BISAGNO, Francesco

First edition of this fascinating treatise on painting, a useful source for the legacy and reception of Renaissance Italian artists. Bisagno acknowledges the virtues of sculpture but lauds painting as the finest of the plastic arts. He divides the making of a picture into five components: design, drawing, light, shadow, colour, and composition, the last distinct from design in that it concerns the arrangement of the above components. These elements are then interrogated further, design being split into natural design, i.e. copying the anatomical forms, and artificial. Bisagno recommends copying Michaelangelo di Buonarotti (1475-1564) for the quality of his draughtsmanship but finds him difficult to emulate as a colourist. For colour he praises Giulio Romano (c.1499-1546) Polidoro da Caravaggio (c.1500-43) and Perino del Vaga (1501-47), comparing their methods of mixing paints. The greatest colourist, however, is Leonardo da Vinci, and Bisagno includes a brief catalogue of his paintings with their locations. Da Vinci receives further praise in the section on light, singling out a painting which he calls the Conception of the Madonna, then in the church of San Francesco in Milan, now known as the Virgin of the Rocks and in the National Gallery, London.

Nothing seems to be known of Bisagno, but he was likely a painter himself, since he demonstrates knowledge of the technical aspects of painting, especially in the mixing of colours, as well as the different methods of painting: fresco, ‘dry’ and oil. Evidently a mannerist, Bisagno describes a theory of colour in relation to the subject of the painting, so that certain elements, especially of religious paintings, such as angels or the Virgin, should be elevated or subdued according to their significance, as well as a theory for the symbolic arrangement of the limbs in accordance with emotions. Bisagno also finishes the work with more practical advice aimed at jobbing painters, including methods of depicting land and sea battles, and appropriate subjects for churches, libraries and the cells of monks, fountains, gardens, music rooms, schools, and places of execution by burning and hanging.