DIRESTA-DISSERTATION-2015

417 Pages·2015·29.61 MB·English

by  Jason Di Resta

GIOVANNI ANTONIO DA PORDENONE:
ARTISTIC AMBITION AND THE CHALLENGE OF THE LOCAL

By

Jason Di Resta

A dissertation submitted to the Johns Hopkins University in conformity with
the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Baltimore, Maryland
May 2015

© 2015 Jason Di Resta
All Rights Reserved
Abstract

This dissertation challenges how we understand the relationship between style and
location in the case of the traveling painter Giovanni Antonio da Pordenone (ca. 1484–
1539). In moving throughout northern Italy at the start of the Reformation era, this artist’s
style changed continuously and in ways that draw attention to how it departed from local
artistic activity. Such stylistic volatility foregrounds the shortcomings of regionally-based
taxonomies of style, making urgent the question of how to address the role of artistic
migration in processes of individual and communal identity formation. Against a tradition
of provincializing accounts that perpetuate old hierarchies of priority, this dissertation
argues that Pordenone’s religious paintings manifest critically self-aware, trans-regional
adaptations of the maniera moderna that, when taken together, constituted a network by
which the painter laid claim to recognition while increasing the interconnectedness of
diverse artistic communities. The network of paintings Pordenone constructed stretched
from the Slovenian border to the Ligurian coast, and thus challenges art historical
expectations about the autochthonous link between style and geography.
Pordenone’s relentless artistic experimentation calls attention to and
transforms Cinquecento fictions of artistic self-representation, but it also can be read
as an attempt to respond to the imperatives of religious reform. Such experimentation, I
contend, exemplifies a consistent interest in testing the referential and affective potential
of art to stimulate piety and mediate divine agency. The first chapter considers
Pordenone’s changing approach to altarpiece painting in his native city, arguing that the
paintings he created for the church of San Marco are independent expressions of a mode
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of visualizing sacred subjects that had been conceived in opposition to the works of
Giorgione and Titian. By drawing analogies to examples of local dialect literature, I
demonstrate how Pordenone’s works deliberately “contaminate” the aesthetic ideals of
his Venetian peers to assert his own distinctiveness and invite reflection on the reliability
and efficacy of different conventions of altarpiece painting. The second chapter
investigates how the artist compounded gruesome depictions of violence with a
startlingly-invasive form of projective illusionism to solicit meditation on the
representability of Christ’s Passion in the murals he painted for Cremona cathedral. The
third chapter concentrates on the central cupola Pordenone frescoed for the church of
Santa Maria di Campagna in Piacenza. Here I argue that the various appropriations and
oblique references that the paintings make to the works by Pordenone’s Roman and
Emilian contemporaries suggest a desire to stand out by means of a visual rhetoric of
abundance. Such abundance is used to accentuate the dissimulative nature of sacred truth.
The final chapter discusses how the painter’s nomadic practice led to his marginalization
in later sixteenth century art-theoretical and art-historical writing.

Advisor: Professor Stephen J. Campbell

Second Reader: Professor Mitchell B. Merback

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Acknowledgments

Debts of gratitude are always a pleasure to pay, but some may never be fully
resolved. Such a debt is owed to my advisor, Stephen J. Campbell, for whom I will
always be minting new words of applause. With unfailing patience he guided me through
every permutation of this project, challenging me in ways that I had never envisioned but
always encouraging me to pursue my own lines of inquiry. Without his tutelage, I would
never have sown the furrowed fields of Mars with dragon’s teeth. I also wish to express
my gratitude to Mitchell Merback for generously taking on the role of second reader.
This dissertation has benefited greatly from his careful scrutiny and pointed criticism and
I have learned much from heeding his counsel. Herbert Kessler also deserves special
thanks. He offered invaluable advice during the project’s earliest stages and the strength
of many of the arguments put forth in these pages draws on his suggestions. I am equally
indebted to Christopher Nygren for being there at every turn, detour, and blockade I
encountered over the years of writing. His many insights and friendship have been
instrumental in seeing this project evolve into its current state.
In the course of preparing this thesis I was aided in innumerable ways by a
number of other teachers and mentors. I must thank Elizabeth Cropper and the deans of
CASVA, David Alan Brown, Michael Koortbojian, Michael Fried, Alessandro Nova,
Daniela Bohde, Hans Aurenhammer, Jeffrey Hamburger, Julian Gardner, Stuart and
Estelle Lingo, Jenny Purtle, Cecilia Frosinini, and the members of my defense committee.
The lessons imparted from these scholars are deeply embedded in this project, probably
more so than I am aware. I must also single out the many friends and colleagues that have
read and commented on parts of my work and/or provided assistance with translations,
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including Denis Robichaud, Ruth Noyes, Laura Fenelli, Elisa Brilli, Meredith Raucher,
Shana O’Connell, Anna Seastrand, and Dana Byrd.
In addition to the individuals who have made this project possible, I am indebted
to numerous institutions. I could not have completed the dissertation without the
assistance of the History of Art Department at Johns Hopkins and the financial support
provided by a Cazel Fellowship, a Carrie M. Kurrelmeyer Fellowship, a Sadie and Louis
Roth Fellowship, two summer travel fellowships awarded by the Charles S. Singleton
Center, the Katzenellenbogen Memorial Prize, and a Dean’s Teaching Fellowship. The
Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts supported my research and writing with a
Samuel H. Kress Pre-Doctoral Fellowship, which I spent in residence at the
Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, Italy, and at the National Gallery of Art in
Washington, DC. These institutions provided me with a period of sustained research and
writing and the opportunity to refine my ideas within challenging intellectual
environments. I would like to thank both institutions for their generous support of my
scholarship.
This project also benefited from the support of numerous libraries and librarians
but would like to extend my sincerest thanks to Don Juedes of the Milton S. Eisenhower
Library and the staff at the Kunsthistorisches Institut and at Harvard’s Villa I Tatti in
Florence. I am especially grateful for the kindness and enthusiasm I encountered among
the staff of the Biblioteca Statale di Cremona.
For their constant support and friendship I would like to thank Hana Gründler,
Caroline Domenghino, Jennifer Sliwka, Jannette Vusich, Joyce Tsai, Kate Markoski,
Hilary Hunt Letwin, Ittai Weinryb, Jamie Rosenow, Viveca A. Pattison, Arvi Wattel,
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Lael Ensor, Ann Woodword, Matt Gilman, Christopher Bassett, Ken Pendergast, Brie
Hayes, Cleo Hayes-Price, my brothers Joseph, Daniel, Nathaniel, and Paul, and my sister
Katherine.
The gratitude I have for my parents and grandparents is incalculable. Their
abiding faith in my abilities kept me rowing the boat even when I could not see the shore.
This dissertation is dedicated to them.

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Table of Contents

Abstract ii

Acknowledgements iv

Table of Contents vii

List of Illustrations ix

Introduction 1

Chapter One. Contaminate Painting in the Friuli 25
Terra(in)ferma 27
Contaminatio 32
Duplication as figura 55
Engineering the Divine Gaze: Recognition and Requisition 60
Local Lessons: Petrus Haedus on the Subservience of Man 67
“Foreign” Invasion: a High Altarpiece for San Marco 74
Against Mid-Century Norms 90

Chapter Two. Violent Spaces and Spatial Violence at
Cremona Cathedral 95
The Place of Production and the Production of Place 98
A Problem of Language 107
Beyond Boundaries: Activating Place 112
Christ Unmade 118
Fragmentation and Collusion 128
“An object lesson in spiritual blindness” 133
Lux and Lamentation 137
A Question of Disposition 141
Artistic Alterity 148

Chapter Three. Glory in Abundance: the Cupola Grande
at Santa Maria di Campagna 150
Political Parochialism 152
Furnishing the Place of Miracles 157
Translatio studii 167
Rethinking the Illusion of Continuity 172
Engineered Ambivalence 179
A Hermeneutics of Divination 183
Pictorial copia: Artistic Ambition and the Rhetoric
of Abundance 195
Augustine’s Example 210
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Conclusion 215

Bibliography 239

Illustrations 282

Vita 395

*All translations are my own unless otherwise noted.

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ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1. Map of Pordenone's activity in the Friuli and Eastern Veneto

Figure 2. Map of Pordenone's activity in northern Italy

Figure 3. Map of Pordenone's activity in Italy

Figure 4. Pordenone, Vault, Intrados, Walls (c. 1508), fresco, Vacile, San Lorenzo, Choir

Figure 5. Pordenone, Vault (c. 1508), fresco, Vacile, San Lorenzo, Choir

Figure 6. Pordenone, Cupola with God the Father and Angels (1520), fresco, Treviso,
Duomo, Malchiostro Chapel (destroyed)

Figure 7. Malchiostro Chapel (1519-1520), Treviso, Duomo

Figure 8. Titian, Annunciation (1519-1520), oil on canvas, Treviso, Duomo, Malchiostro
Chapel

Figure 9. Pordenone, Adoration of the Shepherds (1520), fresco, Treviso, Duomo,
Malchiostro Chapel

Figure 10. Pordenone, Madonna della Misericordia (1515-1516), oil on canvas,
Pordenone, Duomo di San Marco

Figure 11. Detail of sewage trails. Pordenone, Madonna della Misericordia (1515-1516)

Figure 12. Detail of the city of Pordenone’s Hapsburgian coat of arms. Pordenone,
Madonna della Misericordia (1515-1516)

Figure 13. Detail of the scorched field. Pordenone, Madonna della Misericordia (1515-
1516)

Figure 14. Detail of head of Saint Christopher. Pordenone, Madonna della Misericordia
(1515-1516)

Figure 15. Detail of Saint Joseph holding the Christ Child. Pordenone, Madonna della
Misericordia (1515-1516)

Figure 16. Cargnellutto and family. Pordenone, Madonna della Misericordia (1515-16)

Figure 17. Detail of Shepherds. Pordenone, Madonna della Misericordia (1515-1516)

Figure 18. Jörg Kölderer, La terra di Pordenone imperiale (ca. 1509), manuscript
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Figure 19. Paolo Giovio, Bartolomeo d’Alviano in Elogia virorum bellica virtute
illustrium (Basil: Pietro Perna, 1575)

Figure 20. Duomo di San Marco, Pordenone. Ground plan. Current location of the
Madonna della Misericordia is denoted by the number three.

Figure 21. Giovanni Battista Bettini da Portogruaro, Altare di San Giuseppe o della
Misericordia (1771), marble frame, Pordenone, Duomo di San Marco

Figure 22. Dario Cerdonis da Pordenone, Vergine del Patrocino with Saints John the
Baptist and Bernardino, 15th century, Bassano, Museo Civico

Figure 23. Pordenone, Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints Sebastian, Rupert,
Leonard and Roch (ca. 1514), oil on canvas, Vallenoncello, Chiesa di Santi
Ruperto e Leonardo

Figure 24. Pordenone, Virgin and Child Enthroned with Sts Peter, Prosdocimus,
Barbara, Catherine (1511), oil on panel, Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia

Figure 25. Pordenone, Saint Roch with Saints Jerome and Sebastian (ca. 1510-1511), oil
on panel, Venice, Chiesa di Santa Maria della Salute

Figure 26. Map of the approximate confines of the Diocese of Concordia in the early
sixteenth century

Figure 27. Map showing the geographical range of Pordenone's activity before 1515

Figure 28. Armorial bearings of the city of Pordenone, cornice of the organ, Pordenone,
Duomo di San Marco

Figure 29. Albrecht Dürer, Emperor Maximilian I (1519), oil on panel, Vienna,
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gemäldegalerie

Figure 30. Detail of Habsburg blazon. Albrecht Dürer, Emperor Maximilian I (1519)

Figure 31. Titian, Concert champêtre (ca. 1510-1511), oil on canvas, Paris, Musée du
Louvre

Figure 32. Giorgione (and Titian), Sleeping Venus (ca. 1510), oil on canvas, Dresden,
Gemäldegalerie

Figure 33. Giorgione, Tempesta (ca. 1505), oil on canvas, Venice, Gallerie
dell'Accademia

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