Giovanni Batista di Jacopo (1494—14 Nov 1540) il Rosso, better known as Rosso Fiorentino, (i.e. “the red Florentine,” due to his red hair) was a native of Florence and gathered his artistic powers there under the influence of Andrea del Sarto, along with his lifelong friend, another great Mannerist artist, Pontormo. As a youth, he was practically ungovernable, and so could not properly be said to have been anyone’s pupil. However, his acquisitive mind imbibed influences from a variety of directions including, most notably Michelangelo and prints he had seen from the works of northern artists, particularly the Flemish school. He transmuted these influences, along with his own eccentric psychology and aesthetic taste, into a highly individualistic style which drank heavily from the high Renaissance tradition and yet remained distinctly sui generis and enigmatic. He began his independent career in Rome, but after the traumatic rapine inflicted by Imperial troops in 1527, he like so many of his generation found refuge in Northern Italy. From thence, he, along with the great Primaticcio, was invited by François I Valois to adorn the French court. His work was seminal in the foundation of the Fontainebleau School and helped spread the influence of the Italian Renaissance northward into Germany, the Low Countries and England.
Rosso’s work, like that of many other Mannerists, fell out of favor by the early 17th century, and remained largely neglected until the 20th. For this reason, several of his paintings have been lost and others survive only in copies or through the printmaker’s art. Rosso was also a design artist. Under the patronage of François, he was responsible, not only for paintings to adorn chapels, palaces and chateaux, but also the design of tapestries, theatre sets and costumes, dinnerware, decorations prepared for celebrations and royal progresses, tombs and small-scale objets d’art. It could be that the series of drawings of which the Diana was one, was taken from a lost design for an architectural façade, a festival tableau, or for stucco-work like that which still ornaments the Galerie François Ier at Fontainebleau. Or perhaps it was one a set of studies created preparatory to a painting. Its conversion into a print bespeaks the great popularity enjoyed by the artist in his era. The print and bookmakers art was one of the principle vehicles through which artistic styles and ideals of taste spread far and wide during the 16th century.
Diana predates the artist’s departure from Italy to France in 1530 by many years, but it shows remarkable continuity with his later work there, especially in terms of the depiction of the female nude. Compare, for instance, comparable figures in Mars disrobed by Cupid and Venus disrobed by the Graces (pen and ink drawing, 1530) or Venus in Bacchus, Venus and Cupid (Luxembourg Gallery, possibly formerly at Fontainebleau.) There is much of Michelangelo’s aesthetic in the almost masculine vitality and volume of the figure. The musculature is overdeveloped and there is none of the lithe, graceful quality that one might expect in a virgin goddess of the hunt. This deity is firmly rooted to the ground, almost pyramidal in shape. Her bottom-heavy, lozenge-like roundness mirrors and balances the niche in which she stands. In fact, there may be a nod here to a peculiarly northern ideal of beauty, and this characteristic may explain part of Rosso’s appeal beyond the Alps. Compare this figure to Durer’s Eve (in the famous print, Adam and Eve, of 1504) or to Gossaert’s Amphitrite (in Neptune and Amphitrite of 1516.) In any case, the tendency to exaggerate features, (as in the excessively broad hips and thighs, disproportionately reduced head, delicate fingers, and abbreviated lower legs of the goddess) for purposes of balance and elegance of design, is a common feature of Mannerism. In fact, the spare figure of the stag (a lithe, angular foil for the ponderous roundness of Diana’s form), its neck craning back toward the wall, creates a clear symmetry with the ascending curlicue of the bow. The upward gaze of the tense and menaced creature, unreciprocated by the divinity, and balanced and reinforced by the goddess’ extended left arm, serves to draw the attention upward toward the apex of the pyramid, where the only meaningful action is taking place—the removal of a delicate arrow from the quiver. In Mannerism, natural forms are often manipulated into architectural flourishes and compositional depth, highly compressed (though unavoidable, as here, when set in a niche for statuary). Furthermore, there is a cool impassivity of expression, even though the allusion here is probably either to Diana’s penchant for slaying innocent woodland creatures or to the terrible retribution she exacted upon Actaeon, a hunter transformed into a stag and torn apart by his own hunting dogs because he violated the sanctity of her ablutions. Considering the courtly ideals of the day, the ultimate meaning, if one is required for such an appealing image, is probably the power the beautiful, virtuous woman exercises over her trembling, love-struck suitor. Yet she draws her arrow to dispatch the poor creature softly and impassively—la belle dame sans merci to perfection. Such a conceit would be deeply appreciated by the late Valois court—preoccupied as it was with pleasures of the flesh and soon to be dominated by the formidable Diane de Poitiers, the goddess’ namesake. The lack of emotional engagement is another typical feature of Mannerist style, although in other examples of Rosso’s work emotion is violent, stylized and incongruously contrasted across the composition. In this sense, it is pure artifice, like the court masques that were so popular in this era—an entertainment designed to appeal to our sense of the beautiful, flatter our knowledge of classical allusions, and draw us out of the filth and imperfection of daily life.
REFERENCES:
Biography of Rosso Fiorentino, at Web Gallery of Art (http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/bio/r/rosso/biograph.html), viewed 2 Feb 2008.
R. J. Knecht, Renaissance Warrior and Patron: The Reign of Francis I. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 425—461.
Bernard S. Myers and Trewin Copplestone, ed. The History of Art. (New York: Exeter Books, 1985), 512-535.
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