Discoveries are quite rare in art history. And quite rare also are books that ally erudition, acuity, methodological exemplariness, stylish writing, and just a touch of suspense. Vasari, Michelangelo and the “Allegory of Patience” is a book that requires the reader to follow patiently and carefully the unfolding of a plot that is, at the same time, a brilliant art historical essay. First, the book is a concise, subtle, and deft analysis, bringing into sharp focus one of the most important works by Giorgio Vasari: the Allegory of Patience, a canvas painted in 1551–52 for the bishop of Arezzo, Bernardetto Minerbetti, which recently reemerged (Klesh Collection, London). Second, Falciani retraces (very patiently) a whole network of intellectual relationships connecting—via the rediscovered original painting, and the sequence of all replicas and variants—Vasari to his friend and compatriot Minerbetti, to the divino Michelangelo, to the humanist Annibal Caro, and to the Ferrarese courtly and artistic milieu. But the author also follows the circulation of artistic and humanistic ideas between Florence, Arezzo, Ferrara, and Rome, which were adapted to respond to specific local intellectual needs.
To begin, certain points must be clarified. Two main reasons led the bishop to place this commission: first, to give form to his philosophy of life and, second, to possess (albeit indirectly) something made by Michelangelo. Indeed, like many others at that time (from Pietro Aretino to Bartolomeo Bettini), Minerbetti wished also to have a “Michelangelo relic,” a work in which the brush of his friend Vasari had given form to an invention by the divine artist.
Until now Patience (the prototype) has been identified with the canvas at Palazzo Pitti. As underlined by previous critical literature, too many iconographic and formal elements pointed to the gap separating style, iconography, and subject between Pitti's Patience (now ascribed to Ferrarese Bastianino and Camillo Filippi) and the painting that Vasari described in a letter sent to Minerbetti on 14 November 1551 (accompanied by a now-lost drawing). In fact, the allegory painted by Vasari for the bishop's palace in Florence is not Pitti's Patience; following Falciani's investigations, it is known to be the recently recovered canvas now in London. To complicate matters, the lost Vasari drawing and the two versions of Patience (London and Florence) served as origin for many replicas and variants produced for manifold reasons, in both Florence and Ferrara.
According to Falciani's investigation moment in which the puzzle broke into pieces was a dinner organized at Palazzo Minerbetti in Florence, likely at the very beginning of January 1553. It was on this occasion that Benedetto Varchi, Ippolito II d'Este, and Marcantonio Falconi, together with their host, discussed the notion of patience. Following the hypothetical reconstruction of facts, Minerbetti showed his friends both Vasari's description and the now-lost drawing of Patience, piquing the interest of Ippolito d'Este, since his brother, Duke Ercole II, had chosen “Patience” as his personal impresa. Fearing that he would be despoiled of Michelangelo's unprecedented invention, the bishop likely did not wish to unveil the painting hanging in the dinner room. Starting with this episode, Falciani succeeds in reconstructing the chain of events step by step, analyzing the epistolary exchanges between Minerbetti and the artist, the iconographic and formal shift from Vasari's description to the autograph Patience and Filippi's version, the divergences from one variant to another, and the presence or absence in the different artworks of the Diuturnia tollerantia motto, conceived by Annibal Caro specifically for Minerbetti. In following this line, Falciani gets the facts straight: as new evidence he not only reveals Vasari's prototype Patience and the unpublished artworks derived from it but also suggests, in the conclusion, a very interesting hypothesis about the form in which Michelangelo's invention appears today.
This book reshuffles the cards of “the whole question of the Allegory of Patience” and rearranges the complicated puzzle that has, until now, given art historians (including myself!) such a hard time.
