From galley slave to gallery

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Leone Leoni and the Status of the Artist at the End of the Renaissance

Kelley Helmstutler Di Dio

'In May 1540, Leone Leoni (Arezzo, 1509–Milan, 1590) was chained to an oar, forced to power the papal galley with hundreds of other men, even while starved, exposed to the elements, exhausted and brutally whipped... In November 1549 – just eight and a half years later – Leoni was invited as a guest at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in Brussels. There he was showered with gifts... he was granted a title of nobility and he was given a house in the most prestigious part of Milan.'

How did that happen? The rise to fame of a humble artisan from Arezzo is what Kelley Helmstutler Di Dio reveals, tracing his work as a medallist; the setback of his galley ship incarceration, following a gruesome dagger attack on the papal jeweller (the original sentence was to have his right hand cut off); and the supreme accolade as chief sculptor to Charles V, leading to a network of friendships with government and church officials, artists and writers throughout Europe.

In six chapters Di Dio explores the history of this late Renaissance sculptor, woven into the complex social, economic and political life of the Italian and Spanish courts in the sixteenth century. He started out working as a medallist, sculptor and stage-set designer. His relatives were stonemasons, from Arezzo, hence he became known as ‘Aretino’. His marked rise to fame came in 1546, when he was named chief sculptor to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (1500–88), aided by the recommendation of his fellow townsman Pietro Aretino (1492–1556), who referred to him as ‘Lysippus’, after the ancient Greek sculptor of the 4^th century BC. Astonishingly, in 1549 Leone was made an Imperial knight of the Emperor’s court, a remarkable gift to an artist. His first large-scale sculpture in bronze, the legendary Charles V and Fury, 1551–3 (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid), was commissioned by the Emperor the same year. In Roman style, the innovative armour was removable, giving Charles the option of viewing himself as the heroic nude.

Di Dio looks from the naked bodies of the Emperor and ‘Fury’ to the bodies of Perseus and Medusa, 1545–54 (Loggia dei Lanzi, Piazza della Signoria, Florence), the life-size bronze created by Benvenuto Cellini (1500-71) for Grand Duke Cosimo I de’Medici.  The competition  between Leoni and Cellini – both quick with words and fists against each other – is charted through their rivalry to outdo each other in commissions, status and friendships. Di Dio argues that as sculptors and Tuscan men, they both wanted to achieve the status of chief heir to Michelangelo (1475–1564). She draws on the Lives of each sculptor written by Giorgio Vasari (1511–74) – a good friend of Leoni’s – to place the rivalry in context.

Leoni’s grand palazzo, Casa degli Omenoni, in Milan was the site of his magnificent art gallery, ‘a permanent visual document’ of his wealth and imperial connections. Di Dio tells how Leoni came to acquire the prestigious collection, which included paintings by Parmigianino, Titian, Tintoretto and Correggio. (The collection is listed in Appendix V). Moreover, he owned the majority of Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks. In conclusion, we see how Leone fared at court in Lombardy, Madrid, Brussels and Prague, and his legacy.

Di Dio, an Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Vermont, USA, builds on an 1887 monograph by Eugène Plon, Maitre italiens au service de la maison d'Autriche: Leone Leoni sculptor de Charles V et Pompeo Leoni sculpteur de Philippe II, which the author acknowledges as the most comprehensive study of the artist to date. Archival documents, correspondence and contemporary literature reveal Leoni's multiple roles, including criminal exploits. Di Dio argues that the artist’s fortuna critica rests on his absence from major Italian cities such as Florence, Rome and Venice – a reason, she suggests, why he has been overlooked by historians.

Five appendices, pp.177-219, aid the scholar. In Appendix I, in Italian, excerpts from Celio Malespini, Ducento novelle, nelle quali si raccontano diversi avvenimenti cosi lieti, come mesti & stravaganti (Venice: Al segno dell'Italia,1609); in Appendix IV, in Latin, 'Sonnets regarding Leoni and his Sculptures', Francesco Vinta, Carmina quinque Hetruscorum poetarum... (Florence: eredi di Bernardo Giunti, 1562); and Appendix V, in English, a compilation of objects in 'The Collection in Casa degli Omenoni', which itemizes Leoni’s substantial art collection. Leone Leoni and the Status of the Artist at the End of the Renaissance is part of the Ashgate series 'Visual Culture in Early Modernity'. The scholarly book would be of value to undergraduates and postgraduates reading Renaissance art history.

This book is published by Ashgate Publishing Limited 2011. £58.50; 268 pp., 64 mono illustrations. ISBN: 978-0-7546-6234-1