Self-portrait, ca. 1568

Gian Paolo Lomazzo (Milan, April 26, 1538 – Milan, February 13, 1600; his first name is sometimes also given as "Giovan" or "Giovanni") was a Milanese painter of the second generation that produced Mannerism in Italian art and architecture. Lomazzo became blind in later life, and turning to writing, produced two complex treatises that are milestones in the development of art criticism. His first work, Trattato dell'arte della pittura, scoltura et architettura (Milan, 1584) is in part a guide to contemporary concepts of decorum, which the Renaissance inherited in part from Antiquity, which controlled a consonance between the functions of interiors and the kinds of painted and sculpted decors that would be suitable in a systematic codification of esthetics that typifies the more formalized and academic approaches typical of the later 16th century. Image File history File links Giovanni_Paolo_Lomazzo. ... Image File history File links Giovanni_Paolo_Lomazzo. ... Events March 23 - Peace of Longjumeau ends the Second War of Religion in France. ... Milan (Italian: Milano; Milanese dialect: Milán) is the main city in northern Italy, and is located in the plains of Lombardy, the most populated and developed region in Italy. ... April 26 is the 116th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (117th in leap years). ... Events Treaty of Nagyvarad. ... February 13 is the 44th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... // Events January January 1 - Scotland adopts January 1st as being New Years Day February February 17 - Giordano Bruno burned at the stake for heresy in Rome July July 2 - Battle of Nieuwpoort: Dutch forces under Maurice of Nassau defeat Spanish forces under Archduke Albert in a battle on the... Milan (Italian: Milano; Milanese dialect: Milán) is the main city in northern Italy, and is located in the plains of Lombardy, the most populated and developed region in Italy. ... Mannerism is the usual English term for an approach to all the arts, particularly painting but not exclusive to it, a reaction to the High Renaissance, emerging after the Sack of Rome in 1527 shook Renaissance confidence, humanism and rationality to their foundations, and even Religion had split apart. ... Art criticism is the study and evaluation of art. ... Etiquette is the code that governs the expectations of social behavior, the conventional norm. ... It has been suggested that Greco-Roman be merged into this article or section. ... Aesthetics (or esthetics) (from the Greek word αισθητική) is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty. ... An academy is an institution for the study of higher learning. ...

His less practical and more metaphysical Idea del tempio della pittura ("The ideal temple of painting", Milan, 1590) offers a description along the lines of the "four temperaments" theory of the human nature and personality, containing the explanations of the role of individuality in judgment and artistic invention. In traditional medicine practiced before the advent of modern technology, the four humours (or four humors) were four fluids that were thought to permeate the body and influence its health. ...

Lomazzo's criticism took into account three aspects of critical viewing of works of art: doctrina, the record of discoveries— such as perspective— that artists had made in the course ofhistory; prattica, the personal preferences and maniera of the artist, and iconography, the literary element in arts. Lomazzo’s contribution to art criticism was his systematic extraction of abstract concepts from art, not merely a recounting of the marvels of verisimilitude and technique and anecdotes of the works' reception among contemporaries of the type that Giorgio Vasari had reported in the previous generation. Perspective is the choice of a single point of view from which to sense, categorize, measure or codify experience, typically for comparing with another. ... Iconography is the study and interpretation of images in art. ... Giorgio Vasari (Arezzo, Tuscany July 3, 1511 - Florence, June 27, 1574) was an Italian painter and architect, mainly known for his famous biographies of Italian artists. ...

Literature

• Kemp, M.: 'Equal Excellences': Lomazzo And The Explanation of Individual Style in the Visual Arts, in Renaissance Studies vol 1.1, March 1987.
• Lomazzo, Gian Paolo: Trattato dell'arte della pittura, scoltura et architettura [Milano 1584] in Scritti sulle arti Vol. II, Roberto Paolo Ciardi, editor. Florence 1974.
• Manegold, C.: Wahrnehmung - Bild - Gedächtnis. Studien zur Rezeption der aristotelischen Gedächnistheorie in den kunsttheoretischen Schriften des Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo; Ph.D. thesis. Published as Studien zur Kunstgeschichte vol. 158; Olms 2004. ISBN 3-487-12675-3. In German.

External links

• Vita of Gian Paolo Lomazzo.
• Brief description in Italian.
• Another description, also in Italian.