Aneddoti vero e/o verosimili nella pittura storicizzante del primo Ottocento: Aretino fra Tiziano, Tintoretto e Tasso

Nineteenth-century iconography of early modern writers and painters depends to a large degree on anecdotes used as narrative devices to pictorially render the exceptional stature of these creative persons. Focusing on portraits featuring Pietro Aretino, Torquato Tasso, Titian and Tintoretto, the essay documents the sources of the anecdotes used by painters like Ingres, Bergeret, Richard and Feuerbach in order to assess the relevance of their documentary footing. While demonstrating that most of the anecdotes are apocryphical inventions of early biographers or seventeenth-century erudites, it highlights that some of the more peculiar legends on the contrary are factual, specifically the anecdote on the bizarre death of Pietro Aretino by excessive laughing informing the monumental canvas on this topic prepared in 1854 by Anselm Feuerbach. Hence the essay concludes that ‘troubadour’ painting is less concerned with historical evidence than with rhetorical credibility.