Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo’s Trattato dell’Arte della Pittura: Color, Perspective and Anatomy

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Barbara Tramelli’s Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo’s Trattato dell’Arte della Pittura: Color, Perspective and Anatomy investigates the context in which the writings of the painter Giovanni Lomazzo were produced, the types of theoretical and practical knowledge which they conveyed to artists and how painters in the second half of the sixteenth century shared this knowledge among themselves. In his books, Lomazzo drew on earlier and contemporary art literature, his own expertise as a painter, works of natural philosophy and his personal exchanges with contemporary artists, astrologers and ‘scientists’. Lomazzo and his work are placed in the context of the city where he operated and published, paying particular attention to the role of Milanese institutions as ‘spaces of interactions’ with colleagues and men of letters in which the material for his books was discussed and collected. Tramelli highlights three main areas of Lomazzo’s studies: color, perspective and anatomy, linking his theoretical discourse to what was known and discussed about these topics in Milan at the end of the sixteenth century.

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Preliminary Material
Pages: i–xii
1 The Artist and the Traveller
I Vari Caprizzi che Strani mi Venian: Lomazzo’s Education and Background
Pages: 17–36
2 Spaces and Institutions
Milan and the Arts: Spaces of Interaction, Spaces of Production
Pages: 37–62
3 Art and Grotesque
Lomazzo’s Connections with the Patron of the Blenio Academy Pirro Visconti Borromeo
Pages: 63–74
4 Lomazzo’s Colors
Pages: 85–127
5 Acutissima è La Prospettiva
Lomazzo’s Discourse on Perspective and his Connections with Contemporary Practitioners and Men of Science
Pages: 128–173
6 The Study of the Body
The Anatomical Discourse in Lomazzo’s Writings and Painters’ Learning of Anatomy in Milan
Pages: 174–210
General Conclusions
Pages: 211–218
Bibliography
Pages: 233–249
Index of Names
Pages: 250–253
Dr. Barbara Tramelli obtained her PhD in Art history at the Freie Universitaet in Berlin. She held fellowships from the Warburg Institute and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. She is currently working on the project ‘Le livre illustré à Lyon 1480-1600’, Equipex Biblissima, CNRS, Lyon.
"Barbara Tramelli’s Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo’s Trattato dell’Arte della Pittura: Color, Perspective and Anatomy successfully – and perhaps exhaustively – shows how much Lomazzo’s thinking about art is indebted to the scientific and literary cultures of sixteenth-century Milan.
- Joost Keizer (University of Groningen), History of Humanities (Spring 2018), 3:1: 223-224.

"One of the most important values of Tramelli’s book is that it makes Lomazzo’s broad and prolific writings available to non-Italian scholars, particularly the Trattato, the most widely read of his books, which Schlosser has recognized as the “Bible of Mannerism”. [...] Tramelli succeeds in making Lomazzo’s writing lighter and more intelligible, while articulating the topics in shorter paragraphs and highlighting and discussing the contradictions in the text."
Mauro Pavesi (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore), Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. LXXI , No. 1, pp. 237-239

"[the work] demonstrates intellectual honesty in providing an essential and consistent line of interpretation. It is a book that I have read with pleasure, as, in short, it is never discouraging the reader and making him feel inadequate: the difficulties of the reader are the same as those of the author, and she exposes her doubts with the utmost sincerity."
- Giovanni Mazzaferro, Letteratura artistica: Cross-cultural Studies in Art History Sources
Acknowledgements vii
Editorial Principles ix
List of Illustrations x

Introduction: Aims, Sources and Methodology 1

Part 1 Lomazzo and Milan
1 The Artist and the Traveller 17
2 Spaces and Institutions 37
3 Art and Grotesque 63

Part 2 Color, Perspective and Anatomy
The Treatise: A Short Introduction 77
4 Lomazzo’s Colors 85
5 Acutissima è La Prospettiva 128
6 The Study of the Body 174

General Conclusions 211

APPENDICES
1 Contract between Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo and Giulio Claro, Reggente in Milan, dated 1561 221
2 L’interogaçiglion ch’o s’han da fa dar gran Scanscieré pos ra gneregada a col ch’o vùr intrò in dra Vall de Bregn 223
3 Difinicione della tavola sopra detta 224
4 Straducc dra vall de Bregn 226
5 Inventory 24th January 1604, doc. B, notary Benedetto Coerezio, f. 20578 227
6 Inventory, 11th November 1611, Fondo Litta, carte 32 229
7 Libro III Del Colore (1584) 230
8 a. Paduan Manuscript (Merrifield, pp. 648–717), Ricette per fare ogni sorte di colori (Chap. I– De colori in generale, e di quali materie si componghino) 231
8 b. Lomazzo, IV chapter of III book of the Trattato, Quali siano le materie nelle quali si trovino i colori 231

Bibliography 233
Index of Names 250
This volume is of interest to a wide audience of art historians, historians of science and book historians alike.
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