The Artist Grows Old: The Aging of Art and Artists in Italy 1500–1800 (review)

It is generally accepted that Mannerism, the last artistic phase of the Italian Renaissance, coincided with and witnessed the physical decline of some among its greatest artists (Michelangelo and Titian among others); the stylistic decline from the perfection reached by Leonardo, Raphael, and the younger Michelangelo; and a general decline of the period, seen as an all-encompassing term for a whole civilization, with the concomitant loss for Italy of cultural supremacy and political independence.

Now, should personal old age, general stylistic decline, and the waning of the Italian Renaissance be seen as independent entities that just happened to occur by chance at the same time? Or, as the author implies, could old age be the cause of artistic decline, and this in turn the cause for the general collapse of a whole civilization? This, in short, is what the book is about, as it strives to clinch together into a coherent thesis a wealth of data that, in the last resort, does not sustain a convincing argument. Well-written and filled to the brim with anecdotal information, the book has one fundamental defect: it extenuatingly strives to demonstrate something that does not call for a demonstration, namely, that old age, be it lived or perceived, more often than not is a wretched time. One does not need a hundred pages of solid text, plus copious footnotes, to be told, over and over again, that with the passage of time bodies, of painters and of others, lose their pristine agility, beauty, and functionality, and that physical decline and loss of memory and of curiosity, joined to a retreat into the self, are quite common symptoms of old age; or that, for any activity that requires a perfect coordination between mind and body —and this is as valid for a brain surgeon as well as for Titian —the loss of eyesight or the ravages brought by Parkinson's disease, as in the case of Poussin, can indeed damage and give a distorted finale to a long, wonderful career. It is well-known that Renaissance culture (this is also true for previous or later periods) saw and understood life and human affairs in a cyclical, biological model: youth, maturity, and old age, or, rise, apogee, and decline, defined the common fate of everybody and everything. (It is precisely in this way that Machiavelli and Vico theorized history and civilization.) What was new, and not discussed enough in the book, is that the physical and artistic fall from grace of some painters and sculptors did coincide, around 1550, with a collapse, historical, cultural, and economical, that involved the whole peninsula, not just the production of art. As it stands, even its title becomes rather misleading, since, by and large, the book takes into consideration all visual arts but, more specifically, only Renaissance or early Baroque painters that lived and worked well before 1800.

A generous introduction and a chapter centered on gerontophobia is followed by a discussion of how painters, all of them a bunch of narcissists, only managed to paint themselves, as Cosimo il Vecchio said (and this well before the more famous "madame Bovary c'ést moi"). Excursions such as that on the "interplay of love-making and art-making" (43) spice up a text that forcefully glides into case histories. All the biggies are here, all of them ancient and all of them, if we trust their contemporaries, suffering from old age and its corollary: a style that in its decline is a visible proof of physical and mental decrepitude. All are cantankerous, mean, avaricious, and less than pleasant. Michelangelo, the perennial hypochondriac, together with Pontormo, receive special treatment. One feels, however, that the author uses examples that have been handpicked to fit too well into a cliché and a thesis that seems preconceived. Let's face it: a dinner party with Michelangelo, even...