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1500-1508
The return to Florence
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The first Mannerists
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The background of political change in 15th-century
Florence - the attempted theocracy of Savonarola, the
restoration and successive downfall of the Medici, and
the institution of the duchy - found echoes in the field
of formal art. In place of naturalism, which had been
the norm for preceding generations, there was now a move
to imitate the masters of the "modern manner", Raphael,
Michelangelo, and Leonardo, described by Vasari as
protagonists of the "third age". Both in Italy and
elsewhere in Europe, the art of Florence remained
paramount, although it would soon concede primacy to the
Rome of Leo X and Clement VII. Del Sarto, Rosso, and
Pontormo, active almost exclusively in Tuscany, were the
first to signal the historical transformation that was
occurring, evident in the anti-classical taste for
chromatic abstraction, in compositional diversity, and
formality of pose. Yet for all their individualism, the
three painters did not make any radical break with the
universal principles to which they subscribed.
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Andrea del Sarto, Madonna and Child and
the Young StJohn,
c.1505-10, Galleria Borghese, Rome.
Del Sarto, who drew from Leonardo the softness of
his modelling,
the mobile effects of light, and certain
compositional elements,
opened the way to the more experimental phase of
Florentine
Mannerism; among his pupils were Rosso and Pontormo.
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Jacopo Pontormo, St Jerome, c.1525-30,
Niedersachsisches Landesmuseum, Hanover.
Derived from the Leonardo version, this St Jerome is
enveloped in space that
lacks any perspective definition.
The spatial isolation and the inwardly turned
figure give
psychological depth to the scene.
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Raphael, Madonna of the Baldaquin,
1507-08,
Galleria Palatina, Florence.
This was a fundamental reference point for the painters
of this generation.
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Franciabigio, Madonna and Child and the
Young StJohn
(Madonna of the Well),
c.1525-30, Callena degli Uffizi, Florence.
A fresco painter alongside Andrea del Sarto and a
talented portraitist,
Franciabigio was often inspired by Raphaelesque
models.
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Giovan Francesco Rustic, St John the
Baptist Teaching,
front of the Baptistery, Florence, in place since
1511.
A sculptor and painter in Verrocchio's circle,
Rustici completed the bronze group under the
supervision of Leonardo,
with whom he shared a home for a time.
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Eccentrics and Italianized Spaniards
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The atmosphere of dissent and opposition that had produced
Pontormo and II Rosso also nurtured a series of strange, restless
personalities, rebels by nature, whose art helped to hasten the
decline of classicism. Filippino Lippi, son of Filippo and the nun
Lucrezia Buti, was, like Piero di Cosimo, still wedded to
15th-century culture, but anticipated the mentality peculiar to
Mannerism. A pupil of Rosselli, Piero di Cosimo was an eccentric
genius who admired the naturalism of Leonardo and the Northern
masters, and recoiled from idealization, even in classical scenes.
During the first decades of the 16th century a number of Spanish
painters visited Florence: these included Alonso Berruguete, early
in his career, who on his return to Spain emerged as the most
notable painter prior to El Greco; and Fernando Yanez and Fernando
de Llanos, documented as collaborators with Leonardo on the
Battle of Anghiari, who mixed typical Spanish austerity with a
taste for perspective and Italianate structural novelty. Both
artists continued their artistic association on returning home to
Spain.
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Fernando de Llanos, Rest on the Flight into Egypt,
1507-10, Valencia Cathedral.
A methodical, diligent painter, though less creative than his
contemporary Yanez,
with whom he was in Florence in the summer of 1505,
Llanos painted the Stories of the Virgin on his return to Spain,
for the retable of the high altar of Valencia Cathedral. |
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Piero di Cosimo, The Conception of Mary, after
1505,
detail, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.
Rarely seen in official circles, unconnected with the Medici
environment, and frequently engaged with private
commissions, Piero, a pupil of Cosimo Rosselli, responded to
the influence of Leonardo, Fra Bartolomeo, and the young
Raphael during the last phase of his career.
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Fernando Yanez de la Almedina, St Catherine,
Museo del Prado, Madrid.
Yanez showed a mature assimilation of Italian motifs in the
balanced monumentality of his compositions, in his confident
handling of masses,
and in the eloquent features of his characters, often
markedly Leonardesque.
In Florence he also collaborated with Pecori and the Soggi.
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Filippino Lippi, St Philip Expels the Demons,
1502,
Strozzi Chapel, Santa Maria Novella, Florence.
A testament to the end-of-the-century anti-classical
orientation,
Filippino provides elements derived from pagan Rome in a
dramatic and complex work that
transforms the Gothic character of the chapel. |
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