Pietro Perugino (1450-1523) and the Practice of Reuse: Redefining Imitazione in the Italian Renaissance

PIETRO PERUGINO (1 4501523) AND THE PRACTICE OF REUSE: REDEFINING IMITAZIONE IN THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE By Kelly A. Goodman, M.A. A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Corninonwealth University, 2006 Director: Dr. Fredrika H. Jacobs Professor, Department of Art History Pietro Perugino's oeuvre is characterized by the reappearance of figures and motifs replicated through the reuse of cartoons. Perugino's deliberate self-plagiarism, despite being rooted in quattrocento compositional methods, exhibits an exploitation of the reproductive nature of the cartoon. While this practice allowed him to develop an efficient design process, the results of this imitation endowed Perugino's work with a formulaic quality, as was first noted by Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects (1 568). Significantly, in the sixteenth century, theorists revised the concept of imitation to incorporate not only the notion of replication, but emulation as well. An examination of Perugino's reproductive practices alongside this revised view of imitation elucidates the nature of Vasari's criticism, ultimately revealing why the critic placed him among artists of the quattrocento, rather than that of the cinquecento. The Theory of Imitazione The complexity of the Reiiaissance understanding of imitation has its roots in discussions of the literary arts in ancient Greece. Despite our modem biases against the repetitive nature of imitation, which implies a lack of originality, in the Reiiaissance it held a vital pedagogical role and was viewed as an important element in the conception of works of art. In Greek philosophy, imitation or mimesis was defined simply as the representation of another thing. Nature was the primary model and imitation was discussed predominantly within the contexts of education and poetics.' A child, for instance, learns behaviors through observing those of his parents; or to use a Platonic example, a warrior learns virtue (virtu) through viewing images of or hearing stories about men exemplifying heroic behavior.' The association of virtu with imitation underscores the fact that ancient philosophers understood mimesis not only as an exact replication, but also as an ideal representation. In this instance, reproduction is based on an ideal concept, which is created by a corpus of stored memories. In Posterior Analytics, Aristotle stated that all knowledge comes from experience and that each incident of sensory perception is recorded as a memory. These memories coalesce over time and become a universal, or ideal, representation that has the potential to be realized 1 Aristotle, De poetica, ed. W. D. Ross, vol. 1 1 , The Works of Aristotle Translated into English (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908), 1447-62. For a discussion of the history of mimesis see Gunter Gebauer and Christoph Wulf, Mimesis: Culture, Art, Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). 2 in material form.3 perhaps the most famous example of this phenomenon is found in the anecdote recounting the creation of a painting by the Greek artist Zeuxis. When the people of Croton commissioned Zeuxis to create a painting of Helen, he first took the best physical attributes from different women, then reconfigured their myriad features into an image reflecting his concept of the ideal woman. The Zeuxian compositional method makes clear that mimesis was defined as imitation in the same sense that Quintilian's concept of emulation is a re-presentation of the model based on an ideal concept in the mind. As many have observed, Quintilian's De institutio oratoria informed much sixteenth century writing on art including treatises on i m i t a t i ~ n . ~ In his treatise, I1 primo libro del trattato delle perfette proporzioni (1567), art theorist and sculptor Vicenzo Danti (1-530-1576) prescribed a method of creating art that reflected both types of imi ta t i~n .~ He divides imitation into two separate, but related concepts: ritrarre and imitare. Ritrarre is defined as a mode of imitating which results in making "something exactly as another thing is seen to be."6 In simpler terms, ritrarre is to copy. Ritrarre also has value as a means of improving the artist's judgment through the constant copying of both nature and works of art by great ancients and modern Aristotle, Analytica Posteriora, ed. W. D. Ross, vol. 1, The Works of Aristotle Translated into English (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908), 71 100. Quintilian, lnstitutio Oratoria, trans. H. E. Butler (London: William Heinemann, 1932). Vicenzo Danti, "I1 primo libro del trattato delle perfette proporzioni di tutte le cose che imitare e ritrarre si possano con I'arte del disegno," in Trattati d'arte del cinquecento, fra manierismo e Controriforma, ed. Paola Barocchi (Bari: G. Laterza, 1960), 206-69. "ritrarre intendo io che sia fare una cosa appunto come si vede essere un' altra." Danti, "I1 primo libro", 241. The translation is from David Summers, Michelangelo and the Language of Art (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 198 I ) , 279. 3 masters. Danti believed that ifthe natural world were perfect (which it is not), ritrarre would be an adequate means of imitation. However, because of the imperfections inherent in nature, Danti cites a second and more difficult mode of imitation: imitare. He defines imitare as imitating things as they are meant to be, that is without any flaws or blemishes. Therefore, imitare is perceived as a more elevated form of representation, one that unites the skilled hand with the critical mind. When discussing Danti's definition of imitation, art historian David Summers asserts that imitare is not merely transcribing things as they appear (ritrarre) or patterning one's work after another, but "a kind of reality perfected by art."7 Although theorists writing more than a century before Danti cited Zeuxis and his famed portrait of the ideal woman, they nonetheless attempted to prescribe a method for creating art that reflected an empiricism that at best allowed art to equal nature, but not to surpass it.8 Literary scholar G. W. Pigman, 111, identifies three categories of imitation that exist in the Renaissance: following, imitation and emulation. "Following" may be understood as a deficiency of mind and means, "imitation" as a process of replication with the intent to equal the model, and "emulation" as an attempt to rival and supersede one's source. Pigman's divisions can to some extent be associated with Danti's definitions. Following and imitation (or equaling) can be linked to discussions of ritrarre. Both notions appear in Renaissance texts on art, specifically within the context