Vierge à l’Enfant avec anges, sainte Catherine d’Alexandrie, Rosa da Viterbo, saint Pierre et saint jean l’Évangéliste, huile sur bois, 203 × 197 cm, Florence, Galleria dello Spedale degli Innocenti
↑Mina Gregori, Le Musée des Offices et le Palais Pitti : La Peinture à Florence, Editions Place des Victoires, (ISBN2-84459-006-3), p. 112
↑Stendhal dira à ce propos que Pierre de Cosimo est un « barbouilleur dont le nom a survécu, parce qu’il est le maître d’André del Sarto. ». (Stendhal, Histoire de la Peinture en Italie, Paris, Le Divan, 1929, [lire en ligne [archive]], t. 1, p. 186)
Daniel Arasse, Le Sujet dans le tableau. Essais d’iconographie analytique, Flammarion, 1997, chapitre 3 : « Piero di Cosimo, l’excentrique »
Bibliographie
Fritz Knapp, Piero di Cosimo : sein Leben und seine Werke, Halle A.S. : W. Knapp, 1898.
Hugo Haberfeld, Piero di Cosimo, Breslau : R. Galle’s Buchdruckerei, 1900.
Mina Bacci, Piero di Cosimo, Milano : Bramante, [1966].
Dans la lumière de Vermeer, Paris, Musée de l’Orangerie, 24 septembre – 28 novembre 1966 (Sainte Marie-Madeleine, Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica), 1966.
Mina Bacci, L’opera completa di Piero di Cosimo, Milano : Rizzoli, 1976.
Alain Jouffroy, Piero di Cosimo : ou la forêt sacrilège, Paris : R. Laffont, 1982.
James H. Beck, « The origins of Piero di Cosimo », Source, vol. IV, n° 4, été 1985, p. 9-14.
Sharon Fermor, Piero di Cosimo : fiction, invention and fantasia, London : Reaktion books, 1993.
Anna Forlani Tempesti et Elena Capretti, Piero Di Cosimo : l’œuvre peint, Paris : Éd. du Félin, 1996.
Laura Cavazzini, « Un documento ritrovato e qualche osservazione sul percorso di Piero di Cosimo », Prospettiva , n° 87-88 (juil.-oct. 1997), p. 125-132.
Luisa Secchi Tarugi, « Le bizzarrie pittoriche di Piero di Cosimo », Disarmonia bruttezza e bizzarria nel Rinascimento : atti del VII convegno internazionale, (Chianciano-Pienza, 17-20 luglio 1995), Firenze : F. Cesati, 1998.
Catherine Whistler et David Bomford, The Forest fire by Piero di Cosimo, Oxford : Ashmolean Museum, 1999.
Dennis Geronimus, « The birth date, early life, and career of Piero di Cosimo », Art bulletin, vol. 82, n° 1, mars 2000, p. 164-170.
Louis Alexander Waldman, « Fact, fiction, hearsay : notes on Vasari’s life of Piero di Cosimo », Art bulletin, vol. 82, n° 1 mars 2000, p. 171-179.
Dennis Geronimus, Piero di Cosimo : visions beautiful and strange, New Haven : Yale University Press, 2006.
Maurizia Tazartes, Piero di Cosimo : « ingegno astratto e difforme », Firenze : Mauro Pagliai, 2010.
1445: The Creation and the Expulsion from the Paradise
Giovanni di Paolo di Grazia (c. 1403–1482) was an Italian painter, working primarily in Siena. He may have apprenticed with Taddeo di Bartolo, becoming a prolific painter and illustrator of manuscripts, including Dante‘s texts.
He was one of the most important painters of the 15th century Sienese School. His early works show the influence of earlier Sienese masters, but his later style was more individual, characterized by cold, harsh colours and elongated forms. His style also took on the influence of International Gothicartists such as Gentile da Fabriano. Many of his works have an unusual dreamlike atmosphere, such as the surrealistic Miracle of St. Nicholas of Tolentino painted about 1455 and now housed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, while his last works, particularly Last Judgment, Heaven, and Hell from about 1465 and Assumption painted in 1475, both at Pinacoteca Nazionale (Siena), are grotesque treatments of their lofty subjects. Giovanni’s reputation declined after his death but was revived in the 20th century.
Early works
Giovanni di Paolo was first documented in 1417 working for the Sienese Dominican Order as a miniaturist (manuscript illuminator).[1] Most of Giovanni’s commissions came from local monastic communities which is apparent because so many of his early works are altarpieces for such churches.[2] For example, The Virgin and Christ Child with Saints Bernardino, Anthony Abbot, Francis and Sabina and The Lamentation Over the Dead Christ(1462–3), a « square panel painting » altarpiece commissioned by Pope Pius II(of the noble Sienese Piccolomini family) for his recently finished cathedral.[3]
Works and influences
Giovanni di Paolo was influenced by many great artists in Trecento and Quattrocento, Italy. It is believed that he may have owned a model book of other artists’ work he could flip through and use that would fit his paintings. A few of these include the following: Gentile da Fabriano‘s two Florentine altarpieces, Ambrogio Lorenzetti‘s Presentation in the Temple, and the Baptistery reliefs by Donatello.[4] He would then be able to alter, modify, and combine these artists’ works into his own renderings.[4]Throughout his career one can see how this model book was utilized because of certain figures he repeatedly used, « His isolated detail, a single figure, or group copied from another image is shown that he is naturally drawn to the inventions of his fellow artists ».[5] However much it would be looked down upon today to copy, in Trecento and QuattrocentoSiena, the culture valued an artist that could manipulate others’ work and make it their own as creatively as Giovanni did.[6]
Giacobbe Giusti, GIOVANNI di PAOLO
Raising of Lazarus by Giovanni
Giacobbe Giusti, GIOVANNI di PAOLO
Raising of Lazarus by Duccio
Giovanni di Paolo was influenced by many artists during his time, which can be seen in a number of his paintings. Giovanni’s Raising of Lazarus is based on the same scene of Duccio’s Maestà. « But where Duccio’s figures are sober and restrained, Giovanni di Paolo’s are voluble and animated ».[7] Giovanni was open to solutions other than the Sienese tradition which, « …made him receptive to sources farther afield as well ».[8] One of these is the occasion where he painted a picture he had drawn from a mural in Assisi ».[8] His work and style show the transition from the Sienese and Gothicstyle into the Renaissance.[9]
His style also took on the influence of International Gothic artists such as Gentile da Fabriano. He was an artist of great consequence who had been invited by Pope Martin V to Rome.[10] On his way to Rome, Gentile stopped in Siena,[11] where Giovanni quickly assimilated Gentile’s techniques.[12] One technique he kept was Gentile’s fascination with nature. Instead of using standing saints, as was customary, in his painting Giovanni used sprigs of flowering plants.[13]
Giovanni di Paolo’s Adoration of the Magi and Gentile da Fabriano’s Adoration of the Magi are one example of how nature was used by both artists and how Giovanni was able to create the same use of animals and plants from Gentile and make it his own. Where Gentile was capable of darkness and mystery, Giovanni, « …saw nature as untarnished and ever-benign ».[14] These works of art that Giovanni integrated into his own were, « …waiting to be imbued with personal meaning »[15] a creation Giovanni was able to do well.
Style
Later in his life Giovanni became greatly skilled at painting illuminated manuscripts, he illuminated choir books for the Augustinian monks at Lecceto as well as Dante’s Divine Comedy.[16] The illuminations that he created for Dante’s poem are some of his most famous and best preserved works. His illuminations are one area viewers can see how Giovanni di Paolo differentiates himself from other Sienese artists. He may have been in contact with Franco-Flemish illuminators, who had been in Siena during Giovanni’s early years. It seems their Northern influence may have rubbed off on Giovanni because his landscapes resemble those in the famous painting by the Limbourg brothers; Tres Riches Heures.[17] His suspected master, Taddeo di Bartolo, probably taught him how to paint with a « toughness of line », which can be seen in any of his works.[17] The most striking quality of Giovanni di Paolo’s work is the fantastical quality. John Pope-Hennessyexplains Giovanni di Paolo’s work eloquently, « Few experiences in Italian painting are more exciting than to follow Giovanni di Paolo as he plunges, like Alice, through the looking-glass.[17] If one looks at the Madonna of Humility(1435) the checkerboard landscape confirms the world beyond the garden scene in the foreground (also referred to as the hortus conclusus). This checkerboard panorama effect is used frequently by Giovanni for its ability « to create an abstraction of space, whose appeal is not to the fixed optic of the spectator, so much as to the winged flight of the dream-voyager. » .[17]
Giacobbe Giusti, GIOVANNI di PAOLO
Madonna of Humility 1435.
Illuminations of Dante’s Paradiso
After being appointed rector of the painter’s guild in 1441, Giovanni di Paolo was the clear choice to illuminate Dante’s Paradiso.[18] Working on what is known today as « The Yates Thompson Dante », Giovanni created 61 images to accompany the vernacular poem.[19]Two other unknown artists worked on the Inferno and Purgatorioilluminations.[20] Giovanni di Paolo used his unique style to create an obviously Tuscan panorama in a sun-filled world that is much lighter and fresher than the two previous artists of the Inferno and Purgatorio.
A panel painting created after, and inspired by, this cycle of illuminations is The Creation and The Expulsion from Paradise (1445) in the Lehman Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Giovanni created a unique image by showing two separate scenes in one; God floating above the universe and the expulsion of Adam and Eve. One theory is that God is simultaneously expelling Adam and Eve and banishing them to earth.[21] But why then is his hand not pointing directly to the earth? A viable argument for this question is that by following the gaze of God’s gesture the viewer’s eye is led to a specific point on the Zodiac circle. Looking to the 11:00 position of the Zodiac circle, because it’s the only symbol still recognizable, one can discern the symbol of Pisces which is not in its traditional position. Following the circle, in the 12:00 position is Aires and in the 1:00 position is Taurus. Traditionally in medieval times these signs represent spring, more importantly to this image, they represent the season of the Feast of the Annunciation. God seems to point directly to the date of the feast, March 25.[22] One proposed reasoning for such gesture is that it is to remind the viewer of the Annunciation’s significance, and to reflect upon « the purpose of the coming of Christ – to « repair the Fall » enacted by Adam and Eve in the adjoining sector of the panel, and to redeem the sins of man, which their Expulsion represents. »[23]
Another interesting part of this image is that earth is encircled by multicolored rings. One argument is because during this time a geocentric view of the universe was widely accepted, Giovanni was simply following Dante’s description of a « terrestrial world bounded by the orbits of the heavenly spheres ».[21] This theory is often challenged by pointing out that Dante only assigns ten circles but Giovanni depicts twelve. Some scholars believe Giovanni was referencing a book called the Sphera, which was made for lay people to give them a better understanding of the universe based on Greek cosmology (Chaos), which would account for Giovanni number of circles and also their colors.[24]
The Adoration of the Magi (1462). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Virgin and Christ Child with Saints Bernardino, Anthony Abbot, Francis and Sabina and The Lamentation over the Dead Christ(1462–63). Pienza Cathedral.
Jump up^Keith Christiansen, Laurence B. Kanter and Carl Brandon Strehlke, Painting in Renaissance Siena (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1988), 169.
Jump up^Diana Norman, Painting in Late Medieval and Renaissance Siena, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 212.
^ Jump up to:abChristiansen, Kanter and Carl Brandon Strehlke. Painting In Renaissance Siena 1420–1500 New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1988 p 11
Jump up^Ladis, Andrew. « Studies In Italian Art ». London: The Pindar Press, 2001 p 276
Jump up^Ladis, Andrew. « Studies In Italian Art ». London: The Pindar Press, 2001 p 272
Jump up^Pope-Hennessy, John. Paradiso. New York: Random House, 1993 p 24
^ Jump up to:abLadis, Andrew. Studies In Italian Art. London: The Pindar Press, 2001 p 276
Jump up^Mackenzie, Helen F. « Panels by Giovanni di Paolo of Siena (1403–1483). » Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago (1907–1951), Vol. 32 No. 7, 1938 p 108
Jump up^Pope-Hennessy, John. Paradiso. New York: Random House, 1993 p 21
Jump up^Pope-Hennessy, John. « Giovanni di Paolo. » The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol. 46, No. New Series 1988 p 11
Jump up^Pope-Hennessy, John. Paradiso. New York: Random House, 1993 p 23
Jump up^Pope-Hennessy, John. Paradiso. New York: Random House, 1993 p 26
Jump up^Ladis, Andrew. Studies In Italian Art. London: The Pindar Press, 2001 p 282
Jump up^Christiansen, Kanter and Carl Brandon Strehlke. Painting In Renaissance Siena 1420–1500 New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1988: 11
Jump up^Keith Christiansen, Laurence B. Kanter and Carl Brandon Strehlke, Painting in Renaissance Siena (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1988), 168.
^ Jump up to:abcdTimothy Hyman, Sienese Painting (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2003), 162.
Christiansen, Keith; Kanter, Laurence and Strehlke, Carl Brandon (1989). Painting in Renaissance Siena, 1420–1500. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN978-0300201154
David, Benjamin. « The Paradisal Body in Giovanni di Paolo’s Illuminations of the »Commedia ». » Dante Society of America No. 122 (2004): 45–69.
Gillerman, Dorothy Hughes. « Trecento Illustrators of the « Divine Commedia ». » Dante Society of America No. 118 (2000): 129–165.
Pope-Hennessy, John Wyndham (1993). Paradiso: The Illuminations to Dante’s Divine Comedy by Giovanni di Paolo. New York: Random House. ISBN978-0679428053
Le Discobole est l’une des plus célèbres statues de l’Antiquité. Généralement attribuée à Myron, sculpteur athénien du ve siècle av. J.-C., elle représente un athlète en train de lancer le disque. Myron, représentant du premier classicisme, était célèbre pour ses représentations d’athlètes, ce qui explique l’attribution. De plus, elle est mentionnée par Pline l’Ancien dans les Histoires Naturelles, où l’auteur livre la liste des œuvres réalisées par Myron.
Description
La statue originale représente un athlète nu, imberbe, figé alors qu’il prépare le lancer de son disque. La tête est tournée sur le côté. Le mouvement se déploie sur le côté, donnant une composition bidimensionnelle (ce qui est caractéristique du pré-classicisme). La composition est géométrisée, théorique. En effet, le bord des pectoraux est net, la musculature est faite de formes plastiques et théoriques qui se répondent. Le personnage, alors qu’en plein effort, est impassible, le regard serein et sans expression. Les paupières sont lourdes, le nez droit, la bouche charnue et légèrement entrouverte, la mâchoire épaisse, le menton fort. On idéalise son visage pour que son image gagne un aspect intemporel.
Découverte
L’original en bronze a été perdu. Seules demeurent des copies en marbre d’époque impériale. La plus célèbre d’entre elles est le Discobole Lancellotti, considérée comme la reproduction la plus fidèle de l’original. L’œuvre fut découverte sur le mont Esquilin au xviiie siècleet vendue à la famille Massimo, devenue ensuite Massimo Lancelotti. Réalisée au iie siècle sous les Antonins, elle figure actuellement dans les collections du palais Massimo alle Terme, branche du Musée national romain, à Rome. Une autre copie connue, exposée dans le même musée, est le Discobole Castelporziano, découverte mutilée (la tête est perdue) dans le village homonyme en 1906, parmi les ruines d’une villa d’époque impériale. Cette copie est plus réaliste dans son traitement des volumes et témoigne des évolutions techniques survenues depuis entre le classicisme grec et la sculpture romaine impériale.
Représentation dans la culture grecque
Le mot discobole vient du grec ancienδισκοβόλος / diskobolos, « lanceur de disque ». Le disque grec était un palet de pierre ou de bronze d’environ 20 cm de diamètre. Il pesait plus de 5 kg. Parallèlement au type du discobole, on peut citer celui du discophore : un athlète au repos, tenant simplement le disque à la main.
La statue du discobole figure sur la pièce commémorative de 2 € frappée par la Grèce à l’occasion des Jeux olympiques d’Athènes de 2004. Le Discobole était l’une des plus grandes œuvres de Myron Éleuthères.
Bibliographie
Bernard Holzmann, La sculpture grecque, Librairie générale française, coll. « Le livre de poche », , 447 p.(ISBN978-2253905998), p. 214-215
Jean Charbonneau, La sculpture grecque classique, t. 1, Paris, Éditions de Cluny, , 131 p., p. 22-28
Discobolus
Giacobbe Giusti, Discobolus
Roman bronze reduction of Myron’s Discobolus, 2nd century AD (Glyptothek, Munich)
The Discobolus of Myron (« discus thrower« , Greek: Δισκοβόλος, Diskobólos) is a Greek sculpture that was completed toward the end of the Severe period, circa 460–450 BC. The original Greek bronze is lost but the work is known through numerous Roman copies, both full-scale ones in marble, which was cheaper than bronze,[1] such as the first to be recovered, the Palombara Discobolus, and smaller scaled versions in bronze.
A discus thrower is depicted about to release his throw: « by sheer intelligence », Kenneth Clarkobserved in The Nude, « Myron has created the enduring pattern of athletic energy. He has taken a moment of action so transitory that students of athletics still debate if it is feasible, and he has given it the completeness of a cameo. »[2] The moment thus captured in the statue is an example of rhythmos, harmony and balance. Myron is often credited with being the first sculptor to master this style. Naturally, as always in Greek athletics, the Discobolus is completely nude. His pose is said to be unnatural to a human, and today considered a rather inefficient way to throw the discus.[3] Also there is very little emotion shown in the discus thrower’s face, and « to a modern eye, it may seem that Myron’s desire for perfection has made him suppress too rigorously the sense of strain in the individual muscles, »[2] Clark observes. The other trademark of Myron embodied in this sculpture is how well the body is proportioned, the symmetria.
The potential energy expressed in this sculpture’s tightly wound pose, expressing the moment of stasis just before the release, is an example of the advancement of Classical sculpture from Archaic. The torso shows no muscular strain, however, even though the limbs are outflung.
Reputation in the past
Giacobbe Giusti, Discobolus
The discobolus motif on an Atticred-figured cup, ca. 490 BC, is static by comparison.
« When you came into the hall, » he said, « didn’t you notice a totally gorgeous statue up there, by Demetrios the portraitist? » « Surely you don’t mean the discus-thrower, » said I, « the one bent over into the throwing-position, with his head turned back to the hand that holds the discus, and the opposite knee slightly flexed, like one who will spring up again after the throw? »
« Not that one, » he said, « that’s one of Myron‘s works, that Diskobolos you speak of… »
Prior to this statue’s discovery the term Discobolus had been applied in the 17th and 18th centuries to a standing figure holding a discus, a Discophoros, which Ennio Quirino Viscontiidentified as the Discobolus of Naukydes of Argos, mentioned by Pliny (Haskell and Penny 1981:200).
Discobolus Palombara or Lancellotti
The Discobolus Palombara, the first copy of this famous sculpture to have been discovered, was found in 1781. It is a 1st-century AD copy of Myron‘s original bronze. Following its discovery at a Roman property of the Massimo family, the Villa Palombara on the Esquiline Hill, it was initially restored by Giuseppe Angelini; the Massimi installed it initially in their Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne and then at Palazzo Lancellotti. The Italian archaeologist Giovanni Battista Viscontiidentified the sculpture as a copy from the original of Myron. It was instantly famous, though the Massimo jealously guarded access to it (Haskell and Penny 1981:200).
In 1937 Adolf Hitler negotiated to buy it, and eventually succeeded in 1938, when Galeazzo Ciano, Minister of Foreign Affairs, sold it to him for five million lire, over the protests of Giuseppe Bottai, Minister of Education, and the scholarly community. It was shipped by rail to Munich and displayed in the Glyptothek; it was returned in 1948. It is now in the National Museum of Rome, displayed at the Palazzo Massimo.
Townley Discobolus
Giacobbe Giusti, Discobolus
The Townley Discobolus at the British Museum, Roman copy with incorrectly restored head.
After the discovery of the Discobolus Palombara a second notable Discobolus was excavated, at Hadrian’s Villa in 1790, and was purchased by the English antiquary and art dealer established in Rome, Thomas Jenkins, at public auction in 1792. (Another example, also found at Tivoli at this date, was acquired by the Vatican Museums.) The English connoisseur Charles Townley paid Jenkins £400 for the statue, which arrived at the semi-public gallery Townley commissioned in Park Street, London, in 1794. The head was wrongly restored, as Richard Payne Knight soon pointed out, but Townley was convinced his was the original and better copy.
It was bought for the British Museum, with the rest of Townley’s marbles, in July 1805.[5]
Other copies
Other Roman copies in marble have been recovered, and torsos that were already known in the 17th century but that had been wrongly restored and completed, have since been identified as further repetitions after Myron’s model. For one such example, in the early 18th century Pierre-Étienne Monnot restored a torso that is now recognized as an example of Myron’s Discobolus as a Wounded Gladiator who supports himself on his arm as he sinks to the ground; the completed sculpture was donated before 1734 by Pope Clement XII to the Capitoline Museums, where it remains.[6]
Yet another copy was discovered in 1906 in the ruins of a Roman villa at Tor Paterno in the former royal estate of Castel Porziano, now also conserved in the Museo Nazionale Romano.[7]
In the 19th century plaster copies of the Discobolos could be found in many large academic collections, now mostly dispersed.
Jump up^An explanation for his inefficient discus throwing could be that the ancient Olympic sportsmen had a set rotation of three quarters before the discus was thrown. This rotation could well have been a deliberate handicap to make the sport more difficult.
Jump up^Tony Kitto, « The celebrated connoisseur: Charles Townley, 1737-1805 » Minerva MagazineMay/June 2005, in connection with a British Museum exhibition celebrating the bicentennial of the Townley purchase. [1][permanent dead link]
Jump up^Haskell, Francis & Penny, Nicholas (1981), Taste and the Antique: the Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900, New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 200 & 227., ISBN0-300-02641-2
Jump up^Kenneth Clark illustrated it in the 1956 edition of The Nude, fig. 130, p.241, as « after Myron« .
Giacobbe Giusti 
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