THE ART OF COLOUR IN FLORENTINE PAINTING OF THE EARLY SIXTEENTH CENTURY :sx ROSSO FIORENTINO AND JACOPO PONTORMO .sx PATRICIA RUBIN .sx In his Life of Rosso Fiorentino , Vasari gives an account of the altarpiece commissioned by the director of the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova ( plate 9) .sx Seeing is sketched or roughed in ( abbozzato ) , the spedalingo fled from the house , for all the saints seemed to him to be devils .sx Given this impression it is not surprising that he did not want the panel and claimed to have been cheated .sx Vasari explains that he had little understanding of art .sx Rosso was in the habit of sketching his figures with " cruel and desperate " airs , which he softened in finishing them .sx The story of Rosso's unsuccessful commission is told in such a way as to expose a client's ignorance about art , thereby turning Rosso's failure into a successful example and accommodating it to one of Vasari's favourite topics in the Lives ( and perhaps reflecting Rosso's own justification for what was apparently a failure in his career) .sx Recently discovered documents give a different history .sx The administrator of the hospital , Leonardo Buonaf e , was indeed responsible for the commission .sx The contract is dated 30 January 1518 .sx He was acting as executor of the testament of a foreign ( Catalan ) widow , Francesca di Ripoi , who endowed a chapel dedicated to John the Baptist in the church of Ognissanti .sx Buonaf e , who perhaps did not share Vasari's or Rosso's understanding of the arts , was nonetheless far from na i ve .sx He had considerable experience and interest in commissioning altarpieces .sx One feature of his tenure at Santa Maria Nuova was the attention he gave to the provision of altars for the hospital's benefices .sx He was also a notable patron in his own right .sx He seems to have known what he liked , favouring works by Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio ( plate 10 ) - and what he did not like , which apparently included this painting .sx Rosso received sixteen instead of the originally anticipated twenty-five florins and even those only after arbitration and appraisal by two artists , Giuliano Bugiardini and Francesco Granacci .sx It has been suggested that Buonaf e remained steadfast while the painting departed .sx Rejected for its intended site in Florence , it might have been modified ( St Leonard changed to Stephen and Benedict to Anthony Abbot ) to be sent to a farflung benefice of the Hospital , the church of Santo Stefano in Grezzano nearly forty kilometres from Florence .sx An altarpiece by Ridolfo was eventually to appear in Ognissanti .sx Now lost , it is mentioned by Vasari in his Life of Ridolfo .sx It is not possible to know what Buonaf e did see , as Rosso's sketch is submerged beneath the final work .sx The moment of Buonaf e 's seeing this painting , so vividly evoked by Vasari , is totally irretrievable , but the record of his commissions gives and indication of the kind of thing he could comfortably accept .sx There is a marked reliance on Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio and an appreciation for painted terracotta altarpieces from the della Robbia shop .sx His mode or manner of seeing is open to reconstruction .sx A matter of taste and expectation , it seems to have clashed with the talent and temperament of that artist of 'contrary opinion' .sx One aspect of the contrast of opinion may have been Rosso's expressive way of painting .sx The judgment of the appraisers , both trained in the Ghirlandaio shop , suggests that there was a disagreement over Rosso's having completed the work 'according to the standard of an able master' ( ad usum boni magistri ) , to borrow the standard contractual clause .sx His idea of good and mastery was evidently in some way at variance with theirs .sx And it is that element of difference as it pertains to the question of colorito or colouring ( the act of applying colour ) that will be the focus here in trying to find out what devil was in this painting .sx Some hint may be given by comparing Rosso's way of painting his saints with the dragon in Filippino Lippi's fresco of St Philip before the altar of Mars ( plates 11 and 12 ) , painted on the east wall of the Strozzi chapel in Santa Maria Novella around 1495 .sx The dragon had killed three and poisoned many of the onlookers with its noxious breath .sx Filippino painted the demon with freedom and apparent rapidity ; the brush strokes are superimposed and juxtaposed in splashes of colour in a manner prefiguring Rosso .sx It could be argued that Rosso's speed of execution was related to the extremely limited time he was allowed under the terms of the contract , five months , with a very strict and specific penalty :sx Buonaf e was allowed to give the commission to another master of his choice if Rosso failed to deliver in time .sx There was no such stimulating clause for Filippino , however , who worked on and off in the Strozzi chapel for a period of over eleven years ( 1489-1500) .sx The sketchiness of both , the quality reminiscent of abbozzo or draft even in the finished works , demands something more deliberate than haste as an explanation .sx If one looks for period terms to describe the facture , they are fierezza , boldness , and prontezza , lively movement .sx In his passage on artists in the preface to his 1481 commentary on Dante's Divine Comedy Cristoforo Landino characterized Donatello as prompto ( lively ) in the movement of his figures .sx Fifteenth- and sixteenth-century accounts of Donatello consistently employ this and related terms such as fierezza .sx Typically such descriptions were constructed to relate both the artist and his work through one adjective .sx That Donatello was a source of inspiration for Rosso ( as well as Filippino ) is obvious and often stated ( plates 9 , 13 ) ; but the influence goes beyond formal links to a more comprehensive correspondence of technique and intended effect .sx Simply , there was a correlation between what was said and what was done .sx Terms of appreciation and statements of intention were derived from the same vocabulary , which supplied convention , comparison and a powerful metaphorical base .sx In this case the adjectives and nouns relate to movement and to liveliness , strongly emphasizing the artist's ability to make things lifelike , so that he becomes himself a creator of life .sx Filippino's dragon is one of his boldest moments in the chapel - licence reserved for the bizarre , the irrational .sx It is not confined to the margins long reserved for the grotesque , however .sx The dragon is central to the narrative ( plate 14) .sx Filippino's chosen way of painting was expressive of the nature of the subject .sx And though the rest of the painting of the chapel is perhaps tighter , more controlled and contained by line , it is still marked by the quality of fierezza in contrasting , sketchy , areas of colour .sx That this is a spontaneity both calculated and characteristic is shown from Filippino's drawings , as in the metalpoint study in the Uffizi for the Raising of Drusiana in the same chapel ( plate 15) .sx In the case of Filippino and Rosso , this kind of colouring , which was obviously connected to the hand of the painter rather than concealed through meticulous , self-effacing strokes , granted the work the life of immediacy .sx A different understanding of the nature of naturalism is evident in the frescoes painted between 1485 and 1490 by Domenico Ghirlandaio in the Tornabuoni chapel , adjacent to Filippino's work ( plate 16) .sx This contrast is indicative of the variety of means available during this period and further suggests some sort of debate or exchange of opinions relating to the practice of painting in late fifteenth-century Florence , one that certainly extended into the period of Rosso's career and is at least an undercurrent , if not a subtext , in the fate of the S. Maria Nuova altar .sx Here Ghirlandaio established one set of terms , countered subsequently , in direct comparison if not conflict , by Filippino Lippi's quite different approach .sx Filippino's modelling relies in part on ridges of light in constant zigzagging , with lightening flashes of highlights .sx Ghirlandaio's figures are more gradually modulated , with broad areas of light and gradations of tone in juxtaposed planes , following the tradition of Florentine colour modelling going back to the fourteenth century .sx This is the system described by Cennino Cennini in his handbook on painting , the Libro dell'arte , and evident in Giotto's works , for example ( plate 17) .sx Filippino's approach gives the figures an elusive , unfixed , shimmering vitality and visiblity , as opposed to the solid , opaque brilliance of Ghirlandaio's .sx Brilliance or brightness ( splendore ) was a value or essential quality of colour as traditional as Ghirlandaio's system of modelling .sx It can be said that Ghirlandaio's use of colour , or its function in his works , fits with the traditional definition of the beauty of colour .sx This was a material message , which , in the case of the Tornabuoni chapel , was part of the contract specifications and indeed the entire contractual practice on which its terms were based :sx the obligation to paint with the finest colours , " as it is fitting and necessary in order to assure the beauty and quality of the work " .sx Such rich and quite calculable display served the patron to honour the church and bring honour to his family .sx This too was stated in the Tornabuoni contract .sx The desire to embellish the church with suitably beautiful paintings in order to glorify his house and family accorded with the ideals of civic humanism , one of the duties of a virtuous citizen .sx But this recognized material value or attraction of colour was also part of the reason for its low theoretical status .sx The learned tradition of appreciating the arts left the attractions of matter to the ignorant .sx Thus a fourteenth-century writer , Giovanni da Ravenna , wrote :sx When a painting is exhibited , the knowledgeable beholder expresses approval not so much of the purity and exquisite quality of the colours as about the arrangement and the proportion of its parts , and it is the ignorant man who is attracted simply by the colour .sx .. .sx This sentiment was echoed two hundred years later by Vasari in the introduction to his Life of Titian where he warned of the danger that the beauty ( vaghezza ) of colour might hide deficiency in drawing or disegno .sx The currency and persistence of these oppositions of learned and unlearned , matter and idea , is equally clear in Leonardo da Vinci's criticism of those artists who renounced " the crown of science " , " the glory of art for noble intellects " - the creation of relief through light and shade - in favour of the regard of " the ignorant crowd who want nothing more in painting than the beauty of colours " .sx Leonardo criticized that type of painter who had to make a living from the " beauty of gold and blue " .sx In Florence colour or colouring ( colore , colorito ) were associated with the practice of painting :sx the basis of the profession , but not of its prestige .sx In the opening to the Life of the sculptor Andrea da Fiesole , for example , Vasari makes the comparison between a sculptor's ability to handle his tools ( pratica de' ferri ) and the painter's skill with colours .sx According to Vasari it was possible to be a skilled master and still lack ability in drawing , to be an uomo senza disegno , as was Bastiano da Montecarlo , a student of Raffaellino del Garbo .sx The philosophy of art was in design .sx There can be no doubt that Florentine tradition favoured clear outlines and an analytical approach to the compositions of figures , and that this intellectualization of form , particularly in the tempera tradition , influenced the application of colour .sx The pre-eminence given to design also allowed for cross - over between the trades of painting , sculpture and goldsmithing , with painters supplying designs for sculpture and architecture , and sculptors and goldsmiths running painting shops ( as did Andrea del Verrocchio and Antonio Pollaiuolo) .sx Petrarch's conclusion that painting and sculpture " sprang both from one fountain .sx ..the art of drawing " , followed a hundred years later by Ghiberti's remark that disegno was the basis and the theory of each art , was fully justified in practice .sx Drawing was also the means of study , the intersection of hand and intellect .sx The theories of disegno making it the basis of all creative processes connected it to God's plan of creation .sx The word disegno meant intention or plan .sx