“Anticamente moderna et modernamente antica”: Imitation and the ideal in 16th-century Italian painting

Abstract

This essay examines the relationship between sixteenth-century critical texts that define the stylistic accomplishments of Renaissance painters and the evidence of the paintings themselves. Central to this relationship was the synthesis of past and present in the formation of a new style, where ancient visual models and theoretical principles were creatively blended with modern cultural ideals within an atmosphere of political and religious change. Two historical frescoes by the Florentine painter, Franceso Salviati (1510–1563) are discussed in detail along with selected passages from the texts of Giorgio Vasari, Franceso Bocchi, Antonfrancesco Doni, Ludovico Domenichi, and Giovan Battista Armenini, among others.