The Weird and Wonderful World of Cosimo Tura

Last week I was teaching a class on Northern Italian renaissance art, part of a course based on 19^th century art history and the beginnings of connoisseurship of Italian art- Berenson et al. Instead of concentrating on well-known artists like Titian and Giorgione, I decided to take a walk on the wild side looking at lesser-known schools of art like Ferrara, Padua and Brescia. The School of Ferrara was always considered problematic in the eyes of those pioneers who mapped renaissance art geographically in the nineteenth-century. In the words of Crowe and Cavalcaselle:

“The Ferrarese are very like the Veronese in some respects; they are not first-rates, and their painting has a strong northern stamp; but they are more independent in their ruggedness and more powerful in the expression of passion. They adopt alternately the African types of Francesca and the grimacing ones of Mantegna, but they add to these something of the sadness and dryness of the Flemings. In Galasso these characteristics are combined with the comparative helplessness of the antiquated Christian time. Cossa and Tura, though but little younger, are abler and more spirited in this path, altering the technical treatment of detail and distance after the transalpine fashion; it is not improbable that they were struck by the originality of van der Weyden, whose visit to Ferrara in the middle of the century is now placed beyond a doubt. With Stefano and Ercole Roberti Grandi, we come upon Paduan features in their strength and bitterness; Costa and Ercole di Giuilo Grandi introduce a younger and fresher blood by imitating the Peruginesque. From first to last the Ferrarese are colourists.”

Cosimo Tura, A Muse (Calliope?), London, National Gallery, 1455-60.

If any painter deserves to be called “independent,” not to say curious, bizarre, wild, or eccentric it’s Cosmé , (sometimes called Cosimo) Tura from Ferrara. Tura was the fountain head of the Ferrarese school from which gushed such singular strangeness in art. There’s no need for connoisseurship with Tura; his art is instantly recognizable, and completely unforgettable. It’s a repertoire of grimaces, contorted bodies, jarring colours and gnarled hands, with landscapes that that other renaissance oddball, Piero do Cosimo, would have admired. I love it, but Berenson (probably under the influence of Wagner) saw Tura’s world as hard and unyielding as an anvil, likening his perception to the hammer that hit it with ferocity. I have to confess that there is something metallic about Tura, though I find that quite compelling rather than repellent. It’s impossible to say where Tura’s style originates, but you could see his art as a bouillabaisse of Mantegna, Piero della Francesca, Donatello and Rogier van der Weyden- the last actually visited Ferrara in the mid fifteenth-century where he painted pictures for Lionel d’Este. Berenson disdainfully dismisses Tura as an exponent of the “grotesque”, locked into a narrow, decorative formula, and lacking any interest in intellectual development. Well, Tura is decorative, but his ornament is witty, and later scholars like Stephen Campbell have detected erudition there. For example, what hidden meaning could lie in the sea shells and dolphin heads that adorn the throne of an allegorical muse in our National Gallery?

Cosimo Tura, The Annunciation, Museo del Duomo, Ferrara, c. 1469.

A painting of Tura’s that is fast becoming a renaissance favourite of mine is his Annunciation from about 1469. It’s an odd Annunciation; not like the versions that show the Angel and Virgil in profile; not like the so-called “frame annunciations” where there’s a real distance, or a sense of the physical distance that the messenger has to cross; not those that engage the viewer like Antonello’s. No, Tura’s Madonna and angel seem immersed in their own worlds, each contained within their own thoughts. And the backdrop! There is an inhospitable landscape composed of rocky bluffs, bleak terrain, peopled with some strange looking travellers; these are probably fishermen and shepherds though their relevance to the Annunciation- if any- remains unknown. This landscape doesn’t entirely convince; it has the look of a backdrop rather than the real world outside the basilica or palace the main figures inhabit.

Detail showing pagan deities: Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and an unidentified figure.

Quite the most bizarre element in this fascinating work is the gyrating figures ensconced in golden panels and painted in grisaille. They have the look of satyrs or demons, as they twist and turn while hoisting their garments over their head in pagan abandon. You’ll have to wait until Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling until you see such inventive niche figures again. Actually, from reading Stephen Campbell’s excellent analysis, I’ve discovered that they are archaic representations of the classical gods and goddesses: Diana, Apollo, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Mars. Only on closer inspection do you discern their attributes. According to Campbell they may have astrological meaning, though this is too deep to go into here. Tura has cleverly set these pagan deities on black discs within their yellow cubicles, but they threaten to dance out into the Virgin’s space. And as Campbell astutely notes, the Venus (top left in detail) displays the figura serpentinata, thirty years before Leonardo invented it!

A black squirrel

Then there’s the rod that bisects the pillar at the centre; this holds a bird (on the viewer’s L) and another animal (on the viewer’s R). Crowe and Cavacaselle state confidently that it’s a cat, which leads me to conclude they don’t know much about animals. It is, in fact, a black squirrel tethered to a column by a red cord. I did have my doubts because squirrels don’t figure in annunciations, but take my word for it- it’s a squirrel. According to Campbell, and I can’t tell if this is a serious suggestion, the squirrel could alludes to Tura’s squirrel hair brush. I’d like to believe that. Tura is the kind of artist to put in a visual joke, but there’s no proof of that. In best Sherlockian fashion, if we turn our magnifying glass on the bird, this could be a vital clue.

Tichodroma muraria or “wall-creeper”

The sources state that the bird resembles the Tichodroma muraria, or “wall creeper,” a bird believed to frequent graveyards and nest in skulls. The Ticholroma muraria might therefore refer to the ruinous effects of time, and the squirrel might have a similar meaning. Checking Wikipedia’s entry on the Ticholroma muraria, I find no references to cemeteries or skulls, just buildings and quarries. The bird is thought to re-appear in another one of Tura’s paintings: a splendidly twisted and knotted St Jerome, also in the National Gallery. Here, the Tichodroma muraria can be found perched on a branch of a tree above Jerome’s lion. According to the NG’s website, the wall-creeper (and an owl) might symbolise evil. I haven’t read Campbell’s description of the St Jerome yet.

Cosimo Tura, St Jerome, London, National Gallery, 1474.

In Ferrara, Tura’s presence is well represented by frescoes in the Palazzo Schifanoia. This pleasure palace belonged to the d'Este family and is located just outside the medieval town walls.

View of the Salone dei Mesi, Palazzo Schifanoia, Ferrara,  frescoes by Cosimo Tura and Francesco del Cossa, 1476-84.

Cosimo, along with Francesco del Cossa, helped produce an intricately conceived allegorical series about the months of the year and zodiac symbols, which seems to have been a learned interest in Ferrarese circles. The series contains contemporary portraits of musicians, labourers, and carnival floats drawn by more exotic animals; in the case of Mercury, griffons; in the case of Ceres, apes.

Cosimo Tura, Detail from Madonna of the Zodiac, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice, 1459-63.

Tura was an important influence on the other two major painters of the 15th-century Ferrarese School – Francesco da Cossa and Ercole Roberti, who is equally bizarre. The latter replaced him as court painter in 1486 and Tura died poor. Berenson’s summing up of Tura is particularly damning: “He ranks, consequently, not with his Florentine peers, but with another product of the Paduan school Carlo Crivelli. The one exaggerates definition as the other exaggerates precision, and like all born artists who lack adequate intellectual purpose, both ended up in the grotesque.” Unfortunately Berenson’s attempts to exclude painters from consideration because they were not Florentine was effective until very recently when more material appeared on Tura, notably Campbell’s detailed study of 1997. In any case I couldn’t disagree with Berenson more; one man’s grotesque is another man’s delight. I never tire of looking at Tura’s art, especially what Campbell calls his “marginalia,” all the strange details lurking on the periphery of the paintings; like his squirrel, and birds similar to this one hidden in the detail of the Madonna of the Zodiac of 1459-63. On closer inspection this “marginalia” proves to be central to an understanding of the Ferrarese master’s art. If these creatures represent evil, the devil is indeed in the detail of Tura’s art.

 

Sources

Bernard Berenson, Italian Painters of the Renaissance: Venetian and North Italian Schools,. Phaidon, 1968, first pub. 1952.

Crowe and Cavalcaselle, A History of Painting in Northern Italy (in three volumes), ed. Tancred Borenius, John Murray, 1912.

Stephen John Campbell, Cosmè Tura of Ferrara: Style, Politics, and the Renaissance City, 1450-1495, Yale, 1997.

Comments

[Francis DeStefano]

Thanks for a very interesting post with some great images.

Frank

[Glennis]

Thanks for this post - I love Cosimo Tura, and was excited to see the St Jerome appear on display at the National Gallery several months ago - maybe it was taken out of storage to compliment Leonardo's in the exhibition. I'll take a closer look at the wall creeper next time I'm there.

[AHT]

Thanks Frank and Glennis. I'll certainly look out for the Jerome next time I'm in the NG. I don't remember seeing it last time, unlike the Muse that is always on show.

David