Tra Pietro Aretino e Giorgio Vasari: sfumature per una definizione di miniatura

Abstract

Between the end of the Fifteenth and the beginning of the Sixteenth century (as documented by the Pietro Summonte's Letter to Marcantonio Michiel and Michiel's descriptions of collections in Veneto and Lombardy), the art of books illumination entered the field of collecting interests; shortly thereafter, during the fourth decade of 15th century, the words miniatura and miniare enter in the literary lexicon with Pietro Aretino: in some letters he attributes a negative meaning to this art, considered as a slavish copy of the works of great masters (a practice that was attested by the sources for Giulio Campagnola). Elsewhere, Aretino means miniature as an art worthy of fame when he writes about Iacopo del Giallo, whose technique and skill he praises. With Giorgio Vasari, the art of illumination on parchment is one of the techniques worthy of being represented by biographies in his Vite. Vasari, in addition to formulating appreciations for this art in the past centuries, in different cases introduces the words miniare and miniatura as technical-stylistic definitions, independently from its traditional field of application, the painting on parchment. After Aretino and with Vasari a new perspective opens up in the appreciation of an art that, at the time of its decline, begins to represent a wider role (painting in small dimensions and minutissima) in the panorama of arts.