Old-age style and the resistance of practice in Cinquecentro art theory and criticism

grantor: University of TorontoSince the emergence of art history as a discipline, the concept of old-age style has been linked to stylistic change in the later years of an artist's life. My thesis attempts to historicize the problem of old-age style by returning to the Early Modern criticism of artists's final works. The problem of stylistic change in the later life of the artist first emerges in Cinquecento art theory and criticism within the burgeoning discourse on the qualities and nature of artistic styles. In this discourse, 'old-age style' is like a fault line where significant themes of the art theory of the period are tested and submitted to criticism. These themes include the parallel between art and literature, the status of the visual arts, the identity of the artist, the relationship between theory and practice, the 'paragone', and the historiography of the 'terza etá'. I have organised the chapters thematically to establish the relation between the problem of old-age style and the larger discourse on disorderly style in Cinquecento art theory and criticism. In the first chapter I argue that old-age style in sixteenth-century art criticism and theory problematizes claims made for the social and intellectual aspirations of the arts by drawing attention to the manual basis of art. In the second chapter I maintain that old-age style must be considered in light of Early Modern epistemological debates on the relation between theory and practice. Borrowing Paul de Man's definition of literary practice as the resistance to literary theory, I define disorderly practice, including old-age style, as the resistance to art theory. In the third and fourth chapters I demonstrate how the problem of disorderly style is manifested at the level of rhetoric by comparing Vasari's description of Michelangelo's Last Judgement to the striking change in the rhetoric of Vasari's descriptions of the final works of Pontormo and Titian. Finally, I illustrate the homologous relation between the discourses of old age and the female gender in Cinquecento art criticism through an analysis of Francesco Bocchi's 'Eccellenza del S. Giorgio' in the fifth chapter.Ph.D