Giovio Series - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Giovio Series, also known as the Giovio Collection or Giovio Portraits, is a series of 484 portraits assembled by the 16th century Italian Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

historian and biographer Paolo Giovio

Paolo Giovio

thumb|Paolo Giovio.thumb|Monument to Paolo Giovo by [[Francesco da Sangallo]], in [[San Lorenzo di Firenze|San Lorenzo]] Basilica, [[Florence]].Paolo Giovio was an Italian physician, historian and biographer, and prelate.He is chiefly known as the author of a celebrated work of...

. It includes portraits of literary figures, rulers, statesmen and other dignitaries, many of which were done from life. Intended by Giovio as a public archive

Origins and history

Giovio first began collecting portraits around 1512, soon after leaving his hometown of Como

Como

Como is a city and comune in Lombardy, Italy.It is the administrative capital of the Province of Como....

to pursue his career in Rome. Initially focused on men of letters, the collection grew to include military figures, kings, popes, artists and even a few renowned women. The series included illustrious men of ages past alongside those of his own day. Giovio intended his gallery to serve as a permanent public record, and so was scrupulous about its accuracy. Idealised portraits would not suffice: he preferred portraits drawn from life whenever possible. In the absence of such, likenesses produced from coins

COinS

ContextObjects in Spans, commonly abbreviated COinS, is a method to embed bibliographic metadata in the HTML code of web pages. This allows bibliographic software to publish machine-readable bibliographic items and client reference management software to retrieve bibliographic metadata. The...

, busts

Bust (sculpture)

A bust is a sculpted or cast representation of the upper part of the human figure, depicting a person's head and neck, as well as a variable portion of the chest and shoulders. The piece is normally supported by a plinth. These forms recreate the likeness of an individual...

, or earlier life portraits were acceptable. Giovio worked zealously to acquire works for his collection, writing to dozens of public figures across Europe and the Near East to solicit portraits. His correspondence reveals that he bargained, cajoled and even bribed

Bribery

Bribery, a form of corruption, is an act implying money or gift giving that alters the behavior of the recipient. Bribery constitutes a crime and is defined by Black's Law Dictionary as the offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of any item of value to influence the actions of an official or...

subjects for pictures, many of which he paid for himself.

What made Giovio's collection unique was his intent to open it to the public: his 20th century biographer T. C. Price Zimmermann writes that "the idea of founding a portrait museum on the lake was his most original contribution to European civilization." The inspirational value of collections of portraits was a familiar Renaissance trope, consciously revived from Antique precedents: as the humanist

Renaissance humanism

Renaissance humanism was an activity of cultural and educational reform engaged by scholars, writers, and civic leaders who are today known as Renaissance humanists. It developed during the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries, and was a response to the challenge of Mediæval...

Poggio Bracciolini had written in his essay De nobilitate liber, the Romans should be emulated, "for they believed that the images of men who had excelled in the pursuit of glory and wisdom, if placed before the eyes, would help ennoble and stir up the soul." Examples of similar collections can be traced to the early 14th century, and to less universal sets of the "Nine Worthies

Nine Worthies

The Nine Worthies are nine historical, scriptural and legendary personages who personify the ideals of chivalry as were established in the Middle Ages. All are commonly referred to as 'Princes' in their own right, despite whatever true titles each man may have held...

" and literary reports of the busts of philosophers in Roman libraries, such as Pliny's, to "...images made of bronze... set up in libraries in honour of those whose immortal spirits talk to us in the same places." but none of these was conceived with the express goal of edifying the public. Giovio frequently referred to his project as a templum virtutis, or "temple of virtue", as a reflection of its didactic purpose.

Construction of the museum began in 1537 and was competed in 1543. The portraits were organised into four categories according to the subjects' accomplishments: living writers (including poets and philosophers), dead writers, great artists, and dignitaries such as kings, popes and generals. The pictures were arranged within these groups chronologically according to date of death, or by year of birth if the sitter was still alive. As a finishing touch, Giovio composed brief biographies to accompany the portraits; these were published as Elogia veris clarorum virorum imaginibvs apposita, quae in Mvsaeo Ioviano Comi spectantur (1546) and Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium veris imaginibus supposita, quae apud Musaeum spectantur (1551), more commonly known simply as the Elogia. The inclusion of these biographies was fairly innovative. The 1517 Illustrium imagines of the antiquarian

Antiquarian

An antiquarian or antiquary is an aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient objects of art or science, archaeological and historic sites, or historic archives and manuscripts...

Andrea Fulvio

Andrea Fulvio was an Italian Renaissance humanist, poet and antiquarian active in Rome, who advised Raphael in the reconstructions of ancient Rome as settings for his frescoes...

, which paired short biographies with woodcut

Woodcut

Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...

portraits drawn from coins, was one of the few similar contemporary works. The lost

Lost work

A lost work is a document or literary work produced some time in the past of which no surviving copies are known to exist. Works may be lost to history either through the destruction of the original manuscript, or through the non-survival of any copies of the work. Deliberate destruction of works...

Imagines of Varro

Varro

Varro was a Roman cognomen carried by:*Marcus Terentius Varro, sometimes known as Varro Reatinus, the scholar*Publius Terentius Varro or Varro Atacinus, the poet*Gaius Terentius Varro, the consul defeated at the battle of Cannae...

, an illustrated set of some 700 famous figures of the ancient world, may also have inspired Giovio.

Following Giovio's death in 1552, the original collection was eventually dispersed and lost. It is preserved, however, in a series of copies commissioned that year by Cosimo I de' Medici. Artist Cristofano dell'Altissimo

Cristofano dell'Altissimo

Cristofano dell'Altissimo was an Italian painter in Florence.For duke Cosimo I de' Medici he made at least 280 of the portraits known as the Giovio Series .Most of them can be seen at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence....

spent 37 years copying the portraits, working from 1552 to 1589. These copies have been displayed in the First Corridor of the Uffizi since 1587.

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.