Sleep in Renaissance Poland: Bartolomeo Berrecci’s Tomb Sculpture

Bartolomeo Berrecci da Pontassieve (d. 1537), court architect, sculptor and building entrepreneur to King Sigismund I of Poland, is known through his works at Wawel Castle in Cracow, Poland, including the Sigismund Chapel (plate 31). Up to now his achievements as figural sculptor, however, have been either neglected or denied altogether. This book examines all the four sepulchral effigies of an infant and grown-up people in the pose of the dreamer designed by the master. It is argued that the active poses of the deceased were appreciated not for their imitating ancient masterpieces, but primarily thanks to their maniera moderna. Animated compositions were expressly recommended for statues by Quintilian, Alberti and Leonardo. Rather than copying Andrea Sansovino’s effigies in S. Maria del Popolo, Berrecci’s methods of working out such compositions are found to follow Early Renaissance artistic practice in Florence, where he was apparently trained before going to Rome and, possibly, Naples. Ghiberti, Donatello, and other Florentine masters are shown to have derived their own inventions of accumbent people from several ancient and medieval works, which have been overlooked so far. Subsequently, drawings and sculpted models by Ghiberti and Donatello, apparently appreciated as highly as ancient pieces, were assimilated rather than imitated by others, including Perugino, Peruzzi and Raphael. A number of new connections of this kind are discussed. Berrecci followed these masters’ methods in creating his own individual inventions of a reclining toddler (plate 9.1), king (plate 34), bishop (plate 61.1), and lady (plate 66). They are not copies or collections of individual motifs picked up indiscriminately from earlier works. On the contrary, through the thoughtful selection, imaginative interpretation and new arrangement of the inventions of his predecessors and contemporaries, the court artist succeeded in creating his own original works in his Cracow workshop. A case in point is the pose of a dreaming infant (plate 10.3), which reverses the one of Peruzzi’s jurist (plate 11.2) in S. Gregorio Magno in Rome, sculpted in the same year 1525. The figure of the infant results to be one of the oldest European echo of the Sansovinesque pose outside Italy, which postdates Giovan Giacomo da Brescia’s image of Bernat de Vilamari in Montserrat by two years. Both these statues, Berrecci’s in Cracow and Peruzzi’s in Rome, appear to derive from a common source, which was interpreted each time in an individual way. Berrecci endowed his figures with individual features, clothing and insignia, which seem to be rendered realistically if compared with contemporary iconography. However, when juxtaposed with brief descriptions in royal and cathedral records, they appear to represent typical attire, armour and other paraphernalia rather than the things actually owned by the deceased. Occasionally their fragments are decorated with Italian ornaments, probably adapted from pattern prints or drawings. It is also considered how thoughtfully the artist adjusted the reclining figure of the king to its elevated location. To avoid the risk of unpleasant foreshortenings resulting from its being seen from below, he chose to modify its anatomy. Following Donatello and Michelangelo, Berrecci created an illusion of harmony through distortion of the body. A similar ability to evoke symmetry by means of illusion can be traced in his architecture. This rare skill is incompatible with the awkward space and perspective in Mikołaj Szydłowiecki’s relief (plate 46), which consequently should be excluded from the master’s oeuvre. Berrecci’s novel animated statues in the round captured the attention of the local public to such an extent that they kept on demanding similar pieces for over a century, sometimes pointing expressly at the king’s or bishop’s effigy. The last isolated echoes can be found as late as the 18th century (plate 74). In this way the course of early modern tomb sculpture in Poland was altered after it had been dominated by recumbent effigies with open eyes. Among new subjects introduced by the Tuscan master was the monument for an infant. Although Berrecci was employed primarily by King Sigismund I, he also worked for three most prominent members of the inner royal council: bishop Piotr Tomicki and Grand Chancellor Krzysztof Szydłowiecki, soon followed by hetman Jan Tarnowski. They were versed in artistic matters better than an average member of Polish nobility. After his long-awaited first son died unexpectedly, Szydłowiecki was bereaved. It appears that his friend, bishop Tomicki, suggested how to deal with his loss. The ambitious father was persuaded to put up an elegant monument, even if the innocent infant was not in need of any special prayers, his soul believed to have been admitted to heaven. Suffice it to remember that a special Roman liturgy of child funerals had been introduced not long before, as something not really necessary. Unlike earlier figures of the deceased, the nude putto is shown asleep and animated rather than awake and static. It was designed to express probably the firm belief in resurrection, following a few biblical examples (such as Jairus’ daughter) corroborated by St. Paul’s and St. Augustine’s explanations, if not by miracles wrought by Polish medieval saints such as Stanislas, Hyacinth (Jacek) and Kunigunda (Kinga). Soon three more monuments to other infants were erected by Szydłowiecki himself and his close associates: his son-in-law Jan Tarnowski (plate 25.1) and his secretary Jan Ocieski (plate 26). They were driven by various reasons, which results from a scrutiny of primary sources and historical circumstances. In all these early cases, no trace of mothers’ share in erecting the monuments for the first-born or only sons has been detected. Only then were daughters represented as well and mothers mentioned in accompanying inscriptions. The form and iconography of these sculptures are studied in detail. The composition of Szydłowiecki’s effigy, however, was never repeated; each early case was designed individually and derived from other paradigms. Before 1550 an ingenious relief showing a putto with a skull proved to be an attractive model, which was soon adapted in several other infant monuments. It was commissioned by Jan Ocieski, who visited Italy in 1541 and left specific notes on art, including a few details that anticipate Vasari’s account. Thus Ocieski seems to be qualified well enough to adapt the vanitative Italian iconography to his individual needs. In summary, the introduction of a sleeping child tomb to Polish art seems to result from the joint efforts of Szydłowiecki, Tomicki and Berrecci. This new type of sepulchral monument gained some popularity owing to the chancellor’s top social position and magnificence rather than Berrecci’s ingenious invention. Even if several dozens of child monuments were erected, this phenomenon remained exceptional if we consider enormous mortality rate at the time. On the other hand, however, it was just the novel animated composition that apparently pleased King Sigismund, bishop Tomicki and hetman Tarnowski. Working for the king, however, rather than remodelling the effigy of the child, Berrecci remembered the Noah by Ghiberti (plate 44.1) and its echoes in late Quattrocento art. The monarch liked the resulting design so much that he took a risk of breaking with the local tradition of royal imagery, which usually emphasized the ruler’s hieratic magnificence. Nominated Catholic Knight of the Holy See by Clement VII, King Sigismund insisted on his being represented in full armour. Such an attire reminded his deeds for the Christianity. His profound piety prompted him also to express his belief in his own resurrection and admission to heaven. This ardent hope is hinted at by the Madonna-and-Child roundel in the tomb niche, the iconography of the altarpiece in front of it and the chapel’s inscriptions. When Tomicki discussed his own monument with his counsellors including Berrecci, he followed the king in choosing an accumbent effigy, even if his immediate predecessor bishop Konarski had Berrecci designed a traditional recumbent figure with open eyes (plate 53.2). The definitive composition has much in common with earlier Italian and Central-European images of men drowned in a dream, including Donatello’s St. John on Patmos (plate 61.3), Sanzio Vitaliano’s effigy in his Neapolitan tomb (plate 63.2) and Veit Stoss’s knight in the Resurrection scene in the Cracow altarpiece (plate 64.3). Possibly the latter together with a few similar religious works made in Cracow prompted Tomicki to accept Berrecci’s design of his own effigy as something familiar and well-established. The bishop emphasized his belief in resurrection by setting it against a relief showing him face to face with Madonna and Child in heaven. He expressed a similar desire in his will and other documents. It is argued that any explanation of the figural elements of the tombs must refer primarily to Christian iconography because they belong to church art and were commissioned by religious men. Sigismund and Tomicki were prepared to follow the Bible, St. Paul and St. Augustine in interpreting sleep as a figure of death, exactly like in familiar scenes of The Dormition of the Virgin, which enhanced its temporary rather than permanent a status. No special reason is found to support the wide-spread hypothesis that Neoplatonic philosophy played any significant role in this new arrangement of figures, except for a few specific cases, which are documented to the contrary. Filippo Buonaccorsi called Callimachus, active at the royal court in Cracow, argued that Marsilio Ficino’e theory of the vacatio animae was wrong as long as the members of those who slept were animated by their spirit present on the spot. However, this debate was irrelevant for sculpted images of the sleeping in dynamic poses. In addition, discussing the issue of immortal soul at the 5th Lateran Council, Pope Leo X repeated the Church doctrine and warned that philosophy, when lacking “the flavouring of divine wisdom and the light of revealed truth” can sometimes lead “to error rather than to the discovery of the truth”. The bull was read in Lateran by Polish archbishop Jan Łaski. King Sigismund and bishop Tomicki planned their eternal dwellings according to the Church teachings. They both succeeded in creating successful models that invited their contemporaries to rivalry. In the process, scores of similar figures and their simplifications were erected in Poland, Prussia, Lithuania, Ruthenia, Kiev and Silesia. Tombs with sleeping reclining figures in Poland outnumbered works of this kind in Italy, let alone those dispersed elsewhere in Europe. The earliest ones are sepulchral statue of Barbara Tarnowska by Berrecci (plate 66) and that of Roman Catholic bishop Johannes Thurzo of Wrocław (plate 68.1), to demonstrate the latter’s cultural and confessional connections with Catholic Cracow in otherwise mostly Lutheran Silesia. In turn, dynastic links of the Vasas with the Jagiellonians were implied by the animated figure of Catholic King Johan III Vasa of Sweden (plate 71.1). Truly unique position, however, should be attributed to the effigy of Konstanty Ostrogski, the Lithuanian hetman under King Sigismund (plate 51.2). This mighty Orthodox Christian was represented as a Christian knight (miles christianus), possibly by Santi Gucci Fiorentino in Cracow. The prince’s son installed the effigy at Kiev-Pechersk Lavra. The opulent monument, destroyed in 1941, commemorated this Ruthenian Scipio’s important victories, including the one over the Muscovities at Orsha in 1514. It also implied the secure confessional status of his family in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The discussion of many similar funerary figures offered in the book shows how popular Berrecci’s paradigms became. He changed the course of early modern sculpture in this part of Europe to such an extent that the phenomenon deserves to be mentioned in synthetic works on European art