Confraternal Roots of the Sacred Rhetoric of the Painters of the Sistine Chapel?

• In Event: The Visual and the Viewer in the Sistine Chapel

Abstract

This paper considers the artists of the Sistine Chapel as theologians in their own right. All of the chapel’s painters, including the Umbrian Perugino, had frequented, and indeed, were nurtured, in workshops that reflected a practice articulated in Leon Battista Alberti’s book on the artist’s craft where he remarked that “artists should associate with poets and orators, who have many embellishments in common with painters and who will be of great assistance in preparing the composition of istoria” (Alberti ed. Spencer). This does not imply that artists should slavishly convert written or verbal instructions into paint, marble, stone, bronze, or cloth. The paper argues that painters themselves had been inducted into the skills of sacred oratory as members of youth confraternities in Florence.

Author

• Peter F. Howard, Monash University