Page 242 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

onal outline inscribed within a square. The loca-
tion of the relevant points on each of the lines in
the "rosettes" could have been obtained by refer-
ence to a foreshortened version of the square in
which the polygonal plan was inscribed, or by the
use of a foreshortened vertical scale at the side of
the drawing, as in book n of Piero della Frances-
ca's De prospectiva pingendi (see cat. 141) The
mazzocchio drawings, which have been trimmed
down, provide no unequivocal evidence regarding
this question, but the closely packed diagonal
lines incised at the left and right margins of the
drawing of the chalice favor the latter alternative.
Although Piero could have used this method for
139-140 the drawing of a mazzocchio, he reserved it in his
treatise for relatively
simple forms, preferring to
Attributed to Paolo Uccello only in raking light. At each separate level of the use the technique of projection from plan and
a "rosette" of
facets,
upper and lower edges of the
elevation in his book in for more complex struc-
Florentine, 1397-1475 incised lines radiates outward from the central tures such as a mazzocchio or the capital of a
PERSPECTIVAL STUDY OF A CHALICE axis. Even the relatively simple mazzocchio on column. The plan and elevation technique would
sheet 1756A necessitated five such "rosettes." The not have necessitated the welter of incised lines
1758A positioning of the lines in the "rosettes" appears and speaks against any attempt to attribute one or
3
5
29 X 24.5 (ll /8 X 9 /8J to have been determined in relation to a series of more of these drawings to Piero himself (Par-
scaled points on horizontally (and possibly verti- ronchi 1964).
PERSPECTIVAL STUDY OF A MAZZOCCHIO cally) incised lines, which had previously been In other respects, however, the Uffizi drawings
i 757A plotted on an unforeshortened plan of the polyg- are rather dissimilar. The mazzocchio exhibited
9 X 24 (3 /2 X 9 /2)
2
l
c. 1450-1470
pen and dark brown ink
references: Kern 1915; Arcangeli 1942; Chastel
1953; Rome 1959; Parronchi 1964; Pope-Hennessy
1969,155-156; Florence 1978, nos. 76—78;
Himmelheber 1985; Cheles 1986; Rossi et al, 1986
Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence

Uccello's fondness for perspectival conundrums
is well affirmed both by paintings and by the
famous anecdotes in his biography by Vasari, who
claimed to own a drawing of "a mazzocchio traced
in line alone, so beautiful that without the pa-
tience of Paolo it would not have been possible to
accomplish/' There are two drawings of a mazzoc-
chio in the Uffizi —no. 1756A also depicting a
"skeletal" mazzocchio but with different-shaped
outer facets —and two related drawings in the
Louvre — Cabinet des Dessins no. 1969 depicting a
faceted sphere and no. 1970 depicting a solid maz-
zocchio (Rome 1959). The mazzocchio was a
hollow wooden or basket-work frame that sup-
ported a fashionable male headdress of the period.
Examples appear in Uccello's paintings of the
Battle of San Romano and more unexpectedly
around the neck of a near-naked man and on the
head of a woman in the fresco of the biblical Flood
in the cloister of Santa Maria Novella, Florence.
Despite the obvious similarities among the
drawings and their relationship to Uccello's
known practice, their attribution to him is less
straightforward than is generally assumed. The
main feature that the Uffizi drawings have in
common is their basic constructional approach,
which involves a myriad of incised stylus lines on
the surface of the paper, which are fully visible

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD 24!