ANEDDOTI VERI E/O VEROSIMILI NELLA PITTURA STORICIZZANTE DEL PRIMO OTTOCENTO: ARETINO FRA TIZIANO, TINTORETTO E TASSO

Abstract

Abstract
Nineteenth-century iconography of early modern writers and painters depends to a
large degree on anecdotes used as narrative devices to pictorially render the exceptional
stature of these creative persons. Focusing on portraits featuring Pietro Aretino,
Torquato Tasso, Titian and Tintoretto, the essay documents the sources of the
anecdotes used by painters like Ingres, Bergeret, Richard and Feuerbach in order to
assess the relevance of their documentary footing. While demonstrating that most of
the anecdotes are apocryphical inventions of early biographers or seventeenth-century
erudites, it highlights that some of the more peculiar legends on the contrary are
factual, specifically the anecdote on the bizarre death of Pietro Aretino by excessive
laughing informing the monumental canvas on this topic prepared in 1854 by Anselm
Feuerbach. Hence the essay concludes that ‘troubadour’ painting is less concerned
with historical evidence than with rhetorical credibility.