Invention, wit and melancholy in the art of Annibale Carracci

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Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Charles Dempsey and Douglas Basford for reading this article and for their valuable comments, along with those of the anonymous reviewer.

Notes

1. Summerscale, Malvasia's Life, 266.

2. Sohm, “Caravaggio's Deaths,” 449–450.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid., 453, discusses both physiognomy and temperament, but does not consider the perceived physiological dimensions of artistic creation.

5. For Mancini and the Considerazioni, see Maccherini, “Caravaggio nelle carte familiare”; Maccherini, “Novità su Bartolomeo Manfredi”; Maccherini, “Novità sulle Considerazioni”; Maccherini, “Ritratto di Giulio Mancini”; Gage, “Exercise for Mind”; Gage, “Giulio Mancini”; Gage, “Complexion and Palette”; and Gage, “Teaching Them to Serve.”

6. Ginzburg, “Clues: Roots,” 108–109.

7. Siraisi, History, Medicine, 107–108.

8. Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, 1:220, and Maccherini, “Caravaggio nel carteggio familiare,” 86.

9. For Mancini's treatment of artists, see Witcombe, “Two Avvisi.”

10. Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, 1:219.

11. Dempsey, Annibale Carracci, 26. Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, 1:219. Significantly, during the period of Tasso's illness, which he described as melancholy, he reported hearing the “winding of watches,” suggesting that there may have been an association between the watch and melancholy. See Calabrito, “Tasso's Melancholy,” 219.

12. There is every reason to assume that Mancini learned about Annibale's response to his medical doctor from either artist or doctor, since he was in touch with Annibale as late as March 1609. See Robertson, Invention of Annibale Carracci, 189–190. See also Maccherini, “Ritratto di Giulio Mancini,” 50.

13. Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, 1:219, “E dopo haver fatto testamento, accomodata l'anima, morse cristianissimamente.”

14. Ibid., 1:225 and 225n, “soprapreso da febre maligna.” And in his Palatino manuscript (BNCF, Pal. 397), Mancini remarked “fu quasi una morte violenta.” Although both Annibale and Caravaggio apparently contracted a similarly fatal fever, in Caravaggio's case alone did Mancini see fit to characterize it as “nearly” violent.

15. Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, 1:223.

16. Sohm, “Caravaggio's Deaths,” 463.

17. Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, 1:219.

18. Ibid., “poichè faceva di sua fantasia senza tener il naturale davanti.”

19. The opposition between courtly and anti-social behavior, represented by Vasari's characterizations of Raphael and Michelangelo, and analyzed within the context of artistic creativity, is addressed by Emison, Creating the “Divine” Artist, 42–43.

20. Mahon, Studies in Seicento Art, 253, “quasi creduto, che il Fratello non havesse più il pensiero à quella Statua; si avvide poi, che meglio di lui l'haveva Annibale impressa nella fantasia.”

21. Ibid.

22. Emison, Creating the “Divine” Artist, especially 28, 42, 132.

23. Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, 1:13.

24. Ibid., 1:14, where Mancini invokes Plato's concept of the idolo when discussing invention. Overall Plato's role in the development of Mancini's conception of invention is subordinate to Aristotle's.

25. Mancini, “Che cosa sia disegno,” BAV, Barb. Lat. 4315, fol. 150v–151r. Mancini defined mechanical arts as including devices designed to lift weights, or move water or obelisks, such as that created by Domenico Fontana to move the Vatican obelisk, which generated, according to Mancini, marvel, implicitly producing emotions of wonder and surprise.

26. Both men, as indeed was characteristic of this institution, examined phenomena from the perspective of natural causes.

27. Cropper and Dempsey, Friendship and the Love, 99–100. For Fracastoro's conception of contagion, see Nutton, “The Reception of Fracastoro's Theory.” For Mancini's contact with Giustiniani, see Maccherini, “Ritratto di Giulio Mancini,” 51.

28. For Fracastoro, see Brann, Debate over the Origin, 301–308. For the philosophical nature of invention in the fifteenth-century, see Kemp, “From ‘Mimesis’ to ‘Fantasia,’” 348–350. Mancini is setting the stage for the emergence of the type of “peintre-philosophe” embodied by Pietro Testa or Nicolas Poussin. For Testa, see note 50 below.

29. Brann, Debate over the Origin, 442–452.

30. For Fracastoro's Turrius, see Vasoli, “Il Turrius”; Liccioli, “Organi della conoscenza e operazioni”; Pearce, “Intellect and Organism”; and Pearce, “Nature and Supernature.”

31. Giulio Mancini, “Della ginnastica, della musica, e della pittura,” BAV, Barb. Lat. 4315, fol. 191r. For the Aristotelian tradition of intellection, see Cropper, Ideal of Painting, 76–77, 93.

32. Textual division and composition had long been held fundamental to the cultivation of memory. An analogous deployment of memory towards new intellection was described in Mancini's “Epistola al Papa sulla predizione,” BAV, Barb. Lat. 4316, composed late in life, and examining the physiological conditions undergirding prophecy. Here Mancini inquired whether the dream of one Antonio Scioppio concerning the future cure for his hemorrhoids was of divine or natural origin, concluding that it could only be natural since Scioppio could easily have dreamt of applying the same cure he had received for a chest ailment to a new illness. Scioppio, we note, had effectively separated the old cure from its ailment and conjoined it to a new one. (25r–v)

33. Mancini, “Della ginnastica, della musica e della pittura,” BAV, Barb. Lat. 4315, fol. 191v, “va considerando l'intelletto i fantasmi riservati.” And Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, 1:13, “inventione per questa nuova fabrica che vien fatta dall'intelletto et fantasia.” For Leonardo's conception of fantasia, see Kemp, “From ‘Mimesis’ to ‘Fantasia,’” 381–382, and Kemp, Leonardo da Vinci, 146–149. There is nothing in Mancini's Considerazioni to indicate direct knowledge of Leonardo's writings; it is significant that it was within the Barberini circle that a compilation of Leonardo's manuscripts circulated, before Cassiano began compiling notes for a new edition. See Bell, “Cassiano dal Pozzo's Copy,” 105.

34. Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, 1:159, “concepito e fattone sonnittione et astrattione.”

35. Fracastoro, Della Torre, 77. Mancini, “Della ginnastica, della musica, e della pittura,” BAV, Barb. Lat. fol. 191v.

36. Fracastoro, Della Torre, 90.

37. Mancini, Considerazione, 1:219. See also Dempsey, Annibale Carracci, 11, 20–21.

38. Dempsey, Annibale Carracci, 10–11.

39. For the Quattrocento conception of invention in content and in form, as well as Leonardo's synthesis, see Kemp, “From ‘Mimesis’ to ‘Fantasia,’” 356–357, 376–381.

40. Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, 13. See also Cocking, The Imagination, 191.

41. Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, 1:14.

42. A similar process of “analogy” Mancini recommended for representing the infernal.

43. Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, 1:8. For the Renaissance conception of heroic love, see Brann, Debate over the Origin, 25–31.

44. Wells, Secret Wound, 35. This notion of the “‘double-edge’ conception of love” is particularly developed in Avicenna. For the seemingly conflicting features of melancholy within a medical context, see Brann, Debate over the Origin, 19, 30–32, 303. For this idea within an artistic context, see Britton, “‘Mio melanchonico,’” 660.

45. Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, 1:7–8. This passage is ambiguous, however, for although Veronese may be overcome by heroic love, he is not given to flights of fancy and novel subjects, but to consistent attention to application.

46. Marsilio Ficino, De amore, 6.9, as quoted by Wells, Secret Wound, 44.

47. Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, 1:7, “ne può esser spogliata nè corretta.”

48. Emison, Creating the “Divine” Artist, 132–137.

49. The academician Benedetto Varchi had addressed the subject of art as an intellectual habit. Mancini is building on a firm sixteenth-century intellectual foundation, one that is not investigated by Emison. See Cropper, Ideal of Painting, 76–77.

50. Giulio Mancini, “Della ginnastica, della musica e della pittura,” BAV, Barb. Lat., f. 192r, “son piu vere pittore, poiche fan la lor operatione per la formatione interna, nella quale stà la forza del habito.” Aristotle had distinguished the “habit of art,” within his taxonomy of intellectual functions, from wisdom, science and prudence. Mancini's conception of appropriate training and his opposition to a notion of divine inspiration are analogous to the ideas of Pietro Testa. See Cropper, Ideal of Painting, 77, 92.

51. Cropper, Ideal of Painting, 83–84.

52. Mancini, “Della sanità,” BAV, Barb. Lat. 4315, fol. 380r, “che la dispositione sia come radice principio, et inchoation dell'Habito, et l'Habito, come germoglio, et perfettione della dispositione.”

53. See Brann, Debate over the Origin, 277.

54. Fracastoro, Della Torre, 146, “In primo luogo è necessario presupporre che, se il processo cognitivo deve essere condotto a buon fine, l'organo addetto a tale processo sia sano.”

55. Mancini, “Epistola al Papa,” BAV, Barb. Lat. 4316, fol. 30v, “da principio di loro adolescentia sono collerici per progresso di età, e di studio diventono melanconici da collera adusta, hanno inventione [. . .] che al primo aspetto pare gran cosa, che poi và in fumo, et si danno in gran stravaganze.”

56. Mancini, “Epistola al Papa,” BAV, Barb. Lat. 4316, fol. 29v, “in un momento formano mille imagini, et fantasmi.”

57. Mancini, Considerazioni, 1:238, “che quei primi semi di natura li potè dedur a quelle fierezze e movenze che ha espresse poi nell'operare.”

58. Ibid., 1:238.

59. Mancini, “Epistola al Papa,” BAV, Barb. Lat. 4316, fol. 29v, “in un momento formano mille imagini, et fantasmi; mà senza formatione perfetta [. . .] et per essere continuamente ingombrate da queste fantasme di nuovo non possa ricevere perfettamente.”

60. Mancini, “Epistola al Papa,” BAV, Barb. Lat. 4316, fol. 30v, “in progresso di primo senio ha operato meglio, che nella sua gioventù, come Michelangelo, nel Giuditio, et Volta.”

61. Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, 395; Pt. 1, Sect. 3.

62. Ibid., 250–251; Pt. 1, Sect. 2.

63. Ibid., 250. Fracastoro, Della Torre, 90.

64. Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, 250; Pt. 1, Sect. 1, Fracastoro, Della Torre, 156.

65. Calabrito, “Tasso's Melancholy,” 209, 213–214.

66. André du Laurens, Discourse of the Preservation of Sight (London, 1599), 82, as quoted by Wells, Secret Wound, 184.

67. Ibid., 219–220.

68. For the Carracci reform, see Dempsey, Annibale Carracci, passim; Dempsey, “Carracci Reform”; and Keazor, “Il vero modo,” 125–148.

69. Fracastoro, Della Torre, 156, “Tutti coloro che soffrono per via di questo umore sono in primo luogo tristi e solitari. Fra costoro, poi, ve ne sono alcuni che [. . .] si inventano cose che non esistono e che no potrebbero mai esistere—come quelli che ritengono di avere le corna oppore di avere il naso o le mani di vetro; ci sono poi alcuni che pensano di essere morti, o di essere diventi uccelli, e innumerevoli fenomeni di tal genere.”

70. Feigenbaum, “‘A Likeness in the Tomb,’” 21, 35, suggests that Annibale may have suffered, like Poussin would later do, from syphilis, quoting Giovanni Pietro Bellori's remark in Le vite de’ pittori, scultori et architetti moderni, (Rome, 1672), 76, that Annibale suffered, “languendo insieme col corpo, è con gli spiriti.” The idea that melancholy accompanied or followed from an inordinate sexual appetite was widely made in the early modern period.

71. Ginzburg, “Per la chronologia,” 175, “mio zio hebbe quella grave malattia cinque anni sono onde gli è stato sempre impedito di lavorare.”

72. Ibid., “da cinque anni in qua non abbia postuto lavorare quasi niente, non dimeno cominciava a fare alcuna cosetta degna di se stesso.”

73. Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, 391; Pt. 1, Sect. 3.

74. Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, 1:206, 223.

75. Ibid., quoting Agucchi, “ne die segno in una Madonna fatta dinascosto degna di se stesso, poco prima di andara e Napoli, che è bellissima.” It is significant that it is reported to have been secret, since secretiveness is also a common trait of the melancholic.

76. Robertson, Invention of Annibale Carracci, 189–190. For the inventory of Annibale's goods, see Zuccari, “L'inventario.” For Mancini and Annibale, see Maccherini, “Ritratto di Giulio Mancini,” 50. In neither case did the authors expound upon what they understood to be the artist's “creative faculties” or “invention” that remained unimpaired.

77. Maccherini, “Ritratto di Giulio Mancini,” 50.

78. Summerscale, Malvasia's Life, 223–224.

79. Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, 1:219, “Avanti s'amalasse non è dubio che operò meglio.”

80. Beecher, “Recollection, Cognition and Culture,” 373–374. These dangers discussed particularly in relation to erotic melancholy.

81. Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, 1:218, “una estrema malinconia accompagnata da una fatuità di mente e di memoria che non parlava nè si ricordava, con pericolo di morte subitanea.”

82. Ginzburg, “Per la cronologia,” 179, where she proposes that Annibale, when returning to Bologna for the funeral of his brother refreshed his memory of the works of Correggio. Calabrito, “Tasso's Melancholy,” 222.

83. Bellori, Le vite, 67, “per sollevarsi in libertà, si elesse una abitazione su ’l Quirinale, alle quattro fontane, sito ameno e salubre, là dove oggi è la Chiesa di San Carlo.” Summerscale, Malvasia's Life, 223.

84. Summerscale, Malvasia's Life, 223.

85. Gage, “Exercise for Mind.”

86. Benati and Riccòmini, Annibale Carracci, 396, cat. VIII.15. That the Carracci regarded landscape as recreative is indicated by Malvasia early on in his lives of Ludovico, Agostino and Annibale, where he describes a regular form of recreation from work the viewing of “unusual sites, or delightful landscapes.” See Summerscale, Malvasia's Life, 120–121. For the tone of this drawing, I am indebted to the remarks by Feigenbaum, “‘A Likeness in the Tomb,’” 37–38, who rightly distinguishes between sarcastic and sardonic.

87. Benati and Riccòmini, Annibale Carracci, 396, cat. no. VIII.15.

88. Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, 1:217.

89. Moreover, in Malvasia's account, Annibale's illness never led on its own to a complete cessation of artistic production, an unfortunate and unnatural turn of events, occasioned, he suggested, by the decision of the painter's doctors.

90. Summerscale, Malvasia's Life, 223, records how Annibale did not wish to ascend the scaffolding to paint the figure of God the Father in the lantern. This might correspond to the stereotyped early modern attributes of the melancholic as fearful and anxious.

91. Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, 393. Burton states melancholy brought on by disgrace is something to which generous men are particularly prone.

92. Mancini, Considerazioni, 1: 223, “per una certa altra disgratia.”

93. Bellori, Le vite, 67, “si aggravò tanto nel pensiero della sua disgratia.”

94. As Feigenbaum, “‘A Likeness in the Tomb,’” 19–39, recently points out, studies of Annibale still betray the tendency to underinterpret his work. Caravaggio's painting, by contrast, has been the object of extensive interpretive work, a scholarly turn that suggests that art historians believe his painting sustains deeper analysis and is the more intellectual of the two. But the tendency to pull back from interpretation of Annibale's paintings is, in fact, to invert the perceptions of the two artists' work on the part of their contemporaries, for Annibale was considered the intellectual painter. There is no period of Annibale's career more prone to underinterpretation than Annibale's late years.

95. Ibid., 19–39.

96. Ibid., 29–30.

97. Gowland, “Melancholy, Imagination, and Dreaming,” 64.

98. Benati et al., Drawings of Annibale Carracci, 244, cat. no. 76. On 12 April, 1606, Odoardo Farnese lamented that it had been a year since Annibale painted even a single brushstroke for him, suggesting that the onset of at least the most severe stage of Annibale's illness occurred in 1605, but Antonio Carracci, Annibale's nephew, placed the date at least a year earlier. Although the precise date is not known, scholars have traditionally dated a milder form of Annibale's illness, which all his biographers described as severe melancholy, to an earlier period, likely 1603.

99. Robertson, Invention of Annibale Carracci, 253, Robertson dates this drawing to the 1590s. Also Benati et al., Drawings of Annibale Carracci, 244, cat. no. 76, in which Daniele Benati dates it to ca. 1600–1603.

100. Terpstra, “Piety and Punishment.”

101. Bellori, Le vite, 78–79, “cadde in humore di non più dipingere, e volendo non poteva, necessitato lasciare i pennelli che quella malinconia gli toglieva di mano.”

102. Feigenbaum, “‘A Likeness in the Tomb,’” 31–33.

103. Calabrito, “Tasso's Melancholy,” 214, 220.

104. Ibid., 225.

105. For Annibale's “amorous excesses,” see Feigenbaum, “‘A Likeness in the Tomb,’” 21, who speculates that he suffers from syphilis, and Bellori, Le vite, 77, “disordini amorosi.” For Annibale's comment about painting, see Bellori, Le vite, 71, “soleva chiamare la sua Signora.” See also Boschloo, Annibale Carracci, 51.

106. I wish to thank Douglas Basford for this observation.

107. For Mancini's quote, see note 80 above. Emison, Creating the “Divine” Artist, 132–133, 159, 167.

108. Mancini, “Della ginnastica, della musica, della pittura,” BAV, Barb. Lat., fol. 193v, “fussi contemplativa ancorche con le mani.”