1 00:00:00,750 --> 00:00:06,870 So I hope you're all here for the lecture on artists names and artists lives. 2 00:00:06,870 --> 00:00:15,090 Now, when you go to a library or visit a museum, watch documentary on television or on your computer or track down an image on the Internet. 3 00:00:15,090 --> 00:00:15,720 I bet you, Paul, 4 00:00:15,720 --> 00:00:24,780 we usually pay little or no attention to the fact that all these activities are usually organised under the names of individual artists. 5 00:00:24,780 --> 00:00:33,390 Indeed, much of art history, broadly defined, assumes that focussing on artists by name is a perfectly natural and normal thing to do. 6 00:00:33,390 --> 00:00:34,600 In actual fact, however, 7 00:00:34,600 --> 00:00:42,480 categorising artworks as the products of named individuals is not a universal concept and one that didn't even exist in Western Europe, 8 00:00:42,480 --> 00:00:47,790 let alone anywhere else for many centuries. Between the later classical period and the Renaissance. 9 00:00:47,790 --> 00:00:53,100 Indeed, the norm from a worldwide and trans historical perspective is probably that of the 10 00:00:53,100 --> 00:01:00,090 anonymous craftsmen or group of artisans rather than a single identifiable named artist. 11 00:01:00,090 --> 00:01:04,290 So the very idea of naming artists is not a universal phenomenon, and many cultures, 12 00:01:04,290 --> 00:01:10,950 both past and present, do not even record, let alone reverentially pronounced in hushed tones. 13 00:01:10,950 --> 00:01:17,580 The names of individual artists. In fact, the early 15th century painters seen at work on the right. 14 00:01:17,580 --> 00:01:25,860 And that's a early 15th century relief of the painter working on a canvas or a panel, probably, 15 00:01:25,860 --> 00:01:33,690 or the late 20th century Chinese craftsmen on the left who produced objects, images, buildings, sculptures and what have you. 16 00:01:33,690 --> 00:01:39,420 Things that we might now study in an art history course are often completely unacknowledged or at best 17 00:01:39,420 --> 00:01:47,310 recorded only as names in the payment records or account books of rich patrons and powerful institutions. 18 00:01:47,310 --> 00:01:56,220 But can we actually do art history the way we do it here without reference to artists names as the artists Hindmarch both are proposed in 1915, 19 00:01:56,220 --> 00:02:03,570 an art history without names is what he called for. And if we did, what kind of an art history might this look like? 20 00:02:03,570 --> 00:02:08,490 For instance, maybe we don't really need artists names to write a perfectly respectable history of the diversional 21 00:02:08,490 --> 00:02:14,580 function of altarpiece as a mediaeval Europe or the iconography of Buddha sculpture in Tibet. 22 00:02:14,580 --> 00:02:22,200 But when we do use artist names, as is so often the case, we need to think very carefully about who is doing the naming and why. 23 00:02:22,200 --> 00:02:27,330 Or to quote Shakespeare. What's in a name with that which we call a rose by any other name? 24 00:02:27,330 --> 00:02:32,670 Smells sweet just to shift our references for a moment. 25 00:02:32,670 --> 00:02:34,980 We're talking about artworks in our own day and age. 26 00:02:34,980 --> 00:02:41,520 Things apparently do smell sweeter or at least command a lot more cash depending on how they are named. 27 00:02:41,520 --> 00:02:46,620 In fact, in the case of this 17th century painting showing the destruction of the temple Jerusalem, 28 00:02:46,620 --> 00:02:55,050 the value of having one name rather than another can be put precisely at eight million and 40000 U.S. dollars. 29 00:02:55,050 --> 00:02:58,290 This was a difference in price from when the painting was first sold at auction 30 00:02:58,290 --> 00:03:04,140 at Sotheby's in 1995 as a work by the artist Pietro Testor to its reselling. 31 00:03:04,140 --> 00:03:08,430 Just four years later, under the name of a much better known artist, 32 00:03:08,430 --> 00:03:13,260 initially the heirs of the painting's owner, a man who had made his fortune in hand business. 33 00:03:13,260 --> 00:03:18,990 We're told that the painting under Testa's name should be valued at only seventeen thousand dollars. 34 00:03:18,990 --> 00:03:25,980 Keep bidding in the same room on the day of the 1995 auction. Brought the price up to two hundred and sixty thousand dollars. 35 00:03:25,980 --> 00:03:33,060 But once it had been officially Rio tributed a few years later to the famous baroque painter Nikola Pusan by the art historians, 36 00:03:33,060 --> 00:03:37,020 Sir Dennis, mom and the Loom curator here was in bed. 37 00:03:37,020 --> 00:03:45,540 It was resold for eight point three million dollars. It is not, however, only puissance name that is of interest in this little tale. 38 00:03:45,540 --> 00:03:54,160 Since the words sir, as in Sir Dennis Maun and Loof curator as in LUTH Curator pills and both in front of the names of the two art experts who read, 39 00:03:54,160 --> 00:03:59,390 attributed and effectively renamed this painting are also significant. 40 00:03:59,390 --> 00:04:08,850 The names, titles and proceed status, academic as well as social of those doing the naming can sometimes be equally significant in these two 41 00:04:08,850 --> 00:04:14,490 pages from a 1988 exhibition catalogue of Italian Renaissance drawings at the museum in Florence. 42 00:04:14,490 --> 00:04:21,210 We see, in fact, just how many different names and different kinds of names can be linked to a single sheet of paper, 43 00:04:21,210 --> 00:04:25,770 not much bigger than the one that I'm reading from right now. 44 00:04:25,770 --> 00:04:31,290 But once again, which names are attached to the image and by whom makes a big difference. 45 00:04:31,290 --> 00:04:38,220 First of all, there's the name given to the sheet as a whole. Its title of woman in profile and sketches were the bust of a child. 46 00:04:38,220 --> 00:04:42,990 And for a man with a beard, recto. Various studies versa. 47 00:04:42,990 --> 00:04:49,810 Quite a mouthful, especially in contrast to the earliest name given to the Strong by someone specifically the writer and artist Georgia. 48 00:04:49,810 --> 00:04:53,640 Sorry, but may well have known the artist who originally drew it. 49 00:04:53,640 --> 00:05:00,970 His name for this drawing, which he grew up with two other similar images, was simply three pages of heads. 50 00:05:00,970 --> 00:05:04,490 But there are lots of other names to be seen in the text. I know you probably can't read them. 51 00:05:04,490 --> 00:05:11,260 But, for example, lots and lots of names here and in various ones scattered here into the text, 52 00:05:11,260 --> 00:05:15,280 including the names of places where the drawing has been exhibited in the 20th century. 53 00:05:15,280 --> 00:05:23,320 Those are the impressive number of art historians dating back as far as 1862 who have discussed the image in print and in the main body, 54 00:05:23,320 --> 00:05:26,020 the catalogue entry, which actually continues onto the second page. 55 00:05:26,020 --> 00:05:33,310 From what you see here, the names of collectors and scholars who have owned or assessed the drawing since the 16th century, 56 00:05:33,310 --> 00:05:39,280 including Renaissance figures such as Duke, Grand Duke, Francesco Domenici and Busari, as well as Major 19th, 57 00:05:39,280 --> 00:05:46,600 the 20th century art historians such as Jovani morally Hinglish Bird Flu in your arms builder and Charles to Tony. 58 00:05:46,600 --> 00:05:49,210 In the context of today's focus on artists names, 59 00:05:49,210 --> 00:05:57,430 though perhaps most interesting is of all is how the drawings maker has been named and renamed the catalogue and Trey mentions, 60 00:05:57,430 --> 00:06:04,540 amongst others like Yaka and untaught Romine. And there are others as well as possible authors of the sheet. 61 00:06:04,540 --> 00:06:12,070 Now, even for a specialist Italian renaissance, art by Kafka and Antonio Moeny are not exactly names that trip off the tongue. 62 00:06:12,070 --> 00:06:15,340 But I suspect that what such a drawing might fetch at auction, 63 00:06:15,340 --> 00:06:21,250 or indeed the amount of time and attention a visitor would give to the sheet when displayed in an exhibition would 64 00:06:21,250 --> 00:06:28,180 be measurably increased by the presence of yet another name at the head of the wall label or the catalogue entry, 65 00:06:28,180 --> 00:06:31,570 that of Michelangelo Rutti. However, 66 00:06:31,570 --> 00:06:36,600 the very fact that it could be given Michaelangelo's name in this exhibition and catalogue rather than back 67 00:06:36,600 --> 00:06:42,440 yaka or until your moeny or indeed simply labelled an anonymous copy of a lost Michelangelo original, 68 00:06:42,440 --> 00:06:45,370 as some earlier scholars had in fact suggested, 69 00:06:45,370 --> 00:06:51,430 was very much a function of the academic status and institutional positions held by the curators of the exhibition. 70 00:06:51,430 --> 00:06:53,560 One, the director, the office museum itself. 71 00:06:53,560 --> 00:07:02,260 The other professor of art history at the University of Michigan, curators who in turn were themselves named on the front cover of the catalogue. 72 00:07:02,260 --> 00:07:07,210 However, for better or worse, artists names are a fact of life in much art historical scholarship. 73 00:07:07,210 --> 00:07:14,200 But this just makes it all the more important to understand the origins and implications of the very concept of the artist itself. 74 00:07:14,200 --> 00:07:19,610 In fact, our present day view of artists has been very much shaped by 19th century attitudes. 75 00:07:19,610 --> 00:07:24,760 It was in this period that the emphasis decisively shifted from an artist's ars that is 76 00:07:24,760 --> 00:07:31,840 his or her skill or art with a sense of ability to his or her individual creativity. 77 00:07:31,840 --> 00:07:40,560 In other words, there was a clear shift from valuing the art object as carefully crafted object to value most highly an artist's concept or idea, 78 00:07:40,560 --> 00:07:48,580 and inevitably the related personal, biographical and even psychological traits that were believed to shape this idea. 79 00:07:48,580 --> 00:07:51,670 So true artists and I'm sure you hear actually, I'll talk to me in a minute, 80 00:07:51,670 --> 00:07:55,900 but it's a kind of 19th century romantic poet who's kind of literally dead in a garret, 81 00:07:55,900 --> 00:08:00,520 which is kind of the romantic idea of the artist and the kind of creative genius. 82 00:08:00,520 --> 00:08:07,600 So true artists were now most often prised for their imagination, inventiveness, spontaneity and creative self-expression, 83 00:08:07,600 --> 00:08:13,510 even if or perhaps they perhaps especially if these traits led to artists living unconventional lives, 84 00:08:13,510 --> 00:08:19,090 often touched by a kind of creative madness or genius that led them to being inevitably misunderstood, 85 00:08:19,090 --> 00:08:27,070 ignored and maltreated by most of their comparatively dull, unimaginative, conventional and bourgeois contemporaries. 86 00:08:27,070 --> 00:08:31,430 This is, in short, the starving artist in a garret model of being an artist, 87 00:08:31,430 --> 00:08:37,960 a stereotype perfectly embodied in this mid 19th century painting depicting the death of the romantic poet Thomas Chatterton, 88 00:08:37,960 --> 00:08:45,640 who committed suicide in 1770, aged only 18, penniless, misunderstood and literally living in a garret. 89 00:08:45,640 --> 00:08:51,520 If Henry Wallace is painting is to be believed. Vincent Van Gogh was put self portrait you see here. 90 00:08:51,520 --> 00:08:53,740 Likewise conforms to the stereotype, 91 00:08:53,740 --> 00:09:01,420 having apparently sold almost not a single painting during his lifetime to his rather baffled and implicitly narrow minded bourgeois contemporaries, 92 00:09:01,420 --> 00:09:05,710 as well as being mentally unstable to the point of cutting off his own here in a fit of madness. 93 00:09:05,710 --> 00:09:10,750 In 1889, and in an echo of Chesterton's death, also committing suicide a year later. 94 00:09:10,750 --> 00:09:12,820 I think you probably all heard this kind of story. 95 00:09:12,820 --> 00:09:19,270 Not that it's not true, but it becomes a kind of almost a cliche of a certain kind of view of the artist. 96 00:09:19,270 --> 00:09:26,140 The assertion that are true or proper artists is inevitably an eccentric genius continues to be very much in evidence in our own time, 97 00:09:26,140 --> 00:09:29,450 as seen in the strange and enigmatic figure of Andy Warhol. 98 00:09:29,450 --> 00:09:35,750 You've seen a self-portrait on the left or the gossip column antics of England's own Tracey Emin seen on the right. 99 00:09:35,750 --> 00:09:38,320 In another self-portrait, however, 100 00:09:38,320 --> 00:09:46,210 some aspects of this notion of the artist and implicitly of the nature of artistic genius can be dated back much earlier than the 19th century. 101 00:09:46,210 --> 00:09:54,520 Indeed, it was in the 15th and especially the 16th century. That one begins to see the emergence of what has been called a super artist as genius. 102 00:09:54,520 --> 00:10:00,360 In the case of a very small and must remember that this is an exception even in this period or certainly in this period. 103 00:10:00,360 --> 00:10:05,430 But this very small number of so-called super artists such as Durer, Leonardo, Michelangelo. 104 00:10:05,430 --> 00:10:11,400 Some of the characteristics associated with a 19th century artist is genius, can already be seen. 105 00:10:11,400 --> 00:10:18,900 So, for example, Michaelangelo's temper and brooding melancholic fits which led to his nose being broken and a youthful fight with a fellow artist. 106 00:10:18,900 --> 00:10:23,880 His astonishing creativity and artistic innovation, even his eccentric personal habits, 107 00:10:23,880 --> 00:10:29,400 such as wearing his leather boots for so long that they literally had to be cut off of his festering skin. 108 00:10:29,400 --> 00:10:34,320 All these kind of stories feature in contemporary biographies and depictions, such as, for example, 109 00:10:34,320 --> 00:10:39,180 in brooding portraits like the one on the left, where you can also see his broken nose, 110 00:10:39,180 --> 00:10:45,240 which is kind of his one of the signature features of his image or the possible portrait in the famous painting, 111 00:10:45,240 --> 00:10:50,940 which Amino Rafael School of Athens, where this is sometimes said to be a portrait of Michelangelo and his brooding. 112 00:10:50,940 --> 00:10:54,570 He's in the classic pose of the melancholic with his head resting on his arm. 113 00:10:54,570 --> 00:10:58,380 He's got possibly that broken nose and potentially even those festering boots, 114 00:10:58,380 --> 00:11:03,480 that kind of, again, one of those stories where, you know, they're not festering yet. 115 00:11:03,480 --> 00:11:09,330 So, you know, these kind of images of the kind of brooding, eccentric artist. 116 00:11:09,330 --> 00:11:13,110 Likewise, both Michelangelo and the Northern Renaissance, his most famous super artist, 117 00:11:13,110 --> 00:11:19,170 always sure happily encouraged a view of their creative powers, is being divine and godlike. 118 00:11:19,170 --> 00:11:23,580 Michelangelo was even known in his own lifetime as Divino Vino or the Divine One. 119 00:11:23,580 --> 00:11:29,640 And repeatedly reminded his contemporaries through his poems and through images like his very famous Creation album, 120 00:11:29,640 --> 00:11:37,520 that he, as a godlike artist, was able to give life itself to the figures he portrayed. 121 00:11:37,520 --> 00:11:43,530 Was sorry when writing about Michaelangelo's iconic statue of David even explicitly stated that the 122 00:11:43,530 --> 00:11:48,660 artist's transformation of an old botched piece of marble into an incredibly expressive figure was the, 123 00:11:48,660 --> 00:11:52,720 quote, revival of a dead thing and a veritable miracle. So, again, 124 00:11:52,720 --> 00:12:03,660 a repeated theme of Michelangelo and other artists of this particular group of these super artists are to be able to give life to their material. 125 00:12:03,660 --> 00:12:10,410 In the case of Durer, the point was made perhaps even more explicitly in his famous self-portrait, a 50 100 left, 126 00:12:10,410 --> 00:12:18,870 which in its physiognomy and full frontal pose was clearly meant to echo well-known iconic images of Christ, such as the one seen in the print, 127 00:12:18,870 --> 00:12:26,250 also by juror on the right, in which Christ's face is literally what is likewise from frontally and wearing the crown of thorns 128 00:12:26,250 --> 00:12:34,150 on a fluttering cloth known as the Vaira icon or true image helpfully held aloft here by two angels. 129 00:12:34,150 --> 00:12:40,420 There's prints and paintings also highlight another aspect of the status of artists and artists names and the Renaissance. 130 00:12:40,420 --> 00:12:41,770 Whereas in past centuries, 131 00:12:41,770 --> 00:12:49,660 artists names have generally not been recorded for posterity and had almost never appeared on the individual works that produced by the 16th century. 132 00:12:49,660 --> 00:12:56,320 Artists, especially super artists like Dürer, seeking to distinguish themselves from their artisan or craftsman brethren, 133 00:12:56,320 --> 00:13:01,840 began to sign their paintings, sculptures, prints and sometimes even drawings. 134 00:13:01,840 --> 00:13:10,180 Significantly, jurors famous A.D. Bush juror monogram appears both in his self-portrait and in the print on the right. 135 00:13:10,180 --> 00:13:18,550 See the lady here again. In the latter case of the print, in fact, directly beneath the face of Christ himself, 136 00:13:18,550 --> 00:13:24,610 thereby implying yet another link between artistic and divine creation. 137 00:13:24,610 --> 00:13:32,500 Similarly, in this well known in grading by juror Adam, the first human made by God holds in his hand a sign very clearly stating, 138 00:13:32,500 --> 00:13:39,370 quote, made Vucevic in the Latin made by Elbridge Jr. of Nurnberg. 139 00:13:39,370 --> 00:13:51,270 But whether it was a print or Adam himself, it had been made by the implicitly godlike artist is left somewhat ambiguous and perhaps intentionally so. 140 00:13:51,270 --> 00:14:00,720 Absolutely unambiguous. Is the role played by juror's name? Or rather has monogram in one of the first ever instances of artists copyright violation? 141 00:14:00,720 --> 00:14:09,180 In this case, the Italian renaissance artist Marcantonio Mundi, who was a pupil and a student of Rafael's Mundi copied. 142 00:14:09,180 --> 00:14:12,690 Or perhaps we should say forged some of jurors prints, 143 00:14:12,690 --> 00:14:17,790 including the woodcut you see here with the A.D. monogram visible under the seated figure of Christ 144 00:14:17,790 --> 00:14:27,270 as a man of stars you see here is carved into this print by during the legal scuffle that ensued, 145 00:14:27,270 --> 00:14:37,170 resulted in a decision allowing Mark Antonios copies to continue being printed, but only if they appeared without the A.D. monogram. 146 00:14:37,170 --> 00:14:42,800 And I think you can see here that this is the kind of approved after this a legal fight because 147 00:14:42,800 --> 00:14:47,640 it wasn't copyright law where we know at this point it's just sort of beginning to develop. 148 00:14:47,640 --> 00:14:52,200 You can't see where he's kind of scratched out the A.D. here, putting in it. 149 00:14:52,200 --> 00:14:56,970 You can't have branded with the death because you know, that's not allowed. 150 00:14:56,970 --> 00:15:04,410 So it was the presence or absence of the artist's name that seems to have been the key point of contention for a Renaissance super artist like JR. 151 00:15:04,410 --> 00:15:10,150 His monogram was like McDonald's Golden Arches or Chanel's Double C today and Ambiga, 152 00:15:10,150 --> 00:15:17,670 an unambiguous guarantee of artistic quality through what we might call name branding. 153 00:15:17,670 --> 00:15:22,080 It was also precisely to eliminate any ambiguity about authorship that Michelangelo 154 00:15:22,080 --> 00:15:27,100 decided belatedly to sign his name on one of his most important early sculptures, 155 00:15:27,100 --> 00:15:34,800 the famous model Piazza in the Vatican. The Sorry in his life of Michelangelo describes the young artists anger upon hearing a loud mouth, 156 00:15:34,800 --> 00:15:39,150 Lomborg claim that the work had been made by Howard Gobbo of Milan. 157 00:15:39,150 --> 00:15:43,350 No idea what that supposed to be. But it clearly wasn't Michelangelo. 158 00:15:43,350 --> 00:15:50,940 So later that night, at least according to the sorry, Michelangelo rapidly chiselled his name on the sash across the Virgin's chest, 159 00:15:50,940 --> 00:15:56,580 thereby giving very prominently and very permanently proof of his authorship. 160 00:15:56,580 --> 00:16:05,250 And that he could never again be denied. The very idea of signing one's name is a reflection of a new understanding of the status of the artist, 161 00:16:05,250 --> 00:16:10,710 a concept that began to be articulated in the 15th century by the sculptor and writer Lorenzo Ghiberti 162 00:16:10,710 --> 00:16:16,140 and was fully expounded in perhaps the most influential history of art at the Western art ever written. 163 00:16:16,140 --> 00:16:25,020 The Stars Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, first published in Fifteen Fifty and again in a revised edition in fifteen sixty eight. 164 00:16:25,020 --> 00:16:29,190 I say the most influential because so many of the approaches first codified in FACA, 165 00:16:29,190 --> 00:16:36,060 whose lives have been and still continue to be the basis for how much art history is written. 166 00:16:36,060 --> 00:16:42,540 For instance, it is only very recently that scholars have seriously begun to question the notion of artistic progress 167 00:16:42,540 --> 00:16:48,570 of art apparently progressing to the illogically towards some sort of unstated but implicit goal. 168 00:16:48,570 --> 00:16:57,870 First of naturalism, and then especially after the emergence of photography, a formal and iconographic innovation for its own sake. 169 00:16:57,870 --> 00:17:04,800 Although Ghiberti had already begun to develop his own preliminary model of artistic progress in the May 15th century, 170 00:17:04,800 --> 00:17:09,360 it was of a story slightly later grand narrative arts history that became a key 171 00:17:09,360 --> 00:17:13,590 source of inspiration for the following five centuries of writing about art. 172 00:17:13,590 --> 00:17:23,500 Something progressive and defined through a succession of increasingly innovative and inventive named artists. 173 00:17:23,500 --> 00:17:32,560 I'm seeing here on two fronts pieces, two illustrated pages from the second edition of the stories Lives of fifty sixty eight edition. 174 00:17:32,560 --> 00:17:38,460 But the Sari's model is a complex one, which raises as many questions as it answers. 175 00:17:38,460 --> 00:17:43,080 First of all, by reading the prefaces to each of the three sections of his lords of the artists, 176 00:17:43,080 --> 00:17:50,460 one realises that the visual arts can go down as well as up in terms of their quality, style and innovation. 177 00:17:50,460 --> 00:17:54,960 So Vassar describes the history of ancient art as being like the human life cycle in 178 00:17:54,960 --> 00:18:00,840 which youth is followed first by maturity and then inevitably by decline and death. 179 00:18:00,840 --> 00:18:08,570 Or invest Vassar his own words. The arts, like human beings themselves, are born, grow up, become old and die. 180 00:18:08,570 --> 00:18:12,390 A similar trajectory is applied to the art of his own epic, broadly defined, 181 00:18:12,390 --> 00:18:16,240 which begins with what he calls the artists of the first period, such as Joto. 182 00:18:16,240 --> 00:18:22,830 His portrait you see on the left in the 15th 68 edition of his lies. 183 00:18:22,830 --> 00:18:28,560 As the story says, this first wave of wave of artists, quote, fell a long way short of perfection. 184 00:18:28,560 --> 00:18:32,730 But all the same, that did mark a new beginning. That is a new beginning. 185 00:18:32,730 --> 00:18:37,860 After what he felt had been centuries of post classical decadence and decay, 186 00:18:37,860 --> 00:18:45,600 effectively the story was giving the artists of this first age who were primarily in the 14th century the equivalent of a best newcomer award, 187 00:18:45,600 --> 00:18:50,400 even stating explicitly that they shouldn't be judged by the highest standards of art, but rather only. 188 00:18:50,400 --> 00:18:55,160 Comparison to the mediæval or in his words, barbaric art that immediately preceded it. 189 00:18:55,160 --> 00:18:59,880 And I say this is all the sorrows point of view. I don't think it's actually a right description of a mediaeval period. 190 00:18:59,880 --> 00:19:04,830 But there you go. That's how he's trying to set up the difference between that and the Renaissance for sorry. 191 00:19:04,830 --> 00:19:07,770 Second period covers most of the 15th century. 192 00:19:07,770 --> 00:19:14,310 And although Vassar admits that, quote, there was clearly a considerable improvement in invention and execution with more design, 193 00:19:14,310 --> 00:19:20,480 better style and a more careful finish. Even so, there was no one artist perfect in everything. 194 00:19:20,480 --> 00:19:27,690 So to continue our school prise giving metaphore, then this age would have been given maybe the most improved award. 195 00:19:27,690 --> 00:19:34,850 But there are no qualifications needed for the third grade, which encompass FACA, his own 16th century contemporaries such as well Sophia and Tina, 196 00:19:34,850 --> 00:19:41,790 whose portrait in the lives you see on the right and who was part of an age that the story's eyes clearly merited the most valuable player award, 197 00:19:41,790 --> 00:19:46,530 or maybe even an Olympic gold medal for by the 16th century, 198 00:19:46,530 --> 00:19:55,140 according to the sorry art had, quote, achieved everything possible in the imitation of nature and has progressed so far that it has more reason 199 00:19:55,140 --> 00:20:03,000 to fear slipping back than to expect ever to make further advances by sticking to his biological model, 200 00:20:03,000 --> 00:20:09,150 even when discussing the art of his own day. The sorry implicitly admitted that having reached a peak, 201 00:20:09,150 --> 00:20:16,200 the visual arts would presumably and unavoidably soon fall into a period of decline and decay. 202 00:20:16,200 --> 00:20:22,110 But for the time being, the story avoided musing on this sad fact and instead focus his attention on constructing his 203 00:20:22,110 --> 00:20:28,140 lives so as to culminate in an over-the-top celebration of the most super of the super artists, 204 00:20:28,140 --> 00:20:31,110 namely the divine Michelangelo, whose work in painting, 205 00:20:31,110 --> 00:20:42,100 sculpture and architecture not only reached but actually surpassed the sorrows to measures of perfection, nature and the antique. 206 00:20:42,100 --> 00:20:48,380 It is life of Michelangelo. The sorrow displayed both the strengths and weaknesses of his approach. 207 00:20:48,380 --> 00:20:55,340 Having introduced each of his three sections with grand overviews of the period in question, he then states that it was not his intention, 208 00:20:55,340 --> 00:21:05,300 quote, to compile a list of artists and their works, but by using the individual artistic biography as his basic unit of organisation. 209 00:21:05,300 --> 00:21:09,790 In practise, it was the individual artist who became the focus of attention, 210 00:21:09,790 --> 00:21:15,800 a strategy that has remained at the heart of much art historical writing until really quite recently. 211 00:21:15,800 --> 00:21:22,130 But this approach does allow him to make one of his key points, namely that proper intellectual respect, 212 00:21:22,130 --> 00:21:27,020 high social status and generous financial awards should be accorded to artists, 213 00:21:27,020 --> 00:21:32,770 a category that, not coincidentally also included the sorry himself as a practising artist. 214 00:21:32,770 --> 00:21:38,930 And if I'm showing you here, one of the story's own paintings, which you can also argue again, 215 00:21:38,930 --> 00:21:44,190 shows him and others well, that's within plaiting or be eager to inflate the size of the artist. 216 00:21:44,190 --> 00:21:52,430 Obviously, what happened here with this was an image of one painting who might be painting. 217 00:21:52,430 --> 00:21:56,200 OK. It's a good story, you know. It's the story, apocryphal story of St. Luke. 218 00:21:56,200 --> 00:22:08,410 So one of the evangelists who supposedly is an artist and is supposedly visited in his studio by none other than the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus. 219 00:22:08,410 --> 00:22:13,870 And then he paints the sort of perfect portrait of her. And I guess that's what this symbol is. 220 00:22:13,870 --> 00:22:19,510 Is the bull. So he's the patron saint of artists, at least in the European tradition. 221 00:22:19,510 --> 00:22:28,240 And so here's a painting by the story of kind of the ultimate kind of divine artist who literally has contact with God and mother of God. 222 00:22:28,240 --> 00:22:30,490 And then he's his perfect painting of her. 223 00:22:30,490 --> 00:22:35,650 And it becomes actually the story, just like the very icon I showed you, that sort of fluttering image of Christ. 224 00:22:35,650 --> 00:22:39,460 The whole story that's based on the story, the crucifixion in. 225 00:22:39,460 --> 00:22:46,150 Veronica Vera icon puts the cloth to Christ face when he's on his way to being crucified. 226 00:22:46,150 --> 00:22:53,440 And the imprint in his face then becomes this idea that he becomes a model for a whole series of paintings. 227 00:22:53,440 --> 00:22:58,990 And similarly, the supposed Saint Louis portrait of the virgin and child becomes a model for a lot of the paintings. 228 00:22:58,990 --> 00:23:07,030 And so you get a lot of Byzantium and sort of mediaeval icons that then get into these stories that they are actually painting painted by lugu, 229 00:23:07,030 --> 00:23:12,970 or that this is actually either the paint, the cloth of Christ's face impression based directly on that. 230 00:23:12,970 --> 00:23:21,820 So there's a whole sort of interesting story there about that kind of contact with the divinity through art that continues to then be reproduced, 231 00:23:21,820 --> 00:23:24,790 if not the actual painting itself. Anyway, the point here is, 232 00:23:24,790 --> 00:23:30,790 is that the story is showing us in his own work the kind of high status that's that's accorded 233 00:23:30,790 --> 00:23:38,140 to artists or even to the point of directly communing with with God and with the Saints, 234 00:23:38,140 --> 00:23:42,610 the ever more lofty status of the divine, or at least Semien, divine artist who was sorry, 235 00:23:42,610 --> 00:23:47,590 was eager to distinguish from what he saw as lowly artisans and mere craftsmen. 236 00:23:47,590 --> 00:23:56,530 He's also suggested in the life of Michelangelo by the Super Artists Association from an early age with the great and the good of his time. 237 00:23:56,530 --> 00:24:06,990 As Busari tells us, we're just a boy. Michelangelo was invited to join the great Lorenzo Domenici a table while as a young man, sort of a table, 238 00:24:06,990 --> 00:24:11,320 while as a young man who had by this point carved his famous marble, David, 239 00:24:11,320 --> 00:24:15,850 he was willing and able to engage with nobleman, cardinals and even popes as a zikos. 240 00:24:15,850 --> 00:24:19,540 So. Right, as a boy, he's already having kind of dinner and lunch. Lorenzo Mataji. 241 00:24:19,540 --> 00:24:27,670 And that as he gets older, he starts to, you know, basically beyond on equal social terms with aristocrats and even popes. 242 00:24:27,670 --> 00:24:35,890 But it is also in this important respect that early modern artists like Michelangelo differ from their romantic and post romantic successors. 243 00:24:35,890 --> 00:24:43,300 That is, while the latter's biographies are often characterised by a constant and consistent rejection by the mainstream and elite of the day, 244 00:24:43,300 --> 00:24:45,970 we simply can't understand their other gardeners. 245 00:24:45,970 --> 00:24:50,810 And that's kind of the point of being on guard, right, is that, you know, bourgeois society doesn't understand. 246 00:24:50,810 --> 00:24:57,520 You end up in a garret and only famous after your death. But this is quite different in the case of Rennison Super Artist, 247 00:24:57,520 --> 00:25:02,290 because it was precisely by interacting with the contemporary elite as equals and by being 248 00:25:02,290 --> 00:25:07,600 rewarded by the elite financially and socially that is often being given titles and so forth, 249 00:25:07,600 --> 00:25:14,440 that artists such as JR and Michelangelo could avoid starving in Garretts is outcast from bourgeois society. 250 00:25:14,440 --> 00:25:20,410 In fact, there's a recent book by the artist Lloyd Rapp. Hadfield has proved in great detail just how rich Michelangelo was. 251 00:25:20,410 --> 00:25:26,710 By the time he died, the early modern artists could, however, adapt many of the same moody eccentricities, 252 00:25:26,710 --> 00:25:34,600 though perhaps not the stigma of social exclusion associated with the stereotypical romantic, modern and to some extent, postmodern artists. 253 00:25:34,600 --> 00:25:40,060 I think it might be interesting to think about how contemporary superstar to something people like while Tracey 254 00:25:40,060 --> 00:25:44,880 Ullman or Damien Hirst or sort of the big names or in some ways maybe closer to the Renaissance model of, 255 00:25:44,880 --> 00:25:47,890 you know, hobnobbing with the rich and famous, getting very wealthy and all that. 256 00:25:47,890 --> 00:25:52,690 And it's kind of the romantic artist idea is maybe something that's had its day or, you know. 257 00:25:52,690 --> 00:25:58,900 That certainly is isn't being played with by more recent artists who in some ways have the kind of eccentricities 258 00:25:58,900 --> 00:26:05,560 and innovativeness and sexual inventiveness associated with Renaissance artists and romantic artists, 259 00:26:05,560 --> 00:26:11,620 but perhaps socially, financially closer to the Renaissance them to the romantic and modernist stories. 260 00:26:11,620 --> 00:26:17,460 And he gets something to think about. It is like a Michelangelo, 261 00:26:17,460 --> 00:26:25,290 the deploys many of the tools that still form the basis for much present day art historical scholarship by considering issues such as provenance, 262 00:26:25,290 --> 00:26:30,540 patronage, iconography, artistic antecedents and stylistic analysis. 263 00:26:30,540 --> 00:26:37,710 So, for instance, he tells us how fragments of what had Michelangelo's cartoons ended up in the collection of a man to a nobleman. 264 00:26:37,710 --> 00:26:44,730 While the artists often stormy interaction with his elite patrons is a topic returned to again and again throughout the life. 265 00:26:44,730 --> 00:26:50,850 Similarly, the story describes Michelangelo copying the works of two of the heroes of the first and second sections of his book, 266 00:26:50,850 --> 00:26:59,100 namely Joto and Mus'ab Show. And amazingly, drawings by the young Michelangelo after both of these predecessors still survived, 267 00:26:59,100 --> 00:27:02,520 including the sketch on the left drawn by Michelangelo when he was only about 268 00:27:02,520 --> 00:27:06,870 14 years old and which he had copied from figures in one of dropoffs frescoes. 269 00:27:06,870 --> 00:27:16,070 And subsecretary in Florence, which you see on the right. So it's this pair copied from the fresco here in Florence. 270 00:27:16,070 --> 00:27:23,940 But the account also highlights some of the potential problems of focussing so relentlessly on the artist as an individual, 271 00:27:23,940 --> 00:27:28,140 the very survival of such fairly awkward sketches like the one by Michelangelo on the left. 272 00:27:28,140 --> 00:27:32,880 Confirm the Sari's claims that such scraps and fragments were treated almost like precious and 273 00:27:32,880 --> 00:27:38,560 holy relics and thus again inevitably serves to elevate the artist to reveal godlike figure, 274 00:27:38,560 --> 00:27:45,060 you know, whose relics like the bones of a saint are being collected and sort of venerated because it's not a bad drawing, but it's not true. 275 00:27:45,060 --> 00:27:49,460 Amazing. So it's being kept because it's by Michelangelo more than anything else. 276 00:27:49,460 --> 00:27:55,530 And although the story's intention in elevating Michelangelo to the status of a divinity was clearly to raise the status of all artists, 277 00:27:55,530 --> 00:28:02,340 including himself. The result is that such figures eventually started to beget believe their own PR. 278 00:28:02,340 --> 00:28:08,190 Indeed, in the case of Michelangelo, he even hired a spin doctor named Con D.V. to write what we would call today a fully 279 00:28:08,190 --> 00:28:12,810 authorised biography that tried to gloss over claims made in the first edition of the 280 00:28:12,810 --> 00:28:17,700 Sari's lives that seemed to undermine Michaelangelo's carefully constructed image as 281 00:28:17,700 --> 00:28:25,910 an artistic superhero and a divinely inspired and completely self-taught genius. 282 00:28:25,910 --> 00:28:26,720 Specifically, 283 00:28:26,720 --> 00:28:34,600 Michaelangelo wanted to deny the Soros claim in his first edition of The Lives that rather than having literally been God's gift to mankind. 284 00:28:34,600 --> 00:28:40,820 A claim fundamental to the evolving notion of artistic genius as being something innate and unteachable. 285 00:28:40,820 --> 00:28:45,460 Michelangelo actually had a bit of training in the painter Dominico Gillanders workshop, 286 00:28:45,460 --> 00:28:50,370 and it even copied some of his drawings, one of which you see here on the right. That's a guillain diagram. 287 00:28:50,370 --> 00:28:56,990 But this kind of thing, the Michelangelo copy. The result is for the sorry, without a doubt, completely in all of the right. 288 00:28:56,990 --> 00:29:05,630 Michelangelo was nevertheless forced to provide archival evidence in the second edition of his life of Michelangelo to support his claims. 289 00:29:05,630 --> 00:29:10,940 And what might well be the first ever use of documentary evidence in art historical scholarship. 290 00:29:10,940 --> 00:29:16,160 The sorry second edition quotes at length from a contract signed by Michaelangelo's father, 291 00:29:16,160 --> 00:29:21,680 a document that clearly refutes Michaelangelo's claim to have never had a teacher. 292 00:29:21,680 --> 00:29:28,130 According to the Sorry Code, Davie's authorised biography and asserted that Guillain Dyer had, quote, never assisted Michelangelo. 293 00:29:28,130 --> 00:29:34,590 But this is clearly false, as may be seen by the writing in the hand of Ludovico, Michelangelo's father that runs thus, 294 00:29:34,590 --> 00:29:38,610 and the stories that quoting the document in the second edition of Lives 14 295 00:29:38,610 --> 00:29:42,830 Eighty-eight know that this 1st of April that I Ludovico winner of The Apprentice, 296 00:29:42,830 --> 00:29:49,640 my son Michelangelo to Dominico Guillain Deyo and his brother David for the next three years with the following agreements 297 00:29:49,640 --> 00:29:57,110 that they said Michaelangelo's shall remain with them that time to learn to paint and practise his art significantly. 298 00:29:57,110 --> 00:30:01,430 Vassar's excursion into archival art history ends with the following phrase. 299 00:30:01,430 --> 00:30:07,220 I have made this digression in the interests of truth and this of let this suffice for the rest of the life. 300 00:30:07,220 --> 00:30:12,960 We will now return to the story. And this is precisely one of the great problems of the story, 301 00:30:12,960 --> 00:30:20,900 is text that in general it is often more a collection of stories that have documented facts, with perhaps this exception or few other exceptions. 302 00:30:20,900 --> 00:30:23,060 But a lot of it's about a kind of narrative structure, 303 00:30:23,060 --> 00:30:30,350 as much as about kind of the truth that although many of students and art historians continue to 304 00:30:30,350 --> 00:30:35,780 assume that the stories text to be used with competence as evidence for what really happened, 305 00:30:35,780 --> 00:30:39,890 in many instances it is clear that the lives are as much an accumulation of hopes, 306 00:30:39,890 --> 00:30:46,370 desires, myths and constructed ideologies as any work explicitly labelled fiction. 307 00:30:46,370 --> 00:30:53,570 Now, obviously, the story had an agenda on writing the lives and agenda about raising the status of the artist and about the aims of yourself, 308 00:30:53,570 --> 00:30:58,500 namely to imitate and ideally surpass both nature and antiquity. 309 00:30:58,500 --> 00:31:04,740 And it is this agenda that underlies some of the most obviously constructed elements of the lives. 310 00:31:04,740 --> 00:31:11,870 And and Otto Kurtz. I think a list of them on on your handout, the former a noted psychoanalyst and the latter, 311 00:31:11,870 --> 00:31:15,350 a cultural historian who worked at the Warburg Institute in London, 312 00:31:15,350 --> 00:31:24,440 wrote a very insightful book in 1934 exploring the notion of artists lives as myths or better as fictional constructs. 313 00:31:24,440 --> 00:31:29,490 So, for instance, in a motif that can be traced back to classical writers such as Pliny the Star, 314 00:31:29,490 --> 00:31:35,180 he repeatedly claims that artists account is discovered by chance in childhood, 315 00:31:35,180 --> 00:31:42,110 a strategy that supports his general assertion that artistic talent is something fundamentally innate rather than learnt. 316 00:31:42,110 --> 00:31:46,700 Thus, although Vasari tries to prove that Michelangelo was trained by Gillham die, 317 00:31:46,700 --> 00:31:55,610 he also emphasises that Michaelangelo's innate genius was already evident long before his apprenticeship began and that once in the Masters workshop, 318 00:31:55,610 --> 00:32:02,460 he soon surpassed his teacher. And again, this is something that's repeated again and again in stories. 319 00:32:02,460 --> 00:32:08,880 About autists, even more common is the leitmotif of the artist who is discovered while tending sheep 320 00:32:08,880 --> 00:32:14,820 by a passer by who notices his untutored but nevertheless impressive sketches. 321 00:32:14,820 --> 00:32:20,310 We see this narrative in the star's life of job hope, whose portrait is always good to see again. 322 00:32:20,310 --> 00:32:29,190 On the left, quote, Choctaw, the son of a simple peasant, tended his father's flock and drew pictures of the animals on stones and in the sand. 323 00:32:29,190 --> 00:32:34,530 The older artist Chimbu, who happened to come along, recognise the shepherds great talent, 324 00:32:34,530 --> 00:32:37,980 took him along and saw to the training of the boy destined to become one of 325 00:32:37,980 --> 00:32:43,230 Italy's greatest artists and quote and show you a kind of random sheet pictures. 326 00:32:43,230 --> 00:32:49,950 I haven't got other pictures, not certainly the one that was being drawn on stones and in the sand by Joto. 327 00:32:49,950 --> 00:32:56,130 Now, I think we could just about believe the story of one artistically gifted Shepherd boy. 328 00:32:56,130 --> 00:32:59,490 But in a later section of the lives, the story tells the story. 329 00:32:59,490 --> 00:33:05,940 And again, I use the word story advisedly of the CND page. Rebecca Fumi, who is once again described as the son of a peasant, 330 00:33:05,940 --> 00:33:10,830 discovered this time by a scene as nobleman while making drawings in the sand of the sheep. 331 00:33:10,830 --> 00:33:15,870 He was tending, and the story gives nearly identical accounts about the early life and discovery 332 00:33:15,870 --> 00:33:21,440 of artistic talent in the cases of Andreas and Savino and Andrea Castano as well. 333 00:33:21,440 --> 00:33:27,810 And I'm sorry, but for sketching Shepherd boards, IT boys is just a bit too much of a coincidence. 334 00:33:27,810 --> 00:33:30,660 But I don't think it's a case of Asari being lazy. 335 00:33:30,660 --> 00:33:38,840 Rather, he uses such reoccurring motifs to step forward his agenda about the innate nature of artistic talent and genius. 336 00:33:38,840 --> 00:33:47,580 And incidentally, after Vassar's life by other writers, the very same motif appears again and much later biographies of the Spanish throat painters. 337 00:33:47,580 --> 00:33:53,820 Zubaan, whose painting Balaam, in fact, is the one I see on the right, and the early 19th century artist Goya, 338 00:33:53,820 --> 00:34:00,310 which both focus on the chance discovery of their artistic talent while sketching animals as young Shepherd boys. 339 00:34:00,310 --> 00:34:04,860 Kristin Kurts, who argued that such tales had an underlying psychological basis. 340 00:34:04,860 --> 00:34:09,270 Even the site, the story of a Japanese painter named Moriyama Oakhill, 341 00:34:09,270 --> 00:34:16,290 whose talent was discovered when a passing samurai saw a paper sack Okja had painted stuck up on a tree. 342 00:34:16,290 --> 00:34:22,050 Whether he painted she it or not. We are told in a somewhat more subtle way. 343 00:34:22,050 --> 00:34:29,170 The story also allows certain motifs to echo from one super artist's biography to the next. 344 00:34:29,170 --> 00:34:38,370 So he tells the tale of the young Michaelangelo while studying this print by St. Anthony, attacked by devils, by the German artist Martin Changa. 345 00:34:38,370 --> 00:34:44,320 Someone that you're also very much looked up to so hadn't seen and studied this print. 346 00:34:44,320 --> 00:34:49,380 Miguel Angel went out and bought strange looking fish with curiously coloured scales to 347 00:34:49,380 --> 00:34:55,440 help him draw the monstrous spirits in a kind of similar echo in the life of Leonardo. 348 00:34:55,440 --> 00:35:02,040 The story claims that, again, as a young boy, the artist painted a horrible and terrible monster after gathering lizards, 349 00:35:02,040 --> 00:35:07,140 newts, Maggette snakes, butterflies, locust bats and other such animals. 350 00:35:07,140 --> 00:35:14,130 So you saw it again, makes a kind of fantasy of a kind of monster using kind of natural fauna. 351 00:35:14,130 --> 00:35:19,110 So according to the story, both artists use local fauna to produce monstrous images as boys. 352 00:35:19,110 --> 00:35:26,490 And in Leonardo's case, the story even provides a pungent additional detail by telling us that Leonardo became so engrossed in drawing from his 353 00:35:26,490 --> 00:35:35,260 creepy crawly models that he didn't even notice the disgusting stench that developed as their corpses started to rot. 354 00:35:35,260 --> 00:35:39,690 So I guess the point of that is that you need to get a little detail that makes it seem that, well, that must be true. 355 00:35:39,690 --> 00:35:43,560 Then again, you get these sort of echoes and you think, well, really, are they all. I mean, maybe they all do. 356 00:35:43,560 --> 00:35:46,770 The point of this is being kind of highlighted across different artist biographies. 357 00:35:46,770 --> 00:35:54,240 Again, the kind of young artists going out, searching for inspiration and so forth, and competing motifs with slight variations. 358 00:35:54,240 --> 00:36:02,460 And given just enough kind of local detail to make them seem convincing or perhaps to to to remind us of the differences, 359 00:36:02,460 --> 00:36:09,420 as well as some areas across the art as the always lives shape many debates about art and artists in the following centuries. 360 00:36:09,420 --> 00:36:17,130 But for sorry in turn, owed much of his agenda and his strategy of focussing on individual artist biographies to his own predecessors, 361 00:36:17,130 --> 00:36:23,790 especially plenty the elder of the 1st century Roman writer who produced one of the earliest surviving accounts of individual painters, 362 00:36:23,790 --> 00:36:32,010 sculptors and architects. Unlike Fusari, however, put his lives of classical artists did not form a stand alone history of art, 363 00:36:32,010 --> 00:36:40,350 but rather were a slightly eccentric excuses within a multiple volume description and analysis of the natural world in general. 364 00:36:40,350 --> 00:36:44,580 But since one of the principal aims of art for Pliny, as it would later be for the story, 365 00:36:44,580 --> 00:36:50,130 was to imitate or even surpass nature is perhaps not that surprising to find a discussion 366 00:36:50,130 --> 00:36:55,410 of artists who sought to do precisely this in a book about the natural world. 367 00:36:55,410 --> 00:37:04,650 Perhaps one of the most important anecdotes related by Pliny to support this underlying agenda is the famous tale of Zwick's US and ferocious. 368 00:37:04,650 --> 00:37:10,410 According to Pliny quote Pirozzi as it is recorded, entered into a competition with Stokes's, 369 00:37:10,410 --> 00:37:15,900 who produced a picture of grapes so successfully represented that bird flew up to try to eat them. 370 00:37:15,900 --> 00:37:25,150 And I'm afraid this is not process's painting, but rather one by a 19th century American artist. 371 00:37:25,150 --> 00:37:30,120 But it's a good picture of grapes, I think. So that's kind of, you know, it's so realistic. 372 00:37:30,120 --> 00:37:38,280 It's so naturalistic that the computer, even birds are under the illusion that these are real grapes. 373 00:37:38,280 --> 00:37:43,590 And now the continued. Can you finish the story? Quoting from Pliny again, where Pope Francis himself produced. 374 00:37:43,590 --> 00:37:45,510 Oh, sorry. So Zook's is the phrase the grapes. 375 00:37:45,510 --> 00:37:53,860 So we're composters himself produced such a realistic picture of a curtain that zakes us proud, proud of the verdict of the birds upon his painting, 376 00:37:53,860 --> 00:38:01,150 Grapes requested that the curtain scene and process this painting should be now drawn back and the picture itself displayed. 377 00:38:01,150 --> 00:38:08,190 And when he realised his mistake, that is when he realised that the curtain was actually only a painted fiction with a modesty did him honour. 378 00:38:08,190 --> 00:38:15,270 He yielded up the prise, saying that whereas he had received the bird's Parousia said, deceived him an artist. 379 00:38:15,270 --> 00:38:23,510 And it's a kind of an interesting story. This is actually a painting tribute to Vermeer, which has a fictional curtain in front of it. 380 00:38:23,510 --> 00:38:28,560 I'm sure that is almost impossible to imagine that Revere didn't know this famous story that you can see birds. 381 00:38:28,560 --> 00:38:37,710 One thing that you can make an artist or a human you think I must for this province is not really a curtain that would be of a higher prise. 382 00:38:37,710 --> 00:38:40,260 And of course, this might look like a slightly odd painting. 383 00:38:40,260 --> 00:38:46,620 But we know that in a period in the rare songs in the book period, artworks on Slate were often covered by Detective Curtain. 384 00:38:46,620 --> 00:38:51,080 So would it be particularly the stories of an ancient one? 385 00:38:51,080 --> 00:38:55,650 Would have had a resonance with people like Vermeer and other artists because they would have this 386 00:38:55,650 --> 00:39:03,450 idea of a fictional person playing off the idea that there might be a real curtain there as well. 387 00:39:03,450 --> 00:39:06,750 Now, perhaps not surprisingly, given what we see in the stories lives. 388 00:39:06,750 --> 00:39:13,650 Similar anecdotes are related about artists working in the Renaissance and later about deception. 389 00:39:13,650 --> 00:39:20,800 So, for instance, the Italian writer added, Teno describes a mother, you bleeding joyfully when she sees a lamb in a painting by Titian. 390 00:39:20,800 --> 00:39:27,300 No, it's the sheep again. Likewise, a writer claimed that a dog barked at a portrait of its master painted by. 391 00:39:27,300 --> 00:39:30,960 Europe. And just to prove that it's not animals alone. 392 00:39:30,960 --> 00:39:35,200 But also like Zwick's as people who could be fooled by such strong paintings. 393 00:39:35,200 --> 00:39:40,500 Bizarre describes a passer by paying homage to what they thought was the pope himself, 394 00:39:40,500 --> 00:39:44,990 but actually was just a portrait by Titian left to dry in a window. 395 00:39:44,990 --> 00:39:51,030 While, according to the writer Zucchetto, a cardinal once tried to hand a pen to Rafael's portrait of Pope Leo, 396 00:39:51,030 --> 00:39:59,010 the tenth scene here, in order to obtain the pontiff's signature before realising his mistake. 397 00:39:59,010 --> 00:40:05,700 Text such as Pliny is also influenced later works of art like those showing curtains in front of paintings or images like this one. 398 00:40:05,700 --> 00:40:12,000 A late 15th century portrait of an artist and his wife with a fly painted on the woman's head piece. 399 00:40:12,000 --> 00:40:16,950 See, there are other examples of this as well. The flyer painted on the headpiece, 400 00:40:16,950 --> 00:40:24,140 which is presumably meant to trick the viewer to trying to swatted away before realising that he or she had been fooled by the artist. 401 00:40:24,140 --> 00:40:27,810 And I think the fact that it's a portrait of an artist who's playing with his idea that, you know, 402 00:40:27,810 --> 00:40:33,210 my art is so good that I can make you fool you into thinking that it's a real flaw here is obviously part of the game. 403 00:40:33,210 --> 00:40:37,810 And I think, again, probably quite subconsciously thinking about stories like those from plenty. 404 00:40:37,810 --> 00:40:42,630 Pliny the Art historian Ernst Gombrich in his book Art and Illusion, 405 00:40:42,630 --> 00:40:50,580 says that the best tromped boy painting he ever saw was a very recent work depicting what seemed to be broken glass in front of a painting, 406 00:40:50,580 --> 00:40:57,630 as if the protective glass had been shattered, which suggests just how ongoing such leitmotifs can be and how persistent the goal 407 00:40:57,630 --> 00:41:05,530 evolutionism and of imitating and even outdoing nature seems to remain to millennia. 408 00:41:05,530 --> 00:41:10,540 But all this is getting a slightly off track form focus on the artist here, too. 409 00:41:10,540 --> 00:41:14,950 However, the legacy of Pliny transmitted through the stories lives in other biographically 410 00:41:14,950 --> 00:41:18,760 oriented writers continues to be felt since it was a classical author's 411 00:41:18,760 --> 00:41:24,410 descriptions of painters such as the famous Capello's and sculptors such as the famous 412 00:41:24,410 --> 00:41:30,430 Pele's who felt free to talk back to powerful rulers like Alexander the Great, 413 00:41:30,430 --> 00:41:34,150 could have inspired Renaissance artists such as Michelangelo and those who wrote 414 00:41:34,150 --> 00:41:40,750 about him to consider themselves likewise the equals of popes and princes. 415 00:41:40,750 --> 00:41:48,230 Other tales about a Pele's and Alexander, including one in which a Pele's uses the emperor's mistress as a model. 416 00:41:48,230 --> 00:41:54,520 When a palace falls in love with his beautiful suder, Alexander very graciously hands her over to the painter. 417 00:41:54,520 --> 00:42:00,700 Although, needless to say, whether the model mistress thought what she thought about being swapped between 418 00:42:00,700 --> 00:42:05,590 an emperor being through sent off to an artist hasn't really been recorded. 419 00:42:05,590 --> 00:42:11,260 Once again, however, an artist's status is affirmed by being treated as an equal by the most powerful man of his day. 420 00:42:11,260 --> 00:42:14,910 In this case, Alexander the Great Equal. 421 00:42:14,910 --> 00:42:18,760 Revealing, though, is Penneys closing sentence and relating this anecdote. 422 00:42:18,760 --> 00:42:27,700 Quote, Some believe that Alexander's mistress was the model for his painting of Aphrodite rate rising from the sea. 423 00:42:27,700 --> 00:42:35,680 Here we see an action with a literary scholars. Rousset and Beardslee called in 1946 the intentional FLC. 424 00:42:35,680 --> 00:42:42,400 Although many associated with the rise of romanticism, the fallacy they refer to is already implicit in plenty story, 425 00:42:42,400 --> 00:42:49,330 since an assumption is being made about how an artist's life experiences in this case falling in love with the emperor's beautiful mistress, 426 00:42:49,330 --> 00:42:55,450 who is also his model. How such life experiences are inevitably reflected in an artist's works. 427 00:42:55,450 --> 00:43:00,780 In this case, the beautiful Aphrodite depicted in a palace is painting, 428 00:43:00,780 --> 00:43:09,460 and this ultimately is a key problem facing anyone who chooses to focus on artists and artistic biographies in art historical scholarship. 429 00:43:09,460 --> 00:43:19,210 The phenomenon was well alive in the case of the 19th and 20th century writers on Rafael, for example, whose every unknown female portrait, 430 00:43:19,210 --> 00:43:26,170 including the one you see on the right, has, it seems, been at one time or another said to depict his mistress. 431 00:43:26,170 --> 00:43:31,450 The star is enigmatic. References to a beloved mistress also inspired the early 19th century painter 432 00:43:31,450 --> 00:43:36,010 Angra to paint the charmingly a historical portrait of Rothfeld on the left, 433 00:43:36,010 --> 00:43:43,820 with his left alleged mistress perched prettily on his knee, looking at a canvas of the so-called for an arena or Baker's daughter on the right, 434 00:43:43,820 --> 00:43:47,260 a painting that was at the time believed to depict Ruffels mysterious lover. 435 00:43:47,260 --> 00:43:55,540 So I don't know if you'd call that. So here we have one of the many unknown images of a woman that apparently lives visited 436 00:43:55,540 --> 00:44:00,490 with a Baraquio associate with this kind of famous faces through the baker's daughter. 437 00:44:00,490 --> 00:44:06,700 As I mentioned, the thing is, there's just no reason to think that that's who she is, angry. 438 00:44:06,700 --> 00:44:13,190 In the 19th century takes up this crazy little detail of another Rockwell painting. 439 00:44:13,190 --> 00:44:20,820 Here supposedly is a painting of reconstruction in his mind of Rafael with his mistress on his knee, who he is just painting. 440 00:44:20,820 --> 00:44:25,240 You see the outline of her knew there. So there's a whole play there. 441 00:44:25,240 --> 00:44:31,170 Maybe you can provide extra, all of you, about sort of gender and gender issues in art. 442 00:44:31,170 --> 00:44:36,290 But, you know, the whole fact about kind of possessing the mistress is like possessing the art object. 443 00:44:36,290 --> 00:44:42,700 As a whole place for the artist, possessing those that they paint. And also, of course, the owner of the art object kind of owning the painting, 444 00:44:42,700 --> 00:44:45,970 but also what's depicted in it so that you could think about it a bit more. 445 00:44:45,970 --> 00:44:51,420 But any guesses about this idea of the kind of that art must somehow reflect the biography of the artist? 446 00:44:51,420 --> 00:44:57,800 So it's an unknown woman. Donorship, as we know that there's some vague reference in Vasari to kind of a mistress who's the baker's daughter. 447 00:44:57,800 --> 00:44:59,470 Oh, must be the baker's daughter. 448 00:44:59,470 --> 00:45:09,580 Now, having been rather sceptical about this, there is a kind of counterpoint to be made because in this particular case by Rafael, 449 00:45:09,580 --> 00:45:17,680 maybe it's a little bit less fanciful than in most cases because he does sign the painting on a band wrapped tightly around the sitter's bare arm, 450 00:45:17,680 --> 00:45:25,000 thereby laying claim not only to the authority to the authorship of the painting, but also a kind of ownership of the female model herself as well. 451 00:45:25,000 --> 00:45:33,590 So maybe it is his model or maybe it's just about a general idea that the artist possesses kind of any model, at least artistically, if not literally. 452 00:45:33,590 --> 00:45:39,370 But like the stories of sketching Shepherd Boys, search links or rather too frequent for comfort, 453 00:45:39,370 --> 00:45:44,590 since artists almost inevitably seem to be sleeping with all of their unidentified female singers, 454 00:45:44,590 --> 00:45:49,330 something that, strangely enough, is almost never suggested in the case of their own identified male sitters. 455 00:45:49,330 --> 00:45:52,540 But we won't go into detail. 456 00:45:52,540 --> 00:45:59,920 But the point is, the biographical models of art history inevitably encourage this type of identification between artists and their art, 457 00:45:59,920 --> 00:46:05,310 between artist lives and biographies and how their works should be interpreted. 458 00:46:05,310 --> 00:46:13,290 And was precisely this, that would stop an beardslee saw as a fallacy, namely trying to read a work of art, whether it be a poem or a painting. 459 00:46:13,290 --> 00:46:16,350 And they're coming out at this actually as literary scholars, 460 00:46:16,350 --> 00:46:24,900 as though these kind of artistic productions were really only or even mainly the product of an artist's biography or more abstractly, 461 00:46:24,900 --> 00:46:31,660 his or her intentions or individual psychology. This critique of traditional biographically based, 462 00:46:31,660 --> 00:46:36,970 an artist centred modes of interpretation was further developed in the later 1960s by the French 463 00:46:36,970 --> 00:46:44,140 theorist Lambert and Michelle Fuko in Fuegos influential essay entitled What Is an Author? 464 00:46:44,140 --> 00:46:47,790 He quoted the playwright Samuel Beckett, who asked What matter? 465 00:46:47,790 --> 00:46:53,700 Who's speaking? Someone said, What matter? Who's speaking? I think that's the famous closing lines of Waiting for Godot. 466 00:46:53,700 --> 00:46:59,140 Somebody must have started something. Anyway, the point is, who cares who's saying who's the author? 467 00:46:59,140 --> 00:47:03,670 According to both Google and Bard, it apparently really doesn't matter who says it, 468 00:47:03,670 --> 00:47:09,070 since they claimed that not only in an artist's or author's intentions unrecoverable. 469 00:47:09,070 --> 00:47:15,700 How do we know what Rafael did or didn't really feel or mean when he was painting this painting, 470 00:47:15,700 --> 00:47:19,300 but also that they are actually completely irrelevant. 471 00:47:19,300 --> 00:47:26,500 The meaning of a work of art, according to Bufton, fuko, should never reside in the biography or alleged intentions of its maker, 472 00:47:26,500 --> 00:47:32,410 but rather should be located in us as readers, viewers and beholders. 473 00:47:32,410 --> 00:47:39,690 In other words, once an artwork exists, it is as though its maker ceases to exist and instead is those who receive it. 474 00:47:39,690 --> 00:47:44,500 Encounter it, bring it to their own life experiences who give it meaning. 475 00:47:44,500 --> 00:47:51,620 To paraphrase. But the birth of the beholder must be the cost of the death of the artist. 476 00:47:51,620 --> 00:47:55,870 So this is saying basically we shouldn't worry about what the artist did or didn't intend. 477 00:47:55,870 --> 00:47:58,600 How do we read this in terms of biography? This should be about perception. 478 00:47:58,600 --> 00:48:03,430 It should be about how we remake the work of art, obviously, in how we interpret it. 479 00:48:03,430 --> 00:48:15,010 And that's where meaning and significance lies. But as another scholar writing on this kind of subject, David Summers, has pointed out more recently, 480 00:48:15,010 --> 00:48:21,010 it may be a mistake to try to eliminate biography in internationality. However problematic they may be. 481 00:48:21,010 --> 00:48:28,810 Indeed, the concept of the author or artist completely, since the problem isn't that intentions and artists don't actually exist after all. 482 00:48:28,810 --> 00:48:36,700 For a work of art to exist, it must by definition have been made or selected intentionally by someone at some point in time and in some place. 483 00:48:36,700 --> 00:48:42,310 But rather, the problem lies in how and whether we can recover these intentions, including those of the artist. 484 00:48:42,310 --> 00:48:46,960 Him or herself may not even be aware of a subject of great interest to scholars. 485 00:48:46,960 --> 00:48:52,060 Adopting a psychoanalytic approaches. In other words, according to Summers quote, 486 00:48:52,060 --> 00:48:58,360 The real question is how intentions are made visible and whether they are ever fully or even partially recoverable, 487 00:48:58,360 --> 00:49:02,990 not whether they actually exist in the first place. 488 00:49:02,990 --> 00:49:08,000 I think the problem of intentionality and the related issue of how and even whether one should use an 489 00:49:08,000 --> 00:49:12,930 artist's biography to try to interpret his or her own is well demonstrated by these two landscapes. 490 00:49:12,930 --> 00:49:22,370 Bye bye. Well, as I mentioned earlier than golf's biography has fascinated novelists, songwriters, film producers and playwrights for over a century. 491 00:49:22,370 --> 00:49:23,510 As I've already discussed, 492 00:49:23,510 --> 00:49:31,560 his persona and life experience have seemed to conform to many romantic stereotypes of a misunderstood and mad artist genius stereotype. 493 00:49:31,560 --> 00:49:34,220 And certain aspects can be traced back to the story. 494 00:49:34,220 --> 00:49:41,750 And even earlier, we have, however, seen why it pays to be of accepting such biographies at face value, 495 00:49:41,750 --> 00:49:46,820 especially when they fit into pre-existing models a little too neatly for comfort. 496 00:49:46,820 --> 00:49:53,300 But on the other hand, can we ever completely ignore the artists in his life in the case of such? 497 00:49:53,300 --> 00:49:55,370 Yes, of course we can talk about their colours. 498 00:49:55,370 --> 00:50:03,110 The formal elements of the composition, maybe even the culturally specific implications of landscape as agile in the late 19th century. 499 00:50:03,110 --> 00:50:08,060 But doesn't our understanding of these works? Change is a subtle but profound and irreversible way. 500 00:50:08,060 --> 00:50:14,620 If we realise that there were amongst the last works painted by Ben Gough before he committed suicide in 1890. 501 00:50:14,620 --> 00:50:22,880 And if this is the case but the recovery of artistic intentionality remains problematic, what can we as artists do? 502 00:50:22,880 --> 00:50:35,245 In other words, if we can never fully or even partially see the paintings through Von Gough's own eyes?