Cassiano Del Pozzo

Overlooking Venice's Grand Canal, Residenza d'Epoca San Cassiano is a 5-minute walk from Rialto Bridge. This 14th-century villa is furnished with antiques and Murano glass chandeliers. Is a lovely Hotel in a calmer area of Venice. Has the charm of old Venice and has a lovely view of the Water. La Badoche, festa del patrono San Cassiano, in cui i giovani del paese fanno il giro delle case la mattina presto per annunciare la festa. Dopo la messa, danzano sul sagrato della chiesa. Dopo la messa, danzano sul sagrato della chiesa. Collection comprises a signed letter (2 leaves; 20 cm x 27 cm) from Artemisia Gentileschi to patron Cassiano Dal Pozzo, written from Naples 1630 August 31. She requests his help in acquiring a license for her assistant, Diego Campanili, to carry arms, and mentions work she is completing for the Empress and a portrait she is painting for Dal Pozzo.

• Cassiano Dal Pozzo
• Cassiano Dal Pozzo
• Cassiano Dal Pozzo

Citron, Citrus medica by Vincenzo Leonardi, Museum no. E.426-2009

These three watercolours once formed part of the museo cartaceo or 'paper museum' assembled by the 17th-century Roman antiquarian and collector Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588-1657). This was a vast visual encyclopaedia of the ancient and natural worlds, consisting of thousands of drawings and prints.

Cassiano was a member of Europe's first modern scientific academy, the prestigious Accademia dei Lincei ('The Academy of the Lynxes'), established in Rome in 1603 - half a century before either the Royal Society in London or the Académie des Sciences in Paris. The Accademia, which numbered Galileo amongst its members, placed great emphasis on observation as the key to understanding the mysteries of nature.

For his paper museum Cassiano commissioned artists to make drawings directly from specimens. The resulting works were intended to be clear and objective scientific records. Little is known about these artists, due to the documentary bias of the visual encyclopaedia. However, many of the drawings are attributed on stylistic grounds to Vincenzo Leonardi, who was often employed by Cassiano.

Cassiano was particularly interested in abnormality, both in animals and plants, and commissioned numerous watercolours of misshapen fruits. His interest was based on the belief that a study of abnormality could result in a better understanding of normal growth. The deformity in the citron is caused by the action of a mite on the bud of the flower. At the time, however, this was not known - one explanation of the digitated, or 'fingered', appearance of this fruit involved the tragic transformation of a mythical youth into a citrus tree.

The way in which the sour orange is depicted, with the fruit shown both whole and halved, is typical of the representation of natural specimens in the paper museum. An engraving was made after this drawing and published in 1646 in the Hesperides by Giovanni Battista Ferrari, a treatise on the cultivation of citrus fruit. The scroll which is indicated in black chalk on the drawing was probably added in the printmaker's workshop. In the engraving it is inscribed with the name of the species.

Cassiano was also interested in the previously unknown species which at this time were being imported to Europe from the Americas, and sought to include them in the paper museum.

The thorn apple was one such plant. Its white flower, which opens during the night, emits an unpleasant smell, giving rise to the name erba puzzola or 'stinking plant'. Another name to have become attached to it is mela del diavolo, or 'devil's apple', a reference to its spiny fruits. The plant has hallucinogenic properties.

Almost 50 years after Cassiano's death his paper museum was purchased from his heirs by Pope Clement XI Albani. It then entered the collection of the Pope's nephew Cardinal Alessandro Albani in 1714, and in 1762 was purchased - though not in its entirety - by George III. The bulk of the paper museum remains in the Royal Collection to this day, with the exception of a large group of natural history drawings (including these watercolours) that were sold from the Royal Library at Windsor in the 1920s. The V&A acquired these three watercolours in 2009, and they have joined the museum's important collection of botanical drawings. They can be seen in the Prints and Drawings Study Room.

Sour orange, Citrus aurantium by Vincenzo Leonardi, Museum no. E.427-2009

Cassiano Dal Pozzo

Thorn apple, Datura stramonium (anonymous). Museum no. E.428-2009

Bacchus, formerly Saint John the Baptist, is a painting in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, France, based on a drawing by the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci. It is presumed to have been executed by an unknown follower, perhaps in Leonardo's workshop. Sydney J. Freedberg assigns the drawing to Leonardo's second Milan period.^[1] Among the Lombard painters who have been suggested as possible authors are Cesare da Sesto,^[a]Marco d'Oggiono, Francesco Melzi,^[2] and Cesare Bernazzano. The painting shows a male figure with garlanded head and leopard skin, seated in an idyllic landscape. He points with his right hand off to his left, and with his left hand grasps his thyrsus and also points down to earth.

The painting originally depicted John the Baptist. In the late 17th century, between the years 1683 and 1693, it was overpainted and altered to serve as Bacchus.^[b]

Cassiano dal Pozzo remarked of the painting in its former state, which he saw at Fontainebleau in 1625, that it had neither devotion, decorum nor similitude,^[3] the suavely beautiful, youthful and slightly androgynous Giovannino was so at variance with artistic conventions in portraying the Baptist – neither the older ascetic prophet nor the Florentine baby Giovannino, but a type of Leonardo's invention, of a disconcerting, somewhat ambiguous sensuality, familiar in Leonardo's half-length and upward-pointing Saint John the Baptist, also in the Louvre.^[4]

The overpainting transformed the image of St. John into one of a pagan deity, by converting the long-handled cross-like staff of the Baptist to a Bacchic thyrsus and adding a vine wreath. The fur robe is the legacy of John the Baptist, but has been overpainted with leopard-spots relating, like the wreath, to Bacchus, the Roman god of wine and intoxication.

Copies[edit]

Few copies done by Leonardeschi artists are known. One of them is attributed to Bernardino Lanino (panel, 24 x 24 cm) and is held at the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh. It depicts St John the Baptist in Wilderness, however, the saint is placed to a background of grotto with some sight of high rocks, a river, riders and a hanged man. Another copy of 15th-16th centuries is held at Musee Ingres, Montauban. Another copy, attributed to follower of Cesare da Sesto was sold in auction at Christie's on 23 April 2008.

References[edit]

Footnotes

1. ^Cesare is most often credited with the best of three copies of this work in its original formulation, on loan to the National Gallery of Scotland.
2. ^It was inventoried in 1683 at Saint Jean dans le désert at Fontainebleau and in 1693 at Meudon as Bacchus, with a marginal note that it had formerly been previously inventoried as Saint John. (Freedberg 1982:285, note 16).

Citations

Cassiano Dal Pozzo

1. ^S.J. Freedberg, 'A Recovered Work of Andrea del Sarto with Some Notes on a Leonardesque Connection' The Burlington Magazine124 No. 950 (May 1982:266, 281–288) p. 285; the badly smudged and damaged red chalk drawing, conserved in the Museo del Santuario del Sacro Monte, Varese, is illustrated p.284, fig. 27.
2. ^Freedberg 1982, p. 285
3. ^Noted by A. Ottino della Chiesa, Leonardo Pittore (Milan) 1967:109, from a document in the Vatican Library.
4. ^See Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, 'Giovannino Battista: A Study in Renaissance Religious Symbolism' The Art Bulletin37.2. (June 1955:85-101).

Further reading[edit]

• Musée du Louvre, Hommage à Léonard de Vinci 1952:34ff.

Cassiano Dal Pozzo