Ut pictura comoedia: The Andreini Family and the Arts in Renaissance and Baroque Italy

It borders on cliché to point out that the arts and letters remained in close conversation during the Renaissance and Baroque eras. Even if early-modern Italians didn’t use the term “interdisciplinarity”, they surely did the work we mean by that term. Yet some sectors within this world of vibrant exchange have received relatively little attention over the centuries, among them the links between visual artists and comic actors. Enter the Andreini family (fl. 1560s–1710s ), whose members included commedia dell’arte stars, poets, alchemists, monks, nuns, soldiers, and, yes, painters as well. In this lecture, the Andreini family guides us through a vibrant and sometimes fraught cultural zone in which the visual and comic arts connected – and competed.

Sarah Gwyneth Ross is a Professor of History at Boston College, her research obsessions lie in the world of Renaissance Europe, and especially in Italy. Working at the intersection of social and intellectual history, she is fascinated by the ways that people outside the ranks of the robustly enfranchised encountered, talked about, drew inspiration from, and improved their lives through education in general, and the classical literary tradition in particular. She has published extensively on women writers, and the dynamics of Renaissance feminism. She has also unearthed from wills and household inventories the literary lives of ordinary Venetian men and women, telling their stories in her recent book Everyday Renaissances: The Quest for Cultural Legitimacy in Venice (2016). Ross’s current work turns to class-defying, genre-obliterating, gender-bending commedia dell’arte performers. Her new project follows the Andreini family through two generations as they wooed patrons, lured audiences, and dodged Counter-Reformation censors.

Image caption: Domenico Fetti, “Portrait of an Actor” [Francesco Andreini?], ca.1621–1622, oil on canvas, 105.5 cm x 81 cm. Saint Petersburg, Hermitage Museum