Vasari: Eccentric Personalities, Part 2
Eleven more tales of madmen, scatterbrains, weirdos, show-offs, and simpletons, including an anecdote (#7) to make men glad that hosiery above mid-calf is no longer a part of Western male fashion.
1. Vol. II, p. 29, Fra Giocondo, Liberale, and others: [Francesco Monsignori was commissioned by the Marquis of Mantua to paint St. Sebastian:] "But the limbs of this Saint of yours," rejoined the Marquis, "are not true to life, for they have not the appearance of being strained by force or by that fear which one would expect in a man bound and shot with arrows; and by your leave I will undertake to show you what you ought to do in order to make this figure perfect." ... And the Marquis, bursting out of a neighbouring room in a great fury, with a loaded cross-bow in his hand, rushed towards the porter [the artist’s model], crying out at the top of his voice, "Traitor, prepare to die! At last I have caught thee as I would have thee" ... which hearing, the wretched porter, thinking himself as good as dead, struggled in a frenzy of terror with the ropes wherewith he was bound ... thus truly representing one about to be shot with arrows, and revealing fear in his face and the horror of death in his strained and distorted limbs...
2. Vol. II, p. 68, Fra Giocondo, Liberale, and others: Matteo [dal Nassaro] was a man of great spirit and generosity, insomuch that he would rather have given his works away than sold them for a paltry price. Wherefore when a baron, for whom he had made a cameo of some value, wished to pay him a wretched sum for it, Matteo besought him straitly that he should accept it as a present. To this the other would not consent, and yet wished to have it for the same miserable price; whereupon Matteo, flying into a rage, crushed it to powder with a hammer in his presence.
3. Vol. II, p. 156, Perino del Vaga: He made the resolve, therefore, to divide his time equally, working half the week at day work, and during the other half devoting his attention to design; and to this second half he added all the feastdays, together with a great part of the nights, thus stealing time from time itself, in order to become famous and to escape from the hands of others [i.e. established painters giving him temporary jobs] so far as it might be possible.
4. Vol. II, p. 190, Domenico Beccafumi: ... Giovanni Antonio was coarse, licentious, and eccentric, being called Il Sodoma because he always mixed and lived with beardless boys, and answer[ed] willingly enough to that name .. And this Sodoma, being an eccentric, and wishing to please the common herd, always kept at his house parrots, apes, dwarf donkeys, little Elba horses, a talking raven, barbs for running races, and other suchlike creatures; from which he had won such a name among the vulgar, that they spoke of nothing but his follies.
5. Vol. II, pp. 312 - 3, Giuliano Bugiardini: Next, the above-named Messer Ottaviano de' Medici having besought Giuliano privately that he should take for him the portrait of Michelangelo Buonarroti, he set his hand to it; and, after he had kept Michelangelo, who used to take pleasure in his conversation, sitting for two hours, Giuliano said to him: "Michelangelo, if you wish to see yourself, get up and look, for I have now fixed the expression of the face." Michelangelo, having risen and looked at the portrait, said to Giuliano, laughing: "What the devil have you been doing? You have painted me with one of my eyes up in my temple. Give a little thought to what you are doing." Hearing this, Giuliano, after standing pensive for a while and looking many times from the portrait to the living model, answered in serious earnest: "To me it does not seem so, but sit you down again, and I shall see a little better from the life whether it be true." Buonnaroti, who knew whence the defect arose and how small was the judgment of Bugiardini, straightway resumed his seat, grinning. And Giuliano looked many times now at Michelangelo and now at the picture, and then finally, rising to his feet, declared: "To me it seems that the thing is just as I have drawn it, and that the life is in no way different." "Well, then," answered Buonarroti, "it is a natural deformity. Go on, and spare neither brush nor art."
6. Vol. II, p. 315, Giuliano Bugiardini: Giuliano once relating to Bronzino how he had seen a very beautiful woman, after he had praised her to the skies, Bronzino said, "Do you know her?" "No," answered Giuliano, "but she is a miracle of beauty. Just imagine that she is a picture by my hand, and there you have her." [This is the last sentence in Bugiardini's life, by the way.]
7. Vol. II, pp. 336 - 8, Cristofano Gherardi, called Doceno: During the execution of that work his Excellency conceived a very great affection for Cristofano, seeing him zealous and diligent in no ordinary manner at his work; for the morning had scarcely broken into day when Cristofano would appear at his labour, of which he had such a love, and it so delighted him, that very often he would not finish dressing before setting out. And at times, nay, frequently, it happened that in his haste he put on a pair of shoes -- all such things he kept under his bed -- that were not fellows, but of two kinds; and more often than not he had his cloak wrong side out, with the hood on the inside. One morning, therefore, appearing at an early hour at this work, ... the Lord Duke and the Lady Duchess ... noticed that Cristofano had as usual his cloak wrong side out and the hood inside. At which both laughing, the Duke said: "What is your idea in always wearing your cloak inside out?" "I know not, my Lord," answered Cristofano, "but I mean to find some day a kind of cloak that shall have neither right side nor wrong side, and shall be the same on both sides, for I have not the patience to think of wearing it in any other way, since in the morning I generally dress and go out of the house in the dark, besides that I have one eye so feeble that I can see nothing with it. But let your Excellency look at what I paint, and not at my manner of dressing." The Duke said nothing in answer, but within a few days he caused to be made for him a cloak of the finest cloth, with the pieces sewn and drawn together in such a manner that there was no difference to be seen between outside and inside, and the collar worked with braid in the same manner both inside and out, and so also the trimming that it had round the edges.
... Now, since Cristofano was thus careless of his person and hated nothing more than to have to put on new clothes or to go about too tightly constrained and confined in them, Vasari, who knew this humour of his, whenever he observed that he was in need of any new clothes, used to have them made for him in secret, and then, early one morning, used to place these in his chamber and take away the old ones; and so Cristofano was forced to put on those that he found. But it was marvellous sport to stand and hear him raging with fury as he dressed himself in the new clothes. "Look here," he would say, "what devilments are these? Devil take it, can a man not live in his own way in this world, without the enemies of comfort giving themselves all this trouble?" One morning among others, Cristofano having put on a pair of white hose, the painter Domenico Benci ... contrived to persuade him to go with himself, in company with other young men, to the Madonna dell' Impruneta. There they walked, danced, and enjoyed themselves all day, and in the evening, after supper, they returned home. Then Cristofano, who was tired, went off straightway to his room to sleep; but, when he set himself to take off his hose, what with their being new and his having sweated, he was not able to pull off more than one of them. Now Vasari having gone in the evening to see how he was, found that he had fallen asleep with one leg covered and the other bare; whereupon, one servant holding his leg and the other pulling at the stocking, they contrived to draw it off, while he lay cursing clothes, Giorgio [Vasari], and him who invented such fashions as -- so he said -- kept men bound in chains like slaves.
8. Vol. II, p. 395, Girolamo Genga and others: Giovan Battista deserves to be highly extolled, for the reason that, besides having been excellent in his profession [architecture], it is a marvellous thing that, having set himself to give attention to it late in life, at the age of thirty-five, he should have made in it the proficience that he did make; and it may be believed that if he had begun younger, he would have become a very rare master. ... He took extraordinary pleasure in reading stories, and turned them to very great advantage, writing down with great pains the most notable things in them. [Ahem, yes, people who do that are quite strange indeed, cough, cough...]
9. Vol. II, pp. 513 - 4, Battista Franco: [Describing the extraordinary rapidity of Tintoretto -- a contest between painters to make sketches for a chapel:] While the others, then, were engaged with all possible diligence in making their designs, Tintoretto, having taken measurements of the size that the work was to be, sketched a great canvas and painted it with his usual rapidity, without anyone knowing about it, and then placed it where it was to stand. Whereupon, the men of the Company having assembled one morning to see the designs and to make their award, they found that Tintoretto had completely finished the work and had placed it in position. At which being angered against him, they said that they had called for designs and had not commissioned him to execute the work; but he answered them that this was his method of making designs, that he did not know how to proceed in any other manner, and that designs and models of works should always be after that fashion, so as to deceive no one, and that, finally, if they would not pay him for the work and for his labour, he would make them a present of it. And after these words, although he had many contradictions, he so contrived that the work is still in the same place.
10. Vol. II, p. 521, Giovan Francesco Rustici: And since Giovan Francesco had a great affection for that place [a country palace of Jacopo Salviati the elder], he would set out at times from Florence to go there just as he was, in his lucco ["A long gown worn by the Florentine citizens, particularly on occasions of ceremony"]; and once out of the city he would throw it over his shoulder and slowly wander all by himself, lost in contemplation, until he was there. One day among others, being on that road, and the day being hot, he hid the lucco in a thicket of thorn-bushes, and, having reached the palace, had been there two days before he remembered it. In the end, sending his man to look for it, when he saw that he had found it he said: "The world is too good to last long."
11. Vol. II, p. 808, Jacopo Sansovino: ...[H]e set himself to protray from the life, although it was winter, an assistant of his called Pippo del Fabbro, making him stand naked a good part of the day. Which Pippo would have become a capable craftsman, for he was striving with every effort to imitate his master; but, whether it was the standing naked with the head uncovered at that season, or that he studied too much and suffered hardships, before the Bacchus was finished he went mad, copying the attitudes of that figure. And this he showed one day that it was raining in torrents, when, Sansovino calling out "Pippo!" and he not answering, the master afterwards saw him mounted on the summit of a chimney on the roof, wholly naked and striking the attitude of his Bacchus. At other times, taking a sheet or other large piece of cloth, and wetting it, he would wrap it round his naked body, as if he were a model of clay or rags, and arrange the folds; and then, climbing up to some extraordinary place, and settling himself now in one attitude and now in another, as a Prophet, an Apostle, a soldier, or something else, he would have himself portrayed, standing thus for a period of two hours without speaking, not otherwise than as if he had been a motionless statue.
1. Vol. II, p. 29, Fra Giocondo, Liberale, and others: [Francesco Monsignori was commissioned by the Marquis of Mantua to paint St. Sebastian:] "But the limbs of this Saint of yours," rejoined the Marquis, "are not true to life, for they have not the appearance of being strained by force or by that fear which one would expect in a man bound and shot with arrows; and by your leave I will undertake to show you what you ought to do in order to make this figure perfect." ... And the Marquis, bursting out of a neighbouring room in a great fury, with a loaded cross-bow in his hand, rushed towards the porter [the artist’s model], crying out at the top of his voice, "Traitor, prepare to die! At last I have caught thee as I would have thee" ... which hearing, the wretched porter, thinking himself as good as dead, struggled in a frenzy of terror with the ropes wherewith he was bound ... thus truly representing one about to be shot with arrows, and revealing fear in his face and the horror of death in his strained and distorted limbs...
2. Vol. II, p. 68, Fra Giocondo, Liberale, and others: Matteo [dal Nassaro] was a man of great spirit and generosity, insomuch that he would rather have given his works away than sold them for a paltry price. Wherefore when a baron, for whom he had made a cameo of some value, wished to pay him a wretched sum for it, Matteo besought him straitly that he should accept it as a present. To this the other would not consent, and yet wished to have it for the same miserable price; whereupon Matteo, flying into a rage, crushed it to powder with a hammer in his presence.
3. Vol. II, p. 156, Perino del Vaga: He made the resolve, therefore, to divide his time equally, working half the week at day work, and during the other half devoting his attention to design; and to this second half he added all the feastdays, together with a great part of the nights, thus stealing time from time itself, in order to become famous and to escape from the hands of others [i.e. established painters giving him temporary jobs] so far as it might be possible.
4. Vol. II, p. 190, Domenico Beccafumi: ... Giovanni Antonio was coarse, licentious, and eccentric, being called Il Sodoma because he always mixed and lived with beardless boys, and answer[ed] willingly enough to that name .. And this Sodoma, being an eccentric, and wishing to please the common herd, always kept at his house parrots, apes, dwarf donkeys, little Elba horses, a talking raven, barbs for running races, and other suchlike creatures; from which he had won such a name among the vulgar, that they spoke of nothing but his follies.
5. Vol. II, pp. 312 - 3, Giuliano Bugiardini: Next, the above-named Messer Ottaviano de' Medici having besought Giuliano privately that he should take for him the portrait of Michelangelo Buonarroti, he set his hand to it; and, after he had kept Michelangelo, who used to take pleasure in his conversation, sitting for two hours, Giuliano said to him: "Michelangelo, if you wish to see yourself, get up and look, for I have now fixed the expression of the face." Michelangelo, having risen and looked at the portrait, said to Giuliano, laughing: "What the devil have you been doing? You have painted me with one of my eyes up in my temple. Give a little thought to what you are doing." Hearing this, Giuliano, after standing pensive for a while and looking many times from the portrait to the living model, answered in serious earnest: "To me it does not seem so, but sit you down again, and I shall see a little better from the life whether it be true." Buonnaroti, who knew whence the defect arose and how small was the judgment of Bugiardini, straightway resumed his seat, grinning. And Giuliano looked many times now at Michelangelo and now at the picture, and then finally, rising to his feet, declared: "To me it seems that the thing is just as I have drawn it, and that the life is in no way different." "Well, then," answered Buonarroti, "it is a natural deformity. Go on, and spare neither brush nor art."
6. Vol. II, p. 315, Giuliano Bugiardini: Giuliano once relating to Bronzino how he had seen a very beautiful woman, after he had praised her to the skies, Bronzino said, "Do you know her?" "No," answered Giuliano, "but she is a miracle of beauty. Just imagine that she is a picture by my hand, and there you have her." [This is the last sentence in Bugiardini's life, by the way.]
7. Vol. II, pp. 336 - 8, Cristofano Gherardi, called Doceno: During the execution of that work his Excellency conceived a very great affection for Cristofano, seeing him zealous and diligent in no ordinary manner at his work; for the morning had scarcely broken into day when Cristofano would appear at his labour, of which he had such a love, and it so delighted him, that very often he would not finish dressing before setting out. And at times, nay, frequently, it happened that in his haste he put on a pair of shoes -- all such things he kept under his bed -- that were not fellows, but of two kinds; and more often than not he had his cloak wrong side out, with the hood on the inside. One morning, therefore, appearing at an early hour at this work, ... the Lord Duke and the Lady Duchess ... noticed that Cristofano had as usual his cloak wrong side out and the hood inside. At which both laughing, the Duke said: "What is your idea in always wearing your cloak inside out?" "I know not, my Lord," answered Cristofano, "but I mean to find some day a kind of cloak that shall have neither right side nor wrong side, and shall be the same on both sides, for I have not the patience to think of wearing it in any other way, since in the morning I generally dress and go out of the house in the dark, besides that I have one eye so feeble that I can see nothing with it. But let your Excellency look at what I paint, and not at my manner of dressing." The Duke said nothing in answer, but within a few days he caused to be made for him a cloak of the finest cloth, with the pieces sewn and drawn together in such a manner that there was no difference to be seen between outside and inside, and the collar worked with braid in the same manner both inside and out, and so also the trimming that it had round the edges.
... Now, since Cristofano was thus careless of his person and hated nothing more than to have to put on new clothes or to go about too tightly constrained and confined in them, Vasari, who knew this humour of his, whenever he observed that he was in need of any new clothes, used to have them made for him in secret, and then, early one morning, used to place these in his chamber and take away the old ones; and so Cristofano was forced to put on those that he found. But it was marvellous sport to stand and hear him raging with fury as he dressed himself in the new clothes. "Look here," he would say, "what devilments are these? Devil take it, can a man not live in his own way in this world, without the enemies of comfort giving themselves all this trouble?" One morning among others, Cristofano having put on a pair of white hose, the painter Domenico Benci ... contrived to persuade him to go with himself, in company with other young men, to the Madonna dell' Impruneta. There they walked, danced, and enjoyed themselves all day, and in the evening, after supper, they returned home. Then Cristofano, who was tired, went off straightway to his room to sleep; but, when he set himself to take off his hose, what with their being new and his having sweated, he was not able to pull off more than one of them. Now Vasari having gone in the evening to see how he was, found that he had fallen asleep with one leg covered and the other bare; whereupon, one servant holding his leg and the other pulling at the stocking, they contrived to draw it off, while he lay cursing clothes, Giorgio [Vasari], and him who invented such fashions as -- so he said -- kept men bound in chains like slaves.
8. Vol. II, p. 395, Girolamo Genga and others: Giovan Battista deserves to be highly extolled, for the reason that, besides having been excellent in his profession [architecture], it is a marvellous thing that, having set himself to give attention to it late in life, at the age of thirty-five, he should have made in it the proficience that he did make; and it may be believed that if he had begun younger, he would have become a very rare master. ... He took extraordinary pleasure in reading stories, and turned them to very great advantage, writing down with great pains the most notable things in them. [Ahem, yes, people who do that are quite strange indeed, cough, cough...]
9. Vol. II, pp. 513 - 4, Battista Franco: [Describing the extraordinary rapidity of Tintoretto -- a contest between painters to make sketches for a chapel:] While the others, then, were engaged with all possible diligence in making their designs, Tintoretto, having taken measurements of the size that the work was to be, sketched a great canvas and painted it with his usual rapidity, without anyone knowing about it, and then placed it where it was to stand. Whereupon, the men of the Company having assembled one morning to see the designs and to make their award, they found that Tintoretto had completely finished the work and had placed it in position. At which being angered against him, they said that they had called for designs and had not commissioned him to execute the work; but he answered them that this was his method of making designs, that he did not know how to proceed in any other manner, and that designs and models of works should always be after that fashion, so as to deceive no one, and that, finally, if they would not pay him for the work and for his labour, he would make them a present of it. And after these words, although he had many contradictions, he so contrived that the work is still in the same place.
10. Vol. II, p. 521, Giovan Francesco Rustici: And since Giovan Francesco had a great affection for that place [a country palace of Jacopo Salviati the elder], he would set out at times from Florence to go there just as he was, in his lucco ["A long gown worn by the Florentine citizens, particularly on occasions of ceremony"]; and once out of the city he would throw it over his shoulder and slowly wander all by himself, lost in contemplation, until he was there. One day among others, being on that road, and the day being hot, he hid the lucco in a thicket of thorn-bushes, and, having reached the palace, had been there two days before he remembered it. In the end, sending his man to look for it, when he saw that he had found it he said: "The world is too good to last long."
11. Vol. II, p. 808, Jacopo Sansovino: ...[H]e set himself to protray from the life, although it was winter, an assistant of his called Pippo del Fabbro, making him stand naked a good part of the day. Which Pippo would have become a capable craftsman, for he was striving with every effort to imitate his master; but, whether it was the standing naked with the head uncovered at that season, or that he studied too much and suffered hardships, before the Bacchus was finished he went mad, copying the attitudes of that figure. And this he showed one day that it was raining in torrents, when, Sansovino calling out "Pippo!" and he not answering, the master afterwards saw him mounted on the summit of a chimney on the roof, wholly naked and striking the attitude of his Bacchus. At other times, taking a sheet or other large piece of cloth, and wetting it, he would wrap it round his naked body, as if he were a model of clay or rags, and arrange the folds; and then, climbing up to some extraordinary place, and settling himself now in one attitude and now in another, as a Prophet, an Apostle, a soldier, or something else, he would have himself portrayed, standing thus for a period of two hours without speaking, not otherwise than as if he had been a motionless statue.