Journal Article

Setting as revisionism: Vasari's use of Dürer's Siege in the Palazzo Vecchio

Gregg, Ryan E.

2015

Overview

Giorgio Vasari’s workshop decorated the Room of Clement VII in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence in circa 1556–62 with history paintings celebrating Pope Clement VII's achievements. The paintings present the Medici pope’s family in a favourable light, even at the expense of historical fact, to legitimize their newly established ducal rule. The painting Cardinal Ippolito de’Medici Sent to Hungary as Papal Legate demonstrates Vasari’s encomiastic charge. The background reproduces Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut of an invented siege to illustrate the cardinal’s participation in the 1532 siege of Vienna – a siege that never happened. The painting ignores Ippolito’s misconduct to present the Medici as saviours of Emperor Charles V. The use of the Dürer woodcut aids in this revisionism by generalizing the setting while arguing for the emperor’s weak defence through its fortification display. With the painting of Cardinal de’Medici, Vasari argued that Medici aid supported and justified the family’s imperially decreed duchy, an argument that fits the general truthfulness of Vasari’s theme by glossing over the specifics of the historical events.

• Publisher: Blackwell Publishing Ltd,Wiley (Variant)
• Subject: Albrecht Dürer / Art criticism / Art history / Durer, Albrecht (1471-1528) / Giorgio Vasari / Ippolito de'Medici / Renaissance period / Vasari, Giorgio (1511-1574)