Giovanni Maria Butteri

Fourteen ephemeral monuments devised by Vincenzo Borghini and executed by a team of Florentine artists were erected on the occasion of the entry of Joanna of Austria, bride of Francesco de’ Medici, into Florence on 16 December 1565. The starting point of Joanna’s entrata was a huge triumphal arch constructed under the direction of Alessandro Allori before the Porta al Prato, the ancient city gate of Florence.¹ It celebrated Tuscan achievement with a series of six large canvases in chiaroscuro by Allori and Giovanni Maria Butteri. Four of these canvases consisted of group portraits of famous Tuscans who won eternal fame in the disciplines of warfare, letters, poetry, and disegno. Two larger canvases that faced each other on the innermost section of the monument were given over to allegories. One represented Industry and commemorated the city’s long-standing preeminence in this field and in trade; the other, Agriculture, celebrated the fruitfulness of the Tuscan territories. Unfortunately, all the canvases were destroyed, possibly soon after the celebrations.

Domenico Mellini’s detailed account of the event, the Descrizione dell’entrata della serenissima Reina Giovanna d’Austria, published in Florence in 1566, gives some indication of the artists involved and their relative contributions. Butteri is mentioned as the painter of the canvas with the Tuscan poets, whereas Allori is credited with the invention and execution of the rest:

The inventor and architect of the decorations of the Porta al Prato was Alessandro Allori [. . . ] similarly he was the maker of almost all the paintings [ . . . ]; he called in his collaborator Giovanmaria Butteri, who made the painting of the poets.²

Three drawings have hitherto been related to Butteri’s Tuscan Poets. Anna Maria Petrioli Tofani proposed a sketch of a river god in black chalk in the Uffizi as a preparatory study for the figure of the river Mugnone in the foreground of that composition. Rick Scorza identified a drawing in the Palazzo Rosso, Genoa, as Butteri’s finished modello for the Tuscan Poets, as well as a sketch for the same composition.³ In 1995, he connected the subject of the present drawing to the lost Agriculture canvas and, on the basis of a stylistic comparison with the Palazzo Rosso modello, attributed it to Butteri. It had previously been given to Allori—the original attribution proposed by Philip Pouncey when the drawing was acquired—and in 2008 Petrioli Tofani maintained that the “style corresponds far more convincingly to that of Allori,” also pointing out that some of the figures occur relatively unchanged in Allori’s later works, such as the Pearl Fishers in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, and its preparatory study in Budapest.⁴ Mellini’s emphasis on Allori’s supervisory role also implies that Butteri worked from Allori’s preliminary sketches in order to develop the Morgan modello. Yet some anatomical weaknesses (in the articulation of the limbs, for example) and the stylistic proximity to the Palazzo Genoa modello for the Tuscan Poets make an attribution to Butteri, who was five years Allori’s junior and less experienced than him, seem more likely.

The coloring of the prepared ground of both this sheet and the one in Genoa anticipates the chiaroscuro of the monument’s paintings. The Morgan drawing shows peasants bringing the fruits of the goddess Ceres as offerings to the new bride. In the foreground, figures emerge from the water bearing fish and crustaceans; others carry tributes of fruit, vegetables, and wheat; and one peasant shoulders a boar, another a ram, and a third plucks fruit high up in the tree at upper left. The background depicts beautiful countryside with the Temple of Ceres, represented in the form of an ancient rotunda, in the distance.

Like Allori, Butteri was a pupil of Agnolo Bronzino in Florence. He is first recorded in 1564—the year before his collaboration with Allori on the Porta al Prato decoration—when he contributed a painting to the ephemeral decoration erected on the occasion of Michelangelo’s exequies. He must have made quite a success of his early work: in the 1570s he was called upon to collaborate on the decorative program for the Studiolo of Palazzo Vecchio and is noted for the two paintings he contributed. Drawings by Butteri are extremely rare. Besides the studies for the Porta al Prato, the drawings attributed to him include a drapery study in black chalk in the British Museum, a compositional sketch in the National Gallery of Canada at Ottawa for his altarpiece of the Birth of the Virgin of ca. 1585, a preparatory drawing for a Coronation of the Virgin at the Uffizi and a design depicting Christ Healing the Centurion’s Servant formerly in the Barbara Piasecka Johnson Collection.⁵

—REP

Footnotes:

1. See Scorza 1995, fig. 48: the upper left drawing on the sheet shows a section of the monument in elevation as well as a plan.
2. “Fu dell’ ornamento della Porta al Prato lo inventore et Architettore Alessandro Allori . . . fu similmente di quasi tutte le pitture di quello [ . . . ] chiamati in sua compagnia di Giovanmaria Butteri, che fece il quadro de Poeti.” Mellini 1566, 29 (K1). See also Scorza 1985, 889n24.
3. Palazzo Rosso, Genoa, inv. D 1799. See Scorza 1995, 172, 174. For the sketch, which Petrioli Tofani considers probably not autograph, see Scorza 1985, 888–89, and Petrioli Tofani in New York 2008, 161.
4. Letter from Felice Stampfle to Philip Pouncey of 19 July 1950, departmental file: “The Library recently acquired a small group of drawings from Mr. H. S. [sic] Calmann of London and among them are a drawing attributed to Alessandro Allori and . . . Mr. Calmann states that these attributions are yours.” According to a note in the departmental file, in 1958 Pouncey thought the drawing by “Allori or follower, bit rubbed.” For Petrioli Tofani, see New York 2008, 161.
5. British Museum, London, inv. 1946,0713.628; see Chapman 2000. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, inv. 40758; see Ottawa 2003, 44–45, no. 13. Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence, inv. 730 f; see Florence 1963, no. 89. The drawing formerly in the Barbara Piasecka Johnson Collection was sold at Christie’s, Lon- don, 30 September 2014, lot 270; see Oberlin and elsewhere 1991–92, no. 13. Additional drawings attributed to Butteri include Study of a Male Figure Holding an Oyster Shell in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (inv. 1984-56-75), attributed to the artist by Elizabeth Pilliod (see Pilliod 1994, 391), and the Wedding at Cana in the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence (inv. 15641 f), tentatively attributed to the artist by Miles Chappell (see Chappell 2010, 44).