- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804762151
- eISBN:
- 9780804773379
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804762151.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This chapter discusses Benvenuto Cellini, the Florentine goldsmith turned sculptor who immortalized himself by telling the story of his life not only as an artist but also as a belligerent, forceful, ...
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This chapter discusses Benvenuto Cellini, the Florentine goldsmith turned sculptor who immortalized himself by telling the story of his life not only as an artist but also as a belligerent, forceful, and at times fiercely arrogant man. It focuses primarily on Cellini's monumental Vita, an innovative book written toward the end of his life and remaining in manuscript form for 159 years after his death. The Vita tells his story as a wonder-eliciting maker of objects for a public obsessed with collecting things of all sizes and value in an increasingly courtly world defined by conspicuous consumption.Less
This chapter discusses Benvenuto Cellini, the Florentine goldsmith turned sculptor who immortalized himself by telling the story of his life not only as an artist but also as a belligerent, forceful, and at times fiercely arrogant man. It focuses primarily on Cellini's monumental Vita, an innovative book written toward the end of his life and remaining in manuscript form for 159 years after his death. The Vita tells his story as a wonder-eliciting maker of objects for a public obsessed with collecting things of all sizes and value in an increasingly courtly world defined by conspicuous consumption.
Douglas Biow
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804762151
- eISBN:
- 9780804773379
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804762151.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This book concentrates on the Renaissance concern with “self-fashioning” by examining how a group of Renaissance artists and writers encoded their own improprieties in their works of art. In the ...
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This book concentrates on the Renaissance concern with “self-fashioning” by examining how a group of Renaissance artists and writers encoded their own improprieties in their works of art. In the elitist court society of sixteenth-century Italy, where moderation, limitation, and discretion were generally held to be essential virtues, these men consistently sought to stand out and to underplay their conspicuousness at once. The heroes (or anti-heroes) of this book—Michelangelo Buonarroti, Benvenuto Cellini, Pietro Aretino, and Anton Francesco Doni—violated norms of decorum by promoting themselves aggressively and by using writing or artworks to memorialize their assertiveness and intractable delight in parading themselves as transgressive and insubordinate on a grand scale. Focusing on these sorts of writers and visual artists, this book constructs a version of the Italian Renaissance that is neither the elegant one of Castiglione's and Vasari's courts—so recently favored in scholarly accounts—nor the dark, conspiratorial one of Niccolò Machiavelli's and Francesco Guicciardini's princely states.Less
This book concentrates on the Renaissance concern with “self-fashioning” by examining how a group of Renaissance artists and writers encoded their own improprieties in their works of art. In the elitist court society of sixteenth-century Italy, where moderation, limitation, and discretion were generally held to be essential virtues, these men consistently sought to stand out and to underplay their conspicuousness at once. The heroes (or anti-heroes) of this book—Michelangelo Buonarroti, Benvenuto Cellini, Pietro Aretino, and Anton Francesco Doni—violated norms of decorum by promoting themselves aggressively and by using writing or artworks to memorialize their assertiveness and intractable delight in parading themselves as transgressive and insubordinate on a grand scale. Focusing on these sorts of writers and visual artists, this book constructs a version of the Italian Renaissance that is neither the elegant one of Castiglione's and Vasari's courts—so recently favored in scholarly accounts—nor the dark, conspiratorial one of Niccolò Machiavelli's and Francesco Guicciardini's princely states.
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804762151
- eISBN:
- 9780804773379
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804762151.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This chapter offers some final caveats on Renaissance self-fashioning by looking at men who were represented, or represented themselves, as flouting on the grand scale the niceties of decorum in ...
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This chapter offers some final caveats on Renaissance self-fashioning by looking at men who were represented, or represented themselves, as flouting on the grand scale the niceties of decorum in sixteenth-century Italy. It notes that artists like Benvenuto Cellini and Michelangelo Buonarroti are quite exceptional among the larger group of practitioners in the period. They were able to create a demand for their products that was extraregional and associated with their particular virtuosity and expertise. The artists described in this book helped redefine what it meant behaviorally to be someone in a profession in sixteenth-century Italy. In the process, they invested themselves in often novel and exciting ways in their visual and verbal art.Less
This chapter offers some final caveats on Renaissance self-fashioning by looking at men who were represented, or represented themselves, as flouting on the grand scale the niceties of decorum in sixteenth-century Italy. It notes that artists like Benvenuto Cellini and Michelangelo Buonarroti are quite exceptional among the larger group of practitioners in the period. They were able to create a demand for their products that was extraregional and associated with their particular virtuosity and expertise. The artists described in this book helped redefine what it meant behaviorally to be someone in a profession in sixteenth-century Italy. In the process, they invested themselves in often novel and exciting ways in their visual and verbal art.
Gareth D. Williams
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- August 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190272296
- eISBN:
- 9780190272319
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190272296.003.0008
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Chapter 7 focuses on Pietro Bembo’s renown as a collector of antiquities, books, manuscripts, contemporary art, and scientific instrumentation. De Aetna’s relevance to this topic lies partly in its ...
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Chapter 7 focuses on Pietro Bembo’s renown as a collector of antiquities, books, manuscripts, contemporary art, and scientific instrumentation. De Aetna’s relevance to this topic lies partly in its credentials as a work of naturalist collection in itself, recording the physical and topographical features that Pietro encountered on Etna. The chapter further explores the ways in which, later in his life, De Aetna is nostalgically evoked in the material arts. The main exhibits are the portrait medal Pietro commissioned in the early 1530s from the eminent Valerio Belli, and two portraits of Cardinal Bembo by Titian. The chapter also considers the controversial case of Giovanni Bellini’s Portrait of a Young Man of c. 1505, not to argue that Bellini’s sitter in this painting is in fact Pietro, but rather to illustrate the interplay claimed for De Aetna between its content and form, its typeface and verbal portraiture.Less
Chapter 7 focuses on Pietro Bembo’s renown as a collector of antiquities, books, manuscripts, contemporary art, and scientific instrumentation. De Aetna’s relevance to this topic lies partly in its credentials as a work of naturalist collection in itself, recording the physical and topographical features that Pietro encountered on Etna. The chapter further explores the ways in which, later in his life, De Aetna is nostalgically evoked in the material arts. The main exhibits are the portrait medal Pietro commissioned in the early 1530s from the eminent Valerio Belli, and two portraits of Cardinal Bembo by Titian. The chapter also considers the controversial case of Giovanni Bellini’s Portrait of a Young Man of c. 1505, not to argue that Bellini’s sitter in this painting is in fact Pietro, but rather to illustrate the interplay claimed for De Aetna between its content and form, its typeface and verbal portraiture.
