THE BIRDS OF BARTOLO GIOGGIAuthor(s): Norman E. LandSource: Source: Notes in the History of Art, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Fall 2008), pp. 22-24Published by: Ars Brevis Foundation, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23207970 .

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THE BIRDS OF BARTOLO GIOGGI

Norman E. Land

Without question, Giorgio Vasan s Lives of the Artists (Florence: 1568) is the single most

important source for humorous anecdotes and stories about Renaissance artists. Still, such tales existed long before the first appearance ofVasari's book. For example, Giovanni Boc caccio's Decameron (c. 1350) contains a fa mous story about Giotto and several more about the fun-loving trickster and artist Buon amico Buffalmacco and his companions Bruno and the simpleton Calandrino.1

Among trecento authors of stories about

artists, Franco Sacchetti is second in impor tance only to Boccaccio. His Trecentonovelle

(c. 1395) contains two tales about Giotto, sev eral more about Buffalmacco, and a few other far-less-well-known stories.2 Among the no velle that have been largely overlooked is one

(170) about a messer Pino Brunelleschi and "a painter of rooms" named Bartolo Gioggi, who, Sacchetti says, was no less singular a

person than Buffalmacco.3 As Sacchetti s story goes, Pino asks

Bartolo to paint a room in his palace and to

depict numerous birds ("molti uccelli")

among the trees in the upper part of the fresco. Pino then goes into the countryside for a month, during which time Bartolo almost completes the painting. On Pino's

return, as he and Bartolo examine the room, the artist asks for payment. Having carefully scrutinized the artist's work, Pino responds, "Bartolo, you have not served me well, nor as I instructed you, for you have not painted as many birds as I wanted."

To which Bartolo immediately says, "Sir, I painted many more than you see here, but

your servant left the windows open, and a

great many of the birds flew away." Pino, knowing Bartolo to be a great

drinker, replies, "I firmly believe that my servant held open the door of the wine cellar and has given you drink to such an extent that you have ill served me, and you will not be paid as you expect."

When asked why he had not painted more

birds, Bartolo jokingly answers that some of his representations of birds, seeing an

opportunity to escape, flew away out open windows. Bartolo's reply may be under stood as a travesty of Boccaccio's descrip tion in the Decameron (6.5) of Giotto's

ability to create overwhelmingly lifelike

representations of nature. According to Boc

caccio, Giotto was so gifted an artist that his

depictions looked not like the imitation of a

thing, but like the thing itself. His paintings often so deceived viewers that they believed

they were looking at the natural object and not at Giotto's representation of it. In effect, Bartolo tries to convince Pino that his

painted birds are as lifelike as Giotto's

depicted objects seem to be.

Reading Sacchetti's tale from another

perspective, we might say that Bartolo tries to convince Pino that he is like the mythical Pygmalion, who, with the help of Venus, transforms a figure of a woman carved in

ivory into a living person. In other words,

just as Pygmalion transforms ivory into

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23

flesh, so, too, does Bartolo claim to have turned lifeless paint into living birds. Then,

too, because only God has the ability to create living creatures from lifeless material, Bartolo's preposterous claim implies that he is Godlike. Interestingly, according to the

apocryphal First Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ (15:6), the youthful Jesus in effect acts as an artist when he causes some

sparrows shaped in clay to fly, to stand still, to eat, and to drink.4

Part of the humor of Sacchetti's novella is his witty play upon the noun uccello, "bird," and its relation to a verb that he implies but does not actually use, uccellare, "to fool or to deceive someone." Presumably, Pino was uccellato by the lifelike representation of Bartolo's uccelli, but the artist is unable to uccellare his patron with words. That is to

say, Pino might be fooled by Bartolo's vivid

representation of birds, but he definitely is not duped by the artist's ridiculous explana tion for the appearance of an inadequate number of them. If Bartolo is, as Sacchetti

implies, like Buffalmacco, Pino is no

Calandrino, no uccello or "birdbrain." He knows that Bartolo prefers drink to labor.

Sacchetti goes on to say that at the

meeting of Bartolo and Pino there was also

present a blind man named Pescione, who was Pino's very devoted servant. When Bartolo asks Pino if he would allow Pescione to settle the matter of the painted birds, Pino agrees. Pescione laughs and

asks: "Why do you want me, who cannot see the light of day, to resolve the matter? How am I able see how many birds there are, or

how they are painted?" In spite of Pescione's objections, he is

given the task of settling the dispute, and

carefully studying the matter, mostly with

help from Bartolo, Pescione wants to know how many birds the artist painted. After

conferring with certain painters and dining one winter's evening with his friend Pino, Pescione says that concerning the matter of

Bartolo, he has received the advice of a great many people, and, truly, the birds in Pino's room were painted so well that they could not be surpassed.

Sacchetti tells us that Pino does not say to

Pescione, "What nonsense are you handing me?" as one might expect. Instead, Pino im

mediately turns to Pescione and says: "Come out of the house with me."

Pescione replies, "Why have you said this to me?"

And Pino answers, "I understand

well, come out of the house with me." Pino then turns to another of his servants,

a man named Gianni, who has only one eye, and says, "Take the torch, Gianni, and make some light," for it was night and dark outside.

Pescione, who is already on the staircase,

says: "Sir, I have no need of light." To which Pino again replies, "I under

stand you well, go with God; make some

light, Gianni." "I have no need of light," Pescione again

insists. And in that manner, Pescione, without

light, and Gianni, who has one eye and is

holding a torch, descend the staircase. And Pescione goes home, on the one hand

puffing hard and on the other laughing. And

afterward, Sacchetti says, this story made

many people laugh. That Pino would willingly allow a blind

servant to settle a dispute about a painting challenges our ability to willingly suspend disbelief until we notice that Pescione is

Pino's "criatura," or servant. The story

implies that because of his devotion to Pino, Pescione will settle the matter in his favor, but apparently Pescione does not live up to

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24

expectation. Rather, he seems to play a joke on Pino. After consulting with Bartolo and other masters, he settles the matter in the artist's favor. At the very end of the story, however, the narrator says that he believes that it all happened so that Pino would not have to pay Bartolo or so that Pino could

delay the payment. Here we should recall

that, during the month that Pino was away from his house, Bartolo drank a great deal of his patron's wine. That would explain why, as the narrator says, Bartolo, in order to be paid, greatly reduced the compensation owed him for his work.

An especially significant aspect of Sac chetti's tale is that Pino's response to Pe

scione's decision is essentially visual rather than verbal. Pino does not chastise Pe scione's judgment with words; rather, he sends him into the dark night with half-blind Gianni leading the way. In short, Pino demonstrates that, in his opinion, Bartolo's relation to Pescione is one of the blind—or

half-blind—leading the blind. The story gently hints, too, that blind

Pescione is typical of art critics or at least of those who evaluate art. Pescione's judgment of that which he cannot see for himself is determined by the words of others, just as some critics (and other viewers) are guided not by what they see, but by what they are told they should see.

NOTES

1. For Boccaccio's stories, see Decameron 6.5, 8.3,

8.6, 8.9, 9.3, and 9.5.

2. For Sacchetti's stories, see Trecentonovelle 63,

75, 134, 136, 161, 169, and 170.

3. I have used the text in F. Sacchetti, II Tre

centonovelle, ed. E. Faccioli (Turin: 1970), pp. 492-494, no. 170. Faccioli (p. 53n) refers to a Bartolo

Gioggi, whose name appears in a document of 1387.

See also Emanuele Repetti, Dizionario geografico

fisico storico della Toscana, 6 vols. (Florence:

1833-1846), IV, pp. 650-652, who says that a Pino di

Francesco Brunelleschi (d. 1362) owned a villa near

Florence.

4. See The Lost Books of the Bible and The For

gotten Books of Eden (New York: 1977), p. 53.

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