DOI Artikel:
Kilian, Joanna: Locus amoenus, Delightful Place: the courtly return to nature in sixteenth century Northern Italian painting
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18947#0035
5. Giovanni Busi, called
Cariani, Rural Concert,
Muzeum Narodowe,
Warsów, detail
(Phot. Janusz Rosikoń)
of dreamy happiness, one of many utopias created by the human imagination,
similar to and sometimes identified with Eden, paradise lost. The Italian
patricians created their own Arcadia. At the beginning of the 16th century, the
humanist villa, particularly in the regions of Veneto, Lombardy and Friuli,
called the home of the Muses, become a surrogate Arcadia.1"
Carianrs Rural Concert as well as Anguissola’s Chess Gamę are closely
linked with the northern Italian villa culture. Together with poetry and
literaturę in generał, they became the evidence of an ideology, of the myth of
yilleggiatura. These paintings can be described as profane conuersazioni. They
belong to the type of work about which Michael Levey wrote: “Such pictures
may be portraits but they are also genre: reflecting, even if idealising, the
tonę of ordinary civilised life between eąuals.”11 Naturę selected, improved,
becomes in them the background of pleasurable existence. The scenery behind
the action in these paintings is a world ordered according to the laws in effect
in the humanist villa. The function of naturę painted in this way is the creation
of scenery for elegant pastimes and intellectual activity, a separate world of
a delightful idyll. Even if we considered these paintings only at the level of
genre works, it would be a special genre. Daily activity in the villa transcended
the sphere of profanum \ it was rooted in the sphere of a significant, sanctified 10 11
10 Cf. B. Ruprecht, “Uiconologia nella villa veneta”, Bolettino del C. I. S. A., X, 1968, pp. 229-239.
11 M. Levey, High Renaissance, Middlesex 1975, p. 72.
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Cariani, Rural Concert,
Muzeum Narodowe,
Warsów, detail
(Phot. Janusz Rosikoń)
of dreamy happiness, one of many utopias created by the human imagination,
similar to and sometimes identified with Eden, paradise lost. The Italian
patricians created their own Arcadia. At the beginning of the 16th century, the
humanist villa, particularly in the regions of Veneto, Lombardy and Friuli,
called the home of the Muses, become a surrogate Arcadia.1"
Carianrs Rural Concert as well as Anguissola’s Chess Gamę are closely
linked with the northern Italian villa culture. Together with poetry and
literaturę in generał, they became the evidence of an ideology, of the myth of
yilleggiatura. These paintings can be described as profane conuersazioni. They
belong to the type of work about which Michael Levey wrote: “Such pictures
may be portraits but they are also genre: reflecting, even if idealising, the
tonę of ordinary civilised life between eąuals.”11 Naturę selected, improved,
becomes in them the background of pleasurable existence. The scenery behind
the action in these paintings is a world ordered according to the laws in effect
in the humanist villa. The function of naturę painted in this way is the creation
of scenery for elegant pastimes and intellectual activity, a separate world of
a delightful idyll. Even if we considered these paintings only at the level of
genre works, it would be a special genre. Daily activity in the villa transcended
the sphere of profanum \ it was rooted in the sphere of a significant, sanctified 10 11
10 Cf. B. Ruprecht, “Uiconologia nella villa veneta”, Bolettino del C. I. S. A., X, 1968, pp. 229-239.
11 M. Levey, High Renaissance, Middlesex 1975, p. 72.
29