Mio Malinchonico, o Vero... Mio Pazzo - Michelangelo, Vasari, and The Problem of Artists' Melancholy in 16. Century Italy

Sixteenth CenturyJournal
XXXIV/3 (2003)
"Mio malinchonico, o vero ... mio pazzo":

Michelangelo, Vasari, and the Problem of Artists'
Melancholy in Sixteenth-Century Italy
Piers Britton
University of Redlands
This article concerns attitudes to melancholia and melancholic painters in the literature of the arts from sixteenth-century Italy, and focuses primarily on the writings of
GiorgioVasari, with some attention also to texts by Pino, Dolce, Lomazzo, and others.
Remarks made by these authors are analyzed in relation to other sources of primary
evidence, ranging from a carnival song to a treatise by Marsilio Ficino on "black bile;'
the humor supposed to cause melancholia. The principal argument, built around the
figure of Michelangelo, is that, contrary to received wisdom, there is no strong evidence that sixteenth-century artists feigned melancholy. As well as rehearsing the
many negative and ambivalent views on the humor expressed by cinquecento authors,
this article shows that these commentators believed that melancholy gives rise to a
very specific kind of painterly flair, namely, a genius for the fantastical and grotesque.
THANKs TO ALBRECHT DURER AND ERWIN PANOFSKY, melancholia has become one
1
of the warhorses of sixteenth-century art history. Yet the cornucopia of studies
relating to Dfirer's famous print and the phenomenon of melancholy in northern
Europe has not been offset by any substantial examination of the role of melan2
cholia in relation to cinquecento Italian art and artists. This is curious, partly
because Diurer's conception of melancholy is demonstrably dependent (albeit at
one remove) on a text by the Italian scholar Marsilio Ficino, but more particularly
because the literature of the arts in Italy is liberally peppered with noteworthy references to this "complexion." In particular, the issue of artists' melancholy receives
considerable attention in Vasari's Le vite de' piu eccellenti architetti,pittori, et scultori
italianiand other texts dealing with the conduct of artists.
Taken as a whole, the numerous allusions to melancholia in the writings ofVasari
and other Italian authors constitute an important and largely untapped body of
lThe classic texts are Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Sand, Diirers "Melencolia I": Eine quelletn- und typengeschichtliche Untersuchung (Leipzig:Teubner, 1923), and Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz
Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy,Religion, andArt (London: Nelson,
1964). Dependent and tangential studies are far too numerous to list here.
2There are important exceptions: Gloria Vallese, "Leonardo's Malinchonia,"Achademia Leonardi
Vinci:Journal of Leonardo Studies &Bibliography of Vinciana 5 (1992): 44-51; Fredrika H. Jacobs, "The
Construction of a Life: Madonna Properzia De Rossi, 'Schultrice' Bolognese," Word and Image 9 (1993):
122-32; Maurizio Fagiolo dell'Arco, InParmigianino:Un saggio sull'ermetismno nel Cinquecento (Rome: Bul-
zoni, 1970). John F Moffitt, "Painters 'Born Under Saturn': The Physiological Explanation," Art History
11 (1988): 195-216, also deals, highly tendentiously, with the melancholy of painters such as Parmigianino. Moffitt's argument is essentially that whatVasari and others described as melancholy was in fact
the consequence of lead poisoning; while the idea isinteresting, it isalso overstated and makes no allowance for strategic or loaded use of terms byVasari and contemporary commnentators.
653
654
Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXXIV/3 (2003)
information on how this problematic temperament was perceived in the period.

The Italians' reflections on the subject are particularly interesting because they are
more pragmatic in orientation than Diirer's recondite allegory.Vasari's down-toearth comments are particularly valuable. While the "truth" of his testimony concerning individual artists may be called into question, his explanation of the properties of melancholy in toto, as a determinant of behavior and of particular
painterly talents, is both rich and subtle. Moreover,Vasari's views correspond sufficiently closely with those of other writers on the arts from the mid- to late sixteenth century for us to assume with some confidence that his understanding of
the problem was broadly representative, even if his opinions were often skewed.
Michelangelo makes a useful linchpin for this study.This is partly because he
is the most famous self-confessed melancholic, and for that matter the most famous
artist, of his era, but also because he is in many ways the "hero" of Vasari's Vite. As
amply demonstrated elsewhere, and asVasari himself made perfectly clear, Michelangelo's biography was meant to be the glorious culmination of the Aretine's saga
of the revitalization of the visual arts. 3 Buonarroti is alone among the protagonists
of the history in being described as a master of all three ofthe arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture, rather than just one or two, as was true for his fellows. The
fact that Michelangelo occupied a privileged position within the Vite makes doubly
sigrificantVasari's careful avoidance of the term "melancholic" to describe his idol.
This lacuna should alert us to the fact that, whatever positive aspects he might have
recognized in the melancholic mindset,Vasari's enthusiasm for this particular
humoral type stopped well short of unconditional approval.
Whereas Vasari's attitude to melancholy is only briefly mentioned in the
literature, 4 and the comments of colleagues such as Paolo Pino entirely overlooked,
Michelangelo's relationship with melancholia has, perhaps inevitably, received a
certain amount of scholarly attention. The artist's description of himself as melancholic has not been met with wholehearted acquiescence. Quite recently, Don
Riggs suggested, in a thought-provoking investigation of Michelangelo's natal
horoscope, that Mars was the artist's presiding planetary deity.5 Mars was considered
in medieval cosmology to be the patron of the aggressive choleric, just as Saturn
was considered the star of melancholy. 6 On this basis, Michelangelo's claims to be
a melancholic, born under Saturn, are dismissed by Riggs as posturing, or at best
wishful thinking. 7 The melancholic self-image, Riggs asserts, was ultimately no
3See Patricia Lee Rubin, Giorgio Vasari:Art and History (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1995),
183-84,396,400.
4
Rubin, Giorgio Vasari, 65.
5Don Riggs, "Was Michelangelo Born under Saturn?" Sixteenth CenturyJournal26 (1995): 99-121.
6
0n the melancholic's conventional relationship with Saturn, see Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl,
Saturn and Melancholy, passim, esp. 127; for a contemporary text linking Mars with the choleric and
Saturn with the melancholic, see the Florentine carnival song on the four humors published in Ernst
Steinmann, Das Geheimnis der Medicigraeber MichelAngelos (Leipzig: K.W Hiersemann, 1907), 78-79.
7
Riggs, "Was Michelangelo Born under Saturn?" 117-18. The cliche of the "Saturnian" artist is
one of the cornerstones of RudolfWittkower and Margot Wittkower, Born under Saturn: The Character
and Conduct ofArtists:A Documented Historyfrom Antiquity to the French Revolution (London:Weidenfeld
& Nicolson, 1963), esp. 104-6.
Britton / Michelangelo, Vasari, &Artists' Melancholy
655
more than a smoke screen meant to dignify Michelangelo's notoriously misan8

thropic behavior and dauntingly volatile temper.
Yet the idea that Michelangelo chose disingenuously and dishonestly to portray
himself as melancholic presupposes that he really saw some advantage in so doing.
Such an assumption is based on a partial understanding of melancholia and its place
within the milieu in which Buonarroti grew to manhood.A positive image of Saturn, the god of melancholy, was certainly encouraged by Michelangelo's earliest
protector and Maecenas, Lorenzo de' Medici, who seems to have had a personal
9
fascination with melancholy. When Michelangelo entered Lorenzo's ambit, Marsilio Ficino, another Medici creature, had not long since completed his treatise on
melancholy, embodied in the first book of De vita libri tres, which, together with its
two companions, was published in 1489. However, Ficino's account of melancholy
in De vita was far from an uncomplicated palinode to the beneficent influence of
Saturn. The author, who was a physician as well as a philologist, rehearsed a great
number of negative effects deriving from black bile, the humor that caused melancholy, and his text is full of suggested antidotes (FE 123-29, 147-59).10
Ifwe move away from Michelangelo, it is striking that a key cinquecento statement of the idea that all great men are melancholic is certainly not uttered in a spirit
of admiration or respectful awe.This is a reference to the urbane Urbinate Raphael,
of all people, which appears in a letter to the duke of Ferrara from his charge
d'affaires in Rome,Alfonso Paolucci.The agent's account is meant simply to provide an explanation for Raphael's tardiness in honoring his obligations to the
Este.11 In the mind of Paolucci, the melancholy of great men was evidently something to be put up with, an unfortunate fact of life.
Specialist writers on the arts such asVasari and Pino showed a more dynamic
attitude to artists' melancholy than that of the wearily resigned Ferrarese diplomat.
In essence, both Pino andVasari saw melancholia as a double-edged sword, bringing
some benefits but needing to be held in check.Vasari's pronouncements on the subject, though remarkably consistent in terms of his underlying comprehension of the
melancholic pathology, are certainly not narrowly prescriptive; he treated each case
according to its merits.Vasari was in no doubt that Pontormo and other artists who
(according to him) were either born or for some reason became melancholic could
lay themselves open to censure for the wildness of their behavior and the eccentric8
See the letter from Sebasdiano del Piombo to Michelangelo, 15 October 1520, in nI Carteggio di
Michelatngelo, ed. Giovanni Poggi et al., 5 vols. (Florence: Sansoni, 1967), 2:246-47; Sebasdiano records
a conversation with Pope Leo, in which the latter apparendy said ofMichelangelo:"Ma e teribile, come
tu vedi; non si pol pratichar con lui." See also Riggs, "Was Michelangelo Born under Saturn?" 117-18.
9
See Claudia Rousseau, "Cosimo I de' Medici and Astrology: The Symbolism of Prophecy"
(Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1983), 127-34; and Andre Chastel, "Melancholy in the Sonnets of Lorenzo de' Medici,"Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 8 (1945): 61-67.
1
Page references for Ficino's De vita are cited in the text as lj for: Marsilio Ficino, 77free Books on
Life, ed. and trans. Carol V.Kaske and John R. Clark (Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval and Renaissance
Texts and Studies in conjunction with the Renaissance Society ofAmerica, 1989).
llVincenzo Golzio, Raffaello nei docunrenti nelle testimonianze dei contemporanei e nella letteratura del
suo secolo, rev. ed. (Farnborough, Hants: Gregg, 1971), 97.
656
ities of their imagery.YetVasari also acknowledged that in some cases melancholia

could have a beneficial effect both on the way artists worked and on the kind of
work they produced. Certain melancholics, he averred, were extremely diligent in
trying to surmount the difficulties of their art, while others exhibited a "fantastical"
flair for bizarre imagery, which, rightly channeled, could be a real asset.
To draw back from the question of howVasari and his contemporaries applied
their understanding of melancholy in art-related writings, it is worth reflecting on
the prevalent view of melancholy in the cinquecento that shaped their thoughts on
the subject.While we cannot definitively identify the texts from which these writers gleaned their knowledge of melancholia, the precedents for their opinions can
be defined broadly.
By the early cinquecento there existed three main stereotypes of melancholia:
(1) the melancholic as niggardly misanthrope or, less narrowly, as a person who was
withdrawn and socially inept, (2) the melancholic as holy hermit or monkish contemplative, and (3) the inspired or "fantastical" melancholic. These three types were
not mutually exclusive. Popular descriptions of the melancholic often conflate their
characteristics, as in this verse from Giovanni Tolosani's encyclopedic poem, La
Nuova Sfera, which was published in Florence in 1514:
I1 manincornico e freddo ed asciutto
Come la terra, e sempre ha il core amaro,
Resta pallido e magro e par distrutto
Ed e tenace, cupido ed avaro:
E vive in pianto, pena, doglia e lutto,
Ed a sua infermita non e riparo:
E solitario e pare un uom monastico,
Senz'amicizia, ed ha ingegno fantastico. 12
[The melancholic is cold and dry
Like earth, and always has a bitter heart;
He is pale and spare and seems lost,
And he is mean, grasping and miserly:
He lives in anguish, grief, pain, and mourning,
And for his sickness there is no remedy:
He is solitary, and seems like a monk,
Is without friends, and has a fantastical mind.]
In listing the various traits of the melancholic,Tolosani meant to paint a thoroughly disagreeable portrait of the type.Yet his approach was tendentious.Although
the melancholic's propensity for miserliness and mistrust could never be anything
2
1 Fra Giovanni Maria Tolosani, La Nuova Sfera, book 2, stanza 30, in La Sfera da E Leonardo di Stagio
Dati ..., ed. Gustavo Camillo Galletti (Rome:Tipografia delle scienze matematiche e fisiche, 1863),
164.
657
but base, other facets of the temperament could be seen as acceptable, even positive,
in the right context.A fantastical turn of mind might well be thought an indispensable quality for the poet and by no means a drawback for the philosopher or rhetorician, and having the solitary nature of the monk was, of course, perfectly
appropriate if one happened to be a monk.
Many reflections on melancholia during the quattrocento and cinquecento
were as negative as Tolosani's. However, the era did produce some serious apologia
for the more positive, "decorous" melancholy of thinkers and religious solitaries.
Two works warrant careful attention here: Ficino's De vita libri tres, the proem of
which carries the heading "On Caring for the Health of Those Who Devote
Themselves to Literary Studies," and a spiritual handbook by Fra Battista da Crema,
De cognitione et vittoria di se stesso, written in 1531.These authors' accounts of melancholy may not have been directly influential on the views of Michelangelo,Vasari,
or the other writers on the arts who are considered in this essay. However, to a
greater or lesser extent both Fra Battista and Ficino must have reflected widespread
contemporary views.
Of the positive glosses on the melancholic condition, Ficino's De vita is by far
the best known today.According to Erwin Panofsky and a host of subsequent scholars, the influence of Ficino's tract on the arts in Europe during the sixteenth cen3
tury was considerable.1 Of all Italian artists working in the late quattrocento and
cinquecento, Michelangelo was the most likely to have had some familiarity with
Ficino's work, or at the very least with the Saturnian "cult" developed by Lorenzo
il Magnifico. 14 As argued below, the writings of more than one other cinquecento
artist suggest some knowledge of Ficino's text.
Marsilio Ficino's lengthy treatment of the nature of black bile in the first of his
De vita libri tres, entitled "De vita Sana" (On the healthy life), is as double-edged as
his subject. He identified bodily excess of black bile as being (together with excess
of phliegm) a condition to which men of letters are particularly prone, in large measure because of their sedentary and reflective habits. According to Ficino, the thickening of the blood and the cooling and drying of the brain (melancholy being
qualitatively cold and dry) were exacerbated by lack of physical exertion and by
heightened activity of the brain (E, 113-15). At the same time, he also distinguished
potential virtues in the learned person's melancholic pathology. One very specific
kind of black bile, he says, can help to generate the loftiest forms of enlightenment
in the thinker (F,117-23). Although hedged in by contingencies, this claim for the
special intellectual penetration of which the melancholic was capable made Ficino's
text in part a compliment to this "atrabilious" type-and therefore, by accident or
intent, also a compliment to himself, since he was avowedly afflicted by a melancholic pathology.' 5
13
See Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy, 277-78ff.

and
Rousseau, Cosinto I de' Medici and Astrology, 127-35; see also Janet Cox-Rearick, Dynasty
133-34.
1984),
Press,
University
Princeton
NJ.:
Destiny in Medici Art (Princeton,
5
I This is discussed in Kaske and Clark's introduction to F 19-21.
14
658
The most important precedent for Ficino's claim that melancholy is the natural
condition of learned men, and that black bile possesses lofty, inspirational properties, was a short tract attributed to Aristotle, included among the philosopher's Problemata as problem 30.1.16 The author began with a startling rhetorical question:
"Why is it that all those who have become eminent in philosophy or politics or
poetry or the arts are clearly melancholics, and some of them to such an extent as
to be affected by diseases caused by black bile?" 17 The writer's conclusion, in
essence, was that black bile can vary greatly in its temperature, producing not only
cold despair but also hot frenzy, which fueled both the divinely inspired frenzy of
sibyls and bards and the murderous rages of Hercules and Ajax.' 8
Ficino broadly followed "Aristotle," though with certain refinements to the
argument presented in problem 30.1. Ficino introduced, for example, a postAristotelian elaboration of medical theory relative to black bile, namely, the idea of
adust melancholy. This, according to Galen and his contemporaries, was a species
ofblack bile produced by the combustion within the body of one of the other three
cardinal humors (yellow bile, blood, and phlegm) or of black bile itself. 19 Ficino
described this adust black bile as pernicious in its effects, whereas the subtlest form
of the humor-which he characterized, with knowing paradox, as "white bile"could, in his view, create the optimum bodily conditions for intellectual insight and
spiritual contemplation (F,117, 123).
The conceptual content of the Aristotelian problem 30.1 seems to have been
widely disseminated among those who concerned themselves with the visual arts
in Italy during the sixteenth century. For example, there are references to it in the
writings ofBenedettoVarchi and in a tract on painting by Romano Alberti. 2 0 There
is no correspondingly clear evidence that Ficino's work was known at first hand by
those who wrote on the arts during the sixteenth century. Given its esoteric nature
and the fact that it was available only in Latin, this is not particularly surprising. 21
Michelangelo must surely have known something of Ficino's views on melancholy,
but he could well have imbibed this just from living in the household of Lorenzo
de' Medici, without ever actually picking up a copy of De vita. In other words,
Michelangelo's was, manifestly, a special case.
While there is no concrete, overt reference to Ficino's views on melancholy in
the sixteenth-century literature of the arts, Ficinian overtones can be discerned in
remarks on "artist's melancholy" by the painter-theorist Paolo Pino, in his Dialogo
16
See Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy, 15-41.

From the translation of problem 30:1 in Klibansky, Panofsky & Saxi, Saturn and Melancholy,
18.
Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy, 18-19, 24; see also 31-32.
19
Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy, 53.
20ln a passage on complexion in his Sopra ilprimo canto del Paradisodi Dante,Varchi
nodded to the
thesis of"Aristotle's" Problem 30.1: "Aristotele ... afferma eziandio nei Probletni,
che niuno fu mai in
niuna arte o scienza eccellentissimo, il quale non fusse malinconico di natura" (cited
in a note in the
comnnentary to Vincenzo Danti, Trattato delle perfette proporzioni, ed. P. Barocchi,
in Trattati d'arte del
cinqauecetito, vol. I [Bari: Laterza, 1960], 217 n. 1). On Romano Alberti's reference
to the Aristotelian
notion of melancholy see text and n. 39 below.
21
0n the manuscripts and editions of De vita, see the editors' introduction to E 6-1 1.
17
18
659
di Pittura of 1548.22 Faint traces of the ideas in De vita can also be descried inVasari's
work. For the most part, his comments on melancholy in the Vite, cogent and
thoughtful as they are, show no particular sign of having been derived from a study
as specialized as Ficino's. One significant element of the physician's thesis does,
however, seem demonstrably to have filtered through toVasari's thought.This is the
link which Ficino stressed between melancholy and the scholar's way of life-an
association which is not, to my knowledge, made by any other author of the period,
or, for that matter, by "Aristotle" in problem 30.1. In the Vita of Giovanni Antonio
Sogliani,Vasari specifically articulates the idea that those engaged in "the science of
letters" are susceptible to melancholy (V, 4:439) 23
Another seeming commonality between Vasari's work and Ficino's De vita
should also be mentioned. As well as preserving and developing the tradition that
melancholics were Saturnians, Ficino made an unprecedented connection between
melancholy and the planetary deity Mercury. He argued that Mercury contributed
to the dry part of the melancholic's cold-and-dry pathology, and that the planet
"invites us to investigate doctrines" while Saturn "makes us persevere in investigating [them]" (FE 113-15). There may, just possibly, be a faint echo of Ficino's claims
concerning the "mercurial" aspects of melancholy in Vasari's account of a fresco by
Perino del Vaga. On the entrance arch of the Pucci Chapel in Trinita dei Monti,
24
Rome, Perino painted two Michelangelesque prophets, Daniel and Isaiah.
According to Vasari, in the figure of Isaiah, who is shown engrossed in a book, the
onlooker may observe "the melancholy which renders him studious and desirous of
pursuing new ideas in his reading," attested by the fact that "he fixes his gaze on a
book, with one hand on his head, as a man will often appear when he is studying"
(V, 5:123). This account of Isaiah's vigorous pursuit of "new ideas" in his reading
seems to echo Ficino's claim that Mercury, as a patron of melancholy, "invites us to
investigate doctrines."
More unequivocally influential onVasari's approach to melancholy in the Vite
is the conception of the temperament expressed in the spiritual handbook De cognitionie et vittoria di se stesso, written by the Dominican friar Battista da Crema and first
published in 1531 in Milan. Fra Battista did not set out to produce a systematic
study of black bile and its effects in the way that Ficino had done in his De vita.The
friar's treatise on self-knowledge is certainly not about melancholy per se, but his
short account of the complexion in one of the chapters is striking. Emphasis must
major center
22A caveat should be entered on this point: since Pino lived and worked in Padua, a
by a tradition
of medical scholarship, we cannot discount the idea that his understanding was formed
be room for furparallel to the one within which the Florence-trained Ficino was educated.There may
Middle Ages,
ther research in this area. On the teaching of medicine in Padua generally during the later
Pontifical
(Toronto:
1350
before
Padua
of
Studivtn
The
Padua:
at
Sciences
and
Arts
see Nancy G. Siraisi,
Insttute of Mediaeval Studies, 1973), 143-71.
23
vite de'
Page references forVasari's Vite are cited in the text and notes as Vfor GiorgioVasari, Le
a consnenpiu eccellenti pittori scultori e architettori:Nelle redaziotni del 1550 e 1568, ed. R. Bettarini, with
tary by P. Barocchi, 6 vols. (Florence: Sansoni, 1966-87).
24
nella
Reproduced, but not discussed, in MariaVittoria Brugnoh,"Gli Affreschi di Perin delVaga
Cappella Pucci," Bolletino d'Arte 47 (1962): 328.
660
be placed on the fact that Battista, like Ficino and almost every other apologist for
melancholy, recognized the duality of the temperament, declaring roundly that "a
saturnine person is either an angel or a devil" (un saturnino overo e un angelo,
overo e un demonio). 2 5 Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that thefrate regarded
the melancholic, if he or she were properly disciplined, as enjoying a head start in
the field of spiritual self-development. He gave two reasons for this: first, melancholics had an innate compassion which could serve as a basis for acts of piety and
charity; and second, melancholics naturally favored solitude, the condition in
which spiritual development could best be pursued. 2 6
Battista's assertions in De cognitione on the benefits of melancholy for those who
sought to attain a high level of spirituality were not in themselves novel. Already in
the thirteenth century, the scholastic bishop of Paris, William of Auvergne, commented on the fact that, according to Aristode, "melancholics were fitted for inspirations ... in a higher degree than men of other complexions-namely, because this
complexion withdraws men more from bodily pleasures and worldly turmoil." 2 7
Fra Battista's text provides unequivocal evidence that the melancholy of the religious eremitic was a live issue in Italy during the sixteenth century. There was, in
other words, a nexus of cultural assumptions attaching to Giovanni Tolosani's almost
throwaway remark that the melancholic is solitary and monklike. Moreover, the fact
that Fra Battista exerted an influence on the founders of two orders of reforming
clergy, the Barnabites and Theatines, may also suggest that his advocacy of melancholia had a relatively wide and receptive audience. 2 8
Although there is no particular reason to suppose that GiorgioVasari knew Fra
Battista's book, the positive model of the monkish melancholic was certainly one
with which the Aretine was conversant. Indeed, he may well have had a personal
sympathy with, even a private aspiration to, the life of the religious solitary. In the
wake of the assassination of Duke Alessandro,Vasari cured his own suicidal melancholy by retiring to the hermitage at Camaldoli, a context in which melancholia
could be properly channeled into divine contemplation. 29 Vasari was to retain close
links with the Camaldolese throughout his life, and he also forged professional
connections with another austere order, the Olivetans (V46:371, 375, 376, 377,
378, 379, 380, 384,390,391, 405).30
25
Quoted in Noel Brann, "Is Acedia Melancholy? A Re-examination of This Question

in the
Light of Fra Battista da Crema's Della cognitione et vittoria di se stesso (15 3 1),"Journal ofthe
History of AIedicine 34 (1979):193.
26
Brann, "Is Acedia Melancholy?" 191-92.
27
Translation of an extract from William of Auvergne, De universo, 2.3.20, in Opera omnia (Venice,
1591), 993, in Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxi, Saturn and Melancholy, 73.
28
f3rann, "Is Acedia Melancholy?" 185.
29
See also Rubin, Giorgio Vasari, 65; for Vasari's comments on his own melancholy, see
his letter
from Camaldoli to Giovanni Pollastra in Arezzo, dated I September 1537, in Der Literarische
Nachlass
Giorgio Vasaris, ed. K. Frey, vol. 1 (Munich: Georg Muller, 1923), 89-91 (no. 33); 1 diank
Patricia Rubin
for drawing my attention to this letter and discussing its possible imnplications.
30
OnVasari's works for the monastery church at Camaldoh, see also GiorgioVasari. Principi,
letterati
e artisti nelle carte di Giorgio Vasari, Casa Vasari. Pittura vasarianadal 1532 al 1554, Sottochiesa
di S. Francesco,
exhibit catalog (Florence: Edam, 1981), 331-32.
Britton / Michelangelo, Vasari, &Artists'Melancholy
661
of
It is apparent from several of the Vite thatVasari was disposed to approve
this
For
contemplation.
and
piety
of
life
the
those melancholics who inclined to
the atrareason, and for the sake of emphasizing again the basic duality inherent in
monkish
of
portrayals
negative
to
made
be
bilious condition, some reference should
melancholia in Italian literature.
The hermit's regimen consisted primarily of dry and uncooked food, especially
were
wild herbs.Through such a diet, as Allen Grieco has argued, religious solitaries
condivine
to
favorable
thought
were
seeking to create the bodily conditions that
by
base
literally
quite
were
which
templation. Uncooked wild plants, many of
of
kind
crudest
the
as
upon
looked
virtue of growing near to the ground, were
to
also
therefore,
and,
earth
of
element
nutrition, qualitatively akin to the cold-dry
a staple
the cold-dry humor ofblack bile.While the adoption of woodland plants as
divine
less
a
to
rise
give
also
could
ti
diet might promote melancholic inspiration,
Alban
St.
of
life
the
of
account
gruesome
form of furor. Grieco cites a wonderfully
contemhis
pursue
to
forest
a
to
retreats
from trecento Tuscany, in which the saint
out huntplative vocation. After some years, his retreat is interrupted by a princess,
and then,
her
ravishes
he
frenzy,
of
fit
a
in
ing and separated from her companions.
by murfelony
the
compounds
he
that
guilt
his passion cooled, is so overcome by
31
body.
dering her and burying the
This grisly story, as Grieco argues, seems palpably to depend on "Aristotle's"
kinds
problem 30.1.The author of problem 30.1 refers not only to the more exalted
two
by
exhibited
madness
melancholic
of melancholic frenzy, but also to the violent
infanticidthe
and
Ajax
grief-stricken
and
figures from myth, namely, the bereaved
32
century
ally unbalanced Hercules. While the literature of the arts in the sixteenth
could
melancholy
that
idea
the
enormities,
is hardly strewn with tales of murderous
biographies,
ofVasari's
two
in
vita,
Cellini's
beget madness is manifest, strikingly, in
colorful
and in one of Michelangelo's letters. Cellini, whose book is by far the most
madand
melancholy
couples
texts,
and picaresque of sixteenth-century art-related
Lorenzino
to
but
artist,
other
any
matter
ness not in relation to himself, or for that
design of a
de' Medici. Cellini and Lorenzino were supposed to collaborate on the
to profailure
Lorenzino's
describing
in
and
medal for Duke Alessandro de' Medici,
melancholic
crazy
"that
as
him
to
refers
vide an image for the reverse, the goldsmith
33
not long
dreamer" (quel pazzo malinconico filosafo). Lorenzino gained notoriety,
overtones
The
Alessandro.
Duke
of
assassin
the
after his encounter with Cellini, as
Moyen Age et
Allen J. Grieco, "Les plantes, les regimes vegetariens et la melancolie a la fin du
31
siecles): Savoirs et usages sociaux,

au debut de la Renaissance italienne," in Le Monde vegeal (XIe-XV/IIe
de Vincennes, 1993),
ed. Allen J. Grieco et al., Essais et Savoirs series (St. Denis: Presses Universitauies
11-29, esp. 17-22.
32
Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy, 18-19.
It should be
33
Benvenuto Cellini, La Vita, ed. Guido Davico Bonino (Turin: Einaudi, 1973), 192.
self-image
his
though
36),
(ibid.,
a
melancholic
as
himself
noted that Cellini on one occasion described
nella Vita di Benalso embraced the sanguine and choleric tendencies; see Margherita Orsino, "II fuoco
esp. 97.
venuto Cellini:Aspetti di un mito dell'artista-fabbro," Italian Studies 54 (1997): 94-110,
662
of melancholic frenzy which Cellini invokes would, therefore, have been pregnant
with meaning for the contemporary reader.
Something similar, albeit lighter in tone, is to be found in a letter of 1525 from
Michelangelo to Sebastiano del Piombo. Here, Michelangelo informs his friend
that a mutual acquaintance, Captain Chuio, had persuaded him to attend a dinner
party "from which I had great pleasure, because I came a little out of my melancholy, or rather my madness [pazzo]."34 The term "pazzo" was probably not meant
to be taken too literally in this context; rather, it is a characteristically dry example
of Michelangelo's penchant for self-mockery. Nevertheless, the choice of expression suggests that the link between melancholy and madness was by this date fairly
conventional. 35
Vasari twice linked malinconia and pazzia, albeit in a looser way than Michelangelo. He made the arresting claim that Pontormo's frescoes in the choir of San
Lorenzo, Florence, and in particular his LastJudgment there (now destroyed), were
so
melancholy and bizarre that they threatened to drive the spectator crazy. According
to Vasari, Pontormo conceived and executed the San Lorenzo frescoes in eremitic
solitude, the interruption of which he would in no wise tolerate (V, 5:331-32).
It
may be, therefore, thatVasari saw the "madness"-inducing, melancholy character of
the San Lorenzo frescoes as the direct result of excessive seclusion.
Francesco Mazzuoli (Parmigianino) is also described in the Vite as becoming
melancholy in later life because of his pursuit of the secret art of alchemy.Vasari
characterized the search for the philosopher's stone as having a maddening effect on
its obsessive practitioners. He explained how Francesco, who had closeted himself
away with alchemical experiments, "like all others who derange themselves" (le
impazzano) with the GreatWork, went from being refined and gentlemanly to a virtual wild man with a long beard and unkempt locks, his behavior becoming odd
(strano) and melancholic (V, 4: 545). Again, the triple association between a life of
unhealthy seclusion, melancholy, and madness is clear. 36
The term strano, which Vasari used in conjunction with malinconico in his
description of the decline of Parmigianino, was part and parcel of melancholic
characterizations elsewhere in the Vite. The Bolognese painter Amico Aspertini,
though not explicitly designated as melancholic inVasari's very brief account of his
career, is repeatedly characterized as mad. He is first described as possessing a capricious and crazy brain (un capriccioso e pazzo cervello), then as painting figures which
are mad and capricious (pazze e capricciose), and finally as becoming bestially crazed
(bestialissimamente impazzo) in old age.Vasari linked this senile madness with grief
(tristizia) in the second edition of the biography. We might, therefore, reasonably
34
Michelangelo in Florence to Sebastiano del Piombo in Rome, May

see Carteggio, ed.
Poggi et al., 3:156:"Sebastianomio karissimo,iersera el vostro amicho chapitano 1525;
Chuio
certi altri gentilomini volsono, lor gratia, che io andassi accenna chon loro, di che ebi grandissimo epiacere,
perch6
usci' um pocho del mio malinchonicho, o vero del mio pazzo...".
351
thank
John Paoletti for helping to clarify my thoughts on this matter.
3
6See also the vita ofTorrigiano, a choleric who is described as falfing into such melancholy that
he lost his appetite and died as a result of his confinement injail (V4:128).
663
from
imagine that black bile was the bad humor (umore) whose eventual departure
link
the
summary,
In
4:498).
(14
sanity
to
Amico, according toVasari, restored him
Tuscan
among
understood
and
known
between melancholy and madness was well
artists of the sixteenth century.
If painters, in particular, were overly aware of the more extreme imbalances
why
produced by melancholia, then other testimony from the literature explains
to
susceptible
particularly
as
regarded
this should be. The fact that painters were
his
in
second:
a
by
implied
and
melancholia is attested directly by one practitioner
explanaDialogo di Pittura, the Paduan painter-theorist Paolo Pino provided a clear
letter to
well-known
a
in
Pontormo,
and
tion of why painters become melancholy,
it.
BenedettoVarchi, effectively endorsed
an
Pino not only observed, in words that recall (and may even bespeak
life,
sedentary
their
of
virtue
by
painters,
acquaintance with) Ficino's De vita, that
suggesting
were prone to melancholy, but also, again like Ficino, offered remedies,
37
little later,
A
bay.
at
melancholy
hold
and
that exercise would improve digestion
should
artists
that
suggest
interlocutors
his
of
there is a rider to this: Pino has one
life.3 8
shortens
and
melancholy
causes
it
spurn excessive sexual activity because
(together
Ficino listed sexual intercourse among the five enemies of the scholar
may sugthis
morning);
the
in
late
with black bile, phlegm, gluttony, and sleeping
content.
essential
its
least
at
or
work,
gest that Pino was acquainted with Ficino's
The idea that painters can be made melancholic by their sedentary, cerebral
(14
profession is briefly acknowledged inVasari's 1550 vita of Pellegrino da Modena
Italy,
sixteenth-century
in
commonplace
4:335).This was evidently a fairly durable
comfor it appeared again in a 1585 treatise on painting by Romano Alberti. His
paintthat
judgment,
without
explains,
He
ments are neutral and objective in tone.
strive to
ers become melancholy because their work demands that they constantly
mnemonic
vivid
forming
thereby
intellects,
fix sense impressions (fantasmi) in their
their
images that they can call up at will.This mental effort requires that they "keep
comes
whence
[materia],
concerns
worldly
minds abstracted and separated from
39
melancholia, which according to Aristotle indicates intelligence and prudence."
Although he did not specifically use the word malinconico, Jacopo Pontormo
profesalso left an implicit statement that painters were made melancholic by their
of
excellence
relative
the
of
subject
the
on
sion. In his letter to Benedetto Varchi
gave
work
vigorous
sculptor's
the
that
observed
painting and sculpture, Pontormo
forhim a better complexion (migliore complessione) than any painter could hope
37Paolo Pino, Dialogo di Pittura,in Trattati, ed. Barocchi, 1:135-36.
1:137.
38
Paolo Pino, Dialogo di Pittura,in Trattati, ed. Barocchi,
39
ed. Barocchi, 3:209: Ii pittori divenTrattati,
in
pittura,
della
nobilita
della
Romano Alberdi,Trattato
li fantasmati fissi nell'intelletto,
ritenghino
che
bisogna
imitare,
loro
gono malencolici, perche, volendo
e questo non solo una volta,
acci6 dipoi li esprimeno in quel modo che prima li avean visti in presenzia:
la mente astratta e sepama continuamente, essendo questo il loro essercizio; per il che talmente tengono
Aristotile che significa
dice
pero
quale
la
malencolia,
la
vien
ne
conseguentemente
che
rata dalla materia,
son stati malencoprudenti
e
gl'ingegnosi
tutti
quasi
dice,
l'istesso
come
ingegno e prudenzia, perche,
Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and
lici." On Aristotle's conception of "fantasia," see Samuel Henry Butcher,
FineArt (NewYork: Dover, 1951),125.
664
and better complexion, in this context, certainly means rather more

than ruddy
cheeks. 4 0 Pontormo added that the painter was, relatively speaking,
"bodily illdisposed through the fatigues of his craft, which perturb the mind
rather than augment life" (male disposto del corpo per le fatiche dell'arte, piu tosto
fastidi di mente
che aumento di vita). 4 1
Pontormo's complaint was, perhaps, at one level genuinely negative,
given his
ever-increasingly active preoccupation with his own health. 4 2 His
comments can
also be seen as a backhanded pman to the painter. By stressing the
mental efforts
involved in painting, Pontormo may have meant to imply that this
kind of effort is
missing from, or at least less pronounced, in the sculptor's work.
Throughout the
remainder of his letter, his emphasis is on the nuanced difficulties
of manipulating
pigment to create an illusion of nature on a two-dimensional surface.
There is, in
other words, a tacit plea here for the intellectual challenges inherent
in the profession of the painter, and apropos this suggestion it is clearly relevant
that Ficino specifically cited increased mental activity as a prime cause of melancholy
in learned
men (F, 115). To suffer from melancholy, then, might in certain
respects be disagreeable, degrading, and even dangerous. Nevertheless, the painter,
hitherto
regarded as a manual craftsman, de facto gained a perverse kind of
fillip from suffering in the same way as the poet, and for the same reasons.
Whatever his reservations about the effects of melancholy, Vasari
was not
inimune to the appealing idea that artists and men of letters shared
their tendency
to melancholia because both professions demanded enhanced intellectual
effort. In
the most detailed statement on the effects of the temperament in
the Vite, Vasari
treated the connection between melancholy and scholarly cerebration
as a given,
and he took the opportunity subtly to upgrade painting from a purely
manual trade.
These remarks are to be found in the introduction to the vita of
Giovanni Antonio
Sogliani, where the author notes, "we often see in the science
of letters and the
intellectual-cum-manual crafts [arti ingegnose manuall] that those
who are melancholic are more assiduous in their studies, and often have a certain
patience which
enables them better to support the burden of their labors" (V, 4:439).
Again, there
may be an informed echo here of Ficino's assertion that Saturn "makes
us persevere
in investigating [doctrines]" (F,113). On the other hand, the idea
is not peculiar to
40
SeeVasari's very similar reflections on sculpture in the Proemnio di

tutta l'opera in the second edition
ofthe Vite (142d ed., 1:1 i):"Dico dunque, che gli scultori come
dotati forse dalla natura e dall'esercizio
dell'arte di miglior complessione, di piu sangue e di piu forze, e
per questo piu arditi e animosi de' pittori...." Here, complessione is clearly being used, first, in the sense
of"stato di corpo vivente," the first
meaning offered by the lexicographers of Grande Dizionario della
Li igtua Italiana, ed. Salvatore Battaglia
(Turin: UTET, 1964), 3:413. It is only "per questo"' that sculptors
are "pius arditi e animosi"; complessione
is, implicitly, the begetter of indole rather than identical with it. Cf
also the beginning of Vasari's physical
description of Michelangelo (V, 6:121): "dico che la complessione
di questo uomo fui molto sana...";
here again, complexion is obviously being used to indicate physical
constitution.
41
jacopo da Pontormo, letter to Benedetto Varchi from Della maggioranza
delle arti, in Trattati, ed.
Barocchi, 1:68.
42The diary that Pontormo kept towards the end of his life clearly
attests to this preoccupation:
see the annotated text in Jacopo da Pontormo, Diario: Comnientario
alfacsimile, ed. R. Fedi (Rome: Salerno, 1996), 43-84, esp. 43-45.
Britton / Michelangelo, Vasari, &Artists' Melancholy 665
in La Nuova Sfera
Ficino: we may, for example, recall Giovanni Tolosani's remark
that melancholics are tenacious.
artists'
Whatever the truth about its antecedents, the theme of melancholic
their
of
challenges
the
addressing
in
patience
dogged pursuit of their studies and
assiduousness
Vite.The
the
in
times
several
profession is one whichVasari introduced
not only in the vita of
of which the melancholic is capable is brought to the fore
da Correggio, and
Antonio
Spinelli,
Parri
of
Soghiani but also in Vasari's accounts
represented as an
always
not
is
diligence
523).This
Morto da Feltre (V,3:120; 4:50,
apparendy
perfection
perspectival
of
pursuit
advantage. Paolo Uccello's dedicated
of Daniele
case
the
In
(1V,3:61).
manner
difficult
led to his developing a sterile and
style, and
pictorial
stodgy
a
with
coupled
was
daVolterra,Vasari found that diligence
as
brutally,
subject,
his
described
Sogliani,Vasari
in the 1550 version of the vita of
(1V,4:446,
hypocrisy
of
smacked
that
manner
having a repetitive, please-all painterly
in the second edi5:539). Although the biographer was less scathing about Sogliani
a phrase of Noel
borrow
to
was,
Antonio
tion, he managed to convey that Giovanni
competent.
Coward's, thoroughly and appallingly
characteristic
Diligence, with its corresponding weaknesses, is not the only
many of
found
Vite.Vasari
the
in
melancholics
conmnon to more than one of the
taking
as
Pontormo
described
He
monkish.
them to be strongly devout, even
of
religiosity
the
and
Galluzzo,
at
Certosa
delight in the time he spent at the
as
described
specifically
not
though
(who,
Sogliani, Correggio, and Beccafunmti
deliberately
very
also
is
solitary")
"exceedingly
melancholic, is characterized as
association
underscored (V, 4:54, 446; 5:177, 321). Given the long-standing
In
surprising.
way
no
in
are
portrayals
these
between melancholy and monkishness,
an
on
taken
had
tendency
hermetic
the
that
certain cases, however,Vasari indicated
blighted
that
behavior
wild
odd-and-even
of
kind
unhealthy aspect, producing the
the last days of the deranged Parmigianino.
in the Vite who
Neat division can seldom be made between those melancholics
The vita
reclusive.
"savagely"'
were
who
those
were good Christian solitaries, and
behavior
of
mode
one
which
in
way
the
of Pontormo, for example, epitomizes
melnatural
a
as
Jacopo
characterized
on,Vasari
could give way to the other. Early
life,
painter's
5:308).The
(14
youth
his
in
even
ancholic, who had been "soletario"'
home
Pontormo's
anchorite:
secular
a
of
that
as described by Vasari, is essentially
to keep unwelcome
was accessible only by means of a ladder, which he pulled up
with this, pointing
fault
find
to
disposed
not
was
visitors at bay (V,5:328).YetVasari
and it allowed
man,
nor
God
to
neither
harm
did
out that Pontormo's reclusiveness
like the
Pontormo,
that
observed
Moreover,Vasari
him to concentrate on his work.
Pontormo's
order.
eremitic
an
with
association
close
biographer himself, formed a
intermittently for the
particular sympathy was with the Carthusians, and he worked
"the solitude of
monks of Galluzzo for several years, visiting frequently just because
the painter's
regarded
certainly
5:328).Vasari
(V,
the Certosa gave him pleasure"
whichJacopo
brother
lay
a
of
portrait
positive.A
as
association with the Carthusians
that "in itself it excuses
made at the Certosa was, the writer recorded, so well done
666
Sixteenth Centuryjournal XXXIV/3 (2003)
Pontormo the oddity and the capricious style that his solitude had imposed
upon
him" (V,5:322).
Vasari was clearly troubled by aspects of what he called "the bizarre eccentricity
of [Pontormo's] mind, which never rested content with anything" (V, 5:323).
The
same kind of melancholic obsessiveness that limited the achievement of
Uccello
also derailed Pontormo's art, for he interested himself in the "German
manner,"
which he knew from Diirer's prints, to the detriment of the "modern manner"
in
which he had been schooled (V,5:322). ForVasari, who used the expression
"German manner" pejoratively to characterize medieval art, this was a retrograde
step. 43
Its terminus was the melancholy and "maddening" frescoes of the choir
of San
Lorenzo, with its wildly contorted figures and tortuous composition (V,
5:332).
Pontormo executed this project in total seclusion, behind barricades which
he only
strengthened when he found himself being spied on.
Vasari's summary judgment on the melancholic Pontormo, given in the
vita of
Jacopo's pupil and adopted son, Bronzino, was that he was antisocial (salvatico)
and
eccentric (strano)-the very terms used to describe Parmigianino in his decline
(1<
4:544-45). The melancholic's tendency to degenerate into a wild, unsociable
state
was obviously a major concern forVasari. As discussed at length by Sharon
Fermor,
salvatico (often used in conjunction with strano and astratto) is one of the
key terms
inVasari's vita of Piero di Cosimo, another artist who is not specifically called
melancholic but unmistakably embodies the type. 44 Indeed, nowhere else in
the Vite is
there such a comprehensive accumulation of the main signifiers for, and terms
used
to describe, melancholy.Vasari may well have felt that the long and involved
characterization spoke for itself, whereas in more summary biographies the
use of the
term malinconico was necessary in order to ensure clarity. Piero is said to
have had a
lifelong preference for solitude, and his deranged eremitic tendencies
are underscored by the claim that he kept his garden and orchard uncultivated, as though
creating a kind of domestic equivalent to the hermit's desert dwelling
(V,4:61).
Furthermore, the ideas invoked and terms used to describe Piero's special
qualities
and talents as an artist read like a compendium of Vasari's observations on
the effects
of melancholy on different painters.Thus, Piero is described as having worked
with
extreme diligence and patience, and the words strano, bizzarro, capriccioso,
stravagante
andfantasticoare used to characterize his works almost ad nauseam.
In relation to artists' behavior,Vasari generally used the words fantastico,
bizzarro, and capricciosoin a derogatory fashion. Conversely, these terms tend
to have a
positive connotation in the Vite where they are applied to works of art.
Thus, on
the one hand,Vasari censured his melancholic friend Francesco Salviati
for being
"fantastical" by nature and capricious in his behavior (V,5:531-32). On
the other,
he enthusiastically celebrated the "bizarre and capricious inventions" in
Salviati's
43
See Rubin, Giorgio Vasari, 1-2,248-49,255.
44S. Fermor, Piero di Cosimo: Fictioni, Invention and Fantasia (London: Reaktion, 1993),
29-37. See
also Paul Barolsky, The Faun in the Garden (University Park: Pennsylvania State
University
Press,
1994),
77-85.
667
a painting as capriccioso
large-scale decorative schemes (V, 5:527).When he described
imaginative qualities;
and
whimsical,
novel,
its
orfantastico,Vasari was referring to
a noun, to define a
as
form,
plural
its
in
but the word bizzarro he often employed
cognate with grotare
terminology,
inVasari's
whole category of painting. Bizzarre,
discovered in the
paintings
Roman
the
on
tesche, by which he meant images based
45
Many of these
Nero.
of
House
Golden
so-called caves (grotte) of the buried
hybrids of
"monstrous"
of
consisted
today,
images, which are still called grotesques
exponents
foremost
the
of
two
that
significant
plant and animal forms. It is highly
are charCosimo,
di
Andrea
and
Feltre
da
of this kind of imagery, namely, Morto
acterized byVasari as melancholics.
in the Vite.Their
Morto and Andrea share one of the many double biographies
one of the
consolidated
and
initiated
respectively
stories are linked because they
equal and
to
first
art
of
Age"
"Third
own
his
led
innovations that, inVasari's mind,
reinvented
who
man
the
as
presented
is
Morto
then to surpass the antique.
melancholic dili"grottesche, perfecting his command of the idiom with typical
4:517). In many
(V,
examples
ancient
surviving
gence, through careful study of
Andrea, who is
student
his
of
that
to
prelude
ways Morto's biography is only the
(V, 4:521).46
style
figure
strong
a
with
work
described as marrying skill in grotesque
Whereas
nationalism.
by
motivated
certainly
is
This claim for Andrea's superiority
expression
gives
story
joint
their
Florentine;
a
Morto was north Italian, Andrea was
(disegno) and the
to Vasari's prejudice that Tuscan grasp of design/draftsmanship
47
present purposes
For
artists.
north-Italian
of
human figure was better than that
the two
distinguished
he
which
by
means
the
as
Vasari's intent is not as important
In
Morto.
than
melancholic
more
as
presented
is
men from one another: Andrea
painter
the
that
notes
and
gloominess,
his
in
suicidal
fact,Vasari describes Andrea as
away with himself
had to have a permanent "minder" to prevent him from doing
design was
"fantastical"
for
talent
of
degree
that
is
(V, 4:523).The logical conclusion
for
precedent
ample
was
there
Since
melancholia.
of
directly dependent on degree
Ethics
Eudemian
Aristotle's
from
ranging
texts
in
linking melancholy with fantasia,
will generate
to Tolosani's Nuova Sfera, the inference that prodigious melancholy
48
one.
reasonable
prodigiousfantasia seems a
were described as
Yet not all practitioners of grottesche and whimsical imagery
da Udine, is
Giovanni
today,
famous
most
form
melancholic: the exponent of the
45
Fermor, Piero di Cosimno, 30.

nature of the vita of Morto (i.e., that
For a more developed argument concerning the contrived
Lisa Smiles and Othser Tales by Vasari
Mona
l'yy
the artist was an invention of Vasari's), see Paul Barolsky,
58-60.
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991),
Giorgio 1Vasari, 137, 244-46.
47
OnVasari's negative attitude to north Italian art, see Rubin,
n. 70, 36, and esp. 337, where a
34
34,
Melanchloly,
and
Saturn
Saxi,
and
48Ylibansky, Panofsky,
length: "[The children of Saturn]
at
cited
is
(1297)
astronomia
striking section of Lull's Tractatus novus de
is more closely related to melancholy than to
receive strong impressions from their imagination, which
has a closer correspondence and relation to
any other complexion. And the reason why melancholy
relies on measure, line, form, and color,
imagination
that
is
complexion,
imagination than has any other
possess a denser substance than
elements
those
because
which are better preserved in water and earth,
46
fire and air."
668
a notable exception. Another, of course, even more striking, is

the artist whose
"novel fantasies" were, forVasari, of such importance that all practitioners
of the
visual arts were "infinitely and perpetually obliged to him," namely,
Michelangelo
(V,6:55).49 The conspicuous omission of reference to melancholy
in the vita of
Michelangelo is worth exploring in some detail.Vasari does not
actually say that
Michelangelo was not a melancholic, for such a bald statement would
have ruined
his obfuscatory aims, but this idea is implicit at every turn.While
he must have been
all too aware that the notoriously crusty and willful doyen of
central Italian art
would not serve as an exemplar for artists' behavior in the same way
as the gracious
5
0
Raphael, Vasari went to heroic lengths to whitewash his idol. Nor
should we dismiss this effort simply as monumental sycophancy. By the time
the second edition
of the Vite came out,Vasari had a great deal invested in Michelangelo,
at a professional as well as a personal level. 51 In death, as in life, Buonarroti
embodied the dignity of the fledgling Accademia del Disegno, to the inauguration
of which Vasari
was a key contributor. 5 2 As the figurehead of a pedagogical
project, therefore,
Michelangelo had to be dissociated not only from melancholic
behavior but also
from the vagaries of melancholic art.
One of the most interesting strategiesVasari adopted to disguise the
excesses of
Michelangelo's misanthropy is not deployed in the vita itself, but
in the organization
of the contiguous biographies. This is especially evident in the
run-up to the vita
of Michelangelo in the second edition. Here, the penultimate and
antepenultimate
biographies before Michelangelo's are given to a pair of egregious
melancholics,
Dariiele da Volterra and Salviati, beside whom anyone would seem
temperate. The
vita immediately preceding Michelangelo's is that of Taddeo Zucchero,
explicitly
characterized as sanguine, the sunny antipode of melancholic.
The portrayal of
Zucchero is not entirely flattering: he is described as possessing
the fault of libidinousness to which people of sanguine complexion were particularly
prone-a
failing of which the famously continent Michelangelo could
not be accused.5 3
49
For ruminations on Michelangelo's grotesque imagery, see Paul

Barolsky, "From Grotesque to
Vision:TheJourney of the Poetic Imagination in Michelangelo's
Art, 'Explorations in Renaissance Culture
23 (1997): 79-94.
50
OnVasari's carefully built up account of Raphael's mannerliness and

affability, see Rubin, Giorgio
Vasari, 37-77.
51
See Rubin, Giorgio Vasari, 30, 80-81,397-400. It is worth noting

that no fewer than ten letters
from Michelangelo toVasari are reproduced inVasari's autobiography.
52
The minute, comprehensively documented account ofMichelangelo's
funeral and the means by
which he was commemorated by the Accademia del Disegno occupies
a large part of the 1568 text of
the Vita. See also J. Giunti, The Divine Michelangelo:The FlorentineAcademy's
Homage on His Death in 1564,
trans. and ed. RudolfWittkower and MargotWittkower (London:
Phaidon, 1964). OnVasari's role in
the inauguration of the Florentine Accademia del Disegno, see
Karen-edis Barzman, The FlorentineAcademy and the Early Modeni State: The Discipline of Disegno (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000),
23-33, esp. 27-32. See
53
also Rubin, Giorgio Vasari, 192,212-14,399.
0n lechery as a sanguine fault see, for example,Tolosani, who notes

that the sanguine person "e
inclinato al vizio di lussuria" 'in La Sfera da F Leonardo, ed. Galletti,
164; see also Nicholas of Cusa, who
makes the same observation in De concordantia catholica, cited and
translated in Klibansky, Panofsky, and
Saxd, Saturn and Melancholy, 119-20.
669
his faults
Michelangelo's virtues were thus magnified by juxtaposition with vice,
excess.
with
minimized by juxtaposition
but
Vasari represents Buonarroti as possessing all the advantages of melancholia,
it
because
applauded
is
solitude
for
preference
none of its defects. Michelangelo's
quasideep,
the
him
to
ascribed
Vasari
and
work,
enabled him to focus on his
monachal piety which we have encountered in the case of Correggio, Pontormo,
repudiate
and other melancholics (VI5:109, 112). Conversely,Vasari was at pains to
avarice,
of
failing
melancholic
traditional
the
the idea that Michelangelo exhibited
4:54,
(V,
Correggio
at
leveled
matter-of-factly
an accusation of which he had
idea
the
disallowed
He
misanthropy.
Michelangelo's
6:113-14).Vasari also denied
of
list
substantial
a
produced
and
odd,
or
solitary
that his subject was excessively
6:109).
(V,
point
the
reinforce
to
friends
Michelangelo's distinguished
the
Most interesting of all isVasari's caginess in associating Michelangelo with
the
and
thatfantasia
feeling
biographer's
artist.The
special "gifts" of the melancholic
in
implicit
is
hand
of
out
get
could
capriccioso
and
associated qualities of the bizzarro
Aspertini.
Amico
and
Pontormo
of
those
in
explicit
and
the vita of Piero di Cosimo,
caution in
Vasari obviously felt that such a volatile "talent" should be treated with
of a work
account
his
In
Disegno.
del
Accademia
the case of the president of the
Sistine
the
inventions,
capricious
of
abundance
an
by Michelangelo that contains
Buonarroti
that
stated
He
fromfantasia.
subject
his
LastJudgment,Vasari distanced
difficulties
had elected to concentrate on the grand manner, on nudes, and on the
Painters
trifles.
and
refinements,
delicate
(fantasie),
of disegno, leaving aside fantasies
compensate
to
tried
hand,
other
the
on
disegno,"
in
who were "not so well grounded
and novel
"with variety of tints and shadings of color, and with bizarre, varied,
6:69).
"(14
inventions (invenzioni)
With these remarks in mind, let us refer back toVasari's judgments on the work
glib and
of acknowledged melancholics.Vasari implied that Sogliani's paintings were
skill
Correggio's
that
indicated
clearly
he
token
same
vapid (V,4:446), and by the
the
in
weaknesses
his
for
compensate
not
did
effects
in creating lifelike coloristic
sets
who
artist
of
kind
the
of
examples
prime
are
exercise of disegno (144:51).These
guilty of
too much store by "variety of tints and shadings of color." If they were
such
bent,
fantastical
of
were
melancholics
way,
superficiality, perhaps, in another
caprices
that
considered
evidently
Cosimo:Vasari
di
as Morto da Feltre and Piero
grand
and fantasies, while very well in their place, should really be functions of the
or
more
a
as
construed
traditionally
was
Fantasia
manner, not ends in themselves.
mind
the
on
impression
an
left
percept
a
whereby
less involuntary mental faculty,
the
like a signet ring. By contrast, disegno and invenzione were concerned with
to
relevant
more
were
such,
as
and,
images
of
understanding and organization
54
Michelangelo.
deliberation,
Vasari's paragon of formidable
passim, and esp.
0n the perceived nature offantasia, see Kemp, "From 'mimesis' to 'fantasia,"'
ofArt (Princeton: Princeton UniLanguage
the
and
Michelangelo
Summers,
David
also
and
361, 366-67,
Naturalism and the Rise of Aesversity Press, 1981), 103-33, and idem, ThejJudgment of Sense: Renaissance
54
see Karen-edis Barzman,

thetics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 296-98. On disegno,
670
Discussion of the views on artists' melancholy expressed in the Vite is usefully

offset by a brief survey of other opinions on the matter from the literature of
the
arts in the later sixteenth century. Such comparison clearly reveals that Vasari's
observations on melancholy, though unusually well developed, was not exceptional. His cautious treatment of melancholia and his ambivalent attitude
to its
"symptoms" is echoed elsewhere, suggesting that he was not culturally conditioned
to think carefully about melancholy solely by virtue of his proximity to Michelangelo, the Medici, and the legacy of their Saturnian "high priest," Ficino.At the
same
time, a survey of north Italian texts also discloses that, overall,Vasari was harsher
and
more judgmental in his attitude to melancholics than colleagues in the settentrione.
The problem of melancholy per se is not given as much coverage in tracts by
north Italians as inVasari's magnum opus.This is largely because no other writer
on
the arts used the idiom of multiple biographies.While there is an epideictic or
biographical component in texts by Lodovico Dolce, Cristoforo Sorte, and Giovan
Battista Armenini, this device is in no case central to the authors' discursive
purpose. The usefulness of these other texts in relation to Vasari's is that they provide
generalizations that set his specific "diagnoses" of individual painters in countenance. These authors also add a dimension to the problem that is conspicuously
absent fromVasari's work. Melancholy is treated in their discourses not only as
an
outr6 character type or a regrettable pathological consequence of the painter's
modus operandi, but also as a force that legitimately shapes individual taste.
Vasari's more severe strictures upon melancholics who gave way to their eccentricities are not widely echoed among contemporary and later writings on the
arts.
The only commentator outside Florence to be so censorious was the Faentine
painter Giovan Battista Armenini. In his De veri precetti della pittura, published
in
Ravenna in 1586, Armenini indulged in several diatribes on the subject. The
most
substantial of these, which occurs in book 1, chapter 6, is directed against obsessive
painters, who "from being lively began to exhibit melancholy, poor health
and
judgment," becoming "capricious and bizarre" because of the way that melancholic
furor (furore) vitiated their understanding. 5 5 The idea recurs in book 3, chapter
15;
here Armenini complains that artists too easily believe that they cannot excel unless
their work possesses "a whimsical and capricious humor" that derives from "many
oddities of n-ind" (bizarie di cervello). "The worst of it," he concludes, "is that
many
foolish members of the profession nurture this kind of error with an affected
and
melancholic freakishness" (una affetata e malinconica bizarria).56
"Perception, Knowledge, and the Theory of Disegno in Sixteenth-Century

Florence," in From Studio to
Studiolo, ed.
Larry J. Feinberg, exhibit catalog for Allen Memorial Art Museum,

Oberlin College
(Seatde: distributed by University ofWashington Press, 1991), 37-48.
55
Giovan Battista Armenini, De veri precetti della pittura, ed. Marina Gorreri
(Turin: Einaudi, 1988),
65: "perci6 di alegri si son dimnostrati malenconici, di sani infernia e
di savii, che erano divenire capricciosi e bizarie; conciosiache con quanto furore si vuole affaticare l'ingegno,
quello tanto pHi si ritarda."
56
Armenini, De veri precetti, 233.
Britton / Michelangelo, Vasari, & Artists' Melancholy
671
to indicate
Armenini's biting condemnation of melancholic behavior seems
artists
Michelangelo,
to
relation
in
suggested
effectively
clearly that, as Don Riggs
that
fact
the
is
inference
this
against
slightly
cultivated an air of melancholy.Telling
a
word
for
word
reproduces
bizarria"
malinconica
e
Armenini's phrase "affetata
dedicatory
the
in
appears
This
Domenichi.
similar condemnation by Lodovico
to Salviati.
letter that introduces his translation of Alberti's De pictura, addressed
and
affected
that
see
not
does
"one
Salviati
in
that
Domenichi stated approvingly
to
order
in
cultivate,
tiresomely
peers
your
of
many
melancholic freakishness which
that
57
suspect
to
begin
might
we
mind,
in
appear singular?" With this correlation
bizarre" (capricciosi
Armenini's claim that obsessive painters become "capricious and
(Uccello's
biographies
Vasari's
of
more
or
one
in
e bizarie) is a digest of comments
must be
probability
strong
The
mind).
to
and Pontormo's spring immediately
from
culled
wisdom,
received
reproducing
was
acknowledged, then, that Armenini
own
his
within
mores
current
on
based
than
rather
Florentine art-related texts
shall
I
and
seriously,
more
taken
be
should
claim
milieu. Domenichi's original
return to it later.
in strong
The vilification of the melancholic in Armenini's De veri precetti stands
Of
marches.
the
and
inVenice
working
theorists
art
by
contrast to remarks made
reflecvarious
author's
the
for
Pittura,
di
Dialogo
Pino's
particular interest is Paolo
Pino's
tions on melancholia reveal a strikingly evenhanded view of the complexion.
to
melancholy
the
mitigate
could
painters
how
on
dialogue did contain advice
Pino
yet
prone;
them
made
work
sedentary
demanding,
which their intellectually
One of his two
clearly did not regard melancholia as an unequivocally bad thing.
spokesprincipal
Pino's
as
dialogue
the
throughout
acts
interlocutors, Fabio, who
58
that he
pleasure
expresses
He
melancholic.
extremely
be
man, declares himself to
with
resonates
this
and
party,
drinking
a
attend
to
are
and his young friend Lauro
minto
order
in
work
their
from
relief
find
should
his own later claim that painters
off his melanimize the ill effects of melancholy.Yet Fabio does not, in fact, shake
at Lauro's
usually
wit,
His
dialogue.
whole
the
cholic characteristics throughout
of his tacout
him
goad
to
has
repeatedly
friend
his
and
expense, remains mordant,
conversation.
the
out
spin
iturnity in order to
specifically
Although Lauro, with his name of Apollonian associations, is not
and
venereal
his
and
humor
good
irrepressible
his
designated as a sanguine,
59
especially striking
voluptuary proclivities clearly reveal him to be such. What is
a Florentine
Fabio
made
Pino
that
is
characters
two
the
about this contrast between
Pino
words,
other
In
Venetian.
a
Lauro
and
Michelangelo?)
(was he thinking of
Gabriel Giolito de
s7 La pittura di Leonbattista Alberti, ed. and trans. Lodovico Domenichi (Vrenice:
laquale molti
bizzarria,
maninconica
&
affettata
quella
uoi
in
ueggendo
si
"non
Ferrari, 1547), fol. 3v:
see also
letter
this
On
singolari."
mostrarsi
per
mendicare,
pari uostri tanto fastidiosamente sogliono
Rubin, Giorgio Vasari, 28.
l'invito [to the
58
Paolo Pino, Dialogo di Pittura, in Trattati, ed. Barocchi, 1:97: "Fabio: Accetto
piu che malensall
tu
come
son,
perch'io
allegre,
cose
veder
a
grande
favor
un
sera
mni
drinking party], e
colico."'
59
0n the sanguine tendency to lussuria, see n. 53 above.
672
effectively stereotyped the representatives of the two cultures in humoral

terms,
identifying a dichotomy thatVasari was in some measure also to endorse in
the
Vite.60 Pino's dialogue is managed with a light touch, and his gentle lampooning
of
both men must inhibit too earnest an exegesis of their characterizations. Unlike
the
relentlessly moralisticVasari, Pino certainly does not seem to have wished to depreciate either of his speakers. Since the melancholic Florentine, Fabio, is given
the
bulk of the important matter in the dialogue, it can hardly be thought that
Pino
might, likeVasari, have been partial to his own countrymen.Yet Lauro, the volatile
Venetian, is not presented as an oversexed simpleton: he participates intelligently
in
the debate. 6 1 If anything, then, the differentiation of temperamental types
among
Pino's dramatis personae hints that variety in the visual arts is not only inevitable
but desirable. The idea that the different humors or complexions de facto
shape
taste and artistic endeavor is implied elsewhere in Pino's text. In relation to
what
we would call style, Pino offered a view of humoral diversity that is benignly
openminded, noting simply that "human opinion varies, complexions are diverse,"
and
thus "things are not equally pleasing to everyone." 6 2
Dispassionate acknowledgment that melancholy enjoys equal status with
the
other complexions, at least in the field of taste, is present also in Lodovico Dolce's
Aretino dialogue of 1557 and in the Osservazioni nella Pitturaof 1580 by theVeronese
painter and engineer Cristoforo Sorte, both published inVenice. Dolce's two
interlocutors, like Pino's, are clearly characterized as melancholic and sanguine, 6 3
and
his text contains a similar statement on the existence of varied tendencies among
painters. Because human complexions and humors are diverse, he says, some
painters are graceful (piacevole), others terrible (terribili), some "wanderingly"
lovely
(vaghi), and others full of grandeur and majesty.There is no suggestion that
any of
these "diverse styles" (diverse maniere) is inherently superior to the others. 6 4
The
corresponding passage in Sorte's Osservazioni resembles Dolce's very closely.
The
chief difference is that Sorte does not merely speak of"pittori diversi,"
as Dolce
does, but more specifically of quasi-humoral divergences between the
kinds of
images that different artists produce. Painters, says Sorte, have the freedom to
pro60On the characterization of Fabio and Lauro, cf Mary Pardo, Paolo
Pino's "Dialogo di Pittura":A
Translation with Commentary (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pittsburgh,
1984), 122. On traces of
Vasari's natonalistic bias, see Rubin, Giorgio Vasari, 33.
61See Pardo, Paolo Pino' "Dialogo," 121; on Pino's neutral stance
towardsVenetian and central Italian art, see ibid., 34-35.
62Pino, in Tratatti, ed. Barocchi, 1:132: "Sono varii li giudicii umani,
diverse le complessioni,
abbiamo medesmamente l'uno dall'altro estratto l'intelletto nel gusto,
la qual differenzia causa che non
a tutti aggradano equalnente le cose."
63
The loquacious Aretino is manifestly sanguine, his grouchy companion
Fabrini melancholic.
64
"le complessioni degli uomini e gli umori sono diversi, cosi ne
nascono diverse maniere e ciascuno segue quella a cui e inchinato naturahlente. Di qui ne nacquero
pittori diversi: alcuni piacevoli,
altri terribili, altri vaghi et altri ripieni di grandezza e di maesta"; Mark
W Roskill, Dolce's "Aretino" and
Venetian Art Theory of the Cinquecento (NewYork: NewYork University
Press, 1968), 158. I am grateful
to Caroline Elam for drawing my attention to this passage, and suggesting
to me that Dolce's four examples of different"maniere" (piacevoli, terribili, vaghi, and ripieni digrandezza
e di maestd) might have specific
humoral connotations.
673
duce different inventions and styles (stile). Thus, "in images by some painters one
sees melancholy, in some modesty, and in others a certain vivacity of spirit accompanied by a gracious and perfect imitation." 6 5
The notion of "diverse maniere" is manifest also in a tract by a Milanese artist.
This is the extraordinary Idea del Tempio della Pitturaby Giovan Paolo Lomazzo, first
published in 1590. Lomazzo describes seven types of painter, each governed by one
of the seven planets. Here again there are overtones of complexion and the humors:
the Saturnian type, for example, is described as qualitatively cold and dry, in line
with the traditional diagnosis of melancholia. Significantly enough, Lomazzo chose
Michelangelo as the painter most representative of the Saturnian, and ascribed ter66
ribilita to the imagery produced by this type. UnlikeVasari, Lomazzo clearly saw
no need to shield any artist from association with melancholy. He did not sit in
judgment of Saturnians: for him, the seven planetary/complexional types generated
painterly paradigms of equal excellence. 6 7
The relationship between humoral theory and conceptions of style and taste in
68
late-sixteenth-century Italy would certainly repay more detailed investigation.
For present purposes, such questions of reception would lead us too far from the
main focus of the present study, which is the role of melancholy as a perceived function of artists' behavior and creativity. In conclusion, then, what summary remarks
can be ventured on this subject, on the basis of material considered in this article?
The clich&of"artist's melancholy" has long basked in a glow of late Romantic
mystification, and it continues to generate too many scholarly arguments that are
nebulous and highfalutin. As I have tried to show, the topic is brought usefully
down to earth by close attention to the writings of Vasari and his contemporaries
in the Italian peninsula.Two basic observations, which fuinction reciprocally, can be
drawn from this body of material. First, there was clearly a widespread belief during
the cinquecento that the painter's profession made its practitioners melancholic, by
virtue either of the sedentary character of their work or the intellectual exertion it
entailed, or both. In his brief reference to the problem, Romano Alberti was perhaps articulating a generally held view when he said that the effort of fixing images
65Cristoforo Sorte, Osservazioni nella pittura, in Trattati, ed. Barocchi, 1:299: "quella ... liberta
hanno i pittori, che si suole concedere per ordinario ai poeti, e come questi nelle invenzioni e nello stile
differenti l'uno da l'altro si conoscano, cosi a quelli parimente aviene. E di qui e che le imagini o figure
che fanno si dicono essere loro figliuoli, percioche ritengono ordinariamente della loro Idea; e perci6
nelle imagini di alcuni pittori si vede la melanconia, in alcuni altri la modestia, et in altri una certa vivacitA di spiriti accompagnato da una graziosa e perfetta imitazione, com'io ho osservato in M. Giacomo
Tentoreto ...P
66Giovan Paolo Lomazzo, Idea del Temipio della Pittura,facsimile of the 1590 Paolo Gottardo Ponto
edition (Hildesheim: Olms, 1965), 39-60.
67
The idea of the seven governatori is established in chap. 9 of Lomazzo, Idea del Tempio, 39-43: It
should be noted that the four humors are not specifically inscribed into this sevenfold scheme; pace
Martin Kemp,"'Equal excellences': Lomazzo and the Explanation of Individual Style in theVisual Arts,"
Renaissance Studies 1 (1987): 21. Nevertheless, the fact that there is the usual correspondence between
Saturn and the cold/dry qualitative condition strongly suggests a connection with the traditional conception of the melancholic.
681 am grateful to Karen-edis Barzman for corresponding with me on this matter, spring 2002.
674
orfantasmiin the mind was what made painters so prone to melancholy. Conversely,
artists who were actually born melancholic, as opposed to being made so by their
craft, were seen to possess an enhanced faculty offantasia. In other words, their
minds were thought naturally to incline, sometimes unhealthily, to the imaginative
synthesis of different forms observed in the natural world. By extension, such artists
were felt to be especially well suited to producing the kind of images known in the
cinquecento as grottesche or bizzarre.
Our understanding of what can broadly be termed sixteenth-century art theory
is enriched by this last realization. What it clearly indicates is that melancholy was
not merely seen as providing the overall temperamental aegis under which all painters worked, but was intimately related to a particular form of artistic endeavor. This
is a point of considerable significance. Grottesche enjoyed a special status in the
cinquecento, since the surviving Roman specimens in the Golden House of Nero
and similar sites were the only antique paintings available to a society hungry for
traces of the art of the ancients. Moreover, this kind of richly decorative, fantastical
imagery played a key role in defining the lavish and ornamental grand manner
favored in courtly art of the mid-sixteenth century, now usually associated, for
better or worse, with Mannerism.Thus, in assessing the "capricious inventions" that
made the decorative schemes of such artists as Salviati successful and sought-after,
we ought to reckon with contemporary conceptions of melancholia.
A further important point emerges from the views on melancholy expressed by
cinquecento writers on the visual arts. Taken in toto, they render problematic the
Wittkowers' assertion that Italian painters of the period cultivated an artificial air of
melancholy. While the opinions of Lodovico Domenichi (and Armenini's echo)
might be adduced in support of this claim, there is no other substantial testimony
from within the literature of the arts that endorses this twentieth-century platitude.
The most damning evidence against the idea that there was a fad for melancholic
affectation is thatVasari never mentions such a phenomenon in the whole course of
the Vite.We need scarcely doubt thatVasari would have expressed a negative response
to such posturing had it been a cultural force of any significance. He was, after all,
uncompromising in his treatment of those artists whose behavior he felt to be in any
way lax or contemptible, and he was so suspicious of genuine melancholia that we
might reasonably expect him to be brutally scornful of its affectation.
If we ignore the divergences between Domenichi's claim and Vasari's comments, and focus on their common ground, then it is possible to make one more
assertion about the role of "artist's melancholy" in sixteenth-century Italy. Florence
seems to have been a cultural center that, having nurtured self-proclaimed melancholics such as Michelangelo, developed an aversion to manifestations of the temperament. Once this aversion arose, it may even be that the term "malinconico"
was used as a catchall condemnation of any social faux pas or creative limitation on
the part of an artist. On the other hand, Domenichi's comment on painters"'affettata & maninconica bizzarria" may not be a generalization, as it superficially
appears, but a veiled attack on specific individuals. If so, then Michelangelo and
Britton / Michelangelo, Vasari, &Artists' Melancholy 675
Pontormo, from whom we have written evidence of self-pitying rumination on

melancholy and related mental health problems, must be reckoned prime candidates. Since Domenichi's remark is part of a dedicatory letter to Salviati, the likelihood that he was aiming a barb at Pontormo, Salviati's chief rival for ducal
69
comnlissions, should be given serious consideration. Be that as it may, it seems
clear that the phenomenon of melancholy was a moot point around which different
camps polarized in cinquecento Florence.
Since Michelangelo is identified as a pivotal figure in this study, it seems appropriate to end with him. To do so is hardly to strike a trivial note, given his gargantuan status in the history of cinquecento art. Can anything substantial be added to
the debate about his temperament? Some aspects of the data considered here are
suggestive in different degrees. First, Lomazzo clearly believed Michelangelo to
have been melancholic, and he firmly associated the terribilitafor which Buonarroti
was notorious with the influence of Saturn rather than Mars (pace Riggs). Second,
as parenthetically suggested, Paolo Pino may have been quietly parodying Michelangelo's melancholic persona in the cantankerous fictional character Fabio. Finally,
Vasari's strenuous efforts to deny that Michelangelo had any of the antisocial traits
associated with melancholy perversely strengthen the sense that the artist really was
thought to suffer from these limitations.
Of course, the fact that others may have thought of Michelangelo as saturnine
proves nothing except that a particular image of the artist was well disseminated,
perhaps through Buonarroti's own assiduous efforts.The issue of whether he really
believed himself melancholic will, no doubt, continue to exercise scholars. My own
opinion is that Michelangelo's wry claim of finding his happiness in melancholy ("la
mia allegrezz' e la maninconia") suggests the gloomy relish born of genuine experience of depression instead of the artful posturing born of cynical self-promotion. 70 Besides, as consistently argued in this article, the overall tenor of recorded
attitudes towards melancholy in the cinquecento literature of the arts is negative or
neutral, with positive views being ouly cautiously advanced. The lack of unequivocal praise tells against the idea that any artist would have seen melancholia as a selfaggrandizing tool. At best, like Raphael in his dealings with the nagging Ferrarese
charge d'affaires, Michelangelo may have hoped that a plea of melancholy would
excuse his faults, not that it would exalt his reputation.
69
This possibility is discussed in David Franklin, Paintingin Renaissance Florence 1500-1550 (New
Haven:Yale University Press, 2001), 225. See also Melinda Schlitt, "'Lavoando per pratica': Study, Labor
and Facility inVasari's Life of Salviati' in Francesco Salviati et la bella maniera:Actes des colloques de Rome et
Paris, 1998, ed. Catherine Monbeig Goguel, Philippe Costamagna, and Michel Hochmann (Paris: De
Boccard, 2001), 103.
70
Jarnes Saslow, ed., The Poetry of Michelangelo:An Annotated Translation (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1991), 451.
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
TITLE: Mio malinchonico, o vero ... mio pazzo: Michelangelo,

Vasari, and the Problem of Artists Melancholy in
Sixteenth-Century Italy
SOURCE: Sixteenth Cent J 34 no3 Fall 2003
WN: 0328800678002
The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and it
is reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article in
violation of the copyright is prohibited. To contact the publisher:
http://www2.truman.edu/escj/
Copyright 1982-2003 The H.W. Wilson Company.
All rights reserved.

Mio Malinchonico, o Vero... Mio Pazzo - Michelangelo, Vasari, and The Problem of Artists' Melancholy in 16. Century Italy

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Sixteenth CenturyJournal

"Mio malinchonico, o vero ... mio pazzo":

Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXXIV/3 (2003)

information on how this problematic temperament was perceived in the period.

Britton / Michelangelo, Vasari, &Artists' Melancholy

more than a smoke screen meant to dignify Michelangelo's notoriously misan8

Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXXIV/3 (2003)

ities of their imagery.YetVasari also acknowledged that in some cases melancholia

Britton / Michelangelo, Vasari, &Artists' Melancholy

See Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy, 277-78ff.

Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXXIV/3 (2003)

See Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy, 15-41.

Britton / Michelangelo, Vasari, &Artists' Melancholy

Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXXIV/3 (2003)

Quoted in Noel Brann, "Is Acedia Melancholy? A Re-examination of This Question

Britton / Michelangelo, Vasari, &Artists'Melancholy

siecles): Savoirs et usages sociaux,

Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXXIV/3 (2003)

Michelangelo in Florence to Sebastiano del Piombo in Rome, May

Britton / Michelangelo, Vasari, &Artists' Melancholy

FineArt (NewYork: Dover, 1951),125.

Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXXIV/3 (2003)

and better complexion, in this context, certainly means rather more

SeeVasari's very similar reflections on sculpture in the Proemnio di

Britton / Michelangelo, Vasari, &Artists' Melancholy 665

Sixteenth Centuryjournal XXXIV/3 (2003)

See Rubin, Giorgio Vasari, 1-2,248-49,255.

Britton / Michelangelo, Vasari, &Artists' Melancholy

Fermor, Piero di Cosimno, 30.

fire and air."

Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXXIV/3 (2003)

a notable exception. Another, of course, even more striking, is

For ruminations on Michelangelo's grotesque imagery, see Paul

OnVasari's carefully built up account of Raphael's mannerliness and

See Rubin, Giorgio Vasari, 30, 80-81,397-400. It is worth noting

also Rubin, Giorgio Vasari, 192,212-14,399.

0n lechery as a sanguine fault see, for example,Tolosani, who notes

Britton / Michelangelo, Vasari, &Artists' Melancholy

see Karen-edis Barzman,

Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXXIV/3 (2003)

Discussion of the views on artists' melancholy expressed in the Vite is usefully

"Perception, Knowledge, and the Theory of Disegno in Sixteenth-Century

Larry J. Feinberg, exhibit catalog for Allen Memorial Art Museum,

Britton / Michelangelo, Vasari, & Artists' Melancholy

Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXXIV/3 (2003)

effectively stereotyped the representatives of the two cultures in humoral

Britton / Michelangelo, Vasari, &Artists' Melancholy

Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXXIV/3 (2003)

Britton / Michelangelo, Vasari, &Artists' Melancholy 675

Pontormo, from whom we have written evidence of self-pitying rumination on

TITLE: Mio malinchonico, o vero ... mio pazzo: Michelangelo,

Copyright 1982-2003 The H.W. Wilson Company.

All rights reserved.

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