Vasari: Baccio Bandinelli
Baccio Bandinelli is a Renaissance artist you don't really hear much about. The only time I'd ever heard of him before Vasari was from a tourbook of Florence, which gave a possibly apocryphal story claiming that his contemporary Michelangelo had once looked at one of his sculptures and said, "Why did you have to ruin such excellent marble?"
Whether that story is true or not, it sets the tone for Bandinelli's life pretty well. He was a total braggart and bully, and pretty universally hated, though somehow managed to retain the favor of the Medici. He was always pulling douchebag stunts, like trying to learn how to paint by hiring one of his contemporaries to make his portrait, because he was too proud to actually ask for instruction.
It's to Vasari's credit -- and helps compensate for his ambivalent praise for Dürer -- that, in spite of the horribleness of Bandinelli's personality and various artistic mistakes he made, Vasari still judges him to be a great sculptor, and never jumps onto the "bash Bandinelli" bandwagon, though he does preserve the anecdotes of many who did.
Below are eight quotes on the enfant terrible of Renaissance sculpture, showing what a mixed bag he was. I'm suddenly reminded of a thing Dr. Stumpf once said: "You can't fully appreciate the taste of a good apple until you've had some bad ones."
1. Vol. II, p. 265 - 6, Baccio Bandinelli: While still a boy, Baccio frequented at times the workshop of Girolamo del Buda, a common-place painter, on the Piazza di S. Pulinari. There, at one time during the winter, a great quantity of snow had fallen, which had been thrown afterwards by the people into a heap in that piazza; and Girolamo, turning to Baccio, said to him jestingly: "Baccio, if this snow were marble, could we not carve a fine giant out of it, such as a Marforio lying down?" "We could so," answered Baccio, "and I suggest that we should act as if it were marble." And immediately, throwing off his cloak, he set his hands to the snow, and, assisted by other boys ... he made a rough figure of Marforio lying down, eight braccia in length. [A braccio is an archaic Italian unit of measurement "roughly equivalent to 23 inches".] Whereupon the painter and all the others stood marvelling, not so much at what he had done as at the spirit with which he had set his hand to a work so vast, and he so young and small.
2. Vol. II, pp. 286 - 7: In this structure [tombs for the Medici popes] Baccio showed too little religion or too much adulation, or both together, in that he thought fit that the first founders - after Christ - of our religion, men deified and most dear to God [the Apostles], should give way to our Popes, and placed them in positions unworthy of them and inferior to those of Leo and Clement. Certain it is that this design of his, even as it was displeasing to God and to the Saints, so likewise gave no pleasure to the Popes or to any other man, for the reason, it appears to me, that religion - and I mean our own, the true religion - should be placed by mankind before all other interests and considerations. ... Baccio, in doing what I have described, made known to everyone that he had much good-will and affection indeed towards the Popes, but little judgment in exalting and honouring them in their sepulchres.
3. Vol. II, p. 293: Baccio finished ... the statue of Duke Cosimo. ... [H]e took no little pains with the head, but for all this the Duke and the gentlemen of the Court said that it did not resemble him in the least ... [H]earing that head censured by everyone, one day in a rage he knocked it off, with the intention of making another and fixing it in its place; but in the end he never made it at all. It was a custom of Baccio's to add pieces of marble both small and large to the statues that he executed, feeling no annoyance in doing this, and making light of it... holding to such ways as generally damn a sculptor completely.
4. Vol. II, pp. 297 - 8: He then set up these figures of Adam and Eve in their place, but, when uncovered, they experienced the same fate as his other works, and were torn to pieces with savage bitterness in sonnets and Latin verses, one going to the length of suggesting that even as Adam and Eve, having defiled Paradise by their disobedience, deserved to be driven out, so these figures, defiling the earth, deserved to be expelled from the church. Nevertheless ... they display so much art and design, that they deserve no little praise.
5. Vol. II, p. 298: A lady who had set herself to examine these statues [by Baccio of Adam and Eve], being asked by some gentlemen what she thought of these naked bodies, answered, "About the man I can give no judgment;" and, being pressed to give her opinion of the woman, she replied that in the Eve there were two good points, worthy of considerable praise, in that she was white and firm; whereby she contrived ingeniously, while seeming to praise, covertly to deal a shrewd blow to the craftsman and his art, giving to the statue the praise proper to the female body, which it is also necessary to apply to the marble, the material, and which is true of it, but not of the work or of the craftsmanship, for by such praise the craftsmanship is not praised. Thus, then, that shrewd lady hinted that in her opinion nothing could be praised in that statue save the marble.
6. Vol. II, pp. 304 - 5: [Having had his tomb built, he decides to reinter his father in it, too:] These bones of his father he chose to lay piously in that tomb with his own hands; whereupon it happened that either because he felt sorrow and a shock to his mind in handling his father's bones, or because he exerted himself too much in transferring those bones with his own hands and in rearranging the marbles, or from both reasons together, he was so overcome that he felt ill and had to go home, and, his malady growing daily worse, in eight days he died, at the age of seventy-two, having been up to that time robust and vigorous, and without having ever suffered much illness during the whole of his life.
7. Vol. II, pp. 308 - 9: And even more would he have been acknowledged for what he was, when alive, and beloved, if he had been so favoured by nature as to be more amiable and more courteous, because his being the contrary, and very rough with his tongue, robbed him of the goodwill of other persons, obscured his talents, and brought it about that his works were regarded with ill will and a prejudiced eye, and therefore could never please anyone. And although he served one nobleman after another, and was enabled by his talent to serve them well, nevertheless he rendered his services with such bad grace, that there was no one who felt grateful to him for them. ... He brought suits and went to law about everything with the greatest readiness, living in one long succession of law-suits, and appearing to triumph in them.
8. Vol. II, p. 309: [More fun with the fluidity of surnames in Renaissance Italy:] We have deferred to the end the mention of his family name, because it was not always the same, but varied, Baccio having himself called now De' Brandini, and now De' Bandinelli.
Whether that story is true or not, it sets the tone for Bandinelli's life pretty well. He was a total braggart and bully, and pretty universally hated, though somehow managed to retain the favor of the Medici. He was always pulling douchebag stunts, like trying to learn how to paint by hiring one of his contemporaries to make his portrait, because he was too proud to actually ask for instruction.
It's to Vasari's credit -- and helps compensate for his ambivalent praise for Dürer -- that, in spite of the horribleness of Bandinelli's personality and various artistic mistakes he made, Vasari still judges him to be a great sculptor, and never jumps onto the "bash Bandinelli" bandwagon, though he does preserve the anecdotes of many who did.
Below are eight quotes on the enfant terrible of Renaissance sculpture, showing what a mixed bag he was. I'm suddenly reminded of a thing Dr. Stumpf once said: "You can't fully appreciate the taste of a good apple until you've had some bad ones."
1. Vol. II, p. 265 - 6, Baccio Bandinelli: While still a boy, Baccio frequented at times the workshop of Girolamo del Buda, a common-place painter, on the Piazza di S. Pulinari. There, at one time during the winter, a great quantity of snow had fallen, which had been thrown afterwards by the people into a heap in that piazza; and Girolamo, turning to Baccio, said to him jestingly: "Baccio, if this snow were marble, could we not carve a fine giant out of it, such as a Marforio lying down?" "We could so," answered Baccio, "and I suggest that we should act as if it were marble." And immediately, throwing off his cloak, he set his hands to the snow, and, assisted by other boys ... he made a rough figure of Marforio lying down, eight braccia in length. [A braccio is an archaic Italian unit of measurement "roughly equivalent to 23 inches".] Whereupon the painter and all the others stood marvelling, not so much at what he had done as at the spirit with which he had set his hand to a work so vast, and he so young and small.
2. Vol. II, pp. 286 - 7: In this structure [tombs for the Medici popes] Baccio showed too little religion or too much adulation, or both together, in that he thought fit that the first founders - after Christ - of our religion, men deified and most dear to God [the Apostles], should give way to our Popes, and placed them in positions unworthy of them and inferior to those of Leo and Clement. Certain it is that this design of his, even as it was displeasing to God and to the Saints, so likewise gave no pleasure to the Popes or to any other man, for the reason, it appears to me, that religion - and I mean our own, the true religion - should be placed by mankind before all other interests and considerations. ... Baccio, in doing what I have described, made known to everyone that he had much good-will and affection indeed towards the Popes, but little judgment in exalting and honouring them in their sepulchres.
3. Vol. II, p. 293: Baccio finished ... the statue of Duke Cosimo. ... [H]e took no little pains with the head, but for all this the Duke and the gentlemen of the Court said that it did not resemble him in the least ... [H]earing that head censured by everyone, one day in a rage he knocked it off, with the intention of making another and fixing it in its place; but in the end he never made it at all. It was a custom of Baccio's to add pieces of marble both small and large to the statues that he executed, feeling no annoyance in doing this, and making light of it... holding to such ways as generally damn a sculptor completely.
4. Vol. II, pp. 297 - 8: He then set up these figures of Adam and Eve in their place, but, when uncovered, they experienced the same fate as his other works, and were torn to pieces with savage bitterness in sonnets and Latin verses, one going to the length of suggesting that even as Adam and Eve, having defiled Paradise by their disobedience, deserved to be driven out, so these figures, defiling the earth, deserved to be expelled from the church. Nevertheless ... they display so much art and design, that they deserve no little praise.
5. Vol. II, p. 298: A lady who had set herself to examine these statues [by Baccio of Adam and Eve], being asked by some gentlemen what she thought of these naked bodies, answered, "About the man I can give no judgment;" and, being pressed to give her opinion of the woman, she replied that in the Eve there were two good points, worthy of considerable praise, in that she was white and firm; whereby she contrived ingeniously, while seeming to praise, covertly to deal a shrewd blow to the craftsman and his art, giving to the statue the praise proper to the female body, which it is also necessary to apply to the marble, the material, and which is true of it, but not of the work or of the craftsmanship, for by such praise the craftsmanship is not praised. Thus, then, that shrewd lady hinted that in her opinion nothing could be praised in that statue save the marble.
6. Vol. II, pp. 304 - 5: [Having had his tomb built, he decides to reinter his father in it, too:] These bones of his father he chose to lay piously in that tomb with his own hands; whereupon it happened that either because he felt sorrow and a shock to his mind in handling his father's bones, or because he exerted himself too much in transferring those bones with his own hands and in rearranging the marbles, or from both reasons together, he was so overcome that he felt ill and had to go home, and, his malady growing daily worse, in eight days he died, at the age of seventy-two, having been up to that time robust and vigorous, and without having ever suffered much illness during the whole of his life.
7. Vol. II, pp. 308 - 9: And even more would he have been acknowledged for what he was, when alive, and beloved, if he had been so favoured by nature as to be more amiable and more courteous, because his being the contrary, and very rough with his tongue, robbed him of the goodwill of other persons, obscured his talents, and brought it about that his works were regarded with ill will and a prejudiced eye, and therefore could never please anyone. And although he served one nobleman after another, and was enabled by his talent to serve them well, nevertheless he rendered his services with such bad grace, that there was no one who felt grateful to him for them. ... He brought suits and went to law about everything with the greatest readiness, living in one long succession of law-suits, and appearing to triumph in them.
8. Vol. II, p. 309: [More fun with the fluidity of surnames in Renaissance Italy:] We have deferred to the end the mention of his family name, because it was not always the same, but varied, Baccio having himself called now De' Brandini, and now De' Bandinelli.