The Farnese Hours

bibliography
Leaves from the Farnese Hours

The Following is a Personal Work of a Scholarly nature.

Critics! As the joke goes, they were created just after the caveman applied his organic paint to the walls of his cave; and the first thing the critic said was "I hate it!" That is the pox artists live with. And it was no different for the highly praised artists of the Renaissance than it is today. There are records enough, and in such hands as that of the immortal Michelangelo, wherein the artists and their critics complain heaviy back and forth about one another.

But what of the little known artists? One wonders how their critics dealt with them, in light of their more famous counterparts. Just such a "little" artist was the sixteenth century illuminator, Giorgio, Giulio Clovio, the creator of the famous Little Hours of the Virgin, otherwise known as the Farnese Hours, for the Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. Even as highly praised as Giulio Clovio's works now find themselves (though truly, still little known), he has his critics. This treatise will examine the state of such criticism, contemporaneous and later, dealing with his work, specifically in light of his masterpiece, the Farnese Hours.

Guilio Clovio's most renown supporters were, of course, the men for whom he worked: Cardinal Marino Grimani, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, the King of Buda; and his friends, such as fellow artist El Greco, who painted a portrait of the illuminator, and even placed him alongside Titian, Michelangelo, and Raphael (the identity of the third man in the protrait is under debate) in his work Purification of the Temple, according to Webster Smith.(1) Giorgio Vasari took up his cause most eloquently in 1568 in his Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, calling Clovio "a new, if smaller, Michelagnolo."(2) Later devotees, such as Sister Mary Jeanette Cerney speak with equal praise for the artist, calling merely his boarders for the Farnese Hours "extremely elaborate and ornate."(3). In the nineteenth century Clovio's works were so sought after that, it is suspected, one Luigi Celotti disassembled one of his manuscripts only to reassemble a page to show the portraits of the four evangelists(4). William Voelkle says of Cardinal Farnese's collections of Clovio's works: "[he] apparently held them in special esteem; they were the only items singled out in his will of 1587. . . ."(5) Mr. Voelkle even goes so far as to dub the Farnese Hours "a seemingly exhaustible museum whose richness has only just begun to be explored.(6)

However, Mr. Voelkle does admit that there is quite a bit of what can be termed "quoting" in the Farnese Hours. "Many of the pictorial motifs, compositions, and subjects can be found in earlier, contemporaneous art, and in the manuscripts Clovio illuminated for the Cardinal Marino Grimani. . . ."(7) And, he is not the only, nor even the first to have said such things about Don Giulio; and these observation of the Master lead to the crux of my thesis: the criticism of Giulio Clovio's work.

Everyone seems to attempt to attribute the beauty of the Farnese Hours to anything but Clovio's own genius. They point to his obvious borrowings of Michelangelo, his indebtedness to Parmigianino (8), his friendship with Giulio Romano; anything in an attempt to explain the beauty of the Farnese Hours. Unfortunately, when critics could not find fault with his representations (as Vasari had so highly and eloquently praised his work), they decided to take issue with his medium of work: the book--or rather, its form, the miniature; and they do not take issue with just Clovio, but they add all manuscript artists into their damnation. None other than Leon Batista Alberti, in his tome Della pittura announced that "artists should. . .accept the challenge of making figures approximately life-size, wherein any fault will show." (9) In 1576, Lodovico Castelvetro had a similar pronouncement: "Bad painters who recognize their own inadequacies," he said, "will paint only small, indistinct, and crowded canvases, whereas great painters who have confidence in their powers display their true worth by painting figures that are larger. . ." [emphasis Smith's] ". . .than life size, as did Michelangelo, though they know how prominently every least defect will stand out." (10) And their work, their miniatures, were called by Vasari "minuta" which seems to mean "a deficiency in quality as well as in size"; (11) a rather snide remark for something so grand in composition; especially when one considers how highly Vasari held Clovio's work in his illustrious tome.

How seriously, then, does one take such remarks? Are we to believe Clovio's (and indeed all manuscript artists') bad press? Are we to believe that the Farnese Hours is nothing but a collection of "unconcealed and unassimilated reminiscences, paraphrases, and quotations of works by other artists" (12)? Or that, as Grgo Gaumlin says in his collaboration with Maria Cionini-Visani, Clovio may have been nothing more than an artist formed only to and by the desires of his patrons, totally oblivious to the Mannerist shift, and the atrocities taking place around him? (13) Can we respect Sister Mary Cerney's affection for the Hours when she says such things as ". . .in one sense [Clovio's] double-page representations are truly unique to the Farnese Hours, in another sense, they are not." (14) and that, speaking of the Gonzaga Hours (1530-1538), "he could very easily have been familiar with this work. . ." (15) implying anything but the originality she seems to be praising in the rest of her thesis? Or can we move past such surface features and find what it is that Clovio was so praised for, in the circles mentioned above?

Taking a look at the images for oneself is the easiest way to prove, and by contrast, disprove the observations which these experts have made of Clovio's work. The Farnese Hours is a small book, measuring seven inches by four inches, and consisting of some twenty-six full page images, and including most of the typical aspects of a Book of Hours save the Calendar, the Sequence of the Gospels, the prayers "Obsecro Te" and "O Intemerata". The prayers to the Virgin have also been left out by Clovio in favor of a special votive mass in honor of Our Lady which in the eyes of the Cardinal Farnese "possess(ed) far greater spiritual value than that of the traditional devotional prayers."(16) Each Hour is opened with a facing set of images: Matins with the Annunciation faced by the Isaiah speaking with King Ahaz(17); Lauds with the meeting of Elizabeth and Mary faced with a curious depiction of Justice and Peace embracing one another(18); Prime with an interesting Presentation to the Sheperds facing an Adam and Eve with Serpent(19); Tierce, the Angel appearing to the sheperds, and the Tiburtine Sybil speaking with Emperor Octavian of the Virgin birth(20) and so on. In between these introductory images are placed pages of the text of the prayers and devotions of the Book of Hours and among these pages are delicately colored landscapes, inspired by "literary evidence of ancient Roman landscape paintings".(21)

Giorgio Vasari called Clovio "a new, if smaller, Michelagnolo"(22) and one could very well agree with him in viewing Clovio's quotation of Michelangelo's God Creating the Sun and Moon from the Sistine Chapel in the Farnese Hours on folio 59v. However, there is a difference. God, in Clovio's rendering, is centered. A woman kneels beside him, praying to him. Seven putti* variously hold the cloud aloft and lean into God's back, as if helping to support him. A border painted in soft cedar brown(23) surrounds the entire depiction. Michelangelo's is similar, but with only four supporting figures, all but one seeming to be adults. Clovio lays the sun directly behind God; Michelangelo, to his left. He also includes a dubiously covered figure to the left of this panel, while Clovio omitted the extra figure altogether. The boarders of folios 26, 27,30, and 31--and likewise the side boarders of folios 38v and 39 and the lower boarders of folio 50v and 51 as well as the left and right boarders of folios 102v and 103 and tops and bottoms of folios 106v and 107--also are reminiscent of Michelangelo thanks to Clovio's inclusion of the ignudi* in each. This could be enough to prompt some to say Clovio was doing nothing more than mimicing Michelangelo--especially when one studies folio 103, which reproduces a scene of Moses holding a staff of serpents out before a writhing crowd which it is believed Clovio directly modeled on the Michelangelo treatment of the same subject.(24)

And then there are the quotes pertaining to his Annunciation to contend with. Is his Virgin in folio 4v not reminiscent of his friend Giulio Romano's work? That is easily answered affirmatively (although reluctantly) by studying Romano's Madonna della Perla which, according to Cerney, has face, veil, and hair in common with Clovio's rendering.(25) She points to several different versions of the Annunciation--by everyone from Correggio to Titian--saying that there are "points of similarity"(26) between Clovio's and every other Annunciation; but truly, the only similarities (other than those just mentioned) are the generic figures of Mary and Angel, and the hurried arrival of Gabriel to a shocked, shy, and praying Virgin: a convential subject repeated throughout the Middle Ages, Renaissance, High Renaissance, and the Baroque and Rococo periods at the behest of pious patrons everywhere.

But there is originality and skill in Clovio, as well. As Voelkle tells us "Large drawings connected with two of the [Farnese Hours'] miniatures are known, but their boarders are not identical; since Clovio sometimes repeated compositions, it is not certain that they were intended for this commission."(27) Such a remark not only disproves the critics who would dub Clovio a highy skilled copyist, but also blasts Lodovico Castelvetro's aforementioned statement: "Bad painters who recognize their own inadequacies, will paint only small, indistinct, and crowded canvases. . ."(28) as clearly Clovio was skilled in both, but chose miniature as his vehicle of expression.

And yes, our illuminator even surpassed the expectations and conventions of his fellows. Unlike illuminators before him, he combined styles; and not just, as we have seen, of particular artists, but also of a geographical class of artists, as Smith says in the Farnese Hours facsimile "The illuminations in the Farnese Hours frequently suggest an intermingling of Northern European and Italian styles."(29) Albretch Dürer (as in his depiction of the Fall of Man had an impact; the Grimani Breviary seemed to have had a massive impression on the artist, and certainly his treatment of the animals in folios 28v and 29 may have been culled from here.

So, his critics contradict each other, and themselves, at times, beginning with his contemporaries and continuing through the critics of our own times. How much these contemporary criticisms mat have affected Clovio, we cannot say; indeed, it seems logical that, being in such a closed circle as he was, Giulio Clovio may not have been aware of the negative spears cast at himself and his work. The fact remains that his work, his masterpiece, that work of which he was reportedly most proud, the Farnese Hours, came to symbolize the height of manuscript illumination to many future illuminators, and indeed to the art world of ages to come. Giorgio Vasari said it best: "That work . . . executed by Don Giulio in a period of nine years with so much study and labor . . . it would be impossible to pay for the work, no matter what the price; nor is one able to see any more strange and beautiful variety than there is in all the scenes, of bizarre ornaments and various movements and postures of nudes both male and female, studied and well detailed in every part and placed appropriately all around these boarders, in order to enrich the work. Which diversity of things infuses such beauty into that whole work, that it appears a thing divine and not human, and above all because with his colours and his manner of painting he has made the figures, the building and landscapes recede and fade into the distance with all those considerations that perspective requires, and with the greatest perfection that is possible, insomuch that, whether near or far, they cause everyone to marvel; not to speak of the thousand different kind of trees, wrought so well that they appear as if grown in Paradise. In the stories and inventions may be seen design, in the composition order and variety, and richness in the vestments, which are executed with such beauty and grace of manner, that it seems impossible that they could have been fashioned by the hand of man." (31) For all this is it worth it just to put aside the words of all critics, past and present, and enjoy the beauty of this little treasure with an open mind.

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Notes:
1. Smith, p 395
2. Vasari, p 250
3.Cerney, p 114
4. Wieck, p 240
5.Voelkle, p 248

6. Voelkle, p 233
7. ibid. p 233
8. Rowlands, p 31
9. Smith, p 396
10. ibid. p 396
11. ibid. p 396
12. Smith, 396
13.Cionini-Visani and Gaumlin, p 12
14. Cerney, p 56
15. ibid. p 57
16. ibid. p 42
17. Smith, facsimile. f4v; f5
18. ibid. f17v; f18
19. ibid. f 26v; f27
20. Smith, description of Tierce in the facsimile; images f30v; f31
21. ibid. verso of page containing folio 5
22. Vasari, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, London, 1912, p 250
*infant-like angels
23. or so it seems in the facsimile.
*naked, male figures
24. Rowlands, n. 17
25. Cerney, p 68
26. ibid. 65
27. Voelkle, p 237
28. Smith, p 397
29. Smith, pages prior to f 36v
30. ibid, folio 27
31. Vasari, p 250