On the Programmatic Foundation of the Collections of Artists’ Portraits and Their Works in the 16th Century
Abstract
The origin of the idea to establish art collections in various socio-cultural contexts represents a special topic of the museum history, on one hand, and of the institutionalization of art, on the other. The expressions of the intentions to form certain collections, especially art collections, in order to preserve the memory of the art works and the likeness of their creators still stir the scholarly debates. The creation of art collections as such, and along with them the collections of artists’ portraits and self-portraits, is the result of several trends in the renaissance concept of art. One is the status of liberal arts, which the fine arts, especially painting, gradually assumed since the beginning of 15th century, owing to Leon Battista Alberti’s Treatise on Painting. Another phenomenon that contributed to this process is the formation of the value system of art in the 16th century art theory, with Giorgio Vasari as its main proponent. We would like to point to certain other instances that anticipated the tendency to form art collections. One such instance is the collection of portraits of famous men that Paolo Giovio, the prominent humanist, started to acquire in 1521. Another instance is the room in Giorgio Vasari’s house in Arezzo with the portraits of artists, which he had painted in early 1540s. Yet another is the cycle of graphic representations of artists’ portraits that appeared in the second edition of Vasari’s Lives, in 1568, as mnemonic devices to accompany the literary portraits. Concurrent with the design of the illustrated edition of the Lives were the preparations for the establishment of the Academy of the Arts of Drawing (Accademia del Disegno), founded in 1563, whose Statute introduced the need to form a collection of artists’ portraits and an art collection featuring their works. These were supposed to serve didactic purposes, in the first place, but also to preserve the memory of the artistic forebears. It paved the way for the future academic art collections, such as the Borromeo’s Milan Ambrosiana that was created as an art academy. All these played important roles in the establishment of a visible history that grew into museum that shaped the memory of art and its history, not only by exhibition of the art works, but also by exhibition and preservation of the portraits of their creators. Moreover, they established the practice, the obligation, of artists to leave to their artistic progeny not only their works but also their likeness that became the image and the guarantee of a newly established history, the history of art.
References
Милосављевић, A. (2013). Живе слике. Аретинов одговор на Вазаријев опис apparat-a дизајнираних поводом уласка Карла V у Фиренцу 30. априла 1536. године. У: Д. Булатовић и М. Попадић (ур.), Простори памћења: Уметност– Баштина (1–8). Београд: Филозофски факултет.
Alberti, L. B. (2008). O slikarstvu: De pictura. O kiparstvu: De statua. Zagreb: Institut za povijest umjetnosti.
Alberti, R. (1604). Origine, et Progresso dell’ Academia del Dissegno, De Pittori, Scultori, & Architetti di Roma. Pavia: Pietro Bartoli.
Andrei, M. A. & Genoways, H. H. (2008). Museum Origins. Readings in Early Museum History and Philosophy. London – New York: Routledge.
Bennett, T. (1995). The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics. London: Routledge.
Borromeo, F. (2010). Sacred Painting; Museum. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Canata, N. (2014). Giorgio Vasari, Paolo Giovio, Portrait Collections and the Rhetorics of Images. In: M. Wellington Gahtan (Ed.), Giorgio Vasari and the Birth of the Museum (67–79). Farnham: Ashgate.
Canata, N. (2015). Timeless Galleries and Poetic Visions in Rome 1500–1540. In: E. Waghall Nivre et al. (Eds.), Allusions and Reflections. Greek and Roman Mythology in Renaissance Europe (289–307). Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Casini, T. (2014). Portrait Galleries, Artist’s Biographies and the Birth of Academies and Museums. In: M. Wellington Gahtan (Ed.), Giorgio Vasari and the Birth of the Museum (103–115). Farnham: Ashgate.
Casini, T. (2004). Ritratti parlanti. Collezionismo e biografie illustrate nei secoli XVI e XVII. Firenze: Edifir.
De Benedictis, C. (2001). Per la storia del collezionismo italiano. Fonti e documenti. Milano: Ponte alle Grazie.
De Girolami Cheney, L. (2006). The Homes of Giorgio Vasari. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc.
Doni, A. F. (1977). Al molto illustre S. conte Agostino Landi, 20 luglio 1543. In: P. Barocchi (Ed.), Scritti d’arte del Cinquecento (2895–2903). Milano–Napoli: Ricciardi.
Emison, P. (2004). Creating the Divine Artist from Dante to Michelangelo. Leiden: Brill.
Findlen, P. (2012). The Museum: Its Classical Etymology and Renaissance Geneology. In: B. Messias Carbonell (Ed.), Museum Studies. An Anthology of Contexts (23–45). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Giovio, P. (1575). Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium. Septem libris iam olim ab authore comprehensa. Basileae: Petri Pernae Typhographi (https://archive.org/details/imgAI730MiscellaneaOpal)
Giovio, P. (1577). Elogia virorum literis illustrium, quotquot vel nostra vel auorum memoria vixere. Ex eiusdem Musaeo cuius descriptionem vnà exhibemus ad viuum expressis imaginibus exornata. Basileae: Petri Pernae Typographi (https://archive.org/details/gri_33125009325065)
Giovio, P. (1549). Paolo Giovio in Roma a Giorgio Vasari in Arezzo, Di Roma il 25 di Genaro 1549. (https://www.memofonte.it/home/ricerca/singolo_17.php?id=111&daGiorno=31&aGiorno=31&daMese=3&aMese=3&daAnno=1548&aAnno=1548&intestazione=&trascrizione=&segnatura=&bibliografia=&cerca=cerca&)
Goldstein, C. (1975). Vasari and the Florentine Accademia del Disegno. Zeitschrift für Kustgeschichte, 38(2), 145–152.
Hopkins, O. (2021). The Museum From Its Origins to the 21st Century. London: The Quarto Group.
Impey, O. & Macgregor, A. (2017). The Origins of Museums. The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Europe. Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.
Lee Rubin, P. (1995). Giorgio Vasari. Art and History. New Haven: Yale University Press.
McClellan, A. (2003). A Brief History of the Art Museum Public. In: A. McClellan (Ed.), Art and Its Publics. Museum Studies at the Millennium (1–16). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Milosavljević, A. (2019). An Artist in and out of the System in Early Modern Florence. Social Context and the Struggle for Establishment of Young Giorgio Vasari as Reflected in His Letters of 1534 and 1536. In: D. Damjanović, L. Magašić Bilandžić, Ž. Miklošević, J. Walton (Eds.), Art and Politics in the Modern Period (17–24). Zagreb: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb.
Milosavljević-Ault, A. (2013). Prezentacija i legitimacija vladara u dekoraciji renesansnog studiola. Beograd: PUNKT.
Minonzio, F. (2007). Il museo di Giovio e la galleria degli uomini illustri. In: E. Carrara & S. Ginzburg (Eds.), Testi, immagini e filologia nel XVI secolo (77–146). Pisa: Scuola Nomale Superiore.
Moretti, L. & Roberts, S. (2018). From the Vite or the Ritratti? Previously Unknown Portraits from Vasari’s Libro de’ Disegni. I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance, 21(1), 105–136.
Pevsner, N. (1973). Academies of Art Past and Present. New York: Da Capo Press.
Pomian, K. (1991). Collectors and Curiosities. Paris and Venice. Cambridge: Polity.
Rowland, I. & Charney, N. (2017). The Collector of Lives. Giorgio Vasari and the Invention of Art. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Schlosser, J. R. von (1908). Die Kunst- und Wunderkammern der Spätrenaissance. Eit Beitrag zur Geschichte des Sammelwesens. Leipizig: Verlag von Klinkhardt & Biermann.
Smithers, T. (2022). The Cults of Raphael and Michelangelo: Artistic Sainthood and Memorials as a Second Life. New York: Routledge.
Susinno, S. (1974). L’Accademia Nazionale di San Luca. Roma: De Luca.
Vasari, G. (1966). Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568. P. Barocchi e R. Bettarini (Eds.). Firenze: Sansoni.
Wazbinski, Z. (1987). L’Accademia medicea del disegno a Firenze: Idea e istituzione. Firenze: Olschki.
The details about the publication policy, including copyright and licensing, are available at: