GROTESQUE PAINTING AND PAINTING AS GROTESQUE IN THE RENAISSANCE

Author(s): Una Roman D'Elia

Source: Source: Notes in the History of Art , Winter 2014, Vol. 33, No. 2 (Winter 2014),
pp. 5-12
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Bard Graduate Center

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23611168

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 GROTESQUE PAINTING AND PAINTING AS GROTESQUE
IN THE RENAISSANCE

Una Roman D'Elia

nature, so we could say do grotesques, which

Among the grotesques that were so popular
in sixteenth-century Italy, a self-consciously we could definitely call the dreams of paint
playful image has escaped the attention ofing."5 Dialectic, Barbaro maintained, satisfies
scholars: a hybrid monster at his easel, paint reason, oratory the senses and reason, poetry
ing another hybrid, his model (Fig. 1). Thismore the senses than reason. Grotesques are
witty image condenses the tensions aroundinstead akin to sophistry—argument and pure
imitation and invention that also animate artistry for their own sake, untethered by
Renaissance writings about grotesques. logic or nature.6
When light and fantastic paintings, soon Giorgio Vasari deemed grotesques "a very
dubbed grotesques, were unearthed in the ridiculous and licentious species of painting"
ruins of Nero's Golden House in the fifteenth but also praised their inventiveness: "miscar
century, a classical text was conveniently ried monsters [sconciature di mostri] . . .
available as a key to their interpretation.1 things without rules ... a great weight on
Vitruvius had famously derided these "mon the thinnest thread that could not hold it, a
sters" as paintings of the impossible: "These horse with legs of leaves and a man the legs
things do not exist nor can they exist nor of a crane, and infinite swags of drapery and
have they ever existed."2 He wrote of archi sparrows."7 Vasari listed impossibilities—a
tecture with ridiculously thin supports and weight and drapery without support and hy
of heads and bodies sprouting from plants brid monsters—but also sparrows, local birds
and concluded that grotesques cause delight that naturally fly. Vasari's odd reference to
rather than appealing to judgment.3 Vitru sparrows, which are hardly "miscarried mon
vius's language was central to the debate sters," betrays a tension between art and na
over grotesques in the sixteenth century. Vi ture characteristic of Renaissance grotesques.
truvius mentioned figures, human and bes Ancient examples include birds neatly
tial, appearing out of foliage but seemed arranged in a pattern on perches, but nothing
most outraged by architectural violations of like the veristic birds that flit around Re
the laws of physics. Renaissance commen naissance grotesques.
tators shifted their focus to hybrid monsters.4 Vasari called Giovanni da Udine "almost
Daniele Barbaro, in his 1567 commentary the inventor" of grotesques and lauded the
on Vitruvius, added a reference to "mixtures grotesques of the Loggia of Pope Leo X as
of various species" among the list of impos "most lovely and capricious inventions, full
sibilities. Barbaro also offered an explana of the most varied and extravagant things
tion: "Certainly, just as fantasy in sleep con you could possibly imagine." Giovanni da
fusedly represents images of things to us Udine's fruit, birds, fish, and sea monsters
and often puts together things of a diverse are "most natural" and "alive and true."8

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 T
*'..V
. ' 1
• '• *gg
• •

Fig. 1 Luzio Romano, grotes

Rome. (Photo: author)

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Giovanni da Udine emerges in this account poetry. Castiglione was aware that the play
as both an inventor of fantastic grotesques was highly classical—he tells the audience
and a master of naturalism. In his paintings, that since Plautus was so careless as to forget
which predate by decades Renaissance writ to lock up his plays, he deserved to have
ings on grotesques, nature and artifice in them pilfered.11 Raphael and Castiglione vis
tertwine in constant play. Naturalistically ited ancient sites together and surely made
wriggling and flying animals fall into sym jokes about what it meant to be ancient and
metrical calligraphic patterns in a self-con modern. The paintings in the Stufetta are
scious expression of the way in which arti not in any direct sense based on the Calan
fice mimics, transforms, and controls nature dria or Castiglione's prologue, but these im
(Fig. 2). ages articulate a similar tension between the
Raphael (with the assistance of Giovanni imitation of antiquity and modern invention.
da Udine, who probably painted these fig They are, as Pietro Aretino would later write
ures) included a wry commentary among of the conceits of another follower of
the grotesques in the Stufetta of Cardinal Raphael, Giulio Romano, "anciently modem
Bibbiena in the Vatican (Fig. 3).9 Here the and modemly ancient [anticamente modemi
play is on the imitation of antiquity. The e modernamente antichi]."12 They are also
muscular forms of ancient colossal statues naturally artful and artfully natural.
of river gods are made into tiny elfin crea Anton Francesco Doni gave a complex
tures with wispy beards. Boys tame their reading of the relationship between nature
traditionally unruly locks by washing their and artifice in grotesques in his 1549 dia
hair and giving them a modern haircut— logue Disegno. Nature does not understand
grotesques, and Art, Painting, and Sculpture
forms of personal grooming that surely hap
pened in this space, which was a sort of seek to explain:
sauna. The idea of washing a river god Art [to Painting]—When you depict in paint
makes the conceit even sillier. Further levels
ing a sketchy landscape [ritrai in pittura
of interpretation are possible since river gods
una macchia d'un paese], do you not often
can signify the source of invention; therefore,
see there animals, men, heads, and other
by cutting their hair, Raphael and his shop fantastic creatures?
are not only returning to antiquity, but also
Painting—It is in the clouds that I see fan
reshaping the source itself. But such light tastic animals and castles with infinite and
wit does not encourage ponderous readings.
diverse people and figures.
These playful images are entirely appro
Art—Do you believe that these are actually
priate for the patron, Bernardo Dovizi, who, in the clouds?
before he became Cardinal Bibbiena, had
Painting—No ... in the chaos of my brain
written what many call the first Renaissance ... castles in air.13
comedy, La Calandria, a bawdy, irreverent
play—with no discernable moral—about An artist sees grotesques in the landscape,
adultery and replete with cross-dressing and sketched in blots of paint, and in the shifting
genital groping.10 Baldassare Castiglione's forms of clouds—or possibly paintings of
prologue lauds the play as modern, not an clouds. These inchoate shapes are trans
cient; vernacular, not Latin; and prose, not formed by "the chaos" of an artist's fantasy

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 w
VBnt

K.

■hH^'SU
" VT^M

v_ A ■ * ■'

1 , __—- •'-•>
Fig. 2 Giovanni da Udine, grotesques. 1516-1517. Fresco. Loggetta of
Palace. (Photo: author)

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 mm

am ,
mm

1jE3l

Ifii
Fig. 3 Raphael, Giovanni da Udine, and workshop, Boy Drying a River God's Hair. 1516. Fresco
with wax. Stufetta of Cardinal Bibbiena, Vatican Palace. (Photo: author)

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 10

into grotesques. The landscape itself and the that again in its tone seems to taunt the
style of painting are sketchy ("una macchia pompous fool who would dare to make a
d'un paese"), terms that both capture the leaden, theoretical reading of it. I hope that
ephemeral and organic in nature and suggest I can be acquitted of this charge but am fully
conspicuously artful intervention in the form aware that interpreting grotesques is a slip
of a visible quick brushstroke. Chimerical pery game.
grotesques derive ultimately from nature, There are also scant grounds for a highly
mediated so many times that Nature herself intellectualized reading since we know very
cannot understand them. little about the painter, Luzio Romano, ex
If Renaissance grotesques by their very cept that he was a follower of Perino del
existence comment on the relationship be Vaga, which makes him another one of
tween nature and artifice, they rarely include Raphael's heirs. Raphael died in his thirties
depictions of artists.14 The idea of artist and on Good Friday in 1520 and was repeatedly
art as grotesque is embodied most vividly compared to Christ.16 After Raphael was, at
in the previously unnoticed and unpublished his own request, buried in the Pantheon,
vignette of a grotesque painter frescoed in other artists, including Perino del Vaga, fol
Castel Sant'Angelo in around 1545 (Fig. lowed suit, as the pious seek to be buried
I).15 The image is part of the decoration of a near the relics of a saint.17 Pietro Bembo's
vault in the apartment known as the Caglios Latin epitaph was later translated by Alexan
tra, which was originally an open loggia on der Pope:
the top level of the papal fortress and resi
Here lies Raphael.
dence, was subsequently walled and used as
Living, great Nature fear'd he might outvie
a prison, and is now a storeroom and in
Her works, and dying, fears herself may
accessible to the public. The loggia was dec die.18
orated during Pope Paul Ill's renovation of
the castle, a part of his revival of Rome and Luzio Romano's grotesque painter conveys
papal splendor after the devastating Sack of a similar paradoxical conceit about art and
Rome. From this loggia, the pope and his nature to this solemn distich, but in a playful
court could escape the heat, enjoy the view, tone appropriate to a space used for relax
and watch fireworks. ation.
As lions leap symmetrically below and Again, the point is not that Luzio was
foliate-tailed caryatids hold up a frame con reading Bembo and translating his difficult
sisting of a vine that is a single line, one Latin into visual form, which seems highly
grotesque poses, his snaky nether regions unlikely, but that images articulated the same
giving new meaning to the phrase "figura complex ideas about art, imitation, and na
serpentinata." The other fishy-tailed man, ture as literary texts. This loggia was painted
nude except for his painter's cap, pauses like in 1544-1546, before the theoretical debates
a professional to consider his work so far. about grotesques had been published. The
He is a competent modern painter—we can only prior Renaissance writing about gro
just make out that the figure he has painted tesques is in Sebastiano Serlio's 1537 treatise
is foreshortened from his point of view. His on architecture, a text that we have no reason
easel's thin legs are balanced on the waves. to assume Luzio knew. This image and the
The image is a light and elegant joke, one other artfully natural grotesques of the first

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 11

half of the sixteenth century are not illus always paints himself. Artistic creation is
trating the textual debates, which come later. the juxtaposition of disparate things, mon
One of the great claims of grotesques was strous couplings both unnatural and fecund.
that they were not based upon texts. Without As Vasari would repeatedly make clear in
a governing narrative, they are pure creations his Lives, an artist's work was a reflection
of artists, who have no need to turn to a lit of his personality, most famously Raphael's
erary adviser for an "invenzione." grace and Michelangelo's terribilità. There
Luzio's hybrid artist demonstrates how fore, if art is hybridization, the artist is a
grotesques imitate nothing but themselves, grotesque, an embodiment of what Doni
how they are completely independent from would a few years later have Painting call
nature. Of course, the joke only works be "the chaos of my brain." Leon Battista Al
cause Luzio's artist paints from life, and the berti had written that the painter was only
image follows the conventions of naturalism, concerned with depicting things that can be
such as foreshortening and a consistent light seen,19 but grotesques offered a greater scope
source. The fantasy offers a playful inver for art. Because artists themselves are mar
sion, a deliciously silly mirroring and cycling velous monsters, both divine and bestial,
between inspiration and creation, a new ab who conflate strangely disparate things, art
surd way to envision the maxim that an artist can make even our dreams living and true.

NOTES

I would like to thank Anthony D'Elia, Stuart Lingo,4. For a collection of the key texts, see Scritti d'arte
Marcia Hall, Aimee Ng, Susanne McColeman, Lauriedel Cinquecento, ed. Paola Barocchi, 9 vols. (Torino:
Schneider Adams, and the anonymous readers. G. Einaudi, 1977), III, pp. 2617-2701.
5. Daniele Barbara, ibid., pp. 2633-2638. Trans
1. On Renaissance grotesques, see Nicole Dacos, lations are my own unless otherwise noted.
La découverte de la Domus Aurea et la formation des 6. Ibid., pp. 2634-2635. See also Barocchi's in
grotesques à la Renaissance (London: Warburg Insti troduction to this section on pp. 2619-2620.
tute/Brill, 1969); Philippe Morel, Les grotesques: Les7. The word "passerotto" could be a term of en
figures de l'imaginaire dans la peinture italienne dearment,
de connote an oversight, or refer to male gen
la fin de la Renaissance (Paris: Flammarion, 1997);italia. But in this case, Vasari clearly invokes the literal
Alessandra Zamperini, Le Grottesche: Il sogno déliameaning, "sparrow." This passage is in both the 1550
pittura nella decorazione pariétale (San Giovanni edition
Lu (book I: "Proemio," ch. XXVII) and the 1568
patoto [Verona]: Arsenale, 2007), pp. 121-195; and edition (book I: "Introduzione, della pittura," ch. XIII),
Nicole Dacos, The Loggia of Raphael: A Vatican Art with only slight variations. Giorgio Vasari, Le opere,
Treasure, trans. Josephine Bacon (New York: ed. Gaetano Milanesi, 9 vols. (Florence: Sansoni,
Abbeville, 2008). 1906), I, p. 193.
2. Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture, ed, 8. Ibid., VI, pp. 552-554.
Thomas Noble Howe et ai, trans. Ingrid D. Rowland9. See Nicole Dacos, in Giovanni da Udine 1487
1561, ed. Nicole Dacos and Caterina Furlan (Udine:
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 91.
3. See also, for a reference to the ridiculousness
Casamassima, 1987), p. 39. On the Stufetta, see also
Deoclecio Redig de Campos, "La Stufetta del Cardinal
of hybrids and, therefore, the limits of poetic decorum,
Horace, Ars poética, in Ancient Literary Criticism:
Bibbiena in Vaticano e il suo restauro," Rômisches
The Principal Texts in New Translations, ed. D. A.
Jahrbuch fiir Kunstgeschichte 20 (1983):221-240.
Russell and M. Winterbottom (Oxford: Clarendon10. Bernardo Dovizi, La Calandria (Siena: 1521),
Press, 1972), p. 279. frequently republished. Compare, for a Neoplatonic

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 12

reading of the play in relation to the Stufetta, Franco II, pp. 37-45. On Luzio Romano (Luzio Luzzi da
Ruffini, Commedia e festa nel Rinascimento: La "Ca Todi), see Simonetta Prosperi Valenti Rodino, "Ad
landria" alla corte di Urbino (Bologna: Il Mulino, denda a Luzio Luzzi disegnatore," Bollettino d'arte
1986). 86, no. 116 (2001 ):39—78.
11. Ibid., p. 127. 16. For documents, see John Shearman, ed.,
12. Pietro Aretino, Lettere sull'arte, ed. Ettore Raphael in Early Modern Sources (1483-1602), 2
Camesasca, 3 vols, in 4 (Milan: Milione, 1957), I, p. vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), I, pp.
215. 569-571,572-574,575-578,581-583. See also Kath
13. Anton Francesco Doni, Disegno (Venice: leen Weil-Garris, "La morte di Raffaello e la 'Trasfig
Apresso Gabriel Giolito di Ferrarii, 1549), fols. 21v urazione,' " in Raffaello e I'Europa, atti del IV Corso
22v. On this passage, with a different emphasis, see Internazionale di Alta Cultura, ed. Marcello Fagioli
also Morel, pp. 86-89. and Maria Luisa Madonna (Rome: Istituto poligrafico
14. Depictions of musicians and writers are much e Zecca dello stato, Librería dello stato, 1990), pp.
more common. The other examples of artists I have 179-187.
found are in a pilaster by Sodoma in the cloister of 17. On the evidence for Raphael's lost will and his
Monte Oliveto Maggiore (illustrated in Morel, fig. 49) tomb, see Shearman, I, pp. 569-571, and Susanna
and in an initial by a follower of Cornells Floris in the Pasquali, "From the Pantheon of Artists to the Pan
register of the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke, illustrated theon of Illustrious Men: Raphael's Tomb and Its
in Antoinette Huysmans etal., Cornelis Floris, 1514 Legacy," in Pantheons: Transformations of a Monu
1575 (Brussels: Gemeentekrediet, 1996), fig. 267. mental Idea, ed. Richard Wrigley and Matthew Craske
15. On this space, its decoration, and the subse (Aldershot, Eng.: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 35-56.
quent damage it suffered, see Gli affreschi di Paolo 18. Shearman, I, pp. 640-642.
Ilia Cast el Sant'Angelo, progetto ed esecuzione 1543 19. Leon Battista Alberti, Delia pittura, ed. Luigi
1548, ed. Filippa M. Aliberti Gaudioso and Eraldo Mallè (Florence: Sansoni, 1950), p. 55.
Gaudioso, exh. cat., 2 vols. (Rome: De Luca, 1981),

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