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The Reading Images Project |
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The Reading Images Project |
Patronage
For most of western history, including during the Renaissance, works of art are rarely generated spontaneously by artists. Instead, patrons decide they want a work, seek out an artist that pleases them, and make a contract with him to produce the work. Such contracts as have survived from the Renaissance typically show patrons exercising considerable control over how images appear: the scale, materials, iconography, and occasionally even the style of works can be laid out in contracts.
The Patron
The function of the Stanza della Segnatura was to house the pope's private library; this use was not solely practical, however, for there were certain symbolic associations raised by Julius's private book collection. In general it served to establish the pope's humanist background and place him among the most educated men in western society, hence defining one of the qualities that legitimized his rule.
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Even more specifically, the existence of Julius's private
library suggested associations with the official Vatican
Library (or more properly the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana), which
had only been founded under Nicholas
V (ruled 1447-1455). It was then enlarged under Sixtus
IV (ruled 1471-1484), who was Julius's uncle; at the time Julius was
a Cardinal, and he assisted his uncle in reorganizing the collection.
As the full title of the library suggests, it was more than a collection
of books; its purpose was to enhance the Catholic faith. Manuscripts
on the Old Testament, Greco-Roman thought, and the non- classical traditions
(Egypt, Babylon, Persia), as well as Christian texts were acquired to represent
a broad range of human thought. With such a collection, the
library stood for the renewed evangelical vigor of the papacy in fifteenth-century
Rome.(5)
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Melozzo da Forlė, Sixtus IV Organizes the Vatican Library, 1475, Vatican Pinacoteca, 1477 (Sixtus IV is seated, right; the future Julius II is the central figure in the red robe). |
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