Vasari and the Rhetoric of Decorum

In writing about “decorum” in Vasari’s literary works one is at risk of pre-determining the linguistic scope of the investigation. If one decides that a particular word—decoro for example—denotes what Vasari wants to say about “decorum,” then the inquiry will be brief. Vasari uses the term sparingly in his Lives. ¹ Close study of how notions of “decorum” arose in ancient Greek, Roman, medieval, and Renaissance cultures reveals that in each period a semantic field of terms was present, and not a single dominant word. Some historians of “decorum” have misguidedly singled out “key” terms, such as to prepon (the appropriate) in Greek texts, decorum in Latin ones, and convenevolezza in medieval and Renaissance Italian literature. ² Cicero’s favoring of to prepon as being synonymous with decorum served to perpetuate a limited range of terms. ³ But we know that in the English Renaissance, for instance, a broad range of words applied. George Puttenham’s The Arte of English Poesie (1589) cited as synonyms “decency,” “discretion,” “seemliness,” “comeliness,” “agreeableness,” “seasonableness,” “well-temperedness,” “good grace,” “conformity,” “proportion,” “conveniency,” “good approach,” and “reverence.” ⁴