Rosso Fiorentino, Benvenuto Cellini and Clement Marot: Court artists and poets at Francis I's Fontainebleau, 1530--1545

摘要

Upon his return to France in 1526 from captivity at the hands of Charles V, Francis I accompanied a reassertion of political power with an outpouring of funds for the arts and letters. Francis built many new residences, inviting the Italian artist Rosso Fiorentino in 1530 to embellish what soon became his favorite at Fontainebleau. This group of three essays on art and literature produced there reveals the complexity of patron/artist relations at Francis's court and probes the phenomenon of the artist as courtier. Chapter one reconsiders Rosso's decorations in the Galerie Fran?ois Ier, suggesting practical and intellectual functions for the hall and new contexts in which to view it. Seen in the Italian studiolo tradition, the gallery adheres to contemporary Italian practices of collecting and displaying art. These findings, along with visual evidence from the gallery, indicate an earlier involvement for Rosso in its conception than previously believed. The second essay explores the relationship between art and poetry at Fontainebleau and the embellishment and transformation of models across disciplinary boundaries by Rosso and Francis's valet de chambre,Clément Marot. It presents an analysis of Rosso's drawing depicting Petrarch's canzone 323 on the death of Laura, made for Francis's chief advisor, the Cardinal of Lorraine, shortly after the supposed rediscovery of Laura's tomb in Avignon. The drawing can be seen as an attempt to honor this important court figure by lending him the everlasting fame Petrarch's verse secured for his beloved. The chapter also investigates Marot's epigrams on art, focusing on one that may record a lost work by Rosso. The final essay traces Benvenuto Cellini's attempt to surpass ancient and contemporary precedents in stature, materials and pose by erecting a bronze Mars colossus over fifty feet tall. In his autobiography, this gigantic undertaking becomes an expression of Cellini's desire to forsake the lot of the lowly goldsmith for that of the lauded court artist. For this reason, despite the project's ultimate incompletion, the technical ingenuity Cellini displayed in conceiving the colossus and the evidence of his progress from wooden modello to full-scale plaster mock-up are given new emphasis.