Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-wtssw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-07T16:36:07.203Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Penelope’s Web: Francesco Primaticcio’s Epic Revision at Fontainebleau*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Giancarlo Fiorenza
Giancarlo Fiorenza*
Affiliation:
Georgia Museum of Art
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Francesco Primaticcio designed his celebrated Galerie d’Ulysse at Fontainebleau (now destroyed) at a time when the epic genre was being updated and redefined. One of the most popular scenes from the gallery, Ulysses and Penelope recounting their adventures to one another in bed (from book 23 of the Odyssey), was adapted and revised in an independent composition by Primaticcio himself: Ulysses and Penelope (Toledo Museum of Art, ca. 1560). In contrast to the Fontainebleau mural, the artist’s self-conscious, refined pictorial language for his canvas converts epic energy into lyric sentimentality. As a result, Penelope becomes the central focus of the new composition. Through the language of gesture the painting stresses such themes as beauty and desire, and further employs such prized poetic devices as reversal (peripeteia) and recognition (anagnorisis). By responding to the formal prescriptions of both the epic and romance genres, Primaticcio exploits the expressive and visual potential of the Homeric episode in an utterly novel way. The painting opens up questions into ways of reading, viewing, and interpreting mythic subject matter in sixteenth-century France.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , Fall 2006 , pp. 795 - 827
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Support for this study came in the form of a Research Grant from The Renaissance Society of America. I am grateful to the readers of my manuscript for Renaissance Quarterly, as well to a number of colleagues for their helpful comments, including Ethan Matt Kavaler, Michael Koortbojian, William McAllister Johnson, Nancy Struever, and Walter Stephens. Conservators Lance Mayer and Gay Myers patiently discussed the technical aspects of Primaticcio’s Ulysses and Penelope with me.

References

Agamben, Giorgio. Stanzas: Word and Phantasm in Western Culture. Trans. Martinez, Ronald L.. Minneapolis, 1993.Google Scholar
The Age of Correggio and the Carracci: Emilian Painting of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Washington, DC, 1986.Google Scholar
Ahl, Frederick, and Roisman, Hanna M.. The Odyssey Reformed. Ithaca, 1996.Google Scholar
Aristotle, . Poetics. Trans. Bywater, Ingram. In The Rhetoric and the Poetics of Aristotle, 219–66. New York, 1954.Google Scholar
Barocchi, Paola. “Precisazioni sul Primaticcio.” Commentari 2, fasc. 3–4 (1951): 203–23.Google Scholar
Baxandall, Michael. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style. 2nd ed. Oxford, 1972.Google Scholar
Bean, Jacob, with Turcic, Lawrence. Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century Italian Drawings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1982.Google Scholar
Béguin, Sylvie. “Emilia and Fontainebleau: Aspects of a Dialogue.” In The Age of Correggio and the Carracci: Emilian Painting of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 21–30. Washington, DC, 1986.Google Scholar
Béguin, Sylvie. “Primaticcio in France.” The Burlington Magazine 147 (2005): 240–44.Google Scholar
Béguin, Sylvie, Guillaume, Jean, and Ray, Alain. La Galerie d’Ulysse à Fontainebleau. Paris, 1985.Google Scholar
Pietro, Bembo. Gli Asolani. Ed. Dilemmi, Giorgio. Florence, 1991.Google Scholar
Boccaccio, Giovanni. Genealogie deorum gentilium libri. Ed. Romano, Vincenzo. 2 vols. Bari, 1951.Google Scholar
Boccaccio, Giovanni. Boccaccio on Poetry: Being the Preface and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Books of Boccaccio’s ‘Genealogia deorum gentilium.’ Trans. Osgood, Charles G.. Princeton, 1956.Google Scholar
Boccaccio, Giovanni. Famous Women. Ed. and trans. Brown, Virginia. Cambridge, MA, 2001.Google Scholar
Bouchard, Mawy. “Utilité et diversité du ‘romanzo’: Giraldi Cinzio et le contexte français.” Renaissance and Reformation 27 (2003): 65–75.Google Scholar
Boucher, Bruce. “Leone Leoni and Primaticcio’s Moulds of Antique Sculpture.” Burlington Magazine 123 (1981): 23–26.Google Scholar
Braybrook, Jean. “The Epic in Sixteenth-Century France.” In The Classical Heritage in France (2002), 351–91.Google Scholar
Campbell, Stephen J. “The Carracci, Visual Narrative and Heroic Poetry after Ariosto: The ‘Story of Jason ’ in Palazzo Fava.” Word and Image 18 (2002): 210–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carrati, Baldassare, ed. Cittadini maschi di famiglie bolognesi battezzati in S. Pietro come risultano dai libri dell’Archivio Battesimale, dal 1459 al 1809, Biblioteca Comunale dell’ Archiginnario, Bologna (MS B 852).Google Scholar
Castor, Graham. “Petrarchism and the Quest for Beauty in the Amours of Cassandre and the Sonets pour Helene .” In Ronsard the Poet, ed. Cave, Terence, 79–120. London, 1973.Google Scholar
Cave, Terence. The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance. Oxford, 1979.Google Scholar
Cave, Terence. Recognitions: A Study in Poetics. Oxford, 1988.Google Scholar
Chastel, André. “French Renaissance Art in a European Context.” Sixteenth Century Journal 12 (1981): 77–103.10.2307/2539879CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The Classical Heritage in France. Ed. Gerald Sandy. Leiden, 2002.Google Scholar
Cox-Rearick, Janet. The Collection of Francis I: Royal Treasures. Antwerp, 1995.Google Scholar
Cropper, Elizabeth. “On Beautiful Women: Parmigianino, Petrarchismo and the Vernacular Style.” The Art Bulletin 63 (1976): 375–94.Google Scholar
Cropper, Elizabeth. “The Place of Beauty in the High Renaissance and its Displacement in the History of Art.” In Place and Displacement in the Renaissance, ed. Vos, Alvin, 159–205. Binghamton, 1995.Google Scholar
Demerson, Guy. La mythologie classique dans l’oeuvre lyrique de la ‘Pléiade’. Geneva, 1972.Google Scholar
Dempsey, Charles. “Mythic Invention in Counter-Reformation Painting.” In Rome in the Renaissance: The City and the Myth, ed. Ramsey, P. A., 55–75. Binghamton, 1982.Google Scholar
Dempsey, Charles. The Portrayal of Love: Botticelli’s ‘Primavera’ and Humanist Culture at the Time of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Princeton, 1992.Google Scholar
Dimier, Louis. Le Primatice, peintre, sculpteur et architecte des rois de France. Paris, 1900.Google Scholar
Du Bellay, Joachim. Oeuvres complètes. Vol. 1. Eds. Goyet, Francis and Millet, Olivier. Paris, 2003.Google Scholar
Equicola, Mario. La redazione manoscritta ‘del Libro de natura de amore’ di Mario Equicola. Ed. Ricci, Laura. Rome, 1999.Google Scholar
Ferrari, Daniela, ed. Giulio Romano: Repertorio di fonti documentarie. 2 vols. Rome, 1992.Google Scholar
Ferrarino, Luigi, ed. Lettere di artisti italiani ad Antonio Perrenot di Granvelle. Madrid, 1977.Google Scholar
Ford, Philip. “Classical Myth and Its Interpretation in Sixteenth-Century France.” In The Classical Heritage in France (2002), 331–49.Google Scholar
Frati, Ludovico. “Il Primaticcio.” Rassegna d’Arte Antica e Moderna 9 (1922): 334–40.Google Scholar
The French Renaissance in Prints from the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Los Angeles, 1994.Google Scholar
Gaye, Giovanni. Vol. 3 of Carteggio inedito d’artisti dei secoli XIV, XV, XVI. Florence, 1840.Google Scholar
Giraldi Cinzio, G. B. Giraldi Cinthio On Romances. Trans. Snuggs, Henry. Lexington, 1968.Google Scholar
Giraldi Cinzio, G. B. Discorso intorno al comporre dei romanzi. In Scritti Critici, ed. Crocetti, Camillo Guerrieri, 43–167. Milan, 1973.Google Scholar
Glidden, Hope. “Introduction.” In Lyrics of the French Renaissance (2002), 1–19.Google Scholar
Gozzi, Tiziana. “Primaticcio ‘mercante d’arte’ a Venezia?” In Per Maria Cionini Visani: Scritti di amici, 88–92. Turin, 1977.Google Scholar
Guilbert, Pierre. Description historique des Chateau, bourg, et forest de Fontainebleau. 2 vols. Paris, 1731.Google Scholar
Hansen, Morten Steen. “The Art of Hubris: Pellegrino Tibaldi in the Papal States.” PhD diss., The Johns Hopkins University, 2002.Google Scholar
Hirst, Michael. Michelangelo and his Drawings. New Haven, 1988.Google Scholar
Homer, . The Odyssey of Homer. Trans. Lattimore, Richmond. New York, 1965.Google Scholar
Thomas, Hyde. “Boccaccio: The Genealogies of Myth.” Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 100 (1985): 737–45.Google Scholar
Javitch, Daniel. Proclaiming a Classic: The Canonization of ‘Orlando Furioso’. Princeton, 1991.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kemp, Martin. “From ‘Mimesis’ to ‘Fantasia’: The Quattrocento Vocabulary of Creation, Inspiration and Genius in the Visual Arts.” Viator 8 (1977): 347–98.10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.301573CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lorandi, Marco. Il mito di Ulisse nella pittura a fresco del Cinquecento italiano. Milan, 1995.Google Scholar
Lyrics of the French Renaissance: Marot, Du Bellay, Ronsard. Trans. Norman Shapiro. New Haven, 2002.Google Scholar
Maskell, David. The Historical Epic in France 1500–1700. London, 1973.Google Scholar
McAllister Johnson, William. “ Niccolà dell’Abbate’s Eros and Psyche .” Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts 45 (1966): 27–37.10.1086/DIA41504397CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mignot, Claude. “Fontainebleau rivisité: La Galerie d’Ulysse.” Revue de l’art 82 (1988): 9–18.Google Scholar
Minta, Stephen. Love Poetry in Sixteenth-Century France: A Study in Themes and Traditions. Manchester, 1977.Google Scholar
Moss, Ann. Poetry and Fable: Studies in Mythological Narrative in Sixteenth-Century France. Cambridge, 1984.Google Scholar
Omont, Henri. Catalogues des manuscripts grecs de Fontainebleau sous François Ier et Henri II. Paris, 1889.Google Scholar
Pino, Paolo. Dialogo di pittura. In Trattati d’arte del Cinquecento, ed. Barocchi, Paola, 1:93–139. Bari, 1960.Google Scholar
Poetry & Language in 16th-Century France: Du Bellay, Ronsard, Sebillet. Trans. Laura Willett. Toronto, 2003.Google Scholar
Pope-Hennessy, John. Cellini. London, 1985.Google Scholar
Primatice: Maïtre de Fontainebleau. Paris, 2004.Google Scholar
Puttfarken, Thomas. Titian and Tragic Painting: Aristotle’s Poetics and the Rise of the Modern Artist. New Haven, 2005.Google Scholar
Quint, David. Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton. Princeton, 1993.Google Scholar
Reynolds, Joshua. Discourses on Art. Ed. Wark, Robert. New Haven and London, 1975.Google Scholar
Richardson, N. J. “Recognition Scenes in the Odyssey and Ancient Literary Criticism.” Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar 4 (1983): 219–35.Google Scholar
Rigolot, François. “The Renaissance Fascination with Error: Mannerism and Early Modern Poetry.” Renaissance Quarterly 57, no. 4 (2004): 1219–34.Google Scholar
Robortello, Francseco. In librum Aristotelis De arte poetica explicationis. 1548. Facsimile, ed., Munich, 1968.Google Scholar
Romani, Vittoria. Primaticcio, Tibaldi e la questione delle ‘cose del cielo’. Cittadella, 1997.Google Scholar
Roskill, Mark. Dolce’s ‘Aretino’ and Venetian Art Theory of the Cinquecento. Reprint, Toronto, 2000.Google Scholar
Sandy, Gerald. “Resources for the Study of Ancient Greek in France.” In The Classical Heritage in France (2002), 46–78.Google Scholar
Scorza, R. A. “A ‘Modello’ by Stradanus for the ‘Sala di Penelope’ in the Palazzo Vecchio.” Burlington Magazine 126 (1984): 433–37.Google Scholar
Shearman, John. Only Connect. . . . Art and the Spectator in the Italian Renaissance. Washington, 1992.Google Scholar
Snyder, Jane McIntosh. “The Web of Song: Weaving Imagery in Homer and the Lyric Poets.” The Classical Journal 76 (1981): 193–96.Google Scholar
Steinberg, Leo. The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion. 2nd ed. Chicago, 1996.10.7208/chicago/9780226226316.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Talvacchia, Bette. Taking Positions: On the Erotic in Renaissance Culture. Princeton, 1999.Google Scholar
Vasari, Giorgio. Vol. 6 of Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori: nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568. Ed. Bettarini, Rosanna. Florence, 1987.Google Scholar
Vickers Nancy, J. “Courting the Female Subject.” In The French Renaissance in Prints from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (1994), 95–107.Google Scholar
Wardropper, Ian. “Le voyage italien de Primatice en 1550.” Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de l’Art français 1981 (1983): 27–31.Google Scholar
Weinberg, Bernard. A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance. 2 vols. Chicago, 1963.Google Scholar
Wilson-Chevalier, Kathleen. “Women on Top at Fontainebleau.” Oxford Art Journal 16 (1993): 34–48.10.1093/oxartj/16.1.34CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zerner, Henri. Renaissance Art in France: The Invention of Classicism. Trans. Dusinberre, Deke, Wilson, Scott, and Zerner, Rachel. Paris, 2003.Google Scholar
Zorach, Rebecca. “Desiring Things.” Art History 24 (2001): 195–212.10.1111/1467-8365.00260CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zorach, Rebecca. “The French Renaissance: An Unfinished Project.” In Artists at Court: Image-Making and Identity, 1300–1500, ed. Campbell, Stephen, 188–99. Boston, 2004.Google Scholar