‘Some Stirring or Changing of Place’: Vision, Judgement and Mobility in Pictures of Galleries

Abstract

Esprit or ‘ingenuity’ was one of the principle qualities sought by the connoisseurs who populate seventeenth‐century Flemish pictures of collections. This essay scrutinizes the ways in which the flourishing discipline of connoisseurship was depicted, explored and fashioned in Antwerp gallery interiors. Placing these images within the context of Early Modern writings on discernment, Gage explores the ways in which the directed gazes, postures and gestures of cognoscenti reflect the growth of trained artistic judgement within the period’s elite, concluding that such images exemplify a major social and epistemological shift in which one can make apparent one’s universal understanding and keen judgement, and to rightly claim membership in a nobility, no longer defined solely by lineage, but also by learning.

Notes

¹ Two versions of Wildens's painting exist, one in Dresden, Gemäldegalerie (illustrated in Peterson's contribution to this issue) and one in St Petersburg, The Hermitage. Rottenhammer's painting is in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich. On van Haecht's painting, see Peterson in this issue.

² Seventeenth‐century writers also contrasted hunting and learning, demonstrating nevertheless that these two activites defined the gentleman or nobleman. See P. Miller, Peiresc's Europe: Learning and Virtue in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), 47.

³ Z. Z. Filipczak, Picturing Art in Antwerp 1550–1700 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 51–2.

⁴ F. Junius, Die Schilder‐Konst der Oude, begrepen in drie Boecken (Middleburg, 1641). A second and third edition appeared in 1659 and 1675.

⁵ See P. Fehl, ‘Touchstones of Art and Art Criticism: Rubens and the Work of Franciscus Junius’, Journal of Aesthetic Education, 30 (1996), 11–12.

⁷ Junius, The Painting of the Ancients, vol. 1, 303.

⁶ F. Junius, The Painting of the Ancients (De pictura veterum), edited by K. Aldrich, P. Fehl and R. Fehl, 2 vols. (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1991), vol. 1, 68: ‘such a lover and well‐willer of Art as by a rare and well‐exercised Imaginative facultie, is able to conferre his conceived Images with the Pictures and Statues that come neerest unto Nature, and is likewise able to discern by a cunning and infallible conjecture the severall hands of divers great Masters out of their manner of working’. For Junius's art criticism, see E. Cropper, The Ideal of Painting: Pietro Testa's Düsseldorf Notebook (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 161–72, and P. Fehl, K. Alrich and M. R. Fehl, ‘Franciscus Junius and the Defense of Art’, Artibus et Historiae, 2 (1981), 9–55.

⁸ Filipczak, Picturing Art in Antwerp, 53, and David Teniers, Jan Brueghel y los gabinetes de pinturas, edited by M. Díaz Padrón and M. Royo‐Villanova (Madrid: Museo del Prado, 1992), 23.

⁹ R. Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, edited by T. C. Faulkner, N. K. Kiessling and R. L. Blair, 3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), vol. 2, 69–70, 85.

¹⁰ P. Burke, ‘Images as Evidence in Seventeenth‐Century Europe’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 64 (2003), 273–96. See also Miller, Peiresc's Europe, 21.

¹¹ C. Ginzburg, ‘Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm’, In Clues, Myths and the Historical Method Method, translated by J. and A. Tedeschi (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 102–4, 108–11. Significantly, Junius would term the method of the connoisseur ‘conjecture.’ See Junius, The Painting of the Ancients, 68, and the quote in note 6. For the pursuit of scientific knowledge as a form of hunting, see W. Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 281–4.

¹² Ginzburg, ‘Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm’, 112–13. Also Burke, ‘Images as Evidence’, 273–96.

¹³ The attribution is still uncertain. See C. White, The Later Flemish Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen (London: Royal Collection Enterprises, 2007), 111–15, cat. no. 31. The painting is signed ‘Formentrou’ on the crossbar of the table, and inscribed ‘E. Quellinus’ on the cartouche. It was evidently executed in three stages by at least one, and possibly, two hands. Too little is known about Formentrou to resolve this question.

¹⁴ A. S. Sonino, Cabinet d'amateur: le grandi collezioni d'arte nei dipinti dal xvii al xix secolo (Milan: Berenice, 1992), 45, no. 45. The importance of a fixed and steady gaze is underscored by a number of artists, including those who represent the connoisseurs seated before a large painting, the better to examine it for a lengthy period as, for example, in Cornelis de Baellieur and Hans III Jordaens's Cabinet of Art and Rarities (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum) and A Collector's Cabinet (whereabouts unknown).

¹⁵ Similar pairs of figures appear in Frans II Francken's Collector's Cabinet with Allegorical Figures (whereabouts unknown) and in his Cabinet of a Collector (Rome, Galleria Borghese), and in Hieronymus II Francken and Jan I Brueghel's The Archdukes Albert and Isabella Visiting a Collector's Cabinet (Baltimore, Walters Art Museum). A group of three men discuss an unframed painting in Cornelis de Baellieur and Hans III Jordaens's Cabinet of Art and Rarities. For the importance of conversation in gallery pictures and in galleries, see E. A. Honig, ‘The Beholder as a Work of Art: A Study in the Location of Value in Seventeenth‐Century Painting’, Nederlands Kunsthistorische Jaarboek, 46 (1995), 253–97 (278–9).

¹⁶ Junius, The Painting of the Ancients, 300.

¹⁷ Junius, The Painting of the Ancients, 69, 300, 304.

¹⁸ Junius, The Painting of the Ancients, 69.

¹⁹ Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, edited by A. Marucchi, 2 vols. (Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1956–7), vol. 1, 134, ‘se vi si veda quella franchezza del mastro, et in particolare in quelle parti che di necessità si fanno di resolutione […] come sono in particolare i capelli, la barba, gl'occhi [if that frankness of the master is seen, and in particular in those parts that are necessarily made with resolution […] as are the hair, the beard, the eyes, in particular]’.

²⁰ Honig, ‘The Beholder as a Work of Art’, 274. Honig demonstrates that the distinction between original and copy is far more complicated than it might appear, since artists very often copied their own works, or produced versions. Art collectors in Antwerp were establishing a canon and increasingly valuing a painting as an example of a particular master's manner.

²¹ T. DaCosta Kaufmann, ‘Antiquarian Connoisseurship and Art History before Winckelmann: Some Evidence from Northern Europe’, Shop Talk: Studies in Honor of Seymour Slive, edited by C. P. Schneider, W. Robinson and A. Davies (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Art Museums, 1995), 130–2.

²² Significantly Abraham Bosse suggested that the acquisition of skill in connoisseurship developed abilities native to all humans, namely the recognition of faces. He indicated that familiarity with one or two works by a single artist was sufficient to permit a connoisseur to identify his hand in the future. See C. Gibson‐Wood, Studies in the Theory of Connoisseurship from Vasari to Morelli (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1988), 52. Quite a different impression is given by Junius and Mancini.

²³ This incident is recounted by J. M. Muller, ‘Private Collections in the Spanish Netherlands: Ownership and Display of Paintings in Domestic Interiors’, in P. Sutton, The Age of Rubens (Boston and Ghent: The Museum of Fine Arts and Ludion Press, 1993), 194–206 (200–1).

²⁴ Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, vol. 1, 10, ‘il dono dato da Iddio all'artefice per venire a tal perfettion d'arte […] il tempo consumato per condurre l'opera [the gift given by God to the artist in order to reach such perfection in art […] the time consumed to execute the work]’.

²⁵ For this painting, see V. I. Stoichita, The Self‐Aware Image: An Insight into Early Modern Meta‐Painting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 139, and Peterson in this issue.

²⁶ In de Baellieur's so‐called Cabinet of Rubens (Florence, Palazzo Pitti), a couple admires the display of ancient statues in the distant sculpture gallery.

²⁷ See his paintings The Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in His Gallery in Brussels with Titian's Madonna of the Cherries and The Gallery of the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm with the Open Door (both Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen).

²⁸ J. Baudrillard, ‘The System of Collecting’, in The Cultures of Collecting, edited by J. Elsner and R. Cardinal (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 7–24 (12–13).

²⁹ Baudrillard, ‘The System of Collecting’, 13.

³⁰ See Honig, ‘The Beholder as a Work of Art’, 279.

³¹ Honig, ‘The Beholder as a Work of Art’, 265.

³² Rubens and Brueghel: A Working Friendship, edited by A. T. Woollett and A. van Suchtelen (Los Angeles and Zwolle: The J. Paul Getty Museum and Waanders Publishers, 2006),104.

³³ To which list should be added also the illustrations to Philostratus's Imagines, and the frontispiece to the 1614 Paris edition, representing a gallery of painting and sculpture, engraved by Jaspar Isaac, a Netherlandish printer working with other Antwerp print makers in Paris. See Filipczak, Picturing Art in Antwerp, 51.

³⁴ G. P. Lomazzo, ‘Trattato dell'arte della pittura, scultura et architettura’, in Scritti sulle arti, edited by R. P. Ciardi (Florence: Marchi and Bertolli, 1973–4), 294–306, and G. B. Armenini, De' veri precetti della pittura (Turin: Einaudi, 1988), 169–218.

³⁵ W. Prinz, Galleria: storia e tipologia di uno spazio architettonico, edited by C. C. Via (Modena: Edizioni Panini, 1988), 4.

³⁶ Armenini, De' veri precetti, 204, ‘le loggie […] siano a qualsivoglia qualità di persone, che, cosí come servono a diversi usi et a varie commodità, cosí diverse sorti e materie di pitture sono da essere ricercate per quelle [loggias are for any rank of person, which, so as they serve diverse uses and [are] for various comforts, so diverse types and subjects of paintings are to be sought after for them].’ Armenini is refering above all to wall painting, and he sets up Raphael's Vatican Loggia as a paradigm for this type of space.

³⁷ Armenini, De' veri precetti, 204, ‘ci piace che non solamente i soggetti medesimi che si dissero delle sale far si possono, ma con piú largo campo ancora diverssissime cose vi si richiedono; e questo si concede per le diversità delle sue forme, la maggior parte delle quali si vede che sono archi e pilastri, di maniera che su quelli ogni capricciosa invenzione (si richiede) di cose allegre, purch'elle faccia ricchezza et ornamento [it is pleasing to us that not only the same subjects said to be (suitable) for the halls can be made (for the loggias), but with a larger range still the most diverse things be required; and that this is conceded for the diversity of their forms (in the loggias), the major part of which are seen being arches and pilasters, in the manner that on these every capricious invention of cheerful things is required, provided that it make a rich and ornamented effect]’.

³⁸ The Mancini correspondence is in Siena, in the Archive of the Società di Esecutori di Pie Disposizioni. The location of this letter is ASEPD, CXIX, 169, fol. 573r.

³⁹ For Mancini, see most recently my ‘Exercise for Mind and Body: Giulio Mancini, Collecting and the Beholding of Landscape Painting in the Seventeenth Century’, Renaissance Quarterly, 61 (2008), 1167–207; and the following articles by M. Maccherini, ‘Caravaggio nel carteggio familiare di Giulio Mancini’, Prospettiva, 86 (1997), 71–92; ‘Novità su Bartolomeo Manfredi nel carteggio familiare di Giulio Mancini: lo Sdegno di Marte e i quadri di Cosimo II granduca di Toscana’, Prospettiva, 93–4 (1999), 131–41; ‘Novità sulle Considerazioni di Giulio Mancini’, in Caravaggio nel IV centenario della Cappella Contarelli, Convegno Internazionale di Studi (Rome: CAM Editrice, 2002), 123–18, and ‘Ritratto di Giulio Mancini’, in Bernini dai Borghesi ai Barberini: la cultura a Roma intorno agli anni venti (Rome: Accademia di Francia a Roma, 2004), 47–57.

⁴⁰ This characterization, made by Gian Vittorio de Rossi, in his Pinacotheca imaginum illustrium (Cologne, 1645–8), was disseminated by F. Haskell, Patrons and Painters: A Study in the Relations Between Italian Art and Society in the Age of the Baroque (London: Chatto & Windus, 1963), 123–4.

⁴¹ For Faber's characterization of Mancini, see I. Baldriga, L'Occhio della lince: i primi lincei tra arte, scienza e collezionismo (1603–1630) (Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 2002), 35, n. 70.

⁴² He actually theorized three types of collecting, the third being a print collection. See M. Bury, ‘Giulio Mancini and the Organization of a Print Collection in Early Seventeenth‐Century Italy’, in Collecting Prints and Drawings in Europe, ca. 1500–1700, edited by C. Baker, C. Elam and G. Warwick (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2003), 79–84.

⁴³ Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, vol. 1, 144, ‘Ma quando questi luoghi non bastino per l'abbondanza delle pitture, allhora, perchè con questa abbondanza di pitture vi è la ricchezza et commodità d'edificare, si potrà fare una galleria in luogo commodo e di lume et aria buona […] et in quella si porran tutte le pitture che saranno avanzate alle sale e camere’.

⁴⁴ Among the few early paintings in this genre to represent female visitors to collections are Frans II Francken's so‐called Cabinet of Sebastian Leerse, and Hieronymus II Francken and Jan I Brueghel's Archdukes Albert and Isabella Visiting a Cabinet of Paintings (Baltimore, Walters Art Museum). Later works include Cornelis de Baellieur and Hans III Jordaens's Interior of a Picture Gallery (Salsburg, Residenzgalerie), after 1630, and their Interior of a Picture Gallery with Art Objects (Paris, Musée du Louvre), 1637. On the notion of the learned space being gendered masculine, see Miller, Peiresc's Europe, 69–70.

⁴⁸ Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, vol. 2, 85.

⁴⁵ H. Wotton, The Elements of Architecture (1624; reprint, Charlottesville: The Folger Shakespeare Library and the University Press of Virginia, 1968), 98.

⁴⁶ W. Sanderson, Graphice: The Use of the Pen and Pensil: or, the Most Excellent Art of Painting in Two Parts (London, 1658), 26. Also A. Bermingham, Learning to Draw: Studies in the Cultural History of a Polite and Useful Art (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), 52–3, notes that rhetorical ideas of copiousness and plenitude defined collecting. Junius, The Painting of the Ancients, 73, would describe galleries as ‘well‐furnished’.

⁴⁷ Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, vol. 2, 85.

⁴⁹ This painting is illustrated and discussed in A. Marr, Between Raphael and Galileo: Mutio Oddi and the Mathematical Culture of Late Renaissance Italy (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2010), Chapter 6. Quite a contrasting impression is made by the portraits of the Earl and Lady Arundel (London, National Portrait Gallery) painted c.1618 by Daniel Mytens, where this important pair of collectors sits in front of sparsely furnished galleries. This can be partially accounted for by the fact that the Earl would expand his efforts to obtain antiquities only after 1621, but the idea of the gallery presented to us by Mytens seems to have been the exception rather than the rule.

⁵⁰ Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, vol. 1, 144, ‘Si dovranno collocare prima le più antiche [the most antique must be located first].’

⁵¹ Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, vol. 1, 144.

⁵² Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, vol. 1, 144–5, ‘Ma non vorrei già che fosse messe insieme la medessima schuola e maniera […] ma vorrei che si tramezzassero con altre maniere e schuole del medesimo secolo [But I would not like already that the same school and manner be put together […] but I would like that they be divided with other manners and schools of the same century]’.

⁵³ Sanderson, Graphice, 26.

⁵⁴ Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, vol. 1, 145, ‘in questo modo, per la varietà, deletteranno più e, con la comparation della varietà del modo di far, più si faranno sentir senza offesa di gusto [in this mode, by the variety they will delight more and with the comparison of the variety of modes of making, they make themselves felt more without offending the sense of taste]’.

⁵⁵ Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, vol. 1, 145, ‘come sarebbe se fra queste si proponesse qualche pittura d'altro secolo [as would be if among these be put forward some paintings of another century]’.

⁵⁶ Two exceptions can be cited: van Haecht's Studio of Apelles, in which the works of sixteenth‐century Italian and northern Renaissance masters hang on the wall opposite the windows, where they would receive direct illumination, and the so‐called Shop of Jan Snellinck in which a painting of Adam and Eve by one of the fathers of the Antwerp school, Frans Floris, hangs above the large chest. A late fifteenth‐ or early sixteenth‐century picture of the Madonna and Child hangs above the cabinet in Hieronymus II Francken and Jan I Brueghel's The Archdukes Albert and Isabella Visiting a Collector's Cabinet (Baltimore, Walters Art Museum), yet it is unclear whether the two painters were calling attention to it, since it remains partially concealed by the statuettes on the table.

⁵⁷ For the collection as a learned space, see Honig, ‘The Beholder as a Work of Art’, 280. See also Dupré in this issue.

⁵⁸ Junius, The Painting of the Ancients, 304, ‘This frequent and attentive viewing of pictures engendereth in our minde an undeceivable Facilitie of judging’, and Mancini, ‘Discorso di pittura’, in Considerazioni sulla pittura, vol. 1, 330, ‘Si doverebbe adesso trattare della recognitione delle maniere e di tempi ne’ quali sono state fatte e di maestri particolari, ma perchè quest recognitione si fa con una lunga pratica […] non vi essendo altro che quest'osservanza fatta con lunghezza di tempo, non si dice altro se non che bisogna praticare, vedere e dimandare [The recognition of the manners and of the times in which they were made and of the particular masters must be treated now, but because this recognition is done with a long practice […] other than this observation made over a long period of time, nothing else is to be said other than it be necessary to practice, see and ask questions]’.

⁵⁹ Junius, The Painting of the Ancients, 304, ‘esteeming the daily practice of a curious eye to be the chiefest means whereby we do attaine to such a facilitie of judging’.

⁶⁰ Honig, ‘The Beholder as a Work of Art’, 272.

⁶¹ Miller, Peiresc's Europe, 30. Junius, The Painting of the Ancients, 305, ‘Seeing then that it is not for every man to understand the true propertie of that accurate Grace, which wee doe finde imprinted in every Artificers work, as an infallible Character of his pecurliar veine and spirit: it is likewise requisite that wee should study to attaine to this skill of discerning every one his manner of Art’.

⁶² Mancini, ‘Viaggio per Roma per vedere le pitture che in essa si ritrovano’, in Considerazioni sulla pittura, vol. 1, 267, ‘per intelligenza del contenuto in questo trattato, m'è parso bene propor questo viaggio, notando le pitture degne d'esser viste [for the intelligence of the content of this treatise, it appeared to me good to propose this voyage, noting the paintings worthy of being seen]’. Junius, The Painting of the Ancients, vol. 1, 73, ‘great and generous spirits, furnish their houses with such things not onely for their owne private contemplation, but also for the free use of such as doe professe themselves to be Lovers and well‐willers of Art’.

⁶³ Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, vol. 1, 7, ‘con la similitudine, equalità o inequalità giudicar dell'altre [judging of the others, according to the similarity, equality or inequality.

⁶⁴ A comparison between the paintings of two female figures was made by Federico Borromeo in his Museum of 1625. See P. Jones, ‘Bernardino Luini's Magdalen from the Collection of Federico Borromeo: Religious Contemplation and Iconographic Sources’, Studies in the History of Art, 24 (1990), 67–74.

⁶⁵ For the Linder Gallery Interior, see M. J. Gorman and A. Marr, ‘“Others See it Yet Otherwise”: Disegno and Pictura in a Flemish Gallery Interior’, The Burlington Magazine, 149 (2007), 85–91; Marr, Between Raphael and Galileo, Chapter 6.

⁶⁶ Cropper, The Ideal of Painting, 165.

⁶⁷ Cropper, The Ideal of Painting, 165.

⁶⁸ Junius, The Painting of the Ancients, vol. 1, 309, ‘Lovers of art must be filled with great varietie of learning’. F. Donovan, Rubens and England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), 45, indicates that Henry Peacham also articulated the expectation of the nobleman that he demonstrate ‘broad interests’.

⁶⁹ Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, vol. 1, 6, ‘questo nostro perito, per mezzo di […] cognition universale […] potrà dar giuditio delle pitture [this our skilled man, by means of […] universal cognition […] can give judgment of paintings]’.

⁷⁰ Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, vol. 1, 134, ‘chi ha prattica, scopre tutti questi inganni [(he) who has experience, discovers all these deceptions (of the copyist)]’.

⁷¹ That galleries were built for walking has been remarked upon by numerous writers, both Early Modern and recent. See Gage, ‘Exercise for Mind and Body’, 1177–83. For the prevalence of architectural galleries in the Netherlands, see D. A. Nuytten, ‘Architectural and Technical Examples: Between Antique Modernity and Gothic Tradition’, in Hans Vredeman de Vries and the Artes Mechanicae Revisited, edited by P. Lombaerde (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2005), 62–3. Galleries built for this purpose were a common feature of medieval and Renaissance structures in the Netherlands, France and England.

⁷² See Gage, ‘Exercise for Mind and Body’, 1177–83.

⁷³ Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, vol. 2, 86.

⁷⁴ W. Salmon, Polygraphice, or the Arts of Drawing, Engraving, Etching, Limning, etc. (London, 1675), 197, as quoted by P. Thornton, Seventeenth‐Century Interior Decoration in England, France and Holland (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1978), 254. Though Salmon designates this realm as open to anyone, nevertheless the activities he describes are those of the connoisseur, he who knows how to look at and evaluate a painting. Also Sanderson, Graphice, 27, ‘you walk, Judge, examine and censure’.

⁷⁵ D. Bartoli, La ricreatione del savio in discorso con la natura e con Dio (1659; reprint, Venice, 1663), 7, ‘gl'intendenti, che han l'occhio ò della profession ò del buon giudicio naturale, offerisce à ogni passo intorno à che fermarsi, quasi non sapere andar oltre se non che non si lascia addietro cosa bella a veder, che non se ne trovi subito innanzi un'altra similmente bella e nuova [the man of understanding, who has either the professional eye or that which comes from good natural judgement, who at every step is tempted to stop, almost does not know how to go on if not that, not leaving behind beautiful things to see, he finds himself immediately before another similarly beautiful and new]’.

⁷⁶ For the distrust of the senses, which was evidently widespread in the period, see P. H. Smith, ‘Science and Taste: Painting, Passions, and the New Philosophy in Seventeenth‐Century Leiden’, Isis, 90 (1999): 421–61.

⁷⁷ Junius, The Painting of the Ancients, vol. 1, 298, ‘Our judgment is likely to be seduced by the most uncertaine sense of seeing.’ Later on, he added, quoting Boethius, ‘there is no certainty of judgement, nor apprehension of truth in our sences, if they are not accompanied by reason’.

⁷⁸ Junius, The Painting of the Ancients, vol., 1, 298. On the lighting of pictures, both Mancini and Junius recommended a northerly light, for it was the most unchanging.

⁷⁹ Junius, The Painting of the Ancients, vol. 1, 299, ‘We do therefore change the light often, we change the situation also of the things we mean to see; we do deduct and contract the distances, leaving nothing unattempted that may assure unto us the judgment of our eyes’.

⁸⁰ Junius, The Painting of the Ancients, vol. 1, 300, ‘wee should seriously weigh and consider every part of the work, returning to it againe and again, even ten and ten times if need be. For our sense doth seldom at the first judg [sic] right of these curiosities’.

⁸¹ Junius, The Painting of the Ancients, vol. 1, 299, ‘Some pictures take us most […] when we stand nearer, other when we stand further off […] some please us if we do but once view them, others if we take them ten times in hand.’ Precept was of little use to the connoisseur in this regard, since some paintings might require no more than a single act of observation in order for a connoisseur to judge them. Others would necessitate repeated acts of viewing.

⁸² For noble posture, see Gage, ‘Exercise for Mind and Body’, 1180.

⁸³ Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, vol. 1, 232, ‘Le pitture nella volta […] appaiono molto brutte [The pictures in the vault appear very ugly]’.

⁸⁴ Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, vol. 1, 232, ‘chi conosceva giudicava che fusser ragionevoli [he who knew judged that they (the paintings) were reasonable]’. In his manuscript in the Biblioteca Marciana, Mancini substituted the following remarked for ‘fusser ragionevoli’: ‘il difetto non venisse da lui ma dal paragone’.

⁸⁵ Junius, The Painting of the Ancients, vol. 1, 306, ‘It is most wonderfull, how quickely those that have exercised their eyes, can know an originall from a copy’. And he added, ‘the sayd consuetude or accustomance of our eyes doth so much enable us, as that we can upon the first view readily discerne originall pictures from Copies, and antient workes from moderne’ (308).

⁸⁶ Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, vol. 1, 1, ‘la nostra [pittura] con sensi e modo spiritale e così in instante, come è la visione, va operando. Onde, non deviando il Principe dall'affari maggiori con la consumatione del tempo, doverà giudicata molto più a proposito et a tal Principe conveniente [our (painting) goes about working with the senses and in a spiritual mode and so in an instant, like vision. So that, it must be judged much more appropriate and suitable to such a prince, not diverting the prince and taking away time from greater business]’.

⁸⁷ For the notion of taste, see M. Moriarty, Taste and Ideology in Seventeenth‐Century France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), also P. Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, translated by R. Nice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 66–8.

⁸⁸ Junius, The Painting of the Ancients, vol. 1, 298, quoting Pliny, ‘“Though every one of us useth in the ordinary course of banquets to forbeare many dishes […] yet do we all commend the whole feast” […] Every man should give a ready account of his owne liking and disliking’.

⁸⁹ Junius, The Painting of the Ancients, vol. 1, 298, ‘It is to be discerned by a most earnest intention of the minde; whether that be excessive or lofty, whether it be high or enormous and altogether out of square’.

⁹⁰ Quoted in J. Brown, Kings and Connoisseurs: Collecting Art in Seventeenth‐Century Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 160. The emphasis is mine.

⁹¹ Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, vol. 1, 23, indicated that he observed brushstrokes, or in the case of the painting of St. Veronica between SS. Peter and Paul by Ugo da Carpi, the use of his fingers. ‘Si vede hoggi nella sacrestia di S. Pietro di Roma una pittura d'Ugo da Carpi il quali, invece di pennelli, adoperò le dite [Today is seen in the sacristy of St. Peter's in Rome a painting by Ugo da Carpi [for] which, instead of brushes, he adopted his fingers]’.