Anna Eörsi

Puer, abige muscas!

Remarks on Renaissance Flyology

 

I. The page illustrating the beginning of Genesis in the Visconti Hours marks the beginning of a new period in the history of the depiction of flies.

            Earlier medieval miniatures also abound in fly images. We need think only of the fly as Bealzebub’s attribute, flies as the symbol of evil thoughts or in illustrations for tales or works in natural history. There are also the flies of Villard de Honnecourt’s album and the frequently humorous illustrations of flies found in the margins of medieval manuscripts.[1] The last stage of this “tradition” is well represented by a Genovese moral tract from the end of the fourteenth century. Its pages are richly decorated with crickets and insects, among them flies.[2] (ill. 1) Pächt considers these insects – and justly so – to be among the first naturalistic representations of animals. Nevertheless, in comparison to these too, the flies of the Visconti Hours represent a break from this tradition.

            It appears that the size of the naturally depicted animals in the Genovese tract was determined by the space available and by decorative concerns rather than by their real size. The bugs are seen partly from the side, and partly from above, and there is little to keep us from believing that these flies were not painted on, but rather had just landed on the parchment. Thus it is not any deficiencies in the naturalistic depictions or a lack of shadows that prevent us from using the term trompe l’oeil when talking of these flies, but rather the inconsistent differentiation in their scale compared to the other insects. All the insects on the page are depicted with the same degree of realism.

            Attention to scale is what the illustrator of the prayer book of Giangaleazzo Visconti, Giovannino dei Grassi, introduces in the last years of the fourteenth century.[3] The illustration of Creation has an abundance of animals integrated into its composition. The seven flies (and one stag-beetle) seen from above are considerably larger than the other animals depicted, and they appear to have just settled on the parchment surface. They are large, however, only in comparison to the scenes illustrated; their scale is otherwise in keeping with reality.[4] (ill. 2)

            The fly seen on the page from the Très Riches Heures showing St John the Evangelist is depicted in a similar fashion.[5] (ill. 3) The opening lines of the text are written below the illustration of St John as he is having a vision on the island of Patmos. The fly is painted perpendicular to the first initial “I” as if a real fly had landed on the parchment page. There is a clear separation between the pictorial space and the real space: in the pictorial space we can see the scene on Patmos Island, in the other space – that is, our space – we see the fly.

            These are the first trompe l’oeil flies of modern times (whether or not they have symbolic meaning). They are life-size, and therefore are large in comparison to the scene depicted. In part they emphasise the flatness of the parchment, which provides their spatial setting, and given that the viewer takes them to be real and tries to shoo them away, the flies also prove that depiction is equivalent to the real thing. The illustrator relies on the same illusions and plays on the same instincts as the painters of Hellenistic “rhyparography” (painting of the sordid): the illusion is that the insect is in the same space as we are; the instinct appealed to is our disgust at the fly (as dirt), which we would like to go away, and our joy that it is after all just a painting and thus need not be shooed away – instead we can marvel at the cleverness of the artist.[6] From this point on the fly becomes the trademark of artistic excellence, the ability to produce depictions true to life[7] – despite or independent of the fly’s various, for the most part negative, associations. (It is a paradox that the true-to-life depiction of small insects, which are the easiest to represent in a realistic manner, nevertheless became the non plus ultra of artistic competence.) A sense of humour is also necessary for a painter to use a fly – the symbol of sin and “the hated housemate we should like to keep far away”[8] – to demonstrate his virtuosity.

            In this study I will deal primarily with those flies – also – that demonstrate the painter’s skill and humour, without any attempt at being all-inclusive. But first I would like to make a preliminary comment: when the rough idea for this topic first occurred to me, I decided I would finish with the last sentence of Musca, Leon Battista Alberti’s witty paraphrase of Lucian: “Scipsimus hec ridendo et vos ridete.”[9] I was subsequently honoured to receive Ernő Marosi’s request that I write a study for an issue of Acta dedicated to the memory of Lajos Vayer. Consequently the above will not be the last sentence; with this article I would like to remember Professor Vayer’s superior skill and his outstanding wit.

 

II. The earliest surviving fly that I know of found on a panel painting and clearly demonstrating the artist’s skill can be seen in the Christian Museum of Esztergom in the winged altar of an Austrian painter who was influenced by the Master of the Albert altar.[10] (ill. 4) The central panel of this triptych depicts the Death of the Virgin, painted around 1440. Pieces of parchment, one bearing the inscription “Caspar+walthisar+melchior” and the other depicting the Holy Face are affixed to the side of the deathbed with dabs of sealing wax, both casting a shadow on the wood. A tiny-sized fly approaches the inscription, facing the letter “m”. Together with the spider,[11] which is climbing under the apostle’s book lower down in the picture, and the shadow cast by the candleholder, these elements clearly demonstrate the painter’s intention to create an illusion (regardless of his success). Neither the scale of the fly nor the painter’s virtuoso true-to-life depiction is what draws the viewer’s attention to his skill as a painter. Instead it is the “extras,” in particular the inscribed band attached with sealing wax. The fly is just an attribute of authenticity, realness, of truly being there. (The same process that already took place in miniature painting half a century earlier is repeated in the genre of panel painting: attempts to be true-to-life begin with depiction of small things.)

            The earliest surviving fly appearing on a panel painting that can be precisely dated (1446) and demonstrates, among other things, the painter’s skill appears in the portrait of a Carthusian by Petrus Christus.[12] (ill. 5) The fly, which is life size but too large in relation to the figure depicted, has settled on the stone parapet – like-wise intended as an illusion – above the artist’s signature. The deceptive trompe l’oeil fly transfers its own appearance of realness to the figure in the painting, bearing witness to the figure’s existence in the here and now. Both the parapet and the fly belong simultaneously to the space of the viewer and the picture. The fly’s ephemeral existence resting on the stone emphasises the contrast between the brevity of life and the lasting quality of the artist’s fame.[13]

            I consider the claims of many – in reference to this painting – that the painted fly motif in paintings originated in the Netherlands to be unfounded.[14] In fact the depiction of flies in earlier miniatures belie these assertions. Chastel points out also that the fly seen in the painting of Petrus Christus is of a Flemish type, which might further suggest a Netherlandish origin.

            As much as it is bizarre, the fly motif is also easily explained. I do not believe that this motif necessarily spread by way of the usual artistic connections. Under the appropriate circumstances this motif could have been independently arrived at with each artist painting the kind of fly found at home in their own workshops.

 

III. Circumstances were decidedly favourable for the illusionistic painting of flies in the workshop of Francesco Squarcione during the 1460s, even independent of any possible Netherlandish influences.

            The Aristotelian paradox according to which the depiction of repulsive things can be a source of joy was well known in this area, as the local Humanists had been voicing it for decades.[15] In the letter written by the Greek scholar Manuele Chrysoloras to his nephew, Demetrius, in Rome in 1411, he meditates on how it is possible that when we come across everyday creatures, regardless of how strange, we are not amazed, but “when we see a representation of a horse or ox, plant, bird, human being or even, if you like, of a fly, worm, mosquito or other such disagreeable things, we are much impressed and, when we see their representations, make much of them.”[16] Manuele’s student, Guarino da Verona, shared his opinion that the depiction of vulgar things was the greatest artistic achievement, and their recognition in a painting was a source of joy and delight. In 1426 he wrote the following to Giovanni Lamola from Verona: “I would not esteem the man’s poem and talent any the less for his jokes being highly flavoured. Shall we praise Apelles or Fabius or any painter the less because they have painted naked and unconcealed those details of the body which nature prefers hidden? If they have depicted worms and serpents, mice, scorpions, flies and other distasteful creatures, will you not admire and praise the artist’s art and skill? For my part, I certainly esteem the man as writer: I admire his talent and enjoy his joke ...”[17] Painters who at that time desired to raise themselves from the status of craftsmen would find this discussion relevant, as it contributed to the appreciation for painting they much yearned for.

            At the same time, in part because of the desire to rise from the status of craftsman and in part because of the ideal of remaining true-to-life, Pliny not surprisingly found his way into the folklore of the Squarcione workshop. More will be said about Pliny’s anecdotes about painters who deceived animals, people, and fellow artists with their true-to-life representations.

            It is quite possible that Squarcione’s pupils were familiar with the satiric writings about flies: in 1440 Guarino translated Lucian’s, “The fly” (Muscae laudatio). His translation reached Scipione Mainente and Leon Battista Alberti.[18] Alberti was subsequently inspired to write a humoresque about a fly, which he sent to Cristoforo Landino. In the dignified tone of a classical orator, Alberti conveys to readers the exemplary lives led by flies.[19] The noble-born fly is the most innocent of all creatures; it does not harass, disturb, or irritate anyone; it remains quiet, it shows no envy, and it neither quarrels nor rebels: “To this day hatred, competition, and bickering is unknown amongst flies.”[20]

            Numerous documents attest to the fact that Francesco Squarcione, the first known head of a private art school, was surrounded by lawsuits, hostility, broken promises, and deception. Of course I do not wish to use this to support my argument that one of his students, Giorgio Schiavone, fooled and vexed the others with his paintings of flies and bugs.

            Francesco Squarcione began as a tailor and embroiderer. He opened his school in Padua in 1431 after his travels through Italy and – perhaps – Greece.[21] According to sources an extraordinarily modern education was provided in this institution, which around 1455 was promoted from bottega to studium. The students (supposedly there was a total of one hundred and thirty-seven) mastered their craft through making copies in plaster, as well as copying coins, drawings, and Florentine engravings that were in Squarcione’s possession. The pictorum pater adopted the best students, and thus in part relieved them of their obligations to the guild while also taking advantage of their labour and talent. This led to serious conflicts, and many, amidst scandals and lawsuits, fled their unfair master and his otherwise free-spirited workshop. Amongst the adopted students was Andrea Mantegna (between 1442-48 in the workshop), Marco Zoppo (between 1453-55), Giorgio Schiavone (between 1456-61). We also know for a fact that Dario da Treviso and Niccolò Pizzolo studied with Squarcione. It was at just this time and in this location that it became the fashion for the artist to include the name of his master next to his own on the new cartellino – a practice in no way unique to Squarcione’s workshop, but one that was rather widespread throughout Northern Italy.

            The cartellino itself however was an important element in the set of circumstances that favoured the appearance of the painted fly in the workshop of Squarcione. After all, the cartellino was likewise a trompe l’oeil motif demonstrating the skill and self-consciousness of the painter, an intermediary between fiction and reality, a trick of the eye worthy of ancient painters.[22] It creates the illusion that it belongs to the everyday sphere of the painter and his audience, and this illusion is heightened by the fact that the cartellino is frequently torn and/or bears the traces of having been rolled up, reminding one of the Greek “unswept floor” device. The painted fly is thus an adequate addition to this ensemble of tricks.

            Giorgio Schiavone (Ćulinović) was a Dalmatian painter born in Scardona (Skadrin) between 1433-36. From 1456 he studied in Padua. Of the five paintings he made in Squarcione’s workshop signed with a cartellino[23], three include depictions of repulsive insects. In the polyptych now in London, an earwig casting a shadow heads upwards to the right of the cartellino at the front base of the Madonna’s throne.[24] (ill. 6) In the painting in Torino a fly has settled on the back of a putto sitting in the left foreground, while in the painting of the Madonna in Baltimore a fly rests on the front of the stone parapet. (ill. 7-8). These are the three bugs with which, I believe, recalling the world of classical anecdotes, Schiavone, hoped to first and foremost trick his fellow students and master; the fly’s symbolic meaning was not of primary importance.[25] There are some other circumstances in addition to those mentioned above which support this supposition. Making jokes with one another’s works or on the world of classical antiquity was very much in the air in the Humanist and artistic circles of Veneto of the fifteenth century, as was competition –both fictive and real – with each other and with the antique predecessors as well.

            In the artistic life of the age competitions organised based on classical examples played an important role.[26] From Vasari we know that Squarcione inspired his students to greater achievements by encouraging competition between them.[27]

            As for games involving the antique world, the most famous is the case of the boating excursion on Lake Garda in 1464 in which the humanist Felice Feliciano, the engineer Giovanni “Antenoreo,” and two painters, Samuele da Tradate and Andrea Mantegna, took part. In their search for classical monuments and inscriptions, they pretended to be living in ancient Rome. Samuele was named imperator, Giovanni and Andrea played consules. With a crown of myrtle and laurel, the emperor led the others with song accompanied by the lute on a boat decorated in woven cloth and laurel branches.[28]             Squarcione’s teaching methods, considered ultramodern, may be similarly interpreted. Clearly there was no theoretical basis for the copying of classical and other works. I consider it likely there was more playfulness and romantic enthusiasm involved than most think. Classical objects and decorations, and those thought to be that in the studium and in the neighbouring “house of reliefs,” may themselves have been an inspiration for those living amongst them to relive ancient times. Works created here support the idea that, aside from a few classical motifs such as puttos and garlands of fruit (and mutatis mutandis, flies), there was more talk of imitating the antique world than actually took place.[29]

            In Italian literature it has been a commonplace since Petrarch that humanists regarded the painters they admired as the ancient masters reborn; poets especially praised Giotto, Pisanello, Jacopo Bellini, and Mantegna as artists who transcended even the ancient artists (in fact in some cases even deceiving them!) in their true-to-life paintings.[30] As I have already suggested, naturalism, as the most important criterion of good art, is what made Pliny’s anecdotes about paintings that were so true-to-life as to deceive the viewer extraordinarily popular in artistic circles. Amongst the anecdotes, the most famous is the competition between Zeuxis and Parrhasios: the former painted such a convincing painting of clusters of grapes that birds settled on them. In response Parrhasios painted such a true-to-life curtain in front of the same picture that Zeuxis wanted to pull it back. He was thus obliged to acknowledge his defeat, since fooling a fellow artist was a greater feat than deceiving birds.[31]

            This is probably enough proof that Schiavone was in fact playing a joke on his fellow artists with his painted flies. A dragonfly or butterfly would have been perfectly suitable for showing off one’s artistic virtuosity (as we have seen in Schiavone’s Madonna in the National Gallery, London, No. 904). The real challenge, however, is not the artistic representation of animals that in nature are already beautiful, but rather of what are ugly; observation of representations of the latter is a source of joy for both philosophers and common people alike. Flies, however, replaced bees and birds, which were much more common in classical anecdotes, chiefly because they were there in the workshops and really did land on the paintings. Based on this, we can declare with assurance that early Renaissance painters did in fact triumph over their Greek models. After all bees and birds in reality only land on fruit, while flies land not only on fruit, but on paintings as well.[32]

 

IV. They also land on illuminated codices. Some flies painted onto parchment are thus likewise the result of the same humour, playfulness, and attempts at tricks of the eye.

            It is well known that those very participants in the excursion on Lake Garda as well as some artists trained in Squarcione’s workshop are responsible for the radical renewal of miniature painting in the 1450s and 60s in Padua.[33] The title pages produce trompe l’oeil effects. Buildings from antiquity are imitated replete with authentic and imagined classical motifs; the piece of parchment bearing the written words is itself a part of the illusion: it is as if the paper were torn, and it is not at all apparent where the surface of the parchment lies. This provides for an endless source of amusement and playfulness. It is in this vein that a fly settled onto, for example, an apparently torn piece of parchment in the breviary housed in the Houghton Library, which according to the latest research was made between 1478-80 in the area of Veneto – Padua.[34] (ill. 9) On this title-page to the Common of Saints, it appears that the punctured parchment bearing the text has been suspended from the architecture behind it. On the right side one of the holes serves as the eye of a face in profile, with the nose and mouth defined by the torn edge of the paper. The fly, which is life-size, has settled onto this face, thereby magically turning the grotesque face back into a piece of parchment.

            Another example has stylistic similarities (as well) to the art of Schiavone.[35] As an adornment to the initial “E,” King David is shown praying in a landscape, while a huge fly is depicted from above just behind his head. (ill. 10) I can not agree with Levi d’Ancona, who believes this to be a symbol of the plague. I feel that this fly is also – in keeping with the tradition of Grassi – first and foremost a play on the varying degrees of reality, an artistic trick revealing just where the surface of the paper is after all.[36]

            I agree with those who link the Edinburgh Madonna, with its illusionistic painting of parchment and a fly, to the illuminators’ workshops of Padua – Ferrara.[37]

            Carlo Crivelli, painter of numerous trompe l’oeil flies, also belonged to the wider circle of Squarcione’s workshop, and in fact we have documentary evidence that he and Schiavone were in Zara (Zadar) at the same time in the early 1460s.[38]

            It is highly possible that Marco Zoppo, who was living in Bologna from the early 1460s, may have inspired the idea for that fly which until now has escaped the attention of those dealing with this subject-matter. In the work of an unknown master from Bologna, dated to around 1460-70, the Madonna holds the child Salvator mundi in her lap; with her left index finger she points towards the fly that has settled on the calf of the infant Jesus.[39] (ill. 11) This fly is chiefly a symbol and not a trademark of the artist’s skill. After all, it fairly unambiguously belongs to the sphere depicted; the painter has no desire to trick us into believing the fly has landed on the painting itself. It has, however, dual symbolic meaning: it refers with respect to the sphere in Jesus’s hand to the sins of the world, which he shall redeem, and also to the child’s future death.

            It is not known exactly who or what inspired Giovanni Santi to paint a trompe l’oeil fly on the chest of the Imago pietatis, but it does not appear unfounded in this case either to consider the broad range of influence of the Squarcione workshop.[40] (ill. 12) There are countless possibilities: Santi was enthusiastic about Mantegna, he was influenced by Zoppo, and he could have met with Crivelli in Marche (although naturally the Netherlandish influence cannot be discounted either). His fly on the painting in Budapest has a dual nature: it belongs to the painting as an object, as well as to the subject of the painting. As it generally happens in similar cases, we fall victim to two illusions:[41] first, we think the fly is real and we would like to shoo it away in order to protect the sacred image; when we realise we have been fooled, the fly becomes part of the pictorial sphere: we no longer want to protect the sacred image from the fly, but rather the Imago pietatis from the symbol of sin and death. After all, this fly refers to both the sins of the world and people and also to the fact that Christ, looking suggestively into the eyes of the believers, is in fact dead. Last but not least the fly refers to the real presence of the model, this time not in terms of a portrait, but in terms of the Eucharist.

 

V. Therefore, just as Mantegna and his friends dressed as emperor and consuls on Lake Garda, Giorgio Schiavone in the workshop of Squarcione replayed the antique anecdotes about tricks of the eye and tricking one’s colleagues with his illusionistic depictions of flies. That this was truly the case appears to be supported by yet another circumstance. We have good reason to think that in this very same time and place, in the workshop of Squarcione, the famous anecdote about Giotto was concocted according to which Giotto fooled his master Cimabue with a painting of a fly.[42]

            The story first appears in the Trattato di Architettura written by Filarete between 1461 and 1464. This part of the text simultaneously serves as early documentation of the paragone debate.[43] Filarete tells the following to his patron, Francesco Sforza, the prince of Milan, after sounding the praises of painting and referring to the Greek artists famous for tricks of the eye: “I too once, in the house of a Bolognese painter in Venice who invited me to take refreshment and put some painted fruits in front of me, was really tempted to take one, but held back in time, for it wasn’t, but indubitably seemed to be so real that if there had been some actual ones there is no doubt people would have been taken in. And we read of Giotto that as a beginner he painted flies, and his master, Cimabue was so taken in that he believed they were alive and started to chase them off with a rag. Whence, this is based on the knowledge of applying colour in the right places, and such miracles are not seen in sculpture.” Filarete certainly should have known well what was going on in Squarcione’s workshop. Not only is Mantegna mentioned in Filarete’s tract, but Professor Gilbert succeeded in identifying the artist who had tricked Filarete with the fake fruit:[44] the Bolognese painter who had been living in Venice shortly before 1461 and had painted realistic fruit in his pictures was none other than Marco Zoppo, one of Squarcione’s adopted sons. That Zoppo was already famous during his lifetime for painting fruits that could deceive the eye is demonstrated in the epigram written by a student of Guarino called Raffaello Zovenzonio: “The fruits which Hercules handed to Hesperides/ Your painted panel gave to me, O Zoppo./ They deceived your own daughter, Marco, and no wonder/ Such fruits would draw Phidias’ hand to them.”[45] The stories about the fictive fruit and Giotto’s deceptive flies are joined together in Filarete’s account: we have every reason to believe that the source for his information was the same.

            The episode in which Giotto fools Cimbaue unquestionably refers to the competition between Zeuxis and Parrhasios. The anecdote actually is about considerable artistic knowledge and skill in depicting nature in a realistic manner. Giotto, who obviously never painted even one fly, had for some time been regarded as the father of true-to-life painting, surpassing even the ancient Greeks: “ ... not infrequently people’s sense of sight was misled by the things that he created into mistaking the painted for real,” wrote Boccaccio.[46] How and when an anecdote is invented reveals as much about the circumstances in which it was contrived as it does about the person it is about. In Squarcione’s circle the fly was the trademark of artistic excellence and a reminder of the tricks of the eye painted in ancient paintings. This is the reason why the story about Giotto was concocted at that time in that particular setting. After all, the essence of what Filarete wanted to say – and what this anecdote was intended to merely illustrate – was that by using colour the painter was more able to create a true-to-life spectacle than the sculptor.

            I cannot agree with Professor Gilbert’s opinion that Filarete’s anecdote and Zovenzonio’s verse prove that Zoppo did really paint still lifes, that is, that it was he who painted the first still lifes of modern times well before Jacopo de’ Barbari. The actual existence of such a painting is unsubstantiated in the written sources alone. [47]

            Interestingly enough, however, the essence of Filarete’s story – complete with fly – is expressed in Derick Baegert’s painting of St Luke dated to around 1470-90.[48] (ill. 13) The subject itself is a quasi self-portrait of the craft of painting: Madonna sits as a model for the northern artists – in contrast to the St Lukes of contemporary Italy. In this context the fly painted in a deceptively real, illusionistic manner near to the fruit on the shelf behind St Luke serves as the stamp of the artist’s craft, related, as it were, to the painter’s considerable talent and ability to imitate real life.[49] As for the paragone, in the background in front of St Joseph, an angel grinds the red pigment for St Luke. In my opinion the angel is not the archangel Gabriel, or rather he does not refer to the angel’s role in the Annunciation, as this would not explain why he is preparing the pigment. Instead this detail is present to emphasise the importance of colours in painting.[50] In other words Baegert’s picture – with fly – draws our attention, just as Filarete’s anecdote does, to the connection between the paragone and trompe l’oeil.

            Continuing with our discussion of the fate of the legend of Giotto’s fly: Vasari does not use this same anecdote of Filarete – with some minor changes – to illustrate the paragone.[51] For him the story serves as a metaphor for the entire Giottesque revolution, which is why he tells this story at the very end of the Vita. In his version the fictional fly lands on the subject’s nose in a portrait painted by Cimabue, as subsequent proof of the now legendary humour of Giotto.

            Among the numerous versions of this type of anecdote, for us that which Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo mentions twice, again in the context of the paragone, is highly relevant. In the chapter on colouring in his Trattato, following the story about Zeuxis and Parrhasios’s contest, we can read: “Andrea Mantegna fooled his master with a painting of a fly settled on the eyelash of a lion.”[52] In the fictitious dialogue between Leonardo and Pheidias in the Idea del Tempio, Lomazzo has Leonardo relate the same story: “It is well-known that when Andrea Mantegna was a painter’s apprentice in Mantua, he painted a fly on the eyelash of the lion in his master’s painting of St Jerome when his master went to eat. The fly was so true-to-life that upon his return the master tried to shoo the fly away with his handkerchief. Then, realising it was a painting, he was so jealous of Mantegna that he dismissed him. Mantegna went to Venice where he charmed Giovanni Bellini with his works.”[53]

            Aside from the fact that, as I believe, one or two talented students in the same workshop where Mantegna served his apprenticeship vexed their masters with trick flies, it seems that there are some seeds of truth to the story about Mantegna. It is probably not a coincidence that Lomazzo mentions a painting of St Jerome: in the circle about which Lomazzo wrote a favourite subject of painters and humanists was St Jerome in a setting full of true-to-life details and animals.[54] One picture of St Jerome survives with a trompe l’oeil fly on the shoulder of the saint, this one painted by Francesco Benaglio, a painter influenced by the workshop of Squarcione.[55] Furthermore, after Mantegna had a falling out with Squarcione, he did in fact go to Venice right to Squarcione’s rival, Jacopo Bellini, who did indeed appreciate his work greatly.

            Dürer also painted trompe l’oeil flies, and he too soon became the hero of similar anecdotes. In his painting the Feast of the Rosegarlands a life-size fly has settled on the left knee of Mary.[56] (ill. 14) The work from the start was conceived in the spirit of competition; this German master then residing in Venice was competing not only with his Venetian colleagues, but was to a certain extent, if you will, “his own rival.” All this I believe is related to the trompe l’oeil fly. It is in part an expression of self-consciousness and is certainly connected to his self-portrait, which bears his proud signature (exegit quinque mestri spatio Albertus Durer Germanus MDVI). This connection was already registered by Johann König in 1609 in his portrait of Dürer in water-colour on parchment based on Dürer’s self-portrait in the Feast of the Rosegarlands. Instead of the signature there is a trompe l’oeil fly on the piece of paper held in the hand of the model.[57] (ill. 15) In the Feast of the Rosegarlands, the fly is also a reference to the Opus quinque dierum. It is like the trademark of detailed technique, careful execution – that which sets this altarpiece apart from his Christ among the Doctors, painted at the same time with speed and wide brushstrokes.[58] In their own way, both are proof of Dürer’s greatness. For experts, the fly in the Feast of the Rosegarlands alludes to the essential difference between his work carried out in “five months” versus “five days”.

            Two years later Christoph Scheurl, the first to mention the picture, called Dürer alter Apelles, and wrote that just as Zeuxis did the birds and Parrhasios Zeuxis, Dürer fooled his dog and the housekeeper: the former with his life-like self-portrait and the latter with a deceptively realistic painted spider-web.[59]

            I found one of the last versions of the anecdote under discussion in Colin Eisler’s 1991 book on Dürer’s animals.[60] Here we read twice that, according to Pliny, Apelles painted such true-to-life flies that everyone who saw them tried to shoo them away. We know that Apelles is considered the greatest Greek painter, famous primarily for his skill as a craftsman and for his ideas. In reality, however, just like Giotto, he never painted a trompe l’oeil fly. I believe the “secret”[61] of this forever-changing anecdote can be found in the workshop of Squarcione.

 

 

                                                                                                Translated by Lara Strong

 

Abstract

 

            We first come across flies painted to demonstrate the skilled craftsmanship of the artist in the works of Giovanni dei Grassi and the Limbourg brothers. The first such example I know of in a panel painting is in the painting of the Death of the Virgin, from the circle of the Master of the Albert altar (Esztergom, Christian Museum).

            Inspired by Pliny’s anecdotes, painting apprentices in Francesco Squarcione’s workshop in Padua in the 1460s, especially Giorgio Schiavone, painted trompe l’oeil flies to trick their fellow artists. Among others, humour, the romantic desire to revive antiquity, and the Aristotelian paradox that the ugly in art becomes beautiful also played a role. It was in this environment that Filarete’s anecdote in which Giotto fools Cimabue with a painted fly was first concocted. The anecdote is told in the context of the paragone. Trompe l’oeil flies and the glorification of painting are similarly joined in Derick Baegert’s painting of St Luke.

            The fly seen in Dürer’s Feast of the Rosegarlands is related both to Dürer’s self-portrait in the same painting and to the Opus quinque dierum.

            Anecdotes about flies so true-to-life as to deceive the viewer to this day survive in newer and newer versions, although the essence of these tales remains the same: the flies demonstrate the artist’s humour and his ability to imitate nature.

 

 

Published in: Acta Historiae Artium, 42/2001. 7-22.

 

 

Illustrations

1. Northern Italian illuminator: Border with insects. Last third of the 14^th century. London, British Museum, Add. MS. 28841, fol. 4

 

2. Giovannino dei Grassi: Creation of the world. End of the 14^th century.

Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Banco Rari 397/Landau-Finlay 22, fol. LF19

 

3. Workshop of Paul de Limbourg: St Paul the Evangelist on the Island of Patmos. Early 1410s.

Chantilly, Musée Condé, ms. 65, fol. 17

 

4. Follower of the Master of the Albert altar: Tryptich with the Deat of the Virgin. Around 1440.

Esztergom, Christian Museum

 

5. Petrus Christus: Portrait of a Carthusian. 1446.

New York, Metropolitan Museum, The Jules Bache Collection

 

6. Giorgio Schiavone: Madonna with child (center picture of polyptych). Around 1460.

London, National Gallery

 

7. Giorgio Schiavone: Madonna with child. Around 1460.

Torino, Galleria Sabauda

 

8. Giorgio Sciavone: Madonna with child and two angels. Around 1460.

Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery

 

9. Veneto-Paduan illuminator: First page of the Common of Saints. Around 1478-80.

Cambridge, MA, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS. Typ. 219H. fol. 484r

 

10. Paduan illuminator: King David. Second half of 15^th century

Bayonne, Musée Bonnat: Legs 1187

 

11. Bolognese master: Madonna with child. Around 1460-70.

Malibu, The Paul Getty Museum

 

12. Giovanni Santi: Man of Sorrows with two angels. End of the 15^th century

Budapest, Museum of Fine Arts

 

13. Derick Baegert: St Luke painting the Madonna. Between 1470-90

Münster, Westfälisches Landesmuseum

 

14. Unknown master: Feast of the Rosegarlands. Copy of Dürer’s painting of 1506 made around 1600.

Wien, Kunsthistorisches Museum

 

15. Johann König: Albrecht Dürer. 1609.

Florence, Uffizi