De Architect & De Musicus

A pen and compasses and a sheet of music are the principal clues in interpreting a fascinating work of art produced in Renaissance Italy. Piero di Cosimo, one of the most idiosyncratic Florentine painters of the late fifteenth century, portrays the city’s leading architect, Giuliano da Sangallo, and Giuliano’s father, Francesco Giamberti, on two panels designed − most unusually − to be seen as a diptych. Among the earliest portraits to characterize their sitters by referring to their professions, they celebrate the links between the harmony of music and the ideal proportions of architectural design. This booklet examines the genesis and history of these beautiful, gem-like images, unravelling the subtle allusions by which the painter underpins the status and intellectual interests of the innovative architect and his musical father. By placing them within the traditions of both Netherlandish and Italian painting, as well as in the context of Renaissance humanism, it underlines not only the originality, but the extraordinary pictorial quality of these masterpieces. In this edition of the Rijksmuseum series, author Duncan Bull tells the story of the fascinating double portrait of father and son Da Sangallo by Piero di Cosimo against the background of the humanist ideals of the Renaissance.