franco sacchetti on women as artists

FRANCO SACCHETTI ON WOMEN AS ARTISTSAuthor(s): Norman E. LandSource: Source: Notes in the History of Art, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Winter 2013), pp. 1-3Published by: Ars Brevis Foundation, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23292904 .

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FRANCO SACCHETTI ON WOMEN AS ARTISTS

Norman Ε. Land

One of the best-known tales in the Tre centonovelle (c. 1395) of Franco Sacchetti

(c. 1335-c. 1400) is about a group of

painters and sculptors who are working at the church of San Miniato al Monte. As the

story goes, members of the group, having dined heartily with an unidentified abbot,

begin to ask questions. Andrea Orcagna (c. 1308-1368) asks who, excluding Giotto, was the best painter. One of those present answers that Cimabue (c. 1240-c. 1302) was, and another man names a certain Ste

fano, probably Stefano Fiorentino (flour ished c. 1347), who was called the "Ape of Nature." Someone else says that Bernardo—

probably Bernardo Daddi (c. 1280-1348)— was the best painter, and yet another nominates Buonamico Buffalmacco (active c. 1315-1336). Taddeo Gaddi (c. 1300

1366) agrees that there have been several un

surpassable artists but opines that the art of

painting has declined and worsens with each

passing day.1 Some scholars have taken this, the brief

initial portion of Sacchetti's novella, literally. They assume that the author records a gath ering that actually took place at San Miniato in the late 1350s and that Gaddi's remark is an indirect comment on the quality of

Orcagna's art.2 There are, however, some

compelling reasons tor believing that the

story is a fiction. First and foremost, the tale

appears in a collection of fables or novelle, not in a book of history. Second, even if

Sacchetti received the tale from Gaddi, there

is no corroborating evidence that the gath ering is historically true. Last, Sacchetti wrote his story several decades after Gaddi's death and almost forty years after the sup posed gathering is said to have taken place. Arguably, then, the meeting at San Miniato never happened.

Because art historians have been most in terested in the supposed historical signifi cance of the first part of the novella, they have not examined the entire story as litera ture. Consequently, they have not understood that within the context 01 the story as a whole,

Orcagna's question and the various answers to it serve two purposes. First, Gaddi's com ment about the decline of painting recalls some famous lines in Dante's Purgatorio (11.91-96), where the figure of the minia turist Oderisi da Gobbio (c. 1240-1299)

speaks to the figure of Dante as follows:

Ο vain glory of human powers!

How briefly green on the mountaintop

endures

if it is not followed by dull times.

Cimabue believed that in painting

he held the field, but now Giotto is the cry,

so that his [Limabue sJ tame is overshad

owed.3

According to Oderisi, like the greenery on a

mountaintop, the fame of an artist will dis

appear unless it is followed by an era of lesser masters—Dante s dull times, rrom this perspective, Sacchetti's tale implies that



2

Giotto's fame lingers because Orcagna, Buf

falmacco, and the rest are not superior to him.

The introductory description of the gath ering at San Miniato al Monte is also a nec

essary frame or springboard to the remainder of the novella, which is about Florentine women as artists. Following Gaddi's remark, one of those present, a carver of marble named Maestro Alberto, who might refer to the Florentine sculptor Alberto Arnoldi (ac tive c. 1351-c. 1364), says that his compan ions are mistaken and promises to show them that nature has never been more "sottile,' or

clever, in the art of painting and in making lifelike carvings. In other words, he will show his friends—Gaddi in particular—that nature still produces artists who are very ca

pable painters and sculptors. Alberto begins his argument with the as

sertion that God is the greatest artist in paint ing and in composing figures. Nevertheless, Alberto continues, many modern people find serious defects in God's figures and are

busily correcting them. Here, Sacchetti al ludes to the then current idea that God in the book of Genesis (2:7) is a type of sculp tor because He shaped Adam and Eve out of earth. As the translators of the Wycliffe Bible (1382-1395) put it: "Therefore the Lord God formed man of the slime of [the] earth, and breathed into his face the breath

ing of life; and man was made into a living soul."

Sacchetti's reference to the finding of faults in God's creations also recalls Gio vanni Boccaccio's (1313-1375) spoof on the

image of God as creator in a novella (6.6) in his Decameron (c. 1350). The narrator tells a story about a character named Michele Scalzi. One day there arises among a group of friends the questions of which is the oldest

Florentine family and who are the finest gen tlemen in Florence. Michele's companions make several suggestions, but he nominates the Baronci of Santa Maria Maggiore as the oldest family in the world and, therefore, the noblest. When his friends object, Michele

explains his nomination: "The fact of the matter is that when the Lord God created the Baronci, He was still learning the rudi ments of His art, whereas He created the rest of mankind after He had mastered it." The faces of most human beings, he contin

ues, are well-proportioned, but the faces of the Baronci are misshapen, ugly, and "just like the ones made by children when they are first learning to draw."4 Thus, according to Michele's reasoning, because God made the Baronci first when He was just learning to draw, they are the oldest family and, there

fore, the noblest. Maestro Alberto identifies the very artists

who correct the defects in God's creatures,

people like the noble but ugly Baronci. Those artists are Florentine women, who, he explains, are skillful colorists.5 They rub

themselves, plaster their skin, and make themselves as white as swans. In addition,

by using colors they are able to transform a

pale and yellow face into the semblance of a rose, and they can make old, desiccated women appear green and blossoming. No

painter, not even Giotto, has ever been better at coloring than Florentine women.

Maestro Alberto goes on to praise the abil

ity of Florentine women to correct badly proportioned faces, walleyes, crooked noses, and heavy jaws. If a woman s shoulders are too high, she knows how to lower them, and if the shoulders are uneven, she uses padding to make them level so that the woman ap pears correctly proportioned and shaped. Women can also make similar adjustments



3

to the chest and hips.6 They can do more, Alberto says, without a chisel than the sculp tor "Policreto" could do with one. Seem

ingly, Alberto confuses the ancient Greek

sculptor Polyclitus (or Polykleitos), best known for his Spear Bearer, and Praxiteles, who was famous for his figures of Aphrodite, especially his Aphrodite of Knidos, and for

using Phryne, his mistress, as a model.

Following his praise of the artistic skills of Florentine women, Maestro Alberto reaf hrms his opinion that they are the greatest painters and sculptors ever to exist, for they

"supply what nature lacks." As their work

testifies, Florentine women are excellent masters who surpass both ancient and mod ern artists. Indeed, they surpass Giotto in

coloring and "Policreto' in his ability to make well-proportioned women. The impli cation of the whole of Sacchetti's tale is that Giotto no longer "holds the field"—that the women of Florence are now the "cry."

Sacchetti's tale also implies a coherent view of visual art. Like Florentine women,

painters are able to emend the defects in God s creations, beautifying nature with life like coloring. And like women, who correct

disproportionate parts of the human body, so, too, do sculptors make proportionate fig ures in their art. If there is a degree of sar casm in Sacchetti's tale, there is also an ele ment of admiration for the skill of women as artists.7

NOTES

1. I have used the text in Franco Sacchetti, II Tre

centonovelle, ed. Emilio Faccioli (Turin: Einaudi,

1970), novella 136.

2. See, for example, Millard Meiss, Painting in

Florence and Siena after the Black Death (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), pp. 3—4; and Teresa

Grace Frisch, Gothic Art, 1140-c. 1450: Sources and

Documents (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall,

1971), p. 167. An exception to the rule is Patricia L.

Reilly, "The Taming of the Blue: Writing out Color in

Italian Renaissance Theory," in The Expanding Dis

course: Feminism and Art History, ed. Norma Broude

and Mary D. Garrard (New York: Icon, 1992), p. 95.

3. For the Italian text, see Dante Alighieri, Purga

tory, ed. and trans. Anthony Esolen (New York: Mod

ern Library, 2003), p. 120 (my translation). 4. Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, trans.

G. H. McWilliam, 2nd ed. (London: Penguin, 1995),

pp. 460^161.

5. Cf. Cennino Cennini, II Libro dell'arte ο Trattato

delta pittura, ed. Gaetano and Carlo Milanesi (Flor ence: LeMonnier, 1859), p. 135, who, writing around

the same time as Sacchetti, warns women against

using colors to make their appearance beautiful.

Women should not use cosmetics because these prepa rations are displeasing to God and the Virgin Mary, and because they will make women ugly and old be

fore their time.

6. Alberto assumes that the bodies of women are, or can be made to appear, proportionate. Again, Cen

nini (p. 50) believes just the opposite. He maintains

that while there is a set of proportions appropriate to

the depiction of male figures, no woman has perfect

proportions and, therefore, cannot be depicted as such

in works of art.

7. Reilly (p. 95) says that in Sacchetti's tale, fol

lowing "a lengthy and serious debate, the discussion

disintegrates into sarcasm."

