Maso Finiguerra
Encyclopedia
Maso Tommasoii Finiguerra (1426–1464) was an Italian
goldsmith
, draftsman
, and engraver
working in Florence
, whose name is distinguished in the history of art and craftsmanship for reasons which are partly mythical.
Giorgio Vasari
claims Finiguerra invented the printmaking
technique of engraving
(using that word in its popular sense of taking impressions on paper from designs engraved on metal plates to create prints). This made him a crucial figure in the history of old master print
s and remained widely believed until the early twentieth century. However, it was gradually realised that Vasari's view, like many of his assertions as to the origins of technical advances, could not be sustained. Typically, Vasari had overstated the importance of a fellow-Florentine, and a fellow-Italian, since it is now clear that engraving developed in Germany before Italy. Although he clearly was an important artist of his time, few surviving works, and no surviving prints, can now be definitely attributed to him, so scholarly interest in him has greatly reduced.
in 1457, when the firm had an order for a pair of fine silver candlesticks for the church of San Jacopo at Pistoia
. In 1459 in the Palazzo Rucellai, artworks by Finiguerra are annotated as belonging to Giovanni Rucellai
. In 1462 he is recorded as having supplied another wealthy Florentine, Cino di Filippo Rinuccini, with waist buckles, and in the years next following with forks and spoons for christening presents. In 1463 he drew cartoons, the heads of which were colored by Alessio Baldovinetti
, for five or more figures for the sacristy of the duomo, which was being decorated in wood inlay by a group of artists with Giuliano da Maiano
at their head. On 4 December 1464 Maso Finiguerra made his will, and died shortly afterwards.
working on the famous gates of the Baptistery, Florence; Benvenuto Cellini
said he was the finest master of his day in niello engraving, and that his masterpiece was a pax of the Crucifixion in the baptistery of St. John; that being no great draftsman, he in most cases, including that of the above-mentioned pax, worked from drawings by Antonio Pollaluiolo. Vasari, on the other hand, claims that Finiguerra an inferior draughtsman to Pollaiuolo, mentions a number of original drawings by him as existing in Vasari's own collection, with figures both draped and nude, and histories drawn in watercolor. Vasari's account was confirmed and amplified in the next century by Baldinucci, who says that he has seen many drawings by Finiguerra in the manner of Masaccio
; adding that Maso was beaten by Pollaiuolo in competition for the reliefs of the great silver altar-table commission by the merchants guild for the baptistery of St. John (this famous work is now preserved in the Opera del Duomo).
plates on sulfur casts and afterwards on sheets of paper, and of having followed up this invention by engraving copperplates for the express purpose of printing impressions, and thus the inventor of the art of engraving for printing and printmaking. Finiguerra, adds Vasari, was succeeded in the practice of engraving at Florence by a goldsmith called Baccio Baldini
, who borrowed his designs from other artists and especially from Botticelli. In the last years of the 18th century, Vasari's account of Finiguerra's invention was held to have received a decisive and startling confirmation under the following circumstances. There was in the Baptistery at Florence (now in the Bargello
) a beautiful 15th-century niello pax of the Coronation of the Virgin. The Abate Gori, a connoisseur of the mid-century, had claimed this conjecturally for the work of Finiguerra; a later and still more enthusiastic virtuoso, the Abate Zani, discovered first, in the collection of Count Seratti at Ligorno, a sulfur cast from the very same niello (cast now in the British Museum
), and then, in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France
, Paris, a paper impression corresponding to both. Here, then, he proclaimed, was the actual material first fruit of Finiguerra's invention and proof positive of Vasari's accuracy.
and in Italy
for years prior to the date of Finiguerra's alleged invention. For another, Finiguerra's pax for the baptistery, if Cellmni is to be trusted, represented not a Coronation of the Virgin but a Crucifixion
. In the next place, its recorded weight does not at all agree with that of the pax claimed by Gori and Zani to be his. Again, and perhaps this is the strongest argument of any, all authentic records agree in representing Finiguerra as a close associate in art and business of Antonio Pollaiuolo
. Now nothing is more marked than the special style of Pollaiuolo and his group; and nothing is more unlike it than the style of the Coronation pax, the designer of which must obviously have been trained in quite a different school, namely that of Filippo Lippi
.
at the Uffizi
, some of which are actually inscribed "Maso Finiguerra" in a seventeenth-century writing, probably that of Baldinucci himself; and secondly in a very curious and important book of nearly a hundred drawings by the same hand, acquired in 1888 for the British Museum
.
The Florence series depicts for the most part figures of the studio and the street, to all appearance members of the artists own family and workshop, drawn direct from life. The museum volume, on the other hand, is a picture-chronicle, drawn from imagination, and representing parallel figures of sacred and profane history, in a chronological series from the Creation to Julius Caesar
, dressed and accoutered with inordinate richness according to the quaint pictures which Tuscan
popular fancy in the mid-15th century conjured up to itself of the ancient world. Except for the differences naturally resulting from the difference of subject, and that the one series are done from life and the other from imagination, the technical style and handling of the two are identical and betray unmistakably a common origin.
in Paris).
That he was furthermore an engraver on copper seems certain from the fact that the general style and many particular figures and features of the British Museum chronide drawings are exactly repeated in some of those primitive 15th-century Florentine prints which used to be catalogued loosely-under the names of Baldini or Botticelli, but have of late years been classed more cautiously as anonymous prints in the fine manner (in contradistinction to another contemporary group of prints in the broad manner). The fine manner group of primitive Florentine engravings itself falls into two divisions, one more archaic, more vigorous and original than the other, and consisting for the most part of larger and more important prints. It is this division which the drawings of the Chronicle series most closely resemble; so closely as almost to compel the conclusion that drawings and engravings are by the same hand. The later division of fine-manner prints represent a certain degree of technical advance from the earlier, and are softer in style, with elements of more classic grace and playfulness; their motives moreover are seldom, original, but are borrowed from various sources, some from German engravings, some from Botticelli or a designer closely akin to him, some from the pages of the British Museum Chronicle-book itself, with a certain softening and attenuating of their rugged spirit; as though the book, after the death of the original draftsman engraver, had remained in his workshop and continued to he used by his successors.
We thus find ourselves in presence of a draftsman of the school of Pollaiuolo, some of whose drawings bear an ancient attribution to Finiguerra, while all agree with what is otherwise known of him, and one or two are exactly repeated in extant works of niello, the craft which was peculiarly his own; others being intimately related to the earliest or all but the earliest works of Florentine engraving, the kindred craft which tradition avers him to have practiced, and which Vasari erroneously believed him to have invented. Surely, it has been confidently argued, this draftsman must be no other than the true Finiguerra himself.
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
goldsmith
Goldsmith
A goldsmith is a metalworker who specializes in working with gold and other precious metals. Since ancient times the techniques of a goldsmith have evolved very little in order to produce items of jewelry of quality standards. In modern times actual goldsmiths are rare...
, draftsman
Drawing
Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...
, and engraver
Engraving
Engraving is the practice of incising a design on to a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing...
working in Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
, whose name is distinguished in the history of art and craftsmanship for reasons which are partly mythical.
Giorgio Vasari
Giorgio Vasari
Giorgio Vasari was an Italian painter, writer, historian, and architect, who is famous today for his biographies of Italian artists, considered the ideological foundation of art-historical writing.-Biography:...
claims Finiguerra invented the printmaking
Printmaking
Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints with an element of originality, rather than just being a photographic reproduction of a painting. Except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable...
technique of engraving
Engraving
Engraving is the practice of incising a design on to a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing...
(using that word in its popular sense of taking impressions on paper from designs engraved on metal plates to create prints). This made him a crucial figure in the history of old master print
Old master print
An old master print is a work of art produced by a printing process within the Western tradition . A date of about 1830 is usually taken as marking the end of the period whose prints are covered by this term. The main techniques concerned are woodcut, engraving and etching, although there are...
s and remained widely believed until the early twentieth century. However, it was gradually realised that Vasari's view, like many of his assertions as to the origins of technical advances, could not be sustained. Typically, Vasari had overstated the importance of a fellow-Florentine, and a fellow-Italian, since it is now clear that engraving developed in Germany before Italy. Although he clearly was an important artist of his time, few surviving works, and no surviving prints, can now be definitely attributed to him, so scholarly interest in him has greatly reduced.
Career
He was the son of Antonio, and grandson of Tommaso Finiguerra or Finiguerri, both goldsmiths of Florence, and was born in Santa Lucia d'Ognissanti in 1426. He worked with his family as a goldsmith and was early distinguished for his work in niello. In 1449, there is a note of a sulfur cast from an il]] and Antonio PollaiuoloAntonio Pollaiuolo
Antonio del Pollaiolo , also known as Antonio di Jacopo Pollaiuolo or Antonio Pollaiolo, was an Italian painter, sculptor, engraver and goldsmith during the Renaissance.-Biography:...
in 1457, when the firm had an order for a pair of fine silver candlesticks for the church of San Jacopo at Pistoia
Pistoia
Pistoia is a city and comune in the Tuscany region of Italy, the capital of a province of the same name, located about 30 km west and north of Florence and is crossed by the Ombrone Pistoiese, a tributary of the River Arno.-History:...
. In 1459 in the Palazzo Rucellai, artworks by Finiguerra are annotated as belonging to Giovanni Rucellai
Giovanni Rucellai
Giovanni Rucellai is the name of a father and grandson of the Rucellai family wool-dyers turned bankers.The former, Giovanni di Paolo, or Giovanni I, as the effective head of the Rucellai family commissioned the building of the Palazzo Rucellai, designed by Leon Battista Alberti and the father of...
. In 1462 he is recorded as having supplied another wealthy Florentine, Cino di Filippo Rinuccini, with waist buckles, and in the years next following with forks and spoons for christening presents. In 1463 he drew cartoons, the heads of which were colored by Alessio Baldovinetti
Alessio Baldovinetti
Alesso Baldovinetti was an Italian early Renaissance painter.-Biography:Baldovinetti was born in Florence to a family of a rich merchant. In 1448 he was registered as a member of the Guild of St...
, for five or more figures for the sacristy of the duomo, which was being decorated in wood inlay by a group of artists with Giuliano da Maiano
Giuliano da Maiano
Giuliano da Maiano was an Italian architect, intarsia-worker and sculptor, the elder brother of Benedetto da Maiano, with whom he often collaborated.- Biography :...
at their head. On 4 December 1464 Maso Finiguerra made his will, and died shortly afterwards.
Legacy
These documented facts are supplemented by several writers of the next generation. Baccio Bandinelli said Finiguerra was among the young artists under Lorenzo GhibertiLorenzo Ghiberti
Lorenzo Ghiberti , born Lorenzo di Bartolo, was an Italian artist of the early Renaissance best known for works in sculpture and metalworking.-Early life:...
working on the famous gates of the Baptistery, Florence; Benvenuto Cellini
Benvenuto Cellini
Benvenuto Cellini was an Italian goldsmith, sculptor, painter, soldier and musician, who also wrote a famous autobiography. He was one of the most important artists of Mannerism.-Youth:...
said he was the finest master of his day in niello engraving, and that his masterpiece was a pax of the Crucifixion in the baptistery of St. John; that being no great draftsman, he in most cases, including that of the above-mentioned pax, worked from drawings by Antonio Pollaluiolo. Vasari, on the other hand, claims that Finiguerra an inferior draughtsman to Pollaiuolo, mentions a number of original drawings by him as existing in Vasari's own collection, with figures both draped and nude, and histories drawn in watercolor. Vasari's account was confirmed and amplified in the next century by Baldinucci, who says that he has seen many drawings by Finiguerra in the manner of Masaccio
Masaccio
Masaccio , born Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Simone, was the first great painter of the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaissance. According to Vasari, Masaccio was the best painter of his generation because of his skill at recreating lifelike figures and movements as well as a convincing sense...
; adding that Maso was beaten by Pollaiuolo in competition for the reliefs of the great silver altar-table commission by the merchants guild for the baptistery of St. John (this famous work is now preserved in the Opera del Duomo).
Controversy over Vasari's claim
But the paragraph of Vasari which has chiefly held the attention is that in which he gives Finiguerra credit of having been the first to print impressions from nielloNiello
Niello is a black mixture of copper, silver, and lead sulphides, used as an inlay on engraved or etched metal. It can be used for filling in designs cut from metal...
plates on sulfur casts and afterwards on sheets of paper, and of having followed up this invention by engraving copperplates for the express purpose of printing impressions, and thus the inventor of the art of engraving for printing and printmaking. Finiguerra, adds Vasari, was succeeded in the practice of engraving at Florence by a goldsmith called Baccio Baldini
Baccio Baldini
Baccio Baldini was an Italian engraver of the Renaissance, active in his native Florence.-Biography:Little is known of Baldini's life...
, who borrowed his designs from other artists and especially from Botticelli. In the last years of the 18th century, Vasari's account of Finiguerra's invention was held to have received a decisive and startling confirmation under the following circumstances. There was in the Baptistery at Florence (now in the Bargello
Bargello
The Bargello, also known as the Bargello Palace or Palazzo del Popolo is a former barracks and prison, now an art museum, in Florence, Italy.-Terminology:...
) a beautiful 15th-century niello pax of the Coronation of the Virgin. The Abate Gori, a connoisseur of the mid-century, had claimed this conjecturally for the work of Finiguerra; a later and still more enthusiastic virtuoso, the Abate Zani, discovered first, in the collection of Count Seratti at Ligorno, a sulfur cast from the very same niello (cast now in the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
), and then, in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France
Bibliothèque nationale de France
The is the National Library of France, located in Paris. It is intended to be the repository of all that is published in France. The current president of the library is Bruno Racine.-History:...
, Paris, a paper impression corresponding to both. Here, then, he proclaimed, was the actual material first fruit of Finiguerra's invention and proof positive of Vasari's accuracy.
Zani's claim no longer credited
Zani's famous discovery is now discredited among serious students. For one, the art of printing from engraved copperplates had been known in GermanyGermany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and in Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
for years prior to the date of Finiguerra's alleged invention. For another, Finiguerra's pax for the baptistery, if Cellmni is to be trusted, represented not a Coronation of the Virgin but a Crucifixion
Crucifixion
Crucifixion is an ancient method of painful execution in which the condemned person is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross and left to hang until dead...
. In the next place, its recorded weight does not at all agree with that of the pax claimed by Gori and Zani to be his. Again, and perhaps this is the strongest argument of any, all authentic records agree in representing Finiguerra as a close associate in art and business of Antonio Pollaiuolo
Antonio Pollaiuolo
Antonio del Pollaiolo , also known as Antonio di Jacopo Pollaiuolo or Antonio Pollaiolo, was an Italian painter, sculptor, engraver and goldsmith during the Renaissance.-Biography:...
. Now nothing is more marked than the special style of Pollaiuolo and his group; and nothing is more unlike it than the style of the Coronation pax, the designer of which must obviously have been trained in quite a different school, namely that of Filippo Lippi
Filippo Lippi
Fra' Filippo Lippi , also called Lippo Lippi, was an Italian painter of the Italian Quattrocento .-Biography and works:...
.
Surviving works
The only fully authenticated specimens which exist are the above-mentioned tarsia figures, over half life-size, executed from his cartoons for the sacristy of the duomo. But he is thought to be responsible for a number of other works: a set of drawings of the school of PollaiuoloPollaiuolo
Pollaiulo is the name of several people:* Brothers Antonio del Pollaiolo and* Piero del Pollaiolo, 15th-Century artists....
at the Uffizi
Uffizi
The Uffizi Gallery , is a museum in Florence, Italy. It is one of the oldest and most famous art museums of the Western world.-History:...
, some of which are actually inscribed "Maso Finiguerra" in a seventeenth-century writing, probably that of Baldinucci himself; and secondly in a very curious and important book of nearly a hundred drawings by the same hand, acquired in 1888 for the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
.
The Florence series depicts for the most part figures of the studio and the street, to all appearance members of the artists own family and workshop, drawn direct from life. The museum volume, on the other hand, is a picture-chronicle, drawn from imagination, and representing parallel figures of sacred and profane history, in a chronological series from the Creation to Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
, dressed and accoutered with inordinate richness according to the quaint pictures which Tuscan
Tuscany
Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....
popular fancy in the mid-15th century conjured up to itself of the ancient world. Except for the differences naturally resulting from the difference of subject, and that the one series are done from life and the other from imagination, the technical style and handling of the two are identical and betray unmistakably a common origin.
How the works were attributed to Finiguerra
Both can be dated with certainty, from their style, costumes, etc., to within a few years of 1460. Both agree strictly with the accounts of Finiguerra's drawings left us by Vasari and Baldinucci, and disagree in no respect with the character of the inlaid figures of the sacristy. That the draftsman was a goldsmith is proved on every page of the picture-chronicle by his skill and extravagant delight in the ornamental parts of design chased and jeweled cups, helmets, shields, breastplates, scabbards and the like, as well as by the symmetrical metallic forms into which he instinctively conventionalizes plants and flowers. That he was probably also an engraver in niello appears from the fact that figures from the Uflizi series of drawings are repeated among the rare anonymous Florentine niello prints of the time (the chief collection of which, formerly belonging to the marquis of Salamanca, is now in Edmond de Rothschild Collection at the LouvreLouvre
The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...
in Paris).
That he was furthermore an engraver on copper seems certain from the fact that the general style and many particular figures and features of the British Museum chronide drawings are exactly repeated in some of those primitive 15th-century Florentine prints which used to be catalogued loosely-under the names of Baldini or Botticelli, but have of late years been classed more cautiously as anonymous prints in the fine manner (in contradistinction to another contemporary group of prints in the broad manner). The fine manner group of primitive Florentine engravings itself falls into two divisions, one more archaic, more vigorous and original than the other, and consisting for the most part of larger and more important prints. It is this division which the drawings of the Chronicle series most closely resemble; so closely as almost to compel the conclusion that drawings and engravings are by the same hand. The later division of fine-manner prints represent a certain degree of technical advance from the earlier, and are softer in style, with elements of more classic grace and playfulness; their motives moreover are seldom, original, but are borrowed from various sources, some from German engravings, some from Botticelli or a designer closely akin to him, some from the pages of the British Museum Chronicle-book itself, with a certain softening and attenuating of their rugged spirit; as though the book, after the death of the original draftsman engraver, had remained in his workshop and continued to he used by his successors.
We thus find ourselves in presence of a draftsman of the school of Pollaiuolo, some of whose drawings bear an ancient attribution to Finiguerra, while all agree with what is otherwise known of him, and one or two are exactly repeated in extant works of niello, the craft which was peculiarly his own; others being intimately related to the earliest or all but the earliest works of Florentine engraving, the kindred craft which tradition avers him to have practiced, and which Vasari erroneously believed him to have invented. Surely, it has been confidently argued, this draftsman must be no other than the true Finiguerra himself.