Bravura: Virtuosity and Ambition in Early Modern European Painting

By Nicola Suthor

The first major history of the bravura movement in European painting

The painterly style known as bravura emerged in sixteenth-century Venice and spread throughout Europe during the seventeenth century. While earlier artistic movements presented a polished image of the artist by downplaying the creative process, bravura celebrated a painter’s distinct materials, virtuosic execution, and theatrical showmanship. This resulted in the further development of innovative techniques and a popular understanding of the artist as a weapon-wielding acrobat, impetuous wunderkind, and daring rebel. In Bravura, Nicola Suthor offers the first in-depth consideration of bravura as an artistic and cultural phenomenon. Through history, etymology, and in-depth analysis of works by such important painters as Franҫois Boucher, Caravaggio, Francisco Goya, Frans Hals, Peter Paul Rubens, Tintoretto, and Diego Velázquez, Suthor explores the key elements defining bravura’s richness and power.

Suthor delves into how bravura’s unique and groundbreaking methods—visible brushstrokes, sharp chiaroscuro, severe foreshortening of the body, and other forms of visual emphasis—cause viewers to feel intensely the artist’s touch. Examining bravura’s etymological history, she traces the term’s associations with courage, boldness, spontaneity, imperiousness, and arrogance, as well as its links to fencing, swordsmanship, henchmen, mercenaries, and street thugs. Suthor discusses the personality cult of the transgressive, self-taught, antisocial genius, and the ways in which bravura artists, through their stunning displays of skill, sought applause and admiration.

Filled with captivating images by painters testing the traditional boundaries of aesthetic excellence, Bravura raises important questions about artistic performance and what it means to create art.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Release date: Feb 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9780691213439

Book preview

BRAVURA

BRAVURA

Virtuosity and Ambition

in Early Modern

European Painting

NICOLA SUTHOR

Princeton University Press

Princeton and Oxford

Copyright © 2021 by Nicola Suthor

Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to [e-mail]

Published by Princeton University Press,

41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,

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press.princeton.edu

Front cover: Peter Paul Rubens, The Fall of Phaeton (detail), ca. 1604–1605.

Oil on canvas, 98.4 × 131.2 cm. National Gallery, Washington, DC.

Back cover: Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Abbé Claude Richard de Saint-Non, 1769.

Oil on canvas, 80 × 65 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris.

All Rights Reserved

ISBN 978-0-691-20458-1

ISBN (e-book) 978-0-691-21343-9

Version 1.0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020946307

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

Published in part with the generous support of the Publications Fund of the Department of the History of Art, Yale University.

Designed by Julie Fry

Contents

INTRODUCTION

The Semantic Field of Bravura  6

Synopsis  8

1  CELEBRATIONS OF VIOLENCE

The Artist as Executioner  12

Beautiful Horror: The Massacre of the Innocents by Marino, Rubens, and Poussin  21

Swashbuckling and Warcraft  40

Media and Immediacy in alla prima  57

2  THE FIGURAL TOUR DE FORCE

The Art of (Fore)Shortening: Repertoire and Scorcio in Battle Paintings  62

Sacrificial Bodies  69

Pazzia bestialissima: Rubens’s Copy after Leonardo’s Battle of the Standard  81

Rubens Storms the Ramparts: The Fall of Phaeton  84

3  THE SPATIAL TOUR DE FORCE

Bending the Curve  94

Cutting Edge Solutions  100

The Glory of the Dome  105

4  BRAVURA AS PAINTERLY STYLE

Sprezzatura artificiosa  112

The Appeal of Sketchiness  120

Tintoretto as Primus inter pares  122

The Art of Fencing  130

5  COMMUNICATING ARTIFICE

A Day’s Work  134

Luca Giordano and Il far presto  139

To Witness Painting  141

6  ECONOMIES OF PRACTICE

Carlo Dolci’s Excessive Diligence  150

The Incalculable Artist  155

Vanagloria  161

The Fragility of Fame  163

7  ARTE-FACTUM: THE FEMINIZING BRAVURA

The Artifice of Painterly Mimesis  170

Titian’s Vaghezza  172

Manu-Facture  177

Role Reversal  185

8  ENDANGERING THE YOUTH

Caravaggio’s Realism  188

Giuseppe Cesari Lifting Weights  200

Blind Practice  206

9  THE ACADEMIC RESPONSE

The Sophistication of Légèreté  212

Mechanick Genius  217

Forever Young  221

The Inspired Waste of Fragonard  224

10  REENACTMENTS AND ECHOES

Frans Hals’s Realist Bravura  230

The Afterlife of Bravura  234

Notes  239

Bibliography  269

Index  285

Photo Credits  295

BRAVURA

Introduction

Because someone mentioned [to Giuseppe Cesari] one day that Annibale [Carracci] had spoken ill of one of his works, when [Cesari] then happened to meet him, he wanted to take his sword in hand and fight. But Annibale, who knew the only true bravado between them should be that of painting and not of dueling, took up a brush and showing it to him, said: It is with these weapons I challenge you and confront you; and thus he was truly assured of achieving an advantage over his enemy.

— ANDRÉ FÉLIBIEN¹

Ars est ostendere artem, or art is to demonstrate art, is the rhetorical message of a painterly style known as bravura that emerged in sixteenth-century Venice and spread throughout Europe over the course of the seventeenth century. An anti-academic attitude, bravura subverted the formerly regnant dictum Ars est celare artem (true art is to conceal art), which claims the illusion of transparency as the ultimate goal of painterly mimesis. In this earlier paradigm, art acquired prestige by distancing itself from the practical aspects of painting as craft, and in doing so generated a disparity between effect and matter. An exclusive focus on the artwork’s true to life quality created a concept of the image that accentuated the natural appearance of pictorial illusion by eclipsing its artifice. The goal of art in this case — the evocation of an image in the beholder’s imagination — guided a self-effacement of the artist and subjugated the creative process to the higher purpose of pure illusion. While celare only makes sense if ars has a double significance (the art that is concealed cannot be the same as the art that conceals), ostendere is the affirmative emphasis of a seemingly one-dimensional concept of art. The artist operating in the latter modus accomplishes their ascent to art by successfully manipulating painting materials and techniques. The ostentatious demonstration of manual and technical skill becomes the higher purpose of the artwork’s execution, a purpose that is by implication performative.

The maxim learning by doing comes to mind — an idiomatic expression that can be traced to Aristotle (384–322 bce): We learn an art or craft by doing the things that we shall have to do when we have learned it: for instance, men become builders by building houses, harpers by playing on the harp. Similarly we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.² In a famous passage in the Metaphysics, Aristotle grants that empirical knowledge may lead to more functional success than theoretical understanding, and gives the example of a doctor who has had no other teacher than personal experience but is still able to cure, whereas one who has acquired profound theoretical knowledge but no experience would be incapable of doing so.³ However, the ancient philosopher follows his admission by denigrating the inferior wisdom such empiricism represents — a rejection that would prove decisive for Early Modern art-theoretical discourse, which privileged theory over practice and thus posed the perfect foil for the spectacle of bravura.

To a substantial degree, this discourse centered on the controversial issue of artistic practice. The painter Vicente Carducho (1576–1638), a native of Florence who lived most of his life in Spain, took up Aristotle’s distinguishing criterion in his Diálogos (1633) to belittle popular acclaim for a way of painting known as alla pratica: As for those that make such paintings of simple imitation, I regard them to be like empiricist doctors, who without knowing the cause are able to work wonders; they certainly garner great applause before the tribunal of the senses and their works elicit amazement, sometimes deceiving the sense of sight with their evocative imitation; and I do not doubt that all those who serve on this tribunal raise their voices and cheer, although here Reason and Discernment do not dare participate.⁴ What wins popular applause is, Carducho alleges, the opacity of a practice that appears to produce miraculous results.

Carducho’s criticism places him in a long line of authors in art literature who have attempted to shed light on ars as a subject shrouded in mystery. The painter and writer Giovanni Battista Armenini, in his collection of painting precepts titled De’ veri precetti della pittura (1578), explicitly denounces the bad habit (abuso) of excellent masters of our time (i maestri eccellenti de’ nostri tempi) who when they are working lock themselves away and close up every crack, so that their assistants cannot see them.⁵ Armenini’s instructional text instead endeavors to dispel the secrecy surrounding artistic knowledge that a master’s isolation from his pupils creates; he offers to help young painters who set out on the arduous path of the autodidact and to spare them from having to wait until the end of their lives to reach the perfection they desire, or from becoming like a blind man without a cane who proceeds in unusual ways and intricate snarls.⁶

La grandezza e oscurità dell’arte, which Armenini wished to illuminate in his book, also fascinated the painter and theorist Gian Paolo Lomazzo, who literally did go blind early in his life. In his Idea del tempio della pittura (1590), he affirms: Because painting is such a difficult and recondite art, there is no mind in this world that, considering engagement with it, would not become confused and terrified.⁷ Lomazzo explains his perilous exploration of art theory as supported by his faith in God and emphasizes the originality of his treatise: I just want to say I have not copied these principles from other authors, but have discovered them all myself with persevering and untiring, yet gratifying effort.⁸ His insistence on the empirical derivation of his assembled knowledge is paradoxical, however, for he ultimately expects the reader to adopt his principles as the foundation for their own investigation of the subject, thus elevating his personal erudition to the level of the generalizable.

What motivated a number of similar treatises in this epoch was the desire that painting be recognized as a higher art according to Aristotle’s definition: noble artistic pursuits spring from a prerequisite awareness of causation, a realization superior to and distinguishable from mere experience, no matter how successful experience may be at achieving a specific end.⁹ The contemporary demand for written didactic guides also supported painting’s claim to be a science for one simple reason: the very existence of such guides implies that art is teachable — an assumption that, over the centuries, would be repeatedly brought into question.¹⁰

This debate was founded on a nuanced understanding of the specificity of artistic knowledge. The humanist Benedetto Varchi (1502–1565), whose conception of art relied heavily on Aristotle, drew a sharp distinction between art and science in a famous address delivered to the Florentine Academy in 1547 and published in 1550. He identified two types of reason: particular and universal, the first being a cognitive power (cognitiva) fundamental to the discrete intention that aims at the manufacture of objects, while the second is exclusively involved in the formation of general concepts. Varchi admits that in the arts there is more need for consultation and discussion than in science; however, such consultation does not concern an ultimate purpose but rather the possible means to achieve it. In the visual arts, therefore, it is not the speculative and contemplative, but rather the practical and active modes of the mind that open up the field of creative possibility, in the sense of determining what is actually doable (il fattibile). Accordingly, art is an abito fattivo, con vera ragione (a practical habit with true reason), whose principle does not reside in the manufactured object, but in the one who manufactures it — a perspective quite estranged from the early Renaissance’s ambitious project to establish painting as a special type of natural science.¹¹

The dignity of an art, according to Varchi, depends on the relative weights given to ingegno and fatica, for some arts require more talent than effort. Yet artistic ingenuity alone will never suffice because, for Varchi, all arts are abiti and not disposizioni. Therefore, a disposition toward a certain ability will not on its own make one a virtuoso or true artist; it will be necessary also to make use of this ability so that it becomes firmly established through training and regular practice. Varchi’s devaluation of art occurred alongside, and prepared the ground for, an increasing appreciation of praxis during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The process of raising practice to the level of theory, in Charles Dempsey’s apt formulation,¹² ultimately accredited practice with genuine scientificity. As a development, art theoretically connected to painters’ recurring demand for some relief from the all too protracted and tedious obligations of education and apprenticeship, its objective would be most clearly accomplished, functionally speaking, by accelerating painterly execution. While art theory over the centuries has asserted the necessity of guiding constructs, which admittedly would never come anywhere close to pointing out a guaranteed path to mastery, the practice of painting did, in fact, develop effective methods that substantially shortened the time needed to produce a picture. The abbreviation of painterly facture, a manifestation of scienza and intelligenza and the visual expression of experience and practice, reveals what Armenini called the greatness and obscurity of painting. Or, as the philosopher Theodor Adorno put it: Technique is the one determinable aspect of the artwork’s enigma.¹³

Yet two hundred years after Armenini, Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792), the first president of the Royal Academy of Arts, called for practices of expedience that are grounded in transparent causality: We learn to imitate [the ruling characteristic] by short and dexterous methods. I do not mean by dexterity a trick or mechanical habit, formed by guess, and established by custom; but that science, which, by a profound knowledge of ends and means, discovers the shortest and surest way to its own purpose.¹⁴ Despite centuries of persistent questioning as to the proficiencies of various kinds of practice, the academic response was never able to offer a silver bullet to success. And the reason why is due to the very nature of skill. The philosopher Michael Polanyi has argued that "the aim of a skillful performance is achieved by the observance of a set of rules which are not known as such to the person following them.¹⁵ Although these rules are heeded, they are not consciously acknowledged as something that guides execution. The performer is ignorant of them because they are intrinsic to practical reasoning and therefore cannot be extracted from procedure and generalized as overarching principles. The know-how (instead of know-what) demonstrated in a skillful performance shifts the artist’s (and the compliant beholder’s) focus from the active mind to the executing hands. The celebration of the visible brushstroke in Venetian paintings that will be discussed at length in the following chapters focuses on its quality of individuality, for the intention of skill, according to Polanyi, is to gain a personal knowledge that results in the acquisition of a particular touch."¹⁶ The artist’s touch is most evident in the exposed brushstroke, and thus in the material aspect of painting, but it also manifests in the deployment of other techniques. A sharp chiaroscuro and severe foreshortening of the body are forms of visual emphasis that cause the beholder to feel intensely the mark left by the artist in their bold handling of the depicted subject.

Throughout the seventeenth century, we can find in the literature numerous legends that commemorate this tacit knowing of the artist that Polanyi conceptualized. One of the most pertinent tells of a quarrel between the two brothers Agostino and Annibale Carracci over their conflicting approaches to antiquity.¹⁷ When a group of art connoisseurs visited their shared studio, Agostino began discussing the famous antique sculpture Laocöon and His Sons. He put forth a good many erudite observations and wanted Annibale to join in, but to his chagrin, his brother seemed to show no interest. As they continued their talk, Annibale quietly drew the contours of the Laocöon, thereby expressing his profound study and knowledge of the work. Agostino eventually took notice of his brother’s unspoken discourse and lavished him with praise (all the while failing to understand that Annibale’s drawing was meant to silence him). To this Annibale sarcastically responded, The rest of us painters have to speak with our hands (noi altri dipintori abbiamo da parlare con le mani).¹⁸ The tacit expertise expressed in such wordless feats of bravura is the knowledge of how to make, which must prove itself in the doing and thus calls for a theatrical staging. Vladimir Jankelevitch elegantly locates the problematic tendency of virtuosity in its ostentatious bearing: Virtuosity does not seek out the penumbra in order to hide therein; on the contrary, it caprioles in the limelight of center stage.¹⁹

The bared exposure and exhibition of skill articulated in masterful accomplishment is in great part responsible for the personality cults that surround those daring artists who not only touch but emphatically strike their subjects, and through them the beholder. Public celebration marks the bravura painter as a wunderkind — a self-taught experimenter who rebels against the traditional progression of technical training and plunges ahead impetuously, skipping all the essential preliminary steps, not only on the path to expertise but also in the execution of a single composition. An aura of mystery envelops this worker of marvels who seems to have no theoretical grounding. And without this terra firma, the artist appears to be walking on a suspended tightrope, where the corporality of their touch is all the more exposed and the weight of their footfall bears heavily on the course of the artwork’s production. As will be shown, the precariousness of this position arises from bravura’s merger of the two distinct arts of drawing and painting, which elevates the physical involvement of the artist and their demonstrative painterly routine by appropriating the qualities of scienza and intelligenza (formerly only credited to disegno) as inherent to the act of painting. But the load of the artist’s weight imposes a burden that artificially strains, if it does not actively violate, the idea of mimesis. It is this aggressive potential in the artist’s self-assertive execution that will provoke a strong critical reaction (both positive and negative) to their art.

Ostentatious practice seems to have encouraged a kind of anti-social behavior in artists, which stood in opposition to the courtly attitude preferred by those who excelled in the academically mandated concealment of art. Thus Baldassare Castiglione’s gentleman, the role model de rigueur during the centuries of the Early Modern period and the ethical standard against which the virtus of the artist had long been measured, acquired a controversial counterpart: the self-centered, hostile bravo (Italian, hitman, thug). Lomazzo tells of an encounter between two artists regarded as exemplars of these two contrasting attitudes: "It happened once that [Raphael], in the company of several fellows, ran into Michelangelo, who was alone. Michelangelo told him he thought he had met the chief of police [bargello], so many men there were with him. To which Raphael replied that he, for his part, thought he had encountered the executioner [manigoldo], who, like Buonarroti, always went about by himself."²⁰

While this early historical correlation of artist and executioner was meant as a disparagement, the bravura painter enthusiastically adopted the identification. We see the same affiliation humorously reflected in an anecdote recounting an outlandish interaction between Tintoretto and the art critic Pietro Aretino, whom he had invited to sit for a portrait.²¹ As Aretino took his seat in the studio, Tintoretto theatrically pulled a pistol from his vest. Aretino, startled and afraid he would now have to atone for his previous criticism of the young painter, cried out: Jacopo, what are you doing? The artist answered, I would like to take your measurements. After Tintoretto had gauged Aretino’s height from head to foot by means of his firearm, he said, You are two and a half pistols long.²² The comedy here lies in the artist’s repurposing of a real threat of violence for his artistic purposes once the desired effect of intimidation had been achieved — an ironic gesture that leads to a rhetorical disarming of his critic.

THE SEMANTIC FIELD OF BRAVURA

In order to understand the implications of the artist’s perceived affinity with figures such as the executioner and bravo, it is helpful to trace the latter’s etymology. Bravo as an adjective meaning bold or daring is found in Sebastián de Covarrubias’s Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española published in Madrid in 1611. The dictionary entry begins by naming the bull as an animal considered to be bravo, pointing out that any creature designated as such distinguishes itself from domesticated animals either by nature or by cunning. Bravura acts or speech (hecho, o dicho, extraordinario) are categorized as bravata (bravado) and associated with bragging or boasting (fanfarria).²³ Most interesting is Covarrubias’s derivation of bravo from the Latin noun bravium (prize), which informs the word’s related denotation of "victorious, triumphant (vitorioso, triunfante)."²⁴

The first dictionary of the Italian language, the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca, whose premier edition was published in 1612, provides a more precise definition of the term and its various grammatical iterations that will guide our analysis of pictorial bravura. The adjective bravo is here defined as courageous, impetuous, bold;²⁵ the noun form bravura is linked with fierezza (fierceness, daring) and also found as a subcategory under the headwords franchezza (audacity) and (ferocity).²⁶ The verb bravare, meaning to threaten in an imperious and arrogant manner,²⁷ aligns with the aforementioned quasi-occupational noun bravo designating a mercenary or hired hitman (cognate with the Latin sicarius).²⁸

Shortly afterward the word bravura made an impactful appearance in the Venetian art dealer Marco Boschini’s panegyric La Carta del navegar pitoresco (1660), and an attendant strong concept of bravura painting debuted in seventeenth-century art literature. Filippo Baldinucci (ca. 1624–1696) uses bravura in conjunction with several other terms to describe painterly virtuosity. In his Notizie de’ professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua, published from 1681 to 1726, he pairs bravura with boldness, quickness, a great decisiveness, spirit, spontaneity, and a certain painterly vein, composed of such effortlessness and a stroke so ingenious that it is marvelous to look at.²⁹ These pairings contribute to the definition of bravura by identifying the semantic fields in which it operates. Prestezza celebrates the artist’s speed of execution, while the aesthetic quality of demonstrative bravado is expressed by the terms fierezza and maniera gagliarda (daring, vigorous style). Gagliardo becomes an established art-theoretical concept when Baldinucci includes in his glossary the maniera forte, o gagliarda ³⁰ in a list of fifteen stylistic categories, defining it as a manner characterized by intense chiaroscuro that gives objects a high relief and induces them to stand out from the pictorial surface — having thus an inherent force that satisfies the central requirement by which the excellence of painting as art had been traditionally measured.³¹ But the bold chiaroscuro of the maniera forte does not here conform to its traditional role in the creation of mimetic illusion: it slices across and wounds the depicted bodies gagliardamente, according to Lomazzo, because it permits only their illuminated parts to be seen, an effect especially evident in light reflected from metallic surfaces.³² Painters implementing this compositional device were at the cutting edge of innovation for their time.

In the first literary collection of artists’ biographies, Giorgio Vasari’s Vite (1550–1558), the term bravura occurs rarely, and then usually in connection with acknowledgment and applause. Vasari reports that the ephemeral structure made by Jacopo Sansovino to celebrate the entry of Leo X into Florence was of such bravura and boldness (tanta bravura e fierezza) that it was greatly praised by the pope, who expressed his gratitude by allowing the architect and sculptor to kiss his feet.³³ In remarks on Pordenone, Vasari defined painterly bravura as articulated in inventiveness, drawing, coloring, fresco technique, speed, and powerful relief; a description encompassing the foremost marks of artistic quality.³⁴ Vasari also reports in the biography of Rosso Fiorentino that his paintings were continually praised for their incomparable bravura because they were executed without strain or effort.³⁵

The artist’s desire for recognition and admiration is here alleged to be the pivotal impetus behind bravura’s grasp at revelatory exhibition. The Allgemeine Encyklopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste (Universal Encyclopedia of the Sciences and Arts), published in Leipzig in 1824, defines bravura (here applied only to the art of music) as a type of virtuoso performance that is precisely suited, due to rapid or otherwise difficult passages, bold leaps and the like, to cause the audience to call out ‘bravo.’ The bravura piece permits musicians to shine at the conquering of conspicuous difficulties if they are able to overcome the built-in technical challenges of a composition with ease.³⁶ This pursuit of applause by the staging of a masterful triumph over an intentionally sought out difficulty shifts the personal demonstration of skill to a place of central importance in the performance. The encyclopedia entry also notes that the attention-demanding obtrusiveness of bravura is not unproblematic and summarizes its main critique of the bravura piece with a concluding caveat: Bravura in and of itself cannot be the purpose of art.

According to Adorno, applause only superficially signifies an acknowledgment of artistic achievement; more importantly, it pays homage to a custom that requires the artist willingly to sacrifice the work of art in order to create a sense of community: Like the matador, who even today dedicates the bull to a saint or ruler before entering into combat, the virtuoso slaughters the piece of music in the name of the spellbound community as an act of atonement.³⁷ Generally speaking, the bedazzlement of applause may outshine the representational aim of performance, but from the pressure produced in the quest for this reward, unforeseen facets of the performance can unfold — in the very sense of improvisus as the Roman rhetorician Quintilian (35–100) declares:

Extempore pleading is stimulated by a large audience, as soldiers are by massed standards. This is because the necessity of speaking articulates difficult thought and brings it into the open, while the urge to please adds to our happy inspiration. The fact is, everything looks for some reward; even eloquence, though it takes the greatest pleasure in itself, is enormously influenced by the immediate reward of praise and renown.³⁸

The enticement of bravura, not only for the artist but also for the audience, lies in this opening up and exposure, which must be staged to a certain degree but never theless embraces the unpredictable as its core moment.

SYNOPSIS

Although the present book assembles and elucidates in depth the diverse expressions of painterly bravura (or even of artistic virtuosity in general) for the first time, there are several important scholarly contributions to the theoretical discourse on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian art that have broached certain aspects of this study. First and foremost among these is the work of Philip Sohm. His excellent investigation of the concept of pittoresco, as defined in the Venetian art dealer Marco Boschini’s treatise La Carta del navegar pitoresco (1660), resonates throughout the following chapters. Sohm’s collection and careful analysis of the rich lexical treasury of terms used to describe painterly style by Boschini, and his examination of the shifting praise and repudiation of this style by Boschini’s contemporaries and followers, is a precious aid to our understanding of the florid language of seventeenth-century art criticism. Boschini’s metaphorical use of fencing imagery to evoke the act of painting, mentioned by Sohm in passing, will be more fully explored here in order to unfold its importance for the acceptance of visible brushwork.

Another important contribution that thematizes painterly virtuosity in relation to its art-critical response, is Anton W. A. Boschloo’s The Limits of Artistic Freedom: Criticism of Art in Italy from 1500 to 1800. In his account of the variously censorious and appreciative judgments that connoisseurs have directed at groundbreaking manifestations of artistic freedom, Boschloo touches on such demonstrations of virtuosity as rapidity of execution and extreme foreshortening. But his primary goal is to define the different regional centers of art criticism in Early Modern Italy as typified by their reactions to local works of art. The repercussions of parochialism that continue to influence the narration of Italian Early Modern art up to the present day are an intriguing phenomenon of Italian culture and one that requires more scholarly consideration. However, my project is guided by the premise of a pan-European art discourse that was not only supported and stimulated by an effective corpus of art criticism that transcended territorial and language boundaries, but was simultaneously enacted in the realm of artistic practice. This written discourse echoed the self-reflexive visual discourse that was taking place in the medium of painting. The resulting dialogue between painters and their critics gave rise to a concept of artists’ sovereignty that proved a fundamental force in the emergence of the art world in the Early Modern era.

Artists conveyed their message of creative and social autonomy in several ways. One of the most obvious was through the adoption of a theatrically bellicose attitude (whether in real life or on canvas). Because scenes of battle and martyrdom, patent representations of domination, garnered most of the attention and praise in contemporary literary discourse, these became the preferred subjects of artists aiming to make bold artistic statements. As I will outline in the first chapter, the painter’s self-portrayal as an executioner with sword in hand became, in the seventeenth century, a rhetorical commonplace of artistic identity. In this attitude of composed confidence, the image of the artist enjoins the viewer to recognize and applaud their virtuoso execution. Another potent pictorial trope in paintings featuring extreme violence, the scorcio or foreshortened body, is the topic of the second chapter, in which I examine its demonstrative function. In the third chapter, the deployment of this technical feat in its most fitting locus — the ceiling — will be surveyed, along with the intrinsic spatial difficulties of painting on curved surfaces and the bravura of conquering them.

After examining figural and spatial tours de force, my focus will shift from figure and composition to painterly style, and from visual analyses to close readings of foundational art-historical texts. Although stylistic and textual analyses appear throughout this book as closely interwoven interpretive strands, in the second and third chapters, literary references shed light on visual strategies, while in the fourth and fifth chapters, images elucidate rhetorical terms of art criticism. This section highlights bravura’s conceptual connection to sprezzatura, a term in recent years often applied to phenomena that are, more precisely, articulations of bravura. Coined by Baldassare Castiglione in his famous Book of the Courtier, sprezzatura was defined as the concealment of ambition in compliance with social etiquette, and therefore a highly pretentious stance. By downplaying the effort invested in an endeavor, the courtier’s sprezzatura had the psychological effect of adding dramatic supplement to an already successful outcome and thus amplifying public awe. It was less this behavioral code’s ethics of false modesty, so central to the courtly context for which the book was written, than its splendid nonchalance that made it such a promising context for the art discourse of the following century.

For the bravura artist, a pretended negligence that contrives to conceal becomes an end in itself — attitude becomes form. One of the most noted and analyzed of these manifestations was the relationship between sketch-like brushwork and the qualities of carelessness and ease. Sketchiness, a visual strategy as powerful in its impact as extreme foreshortening of the human body, usurps the viewer’s perception of the artwork, its artifice provocatively captivating their gaze and imagination. Seventeenth-century consensus declared Tintoretto, whose name was synonymous with the bold sketchiness of his finished paintings, the bravura painter nonpareil and praised him in language peppered with martial conceits.

What makes the rough brushstoke so alluring is its materialization of facture, the glimpse it affords of the production process. That the public in fact wanted insight into the practice of painting will be documented by a number of anecdotes describing patrons watching their painters at work. The quickness and painterly tricks artists cultivated to entertain these curious clients would coalesce in the lauded bravura feat of the one-day painting. But, chapter 6 explains, quickness came with a price and led to contentious debates about the role of monetary value in defining the worth of art. Swift execution may have seemed the most promising route to equally rapid success, but it proved a rocky road for budding painters, who often stumbled and failed in their attempts, as the examples of Schiavone and Il Mastelletta will illustrate. One of the biggest pitfalls of rushed procedure is the insufficient learning of disegno (drawing), a requisite field of expertise for the painter.

But speed is not the only source of danger — or, if mastered, of glory — intrinsic to bravura practice. As chapter 7 discloses, the immeasurable complexity of painterly mimesis exposed by bravura is its greatest challenge. As soon as paint laid down on a canvas is smoothed and thereby successfully infused with mimetic effects that charm the beholder, the threat and daring of boldness are lost. Such strokes, instead of striking the viewer forcefully, ensnare us into complicity with the illusion. Titian was the ultimate role model for such finesse in coloring; his paintings were considered didactic texts for young artists, disseminating a type of knowledge only accessible through the careful study of his painted surfaces. Velázquez’s genre painting, Las Hilanderas, which depicts Titian’s Rape of Europa in an alcove behind the main scene, will be discussed as a metapictorial meditation on art, accentuating the feminine at a moment when bravura begins to lose its bold recklessness. The painting’s dual registers foreground craft by detaching it from and comparing it to the appreciation of higher art. These two different modes of the Venetian school, Tintoretto’s and Titian’s positions respectively, are wittily reflected in Velazquez’s homage, but what unites them also revolutionizes the theoretical understanding of bravura: the realization that the exposed brushwork on the painted surface was intended from the outset to be revelatory, a medium for the expression of artistic knowledge. This quality of disclosure also elicited, however, the fundamental reproach that Venetian colorito concealed a lack of disegno.

The same accusation re-emerged in controversy centering on the radical take on mimesis in the work of Caravaggio, an iconoclastic artist whose bravura was emulated by the following generation of painters and condemned as dangerous by his detractors. Chapter 8 unpacks the visual strategies of Caravaggio’s ground-breaking concept of mimesis, follows the spread of his message via his follower Bartolomeo Manfredi, and discusses how this new paradigm reflects a general shift — toward working alla pratica rather than from a theoretical grounding — a shift likewise reflected in the art of his rival Giuseppe Cesari, although in the opposite direction. Over the next two centuries, a rigorous critique of bravura’s alleged virtues and vices defined the mission of the prominent art academies, as chapter 9 reviews by spotlighting the mixed assessments handed down by the royal academies in Paris and London. It is ironic that bravura’s unspoken and uncodified knowledge, which permeated and shaped the understanding of high art in Early Modern Europe, provided the impulse for an avalanche of academic writing. Most of these disquisitions misrepresented or exaggerated bravura’s propensities, but they also helped create a legacy that echoed, as the final chapter shows, into the twentieth century.

The present book is a significantly reworked version of my habilitation thesis on bravura, successfully defended in 2008 at the University of Bern and published in 2010 by Wilhelm Fink Verlag in my native German.³⁹ I wrote it in a spirit of resistance against the prevalent art-historical narrative of the time, which ascribed the intelligence of the artwork predominantly to the art patron and/or their intellectual entourage, thus defining the work produced as an expression of their refined visual and literary culture. My reluctance to accept this predominant view was fostered by my mother, a painter, who repeatedly commented on the first papers I wrote during my undergraduate studies with the discouraging remark: Do you really think this is what the artist had in mind? Her critical stance soon became my own, and inspired my decision to engage as far as possible with the intent behind the visual languages of artists. The question of how their rhetorical tools communicate an idiosyncratic form of artistic knowledge that challenges and changes contemporary and future academic discourse is central to the readings of texts and images that follow.

Over the many years of Bravura’s making, the book has accrued debts to many friends and colleagues. I want to thank Rudolf Preimesberger for introducing me to the issue of artistic difficoltà, Gerhard Wolf for offering me six years of intensive research at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence (MPI), Oskar Bätschmann for accepting Bravura as my habilitation at the University of Bern, Annett Hoffmann for being such a lovely comrade during long nights and weekends of study in the library of the MPI in Florence, Diane Bodart and Michael Cole for sharing related ideas, questions, and interests, Alina Payne for always being such a thought-provoking interlocutor, Alexander Nagel for his inspiring museum visits, Matteo Burioni and Wolfram Pichler for many discussions on ground and field, Peter Geimer and Christopher Wood for several debates about the valence of art, Angela Dressen for wonderful trips to Parma and other places, Hannah Baader and Lucia Simonato for their scholarly intensity, Ulrike Mueller Hofstede, Kristine Patz, and Lorenza Melli for their intellectual sisterhood, and Gerd Kroske for his love and patience.

I am especially grateful to Michelle Komie for encouraging me to write an English version of Bravura and for her much-appreciated support throughout the process, to the two readers whose valuable comments were of great benefit, to Karen Carter for her highly competent and careful production of the book, to David Luljak for creating a clear and richly detailed index, to Eva Jaunzems, whose thoughtful copy-editing put the finishing touches on the manuscript, and, last but not least, to Lisa Lawrence, who worked through many versions of the book with steady perseverance and acuity, first translating the German version and then editing the additions and revisions.

CHAPTER ONE

Celebrations of Violence

THE ARTIST AS EXECUTIONER

The artist who wishes to garner the reward of applause must make a personal appearance in their artwork. One of the most common and simple ways of achieving this is to sign the work, which not only guarantees remembrance but can also signpost ambition, as the art historian Patricia Rubin has pointed out.¹ This ambition becomes more transparent when the inscribed name interacts with what is represented and thus participates in the artwork’s meaning.² Another strategem is for the artist to insert their own image. Both practices were already well established by the seventeenth century; however, they were being used now with a forcefulness that announced a new narrative: rather than merely petitioning the beholder, they were meant to strike a blow.

The painter Mattia Preti (1613–1699) from Calabria, praised by his colleague Luigi Scaramuccia (1616–1680) as molto bravo disinvolto (very recklessly bold),³ inserted his own likeness in a most extraordinary manner on an altarpiece he donated to the church of his hometown (fig. 1). The artist has placed himself in a prominent position in the foreground of the image. With his left hand, he touches his chest and proudly indicates the large Maltese cross emblazoned on his robe that identifies him as a knight of the Order of Hospitallers, while with his right hand he grasps a paintbrush and a sword.⁴ The pairing of these two instruments, one placed above the other to form a vertical axis, is remarkable for there is no conceivable task that could require their use in concert. Preti holds the brush poised as if painting, but the instrument is inverted. Aligned with the sword grip and terminating in a white, sharp brushstroke, the pointed end of the brush handle points downward like the analogous tip of the sword.

The narrative of the altarpiece into which Preti has inserted his self-portrait provides a motivation for these mismatched attributes. In the center of the canvas, John the Baptist, the patron saint of the Order of the Hospitallers, delivers a sermon. His bent right arm directs our attention to the undulating banner held by a putto, on which POENIT (repent) is clearly legible. This single word discloses the sermon’s message: You viper’s brood! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance.⁵ Although Preti positions his image in the foreground of the depicted event, spatially he seems to stand in front of his work. As an intermediary between beholder and saint, his gestures and facial expression communicate his empathetic participation in the painting’s theme of sin and redemption. Ostentatiously, but undeniably, he has borne fruit worthy of repentance in the form of this altarpiece that he has created and donated to the church.

1 Mattia Preti, John the Baptist Preaching, c. 1672. Oil on canvas, 290 × 202 cm. Church of San Domenico, Taverna.

In a panegyric to Il Cavalier Calabrese famosissimo Pittore by the notable Jesuit playwright Andrea Perrucci (1651–1704), Preti accrues prestige for the religious role he performs through his art: When you allure souls and deceive the eye, Eternity has chosen her brush to fill the oblivion of blasphemies and harms, while Fame has discovered winged pens to shed light on your excellent paintings.⁶ In a second poem, Perrucci again cites Preti’s duty as a Maltese knight battling heresy through his painting. Preti defends the saintly Heroes of the sublime Religion; the terrifying traces imprinted by his brush bring him not only applause and acclaim but also glory, in the same way that iron makes the candid cross on his breast blaze. By comparing the blood shed in the name of the cross with the sweat of Preti’s labor, both substances decorating the eternal Crown,⁷ Perrucci endows the act of painting with stark martial overtones: the paintbrush is no longer just an artist’s implement; it has become a weapon that will be used to fight religious contests.

Several decades later, Giambattista Piazzetta (1682–1754) will amplify the identification between painting and violence when he renders himself as none other than Herod’s executioner in an altarpiece featuring the beheading of John the Baptist. He is not only the main protagonist, but also the scene’s most malign figure (fig. 2).⁸ The work was commissioned for the Church of San Antonio in Padua, along with a number of other pieces painted by the most important artists of the time.⁹ Piazzetta’s response to this competitive challenge was a self-portrayal hardly to be outdone in its audacity.