bronzino's martyrdom of st. lawrence & counter reformation.pdf

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Counter Reformation Polemic and Mannerist Counter-Aesthetics: Bronzino's "Martyrdom ofSt. Lawrence" in San LorenzoAuthor(s): Stephen J. CampbellSource: RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, No. 46, Polemical Objects (Autumn, 2004), pp. 98-119Published by: The President and Fellows of Harvard Collegeacting through the Peabody Museum ofArchaeology and Ethnology

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98 RES 46 AUTUMN 2004

Figure 1.Agnolo Bronzino, Martrydom of St. Lawrence, 1565-1569. Florence, San Lorenzo (Photo: Alinari/ArtResource).

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Counter Reformation polemic and Manneristcounter-aesthetics

Bronzino's Martyrdom of St. Lawrence in San LorenzoSTEPHEN .CAMPBELL

It iswell known that the term Mannerism means agood deal less than it used to, and many art historiansseem to have decided that it has outgrown its use.Before itwas decisively realigned with the Italian wordmaniera, and with positive social and aesthetic ideals ofeffortless and "stylish" virtuosity, Mannerism hadbecome a central concept in the philosophical accountof art as the bearer of historical consciousness.1Following on the work of Max Dvorak, Friedrich Antal,andWilhelm Pinder,Arnold H?user had by 1965developed a theory of Mannerism as a mode ofalienated artistic expression characteristic of an epoch ofcrisis, where works of art manifest "a process of turninga subject into an object" ultimately pointing to a loss ofself.2 For Hegel, whose remarks on alienation served asa starting point for H?user, alienation had been aninevitable and positive outcome of artistic creation,

whereby the work of art, transcending the control andintentions of itsmaker, assumed a thought-like capacityof itsown.3 Hauser drew on Marx, Weber, and Freud to

elaborate an agonistic tendency already recognized inthe earlier twentieth-century literature on Mannerism.Alienation stood as a symptom of crisis befalling theindividual at the outset of modernity; itwas the sign of ahistorical experience shaped by events such as theReformation and the Catholic reaction to it, economicand social upheaval, and the rise of the centralized,authoritarian, and bureaucratic state.

A reduced version of this model of Mannerismsurvives in the art criticism of the 1980s, among thetheorists of post-modernism, where itdefined the artistas alienated from a historical tradition that terminated

with Modernism, and as an ironic celebrant of capitalistdystopia.4 Art history, on the other hand, now seldomengages with H?user, or with a philosophy of art thathas been pronounced too globalizing, ideologicallyoverinvested, and lacking in empirical conviction. Withthe rejection of this elaborate system of historicalexplanation the principle of artistic consciousness alsobecame unavailable to the history of Renaissance art; noalternative set of terms emerged in art history to addresslinks between historical dispensations of the self and the1. The watershed text is John Shearman, "Maniera as Aesthetic

Ideal." In The Renaissance and Mannerism. Studies of Western Art.Acts of the Twentieth International Congress of the History of Art. 4vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), II,pp. 200-222,followed by Mannerism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967). For reviewsof the term and the concept see Ernst Gombrich, "TheHistoriographical Background," in The Renaissance and Mannerism,163-174; see also Elizabeth Cropper's Preface to Craig Hugh Smyth,Mannerism and Maniera. 2nd ed. (Vienna: IRSA, 1992), and Cropper'scomments on the maniera in the postface to Francesco Salviati e la

bella maniera. Actes des colloques de Rome et de Paris (1998), eds.Catherine Monbeig Goguel, Philippe Costamagna, and MichelHochmann (Rome: ?cole Fran?aise de Rome, 2001), 691-698; for arepresentative selection of twentieth-century writing on Mannerism seeLiana De Girolami Cheney, ed. Readings in Italian Mannerism (NewYork: Garland, 1997).

2. Arnold H?user, Mannerism. The Crisis of the Renaissance andthe Origin of Modem Art (Cambridge and London: Harvard UniversityPress, 1965), especially 96-97.

3. "And although works of art are not thought and notion simplyas such, but an evolution of the notion out of itself, an alienation ofthe same in the direction of sensuous being, yet for all that the mightof the thinking spirit is discovered not merely in its ability to graspitself in itsmost native form as pure thinking, but also, and ascompletely, to recognize itself in its self-divestment in the medium of

emotion and the sensuous, to retain the grasp of the self in that 'other'which it transforms but is not, transforming the alien factor intothought-expression, and by so doing recovering it to itself." G. W. F.

Hegel, The Philosophy of Fine Art (introduction, part I) trans. F. P. B.Osmaston, 4 vols. (London: Bell and Sons, 1920), vol. 1,16.

4. See for instance Achille Benito Oliva, L'ideolog?a del traditore.Arte, maniera, manierismo (Milan: Electa, 1978 and 1998), 17-19,which extends the reach of the term from a Cinquecento moment ofdisenchantment and alienation to the late twentieth-century avantgardes: "La transavanguardia e anche gli artisti della generazionesuccessiva ripercorrono le maniere di prodursi del linguaggio in uninarrestabile nomadismo che non conosce linee de scorrimentoprivileg?ate, esclusive e obbligate. L'esperienza del farsi dell'opera ?l'unico spazio possibile per l'artista che circoscr?ve in tal modo lacoscienza della propria minorit?, insufficienza storica dell'arte difronteggiare ?Imondo, dentro il riparo ed il recinto del linguaggio,dentro le sue artic?late maniere, le uniche capaci di dare al soggettofrantumato il collante di una precaria onnipotenza." For other criticalappropriations of mannerism, see Philip Drew, The Architecture ofArata Isozaki (New York: Harper and Row, 1982); Elke RacholekBrandt, Imagination (Un)Limited. Zum Stellenwert manieristischerTraditionen in amerikanischer Prosa der Postmoderne (Frankfurt andNew York: Peter Lang, 1988).



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self-conscious art of the generations who maturedfollowing Raphael's death in 1520.Mannerism now chiefly defines a stylistic ideal, a setof formal characteristics typical of a new institutionalorganization of artistic practice and a prescriptive theoryof art. A patron-centered model predominates?as in thefrequent observation that Mannerism is above all thestyle promoted by the court of France from 1530, or theMedici ducal court from 1540. Although this courtly styleis seen to recognize or even demand artistic performancesof self-consciousness, wit, even eccentricity, itabove allpresupposes a harmony between the wishes of patronsand the effects pursued and achieved by the artistswho serve them. It therefore registers as an art ofcomplacency, an ornament to power; an unrulypersonality like Cellini becomes a willing arch-pariah ofthe Medici; gestures of heterodoxy or dissidence mightbe found in his autobiography, but not in his art.5Whilethere are important exceptions in some of the recentliterature, it is generally taken for granted that an art

preeminently "about" itself is also a politicallycomplacent art, or one incapable of disrupting anideological continuum.6The following essay is part of a larger project thatseeks to restore a sense of critical potential to thepractice of central Italian artists of the mid-sixteenthcentury, and to reopen the question of Mannerism as areaction to historical tensions and predicaments. Itwillunderstand Mannerism as a practice that points to acleavage between itsown processes of making meaning,itsown internal theoretical concerns, and the politicaland religious institutions it is designed to serve. Whileartists might affect a posture of courtly or academicsubordination before tradition and authority, the selfconsciousness that operates in their work might beregarded as an "other" self, one that confronts theviewer with unauthorized meanings, and wherealienation might have a critical potential. This is not to

say that a certain libertine, parodie, or facetiouscharacter has not long been recognized inMannerist art,but this has normally been addressed as an allegedfailure to attain the sublimity of the High Renaissance,or solely in accordance with the worldly sensibility ofRenaissance patrons. Mannerism is thus seen as theennervating of artistic will through excessive imitation,an unhealthy passivity before the unsurpassable

Michelangelo and Raphael. It is an epidemic case ofinfluence without anxiety, lacking the oedipalantagonism supposedly necessary for the emergence ofa robust artistic selfhood. Yet this essay will show that itis in part through affecting a kind of passivity thatMannerism emerges as a strategy, and one with aradical potential.These possibilities will be explored in relation to one

work, often seen as a colossal apotheosis of Manneristart in all its supposedly effete virtuosity and courtlysycophancy: Bronzino's Martyrdom of St Lawrence inthe basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence (fig. 1). Themassive fresco was commissioned from AgnoloBronzino by Duke Cosimo de' Medici in 1565 andunveiled on August 10, 1569, the feast day of theMedici family saint.7 Despite being the largest single

work undertaken by the artist, in effect the mostsignificant project of his late career, and the fact that it isunmatched in scale or ambition by any work of paintingin Florence during the last third of the sixteenth century,the St. Lawrence is among the least studied of all ofBronzino's works. Those who have referred to it?usuallyonly in passing?have done so in almost universallydisparaging terms. From the very beginning, withRaffaelle Borghini's // Riposo of 1584, the criticism hasbeen leveled at the admittedly striking abundance ofnaked, highly animated bodies, arranged in festivearabesques in the lower zone of the fresco.8 Modern

5. For an instance of this view see Frederick Hartt, "Power andthe Individual inMannerist Art." In The Renaissance and Mannerism,222-239.

6. There are a few important exceptions: Nancy Vickers, "TheMistress in the Masterpiece," in The Poetics of Gender, ed. Nancy K.Miller (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 19^1; MichaelCole, Cellini and the Principles of Sculpture (Cambridge and NewYork: Cambridge University Press, 2002), especially 13-14, for theargument that an art of conspicuous artfulness would not necessarilyhave been seen as soulless, superficial, or even autonomous in thesixteenth century, and that it could, on the contrary "allow artists new

modes of social and religious connectedness"; Morten Steen Hansen,"PellegrinoTibaldi and the Art of Hubris." Dissertation, Baltimore, TheJohns Hopkins University, 2001.

7. For a comprehensive recent discussion, which also pronounceson the "failure" of the work, see Zygmunt Wazbinski, L'AccademiaMedicea del Disegno a Firenze nel Cinquecento. Idea e Instituzione, 2vols. (Florence: Olschki, 1987), I, 197-213. Other discussions include

Marcia Hall, Renovation and Counter-Reformation. Vasari and DukeCosimo in S. Maria Novella and S. Croce 1565-1577 (Oxford: TheClarendon Press, 1979), 73, and After Raphael. Painting in CentralItaly in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge

University Press, 1999), 238; Massimo Firpo, Gli affreschi di Pontormoa San Lorenzo: Erisia, pol?tica e cultura nella Firenze di Cosimo I(Turin: Einaudi, 1997), 403-407; Graham Smith, "Bronzino's Use ofPrints: Some Suggestions." Print Collector Newsletter IX (1978-1979),1, 30-32; Maurice Brock, Bronzino, trans. David Poole Radzinowicz

and Christine Schultz-Touge (Paris: Flammarion, 2002), 313-326.8. Raffaele Borghini, // Riposo (Florence: Marescotti, 1584);

reprint, ed. Mario Rosci, 2 vols. (Milan: Labor riproduzioni e



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Campbell: Counter Reformation polemic and Mannerist counter-aesthethics 101

criticism has regarded the work as a kind of endgameor final decadent excess of the stylistic current,grounded in the imitation of Michelangelo, thatBronzino had represented for several decades. "The St.Lawrence," wrote Charles McCorquodale, "a fusion ofballet and Turkish bath, isone of Mannerism's most

monumental failures from every point of view."9 Earlier,in 1928, Arthur McComb had written that "theMartyrdom of S. Lorenzo is empty of all significance,devoid of taste, crassly Michelangelesque."10 SydneyFreedberg recast these sentiments in a more positivevein, perceptively addressing the theatrical character ofthe image: "[the fresco] transforms its violent and tragictheme into a beautifully artificial fusion of gymnasiumand ballet, played upon an antique stage; the result isone of the most consistent demonstrations of theaesthetic of the High Maniera and one of the finest in itswhole range of style."11More recently, the gigantic fresco has been regardedas an instance of the kind of artificial and licentiouspainting that provoked a call by Catholic prelates (suchas Bishop Gabriele Raleotti of Bologna) for a reform ofreligious imagery.12 According to the newTridentine

Standards for the devotional and dogmatic efficacy ofimages in churches, Bronzino's painting would fall shorton the following grounds: there is no call for nude

figures in the subject being depicted, therefore theirpresence is both distracting and profane, as is thevirtuoso artificiality of their poses and gestures; theprioritizing by the painter of formal design over narrativeconcerns inhibits the readability of the image; scenesfrom Christian history should include actual or plausiblefigures, and not poetic inventions such as the allegoricalgroup who brandish their attributes in the foreground ofthe painting. Finally, far from moving the Christianbeholder to pious sentiment, the overall emotional tenorcould be termed ambivalent; the painting conspicuouslylacks the pathos and horror demanded by a scene of

martyrdom (the protagonist is, after all, being roastedalive on a gridiron), for which in some reformer's termsno amount of graphic violence could be deemed tooexcessive.13

Although Raleotti's Discourse on Sacred and ProfaneImages was not published until 1582, Bronzino musthave been aware of the new standard operating forreligious imagery, which had been publicized for wellover a decade. In fact, several of the works, whichBronzino executed just before and just after the St.Lawrence, show that he was fully conscious of thedemands for a clear, decorous, and affectingpresentation of sacred history?as in the Resurrection ofthe Daughter ofjairus for S. Maria Novella (1570), thePiet? for S. Croce (1570), and the Noli me tangere for S.Spirito (1561-1565).14 These works were for mendicantchurches, but at San Lorenzo, a church where art,architecture, and liturgy itself had long been orientedtowards the ceremonial ends of the Medici court, a

documentazioni, 1967), I,62: ". . . ha fatto I'imperadore nella suastoria a fresco di San Lorenzo che fa tormentare ilmartire interniato dasuoi baroni tutti nudi, o con pochi panni recoperti, casa moitedisconvenevole a personi che servano superbi principi; si come ancoramal vi si convengono quelle virt? ?n forme di bellissime donne a sederefra l'altra gente: e si pure li piaceva il farlevi, dovea ?n aria o in altroluogo separate figurarle . . ." Later, Borghini ismore complimentary:

"?ltimamente dipinse il Bronzino ? fresco in una facciata della Chiesade San Lorenzo ?Imartirio d'esso Santo con un numero infinito difigure var?ate d'habiti, e di gesti, con una bellissima prospettiva, e vison? molti ignudi condotti con grande diligenza, e disegno (538)." Sotoo is Francesco Bocchi, Bellezze di Firenze (Florence: Giunti, 1591),257: "Son? pronti iministri del tormento, & altri portano legne, & altriattizano, & con diversi, e varij atti mostrano, quanto valesse questo raroartefice. E lodato un'edifizio de superbo sembiante: si veggono lecolonne, che diminuiscono, lequali son? di lungi, con bellissimaproporzione, e tutte le parte espresse con molto senno fanno vistaricca, & mirabile." Wazbinski, L'Accademia Medicea, 198, incorrectlystates that Bocchi faults Bronzino's fresco "dove riconoscono glihuomini ?ntendenti eccessive artifizio." The criticism is in fact directedat Donatello's bronze pulpit relief of the same subject (250-251 ).9. Charles McCorquodale, Bronzino (New York: Harper and Row,1981), 154.

10. Arthur McComb, Agnolo Bronzino: His Life and Works(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1928), 52.

11. Sydney J. Freedberg, Painting in Italy, 1500-1600(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971), 315.12. Pamela Jones, "Art Theory as Ideology: Gabriele Raleotti'sHierarchical Notion of Painting's Universality and Reception," in

Reframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and LatinAmerica 1450-1650, ed. Clare Farago (Cambridgeand New York:

Cambridge University Press, 1995), 127-140.

13. See Raleotti, Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane, Lib.IIcap xxxv: "Pitture fiere et orrende," noting that gross cruelty ispermissible in representations of martyrdoms, with their "wheels,razors, iron hooks, fiery ovens, gridirons, racks, crosses. . . ."Contemporaneously, Ulise Aldrovandi justified the artist's full masteryof anatomy "both internal and external, so that he can know how torepresent the heart, the liver, the spleen, the intestines, the stomach,the throat, the brain; so that when he happens to paint a martyrdomlike that of S. Erasmus and others like it... he will be able to depict itin a natural manner." On the prerequisite of violence in scenes of

martyrdom during the Cinquecento, and the role of the Peristephanonof Prudentius (the principal hagiographie source for the martyrdom ofSt. Lawrence), see Robert Gaston, "Prudentius and Sixteenth CenturyAntiquarian Scholarship," Medievalia et Human?stica n.s. iv (1973),161-176.

14. For the investigation of the "counter-maniera" of the works ofart commissioned for the mendicant churches of Florence under thedirections of Vasari in the

closing yearsof Cosimo I's

reign,see Hall,

Renovation and Counter-Reformation.



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different set of criteria could be said to operate. Theartistic idiom mirrors that employed by the artist forcourt projects, and above all itadvertises in very explicitterms a relationship of artistic filiation to Michelangelo.In fact, all of the criticisms of excessive license inreligious art referred to above had been made in 1564,by Giovan Andrea Gilio in his Dialogue on the Errors ofPainters Concerning History. Gilio's dialogue employs astrict theory of pictorial genre and decorum to criticize anumber of contemporary works of religious painting,most notably the Last Judgment by Michelangelo, whichhe saw as offending on all of the above grounds (fig.2).15 Some years ago, Zygmunt Wazbinski proposed thatthe St. Lawrence should be seen as a defensive reactionto such criticism of Michelangelo's Last Judgment in theSistine Chapel. He proposed that Bronzino's fresco couldbest be seen as a programmatic imitation of the earlier,deeply controversial work, all the more noteworthy forbeing carried out in a period of escalating polemicsagainst the Last Judgment, and as a kind of manifesto ofthe new Accademia del Disegno which maintained the

memory and cult status of the great Florentine artist andpoet.16 The very pointed and specific defiance of Gilio'scriticism may be seen in such elements as the acrobaticnudes, their forceful gestures and poses which speakmore of art than of doctrine, the inclusion of angels

without wings (unusual for Bronzino, but not forMichelangelo), and the very prominent display of nakedpagan divinities, which Gilio abominated.While accepting that the painting is indeed on manylevels a kind of academic demonstration that affirms theimitation of Michelangelo, Iwant to consider a dualityin Bronzino's practice, which both aligns itwith theofficial pursuit of orthodoxy in religious art after Trent,

yet also has more radical implications. Itcan be shown,firstly, that the fresco evidences a preoccupation withgenre entirely characteristic of mid-sixteenth-centuryliterary and artistic theory, when works were judged inaccordance with principles of literary classificationderived from Aristotle's Poetics. Bronzino, himself a poet

and a member of the Accademia Fiorentina, can beseen to redefine and reframe the formal language of

Michelangelo according to literary categories.Paradoxically, this engagement emerges at the same timefrom a recognition that Michelangelo's work in theSistine Chapel, characterized by Gilio as a kind ofadulterated history painting, is deeply undermining ofthe distinctions between genres as these were thenbeing theorized.17 Only a notion of genre that wasinimical to the rationalizing and disciplinary purposesgenre was designed to serve could accommodate

Michelangelo's Sistine frescos,or their imitation in

Bronzino's St Lawrence All of this is to say that thefresco constitutes a moment of self-definition for the artof the maniera, inwhich a particular way of workingand of thinking becomes apparent to itself, discoveringand describing its own operative principles.The notion of imitation is in itself not sufficient tounderstand the adaptation of Michelangelo at workin the St. Lawrence; the fresco in fact shows atransformation of Michelangelsque models, whichrequires that we confront the question: what has

Michelangelo been adapted into? For this is no routineor pattern-book academic exercise. The first strikingdeparture, which Freedberg appears to have noticed, isthat a relief-like assemblage of Michelangelesque figureshas been placed in (we might even say against) anarchitectural and perspectival space, realized accordingto the conventions of Vitruvian theatrical design?or atleast as these had been interpreted by Peruzzi, Serlio,and other architectural theorists; in Florence at this time

a stage set could be referred to as a prospettiva.^9 The

15. Giovanni Andrea Gilio, Dialogo nel qu?le si ragiona deglierrori e degli abusi de'pittori circa l'istorie. In Trattati d'arte delCinquecento, ed. Raola Barocchi 3 vols. (Bari: Laterza, 1961), II, 3-97.

16. Wazbinski, L'Accademia Medicea, 200: "In questo operazionec'? un chiaro intento: parlare col linguaggio di Michelangelo." Seealso Hall, After Raphael, 238. Wazbinski's argument is restated andelaborated by Brock, Bronzino, especially 322-323. In a forthcomingstudy Patricia Reilly will show that the centrality of Michelangelo as a

model for imitation had in recent years been challenged by GiorgioVasari and his partisans; Vasari's second edition of the Lives and hisartistic practice in the 1550s and 1560s shows a new adherence to theRoman history painting of Raphael.

17. For some comments on Gilio's preoccupation with genre, seeCharles Dempsey, "Mythic Invention inCounter-Reformation Painting,

in Rome in the Renaissance: The City and the Myth, ed. P. A. Ramsey(Binghamton, New York, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies,1982), 55-75.

18. A concern with genre and decorum is not necessarily, ofcourse, determined in every case by an instrumental purpose; theobservation here is limited to the ideological co-opting of genre theoryby Raleotti and Gilio, and to the "reformed" maniera imposed byCosimo and Vasari at Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce. For anargument that decorum "stands for the potential of art to resistcoercion, to argue the claims of the ?deal," see Robert Williams, Art,Theory and Culture in Sixteenth Century Italy. From Techne to

Metatechne (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press,1997), 73-108. For literary controversies about genre and artisticresponses see also Stephen J.Campbell, "The Carracci, Visual

Narrative, and Heroic Poetry after Ariosto. The Story of Jason inPalazzo Fava." Word and Image 18 no. 3 (2002), 210-230.

19. See the illustrations of the Vitruvian "tragic scene" inSebastiano Serlio, Reg?le general idi architettura (Venice, 1540, andsubsequent editions).



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Figure 2. Michelangelo, Last Judgment, 1536-1541. Vatican, Sistine Chapel (Photo:Musei Vaticani, Archivio Fotogr?fico).



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Figure 3. Jacopo Pontormo, (afterMichelangelo), Venus and Cupid (The "BettiniVenus"), 1532.Florence, Accademia (Photo: Scala/Art Resource).

perspective grid acquires visible form as the veryinstrument of Lawrence's martyrdom, in the gridiron onwhich he reclines. Such a rendering of space is not onlyuncharacteristic of Michelangelo, it is also a distinctdeparture from Bronzino's normal practice, although theartist certainly designed stage sets for comediesperformed at the Medici court.20 The second feature

wholly uncharacteristic of Michelangelo is the range ofdistinctions both embodied and enacted by theindividual members of what first appears as a teemingdecorative interlace of nudes. Lawrence himself is aparadigmatic ?mage of Michelangelesque ephebicbeauty?he in fact combines references to two

Michelangelo prototypes. One is the Creation of Adamon the Sistine ceiling, the other is the cartoon of Venusthat Michelangelo had made for Bronzino's mentorPontormo; Pietro Aretino had already praised the"Bettini Venus" for its androgynous beauty, acombination of the allure of male and female bodies(fig. 3).21 The citation of the Creation of Adam is almost

20. "Fece anche in palazzo, quasi ne'medesimi tempi, due annialla fila per carnevale, due scene e prospettive per comedie, chefurono tenute bel Iissime." Vasari, "Delle Accademici del Disegno . . .e prima del Bronzino," in Le opere di Giorgio Vasari, ed. Gaetano

Milanesi, 9 vols. (Florence: Sansoni, 1906/1981), VII, 598. For adiscussion of Bronzino's connection with the worlds of theater,festivity, and carnival see Leatrice Mendelsohn, "L'Allegoria di Londradel Bronzino e la retorica di carnevale," in Kunst des Cinquecento inder Toskana, ed. Monika C?mmerer (Munich: Bruckmann, 1992), 160.In an unpublished paper, "Bronzino's Martyrdom of S. Lorenzo in

Perspective," Malcolm Campbell has proposed that the "terrifyinglysteep rising ground plane, the flattened patterning of forms and thegrotesquely compacted figures" can in part be explained by the pointof view from which the Medici Duke would have seen the fres ?araised balcony located directly across the nave of the church: "Fromthis elevated position Duke Cosimo would have seen the St. Lawrence

as the hub of a spatially ample scene, the storm center of moving,foreshortened figures. St. Lawrence, in a space now more rational andcoherent, would have expressly recommended the attention of theDuke to the Cappella Maggiore and to the Christ inGlory as revealed

in the frescoes of Pontormo, Bronzino's beloved mentor and friend."Such a point of view would have suggestively crossed that of the tyrantin the fresco, who also surveys the scene from a raised position.

21. On gender crossing in anatomical invention, with regard to theBettini Venus and other works, see Frederika H. Jacobs, "Aretino and



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Figure 4. Marcantonio Raimondi, after Baccio Bandinelli, The Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, ca.1525. LosAngeles County Museum of Art (Photo: LosAngeles County Museum of Art).

violently incongruous, in that the animating hand ofGod has now become the condemning hand of thetyrant, indicating that the relation toMichelangelo is farfrom passive and possesses an ironic, even transgressivedimension.

The allusion to the Bettini Venus also introduces anerotic charge, if that were not already implicit in thegesture of bringing Michelangelo's heavenly nudes"down to earth," to the perspectival world of the piazzawhere they are so fully available to our gaze. Theavailability of bodies to vision goes beyond the logic ofperspective in that the nudes, for the most part, do noteclipse or encroach upon each other; they appearplaced against the space as much as in it.Lawrence reclines rather serenely on his gridiron, butframed by a turmoil of agitated and precariously poisedanatomies, as if the sensation of torment has been

displaced from this tranquil center, in order to register intheir bodies rather than his. The exuberant physicality ofthe work is to some extent a response to an earliertreatment of the same subject (1525) by BaccioBandinelli, well known through an engraving byMarcantonio Raimondi (fig. 4).22 No less than elevennude tormentors appear in the foreground of Bandinelli'scomposition, yet in Bronzino's fresco the nudesdominate the entire historia, and are not offset by thegravitas of the heavily draped observers Bandinelli hadplaced in the upper tiers of his architectural setting. Ifthe effect seems to border on the ludicrous, this wouldseem to have been calculated by the artist: to the lowerright appears a massive figure in a particularly bizarreconvulsion, a parodie restoration of the Belvedere torso.

Michelangelo, Dolce and Titian: Femmina, Masculo, Grazia." ArtBulletin 82 no. 1 (2000), 51-68. See also the exhibition catalogueVenus and Love: Michelangelo and the New Ideal of Beauty, ed.Franca Falletti and Jonathan Katz Nelson (Florence, 2002).

22. According to Vasari, Opere vol. 5, 418-419, Bandinelli'scomposition was initially intended for a fresco in the choir of SanLorenzo, commissioned by Clement VII in 1525. See Berenice

Davidson, "Marcantonio's Martyrdom of S. Lorenzo." Bulletin of theRhode Island School of Design, 47/3 (1961), 1-6; Bruce Davis,

Mannerist Prints: International Style in the Sixteenth Century (LosAngeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1988), 114-115.



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His attributes?a wolf, a child, a flowing pitcher?identify him as the river Tiber, and thus the torsions ofhis body can be seen to have a purpose: his left leg andleft arm describe the meandering course of this river.Bronzino's other nudes seem yet more active and moreantic than those of Bandinelli, extravagantly squatting,twisting, and bending with an exhibitionistic abandonthat was not lost on contemporary critics, such asRaffaele Borghini: "he showed the Emperor in his frescopainting of St. Lawrence having the martyr tormentedwhile surrounded by his barons all naked, or with onlyscant drapery, something which ismost unfitting forpersons who wait upon great princes."23 It is strikinghow for this ideologue of reform the standard ofpropriety operating for a court takes precedence overthat for a church and religious art, even when the courtis that of a ruler who persecutes the faith. His remarktestifies to the extent to which decorum could beprimarily a social concern, arising from the maintenanceof distinctions between courtly and vulgar, civil anduncivil. Theatrical space is itself, by convention, anurban and public space: itbrings with ita considerationof the city and of a social fabric, however abstracted oridealized. There is also a sense that Bronzino himself

wanted to create a hierarchal juxtaposition of beautifuland noble bodies, like that of Lawrence, with what wemight term profane or "uncivil" bodies?bodies markedby labor and by a kind of social physiognomy. Hence heresorted to a procedure which, on the basis of hissurviving drawings, appears to have been untypical ofhis normal working practice: the imitation of "real"bodies in the form of live studio models. Three figurestudies survive, two of them apparently drawn from life,and without exception these are for low-life or nonheroic characters: a porter, an executioner with bellows,and the river god.24 We might contrast the study for theporter on the extreme left, made from a young studio

Figure 5. Agnolo Bronzino, Study for theMartyrdom of St.Lawrence, ca. 1565. Paris, Mus?e du Louvre, Cabinet desdessins (Photo: R?union des Mus?es Nationaux/Art Resource).

model (Paris,Mus?e du Louvre; fig. 5), with the vastlyexaggerated musculature and hulking demeanor of thecorresponding figure in the finished work (fig. 6).Pentimenti in the drawing, above all in the figure's rightarm, suggest that this styl ization towards greatercorporeal bulk (again reminiscent of the Belvedere torso)began even at the drawing stage. The preposterousclassicism of the river god, the grotesque profile of thestoker, and the loping gait (aswell as ineffectivelydraped buttocks) of the porter introduce an effect ofdeliberate bathos and an element of social distinctionreinforced in the contrast with other figures: the porterturns towards a youth of a different anatomical "caste,"who directs him towards the martyrdom as if he wasexplaining ?tssignificance.Bronzino ?sconceiving the martyrdom as a popularspectacle, locating itwithin the heterogeneous space ofthe piazza and the crowd. His invention here may beinspired by another famous depiction of a crowd?in the

frontispiece of a book which, according to Allori,Bronzino claimed to know well and to value highly: the

23. Borghini, // Riposo, 62: ". . . ha fatto l'imperadore nella suastoria a fresco di San Lorenzo che fa tormentare ilmartier intorniatoda suoi baroni tutti nudi, o con pochi panni ricoperti, cosa moltodisconvenevole a personi che servano superbi principi."24. On the drawings see Craig Hugh Smyth, Bronzino asDraughtsman. An Introduction (Locust Valley, N.Y.: J. J.Augustin,1971), 44-45; the stoker drawing in the Uffizi is here identified as acopy, but this makes it probable that an original drawing by Bronzinoonce existed; see also The Medici, Michelangelo and the Art of LateRenaissance Florence (New Haven and London: Yale University Press,2002), 303, entry by Janet Cox Rearick. On the river god see also LarryFein berg, From studio to studiolo. Florentine Draftsmanship under theFirst Medici Grand Dukes (Oberlin College: Allen Memorial Art

Museum, 1991), 80.



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Figure 6. Agnolo Bronzino, Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, detail:porter (Photo: Ali?ar ?/ArtResource).

De humani corporis fabrica of Vesalius (1543; fig. 7).25As in the St. Lawrence, a tumult of naked and clothedfigures besports itself around a prone body at the center,either reflecting on this central event or engaged in aburlesque carnal curiosity of their own (see, forinstance, the animated exchange between the nakedmale figure clutching the column on the left, and hisclothed counterpart in the crowd). Such carnivalesquedemeanor, manifest in records of tumult, riot, anddisorder, appears to have been an actual characteristicof public anatomy demonstrations, which in centers likeRome or Bologna took place during the carnival season.26

Anatomy, effectively another form of theater, is a centralritual of the new academic program with whichFlorentine artists like Bronzino were recently aligned.

Although complicit with the spectacle of coercivejustice enacted on the bodies of condemned criminals,artistic anatomy could also be conceived as the meansto a triumphant "resurrection" of the body, recomposedat the hands of the artist. Such is the claim of Bronzino's

own cheerfully skinless St Bartholomew (1555; Rome,Accademia Nazionale di San Luca), appropriatelyregarded as both an anatomical demonstration piece aswell as a hagiographie subject, who appears to havebeen reanimated by art following his death by flaying.27So too in the St Lawrence, the triumphant allegrezza ofartistically fashioned bodies overrides the tragedy andhorror of the event.

Naked bodies, of course, were not a typical feature ofcontemporary theatrical performance; it should beemphasized that their presence is the result of an act oftranslation?of Michelangelo into theater?and viceversa. Yet Bronzino's painting also recalls elements of amuch older theatrical tradition of boisterous physicality,of which a rare visual record is preserved in JeanFouquet's Martyrdom of Saint Apollonia from the Hoursof Etienne Chevalier dating from around 1460 (fig. 8)

with its gesturing authority figures, straining torturers,and confrontation of bodily torture with more unrulyforms of bodily display. Fouquet makes a clear distinctionbetween performers and audience: so does Bronzino, inthat the sober portrait groups he incorporated in the rightand left background suggest observers rather thanparticipants (fig. 9). Bronzino's painting does not simplyemulate these aspects of traditional sacra rappresentazione;itmay even be said to have assimilated them. In the1560s the kind of popular religious spectaclerepresented in Fouquet's miniature, and we areproposing, evoked also in Bronzino's fresco, was in factpassing away; itwas identified by reformers such asCarlo Borromeo and Gabriele Paleotti as an instigationof riot and disorder as well as moral corruption.According to the reformers, the lud i sacri provoked"laughter and chatter" rather than piety and reverence.28

25. For Allori's testimony see his IIprimo libro de'ragionamentidel le reg?le del disegno in Scritti d'arte del Cinquecento, ed. RaolaBarocchi, 3 vols. (Florence: 1971-1977), II, 1949.

26. G. Ferrari, "Public Anatomy Lessons and the Carnival: theAnatomy Theatre of Bologna." Past and Present 117(1987), 50-106;

Ferrari's conclusions are debated inAndrea Carlino, Books of theBody: Anatomical Ritual and Renaissance Learning (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1999), 70-85, which also explores thephenomenon of tumult and disorder at public anatomies.27. See Stephen J.Campbell, "'Fare una Cosa Morta Parer Viva'

Michelangelo, Rosso, and the (Un)Divinity of Art." Arf Bulletin LXXXIV(2002), 596-620.

28. Alessandro d'Ancona, Origini del Teatro Italiano, 2 vols. (Turin:Loescher, 1891), II, 178-184.



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B A S I L E AE?#?; ,..,';?*.** fci?

Figure 7. Frontispiece toAndreas Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica (1543) (Photo: TheNational Libraryof Medicine).



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The four women below Lawrence's grill seem bothobservers of and participants in the action: they bearattributes that enable us to identify them not just asordinary bystanders but also as the cardinal virtue ofFortitude, with her truncated column, and her threetheological sisters: Faith, Hope, and Charity. The figuresof the three theological virtues and one cardinal virtueform an unusual grouping, and direct us to consider thewhereabouts of the other three virtues. Certainly one ofthem is not to be found in the tortuously posed hulk totheir left, identified as the Tiber, or the figure of thenaked wood-bearer who ostentatiously bends over totheir right. But the remaining virtues are indeed to befound among the courtiers of the tyrant who sits aloft tothe right: Justice is the young man with the axe and thesword, modelled on a Sistine ignudo; the missingattribute of the balance is ingeniously displaced into hisprecariously balanced and patently unstable posture (fig.10). Prudence is the aged, brooding philosopher,reminiscent of Michelangelo's figure of Dusk in theMedici Chapel, who gestures towards his breast; he isprompted at his right shoulder by the figure ofTemperance with her vase.29 By contrast with thedemonstrative gestures of the female virtues in thepiazza, these virtues are marked by a curious reticence,a troubled inwardness and melancholy self-absorption,which is especially marked in the extraordinarycountenance of the youthful Justice, and which we

might aptly term a psychomachia.How should we describe what we are seeing here? Itis hard to resist the inference that the virtues of civicaction, of the active life, have been paralyzed under thedespotic rule of the prince, forced into a dissimulating,anxious acquiescence. It is all the more noteworthy,then, that the tyrant is based on the effigy of DukeGiuliano de' Medici, visible only a few meters away in

Michelangelo's Medici Chapel (fig. 11); that the sametyrant is enthroned under a figure of Hercules, whobears the features of Duke Cosimo I,and that the tyrant'scourt includes portraits of several contemporary

Figure8. Jean Fouquet, Martyrdom of

SaintApolIonia,

ca.1460. From the Hours of Etienne Chevalier. Chantilly, Mus?eCond? (Photo: Giraudon/Art Resource).

individuals, among them Cosimo's son and heirapparent, Francesco de' Medici (the dark-haired youngman visible above the tyrant's right knee), and theLieutenant of the Accademia del Disegno, VincenzoBorghini (the bearded figure just below Francesco).30 Onthe far side of the piazza, under the figure of Mercury,we have portraits of Bronzino, his pupil Allori, and his

29. This is not the only occasion inwhich Bronzino subjectsstandard iconographies to a poetic reworking that can sometimesappear oblique; the London Allegory of Venus is a well-knownexample, as are the two Bronzino tapestry designs discussed byLynette Bosch, "Time, Truth and Destiny. Some Iconographical Themesin Bronzino's Primavera and Giustizia." Mitteilungen desKunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz XXVII (1983), 73-82. Like thefigure of Time in the Allegory, who appears with an hourglass but notwith a scythe, the figures of the Tiber, Justice, and Temperance in theSt. Lawrence all omit one crucial attribute: an additional child, a scale,an additional vase.

30. The bearded older male closely resembles the anonymousportrait of Borghini inChrist Church Picture Gallery, Oxford, althoughBronzino's figure has a somewhat fuller beard. Borghini was one of themost distinguished intellectuals in Florence, and held a number ofimportant administrative positions, among them lieutenant of the

Accademia del Disegno; this probably explains his prominence in apainting so imbued with the spirit of the academy. For theidentification of the portraits, see Wazbinski, Accademia Medicea,199; Robert W. Gaston, "Iconography and Portraiture in Bronzino'sChrist in Limbo." Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in

Florenz 27 (1983), 65, proposes different identificat ions: "Pr inceFrancesco de' Medici ... the recently deceased Medici Pope, Pius IV,and ... the Accademia del Disegno's heroic genius, Michelangelo." Ifthe portrait of Pius IV can be verified, this poses no particulardifficulty, since his inclusion would be on the basis of his status as an



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Figure 9. Agnolo Bronzino, Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, detail: portraits ofBronzino, Pontormo, and Allori (Photo: Alinari/Art Resource).

mentor Pontormo, while the second group of women infront are also probable portraits (fig. 9).What would a contemporary observer have made ofthis apparent conflation of the court of the tyrant withthe ducal court of Florence? In reflecting on whether thework opens a space for a dissenting, alienated subject ofautocratic rule, itmust be borne inmind that thecartoon for the fresco was probably approved by DukeCosimo Ihimself, as is indicated in a letter of 1565.31But Cosimo's monitoring of the design may itself be thecause that results in such an unsettling effect: an imagethat draws attention to the fact that the authority of aruler, even a tyrannical and despotic ruler whopersecutes Christian heroes, could not be undermined,but must be affirmed with all the trappings of empire,and aligned with a portrait of the ruler of Florence. Thisis the very premise underlying Borghini's complaint thatthe ruler's retainers are not comporting themselves withsufficient dignity. Particularly jarring is the presentationof the subjects of Duke Cosimo as subjects of the tyrant.They are placed under Mercury, and under Cosimo/Hercules, but where, we might ask, in relation to the

spectacle of coercive power enacted before them, dothey really "stand?"To sum up so far: between the Last Judgment and the

Martyrdom of St Lawrence there has been a crossing oflimits or boundaries?from sacred epic, in a Dantesquesense, to what might be called sacred theater. Bronzino'shandling of the subject, and his approach to imitation,offer several indications that he was thinking of history

Figure 10. Agnolo Bronzino, Martyrdom of St. Lawrence,detail: Justice (Photo: Alinari/Art Resource).

adopted member of the Medici family. On the adoption see RobertoCantagalli, Cosimo Ide' Medici, Granduca di Toscana (Milan: Mursia,1985), 238.

31. The letter of February 11,1565 makes clear that thecommission was originally for two frescoes on facing walls of thechurch: ". . .quanto alle pitture che disegniate di fame nel le duafacciate di San Lorenzo . . .potrete cominciare a fame idisegniaccioli vediamo e ce ne risolviamo perch? ce sar? grate perl'ornamento di quella chiesa." Cited by Cox-Rearick in The Medici,

Michelangelo and the Art of Late Renaissance Florence, 303.



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painting in terms of theatrical genre, as itwas thenunderstood, and of theatrical practice. The theatricalmise-en-sc?ne has already been mentioned; there are inaddition some direct points of correspondence betweenthe forms of contemporary Florentine sacred drama andthe St Lawrence, although Bronzino's paintingultimately points to an "idea" of theater that by the1560s was increasingly less possible on the stages ofItaly.The plays of Giovan Maria Cecchi, a notary andmember of the Accademia Fiorentina, can provide asuggestive parallel with Bronzino's experiment in the StLawrence. Cecchi's religious dramas, mainly written forthe boys' confraternities known as the Vangelista andSan'Sebastiano dei Fanciulli, and performed from 1559onwards for the Medici court, were inmany respects aclassicizing and humanistic refinement of traditionalsacre rappresentazioni?the longstanding mode ofpopular religious theater which, as noted above, wascurrently going through a somewhat troubledtransformation.32

Cecchi's approach to the academic refinement ofreligious drama was particularly inventive: he realizedthat the strongest analogy between traditional religioustheater and classical drama lay in comedy rather thantragedy. While preserving a serious didactic andexemplary purpose, his own religious plays, which hecalled farces, are written in a comic mode?they drawupon stock characters from Plautus and Terenceincluding porters, parasites, garrulous female servants,

hypocrites, thieves, merchants, innkeepers, and nobles.This adaptation allowed Cecchi to preserve the populartexture of older sacre rappresentazioni, as well astheir wide social appeal, richness of reference tocontemporary urban life, and the experience of asocially mixed audience. The farsa isdescribed withthese hybrid characteristics in the prologue to his finalplay, La romanesca: "Two things Ipromise you aboutthis [farce]: it shall be both cheerful and grim. . . .Thefarce is a third new thing between tragedy and comedy;

Figure 11.Michelangelo, Tomb of Giuliano de' Medici, ca.1522-1534. Florence, San Lorenzo, New Sacristy (Photo:Alinari/Art Resource).

itenjoys the breadth of both of them, while itavoidstheir limits, because it takes in great lords and princes,which comedy does not do; it receives, as if itwere aninn or a hospital, the people as they are, common andplebian, which Lady Tragedy would never do. Itssubjects are not restricted: itcan take on happy and sadactions, matters profane and of the church: urban, rustic,grim and delightful. It takes no account of place: it hasits stage in the church or the piazza and in every otherplace_"33

Bronzino, in his St Lawrence, is also presenting atheatrical rendering of a religious subject, one located in

32. In 1564, for instance, Vincenzo Borghini was charged withorganizing a staging of traditional sacra rappresentazione for Giovannad'Austria, and he regretfully informed Duke Cosimo that the form hadnearly passed away. The traditional neighborhood companies nolonger performed these plays; finally, the Company of St. Agnes wereconstrained to reunite for a performance of the Festa della Nunziata at

S. Spirito; the old play was subjected to certain refinements to suit the"gentilezza di questi tempi," according to Borghini, but with theparticipation of experts who had "gran pratica del le cose vecchie." Seed'Ancona, Origini del Teatro Italiano, II, 185-187. Vasari, Opere, VIII,616, notes that the performance was given to the greatest satisfactionof the populace "che essendone state per molti'anni privo."

33. La Romanesca; farsa di Giovanmaria Cecchi Florentino(Florence and Rome: Tipograf?a Cenniniana, 1874), 2. On the play and

others by Cecchi see Douglas Radcliff-Umstead, Carnival Comedy andSacred Play. The Renaissance Dramas of Giovan Maria Cecchi(Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 1986).



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an urban milieu of comedy and popular spectacle, butalso recasting it in the new classic Tuscan idiom ofMichelangelo. While Cecchi himself appears to havecomposed only one farsa on the martyrdom of a saint, itis known that another sometime member of theAccademia Fiorentina, and one to whom Bronzino hadverifiable ties, composed "commedie spirituals on themartyrdoms of Saint Apollonia, Saint Catherine, andSaint Ursula.34 This was Antonfrancesco Grazzini,known as "II Lasca" (1503-1584), who wroteaffectionately to Benedetto Varchi of "il mio Bronzino"and composed an epitaph for the painter.35 Furthermore,looking at the subject matter and sources for the

Martyrdom of St Lawrence, itmight be asked whether agenre-conscious and literate artist like Bronzino mighthave found the notion of comedy to be inmany waysirresistable. For the idea of comedy is directly engagedin the most classic and humanist-approved source onthe legend of the saint, the Peristephanon of Prudentius,a narrative hymn that precisely conscripts the power ofirony, wit, and rhetorical sophistication as a weapon ofthe triumphant martyr and of the Christian faith. The

hymn of Prudentius abounds in an extravagant gallowshumor (or gridiron humor?), throughwhich the

undaunted martyr Lawrence infuriates the tyrant with hisurbanitas (pleasantry). Among the words spoken "in jest"(ludibundus) is the notorious remark by the saint that hisbody should be turned so itcan be cooked on bothsides: "it is done" he says, "eat it up, trywhether it isnicer raw or roasted." Lawrence in fact is an offense todecorum; his urbanitas is against the grain of theausteritas that should be manifest in the ritual of capitalpunishment. The tyrant as a result refers to him as ascurra, a pantomime clown or comic actor:

"He ismocking us," cries the prefect, mad with rage, "whatawonder that he makes fun of uswith his clever figures ofspeech, and yet this lunatic lives Are you so bold, yougallows bird, as to think you can get away with suchcomedian's jabbering and cheap stage antics? Do you think

it'sa fitting kind of pleasantry to make fun of me? Do youthink to raise laughs at my expense and turnme into aspectacle? Have the magistrate's fasces lost their sterncontrol? Has soft lenity blunted the axe of authority?"36

Cecchi, like Bronzino in the St Lawrence, juxtaposedscenes of court lifewith scenes of the street, and hisrepresentations of the court take their character from theMedici regime. He wrote a play on the downfall of KingAhab and Jezebel, performed for the Medici court in1559; his Coronation of Saul, inwhich the Biblicaltyrant appears as a type of divinely appointed kingship,

was staged for the visiting Archduke Karl of Austria adecade later, in the year Bronzino's fresco was unveiled.The momentous historical events towhich the titles ofthese plays refer are mainly presented through the eyesof characters of different social stations, many of themcomic and plebian types. These comic characters,moreover, speak and act with a license andforthrightness not extended to the courtiers and nobles

who, as Douglas Radcliff-Umstead observes, "mustspeak with caution and frequently in secret becausethey have a great deal to fear and much to lose byimprudence."37 Attacks on official corruption and thevices of the court are not infrequent: "Truth gives rise toHatred, its best friend," notes a character in The

Exaltation of the Cross, "and the adulation which is thevice proper to the court is the frequent ruin ofprinces."38 Yet the glimmers of subversion are finallycountered by a series of allegorical pageants constitutingthe lavish intermezzi: the cardinal virtues join forceswith the theological virtues, along with Biblical heroesand martyrs, to signify the mutually supportive allianceof Church and State and their joint triumph. Cecchi'sAhab may thus appear to offer confirmation of the bleakFoucaultian view of Stephen Greenblatt regarding theeffects of apparent political subversion in Renaissancedrama: "the ideal image [of the prince and the state]involves as its positive condition the constant production

34. For Cecchi's comedy on St. Agnes, see Jacqueline Brunet,"Noces terrestres, noces spirituelles: L'acqua vino de G. M. Cecchi etses remaniements." InCulture et id?ologie apr?s le concile de Trente:Permanences et changements, ed. Michel Plaisance (Abbeville: F.Paillait, 1985), 62.

35. On IILasca's commedie spiritual' see Robert J. Rod ini,Antonfrancesco Grazzini: Poet, Dramatist and Novelliere, 1503-1584(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1970), 105; on Bronzino'sfriendship with II Lasca see Elizabeth Pilliod, Pontormo, Bronzino,

Allori. A Genealogy of Florentine Art (New Haven and London: YaleUniversity Press, 2001), 110, 177.

36. Peristephanon II:Hymnus in honorem passionis LaurentiiBeatissimi Martyris, 312-330; "'ridemur,' exclam?t furens / praefectus,'et miris modis / per tot figuras ludimur: / et vivit insanum caput /Inpune tantas, furcifer, / strophas cavillo mimico / te nexuisse

existimas, / dum scurra saltas fabulam? / concinna visa urbanitas /tractare nosmet ludicris? / egon cachinnis vend?tes / acroma festivumfui? / adeone nulla austeritas, / censure nulla est fascibus? / adeonsecurem publicam / mollis retudit lenitas?'"

37. Radcliff-Umstead, Carnival Comedy and Sacred Play, 132.38. Cecchi, L'Esaltazione della Croce, quoted inApollo Lumini, Le

sacre rappresentazioni italiane dei secoli xiv, xv, e xvi (Palermo:Montaina, 1877), 267.



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of itsown radical subversion and the powerfulcontainment of that subversion."39 Yet in the case ofBronzino's heroic and farcical drama of St. Lawrence,we might wonder whether any such containment canreally occur: rather, we find a promiscuous mingling ofthe comic and the heroic, the allegorical and thehistorical, the erotic and the sacred, greatly exceedingthe comic license of Cecchi's plays.The adaptation of history painting in the heroicmodern maniera of Michelangelo into comic drama hasa double-edged significance. On the one hand, itmaybe regarded as an academic refinement of popular andvernacular forms entirely typical of the culturalenterprise of the Accademia Fiorentina, towhich Cecchiand IILascabelonged and inwhich Bronzino himselfhad been reinstated in 1566 after a twenty-yearsuspension.40 In itsobservance, perhaps even definition,of a Florentine artistic canon, Bronzino's enterprisecould be seen to reflect the Medici instrumentalizationof the Accademia del Disegno and the AccademiaFiorentina as ideological apparatuses of the Tuscan state.The purpose of these institutions was to define,administer, and supervise Florentine culture, includingnot only arts and letters but also the festive andcollective forms of religious and public life embracingpopular and elite sectors of society.41

But another understanding ispossible: Bronzino wasseeing something about Michelangelo's art which

Michelangelo's defenders usually wanted to suppressand deny; Bronzino effectively embraces and affirmssome of the most negative criticism of Michelangelo'sLast Judgment, and by this means the language ofMichelangelo ismade to serve ends not finallycongruent with the academic, the institutional, andthe political.Because of the fundamentally ambiguous andungovernable nature of the human body as a bearer of

meaning in religious painting, itwas quite possible toread even a serious work likeMichelangelo's LastJudgment in a profane and facetious register, and manyof Michelangelo's critics chose to do this: onebroadsheet from the 1540s accused Pope Raul III fdepravity for commissioning from Michelangelo apainting "so obscene and filthy" that itwould betterserve as a theater or a stage-set for a comedy.42 Giliofinds the gesticulations and ambiguous couplings of

Michelangelo's naked saints to be similarly vulgar,remarking that they manifest deportment suitable to the

marketplace or the fairground, or to carnival performers,rather than to sacred history. Gian Paolo Lomazzo againassociated the figures in the Last Judgment with fachiniand istrioni, as ifMichelangelo's intention had been tomake "a crew of porters and ham actors who wouldkeep jumping up and down" in an indecent manner.43Yet for Bronzino itmeant something different to read

Michelangelo in this way; the younger artist, throughouthis work, is deeply absorbed in this ambivalentsignificance of the body, the sign of man inGod'simage yet also the vessel of carnal temptation, and

39. Greenblatt, "Invisible Bullets." In Shakespearean Negotiations.TheCirculation of Social Energy inRenaissance England (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1988), 41.40. Most artists had been expelled following a reform of theacademy's statutes in 1547; in 1549 itwas deemed that they could bereadmitted if they demonstrated a capacity to write poetry. Bronzinowas readmitted following the presentation of two canzoni in praise ofDuke Cosimo in 1566. On Bronzino's literary enterprise and hisrelations with the academy, see Deborah Parker, Bronzino:Renaissance Painter as Poet (Cambridge and New York: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2000). On Florentine academic culture see MichelPlaisance, "Culture e politique ? Florence de 1542 ? 1551 : Lasca etles 'Humidi' aux prises avec l'Acad?mie Florentine." Les escrivains etle pouvoir en Italie ? l'?poque de la Renaissance, 2 vols. (Paris:

Universit? de la Sorbonne nouvelle, 1974), II, 149-202, and RickScorza, "Borghini and the Florentine Academies." InDavid S.Chambers and Fran?ois Quiviger, Italian Academies of the SixteenthCentury (London: The Warburg Institute, 1995), 137-163; MichaelSherberg, "The Accademia Fiorentina and the Question of theLanguage: The Politics of Theory inDucal Florence." Renaissance

Quarterly LVI (2003), 26-55.41. For this understanding of the Florentine academies see Karinedis Barzman, The Florentine Academy and the Early Modern State:TheDiscipline of Disegno (Cambridgeand New York:Cambridge

University Press, 2000).

42. The letter circulated under the name of the Catholic reformerFra Bernardino Ochino: "una pittura cos? obscena et sporca comequella di Michel Angelo nella cappella, ove si hanno da cantare lioffitii divini, la quale molto meglio servirebbe in un theatro o scenac?mica ove qualche cosa obscena si havesse de recitare." Quoted inRomeo de Maio, Michelangelo e la Controriforma (Bari: Laterza,1981), 53 n51.

43. For Gilio's identification of behavior appropriate to the stage,to the tavern, to a wedding party, see Dialogo, 75. Lomazzo's Sogni#5, a fictitious dialogue between Phidias and Leonardo da Vinci,comments on the kisses "da nozze e da bordel I " and on behavior

more appropriate to "fachini" and "istrioni"; he also reports on PopeRaul IV's intention to have the fresco destroyed, on account of its"wicked exhibition of nakedness and buffooneries." For these andother contemporary characterizations of the Last Judgment in terms ofatti istrionici and low comedy, see de Maio, Michelangelo, 39, andBernardine Barnes, Michelangelo's Last Judgment: The RenaissanceResponse (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 87.



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contemporaries noted this play of ambiguity in hisearlier religious painting which in the words of the poetAlfonso de'Razzi, could cause the beholder to fall "fromHeaven to the Abyss."44The question of course, iswhy? And what is the forceof doing this in Florence in the 1560s? The answer liesin the wholesale transformation of the religious cultureof Florence, along with that of Catholic Europe, duringthe pontificates of Paul IV(1555-1559), Pius IV(15591565), and Pius V (1566-1572), corresponding to themost militant phase of post-Tridentine reform. Bronzino

began workingon his fresco at the end of a decade

which had seen the publication of theTridentine Indexin Florence, the first bonfires of heterodox books in1552, the opening of the Tribunal of the Inquisition, anda new rapprochement between Duke Cosimo and the

papacy, whose demands for a thorough policing andpurging of heresy and error he had generally resisted inthe earlier part of his reign. Cosimo, for instance, hadlong protected the religious dissident Piero Carnesecchi,a Medici courtier and academician, and a leadingmember of the Catholic reformist group who inclined

towards the theological position of Juan de Valdes. TheValdesian position, grounded like that of Luther in thescriptures of St. Raul, held that one could maintain aCatholic observance while at the same time embracingthe doctrine of sola fides?salvation through Faith alone.The doctrine was officially proscribed by the Council ofTrent in 1547. Carnesecchi, after long resistance on thepart of the Florentine Duke, was handed over to theRoman Inquisition and executed in 1567; Cosimo'sreward, two years later,was the bestowal by Pius V ofthe Grand Ducal Crown of Tuscany. This is the verycrown, in fact, that Lawrence receives in the fresco,rather than his traditional martyr's crown of laurel (lauro).A remarkable number of Florentine intellectuals,

within and outside the Accademia Fiorentina, had fallenunder the sway of the religious thought of Juan deValdes by 1547, when the Council of Trent madeabsolutely and chillingly clear its position onjustification. These reform-minded individuals foundthemselves in the same position as members of theRoman curia whose profession of sola fides went with acall for a reform of the church, for a purging of the

venality, the ceremonial extravagance, the superstitiouscults of saints' relics, which were legitimated as thepractice of "good works." Beginning in the mid 1550s,we find these same individuals, who include illustriousnames like Benedetto Varchi, Giovambattista Gelli,Antonio Grazzini, Antonfrancesco Doni, BartolomeoPanciatichi, and Cosimo Bartoli, recanting their previousenthusiasms, making elaborate professions of conformityand obedience, or carefully republishing their religious

writings to bring them into line with the neworthodoxy.45 In this reorientation, there is an obviousand perceptible shift from the idea of salvation as anindividual and inward process, based on the privateexperience of spiritual grace, to more outward andcollective performances of devotion, which includeprayer, ritual observance, and the open performance ofgood works.Inmany respects the iconography of the fresco is fullyin line with the current climate of orthodoxy. Eventhough laterwriters like Raffaele Borghini failed toacknowledge the fact, some of the most distinctiveaspects of its imagery can be explained with regard todoctrinal preoccupations of the 1560s, especially therepudiation of sola fides. In 1559, the boys who acted in

Cecchi's plays heard their author deliver a series ofsermons, which followed from his own religious crisisand conversion. Substantial passages inCecchi'ssermons deal with the martyr-saints, and on martyrdomas an ultimate expression of good works. "Good works,"of course, are exactly what adherents of the sola fidesposition had rejected in their insistence that faith, and adivine grace that could not be earned throughmeritorious action, were the sole prerequisites forsalvation. Meritorious action is the realm of human lifegoverned by the virtues. Faith, Hope, and Charity, saysCecchi, are like the bones, the nerves, and the skin?they are mutually intertwined, they cannot exist withouteach other. Charity, the virtue which mandates works onothers' behalf, corresponds to the skin; it is the sign bywhich Christianity shows itself in the world.46 In 1568,Silvano Razzi, the friend and literary executor of theacademician Benedetto Varchi, published a dialogueentitled Della econ?mica Christiana e civile inwhich

44. Razzi's poem was cited inGuiseppe Richa, Notizie istoriched?lie chiese florentine, devise ne' sue quartiert, 10 vols. (Florence:Viviani, 1754), I,97, as proof of the depravity of his art: "Scusi il Pittorchi guarda, e fermi il passo, / Perch? l'intenzion sua fu di far questo, /Di formar Cristo, i Santi, e il resto, / Ma egli sbagli? dal Raradiso alchiasso." See also Robert W. Gasten, "Iconography and Portraiture," 42.

45. On the predicament of these Florentines and their efforts toembrace orthodoxy, see Firpo, Gli affreschi di Pontormo a SanLorenzo, 155-290; on Varchi's and Gelli's relation to heterodoxreligious thought see also Gaston, "Iconography and Portraiture,"52-66.

46. Cecchi, Ragionamenti Spiritual' (1558), with introduction andnotes by Konrad Eisenbichler (Toronto: Dovehouse Editions, 1986), 97.



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Bronzino and Varchi both appear as speakers.47 Despitethe title, and to the frustration of participants in thedialogue who expect to be lectured on householdadministration, the focus of Razzi's text is in fact thepractice of the seven virtues. Varchi, who in his own

writings had been dangerously close to the sola fidesposition, here affirms the Council of Trent, makes aprofession of orthodoxy against heresy, a defense ofgood works along with the cult of the saints and thetradizioni of the Holy Roman Church, and once againwe have the injunctions about the practice of Faith,Hope, and Charity in the form of good works.48 Thepractice of religion, says Varchi, is firstly interior, throughwhich by Faith, Hope, and Charity we are conjoinedwith God; but it is also exterior: "nothing other than ademonstration of inward devotion, which is renderedvisibly manifest through certain signs and observancescarried out openly in the gaze of others."49 Varchi goeson to defend the role of images inChristian cult?"Whois there that on seeing, for instance, paintings of thebirth and the suffering and death of Our Lord, whowould not himself feel something by considering howmuch Christ wished to suffer for us, and as a result

would not make some sign of gratitude or at least ofconsciousness of benefits?"50 Images, in other words,should not only stimulate consciousness of the benefit ofChrist, but should also produce signs of thisconsciousness in the beholder; they should produce aperformance in accordance with inward demeanor. Theprofession of Catholic orthodoxy is a question of openand public demonstration: not only to be manifested inthe form of acts of Christian fortitude and charity, butalso inmaking manifest signs and gestures of prayer and

ritual observance in the sight of others. Such is the verydoctrine painted by Bronzino in his Martrydom of St.Lawrence. Razzi's economy of visibility is herevisualized in the perspectival and gestural idiom oftheater, accommodated not only in the heroicperformance of the martyr but also in the actualenactment of his virtues by Faith, Hope, Charity, andFortitude themselves. The "courtier" virtues, on the otherhand, who are not attended by Fortitude, abstain fromany such performance; their attitudes instead suggest atension between interior character and outwarddemeanor, a dichotomy between surface and substance,which at this time defined not only the actor but alsothe courtier, the "Nicodemist," or those religious andpolitical dissidents who sought alternative modes ofexpression for their alienation.In the remainder of this essay Iwill propose thatBronzino's "theatrical" art on the one hand serves anofficial purpose: his patron's realignment of Florencewith the newly defined orthodoxies of the Romanchurch. On the other hand, by casting its reformisttheological program in a Michelangelesque artisticlanguage that Catholic reformers had recently rejected,Bronzino might be said to resist the total hegemony of

Rome over Florence. Itwill further be suggested that TheMartyrdom of St Lawrence cannot be reduced to the

totalizing ends of either Medici power or ecclesiasticalauthority, and that it finally constitutes a distinct criticalinitiative of itsown. What is ultimately at stake inBronzino's painting is a contestation of art's instrumentalstatus under a new organ of the state set up to regulateits production; italso envisions other possibilities forsuch intellectual and creative communities.

Inone sense, then, we would have to acknowledgeGreenblatt's counter-Bakhtinian position, and allow thatcomic impropriety and carnival inversion correspond toa kind of official limit of what the Medici regime couldtolerate in terms of protest and dissent. The presence ofthe gigantic fresco in the very church that proclaimedthe Medici dynasty and its continuity may be said tosignify a kind of official approval of thedissidentenergies manifest in festive forms. In fact, at least upuntil the decade before the execution of this fresco,Cosimo was prepared to tolerate carnivalesque andludic forms of protest against his regime. In 1556 hissecretary Lorenzo Pagni informed his prince with somealarm that a group of Florentines constituting theAccademia del Piano, including members of familieswith a long history of opposition to the Medici, hadgathered for a festive celebration in the house ofBartolomeo Ranciatichi, a person under suspicion as a

47. On Razzi's dialogue see Gaston, "Iconography andPortraiture," 56, and Firpo, Gli affreschi di Pontormo, 252-260.

48. Silvano Razzi, Della econ?mica Christiana e civile . . .ne iquali da una nobile brigata di donne e huomini si ragiona della cura egoverno famigliare, secondo ?a legge Christiana e vita civile (Florence:Sermartelli, 1568), 35, on the Council of Trent, 64-79 on Faith, Hopeand Charity, 152 on prayer and good works, and 156ff. on the cardinalvirtues.

49. "Interiore, per lo quale (mediante l'intelletto e l'affezzione) cicongiugniamo con Dio col mezzo della Fede, Speranza e Charita, eesteriore, che non ? altro che una certa dimostrazione di esso cultointeriore, il quale si manifesta visibilmente per certi segni e cerimonie

apparenti nel copsetto degl'huomini." Ibid., 94.50. "Chi ? quegli che, nel vedere le pitture le quali cirappresentano poniam caso il nascere, il patire e lamorte del nostroSignore, che non si risenta tutto in considerando quanto ha volute pernoi sofferire il figliuol di Dio et per conseguenza non mostri e nonfaccia alcun segno di gratitudine o almeno di conoscenzade'benefizii?" Ibid., 79.



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former adherent of heterodox religious beliefs. Thegathering had taken place on the anniversary of theassassination of Cosimo's predecessor Alessandro de'

Medici, and it involved the burlesque celebration ofmock-exequies for an Archbishop of Pisa identified as acreature of the Medici. Cosimo responded thatconspiracies could hardly be hatched involving suchlarge numbers of people, and that "since the minds ofthe Florentine people are incapable of idleness, it isbetter that they occupy themselves in similar goings on,than remain pensive (cogitabundi)."51 Cosimo appears tohave assumed that insubordination so blatant could not

have been dangerous; secrecy, or being quietlycogitabundo, was what was to be feared. But he was

wrong in this instance, for several members of theAccademia del Piano, including members of theCavalcanti, Pucci, and Capponi families, some of themclose to the prince Francesco de' Medici, turned out tobe involved in a deeply laid conspiracy against hisregime, and were executed in 1559 and 1560.52In the case of Bronzino's fresco, a ludic mode could

perhaps have provided a symbolic compensation for theausterity mandated by Cosimo's political compromisewith Rome and with Tridentine reform. But itcould alsosignify an exorbitant attempt at assimilation thatunleashes more than itcan control. Many of the featuresof this work can be characterized in terms of familiar

Medici cultural politics, but it remains to be seenwhether that would be adequate as an account ofthe fresco. The festive dimension might remind us ofthe Medici's long-established habit of drawing on thevital elements of Florentine culture, as a reinforcementof their own charismatic identification withFlorence.53 Both elite and popular cultural forms hadcharacteristically been re-forged into a civil andaristocratic version of Florentine cultural identity,maintaining links to a popular and republican past, but

idealized and purged of politically contrary elements.San Lorenzo, a church under Medici patronage for over

a century, had long served as an arena for theproduction of a distinctly Medici version of Florentineculture, especially through its centrality in the festiveand religious life of the laity. The realms of the sacredand of the marketplace interpenetrated there as nowhereelse; generous indulgences were granted to those whovisited the altar of St. Lawrence on Wednesdays, whichwas also the day when a market was held outside thechurch, and the grace afforded by these indulgences wasincreased by the two Medici popes Leo X and ClementVII. Hence also the annual P?lio of San Lorenzo, theannual ostensi?n of relics, the rather grisly feast-day giftsof roasted meat to preeminent donor families, and theincreasingly elaborate Medici funerals.54 Comedies byPlautus were performed there in the time of Lorenzo II

Magnifico, along with the traditional tragi-comic sacrarappresentazione the Play of Cosmas and Dami?n. By

mid-century, the range of novelties and curiosities thatpacked the church included a sermon by an eight-yearold Dominican friar inMay 1564 (recalling the "boybishop" of carnival tradition), and the spectacularfuneral obsequies for Michelangelo the following year?itself a laboriously arranged marketing enterprise for thenew Accademia del Disegno.55 Traditions could prevailat San Lorenzo despite an internal, Trent-inspired reformin the 1560s; Bronzino's fresco could thus be seen as aperpetual enactment of a kind of popular religioustheater increasingly under attack by religious reformersin the 1560s; from this decade onward, Florentine

51. The episode is examined by Domenico Zanr?, "Ritual andParody inMid-Cinquecento Florence. Cosimo de'Medici and theAccademia del Piano," in The Cultural Politics of Duke Cosimo Ide'Medici, ed. Konrad Eisenbichler (Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2001),

189-205.52. As noted by Zanr?, "Ritual and Parody," 198; on the

conspiracy of Randolfo Pucci, see Cantagalli, Cosimo Ide' Medici,242-246.

53. An approach characteristic of much recent scholarship, mostnotably Richard C. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (Ithaca,N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1980), see especially 374-377 on sacrerappresentazioni.

54. Gaston has shown that the liturgical life of San Lorenzo washeavily shaped by the laity even before it became the primary arena

where Medici power was placed on show for the whole spectrum ofFlorentine society. He points to the veritable commerce in liturgy atSan Lorenzo from the fifteenth century onward, as families "took over"saints' feast days?a correlative to the privatization of liturgical spaceamong the elite, with the string of chapels and chaplaincies. See"Liturgy and Patronage

at San Lorenzo, 1350-1650," in Patronage,Art

and Society in Renaissance Italy, eds. F.W. Kent and Patricia Simons(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 111-133. For the liturgy andtraditions of San Lorenzo see also Domenico Moreni, Continuazionedelle memorie istoriche delI'Ambrosiana Imperial Basilica di SanLorenzo di Firenze dall erezione della chiesa presente a tutto il regno

Mediceo. 2 vols. (Florence, 1816); and Maria Ciseri, "Scenari festivi aSan Lorenzo: Apparati, Cerimonie, Spettacoli," in San Lorenzo: Idocument e i tesori nascosti (Florence: Marsiglio, 1993), 41-44,69-75.

55. On May 3, 1564 Lapini's Diario reports "A di 3 Maggio 1564doppo Vespro predico in S. Lorenzo di Firenze un Fraticinodell'Ordine di S. Domenico di et? di anni otto, pi? testo mancho, chepi?, quale aveva imparato a mente certe prediche, et quelle recitava,che se n'ebbe pocha satisfazione per havere lui poco petto, e spirito,et la Chiesa era tutta piena, e fu tenuta cosa rarissima, considerandoalia te?era et?." Cited inMoreni, Continuazione, II, 305.



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theater showed increasing signs of accommodation witha newly didactic standard and more rigorous decorum.56Giovanni Angelo Lottini's Sacra rappresentazione di S.Lorenzo, published in 1592, is a purified version of thesaint's legend, fully divested of the comic elements thatabound in the hymn of Prudentius or the fresco byBronzino.57

Thus far, the fresco would constitute a rathersuccessful example of an absolutist cultural policy inaction, an extension of the means of ruling throughforms associated with pleasurable misrule. Yet it is notthe only way to understand Bronzino's painting; as anabsolutist instrument that works through openness andinclusiveness, that desires to accommodate manifold

Florentine traditions and the social groups and identitiesassociated with them, it is at best questionable whetheritsoperations can be seen to serve a single instrumentalfunction, to extend a pervasive "dominion of the eye."58

Writing of Florentine public space, Stephen Milner hasargued for a mode of analysis that can address "themanner inwhich symbols, with their multipleassociations, permitted alternative visions of socialordering to coexist alongside the dominant form.Changes in the deployment of a particular symbol bythose in power did not so much constitute anappropriation of that symbol as the imputation to itofan alternative preferred reading."59

On the one hand, Bronzino manifests the symptomsof an alienated enterprise, passively drawing his identityfrom that of a powerful, canonical forerunner. Yet on theother hand, Bronzino also appears as a reader ofsymbols rather than an absorber of influences; his ironic

misprisions of Michelangelo?of the Sistine Adam andignudi, the Bettini Venus, the Medici Chapel capitano?indicate that it is possible to read symbols against the

grain, that the meanings of "readers" finally havepriority over the meanings of "authors," and that thealienation or severance of the work from its authormake itprecarious as a bearer of official meaning. Theeffect, however, is not completely one of bathos;Michelangelo's art supplies another crucial element,which greatly extends the expressive range of thesc?nographiemode of historypainting being defined byBronzino. While Michelangelo's poetry and writingsoften dramatize the alienation of the artist's works fromthe artist's self, certain works were also seen to have aquality that placed them beyond the reach of thesignificance desired by patrons. It is frequently observedand recognized in the sixteenth century that the humanfigure inMichelangelo's art often moves and acts less inaccordance with a narrative function than with anenigmatic pathos, a dimension of pensive disquiet thatcontemporaries sometimes identified as melancholia.60This was above all characteristic of the "Florentine"rather than the "Roman" Michelangelo, and itwas seento define the allegorical figuresof theMedici Chapel inparticular. Opposed to the Medici regime by the time ofhis final departure from Florence in 1534, Michelangelowould ten years later famously assign a negativepolitical significanc

bronzino's martyrdom of st. lawrence & counter reformation.pdf

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