THE ENIGMA OF LUCA PACIOLI'S PORTRAIT
“ IACO. BAR. VIGENNIS P.1495 ”
“CARTIGLIO” SIGNATURE AND FLY
Is it just
for a lack of documentations, witnesses and historical attestations, if
the attributive question of the enigmatic “Luca Pacioli’s
Portrait” ( Gallery of Museum of Capodimonte, Naples) – depicting
Luca Pacioli, the friar and Mathemathic Author of “Summa de Arithmetica”
and of the “Divina Proportione”- is still unsolved?
The available documentations doesn’t give any specifical information
about the execution or the original assignment of the Portrait.
The first documental information are from a century later of the presumable
execution of the Portrait, and they dated back to a 1631’s inventory,
however without any explanation about the date and the way of accession
in Urbino, at Palazzo Ducale.
The Portrait was included in a list of goods of Della Rovere’s dinasty.
This first inventory reports just mere hypotesis and even the sudden documentations
stopped just reporting the movements of the Portrait, during the half
of the XVII century, from Urbino to Florence and from the Urbino’s
dinasty to the Medici dynasty, by Vittoria della Rovere-Medici.
Traces of the Portrait appear again in the later centuries in Naples,
still in Medici’s belongings, collateral branch of Ottaviano. These
traces will then take to its actual musuem position after the state pre-emption
against the foreign selling of the Portrait.
The historical tradition is silent about the actual and generic attribution
(based on a signature), is referred to uncertain interpretations on the
acronym indication relieved from the anomal “cartiglio” presented
in the Portrait.
The historical and critical research haven’t yet found an incentive
either progress, even though there have been critics on the original past
given hypotesis.
After an initial solicitation due to the acquisition of the Portrait by
musuem of Capodimonte, despite other periodical examinations, the solution
of the question is still at the same point without any new substantial
or critically resolutive documentations. There haven’t been either
different indications on new elements about the Pacioli’s Portrait,
for opening again other ways of processing investigations. The attributive
research is at a stop, after the progressive exhaution of possible interpretations
detectable from the picture’s clues.
Considering the elevated pictorial and artistic quality of the Portrait,
the intensification in exposing the picture, the deep spread of the image
through photos – even as icon on editorial work’s covers,
the lack of recent studies assumes a characterisation and a meaning of
a proper real implicite disistance on the investigations.
The obstacle for the researches is found in the misleading abbreviation
and inscription: "IACO.BAR. VIGENNIS. P. 1495", apparent marking
and ineludibile and unsolved cryptography, made still more ambiguous by
the representation of a fly.
The interpretation of the misunderstood “cartiglio” and its
inscriptions and abbreviations, influenced the research of the Portrait
from the beginning, taking on a different way the perspectives and the
historical directions in order to find the author of the work.
Either the omission of a deepened hermeneutic of the painting and the
preference given to the only stylistic analysis, had clasped the research
field neglecting other needed ways of critical investigation.
The question has been then left to an occasional solution, to a mere and
eventual archivistical solving, that hasn’t been reached yet.
Based on this anomaly, even caused by the absence of historical quotations
and tradition, had also influenced the reductive effect by the anonymous
and reserved maintenance at the Urbino Palazzo Ducale and the next following
owners of the Portrait.
The portrait has been considered for its documentary and historical value
rather than its artistic importance. This judgment is not adequated considering
the contents and the aestethical qualities expressed in the picture.
The work, even though substantially misunderstood, has reached prestige
and fame, even without a clamour of a fair paternity.
INCREASE AND OBSERVE
GEOMETRY AND PROPORTION
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COMPARISON OF ALFABETIC TYPES
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PROPORTION AND PROPORTIONALITY
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PORTRAIT COMPARISON
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CRITICAL CONFRONTATIONS
Nick Mackinnon, The Mathematical Gazette, n. 77, 1993, pag. 143
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“The highlight of the portrait is the rhombicuboctahedron. And here we surely see the ineffable left hand of Leonardo da Vinci, who drew the superb picture for De divina proportione, which, moreover, hang from a string in the originals. Pacioli left Venice for Milan in 1496 and was then with Leonardo for two years, during which time the illustrations for De divina proportione were made. Furthermore, Pacioli says in De divina proportione that a collection of crystal polyhedra is to be found in Milan. The rhombicuboctahedron could not be executed more exactly, and furthermore the artist has complicated the task by showing it half full of water and showing the consequent reflections and refractions. By contrast the (easier to depict) dodecahedron is at best a workmanlike job.”
Geofroy Tory, “Champ Fleury”, 1529, Le Segond Livre, Feuil XIII
(treatise
of "art and science of the due and true proportion of the Attic letters,
otherwise named Ancient letters and vulgarly Roman letters,
proportionated according to the body and the human face")
« Frere Lucas Paciol du Bourg sanct sepulchre, de lorde des freres mineurs et Theologien, qui a faict en vulgar Italien vng livre intitule, Divina proportione, & qui a volu figurer le dictes lettres Attiques, nen a point aussi parle, ne baille raison: & ie ne men esbahis point, car iay entendu par aulcuns Italiens quil a desrobe ses dicte lettres, & prinses de feu Messire Leonarde Vince, qui est trespasse a Amboise, & estoit tres excellent Philosophe & admirable painctre, & quasi vng aultre Archimedes. Ce dicte frere Lucas a faict imprimer ses lettres Attiques comme sienne. »
“Fra’
Luca Pacioli from Borgo San Sepolcro, monk of the order of the Grey Friars
and theologian, who wrote in Italian vernacular a book entitled “Divina
proportione” and has intended to represent the aforesaid Attic letters,
did not describe them at all, neither gave any explanation about; and
I am not surprised at all about this, because I’ve heard from some
Italian people that he had taken the letters away from the late Mr. Leonardo
Vinci,who’s dead in Amboise and was a very excellent philosopher
and admirable painter and almost another Archimedes. This told fra' Luca
made print those letters as his owns.”
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