraved by Cornelius Cort in 1578, glosses over the drawings of dissected body parts, such as studies of a right
gore of anatomical study by allegorizing it (Fig. 10). "Anato- arm at various stages of dissection attributed to Alessandro
mia," as it is labeled in Cort's engraving, occupies a third of Allori (Fig. 11), indicates the basic veracity of Stradano's
the image, which is otherwise filled with artists engaged in the allegorical scene. By the 1540s physicians increasingly per-
arts of "pictura," "statuaria," and "incisoria." In the fore- formed dissections with the assistance of an articulated skel-
ground an articulated skeleton hangs from a rope secured to eton rather than relying solely on a descriptive and typically
the ceiling. Immediately behind and above it is a flayed ancient text. This is not only seen in other allegorical acad-
cadaver. Attached to a pulley system, the corpse is suspended emy scenes, such as Piero Francesco Alberti's Accademia d[ei]
above a table in a Marsyas-like posture. One arm is stretched Pittori of about 1600, it is also illustrated on the title page of
upward and tied at the wrist to the supporting rope. The Andreas Vesalius's De humani corporis fabrica, 1543-55, which
other rests in the anatomist's hand as it is subjected to his is itself corroborated by an eyewitness to Vesalius's famous
knife. Of the myriad activities represented in Stradano's Acad- public dissections in Bologna inJanuary 1540 (Fig. 12).67 The
emy of Art, this is the principal attraction for the assembled use of supplementary articulated skeletons made sense.
students. Whereas man's osteological structure can be and was taught
Textual evidence, augmented by a significant number of from a skeleton, man's myological structure could be under-

177.102.113.160 on Mon, 17 May 2021 16:42:04 UTC
pencil who drew the forms and lineaments which would

make every subtle genius wonder? Dead the dead, and the
living seemed alive [Morti li morti e vivi parean vivi]," Alberti
advises,
Anyone who wants to express a dead body, which is cer-

tainly most difficult, will be a good painter if he knows how
to make each member of a body flaccid.... The members
of the dead should be dead down to their very fingernails;
of living persons every member should be alive in the
smallest part.... the painter, wishing to express life in
things, will make every part in motion but in motion he
will keep loveliness [venusta] and grace [gratia].69
Alberti's statement can be read as acknowledging two dis-

tinctive ways of looking at dissection in relation to the making
of works of art. One places the emphasis on constructing an
accurate figure. In the late sixteenth centuly Giovan Battista
Armenini encapsulated the idea most succinctly in De' veri
precetti della pittura, 1587. "Man is made of bones, nerves,
flesh, and skin and although one rarely sees in artworks
anything other than what is visible on the exterior, it is none-
theless true that if one does not thoroughly understand
the concealed interior parts, then one cannot make the
exterior ones well."70 Four years later, Gian Paolo Lomazzo
concurred. "Those who do not have a knowledge of it [hu-
man anatomy], regardless of how skilled and trained they
may be, not only cannot reach or achieve naturalism [il
naturale], but also can hardly imitate it.''71 The second way of
reading Alberti's remark places the emphasis on assembling
a figure that is aesthetically perfect as well as anatomically
correct. At midcentury Benvenuto Cellini had articulated this
notion with the clarity of practicality. Regardless of whether
the represented figure was dead or alive, its underlying struc-
ture was the same and needed to be studied if the depicted
figure was to be accurate.
Now, because it is of great importance to make male and

13 Bartolomeo Torri, Studiesfrom a Suspended Cadavgr,
female nudes well and also to be able to do this from
ca. 1550. London, The British Museum
memory as you desire, it is necessary to deal with the
foundation of the nude, which is the bone structure. Once
you have put well to mind a bone structure, you can never
stood only as an integration of muscle with bone. Having a make a figure, either naked or dressed, with errors; and
skeleton as well as a cadaver present at a dissection enabled that is surely a great accomplishment. I am not saying that
the anatomist to relate the muscles to the bones that were you can be sure, because of that, to make your figures with
supported and moved by them. In essence, it made it possible more or less grace [grazia], only that it may be enough that
to show the relationship of the body's fabric to its move- you make them without mistakes, and of this I assure
ments. Awitness to Vesalius's 1540 anatomical demonstration
yous72
reported the benefits of the practice as enumerated by the
dissecting physician. "Observe, [Vesalius] said, that all mus- Setting aside for now the issue of grazia (or Alberti's venusta
cles take their rise from bones, beginning from the sinews and gratia), Cellini can be understood as expressing an idea
where [their] head is, and then ending in tendons or cords that many took seriously and advocating a process that some
they are again fastened to the bones, in order to effectuate certainly put into practice. Drawings such as Alessandro A1-
voluntary movement."68 For sixteenth-century artists an un- lori's many studies of arms and legs illustrating the limb in
derstanding of how bone and muscle work in concert to various states of wholeness bone, bone with sinew, and
produce movement was crucial to the making of a figure covered with flesh provide ready evidence.73 That Allori
"more alive than lively [piu vivo che la vivacita]." Leon Battista would write Ragionamenti delle regole del disegno, a dialogue on
Alberti, whose Depictura appeared in translations by Lodovico the process of making art that not only contains repeated
Domenichi in 1547 and Cosimo Bartoli in 1568, had noted references to anatomical texts but also refers to Vesalius's De
this fact while advancing a counterbalancing truth. Recalling humani corporis fabrica with its 243 illustrations as a "fine work
Dante's famous verse, "What master was he of brush or of never praised enough," is not surprising.74 Perhaps the most

177.102.113.160 on Mon, 17 May 2021 16:42:04 UTC
14 Bartolomeo Passerotti, Michelangelo

Conducting an Anatomy Lesson, ca. 1570.
Paris, Musee du Louvre (photo:
Reunion des Musees Nationaux/Art
Resource, NY)
remarkable examples of drawings of this kind are a pen and mized corpse].... Meanwhile the divine Michelangelo
ink over chalk sheet in the Fogg Art Museum by Jacopo Buonarroti, prince and guide to all of them and with three
Ligozzi (ca. 1547-1626), Studies from a Suspended Cadaver, rings in his hand [his ancient emblem] ... gestures to-
1590-1600, and a pen and ink study by Bartolomeo Torri ward Andrea del Sarto, Leonardo da Vinci, Pontormo,
(1527-1552) in the British Museum (Fig. 13).75 Torri's draw- Rosso, Perino del Vaga and Francesco Salviati, Andrea del
ing is best viewed against Vasari's brief account of his life. San Gallo and Rustico-who are gathered around him
Torri, we are told, was so obsessed by anatomical study that reverentially-and shows with greatjoy the grand entrance
he stashed anatomized body parts under his bed, an un- of the lady.77
healthy practice that contributed to his early death.76 The
British Museum drawing, inscribed "demano de bartolomeo/ Approximately a decade later, Passerotti visualized a scene
aretino 1554," appears to document the obsession. It illus- strikingly reminiscent of Vasari's description of the decorated
trates two bodies from the waist down seen from the rear. The Porta del Prato. Michelangelo Conducting an Anatomy Lesson of
about 1570 illustrates a similarly anachronistic array of fa-
left of each pair of legs is in ecorche so as to display the
mous artists gathered around the great master (Fig. 14).
musculature, the right as yet unflayed. The angle of the feet
Andrea del Sarto sits on a stool to Michelangelo's left. Sebas-
makes it clear that the drawing was done from "life," that is,
from a cadaver suspended in a Marsyas-like manner of the tiano del Piombo is at his right. Baccio Bandinelli stands with
same sort pictured in Stradano's Academy of Art. his back to the viewer while Raphael, facing forward and
Although Stradano's image of the allegorical academy wassupporting the hand of the flayed corpse, is surrounded by
the
by no means unique, visualization of a related theme by the artists most closely associated with him: Giulio Romano,
Bolognese painter Bartolomeo Passerotti (1529-1592) de- Marcantonio Raimondi, and Perino del Vaga.78 Whatever
serves special attention. In December 1564, five months after Passerotti's drawing may be-a tribute to Michelangelo
else
or a memory of the ephemeral decorations made for the
Michelangelo's funeral and almost a year after the institution
of the Accademia del Disegno, Florence's artists directed Medici nuptials-it is a record of a practice with which Pas-
their energies to preparing the city for the arrival ofserotti was familiar. As one of the compagni virtuosi affiliated
Francesco de' Medici's betrothed, Giovanna of Austria. Vasa- with the Carracci, Passerotti surely would have attended the
dissections conducted for the benefit of the assembled artists
ri's description of a portion of the Porta del Prato's decora-
tion, which reportedly included a "statue of Disegno, the by one Dr. Lanzoni.79 He may also have availed himself of
father of painting, sculpture, and architecture," merits re- Bologna's gran fontione, which included an anatomy course
peating: conducted for the public that lasted ten to fifteen days,
utilized a minimum of two corpses, and discussed approxi-
On a panel... one saw represented a vast courtyard in mately twenty topics concerning the body's internal structure
which there were a large number of ancient and modern and functions.80 Finally, there is the testimony of Raffaello
statues and paintings by various masters ... in one part [of Borghini in II riposo, 1584. According to Borghini, Passerotti,
the courtyard] a dissection [anatomia] was taking place. like Allori, worked on a "book of anatomies, bones and flesh
Many [artists], who appeared to be greatly interested, in which he wants to show how it applies to the art of disegno."
seemed to be observing and intently copying [the anato- Passerotti's Self-Portrait with Skeleton, Ecorche, and Nudes, early

177.102.113.160 on Mon, 17 May 2021 16:42:04 UTC
1580s (Warsaw University Library), is presumed to have beentomica: Libro XV, 1559, contains no illustrations other than the
drawn as the frontispiece for his book.81 one on the title page. Like the title page of Vesalius's De
If all of this-the Porta del Prato decoration, Passerotti's humani corporis, that of De re anatomica features a dissection.
drawing, and even Stradano's allegorical studio-suggests Michelangelo's
a presence at the "anathomia" represented in
perceived connection between anatomical dissection, the Ac-Colombo's book is conspicuous. Still, if Ascanio Condivi is to
be believed-and there is no reason to question him on this
cademia del Disegno, its Laurentian precursor, and a course
of study resulting in excellence, then Michelangelo may be point-Colombo did for Michelangelo what many physicians
seen as a connective link. His presence, indeed, looms large. did for their artist friends: he provided him with cadavers.
He had frequented Lorenzo's garden in his youth and was Condivi recounts standing over the corpse of "a Moor, a most
elected one of the academy's two capi late in life. Morehandsome young man" in the remote church of S. Agata in
significantly, the academy, of which he was nominal head, Rome while "Michelangelo showed me many rare and recon-
recognized his knowledge of anatomy as a major contributing dite things, perhaps never before understood, all of which I
factor for the perfection of his art, which was seen as bothnoted and hope one day to publish."88
defining and mirroring the city's own artistic preeminence. It has been suggested that Condivi's manuscript notes
Seeking to perpetuate his excellence in their own works andmade their way to Vincenzo Danti (1530-1576), sculptor,
thus maintain Florence's esteemed position among the trattatista, and prot6eg of Vasari. In 1567 Danti's Ilprimo libro
conoscenti, academicians established anatomical dissection as del trattato delle perfette proporzioni di tutte le cose che imitare e
a required component of a corso di perfezionamento artistico. ritrarre si possano con l'arte del disegno appeared in Florence.
The treatise, which almost certainly mirrors Michelangelo's
Anatomizing ideas, sets forth the distinction between copying (ritrarre) and
Vasari put great stock in anatomical study. The artist Fran- imitating (imitare). "By the term ritrarre I mean to make an-
ciabigio (1482-1525), he contends, improved greatly after other thing exactly as another thing is seen to be; and by the
having made "una notomia" (performed a dissection) with term imitare I similarly understand that it is to make a thing
the assistance of the Florentine physician Andrea Pasquali.82not only as another has seen the thing to be [when that thing
Several passages advocating the benefits of anatomical studyis imperfect], but to make it as it would have to be in order to
added to the second edition of The Lives emphasize thebe of complete perfection."89 Typically, this statement, as well
general truth of Franciabigio's particular example. In fact, aas much of II primo libro, is understood in the context of the
significant number of artists entered into collaborative rela-perfect beauty that exists potentially in nature and can actu-
tionships similar to that of Franciabigio and Pasquali or ally be realized only by art. While it is possible to find perfect
depended on the textual resources of their physician friends. beauty in the world, it is improbable, since "beauty is scat-
This was only logical. Artists needed access to bodies and tered and found in its entirety in many, almost never one."90
physicians needed a skilled hand to record the details of theArtists who see "that beauty may be in one" recognize that art
body's revealed structures and systems. Marcantonio dellatakes on the appearance of nature while producing what
Torre (ca. 1473-1506?), who lectured on theoretical medi-nature can only aspire to. The ramifications of this concept
cine at Padua and established a school of anatomy at Pavia,
should not be limited to Danti's published book, which was,
"was wonderfully aided by the genius and labor of Leonardo, as its title proclaims, the first installment of what was in-
who filled a book with drawings... copied with the utmost tended to be a larger project. At the end of II primo libro the
care after dissected bodies."83 Likewise, Francesco Salviati reader is promised fourteen more books. Eight of them were
(1510-1563), who, says Vasari, "made some anatomical stud- to address topics of anatomy.
ies in the Campo Santo," has been identified as the illustrator For anatomists as well as academic theorists, Michelange-
lo's art exemplified the advantages of anatomical study by
ofVidus Vidius's Chirurgia e Graeco in Latinum conversa . .. cum
commentariis, 1544.84 Vasari himself, acknowledging that ca- dissection. Juan Valverde de Hamusco, for example, singled
davers were scarce in his native city of Arezzo, wrote to the him out for praise. That physician's Historia de la composicion
Florentine physician Baccio Rontini in 1537 asking to borrow del cuerpo humano, 1556, includes among its illustrations an
his "libro dell'ossa et anatomia."85 Perhaps the most famous ecorch, or so-called Muscle Man, holding his flayed skin in a
artist-physician association of the era was that of Michelan-manner clearly dependent on and evocative of Michelange-
gelo and Matteo Realdo Colombo (ca. 1515-1559).86 lo's Saint Bartholomew in the Sistine Chapel Last Judgment,
In 1544 Colombo left Padua, where he had served as one of commissioned in 1534 and completed in 1541.91 But while
two surgeons at the university, for Pisa. There, at the invita-Michelangelo's rendering of the human form, together with
tion of Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, he assumed the post the of anatomical knowledge and practice of dissection that lie
"Master of Anatomy and Surgery." Briefly in 1547 and per-beneath it, were legend among contemporaneous theorists,
manently a year later Colombo went to Rome, where he artists, and anatomists, an appreciation of Michelangelo's
herculean figures did not meet with universal approval. For
taught at the papal university, the Sapienza. In a letter to
Cosimo dated April 17, 1548, Colombo explains that he wentexample, Lodovico Dolce, an outspoken proponent of Titian
to the papal city "to pursue my dissections and supervise theand Venetian colorito, disparaged the figures of Michelangelo
painters." Additionally, he references his collaboration withand Florence's academicians:
the "greatest painter in the world" on a proposed book of
anatomy.87 The book suggestively alluded to by Colombo-a The man who practices a detailed elaboration of the mus-
collaborative enterprise-was never realized. The project cles is really aiming to give an organized picture of th
published just months after the physician's death, De re ana- bone structure, and this is commendable; often, however,

177.102.113.160 on Mon, 17 May 2021 16:42:04 UTC
he succeeds in making the human figure looked flayed or ends up on the anatomist's table" resembles Marsyas in that
shriveled up or ugly [scorticato, o secco, o brutto]. The man he, like the satyr, "had broken a code of conduct, and the
who works in the delicate manner, on the other hand, sundering of his body's integrity by Apollo (as by the anato-
gives an indication of the bones where he needs to do so; mist) is made legitimate by the 'infamous' character of the
but he covers them smoothly with flesh and fills the nude body being violated with the knife."97 This reading of the
with grace [gratia].92 satyr's iconography aside, it is useful to remember that six-
teenth-century physicians took a body apart in order to com-
Agostino Carracci held a similar opinion, recorded in his prehend how it worked when it was whole.98 Such knowledge
annotations to his copy of Giorgio Vasari's Lives. In the assisted the physician in transforming a sick body into a
margins by Vasari's brief remarks about Bartolomeo Torri's healthy one. Artists and theorists subscribed to a similar line
unhealthful collection of anatomized body parts, Carracci of reasoning. To the desired end of painting, modeling, and
scribbled, "While it is useful for the painter to devote time to
carving works of art, academicians reviewed the best way to
anatomy-the general nature of which it is good to know-it learn "how to join different parts of the human body," con-
is not, however, necessary to hunt around inside the way cluding that the study of "models dead and living" promotes
doctors do."93 In fact, Vasari-whom Carracci labels "igno- an understanding of how "the parts of a body, visible and
rant" in several of his marginal notes-concurred on this concealed, are structured." It takes little effort to see how
point, although perhaps for other reasons. "It may be con- images of a flayed Marsyas became a visual sign in the cultural
cluded that those who think they do better in giving all of context of sixteenth-century Italy. Above and beyond the
their attention to studying the torso, an arm, leg, or other descriptive level of obvious interpretation afforded by the
member and to making good muscles and understanding narrative in the Metamorphoses, the satyr's death and meta-
them all are in error, for this is a part and not the whole."94 morphic rebirth fit within a cultural framework circum-
As Vasari's comment makes clear, anatomizing was not to be scribed by the advent of modern anatomical science and of
an end in and of itself. Ultimately, disassembling had as its art history and criticism. Representations of Marsyas, specifi-
goal reassembling. Many sixteenth-century theorists, follow- cally those categorized as "hanging" or "red," were associated
ing Alberti's lead, understood composition (compositio, com- with dissection, a practice that put medical anatomists and
ponimento) in the literal sense as the "putting together" of artists side by side in their respective quests for knowledge of
parts.95 Within this cultural context the figure of the flayed the secrets of nature-in essence, the same quest.
Marsyas, who so readily conjures visions of the flayed figures Both anatomists and artists sought to comprehend alive-
imaged in bronze ecorche statuettes by Pietro Francavilla (ca. ness by investigating the final cause of structure, striving to
1548-1615) and Lodovico Cigoli (1559-1613), studies from garner the information necessary to render lifelikeness. All of
cadavers by Bartolomeo Torri and Jacopo Ligozzi, and im- this helps to explain the prominence given to the flayed
ages of the so-called Muscle Men in contemporary anatomical "hanging" Marsyas that marked the entrance into the Medici
texts like Vesalius's De humani corporis fabrica and Vidius's garden in Vasari's text and Lastricati's drawing. It does little,
Chirurgia, can be comprehended as a symbol of what by the however, to elucidate the significance of the as yet unscathed
end of the century had become an essential component of Marsyas religatus pictured on Michelangelo's catafalque. I
academic training.96 Anatomical dissection was to be seen as would argue that this Marsyas figure also references dissec-
a crucial step in the creative process. Taking apart a human tion, albeit of a very different kind. Whereas the "hanging"
body facilitates the construction of another in the myriad Marsyas alludes to the taking apart of a human body in
materials of art.
order to understand how it is put together so that-to use
Cellini's words-"you can never make a figure, either naked
Marsyas Redivivo or dressed, with errors"-the Marsyas religatus simultaneously
For the obvious reason that the flayed body of Marsyas could alludes to dissection and the taking apart of or borrowing
be viewed as synonymous with the ecorch, the satyr's story was from esteemed works of art and the subsequent conjoining of
incorporated into anatomical iconography. His is the only disparate parts to make another whole, or compositio.
myth illustrated among the more than two hundred woodcuts As a practice that brought together artists and anatomists
in Vesalius's De humani corporis fabrica, in the text's first his-
and as a process associated with the making of art, anatomiz-
toriated initial, the letter V for the author's name. Marsyasing had more to do with creative assemblage than with the
also makes an appearance, albeit symbolic rather than violation in and destruction of the body. In this respect it shares
narratival form, in the 1586 Italian edition of Valverde's much in common with a compositional method exemplified
Anatomia del corpo umano (the first edition, Historia de best
la by Zeuxis's legendary painting of Helen, recorded by
composicion del cuerpo humano, was published in Rome in 1556 Pliny and well known among Renaissance theorists and art-
by Antonio Salamanca y Antonio Lafrerij). In the first Italian
ists. Commissioned to paint an image of the woman whose
edition of 1560, the cartouche on the title page is laterally
famed beauty triggered the events that erupted in the Trojan
framed by skeletons and topped by a skull. In the 1586War and eventually led to the founding of Rome, Zeuxis
edition the skeletons were replaced by ecorche herms, whiledemanded that every maiden in the city of Croton be brought
the skin of the flayed satyr hangs from an architectonic
before his scrutinizing eyes. From the assembled girls he
border. The appropriateness of the Marsyas myth to anatom- selected five he deemed to have some feature of singular
ical illustration is typically interpreted with respect to the loveliness. He extracted from each some particularly beauti-
criminal body subjected to violation by dissection. Accordingful feature or features and reconfigured these into a compos-
to Andrea Carlino, "the person condemned to death who
ite that became his painted Helen. Through his method of

177.102.113.160 on Mon, 17 May 2021 16:42:04 UTC
15 Three Studies of the "Torso Belvedere,"

Italian, ca. 1550. Oxford, Christ
Church
first disassembling, then reassembling, Zeuxis had done what

heads, torsos, and limbs-they lent themselves to imitare as a
nature could not-he had made a figure of perfection. This
process of unification. Moreover, because "the Renaissanc
is, of course, the essence of imitare (as opposed to ritrarre, or
found beauty in ruins" and still more beauty in the "effaced
replicate) as defined by Vincenzo Danti, echoing Michelan-
condition" of some of these fragments, they might function
gelo and reflecting the tastes of central Italy during the
as the catalyst that inspired creative artists like Michelangel
middle decades of the sixteenth century:99 "By the term "to use their own wits."103 In a word, these fragments served
imitare I... understand that it is to make a thing not only as
as Apollonian concetti, touchstones for the complex play of
another has seen the thing to be, but to make it as it wouldimitation and invention that lies at the heart of academic
have to be in order to be of complete perfection."100 artifice, which in turn depends on knowledge of anatomical
As conveyed in an anecdote related by Vasari in the life ofstructure. As many have noted, ancient torsos, whether frag-
Michelangelo, the Zeuxian method of composition was mentary
a like the Torso Belvedere or largely intact like that
common modus operandi: belonging to the Trojan priest Laocoon, functioned in this wa
for Michelangelo, whose own creations subsequently fulfille
A painter had made a scene containing nothing but what
a similar role for generations of academicians.
was borrowed from drawings and the works of others. It
was shown to Michelangelo and an intimate friend asked
him his opinion. He answered, "He has done well but The
at Torso Belvedere
the day of judgment, when all bodies will recover their
The Torso Belvedere, an ancient torso drawn often and from
members, nothing will be left of it," a warning to artists to
use their own wits.101 every possible angle in the sixteenth century and associated
with Michelangelo since 1556, in recent decades and with
It is noteworthy that one of the supplementary instructional increasing frequency has been recognized as the fragment of
tools used by students of anatomy, including artists, was the a Marsyas religatus (Fig. 15).104 But recent scholarship does
not alter the fact that when the sculpture was identified in
flap anatomy, a series of overlaid sheets that, when lifted one
after another, penetrate ever deeper into the body to revealsixteenth-century sources-a rare occurrence-it was appre
what lay hidden beneath the skin. Additionally, students ciated as "a most singular figure said to be Hercules."l05 For
could engage in a two-step process of piecing together bodythe sake of the arguments presented here it would be nice
parts in a manner evocative of the Zeuxian compositional were the Torso Belvedere the remnant of a sculpture of Marsya
method. First, they cut out images of the body's individual or, better yet, had it been identified at some point as such
organs and systems printed on separate sheets. This done, during the Renaissance. However, this is not the case. None-
theless, the fragmentary state of the statue as well as its
they pasted the pieces together on another sheet in order to
make a reassembled whole. physiologically complex posture, which bears comparison
with the Marsyas religatus, exercised a remarkable catalytic
Putting aside for the moment Vasari's (and Michelange-
lo's) caveat concerning taking too many parts from the power
com-over sixteenth-century artists- especially Michelan
gelo.not
positions of others, academic practice prescribed drawing Leonard Barkan asserted that the Torso Belvedere's can-
only from live models and casts dal vivo but also from onization
ancient "as masterpiece, as representing art itself, as iconic
and beautiful statues.'02 In Michelangelo's youth theofMedici
a particular aesthetic vision of the human body, indeed as
defining the category 'torso' as fundamental to the exercise
gardens of both Cosimo il Vecchio and Lorenzo il Magnifico
of visual representation-is unimaginable without the career
were filled with such works. Because many of these ancient
statues, according to Vasari, survived in fragmentary of Michelangelo. And perhaps vice versa."106 Gian Paolo
form-

177.102.113.160 on Mon, 17 May 2021 16:42:04 UTC
s
16 Niccolo Ferrucci, Florentine Artists Studying the Works of lX{ichelangelo, 1615-16. Florence, Casa Buonarroti (photo: Scala/Art
Lomazzo's observations concerning the fragment are worth Perino del Vaga and others who pursued the maniera of
quotlng ln thls context: the same Michelangelo could never equal him.107
Michelangelo . . . was never able to add anything to the This stopped no one from trying. Michelangelo's admiration
beauty of the Torso of Hercules by Apollonios of Athens, for the torso, which is a leitmotiv in sixteenth-century literary
which is located in the Belvedere in Rome, and which he sources, informed the poses of some Sistine ignudi, the
unceasingly pursued. In the same way Daniele da Volterra, Medici Chapel Day, and the Palazzo Vecchio Victory, among

177.102.113.160 on Mon, 17 May 2021 16:42:04 UTC
trays the artist seated at a table that holds the various instru-
ments associated with the visual and poetic arts. Perched
prominently on a low stool in the right foreground sits a torso
fragment. The torso reappears in the left foreground of
Cristofano Allori's Portrait of Michelangelo with a Hovering Muse
(Fig. 9). Regolo Coccapani's Apotheosis of Michelangelo pictures
Il Divino and the by now familiar torso among an assembly of
academicians. Niccolo Ferrucci's Florentine Artists Studying the
Works of Michelangelo, 1615-16, offers a variation on the theme
in which the works of Michelangelo are presented as didactic
paradigms of excellence, touchstones, or scuole, for genera-
tions of artists (Fig. 16): Andrea del Sarto holds a reproduc-
tion of The Last Judgment, the legs of Michelangelo's Bacchus
can be seen behind Pontormo, and the Moses fills the space
above the assembled academicians. Occupying the right fore-
ground, a serious Baccio Bandinelli looks out at the viewer.
Rather than reference directly a work by Michelangelo, he
points to a torso fragment. Ferrucci expressly structured his
composition to relate the foreground fragment with Michel-
angelo's Medici Chapel Day, which occupies the painting's
central background.10 This placement establishes something
akin to a stylistic lineage. Michelangelo is heir to the classical.
Academicians are, in turn, Michelangelo's heirs. In other
words, a principal goal of the Accademia del Disegno had
been achieved. Michelangelo's incomparability had, indeed,
defined and continued to be reflected in Florence's assertion
of its own artistic preeminence. Logically, this message was

conveyed more strikingly if the fragment could be identified
as belonging to Lorenzo de' Medici's Marsyas religatus in
Florence rather than the Roman Torso Belvedere. In fact, it can
be so identified. A salient feature of the torso in Ferrucci's
painting as well as in those by Caccini, Allori, and Coccapani

17 Andrea Boscoli, Saint Luke Painting the Virgin, ca. 1590.is its state of preservation. In contrast to the Torso Belvedere,
Rome, Gabinetto dei Disegni e Stampe which at some time in its history was broken at the shoulders,
these pictured fragments have arms that extend at least mid-
way between shoulder and elbow and in some cases seem to
other adaptations. As for Michelangelo's followers, Daniele
have been preserved as far as the forearm. Enough remains
da Volterra, Perino del Vaga, and just about any artist active
visible to make it clear, as Ferrucci pointed out, that the arms
during the sixteenth century acknowledged a number of positioned behind the back of the figure in a manner
were
works by the master as sources of study, images to be plun-
similar to that seen in Michelangelo's Day.
dered for their parts. One of these, Michelangelo's cartoon
The wash drawing Saint Luke Painting the Virgin of about
for the Battle of Cascina, which Vasari calls "a school1590,
for replete with torso, by Andrea Boscoli (ca. 1560-1607)
provides an addendum (Fig. 17). The image can easily be
artists," was studied by "Aristotile da Sangallo, Ridolfo Ghir-
landaio, Raphael Sanzio of Urbino, Francesco Granacci,read Bac-as a variation on the theme of Coccapani's Apotheosis of
cio Bandinelli and the Spaniard Alonso Berrugete. They wereMichelangelo and Allori's Portrait of Michelangelo with a Hovering
followed by Andrea del Sarto, Franciabigio, Jacopo Sanso-
Muse. Additionally, the image can be seen as a play on the
vino, Rosso, Maturino, Lorenzetto and Tribolo."108 The list
heavenly status of Michelangelo il Divino. It is worth noting
reads like a roll call of those who had passed between thethat
two Boscoli's style at this time is typically characterized as a
figures of Marsyas and entered the "scuola ed accademia" fusion of Michelangelo's and that of Rosso Fiorentino during
that was the Medici sculpture garden, the Laurentian precur-
the 1520s, which, in turn, is seen as a response to Michelan-
sor to the Accademia del Disegno. gelo.l11 To put it another way, Boscoli, like Rosso before him,
Undoubtedly, the Torso Belvedere informed Michelangelo's is Michelangelo's artistic heir. Ultimately, Boscoli, Rosso, and
work. But it should be remembered that the work never left Michelangelo, like all artists, could trace their lineage to, and
thus claim privileged kinship with, Saint Luke, the patron
Rome; thus, it would have had less significance for Florentine
academicians than the torso of the Marsyas religatus saint
that of artists and physicians. Viewed in conjunction with
reportedly flanked the entrance into the Medici garden, Boscoli's
the drawing, the images paying homage to Michelan-
"scuola ed accademia" attended by Michelangelo in the
gelo-the portraits by Caccini, Allori, Coccapani, and Fer-
rucci that celebrate and deify him-metaphorically present
1490s. This is borne out in images by academicians celebrat-
him
ing the great master.109 Pompeo di Giulio Caccini's Portrait ofas a modern-day Saint Luke, once again setting forth
Mlichelangelo as Poet, Painter, Sculptor, and Architect, 1595,Michelangelo's
por- incomparability. And once more, an acade-

177.102.113.160 on Mon, 17 May 2021 16:42:04 UTC
mician reminds us of the significance of the Medici porphyry Jack, "The Accademia del Disegno in Late Renaissance Florence," Sixteenth
Century Journal 7 (1976): 3-20; Carl Goldstein, "Vasari and the Florentine
Marsyas religatus. Accademia del Disegno," Zeitschriftfur Kunstgeschichte 38 (1975): 145-52; and
Nikolas Pevsner, Academies of Art Past and Present (1940; reprint, New York: Da
Capo, 1973), esp. 44-48, 296-304 (app. 1). For a discussion of Vasari's Lives
with respect to the Accademia del Disegno, see Patricia Lee Rubin, Giorgio
Fredrika Jacobs is professor of art history, Virginia Commonwealth Vasari: Art and History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 212-15,
University. She has published numerous articles on Renaissance art 241-47.
4. Barzman, 164. According to Barzman, 163, "To date, the archives have
and theory as well as Defining the Renaissance "Virtuosa"
yet to yield information about 'anatomies' conducted under the academy's
(1997). The current study presents ideas explored in Early Modern official sponsorship. Nonetheless, the amount of graphic work and textual
Medicine, Anatomical Science, and the Language of Art production dedicated to anatomical study (particularly from the second half
of the sixteenth century) indicates the degree to which Florentines were
(Cambridge University Press, forthcoming) [Department of Art His- committed to the practice and suggests that further research is warranted."
tory, School of the Arts, Virginia Commonwealth University, PO Box 5. Vasari to Michelangelo, Mar. 17, 1563, in Karl Frey, Der literarische
843046, Richmond, Va. 23284-3046, fhjacobs@vcu.edu]. Nachlass Giorgio Vasaris (Munich: Miiller, 1930), vol. 1, 737. Cosimo I de'
Medici was the other capo. As the governing Luogotenente, Vincenzo
Borghini acted on the duke's behalf.
6. Michelangelo was called divine as early as 1516. See Lodovico Ariosto,
Orlando Furioso, canto 23, "Michel piu che mortal angel divino." Other litterati
Frequently Cited Sources followed. "The world has many kings," writes Pietro Aretino, " but only one
Michelangelo." According to Vasari, Michelangelo was "the marvel of our
century." The sculptor Vincenzo Danti proclaims in the preface to his Trattato
Barkan, Leonard, Unearthing the Past, Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of delle perfette proporzioni, 1567, that he is to be "followed eternally," while in a
Renaissance Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). letter to Apollonio Filareto, ca. 1540, Claudio Tolomei says that "all painters
Barzman, Karen-edis, The Florentine Academy and the Early Modern State: The worship him as a master, as a prince, even as the god of design." Leone Leoni
Discipline of "Disegno" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). addresses Michelangelo as "uomo divino," while Bronzino praises him in a
Carlino, Andrea, Books of the Body: Anatomical Ritual and Renaissance Learning, sonnet as "wonder of nature" and "angel elect." For these and other refer-
trans. John Tedeschi and Anne C. Tedeschi (Chicago: University of Chi- ences, see Paola Barocchi, Michelangelo tra le due redazioni delle "Vite" vasariane
cago Press, 1999). (1550-1568) (Lecce: Milella, 1968), vol. 2, 21. Bronzino's comment is in
Cazort, Mimi, Monique Kornell, and K. B. Roberts, The Ingenious Machine: Four L'opera completa di Bronzino (Milan: Rizzoli, 1973), 8-9. For his funeral, see
Centuries of Art and Anatomy (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1996). Rudolf Wittkower and Margot Wittkower, The Divine Michelangelo: The Floren-
Condivi, Ascanio, The Life of Michelangelo, trans. Alice Sedgwick Wohl and ed. tine Academy's Homage on His Death in 1564 (London: Phaidon, 1964); Kathleen
Hellmut Wohl (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, Weil-Garris Brandt, "Michelangelo's Monument: An Introduction to an Ar-
1999). chitecture of Iconography," in Studies in the Memory of Richard Krautheimer, ed.
Cecil L. Striker (Mainz: Zabern, 1996), 27-31; and Joan Stack, "Artists into
Elam, Caroline, "Lorenzo de' Medici's Sculpture Garden," Mitteilungen des
Heroes: The Commemoration of Artists in the Art of Giorgio Vasari," in
Kunsthistorische Institutes in Florenz 36 (1992): 41-84.
Fashioning Identities in Renaissance Art, ed. Mary Rogers (Aldershot: Ashgate,
Summers, David, Michelangelo and the Language of Art (Princeton: Princeton
2000), 163-72, esp. 168-69.
University Press, 1981).
7. Varchi, 22. Between 1564 and 1578, a permanent tomb was erected in the
Varchi, Benedetto, Orazionefunerale di M. Benedetto Varchifatta, e recitat da Lui church of S. Croce.
pubblicamente nell'essequie di Michelagnolo Buonarroti in Firenze, nell Chiesa di 8. The garden as a site of inspiration, poetic origins, and artistic identity
San Lorenzo (Florence: Giunta, 1564).
holds an important place in Paul Barolsky's Michelangelo's Nose: A Myth and Its
Vasari, Giorgio, Le opere, 9 vols., ed. Gaetano Milanesi (Florence: G. C. Maker (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990) and The
Sansoni, 1906). Faun in the Garden: Michelangelo and the Poetic Origins of Italian Renaissance Art
(University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994). Also see
Elam; Paul Barolsky and William E. Wallace, "The Myth of Michelangelo and
Il Magnifico," Source 12 (1993): 16-21; PaulJoannides, "Michelangelo and the
Medici Garden," in La Toscana al tempo di Lorenzo il Magnifico, politica, economia,
Notes
cultura, arte: Convegno di studi promosso dalle Universita di Firenze (Pisa: Pacini,
1996), vol. 1, 22-36;James Beck, Three Worlds of Michelangelo (New York: W. W.
Earlier versions of this paper were read by Michael Cole and Paul Barolsky. I
Norton, 1999), esp. chap. 1; and William Wallace, "Michael Angelvs Bonarotvs
am grateful to both for their thoughtful critical readings. Special thanks are
Florentinvs," in Innovation and Tradition: Essays on Renaissance Art and Culture,
due to William Wallace, who so generously gave of his time and shared with
ed. Dag T. Andersson and Roy Eriksen (Rome: Kappa, 2000), 60-74.
me his profound knowledge of Michelangelo. Additionally, I wish to thank 9. Vasari recounts the tale in both editions of The Lives. See Barocchi (as in
Perry Chapman for her insights and suggestions, Deborah Parker for her help
n. 6), vol. 1, 9-11; and Condivi, 10-12.
in translating several Italian passages, and the Center for Advanced Study in
10. See Wallace (as in n. 8), 61.
the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., for its support of a
11. Barzman, 7, further notes that Vasari's "mythologized" sculpture garden
portion of the research. Unless otherwise indicated, translations are mine.
school ignores the differences between it and its reincarnation, the Acca-
1. Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Frank Justus Miller (Cambridge, Mass.: Har-
demia del Disegno. The latter was incorporated by Cosimo I "as an official
vard University Press; London: William Heinemann, 1971), 6.315. institution of state."
2. Michelangelo, "D'altrui pietoso e sol di s6 spietato," in The Poetry of
12. See Dale Kent, Cosimo de' Medici and the Florentine Renaissance (New
Michelangelo: An Annotated Translation, by James M. Saslow (New Haven: Yale
Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).
University Press, 1991), 219, no. 94.
3. In a solemn ceremony on December 10, 1537, Michelangelo was awarded13. References appear, for example, in the lives of Pietro Torrigiano,
Mariotto Albertinelli, and Michelangelo. See Vasari, vol. 4, 256, 218-19, vol.
honorary Roman citizenship. Vasari, vol. 6, 655-60, describes the founding of
Florence's Accademia del Disegno in his life of Fra Giovanni Agnolo Mon- 7, 144. Also see Elam, 41-84; and Shigetoshi Osana, "Due Marsia nel giardino
torsoli, a member of the Servite order who was also Michelangelo's mostdi Via Larga: La ricezione del d6cor dell'antichita romana nella collezione
medicea di sculture antiche," Artibus et Historiae 34 (1996): 95-120.
famous pupil. Karen-edis Barzman's The Florentine Academy and the Early Modern
14. The land is first identified as belonging to I1 Magnifico in 1475. See
State, which considers the connection between cultural and political hege-
Elam, 46.
mony, is without question a critically important addition to the already
considerable scholarship on the Accademia del Disegno. For the founding of 15. A. Schmarsow, "Excerpt ausJoh. Fichard's Italia von 1536," Repertorium
the academy, see Barzman, 23-59, for its statutes and other issues, see 221-42, fiir Kunstwissenschaft 14 (1891): 377-80, deals with Florence, with the garden
app., docs. 1-5. Also see Zygmunt Wazbinski, L 'Accademia Medicea del Disegno entry on 378: "Item ad eam portam, qua in viam publicam egredimur,
a Firenze nel cinquecento (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1987), vol. 2, 423-70, app. utrinque est poista Marsii excoriati simulacrum marmoreum, et sinistrum
2. For the founding and objectives of the institution, see Larry J. Feinberg, quidem ex brachiis dependet, quale vidisti et in pensili horto cardinalis de la
Valle Romae, dextum vero sedet, brachiis tamen sursum delegatis. Et est ex
From Studio to Studiolo, Florentine Draftsmanship under the First Medici Grand Dukes
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991); Barzman, "The Florentine lapide porphyro quo colore mire refertur ipsius excoriati Marsiae forma."
Accademia del Disegno: Liberal Education and the Renaissance Artist,"Fichard's in "Italia anno MDXXXV" has been questioned concerning the identity
Academies of Art between Renaissance and Romanticism, ed. A. Boschloo, Leids of other works. See Ruth Rubinstein, "The Hermes Farnese or a Marcus Aurelius?
KunsthistorischJaarboek 5-6 (1986-87): 14-32; Anthony Hughes, "'An Acad- Sixteenth Century Drawings of a Statue in the Sassi Courtyard," in Ars naturam
emy for Doing,"' Oxford ArtJournal 9 (1986): 3-10, 50-62; Charles Dempsey, adiuvans, Festschrift fur Matthias Winner, ed. Victoria V. Flemming and Sebas-
"Some Observations on the Education of Artists in Florence and Bologna tian Schutze (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1996), 230-43, esp. 230.
during the Later Sixteenth Century," Art Bulletin 62 (1980): 552-69; M. A. 16. Vasari, vol. 4, 256. "Le quali tutte cose, oltre al magnifico ornamento

177.102.113.160 on Mon, 17 May 2021 16:42:04 UTC
che facevano a quel giardino, erano come una scuola ed accademia ai Capranica. See Phyllis Pray Bober and Ruth O. Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists
giovanetti pittori e scultori, ed a tutti gli altri che attendevano al disegno...." and Antique Sculpture: A Handbook of Sources (London: Harvey Miller; Oxford:
17. Vasari, vol. 7, 144. Oxford University Press, 1986), 72, 75; and Francis Haskell and Nicholas
18. Vasari, vol. 4, 218-19: "Ed oltre a questi, era quel giardino tutto pieno Penny, Taste and the Antique (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 262-63.
di torsi di femmine e maschi, che erano non solo lo studio di Mariotto, ma di The date for the entry of the red Marsyas into the Medici collection remains
tutti gli scultori e pittori del suo tempo; che una buona parte n'e oggi nella uncertain. It is, however, generally held that the statue was a gift to Duke
guardaroba del duca Cosimo, ed un'altra nel medesimo luogo, come i dua Francesco I from Virginia Orsini in 1586. Although it has been assumed that
torsi di Marsia, e le teste sopra le finestre, e quelle degl'imperatori sopra le the statue was immediately placed in the Uffizi, it may have been located in
porte." the gardens of the "Palazzo detto del Casino da San Marco." A Marsyas is listed
19. Ovid (as in n. 1), 6.389-400. Also see Ovid, Fasti, trans. Sir James G. in an inventory of the sculpture in the garden in 1667. See Weiss (as in n. 20),
Frazer (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heine- 161-62. Cosimo I attempted unsuccessfully to purchase a presumed pendant,
mann, 1984), 6.697-710. In Anabasis 1.2.6, Xenophon provides the following The Knife Sharpener, or L 'arrotino, with Vasari's help. See Cosimo to Vasari, Mar.
account: "It was here [in Celaenae] according to the story, that Apollo flayed 17, 1566, in Giovanni Gaye, Carteggio inedito d'artisti dei secoli XIV. XV. XVI
Marsyas, after having defeated him in a contest of musical skills; he hung up (Florence: Giuseppe Molini, 1840), vol. 3, 240-41, no. ccxvI. Also see Caglioti
the skin in the cave from which the sources issue, and it is for this reason that (as in n. 26).
the [Phrygian] river is called Marsyas"; Xenophon, Anabasis, trans. Carleton 29. Vasari, vol. 4, 10.
L. Brownson (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William 30. The painting was completed by Rossi in 1622.
Heinemann, 1961). 31. See, for example, Wyss (as in n. 22).
20. See Paolo Moreno, Scultura ellenistica (Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 32. Beat Wyss, " The LastJudgement as Artistic Process: The Flaying of Marsyas
1994), vol. 1, 240-44, vol. 2, 671-71; and Ann Weiss, The Hanging Marsyas and in the Sistine Chapel," RES 28 (1995): 65.
Its Copies: Roman Innovations in a Hellenistic Sculptural Tradition (Rome: Giorgio 33. I am grateful to Raymond Waddington for sharing his ideas on this
Bretschneider, 1992). subject with me.
21. Pliny, Natural History, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard 34. Plato, Symposium, trans. Benjamin Jowett (Chicago: Encyclopedia Bri-
University Press, 1952), 35, 66. tannica, 1952), 215b: "What [Socrates] reminds me of more than anything is
22. Philostratus the Younger, Imagines, trans. Arthur Fairbanks (Cambridge, one of these little sileni that you see on the statuaries's stalls; you know the
Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, 1979), imagineones I mean-they are modeled with pipes or flutes in their hands and when
2, 295-97. Philostratus's description of a painting he reports having seen inyou open them down the middle there are figures of the gods inside. And
Naples includes Apollo in the scene. The Seal of Nero is currently in Naples,then again he reminds me of Marsyas the satyr." Barolsky, 1990 (as in n. 8),
Museo Nazionale, inv. no. 26051. The Medici inventory of 1492 reads as 23-31, discusses provocatively the Socrates-satyr-Michelangelo association.
follows: "Una chorgnuola grande con tre fighure intagliate di chave, una 35. This is the term that appears in 16th-century publications of the Latin
parte gnuda et ritta, chon una lira in mano con una fighura ginocchionjtext, including those of Venice, 1515-16; Antwerp, 1536; Paris, 1541; and
gnuda a piedi, l'altra testa di vecchio a sedere cholle manj dirieto Basel, 1568.
leghato ... f. 1000" (A large carnelian intaglio with three figures ... one 36. Among the many texts citing the likeness are Plato, Theatetus 150B-151;
nude and standing with a lyre in his hand [and] with a nude figure kneeling Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals 1.20.729a10-729b25; Filarete, Trattato di
at his feet, the other with the head of an old man seated with hands tied architettura, ed. Maria Finoli and Liliana Grassi (Milan: I1 Polifilo, 1972), vol.
behind ... f. 1000); Nicole Dacos, Antonio Giuliano, and Ulrico Pannuti, II 1, 39, introduction to bk. 2; and William Shakespeare, Richard II, 5.5.1-2. Also
tesero di Lorenzo il Magnifico: le gemme (Florence: Sansoni, 1972), 55-57, cat. no. see Robert J. Bauer, "A Phenomenon of Epistemology in the Renaissance,"
25. Also see Francesco Caglioti, "Lorenzo Ghiberti, il 'Sigillo di Nerone' e le Journal of the History of Ideas 31 (1970): 281-88; and Fredrika Jacobs, Defining
origini della placchetta 'antiquaria,"' Prospettiva 85 (1997): 2-38; and Edith the Renaissance "Virtuosa": Women Artists and the Language of Art History and
Wyss, The Myth of Apollo and Marsyas in the Italian Renaissance: An Inquiry into the Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 27-39.
Meaning of Images (Newark, Del.: University of Delaware, 1996). Wyss's infor- 37. Filarete (as in n. 36): "L'edificio prima si genera, per similitudine lo
mative and in-depth discussion of Marsyas imagery does not include the ideas potrai intendere, e cosi nasce si come la madre partorisce il figliuolo in capa
presented here. di nove mesi."
23. The medallion appears in Sandro Botticelli's Portrait of a Young Woman 38. Raphael Regius, P. ovidii Metamorphosis c'u luculentissimis Raphaelis Regii
in Mythological Guise, ca. 1480-85. Pictured in reverse, which identifies the (1512; Venice, 1565), 131; Philipp P. Fehl, "The Punishment of Marsyas," in
medallion as a copy of the antique gem, it "serves to associate the subject of Decorum and Wit: The Poetry of Venetian Painting; Essays in the History of the
the picture with the Medici"; David Alan Brown, Virtue and Beauty: Leonardo's Classical Tradition (Vienna: IRSA, 1992), 371 n. 5.
"Ginevra de' Benci" and Renaissance Portraits of Women (Washington, D.C.: 39. See Barolsky, 1990 (as in n. 8), 30-31; and Francesco Bocchi, Eccellenza
National Gallery of Art, 2001), 183-85, cat. no. 28. della statua del San Giorgio di Donatello, scultore fiorentino, posta nella facciata di
24. Vincenzo Cartari, Le Vere e nove imagini (1615), facsimile ed. (New York: fuori d'Or San Michele (1571), in Paola Barocchi, Trattati d'arte del cinquecentofra
Garland, 1979), 509. For an example of a small bronze, see Manfred Leithe- manierismo e controriforma (Bari: G. Laterza, 1960), vol. 3, 166.
40. Benvenuto Cellini, quoted in Giuseppe Guido Ferrero, La "Vita" di
Jasper, Renaissance Master Bronzes from the Collection of the Kunsthistorisches
Museum Vienna (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1986), 116-19, Benvenuto Cellini (Turin: Gheroni, 1959), 521. Vasari, vol. 7, 154. While
no. 22. quarrying in the mountains of Pietrasanta, Michelangelo wrote of his inten-
25. Sacchi's portrait of Pasqualini (1614-1691), a castrato singer of thetion "to resuscitate the dead, domesticate the mountains, and introduce
Cappella Sistina and a protege of Cardinal Antonio Barberini, has been theindustry in this country [risuscitar morti a voler domestichar questi monti e a mecter
l'arte in questo paese]." See Il Carteggio di Michelangelo, ed. Paola Barocchi,
subject of several studies, including Keith Christiansen, "Marc'Antonio Pas-
qualini Crowned by Apollo," Notable Acquisitions 1981-2 (Metropolitan Mu-Kathleen Loach Bramanti, and Renzo Ristori (Florence: SPES, 1988), vol. 1,
seum of Art, New York, 1982), 40-41; Terence Ford, "Andrea Sacchi's Apollo 346. I am grateful to William E. Wallace for bringing this reference to my
attention. The translation is that of Wallace. Michael Cole's outstanding study
Crowning the Singer Marc Antonio Pasqualini," Early Music 12 (1984): 79-84; and
Franca Trinchieri Camiz, "The Castrato Singer: From Informal to Formal on the making and critical perception of Cellini's Perseus, "Cellini's Blood,"
Art Bulletin 81 (1999): 216-35, is particularly relevant to the ideas discussed
Portraiture," Artibus et Historiae 18 (1988): 171-86, esp. 178-82. The Marsyas
statuette has been identified simply as "a bound prisoner," an identity thathere.
fails to read in full the iconography of a painting described by Giovanni Pietro 41. Ascanio Condivi, Vita di Michelangelo (Florence: Rinascimento del Libro,
1927), 100-101. Condivi likens Michelangelo's act of removing his shoes to
Bellori in his Vite dei pittori, scultori e architetti moderni, Rome, 1672, as not just
a portrait but an extremely beautiful conceit. that of a snake shedding its skin. Michelangelo's use of the metaphor of the
26. Vasari, vol. 2, 406-7. Francesco Caglioti has convincingly argued that skin-shedding snake in his own writings is generally understood to signify the
the statue of Marsyas was actually restored by Mino da Fiesole with the liberation of the soul from the body. See, for example, Saslow (as in n. 2),
assistance of Giovan Battista Foggini. Caglioti, "Due 'restauratori' per la
219-20, no. 94. This poem employs the snake shedding its skin as a metaphor
antichita dei primi Medici: Mino da Fiesole, Andrea del Verrocchio e ilfor salvation (as do nos. 33, 51, and 161).
'Marsia rosso' degli Uffizi," pts. 1 and 2, Prospettiva 72 (1993): 17-42, 73-74 42. Dante, Paradiso 1.21, in Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Paradiso,
(1994): 74-96. Beth Holman considered the second Marsyas statue in the trans. Charles S. Singleton (1973; reprint, Princeton: Princeton University
context of anatomy although in a discussion of far less detail than the one Press, 1991), vol. 1, 5.
presented here. Holman, "Verrocchio's Marsyas and Renaissance Anatomy," 43. For a discussion of the recognized likeness of the painter and poet, see
Marsyas 19 (1977-78): 1-9. Corrado Gizzi, Michelangelo e Dante (Milan: Electa, 1995), esp. Michael Brun-
27. Vasari, vol. 3, 367: "I quale torso antico ... fu con tanta awertenza e ner's essay "Michelangelo e la critica dantesca nel Cinquecento," 81-90.
giudizio lavorato, che alcune vene bianche e sottili, che erano nella pietra 44. Cosimo I's University of Pisa reopened in 1543 as the "official" Tuscan
rossa, vennero intagliate dall'artefice in luogo appunto che paiono alcuni university. For Varchi's lectures, which were subsequently published in 1550,
piccoli nerbicini che figure naturali, quando sono scorticate, si veggiono. I1 see Leatrice Mendelsohn, Paragoni: Benedetto Varchi's "Due Lezzioni" and Cinque-
che doveva far parere quell'opera ... cosa vivissima." cento Art Theory (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1982).
28. Guido A. Mansuelli, Galleria degli Uffizi: Le statue (Rome: Istituto Poli- 45. Varchi's Lezzione is the first analysis in a long-lived (and ongoing) debate
grafico dello Stato, 1958), 87-88, no. 56 (white Marsyas), 88-90, no. 57 (red concerning the meaning of the sonnet, especially that of the first quatrain:
Marsyas). The white Marsyas came into Medici hands in 1584 when Cardinal "Not even the best of artists/has any conception that a single block of
Ferdinando de' Medici acquired the contents of the Palazzo della Valle- marble/does not contain within its excess/and that is only attained by the

177.102.113.160 on Mon, 17 May 2021 16:42:04 UTC
hand of the intellect ...." The translation is that of Saslow (as in n. 2), 302, ence," in From Studio to Studiolo, ed. Larry Feinberg (Seattle: University
no. 151. The poem has been read in the context of Neoplatonic thought, for Washington Press, 1991), 37-48. Filippo Baldinucci, Notizie de' professori
example, Erwin Panofsky, "The Neoplatonic Movement and Michelangelo," disegno da Cimabue in qua per le quali si dimostra come, eper chi le belle arti di pittur
in Studies in Iconology (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 171-230; and scultura e architettura, lasciata la rozzezza delle maniere Greca e Gotica, si siano i
Charles De Tolnay, The Art and Thought of Michelangelo, trans. Nan Buranelli questi secoli ridotte all'antica loro perfezione, ed. F. Ranalli (Florence: V. Bate
(New York: Pantheon, 1964), 31-55. Others, including Martin Weinberger, 1846), vol. 2, 551 (Santi di Tito), and vol. 3, 12 (Jacopo da Empoli), identif
Michelangelo the Sculptor (New York: Routledge, 1967), 375-85, disagree both drawings as "naturale." Ironically, Pontormo's Corsini Sketchboo
strongly. Summers, 11-17, provides a more moderated reading. Also see Paula which contained at least three dozen life studies, was used to demonstrate t
Carabell, "Image and Identity in the Unfinished Works of Michelangelo," RES importance of the practice yet provided two generations of academic arti
32 (1997): esp. 90-93, for this sonnet and others on Michelangelo's opinion with models. Similar studies occupied the studio practices of Bologna; see, f
on technical matters.
example, Bartolomeo Passerotti's Seated Man (British Museum, London, in
46. See n. 6 above.
no. T-13-25). The complicated pose-left leg crossed over the right and rig
47. Varchi, 22. hand raised and resting on the head-suggests Passerotti arranged one of
48. Vasari, vol. 4, 256-59 (Torrigiano); also see vol. 7, 141-43 (Michelan- garzoni in his shop in order to study the arrangement. For an in-dep
gelo), and vol. 8, 117-18 (Ragionamenti). Also see Elam, 41-84. discussion of Carracci practices, see Carl Goldstein, Visual Fact over Ver
49. See n. 16 above. Vasari describes the garden in the 1550 edition simply Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); and Diane de Graz
as a "school." Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de' piui eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori "Drawings as Means to an End: Preparatory Methods in the Carracci Schoo
italiani, da Cimabue insino a' tempi nostri, ed. Luciano Bellosi and Aldo Rossi in The Craft of Art: Originality and Industry in the Italian Renaissance and Baroq
(Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1986), 882. Workshop, ed. Andrew Ladis and Carolyn Wood (Athens, Ga.: University
50. Varchi, 22. Georgia Press, 1995), 165-86.
51. Condivi, 10-11. The story brings Michelangelo and Donatello together. 63. Enea Vico's engraving Bandinelli's Academy, ca. 1550, is after a drawin
Not only did Donatello reportedly restore the white Marsyas, but also his by Bandinelli. The self-portrait is in the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Cor
student Bertoldo was the resident instructor in the garden school. For the ridoio Vasariano, inv. 1890, no. 4013. A print after Fontana's self-portrai
analogy between Michelangelo and Donatello, see Vincenzo Borghini's epi- drawn by Gozzini and engraved by Lasinio figlio, is easier to read. F
taph quoted at the end of Vasari's life of Donatello, vol. 2, 426. Also see illustrations of both, see Maria Teresa Cantaro, Lavinia Fontana bologne
Barbara J. Watts, "Giorgio Vasari's Vita di Michelangelo Buonarroti and the (Milan: Jandi Sapi, 1989), 86-87, 4a.18. There is, of course, a social comp
Shade of Donatello," in The Rhetorics of Life-Writing in Early Modern Europe: nent to this type of self-imaging. For a recent discussion of this and oth
Forms of Biography from Cassandra Fedele to Louis XIV, ed. Thomas F. Mayer and images of and by Bandinelli as well as Fontana, see Joanna Woods-Marsde
D. R. Woolf (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), 63-96. Renaissance Self-Portraiture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 139-4
52. Varchi, Due Lezzioni, in Barocchi (as in n. 39), vol. 1, 45. 215-22.
53. Vasari, vol. 1, 103. See Francesco Doni to Giovann Angelo Montorsoli, 64. According to Accademia del Disegno statutes, the Compagnia di S. Luca
in Paola Barocchi, Scritti d'arte del cinquecento (Milan: Riccardo Ricciardi, met in the Chapel of St. Luke at the northern end of the hospital's male ward
1971-76), vol. 2, 1906-7; Alessandro Lamo, Intorno alla scultura, e pittura from 1345 to 1515, at which time it moved its meeting place to one of the
(1584), in Giovanbattista Zaist, Notizie istoriche de' pittori, scultori, ed architetti hospital's houses in the Via della Pergola. See Wazbinski (as in n. 3), vol. 2,
cremonesi (Cremona: Stamperia di Pietro Ricchini, 1774), vol. 1, 13. 429; andJohn Henderson, "Healing the Body and Saving the Soul: Hospitals
54. Vasari, Della pittura, in Vasari, vol. 1, 168-69: "... si pu6 conchiudere in Renaissance Florence," Renaissance Studies 15 (2001): 188-216.
che esso disegno altro non sia che una apparente espressione e dichiarazione 65. Alessandro Benedetti, Anatomice: Sive, de historia corporis humani libri
del concetto che, si ha nell'animo, e di quello che altri si e nella mente quinque (Cologne: Eucharius, 1527), bk. 1, fol. Aii verso. Benedetti regarded
immaginato e fabbricato nell'idea." dissection as "a horrifying task, worthy of theatrical presentation [horrido
55. Vasari, Proemio delle vite, in Vasari, vol. 1, 215-16: "... anzi l'istessa anima munere. . . materia suo theatrali digna spectaculo]." Among his other endeavors,
che concepe e nutrisce in se medesima tutti i parti degli intelletti, fusse Benedetti published an edition of Pliny: Plinii Secundi Veronensis Historiae
perfettissimo in su l'origine di tutte l'altre cose, quando l'altissimo Dio, Naturalis Libri XXXVII (Venice, 1513). Also see L. R. Lind, Pre-Vesalian Anat-
formando l'uomo, scoperse con la vaga invenzione delle cose la prima forma omy: Biography, Translations, Documents (Philadelphia: American Philosophical
della sculptura e della pittura: dal quale uono, a mano a mano poi.... Come Society, 1985).
da vero esemplare, fur cavate le statue e le sculture, e la difficulta 66. Archivio di Stato, Florence, Accademia del Disegno 24, fol. 2r, Oct. 18,
dell'attitudini e dei contorni; e per le prime pitture... la morbidezza, 1563.
l'unione, e la discordante concordia che fanno i lumi con l'ombre." 67. Ruben Eriksson, Andreas Vesalius'First Public Anatomy at Bologna 1540: An
56. Paul Barolsky speaks to the relation/conflation of Michelangelo il
Eyewitness Report by Baldasar Heseler Medicinae Scolaris.... (Uppsala: Almqvist
Divino and the Deus artifex in "The Imperfection of Michelangelo's Adam,"
and Wiksells, 1959). Eriksson's English translation faces the Latin text.
and "Michelangelo's Creation of Adam," both in Source 20, no. 4 (2001): 6-8
68. Ibid., 88-89.
and 9-11.
69. Dante, Purgatorio, 12.64-66, in Dante (as in n. 42), vol. 1, 124-25. Leon
57. Charles De Tolnay, Michelangelo (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
Battista Alberti, On Painting and On Sculpture, ed. and trans. Cecil Grayson
1954), vol. 3, 77, vol. 4, 124-75. Also see Summers, 259; and most (London:
recently Penguin Books, 1972), 73-74.
William E. Wallace, "Drawings from the Fabbrica of San Lorenzo during the Battista Armenini, De' veri precetti della pittura (Ravenna:
70. Giovan
Tenure of Michelangelo," in Michelangelo Drawings, ed. Craig Hugh Smyth
Francesco Tebaldini, 1587), bk. 1, chap. 8, 68.
(Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1992), 117-41. The device wasPaolo Lomazzo, Idea del tempio della pittura (1590), in Scritti sulle
71. Gian
also that of the Medici. See, for example, Paolo Giovio, "Impresaarti, di Cosimo
ed. Roberto Paolo Ciardi (Florence: Marchi e Bertolli, 1973), vol. 1, 276.
il Vecchio," in Le sententiose imprese (Lyons, 1562). 72. Benvenuto Cellini, "Sopra i principii e '1 modo d'imparare l'arte del
58. As recorded in Lastricati's drawing, the catafalque featured Fame
disegno," in Barocchi (as in n. 53), vol. 2, 1935.
sounding three trumpets while crowning the great master with the triple
73. For examples other than the one illustrated here, see Simona Lecchini
wreaths of the arti del disegno. The concept is expressed differently Giovannoni,
but not less Mostra di disegni di Alessandro Allori (Florence: Leo S. Olschki,
clearly in the permanent tomb. Here, carved in relief, a portrait bust 1970);ofand
thefor examples by artists other than Allori, Roberto Paolo Ciardi and
artist is accented by a pair of the three interlaced wreaths. Below, seated
Lucia on Tomasi, eds., Imagini anatomiche e naturalistiche nei disegni degli
Tongiori
the monument's base, are personifications of Scultura, Pittura, and Uffizi Architet-
secc. XVI e XVII (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1986).
tura. Vasari, vol. 7, 313, describes the monument and explains the meaning 74. Alloriofis known to have borrowed anatomical texts from the physician
the emblem. The device "Michelangelo used either to suggest Alessandro the three Menchi. For the relationship between Allori and Menchi, see "La
professions of sculpture, painting, and architecture are interwovenrinascith one with della scienza," in Firenze e la Toscana dei Medici nell'Europa del cinque-
another and so bound together, that each of them receives benefit cento, ed. andPaolo Galluzzi (Milan: Electa, 1980), 172.
adornment from the others." He then adds, "being a lofty man of genius, 75. For he
Ligozzi's drawing, see Alvin L. Clarke Jr., Drawing on Tradition: The
may have intended a more subtle meaning." See Stack (as in Lost n. 6), 169;
Legacy of Academic Figure Studies (Cambridge, Mass.: Fogg Art Museum,
Cristina Acidini Luchinat, "L'immagine medicea: I ritratti, i patroni, Harvard University, 1995), 276-83.
l'araldice
e le divise," in "Per bellezza, per studio, per piacere". Lorenzo il Magnifico76.
e gli spazi
Vasari discusses Bartolomeo Torri in the life of Giovan' Antonio Lap-
dell'arte, ed. Franco Borsi (Florence: Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, poli, 1991).
vol. 6, 16.
59. Pietro Aretino, Lettere sull'arte, ed. E. Camesasca (Milan: Edizioni delvol. 8, 528.
77. Vasari,
Milione, 1957), vol. 1, 64. 78. Passerotti's drawing is discussed by Ernst Steinmann, Die Portraitdarstel-
60. Vasari, vol. 2, 94. lungen des Michelangelo (Leipzig: Klinkhardt und Biermann, 1913), 80-81. For
61. Vasari, Della pittura, in Vasari, vol. 1, 170-71. a discussion of the group around Raphael, see Hugo Wagner, Raffael in Bildnis
62. For Jacopo da Empoli's Study of a Reclining Male Nude in Three-Quarter
(Bern: Benteli, 1969), 90-91. The grouping at the right by the skeleton is said
View, see Dessins baroques florentins du musee du Louvre (Paris: Editions de Titian
to portray la and other members of the Venetian school. The drawing was
Reunion des Mus6es Nationaux, 1981), cat. no. 4. Santi di Tito's drawing is ain
realized as painting that hangs in the Borghese Gallery, Rome. See Corinna
the Uffizi, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe, inv. no. 7585F. Archival records
Hoper, Bartolomeo Passerotti (Worms: Wernersche, 1987), vol. 2, 243; and
documenting the teaching of life drawing have yet to be found. Angela For an
Ghirardi, Bartolomeo Passerotti: Pittore (Rimini: Luise, 1990), 44.
informative overview of this, see n. 3 above and Karen-edis Barzman, "Per-
79. Lutio Faberio references the anatomy lessons at the beginning of his
ception, Knowledge, and the Theory of Disegno in Sixteenth-Century funeralFlor-
oration for Agostino Carracci. See Benedetto Morelli and Lutio

177.102.113.160 on Mon, 17 May 2021 16:42:04 UTC
Faberio, Ilfunerale d 'Agostino Carracciofatto in Bologna sua patria da gl'Incaminati 94. Vasari, life of Battista Franco, vol. 6, 580.
Accademici delDisegno, reprinted in Carlo Cesare Malvasia, Felsina pittrice, vite de' 95. According to Alberti, "Composition is the procedure [della ragione] of
pittori Bolognesi (Bologna: Guidi all'Ancona, 1841), vol. 1, 307-8. painting whereby the parts of things seen are put together [si pongono insieme]
80. In 1540 the corpses of three executed criminals and six dogs were used. in the picture." Alberti (as in n. 69), 71. Also see J. Strumpel, "On Grounds
In that year as well as in 1523 and 1544 the gran fontione of public anatomy and Backgrounds: Some Remarks about Composition in Renaissance Paint-
coincided with carnival celebrations. See the informative and fascinating ing," Simiolus 18 (1988): 219-43; and Hellmut Wohl, The Aesthetics of Italian
study by Giovanna Ferrari, "Public Anatomy Lessons and the Carnival: The Renaissance Art: A Reconsideration of Style (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Anatomy Theater of Bologna," Past and Present 117 (1987): 50-106. Individual Press, 1999), 91-94.
cities regulated the procedures to be followed for so-called public dissections. 96. Pietro Francavilla, Ecorche Statuette, Jagiellonian, Cracow; Lodovico
For an in-depth discussion of those instituted by Rome's Studium Urbis with Cigoli, Ecorche Statuette, ca. 1598-1600, Victoria and Albert Museum, London;
reference to those of Bologna and other locales, see Carlino, esp. 69-119. and Jacopo Ligozzi, Studies from a Cadaver, 1590-1600, National Gallery of
81. Raffaello Borghini, II riposo (Florence: Giorgio Marescotti, 1584), bk. 4, Scotland, Edinburgh. For illustrations, see Cazort et al., 156, fig. 61 (Franca-
566. Also see Cazort et al., 158-60.
villa), 162, figs. 48, 49 (Ligozzi).
82. Vasari, vol. 5, 196. 97. Carlino, 221.
83. Vasari, vol. 4, 34-35. For the nature of this relationship, see Martin
98. This is not to say that dissection was understood in terms of the healing
Kemp, "Dissection and Divinity in Leonardo's Late Anatomies," Journal of the arts. Clinical observation and humoral theories still held sway.
Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 35 (1972): 200-225; and idem, Leonardo da
99. For a recent discussion of Zeuxis's Helen and the impact of Cicero's
Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man (London: J. M. Dent and Sons,
explanation of the paintings in De inventione 2.1.2-3, as well as Pliny's refer-
1981), 291. Also see Martin Clayton, Leonardo da Vinci: The Anatomy of Man,
ence to it in Natural History 35.64, see Leonard Barkan, "The Heritage of
Drawings from the Collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (Boston: Little,
Zeuxis: Painting, Rhetoric, and History," in Antiquity and Its Interpreters, ed.
Brown, 1992); and J. H. Randall Jr., "The Role of Leonardo da Vinci in the
Birth of Modern Science," in The Roots of Scientific Thought, ed. Philip P.
Alina Payne, Ann Kuttner, and Rebekah Smick (Cambridge: Cambridge
Wiener and Aaron Noland (New York: Basic Books, 1957). University Press, 2000), 99-109; and Pasquale Sabbatino, La bellezza di Elena:
L'imitazione nella letteratura nelle artifigurative del Rinascimento (Florence: Leo S.
84. Vasari, vol. 7, 13. Michael Hirst, "Salviati illustrateur de Vidus Vidius,"
Revue d'Art 6 (1969): 19-28. Vidius (Guido Guidi) was born in Florence. His Olschki, 1997).
mother was the daughter of Domenico Ghirlandaio. In his autobiography, 100. Danti (as in n. 89), vol. 2, 1575-76.
Cellini describes Vidius, who was the godfather to Cellini's illegitimate daugh- 101. Vasari, vol. 7, 281.
ter, as "an able physician and doctor of medicine." 102. Vasari, vol. 1, 170.
85. Vasari, vol. 8, 271. 103. Barkan, 205-7, discusses the Torso Belvedere, Michelangelo, and his
unfinished works.
86. For an overview, see Ludwig Choulant, History and Bibliography of Ana-
tomic Illustration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1920); Bernard 104. The first to argue the case was Gosta Saflund, "The Belvedere Torso: An
Schultz, Art and Anatomy in Renaissance Italy, Studies in the Fine Arts, ArtInterpretation," Opuscula Romana 9 (1976): 63-83. Among the evidence cited
Theory, no. 12 (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1985); and, more recently is the dowel hole located on the torso's sacrum, which, says Saflund, would
and informatively, Cazort et al.; and Martin Kemp and Marina Wallace, have secured a satyr's tail. Additionally, the hide on which the figure sits is that
Spectacular Bodies: The Art and Science of the Human Body from Leonardo to Now of a Phrygian leopard (which can be associated with the Phrygian satyr) rather
(London: Hayward Gallery; Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000).than that of a lion (which is associated with Hercules). Most significantly, the
For discussions related specifically to Michelangelo, see Alessandro Parron- position of the torso is virtually identical with that of the Marsyas on the
chi's essays "Un'ipotesi su un'opra perduta la Testa di Fauno" and "Sulla Augustan gem. In both instances this pose is distinctive to having one's arms
nascita dell'anatomia artistica," in Opere giovanili di Michelangelo, vol. 1 (Flor-
tied behind the back. "It displays a tension which affects especially the
ence: Leo S. Olschki, 1975), 3-18, 19-48; and "Michelangelo e Realdo shoulders and the dorsal muscles. The upper body is twisted: the left shoulder
Colombo," in vol. 3 (1981), 159-66. is turned backwards and the right is lowered and inclined forward" (64). A
87. Schultz (as in n. 86), 102, 104-6. Summers, 397-405, remains the most comparison of the Torso Belvedere with the 1st-century Herakles Epitrapezios, or
thoughtful assessment on the relationship between Michelangelo and Co- Hercules seated (often at a dinner table), in Cleveland is instructive. The
lombo. For Michelangelo's anatomical drawings and their notations, see Herakles exhibits none of the tension of contracted muscles that is so apparent
James Elkins, "Michelangelo and the Human Form: His Knowledge and Use in the Torso Belvedere and accompanies the rotation of a constrained body. Also
of Anatomy, "Art History 7 (1984): 176-86. see Bober and Rubinstein (as in n. 28), 166-68, no. 132; Haskell and Penny
88. Condivi, 99. If Colombo is to be believed, he had access to an amazing (as in n. 28), 311-14; and Barkan, 191-207. For the link between Michelan-
assortment of bodies. "In book 15 of the De re anatomica ... Colombo men-
gelo and the Torso Belvedere, see Ulisse Aldrovandi, "Delle statue antiche, che
tions among his trophies autopsies performed on Cardinals Gambara (1540),
per tutta Roma, in diversi luoghi e case si veggono," Le antichita della Citta di
Cibo (1550) and Campeggio (1554), and on the body of Ignatius Loyola who
Roma, appresso tutte le statue antichita, by Lucio Mauro (Venice: Giordano,
died in Rome in 1556." See Carlino, 193-94.
1556), 121.
89. Vincenzo Danti, Trattato delle perfette proporzioni: Ilprimo libro, in Barocchi
105. Lomazzo (as in n. 71), vol. 2, 381. For the most recent discussions of
(as in n. 53), vol. 2, 1575-76.
the Torso Belvedere and its impact, see Barkan, 191-99; and Raimund Wunsche,
90. See Summers, 195. Also see Margaret Daly Davis, "Beyond the 'Primo
"Torso vom Belvedere," in In Cortile delle Statue: Der Statuenhof des Belvedere in
Libro' of Vincenzo Danti's 'Trattato delle perfette proporzioni,' "Mitteilungen
des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 26 (1982): 63-84. Vatican (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1998), 287-314, esp. 293-95.
106. Barkan, 197, 199.
91.Juan Valverde de Hamusco, Anatomia del corpo humano composta per M.
107. Lomazzo (as in n. 71), vol. 2, 381.
Giovan Valverde di Hamusco, et da luy con molte figure di rame, et eruditi discorsi in
luce mandata (Rome: Salamanca et Antonio Lafrery, 1560), 66v. The title page 108. Vasari, vol. 7, 160-61.
of the 1611 edition of Vidius's Anatome corporis humani contains a similar109. See Steinmann (as in n. 78).
110. On a recent visit to the Casa Buonarroti, Florence, all of these works
figure. Elkins (as in n. 87) has written the study that best evaluates the extent
of Michelangelo's anatomical investigations. were on view. Significantly, the sculpture fragments included in Niccolo della
92. Lodovico Dolce, quoted in Mark Roskill, Dolce's "Aretino" and Venetian Casa's 1540s engraving after Baccio Bandinelli's Self-Portrait (Museum of Fine
Art Theory of the Cinquecento (New York: New York University Press, 1968), Arts, Boston) bear no relationship to the Torso Belvedere or a torso of the
142-43. Marsyas religatus type and thus suggest that the reference in Niccolo Ferrucci's
painting, like the other pictured artworks, refers directly to Michelangelo.
93. Agostino Carracci, quoted in Giovanna Perini, ed., Gli scritti dei Carracci
(Bologna: Nuova Alfa, 1990), 158. 111. Feinberg (as in n. 3), 63.

177.102.113.160 on Mon, 17 May 2021 16:42:04 UTC

(Dis) Assembling: Marsyas, Michelangelo, and The Accademia Del Disegno Author(s) : Fredrika Jacobs Source: The Art Bulletin, Sep., 2002, Vol. 84, No. 3 (Sep., 2002), Pp. 426-448 Published By: CAA

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

(Dis) Assembling: Marsyas, Michelangelo, and The Accademia Del Disegno Author(s) : Fredrika Jacobs Source: The Art Bulletin, Sep., 2002, Vol. 84, No. 3 (Sep., 2002), Pp. 426-448 Published By: CAA

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

(Dis)assembling: Marsyas, Michelangelo, and the Accademia del Disegno

Author(s): Fredrika Jacobs

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3177307

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

^^Tri^A i-??A IffV

.,(*.L4 . l y ,.,~ . /'

^-u ~~4kYI ^ ^ n6'^;.~??

| llttr It rtC t<elc~

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

4 Apollo and Marsyas, from Vita et Metamorfosei d'Ovidio: Figurato

courtyard of the Medici home" reside several works by Do-

The ancient torso . . . was wrought with such care and

In these passages Vasari explicitly identifies one Marsyas

This content downloaded from

5 Apollo, Marsyas, and Olympus, Florentine, 15th century, copy

6 Apollo and Marsyas, from Vincenzo Cartari, Le vere e nove

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

.~~~~~~~~~~ ~ ~~~~~~~ .' I . . ;,i . . I

The great Renaissance painters sensed in Marsyas an af-

In other words, Marsyas can be understood as a "metaphor of

This content downloaded from

cetto," of about 1538-44, a work noted for the author's

This content downloaded from

del Disegno. Vasari's definition of disegno accommodates Michelange-

a pedagogical program. Still, the author of The Lives was a

This content downloaded from

drawing the model dal vivo or copying plaster casts of miscel-

10 Giovanni Stradano, Academy of Art, 1573. London,

ings like Santi di Tito's Study of a Prone Figure and Jacopo da

This content downloaded from

12 Title page of Andreas Vesalius, % 9-lCR C^S5ARS^S{ s rM^le

De humani corporis fabrica, 1543. M=eJ7.GdlitzrtvssR*gis,dc Sendtas Vnraprz

This content downloaded from

pencil who drew the forms and lineaments which would

Anyone who wants to express a dead body, which is cer-

Alberti's statement can be read as acknowledging two dis-

Now, because it is of great importance to make male and

This content downloaded from

14 Bartolomeo Passerotti, Michelangelo

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

15 Three Studies of the "Torso Belvedere,"

first disassembling, then reassembling, Zeuxis had done what

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

of its own artistic preeminence. Logically, this message was

painting as well as in those by Caccini, Allori, and Coccapani

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

You might also like