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

Abstract

REVIEWS 327 ingly) into the associated world of female visions, dreams, and prophesy. And yet, he resists addressing these closely allied spiritual phenomena, even when using the strictly visionary treatises of Gerson and Langenstein to make points about possession (171). This leaves the larger question of how an apparent decline in possessed men and women in the mid-seventeenth century affected visionaries and prophets unanswered. His evidence, however, seems to suggest that female visions and prophesy continued even though female possession became dangerous. Overall, Sluhovsky’s book is a step in the right direction. Scholars interested in visions, prophecies, and possession must not only attempt to explain the anxieties felt by religious and civil leaders about visionaries—especially female ones—but also give insight into why such forms of divine communication remained popular well into the early modern period, and beyond. ANDREW FOGLEMAN, History, University of Southern California Philip Sohm, The Artist Grows Old: The Aging of Art and Artists in Italy, 1500-1800 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press 2007) ix + 222 pp., ill. The phrase “Old Masters” is common parlance. When used, it calls to mind paintings by artists such as Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Titian, Vermeer, and Goya. But what if we were to read “Old Masters” simply as a description of elderly artists no longer in the prime of their lives? In The Artist Grows Old, Philip Sohm does just that: he delivers seven chapters based on the premise that aging or old artists paint differently than younger ones (7). As the author states in his introduction, “This book is a history of prejudices about old age” (1). It is not only about how bodies physically age, but also about how social codes construct ideas of age. The author’s reasons for writing the book are clearly outlined in the first pages. Sohm himself is an aging scholar, and the pressures and anxieties of aging have started to gnaw at him. The kinder sides of aging are not the subjects of this book, however: obsolescence, dysfunction, mania, gerontophobia, senescence, and narcissism are the main themes that Sohm addresses throughout his text. The book is divided into three sections (Psychology, Making Art in Old Age, and Historiography), and the “Old Masters” who worked in Italy, particularly Michelangelo, Nicolas Poussin, Titian, and Jacopo Pontormo, receive the most attention. For evidence, Sohm relies heavily on artists’ biographies or descriptions of artists (e.g., Vasari, Mancini, Baldinucci), economic lists (e.g., artists’ earnings), and artists’ journals. The visual works produced by the artists assume a secondary position despite the fact that the book is handsomely illustrated . Nevertheless, Sohm’s lengthy quotations from primary texts make this book a goldmine of information. Moreover, most of the quotations have been translated into English, which allows for an easy read of the text. The Italian quotations are relegated to the endnotes. Several shortcomings of the book must be addressed, but they do not notably impede the overall quality of the book. First, there is no bibliography, which makes it difficult to navigate through the endnotes. And secondly, Sohm claims to focus on the years between 1500 and 1800, although the majority of evidence and case studies antecede 1700. In his first section, Sohm claims that gerontophobia and anxiety of obsoles- REVIEWS 328 cence were constant fears for artists. He argues that artists were prone to these anxieties, since with old age artistic production declined, health often waned, and society, in general, expected the elderly to fail. As he clearly demonstrates, elderly artists were frequently accused of copying their own earlier (and better) works, thereby suggesting that in old age innovation and creativity were uncommon . Nevertheless, Sohm suggests that certain artists, such as Michelangelo , were exempt from this categorization and were used as foils for other artists in order to reaffirm the negative associations with old age. One particularly thought-provoking portion of this section deals with the notion of Narcissus growing old, which Sohm uses as the foundation for discussing the timeworn idiom “Every painter paints himself.” For me, the second section of the book is the strongest: in content, evidence, and readability. Sohm proposes that we rethink our conceptions about the later art...