The Antirenaissance – Magic of the Elements

Translation and editing by Matthew Didemus and Filippo Scafi

The respect and devotion, we may well say, for the “concept” of water is also manifested in the design of the vessels that are to contain it; especially if they are intended for ceremonial functions, such as political banquets, etc. They also insist, on the presumption that such purity can serve as an antidote to poison; in the search for the most transparent material, indeed, rock crystal is selected, considered at that time by many, including the Swiss who were avid researchers of it, water converted to snow and then to stone due to the excessive rigours of the cold, being in places without sun for thirty years and more¹ (see appendix, p. 4 38). But in the [glasses] of crystal or glass created by Hans Vredeman de Vries, around 1560,² and in those designed by Ligozzi, for Francesco I,³ it happens as if the casing melts together with the liquid, or is transformed on contact with it into a kind of shell that is still moist and ductile. The rims become wavy, and slack, and the spouts look like hanging, suspended drops. The large goblets, which are at this moment the most precious ornament of the table, proceed even further along the path of the biomorphic, configuring themselves, especially through the work of those extraordinary sculptors the Milanese Saracchi,⁴ as monstrous animals or birds (and perhaps more due to an unconscious memory – as indeed in Michelangelo,⁵ of the age-old connection between crystal and sky,⁶ than to the imitation of more or less automatic fountains in the shape of animals, such as the chante-pleur sketched by Villard de Honnecourt).⁷  The heart of the fragile crystal block, delicately worked to empty it on the inside, now coincides with the heart of the bird, and holds the ceremonial  banquet wine. These cups, an abundance of  which can be contemplated in the Treasury of the Munich Residence, or the museums of Vienna, have nearly always the same characteristic: that they envelope the liquid on all sides with their thickness reduced and cut to the extreme limits of temerity. The magic of the crystal, in fact, lies in its heart – which has the ability to concentrate light and transform it into fire, to reverse and reduce images, bringing them from the cosmos to the microcosm, or vice versa – and in the heart the liquid must be placed, to exalt it aesthetically and magically, even if only in a convivial desire for prosperity: Prosit!

Different is the case, however, with coral, which is also connected to water.⁸ Coral has no inherent magic; it is by nature something outwardly similar to hard stones, it can be carved and unscrupulously reduced to images. But even in such a case, its red colour will continue to be evocative, either of its marine origin or of the liquid blood. Precisely as a reminder of the divine sacrifice, the great crucifixions with dozens and dozens of figures were born, such as the Montagna, with 85 figures, carved in Trapani and sent in 1570 as a gift to Filippo II,⁹ which was intended to appear as a spectacular panorama in technicolour with colours screened in purple, for dramatic emphasis. As a reminder of nature, on the other hand, i.e. as a hint of the sea, coral, together with shells, has a wonderful use in a series of sea myths (such as the Liberation of Andromeda, owned in their treasure by the Medici, the magnificent Triumph of Galatea, perhaps the work of Filippo Santacroce¹⁰ still contemplated in the castle of Amb ras),¹¹ where the marine products, reworked or in their original state, are admirably contrasted with each other, both in colour (mottled white and red), in their different receptivity to light (the shiny shells, the opaque coral), and in their different stylisation (the shell has a curvilinear course, but no plasticity; the coral remains, even if elaborate, always rigid, and penetrates the space in a pungent and dramatic way, almost like a quill or a violent gesture). Coral in its natural state was also used, in curious views of castles in the Tyrol at Ambras, to represent the rocks of mountains, forming their summits, not only steep but branching out into the air, almost as if seen in lightning or mists swept by the wind.  It is difficult to imagine a more evocative plastic metaphor than the alpenglow. And even if the coral, with its multiple ramifications, interprets it not as a reflection of the sunset, but as living flames advancing towards the sky, it nevertheless allows art to once again anticipate science: only since the 1700s have geologists known that the Dolomites are chains of coral that emerged from the sea.

Air, which in a certain sense we have already understood symbolically joined with water in crystal, has in common with water inconsistency, or rather, the variety of forms it can assume. The artist of the 16th century, in fact, shapes and elaborates with the same vivacity with which he treats other materials, even the elusive air.

Perhaps the most spectacular, albeit exclusively playful manifestations are the great flying deer (again, the name recalls the rapport between animals and cosmic elements), of which only descriptions remain, such as the one which is 26 feet high, with gueules as gaskets, and sprinkled with crowned golden lilies, being held by a jeune fille for Louis XII’s entry into Paris in 1498, or the other two, also on the same occasion, bearing the painted coats of arms of France and Milan;¹² or even the spectral kites, raised at night, with burning lanterns, with petards ready to explode at a moment’s notice, or with puppies tied up, which let out wailing cries like lamias, to the terror of the people, according to Della Porta’s description.¹³ Alongside these games, we must place the throwing of banners that we still see in Siena during the Palio,¹⁴ the weathervanes, which even Alberti appreciates,¹⁵ the complicated wings of the windmills, which were perfected at precisely in this period.¹⁶ Air, thanks to studies on pneumatic mechanisms, became fashionable in the second half of the 16th century; ¹⁷ however, it is above all sound magic, a varied modulation, a transformation of the motion and pressure of the water into song, into chirping, or conserving the natural timbres, a concert based on roars in counterpoint, or unison. The gardens and fountains of the Villa d’Este, Coffin observes,¹⁸ for example, were designed “not only for a visual delight, but an auditory one. Water is used mechanically not only to produce artificial sounds, such as the music from the Organ of Water, the artillery of the Fountain of the Dragon, or the cries of the Fountain of the Owl, but a very wide variety of its natural sounds are exploited…’. One of the visitors to the complex, before the stripping and devastation that led it to its present squalor,¹⁹ Bartoli, confirms for us, as ear-witness, in his extraordinary eulogy to the villa and air.²⁰

(the following is a quote in 16th century “Italiano volgare” and left untranslated)

Veggonsi giù dalle gromme e dai tartari d’aulentissime nicchie stillare a goccia a goccia in minutissima pioggia, sicché meglio non sanno ripartirla le nuvole sulla terra. Imitare, quasi uscissero dalla caverna d’Eolo, i venti e quasi col soffio umido gli Austri, col piacevole i Zeffiri, coll’impetuoso e freddo le Boree. Stendersi sì sottili, e ispianarsi sì eguali, che sembrano limpidis- simi veli spiegati in aria. Sminuzzarsi in piccolissime stille, e formar di sé quasi una nuvola rugiadosa, che opposta all’incontro del sole, iride d’arco e di colori perfetta dipinge. Avvivare col moto le statue morte, e variamente atteggiarle. Spicciar furtiva- mente di sotterra, e lanciarsi, e sospendersi in aria con altissimi pispini. Gemer come dogliose, mugghiar come infuriate, cantar come allegre, né solo rinnovare al mondo quella che Tertulliano chiamò portentissimam Archimedis munijicentiam, gli organi idraulici, ma nelle gorgie, ne’ trilli, ne’ spessi e artificiosi pas- saggi, ne’ ripartimenti e nelle mutanze di soavissime voci imitare al vivo i rosignuoli, come se per bocca loro cantasse non spiritus qui illic de tormento aquae anhelat, ma le Sirene stesse abitatrici dell’acqua.

All that remains for us is to visit, in summer, the still playful park of Hellbrunn, and especially its grottoes where invisible birds sing far better than in an amber forest, to supplement the now musically dead Villa d’Este.²¹ Or to reread the pages of theorists who insist on the natural origin of music. Music, especially instrumental music of the sixteenth century, is hardly detached from this incidentally delightfully Arcadian (albeit mechanical and hydraulic) sonorous context.

The magic of the air is also translated visually then into the shapes of the wind instruments, which, beyond any functional necessity, are modelled in the image of the timbre they express, and are inspired, in a true zoomorphic eagerness, by reptiles and monsters. Thus we have the calamis (of the oboe family), slimy and undulating like eels, or the bombards, similar to dragons, with their sinister breath.²² The same attitude of biomorphic reworking of the instrument of sound is reflected in Michelangelo’s somewhat playful, certainly paradoxical project to build, next to Brunelleschi’s serene Basilica of San Lorenzo, a bell tower in the shape of a giant, which would emit from its mouth the intensified and tremendous tolling of the bells.²³

Just as air and sound are accompanied by water, for a ‘total theatre’, also fire intervenes with just as much figurative vivacity alongside the other elements, almost as if to finish setting the stage. Of course, it was easier to give lanterns, altars and fireplaces first a decoration, then an organic modelling, which rapidly evolved into monstrous or zoomorphic forms: think of the lamps by Riccio and other bronze artists, the gigantic fireplaces allegorically protected by gods and mythological and fantastic heroes, the artillery that spit fire like the dragons of legends but that were far more terrifying than any dragon.  But the 16th century, and it boasts of this, succeeded in moulding fire itself into that extraordinary form of spectacle that are fireworks. A spectacle of a moment, of which pictorial and graphic testimonies are rare, though far from being artisanal, and of which even poetical descriptions are abound. Great architects and painters collaborated on fireworks in all parts of Europe, with apparatuses of monumental dimensions and dedication;²⁴ the description in the appendix,²⁵ of the firework displays organised in Trento in the third and fourth decade of the century by Cardinal Madruzzo, indicates how these machines were decorated with valuable paintings, of which a close memory remains, for example, in the mysterious Tregenda dossesca in the Pinacoteca of Dresden.²⁶ Indeed, this painting shows us how, especially in this sphere, the transformation of what in its original state was horrifying and frightening,²⁷ into a happy and pleasant effect could not be said to be entirely complete.²⁸ The material, even in the figurative alchemy to which it is subjected, conserves intact its emotionality, indeed it accentuates it by means of surprise and decorative splendour. The pyrotechnic fire does indeed have a glorifying and propitiatory function (and is therefore consciously connected with the solar whirligigs and the fires of Saint John widely practised in Europe during the 16th century, and for centuries afterwards, on the occasion in Florence, for example, of special festivities in honour of the city saint), but it remains, like the burning wheels that fall from the mountain tops, in its tremendous and diabolical appearance; and the paintings that accompany it recall rains of fire, natural catastrophes (such as the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah), taking on a religious and moral character.

In any case, to achieve their new expressive possibilities, fireworks underwent rapid technical evolution: from the simple compositions with overlapping vases, illustrated by Biringuccio Senese, to the tabernacle-shaped machines, by Tribolo, immortalised by Stradano on the grand staircase of Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, to the gigantic fires of Castel Sant’Angelo and Piazza Navona, with ships, devils, monsters appearing in the flames and smoke as in the Flemish infernos, to the great figurative fireworks, such as the dragon, reproduced here ( p. 196), in which the pyrotechnic jet does not spring from a machine, but is a uniformly terrifying celestial vision.More or less, in all these manifestations, two aspects of fire are mixed: one chthonic, the other celestial.

Fire, in its chthonic side, much more than in the Middle Ages, is a constant ingredient of every infernal or demonic representation of the Renaissance, whether pictorial or scenic.  If in the interludes at the Medici theatre, it terrified and amazed the spectators, in private festivals, even in the most delightful and arcadian gardens, as we have seen, it suddenly broke the shadows of the night, “amidst fumes of fetid ash, pitch and sulphur, and ‘the devils’ whose ugly faces and hideous, frightening gestures grew larger in the light of the continuous flames”.²⁹ 

For the Neo-Platonists, and the artists who grew up within their circle, such as Michelangelo, fire was instead a celestial element, indeed the very breath of souls ‘which by virtue of their lightness rise up through our thick atmosphere’, overcoming obstacles such as ‘air, water and fire arranged in concentric zones, always moving around the heavy and stable earth. And passing through these overlapping elements, the souls are ventilated, washed, burnt, and thus purified and lightened of the weight of their filth’.³⁰

This is one of the passages that best explains the theory of the serpentine ascension line, which underlies various mannerist flame-like images, yearning for the divine, modelled precisely on fire, which the philosophers understood as the giver and purifier of forms; but we have brought it up again above all to recall how, in the 16th-century conception, the figurative animism of the elements (cup as animal, fountain as triton or shell, oil-lamp as gazelle) was the basis of the 16th-century conception of the elements as a creature, a fountain as triton or as shell, an oil-lamp as gazelle. But we have quoted it above all to recall how, in the 16th-century conception, the figurative animism of the elements (the cup as animal, the fountain as triton or shell, the lantern as gnome, the flame as human image, the firework as dragon) corresponds to an extremely dynamic conception of the relationship between the parts of nature, understood in a continuous metamorphosis, which the artist, like the alchemist, must support and stimulate.

The apex of this conception of matter is perhaps precisely the theatrical intermezzo,³¹ with its prestigious sudden scenic mutations, which will constitute, for centuries, a technical glory of Italy. The mountain opens up and reveals the Hades; the fire goes out and waters flow through paradisiacal parks, in which nymphs dance, until the sea from the background swells and rushes, with its waves and its monsters, into the foreground, and sometimes even into the stalls, in a series of metamorphoses that have nothing to envy in those of Ovid or Dante’s initiatory journey.³² Metamorphoses – it should be noted – that have their origin in the ‘pastoral’, i.e. ‘rustic’, ‘natural’ background of the interludes, a frank and authentically mystical background despite the tone of arcadia, so that even his heroes remain symbols of laws and passions inherent not only to man, but to that enormous reservoir of life and forces that is the cosmos.

In our discourse, at this point, if we ought to extend it, Arcimboldo³³ would certainly hold a position of great importance. He creatively participates in this style in two ways at least.  Firstly, and I am thinking of his famous Allegories of the Elements, in Vienna, from Ambras, for his ability to exalt the ‘concept’ of matter by accumulating, starting from a natural starting point, attribute after attribute, in an orgy of associations, both conceptual and visual, sometimes almost in a sort of etymology: ‘flora from flowers’, or chemical process, ‘fire from embers’, in the same way that in Pratolino we find the ‘Appennino’ of ‘stone’. This accumulation of similar attributes are also found in contemporary emblemists: read, for example, Ripa’s description of Anno: “A middle-aged man with wings on his feet, his head, neck, beard, and hair full of snow and ice, his chest and flanks red and adorned with various ears of corn, his arms full of various kinds of flowers, his thighs and legs gracefully covered with vine leaves and fronds of grapes.”

The second characteristic of Arcimboldian fantasy, but perhaps just as important, is the taste for metamorphosis, whereby one reality dissolves into another, plants into man, the inorganic into the organic, always provoking an effect of surprise. a. An effect that demonstrates how the transformation always wants to present itself as the result of intellectual effort, as a complicated process, how, in short, it intends to be the portrait of a more genuine world, and not merely a passive observation of the spontaneous metamorphoses of organic life, or the images of fantasy. Palissy says, referring also to his own labours as an artisan: “Nulle nature ne produit son fruit sans extreme travail, voire douleur” (No nature produces its fruit without extreme labour, even pain).³⁴

To define the attitude we are attempting to interpret, already in the 16th century the term ‘rustic style’ was used:³⁵ a designation which, however, only covers one part of the phenomenon: or rather the most extrinsic part, that is to say the crude decoration, which makes use of the simplest natural materials, leaving them uncovered, conspicuous, without reworking them in their substance. In other words, rustication instead of smooth marble, brick instead of plaster, grained stone instead of compact stone, etc. It must be emphasised, however, that it is enough to give a somewhat broader meaning to the idea of a rustic style, as is already the case in the first epistle of Horace’s second book, from which it was popularised, for the term not only becomes much more pertinent, but even clarifies its own fortune.³⁶

Rustic art is that which existed before ‘Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit’, i.e. before the introduction of the artes, or rather classicism, into rural Latium; rustic art is that of disharmonious rhythms, asymmetrical form, acrid naturalism devoid of elegance but capable of persisting ‘in longum aevum’. An art that had a broad social basis and, this is also important, was based on seasonal cycles, acquiring specific characteristics according to the occasion. It is highly probable that the opposition between rusticism and classicism (“…les piliers rustiques – qui effacent l’honneur des colonnes antiques“) (…rustic pillars – erasing the glory of ancient columns)³⁷, and with disdain equal to that shown by Horace for the devotees of archaic styles, was referred to by the anonymous critic who first brought the term ”rustic’ from literary criticism (and moreover from Augustan criticism) into the current sixteenth-century discussions. A term that, as happened, in times close to us, for ‘Cubism’ or ‘Fauvism’, was immediately accepted with pride by the anti-Classicists of the early 16th century, only to pass a little later into the treatises, and to spread very widely and last ‘in longum aevum’. 

In addition to the lack of an adequate label, this “poetics” of the elements complains of entirely partial, or rather, one-sided critical interpretations. It is in fact a highly composite phenomenon, lying on the threshold between the modern world and the Middle Ages, between civilised Europe and ethnography, between science and magic, between art and philosophical literature, between naturalism and emblematics. Only by keeping all these levels in mind will it one day be possible to define the phenomenon as a whole, especially bearing in mind that, as soon as one leaves the artisanal world and enters the sphere of poetic re-elaboration, it seems to constitute the true context of images, themes and symbols of the sixteenth-century world’s parnassus.

In two magnificent articles³⁸, Kris, who was perhaps the first to ascertain the extent and the European parallelism of the phenomenon, put the so-called ‘rustic style’ in relation to the graphic and scientifically exact study of nature with casts of animals and insects from life (made in Italy as early as the beginning of the century by Della Robbia and Riccio), and considered it a reflection of science on art.

In our opinion, he does not differentiate between two different kinds of components: that is, the intuitive, affective, mythical ‘naturalism’, so to speak, which leads to an organic structure of form and to an increasingly abundant zoomorphic and phytomorphic decoration, even outside the exact reproduction of a particular animal or plant; and the reflexive ‘naturalism’, the result of meticulous and controlled observation, conducted with the methods of experimental research, and which can have anti-decorative results. In Florence itself, between the sculptors of Buontalenti’s circle, who decorated the rustic grottoes of the Medici parks with bronze birds and animals, and Ligozzi, who prepared albums of extremely accurate graphic reliefs of animals on the spot, working day and night, probably for the purpose of a scientific publication, there is a remarkable difference in attitude, even if, at times, the result, i.e. mimetic exactitude, could be singularly idiosyncratic. Love of nature is not, sic facto, a study of nature.

In addition, the interest in the natural sciences, which underlies “rustic style” and scientific design, must also be explained by deeper roots, all the more so since, at least in part, it is shared by humanists and scholars. A suggestive proposal to locate its presuppositions in late Platonism, limited to interpreting the ornamentation of an organic type (called the ‘auricular style’ by German critics), but extendable, in its conclusions, to the whole of the phenomena we have exemplified (which has had a diffusion and fortune, but not its origin outside Italy), has recently been put forward by Weise,³⁹ who, as we have already mentioned, speaks of ‘vitalism, animism and panpsychism’, not only antithetical, but opposed to “abstract stylisation, aimed at subjecting both human and animal forms and elements of inorganic origin to the same principle of anti-naturalistic transformation”,⁴⁰ observing, as proof of the widespread diffusion of this style, that “even where there is no introduction of figurative elements proper to the genre, the tendency predominates to give a naturalistic malleability and organic life to motifs originally purely abstract in nature”. Observing, as proof of this widespread generalisation of this style, that “even where the introduction of figurative elements proper is lacking, the tendency to give a character of naturalistic malleability and organic life to motifs originally of a purely abstract and inorganic nature predominates”, and furthermore “at the same time, there is an eagerness to give the interpretation of all decorative details an aspect that is not only fanciful and bizarre, but also distressing and oppressive, the expression of forces that are occult and terrifying”.

Again, Weise, in his splendid contribution, points, as a cultural presupposition, to the Neo-Platonic concept in which the ‘world is a great living animal in which we live, move and are’; only that Neo-Platonic magic, also due to the suspicion of the church, has now turned into black magic.⁴¹ The soul of things no longer resigns itself to its natural envelope, but plants, animals and minerals manifestly appear “animated by feeling and exerting their plastic action on the body in which they are enclosed, in accordance with the mysterious designs of divine nature’”.⁴² This insurrection of matter is immediately resented by the man of culture, who abandons, at least in the arts, the studies of perspective or proportion, or rather, attempts, like Michelangelo in anatomy,⁴³ and many others, such as Gallaccini,⁴⁴ to adapt laws to the individual case, to make them ductile and adherent, not determinative and autocratic, but obsequious to realia. Just as in Gallaccini’s treatise on stage design, man no longer has a single straightforward path ahead of him, towards which all the wings converge, and the floor slips; but is like a doubt-filled Hercules at the crossroads of a thousand roads and possibilities, none of which really seem to really predominate, and from which all are therefore equally and perhaps distressingly drawn.

1. See for example the relevant chapter of Storia delle Pietre by Agostino del Riccio, 1590, cod. 2230 in the Biblioteca Riccardiana in Florence, which I reproduce in the appendix.  The crystals were located in Ambras in the 1st of 18 cases, see the inventory of 1596 published by W. Boeheim in the ‘Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses,’ VII, Wien, 1888, pp. CCLXXIX-CCXIII. Such a privileged location could be an indication of a very particular esteem for such extremely costly objects. A magnificent description of large crystal pieces is also given in the 1607 inventory of the treasures of Philip Il. See Rudolf Beer, Inventäre aus dem Archivo des Palacio zu Madrid, in ‘Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen der Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses,’ XIV, II, 1893, pp. XLIII-XLIX, nos. 596-691. Crystals were also found in the Grüne Gewölbe in Dresden and are noted in the inventory of 1610. An extensive bibliography exists on crystal, see the entry Bergkristall in Real Lexikon, II, coll. 275-98; and E. Kris, Meister und Meisterwerke der Steinsclineidelkunst in der italienischen Renaissance, Wien, 1929. The recent bibliography consists mostly of individual contributions, such as Hans Wentzel, Die Monolitligefässe aus Bergkristall, in ‘Zeitschrift fiir Kunstgeschichte,’ VIII, 1939, pp. 281-5; F. HAYWARD, A Rock-Crystal Bowl from the Treasures of Henry VIII, in ‘Burlington Magazine,’ 1958, pp. 120-4; Anton Legner, Ein Freiburger Kristallpokal in Graz, in Studien zur Kunst des Oberrheins-Festschrift für Werner Noack, Freiburg, 1958, pp. 131-6, etc.; Anton Legner, Schweizer Bergkristall und die Kristallschleiferei von Freiburg im Breisgau, in ‘Zeitschrift for Schweizerische Archäologie und Kunstgeschichte,’ XIX, 1959, pp. 226-40.  In the 16th century, crystals from Mont Blanc and other mountain massifs (Barèges, Urals, etc.) also began to be worked. The largest crystals, however, continued to arrive from Japan, India and Arabia.
2. The symbolic attraction of the crystal is complex, and very interesting. In part it depends on physical laws, ‘if you turn a crystal towards the sun, you can light a fire,’ wrote Albertus Magnus. For a long time, it remained an essential tool of magic. The crystal palace is equivalent, in fairy tales, to the empyrean: see, e.g., in Calvino, p. 56, The Three Castles. ‘The boy lifted the stones and found a door with a keyhole. The boy put the crystal key in it and opened it. He found himself in a magnificent crystal palace. Etc.”
3. See W. K. Zülch, Die Entstelmng des Ohrmttschelstils, Heidelberg, 1932, table 48.  Some of Ligozzi’s designs were exhibited at the Mostra di disegni d’arte decorativa, Florence, 1951, card no. 56 and fig. 24 in the catalogue edited by Luisa Marcucci. I refer in particular to drawings uff. 97302 (and 97186). Their derivation from those of De Vries is highly probable.
4. The Saracchi certainly deserve more than the brief information given about them by G. Rosa in Storia di Milano, X, pp. 842-50. Their works still constitute one of the most astonishing nuclei of the marvellous treasury of the Bavarian dynasty ( see section VI, cards 298 ff. of the truly exemplary catalogue by Hans Thoma, Schatzkammer der Residenz München, Müinchen, 1958).
5. Indeed, it is curious that Michelangelo, for Ippolito de’ Medici, gave Giovanni Bernardi, who translated them into rock crystal, drawings representing the Fall of Phaeton, the Torture of Titius, Ganymede abducted by the eagle, themes typically found in psychoanalysis. See C. Tolomei’s letter to Apollonius Philaretus, pp. 87-88 of the 2nd vol. of the Letters, cd. 1829. Here too there are many possible ancient comparisons, including literary ones; in the pinacoteca described by Petronius there was a painting with “Zeus abducting Ganymede.”
6. See Chapter III, note 119.
7. Villard de Honnecourt, Hahnloser edition, Wien, 1935, table 44, pp. 134-7.

8. Coral was already widely used in the 15th century, for apotropaic purposes
   (see, for example, the amulet hanging around the neck of the infant Jesus in Piero della Francesca’s altarpiece now in Brera, where the infant has the features of the Duke of Urbino’s much-desired first-born son, and presumably reproduces his necklace).
   The great flourishing of the workshops that worked on it, in Sicily, Naples and Genoa, elaborating on it in a variety of ways, dates back to the 16th century. But to date there remains no satisfactory general bibliography on the matter.  See, however, A. Sorrentino, Il Museo del Corallo e la R. Scuola d’arte industriale a Trapani, in ‘Il Nuovo Vespro,’ February-March 1926; Giov. Tescione, Italiani alla pesca del Corallo, Naples, 1940; O. Pastine, L’arte dei corallieri, ‘Atti della Soc. Ligure di Storia Patria,’ vol. XXIII. See also P. Giulianelli, Memorie degli intagliatori moderni in pietre dure, 1753.

9. In Trapani in the 16th century, there were 25 coral masters. Regarding the “Montagna,” commissioned by Don Francesco Ferdinando d’Avalos, see “Archivio Storico Siciliano,” XIX, 1895, p. 277, A. Sorrentino The Coral Museum, cited; Antonio Daneu, Rosso e Nero, in ‘Sicilia,’ autumn 1957.
10. Concerning Filippo da Santacroce, see Mario Labó, in Thieme Becker, ad vocem.
11. For the Ambras corals, I can, by the gracious courtesy of the conservator, Dr. Laurin Luchner, quote a document on pp. 497-99. They are listed in the inventory of 30 May 1596, published by W. Boeheim, Unkunden und Regesten aus der K. K. Hofbibliothek, in ‘Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des A. Kaiserhauses,’ VII, Wien, 1888, CCXXVI ff, were preserved (CCXCVI, 412-18) in the 12th case and were described by Charles Patin in his travel account (I quote from the English translation of 1697, London, Travels tho’ Germany, Swisserland, Holland and other Parts of Europe), pp. 88-9. Worked corals were to be found in the major aristocratic collections of the time: of the Medici, of the Doria family, in Rome (still preserved in the Palazzo di Via del Corso), of the Duke of Belviso of Messina, of Count Ludovico Moscardo of Verona, and of course in natural science museums, such as Kircher’s.
12. This is precisely what makes the moreover widespread motif of men turned into corals by Sirens visually dramatic, see Calvin cited above, p. 628
13. See G. Monrey, Le livre des Fétes Françaises, Paris, 1930, pp. 11-12.
    G. B. Della Porta, De i miracoli et maravigliosi effetti dalla natura prodotti, etc., Venice, 1560, e. XIV, p. 70: ‘one finds an artefact, which some call a flying dragon or shooting star, which is composed in this way, to make a quadrangle of thin reed sticks, whose length and width are in the same proportion of sixteen times the width, or we can say that the length is one and a half times more than the width, and the two diameters are the same on both sides, then in the intersection of these, it is necessary to tie a rope of the same length to it, and to join it with the two other rods of the machine, and so cover it with paper or with a thin cloth, so that it does not weigh too much. Then go to a high mountain or a tower, when the winds are even, and are not opposing one another, but not so strong that the machine breaks down, nor so little wind that it cannot be lifted up, moreover, that it does not run straight, but crooked,  which will be done by it being pulled at one end, and at the other end by the long tail, which must also be made of rope. Let the sheets of paper be tightly bound throughout, so firmly pushing it gives it the go. And in this way flying as it is a little raised, they put a lantern on it that seems to be a comet. Some put on it a tear of paper and gunpowder, which, when it stops in the air, is put using an ingenious string with a ring of burning rope, and, cutting the veil, sets fire to it, and with a great bang the machine falls into many pieces, and falls to the ground. Some tie up a cat, and a dog, so that it is heard yelping in the air.’  It is more than likely that a derivation from the Far East must also be recognised here, as in the animated representation of the clouds. On this, in addition to Baltrušaitis, Moyen Age Fantastique cited above, see the first chapter (Wolken in Religion und Kunst) by Kurt Badt, in Wolkenbilder und Wolkengedichte der Romantik, 1960. The fantastic iconography of clouds seems however to depend, more than on almost insignificant ancient literary quotations, on an oriental influence, which was particularly vibrant in the 15th century. Giovanni Fontana claims to have seen armies fighting in the sky in 1403. Cellini shoots at the clouds (Vita, ed, cit, p. 285).
14. On the games of flags see Francesco Ferrari Alfieri, La Picca e la Bandiera, Padua, 1641, but also Valturio’s passages on flags, the fresco with the defeat of Cosroe, by Piero della Francesca.
15. In De Architettura, VI, 11. ‘Eusebius narrates, that over the temple of Solomon chains were drawn, from which hung four hundred bells, with the sound of which the birds had disappeared. Imagine there are the roofs, the tops, the mouths of the cannons, and the cantons also. And there are placed bales, flowers, statues, wagons, and similar things, of which we will talk about in due course.’

    Essential, of course, are the classical precedents, or better still, Vitruvius’ description (16, 4) of the Tower of the Winds in Athens, surmounted by a Triton (repeatedly depicted in woodcuts in Vitruvian editions). One of the most beautiful literary exhumations of ancient weathervanes is the one from the Dream of Polyphilos, where, atop an obelisk, a Nymph is imagined in ‘acto mostrante de volato‘ with a cornucopia in her hand, presumably following the coeval (c. 1498) depiction of Fortune from the school of Mantegna, now in Mantua Castle, with ‘sopra el comoso fronte le trece libere volante e la parte della calva coppa overo cranea nudata et quasi depilata’. The subject derives from an epigram by Ausonius.

    The most beautiful weathervane made since the 16th century is undoubtedly the gigantic four-metre-high statue of the Faith by Bartolomeo Morel (1566-8), which dominates Seville from the top of the Giralda Tower, named after her, marking the reconquest of the entire country to Catholicism. The cosmological value of turning on itself, turning to all sides, in the 16th century is attested by various allegorical statements. Thus the group of Justice and Peace, turning on a pivot, for a fountain of the City Palace in Geneva, executed in 1584, bears the inscription: ‘Justice is the foundation of lasting peace, therefore we turn so that all things appear successively to our gaze.’ See W. Deonna , La Justice à l’Hotel de Ville, in ‘Revue Suisse d’Art et d’Archéologie,’ 1950, p. 144.

16. Fausto Venanzio Da Sebenico, Machinae Novae, Venice, 1595 (he is the inventor of the air turbine); see Francesco Savorgnan di Brazzà, Un inventore dalmata del ‘500, in “Archivio Storico per la Dalmazia,” May 1932, pp. 55-73.
17.  Il Trattato delli venti, by Stefano Breventano Pavese, Venice, Gioan Francesco Camotio, 1571, is mediocre and compilatory, and draws from Pliny, Seneca, etc. On musical automata, the most important information can be found in Salomon de Caus, lnstitution harmonique divisée en deux parties, Heidelberg or Frankfurt, 1614, and Les Raisons des Forces Mouvantes, Paris, 1624.
18. David R Coffin, The Villa d’Este at Tivoli, Princeton, New York, 1960, p. 39.
19. A sound restoration of Villa d’Este, using electronic music apparatus, in collaboration with Sanguineti and Gelmetti, was proposed by me to Siemens, but turned out to be economically unfeasible.
20. Daniello Bartolli, L’uomo di lettere difeso e emendato, Venice, 1670, II, 3.
21. On Hellbrunn, near Salzburg, see Chapter VIII, note 67.
22. On Renaissance musical instruments I know of no studies that address this aspect.
23. Michelangelo, Letters, ed. Milanesi, no. 179, p. 501.

24. For the element of fire, in general (but with minimal references to the 16th century), see Carl Martin Edsman, lgnis divinus, Le feu comme moyen de rejeunissement et d’immortalité; contes, legendes mythes et rites, Lund, 1949; on fires ceremonial fires in folklore, see Chapter III, footnote 38.

    For the figurative arts, one need only recall the vast series of depictions of the four elements, in which fire has a particular pictorial prominence, and for the dramatic aspects A. Kamphausen, Die Brandkatastrophen in der bildenden Kunst, Heide in Holstein, 1959.

    A comprehensive study on fireworks is the illustrated one by Arthur Lotz, Das Feuerwerk, Leipzig, undated. For the 16th century he gives specific information Biringuccio Senese, De la Pirotechnia libri dieci, Venice, 1540, with illustrations. Other information is in the excellent article on Pyrotechnics by E. Povoledo in Enciclopedia dello Spettacolo. Important descriptions, partly collected by Lotz, are found in 16th-century and later art writers. Thus Vasari, in the Life of Triboldo, Milanesi ed., VI, pp. 93-4; and Baldinucci, in the Life of Buontalenti (ed. 1811, vol. VIII, pp. 16-17) ‘at this time he invented a certain amusement of some figures surrounded and compared to certain circles that closed in a large paper lantern, turning by force of the smoke of a certain light, they disappear the shadow in a sheet, which comes between them and our sight. The name Girandola was given to this; from then on he was nicknamed the one of the Girandole, and then Bernardo delle Girandole, and this nickname was stuck on him when he exhibited in Florence the most marvellous fireworks that had ever been seen there, and among these the artificial girandole, which are nowadays so much practised on the occasion of public merrymaking.’ Among the grandest demonstrations was, from 1481, the great Girandola of Castel Sant’Angelo, in Rome, of which we have engraved representations; the machines of Piazza Navona (1589); in Florence, the festivities of S. Giovanni. In Italy, Bologna, Ferrara, Messina, Trento (not mentioned by Lotz) have firework festivals. Victories, triumphal entrances are, especially outside Italy, occasions for grandiose, largely allegorical experiments. See the dragon reproduced here, and the description of the festivities in Trento for Philip II, in the appendix. Technically, from simple geometric decorations, we move on to complex figurations, also of a narrative nature.

25. See appendix, pp. 500-20.
26. The painting was among the one hundred paintings purchased by Augustus III of Poland in 1746 from the Duke of Modena Francesco III. Originally part of a series of eleven mythological subjects that had adorned Ferrara Castle, Adolfo Venturi attributed the painting, catalogued as being by Dosso Dossi, to Battista Dossi. See Henrette Mendelsohn, Das Werk der Dossi, München, 1914, pp. 144-5, and in ‘Commentari, ’VIII,1957,pp.257-61.
27. On this psychological factor Greek fire was leveraged; see, for example, in Vonville’s Chronicles of the Crusade of St. Louis: ‘one evening, the Turks brought a device they called the perriere, a terrible device for doing bad things; with this device, they gave us the Greek fire to plants, which was the most horrible thing I have ever seen… the manner of the Greek was such that it came down as big as a barrel, and the length of the tail would be as long as half a cane of four sides. It made so much noise coming that it seemed as if it was a whip coming from the sky and seemed to me like a great dragon flying through the air… and it made so much light that it also made our host light up like day, so much was there great flames of fire’. See P. B. Bagatti Bombe a ‘fuoco greco’ in Palestina, VIII-XIII, in “Faenza,” XXXIX,1953, pp. 35-39 (these were globular jars filled with naphtha). The use of incendiary fragments, for terrorist purposes, is after all a painful custom.
28. I quote from Biringucio Senese, Venezia, 1540, pp. 165-6, “as still these fires composed of impetuous and horrible matters that render to men harm and fright,they also create a happy and pleasing effect, and in exchange for escape, the populace would gladly go to the festivities to see them.’
29. See Celio Malespini, Novella, XXIV of Tome II, 1599. The same problemat is involved in the visualization of the oil lamp, especially if it has a representational function. See in this regard Dürer’s designs, commented on by Detlef Heikamp, Dürers Entwürfe fur Geweìhleuchter, in “Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte,” 1960, I, pp. 42-55
30. One can also read, for example, in B. Castiglione, who summarizes a very complex affair of the revival of the hermetic theme: “as the material fire refines gold, so this most holy fire in souls destroys and consumes what is mortal, and vivifies and renders beautiful that celestial part, which was previously mortified and buried by sense in them. This is the pyre, in which the poets write that Hercules was burned at the summit of Mount Oeta, and by such fire after death, he remained divine and immortal” Courtier, IV, LXIX, ed. Cian, p. 49.
    For the serpentine flame, I quote from Posidonius, quoted in Cumont, Lux Perpetua, p. 17. On the idea of the flame, in Michelangelo, see Robert J. Clememts, Michelangelo’s Theory of Art, Zürich, 1961, pp. 175-17
31. On the theatrical intermezzo, see the relevant entry in Enciclopedia dello Spettacolo, VI, coll. 572 ff. A volume by Sandaro Marabottini on stage design is currently being published, with a very extensive treatment of festivals and apparatuses, whose poetics,in a certain sense, the intermezzos echo. See also the very sharp exegesis of Pofiziano’s Orfeo made by Karl Kerényi,in Orfeo simbolo dionisiaco, “Umanesimo e Simbolismo, Atti del IV Convegno Internazionale di Studi Umanistici,” Padova,1958, pp. 182-92

32. In fact, another of the areas in which the new “naturalism” was expressed was the figurative interpretation of the Divine Comedy: of which, in fact, we have, at the end of the Cinquecento, several interesting visualisations. Here, too, the same chronological rhythm operates, which seems to scan this revival of the fantastic and the superhuman, from generation to generation. The previous stage had been Botticelli and Giuliano da San Gallo; already extraordinarily rich in naturalistic settings, compared to the coeval painting. Now it is the turn (1587-8) of Zuccari (87 drawings, nos. 2474- 3561 cat. Ferri), of Stradano (Cod. Med. Pal. 75), of Ligozzi (an artist who, as we can see, reappears at every turn in our discourse); see C. F . Bell, Drawings by the old Masters in the Library of Christ Church, 1914, no. 211, table 44; they much more ‘romantically’ emphasise the alternation of light and shadow in Dante’s itinerary; indeed, they emphasise above all the nightmare of the shadow. It is they who give us the first true nocturnal image of Inferno, that is, practically the first pictorial translation of a tragedy no longer based on human relations alone, but on the irremediable tension between the individual and the universe.

    On 16th century illustrations of Dante, see C. Ricci, La Divina Commedia di Dante nell’Arte del Cinquecento, Milan, 1908; G. Biagi, La Divina Commedia nella figurazione artistica e nel secolare commento, Turin, 1924; P. Schubring, lllustrationen zu Dantes Göttlicher Komödie in ltalien 14 bis 16 jahrhundert, Wien, 1931 . It is curious how Mannerist architectural capriciousness is so well suited to the demonic, e.g. in Zuccari’s Gates of Hell (Schubring, table 31), solving the dramatic demands of the theme on its own, even if the effectiveness of the ensemble is less than, for example, that of Bomarzo Park.

    The late Gothic period had already tackled the cosmological theme of the ‘Commedia’ very successfully, for example in the stupendous miniatures of the Lorenzetti circle on Cod. C.L. 70 in the Biblioteca Comunale di Perugia.

33. This process, which seems very general indeed, has been sharply analysed by Josef A. Mazzeo, Universal analogy and the culture of the Renaissance, in ‘Journal of History of Ideas,’ April 1954, XV, pp. 299-304, where on pp. 303-4 we read: ‘The Renaissance emphasis on universal analogy and cosmic affinities helped make the forma mentis of Renaissance men richly metaphorical and symbolic. Cassirer, Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance, Leipzig, 1927, ch. 4, passim, justly remarked that one of the characteristics of Renaissance philosophy is the reluctance shown by philosophers of that period to be satisfied with an abstract statement. They sought instead the concrete expression of an idea, often by means of myths. They displayed a strong tendency to create an analogy, to understand it as an end to inquiry, and to feel an almost animistic identity of man with the great living world of nature. Their criterion of the truth or falsity of a statement seems to have been its degree of richness in essentially ‘poetic’ elements. The principle of universal analogy or universal correspondences provides basis for a unified theory of the imagination which joins the philosopher or investigator of nature and the poet.’

    The concept of nature and garden also seems to participate in the same analogical structure. The villa is a great alchemist’s laboratory: ‘In this country house, by the dew of the sky, the vast rains and the waters of the earth, the tilled soil bestows its fruit, while from the saltpetre mixed with the sun the vapours of the scattered fertiliser rise. ‘See Roman Encyclopaedic Memoirs, V, 1810, pp. 86-93. Quoted by Guy De Tervarent, De la méthode iconologique, Brussels-Paris, 1961 (‘Mémoires de l’ Académie Royale de Belgique,’ XII , 4).On Arcimboldo see, among others, B. Geiger, Giuseppe Arcimboldi, Florence, 195 4; B. Geiger,Giuseppe Arcimboldi ‘surrealist’ of his time, in ‘Arte Figurati va,’ IV, 1956, no. 5, pp. 33-5; F. C. Legrand and F. Sluvs, Giuseppe Arcimboldi, Paris, 1955; F. C. Legrand and F. Sluvs, Giuseppe Arcimboldo Joyau des Cabinet De Curiosité, in ‘Les Arts Plastiques,’ July-September 1953, pp. 243-58; Idem, Some little known ‘Arcimboldeschi,’ in ‘Burlington Magazine,’ XCVI, July 1954, pp. 210-3; G. A. Dell’Aqua, in ‘Storia di Milano,’ X, p. 686; Sven Alfons, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, in ‘Symbolister,’ 2 (Tidskrift für Konstvetenkap, XXXI, 1ine! De Curiosité, in ‘Les Arts Plastiques,’ July-September 1953, pp. 243-58; Idem, Some little known ‘Arcimboldeschi,’ in ‘Burlington Magazine,’ XCVI, July 1954, pp. 210-3; G. A. Dell’Aqua, in ‘Storia di Milano,’ X, p. 686; Sven Alfons, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, in ‘Symbolister,’ 2 (Tidskrift für Konstvetenkap, XXXI, ine! De Curiosité, in ‘Les Arts Plastiques,’ July-September 1953, pp. 243-58; Idem, Some little known ‘Arcimboldeschi,’ in ‘Burlington Magazine,’ XCVI, July 1954, pp. 210-3; G. A. Dell’Aqua, in ‘Storia di Milano,’ X, p. 686; Sven Alfons, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, in ‘Symbolister,’ 2 (Tidskrift für Konstvetenkap, XXXI, 1957).

34. E. Kris, Der Stil ‘Rustique’:die Verwend des Naturabgusses bei Wenzel Jamnitzer und Bernard Palissy, in ‘Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien,’ no. F., I, pp. 137-208 (p. 197).
35. On the origins of the rustic style, Prof. L. H. Heydenreich gave a series of fundamental lectures two years ago. See, for the bibliography, the following notes.

36. The quotation is taken from K. Borinski, Die Antike in Poetik und Kunsttheorie, Leipzig, 1914, I, p. 145. Evidence of the immediate transfer to the arts of the periodisations given by literary criticism is provided by the following passage from Philarete (ed. W. van Oettingen, Wien, 1896, p. 272):

    I give this as an example of the ancient edification of modern letters, that is to say, like the speech of Tullius or Vergilius, which has been in use for thirty or forty years, and which has now been reduced to better use than it was in times past, that is to say, to prose speech with ornate eloquence, which is already several hundred years old. And this was only out of respect, that they followed the ancient way of Tullius and the other worthy men. And so to this similitude I give you edification; that he who follows the ancient practice, is at the point of the above-mentioned similitude, i.e. of the Tullian and Vergilian letters in comparison with these ancients.

    Another important component, which must have been extremely provocative in the context of Renaissance geographical and historical exoticism, is that provided by the chapter in Book II of Vitruvius, dedicated to primitive construction techniques.

37. Ronsard,cited by Kris (see note below).
38. E. Kris, Der Stil ‘Rustique’; die Verwendung des Nataturabgusses bei Wenzel Jamnitzer und Bernard Palissy, in ‘Jahrbuch der Kunthistorichen Sammlungen in Wien,’ n.F., pp. 137-208.
39. G. Weise, Vitalism, animism and panpsychism and decoration in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, I, in ‘Art Criticism,’ Nov.-Dec. 1959, pp. 375-98, II, ibid. March-April 1960, pp. 85-96.
40. Weise, cit., I, 375.
41. Weise, cit., I, 398.
42. Paola Zambelli, art. Cit.
43. I refer explicitly to Danti, Primo libro del trattato delle perfette proporzioni, ed. P. Barocchi, Bari, 1960 (Trattati d’arte del cinquecento fra manierismo e controriforma), I, pp. 237-241. 
44. On Gallaccini and his manuscripts, see note 49 of chapter XI.
    I refer here to his chapter on the proportions of the human body, included in Perigonia, Biblioteca comunale di Siena Ms. L. IV 5 pp. 74-83 and to Teoriche e pratiche di prospettiva scenografica, 1641, Biblioteca comunale di Siena, L. IV. 4.