Pietro Perugino (1450-1523) and the Practice of Reuse: Redefining Imitazione in the Italian Renaissance

Pietro Perugino's oeuvre is characterized by the reappearance of figures and motifs replicated through the reuse of cartoons. Perugino's deliberate self-plagiarism, despite being rooted in quattrocento compositional methods, exhibits an exploitation of the reproductive nature of the cartoon. While this practice allowed him to develop an efficient design process, the results of this imitation endowed Perugino's work with a formulaic quality, as was first noted by Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects (1568). Significantly, in the sixteenth century, theorists revised the concept of imitation to incorporate not only the notion of replication, but emulation as well. An examination of Perugino's reproductive practices alongside this revised view of imitation elucidates the nature of Vasari's criticism, ultimately revealing why the critic placed him among artists of the quattrocento, rather than that of the cinquecento.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Art History

Year dc:date.available

2006

Author dc:creator

• Goodman, Kelly A.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Dr. Fredrika Jacobs

• emulation
• cartoon
• symmetry
• Arts and Humanities

Statement dc:rights

• © The Author

Identifier

https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/811

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarscompass.vcu.edu:etd-1810