The Renaissance of Anonymity

Abstract

IN 1559, POPE Paul IV published a new Index of banned books. In this document, all anonymous works are proscribed. This radical initiative led the print industry to find new strategies to sell its products, including the use of pseudonyms, initials, and other concealing devices. Paul IV’ sb an was a mighty yet unsuccessful attack on concealed authorship. Anonymity as a deliberate act of concealment on the part of the author, editor, or publisher has continued until the present day. Renaissance scholars encounter the anonymous in different contexts and genres: archival documents (manuscript and print), literature, music, and art. Despite this, scholars seldom question what anonymity is and how it matters to their research. The most common approaches to anonymity are to take Renaissance authorial concealment as an accident (in literature and music) or a default practice (in visual art) before the development of professional artistic figures, copyright laws, and celebrity. An unsigned painting from early fifteenth-century Italy is seen as a norm by Renaissance art historians, as most art works are without signatures and can therefore be categorized as anonymous but awaiting identification. When the modern scholar finally attributes the work as being, for example, from the workshop of Catena or Botticelli, anonymity is discarded, and modern values concerning its aesthetic, cultural, and monetary worth are concomitantly ascribed to it. In most cases where attribution of premodern works is not unequivocal to modern scholars, the works are provisionally classified as anonymous until their authorship is established; but for Renaissance viewers and patrons these works were not anonymous, or at least they were not thought of as such by the intended audience and users. As with secrecy, anonymity demarcates “exclusion, distinction and privilege” 1 : intentional