1. Introduction

In his Le vite de' più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori, Giorgio Vasari (1511–74) aspired to compile an encyclopedic overview of the art of the Italian peninsula. His collection of biographies, however, mainly consists of Florentine artists. Paolo Pino's (1534–65) Dialogo di pittura, which originated in the Veneto but praises masters from different regions of the Italian peninsula, acknowledged Vasari's forthcoming work two years before it was published. In a famous passage, Pino envisions the ideal artist as an embodiment of Titian (ca. 1488–1576) and Michelangelo (1475–1564), as the perfect union of Venetian colore (color) and Florentine disegno (design).Footnote ¹ Vasari did not return the compliment. The Vite, first published in Florence by Lorenzo Torrentino in 1550 (commonly called Torrentiniana), exacerbated regional tensions of civic pride among its readers by unambiguously establishing Florence as the epicenter of modern art. Vasari stresses the primacy of Florentine disegno in art theory and practice, and at the same time marginalizes or ignores major artists and works from Northern Italy. He honored Michelangelo with a biography, but not Titian.

Vasari's oversights were not lost on Venetians. Contemporary art literature and the hitherto-unknown annotations that I present in this article offer clues on how the Vite was received among art writers as well as artists and art lovers. The earliest published response to the Vite from the Veneto is Lodovico Dolce's (1508–68) Dialogo della pittura (1557), in which the exaltation of colore and the celebration of Titian assumes an anti-Vasarian stance.Footnote ² Dolce employs a character named Pietro Aretino (after the famous polemist writer) who demonstrates to a Tuscan visitor in Venice, named Gian Francesco Fabrini, that other artists are comparable to Michelangelo and equally praiseworthy when one considers painting not only in terms of disegno but also in terms of “invention” and colore.Footnote ³ While Raphael (1483–1520) excelled in all aspects of painting, explains Aretino, Michelangelo did so only in disegno. In the conclusion of the dialogue, Dolce characterizes Titian's works as insuperable examples of colore. The dialogue was likely inspired by Pietro Aretino (1492–1556), who knew Dolce and whose ideas on art and admiration for his friend Titian were well known from his published correspondence, printed in six volumes between 1537 and 1557. It is also plausible that Titian himself favored Dolce's publication, irritated by the absence of his biography in the Torrentiniana.Footnote ⁴

Another important published response in the Veneto to the Vite is the last chapter of Bernardino Scardeone's (1478–1574) De antiquitate urbis Patavii et claris civibus Patavinis (1560), the major sixteenth-century source on Paduan art. Dedicated to twenty-three illustrious Paduan artists from the Trecento to Scardeone's time, this chapter is representative of the immediate impact of Vasari's book on the learned tradition of civic historiography. Scardeone praises modern Paduan artists — largely neglected by Vasari — for having resurrected and improved upon the art of antiquity. This special merit was certainly deserved by Andrea Mantegna (ca. 1431–1506), whose biography in Scardeone's book plays a role similar to that of Michelangelo in the Vite.

Vasari tried to reconcile these criticisms in the second edition of the Vite. As a result, the 1568 edition, published in Florence by the Giunti brothers and known as the Giuntina, offered more information on artists of the Veneto and, most significantly, a biography of Titian. To research the second edition, Vasari traveled to Northern Italy in 1566 and visited Titian's studio. By the time of his departure, Vasari had set up a web of correspondents in the region, including the Veronese friar Marco Medici (1516–81), the Carrarese sculptor Danese Cataneo (1509–73), and the Florentine Cosimo Bartoli (1503–72), Vasari's longstanding friend who was serving as Duke Cosimo I's (1519–72) agent in Venice. Through Bartoli, Vasari received from the city the woodcut portraits of the artists that illustrated the new edition and, we must assume, major information on Veneto art, including Titian's biography. The length and accuracy of the biography of Titian was unprecedented, and, according to Charles Hope, was probably originally written by someone in close contact with the painter. Later, it was expanded by Vasari, who also relied on the new information that he himself had gained on his visit to Venice.Footnote ⁵

Though Dolce and Scardeone's works are expressions of an anti-Vasarian sentiment, less clear is how accurately they reflect the overall reception of the Vite in Veneto artistic circles. Both Dolce and Scardeone defer to Vasari as an authority in art writing, and their anti-Vasarianism is quite indirect.Footnote ⁶ In the Dialogo, even the comparison between Titian and Michelangelo is only implied, mediated by Raphael and prudently inserted in the contemporary debate on the two artists.

The annotations, however, illuminate the wider reception of the Vite in a way that contemporary publications cannot. Annotations in the first volume of the two-volume set of the Torrentiniana at the Beinecke Library at Yale University, written by two anonymous Veneto readers, almost certainly Paduans, give us a rare insight into how the Vite and the contemporary art literature were read in the Veneto and how the information they provided circulated among artists and art lovers.Footnote ⁷ The annotations by the first annotator are the earliest known annotations made to the Vite; they were written after Dolce's Dialogo and between the publications of Scardeone's De antiquitate urbis Patavii and the second edition of the Vite.Footnote ⁸

Concentrated on a few biographies, the annotations were mainly written to index the book's content, usually by repeating words in the margin. Sometimes, however, they offer comments on, or amplifications to, specific passages and wider issues raised by the book. These comments and amplifications, written from memory primarily on the basis of oral sources, demonstrate the wide circulation of the main anti-Vasarian arguments derived from — or independently elaborated by — printed sources. As in the De antiquitate urbis Patavii, they vindicate the importance of the Paduan tradition by exalting local painters ignored by Vasari. And as in the Dialogo, the annotations' polemical argument centers on the exaltation of Veneto colore and culminates with an account of Titian's life and work, presented at the end of the volume on the recto of the first flyleaf before the back cover. The annotations include information that must have been circulating widely in the region, as shown by specific correspondences with Vasari's additions that are dedicated to Veneto art in the second edition of the Vite. The value of the annotations is not in the quality or accuracy of their commentary, but more in how they reflect Veneto artists' and art lovers' contemporary reading and understanding of Vasari and his critics.

Unlike the printed tradition, which advanced more nuanced and subtle critiques, the annotators' critiques are explicit and colloquial. This is not unusual. Private forms of writing, such as marginalia, are typically direct. They foster unrestrained criticism and dilation, especially in the case of a controversial book like the Vite. As did the first annotator of the Beinecke Vite, other readers such as Annibale Carracci (1560–1609), Taddeo Zuccari (ca. 1542–1609), El Greco (1541–1614), and Vincenzo Scamozzi (1548–1618) freely gave their criticism in their annotations to the Vite, sometimes even targeting Vasari with offensive language.Footnote ⁹

As a group, the annotations add little to what is already known. The information they provide on Veneto art is scarce, limited to occasional, geographically circumscribed insights, and increasingly generic when it concerns anything outside Padua. In a larger sense, the annotations remind us how difficult it was to gather specific information on artists and artworks in the second half of the sixteenth century. Although sensitive to civic pride and willing to evaluate their local artistic tradition, the annotators do not possess means to contest Vasari. They point out the Vite's gaps and prejudicial views but only in a few cases — and sometimes mistakenly — are the annotators able to fill them in or correct them.

This does not mean that the annotations do not present valuable information for art historians. On the contrary, by primarily relying on oral communication and secondhand sources — based on, but also independent from, written and printed culture — they offer important comments about fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Veneto art that has been overlooked or ignored by art literature. This study analyzes in detail the informative value of individual marginalia, especially a new attribution to Titian contained in the biographical annotation dedicated to the painter: the façade decoration of Palazzo Lion in Venice, which the first annotator lists as one of the earliest works executed by Titian. I will also analyze the annotators' mistakes. Not only do they confirm the secondhand nature of the annotator's sources, but in a few cases they also offer insights on controversial art-historical issues, such as the relationship between Giovanni Bellini's (ca. 1430–1516) and Antonello da Messina's (ca. 1430–79) work and Titian's late activity.

2. The Annotations

While the authorship, date, and provenance of the annotations cannot be determined with precision, they can be described generally by a formal and contextual analysis. The graphic features of the annotations indicate that the first annotator is responsible for most of the annotations, whereas the second annotator is only recognizable in a single marginal annotation to the biography of Vittore Carpaccio (1460/65–ca. 1526) and in the concluding part of the biographical note on Titian.Footnote ¹⁰

The first annotator wrote around the first half of the 1560s. Several of his annotations refer to works and events of this period, and the mention of a work by Domenico Campagnola (1500–64) executed in the first months of 1563, certainly after 12 April 1562, is an important terminus post quem for his writing. Although not automatically extendable to the whole corpus of his annotations, this chronological indication corresponds to the precise dating to 1563 in the annotations of a judgment by Domenico Campagnola on a Venetian altarpiece. The second annotator certainly wrote after 1581: he describes as extant a painting that had not yet been executed, according to a Venetian document dated that year (that I discuss below). This date corresponds to the graphic quality of his writing, attributable to the last two decades of the sixteenth century. There are continuities between the two writings, both discursive — the second annotator begins his addition to the biographical note on Titian with the conjunction “et” — and material — visual examination suggests that they use the same ink, although diluted in different concentrations. These continuities lead me to believe that the volume passed among different hands in one family or workshop.

The annotations establish the Veneto as the provenance of the document. The annotations concern works of art then visible in Padua, Venice, and Ferrara (with a few exceptions in the note on Titian) and concern artists who either lived in these cities, such as the Bellini, Carpaccio, and Ercole de' Roberti (ca. 1451–96), or who left significant traces of their art there, like Francesco Francia (ca. 1450–1517) and Donatello (ca. 1386–1466). The linguistic elements of the annotations are also characteristic of the Veneto, including the use of the voiced occlusive velar g instead of the correspondent unvoiced c (Domenego, fondego), the evolution of l followed by the semivowel j (ogio), the palatal outcome of the nexus scl (sciavo), and the pronoun mi functioning as subject (mi son partito).

Within this geographical area, Padua dominates the annotations. The most direct evidence is a reference to the city in an annotation (whose grammatical form also establishes the first annotator as male) that criticizes Francesco Francia's altarpiece in the Ferrara Cathedral, the Ognissanti altarpiece (1506) still in situ: “I purposely traveled from Padua to see this altarpiece in the Ferrara cathedral and I saw a work very roughly made in comparison to the contemporary works made in Lombardy and by Lombard artists” (fig. 1).Footnote ¹¹

Figure 1 Anonymous annotator. Manuscript annotation in the margin of p. 534 of Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de' più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani. Florence, 1550. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (1987 441 1).

Another clue that suggests the Paduan origin of the annotations is their frequent reference to the painter Domenico Campagnola, a contemporary Paduan artist who was ignored by Vasari in both editions; in the narrative created by the marginal annotations, however, Campagnola assumes a primary position. The first annotator judges him as one of the best modern painters (a view shared by Pino and Scardeone) and as an art expert — a role that Campagnola officially performed at least on one occasion, as attested by a contemporary notary document.Footnote ¹² Campagnola seems to be the first annotator's main source, or at least the only source he acknowledges. The name “Domenico Campagnola painter,” crossed out but still legible, even appears on the last page of the volume at the end of a concluding comment on the book (fig. 2).Footnote ¹³

Figure 2 Anonymous annotator. Manuscript annotation in the margin of p. 552 of Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de' più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani. Florence, 1550. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (1987 441 1).

Why the name of the artist was written and then crossed out is unclear. Perhaps the annotator intended to attribute the preceding comment to the artist, but feared the name could have been mistaken as an indication of the volume's ownership. Whatever the reason, the name is not a signature. The annotations' two references to Campagnola in the third person singular, along with a passage certainly written by the artist in a Paduan notary document dated 1 August 1542 (fig. 3), indicate that the artist cannot be identified with the annotator.Footnote ¹⁴ Yet his name, centered on the page at the end of the volume and written according to a formula common for signatures, is emblematic of the role the artist plays in the annotations' narrative. In light of these observations, the first annotator is probably an anonymous reader, an artist or an amateur who was close to Campagnola and his circle in the early 1560s.

Figure 3 Domenico Campagnola. Autograph writing. Archivio di Stato, Padua, Notarile, 3229, 530^r. Reproduction by the Sezione Fotoriproduzione of the Archivio di Stato, Padua, granted by the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, n. 11/2009.

Campagnola was a prominent figure in the contemporary Paduan art community.Footnote ¹⁵ Born around 1500 in Venice, orphan of a German immigrant shoemaker, he was adopted by the Paduan Giulio Campagnola (ca. 1482–ca. 1515). Documented in Padua in 1523, the artist obtained many of the major Paduan public and private commissions during his nearly forty-year career. He was also favored in learned circles of the city. We know that Marco Mantova Benavides (1492–1582) collected his paintings and drawings, and that Alvise Cornaro (1484–1566), according to the contemporary Marcantonio Michiel (1484–1552), commissioned him to decorate the interior of his palace.Footnote ¹⁶ He collaborated with the major Paduan artists: initially with the caster Guido Lizzaro; then with the sculptor and painter Tiziano Minio (ca. 1511–52), son of Guido; and with the painter Stefano dell'Arzere (ca. 1505–ca. 1576), who was only a few years younger than Campagnola, and was perhaps his former pupil.Footnote ¹⁷ He must have been acquainted also with Giambattista Maganza (ca. 1509–86) and Parrasio Michiel (ca. 1516–78): Michiel was the recipient of a ballad composed by Maganza, in which the name of Campagnola also appears.Footnote ¹⁸ Parrasio was also hired by the clergy of the Paduan cathedral to complete Campagnola's last work after the artist's sudden death at the age of sixty-four on 10 December 1564.Footnote ¹⁹

The first annotator may have been connected with the religious orders, given his interest in devotional information contained in the Vite. For instance, he indexes in the margins the portrait of St. Francis executed by Margaritone d'Arezzo (ca. 1216–90) and Taddeo Gaddi's (1300–66) veneration for St. Jerome.Footnote ²⁰ His annotations in the margins of the biography of Lorenzo Monaco (ca. 1370–1425) largely refer to religious information. These indexical annotations include the order to which the artist belonged; the supposed veneration of his hands, held as relics by his brotherhood;Footnote ²¹ his special exemption from the duties of the order, obtained for special merits from Pope Eugenius IV (1383–1447); and the decoration of a missal, still in use in Rome at Vasari's time.Footnote ²² The annotator also reveals an interest in language and letters (a fact already implied by the quality of his writing), which displays a literacy superior to the average Cinquecento artist. He indexes the literary education of Cimabue (ca. 1240–ca. 1302), the poetic activity of the painter Andrea di Cione, called Orcagna (ca. 1308–68), and the names of the humanists Leonardo Bruni (ca. 1369–1444) and Angelo Poliziano (1454–94), as well as the portraits of Dante (1265–1321) and Petrarch (1304–74).Footnote ²³

The importance of Campagnola in the annotations also derives from the prestige of his adoptive family, which was known for its literary interests, unusual among artists. His adoptive father Giulio Campagnola was celebrated as an enfant prodige in the learned Paduan circles for his knowledge of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, for his poetry, as well as for his talents as engraver, calligrapher, and lute player. Vasari also praised him, but only in the Giuntina, recalling that he “made many beautiful works of painting, illumination, and copper-engraving, both in Padua and in other places.”Footnote ²⁴ Of Giulio's works we have only a few drawings and engravings that represent themes then familiar in Paduan cultural circles.Footnote ²⁵ He died soon after he took vows, perhaps in 1515, the last year in which his name appears in documents.Footnote ²⁶ Domenico's adoptive grandfather Girolamo Campagnola (ca. 1435–1522), a notary and art amateur, is especially known for a letter on art written in Latin and addressed to the philosopher Niccolò Leonico Tomeo (1465–1531).Footnote ²⁷ The letter is now lost, but was well known by contemporaries, and used as a source by Marcantonio Michiel for his Notizia d'opere del disegno (1521–43) and by Vasari for the second edition of the Vite (1568).Footnote ²⁸ For all this, Campagnola must have appeared to the first annotator as an authoritative figure in the city's artistic tradition. His prominent appearance in the annotations was instrumental in the annotators' opposition to the marginal status of Paduan art in the Vite, and to their claim of its enduring importance at the time.

3. The Anti-Vasarian Arguments

At the end of the biography of Cimabue, where Vasari refers to “those who brought such craft to the amazement and wonder that we see in our own age,”Footnote ²⁹ the first annotator writes: “Michelangelo Buonarroti, Raphael of Urbino as Titian, Jacopo Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, Salviati, Bonifacio, Lorenzo Lotto, Rocco Marconi, Parrasio, Domenico Campagnola, who executed many works, among them a panel in Sant'Agostino of Padua and [another] in the hall of the Podestà, another too by Stefano padovano; and fra' Marco wonders about the fact that one can see [Stefano's] divine works in so many places” (fig. 4).Footnote ³⁰

Figure 4 Anonymous annotator. Manuscript annotation in the margin of p. 130 of Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de' più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani. Florence, 1550. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (1987 441 1).

This annotation, exemplary of the annotator's campanilismo (civic pride), counts Campagnola and Stefano dell'Arzere (“Stefano padovano”) as the best contemporary artists of Padua — celebrated as such and similarly paired by the contemporaries Pino and ScardeoneFootnote ³¹ — and includes them among the indisputable masters Michelangelo, Raphael, and Titian, and the Venetians Tintoretto (1518–94), Veronese (1528–88), Bonifacio de' Pitati (1487–1553), Lorenzo Lotto (ca. 1480–1556), and Rocco Marconi (before 1490–1529). The annotation also mentions Giuseppe Salviati (1520–75), a painter of Tuscan origin who was very successful in the Veneto and especially in Padua, where he was documented in 1541. Also relevant is the mention of “fra' Marco,” whom I identify as the Veronese Dominican Marco Medici, a man of letters, amateur architect, and art expert. Medici was collecting information in those years on Veronese artists for the second edition of the Vite, and perhaps, as the annotation may suggest, also on Paduans.Footnote ³²

The annotator includes references only to works of art by Paduans. He mentions two paintings by Campagnola, one in the Church of Sant'Agostino, and another in the Palazzo del Podestà. The first corresponds to the Resurrection of Christ with Saints, now in the Museo Civico (inv. 2321), made between 1547 and 1554 and installed on the main altar. This was celebrated by Scardeone as one of the most important works of the city.Footnote ³³ The second work by Campagnola is the monumental canvas Podestà Marino Cavalli and St. Mark, commissioned during Cavalli's office as podestà (chief magistrate) between 12 April 1562 and the beginning of March 1563. This may be the painting recorded in a payment receipt to Campagnola dated March 2 of the same year: “for the painting of the large canvas relocated in the auditory chamber in the Palazzo of the illustrious Podestà.”Footnote ³⁴ Regarding dell'Arzere's work, the annotator does not offer precise details but recalls Medici's special appreciation of its wondrous quantity and quality.

This annotation on the best modern painters — which includes, together with the Paduans, artists neglected in art writing at the time such as Lorenzo Lotto and Rocco Marconi — synthetically expresses an art-historical vision of the Veneto territory centered in Padua as an alternative to the one centered in Florence that Vasari proposed, of which the annotator is increasingly critical. The most illustrative annotations in this sense are those in the biography of Francesco Francia, one of the most annotated of the volume. Here the annotator sounds a polemical note on the prejudicial treatment Vasari reserves for Lombard artists. In their defense, the annotator writes, “see how this Giorgio from Arezzo [Vasari] is very prejudicial against the Lombards, but willing or not, he must make the effort to consider them, because in these regions there are excellent men” (fig. 5).Footnote ³⁵

Figure 5 Anonymous annotator. Manuscript annotation in the margin of p. 536 of Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de' più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani. Florence, 1550. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (1987 441 1).

In the sixteenth century, artists of Veneto or Emilian provenance, like Francesco Francia, were also considered Lombards. However, the annotation cannot be a defense of Francia. Not only would it be unjustifiable to defend an artist who received a privileged treatment in the Torrentiniana, but we have seen that the annotator does not appreciate Francia's work. In contrast with Vasari, but also in contrast with literary precedents, the annotator considers his work inferior to that of other Lombard artists.Footnote ³⁶

The annotator's “excellent men” refers to artists ignored or underestimated in the Vite but highly regarded in Padua: locals like Campagnola and dell'Arzere as well as outsiders who left their work in the city, like Girolamo Romanino (ca. 1485–ca. 1566) in Santa Giustina — The Last Supper (1513) in the refectory of the convent, and the Madonna with the Child in Throne with Saints (1513–14), now in the Museo Civico — and the Lombardo family in the Basilica del Santo — the Sepulchral Monument of Antonio Roselli, by Pietro (1435–1515), and the monumental Cappella del Santo, decorated with a series of reliefs of The Miracles of St. aAnthony by Tullio (1460–1532) and Antonio (ca. 1458–1516).Footnote ³⁷ The annotation thus indirectly recalls a tradition of exchange among Northern Italian artists that had found extraordinary expression and continuity in Padua, from Mantegna and beyond, for almost a century. According to the annotator, Vasari intentionally overlooks this tradition in the Vite and elects instead an inadequate representative like Francia.Footnote ³⁸

To signal Vasari's prejudicial treatment of Lombard art, the annotation is written in the margin of the famous anecdote about Francia's death, which was taken as illustrative of the painter's mediocrity and, in a wider and more important sense, exemplary of the confrontation between Northern and Central Italian art in the book. As Vasari narrates, Francia, highly celebrated in his homeland, understood his limitations only after having seen the Saint Cecilia (1514) by Raphael. Overwhelmed by the sublime perfection of that painting, the Bolognese artist eventually died. To be precise, one may note that the first annotator writes this annotation on the Lombards before the conclusion of the anecdote, which ends on the following page. He probably already knew the story of Francia's death. Vasari had, in fact, anticipated it six pages before and the annotator had already indexed it on the margin: “Note how Francia abandoned art and life seeing the works of Raphael of Urbino.”Footnote ³⁹ Clearly, the anonymous reader was struck by the anecdote — whose veracity he does not seem to doubt — so much as to make it his own and repeat it in the biographical note on Titian: “And I believe that like the panel of Santa Cecilia by Raphael of Urbino made Francia fall into an ecstatic state, so much that, as people say, he died; in the same way, this and other works [Titian] made, not only generated amazement among the modern painters, but also demonstrate that the ancients knew nothing about painting.”Footnote ⁴⁰ Understanding the anecdote's importance as a representation of Northern Italian art in the Vite, the annotator adopts it for an opposite aim: by using it as a term of comparison to underscore the absolute superiority of Titian, the major Northern Italian artist overlooked in the Torrentiniana. More broadly, the annotations to the biography of Francia show how the cultural antagonism between Tuscany and Lombardy — longstanding competitors in the language debate from Dante to Trissino (1478–1550) and up to Manzoni (1785–1873) — was being extended to the figurative arts. This was in large part because of Vasari's Vite and the anti-Vasarianism that followed.Footnote ⁴¹

In a concluding comment at the end of the volume, the first annotator denounces the Florentinism of the book and accuses Vasari of having misunderstood that the fundamental value in painting is oil coloring, an invention of the Veneto: “see how this good man of Giorgio Aretino reports in these lives some of his opinions that not even the mouth of an oven would say. And he neglects important things, so much that nobody ever saw praising so much one country and blaming the other as this radish head does; for he exalts so much his own Florentines and blames so much the others, and does not see, poor man, that the true virtue and spirit of painting is the oil painting, and that it came from these regions” (fig. 2).Footnote ⁴² In colloquial language, the annotator recalls the main and enduring anti-Vasarian argument in Veneto art literature: the importance of colore in painting. The reference to the invention of the oil technique, which, in fact, is neither from the Veneto — as the annotator claims — nor only from Flanders — as Vasari writes — further undermines the centrality of Florence in modern painting as claimed in the Vite. In his inadequate coverage of Northern Italy, Vasari largely dismissed Venice, its most vital center. This critical oversight immediately emerges in annotations to the early pages of the Vite, in the biography of Cimabue. Where Vasari praises the Florence Cathedral as the most beautiful church of Christendom, the first annotator writes in the margin, “and what should we say about the stupendous church of San Marco in Venice?”Footnote ⁴³

The polemical argument is also developed in a series of annotations dedicated to the Greek mosaicists coming from Venice to Florence in the early thirteenth century. Vasari claims the foreign mosaicists arrived at the time of Cimabue, when the artist was still a boy. According to Vasari, Cimabue abandoned literary studies and decided to become a painter after he was inspired by the mosaics in the Gondi chapel in Santa Maria Novella in Florence. In the biography of Andrea Tafi (fl. 1300–25), Vasari also reports that Tafi went to Venice to hire mosaicists and that one of them, a certain Apollonio, instructed Tafi in the art of mosaic. Eventually, they decorated the interior of the Baptistery of San Giovanni, outdoing a mediocre artist, the Franciscan friar Jacopo. The annotator indexes the presence of the mosaicists in Florence — “Greek painters came to Florence” — and their achievement — “Gondi chapel in Santa Maria Novella begun by the Greek painters.”Footnote ⁴⁴ He also emphasizes the contrast between the mastery of Apollonio and the mediocrity of fra Jacopo — “see the clumsiness of the friar” — a contrast admitted by Vasari.Footnote ⁴⁵ By emphasizing the achievements of the mosaicists in Florence, which preceded those of Giotto (ca. 1267–1337) and Cimabue, the annotator makes a claim for Venice's role in the origin of modern art.

Little is actually known about these events.Footnote ⁴⁶ Certainly, as the Florentine historian Leopoldo del Migliore (1628–96) first pointed out, the Greek masters did not decorate the Gondi chapel, for it was built in 1277, long after their arrival in the city.Footnote ⁴⁷ Yet a document dated 1302, lost but transcribed by Carlo Strozzi (1587–1671) in the seventeenth century and discussed by Gaetano Milanesi (1813–95) in his commentary to the Vite, shows that the Guild of Calimala, in charge of the decoration of the Baptistery, was looking for mosaicists from Venice after the sudden dismissal of the fraudulent Bingo and Pazzo, who were accused of having stolen glass and other materials.Footnote ⁴⁸ Andrea Tafi might have well undertaken his trip to Venice and invited the mosaicists to Florence, as Vasari narrates, as a consequence of these events. But this could not be verified, and Vasari's passages on the Greek mosaicists in Florence became highly controversial in the following century. While Carlo Ridolfi (1594–1658) emphasized their importance in his anti-Vasarian exaltation of Venetian art, Florentine historiographers such as Filippo Baldinucci (1624–97) and Del Migliore undermined the historical validity of the passages to reinforce the Florentine canon.Footnote ⁴⁹

In the same pages of the biographies of Cimabue and Tafi, the annotator also stresses the persistence of Venetian primacy in mosaic. Where Vasari alludes to wonderful works visible in his day, the first annotator calls attention to the recent works by Francesco and Valerio Zuccati, the mosaicists close to Titian who were also celebrated by Pino, Aretino, and Dolce: “as today, the Zuccati's wonderful works in San Marco and again the altarpiece of St. Victor in Santa Maria Nova.”Footnote ⁵⁰ The annotation refers to the contemporary mosaic decoration in the Venetian basilica, then still in progress (in the atrium), and to the monumental St. Victor altarpiece, correctly recorded in the Church of Santa Maria Nova (completed on 1 August 1560, now in the holdings of the Basilica of San Marco), an important example of the pictorial potential of the micro-mosaic technique.Footnote ⁵¹

The annotators argue the importance of Veneto art by evoking Venetian masters who had been undervalued in the Torrentiniana. Describing Carpaccio's cycle The Legend of Saint Ursula (then in the homonymous Scuola, now in the Galleria dell'Accademia), Vasari praised the artist but excluded him from the group of the greatest masters.Footnote ⁵² In response to Vasari's tepid judgment, the annotator writes, “see that this is the most beautiful work in Venice among the modern and the antique ones.”Footnote ⁵³ He also amplifies the passage by adding the recollection that in the teleri (large canvases) Carpaccio represented himself and the Bellini: “see that in the mentioned Scuola di Sant'Orsola there are portraits of Giovanni, Jacopo, and Gentile Bellini, and of the same Vittore Carpaccio.”Footnote ⁵⁴

In addition to the cycle — the only work by Carpaccio mentioned in the Torrentiniana — the annotator calls the Martyrdom of the 10,000 Saints on the Mount Ararat, then in the Venetian church of Sant'Antonio and now in the Galleria dell'Accademia, the best altarpiece in Venice: “see that [Carpaccio] made an altarpiece in Sant'Antonio in tempera representing ten thousand martyrs, which is the most beautiful altarpiece in Venice.”Footnote ⁵⁵

Only in one case does the annotator criticize a Venetian work, recalling another opinion of Domenico Campagnola: Cima da Conegliano's (ca. 1459–1517) St. Peter Martyr between St. Nicholas, St. Benedict, and an Angel Playing Music (1504), in the church of the Corpus Domini (now at the Brera), the only work by Cima mentioned in the Vite. The annotation reads: “This panel is worth nothing, according to the judgment of the excellent painter sir Domenego Campagnola illustrious painter.”Footnote ⁵⁶ Like the critique of Francia's altarpiece, this view stands in isolation in art literature. After Vasari, the painting is unanimously praised by the major Venetian art writers: Francesco Sansovino (1521–86), Marco Boschini (1613–78), and Anton Maria Zanetti (1706–78).Footnote ⁵⁷

4. The Biographical Note on Titian

As in Dolce, the anti-Vasarian argument of the annotations culminates with the exaltation of Titian's work as an insuperable example of invention, colore, and naturalism, comparable only to that of Raphael. The annotators wrote the biographical annotation on Titian two decades apart, a temporal gap also made explicit by their use of different tenses: whereas the first annotator uses the present tense, indicating that Titian was still alive at the time of writing, the second uses the past tense, which dates his writing after the artist's death in 1576.Footnote ⁵⁸

The annotation is essentially an extemporaneous list of works executed by Titian (fig. 6). The first annotator lists works located outside of Venice and commissioned by prestigious patrons; works visible in Venice, in the Doge's Palace, and churches; and an early work. The second annotator adopts the same conceptual division, but reverses the order, creating a symmetry that emphasizes the continuity between the two writings. The last lines report two essential bits of biographical information: the knighthood that Titian received from Charles V (1500–58) in 1533, and his journey to Rome in 1545, when he was summoned by Pope Paul III (1468–1549). The following is a translation of the entire annotation, all of which is important for the insights on Titian's work and for the analysis of the marginalia as a group.

Figure 6 Anonymous annotators. Manuscript annotation on the recto of the first flyleaf before the back cover of Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de' più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani. Florence, 1550. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (1987 441 1).

The works cited in this annotation attempt to roughly outline Titian's career. “The painting of the Battle” is the Battle of Spoleto, the public commission Titian received from Venice as early as 1513, but carried out only in 1538 (the painting was lost in the 1577 fire). The St. Peter Martyr altarpiece in San Giovanni e Paolo was celebrated by Aretino, Dolce, and Vasari, and completed by 27 April 1530; in 1867 it was destroyed in a fire. The Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, which hung in the Church of the Jesuits (then the Church of the Crociferi, as cited in the annotation), was started at the end of 1548 and completed ten years later, between 1557 and 1559. The annotator also mentions the St. Jerome of Santa Maria Nova, which was executed around 1555 and is now in the Brera. Finally, the annotation offers a new attribution to the painter, the fresco decoration of Palazzo Lion.

The second annotator records the frescoes of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, the first public work by Titian known to date, and the Pietà of Santa Maria Formosa, another new attribution. He then recalls the St. John the Baptist of Santa Maria Maggiore (now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia), and the three altarpieces Titian executed for the Frari (also listed together and in the same chronological order by Dolce and Vasari in the Giuntina): the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, inaugurated on 19 May 1519; the Pala Pesaro — “one [altarpiece] of the very illustrious Pesari” — in the Pesaro chapel executed between 1519 and 1526; and the Madonna and Child in Glory with Six Saints — “one [altarpiece] in the convent with a naked St. Sebastian, cleverly done, and not painted” — completed by the mid-1530s for the high altar of San Nicolò della Lattuga, part of the same ecclesiastical complex (now in the Vatican Museum).Footnote ⁶⁰ The annotation ends by running up the inside margin of the page, where the second annotator records three works: a Portrait of Paul III, corresponding to one of the two portraits of the pope then in the Farnese Guardaroba in Rome (now in the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples); the Trinity (“an altarpiece of a Paradise that he sent to Spain”), the large canvas commissioned by Charles V in 1550–51, completed and sent to Flanders in 1554 and transferred to the monastery of Yuste in Spain in 1556; and a portrait of Charles V, which can be identified with a version of the Portrait of Charles V in Armor painted at Augsburg in 1548.

Two novelties in the annotation deserve further discussion: the attributions to Titian of the decoration of the façade of Palazzo Lion and the Pietà altarpiece in Santa Maria Formosa. The first annotator reports that Palazzo Lion belonged to Simone and Filippo Lion at the time of the decoration, and to Alessandro, son of Filippo, at the time of the annotation. Simone and Filippo are recorded as sons of Tommaso Lion in Marino Sanudo's Diarii several times from 1509 to 1533.Footnote ⁶¹ Alessandro Lion can be identified with one of the protagonists (together with Lodovico Bembo) of two dialogue-form guidebooks and historical treatises on Rome and Naples by Luigi Contarini.Footnote ⁶² Notably, the annotation refers to two different persons with the name Filippo, the brother and the son of Simone, respectively. In fact, from the testament of Filippo Lion, dated 29 May 1540 in the Archivio di Stato in Venice, we learn that he died without any legitimate sons, and left all his substantial goods to the sons of his brother Simone.Footnote ⁶³ The document also records Filippo Lion's residency in the contrada of Santa Maria Nova (the same parish as Luigi Contarini), an important topographical indication for the identification of the building. This is corroborated by the annotator's record, immediately following the Lion frescoes, of another work located in Santa Maria Nova, the St. Jerome.

The annotation to the Pietà of Santa Maria Formosa — “a Christ on the lap of his Mother in the church of Santa Maria Formosa” — is far more problematic. The annotator mistakenly attributes to Titian a work executed by Palma il Giovane (ca. 1548–1628) after Titian's death. The painting is still in the Venetian church, in the second chapel on the right nave, on the altar of the Sorrowful Mother. It shows a deposed Christ lying across the Virgin and flanked by a kneeling figure of St. Francis (fig. 7). The painting is first recorded as the work of Palma in Ridolfi's Le maraviglie dell'arte (1648): “In Santa Maria Formosa, a deposed Christ in his Mother's lap.”Footnote ⁶⁴ Since Ridolfi, the attribution to Palma has not been contested, although the painting never found a satisfactory place within the artist's oeuvre. Pietro Zampetti refers to the altarpiece as a stylistic and chronological enigma in Palma's career. Recognizing its distinct Titianesque style, Zampetti and Nicola Ivanoff considered the painting one of Palma's early works from the late 1560s, when the artist, then not yet twenty years old, was strongly influenced by Titian.Footnote ⁶⁵ But, as Stefania Mason argues, it seems unreasonable that Francesco Reference SansovinoSansovino (in 1581) and Raffaello Borghini (in 1584), usually reliable in the case of Palma's early activity, do not mention this large public work. Mason believes that the altarpiece was executed in Palma's later years. Given the absence of the work in the usually accurate additions to Sansovino published by Giovanni Stringa in 1604, Mason proposes that year as a terminus post quem. If the style of the painting remains puzzling, Mason argues, it is because a nineteenth-century restoration compromised it. What we see, she concludes, is a modern painting based on an original composition by the late Palma.Footnote ⁶⁶

Figure 7 Jacopo Palma il Giovane. Pietà, ca. 1581–90. Santa Maria Formosa, Venice. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali.

A previously unknown document throws new light on the history of the altarpiece and its controversial chronology, confirming in part Mason's argument. This is a document that records two codicils of a will concerning the chapter of Santa Maria Formosa, held in the Archivio Storico del Patriarcato in Venice.Footnote ⁶⁷ On 5 November 1580, Polissena, first wife of the deceased Giovanni Martini, and second wife of Francesco Carugo, granted a stipend to the chapter of Santa Maria Formosa for a mansionaria (commemorative Mass) on the altar dedicated to the Pietà. Four months later, on 14 March 1581, Polissena left more money and specific directions to her husband Francesco for the decoration of the altar in the case of her death. At the date of Polissena's testament, a sarcophagus with the names of Giovanni Martini and Polissena had already been built in front of the altar of the chapel. The altarpiece must have been commissioned afterwards, for the same document suggests that no arrangements had yet been made for the realization of the altar's decoration. If we take into consideration Borghini's account, the painting was probably installed after 1584. It is implausible, however, that the altarpiece reached its destination after 1604, as Stringa's additions to Sansovino imply. This date seems exceedingly late, not only considering the date of Polissena's will, but also the formal qualities of the handwriting of the second annotator, who describes the altarpiece as already located in the church.

The finished painting also suggests that Polissena died before its execution. The kneeling figure holding the hand of Christ, painted in the guise of St. Francis, is almost certainly the patron, Francesco Carugo. From the collection of inscriptions of the church collected in the nineteenth century by Emmanuele Antonio Cicogna, we can also partially reconstruct Carugo's refurnishing of the chapel. He reserved a place for himself in the tomb and commissioned two new inscriptions for the two sides of the altar.Footnote ⁶⁸ With the exception of the altarpiece, the decoration of the chapel — perhaps already dismantled during the remaking of its pavement in 1840 — was eventually lost in the bombing of the church in 1916.

If the commission of the Pietà of Santa Maria Fomosa is now clearer, it remains puzzling how the annotator could have made such a trivial mistake. So far, I have not been able to find any satisfactory answer. Yet the peculiarity of the altarpiece and its enigmatic status in Palma's corpus must be taken into account when reading this annotation. Indeed, the painting, convincingly Palmaesque in its details, remains strikingly Titianesque as a whole. Its composition is almost the reverse of the central (and possibly original) composition of the only Pietà designed by Titian, the famous painting in the Gallerie dell'Accademia that was completed by Palma after Titian's death.Footnote ⁶⁹ How could such a Titianesque design appear a decade after Titian's death painted by Palma, and why would a contemporary artist or art lover record the same painting as a work of Titian? These are questions that call attention to the functioning of Titian's workshop and to the destiny of the works produced there after his death, two aspects widely discussed in recent studies on the painter.Footnote ⁷⁰ Even more, the annotation points to the unclear role Palma played in the reworking of Titian's late production and to the unknown circumstances through which the Pietà of the Gallerie dell'Accademia passed from Titian's studio to Palma's hands.Footnote ⁷¹

5. Imprecisions and Mistakes

In an annotation to the biography of Carpaccio, the first annotator reports that Domenico Campagnola praised Giovanni Bellini's St. Job altarpiece but criticized the clothing of the St. Sebastian in it: “In this panel, made for San Job, there is a figure of a St. Sebastian, highly praised by modern painters, which has only one defect: he wears shorts in the fashion of slaves, according to the judgment of the excellent painter sir Domenico Campagnola; 1563” (fig. 8).Footnote ⁷² As one can verify, there is no trace of such shorts in the painting: the figure of the saint wears a conventional loincloth. This means that either Campagnola mistakenly recalls the detail, or that the annotator recorded the artist's opinion of a different painting. In either case, the origin of the mistake must have been an imprecise recollection of a contemporary painting, now probably lost.

Figure 8 Anonymous annotator. Manuscript annotation in the margin of p. 448 of Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de' più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani. Florence, 1550. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (1987 441 1).

I should nonetheless mention the possibility that the painting was Antonello da Messina's Pala di San Cassiano, which, for typology, dimensions, subject, style, and celebrity, the annotator could have confused with Bellini's masterpiece.Footnote ⁷³ It is difficult to determine what specific clothing the saint was wearing: documented in the church of San Cassiano until 1581, the altarpiece was already dismembered into five pieces by the 1630s. The piece representing St. Sebastian is not among the surviving three (now at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna). The figure is known, however, from a copy by David Teniers the Younger, executed in the 1650s, when the five fragments, then attributed to Giovanni Bellini, were in Brussels in the collection of Leopold of Augsburg; in 1660 Teniers included engraved copies of the fragments in the Theatrum Pictorium, which illustrates the collection's masterpieces. Teniers's copy clearly shows the saint covered by a piece of cloth that may well correspond to the piece of clothing described by Campagnola: short and amply folded (perhaps also modified by the Baroque copyist), a cross between traditional loincloths and the short, clingy undergarments that recur in other works by Giovanni Bellini and Antonello.Footnote ⁷⁴

The biographical note on Titian includes another puzzling annotation: “[Titian] painted another panel representing the Annunciation Transfiguration in San Salvador, very honorably executed, on which he put his name.” The annotation refers to the two altarpieces Titian executed for the church of San Salvador: the Transfiguration for the main altar, made between 1562 and 1565, and the Annunciation for the chapel of the merchant Antonio Cornovì della Vecchia, made between 1563 and 1565.Footnote ⁷⁵ But the writing of Transfiguration over Annunciation shows that the first annotator (whose hand can be identified as having written both words) was unaware that both works were in the same church and that only the latter, as he had first correctly reported, carries the signature of the artist.Footnote ⁷⁶ This double mistake suggests that he relied on at least two different sources at different times, and that one of these, antecedent and accurate to the point of recalling the detail of the signature, was no longer available at the moment of the correction.

The reference to the Venus and Adonis is also mistaken. Titian executed this painting around 1553–54 for Philip II, and not for Charles V, as the annotator claims. This error may have been indirectly caused by Dolce's Dialogo, which includes the famous painting in a list of works Titian made for both rulers.Footnote ⁷⁷ Finally, the annotator records Titian's Neapolitan Annunciation in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore instead of San Domenico Maggiore, where it remained until its modern transfer to the Capodimonte, and states that it was commissioned by Philip II (1527–98) rather than by Cosimo Pinelli, whose patronage is documented by a letter on the painting by the botanist Bartolomeo Maranta (d. 1571), protégée of Cosimo.Footnote ⁷⁸ Though wrong on both counts, this confirms the Paduan origin of the annotations. The first idea for the commission of the painting came, in fact, to the young Giovanni Vincenzo Pinelli (1535–1601), son of Cosimo, after his arrival in Padua from Naples in 1558, as documented by Maranta.Footnote ⁷⁹ A remembrance of the commission in Paduan artistic circles explains why the Neapolitan canvas, which rarely received enthusiastic appreciation in print until 1623, is the first work listed in the biographical annotation.

Mistakes like these oblige us to question the veracity of each annotation. But it is also true that the reliability of the annotations as a whole is directly related to the connection they establish with Padua. The city is the center from which the gaze of the annotator widens, losing focus and precision with distance. The only mistake I have found that is directly related to the city concerns the terracotta sculptor Guido Mazzoni, called Modanino (ca. 1445–1518), whom the annotator believes to be buried in the atrium of the no-longer-extant church of San Lorenzo: “this Modonino is buried in Padua in San Lorenzo outside of the church” (fig. 9).Footnote ⁸⁰ In fact, the sculptor was buried in his hometown Modena, in the Church of the Carmelites on 12 September 1518.Footnote ⁸¹ The annotator was most likely misled by a funerary epigraph in the wall of the church's atrium, now lost, which commemorated a musician also called Modanino (which must have been a common nickname among short men from Modena).Footnote ⁸²

Figure 9 Anonymous annotator. Manuscript annotation in the margin of p. 357 of Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de' più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani. Florence, 1550. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (1987 441 1).

The first annotator was not a man of letters, but he demonstrates his substantial good faith in using the annotations to transmit, however unsystematically, information on Padua that had been neglected by Vasari. For example, he attributes to Donatello the Crucifix in Santa Maria dei Servi in Padua in an annotation appearing at the end of Vasari's excursus of Donatello's works in the city: “[Donatello] also made the crucifix, which is now in the church of the Servites of Padua.”Footnote ⁸³

6. Sources

The annotators' errors indicate that they largely wrote from memory and from oral sources. Although influential, written sources seem to have been mediated or supplanted by oral ones. It is unlikely that the annotators read Dolce's or Aretino's works, and even more unlikely that they had them in hand at the moment of the writing. If this had been the case, correspondences between these texts and the annotations would have been closer. Linguistic limitations, evident in the mistake regarding Guido Mazzoni, also probably limited the annotators' access to Scardeone's learned compilation in Latin, De antiquitate urbis Patavii: access to this source may have only been indirect.

We can also assume that the second annotator never read the substantially augmented second edition of the Vite, published at least thirteen years before his writing. First, his brief addition to the biographical annotation of Titian is in no way comparable to the accurate sixteen-page biography of the artist included in the Giuntina. Second, we see errors made by the first annotator that would have been corrected had the second annotator consulted the new edition: one example is the overwriting of Transfiguration over Annunciation, two works correctly described by Vasari as coexistent in the same church.

However, the relationship between the annotations and the Giuntina is far more complex: we find precise correspondences between them. The judgment of Carpaccio, for example, is more favorable in the new edition. Vasari eliminated the incidental subordinated sentence — “if not among the high and great masters” — that had excluded Carpaccio from the echelon of the best artists, and provoked the intervention of the annotator. The Martyrdom of the 10,000 Martyrs, praised by the annotator as the best altarpiece in Venice, is included in the catalogue of the artist. These correspondences do not mean that the new edition was revised on the basis of these specific annotations, but the annotations indicate that the circulation of anti-Vasarian arguments in Veneto art circles after the publication of the Torrentiniana may eventually have had an impact on the Giuntina.

More puzzling is information given by the second annotator in the margin of the biography of Carpaccio. Indexing the portrait of a member of the Badoer family by the Veronese painter Francesco Torbido (1486–1562), the annotator added that Torbido was a pupil of Giorgione (ca. 1477–1510) and that he had painted the portrait when he was young: “Francesco Torbido pupil of Giorgione; and a beautiful portrait by him while he was young” (fig. 10).Footnote ⁸⁴ In the Giuntina we find the same information in a new section of part 3, entitled “Liberale da Verona and other Veronese artists,” which was based on accounts provided by Marco Medici, the same fra' Marco mentioned by the first annotator as an expert on Paduan art. Any direct connection between Vasari and the second annotator is unlikely, even if it were through Medici. But if the Giuntina, published long before the writing of the annotation, remained unknown to the annotator, then we have reached with this annotation the point of a circular influence, impossible to solve in one direction or the other. This seems especially true if we consider the possibility that early readers of the Torrentiniana, like the second annotator, became familiar with the Giuntina only through oral accounts and secondhand sources.

Figure 10 Anonymous annotator. Manuscript annotation in the margin of p. 541 of Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de' più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani. Florence, 1550. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (1987 441 1).

The annotations' frequent reference to recent works may be explained by the emphasis on fresh information that is characteristic of oral sources. This explanation also accounts for their reliance on accessible or famous works like the Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, an altarpiece first mentioned in print only in the Giuntina, but already popular in Veneto art circles for its rendering of nocturnal light.Footnote ⁸⁵

With the exception of Domenico Campagnola, the first annotator does not prove to have had any direct contact with the artists he mentions. It is unlikely he had any access to Titian or to any member of his close entourage. The insight into the Palazzo Lion's frescoes is better explained by an acquaintance with the Lion family rather than direct contact with the artist. The case of the Neapolitan Annunciation, another peculiarity in the list, simply demonstrates the prominence of Paduan sources in the annotations and, ultimately, the annotations' unreliability for more distant works.

The second annotator's knowledge of Titian was also indirect, but in two cases it seems plausible that his information originated from the artist's entourage. The first instance is the claim that Titian brought a portrait of Charles V to Venice. This event, never recorded in the literature on the artist, might have indeed inspired Aretino to compose the sonnet “Nel ritratto de lo imperadore” in the same month that Titian returned from Augsburg.Footnote ⁸⁶ The second case is the reference to the Trinity as a “Paradiso,” a title that appears in print only in 1622, in the anonymous biography of Titian known as the Breve compendio, but which was used by Titian in his January 1567 request for copyright on the work's reproduction.Footnote ⁸⁷

In a few cases, the annotators had direct knowledge about paintings. In the annotation on Francia's altarpiece in Ferrara, the first annotator recalls that he had traveled from Padua to see it. His remarks on the two major works of Santa Maria Nova, the St. Victor and St. Jerome altarpieces, also suggest that he had visited that church. Finally, the precise location of the composition of Judith in the frescoes of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi “above the door,” a detail never mentioned in print before Reference RidolfiRidolfi (in 1648), can only be explained by a direct knowledge of the decoration.

In other instances the second annotators' knowledge of Titian's work was probably based on reproductions. For example, the description of the Trinity — “one could not see in the world figures more cleverly done than those” — which, although generic, could have been based solely on the observation of an engraved copy. The original painting had been hardly seen in Venice, for it had been sent to Flanders immediately after its completion. The description, then, must have been derived from Cornelis Cort's (ca. 1533–ca. 1578) engraving of the work (1566) published before the annotator's writing.Footnote ⁸⁸

7. The Annotators

A few final observations should be devoted to the annotators' reading of the Vite. First, it is important to highlight their partial knowledge of the book, which was probably limited to the first two of the three artistic periods delineated by Vasari. They likely possessed only the first of the two volumes of the Torrentiniana. It would otherwise be curious for the first annotator to mention recent works and contemporary artists in the first volume, in which Vasari discusses works and artists from the Duecento to the early Cinquecento; the second volume, dedicated to Vasari's contemporaries — and in which he writes about almost half of the artists mentioned in the annotations — would have been a more appropriate choice for the annotators' comments. The biographical note on Titian would have found its ideal location at the end of the second volume, as a counterpoint to Michelangelo's biography. Similarly, the concluding annotation to the Vite, which appears at the end of the first volume, would have been more logically placed at the end of the work as a whole. Finally, the indexing of the text, the main purpose of the annotations, would have been useless in light of the second volume's exhaustive printed index of the whole book.

Second, the first annotator's reading of the text was probably discontinuous. It would otherwise be difficult to explain the absence of annotations where one expects to find them. The biography of Mantegna, for example, presents mistakes that seem to have passed unnoticed. We would expect the annotators to correct the claim that the artist was Mantuan instead of Paduan (noted by Scardeone), and the mistaken location of the Ovetari chapel in the church of Santa Maria dei Servi instead of in the Eremitani.Footnote ⁸⁹ Similarly, the biography of Bellano, the only Paduan who received significant attention in the Vite (with the exception of Mantegna), remains untouched. Moreover, the annotator does not acknowledge the passages dedicated to the invention of oil painting in the book's theoretical introduction to painting, or in the biography of Antonello da Messina, a subject for which he expressed keen interest in the annotation on the volume's last page.Footnote ⁹⁰ Occasional and extemporaneous, the annotators' reading of the book seems limited to those pages where we find annotations. Except for the dedicatory letter to Cosimo I, which was copiously annotated,Footnote ⁹¹ and the biographical note on Titian, which for its scope represents a case in itself, the pages the annotators read can be grouped into five distinct sections of the text: from Cimabue to Giotto (126–49); from Taddeo Gaddi to Lorenzo Monaco (177–218); from Brunelleschi to Antonio Averlino, called Filarete (305–59); from Gentile da Fabriano (and Pisanello) to Francesco d'Angelo di Giovanni, called Cecca (417–60); and from Francesco Francia to Pietro Perugino, the last biography of the volume (530–52).

Partial knowledge of the book is consistent with the extemporaneous character of the annotations and their narrow reference to the text. The annotators are mainly interested in indexing or supplementing the book's content with precise information. In general, they disregard theoretical issues. The introductions on the principles and techniques of each art have no annotations. The mediocrity of fra' Jacopo, which in the Vite introduces a digression on the historicity of art, is taken literally in the annotations, as an example of the inferiority of the Florentines to the Greek mosaicists. Finally, while they are critical, the annotators never question the reliability of the Vite. Their indexical notes and amplifications reveal an unconditional acceptance of the information contained in the book. Thus, in more than one case the first annotator indexes wrong information: understandable in the case of the Gondi chapel of Santa Maria Novella, a work distant in time and space, but surprising in the case of the equestrian wooden model, now in Palazzo della Ragione, that Vasari mistakenly attributed to Donatello. The faith in Vasari's knowledge, combined with the Florentinism of the book, led the annotators to believe that any omission in the Vite was intentional. This is the case in the biography of Francia, where the first annotator accuses Vasari of being prejudicial against Lombard artists. The possibility that Vasari simply did not have enough information about them, which is entirely plausible, never occurs to the annotator.

8. Conclusions

The annotations offer new clues for art historians, but as a group they mainly repeat what is already known. They show how information in contemporary art writing circulated, especially in response to Vasari, in a peripheral location like Padua. The claim of colore as a defining quality of Veneto painting, and much of the account of Titian's life and work, derive from Dolce's and Aretino's writings. The celebration of the Paduan contemporary artists Domenico Campagnola and Stefano dell'Arzere echoes Scardeone's authoritative compilation. Material from these works makes their way into the annotations, albeit in uneven and imprecise ways.

Moreover, the annotations' tendency to simplify information that originates in printed sources and to mistakenly record oral information shows how difficult it was to obtain specific knowledge about artists and works of art in the second half of the sixteenth century. At the same time, and by contrast, the annotations also remind us what an unprecedented amount of information the Vite presented to contemporary readers. Unlike its predecessors in the Veneto, the Torrentiniana presented precise information (although not necessarily correct) on artworks' authorship and locations. Veneto art books such as Pino's Dialogo and Luca Gaurico's De sculptura (published in Florence in 1504 but compiled and set in Padua) were mainly interested in art as a theory or as a literary genre. More than any other book about art, the Vite could be used as an art guide — a topographical catalogue of identifiable works of art — and it was, in fact, used by the first annotator in this way, in the case of Francia's altarpiece in the Ferrara Cathedral.Footnote ⁹²

The annotators understood the weight of the Vite's authority. They never seem to doubt the validity of its information, and when trying to argue against Vasari, they structure their responses with his rhetorical formulas, examples, syntax, and vocabulary. Their criticism turns into emulation, as in the case of the incipit of the biographical note on Titian — “since I am willing to write about painters,” which refers to the intention to write a compilation like the Vite — or in the adaptation of Vasari's anecdote on Francia a few lines below in the same annotation.Footnote ⁹³ The annotations as a group are thus a precocious example — even more valuable for their limitations and spontaneity — of the normative effect the Vite exerted on contemporary art writing. This effect was enhanced by the partiality of its view, which instilled in contemporary readers a desire to close its gaps, or to rewrite the whole book from an alternative point of view.

Finally, the annotations reflect the increasing marginality of Padua in the artistic geography of the Italian peninsula, and its minor status vis-à-vis Venice. Very little remains of the longstanding rivalry between the two cities that characterized early Renaissance Veneto culture in an exemplary case of the vivid dialectic between center and periphery.Footnote ⁹⁴ Scardeone avoided any explicit confrontation between contemporary Paduan art and that of the rest of the peninsula by creating a geographically idiosyncratic and chronologically asymmetric anti-Vasarian narrative. Despite its claims to universality and emphasis on the art of the present in the introduction, the chapter dedicated to illustrious artists is exclusively dedicated to Paduans, and is dominated by Mantegna, an artist of three generations earlier whose treatment in Scardeone easily matches that of Michelangelo in the Vite.Footnote ⁹⁵

The annotators share Scardeone's anti-Vasarian spirit, but reconcile civic and regional pride by delegating to Titian — as celebrated by Pino, Dolce, and Aretino — the function that Mantegna plays in the learned historical compilation. The annotations portray a Paduan society characterized by nostalgia, valorizing its artistic tradition, but whose present was destined to remain unmemorable. The first annotator's inclusion of a local master like Domenico Campagnola as one of the best contemporary painters of the Italian peninsula is at best a reach. Despite Marco Medici's presence in the city, at the time that he was in charge of revising the section of Northern Italian art for the second edition of the Vite, Campagnola's name remained excluded from the book.