A favourable specimen of Vasari’s decorative painting is the fresco in the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence, given on Plate I. It represents Leo X surrounded by his Cardinals, and introduces portraits of famous men of the day. For instance, on the left above the balustrade in the upper part of the fresco against the opening, will be observed four heads of personages outside the conclave. That on the right is of Leonardo da Vinci and the one on the left Michelangelo’s, while the two men with covered heads who intervene are Giuliano de’ Medici, Duc de Nemours, and his nephew Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duca d’ Urbino, the originals of Michelangelo’s world-famous statues on the Medici tombs, that are of course treated in a wholly ideal fashion. It will be observed that among the foreground figures the heads of the second from the left and the second from the right are rendered with much more force and character than the rest. They are of Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici afterwards Clement VII, and Cardinal de’ Rossi, and Vasari has saved himself trouble by boldly annexing them, and with them the bust of the Pope, from Raphael’s Portrait of Leo X, of which, as he tells us elsewhere, he had at one time made a copy.
It has been well said of him by the continuators of his autobiography that ‘to our Giorgio nature was very bountiful in her gifts; study and good will had largely improved his natural disposition, but the taste of the times, and the artistic education he received, corrupted the gifts of nature, and the fruit of his unwearied studies.’ Vasari was not an inspired artist, and he had neither the informing mind of a master nor the judgement of a discriminating critic, but he was, as we have already pointed out, above all things a thoroughly practical craftsman in intimate touch with all the manifold artistic life of the Italy of his time. He possessed moreover a most genial personality with which it is a pleasure to come into contact, and his good temper (which only fails him when he talks about Gothic art), though it may at times slightly provoke us, accounts for not a little of the deserved popularity of his writings.[[2]]
Vasari has no doubt at all about the arts being in the most healthy condition in the best of all possible artistic worlds, but it is easy for us to see that this art of the High Renaissance was not of the very best; that the spirit had died out of it almost as soon as the form had attained to outward perfection. We cannot share the facile optimism of Vasari who will admire any work, or any at least in his own school and style, in which there is initiative and force and technical mastery, and in whose eyes to paint feigned architecture on a stucco façade, provided it be deftly done, is as much a ‘cosa bellissima’ as to carve the Marsuppini sarcophagus in S. Croce. We cannot however withhold our admiration when we consider the copious artistic output of the age, the manifold forms of aesthetic expression, the easy surrender of the most intractable materials to the artist’s will. As we read Vasari’s descriptions and recipes the air all about us seems full of the noise of the mason’s hammer, the splash of plaster on the wall, the tinkle of the carver’s chisel against the marble, the grating of the chaser’s rasp upon the bronze. We feel ourselves spectators of an organized activity on a vast scale, where processes are so well understood that they go on almost of themselves. In the present day, in so much that is written about art, the personal or biographical interest is uppermost, and the lives of Italian artists, with their troubles and triumphs, absorb so much attention that one wonders whether any is left for Italian art. Hence one of the chief values of Vasari’s Technical Introduction is its insistence on artistic practice in general, as distinct from the doings of individual artists, and in this it may serve as a useful supplement or corrective to the biographical writing now in vogue. In Vasari on Technique there are no attractive personal legends, like that of Giotto’s shepherding or Donatello’s adventure with the eggs, but we learn in exchange to follow step by step the building and plastering and painting of Giotto’s chapel at Padua, and can watch Donatello’s helpers as they anxiously adjust the mould and core for casting the statue of Gattamelata.
Plate I
LEO X WITH HIS CARDINALS
Mural Painting by Vasari, in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence
It may assist the reader if there be here subjoined a succinct resumé of the subjects treated by Vasari in the three ‘Introductions.’
The first of these, on Architecture, opens with a long chapter on stones used in building and decoration, which is important as the fullest notice of the subject that has come down to us from the Renaissance period. Into his somewhat loose disquisitions on porphyry, marbles, travertine, and other materials, Vasari introduces so many incidental notices of monuments and personages of interest, that a somewhat extended commentary has in this part been necessary. Next follows the inevitable chapter on the five Orders, at the close of which comes the notable passage in which Vasari adopts for late mediaeval architecture the term ‘Gothic’ that has ever since adhered to it. With Vasari the word ‘Gothic’ means ‘barbarian,’ and he holds that the style was invented by the Goths, after they had conquered the Romans and destroyed all the good antique structures. His description of what he terms the ‘abominations’ of slender shafts and niches and corbels and finials and doors that touch the roof is quite spirited, and might be learned by heart as a lesson in humility by some of our mediaeval enthusiasts. On the question whether Vasari was the first to use the term ‘Gothic’ in this sense a word will be said in the Note on the passage in Vasari’s text.
Next come chapters on the architectural use of enriched plaster; on the rustic fountains and grottoes, the taste for which was coming in in Vasari’s time, and which at a later period generated the so-called ‘rocaille’ or ‘rococo’ style in ornamentation; and on mosaic pavements. This ‘Introduction’ ends with a chapter on an interesting subject to which it does not quite do justice, the subject of ideal architecture, on which in that and the succeeding age a good deal was written.
Though Sculpture was not Vasari’s métier his account of the processes of that art is full and practical, though we miss the personal note that runs through the descriptions of the same procedure in the Trattato of Cellini. After an introductory chapter we have one on the technique of sculpture in marble, with an account first of the small, and then of the full-sized, model in clay or wax, the mechanical transfer of the general form of this to the marble block, and the completion of the statue by the use of tools and processes which he describes. Chapter three introduces the subject of reliefs, and there is here of course a good deal about the picturesque reliefs in which perspective effects are sought, that Ghiberti and Donatello had brought into vogue. The account of bronze casting in chapter four is one of the most interesting in the whole treatise, and the descriptions are in the main clear and consistent. Illustrations have been introduced here from the article on the subject in the French Encyclopédie of the eighteenth century, where is an account of the processes used in 1699 for casting in one piece Girardon’s colossal equestrian statue of Louis XIV for the Place Vendôme in Paris. A chapter on die-sinking for medals is followed by one on modelled plaster work, for this material is dealt with in all the three sections of the Introduction; while sculpture in wood forms the subject of the concluding chapter, in which there is a curious notice of an otherwise unknown French artist, who executed at Florence a statue of S. Rocco which may still be seen in the church of the Annunziata. In various places of this ‘Introduction’ to Sculpture questions of general aesthetic interest are brought forward, and some of these are discussed in the commentary at its close.
Of the three ‘Introductions’ that on Painting is the longest and deals with the greatest variety of topics. After a preliminary chapter in which Vasari shows that he regards the art with the eyes of a Florentine frescoist, he gives a practical account of different methods of executing drawings and cartoons, and of transferring the lines of the cartoon to the fresh plaster of the wall, on which the fresco painter is to work. A chapter on colouring in mural pictures leads on to the account of the fresco process. As Vasari was in this an expert, his description and appreciation of the process form one of the most valuable parts of the treatise. He is enthusiastic in his praise of the method, which he calls the most masterly and most beautiful of all, on account of its directness and rapidity. Tempera painting on panel or on dry plaster is next discussed, and then follows a notice of oil painting on panel or canvas. The statement here made by Vasari that oil painting was invented by van Eyck is the earliest enunciation of a dogma that has given rise in recent times to a large amount of controversial writing. He goes on next to treat of the right method of mural painting in the oil medium, and in this last connection Vasari gives us the recipe he had finally adopted after years of experiment, and employed for preparing walls for the application of oil paint in the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence. The use of oil paint on a ground of slate or other kinds of stone furnishes matter for another chapter.