Renaissance Studies Vol. 20 No.

The Renaissance Original Article XXX 2006 UK 0269-1213 Renaissance study REST Ruvoldt Studies Oxford, The Society Ltd Blackwell Publishingfor Renaissance Studies, Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Maria carpets, collecting, inspiration, portraits, studiolo Key words:

Sacred to secular, east to west: the Renaissance study and strategies of display
Maria Ruvoldt

The emergence of the study, a private retreat for contemplation that also served as a public display of inner virtue and exquisite taste, has long been recognized as one of the most signicant developments in the Italian Renaissance interior.1 Indeed, the study is perhaps the quintessential Renaissance space. Designed to accommodate the secular scholarly pursuits associated with the rise of humanism, the study also served as a visible manifestation of the culture of consumption, housing leather-bound books, small bronzes, glass, medals and other collectibles.2 A room devoted to the exclusive use of one person, the study was a signature space in an age increasingly obsessed with the fashioning and presentation of the self. Whether the lavishly decorated studiolo of a prince, specially designed and constructed from oor to ceiling, or the more modest space carved out of a merchants home, the study functioned as an expression of the individual, revealing through its contents a sense of its owners ideal self.3 Correctly seen as a precursor of the kunst- and wunderkammer, the study was also an important transitional site from sacred to secular space. The most obvious parallels are the cells and scriptoria of monastic life with their devotional and scholarly functions, but the study signicantly inherited a tradition of display from churches, where the faithful might come to see not only relics and other objects of religious veneration, but also precious gems and wonders of the
I presented an earlier version of this paper at the symposium Novelty, Trade and Exchange in the Renaissance Interior, held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, June 2003. I am grateful to Marta Ajmar, Flora Dennis and Ann Matchette for the opportunity to participate and to all of the conferences contributors and attendees, in particular Rosamond Mack and Luke Syson, whose comments and queries helped develop this paper. 1 The essential histories of the study are Wolfgang Liebenwein, Studiolo: Die Entstehung eines Raumtyps und seine Entwicklung bis um 1600 (Berlin, 1977), which focuses primarily on the princely studiolo; and Dora Thornton, The Scholar in His Study: Ownership and Experience in Renaissance Italy (New Haven and London, 1997), which concentrates on the studies of the urban elite. I am deeply indebted to Thorntons book; although my focus on the inspirational and symbolic effects of the studys contents differs from hers, much of the evidence I employ derives from Thorntons work. 2 For the Renaissance culture of consumption, see Richard A. Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy 1300 1600 (Baltimore and London, 1993). 3 See Thornton, The Scholar in His Study, and Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting and Scientic Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley, 1994), esp. 293345.

2006 The Author Journal compilation 2006 The Society for Renaissance Studies, Blackwell Publishing Ltd

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natural world, such as crocodiles or ostrich eggs. The studies of Renaissance princes and merchants alike were furnished with objects that in previous generations had decorated and been displayed in churches. This paper will consider how this shift from sacred to secular intersected with Renaissance conceptions of scholarly identity. What can the secular appropriation of sacred decorative vocabulary and collecting practices tell us about Renaissance perceptions of scholarly identity? My aim is to examine the role that the objects collected and displayed in studies in particular those of non-European origin played in articulating and enhancing the experience of the scholarly self. In addition to displaying relics and naturalia, Early Renaissance churches had used Islamic rock crystal containers to house relics, attached Hispano-Moresque ceramics to their faades and laid Oriental carpets on their oors long before such luxury goods had become hallmarks of the fashionable scholarly interior.5 When these objects moved into domestic space, how did they contribute to the study and its purpose? And what does the Renaissance construction of the intellectual tell us in return about the meaning and functions of material objects? The migration of decorative strategies from the church to the private domestic sphere points to the privileged nature of the study. In the context of Renaissance domestic space, the study was a truly exceptional place, affording its occupant an unprecedented degree of privacy.6 As early as 1434, Leon Battista Alberti described the study as a sanctum sanctorum that only the head of household could enter. There, safe from the prying eyes of his servants and his wife, he could peruse his most precious possessions at leisure, treating his books and family documents almost like sacred and religious things.7 Later in the period, Juan Luis Vives advised aspiring scholars to begin any session of study with a prayer, in imitation of St Thomas Aquinas and many other holy men, acknowledging the sacred nature of even secular intellectual pursuits, and establishing the scholar-saints as exemplars.8 The religious genealogy of the study is made manifest in decorative programmes such as Luca della Robbias Labours of the Months, made for the study of Piero

See Giuseppe Olmi, Dal Teatro del mondo ai mondi inventariati. Aspetti e forme del collezionismo nellet moderna, in Gli Ufzi: Quattro secoli di una galleria. Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi (Firenze 20 24 settembre 1982), ed. Paola Barocchi and Giovanna Ragionieri, 2 vols. (Florence, 1983), Vol. 1, 23369; and Claudia Cieri Via, Il tema degli studioli nellinterpretazione del Rinascimento, in Renaissance: Diskursstrukturen und epistemologische Voraussetzungen, Literatur, Philosophie, Bildende Kunst, ed. Klaus W. Hempfer (Stuttgart, 1993), 17793. 5 See Rosamond E. Mack, Bazaar to Piazza: Islamic Trade and Italian Art 13001600 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2002), esp. 56 for religious display of Islamic artifacts. For East/West exchange, see also Lisa Jardine and Jerry Brotton, Global Interests: Renaissance Art Between East and West (London, 2000). 6 For the multi-purpose spaces of the Renaissance home, see Peter Thornton, The Italian Renaissance Interior 14001600 (London, 1991). 7 Leon Battista Alberti, I libri della famiglia, in Opere volgari, ed. Cecil Grayson, 3 vols. (Bari, 1960), Vol. 1, 219. 8 Juan Luis Vives, Vives: On Education, A Translation of the De Tradendis disciplinis of Juan Luis Vives, trans. Foster Watson (Cambridge, 1913), 276.

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deMedici. Della Robbias glazed terracotta roundels of agrarian labour not only bring the classicizing ideal of the pastoral into the urban palazzo, but also recall the decorative programmes of medieval churches and books of hours, enveloping the study in both antique and Christian references. Likewise, the illusionistic intarsias of Federigo da Montefeltros studioli at Urbino and Gubbio refer pointedly to the decoration of choir stalls and sacristies in both form and content.10 Granting pride of place to the personications of the theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity, the Urbino studiolos dcor in particular imbues Federigos worldly interests with a decidedly religious air. Decorative strategies such as these stress the studys continuity and compatibility with Christian precedents even as it becomes the site for the revival of classical culture. But they also signal a new conception of the life of the mind. Concurrent with the development of the study, we see the adoption of a new model of inspiration, rooted in Platonic philosophy and ltered through early Christian thought, that emphasized the irrational and emotional rapture of divine union. Traditionally reserved for the prophets and evangelists, the privilege of divine inspiration was extended to philosophers, poets and scholars through the efforts of Marsilio Ficino and his circle.11 Drawing on the Platonic theory of divine inspiration, Ficino proposed a new model for the acquisition of all types of knowledge, not just religious revelation, infused directly into the soul in moments of transcendence. He attributed the superior knowledge of philosophers and prophets alike to vacatio, a form of ecstasy in which the soul separates from the body to commune with the divine intelligence.12 The philosophers soul, Ficino claimed, called away [ . . . ] from its own body, is made in the highest degree both a neighbor to the divine and an instrument of the divine.13 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola likewise argued that, through study and contemplation, a scholar might nd union with God.14 Pico further suggested that his own studies were guided by a divine hand. Writing to Ficino, his most sympathetic audience, he credited his acquisition of certain books to Gods decision, and that of a certain divinity that favors my studies.15
For the study of Piero deMedici, see Liebenwein, Studiolo, 745; and Rab Hateld, Some Unknown Descriptions of the Medici Palace in 1459, Art Bulletin, 52 (1970), 23249. For the Della Robbia roundels, now preserved at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, see John Pope-Hennessy and R. W. Lightbown, Italian Sculpture in the Victoria and Albert Museum, 3 vols. (London, 1964), Vol. 1, 7048. 10 See Luciano Cheles, The Studiolo of Urbino: An Iconographic Investigation (Wiesbaden, 1986), esp. 546; and Olga Raggio, The Gubbio Studiolo and Its Conservation, 2 vols. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999), esp. Vol. 1, 10510, with extensive bibliography on Federigos studioli. 11 For Ficinos theory of divine inspiration, see Marsilio Ficino, The Letters of Marsilio Ficino, trans. Members of the Language Department of the School of Economic Science, 5 vols. (London, 19751994), Vol. 1, 423; idem, El libro dellAmore, ed. Sandra Niccoli (Florence, 1987). See also Paul Oskar Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, trans. Virginia Conant (Gloucester, MA, 1964). 12 For vacatio, see Marsilio Ficino, Thologie platonicienne de limmortalit des ames, ed. and trans. Raymond Marcel, 3 vols. (Paris, 19641970), Vol. 2, 214. 13 Marsilio Ficino, Three Books on Life, ed. and trans. Carol V. Kaske and John R. Clark (Binghamton, 1989), 123. 14 Anthony Grafton, Commerce with the Classics: Ancient Books and Renaissance Readers (Ann Arbor, 1997), 934. 15 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola to Marsilio Ficino, as cited by Grafton, Commerce with the Classics, 107.
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Not simply the stuff of high philosophical discourse, the image of the divinely inspired scholar meditating in his study was popular enough to merit parody. In 1506, Giovanni Filoteo Achillini offered a mocking description of a scholars study where, upon entrance, the human soul is immediately lled with the entity of a divine, magical spirit, which with its otherworldly and supernatural and metaphysical powers transports the mind in an ecstatic vision, which allows it complete and perfect knowledge of all things in this world and beyond.16 Such mystical transports, whether treated with Ficinos gravity or Achillinis irreverence, claimed for the secular intellectual the same status as that enjoyed by the inspired prophets, an elision of identity mirrored by the adoption of religious dcor in the study. The study and its dcor reect the faith that Ficino and his contemporaries put in the potential of spaces and objects to encourage and enhance the transformative experience of divine inspiration. In an oft-quoted passage, Niccol Machiavelli offers perhaps the most eloquent description of the studys metamorphic powers: When evening comes, I return home and go into my study. On the threshold, I strip off my muddy, sweaty, workday clothes and put on the robes of court and palace, and in this graver dress I enter the antique courts of the ancients and am welcomed by them, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, for which I was born. There I make bold to speak to them and ask the motives for their actions, and they, in their humanity, reply to me. And for the space of four hours I forget the world, remember no vexations, fear poverty no more, tremble no more at death: I pass into their world.17 Machiavellis communion with the ancients is precisely the kind of experience Ficino envisioned for the scholar/philosopher. Machiavelli speaks of pass[ing] into their world, as if he has truly been transported to another place. It is worthy of note that Machiavellis experience begins with a change of clothes. He prepares himself for intellectual communion by putting on the robes of court and palace, and thus attired enters not his study, but the antique courts of the ancients. His interior journey is mediated by his exterior garb. We should not imagine that Machiavelli was unique in such practices. The household expenses of Bernardo di Stoldo Rinieri, a fteenthcentury Florentine merchant, include 3 gold orins for a fur lining for a coat specically to wear in his study.18 Such a garment arguably did more than
Giovanni Filoteo Achillini, Epistole, in Claudio Franzoni, Le raccolte del Theatro di Ombrone e il viaggo in Oriente del pittore: Le Epistole di Giovanni Filoteo Achillini, Rivista di letteratura italiana, 8 (1990), 287 335. For this passage, see p. 312. 17 Niccol Machiavelli, The Literary Works of Machiavelli, ed. John Hale (Oxford, 1961), 139. 18 John Kent Lydecker, The Domestic Setting of the Arts in Renaissance Florence (unpublished Ph.D. diss., The Johns Hopkins University, 1987), 270.
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protect its owner from draughts; it would have conferred upon him a sense of dignity appropriate to his tasks in the study, and enhanced his imaginative retreat from the everyday. The almost magical power of a garment begins to suggest the role that material goods played in the workings of the study. Even those who could not afford an elaborate decorative programme could experience the study as a mystical space through the power of the objects it contained.19 The written evidence, ranging from inventories to literary fantasies of ideal studies, catalogues the seemingly innite variety of things to be found there.20 In 1532, Marcantonio Michiel visited the collector Andrea Odonis little study, where he saw carved tazze of porphyry, crystal and petried wood, vases of semi-precious stones, porcelain vases and bowls, [ . . . ] antique vases and medals and natural things, i.e. the crabs, shes, petried snakes, a dried chameleon, small rare seashells, crocodiles and strange sh.21 More than a decade later, the Venetian nobleman Gabriele Vendramin described the contents of his own little room, which included contemporary drawings and prints, antiquities, medals both ancient and modern, hardstone vessels and naturalia and curiosities including Animals horns and diverse other things [ . . . ] like the skull carved in the round on a very small cameo, and other things that it would take too long to relate.22 There is a remarkable consistency to the types of things considered appropriate for a study: in addition to books, treasures and wonders, both man-made and natural, formed the basis of private and princely collections alike and placed the study at a crucial moment in the history of collecting, looking back to the church and forward to the modern museum as sites of display.23 The collectibles that graced the study served several important complementary functions. At the most basic level, the display of a collection embellished the domestic space. Collecting was, as Dora Thornton points out, a form of interior decoration [ . . . ] not merely [ . . . ] an activity for its own sake.24 But it was interior decoration with a very specic aim: the objects displayed in a study were expressions of the self, material manifestations of the variety of
The concept of the study was exible enough to encompass not only a dedicated room, but its owners collection of objects. See the will of Jacopo Contareno: By the study I mean not only the room in which the books are to be found, but all those things contained in the four mezzanine rooms in which I ordinarily live. Cited by Thornton, The Scholar in His Study, 113. Emphasis added. 20 Thornton, The Scholar in His Study, makes masterful use of inventories and other documents to reconstruct and evaluate the signicance of the objects contained in Renaissance studies. 21 Marcantonio Michiel, Notizie di opere di disegno, ed. Jacopo Morelli (Bassano, 1880), 601. Translation from Venice: A Documentary History 14501630, ed. David Chambers and Brian Pullan with Jennifer Fletcher (Toronto, 2001), 425. 22 3 January 1548, from the acts of the notary A. Marsilio: Archivio di Stato, Venice, Archivio Notarile 1208, fol. 403, as cited and translated in Venice: A Documentary History, 428 9. 23 See Findlen, Possessing Nature; idem, The Museum: Its Classical Etymology and Renaissance Genealogy, Journal of the History of Collections, 1 (1989), 5978; and The Origins of Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe, ed. Oliver Impey and Arthur MacGregor (Oxford, 1985). 24 Thornton, The Scholar in His Study, 74. For modes of display, see 1015.
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their owners interests and, by extension, evidence of his virtue. In his Ricordi Fra Sabba da Castiglione suggests appropriate ornaments for a study, listing the items we now come to expect, including musical instruments, antiquities, gems, medals, arms, mirrors, and sculptures by Donatello and other accomplished artists, in addition to well-chosen books.26 The standardization of acceptable objects for display indicates that they functioned as attributes, signalling their owners membership in the class of learned collectors. Sabba goes on to urge gentlemen to select objects for their own studies according to the variety and diversity of their ingegni and fantasie.27 The studys occupant is thus transformed into a kind of artist, who shapes his own self-portrait through the careful selection of objects for display. But the function of the objects in the study went well beyond the merely decorative or symbolic. Sabba points out that antique coins provide a tangible connection to the great men of the past, musical instruments recall the harmony of the spheres, and mirrors reect the truth.28 It seems plausible that, just as a change of clothes signalled the transition from one world to another, the objects collected in a study were meant to serve as aids to contemplation, enhancing the consideration of ancient texts. In a culture accustomed to using images in religious practice to focus the mind and intensify fervour, these objects would have functioned as the secular equivalents of devotional images.29 It is possible to apply the Renaissance paragone of painting and poetry to the contents of the study. Although artists were more likely than writers to promote the supremacy of painting, the Ferrarese humanist Lelio Giraldi nevertheless admitted that images may present the forms of things more clearly and more truthfully than letters do.30 This assessment of the power of images might easily extend to the small collectibles housed in the study. These precious objects were meant not only to be gazed
See Luke Syson and Dora Thornton, Objects of Virtue: Art in Renaissance Italy (Los Angeles, 2001), esp. 1236. Of course anyone with the means to do so could accumulate and display the standard objects, regardless of his own virtue. See Sabba da Castiglione, Ricordi, overo ammaestramenti di Monsignor Sabba Castiglione Cavalier Gierosolimitano, ne quali con prudenti, e Christiani discorsi si ragiona di tutte le materie honorate, che si ricercano a un vero gentilhuomo (Venice, 1562), fol. 118r-v, for a critique of an ignorant collector passionately attached to ancient coins depicting villainous men. 26 Sabba, Ricordi, fol. 114r. 27 Ibid. 28 Sabba, Ricordi, fol. 119r-v. For mirrors in studies, see also Findlen, Possessing Nature, 298303; and Thornton, Scholar in His Study, 16774. 29 Stephen Campbell has demonstrated how the unique conditions of viewing and interpretation created by studiolo culture aid in reading enigmatic pictures. See Stephen J. Campbell, Mantegnas Parnassus: Reading, Collecting and the Studiolo, in Revaluing Renaissance Art, ed. Gabriele Neher and Rupert Shepherd (Aldershot, 2000), 69 87; and idem, Giorgiones Tempest, Studiolo Culture and the Renaissance Lucretius, Renaissance Quarterly, 56 (2003), 299332. For the sleeping female nude as a secular devotional image, see Maria Ruvoldt, The Italian Renaissance Imagery of Inspiration: Metaphors of Sex, Sleep, and Dreams (Cambridge, 2004), 86 121. 30 Lelio Giraldi, Progymnasma adversus litteras et litteratos, 333, as cited by Campbell, Giorgiones Tempest, 302, n. 9, with reference to Franco Bacchelli, Science, Cosmology, and Religion in Ferrara, 15201550, in Dossos Fate: Painting and Court Culture in Renaissance Italy, ed. Luisa Ciammitti, Steven F. Ostrow, and Salvatore Settis (Los Angeles, 1998), 33354.
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Fig. 1

Sandro Botticelli, Saint Augustine. Florence, Chiesa di Ognissanti. (photo: Scala/Art Resource, NY)

at, but to be handled and meditated upon in a very intimate way. The humanist Paolo Manuzio described the effects of looking intently at antiquities: one gathers in the mind as much knowledge in a short span of hours as one does after years of reading Livy and Polybius, and all the ancient historians together.31 As a mode of viewing, this kind of concentrated attention relates to the assiduous contemplation Ficino recommends to free the soul for divine union.32 Written sources offer an incredibly rich resource to interpret the study and its signicance. But we can also trace the uidity of the boundaries between sacred and secular in a host of images depicting the scholar-saints at work in their studies. The pendant images of St Augustine and St Jerome by Sandro Botticelli and Domenico Ghirlandaio, respectively (Figs. 1 and 2), belong to
Paolo Manuzio, Lettere volgari (Venice, 1560), fols. 72r-v, as cited by Campbell, Giorgiones Tempest, 303 4, with reference to Monika Schmitter, The Display of Distinction: Art Collecting and Social Status in Early Sixteenth Century Venice (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, The University of Michigan, 1997). 32 See Ficino, Three Books on Life.
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Fig. 2

Domenico Ghirlandaio, Saint Jerome. Florence, Chiesa di Ognissanti. (photo: Scala/Art Resource, NY)

a tradition that situates the early Christian saints in the contemporary space of the study.33 Although these are images of saints created for display in a church, they speak the language of the contemporary domestic interior. Both saints work in well-equipped studies, provided with slanted writing desks, ledges for the display of books and other ornaments that testify to their scholarly interests. St Augustine possesses an armillary sphere, a clock, and a treatise on geometry in addition to his quill pen and bejewelled bishops mitre. St Jeromes study features all of the necessary tools for his work as a writer and translator, including inkwells for black and red ink, texts in Greek and Hebrew, spectacles, and scissors. But the collection of objects gathered around the uppermost ledge of his chamber does not bear the symbolic weight of Augustines possessions. Instead, Jeromes study is that of
See Eugene Rice, Saint Jerome in the Renaissance (Baltimore and London, 1985); Claudia Cieri Via, Il tema degli studioli; and Penny Howell Jolly, Antonello da Messinas Saint Jerome in His Study: An Iconographical Analysis, Art Bulletin, 65 (1983), 23853.
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a collector, embellished with maiolica albarelli, a crystal vase half lled with water, and citrus fruits, anticipating by almost a century Rafaello Borghinis description of Bernardo Vecchiettis study, which contained, among other things, vases of porcelain and crystal, fruits, [ . . . ] and distilled water.34 Gracing Jeromes tabletop is a ne Turkish carpet, its pattern lovingly described by Ghirlandaio, an example of the type of new and rare thing [ . . . ] from Turkey that would eventually also adorn Vecchiettis study and others like it.35 In addition to delighting the eye, such objects may have served a practical purpose. Jerome rests his head on his hand in the conventional pose of melancholic meditation, suggesting that his study may reect Ficinos recommendation to alleviate the ill-effects of melancholy with pleasant smells [ . . . ] the leaves of the citron or of the orange, and fragrant fruits.36 Ficinos text further suggests why crystal vases of water would be desirable in the study, promoting the frequent viewing of shining water for its restorative effects on the eye.37 Laced with suggestions for appropriate visual stimulants to temper melancholia and encourage contemplation, such as mirrors, generous doses of the colour green and views of landscapes, Ficinos text might easily have served as a handbook for scholarly dcor. Contemporary accounts of the environs of the study lead us to expect precisely the kind of display we nd in images of the scholar-saints. But these images are exceptional as visual documents. With the notable exception of author-portraits in manuscripts and books, the pictorial evidence in Italian art does not match the written record of the wealth of objects characteristic of the study.38 It is only in the most informal renderings, such as a series of sketches by Vittore Carpaccio or Lorenzo Lottos sketch of a cleric in his bedchamber (Fig. 3), that we get a sense of the abundance that characterized the study. The very informality of such images grants them a liveliness and verisimilitude that idealized depictions of saints in their studies cannot approach, even if the contents of St Jeromes study are mercifully legible. Instead, formal presentations of men of scholarly aspiration emphasize modesty and sobriety, with a few choice objects serving as signs of the range of an individuals interests. It is possible to identify a portrait type for the man of letters, in which he appears in half- or three-quarter length, soberly but expensively dressed, seated or standing near a table which holds the
Raffaello Borghini, Il Riposo [1584], 3 vols. (Milan, 1807), Vol. 1, 1516. Ibid., Vol. 1, 15. 36 Ficino, Three Books on Life, 135. Jeromes pose and the objects in his study clearly reect the inuence of the Saint Jerome (Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts) from the workshop of Jan van Eyck, which belonged to Piero deMedici and inspired many Italian imitations. See Annarosa Garzelli, Sulla fortuna del Gerolamo mediceo del van Eyck nellarte orentina del Quattrocento, in Scritti di storia dellarte in onore di Roberto Salvini, ed. Cristina De Benedictis (Florence, 1984), 34753. 37 Ficino, Three Books on Life, 135. 38 See Garzelli, Sulla fortuna del Gerolamo. We have to look to Northern examples, such as Hans Holbeins Ambassadors (London, National Gallery), to see the visual equivalent of the kind of display the inventories and other sources lead us to expect.
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Fig. 3 Lorenzo Lotto, An ecclesiastic in his bedchamber. London, The British Museum. (photo: The Trustees of the British Museum)

objects that function as his attributes (for example, Figs. 4 to 7). Considering the variety of things a study might contain, the relatively limited repertoire of objects that appear in portraits is somewhat surprising, but nevertheless an effective means to convey the key elements of identity. Books or papers of some sort are absolutely essential, demonstrating literacy, engagement with the outside world in the form of correspondence, and, in the case of Pierfrancesco Foschis portrait of Cardinal Antonio Pucci (Fig. 4), a taste for expensive bookbinding. Small bronzes, such as Puccis inkstand replica of the Spinario, or antique coins and medals indicate an interest in classical antiquity, and hint at a larger collection. Limiting the number of items on display negotiates the difcult terrain between virtuous collecting and the vice of materialism. As Stephen Campbell has demonstrated, the culture of collecting ran contrary to a long-standing humanist polemic against the vanity of any profession of virtue or distinction through the ownership of things.39 Moretto da Brescias portrait of a young man (Fig. 6) suggests the very ne line that aspiring intellectuals had to tread between virtuous display and vulgar excess. Resting his head on his hand in the conventional posture of melancholic meditation, Morettos young man gazes longingly into the distance, the Greek motto on his hat
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Campbell, Giorgiones Tempest, 303. See also Syson and Thornton, Objects of Virtue, 2336.

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Fig. 4

Pierfrancesco Foschi, Cardinal Antonio Pucci. Florence, Galleria Corsini. (photo: Scala/Art Resource, NY)

badge declaring both his erudition and his dilemma: Alas, I desire too much.40 Set off by a sumptuous drape, his fur-lined velvet coat, rich satin sleeves, silken study cushions and crushed velvet chair threaten to overwhelm the scattering of ancient coins and antique-inspired bronze oil lamp on his table, the attributes that signal his interest in classical antiquity. The attention lavished on the description of his garments testies not only to his wealth and taste, but to the nobility of his intellectual pursuits. But his languid pose, expression of ennui, and motto suggest the perils of excess meditation as well. Ficino warns aspiring scholars that they may be overcome by melancholy: the more they apply their mind to incorporeal truth, the more they are compelled to disjoin it from the body. Hence their body is often rendered as if it were half-alive.41 Among the characteristic accoutrements of the study we see in these portraits are prominently displayed table carpets.42 In her important study
See Nicholas Penny, National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings, Volume I: Paintings from Bergamo, Brescia and Cremona (London, 2004), 17281. 41 Ficino, Three Books on Life, 115. 42 The motif of the carpet-covered table may originate with Sebastiano del Piombos portrait of Ferry Carondelet with Two Companions (Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza). See Elizabeth Pilliod, In tempore poenitentiae: Pierfrancesco Foschis Portrait of Cardinal Antonio Pucci, The Burlington Magazine, 130 (1988), 679 87.
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Fig. 5 North Italian, The Protonotary Apostolic Giovanni Giuliano. London, The National Gallery. (photo: 2000 The National Gallery, London)

of Islamic trade and Italian art, Rosamond Mack charts the history of the Oriental carpet in Italian paintings, from its initial appearance in the early fourteenth century to its peak during the rst quarter of the sixteenth century, tracing the migration of the carpet from the oor to the tabletop and from sacred to secular contexts.43 She demonstrates the role that carpets play as signiers of status, whether denoting the exalted realm of the divine or the material wealth of a patrician family. The appearance of a ne table carpet in a portrait signals the sitters afuence as clearly as his fur-lined cloak or precious antiquities, and carpets are a recurring feature in this type of portrait. Carpet historians have been able to learn much from paintings about the types of carpets that were available to Italian Renaissance consumers, including their countries of origin and uses, but their efforts understandably have been focused on carpets as objects in trade and practical issues of their
Mack uses the term Oriental to reect the Renaissance perception of the origin of these goods: [Renaissance] Italians understood little about the different geographic and artistic origins of the foreign objects they admired. In the contemporary context, therefore, the term Oriental for all the art objects coming to the Italian market from Islamic lands and Asia continues to have some merit because of its imprecision. Mack, Bazaar to Piazza, 1.
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Fig. 6 Moretto da Brescia, Portrait of a young man (Count Fortunato Martinengo Cesaresco?). London, The National Gallery. (photo: The National Gallery, London)

use and display.44 My intention is to put aside the distinctions that can be drawn between types of carpets and approach them instead as a category of object. As a recurring presence in portraits of men of letters, what symbolic value do Oriental carpets carry? First and foremost, of course, these carpets are luxury goods, tangible signs of wealth. They complement the expensive clothing, ne furniture, and precious collectibles featured alongside them. By placing the luxurious carpet at a slight remove from the body, they help the sitter achieve the ideal balance of sumptuousness and sobriety that collectors admired. On the symbolic level, carpets may function in much the same way as the other objects in a portrait do, as signs both of a particular interest and
Julian Raby, Exotica from Islam, in The Origins of Museums, 25158; Julian Raby, Court and Export: Part 1. Market Demands in Ottoman Carpets 14501550, in Oriental Carpet and Textile Studies II: Carpets of the Mediterranean Countries 1400 1600, ed. Robert Pinner and Walter B. Denny (London, 1986), 29 38; John Mills, Near Eastern Carpets in Italian Paintings, in ibid., 10921; Michael Rogers, Carpets in the Mediterranean Countries 1450 1550: Some Historical Observations, in ibid., 1328; John Mills, Carpets in Pictures: Themes and Painters in the National Gallery, Ser. 2, No. 1 (London, 1975); and John Mills, The Coming of the Carpet to the West, in The Eastern Carpet in the Western World from the Fifteenth to the Twentieth Century, exh. cat. Hayward Gallery, London 20 May10 July 1983, selected and arranged by Donald King and David Sylvester (London, 1983), 1123.
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Fig. 7 Dosso Dossi, Potrait of a Gentleman. Rome, Galleria Nazionale dArte Antica. (photo: Alinari/Art Resource, NY)

potentially of a larger collection. Just as bronze inkstands and oil lamps stand for antique things, might carpets not signal Oriental things? A single book or a handful of coins surely hints at other treasures, might a carpet do the same? We know from the written evidence that objects of Eastern origin were collected and displayed in studies along with antiquities and other valuables. Sabba discusses those who adorn their rooms with all sorts of [ . . . ] new, fantastic, and bizarre but ingenious things from the Levant, including tapetti turcheschi, and spalliere barbareschi, praising such ornaments as demonstrations of ingenuity and civility.45 In his own study, one of his most prized possessions was an antique Oriental alabaster urn, which he lovingly claims is the nest example of its type he has ever seen and, he assures us, he has seen molti.46 The collector Gabriele Vendramin enumerates the many [ . . . ] works in metal, damascened that his study contained,47 and Rafaello Borghini describes one study that contains so many new and rare things from India and Turkey that whoever sees them is amazed, and another that
Sabba, Ricordi, 119v. Ibid. As cited in Venice: A Documentary History, 428. Whether or not Vendramins metal goods were of Oriental origin is impossible to say, but at the very least, damascening was an emulation of Eastern style.
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houses Oriental metalwork, including knives and scimitars.48 Even the inventory of the artist Sodomas studio mentions many Turkish things.49 Whether a merchants souvenirs from Constantinople, an antiquarians prized alabaster urn, a condottieres damascened weapon or a connoisseurs ne carpet, objects from the East were just as integral to the study as were antiquities and books. Rarity was of paramount value in choosing objects for a study, a criterion that Eastern objects, and carpets in particular, could easily meet. In the Book of the Courtier, Baldassare Castiglione praised Federigo da Montefeltro for furnishing his palace not only with what is customary [ . . . ] but for ornament he added countless ancient statues [ . . . ] rare paintings, and musical instruments of every sort; nor did he wish to have anything there that was not the most rare and excellent.50 Though only a self-described poor cavaliere, Sabba maintained the very same standard for his own study, recording in detail the exemplary objects in his collection, and passing over in tactful silence those things that did not match the dignity and excellence of his showpieces.51 Such high standards for display are in keeping with Leon Battista Albertis advice that a home should provide a spiritual atmosphere appropriate to [its owners] highest activities.52 The acquisition and display of ne objects gave visible form to the nobility of a studys purpose, and the presence of unique and outstanding things created a rareed atmosphere that must have encouraged contemplation. Perhaps the single most expensive import from the East, carpets were difcult to come by, and would have demonstrated their owners ability to obtain the most rare and excellent ornament for his home. Displayed proudly in portraits alongside the remains of classical antiquity, carpets enhanced the sitters identity as a connoisseur and collector. Many of the Eastern artefacts kept in studies had, as mentioned above, found homes earlier in churches. Together with the tradition of using carpets to denote sacred or otherwise privileged space, this suggests that Eastern objects, and carpets in particular, would have carried sacred associations that would have tted in quite nicely with the other aspects of display that claim religious heritage for the study and divinely inspired status for its owner. The formula of carpet-covered table in the foreground of a portrait certainly echoes precedents in religious painting, inserting the scholar into an established tradition where the carpet signies an ideal realm, an apt denition of the study itself (Figs. 4 and 5). This raises the question of whether Oriental carpets were perceived as prayer rugs by their Italian owners. Rosamond Mack points out that we do
Raffaello Borghini, Il Riposo [1584], 3 vols. (Milan, 1807), 1:15. For Sodomas inventory, see Claudio Franzoni, Rimembranze dinnite cose: Le collezioni rinascimentali di antichit, in Memoria dellantico nellarte italiana, ed. Salvatore Settis, 2 vols. (Turin, 1984), Vol. 1, 299360. For Eastern artefacts in the study, see also Thornton, The Scholar in His Study, 7882. 50 Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, trans. Charles S. Singleton (New York, 1959), 1314. 51 Sabba, Ricordi, fol. 119v. 52 Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand for Art, 224.
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not know if these carpets had religious meaning for Renaissance consumers, but the term mosque carpet does appear frequently in sixteenth-century inventories, suggesting an awareness of this aspect of a carpets use.53 While I would not argue that the sitters in these portraits mean to ally themselves in any meaningful way with the beliefs and practices of Islam, it does seem possible that the carpets function as a tool for prayer might have had resonance for the study as a site of contemplation. The carpet and other Eastern goods would also carry the allure of the East, perhaps providing, just as Machiavellis robes did, an imaginary gateway to a distant and exotic locale. The imported ceramics, metalwork, leather bookbinding and other Eastern goods that graced the study soon generated Italian imitations and adaptations, and were ultimately replaced by items of Italian manufacture. But, unlike their counterparts in Flanders, Spain, and England, Italian craftsmen did not endeavour to imitate Oriental carpets. Other goods, as Deborah Howard recently observed, might have lost their specic connection to the time and place of manufacture, but carpets escaped this fate.54 They retained a foreign identity and authenticity that must have contributed to their value. In sacred contexts, carpets with an Oriental pedigree functioned as signs of the Holy Land, as tangible connections to the Churchs origins in the East. How might foreignness and authenticity function in the secular interior? I would suggest that, just as carpets signalled the religious heritage of Christianity in churches, they also might have served to signify the secular intellectual heritage of Renaissance scholars in studies. The intellectual foundations of Renaissance humanism owed a great deal to the Arab tradition. Largely through Arabic translations and commentaries, the corpus of Aristotles works was preserved and, through Latin translations in the early modern period, re-entered the Western tradition.55 The philosophers Avicenna and Averroes, commentators on Aristotle, were touchstones for Renaissance humanists, and helped to shape not only understanding of the Greek philosopher, but also growing interest in the sciences at large. Arabic sources inuenced medicine and mathematics, as well as the more experimental side of Renaissance philosophy, encompassing alchemy and astrology, and such beliefs as the world soul or afnities among celestial bodies.56 Renaissance scholarship was marked by a sustained interest in the intellectual heritage of the East as a complement to the Latin tradition. Ficino frequently cited the authority of Arabic sources, often generically, and referred to Avicenna as Avicennam nostrum, an honoric title that mirrors his use of Plato noster.57
Rosamond Mack, Lotto: A Carpet Connoisseur, in Lorenzo Lotto: Rediscovered Master of the Renaissance, ed. David Alan Brown, Peter Humfrey, and Mauro Lucco (Washington, DC, New Haven and London, 1997), 5967. 54 Deborah Howard, Venice and the East: The Impact of the Islamic World on Venetian Architecture (New Haven, 2000), 60. 55 See Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and Its Sources, ed. Michael Mooney (New York, 1979). 56 Ibid., 60. 57 Ficino, Three Books on Life, 222.
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In 1487, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola journeyed to Rome to offer public lectures on 900 theses, among them that the sages of ancient Persia and Egypt [ . . . ] had grasped and taught the basic truths of Christianity.58 Picos primary source was the Corpus Hermeticum, a pseudo-Egyptian text that was tremendously popular among Renaissance Neoplatonists. His devotion to Eastern sources was exemplary, leading him to study Arabic so that he might read the Koran in the original. His intellectual interests manifested themselves in both the contents and the dcor of his remarkable library, which contained over 1,100 books, including 124 in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic and was adorned with frescoes by Cosimo Tura depicting a series of uomini famosi that included Zoroaster, shown in Persian dress.59 Nor was Pico the rst to assert the signicance of the Eastern tradition and its compatibility with Christian thought. In 1460, Nicholas Cusanus had written his Scrutiny of the Koran, an attempt to demonstrate the compatibility of the Christian and Islamic faiths.60 Intended to persuade the sultan to convert, the Scrutinys agenda was far from innocent, but its careful examination of Eastern thought reects a larger tradition of, at the very least, respectful consideration. It is possible to see the popularity of Mamluk-style bookbindings, damascened metalwork, and other Oriental goods through the lens of this appreciation of Eastern culture, as a means of declaring allegiance to, or at least awareness of, an intellectual tradition that had preserved the knowledge of classical antiquity and contributed insights of its own to the study of the natural world. Just as antiquities gave the scholar a tangible connection to the classical past, Eastern artefacts may have served to remind him of, in Picos words, the rm and stable Averroes, the profound and well-considered Alfarabi, and the divine and Platonic Avicenna.61 In the portraits gathered here, just a few token items a book, a small bronze, a carpet convey the range of interests encompassed by the study, whether real or imagined. Dressed in ne clothes, the sitters often lay a hand on their possessions while looking off into the distance, their gazes indicative of deep thought, their gestures of proud ownership. There is a play between the touch of the hand and the faraway look that speaks of the role that these objects played in the interior lives of their owners. Just as the scholar-saints inhabit ideal, imagined spaces, so too do the spaces in these portraits reect an idealization of the study. It is presented as a state of mind, even more than as a place. Each of the artists represented here, though working in his own
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Opera omnia (Basel, 1572), reprinted as Opera Omnia, ed. Eugenio Garin (Turin, 1971), Vol. 1, 63 113, as cited by Grafton, Commerce with the Classics, 93. 59 Lilio Gregorio Giraldi, Historiae poetarum tam Graecorum quam Latinorum dialogi decem, Operum quae extant omnium tomus secundus (Basel, 1580), 59, as cited by Grafton, Commerce with the Classics, 101. 60 Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance, 2nd ed. (New York, 1968), p. 228 n. 33. 61 Among the Arabs there is in Avveros something rm and stable [ . . . ] in Alfarabi something profound and well considered, in Avicenna, something divine and Platonic. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Discorso sulla dignit delluomo, ed. Giuseppe Tognon, trans. Eugenio Garin (Brescia, 1987), 3840, as cited by Grafton, Commerce with the Classics, 99.
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pictorial idiom, nevertheless depicts his sitter in a tightly compressed space with a window, often affording a distant landscape view, the table displaying his treasures pressed up against the picture plane, simultaneously making its contents visible to the viewer and preventing access to the sitter, as if to assert his presence in a world separate from our own. As the ranks of the divinely inspired grew to include not only the prophets and evangelists but philosophers, poets, and scholars, these secular individuals borrowed decorative formulas from sacred contexts to assert the privileged nature of their own activities, treating the remains of classical antiquity and traces of the East with the same reverence accorded to holy relics, and, I would argue, attributing to them similar powers of intercession and communion with another world. The decorative strategies employed in the Renaissance study speak of the complex heritage of humanism, rooted in Classical, Christian, and Eastern traditions. Through the acquisition and display of carefully selected, rare and excellent objects, the owner of the study whether truly a scholar or merely an aspiring intellectual is located at the crossroads of the sacred and the secular, of East and West. Cooper-Hewitt Museum, Masters Program