ABSTRACT
In 1534 Giorgio Vasari was commissioned by Ottaviano de’ Medici to paint a portrait of Lorenzo de’ Medici ‘the Magnificent’ for Ottaviano’s ward, Duke Alessandro de’ Medici. Alessandro was Lorenzo’s grandson or grand-nephew depending on the version of his parentage one chooses to accept. He was, in any event, the titular head of state in the recently restored – and precarious – Medici regime in Florence. Manifestly part of Medicean cultural politics, the portrait is a creaky piece of symbolic machinery. It is a masquerade of magnificence, using the imagery of masks to emblematize Lorenzo’s virtues. Vasari glossed the picture in an artfully written letter addressed to Alessandro – a letter contrived to prove his fluency in the visual and textual arts. This episode can be taken as paradigmatic of the multi-facetted connections between art and history and the relation of these two forms of representation to the dynamics of memory. It is particularly significant because of Vasari’s position as artist and biographer and of his Lives in the formation of the history of artists and of their arts. This essay examines the various histories contained in the portrait as a posthumous picture of Lorenzo, as a created and collected object, and as an archival subject. Such an approach allows for a consideration of the many facets and faces – the masks – of artwriting and its engagement with history from Vasari’s time to our own.
