Snare Of The Fowler, parts 1968 - 1971

1968. One last anecdote deserves mention also, and it is about Giotto. It is said that when he was an apprentice he painted a fly on his master’s painting, and the master tried repeatedly to brush it away. Some critics of Vasari use this incident to prove that Vasari was not accurate, because the same incident is referred to in ancient literature pertaining to another apprentice and master from a former time.

1969. On the contrary, the fact that it can be shown to have happened at an earlier date goes to show how accurate Vasari is, because he too was an apprentice at one time, and therefore knows that flies have been painted on master’s paintings for time immoral, ending only once painting became irrelevant, and there were no more masters nor apprentices in this world.

1970. “About Michelangelo and Indaco,” said Aunt Jemima. “They were good friends, and then their friendship ended because of a misunderstanding. Later the two of them got back together, and as we listened to this story I am positive that every one of us was relieved that their disagreement was resolved. I think there is an instinctive desire we all have to see associations continue and not dissolve. It doesn’t really matter how long ago the story may have taken place, we still feel an anxiety when husband is separated from wife, mother from son, and friend from friend.”

 

1971. In actual life we also want to see arguments ended, conflicts resolved, and misunderstandings cleared up, and even though the situation has nothing to do with us, still we suffer anxiety when separations threaten to last forever. And if separations are going to last forever, we want to know for a fact that this is so. I am sure you agree with me Professor Duck. And so before you say even another word about Vasari, Michelangelo, or Giotto, I want to know if the blacksmith’s boy ever sees Otis again even if it is many years later. So, if you know what has happened to them please tell us. 

 

Rounder Than The O, parts 1956 - 1959

 1956. Pietro, being by nature upright and honest, took it ill that the prior should distrust him, and thought how he could shame him out of it. So he took a basin of water, and setting himself to his work, for every two brushfuls that he took he washed his brush in the basin, so that there was more color left in the water than he put into his work. The prior, seeing his bag of color getting empty, and the picture not getting on, kept saying, “Oh, how much ultramarine that plaster consumes!”

1957. But when the prior was gone, Pietro collected the ultramarine that was at the bottom of the basin; and when the time seemed to him to be come, he gave it back to the prior, saying, “Father, this is yours; learn to trust honest men who never deceive those who trust in them, but know how to deceive, when they choose, suspicious men like you.”

1958. This is just one of hundreds of such stories in which an artist makes a fool of a simpleminded prior, and perhaps these stories, all of them, make us aware of what life was like for these enormously inventive and creative artists forced to bend all of their talents and skills to the pleasure of men who actually understood nothing about the art they were inspired somehow to commission.

1959. The above store of the ultramarine blue also reminds us that, here also we see Vasari the artist, pointing out that the artist, who spends his life wordlessly manipulating materials, knows things that the prior could not know or even imagine. The artist knows that the pigment can be retrieved from the water, and so he can steal the pigment right before the watchful eyes of his employer.

Rounder Than The , parts 1964 - 1967

 

1964. To understand this story you must know that this person, Piero Soderini was the most powerful man in Florence at that time, and his title, Gonfalonier indicated something between a mayor and a dictator of the city state. So when he criticized Michelangelo’s David he was not only expressing his artistic opinion, he was also exerting his authority over the artist as if to say, “You may be able to create this thing, but still you are just a servant.”

 1965. And Michelangelo would never have ventured to contradict the Gonfalonier, regardless of how his biographers have glorified his personality by dwelling on his arguments with the Pope about the Sistine Chapel. Nevertheless, Michelangelo puts Soderini in his place, and illustrates his ignorance for all to see for all time, and he does it out of the knowledge of the details of his craft.

 1966. Something must be said however, of the trick that Michelangelo used to fool Soderini. Perhaps you might think that he thought this rouse up in an instant, and on the spur of the moment, but that would be wrong. You can be quite sure that in the long history of humble sculptors creating figures for the Lords of this world, that incident has happened over and over again.

1967. In the Rome of Nero, and in the Athens of Pericles, both Nero and Pericles would have been subjected to the same deception of the artist pretending to correct his work. And the story, handed down from generation to generation is the possession of the sculptors only, and their employers remain in ignorance that their pretended aesthetic judgments have been used to make fools of them.

Rounder Than The O, parts 1960 - 1963

 1960. But now we come to the most important anecdote Vasari ever recorded. An anecdote that reveals the soul of a great artist and at the same time throws a spotlight on the social standing, in flux at the time of the Renaissance. The story is of Michelangelo’s David.

 1961. It happened at this time that Piero Soderini, having seen The David in place, was well pleased with it, but said to Michelangelo, at a moment when he was retouching it in certain parts, that it seemed to him that the nose of the figure was too thick.

 1962. Michelangelo noticed that the Gonfalonier was beneath the Giant, and that his point of view prevented him from seeing it properly; but in order to satisfy him he climbed upon the staging and quickly took up a chisel in his left hand, with a little of the marble-dust that lay upon the planks of the staging, and then, beginning to strike lightly with the chisel, let fall the dust little by little, nor changed the nose a whit from what it was before.

1963. Then, looking down at the Gonfalonier, who stood watching him, he said, "Look at it now." "I like it better," said the Gonfalonier, "you have given it life." And so Michelangelo came down, laughing to himself at having satisfied that lord, for he had compassion on those who, in order to appear full of knowledge, talk about things of which they know nothing.

Rounder Than The O, parts 1952 - 1955

 

1952. Giotto with his gesture makes a fool of the Pope, but he does not get away with it. His prank becomes a legend, and is handed down in the Italian language not as the mark of a wise man or even of a fool. The O of Giotto signifies the dull witted person, the opposite of the man who created it.

1953. You may think I am making up this idea of Giotto or Vasari making fun of the Pope, but the tendency of the artists of that time to abuse, and ridicule the clergy is well known and well documented in stories and legend. Consider this other anecdote from Vasari’s life of Pietro Perugino. To understand this little story it is necessary to know that the color ultramarine blue in the Renaissance cost the same as gold.

1954. Since ultramarine blue was so expensive a pigment, when mural decorations were done in churches, the blue color was doled out as from a vault, and weighed out on a gram scale the same as gold for gilding. In this story Perugino is painting a mural for the church fathers.

1955. From Vasari’s life of Pietro Perugino: There is a story which I have heard told of a prior of a convent who had employed Pietro to paint in its cloisters. This prior was very good at making ultramarine, and having therefore abundance of it, he desired that Pietro should put a great deal into his works; he was, however, so miserably suspicious that he would not trust Pietro, but would always be present when he was using the ultramarine.

Rounder Than The O, parts 1948 - 1951

 

1948. I must admit that when the artist who was restoring the mural at the library told me that an artist had to draw a circle with his entire body I was at a loss to understand exactly what he meant. He was standing high up on the scaffold where he had been working at the mural, and he could see from my expression that I did not exactly understand what he was talking about.

1949. "The reason this is not clear to you is because you are trying to think of drawing as it is done on a little sheet of paper, sitting at a writing desk in school when you were in the eighth grade, which is probably one of the last times you tried to draw anything with a pencil on paper." The mural painter said.

1950. " But Giotto was a mural painter, just as I am a mural restorer, and the observation that an artist must draw using the entire body refers to the drawing of life sized figures, and not to the drawing of airplanes, or the faces of horses on 8 x 10 inch blue lined pad paper." He said all of this pointing with the end of his paint brush to the life sized figure the face of which he was restoring as a part of his work on the library murals.

1951. To draw the line that runs down the body from the hip to the foot, and have it look correct when drawing life sized, one must draw that line holding one's pen in a hand that is still, in an arm that is fixed, and with a motion controlled by just those parts of the body one is attempting to draw. For to draw with just the hand or the fingers produced what we artists always call, "chicken scratching;" marks  which after they are put down must be scratched out again.

Rounder Than The O, parts 1944 - 1947

1944. But only the arm from the elbow to the fingers can be used to generate a circle, and only if it is anchored at the hip, as Vasari notes. In short, Giotto used his body as an instrument to produce his circle. In his years of working, gradually Giotto’s body becomes the tool. Not the hand, not the arm, not the fingers, but the entire body is employed, even down to the toes, when he drew his circle.

1945. So someone, I do not know who, said, “One learns to draw in ballet class,” meaning that to draw is to make marks on a paper controlled by the entire body, and not just the tips of the fingers. This is a concept hard to put into words, but is as true for the artist as it is for the person playing golf. If you will look again at pictures of Jackson Pollock as he is painting, there you will see after four hundred years the return of the O of Giotto. 

1946. But we are not done at this point with this O of Giotto. The importance of this anecdote is yet more complicated. The next remark we have to deal with concerns the reactions of the Pope, Vasari says, “When the Pope and many of his courtiers understood, they saw that Giotto must surpass greatly all the other painters of his time.” What is it exactly the Pope and his courtiers understood, as they looked at Giotto's circle?

1947. They understood nothing at all. Vasari knows this for a fact, but he would never ever have risked his life putting such an idea into print.  No, what we have here is the very first instance in art history of the artist’s utilizing intellectual intimidation to manipulate his patrons.  The Pope “understands” the circle in the exact same way the curators and Trustees of the Museum of Modern Art, “understand” Duchamp’s urinal.