Il fine della pittura: Canon Reformulation in the Age of Counter-Reformation. The Lombard-Roman Confluence

Abstract

Counter-Reformation treatises are typically dismissed as determiners of style. This dissertation challenges the prevailing view that rejects Counter-Reformation theory as key motivators of sacred style, and will prove that one treatise in particular, Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti's 1582 Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane, held a considerable amount of authority almost immediately after its publication. Through a close study of the Discorso's nature-centered language and its applicability to the Lombard tradition of presenting "tangible presences," it is evident that one artist, in particular, fulfilled Paleotti's vision for a "reformed" sacred style, and one who seldom appears in connection with the cardinal: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. The interconnection of Paleotti's theology of nature, Lombard painting style, and the sacred works of Caravaggio is established through this contextual study of Counter-Reformation Rome in the late Cinquecento and early Seicento. Paleotti's Discorso is evaluated as a whole and as an expression of Paleotti's ideas on sacred art. This examination and analyses of Paleotti's major points and emphases shows how they collectively form a cohesive language and theoretical basis ("theology of nature") for the reformulation of sacred images based on naturalism. Careful readings of Cinquecento and Seicento literature on art (from Vasari to Bellori) draw correspondences between the words used to describe Lombard style and Paleotti's language in his Discorso. The dissemination of his "theology of nature" is demonstrated through reconstruction of Paleotti's Roman circle. Paleotti's important ties to the Oratorians, the Jesuits, the Accademia di San Luca, and his friendships with key cardinal-patrons in the circle of Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte, provided an ideal network for the dissemination of his ideas that would in fact put him into contact with Caravaggio. Caravaggio's plebian religious scenes and figures correlate with Paleotti's conviction that naturalism served as a bridge between painted subject and Christian viewer. This dissertation fills not only a critical lacuna in Counter-Reformation studies, but also opens new contextualizing avenues of research and dialogue on the intricate and determining relationship between Counter-Reformation theory and style, at which, at the heart, stand Cardinal Paleotti and Caravaggio.