Fiction, Strong Words and Rumore in Giovanni Baglione’s Vite de’ pittori, scultori et architetti
Time: Oct. 1, 2021, 2 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.
Location: 313 Bowne (and virtual)
Frances Gage (Buffalo State University)
The Medieval Renaissance Program welcomes Gage, presenting the first lecture in their annual lecture series. Participants are welcome to join the lecture in person or to connect via zoom.
Throughout his Vite de’ pittori, scultori et architetti (1642), the painter Giovanni Baglione recounted multiple instances of the fictions and rumors spread by early modern Roman artists. Art historians have typically dismissed these anecdotes. But Baglione’s interest in artists’ production of oral fictions and rumors attests to the role that these played in the reception of art in early modern Rome. The most significant instance emerges in Baglione’s Life of Caravaggio, in which the author implicitly accused the Lombard painter of spreading rumors, but also argued that Caravaggio was an object of them. Indeed, the network of transmission by which Baglione came to know about the calumnious verses allegedly written by Caravaggio and his associates against him, his art and his associate Tommaso Salini, attests to the importance of these practices in the formation of artistic identity and reputation. Baglione inscribed his Vite within an agonistic culture in which oral and written art criticism—whether produced by a specific ally, rival or an anonymous critic—became interwoven with false or fictional accounts of criticism or acclaim. At the same time, Baglione opposed his Lives, allegedly written in the ‘clear light of truth,’ and without judgment, to these contentious oral and written practices, inscribing his text within traditions of the guidebook and elevated ecclesiastical history.
image: Baglione, Divine Love