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"Fare una cosa morta parer viva": Michelangelo, Rosso, and the divinity of art - un - Rosso Fiorentino
Art Bulletin, The, Dec, 2002 by Stephen J. Campbell
(43.) The most famous instance is Lucan's De bello civili 6.508ff., concerning the Thessalian witch Erichto, who preys on desiccated corpses and summons the dead to life in order to know the future. Lucan's text was transmitted in a vernacular version, Li fait des Romains, from the 13th century, and more contemporaneously by the Pharsaglia in ottava rima by Cardinal Montichiello, printed in Milan in 1492. Editions of the Pharsaglia appeared in Rome the same year (published by Eucharium Silber, alias Franck), and in Venice and Bologna by 1495. See Louis-Ferdinand Flutre, Li fait des Romains dans les litteratures francaise et italienne du xiie au xvi siecle (Paris: Hachette, 1932), 310-11; and David P. Beneteau, "Per un'edizione critica dei Fatti dei Romani," Italianistica: Rivista di Letteratura Italiana 26 (1997): 401-11. Drawing on different source materials, Falciani, 82-86, also argues for a connection with witchcraft.
(44.) Vasari, vol. 5 (Life of Marcantonio Bolognese), 424: "una sua figura di notomia secca, che ha una testa di morte in mano e siede sopra un serpente, mentre un cigno canta...." On the notomia secca, sac Monique Kornell, "Rosso Fiorentino and the Anatomical Text," Burlington Magazine 131, no. 1041 (1989): 843-47.
(45.) Vasari, vol. 7, 146.
(46.) On the anatomical researches for Time Battle of Cascina, see James Elkins, "Michelangelo and the Human Form: His Knowledge and Use of Anatomy," Art History 7, no. 2 (1984): 176-86; and Bernard Schultz, Art and Anatomy in Renaissance Italy (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1985), 89. The connection between anatomy, memory, and fantasia is outlined in Vasari, vol. 1, 172: "Design cannot have a good beginning if it has not continually been engaged in the portrayal of things in nature and studied from the paintings of excellent masters and ancient reliefs, as has many times been said. But above all, the best is the living nude male anti female figure, and to have memorized from continued practice the muscles of the torso, the back, the legs, the arms, the knees, and the bone structure, and to have ensured from much study that without having an actual model poses of every kind can be formed from the fantasia alone. In the same way, having seen bodies flayed in order to know how the skeleton is arranged and the muscles and nerves, with all the rules and terms of anatomy, to be able correctly and with great certainty to place the members of the body, and to arrange the muscles of the figures [... il qual disegno non puo avere buon'origine, se non s' ha doto continuamente opera a ritrarre cose naturali e studiato pitture d'eccellenti maestri ed istatue antiche di rilievo... Ma sopra tutto, il meglio e gl'ignudi degli uomini vivi e femine, e da quelli avere preso in memoria per lo continovo uso i muscoli del torso, delle schiene, delle gambe, delle braccia, delle gnocchia, e l'ossa di sotto, e poi avere sicurta per lo molto studio che senza avere in naturali inanzi si possa formare di fantasia da se attitudini per ogni verso; cosi aver veduto degli uomini scorticati per sapere come stanno l'ossa sotto et i muscoli et i nervi con tutti gli ordini e termini della notomia, per potere con maggior sicurta e piu rettamente situare le membra nell'uomo e porre i muscoli nelle figure...]" (emphasis mine). The goal of t his composition of the figure is "good grace and beautiful style [buona grazia e belle maniera]."
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