Pictura and the Concept of Cognate Arts in Florence

The goal of this dissertation is to clarify the relationship between painting and sculpture in fifteenth-century Florence as one of interaction, and to observe the effects of this relationship in the sixteenth century. A crucial, and well-established, historical moment in this development occurred in the sixteenth century, when an official paragone, or comparison of the arts, was formulated by Benedetto Varchi: almost simultaneously an opposing idea was presented that saw the arts unified under the banner of design, or disegno. However, these two concepts can be fully understood only by also considering the meaning of the word pictura . Pictura developed as a theoretical term in the fifteenth century, particularly in the treatises by Alberti, where it described pictorial art in general, including relief sculpture. The meaning of the word changed in the sixteenth century, when Leonardo da Vinci gave pictura its modern meaning of painting on a two-dimensional surface. Long before Varchi explored the concepts of the paragone, Alberti spoke of picture-making (pictura) and sculpture in stone (sculptura) as cognate arts. It is Alberti's use of the word pictura that provides the most compelling arguments for its meaning as 'depiction,' not 'painting.' Supporting evidence is also found in other fifteenth-century documents, as well as in fifteenth-century practice. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, however, there had developed an acute awareness of the differences between painting and sculpture. At this time, with rare exception, artists were limiting their work to one or the other medium. Thus, with the concepts of pictura, disegno, and paragone in mind, this study attempts to do the following: to define pictura as it was used in the theoretical treatises of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, to show how the early Renaissance use of the word led to a basic understanding of painting and sculpture as unified arts, to support the idea of theoretical unity with examples of practical application, and to show how an understanding of the evolution of the meaning of pictura provides a framework for the sixteenth-century separation of painting and sculpture as part of the paragone debate.