Study of self-presentation of artist in the Italian painting of the 16th century - abstract Italian art of the 16th century, known as the Cinquecento, is undoubtedly a captivating chapter of art history. No less interesting are the lives of artists from that time, the understanding of self-value and its presentation, creating the artist's identity, i.e. their "artistic self". Within a century we may observe the transformation from a craftsman to an artist, and subsequently artist- the courtier. The main representatives of this "movement", trying to raise the status of arts and artists in the society, were Giorgio Vasari and Federico Zuccari. Each represented a different generation of artists; however, figures of both these painters are complemented in a curious way. There are moments when their lives meet and, in a certain way, follow one another. It is one of the reasons, why the connection Vasari-Zuccari is suitable for understanding social situation or the self-presentation of central Italian artists in the 16th century. It is almost as if this duo was representing a fictitious art figure of the Cinquecento, whose life began 1511 (with the birth of Giorgio Vasari) and ended in 1609 (with the death of Federico Zuccari) and by studying this figure we discover the development of artists' self-concept and...

Die Untersuchung widmet sich der visuellen Thematisierung autoreferentieller Fragestellungen zur Genese sowie den Grundlagen und Zielen von Malerei in der italienischen Druckgraphik des ausgehenden 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts. Erstmals wird diese bildliche Auseinandersetzung mit abstrakten kunsttheoretischen Inhalten zum zentralen Untersuchungsgegenstand erklärt und anhand von vier hinsichtlich ihrer ikonographischen Dichte herausragenden druckgraphischen Beispielen - Federico Zuccaris Lamento della pittura, Pietro Testas Liceo della pittura, Salvator Rosas Genio di Salvator Rosa und Carlo Marattas Scuola del Disegno – vergleichend analysiert. Neben der Rekonstruktion der Entstehungszusammenhänge befasst sich die Analyse mit dem Verhältnis von Text und Bild, offenen Fragen der Ikonographie, der zeitgenössischen Verlagssituation sowie dem Adressatenkreis und somit schließlich der Motivation für jene komplexen bildlichen Reflexionen über Malerei. Als zentrale Gemeinsamkeit der kunsttheoretischen Blätter, welche im Kontext der römischen Akademiebewegung entstanden sind, konnte das Bestreben, die Malerei im Sinne einer Metawissenschaft über das neuzeitliche Wissenschaftspanorama hinauszuheben, erschlossen werden. Anhand einer umfassenden Neubewertung der einzigartigen Ikonographien wird erstmals aufgezeigt, dass dem Vergleich zwischen Malerei und Philosophie als der Mutter aller Wissenschaften in der visuellen Kunsttheorie des 17. Jahrhunderts eine vollkommen neuartige Bedeutung zukommt. Dieser hat neue Spielräume für die bildliche Definition des künstlerischen Selbstverständnisses eröffnet, die der traditionelle, aus dem Horazschen Diktum „Ut pictura poesis“ hervorgegangene Vergleich zwischen Malerei und Dichtung nicht in ausreichender Form bereit hielt. Folglich thematisiert die vorliegende Untersuchung auch die Frage nach dem spezifischen reflexiven Potenzial des Bildes, seiner medialen Autonomie und seiner möglichen Vorrangstellung gegenüber dem Medium der Sprache. / The study deals with the pictorial examination of self-implicating topics relating to the genesis, the fundamentals and the aims of painting by Italian printmaking of the late 16th and 17th century. For the first time, a research is focussed on the pictorial examination of abstract contents of art theory as shown in the selected and compared examples which are extraordinary regarding their iconographical concentration – the Lamento della pittura by Federico Zuccari, the Liceo della pittura by Pierto Testa, the Genio di Salvator Rosa by Salvator Rosa and the Scuola del Disegno by Carlo Maratta. Besides the reconstruction of the history of origins the research is dealing with the relationship of image and text, problems of iconography, the coeval publishing situation as well as the target audience of these prints and finally the motivation for those very complex visual reflections on painting. As essential similarity of those arttheoretical prints, which all araised within the context of the Roman Art Accademy, has been determined the ambition to specify painting as a kind of Meta-science, which is somehow superior to all other modern age sciences. By means of an extensive reevaluation of the unique iconography of every single sheet it became feasible to illustrate that the comparison between painting and philosophy as the origin of the entire spectrum of sciences has attained a completely new dimension within the pictorial art theory of the 17th century. The novel comparison has opened a wider range and diversity for the visual definition of the artists` self-conception compared to the traditional comparison between painting and poetry, as it emerged from the dictum „Ut pictura poesis“ by Horaz. Accordingly the study deals with the question of the particular reflexive capability of images, their medial autonomy and their potential primacy over language.