The Peripatetic Aesthetic, Counter-Mannerism and the Myth of the Carracci Reform

Abstract

In the spirit of the late historian Eric Cochrane, this thesis is a rejection of the perception of Italy in the mid-to-late sixteenth century as a period of cultural “decline.” Not only did a new interest in the writings of Aristotle, in the mid-sixteenth century, see the birth of modern literary criticism but also the emergence of a peripatetic aesthetic that would define the visual arts until the end of the seventeenth century. The peripatetic aesthetic was associated with cultural currents that were working to break down the elite domain of humanism in the courts of Italy, by positively proclaiming Aristotle’s conception of the democratisation of both aesthetic judgment and reason. Coupled with an emphasis on the importance of legibility, this led painters to adopt Counter-Mannerist approaches to painting which, in turn, complemented the concerns of the Counter-Reformation Church. In this context, the art historian Elizabeth Cropper has acknowledged that ‘the essential working definition of art stated by Varchi, Barbaro, or Zuccaro had not changed by Bellori’s day.’ This continuity within the period has led me to question the so-called exceptional nature of the Carracci as reformers of painting - who supposedly instigated the “baroque” style at the end of the sixteenth century. In fact, I argue that the stylistic models of reform adopted by the Carracci were apparent in the work of artists living in many of the major cultural hubs of the Italian peninsula. The marked tendency of past historians to downplay these reformers in order to promote a Carracci exceptionalism I argue has more to do with the cultural value judgments of these scholars, who, both covertly or overtly, sought to establish heroic Carracci-based narratives of reform as a means of “rescuing” the arts from the perceived cultural decline of the mid-to-late sixteenth century. I further contend that justification for this was taken from the seventeenth century Roman antiquarian circle of Angeloni and Bellori. These antiquarians, I argue, had sought to promote Annibale Carracci as a means of reinforcing their own desired personal links to Rome’s antiquarian past and, in turn, as a means to further associate themselves with the belief in its present cultural immanence. In all these instances of cultural appropriation – whether by art historians or Roman antiquarians - I argue that the advancement of an autonomous “Carracci reform” of painting said more about the identity of the advocates than about the initial cultural context and identity of the artists in question.